Games Archives - Page 277 of 687 - Tales of the Aggronaut

I don’t Even Have Time to Explain…

June 10, 2020 by Belghast

Yesterday was the big reveal stream for where Bungie is going in the near future laying out a long term road map. As the countdown ticked to the show beginning, the screen showed a sequence of all of the places we visited starting with Destiny 1 all the way through Shadowkeep. All of this to hype us up for the big reveal, and then as the countdown ticked to zero we were presented with this screen. We sat in 8 minutes of 46 seconds of silence as a sequence of slides played out in front of us ending with a number of links to organizations that need our help in the Black Lives Matter movement.

I have to give Bungie huge credit for the way this played out. By hyping us to a fever pitch with the “best hits” reel playing out in the moments as the countdown ticked down, this came across with maximum effect. Those 8 minutes and 46 seconds that the Derek Chauvin kneeled on George Floyd’s neck felt like an eternity. I guess I must be following the right crowd because I saw nothing but respect for the display. I still throw some serious side eye that it is to corporations we turn for solace in this time of global need… but it only makes me think more than we are sliding into a shadowrun esc corporate hellscape. That doubt aside however, I still greatly respect Bungie for their actions in not only donating to causes but also in taking time out of their big moment to make sure we remember.

Over the last week we have been getting fragments of a video showing two characters heading towards what we can only assume is Europa. Eris Morn and the Drifter have been characters that are all too willing to blur the lines between the Light and the Dark, so it is befitting that they represent what is ultimately the envoy in dealing with the Darkness. Over the last season the ships were a present threat looming on the Horizon, but now they have arrived and are interacting with the various planets in our solar system in what appears to be a similar manner to how the traveler was described.

The big reveal however is that we are adding a third to this rogues gallery. The Stranger is a character that we have heard nothing from since Destiny 1. She is the infamous source of the line “I don’t even have time to explain why I don’t have time to explain”. She is also the one who called our Ghost “Little Light” and represented a character that knew far more about our circumstances and predicament than our then fledgling guardian first stepping foot into the Ishtar Sink on Venus. Now she has returned at the same time the darkness has returned and appears to be the individual ushering us into the new expansion.

I said earlier that Bungie laid out a roadmap, and in doing so they have announced the next two expansions and with that dispelling any rumors that a Destiny 3 was waiting in the wings. This in theory begins a regular release cadence of a new expansion coming out every September with the first being Beyond Light in 2020, The Witch Queen in 2021 and Lightfall in 2022. Additionally we have an established structure of four seasons per year, which in theory means every three months an infusion of new content. The feature addition for 2020 is that console generations will be able to play together without purchasing the game again as we transition between the PS4/Xbox One to the PS5/Series X. They also hinted that a feature on the longer term roadmap was unifying the players so that there was a single Destiny platform.

I played through the first mission, but that is pretty much as far as I made it last night. I’ve had this fraught relationship with Destiny since the introduction of the seasonal model. Especially with the season pass unlocking a number of items, but only if you manage to make it to level 100 each time. Instead of prompting me to engage and grind away, this has prompted me to check out since I know I won’t actually manage to achieve that goal unless I swap to ONLY playing Destiny. One of my frustrations has been that the seasons set up content that only lasts while that season is currently happening, and in theory content will be sticking around for several seasons afterwards solving one big problem I had.

They also however presented a new problem. They talked about the introduction of the Content Vault, and shelving old content that isn’t seeing much play time. This means that they are going to be removing a number of destinations and activities connected to them including the Leviathan with the release of Beyond Light in September. They said however that they were going to dig into the Destiny 1 vault and pull back out some content from there like the Cosmodrome. Pending they cycle content in and out of the vault on a pretty good schedule, then it might not be a bad thing. I am just not entirely certain how I will feel about losing what is currently my favorite grinding Destination… Titan.

In truth I am not really sure how I feel about the entire model going forward. Like I said, last night I only played long enough to make it through the first mission and even then only because the game didn’t give me a choice. As I loaded into the game the mission started without me having any ability to stop it. After playing through, I went to the Tower, did a bit of maintenance and then logged out to play PSO2. I am not nearly as the friends who are deeply engaged with this franchise. Yesterday for them seemed to be a re-ignition of a spark, and I am pretty jealous of.

