one-armed dwarf

Play a character with a meterless reversal, find out what the option select is to block on one side and do the reversal on the other, if you block you're good. But if you DP then when the safe jump blocks the reversal, use meter to escape the DP punish with purple RC and then put them back under pressure Of course, Millia can't do this, lmao. (actually using RC to undo the DP might require specific timing, I'm not sure tho can't remember)

The thing is, you want some friction and danger with a Resident Evil game. I guess you also want some sense of direction, but frankly I thought Alan Wake 2's sort of more free structure shows that a different approach can work. The thing that's great with Dragon's Dogma is how poorly laid plans can fuck you up, in exactly the same way that a poorly prepared run from one side of the mansion to the other can. Admittedly, a ton of the appeal of these games lies in their intimately laid out hallways and shortcuts. But even a game like DD can do stuff like that, just in a different way. Perhaps that's all recency bias, but in either case I think it's a mistake to think of all OW games as having a similar approach or being dismissive of such an experiment. There are definitely more games than Ubisoft icon cleanups. There's very different types of OW that can still have pushback and consequence. It's something Resident Evil hasn't really tried either, and I think it's in a bit of a stale position right now, relying on remakes and the Ethan stuff has really sort of petered out. Like, if you're a fan of classic RE, FPS RE, action focused RE or even VR RE, every single one of these tastes has been very well served the past few years so imo there's not much to complain about here

The problem isn't with open world games, it's about games putting content ahead of craft. But there's lots of open worlds which don't do this You know, I bet Nag would agree with me, but Dragon's Dogma's item box and adventuring mechanics would work really well with a Resident Evil game. The way you have to plan, and can get caught out in night, you can see the Resident Evil DNA in it

Rowling can get in an exploding mako reactor tbh

I think both of these DLC look really good, the boss fight I saw in the first DLC looked really good. But I'm anxious of about 12 more sequels to Blacksmith's blues But I'm holding out for the PC release now. I wish they just kinda bit the bullet though and made this a straightforward DMC action game, cause it's already decent at that part anyway. The RPG side didn't seem needed (and Rebirth trounces that side, even if combat isn't as high execution)

I took the day off to play, as mentioned. It's good, but so far it sort of feels like it's just replaying the hits from the first one. It's not clear what makes it a new game tbh It did stick out that the title screen does just says Dragon's Dogma, so perhaps that's on purpose. The physicality of fights is improved, they are fraught affairs and modern visuals and physics sell that in a much more convincing way. Night is dangerous, your lantern glints in the eyes of monsters. You can chuck an object, enemy or even your own pawn at enemies to damage and stun them. You can play all out offense as a fighter/warrior, or more long distance support and ranged with a mage (no idea what ranger is like). You can create small platforms out of ice spells, and shield your allies with magic. There are performance issues on PC, but I also doubt there is a better way to play it than that. But so far it has a similar vibe as going from dmc4 to dmc5, in terms of how similar it is (the point being, it's the same dev team on both series sticking to what they know, with a 10 year increment in technology being the main justifying factor here) Hopefully there's something a bit more surprising later on. It's just the familiarity of it has me feeling bored, at the same time if you've never played the first one that will not be a problem for you at all.

I really liked The Batman, but still find this a bit puzzling. It's such a gimmicky performance by Colin Farrell, a lot of fun in the film but I'm not super into the idea of a long form story about him. Definitely going to check it out though, Bats and Gotham remain the only comic book-ey thing to pull me in right now

Those are some puzzling mtx, cause one of the game's main appeal is its sense of friction and a lot of those mtx are designed to undo that. If you're paying to undo its fast travel it seems like you would miss out. The only one that annoys me personally is they're charging to change you appearance, but im fairly sure there will be a cheat table to do that at least. Edit apparently you can redo characters without mtx

Clearly optimistic with the naming here These nostalgia bait films all have the same trailer, that said I hope this one is good. Oh and I see they immediately answer the question of 'is Alec Baldwin going to be in it'

VATS is a very good analogy. I think of the system was being like RTWP (real time with pause), like classic Balder's Gate or Planescape Torment but VATS probably makes more sense given the action synthesis. I don't know what red move you mean, but there are red moves which you can block or punisher counter (holding R1 during Cloud's stance change), and there are unlockable red moves where you GTFO. You can interrupt both of these (not all the time, but some of the time), but you got to do it quickly and it's very situational which ones work. Like a powerful thundaga spell may interrupt certain moves by big robot enemies, but a weaker thundara might not, depends on how big the number given is. It's a bit more technical though cause enemy weaknesses play a part there and most of the time you're much better off respecting the mechanic and blocking it, and taking your turn back right away after. 'Pressure' is a state where you deal enough damage to interrupt and slightly stun an enemy, and their orange stagger bar will fill up more quickly. So you've a small window there to capitalise (sometimes a longer window) but you still have to wait your turn after a while. Stagger is where your damage multiplies, you get to just pile on. Generally tho wrt information overload in the heat of battle, I use tactical menu a lot (the X button). Especially in Rebirth, where it gets more complex, and that's where the RTWP thing comes in for me. I don't play it like an action game at all, really. I live in its menu systems so it comes closer to being a turn based strategic game in its own weird way, except you have to find ways to make turns happen faster. Also in general it's good to keep ATB ticking over a bit rather than 'overcapping' on it, it's your main resource for dealing damage, dealing support and general synergy amongst the team. If it's not being used and there's an opening to use it, then it's being wasted, even if that means you won't have a way always to interrupt something later.

