Gaming Report Q3 2024
...Yep. So that's pretty much how this quarter went.
Tavern Talk
I've mentioned before that I liked the Coffee Talk games (and V4ll-H4lla, which was very similar) so I figured I had to back this when I saw it on Kickstarter. This isn't the same developer that made Coffee Talk, so really, it was bold of these guys to rip off the "___ Talk" name, but I'll let it slide I guess.
Anyway, I actually gave up on this one early on. It didn't pull me in; I think it felt a little more game-y than the others I mentioned, in that the characters who were going on quests would say "oh, I could take this approach, or maybe try doing it this other way; I guess it'll all depend on which drink you serve me!". I know the other games I mentioned had varying outcomes based on what you served, but those were more organic and I never felt like I was "making a choice"; I was just serving drinks.
I also didn't care for the drink-making interface or how limited my options felt (you're stuck with what's on a recipe card, which is a total of 5 drinks for the first few hours), and upon further reflection, I'm finding myself kind of bored with "generic high fantasy" as a setting. On top of that, I was really put off when a character who ordered her usual complained that I made the drink wrong; I'm pretty sure it was just a bug, but that more or less put the nail in the coffin on this one.
Wildermyth
Unfortunately, this came before my "I don't like generic fantasy anymore" epiphany.
I liked the idea of this game, how the characters in your party could form different types of relationships, lead full lives and grow old, and influence the world in ways beyond just their deeds as an adventurer. Seemed ripe for emergent storytelling. But then I realized I'd be spending a fair amount of time in tactical, grid-based combat, and I completely lost interest.
God, I'm beginning to think Dungeons & Dragons screwed me up somehow.
Balatro
My brother got me this for my birthday; he had been enjoying it and thought I would too. I played one round for about 40 minutes and went "I now have a full understanding of how this game is going to work, and so it is no longer interesting to me." Which is more or less how I feel about roguelikes as a genre. I'm finding it really difficult anymore to engage with a game purely for its mechanics; roguelikes are really good at keeping their gameplay interesting and varied over long periods of time, but if I'm not in it for the gameplay... what else is there?
Supergiant tried to subvert this problem when they developed Hades, and they still weren't entirely successful in winning me over. I would argue it's their weakest game to date, and I was ultimately disappointed that they announced Hades 2 rather than giving us something new (although I would also have accepted a sequel to Pyre). I feel as though they did the best job with the story, setting, and characters as they could possibly do; but at the end of the day, there is a very visible line that separates "game stuff" and "story stuff", and you can't get to the latter without having to do the former. Ultimately, I got so tired of actually playing the game that I was entering the dungeon and making it just far enough to make the run "count" before letting myself get killed, all so I could wrap up the character content, which is the only thing I really wanted. I should have just watched it on YouTube.
Anyway I'm sorry my review of Balatro turned into a review of Hades. I won't be playing either again.
Dungeons of Hinterberg
So at this point, I was pretty much striking out all over the place, and I just wanted to go with something safe. This title was billed as "Zelda meets Persona" with the dungeons and combat of the former mixed with the social link aspect of the latter. Which... that kinda fits, yeah, although the social link portion isn't really as engaging as you would get from the Persona series.
Don't get me wrong, I still made all the friends. But I don't think I was supposed to do this. For context, an in-game day is broken down into two parts; during the day you go exploring and maybe do a dungeon, and in the evening you improve your social stats or build your relationships. It took me 70 days to max out my relationships; I maybe wasn't the most efficient with them because I never bought gifts, but I also never needed to spend an evening building my stats because you get plenty of them in other places. Still, there are only 25 dungeons. These do not get split up into multiple days. There's maybe a dozen or so "rest spots" which are one-use stat builders you can do in lieu of finishing a dungeon, and a handful of social events that take place during the day. But still, I spent a LOT of days at the end having run out of daytime activities and just needing to skip to get to the evening. Kind of the same problem I had with Hades.
Otherwise... it was fine. I like how the dungeons felt fresh and unique from one another, and crucially, they were generally well-designed overall. And the concept of turning dungeon diving into a tourist attraction is honestly a really fun idea to build a story around. Solid B game, although I did have to push myself to finish it.
