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Post by lurker on Apr 25, 2019 10:43:41 GMT -5
So it's going to be a Musou game...
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Post by GamerL on Apr 25, 2019 16:51:18 GMT -5
Dipped my toe into Sekiro and honestly it's nothing too extreme so far, I did struggle with a miniboss a bit while getting the hang of it's combat, the game is certainly challenging but doesn't seem insurmountable or anything.
I think what's tripping people up is trying to play it like it's just another Soulsborne game and taking enemies head on, which is a good recipe for getting your ass kicked, I've found that it's much more of a stealth game, you are supposed to be a ninja after all, trying to sneak up on enemies is much easier than always trying to take them head on.
And the game has that trademark From Software weirdness we know and love, even though the setting is feudal Japan there's still fantastical elements, I've already encountered some great "WTF?" stuff I won't spoil.
So yeah, it's a really cool game, I dig it.
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Post by zerker on Apr 25, 2019 17:36:56 GMT -5
I'm kind of obsessed with/agitated by Block Out at the moment. If you don't know, that's essentially that Virtual Boy 3D Tetris game but from half a decade before that came out. Specifically I'm playing the arcade version which has stages to beat instead of just being an endless mode, which I think the other verions all are. It's probably the best "other" take on Tetris (well, besides Puyo Puyo Tetris, but that's really just two games in one) I've yet played. But it's also very frustrating, in that pretty much every aspect of the game is quite maddening in one way or another. The controls especially are just very hard to grasp, and I keep mapping everything to different buttons in the hope that I'll get to a good scheme. You can rotate pieces along the X, Y or Z axis, but that's harder to map in a logical way to a controller than you'd think (or I'm an idiot or something). Yeah, I had a friend who owned the DOS version back in the day. The control scheme at least was reasonably laid out on the keyboard, but was still rather hard to grasp for my 12-year-old brain. There is, of course, an open-source clone called BlockOut II if anyone is curious.
I never knew there was an arcade version. I guess the arcade cabinet must have had at least 3 (preferably 6) rotation buttons? If I was to map to a SNES/PlayStation style controller, I would use L/R for one rotation axis, then use the four face buttons based on their relative positions (e.g. as a "second dpad"). Does that help?
EDIT: Found the arcade cabinet at KLOV. It looks like it has two joysticks per player, I suppose one for movement and one for piece rotation. I guess the second joystick must twice for the third axis?
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Post by lurker on Apr 25, 2019 19:00:34 GMT -5
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Post by kaoru on Apr 26, 2019 3:42:48 GMT -5
dsparil: Your posts reflects exactly the experience other people that tried Romancing SaGa have told me over the years. Things happening or refusing to happen for not quite clear reasons and the constant dreadful fear of playing yourself into a dead end you can't get out of. I hope you manage to beat it!
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Post by GamerL on Apr 26, 2019 4:06:47 GMT -5
Oh fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck Sekiro is unbelievably hard.
Now that I'm well into the game it's more apparent what it's going for and honestly, it's to the point of ridiculousness.
Who honestly enjoys difficulty this high? What's supposed to be fun about it? The repetition alone is tedious as hell.
Now I can see why people were begging for an easy mode, which I thought was silly at first but yeah, it's elitist gate keeping to just say "git gud" and not give people options, I don't even necessarily need an "easy" mode per se, just something a little less insane.
I'm not giving up just yet because like Dark Souls you're not on a strict set path, you can go to different places, I'm going to change direction and see what happens, but it's not looking good, the slower and more measured combat of Dark Souls is more my style, the super fast twitch based combat of Sekiro is pretty much exactly what I suck at, I just don't have reflexes fast enough.
To be fair you can sneak past and sometimes simply run past enemies, which has saved my bacon a number of times, but of course I make it to my first major boss fight and just totally hit the wall, like I feared I would.
But like I said, not giving up just yet, will keep trying, but it says it all that already I'm getting so much resistance way earlier than I got from Dark Souls, Dark Souls is a walk in the park compared to this game, I mean that.
Just stop and think about that.
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Apr 26, 2019 4:27:50 GMT -5
Yeah, I had a friend who owned the DOS version back in the day. The control scheme at least was reasonably laid out on the keyboard, but was still rather hard to grasp for my 12-year-old brain. There is, of course, an open-source clone called BlockOut II if anyone is curious. I never knew there was an arcade version. I guess the arcade cabinet must have had at least 3 (preferably 6) rotation buttons? If I was to map to a SNES/PlayStation style controller, I would use L/R for one rotation axis, then use the four face buttons based on their relative positions (e.g. as a "second dpad"). Does that help?
