Patient Gamers

The Banner Saga trilogy should be seen as one big game in an episodic format, because it tells one continuous story and the gameplay isn't different between the episodes, it just gets new characters with new abilities and items. And it doesn't make sense to play it in any other order than publication order, since your characters, choices and items carry over from each game to the next.

Now what is Banner Saga? It is an epic tale in a Nordic inspired world about hardship, survivors and what you do in order to survive. You play in a world where the sun stopped moving, the gods stopped responding (and were very much present in the past) and now there are stories about long thought defeated demons from the past coming up from underground and invading the known world. Some people fear it's the end of the world.

But for the moment you are still living in this world and need to somehow survive. You are elected to lead your village to a safer place, wherever that may be. And so you start your long journey in a caravan, where you meet a wide variety of people, some helpful, some malignant, but everybody desperate and you need to decide what to do. Do you search for berries in easily observable terrain or hunt in deeper woods where you might be ambushed by aforementioned demons ... or other desperate survivors less scrupulous than you? Because you also need to keep in mind to have enough supplies for your people, which very quickly makes the decision to take even more poor refugees in without any supplies themselves a lot harder than you might think now. In that regard it is similar in atmosphere to Frostpunk. How far are you going in order to survive? Do you leave behind your humanity? Not all of the characters following you will agree to abandon everybody else and so you have an ongoing dynamic during the whole story.

The second big gameplay part of this game series are turnbased tactical fights of your group against others. It has a unique HP situation: your characters have Strength, which is HP and Attack Strength in one as well as armor which reduces the damage from enemy attacks. So you need to find out how to reduce enemy armor in order to kill your enemies before they do the same to you. You're named characters are either small humans or bigger Varls, a giant race with lots of strength behind their hits. You get fame from fights, which acts as currency and XP here.

Playing this game means accepting that you could fail 6 hours in because you don't have any supplies anymore and your people are abandoning you and then restarting. If you are fine with that (or save scumming/cheating, I don't judge) then a very beautifully depicted world, rich with stories and world building awaits you. Each game roughly takes 10 h and while the main locations are pre determined, the story that happens is very much depending on your prior decisions and it's not just Telltales "only optics of important decision making". And without spoilers: I was surprised how many variations of the finale there are, depending on your way to get there.

Oh and I completely forget to mention the music: it's epic in the literal sense of the word. The islandish, I think, lyrics really portrays the 'epic tale told by bards' feeling. It's by Austin Wintory, so of course it's awesome.

Rime is a very melancholic game by the sadly now defunct Tequila Works. You play a child that is stranded alone on an island but soon gets support by a fox spirit. Together you must solve the puzzles of the island and reach and climb the only landmark of this place, the huge central tower. The puzzles are not overly complicated or hard, but there was enough variety in them to entertain me over the whole play time of roughly 7 hours without feeling bored or it being repetitive. The levels are each unique in setting, theme and atmosphere to each other, highlighting the developers craft. Each level is a big open world, where you need to explore in order to find new ways to progress.

The highest strength of this game is its atmosphere and the music. Both are fantastic and similar to Ico, since you also explore a strange fortress together with a lone companion and wonder together at the vistas.

It's available on GoG, Steam, XBox One & PS4 but the price of 35 € really hurt the game in my opinion. <15-20 € is a fairer price range for the amount of content.

If you like taking artistic screenshots in games, then Eastshade is exactly the game for you.

You are an artist who fell into a creativity blockade and to get out again, you visit the island of Eastshade, birth place of your mother, to get new inspiration. The main game consists of you painting pictures by freely choosing the size and orientation of the frame, aligning your view & then taking the picture. These pictures are then used to solve most of the quests in this game. People request that you paint their business for advertisement or somebody wants a picture of their hometown before they leave it. It feels a bit like a pacifistic Elder Scrolls game, because every corner had some quest for you and you want to explore more. I took more than a few pictures just for myself because I liked the composition.

In order to paint you need a canvas and inspiration, which is a resource you get from finding beautiful views, hearing interesting stories or drinking a nice relaxing cup of tea. In this way the game play loop is nicely interwoven with the players desire to explore without making it possible to simply spam the "create picture" button.

The whole game was around 12 h for me and I enjoyed every minute of it. The wholesome atmosphere is a nice contrast to the all to common violence in so many other games. It is the only pacifistic Open World game that comes to my mind. And the music is also really great.

And they even included the possibility of accessing your in game pictures, they are in a special folder on your PC (but only those currently in your possession, if you give one away, it's not in there any more). While this is a wonderful feature, it also contains my only criticism: the resolution of the pictures is sadly really low. So while you can access your pictures in a folder on your PC, it's not high enough quality to use as background or anything similar.

