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ArbitraryWater

Internet man with questionable sense of priorities

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ArbitraryWater

16091

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I fully believe that WayForward does a lot of the mercenary work they do for other companies entirely so they can make more video games with beautifully animated busty girls with bare midriffs. I have no proof of this, but it feels true in my heart. Someone somewhere has a balance sheet where they're allowed to make a new Shantae every time they make four Mummy Demastered-s.

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ArbitraryWater

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You might not explicitly endorse piracy, but I do. If a game is old enough to easily emulate than it's old enough to play for free. If FromSoft doesn't care about making these AC games readily playable than they're fair game for however you want to get hands on them.

Baldur's Gate is for nerds, do a thing on FromSoft's terrible old survival horror games. Let's keep this train rolling off the rails.

don't worry I have all of the EchoKnight games as well as Kuon ready to go for any horror related streams I'm sure they'll be great.

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ArbitraryWater

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okay but have you considered revisiting this game with the PAL version in order to experience the authentically British experience that is "British Gex." I assume it's nothing but the funniest Fawlty Towers and Keeping Up Appearances jokes, with perhaps a goof or two about "the beatles"

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ArbitraryWater

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@mento said:

Someday I'll make you play UnderRail. After Descent to Undermountain, of course.

Oh don't worry, if I can get it to work there's a good chance Undermountain shows up on Dubious RPGs 3: The Actual Bottom of the Barrel. (I have like 42 games on the shortlist for that and some of them are wretched) There are some choice trash D&D games I haven't covered on stream and by god someone's gonna have to play Birthright: The Gorgon's Alliance.

Thankfully I can say I've been playing CRPGs for a while since before I knew BG3 was even in development. Disco Elysium and D:OS2 rank very highly on my favourite games list.

Honestly I know it's a bit janky but I genuinely do recommend Geneforge 1: Mutagen. It's really cheap comparatively, and has a lot more jank than the modern CRPG gamer is willing to put up with, but the world, combat and writing is excellent.

Oh yeah to be clear I think all of the Spiderweb games are pretty solid comfort food RPGs. That said, I'd be lying if I thought the intentionally minimal production values of those games might be a turn-off to someone coming into the genre via BG3. Jeff Vogel deserves a lot of credit for doing "indie dev" before that was a thing, but I just imagine someone taking one look at that Geneforge remake and running away.

@ben_h said:

Oh, and to add one (well kinda) to the list for people who like BG3's combat: The hot 2003 LucasArts release Gladius for the Gamecube/PS2/Xbox (You can buy it on the Xbox store as a classic for like $10). It's a hybrid RPG/tactics game that BG3's combat reminds me a lot of. It's got all the typical CRPG class stuff but a little simplified and it has a fancy gear system. I remember it super fondly. I bought it on a whim because it was used at EB Games for like $8 (it didn't sell well from my understanding). I ended up pouring tons of hours into it. Funnily enough, the "People also like" for Gladius' entry on the Xbox store is almost all CRPGs and the first two entries are the old Baldur's Gate games.

Gladius is a heck of an obscure pick. I actually bought a copy somewhat recently with the intent of playing it on stream. "LucasArts made a tactical RPG with fantasy gladiators and no one played it" is a heck of a pitch.

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ArbitraryWater

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You're sick and I'm very proud of you. Between the two of us, I wasn't expecting you to be the one to go all the way down the N64 hellhole, but now you can legally say you're "an expert at Mario 64." Only a few half-A presses to go before you become a true master.

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ArbitraryWater

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Very excited for sadness parade to begin/continue

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ArbitraryWater

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Edited By ArbitraryWater

remember when the game asked you if you were over 18 and then put you in a room with the penis bed and boob walls. I sure do.

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ArbitraryWater

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ello' guv fancy a bit of handegg innit

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ArbitraryWater

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This series is right up my alley... so I will be watching it (or reading) very closely. Neither of these games I have tried, but Marvel suns is certainly on my short list.

Follow up question, what if I don't care about warhammer, will I still enjoy a game around it?

Part of the appeal of Warhammer games for me at this point tends to be the absurdity of the setting, but I hardly think that's a qualifier. In fact, it's the quality of some of these Warhammer games that's made me interested in the setting at all. I did go down a wiki hole at one point. I have no intention of ever buying or painting pewter miniatures, however. They aren't gonna get me there.

But yeah I think Chaos Gate is just a good tactics thing even if you button past all of the dialogue and just want your space trucks to kill the snot demons.

@sethmode said:

Anyway, will catch this series as well! Good stuff! Question though: is you ending your post with ENEMY PHASE imply that WE are the enemy???

👀 ...who's to say????

@undeadpool: I don't really agree with this because part of being quippy is getting to the point and these characters WILL NOT SHUT UP. By the end of the game it was almost funny to me how every time a conversation reached its natural end there were still like 10 lines of dialogue to go.

"Well we better go stop the big bad now."

"Yep! It's time."

"I guess I'll go do it!"

"If anyone can, it's you."

"No if anyone can it's us."

"I never really thought of myself as a team player but you have really changed that. I believe in you."

"It's so great that you believe in me. That's really going to help us stop the big bad."

"As a team."

"Yes, as a team."

"What an amazing team effort it will be."

"We're all going to fight him together."

"Yep, okay, I'm heading off now."

"Talk to you later."

"Yes, we will talk later."

"I look forward to it."

It's truly awful. But not as awful as Captain America telling you how you inspired him as a leader and have become one of his best friends because you gave him some book when the two of you played cards together.

@sethmode You're missing nothing except that if you get to friendship level 5 with a hero there's some neat stuff that opens up. The dialog itself is all cringe except for a few characters (Majik is okay and Blade is decent.)

I actually really love the "it is my Charlie girl" line read because it's so weird it feels totally anachronistic. One of the few reminders in the game that the Hunter has been dead for like 300 years, since she doesn't seem phased at all by stuff like cars and computers and Iron Man armor.

Yeah like, I respect Firaxis for going out of their comfort zone on this one, but it's abundantly clear they aren't used to writing games like this. I genuinely think Midnight Suns would've been much higher on my personal top 10 if the Abbey stuff was just a menu and every other line of dialogue was excised. Just a little too talky for its own good (speaking of too talky, please look forward to when I eventually talk about Triangle Strategy)

Great Blog!

One thing that it make me really curious, is if and how much of Midnight Suns might end in an eventual proper XCOM sequel...

I have a feeling the answer HIGHLY DEPENDS on how well Midnight Suns is received and how well it does sales-wise.

But also I don't wanna do fucking support conversations in an XCOM game. Full stop. That's what Fire Emblem is already for, and the world of questionable Fire Emblem imitators is something I'm already gearing up to talk about.

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ArbitraryWater

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They seemed surprised I would recognize Hellgate London. For the record, I've never played Hellgate London, but I know a shitty 90s/2000s CRPG when I see one.