appiah4 wrote on 2022-02-18, 06:03:

Nexxen wrote on 2022-02-18, 00:16:

clueless1 wrote on 2022-02-17, 11:36:

Rather than retry EOB1, I'm going to just play EOB2. Maybe my next RPG after the one I'm playing now. My issue was I got into a "can't proceed" situation. I can't remember the details but it involved needing a key to move to the next level that I could no longer get and I didn't have a save prior to that moment. I wasn't having such an amazing time up to that point that it was worth bothering to start over. Remember: EOB1 has only 1 save slot and I was playing on a retro PC, so no save states, etc.

As for Fallout, yeah, definitely the UI. There was a point I needed to give a health kit to an injured NPC and the steps needed to get it out of my inventory and into his hands was ridiculous. Again, I wasn't having that much fun up to that point, so it was easy to stop. And Fallout was a game I tried to play when it first came out, so this was technically my 2nd crack at it.

I think it was a copper key in the second level of the tower.
I got in the same situation and simply hexed one as I didn't want to start over.

There are no towers in EOB1, it's a dungeon that only goes down 9 levels (IIRC..)

My mistake, I was thinking EOB2.
When I posted my answer I was 3 minutes away from bed 😀

clueless1 wrote on 2022-02-18, 00:34:

I wrote about it in this thread back in the day, so I looked it up: Re: What game are you playing now? (it was level 6) […]
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Nexxen wrote on 2022-02-18, 00:16:

I think it was a copper key in the second level of the tower.
I got in the same situation and simply hexed one as I didn't want to start over.

I wrote about it in this thread back in the day, so I looked it up:
Re: What game are you playing now?
(it was level 6)

And here are my thoughts of the game up to that point:
"Not so much that I was disappointed, it just didn't have enough good things going for it that it was worth the extra time of backtracking. Having 1 save slot is potentially a killer because you can save your way into a dead-end. I had been manually backing up my save file after each level, so I can restore back if needed. But the lack of music and skeletal storyline just didn't draw me in enough, and having to have a map up on a 2nd computer, plus a physical printout of another map was too much work for a middle-aged gamer. 😀"

I made a mistake, I thought it was EOB2.
I had to start over as I went into a level and my party died and I saved at the worst time possible.
My father created a batch, on exit it'll copy the savegame to avoid my screaming in anger after my party's death 🤣

Today I'd cheat, use the "all seeing eye" program with automap function and more to avoid starting over.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-02-17, 10:40:

That's the one!

I needed to reload something like 10 times before I was able to pass him. Felt really good after finally making it though. As a veteran of the Thief games, I was determined to stay in stealth mode as much as possible, and my stubbornness somehow carried me through.

Hehe, I knew it must be that one. That's the point were I usually got detected. If I remember correctly, there is a small timeframe, when he walks to another console for a short period.
Because the mission doesn't fail when you get detected, I did assume it was intentional to blast through the rest of the level. So I did vaporize every Klingon, Malon, Hirogen and Terran on that station. 🤣 But one day I decided to try to sneak past that guy and was surprised that you can play the whole level in stealth mode.

That particular level was the highlight of the game imho.


Fantastic design. And fantastic graphics for 2000 (thanks to Carmacks Q3 engine).
But I always wondered how Terrans from another time ended up in the prime universes delta quadrant.

Nexxen wrote on 2022-02-18, 08:58:

I made a mistake, I thought it was EOB2. I had to start over as I went into a level and my party died and I saved at the worst t […]
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clueless1 wrote on 2022-02-18, 00:34:

I wrote about it in this thread back in the day, so I looked it up: Re: What game are you playing now? (it was level 6) […]
Show full quote

Nexxen wrote on 2022-02-18, 00:16:

I think it was a copper key in the second level of the tower.
I got in the same situation and simply hexed one as I didn't want to start over.

I wrote about it in this thread back in the day, so I looked it up:
Re: What game are you playing now?
(it was level 6)

And here are my thoughts of the game up to that point:
"Not so much that I was disappointed, it just didn't have enough good things going for it that it was worth the extra time of backtracking. Having 1 save slot is potentially a killer because you can save your way into a dead-end. I had been manually backing up my save file after each level, so I can restore back if needed. But the lack of music and skeletal storyline just didn't draw me in enough, and having to have a map up on a 2nd computer, plus a physical printout of another map was too much work for a middle-aged gamer. 😀"

I made a mistake, I thought it was EOB2.
I had to start over as I went into a level and my party died and I saved at the worst time possible.
My father created a batch, on exit it'll copy the savegame to avoid my screaming in anger after my party's death 🤣

Today I'd cheat, use the "all seeing eye" program with automap function and more to avoid starting over.