It would be a lie if I said I would not be there playing Beyond Light in September. I like the concept of wielding the darkness and growing the abilities we have access to. However due to the stance of rolling out new content and removing old content, I am wondering what exactly we will sacrifice in the process. My preference will always be with constantly expanding the world, making it a more exciting and vibrant place to play. However it seems Bungie feels like they need to shrink it down a bit to keep from having to restart once again with a new game to keep the scope manageable. I understand that desire, and I absolutely do not want Destiny 3 to cause the same big reset that Destiny 2 did. For now I mostly just have to mull over these thoughts and determine at what point I will engage with this franchise again.

Spontaneous Moments of Community

June 9, 2020 by Belghast

Good morning friends! I’ve been playing a non-casual amount of Phantasy Star Online 2 over the last few weeks. Most of my posts about the game thusfar have been largely explanatory, given that there are a truly nonsense number of systems to digest. At this current moment I am level 60 of 75 and the leveling process has slowed down significantly. Imagine a train pulling into the station, each time you tick past 10 levels you feel a noticeable slowdown in just how much momentum is happening. I expect the 60-75 grind to take as much time as the levels previously gained to be honest.

I’ve not really noticed this that much however because the game provides a bounty of large set piece content for you to participate in. Right now I am mostly focused on “very hard” content, though I could bump up and start doing “super hard” though I am not sure the added difficulty is worth it. Several times a night something happens call and Urgent Quest, and for a period of time you can participate with other players on the server in a group activity. These feel similar to the Alliance Raids you can participate in while playing Final Fantasy XIV.

My current favorite of these is Dark Falz Luther, which is a multi part event. The first phases involve 30 minutes of farming the oddly bong shaped creatures two images up which drop a ton of meseta and worth a sizeable amount of experience. Once that phase finishes you get to fight Luther itself in a big raid like encounter with mechanics that more or less need to be observed. This phase can be done only once per character and tends to drop some pretty significant rewards.

After which you end up with this cool screenshot moment of the entire team. I’ve been lucky enough to participate in this event each evening over the last several days, and in part this is probably why I have gained several levels in rapid sequence. I’ve not really encountered one of these urgent quests that was not worth my time either in loot or experience gained, and as a result I tend to look forward to them when they are announced by the ships public announcer. It also helps to make you feel like you are part of a larger community.

Another thing that I first thought was really weird, but I am now warming to significantly… is the fact that every so often there are “Live” vocaloid concerts in the shopping area. I am not going to go into what a vocaloid is, but SEGA appears to have a cross promotional relationship with the folks behind “Hatsune Miku” and “Megurine Luka”. There are item packs associated with both that can be gained through the in game loot boxes, and periodically a concert happens of a song called “Living Universe”.

I admit that at first I considered this a bit on the odd side, but players legitimately turn up for these and as a result they become yet another spontaneous occurrence of community in game. I tend to turn up if I am available because of the prevalence of folks firing off various symbol art. I am slowly curating a collection of these images, and I absolutely snagged “Meatwad” shown above. I don’t personally necessarily get the vocaloid thing, but I don’t really have to in order to understand that it is good to have these moments of spontaneous gathering in a game.

The game has this built in farming culture that I also find interesting. When something is going well people tend to stick around and ride the experience and loot until it stops being interesting. I was doing a mission the other day that no joke gained me half of a level at 57 and the entirity of 58 all while just sitting in the same place. We had a full compliment of twelve players and for some reason this beach decided to start paying out in droves as we went through the course of three different PSE bursts. No screenshot can do justice to just how fast we were killing things and how much loot was dropping. This is the closest I have ever seen to the fabled Destiny Loot cave.

Sure most of the loot that dropped was trash, and I only actually picked up any of the “red” items which denote the higher rarity items, but the experience was fun regardless. I have to say the longer I play Phantasy Star Online 2 the more I end up enjoying it. Sure it takes a long time to really begin to grasp all of the systems and how they intermingle, but eventually you read a point of equilibrium where you are doing interesting things every day. The longer I play however the more of the community aspect I am experiencing, and while it is not necessarily my traditional jam, I definitely appreciate it. A fancy horned lad pole dancing in the cafe if nothing else breaks up the monotony.

Minecraft without Mining or Crafting

June 4, 2020 by Belghast

Minecraft Dungeons is a new game from Microsoft and Mojang and released on all platforms on May 26th. Considering I am extremely late in writing this, I am figuring you have probably already played the game and already decided if it is for you or not. It is available through Xbox Game Pass, so if you partake of that it is pretty much a no-brainer to at least dip your toes in the water. For the rest of you that have not placed your hands on this game, you might want to pause a bit and listen.

