I also never though MI had frustrating "moon logic" puzzles but to each their own..

dr_st wrote on 2022-04-14, 06:13:

ratfink wrote on 2022-04-13, 23:31:

Haven't managed to play anything for a few years now. I buy a few games on GOG from time to time, and I have a to-do list of partially-completed games and ones i want to replay that hasn't shifted for at least 15 years (I count myself as still playing them...). These days I just dabble a bit and then go and do something else instead...

Very similar to my situation. Occasionally I do play a new game (or an old game that is new to me), but that is an exception.

I've been the same for the last half a year or so. I have the time but lack the drive to play all that much. I've played 10 hours of Doom Eternal since last November after I've beaten Fallout (1). About 6hrs in December and another 4 in January and since then only to test some graphics cards.

Fallout though pulled me in, I was very consistent playing at least one session every 1-3 days.

Yeah I'm not sure what you mean about illogical puzzles in Monkey Island 1, either. Even in the second game, the worst it ever really gets is one where the solution is a stupid pun. I think Escape is the first time the series really got infected by moon logic, and that one's rightly panned as the worst in the series.

Speaking of, I can't believe another Ron Gilbert MI is actually happening after all these years and I can't wait to play it.

NovaCN wrote on 2022-04-15, 13:19:

Yeah I'm not sure what you mean about illogical puzzles in Monkey Island 1, either.

I think the stated opinions are just another way of showing that different people are suited to different styles of gaming. It's not that the Monkey Island puzzles are illogical, or particularly intellectual. It's a game made partly for children, after all, like most games are.

Some people simply find the style's major gameplay dynamic - namely, pixel hunting - to not be sufficiently rewarding or mentally stimulating, vs the time investment. Just another product of the diversity in human beings and their preferences.

I love Monkey Island 2, but if someone says "here then, play it", what's going to happen is that I'm going to walk my way through the well-known storyboard that I've been familiar with since childhood. There's no replay jeopardy in "can I click on that correct pixel again??!", in the way that (say) a platform game might have replay jeopardy in "can I land the jump on that tough platform again??!". So I don't spend a great deal of time playing Point-n-clicks, or particularly rate their gameplay, despite several of them holding a special place in my heart since forever.

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-04-15, 20:50:

Some people simply find the style's major gameplay dynamic - namely, pixel hunting - to not be sufficiently rewarding or mentally stimulating, vs the time investment. Just another product of the diversity in human beings and their preferences.

You don't have to pixel hunt, as most such games (or at least their modern remakes) have hotkeys to show all the hotspots on the current screen. It is true that some early games didn't have this, and then the experience can be uber-frustrating.

As it is, it is all about figuring the puzzles. Some of them may be intuitive to certain people, and seem completely obtuse to others, whether because of different cultural background or simply different wiring in the brain.

My wife and I had both played a few point-n-click adventures (at the very least, the first 2 Simon Games, and the first 2 Monkey Island games), and each of us got stuck on different puzzles at different times.

It can also happen that you just missed some vital clue. Perhaps you had seen it, but had forgotten by the time you got to the place where you are supposed to use it. It certainly does not do such games good to take long breaks in play (like, more than a couple of days).

after a few years even though you might remember some of the story or places you most probably forget how to solve all the puzzles.
also some games may have more than one solution to same puzzles.
you may also find tips for what you earlier thought was stupid or used a solution for.
sometimes when you enter a room there may be a blink of light on a pixel size item, like a ring dropped from a shelve and blinked while falling but if you don't notice that, you have a pixel hunt indeed
generally a well designed adventure should have tips scattered all over the place for each of the puzzles and you just have to find them
sometimes tips are lost in translation so if you don't play original language you are out of luck
of course the bigger adventure, the bigger the location, the easier you forget the tips you already noticed
just try a small one first to figure out how it works, but you have to look at /read absolutely everything

Realms of Antiquity: The Shattered Crown
I decided to restart this since it's been months since I last played, and I wasn't that far into it anyway. This is a very impressive RPG for the TI-99/4A released back in 2020. It's easily the most complex game on the platform, and is roughly in between Ultima III and Ultima IV in size/complexity. The world is large and nearly right from the start you have a lot of freedom to explore.

One interesting thing about this game is you can choose to start with a party of four with full character creation (like Ultima III), or you can choose to start with just a single character and pick up companions as the game goes along (like Ultima IV). The latter option gives you access to the "Hero" class for your main character, which is basically an Avatar-like class that excels at everything; this doesn't really break the game, though, since it takes quite a while even to find your first companion.

Combat is definitely a step up from Ultima. You have a stamina bar which dictates how many actions you can take per round. This gives you some flexibility even with pure melee characters, as a heavily armored character will be slow and have just a couple of powerful attacks per round, while a lightly armored character will be fast with several attacks per round allowing him to dart into and out of melee safely.