I think if/when I play EOB2, it will be via The All-Seeing Eye. What makes that an easy choice is the lack of any MT-32 or GM support. I'd probably prefer to listen to the music on original hardware if that was the case, but Adlib music won't be a downgrade through DOSBox.

My gaming time has mostly been spent in the living room playing console games, but I've finally completed Final Fantasy VIII so I am back in the PC gaming mood. I spent an hour or so on a few games to decide what to play next. Here are my initial impressions:

Cyberpunk 2077
My laptop can barely run this, but it's playable. I have it locked to 30 fps and running on mostly medium settings (dropping to low doesn't really improve performance in this case). So far, I'm not sure what to think about this one. It's sort of nice to play a "spectacle" type of game full of impressive set pieces after years of playing old DOS RPGs, and FC/SFC/PSX RPGs... but after a few hours I really started to get bored with this. Leveling up isn't very satisfying, loot is pretty dull, and I felt like I was mostly being pulled down a corridor on the story missions. I should probably stop following the story and just explore a bit.

The Outer Worlds
I bought this today because it was on sale for a very good price. I played through the tutorial/intro, and I was pleasantly surprised with it—I remember reading that fans of previous Obsidian games were pretty disappointing with this game. So far it runs shockingly well on my aging "gaming" laptop, and the combat feels decent. I decided to create a talky handgun expert, so we'll see how that goes.

Neverwinter Nights
I've tried to get into this game many many times over the years. I remember buying it when it was first released in stores, and being pretty disappointed once I got over the graphics. Since then, I've tried getting into this a few more times, but it's always struck me as very dull and basic (mostly because of one character & one henchman party). This time around, I decided to start off as a rogue just for one level, then switch to a cleric, so that I don't have to rely on a henchman to open locks/disable traps. That means I could choose a melee-focused henchman to make combat go by a bit quicker. So far, it's working out pretty well and I've started to get a bit addicted to this. I'll probably keep this as a secondary game to play when I'm not really in the mood to concentrate on something more demanding.

Exile: Escape from the Pit
I'm still plugging away at this, and having a fun time with it. I really like how character development works in this version of the game. When a characters levels up, the only immediate change is an increase in HPs. You also get some training points, however, which you spend in town to increase skills and attributes. Training also requires gold, which is in short supply early on, so improvement is slow at first. It's a very satisfying system, and even a couple of points in a skill really seems to make a noticeable difference.

Finished the main story of The Witcher 3. Third playthrough for me and still thoroughly enjoyed the game, in game clock showed 99h 1min and I didn't even do every side quest and skipped entirely almost all of those question mark points of intrest the maps are full of. Can't claim the lenght of the game didn't weight on me at times, for me the sweet spot for RPG is around 40h. Especially since so much time sinks in travelling around the maps alone.

Never was a fan of some of the open world design the game has, I honestly do think the game would have been better had it been a bit more linear. It's the quests and characters that raise the game to the game of the decade category for me anyway, not the open world aspects and the boring waste of time tropes that come with them. At least it helps to know that there's always good stuff waiting in the horizon, just got to get there.

What a funky game, out of all the games I personally enjoy this one is the one that I could write the longest list of things I think could have been done better, things I dislike and things that I think are so infuriatingly bad I can't but wonder what the hell were they thinking, and yet the things it does well it does so magnificently I can't help but forgive all. Though a bit begrudgingly at times.

On to the Hearts of Stone DLC, which has the best plot and some of the best quests of the entire game in my opinion.

Me and my wife have really been putting in some extra time into Guild Wars 2 in preparation of EOD coming out Monday. We've been really loving this game we started early February of last year.

Pretty much glued to my new MonroeBot MiSTer, this week. Being restricted to the Sega Mega Drive, Turbografx16 and Gameboy Advance cores (since I haven't obtained the SDRAM add-on yet), I curated a shortlist of games I wanted to tackle from those systems over the coming weeks.

