whatchu playing now

oof, I'm at the end of Paper Mario and it seems that trying to play it to completion (collecting all star pieces, badges, chef lady recipes, etc) is incredibly tedious and exhausting to the point where it doesn't even seem like you're supposed to?? I've made it through 7 of 8 chapters and have only answered 15 of 64 Chuck Quizmo questions and slogging though this 49 more times PLUS finding all of the secret panels PLUS tracking down all of the badges... this seems like a bad idea

old JRPGs tend to be pretty hostile to 100% completion in general. at least that one doesn't have permanently missable stuff i don't think, which is common elsewhere.

they all assume you would do it on a second playthrough with a gamefaqs guide

nothing as bad as that invisible block you can only hit during a special event near the start of super mario rpg.

Ya that 2nd playthrough thing is a good point. The weird thing abt Paper Mario is that there is no way to neatly collect everything as you go along, like it's more or less designed to dump you at the end of the game with several more hours of tedious grinding if you actually want to collect everything before you go fight the final boss (after which you cannot save your game or return to collect the rest lmao)

I just finished Link's Awakening on the Switch and it lets you save after defeating the final boss and completing the story. You can load that save up and continue looking for all the seashells etc.
A wonderful game, by the way.

I gave Remnant another shot and figured out some things, and thought I was back in, but I've been stuck at the first actual boss. It's sort of like Resident Evil 4 in that your character is not very maneuverable, so you need to either stand and shoot or reposition yourself (or maybe I'm doing it wrong). But when you have enemies coming at you on all sides that are much faster, and can kill you in 1-2 hits, it's not so fun.

It really seems tuned for co-op -- I could see it being fun with friends, if one person is keeping tabs on these suicide bomber fungus creatures that keep running at you, and the other is handling the boss. But either I'm missing something or this game is just super hard solo. And not in a fun Dark Souls way where I feel like I'm learning or getting close.

Oh and apparently my randomly generated version of this boss (Gorefist) has health regen, so yeah, I'm out.

oh yeah I just played thru Link's Awakening DX (the Game Boy Color one) a few years ago and it was a delight, also the ending had a level of hard-hitting emotional depth that I was not at all expecting???

its my fav zelda, haven't played the remake though because i don't love the style

You can't buy the original first Ori game on Steam any more, but when you buy the Definitive Edition you get the original one for free - it's an interesting comparison, and one area which is both "they cleaned this up" and "why was it like this in the first place" is that you can't re-enter any of the dungeons, or even save within the last one, or get a usable save after the end.

just started Wario Land II for Game Boy Color. It's fun!

Hitman 3. Funky levels

this looks good...
https://venturebeat.com/2021/04/04/we-are-the-caretakers-interview-juggling-afrofuturism-poaching-and-strategy-in-one-rpg

GamesBeat: What would be your 30-second encapsulation of We Are the Caretakers?

Brodie: We’ve been workshopping a description, but it’s a squad management RPG set in an Afrofuturist world, where you’re trying to protect your animals, your resources, from sci-fi poachers, and eventually, you find out, aliens. You build squads in a Darkest Dungeon, XCOM-like way, where you have an ensemble cast of different classes. You form them into multiple squads, send them out into an RTS with pause field, and when one of your squads encounters a poaching squad, it goes into a unique RPG turn-based combat system.

GamesBeat: You talk about this being a take on Ogre Battle, rather than XCOM.

Brodie: It’s very core to my inspirations from a gameplay side. This is fundamentally, from a game design perspective, a dream project for me, because Ogre Battle is a game I spent countless hours on and really influenced me as a designer. This is in some ways a way to take elements of a design that happened to map well this real world scenario we have, and then trying to modernize those ideas. Ogre Battle specifically was a bit ahead of its time. It has a very PC-centric design. It has a cursor that you’re using on the Super Nintendo, trying to do that. It felt like there was a lot of room to expand on that concept, and no one really did for 25, 26 years. The world has lived on with Tactics Ogre, and Matsuno went on to work on Final Fantasy Tactics and lots of really cool games, but they kind of left out the ensemble cast, squad building component that was the draw for me. I enjoyed this experience of constantly getting new recruits and special characters, trying to grow this organization. In that game it’s a rebellion.