Spellcasting is a bit annoying. In order to acces spells you need to equip a spellbook, and each spellbook has only certain spells in it. You can continue to cast spells as long as you have enough stamina. The annoying part is that you need to swap spellbooks in and out to access the spells on each book. It also means cluttering your inventory with several books.

The only issue I have with the game is that it doesn't really have much of a "hook" to the story or world. In this respect, it's most like Ultima III I suppose.

Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos
I decided to give this one another shot. I'm not a big fan of these step-based real-time combat RPGs (Dungeon Master, Anvil of Dawn, Legend of Grimrock), but I figured LoL would be a good side-game to play on my DOS machine. So far, it's okay. It looks and sounds great, but the combat is really dull. It's also really linear, so exploration doesn't feel very rewarding. Having said all that, it's good for those times when I want to play an RPG, but don't really want to struggle with something that requires mapping, note-taking, etc.

I'm playing UT99 again, haven't done for about 3 years. I think I've lost some skill or reaction time 🙁 i remember being better at it years ago

I'm currently trying to discover the majesty of Master of Magic. I never played this back in the day. But I do recall gifting it to a nerd buddy of mine back in middle school. It was in this 4 pack of games that also included Master of Orion, and two others I completely forget. This was well after those games' heyday, and Master of Orion 2 was already dominating the 4x genre for years. Still, I thought it looked cool.

Sometime I wonder what in the world that bundle of games might have been. Mobygames has nothing.

Anyways, took me many abortive starts to begin to grok how to survive in MoM. But the game also kept crashing on me, which is when I realized I had version 1.2. So I downloaded the latest community patch, 1.53.06 or something, but then it crashed even harder. Because apparently, using the install program on the CD is not what you want to do. You want to manually copy the GAME folder to your HDD, and run the game from there. Otherwise patches don't work? Or something?

I didn't try the community patch again, but I did try 1.31 which seems good enough thus far. Although roads don't show up? That's weird. Still learning the ropes on the easiest setting, fiddling with spells and summons and such. But it's good. I'm enjoying it. I don't think I've gotten to that level of "I'm powerful enough to break the game in two, suck it", which I think people remember really fondly. But I'm starting to see why it has the reputation it has, maybe?

My friends finally got me to cave and start Final Fantasy XIV a little less than a week ago. Enjoying it a fair bit so far, just got a mount and my first jobstone yesterday. The story has been pretty meh so far but it's still a lot more in-depth than you'd expect for an MMO and I do appreciate that.
Only problem is I chose Archer/Bard for my starting job and queuing for the duty finder as DPS is a nightmare. I end up waiting an obscenely long time to get into anything. I should have picked Arcanist, upgrade to both Summoner and Scholar so I could play DPS solo and switch to healer for dungeons. I'll probably level in that next once I cap Bard, I guess.

Our family's been on vacation for 10 days, and I'm just getting back into the swing of things after returning last Sunday, so this morning was my first gaming session in 18 days. Just got a little over an hour of gaming in on Avernum: Escape from the Pit. It's a simple enough game that it didn't take much to get back into the swing of things, but still fun for an RPG. I'm near the end of completing the Slith Temple. Just need to enter the final section. I assume there will be a difficult battle, followed by rewards. Apparently there is a piece of the Demonslayer sword here, at least according to my quest log. I've also come across a magical barrier that requires Dispell Barrier level 3. Unfortnately, my Mage is only up to level 2, so could not dispell it. We'll see if the sword shard is behind there or in that other room I'm about to enter.

NovaCN wrote on 2022-04-29, 13:25:

Only problem is I chose Archer/Bard for my starting job and queuing for the duty finder as DPS is a nightmare. I end up waiting an obscenely long time to get into anything.

Play tank for instant invite. 😁

Healers were also in good demand in FF14 when I was playing. (was by far my favorite task in FF14)

RaiderOfLostVoodoo wrote on 2022-04-30, 16:41:

NovaCN wrote on 2022-04-29, 13:25:

Only problem is I chose Archer/Bard for my starting job and queuing for the duty finder as DPS is a nightmare. I end up waiting an obscenely long time to get into anything.

[img]
Play tank for instant invite. 😁

On the other hand I don't know how I would have survived my time pre-chocobo without Peloton to increase my walking speed. But yes I'm definitely leveling in Arcanist once I hit Bard 60 (the cap for a free trial player).

Oh, me? I'm about to play one of my favorite arcade games from back in the day, Virtual-On: Cyber Troopers.
In fact...

I just got a cheerful pair of Win98 PCs all networked up for some two-player action! Short of owning the 2-player cabinet, this is probably as good as home Cyber Troopin' gets.

Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress (Apple II)
It's finally time to get through this piece of garbage 🤣. I've completed Ultima I, III, IV, and VII, and it's annoying me that I've never completed this one.