With Westone's flagship Wonderboy III:The Dragon's Trap (SMS) being one of the gaming High Water Marks of my childhood, naturally I have also played the very excellent 2017 remake by Dotemu. But I had never played the interesting and slightly enhanced Turbografx16 version before, which is called Adventure Island (Japan) or Dragon's Curse (West).

The MiSTer gives great basis and opportunity to experience highly accurate and lag free incarnations of such titles which I hadn't gotten around to yet, and it seems I will be busy with it for quite some time. Then I will get the SDRAM upgrade, opening up dozens of other systems' back catalogues, and subsequently be busy with it for quite, quite some time...

Anyway, Dragon's Curse is fun. Basically identical to the SMS version but with slight graphical and sound improvements. Some parts of the game are harder than I had remembered. The Samurai Dragon has just given me two beatings.

Sombrero wrote on 2022-02-22, 14:48:

Finished the main story of The Witcher 3. Third playthrough for me and still thoroughly enjoyed the game, in game clock showed 9 […]
Show full quote

Finished the main story of The Witcher 3. Third playthrough for me and still thoroughly enjoyed the game, in game clock showed 99h 1min and I didn't even do every side quest and skipped entirely almost all of those question mark points of intrest the maps are full of. Can't claim the lenght of the game didn't weight on me at times, for me the sweet spot for RPG is around 40h. Especially since so much time sinks in travelling around the maps alone.

Never was a fan of some of the open world design the game has, I honestly do think the game would have been better had it been a bit more linear. It's the quests and characters that raise the game to the game of the decade category for me anyway, not the open world aspects and the boring waste of time tropes that come with them. At least it helps to know that there's always good stuff waiting in the horizon, just got to get there.

What a funky game, out of all the games I personally enjoy this one is the one that I could write the longest list of things I think could have been done better, things I dislike and things that I think are so infuriatingly bad I can't but wonder what the hell were they thinking, and yet the things it does well it does so magnificently I can't help but forgive all. Though a bit begrudgingly at times.

On to the Hearts of Stone DLC, which has the best plot and some of the best quests of the entire game in my opinion.

I own The Witcher 1 and 2 and have 3 on my wishlist. But I'm generally not a fan of 3rd person open world real-time combat RPGs so I keep picking other games. Eventually though, I will get through the rest of my backlog and start playing this series. Have you played 1 and 2? Ideally, I'd like to play all three in order, but I'm always interested in other people's opinions on the series.

Speaking of 3rd person open world real-time combat RPGs

Bought Nier Replicant over the weekend, I played Nier Automata when it came out so was already familiar.
Read plenty of reviews before buying and they all mention how repetitive it is. Fetch quests and repetitive combat are plenty. Was told to stick with it for 10hrs and I kept eyeing the clock every hour until I hit 10 and yup looks like it's picking up!
Had to use a fix for 21:9 support.
Music is pretty good.
Since this game came before automata you can see why everything is improved in the sequel but there's alot of good here if you stick with it for 10 hours....

clueless1 wrote on 2022-02-22, 22:57:

Sombrero wrote on 2022-02-22, 14:48:

Finished the main story of The Witcher 3. Third playthrough for me and still thoroughly enjoyed the game, in game clock showed 9 […]
Show full quote

Finished the main story of The Witcher 3. Third playthrough for me and still thoroughly enjoyed the game, in game clock showed 99h 1min and I didn't even do every side quest and skipped entirely almost all of those question mark points of intrest the maps are full of. Can't claim the lenght of the game didn't weight on me at times, for me the sweet spot for RPG is around 40h. Especially since so much time sinks in travelling around the maps alone.

Never was a fan of some of the open world design the game has, I honestly do think the game would have been better had it been a bit more linear. It's the quests and characters that raise the game to the game of the decade category for me anyway, not the open world aspects and the boring waste of time tropes that come with them. At least it helps to know that there's always good stuff waiting in the horizon, just got to get there.

What a funky game, out of all the games I personally enjoy this one is the one that I could write the longest list of things I think could have been done better, things I dislike and things that I think are so infuriatingly bad I can't but wonder what the hell were they thinking, and yet the things it does well it does so magnificently I can't help but forgive all. Though a bit begrudgingly at times.

On to the Hearts of Stone DLC, which has the best plot and some of the best quests of the entire game in my opinion.

