[Video Games] What are you playing? (Omikron Edition)

“But at least we have baristas serving us coffee here,” one employee joked, referencing the over-the-top coffee bar that takes up a large portion of the 9th floor of its new Manchester building.

...

Earlier this year, CIG quietly laid off an estimated 100-150 staff members at its Austin and LA offices.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/crapmame/

 

In my heart, forever, will be CS2) I don't think there can be a more ideal game than this.

I've been playing for so many years now, ever since I was at school. I also have some weapon skins that I think I can sell now for big money) In addition I also found some undetected Cheats, which made my game even easier)

 

If you ain't cheating, you aren't trying.

 

From my understanding, the original developers were a husband and wife team (I guess he programmed and she designed the world)...and once they realized they had a product that could possibly sustain momentum, they hired on four more developers. I think it is pretty polished and thoughtful. There's definitely some design wonks (like jetpacking up the side of a cliff and clipping in and out of the rock face)...but overall, it's a fun game that allows you to slowburn your way through it...or ramp up and try to build up fast and beat the main objective. I'm really hoping they'll develop beyond that one planet and give us new planets to terraform with different obstacles. For anyone interested, you can download the demo on Steam for free...and if you like the demo, your demo-setup will carry over into the full game.

@RC Cola ...glad you revisited it. I'm with you. It is remarkable how nice of a game it turned out to be with such a small team.

 

Survivor is even better, thank God they included fast travel cause I was about to throw my controller at the sheetrock.

 

This is probably a good place for this :

 

Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader. Just started but having fun with the lore and grimdark atmosphere. The battles feel drawn out but that's the problem with all turn-based CRPG battle systems that are favored nowadays.

 

This is currently sitting in my shopping cart to buy during the Winter Sale Event, but am tempted to remove it. It gets great reviews, but looking at it makes me wonder if it's my cup of RPG tea. I may just buy it anyway and play it as my next RPG.

 

It's been fun so far to be honest, but the combat has felt slightly grindy so far. Once again, I'm not a big fan of turn-based combat CRPGs. But otherwise, in about 15 hours or so, the game has felt fun lore and story wise.

 

I could be wrong, but I don't think I ever posted final thoughts after *actually completing* XB3 and its DLC.

I super-represent your quote "I don't know if I'm the one that's broken or the games".

I feel like I've had the weirdest reaction to be XB3 that I've had to any game ever. Overall I think the quickest way I can describe the phenomenon is that for every individual aspect of the game... story, character, music, graphics, combat (for what it is)... it all seemed pretty great. In particular, I was amazed at the amount of side quests that felt like they had some sort of substance, and snappy dialogue to them. It didn't feel like 80% fetch quests like XB1 did.

And yet... near the end of the base game, I kinda... just wanted it to end? I can't actually explain why I liked XB1 more, because I can't think of any objective measure it did better with. Maybe just simpler/quicker combat and not overstaying its welcome?

And then the same thing happened for the DLC.

I ended up taking an approach of clearing all the sidequests unlocked, but then not working at all to find the triggers for even more quests, which I know existed because I didn't 100% any area on the map I don't think.

And weirdly, like a year later, now I almost feel like I want to revisit it? Mop up the stuff I missed?

It may have just legitimately been burnout on a game I actually loved, and I should've let myself take a long break to play other things. I did clock in at around 160 hours for base game and 40 for the DLC. I think there was just too much game there, perhaps. Why I chose to almost immediately move on to FF7 Rebirth, which to me ended up being "XB3 but worse" for the most part, I'm not sure I'll ever know.

On that note I think I rate the XB games thusly (best to worst):

1. Xenoblade 1
2. Xenoblade 2 DLC
3. Xenoblade 3
4. Xenoblade 3 DLC
5. Xenoblade 2
6. Xenoblade X
7. Xenoblade 1 DLC

I really do think they are mostly pretty good games. But I also think I will remain conflicted over where I actually rate XB3 in the big scheme of things. Such good story, such good characters. Just too damn long.

