u/TheActivistClown

I thought you were gonna say the alien looking dude that lives in the basement that you fight out of nowhere.

Better Ashtray Maze?

Ah that explains it, I already didn't like the direction they were going in Eternal so I didn't bother with the dlc. I agree with you though that's just a really unnecessary development.

I can't recall, what did they do to Vega?

This sounds more like a knock against BotW's combat than anything else.

When I find a contained unique location that's essentially just a dark souls area, Elden Ring was pretty good. When I explored the open world only to find generic cave #27 or same looking crypt #18 with bosses that I've already fought somewhere else, I'd rather be playing anything else.

And for the bosses a bunch of times it felt like they were designed for something that plays like Bloodborne while my character was coming from dark souls.

One of my favorites is him explaining that if Doctor Cox comes into his office asking for something, he always says no at first. If he doesn't show back up about it then it wasn't actually important. But if he does show up to raise hell about it again then he knows it's something he needs to look into. It allows him to not get bogged down by every little thing but prevents serious issues from going unattended.

I love how over the course of the show he goes from appearing like a cold heartless bastard to a guy just doing the best he can with the position he was given.

Finished it last night and I had a pretty good time. I do wish the payoff was a bit stronger than the by the numbers slashers tropes it used, but the buildup was enjoyable enough to outweigh that and for a 4 hour game I can't be too mad. Now I'm looking forward to the one from this post even more.

Thanks.

How was Killer Frequency? I started it but I don't think I got very far so I've been meaning to go back to it.

FFX is what was in my head while reading the title. It's gorgeous, it's chaotic, it's destructive. And you have so little context for anything yet so it's all confusing in the best way and really get you going. On top of that the music is so unlike anything you'd expect from Final Fantasy but it really works at selling the moment.

I also have a soft spot for the entire Reks prologue of XII.

No worries about the length and thank you for taking the time to give me your thoughts. Turns out it went on sale after your first reply.

Thanks, I appreciate the response. The first one had some cool ideas with the interactivity in avoiding the curses but it felt pretty front loaded in regard to those. Most of its revelations felt pretty telegraphed long before the game was ready to even start hinting at them so I felt deprived of any kind of wow moment as it progressed, which I would say are the main draw of a mystery game. Would you say the second feels any different in those regards?

Ah that's unfortunate for me. I found the first one to be pretty disappointing by the time I finished it.

Battle Tendency was my favorite, still couldn't stand Phantom Blood.

How would you rate Mermaid's curse against the original?

Don't they also imply a character was actually psychic in another episode?

I think this idea only works in theory most of the time. Too many games have things that don't work as stated or have secret caps that the player isn't told about and it just sucks to wanna try something fun only to find out it was secretly handicapped to not work. Especially in an age where things can get patched at any moment. Feeling the weight of your decisions doesn't feel so great when you're playing hopscotch around the whims of the devs.

It's really bugging me that only one hand is gloved too. Kind of a small detail but it just looks so out of place, and I can't really think of a reason to make that change.

That's definitely a cleaner way of putting it. Rubber banding is also a great example.

When I hear artificially hard I think of things that don't feel like they were part of the natural course of development when deciding what the challenge should be but we're tacked on later just to make something harder and pad out the fight/game, something that doesn't feel like it belongs or is just unnecessarily unfair. Basically shorthand for some bullshit the developers added just to make something aggravating and take more time than to actually make the experience more interesting.

If I had to pick an example off the top of my head, every boss in Destiny doing the same stomp that demolishes most of your health and sends you flying back if you get even kind of close to melee range. It's not fun, it's not interesting, it's not creative or diverse. It only seems to exist to limit player options so the devs don't have to be bothered to account for a player playing up close to the boss. And basically all of them do it so it's not even like a unique challenge for certain fights.

I'm sure there's way better examples too but that's the one that came to me first.

Probably everything following the word 'but' after mentioning a good point of the games.

I had no idea Crow Country was the same developer as Tangle Tower.

If anybody happens to know, is Tangle Tower representative of the rest of the games following the same detective? It was a pretty solid game before the end where it kinda fell apart for me.

Do the others stick the landing better?

Was it Re:Monster?

I definitely will.

Have you tried Of the Devil yet? I haven't played much myself but I saw people talking it up for a while. Might be worth looking into if you haven't.

I really appreciate the response, definitely the nudge I needed to pick it up. And don't worry about the size of the reply, it just tells me a lot of thought went into it which only inspires more confidence in what you have to say. Plus I don't think I'd be an Ace Attorney fan if I was averse to a little reading.

I also just saw Trials of Innocence has a demo so I'll grab that as well.