I own The Witcher 1 and 2 and have 3 on my wishlist. But I'm generally not a fan of 3rd person open world real-time combat RPGs so I keep picking other games. Eventually though, I will get through the rest of my backlog and start playing this series. Have you played 1 and 2? Ideally, I'd like to play all three in order, but I'm always interested in other people's opinions on the series.

I have, and talked about them on page 189 and 191 if you want to read more. In a nutshell I think TW1 is a charming but fairly janky game that feels more like a fan project than an AAA game, TW2 had way larger production values and has way better story and dialog, but in my opinion the gameplay is also so bad I never really liked the game all that much and these days I can't play it at all anymore.

If you're not a fan of third person combat RPG's you might find TW1 ok since the combat system in that one is not complicated, but I expect you're going to hate the combat system of TW2 with a passion.

RaiderOfLostVoodoo wrote on 2022-02-18, 13:15:

Fantastic design. And fantastic graphics for 2000 (thanks to Carmacks Q3 engine).

It's one of the peaks of that engine yeah, there's some interesting changes raven did though:

- A good particle system! A lot of it shows Heretic II-ish effects but consider this engine didn't have particles in the first place.
- MDR skeletal models with *lots* of frames by finishing off the MD4 format that was left as scraps in the engine. This also had plenty of memory savings involved
- environment mapping calculation's a little different, on models (weapon models) it'll calc from the nearest lightgrid source so it has a very cool shimmer as you move around. Specular calculation was also fixed and used the same point (q3 had it, but was set to a hard fixed vector and is only ever used on Xaero)
- Flares were fixed and they're the expensive depth/pixel reading kind that work through alphas (and doesn't work on Kyro). It's why it's not on by default.
- Using detail texturing. Besides EF, only Alice used it in the whole family.
- While they were pushing the engine they've also made a special "Simple shaders" option for worse video cards to play the game.
- Localization to external string files, which is rare in the whole family too.

Sitting here waiting for Elden Ring to release on Steam ...wont actually be till 10AM tomorrow sadly 🙁

Other than that I have been poking Lost Ark, its okish if you ignore the MT in it and just treat it as a Free to Play MMO ARPG, I do have to say the MT isn't pushed on you and its really easy to ignore its even there since the game plays perfectly fine without any of it. The combat reminds me a lot of Tera but without the jank the only issue I have with it is how badly some of the telegraphs are affected by latency and since im in Australia I have to use the west coast US servers so I play with 200 -250ms of ping.

I doubt I will bother with any of the end game stuff due to the telegraph latency thing but for a strictly ARPG kill massive waves of trash game .. its fun right now.

Edit 26/02/22

Just decided to refund Elden Ring, game is pretty and what little I managed to play is fun but it has so many issues with performance and stability right now that I will wait till its been patched up a bit before I try it again.
Some new nVidia drives might help it too but there are no game ready drivers for it yet, so will be waiting for them too.

Its so weird because the version the streamers got doesnt have the issues the release version has, the day one patch seems to have been the problem, along with EAC being a pain in the arse too.

Operencia
I decided to resume playing this after putting it aside for many months. I ended up restarting, but I went with a mage instead of a fighter for the main character. This has really made combat go by a lot quicker, so I'm enjoying the game a lot more this time around.

It's not an amazing game, but it's okay. It's extremely linear, the dialog is awful (and goes on and on), and the combat is really not that interesting. I guess I'm playing it just because I really like "blobber" rpgs with turn-based combat, and I've already completed Might & Magic X and The Bards's Tale IV.

Elden Ring
I was surprised to find that this runs very well even on my aging "gaming" laptop, except for some minor stuttering now and then that seems to be caused when loading nearby zones. So far, I really like it. It plays 99% like the Dark Souls games, just with an open world to explore. The open world is pretty interesting to explore, but I'm not in love with it; I'm simply just not that interested in exploring all over just to find crafting ingredients, etc. I miss the clever level design that rewards exploration with interesting gear, etc. that you get in the DS games. I'm assuming (hoping) the level design picks up later in the game, once you make some progress in it.

Just finished playing though all of Gunmetal (again), this time having realized DXGL can actually function under Wine and override Wine's own DirectDraw, I was able to run the game with significantly less CPU overhead, though it still thrashes the CPU when playing the FMV's, most of it kernel time judging by the CPU bar being mostly red.

