newtmonkey wrote on 2022-08-28, 17:13:

Nox Archaist I went and cleared the Orc Cave. There was a tough battle at the end which seemed way too difficult for my current […]
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Nox Archaist
I went and cleared the Orc Cave. There was a tough battle at the end which seemed way too difficult for my current party, but it ended up being a bit of a "puzzle" battle. Once I figured it out, it was not very difficult at all. I ended up getting a lot of gold and some nice items there, and also found out something interesting about the game: treasure chest are random and they are regenerated whenever you enter a dungeon. You could probably really abuse this, but I'll avoid doing that.

My next goal is to sell some of the items I've found, upgrade the armor on my front line characters, buy a boat, and start exploring the rest of the world. Like I mentioned before, I want to replace my "paladin" (fighter/mage) character with a pure mage, and (unless I am missing something) there is only one mage character to recruit on the first island.

Avadon
I'm something like 20 hours into this, and while I don't like it, I'd like to complete it. I decided to leave it installed and just put 20-30 minutes into it at a time as I have time. What makes this both very playable but also boring, is the fact that it's ridiculously easy. You heal in between combats, so you are never in any danger. It's almost not even worth playing, but it's sort of perfect for those times when I want to veg out and listen to music or whatever, but also want to play a game.

Quake
I decided to install this on my dedicated MSDOS PC. I have it on Steam, and that version is fine, but something felt off about it... movement felt a bit weird, and the higher resolution imo makes the game look worse than it should. I actually still have my original CD bought back in the day, so I installed the game and played it a bit.

I really liked this game back in the day, and I like it even more now. A great followup to DOOM, with a fantastic soundtrack. Like DOOM, it's got its own unique feel that takes a bit to get used to, but once you do it just feels perfect. Its also got a great selection of weapons, very unique enemies, and some spectacular level design.

I played GLQuake on my Win9x PC, but only completed the first episode. I could never get into the multi-episode games like this, Duke3D, etc. I'd finish the first episode and feel like I was done with the game. Never moved on to episodes 2 or 3.

Avadon is on my playlist and I hope I'll like it better than Avernum. The quests in Avernum were too convoluted for me and ended up bailing on it after sinking 87 hours into it. I didn't feel like I was making any progress towards the endgame.

Tom.. wrote on 2022-08-27, 13:16:

I play Cue Club, it's a fun but a bit forgotten game..

I love Snooker/Pool games. The ones I have played the most are Virtual Pool 3 on the PC, and Virtual Pool 64 on the Nintendo 64 (though I never forgave Virtual Pool 64 for not supporting Snooker, but it was excellent otherwise), and in the 90s I loved the two Archer McClean games Jimmy White's 'Whirlwind' Snooker, and Archer Maclean's Pool, on the Atari ST. Other great games include World Snooker Championship 2007 on the PS2, Snooker 19 on the PS4, Virtual Pool 4 on the PC, and one I played in the late 90s on the PC and who's name I have unhelpfully forgotten (it might have been Jimmy White's 2: Cueball, from a quick google search).

I always prefer 3D snooker/pool games rather than the pure top-down-view games, but for lining up difficult shots, then I always use the optional top-down-view to set up the shot, of course.

clueless1 wrote on 2022-08-28, 18:34:

I played GLQuake on my Win9x PC, but only completed the first episode. I could never get into the multi-episode games like this, Duke3D, etc. I'd finish the first episode and feel like I was done with the game. Never moved on to episodes 2 or 3.

Avadon is on my playlist and I hope I'll like it better than Avernum. The quests in Avernum were too convoluted for me and ended up bailing on it after sinking 87 hours into it. I didn't feel like I was making any progress towards the endgame.

I think a lot of the shareware games frontload the best content in Episode 1 as a sales tactic!

As for Avadon, maybe this is just because I've since completed Queen's Wish (definitely the worst Spiderweb Soft game I've played), but Avadon seems a lot better than I remember. I still feel it's a step down in every way from Exile/Avernum, but it has much better exploration and quests than Queen's Wish.

Having read what you didn't like about Avernum, you might actually dig Avadon. It plays similar to Avernum, though much, much simplified (three-character party is the biggest letdown). There are lots of side quests, but the main quest is quite linear and mission-based, so it's always clear what you need to do to progress the story. It might be worth giving this a try for a few hours and see what you think!

