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voltimer · 3 years

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'The Magic of Johto's Level Curve'

(or, 'a leisurely analysis of the singleplayer balance of Pokemon GSC and HGSS')

The Johto games - especially HeartGold and SoulSilver - seem to have a very good reputation. Some often put the aforementioned HGSS into their top 3 or describe it as the core Pokemon experience. I personally agree with this sentiment and HGSS is either #2 or #1 depending on my mood (it usually competes with Black 2 and White 2).

Despite all its praise though, there seems to be an incredibly consistent point raised against it: the level curve. I see it described as unbalanced, janky, and generally bad.

There are two main problems people tend to cite. First is the level progression in Johto itself, with Gyms 5, 6, and 7 not exactly being a smooth progression upwards and then Team Rocket's Archer and the 8th Gym having a notable level spike compared to those last three. Wild Pokemon levels are also usually a lot lower than the major boss fights they are ahead of, making raising new 'mons harder and grinding for boss fights longer. The other problem is Kanto, whose problems can essentially be said to take Johto's levelling issues and ramp them up. The jump from fighting Blue to the Elite Four rematches and Red is also very significant.

What I'm not going to do here is refute that the above isn't true - these level scaling inconsistencies are certainly present. It's also very different to the vast majority of main series entries, whose level curves are more linear and gradual. Gens 5 and 7 even have a feature which multiplies exp gain based on how much lower or higher you are than the Pokemon you defeat which in a way acts like a rubber band around each game's level curve, ensuring you can catch up easily but not go too overlevelled either. Playing GSC and HGSS when the rest of those entries are like that is a bit jarring. Pokemon is so well-known for having quite a formulaic design across its main series and when compared to that formula with regards to level progression and the like, the Johto games do seem a bit off-colour.

What I am going to do though is try to explain why this so-called bad level curve is at the very least not actually that bad, or, if I can convince you well enough, that the Johto games actually have a unique and (what I call) magical singleplayer game design not properly replicated in any other entry. It goes to the core essence of Pokemon's theming, and it fits with the fact that Johto's narrative also happens to put the most focus on those themes than the rest of the series.

When I say the core essence of theming, I mean the very basics of every Pokemon adventure: you, the player, leave home to go on a journey around your region, meeting various people and overcoming various challenges along the way together with your partner Pokemon. Challenges you overcome are all thanks to the bonds you share with your partners and how you raise them with love and care. As you get older, this is the sort of thing in Pokemon that you probably end up taking for granted. It's typical "power of friendship" stuff, and most people will tend to come to conclude through learning about the game mechanics that this sort of thing is superficial and that stats are all that matter in the end. The more modern Pokemon games also have such a big focus on larger-than-life stories with big climaxes featuring the box Legendaries that it's easy to lose this basic level, down-to-earth narrative theming.

Johto is significant for not having any larger-than-life aspects overshadowing its core. Instead, the core takes centre stage. There is no real overarching story besides your adventure. Team Rocket's antics take a sub-plot role but in the end act as a foil to your story, being one of the more major obstacles you overcome. Catching Ho-oh or Lugia is no cataclysm either, but rather a reward for your achievements throughout the game and thanks to your good and pure heart - recognised by the Legendary in question. Moments throughout the game like how you deal with the situation at the Lake of Rage, or the Dragon's Den trial where you're asked questions to test your ideals as a trainer (which, of course, you pass with flying colours) all contribute to this core as well.

The way Professor Oak congratulates you after defeating Lance ties the knot perfectly on the main campaign:

"Ah, <player>! It's been a long while. You certainly look more impressive. Your conquest of the League is just fantastic! Your dedication, love, and trust for your Pokémon made this happen. Your Pokémon were outstanding, too. Because they believed in you as a Trainer, they persevered. Congratulations, <player>!"

These are just examples of the main story events, though,and Johto has a lot more than that. The region is filled with things to do beside the main campaign - Berries/Apricorns, Pokegear calls, the Ruins of Alph and other optional caves, the Bug Catching Contest, and (in HGSS) the Pokeathlon and Safari Zone, just to name a few of the more notable ones. Tama Hero's review of Pokemon GSC talks a lot about this and it's well-worth a watch even beyond the section describing the games' breadth of side content.

Tama Hero also touches upon the supposed level scaling issue, and her response to the complaints is that there is a "sprinkling" of opportunities for small bits of exp gain throughout the game which should help you stay on track in most cases, and where you can't match levels, you can outplay your opponent.

I certainly agree with the latter. It always feels entirely possible to beat bosses at a level deficit throughout Johto. The Johto League is one of the key cases where you'll probably end up at level disadvantage, but I've consistently been able to defeat it with a team of lv 40s on average (so nearly 10 levels behind Lance's peak), and I'm pretty certain that my not-even-10-year-old self did so as well, even though it took me many, many attempts. From various people I've talked to and bits of let's plays I've seen over the years, this seems to be the common experience too. I think only a minority of people have had to grind to match Lance's levels in order to beat him at all. Granted, it might take you a couple of tries at that level disadvantage (or a great couple of tries more, like little ol' me), but that's surely not an unreasonable expectation. The concept of getting stuck at a difficult stage in a game could be called a universal one, and I think most people agree that it's always pretty satisfying to finally surmount a challenge like that. This can even be said about other Pokemon games - Kanto, Hoenn and Sinnoh also all have large level spikes at the end. In fact, at least when it comes to the end of the maingame, I'd argue Hoenn and Sinnoh have a larger level spike than Johto, but they're not considered impossible or anything

Regardless, though: it's certainly possible to win difficult battles in Pokemon at a level disadvantage. Tama Hero argues that the strategy required to do so isn't something the game teaches you very well, but I think this is a tad pessimistic. In the end I think that most wins will just come down to understanding of more fundamental skills that you've probably learned through the course of the game naturally - using type matchups (gyms are all type themed), using moves with stat changes (the earlygame is full of moves like Growl and Tail Whip), using status moves (no doubt you're going to see the effects of Paralysis and Burns throughout the game at least), and apt use of items (bosses always use potions and often use held items). Players also have more control over the battle than the enemy, with the default Switch mode and a huge amount more items available. It's true that the games don't teach you the deeper, untold mechanics very well, but learning about those only unlock even more ways to succeed for the numbers-minded veterans.

On the topic of those deeper, untold mechanics I also want to talk about something which Tama Hero doesn't mention at all - Effort Values, or EVs. Most of you reading will probably know about these by now, but for those who don't, EVs are hidden values which can increase a Pokemon's raw stats by a certain amount based on the other Pokemon they defeat. They were present in a slightly different form in Gens 1 and 2 in the form of "stat exp" but the premise was the same: your Pokemon grow twofold when you defeat Pokemon, by gaining visible exp for levelling up and visibly gaining stats every time that exp bar fills, but also by gaining stats little by little every time they defeat any Pokemon. Your Pokemon's EVs weren't visible to you in-game until Gen 6 with the Super Training graphic, and numerically weren't until Gen 7 where you can press X on the Pokemon's stat screen to show what are called "base stats".

EV optimisation is crucial to competitive play because the stat boosts they give are quite significant. Competitive players will "min-max" spreads, putting as much as possible into 2 stats to maximise strengths and not wasting any on stats they aren't making use of. In maingame playthroughs, though, EVs will usually end up being a balanced spread because you'll invetivably be facing a variety of Pokemon with different EV yields throughout the game. EVs can also be increased with the Vitamin items (Protein, Calcium, etc.) which you find a handful of throughout the game (and can buy at a premium) and can be used to manually raise EVs, though only to a certain point.

