Aielman15 @ Aielman15 @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Mistwalker is the company founded by Sakaguchi, the creator of Final Fantasy. It should come to no surprise that the game is really evocative of many early FF titles.

I played Lost Odyssey and very much liked it, but it's not Square.

It was made by Mistwalker with MS backing, after Sakaguchi left Square.

Actually, re-reading my list, I noticed that I mentioned Resonance of Fate, which wasn't Square, either! It was published by Sega. The other titles should be correct.

First of all, I don't see how a series where each and every entry is unique and has nothing to do with the previous ones (apart from a few recurring names) could be "well past done". They don't even share the same gameplay or combat system.

And also, Square has "tried something new" pretty much all the time. Triangle Strategy, Live a Live, Nier, Kingdom Hearts, Star Ocean, SaGa, Mana series (with an upcoming title next year), Dragon Quest, Octopath Traveler... I'm just listing a few, but I could go on. It's not even a thing they suddenly decided to do. Even a few gens back, I remember playing Star Ocean, Last Remnant, Resonance of Fate and other lesser known titles. If you want to go back to the PS1 days, Vagrant Story and Threads of Fate come to mind, but there are surely a lot more I'm currently forgetting. EDIT: Xenogears too! I don't know how I could forget that one.

I have heard very good things about it, but I can't talk for myself, as I haven't played it. My only recommendation is to stay away from the console versions of the game, as I tried it on Xbox One and it was unplayable (heard the same about the PS4 port, too). Maybe it's better on next gen, but I wouldn't risk it.

Two things worth mentioning:

• The remake only has one character, the Haruspex. If you want to play as the Bachelor or the Changeling, you'll need to grab the original game.
• There are difficulty settings in the remake. I would leave them as default, as I think the difficulty of the game, and the conflicting decisions you'll need to undertake because of it, is an integral part of the experience. That being said, if you really like the game and want to see it through, you can tweak the difficulty a bit, and accessibility is always a plus in my book.
• Again, this is just hearsay as I haven't played it, but from what I've gathered, Pathologic 2 is more a retelling than a faithful remake. Same setting and same ending, but a different road, so to speak. You could play either one and then move on to the other if you like it.

The obvious answer is Pathologic. You play as one of three possible characters in a black plague-infested town in the russian steppe, trying to help people and survive.

As days go by, the situation worsens and, in order to survive, you are forced to make very hard decisions. Can you spare the food for the others? Will you rob someone of their medicines? Will you risk going to the most dangerous parts of the city, where the stench of infection permeates the air?

I'll quote The Nocturnal Rambler's review of the game, which is one of my favourite video game reviewers:

Making it to the end of a day is a genuine accomplishment in this game, considering all the work you have to do to stay alive, and that the game really doesn't care if you live or die. It won't hold your hand to make sure you get through to the end; it's entirely possible to make it through 10 days and then back yourself into a corner where you have absolutely no hope of survival, short of loading a save from a few (in-game) days ago. Or perhaps to save yourself the agony of replaying several hours of the game, you end up in terrifying, desperate scenarios where you have to sell your only weapon for a few scraps of bread, or murder a child for the medicine he's carrying while you're about to die from infection. That's true horror right there.

It's not an easy game and it's not a good game, even. It's old and dated and janky, but it's also full of charm and personality. I wouldn't say it's a game meant to be played, as much as it is an experience worth going through. You won't have fun playing the game. Even if you can overlook its pain points, it's an objectively oppressive game that will make you feel miserable from beginning to end, and increasingly so. I wouldn't say it's for everyone, and I don't mean that in an elitist way. Some people simply won't stand this much bleakness during the time they are supposedly spending to find entertainment.

I'm a bit sad that the game didn't resonate with the public. It was a very emotional journey and I liked it more than the first one, but every time the LiS series is brought up, people treat it as the black sheep and mostly mention it only to recommend to stay away from it and try the others instead.

I feel bad for forgetting about that game, mostly because it's not my cup of tea, but I totally agree with you, it was great.

Will this be the year they finally release something good?

Ugh, I hate it when my plastic has meat in it.