---

Avadon
I was able to put a solid 2-3 hours into this tonight. Steam says I'm 42 hours in, but I am pretty certain that time includes a 15-20 hour game I abandoned and then lost my saves for when I got a new laptop (and failed to backup the save files...).

I made some progress in the main quest, but also completed a somewhat lengthy "companion" quest. I must admit that, while I don't really like any of the companions in this game, their personal quests are generally pretty interesting, and are never as simple as just killing some skeletons in a cave or whatever.

I don't mind the overall structure as a change of pace from a more involved RPG, and once I made peace with this fact, I began enjoying this a lot more. It helps that, regardless of all of the simplifications, individual locations are still massive and both fun and rewarding to explore. Even with a three-person party and tiny skill-trees, it's still pretty fun to level up and your party does seem to feel more powerful as time goes on.

There are some annoyances.

- Even though the whole game is streamlined considerably compared even with the latest Exile/Avernum remake, traveling around the world is a pain. Everything is accessed from a central hub, but for some reason the world is split into three sub-areas, requiring you to tediously walk to teleportation pylons in the central hub to access each of these areas. Why not just have a single teleporter... or even better, just allow you to bring up a world map and select where to go from there? Even more annoyingly, the east teleporter takes you to a castle, and from there you need to tediously exit the map before you are shown the sub-area map to select where to go. What a waste of time.

- Combat on Normal is braindead easy. I am pretty sure you can change the difficulty in-game, but I'd rather just stick with the same difficulty level the whole game, and don't want to restart. The game was allegedly "balanced" for Normal, but I really find this hard to believe because of how ridiculously easy it is. I would suggest playing this on Hard if you want any challenge whatsoever.

Having said all that, I've started to enjoy this. I dunno if it's because the game "gets good 20 hours in" or if it's because it's so much better compared with Queen's Wish from the same developer, but I got fairly addicted tonight! I'll say this much: even though I still have a lot of game left, I'm looking forward to eventually playing Avadon 2 (and even 3). Big contrast with Queen's Wish, where I have zero interest in any other games in the series.

clueless1 wrote on 2022-08-28, 18:34:

I played GLQuake on my Win9x PC, but only completed the first episode. I could never get into the multi-episode games like this, Duke3D, etc. I'd finish the first episode and feel like I was done with the game. Never moved on to episodes 2 or 3.

Quake's not like the apogee laziness shareware design model though, but it does get very slapdash after E4M1 (the sandy petersen episode)

leileilol wrote on 2022-08-30, 07:35:

clueless1 wrote on 2022-08-28, 18:34:

I played GLQuake on my Win9x PC, but only completed the first episode. I could never get into the multi-episode games like this, Duke3D, etc. I'd finish the first episode and feel like I was done with the game. Never moved on to episodes 2 or 3.

Quake's not like the apogee laziness shareware design model though, but it does get very slapdash after E4M1 (the sandy petersen episode)

i liked Duke3d episodes more than quake's later ones though, mainly because of the continuation of quake's look and feel, while Duke at least went to different places

not sure if quakes major expansions were good tough, didn't play them

Scourge of Armagon did involve one of Duke3D's level designers for most of it and has creative new entity usage, Dissolution feels relatively rough.

Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards (MS-DOS)

I decided this would be the next adventure to play, and before I knew it I had completed the game (an hour or two). I've made many attempts to finish this over the years, so I already knew what to do for about the first half of the game. The rest of the game was pretty straightforward, and getting through it was just a matter of exploring all the screens and picking up everything I could.

I needed one hint for this one:

Otherwise, the game was really quite fair. As long as you pay attention to the descriptions, it's not hard to figure out what you need to do. The room descriptions mostly list everything you'd need to inspect, and the graphics are good enough that you don't have to guess what you're looking at. The item puzzles all made sense, and the only possible "walking dead" situation I can think of is:

This is one of the first adventure games I ever played (on a friend's Atari ST, back around when the game was released), so it feels great to finally complete it. I really enjoyed it!

newtmonkey wrote on 2022-08-31, 16:40:

Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards (MS-DOS)

Nice one, that is a fun game and the only Larry I've ever finished. I played through the original and VGA versions back to back a while ago to see how they differed and they didn't much gameplay wise. The VGA version is a lot easier on the eyes though of course.

badmojo wrote on 2022-09-01, 00:53:

Nice one, that is a fun game and the only Larry I've ever finished. I played through the original and VGA versions back to back a while ago to see how they differed and they didn't much gameplay wise. The VGA version is a lot easier on the eyes though of course.