In Gens 3 and onward, a Pokemon can have up to 252 EVs in 1 stat, and 510 in total. At Lv 100, 4 EVs in a stat grant 1 point extra to it. For the singleplayer campaign the conditions are a bit different, but if we assume as a standard that by the Elite Four your EV total is maxed out and you have an even spread, your stats will all be up to 10 points higher than they would be without EVs. In Gens 1 and 2, you can actually max out all of a Pokemon's stat exp values but you're unlikely to cap them all for a good while beyond the maingame so we can consider them about the same as in the later gens for this.

But why is this important?

Firstly, the difference EVs make in the above scenario account for what is usually about 5 levels' worth of stats. Depending on your exact distribution, it could be a couple more or less levels' worth in each stat but the bottom line is that they make your Pokemon's strength higher than it may seem based on level alone.

This means that the wild Pokemon grinding that is criticised for being too tedious in Johto as a result of low levels is also better than it seems because even when you don't level up, you're gaining EVs for every one of those you defeat. The stagnant levels in the midgame of Johto also contribute more to your Pokemon's growth than it may seem from the slow level gain. The Pokegear rematches which you gain access to after defeating Team Rocket before Gym 8 may also be a little infrequent, but they also very often give you Vitamins afterwards to add to all of this.

Secondly is what seems to be a fairly unknown fact: in-game trainers do not have any EV spreads. Thanks to the work of speedrunners, we have exact data of enemy trainers' Pokemon to show this. Trainers do have IV spreads based on their "AI level" (more 'advanced' AI levels will have up to 30 IVs across the board) but the difference near-perfect IVs will have on their Pokemon is not as great as the combination of random IV spreads and relatively balanced EV spreads yours.

That 10 level deficit vs Lance is suddenly more like 5 in practice. Some of his Pokemon also happen to have pretty high stats naturally in Gyarados and the Dragonites, and the level deficit will still be slightly present, but once we factor in strategy again, you can abuse their type weaknesses and make good use of items, status and whatever else have you to swing the odds in your favour.

The only way you can find out anything about EVs in Johto is from a NPC in Blackthorn City who gives your Pokemon the Effort Ribbon if they have reached their total of 510, and the only practical way for a player without the technical knowledge to have achieved this is to have spent time throughout the game doing lots of little bits of training - in other words, putting in the effort - to have incidentally capped their Pokemon's EV total. It's only fitting that you find this NPC towards the end of the Johto campaign because it's likely that by this point a couple of your team members will be eligible for the ribbon.

This finally ties back to the point of core theming. EVs are an invisible stat giving your Pokemon an extra edge over their in-game opponents, or, at worst, one closing a gap in strength between them, as a result of all of the time you've spent raising those Pokemon throughout the game. In other words, EVs are essentially the statistical representation of the "dedication, love, and trust" you have for your Pokemon which gets you through seemingly difficult challenges. Levels, then, are only a surface representation of your Pokemon's strength: they create the feeling of an uphill battle, but you can win against the odds by believing in yourself and your partners. It's probably exactly what you thought as the naive and uncynical child playing through a Pokemon game for the first time, and probably one of the ways you made such fond memories of it. In hindsight, this is definitely how it was for me. It is a sort of magic, really.

There is still a big Red elephant in the room, and I do think that the level gap between the end of the Kanto Gyms and Red is maybe too hard to go and beat immediately after even with the power of EVs and such, but Red is by all means a superboss and final challenge of the Johto games, and I don't think it's unreasonable to have to grind for a while to build up for and to finally be able to take his team of Lv 80s on. The same can be said about the Elite Four Rematches in this game and others, Steven in Emerald, or that one Barry fight in Platinum if you do decide to beat the E4 rematches 20 times to make his levels nearly match Red's. If you're setting out to fight a superboss like this, the grind is part of the prerequesites. It's definitely still possible to beat someone like Red with a 10 or even 20 level deficit if you play well, though. I admit, I haven't beaten Red in a long time, but I have beaten Emerald Steven with a ~15 level gap before. Tama Hero also said she has beaten Red with a team of level 50s in Crystal in the review.

I said before that the other games in the series haven't replicated this sort of thing as well. Gen 5 was the beginning of a marked shift away from this design, with its overarching story-driven style and a change to exp gain which would honestly be incompatible with the level curve in Johto. Gen 6, whilst returning to the exp system without level deficit multipliers, saw different means of statistical representations of the 'dedication, love and trust' trio in Pokemon Amie, which can break the game almost as much as the Exp Share when enough Affection is built up. Gen 7 brings back Gen 5's exp system whilst retaining the Exp Share and Affection systems, and actually ends up even diverging from the EV design which went before by having in-game trainers and Totem Pokemon with competitive, min-maxed EV spreads from as early as the Trainer's School. Whilst I am yet to play Let's Go and Sword and Shield, their Exp system with a 'permanent Exp Share' of sorts makes it a huge amount different and from what I've seen and heard, overlevelling is quite easy despite the game being designed around the feature. I really hope that Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl at least return to Gen 6's exp mechanics, or better, reunite us with the held-item version of the Exp Share which doesn't make me feel like I'm cheating whenever I use it.

Before I go too off-topic, though, I should probably return to the original thread of this post to make some concluding remarks. What can't be denied that the way GSC and HGSS are designed may not be for everyone. I know for sure that a lot of people prefer to be able to breeze through a Pokemon game at a brisk pace without many roadblocks, but as someone who in recent years has come to appreciate much slower-paced and immersive singleplayer Pokemon playthroughs, I can't help but love the way GSC and HGSS are designed in the way I've explained, or appreciate their unique identity amongst the rest of the series. Coming to think about this has also shed light on why I adored HeartGold as much as I did when I first played it way back 11 years ago. I poured hours and hours into the game, and as a result, its magical design put me under its spell.

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Though I linked to the references I did use when they appeared, here they are again. Do check them out if they're of interest to you!

Tama Hero's GSC review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgtMVKP2T6Y

speedrun.com trainer data for HGSS: https://www.speedrun.com/pkmnhgss/guide/k2zij

speedrun.com trainer data for SuMo: https://www.speedrun.com/pkmnsunmoon/guide/d2683

Tama Hero (YT) is one of the few people I know who actually makes longer-form Pokemon analysis content besides Aleczandxr (also YT), who whilst not being a 'PokeTuber' has made some brilliant analyses of storytelling through setting in Sinnoh, Hoenn, Johto, and just recently, Unova. I did not refer to them here but I can highly recommend their content, at least.

Thank you very much for reading to the very bottom here. This is my first time writing something like this and I appreciate it.