Minecraft Dungeons is a game in the Minecraft universe, but effectively has nothing at all to do with the gameplay of the baseline game. It is instead a top down isometric dungeon crawler that just happens to feature the primitive graphics of Minecraft. You choose from a list of preset characters, which is the first strike against the game given it would be nice if we had some measure of control over our characters features. You equip suitable Minecraft world items like swords and pick axes and use them to bash your way through levels filled with a greatest hits collection of things you will recognize from Minecraft, namely Zombies, Creepers, and Skeletons.

You defeat levels, which unlock additional levels… each of which having a difficulty slider effectively determining the sorts of drops that are available and supposedly the relative difficulty. I am primarily playing this as my before bedtime game, but I have yet to finish unlocking everything available due to lots of short play sessions. I am not sure exactly what the ultimate point of the game is, but it seems to have a storyline woven around a bad group of Villagers called the Illagers. This is apparently a thing in actual Minecraft but I never thought of them as some sort of an enemy faction.

The game seems to sell itself as a sort of Minecraft meets Diablo experience, and based on my play sessions it feels like neither. I would say the core gameplay loop reminds me significantly more of something like Gauntlet Legends or Gauntlet Dark Legacy. The loot is neither plentiful enough or good enough to really feel like a Diablo game. The game also lacks anything close to the build complexity and nuance that is traditionally available in the ARPG genre, so in the end it feels exceptionally shallow.

In theory as you go throughout your travels you collect melee weapons, ranged weapons, armor, and can equip three artifacts at a time. The second significant strike is that all of the gear can be enchanted, but each item acquired has a randomly assigned fixed ability that as far as I can tell you can’t change. This leads to situations where you might find a weapon that is technically stronger than the one you are using, but it has a worthless enchant on it leaving you to hold onto your existing gear for far too long.

Similarly not all artifacts are created equal. Some are going to have useful effects and others are going to largely be pointless. For example the first one you get is an old timey bottle rocket style firework that you can in theory aim at a group of enemies to explode it. The challenge there is an exceptionally long cooldown and that it never seems to go in the direction you actually want it to. The best item I have found is an amulet that collects souls each time an enemy dies and then allows you to effectively have an extra healing potion. Over time this seems to heal less and less of your health pool diminishing its usefulness.

The third strike against the game is that there are a significant number of “cheap” mobs that seem to put you in positions where it is exceptionally hard to avoid taking damage from them. Additionally I have encountered even on lower difficulty settings several mobs that can just straight up one shot you. It isn’t so much a difficulty thing, as most encounters fall over without effort. There is an unpolished nature to the design that makes me question if it got the requisite time to balance the encounter design or even had a significant alpha or beta testing period. The game as a whole has this half baked and unfinished feeling to it.

A significant amount of your time is spent in your camp, which you unlock as a safe base of operations after the prologue. The game operates on collecting emeralds and then you can spend those emeralds at your base with first the Blacksmith for randomly generated weapons, and later the Wandering Trader for randomly generated artifacts. The problem is that in both cases the items created for you are generally several levels worse than whatever you can get as loot from the zones themselves.

The camp itself is also huge, but almost completely devoid of purpose. You have a house that appears to never change as you go through the game levels. You have various ruins scattered around the play area, that again never evolve over time. At first I thought that maybe this was just a side effect of me not having gotten far enough into the game to unlock more things. However one of my friends who has played a ton of this game with his son indicated that I have effectively seen everything that is going to open up. Once again… the game feels like it was meant to be something more, but instead we got an unfinished product that was rushed to market.

I have played the game on Windows and Xbox One through Xbox Game pass and then purchased it for the Nintendo Switch. In all cases they rely upon your Xbox Live account but also in all cases they do not seem to support any manner of cloud saves. This would be strike number four, because even though I have issues with the experience as a whole it might be more enjoyable if I could start the evening on my PC and then finish playing the same character and making the same progress on my Switch. It seems to pull in all of my Xbox Live friends, but while playing on the switch none of them have actually shown up as someone I could play with… making me question if cross platform play is a thing either.

What you have in the end is a game with the primitive graphics of Minecraft but is devoid of any creative outlets. A game that would like to pattern itself off Diablo but lacks any interesting loot and character building options. A game that seems to have a shared account system but is not utilizing it in any meaningful manner. Ultimately Minecraft Dungeons is a confusing mess of a game that feels unfinished and unbalanced, and after experiencing it myself for a few weeks there is no way I would ever suggest this game to someone. If you have Xbox Game Pass, by all means check it out for yourself since you can do so for free… but I would not spend a dime here until things have sufficiently changed.