Thanks! I really liked it. I want to play these in release order, but am already looking forward to playing the VGA remake. I know LSL2 has a very poor reputation with lots of walking dead scenarios, but at least it will be an excuse to turn the MT-32 on. 😀

This stuff ain't that old, but: I'm currently playing Cadence of Hyrule and Xenoblade Chronicles 3, both on the Nintendo Switch system.

C.O.H. is quite retro, as it's basically a 2D Zelda game where the combat is timing/beat -based. For people who love both 2D Zeldas, and the music of Zelda games (which, in this game, is all souped-up and enhanced), it's a really special treat. Short but sweet, I'd estimate 8 to 12 hours long. Nearly to the end, and loving it.

X.C.3. is a weird beast. I haven't played this kind of game before - a very 'anime'/almost-superheroes style of RPG. I haven't by any means mastered the semi complex combat system, at all, so I am playing the game on the noob's Easy setting. This presents a weird situation: short bursts of between 30 seconds and 10 minutes of relatively easy combat which I nonetheless ineptly stumble through, followed by a yet-another massive cut scene. The story is awesome, think The Matrix or "misc good anime" style of dystopian sci-fi-ness. Likewise the characters, in a somewhat trope-y way.

I am not used to these modern games where literally half of the gaming time is "welp, time to put down the controller for !!yet another!! 5-10 minutes, while everyone talks etc". An obvious partial solution is to up the difficulty. But that will need to occur hand-in-hand with some regimented training by me, to actually get good at the game. All that said!, ... I'm still enjoying the experience, in bursts. The production and story are amazing.

I'm just not sure if I'm watching a movie or playing a game, because often it doesn't quite feel like either one.

I never played the Laura Bow games before and the LSL writeup above makes me want to give Colonel's Bequest a go. I believe the DOS version is PC Speaker only so I guess the best version of this game to enjoy is the Amiga one?

Currently playing through Beyond Oasis on the Genesis and Microsoft Pandora's Box on PC. With Beyond Oasis I'm continuing a save I made probably like 4 or 5 years ago where I played for 30 minutes, wish I just started a totally new game instead but it's too late now.

appiah4 wrote on 2022-09-01, 10:27:

I never played the Laura Bow games before and the LSL writeup above makes me want to give Colonel's Bequest a go. I believe the DOS version is PC Speaker only so I guess the best version of this game to enjoy is the Amiga one?

Colonel's Bequest supports Adlib and MT-32 😀

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-09-01, 05:10:

X.C.3. is a weird beast. I haven't played this kind of game before - a very 'anime'/almost-superheroes style of RPG. I haven't by any means mastered the semi complex combat system, at all, so I am playing the game on the noob's Easy setting. This presents a weird situation: short bursts of between 30 seconds and 10 minutes of relatively easy combat which I nonetheless ineptly stumble through, followed by a yet-another massive cut scene. The story is awesome, think The Matrix or "misc good anime" style of dystopian sci-fi-ness. Likewise the characters, in a somewhat trope-y way.

I am not used to these modern games where literally half of the gaming time is "welp, time to put down the controller for !!yet another!! 5-10 minutes, while everyone talks etc". An obvious partial solution is to up the difficulty. But that will need to occur hand-in-hand with some regimented training by me, to actually get good at the game. All that said!, ... I'm still enjoying the experience, in bursts. The production and story are amazing.

I'm just not sure if I'm watching a movie or playing a game, because often it doesn't quite feel like either one.

You sure got lucky picking this entry in the series. IMHO it's the best one yet. A lot of people thought XC2 was a step back from XC1. I can see where they were coming from. XC3 seems straight up better than both IMHO.

I'm about 5 chapters in, compulsively mopping up side quest before I progress with the story. I'm still making up my mind about the combat system. It's a bit more immediately responsive than XC2's. But my sense of agency still feels weaker than XC1's. I've found myself too utterly awash in accessories to make any sensible choices with them, so I mostly let the computer fill those slots for me. I was excited to see a Job system, but it's so constrained they managed to turn one of the best parts of an RPG and make it a little bit like a chore. So as usual, the best parts of this XC are the massive creative open world, and the story. Although I will also say I like it's Hero system a lot better than the Blade system from XC2.