DXGL will significantly make it easier for me to stream this game, as Wine's virtual desktop is virtually impossible to escape the mouse out of, and I haven't figured out how to fix that problem. Being able to run Gunmetal without the need for it anymore is a huge bonus.

Operencia
I've spent a few more hours in this, and don't really love it. I'll finish the game, as any step-based first-person RPG with turn-based combat is worth my time, but I have a lot of issues with this one.

The dialog is some of the worst I've ever heard/read... the characters just go on an on, constantly bickering with one another in an attempt at humor, and in 10+ hours of playing, only one exchange has made me chuckle. Probably some of the worst writing I've seen in a game in some time.

Because of the focus on characters and story, you can't create a party; instead, you create one character (from one of three classes) and meet up with the rest of the characters as you play through the game. Although I don't mind this kind of setup in principle (Dungeon Master does something similar), Operencia has too few characters, and they are unlocked as the story progresses, so there is really no replay value.

Like with Might & Magic X, The Bard's Tale IV, Divinity: Original Sin series, and Lords of Xulima, there are no random encounters. I honestly don't care for this mechanic. It tends to ensure that you can never sleep-walk though easier encounters, at the expense of never feeling like you are gaining any real power. I felt that BT4 and LoX handled this system the best, as your overall power tended to be determined by your character/party abilities; even if your raw damage per character was not really increasing much compared with enemy stats, the abilities you gained more than made up for it. I don't see that at all so far with Operencia; if anything, combat is taking longer and longer as the game goes on, without really getting any more difficult.

On the positive side, the dungeons are pretty decent with puzzles that are unique from dungeon to dungeon. Exploration is alright, but a clear step down from games like M&MX and BT4 as they are mostly linear with some branches here and there. Loot is pretty good, as you are always finding upgrades in chests and after battles.

I really don't see the game getting much worse or better from this point, though I will finish it. So far, I'd rank it last among the modern attempts at a first-person party-based RPG with combat, behind both The Bard's Tale IV (really quite excellent with the Director's Cut) and Might & Magic X (a big disappointment as a M&M game, but a very decent game).

I am playing GOG Descent3 via parallels for mac and it's surprisingly playable even with Maxed out graphics. It does LAG a bit some times, but on average I seem to get a solid 60.

GLIDE was the default graphics setup, but it looks so much nicer in Direct3D with the proper coloured lighting and other effects. I'm actually surprised graphics could look this good in 1999! I kind of want to build a Pentium 4 system now just for Descent 3 because it's so much fun.

It does have a few bugs but it's not ruining the gameplay too much. This is most likely because I'm running an X86 application on a ARM based MAC system.

Still runs pretty good though all things considered.

Descent 3!, I know very little about that game, must look into it, given the classic status of 1 and sort-of 2.

I am currently playing Yoshi's Island, on GBA, via Mister. First time I have played the game*. It is as good as they say, a very well done and classic game. I had thought the crying noise would annoy me too much - even found hacks to remove it, if necessary - but it turned out to be not too much of a problem (and is a good incentive to avoid being hit, at the very least!). Yet.

*the product of a Sega childhood, I am spending adulthood forever catching up on Nintendo classics

I've been playing / testing Boiling Point: Road to Hell, which I discovered looked like crap on my modern PC due to it being hard coded for 4:3 monitors, plus it was hanging on exit and generally being unplayable. I've put together a patch that fixes the hanging, allows for a higher FOV, and implements a 16:9 aspect ratio without breaking the HUD and menu like an existing fix out there does. I also changed the nauseating head-bob and annoyingly low jump height while I was at it. It seems to work OK - it's hard to test a game that's already full of bugs 😂

Fixes available here if anyone's interested: https://www.moddb.com/games/boiling-point-roa … de-screen-patch

The devs did so much great stuff with this game, it's such a shame they weren't given the time to polish it up.

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-03-04, 06:22:

I am currently playing Yoshi's Island, on GBA, via Mister. First time I have played the game*. It is as good as they say, a very well done and classic game. I had thought the crying noise would annoy me too much - even found hacks to remove it, if necessary - but it turned out to be not too much of a problem (and is a good incentive to avoid being hit, at the very least!). Yet.

*the product of a Sega childhood, I am spending adulthood forever catching up on Nintendo classics

The GBA version changed the crying sound to play slightly less frequently so it would be less annoying.