Fun With Fake Friends

June 1, 2020June 1, 2020 by Belghast

Hanging out with Pizza Maid and her adorable Hatsune Miku Mag

This weekend I learned about a fun system in Phantasy Star Online, in part thanks to my good friend PizzaMaid. However since I have way more friends showing up through Xbox Live than I do friend avatars available I thought I would take a few moments today to talk about this system. First off at a high level Friend Avatars allow you to run around with up to 3 copies of your friends characters, pending they have gone through the process of registering an avatar. These are going to be weaker versions of their own characters, but nonetheless are a bit of a buff when playing through content as they do a non-zero amount of damage, healing and buffing.

Creating your Own Friend Avatar

This system like so many begins with the Visiphone, aka the kiosk with the purpleish pink ? inside of a rotating oval. By now you should in theory make yourself familiar with this interface as it is also how you access this games version of the auction house, aka the Personal Shop. I’ve pasted together several of the UI screens showing the process of selecting the Friend Avatar option, choosing to Add and Avatar and then the settings that I currently have filled out for mine.

From what I understand the personality means nothing really, but the Attributes and Title impact how your avatar will perform in battle. I’ve not found a good NA guide to the settings, but here is one that I attempted to follow for my settings. I took that list and compiled it with the North American names here as a Google Sheet. I chose Hot and Cold which is known in the Japanese region as Tsundere and makes it so that they get better the more times you use them. Ready for War appears to translate to the “Battle Ready” option which means they have their weapons out and ready in advance which seemed useful. Lastly I checked the “Make Me Visible to Non-Friend Players” because whenever someone runs with your Avatar you earn some “FUN” currency as a result.

Real quick side note. You are going to have to go through this menu system every so often to update your Friend Avatar, as it will be snapshot at the moment it was created. Pretty much each day I go through and update mine so that as I gain new levels my friends will have access to those levels as well. The Avatar will in theory scale to the level of your friends, but it will be capped by the actual levels that you as a player have earned.

Running with the Avatars of your Friends

You can access your friends avatars when you are just about to start a mission and are in this pre-loading area. Head over to the terminal that has an Orange “i” icon which gives you access to choose some characters to take along with you. In theory for most expeditions and such you can take three avatars with you. I have found a few missions that limit you to only having one, and others like Urgent Missions won’t let you take any with you.

Once again I have pasted together several of the interface screens so that you could see the various options. The first menu allows you to choose one of the NPCs that you have gained some affinity for. Right now I only have two showing up which are Afin and Io. The next tab over shows you all of your friends that are available for running content. I have no clue what the “Support” tab does as I have nothing currently listed there, but the last tab labelled “Free” gives you access to the Avatars of random strangers. The avatars you have not run with that day show up as having “Fun Available” beside them, but in truth I ran a bunch of content yesterday and I believe I hit some sort of internal cap until reset.

Now you too can run around with what feels like your own personal army. I tend to largely pick classes that have a decent chance of healing or buffing me, because they seem to be more efficient than classes that attack things. They are by no means a “pet” and will ultimately have a mind of their own, but thankfully the game doesn’t seem to have a version of “in combat” that actually matters or blocks you from doing anything.

The Symbol Art System

Another random system that I learned about this weekend through my friend Ashgar is the Symbol Art system. If you are hanging out in the Gate area and someone throws out a message with a picture in it, then you have experienced Symbol Art. Based on my limited understand, there is an in game editor that allows folks to draw images as well as supposedly a windows based tool that you can import images from. What you end up with is a recipe for lewds and offensive content. So before you get any further into this system consider yourself warned.

In fact it took me a bit to find some pages that were relatively safe to show you in order to explain the system. You can access your symbol art collection from the Gear Icon and choosing Symbol Art. By default you won’t actually have anything, but the piece that Ash figured out is that the game seems to keep a rolling history of every piece of symbol art that you have seen. I’ve spent a fair amount of time on the Personal Shop and as a result I have seen a TON of symbol art. At the top of the screen there is a drop down that lets you change over and view your history, and then from there you can save any image to your permanent collection.

And there we go, two new systems that I have talked about. The personal avatar system is pretty great and I am enjoying running around with an army of minions. I’ve also figured out where to spend my Memories of Ragol tokens, allowing me to look like a Phantasy Star Online 1 era RACast which pleases me greatly. All in all I am still really enjoying the game, but also still extremely confused about the finer details. I will likely continue to keep posting random observations like this, so hopefully you find them helpful.