EDIT: Found the arcade cabinet at KLOV. It looks like it has two joysticks per player, I suppose one for movement and one for piece rotation. I guess the second joystick must twice for the third axis? I've now downloaded all three versions of the game that I could find, but all of them use the 3 button set-up, not the twin-sticks one. In fact, there are at least three versions. One with twin-sticks, one with three buttons, and one with three buttons but lacking the button on top of the joystick. I think I even saw a 6-button one, but that might just be a conversion or custom cabinet. It's not a very well documented game, unfortunately. I sadly can't find a rom that features twin-stick support. That's where the problem mainly lies. You can only rotate things one way for each axis. If you could go all six ways, it'd be easy to just map it the way you suggested. And in fact I've tried that anyway, but having only one way for each axis doesn't make that as intuitive as I'd like. And I checked, and the second player's joystick or buttons don't secretly work for the single player mode... The Japanese version is even worse, in that there's three buttons, but the button on top of the control stick is missing, so you're left with only two ways to rotate pieces. Blockout II is cool, but it neither has the arcade's stage clear mode, nor controller support from what I gather.
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Post by retr0gamer on Apr 26, 2019 5:38:06 GMT -5
Oh fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck Sekiro is unbelievably hard. Now that I'm well into the game it's more apparent what it's going for and honestly, it's to the point of ridiculousness. Who honestly enjoys difficulty this high? What's supposed to be fun about it? The repetition alone is tedious as hell. Now I can see why people were begging for an easy mode, which I thought was silly at first but yeah, it's elitist gate keeping to just say "git gud" and not give people options, I don't even necessarily need an "easy" mode per se, just something a little less insane. I'm not giving up just yet because like Dark Souls you're not on a strict set path, you can go to different places, I'm going to change direction and see what happens, but it's not looking good, the slower and more measured combat of Dark Souls is more my style, the super fast twitch based combat of Sekiro is pretty much exactly what I suck at, I just don't have reflexes fast enough. To be fair you can sneak past and sometimes simply run past enemies, which has saved my bacon a number of times, but of course I make it to my first major boss fight and just totally hit the wall, like I feared I would. But like I said, not giving up just yet, will keep trying, but it says it all that already I'm getting so much resistance way earlier than I got from Dark Souls, Dark Souls is a walk in the park compared to this game, I mean that. Just stop and think about that. It's not that hard once the game clicks. You just have to get over the old souls muscle memory. Dodging isn't viable in most situations. You are actually much better off getting up in an enemies fact and attacking/blocking/defending. When it comes to the one on one combat it's actually better to be aggressive. It's also hard to figure out how the stamina system works. You'll do feck all stamina to an enemy at the start of a fight but as they lose health their stamina will drop really fast. Also learn to use the sub weapons. The fire cracker in particular is very useful against red eyed enemies and beasts. The first tough boss is one of these and you get a clue to this when you eavesdrop.
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Post by kaoru on Apr 26, 2019 10:28:59 GMT -5
Oh fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck Sekiro is unbelievably hard. Btw, if you reach a bell with a warning to not ring it or misfortune will burden you. Don't ring it.
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Post by Snake on Apr 26, 2019 10:49:14 GMT -5
Gasp!!!! I'm super tempted to pick up Vivi and Steiner.
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Post by lurker on Apr 26, 2019 11:30:32 GMT -5
Looks like the 3DS isn't quite done yet...