#voltimer longpost #pokemon #gsc #gen 2 #gold and silver #crystal #gen 4 #heartgold and soulsilver #analysis #hgss

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nanintell · 3 years

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damn arise's story is really good. love it.

a bunch of spoilers below! I HAVE WARNED YOU!!!

dhana and rena reminds me of eternia's inferia and celestia mixed with graces a little. cause they are different planets after all.

though story is different and really moving me to tears ,especially at the end when shionne was really to die then alphen managed to save her and get rid of her thorns in the end. and hey, we got a happy ending for once where hero and heroine are together ever! i mean they got married! haven't seen these kind of ending for a while. mostly romance but proceed to wed? can't remember latest time seeing that haha

there's also a scene about alphen's past. damn that's deep. i mean, WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGT HE'S FREAKING 300+ YEARS OLD! also the truth about thorns, sorveign, rena and stuff is really plot twisting. a scene when shionne's thorns went crazy after being kidnapped is also great, bring tears to my eyes. damn she was really lonely, unable to touch everyone. also thanks to vholran's brainwash and alphen suddenly getting hurt from her thorns when she was about to be taken, she thought she was really alone at that point. gosh, i feel bad for her.

i feel like this time we got a lot of animation though. then i saw someone combined it and turned out it to be around 25 mins long.

for characters, well i think i like everyone equally at this point. each of them has their own trait after all, like alphen always making food so spicy that shionne commented that it will make a hole in stomach, shionne loving to eat, rinwell and law fighting (i laughed everytime they fought in skit lmao), kisara being a mom to the group and dohalim listening to the relics (there's one skit where he tried to hold a conversation with relics and when there was a change, he thought that they finally responded but lo and behold, it's hootle's poops lmao)

of course hot spring scene is the best. i mean we normally got a peeping tom but walking out naked? LMAO (of course there's peeping tom but never got to peep scene)

don't ask me about gameplay though i didn't play it, i watched a playthrough in youtube (ok i'm sorry for not supporting the game financially) but overall graphic, color, others are great! recommended for everyone who can afford time to play and money to buy!

#tales of series #tales of arise #spoilers #like a lot #sry if anyone got spoiled by this but i can't hold it haha

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macgyvertape · 3 years

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HZD liveblog

time to see how badly watching a friend play the first 10 hours and then the internet spoiling the whole GAIA/HADES and clone thing, actually ruined me for the emotional beats of the story

VERDICT: Not really ruined, the clone thing would have been fairly easy to guess early on and HADES’ origins didn’t have a lot of emotional weight

So much of what got me emotionally invested was the environmental storytelling of the old world and the audio/text logs. Like yeah Aloy’s arc and journey was good but the game would have been lesser without them

The “old world” being set in the not so distant future and dealing heavily with themes around nihilism vs hope with climate change and extinction, I found it really compelling with the robot plague being a fictional metaphor of real issues that are easy to get doomerist about

Gameplay wise

spent a fair amount of time adjusting the graphics, and yeah 2 min into controling Aloy i get what people were talking about with controls feeling jank. This is AFTER the patches, glad i waited. Also the agony of minute+ loading screens ocassionally which is why i finished this with so many notes

the notes were great when I took a break midway through playing this game so I could look back

dodging/evading felt really janky at times I don’t ever see myself doing the game on harder difficulties especially since the game is long enough without doing sections slow with stealth or having to take time to go gather resources

My playthrough is ending at around 60 hours, I don’t see myself doing a ng+ anytime soon, but I do hope the sequel eventually gets ported to the PC

Liveblog comments below the cut:

oh shit 3 audio logs in and it seems like the writing and sound design is gonna knock it out of the park. From happy birthday, to a new years party, to suicide by gun.

since i know the flashpoint personality choices don’t effect plot, yeah i chose throw a rock back at that kids head

Wow Erend is a smooth talker.

Its hard not to be really dismissive of all of Nora’s superstitious religiouness like “we will be forgiveness for the sins that brought such misery on the tribe”, due to my own experiences with Southern US religious conservatives

Especially after these past 2 years I just feel derisive of the Nora’s religious/cultural anti intellectualism but considering its very different circumstances when the game was made, I don’t think I really have the knowledge to deeply talk about how this game touches on stereotypes of native groups

I know this is a game, so there is a cost to rendering things, but how does the worldbuilding work? The Nora I don’t think can do a hunter-gather life style because they don’t leave the Mountain area, and it seems outside trade is extremely limited (if it exists) so do they farm and we don’t see it (except for berry picking in the beginning) Like the tumblr post where its like it takes 1 full feudal village to produce a knight, but I guess all the Braves double as food hunting too????

I know they went through a war recently but still no wonder having most of a hunting party + a large collection of the youth killed in a short amount of time would push the Nora near collapse.

The Forgotten quest, I did point out that Brom’s issues wouldn't disappear and he walked away. (the tribe continues to have members who are vocal about treating Aloy like shit, do you think 10 years of isolation would lead to them treating Brom any better?) I'm really sideeying that the first side quest you get is a mentally ill poc man who is killed before and the voices are driving him to kill again. Hmmmmmm, maybe i'm reading too much into things??? Idk…..

Easily did gold medal on the first hunter trials. Watching my friend play this on PS4 he really struggled here but i guess the difference is mouse+keyboard aiming

Nil’s pretty ripped, kinda hot…

Playing on normal is pretty easy with combat so im fast tracking my skill points so i can summon a horse. I don’t have time to just run all over the map

Lol the “ring of metal” sports arena is a forbidden place, Varl’s nice

Difficulty scaling in this game is bad. I’m at level the 20, and at lvl 18 i did cauldron Sigma that had a challenging boss fight (the dodge mechanics), and then I did Underequipped (just by running across it) that had some challenging enemy waves. Meanwhile I haven’t reached the Carja fort and I’m passing by a bandit camp that is lvl 9

Also i upgraded my outfit carrying capacity to 35. I currently have 6, SIX total outfits. This seems like overkill

Did the find the soldiers quest, fuck snapmaws

First thing i do on the other side of the carja fort is kill a lvl 27 stormbird as lvl 21

Wow the tallneck surrounded by the birds, actually difficult, reloaded several times. Adds just keep getting aggroed, until i waited to override a sawtooth and have it fight for me

My mount stopped and stood in the talknecks path and just got crushed, lmao

Whelp 12.5 hours in i finally reach meridian

Feel kinda sorry for Olin reading his journal

So the Carja have a whole religion too, that is easily interpreted to mean whatever they want. Namman seems to be the only reasonable religious official in this game so far

Did the rustwash tallneck right at level 23, just by riding past all the enemies and jumping on it

Did the last bandit camp pretty easy, now all base game map unlocked

Finally tracking Orin down, and i get the “Unknown Caller” and I immediately recognize Lance Reddick, I’ve listened to a lot of Zavala voicelines the voice is very recognizable

Didn’t want to play Aloy as someone who will kill for revenge in cold blood, not for someone like Olin. Chose the heart option to tell him to redeem himself.

Time to fight another Stormbird since one attacked me when i fasttraveled to hunter quest, damn igniting the blaze cannisters does OP damage but also wow that bird wrecks my shit if i get close to it while grounded

I really like the robot strategic dismemberment. Shoot off their weapons, their plates, shoot the blaze cannisters to make them go boom. I’ll never play dead space but I enjoy this

Finally went to Rost’s grave, it was actually touching

Did another Cauldron, and in between just running around the map and wow i do a lot of combat -> gather -> upgrading loop.

Im starting to consider the hunters lodge quests with their annoyingly precise quests, padding

Im fucking sure im not gonna do all the collectables edit: in the end i wound up doing the metal flowers without going too far out of the way and I wanted to get all the vantages. Didn’t finish the rest

Was wondering about farms with the Nora, here are farms right in Meridian’s walls!