I really enjoyed playing through Ultima I (DOS) around 20 years ago, and was looking forward to playing its sequel but was immediately put off by the difficulty early on. I've made several attempts at the DOS version since then, but always get frustrated with the lack of enemies spawning early on.

With that in mind, I decided today to try the Apple II version (from the Ultima Trilogy set), and was surprised to find that enemies spawn much more reliably early on. Over the course of 20 minutes or so, I had earned enough gold to get my HP and food to decent levels, and had even won a couple of blue tassels. I wasn't able to find any pirate ships in BC or AD, but was able to find one in Pangea, where I was able to cruise around shooting monsters for easy gold. Once I had my fill, I headed to AD to level up my stats a bit, then headed back to BC.

And that's where I am now. My goal now is to find a pirate ship in either BC or AD. I know from info I've picked up over that years that a massive portion of the game is optional/useless, so I hope to just blast through it over a few hours here and there. My #1 goal starting out, though, was to get off to a good start without having to steal anything, so I'm glad I was able to get that accomplished today.

Dunno what I will do with the dungeons. I know they are completely useless in this game, but I feel like I should explore at least one to get the "full experience." If I decide to do that, I'll probably wait until I've powered up quite a bit.

Standard Def Steve wrote on 2022-05-04, 03:55:

Oh, me? I'm about to play one of my favorite arcade games from back in the day, Virtual-On: Cyber Troopers.
In fact...IMG_0171.png

I just got a cheerful pair of Win98 PCs all networked up for some two-player action! Short of owning the 2-player cabinet, this is probably as good as home Cyber Troopin' gets.

What kind of stick is that? Any workarounds needed to make it play with 98?

My Hori mini 4 is supposedly hid compliant, but I could never make it work. 🤔

Ultima II (Apple II)
I've been putting 30-60 min. into this at night when I've got nothing to do, and I've started to appreciate the game in concept, but hate it in execution. The information gathering and exploration are both fine, and the quest isn't as random/crazy as it first seems. Once you figure out the time gates, the world makes a lot more sense. The game also provides you plenty of clues to figure out what's going on, and what you need to do.

I finally was able to get a ship to spawn in 1990 AD, so that makes it a bit easier to get all my shopping (HP, food, equipment, stats) done in one place. I've been steadily improving my stats at the hotel but honestly none of the stats really seem to make much a difference in combat.

My plan is to do one more round of stat upgrades, which will get most of my stats up to 50+. Then I'll go buy the Power Armor (best armor in the game, I guess) and will probably explore/map a single dungeon just to experience it. Then I'll start the main quest, finally.

Hit the first credits roll in FFXIV. Enjoying the game well enough, though the story makes me wince a lot. Looot of stuff here that makes me really dislike the nations I'm ostensibly supposed to sympathize with. Predatory ultracapitalism, colonialism while painting the colonized as savages, poor treatment of refugees, it's not great that all this stuff goes unchallenged by the narrative (at least so far)! Not that I'm on the side of the Garleans, oh god no. Gaius has a whole monologue about his Social Darwinist garbage before the final boss fight and pleads with you to understand and I just want to tell him he's full of crap.
I've heard it gets better, that the writers started properly addressing these things in later expansions, but early on it is definitely a bit rough.

Anyway, right now I'm grinding dailies to get better gear while I wait for my friends to have time to help me run through Coils of Bahamut, an old series of raids with story content in it relevant to this point in the main plot (but nobody runs them anymore so it's outright impossible to get a party together through the duty finder). The perils of making your MMO heavily story-based, I guess.
I will say I love the community in this game. I've so rarely played an online game where people are this welcoming to and accommodating of new players. Every time I go into a dungeon, everyone's really patient while I learn the mechanics of the boss fights, and I come out of it with multiple player commendations. It probably helps that everyone in a group gets bonus rewards when one of them is doing that given duty for the first time; stuff like that does a lot help to foster a kinder environment.

Ultima II (Apple II)
I was able to put a little more time into this. I saved up enough for another round of stat upgrades, and my CHA+INT reached a level where I get a good discount on equipment, so I was off to buy the Power Armor. While traveling back and forth through time, I was pleased to see a pirate ship spawn in 1423 BC. With that, I have ships docked in convenient locations in 1423 BC, 1990 AD, and Pangea... that makes getting around a lot easier.

I've got all my stats around 70 or so, so I will probably start exploring one of the dungeons (even though I know they are meaningless in this game). I don't plan on getting all my stats to 99 (in fact, doing so would be dangerous, since stats roll-over back to 1 if you go above 99), but I might do another another couple of rounds of upgrades.

I did hit the roll-over issue with some of my tools, as my torches went from 99 to 0! You find tools randomly after killing certain enemies, so there's really no way to avoid this. I was able to build up another 25 torches quickly just as I was grinding gold, so it should be fine.

Hopefully, I'll be able to get started on the actual main quest this weekend.