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Post by dsparil on Apr 26, 2019 11:46:37 GMT -5
kaoru : Thanks! It's definitely a confusing game, and the general lack of information in English certainly does not help either. The site's article mentions that the games were always poor sellers, but maybe they made up for it in guide sales? It turns out though, that my plan to get the good weapons won't work as I had triggered a different event than what I had thought was going on. Another possibility was rescuing/finding Aisha's tribe, but it turns out that you need her in your party in order to actually complete it. I did get the Topaz destiny stone out of it least. The dungeon I went through seems like it's one of the largest if not the largest in the game so it did feel like a small consolation. I also grabbed the Obsidian Sword (also a destiny stone) from the frozen castle that eventually becomes unlocked which brought me up to 5. Apparently Barbara has another, but I'd have to kick someone out of my party, grab it from her and then find that person again. A seventh was part of the quest I messed up and the other 3 (emerald, diamond, black diamond) can't be retrieved. The black diamond is in the ocean (supposedly you can see it when traveling by boat), but was made available in the PS2 version. The diamond is part of some cut content and added back in the Wonderswan version. The Emerald is a little interesting. The area and quest where you would receive it exist, but the boss that has it just runs away in the SFC version. You can get it in the WS version if you do this quest after getting the others available. That makes me wonder if it actually is possible to get the emerald, if the check for the diamond was accidentally left in, or if it simply isn't possible at all even though everything plays out the same way otherwise. What the destiny stones actually do is a little bit of a mystery. You can equip them as various types of equipment which I didn't realize until I grabbed the Obsidian sword which gets called out as also being one of the stones. They give +1 to all stats and magic bonuses in the PS2, but they don't give the stat bonuses in the SFC version (not sure about magic). There's dialogue that suggests that they affect the final boss fight, "The battle between Saurin and Mirsa is no fairy tale. The destiny stones played a key role in that battle." Maybe they lower Saurin's HP if they're equipped? I only had them in inventory the first time. So, I have a single avenue left to get the good weapons. There's a hidden temple of Saurin that gives you a "good point" when completed, but I'm not sure where it is which makes me think there is some kind of poorly documented quest attached. I hypothetically could find Aisha and do her quest properly, but I'd have to kick someone out and lug around an "unleveled" character for the duration which seems a little annoying. I might just give my 3 characters without endgame weapons Ice Swords and move them forward on the first turn of the battle. The strange thing about formation is that you arrange the character on a 3x3 grid so you can only have 3 front line characters, but everyone is presented in a single line during battle and can move freely forward and back. Just another weird quirk in a game full of them. I really want to finish this since I'm so close and have spend so much time already, 26 hours for this game plus 8 for my original try. It's not a bad game, and I can slightly understand some of the weird decisions. RS3 is the refined version of this game, and I'll definitely play it next. If the original translation attempt had actually been completed way back when rather than having a different one finish in 2016, there might be better information to go off of. There's certainly plenty for the PS2 version and RS3.
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Post by kaoru on Apr 26, 2019 11:56:37 GMT -5
kaoru : Thanks! It's definitely a confusing game, and the general lack of information in English certainly does not help either. The site's article mentions that the games were always poor sellers, but maybe they made up for it in guide sales? I think that's mostly refering to the West? The franchise seems to have a decent following in Japan, where the games often sold half a million to a million copies. That's not bad for a B-tier franchise.
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Post by dsparil on Apr 26, 2019 13:05:35 GMT -5
kaoru : Thanks! It's definitely a confusing game, and the general lack of information in English certainly does not help either. The site's article mentions that the games were always poor sellers, but maybe they made up for it in guide sales? I think that's mostly refering to the West? The franchise seems to have a decent following in Japan, where the games often sold half a million to a million copies. That's not bad for a B-tier franchise. The wording isn't super clear, but it must be. Wikipedia says RS2 sold 1.5m, and the first even got up to 1.3m!
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Post by GamerL on Apr 26, 2019 15:15:43 GMT -5
Oh fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck Sekiro is unbelievably hard. Now that I'm well into the game it's more apparent what it's going for and honestly, it's to the point of ridiculousness. Who honestly enjoys difficulty this high? What's supposed to be fun about it? The repetition alone is tedious as hell. Now I can see why people were begging for an easy mode, which I thought was silly at first but yeah, it's elitist gate keeping to just say "git gud" and not give people options, I don't even necessarily need an "easy" mode per se, just something a little less insane. I'm not giving up just yet because like Dark Souls you're not on a strict set path, you can go to different places, I'm going to change direction and see what happens, but it's not looking good, the slower and more measured combat of Dark Souls is more my style, the super fast twitch based combat of Sekiro is pretty much exactly what I suck at, I just don't have reflexes fast enough. To be fair you can sneak past and sometimes simply run past enemies, which has saved my bacon a number of times, but of course I make it to my first major boss fight and just totally hit the wall, like I feared I would. But like I said, not giving up just yet, will keep trying, but it says it all that already I'm getting so much resistance way earlier than I got from Dark Souls, Dark Souls is a walk in the park compared to this game, I mean that. Just stop and think about that. It's not that hard once the game clicks. You just have to get over the old souls muscle memory. Dodging isn't viable in most situations. You are actually much better off getting up in an enemies fact and attacking/blocking/defending. When it comes to the one on one combat it's actually better to be aggressive. It's also hard to figure out how the stamina system works. You'll do feck all stamina to an enemy at the start of a fight but as they lose health their stamina will drop really fast. Also learn to use the sub weapons. The fire cracker in particular is very useful against red eyed enemies and beasts. The first tough boss is one of these and you get a clue to this when you eavesdrop. Yes, I keep wanting to dodge and play keep away like in Souls but that only results in getting your ass kicked, I am noticing that it's better to be really aggressive and get up close to enemies, but I'm still having trouble getting the hang of it. Thanks for the advice, I'm certainly not calling it quits just yet, I paid 60$ for the game, I want to be able to see it to the end, especially for the bragging rights of saying I did it, like with Dark Souls.
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