I beat the 'superboss', it's morphin time Some of the optional fights near the end lean pretty heavily on the precision defense mechanic. Not as big a fan of that mech as others tbh, kinda pushes the gameplay balance more to the action part of the spectrum. The materia for it makes it a lot easier though (not that it's particularly strict timing) and more powerful. The protorelic questline that leads to this has a lot going for it as well. Unique minigames, bespoke cutscenes dripfeeding teasers for future plot developments and wrapping up old ones (although at the same time, this accentuates the frustration at this piecemeal telling of what used to be a fairly brisk and easily contained story). FFXII's gambit system is in it for a bit, in maybe the most crazy bit of excess the game has to offer. After that, you unlock 'brutal' and 'legendary' VR trials, which are the thing they give you I suppose to justify the extra power grind you get from hard mode. Definitely appreciate that it's in there, but that's as good a point as any to put it on a hiatus. Tried the first one and got to floor 7 of the first challenge and some of the mobs were doing 2000 damage in stray attacks, so you have to really optimise and take build into consideration and use tactical mode to respect mechanics, not just mash buttons. Great, great game. Very very messy though, feels all over the place. Though honestly, its complete abandonment of polish and throwing every idea at the player is part of why it's so great, in my view, modern FF has been too on-reigns until this point. But that is what this era of FF was like, the one that VII was a part of, the era most fondly remembered. If it actually had a story, it would be the best Final Fantasy

Reading impressions on resetera, it apparently still looks pretty bad edit also apparently 'soft' (or smooth, as it's called) looks less bad than sharp

I'll reserve judgement on the performance stuff until the game is out, given it's hitting CPUs so hard and they are selling this as a very systemic, emergent game, you'd hope the hit to performance is at least balanced out by some really clever open world design. This is what next gen hardware is for after all That said, I said that about Starfield and I'm not sure I would be so quick to defend my position on that one, lol

There is no universe in which a console will run this better than that PC you have. Not even the spaghetti monster universe where everything is upside down

I will say, at this point I'm in the 'everything is a spoiler' camp with this game WRT discoverability and emergent gameplay, so I'm going to stop reading things and just look forward to my own discoveries (which I will also put in spoilers in the thread). But I found this anecdote on Pat's preview here really interesting. He's following a bard around, it's 5 minutes in, it's the most Gothic type shit I've heard

Reviews are in and sounds like a good 'un https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/dragons-dogma-2-review/ https://www.rpgsite.net/review/15622-dragons-dogma-2-review https://www.eurogamer.net/dragons-dogma-2-review I'm sort of annoyed though that FFVII Rebirth ended up being way better than expected cause I don't feel ready for this one yet, despite taking Friday off to no-life it for the day. Damn PC spec things, the TL:DR I'm seeing online is it needs a very powerful CPU, the GPU doesn't matter as much. Monsters can invade towns and massacre your framerate with all the NPC murdering they do, the inconsiderate cunts https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/dragons-dogma-2-performance-analysis/#section-1080p-performance

Good news for a change, Alpha Protocol is 'relisted'. Definitely grabbing this, heard it's some janky immersive/reactive RPG fun https://www.gog.com/game/alpha_protocol

To Och's question about materia, there's tons of different compositions there. Also you should look at this game as its own thing and not try to see it as having any progression from the Midgar chapter, cause it doesn't (outside of just the game itself being a more rich experience with the Midgar game as its underlying framework) Just had a look there, there are 87 different materias in this, there was 83 in the original FFVII. Remake had like half of this I think, it was fairly limited there. Early on you mostly get it from the VR thingy, and also from world intel. That's the weakness with this system I feel like, you don't really discover a lot of the new things so much as get it as a reward for doing the homework, but the possible compositions here with different materia and equipment make up for it as it's a much more interesting system. There are 7 weapons for each character, but each weapon is fully viable in the endgame. It's the same system FFXIII has, except without that game's grindy upgrade system. Buster sword is an all rounder, you have another one which is more physical based. Another is more magic. Another defensive. My favorite is one you get way later, which has fewer materia slots but has high crit chance, I pair that with luck plus and put Cait Sith in the party to boost luck so I'm getting crits all day. yesterday I beat all the summons I'd put off, max level . Kinda found the first two a bit easy even with level scaling, they are designed for the kit you have at that point in the game I feel like, endgame kits rip through them. The last one was different though, very unique gimmicks that I had to look up on reddit to understand Fun thing is though (protorelic spoilers)

Disgusting

Brolylegs has passed away RIP

tfw when in Gonganga turning the camera in 30fps graphics mode in HDR and it feels like your corneas are being serrated by extremely bright shiny razor blades

I really liked the first half of Matrix 4, but the second half did not work for me cause it just couldn't carry those action scenes as well as the original 2 did (I barely remember Revolutions). The camera and the way it frames all that bullet time stuff in the original has never stopped being cool imo, even as a late 90s time capsule of what 'cool' means (which if you look at it, just encompasses what 'The Matrix' is supposed to be anyway on a story level) I would have much preferred tbh if the whole movie was just about a game developer working through his shit, that it was just a way more low key film (it sort of is, but not as much as I'd have liked).

Damn, Nag straight up calling Maf 'mid' unprompted, toxic af

Phoenix without crystals is pretty real, I posted my run of that in the demo on the first page I think, lol. I've only beaten Phoenix, Bahamut and Alex so far, cause I kinda want to do them all without crystals. But because of that I've put off doing some of them, takes a while to learn the fight. Also because of the summon save import from Remake/Intermission/pre order bonuses, I don't really need the other ones tbh, I have mostly 'old' ones equipped. Phoenix is the most useful one (revives you), the power of the others is a bit underwhelming cause the full fat summon attack might not sync up with your burst phases, it's more for spectacle at times. I've beaten all the Gold Saucer arena fights, in fact the only thing left to do in the GS is to do the last two Queen's Blood challenges. Some of the high scores for things like the bike minigame and other games are surprisingly easy to achieve. But the QB challenges are real as fuck