4847 replies to this topic

[kurt91]

I took a break from grinding cash in Neptunia during Finals Week, and I'm kind of getting into some other things before I get around to finishing that. I made a few adjustments to how my Fallout 3 game is set up. I found something that claims that the adjustment to use multiple cores efficiently and allow more RAM doesn't play well with the Unofficial Patch, and causes random crashes. I disabled the patch and tried running the game, and while it did ultimately crash again after a while, I think I got to play for a fair bit longer than usual before it happened.

 

Just in case anybody here's played the game, if I stick to the main quest and avoid a majority of side-quests, how much longer should it be until I finish? I have New Vegas as well, and while I'm enjoying the game and want to play them in order, I'd like to get to something that's at least slightly more stable.

Spoiler

I crashed during the escape sequence when the Enclave show up at Project Purity

 

I also read about and downloaded a game called "Path of Exile", which is supposed to be a really good, unbelievably massive Diablo-style game. That sentence would make more sense to me if I had ever played a Diablo game. I picked it up because I like customizing my character, and the skill tree made me think of the Final Fantasy X Sphere Grid, which was fun.

 

Speaking of which, I also got a hold of the PC port of the Final Fantasy X + X-2 remaster. I have both games already on PS2, as well as a translation of the International Version on emulator, but I got the PC version for two things. One, the emulated game has a few texture issues, with more appearing if you try upscaling it. Second, there's a program you can use for the PC version that gives you camera control! It's not perfect and needs some adjustments to prevent breaking the game at points, so I haven't started using it yet. I'm playing it a little bit at a time for the same reason I played Ocarina of Time 3D, as a sort of guided tour of the visual and audio changes. I kept the U.S. Sphere Grid, because I think I remember that maxing it out gives a couple more points to stats, and I'm pretty sure I'll need them for the additional bosses, when I eventually get to that point.

[Tree]

Now that I've got my computer working decently, I can finally play some of the quests that have come out in recent years that I've missed out.

 

Or I could play Hero of Dreams, Lost Isle and Link To The Heavens for the millionth time.

[The Satellite]

All these rumblings about Breath of the Wild has made me to turn to a retrospective phase, thinking back to the birth of the series and how it's progressed to a point where we essentially needed Breath of the Wild as a "reboot" of sorts, if not of the lore, then at least of the gameplay. So I went back to play the original NES Zelda, which I mentioned earlier that I borrowed from my brother, and beat it.

 

I was surprised at how much of a good time I was having.

 

Don't get me wrong, it's still a flawed product. The controls are little stiff, the graphics are just too primitive, and the secrets can be too cryptic... and door repair charges shouldn't exist. But past all that, it's a true adventure, open, free, left to your own devices. You set the tone and the pace, you can do much of it out of order and even disregard portions, you dictate how you play the game. Some limitations aside, of course. It can be easy to get lost, and none of the areas or dungeons have their own real personality apart from a palette and enemy set, but throughout the adventure, it was quite fun. I'm also proud of the fact I only died four times. Three, if you don't count the intentional death for the sake of saving, because I apparently forgot about the controller two save trick.

 

I'm going to be continuing, not with the whole series, but with a few key titles to watch how the series evolved to the point we need a re-revolution. From the days of open adventure to the present of set paths and a partner yelling in your ear where to go all the time. I still love these games as games, but I wonder how I'll feel with this specific mindset as I progress through them.

 

I'll be playing A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, The Wind Waker, The Minish Cap, Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword, and A Link Between Worlds. All on their original systems; no VC ports, 3DS/Wii U remakes, etc., with the exception of The Minish Cap. Admittedly TMC is thrown in just so I can play it a second time, but it'll definitely stand in contrast to Z1 and ALttP in play style, which is enough for me.

 

Let's see how this series progresses.

[Anthus]

Not playing anything right now. Anyone have good game recommendations?