Doing the Fatal Inheritance quest at lvl 30, I remember watching my friend play and him spending like an hour on this getting wrekt. Yeah I’m overleveled and my gear is purple

Looked up where to find the power cells: I don’t need that power cell shield weave armor, but i will grab the powercells as i go along i guess but not going back for any

Meeting up with Erend for main quest and i think its funny there recorded like 5 extra voicelines for if you take ur time looting and not talking to him

This feels very Witcher 3, use ur extra senses to play CSI, highlight some tracks then follow them to a fight. Like i know more games do it but

Got the message “i advise you against visiting sunfal…” from not!zavala. But nothing seems to happen as i ride on by

Stealth through Maker’s End and killing the big machine was super easy. The enemies dont notice corpse and sniping with Shadow Sharpshot bow is EZ

Love how Aloy just yells “mysterious stranger did u see that” and is salty about no answer

Got the voice log where Ted Faro is like “use the back door” and the coder is like “you explicitly forbid any and all backdoors” and Faro is “well figure it out”

I don’t like Ted Faro already he’s every shitty management boss who has is the buisiness man on a tech dev project but knows nothing of tech

Oh so they made the smart AI robots able to self replicate and able to eat biomass to better sell weapons. And the pivot to weapons after solving climate issues was Faro’s idea. Fuck Ted Faro, literally every hologram makes me dislike him more

Not!Zavala is Sylens, and actually a+ writing here with how Aloy’s priority questions are different and how hes salty her first question is his name

Chose the Heart response to Sylens dialogue and what a HOOT his “i don’t care” response was. Same VA as Zavala is somewhat influencing my enjoyment of the character but also this interpersonal conflict is fun

Rescued Olin’s family with him, i like this outcome vs rescuing his family and telling the wife I killed Olin out of revenge

Ok im doing the “A Daughter’s Vengence” quest and its too easy that combat is annoying instead of fun.

I think i will just stop doing stealth because on Hard I’m too much of a glass cannon, and i don’t have time to stealth takedown 5 machines when i need to clear a site for parts

Doing the Banuk side quest and whats with the cords/wires interwoven in their body. I’m surprised that wouldn’t result in infection/toxic shock

Lots of voice logs in the Grave-Hold actually well written great worldbuilding. You hear a lot from Ames, then you hear from his wife where she says that the letters she get are AI written and don’t refer to all the awful events as the military is obviously losing, and civilians know “the lights will go out”

Then i realize all the audio logs from Ames in that room say “edited” and have a lot of “...” gaps, meaning stuff was scrubbed

Love how Aloy is like yeah Sylens i know the Earth isn’t flat (also I can’t tell if the continents look different to deliberately show tectonic drift or how sealevels rose)

Oh wow that Kopesh can demolish the catwalk instakilling me

Got a plus 51% handling time to slap that on my Sniper Bow

Ok so I get it now, thx to internet spoilers. The robots WON. Dr Sobek just had the US military kidnap scientists to build a vault system (reseeding life was the part i was spoiled on), and had the Military arm all the civilians and lie to this that the war would be winnable with a “superweapon” Zero Dawn. But no, everyone died

Ran across a thunder jaw while trying to hunt foxes. It would have been a rough fight if not for the armor arrows knocking off 2 heavy weapons and destroying the tail doing crits

Where is Nil, im doing a side quest to clean out bandits from a scrap site and I just remembered I haven’t seen that dude despite his promise to fight bandits with me

Okay Heap of Trouble quest heavy weapon segment was fun, also the quest giver Petra is cool af

Level 36 and i finally FINALLY get a fox skin for carry capacity increase. Holy shit that took too much farming

I wiped out the last bandit camp and got a “farewell” quest from Nil, googling shows he was supposed to help out with 2 other bandit camps but i guess the game is bugged and those quests didnt’ trigger. Glad I can watch it on youtube

Nil seems so sad I didn’t kill him. Of course i wouldn’t, he’s a weirdo but a fun weirdo and i bet he’ll show up for the final battle as a cameo. Thats how these big AAA games with “rpg elements” go.

Bet people online are thirsty af for him (who am i to judge)

Wish we got a hide helmet option, I like the look of a lot of the lower tier of armor but not enough to buy extra versions for cosmetics

Bow life and tripwires here

I just acquired 4 mugs on my travels, turned them in and i just got a collection of resources. Not worth it IMO

WHELP my game crashed fighting Ravagers, this is the 2nd time the game has crashed in combat

Chose the compromise option with the hunter quest, like didn’t seem the good choice to fight the large group and kill them

I really like Talanah, her helmet chinstrap though looks uncomfortable

Wow Brin is kinda accurate with the machine blood predictions, but also like suffering from severe heavy metal poisoning atleast

Avad the king seems very open with Aloy, wow

Blameless Marad seems to be what's keeping the sun king going

I have the Warbow and Tearblaster, and for fucks sake gotta go find fish bones again

Just hit lvl 40 rescuing Ersa

I kinda hoped Ersa would live but that would be too much happy ending for this game

So serene is pretty self deprecating, the way he talks about always being drunk makes me think its borderline alcoholism if not flat out.

Kinda surprised there isn’t more substance abuse in this world, but I guess its hard to get substances to abuse

Well except for machine blood guy

Right about here is where I gave up farming for resources and just lived with small carry capacity for new weapons and bought resources from merchants

The Carja have prison, and like a reform system, wow that takes resources especially in a very fragile society. Sucks that like Carja don’t allow women to be soldiers unless they can literally maim the opposition until they shut up

Back on main quest line: I really like the “i serve my own interest” type antagonists especially when they are competent and especially when the team up to help to against another antagonistic force

Really Aloy spends so much of the game alone, its good variety to see her interact with a person who also understands machines but they don’t get along. Motivation to help others with Aloy vs motivated for himself Sylens

Wow maybe Helis wouldn’t have become a fanatic if his wife and child hadn’t died in childbirth. Stereotypical angst BUT its one of those preventable deaths if medical knowledge had been preserved (can’t believe i wrote this before the big Ted Faro crimes against humanity reveal)

Chase segment was GOOD

I like Vanasha

GLAD THE GAME TELLS ME I’M AT A POINT OF NO RETURN

I really liked the Uthid questline, though at the end even as lvl 43 i was spamming heals

Doing the other quest, Vanasha has a six pack she’s shredded

I like finding text entries that talk about how fucked the world was even before the killer machines, talking about mosquitoes going extinct during a period of time people just call the “Die off” with whole new pandemics. Really feelz too real rn

Its definitely at the top of the list for good worldbuilding writing, shame just so much of it is hard to find over the entire open world

Fuck the Spurflint trials, too much random chance and bullshit. Its not worth my time to do them

I really like how the Zero Dawn facility is laid out. All the notes talking about just the human resource problems from snatching people around the globe and telling them how little time is left until extinction. The logs talking about the different options people had, and you can find one of those small solitary confinement rooms

The tragedy of Operation Enduring Victory, all the lies that were told and the people sacrificed just to hold off the robots for a little bit longer to try to build Zero Dawn to bring humanity back after total extinction; like its good writing the way they build up to it

Herres: “please note I am sorry and i wish you well” good shit

Sylens with the big heroic moment! Promptly undercut by him being so dismissive of the first message Aloy saw with her focus, then an apology for being needlessly cruel before. On that note, damn Sylens really has got a lot of intel this whole time

A lot of feelings about how so many messages in the game are left by people uncertain if someone will survive to see them but hoping none the less.

