What are you playing?

[Gendo's Ocular Dickhole]

Getting the feeling this'll flop too given Square's paltry track record in recent years.

[rabidtictac]

Finished Gothic `1.

Overall positive opinions on the game. The atmosphere and camps are great. I played Risen before this (and Elex) so I already knew about the PB structure. I think Risen benefits from more polish and possibly a larger budget, but Gothic has a unique open world not found in even other PB games.

Combat varied between jank, fun and frustrating for the entire experience. I never did figure out a way of dealing with insane Templars other than trading blows. They never seemed to stagger from my hits and I didn't get anything from blocking their attacks (they would just attack again.) The 5 Elite Goblin Shaman bosses were bullshit. Well, really any enemy who can apply the "burning" animation to your character is bullshit. It stunlocks you from full health to zero as long as they keep attacking, so you can't get hit once. My solution was to stunlock them before they could stunlock me. Felt like we were both cheating.

The Orc Temple dungeon was my least favorite part of the game. At least it was shorter the second time. I'd say the game was pretty great until around act 4 or 5, when you have to go all in on the dungeon crawling. Risen 1 has the exact same problem with its world progression.

I guess Gothic 2 is next. Unless I feel like another playthrough so I can join the Weedbros.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

Speaking of PB, am I ruining your fun if I say they've recently gone bankrupt?

[rabidtictac]

Oh, I know.

More specifically, they are on the chopping block. A bunch of employees have been let go and the remaining company is a shell of its former self. But it was already a shell. The last truly good game PB made was Risen 1 in 2009. Elex is kinda fun in places but uneven as hell and contains a lot of the same problems as Skyrim , due to Bjorn being obsessed with making the games "bigger."

It's possible they'll be allowed to complete their current project, because they already received the space for funding from the government. They might finish out that project under another backer, but we don't know. Embracer Group apparently fucked up their finances and a bunch of studios with far-off game releases are getting the axe over it. It isn't directly related to PB, but Elex 2 bombing (and being a pile of shit) didn't help.

If you look at their track record in sales and game quality over the last twenty years, it's not surprising why they're in the situation they are now.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

It's just somewhat concerning since this is the second Kraut developer in a short while that has gone to shit.
At least they didn't make that Gollum game.

[Kugelfisch]

>romancing a navigator

That's not just heresy but also just plain stupid and goes against canon. Navigators are inbred mutants with arranged marriages. They are far from normal. Not just in the ability they have but they usually also have other mutations of body and mind.

Not even a Grey Knight would want to interact with one for a second longer than absolutely necessary.

[Complicity]

>romancing a navigator

That's not just heresy but also just plain stupid and goes against canon. Navigators are inbred mutants with arranged marriages. They are far from normal. Not just in the ability they have but they usually also have other mutations of body and mind.

Not even a Grey Knight would want to interact with one for a second longer than absolutely necessary.

I've seen several people complaining about that in negative reviews and comments.
Considering the people behind this game, it'll be a miracle if that's the only change they went with.

In other news, i've beaten Fallout 1 with the Fixt patch that brings back khàntent that was censored in the official release, like children NPCs that can be murdered, and the implication that pedos survived the apocalypse.

SpoilerShow

I've beaten it multiple times with different builds, not so much because i wanted to test them and the game is very short (the level cap is 21, but you'll exhaust everything this game has to offer at level 14-15), but because it comes with a pride parade of bugs, and the (few) quests kept breaking on me.
There is a particularly frustrating bug in the super mutants' base that will cause the force emitters in it to not go down after you either hack or demolish them like they are supposed to.
I was able to continue by finding on a guide that you could use a radio on one of the computers there, turning it into a remote controller for the emitters - the game gives 0 clues about this being doable.

The time limit is really not a big deal in Fallout 1.1/1.2; finding the water chip is relatively easy and after that you can take all the time you need to beat the rest of the game.
It's more of a big deal in Fallout 1.0 though; after 500 days you'll get a game over and the Super Niggaz will invade your Vault massacring everyone:



Even ignoring the bugs, the game has 2 major flaws:
-The bartering system: Instead of being able to type the amount of caps needed to complete a transaction with the keyboard, one has to click on the + and - icons; if you need 421 caps, click on '+' 421 times, or keep the icon pressed for a good minute and a half.
-Not being able to control the companions (3 generic humans and Dogmeat) during combat; you can equip them with better armors and weapons, outside of combat you can give them general tactics to follow, but they will always use the worst possible attack and put themselves into the worst possible position, resulting in their (and sometimes your) death.
At some point you'll just let them die and continue solo.

Even with all of that, the story and setting are way better than the ones of 3D Fallout gaymes.
Fallout 1 presents a world that has gone to shit, it's full of horrors and it's never going back the way it was.
Bugthesda instead presented a gay parody of the 50s, and shifted the focus of the story from the real causes behind the mutations (which were not the bombs and radiation) to factions of ineffectual faggots bitch-slapping each other.
Never bringing back creatures like the master of the super mutants (some Tetsuo-like blob of humans, animals and computers fused together) and its "pets" (basically parts of its body) was the first red flag about Todd & frens not being worth a damn anymore:



The Final Fight against this fucker (if you lack the means to convince it that the Super Scholars are sterile) is very hard; it will permanently cripple your stats while you are reaching its chamber, it's a bullet sponge that hits like a truck and will keep summoning Super Mostly Peaceful Protesters behind you.

I'll play Fallout 2 next.
The level cap is 99 and the time limit is 13 years, so i'm expecting a much bigger RPG.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

I've seen several people complaining about that in negative reviews and comments.
Considering the people behind this game, it'll be a miracle if that's the only change they went with.

People just don't want to put their dicks into a wench that will blast their immortal soul to bits if she were to ever open her third eye.

It also doesn't help that all the logs you find in that navigator station are about the absurd wear and tear of the staff assigned to her, because they all end up going Event Horizon sooner or later.

Well at least I can't complain about her combat performance. Her ability to reduce Veil Degradation (aka warp fuckery) is cheesy af in those battles where that matters (you never have to worry about surprise daemon summons with her in your party), and she can eye blast the fuck out of people. Plus she can learn a fuckload of broken passive Talents, with everything from automatic debuffs to turning her into a regenerating tank without having to put a single point into a physical characteristic.

[AdorableOtter]

I'll play Fallout 2 next.

I played & finished Fallout1/2 (with unofficial patches) like...... 10 years ago maybe???? and I don't remember bartering system being a problem. You maybe probably missed shortcut keys or something.

Either way, the natural progression after FA2 is playing Underrail and Age of Decadence. You die as a retarded nigger if you don't.

[Old Black Man]

Does anyone give a shit about monster sim games, obviously Poggermonz doesn’t count. I saw that Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX is on the Switch and that brought back some fond memories of trying out various CDs to see what I’d get.