Rayman 2 (N64 version, if you're into 3D platformers)

I've been playing Conker's Bad Fur Day on emulator.

[kurt91]

FINALLY!!!! I've unlocked every single achievement on "Hyperdimensional Neptunia Re;Birth Vol:1"! Millionaire was a huge pain!

 

Let me elaborate a bit on that one. The achievement is to have earned 100,000,000 Credits throughout the game. You don't necessarily have to be holding that much, you can spend money and it still counts toward your total. Since the game is a turn-based RPG, the best way to grind money is through the Colosseum, since you only need to go through a short menu to jump straight into a fight, and you're given full HP/MP for each fight.

 

Buying the game starts you off with a couple sets of DLC included for free. One of them adds in a special fight against four enemies that are stupidly overpowered, but only use Thunder-elemental attacks. Abuse elemental resistances, and you can kill them with zero effort, and their battle moves to the Colosseum. Go there and grind against them during the final chapter of the game when you have the characters with the best Area-of-Effect spells unlocked, and you can get up to the original level cap of 99 fairly quickly. You only get around 20,000 Credits per battle, so this isn't going to work well for the achievement.

 

The painful part is, in order to get to the special fights that earn you 100,000 Credits per battle, you need to level grind up to the DLC-unlocked experience levels. Fight the same fight for several hours until you slowly edge up to LV 500. There are enemies in the normal levels that can do this faster, but you have to wait for them to respawn, so this Colosseum fight is still the fastest way to go. This will take you about a full day non-stop grinding.

 

Fortunately, once you hit LV 500, you'll get a bit of a speed-up. The next recommended fight will be incredibly difficult, but you should be able to barely scrape in a win. Each fight will net you enough experience for 20 or 30 Levels. Grind here, at 100,000 Credits per battle until you hit LV 700. The final recommended fight is fairly easy with AoE Finisher Attacks, and will net you 2,000,000 Credits a pop. Unfortunately, it takes all that grinding just to get there!

 

I finally finished it, and now I can see why each game in the series lately has been in a different genre. I love the characters and humor, but after all that grinding, I don't think I want to play the sequel for a little bit. Once I get past the third game, then the series starts spreading out, but for now, I think I need a break!

[Eddy]

I'm jumping all over the place with games right now... I'm playing Geometry Dash, Terraria and Minecraft all at once lel. I also got Pokemon Picocross because number puzzles are my thing I guess

 

Still need to start Hyrule Warriors though, I've been leaving it for months >_<

[Fiyaball]

I recently got Breath of Fire 3 and a PSP, so I've been having fun with that.

[Nicholas Steel]

Playing through Path of Exile and Dragon Age: Inquisition at the moment.

Dragon Age: Inquisition character models rival Assassins Creed: http://steamcommunit...tscn=1466424901

Edited by Nicholas Steel, 20 June 2016 - 09:54 AM.

[Tree]

After seeing much more of Zelda U Breath of the Wild, I decided to go back, and play through the original Legend of Zelda and remind myself of the series' roots. 

 

Y'know, this game may be much more open than modern Zelda games, but it's not completely open-world. Sure, you can pretty much explore the entire overworld from the very beginning, (assuming you know the way through the Lost Woods) but some dungeons aren't accessible from the beginning. You can't access level 4 without the raft from level 3, you can't traverse the majority of level 5 without the stepladder from level 4, and you can't access level 7 without the whistle from level 5. You can only do some of the dungeons in any order, but you really have no choice but to do some of them in the intended order, due to the items that act as glorified keys to the next dungeon, and not much else. Honestly, I don't think the game was specifically designed to be an open-world game. It just turned out to be more open because of limitations. That's how I feel about it, anyways.