My relationship with P&C adventures is... strained. I often like the stories they tell, but their moon logic is too often too strong for my poor brain & patience, so I start using a walk through. With this game it was the same, but it was better than many other offenders, as i only used it a few times, so I consider it one of the better designed P&C games.

You play as the android Horatio Nullbuilt (voiced by non other than Logan Cunningham, the voice actor from Supergiant Games, voicing all those old gruff ones like Dad Hades or the narrator in Bastion), the last name is one of the great points of world building in this game. It describes by which other robot this unit was built. Some ancient robots are even called humanbuilt, after the semi mythical creator beings that apparently lived once in the ancient past on this planet. But Horatio doesn't know his creator, hence Nullbuilt. He lives with his own creation and side kick Crispin Horatiobuilt in the airship UNNIIC and they try to repair it. Somerobot steals their power core though and so they take on the journey of retrieving it or finding a new one. This ultimately leads them to a city of robots, which shortly does away with silly questions like "oh no, does this robot have a soul?"and instead asks you the important questions like determining the parental naming rights between bickering robot creators.

While that last one is one of the few moments that lie more on the humorous side, the story of Primordia is in general on the serious side and in my opinion in the tradition of Isaac Asimov's AI: it has a premise about how the robots work and tells a story around that. The melancholic atmosphere of this game is one part I especially enjoyed.

If you like a well told story about a society of robots more on the serious side, give it a try! It's available on GoG, Steam and apparently also on iOS & Switch.

The first Psychonauts is a true Tim Schafer game: unconventional and a bit absurd, but funny and entertaining nonetheless. And make no mistake, this game is old, as is obvious by the graphics and certain game designs. And while the art style is unique, is grotesqueness is also not for everybody, sure. But I first played it a few years ago and so can say: even without nostalgia googles, it is a fun collectathon in today's age, if you can forgive some old school jank.

You play as Raz, a kid with psychic abilities that sneaks into a training camp for psychic secret agents, the titular Psychonauts. He wants to be one as well, but his family of circus artists forbid it. Psychonauts can enter the minds of other people and can access memories or help with psychical problems in this way. And the mind levels of all the different characters are the highlight of the game. Every single mindscape is unique for each character with different objectives and mechanics. You have one mind stuck in a 70s disco party, where you mostly have to use a bouncing ball to float around. One from a small guy with Napoleon complex, where everything is set up like a wargame or another from a failed actress where you have to literally set the stage and tell her life story and thereby help her come to term with it.

If you like unconventional designs, collectathons and can forgive some old school control and game design issues & somehow haven't played this game yet, I highly recommend it! The creativity in its characters and their mind levels is pretty unique. The sequel Psychonauts 2 is also a great game and modernise the formula without losing it's charm. Between those two games is also a plot relevant VR game "Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin". It is a fun little VR game, but if you can't play it, just watch a let's play or read a story summary, it's not a long game and only the setup for the beginning of the second main game.

It's available on GoG & Steam.

Like some of you I presume, I've been playing Lies of P for the first time recently... I took a break from it

to do a little fan art. A messy half baked sketch, but fan art nonetheless :P I couldn't resist, Geppetto's puppet is just the cutest kid.

Anyway, I've been really enjoying it! the combat I'm loving the most. As a mostly dodge monkey I feared parrying was going to be overwhelming, but the game eases you in very nicely. Maaan I love seeing those red sparks fly! Cool weapon movesets, the arm spices up the playstyle, and the fable arts are fun, but those feel a bit overpowered now, certainly will be very handy in NG+ cycles.

On that note, bosses have not felt super difficult, and I've enjoyed most of the fights (swamp monster phase 2 did made me sweat but it's ok, my favorite so far has been king of puppets ...least favorite: the mad clown and probably champion Victor, I struggled with his timings so I just dodged, and it was a bit meh that way)

World design, and vibes are all great of course, a beautiful homage to bloodborne in many ways, while doing it's own thing... Story wise I like the way they chose to adpapt this classic.

Over all It's been a pretty tight experience, Lots more good things to say about this game, but I won't bore you with it, I'm sure everything's been said ad nauseum. I've got some minor nitpicks here and there but nothing major. just wanted to ramble on a bit :D

I think the ps+ subscription only gives access to the base game, so I'm a bit bummed about that.

