4847 replies to this topic

[Nicholas Steel]

I was originally gonna say that Axiom Verge isn't worth the $20 USD asking price but after playing it to completion on Normal difficulty and seeing it take me 10 and a half hours to complete, and comparing it against the 3 hours and 50 minutes it took me to replay Metroid Fusion... I'm reconsidering my original opinion of Axiom Verge's price.

 

While some of the bosses can be cheesed and it has some slight problems with providing the player direction in the late game, it is overall an excellent metroid style game and is more like Metroid than a lot of so called "metroidvania" games out there.

 

I'd give it an 8.5/10, if the singular developer fixed the minor quibbles I had with it I'd bump it up to a 9/10.

Edited by Nicholas Steel, 15 May 2016 - 01:27 AM.

[Fiyaball]

Just got Illusion of Gaia/ Resident Evil (Gamecube) for $37. ALmost got a super scope for $35 and FF3 (SNES) for $55, but I couldn't afford them. (Or, in the case of the super scope, it was that or the games) Probably going to stream RE blind eventually to give some people some laughs

[Russ]

There are some gems that would be rendered useless if the level difference didn't make you miss more often (Night Vision Gems come to mind). The only poorly designed boss in Xenoblade for me is a near end game boss that actually made quit the game in my first playthrough.

So hey, I hit this boss. And hey, I'm done with this game.

Xenoblade's bosses... they're bad. They're very bad. There are a handful of decent ones, but the vast majority of them are just awful. And a certain endgame one by the name of

Spoiler

Lorithia

takes the cake. This boss... it's not exxageration to say this is the single worst video game boss I've ever fought. The game in general has a problem with summoner bosses but this one takes it to a new extreme. She summons four enemies with insanely high HP, all of which are dangerous in their own right. Her defense doubles for each alive. Once they're killed, she respawns a new batch within seconds. She and the enemies both are resistant to physical damage, but if you try to bring in an ether character, she focuses on that character and doesn't switch aggro until that one's dead. Meanwhile, the room itself is mostly taken up by damaging acid. The AI party members don't have a smart enough pathfinding routine to walk out of the acid, so she's intentionally push them in and let the bad AI take care of the rest. To facilitate this, her hitbox is about twice the size of her model. Every detail about this boss is fine tuned to make it as bad as possibly, and I'm honestly amazed it made it past Q/A.

But yeah. I want to like Xenoblade. I really do. But a string of awful bosses and bad mechanics (such as being unable to hit enemies higher than you, the existence of spikes, a cool-in-theory-obnoxious-in-practice vision system, and a freaking annoying music system that replaces every single battle song with the same annoying short loop after a few seconds of fighting) has sucked all enjoyment out of it. I was enjoying the story (even if its head did get lodged pretty far up its ass near the end) and the cool locations, but everything else is just... bad. I can't remember the last time I had such a bad time with a video game that I didn't even finish it. All things considered, I'm really disappointed with Xenoblade.

[Norzan]

Yeah, it's a really poorly desgined boss and it's easily one of the worst i ever fought. I had to use the command to call your party members to your character location a lot of times to keep them out of the pools of acid. I also didn't like

Spoiler

Gadolt boss battle

.

 

 

The only thing i truly dislike about Xenoblade is that they dump level 80-99 enemies in the middle of low level enemies. There's this infamous great ape enemy in Gaur Plains that is the worst case of this. You are walking around killing enemies and suddenly this prick pops up and one shots your entire team. Couldn't they put those enemies in an endgame area instead in the middle of an early area with low level enemies?

 

I also don't like spike damage. Can't count how many times i lost a battle because i one shotted myself due to an unique monster high as hell spike damage. This is made worse by the fact that when you use spike damage (equiping armor and gems with it), it sucks ass due to enemies high health.

Edited by Norzan, 20 May 2016 - 11:48 AM.

[Russ]

That other boss you mentioned takes second place on the bad bosses list. I can only imagine the conversation that led to his creation went something like this

"Let's give this a boss an area-of-effect attack that can kill the entire party in a single hit. The only way to block this would be to topple him, causing players to carefully plan their chain attacks."
"I like it, but it's not aggravating enough. What if we make him randomly block topple attacks. Shall we say 33% chance of blocking?"
"Ooh, that sounds horrible. I love it."
"Wait, it can be worse! Let's have him periodically summon enemies with absurdly high health too."

Like everyone else, I'm not a fan of spike damage. I think my biggest complaint is how there's no indication it's there. You don't know you're being hurt by the spike til you topple the enemy and suddenly you're dead. If they'd had some sort of indicator, and made Monado Purge last longer so you had to strategically use it during the fight, I'd be fine, but as it is now, it's garbage.

As far as monster levels, I don't mind some of the cases of this. Perhaps it just stems from playing X first, which did a similar thing, but I feel that entering Gaur Plains and seeing the level 81 giant ape makes the world feel alive. Sure, there's some weak monsters you can totally take. But there's also some strong ones you're best off avoiding. So the concept I'm fine with. In practice though, the game had some questionable enemy placements. One of the seal islands in Eryth Sea has a unique monster circling overhead that's almost guaranteed to spot you, and you basically just have to run from him. At another point, near the end of the game, there's one sitting on top of the respawn point, so every time you die and respawn, the first thing you have to do is run for your life. Issues like that are a problem. But just having higher leveled enemies in lower leveled areas, so long as they can be avoided, I'm fine with.

[The Satellite]

Nobody will defend Spike damage. And also probably not those two bosses either.