[kurt91]

Finished Fallout 3, but only stuck to the main story because of crashing. Didn't do much of sidequests. Spent a good part of the day watching tutorials on how to set up New Vegas with a texture pack, UI adjustments, and a few quality-of-life mods. The closest thing to a gameplay change would have to be the weather mod I added in as well, since it looked like a good idea. Not too sure on it now, because the sandstorms seem to come up amazingly often. I also probably need to find a mod that makes the Pip-Boy light shine farther, because it makes nights much darker as well. Looks pretty, though. Unfortunately, unless there's a bug-fix patch that I need to apply, I'm going to have a similar crashing problem in this game as well, so I'm probably going to have to stick to only the main story quests. Can't wait to get Fallout 4, because it was actually designed around modern computers and shouldn't crash as much.

[Nicholas Steel]

Finished Fallout 3, but only stuck to the main story because of crashing. Didn't do much of sidequests. Spent a good part of the day watching tutorials on how to set up New Vegas with a texture pack, UI adjustments, and a few quality-of-life mods. The closest thing to a gameplay change would have to be the weather mod I added in as well, since it looked like a good idea. Not too sure on it now, because the sandstorms seem to come up amazingly often. I also probably need to find a mod that makes the Pip-Boy light shine farther, because it makes nights much darker as well. Looks pretty, though. Unfortunately, unless there's a bug-fix patch that I need to apply, I'm going to have a similar crashing problem in this game as well, so I'm probably going to have to stick to only the main story quests. Can't wait to get Fallout 4, because it was actually designed around modern computers and shouldn't crash as much.

http://www.nexusmods...?id=44204&pUp=1

 

Install the "NVEC Reduce CTD" v3.4DD to minimize the risk of game crashes (without changes to the gameplay). Install the NVEC Complete version instead if you want a more extensive refinement of the original game experience (and numerous bug fixes). NVEC is probably the most popular compilation mod for New Vegas.

Edited by Nicholas Steel, 19 June 2016 - 10:53 PM.

[The Satellite]

After seeing much more of Zelda U Breath of the Wild, I decided to go back, and play through the original Legend of Zelda and remind myself of the series' roots. 
 
Y'know, this game may be much more open than modern Zelda games, but it's not completely open-world. Sure, you can pretty much explore the entire overworld from the very beginning, (assuming you know the way through the Lost Woods) but some dungeons aren't accessible from the beginning. You can't access level 4 without the raft from level 3, you can't traverse the majority of level 5 without the stepladder from level 4, and you can't access level 7 without the whistle from level 5. You can only do some of the dungeons in any order, but you really have no choice but to do some of them in the intended order, due to the items that act as glorified keys to the next dungeon, and not much else. Honestly, I don't think the game was specifically designed to be an open-world game. It just turned out to be more open because of limitations. That's how I feel about it, anyways.

Likely, but I still can't help but feel like it was an intentional design choice for it to be open enough, or at least encouraged. A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time were still really open, for example. They just (sub)consciously chose to close things up when they decided to have a larger narrative focus.

[kurt91]

http://www.nexusmods...?id=44204&pUp=1

 

Install the "NVEC Reduce CTD" v3.4DD to minimize the risk of game crashes (without changes to the gameplay). Install the NVEC Complete version instead if you want a more extensive refinement of the original game experience (and numerous bug fixes). NVEC is probably the most popular compilation mod for New Vegas.

Yeah, "NVEC Reduce CTD" fixed my problem, or at least slowed the rate between crashes to the point where I got in a really lengthy play session without any real problems. I've had times playing Fallout 3 where I could play for a pretty long time without crashing, and times when I got about twenty feet and it crashed. If this is the same problem, I'm not getting my hopes up. I'll keep playing the game, but I'll be a bit more optimistic and go for a casual playthrough rather than a streamlined "gotta finish quick" mindset.