Anyway, sorry for the mega post if you are playing of have played before I'd love to hear about your experience as well. What you loved, what you didn't... Just please mark any endgame spoilers :P

The first Evoland was mostly just a one-joke game that was funny for half an hour. Not so it's successor, Evoland 2. That one is a full game in it's own right telling an overarching story and integrating it's greatest selling point, the constant change of gameplay mechanics, into that story.

You mostly play in an Action Adventure way similar to Zelda, but there are different time eras, which all have a different graphical style: the past with it's 8 bit and the present with 16 bit pixel art, as well as the future which has 3D graphics. You jump back and forth between the times to follow the plot and find out why you can do that in the first place. At certain points of the mostly linear game story you have scenes with special game play mechanics. From fighting game or Bejeweled to Prof.Layton puzzles, there is a lot of variety. And while no mechanic is really deep, it's only there for at max. 30 minutes, so nothing overstays it's welcome in my eyes.

The story is nothing overly philosophical, but it worked for me to endear the characters (well, except the MC, because its literally a blank state, maybe as reference to those older games, maybe because they didn't knew what to do with him) to me and move the game forward. Sadly it did get tangled up a bit in it's own time shenanigans story, but nearly every story with time travel does, so I'm not holding it against them.

While it is not a must play, I felt well entertained during my play through and was fascinated about the world they created.

And when I get bored of Hollow Knight, I pick up Gran Turismo 4 and Slay the Spire.

Spoiler warning: if you have not played the game yet, do yourself a favour and stop reading this post, don't look up anything about the game, and give it a go. You will not regret it.

Last warning. For real. :D

I tried the game out a couple of years ago when it was free on PS+ Extra and liked it a lot. Didn't end up playing all too much and once my Extra subscription ran out, I lost access to the game. I still wanted to keep playing it so I bought the game on sale for I think 10€? Still didn't keep playing the game further than Act 2 because I wanted my SO to play the game with me and experience all the twists and turns of this awesome game. We haven't played it further together still, and what better way to try out my new PC than with Inscryption. :)

I had watched a playthrough by Northernlion back when the game dropped and was amazed by the depth and complexity of the game but also of all the kinds of different genres that were blended into tight package. Act 2 distilled the already basic premise of the game down to its core and introduced all the different mechanics the rest of the game would be showing. The inclusions of the ARG component made the game even more special.

The ending when Grimora deletes the game and all the bosses reappear for a final battle was amazingly done, and I even teared up a little when Leshy showed up for the final time for another battle. It just felt so heartfelt when he even went so far as ignore the health points just so we could play a little longer before everything vanishes.

The ending was a little open-ended, I feel like. Luke is killed by an agent of GameFuna, but ultimately, the video game equivalent of the physical card game Inscryption still exists, so maybe a sequel would make sense to tie up the few loose ends? Then again, maybe it would invalidate the experience as a whole if a sequel is shoehorned into existence.

I havent't really thought about what to write exactly - just wanted gush about the game a little and maybe inspire some people to give it a try too if they haven't yet.

How did you like the game? Did you enjoy the different genres mixed into it? Any act that you especially liked? Act 3 is probably my favourite gameplay-wise.

The real-time chess of the different character classes in Bad North is truly incredible. I love how height makes a real advantage (or disadvantage if too close!) for archers' physics-driven arrows, all the details (despite being a minimalist game) like arrows getting stuck in targets' shields, your choices in what weapon specialties you can assign, the fluid and organic character movement and fighting, etc.

You also really come to care about your soldiers' survival since the death of squad leaders is (typically) permanent, so loss is extremely emotional, especially given how they're customizable with different items. And—like the world's greatest jigsaw puzzler, Glass Masquerade—almost any screenshot from the game could be made into a wallpaper, so that's awesome.

For those who have never played this game, it was just on sale at GreenManGaming for <$3 (IsThereAnyDeal rocks!). It was also given away via Epic Games some years ago, which is how I've been revisiting it.

This game made me feel like the captain of a space ship. There was nothing like it at the time it was released, and even now I have not experienced any other game making me feel this way. I loved Fallout 3 too, but Mass Effect had something special. It was so well crafted, I listened to every dialogue of every NPC. The characters are so memorable with amazing voice acting. The Citadel is the best city in video games, felt really alive. Most sidequests add to the story instead of just padding the gameplay time.

After playing the game, I wondered how Star Wars (movies) sucked so badly, when a video game could create a much more interesting sci-fi world and story.

Unfortunately Bioware is no longer the same company.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/46035991

Good Day good people.

I am looking for some more examples of Video Games where there is a plot, but for one reason or another, the result of the plot is that nothing happens. My criteria for this is fairly lax on the "how" but in some sense, by some definition by the end of the game, absolutely nothing has happened. I'm hoping some of you fine people may be able to identify some instances of such a thing.