Also the children raised by AI with obvious limitations forbidden from accessing the rest of the space, the area only takes a few minutes to get through but its great environmental storytelling. So roughly 700 years later they are the present day Nora

Sylens really expressed that horror, they could look down into space they couldn’t access and raised by AI who obviously had gaps until they were sent outside since there was no more food

All the feels: Rost’s tragic backstory, Aloy hugging Teersa

LMAO ran across sidequest “death from the skies” i think that previous point of no return wasn’t as NO RETURN as I thought but I did notice where dialogue would have differed

Listening to peoples final messages as they’re sealed in GAIA with no return, then Elisabet’s sacrifice, its genuinely moving. You meet them not to long ago in the Zero Dawn facility but the logs serve to really flesh out the characters and flesh out that time was up, especially since some of the people met before chose suicide

FUCK TED FARRO, WHAT AN ASSHOLE LIKE HOLY SHIT I HATE THIS GUY, LIKE HES THE REAL VILLAIN HERE DONT THINK IVE HATED A VIDEO GAME DUDE MORE

Without Elisabet there to “manage” him he fucked the world over a second time, classic entitled rich white dude talking about the fucking “innocence of man” after he ordered the Faro war machines that he refused to understand the risk of no shut off

I don’t think I’ve been angry at a fiction man, I had to get up and go get myself a drink to take a moment

Like the horror of seeing their preserved corpses and the holograms overlaying it for that <min it’s very good at building up suspense because you KNOW something is wrong

Like the way he STUTTERS on talking about women there, the way that all the deaths from basic preventable things that he doesn’t even care about like CLASSIC SILICON VALLEY FUCKBOY

NOT to mention not just the MURDER OF THE ALPHAS, but like all the deaths becuase the work wasn’t fully completed aside from Hades going rampant.

That Sylens founded the eclipse isn’t a super surprise, he obviously regrets what his ignorance served more so than just assisting them one time

Its very funny to do the Dervall quest and see Avad in his grief make a pass at Aloy then apologise for it immediately in the next quest dialogue

I do appreciate all the people showing up for Aloy (it’s cute how many of them flirt)

Chose the heart option with Helis, i kinda do pity him but not enough to not kill him

Crying at the ending where Aloy visits Elisabeth grave and there’s the pan out with the triangle shape of the flowers like all the other flowers GAIA had created

That post game Sylens scene, maybe I ignored how he literally said he would use Hades again if it gained him knowledge cause I just liked the character so much. Feels like I just got Solas’d and he’ll be the big bad of the next game

Doing DLC Dam quest, Gildrun really made it enjoyable hes just so enthusiastic. Wish i could have found a mirror to give him. Just people finding joy in music over and over

The DLC old world narrative seems to be Blevins is peak stereotype asshole middle manager

Really appreciate how i can safe spot snipe all these towers

Remembered those 3 hunters as what they were willing to fight for

I enjoyed the main DLC story, told Cyan to be honest with the Banuk. The sibling relationship arc was well written as were the tie ins to the larger Zero Dawn plot

OF FUCKING COURSE Sylens was snooping in and chimes in at the end

Theres that vibe where “only you get that warning” like Sylens definitely treats Aloy as better than everyone else who lives in ignorance

I upgraded to bluegleam bows, I’m not going to bother to do so for all my armor

#horizon zero dawn #hzd #mac plays video games #horizon zero dawn spoilers #liveblog

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cassandrapentayaaaaas · 5 years

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Why did you first get into Dragon Age?

Funny enough, I was following a friend who reblogged at least one picture of Cassandra, my gay and repressed ass just kept going back to the post.

And then quite a while later, I decided I needed a new game to play. I knew that I wanted really stellar graphics. I also knew that I liked fantasy settings and RPGs, thanks to skyrim. So I looked up a list of the RPGs with the best CC at the time (because that also mattered), and DAI was close to the top of the list. So I bought the game on my 3+yo slow-ass Toshiba laptop whose memory space was already overencumbered by millions of old school projects, and I trudged my way through my first playthrough.

The graphics were shit, because I had shit machinery. Expressions were frozen more often than they weren’t. Cutscenes buffered for like 5 mins at a time.... and I was absolutely hooked. The story got me in the first 5 seconds. I hadn’t touched any of the preceding games, but I so easily fell in love with the world and the characters. And when Sera turned down my Big Strong male character (that’s another story), I finally let myself fall head-over-heals for Cass. And there’s been no going back, since.

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gingerbreton · 5 years

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Dragon age questions

Tagged by @bitchesofostwick thank you my dear ❤️

01) favorite game of the series? Origins by far. I love the story and the characters and how we were introduced to the world. Followed by DA2, I love the dynamic with the companions and how different it is to the first game. It’s also an easy nip in do a mission if you’ve not got much time. You’re not going to be stuck in the fade for hours!

02) how did you discover Dragon Age? I bought it as a present for my hubby (then bf) when it came out in 2009. We already loved mass effect but fantasy was more my thing than sci-fi (don’t get me wrong, I do love sci-fi) so the idea of dragon age was just fantastic.

03) how many times you’ve played the games? The first two I have played quite a lot. Origins maybe 15..? DA2 maybe 7? I’ve only played Inquisition once. The first two I tend to always have playthrough on to the go, whether or not I’m regularly playing it.

04) favorite race to play as? Human (not that there is a choice in 2). I don’t know why, but I’m more likely to play as an elf in other games. Maybe my need for power means I just have to be able to rule Ferelden 😬

05) favorite class? Rogue! I’m all about the loot! I get way too frustrated in DAO if I’m not rogue and I can’t open shit until we pick up leliana. I have been known to shout ‘what is the point of you’ at Daveth. I’m more likely to go mage in DA2 because you pick up varric so early (plus force mage specialty is the best).

06) do you play through the games differently or do you make the same decisions each time? I have to make a conscious decision to try and change my choices, otherwise I’ll slip into making the same ones over and over. Although to be honest, I love the story and still enjoy it even if I do make all the same choices. It’s your game, play the story you want to.

07) go-to adventuring group? DAO always Alistair, usually Morrigan, then either Lel/Zev (definitely if I’m non-rogue) or Wynne. DA2 always Anders and usually varric (swapping for Isabella for certain quests), I’ll take Carver in Act one and Aveline in 2-3. I can’t say I’ve played enough Inquisition to have a go-to group.

08) which of your characters did you put the most thought into? My warden, Ysabelle. She is far from DA canon though, her background is more like Daveth than Cousland. She does have a long fic in the process, featuring Aedan Cousland as well (my other properly formed warden oc), and she has taken over basically all my one shots and exists in multiple AUs now.

09) favorite romance? Alistair definitely but followed fairly closely by Anders.

10) have you read any of the comics/books? I’ve got the comics, the world of thedas books and the novels. I’ve read most of the 2 volumes of World of Thedas. It’s a fab reference and has some wonderful bits of history in there. I’ve just started Stolen Throne today and I’m loving it. The comics are a new addition to me, so I’ve had a flick through and they are beautiful but I haven’t read them properly yet.

11) if you read them, which was your favorite book? I don’t think I could chose! They are so different and they all add so much. I am in World of Thedas most often.

12) favorite DLCs? DAO Soldier’s Peak has an important significance for Izzy (plus you get a storage chest that levels things up!), but personally I love Return to Ostagar because I think Ostagar is my favourite location in all the games. I just think how breathtaking it would look with modern graphics. The idea and location were stunning enough back then. So yeah, any excuse to get back to Ostagar (plus fantastic weapons like Maric’s sword and Duncan’s).