Guild Wars 2
Okay, I did a lot of complaining about "generic fantasy" in some of the earlier games. I keep coming back to Guild Wars 2 because it is fantasy, but it is very outside-the-box about it. There are no elves and, like, one dwarf; necromancy is seen as an eccentric but acceptable career path; technology runs the gamut from swords to guns to computer consoles. I played GW2 on launch, and I really, really love its world.
That said, I've also dropped the ball on this game's story, and now I don't know where I'll ever find the time to catch up. I think they're on their fifth expansion, and during this play session, I completed number two. It doesn't help that I play alone, so finding the motivation in addition to the time... ugh. Feels like a losing proposition.
Especially since this go-around I spent more time trying to see if I could coax Stable Diffusion into generating art of my character than I did actually playing the game. The result: it kind of worked? Let's go with that.
The pixel art turned out pretty well.
Dynasty Warriors 3
Oh, we are so back, baby.
After finally deciding I'd done DW2 to death, it was time to try out DW3. Though I'd never played this installment either, it instantly felt like an old friend, moreso than DW2 ever did. Holy hell what a difference. Anyway, it's not the best, but it's now a favorite purely because of that immediate "this is it" moment. Oh it feels so good.
Arranger
This was a cute little "puzzle RPG" (their words) where you move your character by shifting rows of tiles instead of simply walking over them; so when you move, objects on the same row as you do too. This is not a good explanation, but it's the best I'm going to be able to do. My only real complaint is that I would have liked to do all the side puzzles, but it wasn't obvious how to even get to all the side puzzles, so I skipped a bunch of them. Oh well. Short game, but fairly cute, anyway.
UFO 50
Okay, I'm an idiot. I bought this game because I thought the framing device of "here's a catalog of old arcade games from this fictional developer" was brilliant. That's a really cool idea. Aaaand then I remembered I don't have the patience for arcade-type games. I mentioned how I feel about roguelikes; arcade-style games are basically just roguelikes without the roguelike elements. Tell me I'm wrong.
Anyway I've only played maybe a half-dozen in the catalog so I might dive back in, but I'm not exactly looking forward to it. Again, they're not bad (except literally the first game; it IS genuinely bad, possibly intentionally), but I play them for a few minutes and feel like I've seen everything there is to see.
Thank Goodness You're Here!
This game was so dumb. I laughed the whole way.
Total War: Three Kingdoms
Heeeey it's this again. I was idly browsing mods as I do sometimes, and decided to give a new gameplay overhaul mod a try. I usually use Beneath a Red Sky, which really only affects battles; but this time I switched it up to The Rule of Might, which is a more comprehensive overhaul. Then I popped in to try playing as Gongsun Zan.
So, one of the big changes with TROM is that units are now "tiered". That's not to say that some units in vanilla aren't clearly more powerful than others, but TROM makes it clear, you're buying one of three tiers of units, and there is going to be a vast different in their strength. I'm not necessarily against this in theory; deciding between a large number of cheaper, lower-tier militia troops versus expensive but deadly elite units could be a fun element. But I rock up to push Yuan Shao out of a low-level fishing port he just took from me; his army is already largely tier 2s and a handful of 3s, where I'm still at an even mix of 1s and 2s. Even though I outnumber him two to one, I almost get wiped here. It takes my best troops, a rain of arrows, and two generals to break through his handful of tier 3 units. I really thought I was going to lose this one.
After this, Yuan Shao decides he's majorly losing to me and offers to pay me really good money every turn in exchange for peace. I don't know where all his money is coming from, but a few turns later, I see one of his other armies in the distance. I'm still struggling to keep my head above water financially, so my armies havn't been upgraded; but he somehow assembled a new army almost entirely out of tier 3 units. And we're still in the early game. I think I might not like this mod.
Yeah, you know it's been a rough quarter when I can't even get into one of my most-played games of all time. I guess we'll see what Q4 holds, but I'm not feeling optimistic.