[Lejes]

I didn't have a problem with what's-her-face because I was pretty overleveled from sidequests, and had Melia in my party more or less always anyway. You're not really missing much from skipping the endgame, though. The level difference agility multiplier mechanic is just dumb, like you noted. It makes all the optional late game content very samey. The strategy for literally every enemy is to buff agility/heal with Melia while Dunban slowly hacks whatever it is to death. Maybe add Shulk if the enemy has some dumb, otherwise unavoidable party-wipe attack. You can generally take on things 9 levels above you like this, and completely stomp them if you're on par. I think the only thing I didn't end up doing in the game was some level 114 guy. I have to agree that Xenoblade was pretty disappointing overall (and the sequel looks worse in every way).

In good game news, I played the entire Momodora series recently. The first three games are short and fun. It's interesting seeing how rdein gets so much better at everything with each game. Momodora 4 is the Cave Story/Dark Souls crossover I never knew I wanted.

[Russ]

I have to agree that Xenoblade was pretty disappointing overall (and the sequel looks worse in every way).

I think I'm in the minority, but I LOVED Xenoblade X. Far too much. It addressed most of the complaints I had with the first; really the only thing it's lacking that the first has is a good plot (though I watched Xenoblade's ending on Youtube last night and can't say I'm impressed...). The dumber mechanics like spikes and agility multipliers are gone, and you've got a lot more options for combat. The different superbosses all also need unique strategies, something Xenoblade's don't from what I've gathered. But I may be a bit biased. I loved X far too much and went down a... a rather spergy path.

[ywkls]

I've been stuck on Xenoblade X for a while, because of various things.

 

First, the level cap. Who thought it was a good idea to make a game where level 100 monsters exist but your party can only get up to level 60? To me, that's just wrong. True, you can get a high-level mech that makes them possible; but acquiring it is mostly a lot of item grinding and/or going on missions that have rewards which earn you points for buying rare items.

 

Then, there's the affinity system. Quite literally the only way I can level up affinity for my party at this point is to go on a bunch of nearly identical missions that boost it slightly... then repeat a billion times. That's because during the part of the game where you're supposed to be exploring and leveling up; I stuck with pretty much the same team and never used the rest unless I was forced to.

 

The game is also much shorter than the original and the story... let's just say the ending was rather unsatisfying.

 

Another feature that should have been included from the first game is the ability to shift the time of day anywhere, rather than having to find a base camp on the overworld or a random object in the city.

 

Having more than one town to visit would have been interesting too.

 

Not that I dislike the game. It's probably one of my favorites that I've played recently. It just feels a bit... incomplete.

 

As for games I'm currently playing- Lego Marvel Avengers for PS3.

[Norzan]

Decided to buy Grim Dawn on Steam because it was made by the same guys who made Titan Quest, which a game i like very much and i wanted to support them. It plays very similarly to Titan Quest and i'm really enjoying it so far.

[Eppy]

Overwatch, because OBVIOUS.

 

I've also been working my way through the Mass Effect series. I finished the first one a while back but never finished the 2nd, and obviously never started the 3rd. I'm now back up to the 2nd game with the intent to finish it this time.

[kurt91]

I finally beat "Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth Vol. 1" a couple days ago. I noticed that from the Achievement List on Steam that it seemed incredibly easy to get all of the Achievements. (For one thing, half of them is "Get XXX Character to Lv.99", and the free DLC included raises the level cap to 999) I pretty much managed to get all of the Achievements for the game except for two of them. I still need "Millionaire" (Get 100 million Credits), and that will automatically get me the 100% Completion Achievement.

 

The next two games were on sale during Humble Store's Spring Sale, so I got them for cheap. They don't change much as far as gameplay mechanics go, but the story's supposed to still be really good, and the existing gameplay isn't too bad. They do bump up the party size from 3 to 4, so I can have a team of all CPUs or all CPU Candidates if I want. (Console-based characters or handheld-based characters. If you don't know, characters in the Neptunia series either represent game consoles or developers, while the villains generally represent video game pirates.)

[Eddy]

So a friend of mine got me into Terraria after quite a while. Bought the game today and I'm having a blast with it. 3 hours already, and I can see this being the new thing to be addicted with.

 

Alongside that, I've been playing Geometry Dash (again) and I might start Hyrule Warriors soon...

[The Satellite]

After a year, I'm trying out Dark Souls again, trying a different path than last time, and it's working out better. I gotta admit, while I love the freedom, I'm not really feeling the game itself too much. I'm gonna give it some more time to let it sink in and get more used to the controls, but while I understand and appreciate a game that challenges you deeply, in some way I feel like Dark Souls goes a little too far. Can't pause at all, for starters. Real time menu handling isn't new to Dark Souls, and I don't even mind it, but what if there's an emergency or you have to eat and are nowhere near a safe area? I also feel the controls are partially too complex, and while there's nothing wrong with deep gameplay, this feels like a bit much in that you can make one tiny screw-up and it's often costly, which isn't a lot of fun. But again, I'm gonna give time to let it sink in some and see if I can truly grasp it and change my mind.

 

Also it could use some more music. I like my adventure games to have adventurous music.

 

I've heard comparisons between Dark Souls and Castlevania, and I don't know if they're referring to the classic style or the Metroidvania style, but either way I don't really see it. Castlevania's controls are simple, fluid, and intuitive, easy to grasp, and the game's about applying quick reflexes and clever use of subweapons. Dark Souls is far more meticulous and involved than that.

 

In other gaming news, I borrowed a couple games from my brother, all NES. Zelda, because I won't feel complete until I've beaten it on the original system. TMNT, which I expect to get nowhere in and only wanted to try for nostalgia. Contra, because I don't need to say more. Wizards & Warriors, being one of Rare's first ever games. Should be fun.

[Avaro]

This week I started playing distracting rooms of distraction.. er, I mean deadly rooms of death. It's a pretty hard puzzle game. I really recommend it if you like puzzle games and dungeons. It'll keep me distracted from ZC for a few weeks. xD