13) things that annoy you. How slow combat is in DAO. It can feel like it takes 5 mins to get to a spot where it’ll let you stab someone, and by that point Morrigan has zapped them to death. In DAOA and DA2 being so restricted to when you can speak to your companions devastated me. I loved how much you could chat in DAO.

14) Orlais or Ferelden? Ferelden all the way!!

15) templars or mages? I am definitely a mage girl. No chantry sympathy here. Free the circles!

16) if you have multiple characters, are they in different/parallel universes or in the same one? Ysabelle and Aedan are in the same universe as wardens together. I haven’t decided on a canon Hawke for that universe yet though, let alone an inquisitor.

17) what did you name your pets? (mabari, summoned animals, mounts, etc) Aedan’s mabari is The Bann. I can’t say I’m too inventive with naming with other names though.

18) have you installed any mods? Ugh I’m not sure I’m emotionally ready to talk about bloody mods. Got dragon age on pc for said purpose just this week and it’s been a nightmare of crashes and inexplicably disappearing npc hair. I’m very close to telling the pc to do one and go back to my vanilla Xbox gaming.

19) did your Warden want to become a Grey Warden? It would have been a dream for Aedan except for the circumstances it came about through. He resented Duncan for a long while. While Izzy would have been hanged for her repeated thievery in Denerim if she hadn’t ended up recruited (but like I say, she isn’t exactly a traditional DA origin).

20) hawke’s personality? Purple with the occasional blue flutter. My Hawkes are just plain sarcastic.

21) did you make matching armor for your companions in Inquisition? Nope

22) if your character(s) could go back in time to change one thing, what would they change? Aedan would have stopped Fergus and the men marching to Ostagar so Highever was properly protected. Izzy would have come clean about her family’s past warden association and avoided disruptive drama to the group. Selene Hawke might well have thrown herself in front of the ogre near Lothering in the hope of saving her family from suffering the loss of one of the twins. An event she sees as the beginning of the end of her family.

23) do you have any headcanons about your character(s) that go against canon? Ysabelle is 100% against canon! Outside of the long fic, Aedan’s OTP is actually with @magpiesandmabari ‘s warden Yana Surana. They are a very entertaining couple.

24) are any of your character(s) based on someone? I suppose everybody’s ocs must have a bit of themselves in there. But I can’t say I’ve purposefully set out to create any character in someone’s image.

25) who did you leave in the Fade? I will never leave Alistair Theirin in the fade. Anyone else is potentially fair game.

26) favorite mount? I don’t have one

Tagging: @magpiesandmabari @laurelsofhighever @weirdnproudofit @allisondraste and anyone who wants to. Just tag me, I’d love to see it!

#tag game #dragon age

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zicygomar · 5 years

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I didn’t intend to revisit Xenoblade 2, or for that to coincide with its anniversary and the rare instance Nintendo holds a sale but here's my big ole "rant-ble" on my love-hate relationship with this game that absolutely no one asked for!

I haven't had as much fun with this game as I have right now, playing through it a second time. Knowing the systems and how to optimize for each chapter makes kitting for combat actually interesting. More importly, the combat itself becomes an extremely satisfying rhythm game in executing your rotations into rotations.

It's also like catnip for people who like grinding. Once you know the systems, there is a near endless supply of chill menial tasks to queue up that do have meaningful benefits to gameplay, and the Switch's portable mode is perfect for playing in the background while doing something else.

Which is its double-edged sword. I only watched a playthrough of XC1, but having personal experience with XCX and XC2, I can only conclude that Monolithsoft must have a fetish for systems, continuously pushing the size and scale of their RPGs. Systems upon systems; god it ain't turtles, it's systems all the way down, making it downright inpenetrable to newcomers. Remember when XCX came with an in-game digital manual, that was like, what, 700 pages?? I get that RPGs attract the kinds of people that like research and number crunching, which are inherently difficult to intuit but... well, maybe there isn't a better way after all.

The win conditions for combat are also unusual, by which I mean it's always hit something harder and harder until it dies. The system is built around multiplicatively scaling damage, literally combos, which means your true failure condition isn't really dying to a boss (death is cheap, interesting design choice), it's taking too long to kill something. Fully min-maxed endgame builds can evaporate superbosses with hundreds of millions of health, but newcomers without a firm grasp on the game's tens of individual systems will be punished with battles lasting 10min against a couple bunnies.

If a player coming in blind dies repeatedly to a boss, it's easy for the player to intuit that they're doing something wrong and reaccess their builds and strategies. A non-discrete failure condition like "why did this trash mob battle take so long" only makes them think "wow this game sucks." Satisfaction, the win condition, doesn't come from winning a hard fought battle, it comes from ripping through bosses like a hot knife... through buttahhh!!! We did get a glimpse of a what a more refinded set of systems might look like in the Torna Expansion, but I don't know that there's a way to fix the intuiting issue of scaling damage combat.

And while I may not have insider knowledge or anything, I'd hazard a good number of aesthetic and design choices were a result of being stuck with a skeleton crew for a triple-A title. More than half their staff was redistributed to a little known game called Breath of the Wild, so who knows if that was worth it.

So many QoL issues have been fixed one year later, like better stability and filters, so I guess there's no better time to pick it up? Now the only thing missing is character loadouts. Like can we all agree that this should be standard in games, particularly RPGs where's you're constantly kitting your characters out with different gear? You need a good item filtering system and sets of customizable item, gear, constume loadouts. Please. Then there's that whole waifu aesthetic which is kinda par for the course for gatcha-style games, and the multiple artists was probably to alleviate a dirth of staff, but that means the art style isn't unified and it's all over the place. Funnily enough, every fanart (even official art?) of anyone looks way better than the portrait graphics and 3D models. Must be the action and emoting that gives it more life?

I normally wouldn't pay for DLC just for extra items and trinkets and characters, but basically getting the season pass is paying $30 for the Torna campaign, which is a reasonable price, and then you get the extra stuff for free. Which is what DLC should be. Imagine that. Paying for actual content.

As for the bonus characters, so I got Crossette and she's adorable and I love her. She's a healer who hurts, balls with the best of them, dunks with the rest of them, and she's fireworks-themed and has rocket roller skates. She's great. So I'm having fun now that I know who to actually play the darn game.

And can Monolithsoft just make that darn MMO they so clearly want to make? All the huge open world exploration, the requiring an encyclopedic knowledge of their game, and the attack rotations are all so MMORPG... Nintendo, just let them. You already collab'ed with Cygames for a mobile game. I'd gladly sink my time into a XCX2 MMO on PC instead of a console with one foot in the grave.

#long post #text post #zicy uses a blog to blog #xenoblade chronicles 2

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radigalde · 10 months

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Okay, so, I started BG3. But this post is not about spoilers. It's about how it looks.

You see, I preordered it when it first became available, and participated in Early Access for most of its duration (except for two last patches). As you may know, during the development Larian abruptly changed the system requirements. And while my laptop with old GTX1050 was sitting comfortably enough in the middle of the old requirements, it's barely able to crawl under the minimum of the new version.

So, while the game was running smoothly with the medium graphic settings at the start of EA, by druids patch I couldn't even get to the first settlement because of the freezes, textures lagging in and out of their blurry existence, T-posing, etc. It was pretty bad.

Reportedly, the final game should have been optimized a bit better, so I decided to give it a shot and see how it looks like on the same laptop almost 3 years since the first download.