EDIT: Oh. One thing does occur to me that I actively didn't like about XB3: that it often incentivized mastering classes that a particular character would never use, just to get a good passive or whatever. It was kinda dumb playing an extremely un-optimized party for almost the entire game. But that's really the one big annoyance I can think of.

...On a less complicated note, did you ever try Wildermyth?

Also, speaking of games that blew my hair back: holy hell was Unicorn Overlord great. Probably beats Helldivers 2 for my game of the year, by a whisker. And nothing comes close to those two.

 

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim on Switch. The RTS combat is pretty slick and action packed, but the story and "tutorial" was a drag for the first couple of hours.

It's a bit convoluted, but if you slog through the initial slow start, the character's storylines come together while you fight monsters stage by stage and it's a trip. The story ends up playing out like a graphic novel.

I would recommend if you're used to whiny high schooler tropes in anime and if you like a sci fi mystery with robots fightng kaiju.

Bought a copy of Unicorn Overlord during Black Friday, but not sure if I should start another journey.

 

I did actually play 13 Sentinels too, and liked it a good bit, though I did find the combat gameplay parts to mostly just be a chore to get through. Great story. I even saved a few clips and screenshots on my PS5 because I was so taken by some of the dialogue.

That kind of inspired me to immediately play Unicorn Overlord, which is maybe not opposite, but definitely different strengths. The story in Unicorn Overlord feels distinctly generic, but also basically competent and with decent dialogue. I actually went into it expecting a true turn-based SRPG, but it's more like an RTS with a turn-based layer that plays itself according to your instructions/formations/equipment. I was briefly dubious due to generally not liking RTS's.
I persisted anyway and HOT DAMN... probably my game of the year. There is nothing else quite like it. Each time you expand the size of your units (from 2, to 3, to 4, and finally to 5), it greatly increases strategic possibilities and had me spending hours just skirmishing with my units to optimize their tactics for different situations.
Needless to say I highly recommend you give it a chance. FWIW it took me around 100 hours to do a complete playthrough, though probably 20-30 hours of that was just tinkering and highly optional stuff.
A few short tips if you do decide to get into it:

• When you are first able to leave Cornia, go to Elheim first as it immediately gets you an awesome unit just for showing up. Then immediately leave and go through Drakenhold before returning to Elheim.
• You may want to *consider* finding a recruitment guide to follow along with. Most character recruitments are pretty obvious (e.g. forgive someone and invite them to join instead of executing them after you defeat them), but a few are a little less clear. One of these for example, is a unit near the start of Drakenhold with long blond hair, and if you don't obtain that one unit, it locks you out of several others, plus a satisfying bit of story.

 

I struggled a lot with XC3. The story starts off good. I like the characters. They fleshed out the playable characters better in XC3 than the others that were more centrally focused on the protagonist. The combat was....okay. With six characters on screen, there was just too much going on for me. At times, it was hard to focus on my playable character to follow the combat, and it was fairly repetitive to spam fusion arts or overclock to Ouroboros until you can chain attack. It felt like every battle was the same. The story peaks in the 2nd-to-last chapter, but it didn't hit as hard as XC2 did. Maybe because it was a game that I couldn't keep interest in so I would start and stop it whereas XC2 gripped me in the latter third. And the last chapter of XC3 with its story was kinda disappointing.

I did enjoy the DLC more. I liked how they connected it to previous games and characters that I liked. The combat wasn't as annoying as I didn't have to struggle with classes and farming them, but still had the same repetitive feel. I enjoyed the overall story of it, too, but I'll also admit that I had to watch videos and read up on it to better understand it.

XC2 is still my favorite. It was my first, but I liked the characters and gameplay much better. There are lots of things that XC2 could optimize for a smoother gameplay experience, but the core of it clicked for me the most.

I'm excited that XCX is getting a DE. I'll be picking that up in March when it releases.