gerrid

Glad to hear it's compelling, I'm going to play it once I'm done with Link's Awakening.

From what I've read it works similarly to the Zero Escape games, in that you will have to return to branching points in the story on subsequent playthroughs to make different choices. If so, I wouldn't worry too much about those early bad choices!

I would be interested to know their metrics for forum usage since they made the switch away from the light theme. Anecdotally it has driven some people away.

@sarcasticmudcrab: Vinny is tough to read. Sometimes a game you'd think would be perfect for him he just doesn't click with at all. Which actually can be really disappointing if it then means no discussion of a game or no videos on it!

I get it though, especially as someone also time-poor, I find that my mood when I start a game can really affect what I want out of it at that moment, and I don't have the time to plough through that initial distaste. Could be he was after something with visceral instant impact and Greedfall required too much reading and attention.

Definitely has happened to me on multiple occasions. Divinity Original Sin is one example - tried to get into it and it was just not the right game at that time. When the sequel came out I was hungry for something which required patience and investment, and loved it.

Vinny said on the Beastcast he would do a quick look of Greedfall since he was playing it. But he also said he had found it a little dull.

Currently sitting at 81 on Metacritic if that is anything to put stock in, this is the new game from the Director/ writer of the Nonary games trilogy - which is evident from the gameplay and style of it. Multiple routes, investigations, choices and murder. I really wasn't anticipating this at all so it's a very nice surprise.

Out on Switch, PS4 and Steam this week. Got good reviews from the Nintendo-specific sites too so seems to run well on Switch.

Would love to see a QL of this, I know Vinny is a big fan of the previous trilogy.

The music is incredible already. The background notes where you hear a hint of Weight of the World. I can't wait to hear more of it. To think we have 3 whole alliance raids of this to come.

I am not unreasonably excited for this, my two favourite games of all time being smooshed together. From the sounds of it the gameplay will be very inventive and probably quite unusual for XIV. If there isn't a fake-out death ending somewhere in there I will be surprised.

I wasn't considering it but I looked at the release calendar for the rest of the year and I've got a gap from now until Outer Worlds at the end of October. So I could either dip back to go for something I missed or try out B3.

I liked Borderlands 2 but going back to it on Vita it felt like a relic of a past age, like if you play a playstation era 2.5d platformer.

If 3 is really just exactly the same, I'm worried I'll just fall off very quickly. Need to watch some good gameplay of it I think.

Just finished it this morning on Hard/Classic. Black Eagles Empire route. There was a couple of fights that caused me difficulty, but nothing really insurmountable. Marianne's paralogue for instance was pretty tough.

I had to concentrate and used Divine Pulse fairly liberally, but in the final battle for instance I beat it on turn 14 with only 3 uses of pulse (annoying critical hits from those stupid guardian things, one bad position in range of a flying unit.). I'd heard it was a real stumbling block but the final enemy was downed in 2 turns with no danger to anyone. Bit of a let down aha. The most challenging section I would say is probably right before the jump, and then right after it.

I didn't feel like previous Hard modes where you would constantly turtle and shield weaker units with stronger ones - mostly because of the enemy telegraphs. Previous games you had to be very risk averse because you didn't know which unit an in-range enemy might go for. In Three Houses you can see easily and take steps to mitigate it with the rest of your units. Having 10 on the field all the time also makes it easier. If you accidentally put someone at risk of death, you have 9 other moves, combat actions and gambits like stride to combine to rescue them. In older games that unit would just be dead and you'd restart the map.

I had a couple of units that were essentially invincible, and I hadn't classed at all optimally. Nobody could really hit Petra at all, every hit attempt on her was about 20%. Edelgard just took no damage from anything other than chip damage on magic, same with Ferdinand. And enemies wouldn't even attack some of my magic units because it would mean one shot death for them.

With proper optimisation it would have been even easier. I only had 1 flying unit the whole game, although it seems like it's balanced around you having quite a few. Wyvern riders looked really strong but I never got one. Actually any map with flying units was where I had to concentrate the most, that's where it felt most like the old Fire Emblem difficulty, because they could one shot most of my characters.

I think most of the sense of it being easier comes from Divine Pulse. Being able to just rewind turns instead of restarting a whole battle was an incredible difference in terms of hours played. If I had to restart every battle where a unit died probably it would have taken me 30% longer or more. Pretty thankful for that honestly, since I clocked in at 72 hours on the counter.

Most satisfying moment was probably the penultimate map, really made me appreciate divine pulse as a mechanic in this sort of game. That map in general was really well designed, but I had a good experience on it too:

Without Divine Pulse I'd have just restarted the map and sent everyone over there for an easy steamroll. As it was I had to figure out the best way to still get through with non-optimum units, which was fun.

Overall the difficulty felt pitched really nicely for me playing through first time. I had to concentrate and make smart decisions, so it felt satisfying to win, like an actual tactical victory. There was always danger but there was always a way to mitigate it too. Can't imagine how much worse it would have been playing on Normal and steamrolling. Glad they added in a nightmare difficulty for the replayability, I don't think I'd bother playing again on Hard mode.

Might do a casual normal run through of one of the other houses just to see the story now. Are they wildly different than the Black Eagles route? Or is it mostly just a palette swap?

@nodima:

The Tomassi fight really sucks. I died a dozen times trying to be aggressive or use the catwalk, eventually just priortised not taking damage and got it in a couple of goes. Here's what worked for me:

1. Use the shield when he flings stuff at you, rather than trying to dodge or make him drop them.

2. You can hit him reliably with launch by launching stuff at him twice quickly. The second one will always hit. Make sure you hit him regularly with this to stop his shield regenerating.

3. Kill other enemies but leave the invisible one alone. Killing it spawns in more enemies. Just keep moving around and be ready to dodge when you hear the scream. Make sure not to ever fully deplete your energy so you can dodge if the invisible thing comes, and you can throw up a shielf if you get caught.

4. I equipped the mod to Grip to give me energy back on headshots.

For Mold-1 I just launched the exploding cists from the ceiling at the main eye until the floor became poisonous. At that point it's just a case of shielding yourself if you are out in the open and trying to fling back the last few rocks. This bit doesn't last very long if you stay calm and don't panic.

Finished it over the weekend and really loved it. Only criticism is the performance really, and the ending is cool but didn't have the "holy shit" moment that I was anticipating, that ties everything together. I suppose that might come in the sequels but it would have been great to have some big revelation that re-frames the whole story. Perhaps it's more interesting just to take things on their face though, and not have it all tie up neatly. A lot of questions left open about The Board in particular.

The thing that impressed me the most is the confidence to execute on a vision so consistently. This is a game with a really strong direction and a world that you really inhabit. It feels like a genuinely realised place, the result of someone's pure imagination. Not just videogame levels designed by focus groups.

Also I like how they didn't make the game world particularly annoying. The atmosphere is fairly light hearted rather than oppressive, and despite the map being rubbish I did like having to use the signage and natural level design to get to know the building, rather than just following a glowing trail. It lent itself well to the way the story is presented, since for both you and Jesse you have to navigate everything based only on what's in the world. I actually liked that I wasn't just constantly checking the map, but instead guiding myself.

In another dimension there's a version of this game with annoying enemies respawning everywhere with a lot of dark zones and jump scares and Max Payne-esque dream sequences. I'm glad they didn't go down that route, and instead focused on making it fun to explore.