In We Are the Caretakers it’s this kind of resistance force you’re creating to protect these animals and the environment. As you get further into the game you meet other groups, and it fits into this idea of, how do different groups of people come together for a common cause, even if they have differences, and trying to literally fit them together. Mechanically, the systems Ogre Battle had, and how we’ve modified them, connect the dots between the narrative, world, and gameplay.

Any designer having been seriously influenced by Ogre Battle is a terrifying prospect. You son of a bitch, I'm in!

I am playing Monster Hunter arise, and the monster hunting is ok but the weapon upgrading is great!

i feel like i've been playing it forever and i'm still a LVL1 overall hunter (with 3 star missions unlocked, at least). but i'm having fun with all of it! my first monster hunter :)

Same, also “arise” a typo obviously. The wirebug is new in this game (it says) and it is pretty fun to use

Subnautica is really fun, and free!

Thanks to zs, I am now on the loop hero train
Loop loop loop

i am playing monster hunter as well. i still don't know what i am doing yet but i did kill some monsters. i like the dual blades and the great sword, i want to be all the way at one end of the speed-power spectrum always

also playing a light beam puzzle game called SOLAS 128 that's fairly clever and fun

there are at least 30 to 50 different subsystems within monster hunter

I also got rise and am suuuuper overwhelmed. Supposed to play w some friends soon who will hopefully help me understand wtf I'm doing

about 12 hours in now, and i think i generally get most of it. it helped to read a couple guides for noobs, too. i still need to try out about 2/3 of the weapons

I have only tried 2 weapons. I am favoring the dual swords bc the game plan is easy to understand. (Hit monster with swords)

I am planning on finishing the single player part first before tackling multiplayer, but it would be fun to monster hunt with you all sometime

Yeah let’s hun some mons

I love when two giant monsters start to tango and it’s possible to ride them both

what monkey playing now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsCul1sp4hQ

I don't think it's the answer I'd give if asked, but given the number of times I've cycled back around to it and the obscene number of hours I've poured into it, it's possible that Disgaea is my favorite game. I could play ten quick rounds leveling up a weapon in the Item World literally anytime, apparently without ever getting sick of it. It's like this platonic ideal hybrid of a SRPG and a procedurally-generated board game that I never knew that I wanted.

flonne has maybe the worst voice acting of any character in any video game. the plot and story stuff was bad and the character design made me want to bleach my eyes and put nails through my ps4 memory card.

i put 100+ hours into disgaea on the ps2 and never played any of the sequels. the strategy guide published by double jump books was also marvelous.

I've been thinking about trying Disgaea, are they all pretty much good or is one of them worth starting with?

have heard positive things about 5 if you want one on current platforms. i see it on sale fairly often

It's 2021 and I'm playing Dark Souls 3

that's nothing, it's 2021 and I've been playing Magic The Gathering Arena!
it's always been there in the background as a "nerd thing" that I knew nothing about, so I played through the free tutorial stuff to see how it works
can see why people get obsessed with it, it's not really for me though

(still getting better! Although I've also developed a lot of bad habits by playing at lower levels and getting used to people reacting the way newer players react, and so I'm less prepared when I run into an actually good player)

(also a la Fezzik, I'm so used to fighting groups that I'm also worse at fighting just one person)

xp

Ooh I've been meaning to finally try MTG Arena. My partner & I still play with cards, I miss the deck-building aspect though.

i've been playing mtg arena a lot too rather than making progress on my rpg backlog. though i'm a veteran mtg player i guess

ciderpress you need to make progress on the rpg backlog so that you can work on your comprehensive monograph about JRPGs

if i can count monster hunter as a jrpg then we're good

What DO you classify a monster hunter game as? What is the Pokémon/horizon/monster hunter genre?

those are 3 different types of game imo

they're all Zeldas

well no actually

Monster Hunter is a Mario

monster hunter is simply an action rpg. i haven't seen an acceptable more specific term for it and stuff like it

it's a roguelike

it's a boss rush in slow motion

Oh right, MTG Arena crashes when I try to install it on my ancient PC, is blocked on my work computer, and all tablets in the house are too old to be supported. :(