I pirated 90% of the texts I used to write my thesis at university, because those books would have cost me hundreds of euros that I didn't have.

Fuck you, capitalism.

That sentence only applies to the first episode. The rest of the series is an overly jingoistic power fantasy where the MC goes around collecting waifus for his harem and the japanese army exports democracy japanese culture.

Please, don't give me hope.

I haven't read the book, but the movie was crap too. It was just a slide show of '80s and '90s references that completely failed to capture what made those good, or even understand them.

This is the game that was facing closure due to the budget drying out and one of the two key developers being diagnosed with cancer. Seems like that news resonated with enough players, and the developers have received enough donations to keep the development going forward for a while.

Despite not being interested in MMORPG games, it's a heartwarming news that I'm happy to hear. The developers seem genuinely passionate about the project and the industry really needs more people like them.

At the time I'm writing this, recent reviews reached mostly negative (29%), and all-time reviews are mixed (64%). Which is honestly a lot more than it deserves, but I would hardly call that "riding Bethesda's cock".

It's probably just a matter of big games getting more votes, because of name recognition. This is just a popularity contest, after all.

Not mine, but once heard of the concept of an undead spore druid with fungi inside its body that serve as its digestive system.

It was a novel idea.

They literally cannot. If they offer a game at a lower price than Steam on other storefronts, Valve delists the game from Steam, which publishers cannot afford to since it's the de facto leader of the industry, and forfeiting Steam sales means forfeiting a huge chunk of sales. Listing "they could just not sell on Steam" as a "trivial" way to get around Steam's monopoly is so willfully moronic on so many levels that I don't think I need to explain to you why that would be a bad idea.

As for "doing a different edition of the game for each platform", that's also a no-go. The content parity clause extends to DLC as well, and the link provided above by the other user includes multiple examples of games that were forced to match Steam's price on other storefronts despite not being compatible. One such example:

There are ample examples of Valve explaining and enforcing the PMFN.
Valve enforced the Valve PMFN, for example, to block competition from the Discord Store. As detailed below, Discord launched a competitor to the Steam Store that charged only a 10% commission. As Discord offered a much lower price, some publishers wanted to steer customers to Discord, where the publisher could charge a lower price to the customer while growing its own revenue.
In late 2018, for example, one publisher had been selling its game on the Steam Store for $5, but launched its game on the Discord Store (enabled for Discord’s gaming platform) for free. Valve detected that the publisher was charging different prices on the two storefronts, and told the publisher that offering its game for a lower price on Discord violated the Valve PMFN. Valve insisted the publisher renegotiate its deal with Discord and ensure that gamers buying the Discord version pay the same price as gamers buying the Steam version.
Valve’s enforcement of the Valve PMFN harmed Discord, publishers, and gamers. Discord was unable to use price to grow its share of the market. Publishers were unable to reap the benefit of Discord’s lower commissions. Gamers were denied the ability to purchase the game for a lower retail price.

Having a central store is nice and all, but I should not be forced to pay my games on GOG, Epic or whatever the same price that Valve charges on Steam. That doesn't benefit me in the slightest. Heck, if anyone else other than Valve was forcing their competitors to match their prices, the outcry from the gaming community would be huge, and justifiably so. But since it's Steam, nobody cares and "having a central store" is used as a smoke screen to cover their shitty monopolistic anti-consumer practices.

EDIT: My god, the Steam fanboys in this thread are insane. You can like the storefront and still criticize its anti-consumer practices. Your Lord and Saviour Gaben won't knock on your door to kiss you, no matter what you do.

I'd also be winning if I could force all my competitors to match my prices despite my fees being higher than theirs.

Only the bare minimum to run the narrative arc. I don't need to know how many gods created your world, or how many cities with unpronounceable names there are out there. Keep that info handy in case it comes up (for example, the pantheon may come up if we seek refuge in a church, or there's religious tension in the country or whatever), but don't spend 30 minutes telling me the minute details of your world, because I'll probably forget by the time we play together again next week.

Unless anyone in your party is able to count up to two, which is the number of spell slots you have until you reach level 11...