Yeah, I know that the cloud gaming exist. It costs money and needs a speedy internet connection.

And the game greeted me with this.

(Changed everything from medium to low except for the texture quality - it's still on medium. Had to say goodbye to the distance blur as well)

Compare it to this from 2020 (screen from another person with approximately same old settings, my screenshots of the old character creation room didn't survive):

Or this (mine 2020 screenshot outside of the character creation):

Same laptop, same graphic card, 3 years of development in-between.

Which is especially gutting, because the hair quality was really good during the first EA patches even on the lower graphic settings and older machines. But at some point the developers decided to change it, turning it into greasy looking pixelated something.

Larian, why :(

Some hairstyles managed to lag through into something decent.

Others did not.

The hair's reaction to lightning in this room/location is atrocious btw.

Even when the textures are fully uploaded.

It's a LED wig, I got it.

Comparison of the first model appearance vs after the textures loaded in is quite funny, though.

It jumped to the left version each time I moved the camera in/out even a tiny bit, loading the textures from the right anew. Each. Time. The same happened during the last patches of EA, except that back then the loading could take a few minutes. Now it's either ~15 sec or not loading at all here.

Tbh, after seeing all of that in the dressing room, I dreaded of what would I see during the main game.

But it's surprisingly better. Almost no jarring rounded pixelation, and no jumping between abyssmal low and normal version of textures.

The reaction to light still sucks sometimes. The hair pick too much from the light sources that are barely visible otherwise and don't light up anything else to the same degree.

As for the optimization: yes, it indeed became better. Still not the first EA release quality for me, sadly, but by far better than the latest EA patches. Textures are way more steady now: they still take a few seconds to load in during the big cutscenes, but it's like nothing compared to the previous mess. During the regular exploration gameplay character (and most of environmental) textures are always steady. I even managed to watch the full crashing cutscene as a, well, cutscene instead of three half-loaded frames that took 20 min to render. And I was running freely on the beach despite the falling ash and everything that almost killed my frames back then.

Also, it still doesn't heat up my laptop all that much, which is a pleasant surprise.

Well, stay tuned for more cursed images, I guess.

Isekai-d into a mobile game.

Oh, and Lae'zel is a fiery redhead on her character portrait for some reason, and other characters' hair is displayed like brighness/contrast +100. I think, something is deeply wrong with the dressing room specifically after all.

#baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #min graphic playthrough

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unproduciblesmackdown · 6 years

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if you find out the name of the game, please let us know! it sounds spooky

right yeah i’ll Rec it here too, i did look it up again and it’s called “do you copy”: the game where you’re in a communication tower in the middle of the woods in a big park and you have to try to save a lost hiker from The Goatmani said the graphics are simple but its a pretty nicely rendered environment...you can either walk around inside the small room w the radio or go out onto the tower’s balcony (its blocked off so you only have access to one side) and there’s all these trees and fog and a lake and the moon and all that nighttime nature shitall you can really do is talk on the radio to the lost hiker (it gives you a couple dialogue options) and try to guide them to your tower via the map of the trails, or go outside and switch a floodlight on/off. there’s different points of conversation that can come up depending on what you say / which way you guide them...its sort of difficult to figure out the “correct” way to guide the hiker at any point. and you also have to comfort them about being pursued by a goatman, which you can hear outside crashing around or doing the weird screaming bit. and then, again i dont know why but you just go with it, goatman also starts calling in on your radio and talking directly to you in the hikers voice, but in a bit of a monotone, and also sounding slightly more natural as time goes on, so that if you steer the game in a certain way its a bit confusing whether you’re hearing from the hiker or the goatman imitation. but it isnt a long game and you can only talk to the actual hikerthere’s a few endings, i THINK the possible outcomes are: hiker dies/you live, you both die?, hiker lives/you die, you both live. you get a newspaper clipping after the game fades out to let you know who died or not. also sometimes in the end you get the goatman showing up at the tower and seeing it thru the window as it knocks on the door, which is a bit funny. but adequately creepy anyways. and your radio operator character is always getting threatened either way. not by the hikeranyways it was apparently made during one of those events where ppl just crank out a game in like a day or two or three, interestingly the event is one where The Theme is ppl creating scary games that specifically do not have anything to do with using mental illness as a Horror Point. the duration of the game is abt 10 min. there’s a fair amt of playthroughs available to watch, including a commentary-less one that shows multiple tries w different endings. interestingly apparently the way to get the “good” ending is to give fairly counterintuitive instructions to the hiker. you’d think it is obvious with a map on the wall but it isn’t. anyways the point is i think its a cool game...my fave Goatman-Related thing. it’s also cool like i said how the whole thing is built around audio. there also aren’t any jumpscares or anything, even when you get “the goatman is knocking on your door” and its startling it doesnt like, go for a sudden audio/visual bombardment; it just suddenly happens and thats good enough. and the voice acting is pretty decent—good enough to not Ruin Everything in the way that bad voice acting can for any kind of media. having the juxtaposition of a freaked out hiker and a deadpan cryptid stealing their voice is fun and creepy, and the hiker’s fear sounding halfway believable does a lot to add some pressure and just generally not detract from the other cool elements. Cool Game check it out

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nanintell · 2 years

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I posted 360 times in 2021

40 posts created (11%)

320 posts reblogged (89%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 8.0 posts.

I added 55 tags in 2021

#tales of crestoria - 27 posts

#maplestory - 13 posts

#love it - 3 posts

#nice - 2 posts

#rip - 2 posts

#yeti - 2 posts

#edna - 2 posts

#lmao - 2 posts

#sharenian knight - 1 posts

#gz - 1 posts

Longest Tag: 138 characters

#on the turn b4 sync's ma i thought i died for sure cause after burst he had a bit of hp left not died and cress seems to have the least hp

My Top Posts in 2021

youtube

[메이플] 얀데레 라니아와 루미너스 만화

the real reason lumi doesn’t come home often

4 notes • Posted 2021-05-25 07:39:50 GMT

damn arise's story is really good. love it.

a bunch of spoilers below! I HAVE WARNED YOU!!!

dhana and rena reminds me of eternia's inferia and celestia mixed with graces a little. cause they are different planets after all.

i feel like this time we got a lot of animation though. then i saw someone combined it and turned out it to be around 25 mins long.

of course hot spring scene is the best. i mean we normally got a peeping tom but walking out naked? LMAO (of course there's peeping tom but never got to peep scene)

5 notes • Posted 2021-09-12 18:22:38 GMT

my daily 3 hours torment is finally over

7 notes • Posted 2021-08-01 08:39:29 GMT

Well this is one hell of a coincidence.

8 notes • Posted 2021-10-16 09:55:54 GMT

so i just had my evan reach 200 yesterday and i laughed at this so much LOL

9 notes • Posted 2021-04-23 06:18:20 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#my 2021 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #Well i guess i wasn't really active in this year haha #Youtube

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radigalde · 9 months

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We are at the bottom of the world, eh?