It's been more difficult to put hours into XC3 than before in my life. When I beat XC2 I didn't have a kid. I've typically beat these games, but we'll see what life allows me before I simply run out of steam to plug away at the same game for 2 hours a night, 90 days in a row. I may wonder off to something else that is more achievable.

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-09-01, 05:10:

This stuff ain't that old, but: I'm currently playing Cadence of Hyrule and Xenoblade Chronicles 3, both on the Nintendo Switch system.

C.O.H. is quite retro, as it's basically a 2D Zelda game where the combat is timing/beat -based. For people who love both 2D Zeldas, and the music of Zelda games (which, in this game, is all souped-up and enhanced), it's a really special treat. Short but sweet, I'd estimate 8 to 12 hours long. Nearly to the end, and loving it.

If you aren't already aware of it I recommend also checking out Crypt of the NecroDancer. CoH is basically just a NecroDancer spinoff with a Zelda skin so if you want more of CoH, there you go.

NovaCN wrote on 2022-09-02, 12:50:

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-09-01, 05:10:

This stuff ain't that old, but: I'm currently playing Cadence of Hyrule and Xenoblade Chronicles 3, both on the Nintendo Switch system.

C.O.H. is quite retro, as it's basically a 2D Zelda game where the combat is timing/beat -based. For people who love both 2D Zeldas, and the music of Zelda games (which, in this game, is all souped-up and enhanced), it's a really special treat. Short but sweet, I'd estimate 8 to 12 hours long. Nearly to the end, and loving it.

If you aren't already aware of it I recommend also checking out Crypt of the NecroDancer. CoH is basically just a NecroDancer spinoff with a Zelda skin so if you want more of CoH, there you go.

Thanks, I will be checking it out. Tbh the majority of my love for CoH is based upon the Zelda elements, with the NecroDancer style being a novel dynamic. Take away the Zelda game layout and the awesome enhanced Zelda music, and some of my passion may go with it. However, I may still enjoy the CotN game in it's own right.

Avadon
I've been plugging away at this here and there as I have time. It's impossible to tell how far I am into the game (the story has basically been going nowhere for the last 20 hours), but I expect I am in the last 25% of the game.

I regret playing this on Normal, but it makes no sense to change the difficulty now. Every single combat is pretty much the same; hang back and shoot arrows, then switch to melee once any surviving enemies get close. The only time I use spells/abilities is when combat gets too tedious (not hard), and I want to just end the battle quicker.

Having said all that, it's an alright game to relax with while listening to some music or watching some videos.

Ultima VI: The False Prophet
I'm still getting a hang for the controls in this game. I've sunk about 6 hours into it, but most of that time has been talking with NPCs and figuring out the controls and lay of the land. I finished up in Britain and took a short trip to Cove and the Shrine of Compassion. Battled a couple of gargoyles on the way to Cove, then spoke to some folks in Cove, got some free healing, bought a spell that I can't use yet (Great Heal), some reagents, and learned how to meditate at the shrine. Went back to the shrine, battled a couple of more gargoyles, then did the meditation thing. It was not obvious how to get the spell I bought written into my book but I eventually figured it out. And it wasn't obvious how to meditate properly either (you have to be exactly in front of the shrine, not even one square in between you and it).

I'm enjoying the experience so far, but I'm still not invested to the point where I'm confident I will play it through to the end. I may, but that remains to be seen. I've played several RPGs that I've sunk significant time into and decided not to finish (Betrayal at Krondor, Dark Sun: Shattered Lands, Albion, Eye of the Beholder 1 and Avernum: Escape from the Pit), so I'm now wary about sinking too much time into a game that I'm not excited about from the get-go.

I'm plodding through Child of Light on Casual difficulty. I am not much into RPGs, but decided to give this one to try, because I'm a fan of the two recent Rayman games that use the same UbiArt framework. The game is very pretty, but is indeed somewhat boring.

appiah4 wrote on 2022-09-01, 10:27:

I never played the Laura Bow games before and the LSL writeup above makes me want to give Colonel's Bequest a go. I believe the DOS version is PC Speaker only so I guess the best version of this game to enjoy is the Amiga one?

Colonel's Bequest for DOS supported a lot of audio devices including the MT-32. It's your best bet for the best audio that game has to offer.