Examples (I've chosen to spoiler tag everything as just being listed gives away certain plot elements. All examples given here are niche titles from over 15 years ago).:

• Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere (specifically the Japanese release): Huge inter-corporate conflict with several different factions and paths you can follow. One you go through all the different endings, the game reveals that it's just a simulation made by one guy to make sure no matter what happens in an upcoming conflict; your character, an AI, will kill the dude who cucked him.
• Persona 2: Innocent Sin: You spend the whole game fighting Nyarlathotep to prevent him and the Nazis from destroying the world. At the end of the game, you fail and choose to abort the timeline and erase everyone else's memories, leaving the main character stranded in the doomed timeline.
• Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter: This is the most boring way for this to play out IMO as it's just a straight coma twist

---

So please. Let me know any and all games you can think of where the end result of the plot is that nothing happens. The more ridiculous, the better!

(Sorry, for repost. I didn't know about the crosspost feature)

I never got around to playing the DS Castlevania games since I never owned a DS, and the emulators aren't the best experience because of its awkward portrait mode and touch controls. Recently though, I picked up the Castlevania Dominus Collection on my Switch and wanted to gush about it a little.

Order of Ecclesia is fantastic. Almost 20 years later, it aged incredibly well even compared to modern Metroidvanias. You could say the same for any RPG Castlevania game, but still. It's a great take on the Castlevania formula but manages to be unique enough to feel fresh.

For one, this doesn't take place in one big map. It's split up into multiple smaller areas connected with a world map, which is pretty different compared to entirely taking place in one castle. Areas can still be massive and have a lot to explore though, and there's a lot of side-quests you can finish to help the villagers across many areas.

Also, Shanoa's playstyle is heavily magic-based. At the start you can conjure up weapons to attack normally, but over the course of the game you'll be exclusively using spells and exploiting elemental weaknesses on enemies. Similar to Dawn of Sorrow and the newer Bloodstained, you gain new spells from enemies you kill which is a great mechanic.

Side note, I'm in love with Shanoa's design in this game. It's a shame it had to be a DS game because it doesn't quite show in the pixel art, but she's probably the coolest MC in any Castlevania game. Very different to your typical "Die Monster!" protagonist.

Order of Ecclesia is also notably really tough. I was having a much harder time compared to Symphony of the Night or Dawn of Sorrow. Checkpoints are few and far between, and bosses can be such a pain in the ass with really high HP and enough damage to kill you in 3 hits. The game is also very stingy on money so you can't just keep buying potions to use in hard fights, I was constantly broke and had to manage my resources well.

Overall, fantastic game. Highly recommended if you're into Metroidvanias or never got around to playing it. It's an S tier Castlevania game.

I also want to give a shoutout to Konami. I hate their business practices and pachinko machines, but I have to give credit where due, this is the best retro collection of games I've ever bought. It has everything. Built-in achievements, a music player for each track in every game, hundreds of high quality concept arts, scanned user manuals for each language, high quality versions of covers and promotional material... You can even switch each game's region between US and EU for its subtle differences.

Like, you can even choose tracks you like in the main menu and place them in a playlist, then shuffle it. They put so much effort into this and it really shows. It's a game preservation miracle. Serious props to the creators.

Ran across this in a discussion about Nintendo's Virtual Game Cards and Key Cards.

For myself it's

Physical > Perpetual Digital (GOG) > Key Cards (Switch 2) > DRM Digital (Steam/PS3/Xbox 360) > Account DRM Digital (PS4/Switch/Xbox One) > System Locked Digital (3DS/Wii U) > GamePass > Streaming Games (Amazon Luna/Stadia)

For some context.

While Key Cards are digital they are not tied to hardware which means so long as the servers are still running the game can be downloaded and played... presuming no additional authentication is required.

DRM Digital is bellow that since services like Epic Games, and Steam still require re-authentication from time to time. Though Steam is getting better thanks to the Steam Deck.

GamePass is low because it is the same as Game Rental. You don't own the game. Good to try never to own.

On that note, physical games with download codes inside don't even get a place on my list. Got tricked into buying Patapon 2 this way and I always read the games fine print ever since.

Give me your favourite OSTs, individual tracks, whatever.

With all secret shells, hearts containers and 0 deaths. Was a fun experience but a challenge I will not do again.

Was intending on playing links awakening again. But I happened to do so since I just got a switch lite and was trying out some games on it. Then I got sucked back in.

Such a classic game