 

The problem with installing the mod pack you recommended is that I bought these two games during a sale, and didn't buy any of the DLC for them. Same thing that I did with Skyrim, as well. I'm going to play this as-is for now, and then re-visit it when I have the DLC (probably during the Summer Sale, if they get discounted) and mod it all to hell. I actually picked up a full DLC pack for Skyrim a few days ago, on sale on some other website I stumbled across, so I'm going to go back into that one soon. I'm just picking together a list of what mods I want to add in. (My general mindset is, if it's something conceivably believable, I'll add it. If it's something like that Thomas the Tank Engine mod, it's not even considered. Borderline case is the Mario Bros. mod, only because it's a fully self-contained area, and explained in-game as some sort of hallucination/drug trip/dream sequence.)

 

To be completely honest, I'm abysmal at FPS games, and I can only manage Fallout/Skyrim because of the RPG elements added in. I don't want to add in something that will make it harder on myself unless there's something else that would otherwise be game-breakingly powerful to compensate. (Even then, at my skill level, a game-breaker would probably only give me a slight edge.)

 

Anyways, I gave myself a "preview" of sorts a while back of this game when I played the 360 version. (I got a bunch of games as well as the system for Christmas, and got bored enough to try it out.) I didn't get very far, and this single play session today pretty much got me caught up. All I have to do is a short jog to Novac from the Raid Camp to the south, and I'm at the point in the main quest that I was at on the 360.

[Nicholas Steel]

Ah, one other thing you'll want to do is modify the games configuration file so that the game will only utilize 2 CPU cores. It tends to be unstable and crash prone when running on more than 2 CPU cores. The same tweak is recommended for Fallout 3.
 

Some dual core and quad core CPU users have said that by inserting a new command iNumHWThreads=2 under the General section of Fallout.ini (Obviously you want the New Vegas version of this file), and setting it to a value of 1, 2 or 4 (typically 2), this prevents freezing at certain points in the game. In practice this setting should not be required, as it appears to restrict the number of threads used by the game, however you can experiment with different values depending on how many cores of your CPU you want the game to use.

Combine this with the use of the "NVEC Reduce CTD" mod and you should have a virtually 100% stable experience.

Edited by Nicholas Steel, 20 June 2016 - 09:48 AM.

[The Satellite]

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

 

Still my favorite video game of all time.

 

There's very little wrong with this game. The only thing I think is ridiculous is how saving and quitting adds a mark to your death counter. Or "games played." it's kind of unfair and feels like it's punishing you just for taking a break or because you had to put the game down. Never was a fan of that feature and it's one of the very few changes in the GBA remake I appreciated.

 

But otherwise, this game is still just plain fantastic. It's more "guided," sure, particularly in the light world, and especially when you're forced to beat the first dark world level before you have true freedom to explore that place, but apart from those, it's still a pretty open game, and encourages exploration. Even in the light world segments, with its fixed dungeon order, there's still a lot of exploring to be done before even level one, resulting in being able to collect a fifth heart container and the ice rod before you make it to that dungeon.

 

Then after clearing Dark Palace, the dark world becomes incredibly open as well, and the dungeon order is close to being just a suggestion. In both worlds, the world size is perfect, not too large but also not too small, and travel is quick even before receiving the flute. It's also rich in exploration and secrets, making it rewarding to explore and to learn new things about the world. There's also the little things, like discovering new uses for the magic powder. The game's just so full of excellent gameplay and layers that it's hard not for me to fall in love with this game all over again every time I play it.

 

I still think this game is a pretty solid base for how lore should be handled in Zelda most of the time. Main, driving narrative, tons of side story you can learn just from talking to villagers and NPCs. Explore the story at your leisure. The game also has a lot of mystery and, dare I say it, legend surrounding it, where you don't know everything there is to know about the story; that just causes story overload. It's great to leave things to the imagination, I love that, or else everything's just explained to you and you just sort of stop caring.

 

Also the gameplay is still incredibly smooth and quick, even to this day, with really fun dungeoneering. I still don't find Desert Palace or Skull Woods very good, but the other levels have their own personality and charm to them that I enjoy them all greatly.

 

A Link to the Past. Still a gem, still a masterpiece.