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #baldur's gate iii #min graphic playthrough

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commander-ledi · 6 years

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its honestly absurd how so many people claimed that when me:a was released, “it was so buggy that it was virtually unplayable and basically unfinished product sold as finished product”.

like it was one of the least buggy AAA game i have played in years??? i encountered only about 5 bugs in my entire first playthrough and none of them were game breaking (except the one where i got stuck in bed and i had to restart. it was my own fault because i spent 15 mins trying to climb on a bed where i was obviously not supposed to climb on) or frequent. i encountered some crashing but it was purely because my graphics card couldn't handle my graphics settings. so basically... it was fairly finished product with very few bugs.

like if you want to see what it actually looks like when a game company is pushing out unfinished bug hell games as finished product, you should try unpatched assassin’s creed: unity or black flag. suddenly unpatched andromeda starts to seem like its running as smoothly as lubed cheetah

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heirloombabydoll-blog · 6 years

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legend of the golden mask level 9

Legend of the golden mask PC GAME

Legend of the golden mask is a vintage excitement game that explains to a gripping story of undying love. Believe the role of museum curator Sarah Dark and manage your destiny to avoid the undead Captain Remington and save your valuable daughter's life. Jam-packed with chilling locations - from rotting shipwrecks to dank and mordant caves. Use your wits to find signs, solve puzzles, and uncoil the traditional mysteries of Skull Island before it's too later!

Legend of the golden mask emerged to PC a couple of years ago and has been ported to PC GAME. The overall game is a first-person point and click excitement/hidden objects game. Although it is first-person, you aren't actually managing your characters motion immediately, but can control your personality jumping from landscape to scene.

The gist of the storyplot is you are a museum curator. You as well as your daughter are later part of the at the museum as you obtain your latest display. In some way you awaken the pirate from his slumber, and he kidnaps your little princess. You then join the vessel and leave to save lots of her and solve the mysteries of the island he has sailed to.

As I stated before the game can be an adventure /hidden objects game, and that means you find their way the still casings and discover items in them that'll be beneficial to your trip. There will most likely be invisible puzzle games that you can complete where you'll have a set of items and can have to find where they are simply hidden in the picture. It's a fascinating mechanic that i have observed in the mobile/Computer space before, however, not much on the system market.

If the invisible puzzles are taking too much time or are too problematic for you, then you additionally have the choice of concluding a Mahjong game that will clear every item off your list. Once you conclude the concealed picture puzzle/Mahjong game, you'll be given an important item that you can use in the key areas to help you improve through the overall game.

As an admirer of adventure video games I liked different twist to obtaining items, providing it a different degree of challenge. In addition, it provided me vibes of reading Features whenever i was a youngster. For this game, it sometimes it needed a little for me personally to find some items because they combined in or scheduled to translation problems. As the studio room is not really a American one, it appears likes there are a few bad translations for the American market, and it could leave me speculating for what I had a need to go through the puzzle. Not really much in the key game, however in the excess epilogue sequence there have been some spelling mistakes on the things in the puzzles themselves that made me spend some more time scratching my brain.

As the overall game has been out a couple of years which is on mobile and Laptop or computer, it generally does not outdo itself graphically. It cans a serviceable job to getting the storyplot across and having you explore the locations, even though some of the slice views do look fairly cheesy.

The overall game is a trophy hunter's desire game. Why? Since it has nine Silver, four Silver precious metals, two Bronzes, and, awaits it..... a Platinum trophy! Two warnings, though, and that means you don't make the same blunder I did so. Either do All of the Mahjong puzzles or All of the concealed pictures puzzles and don't blend and match as you must do them all in a single run to uncover the trophy in consecutive playthroughs. I now need to return for a 3rd set you back clean that trophy. Also, there's a trophy for performing a Mahjong puzzle within a min. It's really only sort out doable on the first puzzle you get, so remember that!

SUMMARY:

I wasn't sure what I was getting with legend of the golden mask, and what I acquired was a slightly cheezy and just a little outrageous... but I came across myself driven to experience it more. Maybe it's my love for excursion game titles, but I actually relished my time with that one! For $9.99 its value for money that gives a long time of fun and a reasonably easily Platinum trophy. After carrying this out legend of the golden mask review I really do believe you should take a look game out.

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carnelianwings · 6 years

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top 5 video games you've played that were ugly as sin but you still enjoyed them

(For this ask meme!)

Hmmmmm, if by “ugly as sin” you mean “outdated graphics”, then:

Final Fantasy 6: One of the first JRPGs I ever played, on SNES emulator no less. Hands down my personal favorite out of all the Final Fantasy games I’ve played, and my favorite party will always be the Celes, Terra/Tina, Relm, and Mog. AKA Team Female Characters and the Super Cute Mascot. Also known as “So much magic attack they can max out Ultima’s damage to 9999 and do it twice even.” I also just adored the story for the game.

Seiken Densetsu 3: The never released in the US third game of the Legend of Mana series, I also played an English-patched version of this game on SNES emulator. I love this game (I’ve done so many playthroughs, but almost always with a female character as the lead - seeing a pattern here guys?) and it’ll always be a favorite for me. Part of the reason I fell in love with Symphonia and Tales was because of that similar action RPG style, so in a way, this was kind of the game that started off my love for action JRPGs.

Final Fantasy 4: The third of the games that introduced me to JRPGs in general, and also the first game I ever reached the final dungeon on. And didn’t realize it was a final dungeon the very first time I played through it. And ran out of items. So I ran from combats and went deeper into the dungeon. Yeah, you can imagine how well that went, anon.

Tales of Phantasia: Yes, I did actually play the DeJap fan translated version on SNES emulator (this was also the first version of Phantasia I played). That was the second Tales game I ever played, shortly after I got introduced to Symphonia, and man, did I miss being able to regenerate 1 TP with a normal attack like you could in Symphonia! But I loved the story, and how in the end, you’re not entirely sure if Cless is a hero or if Dhaos is really a villain, and I think that was one of my favorite parts of the game.

Pokemon Yellow: Does Game Boy Color count for outdated graphics? My first Pokemon game, and honestly, part of what made me love the monster recruiting aspect of Symphonia 2. And I’ll admit, I was more of the “collect all the cute ones” than “okay, most min/maxed out team for battling EVAR” type trainer. I did go for the balanced team, and yeah, no lie, I went with the Pokemon anime team (Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Squirtle, Charmander, plus 2 more) but it was fun. I did Rage Quit Platinum (I swear, Cynthia having Earthquake on like, every one of her Pokemon was just … don’t even get me started, I’ll rant for days about how irritating it was), but I was enjoying Sun. Which reminds me, I should get back to that. I’m also particularly guilty of nicknaming my Pokemon after my favorite characters. So as I’ve blogged about before, there’s a Flareon in my Sun save named Sorey and an Alolan Ninetails named Mikleo. XD

Other old videogames I enjoyed but I don’t consider ugly: Star Fox 64 - the first game I ever 100%’ed and also the very very very first videogame I ever played. I actually managed to get every single medal in the game, and my high score was I think around 1400 kills total for a full run. I even figured out which stages to run to get the most kills. XD I always loved General Peppers “WHAAAAAAAT?” after the credits when you broke like, 1000 kills and charged him for the job, lol. Star Fox is a mercenary group after all! =D

EDIT: I can’t believe I forgot to add this one: MINECRAFT! Have you seen what people have crated in the game with just blocks? And all the mods? And all the things you can build? It’s amazing! Also, if you’re tired of looking at Steve, odds are pretty good someone’s made a skin of your favorite character.

#soymilkheaven answers an ask #ask meme #i honestly don't consider any of these ugly #they're all a cherished part of my experience gaming #this reminds me i need to get a switch or whichever platform it is that will play starfox zero #because i played a demo of it at pax #and holy shit it woke up the starfox fangirl in me #the controls felt soooooooo much like starfox 64 the nostalgia trip was amazing #Anonymous

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