DaimarA Million Feet Tall of AwesomeRegistered Userregular
I know I've played and finished Okami on the PS3 (PS2?) but I can't remember anything about the story so I'm always wondering if I've played the same game as everyone else when they gush about it when it just seems to have slid off of my memory.
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Gear GirlMore class than a state universityRegistered Userregular
@mildlymorbid attempts to alleviate my hunger with video games. Thanks!
I know I've played and finished Okami on the PS3 (PS2?) but I can't remember anything about the story so I'm always wondering if I've played the same game as everyone else when they gush about it when it just seems to have slid off of my memory.
for me, I enjoyed the story, but I love it because every frame looks like a beautiful piece of art. Also, I like finding stuff and Okami delivers on that like crazy
What's your opinion on Zelda games? Because Okami is inspired very much by Zelda. If you enjoy Zelda-likes, I'm willing to bet money you'll enjoy Okami a bunch - it's legit real good.
What's your opinion on Zelda games? Because Okami is inspired very much by Zelda. If you enjoy Zelda-likes, I'm willing to bet money you'll enjoy Okami a bunch - it's legit real good.
I enjoy Zelda-like games quite a bit. Especially Darksiders.
”Come, sit, catch your breath. They will not follow you here. Your memories are fading even now, as we set the pieces in place. Gone to form the soul of the game we play…” –The Dealer
Hand of Fate 2 review
And Thus Defy the Tyrannous Stars – Story and Challenges
You find yourself with no memory, you sit across the table from The Dealer. A large table with various curios resides between you two while a large map sits to the side. You have no choice but to sit and play The Dealer’s game.
The Dealer, the cowled figure in front of you with most of his face hidden, is your traveling companion, guide, but not your friend. His piercing eyes taking analyzing you and your surroundings to see if they are fit for the task he has set ahead of you. His hands deftly manipulate the aspects of the game, from cards to pendulum they all obey is beck and call. His sharp tongue narrates the game, offering measured praise for success and quick mockeries for failure as you progress. Through this journey, he will speak of his future revenge of the entity known as Kallas. Yet his visible flesh betrays a corruption of his own though he pays it no mind.
Memory is a fluid thing here and you may customize your character at any point during the game, even during a challenge when you make camp—which will be explained later. While relatively basic, the customization options are gender, skin tone and facial features, hair style and color, and color pattern of the basic adventurer’s garb, they are all welcome additions.
Inspecting the map will lead to various challenges the Dealer has constructed using your memories, each named after a particular Tarot card. The challenges are vastly different from investigating signs of corruption in townships or escorting a farmer to find his lover just to name two. There are 22 challenges in all and each is constructed from a series of cards specific to the challenge and any cards you choose to add to the challenge deck. Failure may come in a variety of ways: from inappropriately preparing for a challenge, dying from starvation, combat or pain cards, or failing the challenge’s specific goals. You can always return, forewarned and forearmed with a deck more prepared to deal with each challenge’s foibles. In the end, the game is all, and mastery of its mechanics will allow mastery of the game in total.
Once a challenge is completed, you will unlock some of the cards used during the challenge for your own card catalogue. These cards can then be used for future—and past—challenges to further help you to manipulate the hand of fate.
Your Fate is in Your Hands – Deck Building, Encounters, and Games of Chance (Gambits)
At the start of every challenge, you are prompted to build a deck consisting of a chosen companion, encounters, equipment and supplies (items you start a challenge with). Each of the four companions has unique attributes reflected in their combat style, active ability in combat, and an ability to help with a specific game of chance—though the companion must recover for three encounters after this ability is used.
The Dealer will then take the encounters you have chosen and quickly show you a series of encounter and enemy cards specific to that challenge. Do not worry about memorizing them as over the course of the challenge you will become intimately familiar with them. These encounter cards will build the map you will explore, with only some specific and static encounters, such as the map start and exit which depends on the challenge, the rest will be randomized in the configuration of the level’s map. You will explore this map, uncovering new threats or opportunities as you go. Perhaps you find a call to arms to help Empire soldiers to fight corrupted paupers or an arm wrestling competition. Each encounter is a small written encounter where you will choose to interact or walk away, select options of how to interact, or be forced to perform an encounter such as an enemy ambush. These choices, if you are allowed any, will help determine what challenges you face during the encounter be it a game of chance or combat against enemies pulled from the Dealer’s monster deck. The randomization of the deck dictates that you will not truly know what you will find on each level. Yet, if you encounter a new card from your deck, then regardless if you succeed or fail your catalogue will be updated with the aspects of that card, such as the arm wrestling competition having Gold Gain and a Dice Gambit. Therefore your knowledge, and desirability, of each card is learned for future decks you may build.
Lastly, there are four games of chance you will encounter during the course of the game; listing them from the most random to the most skilled: dice, card shuffles, wheel, and pendulum. Each is inherently random and can be played by just closing your eyes and letting fate decide. But, each game can be mastered to a degree: how vigorously you roll the dice, track the cards during the shuffle, predict where the wheel will stop, and choosing where and when the pendulum stops. Each gambit has varying degrees of difficulty, from low dice rolls to pendulum Should pure skill not be enough, or a challenge has several specific gambits, you can add encounters (which can result in gaining helpful equipment or blessings) and specific equipment to the deck to give you an advantage to these gambits such as slowing down the pendulum swing or adding values to dice rolls.
Gains, Pains, and Fame – The Resources of the Board
There are four resources you need to keep track of while tackling the various challenges. In order of important they are Health, Food, Gold, and Fame.
Health is the most obvious as reaching zero health will result in death and an end to the challenge.
Food is required to travel around the map and 1 food is consumed on moving to a new encounter. Consuming food also heals 5 health and can also be used at camps without needing to move, providing respite between encounters. Should you run out of food and continue to travel then you will take starvation damage, which is more per movement than the health recovered by eating.
Gold is the currency of the trade. No harm will befall you if you run out of gold, but many doors will be closed if you have insufficient amounts. Gold can be used to buy all manners of goods: food, equipment, health and, in some rare instances, fame. Gold can also unlock unique interactions during encounters such as paying a priest for a blessing or greasing Empire palms.
Fame is the state of your notoriety. Most challenges will see Fame start at zero, no more known than anyone else in the faceless masses. This is not necessarily a bad thing as it will help you keep a low profile, being harder to be tracked by the law or avoid a lynching for your past actions. However, most powerful equipment requires a certain amount of fame to be wielded and being famous can have its own perks for certain encounters.
All of these resources can be traded in various challenges and encounters and some may be more valuable than others based on the goals you are pursing. A careful balance of each is required to increase your odds of success for any given challenge.
Wild fluctuations can occur during a challenge due to the various encounters dealing out Gain and Pain cards depending on the result of said encounters. Success can deal out various Gain cards providing additional Health, Food, or Gold to help you on your quest. Failure is frequently met with Pain cards robbing you of these resources and hindering your chances of future success. Sometimes Pains are exchanged for gains, such as spilling your own blood to gain the trust of a thief or to Gain additional Gold. The pinnacles of these shifts in power are the Blessings and Curses that can radically alter rules of the game, helping to ensure success or failure. For example a Blessing may add additional values to all your dice rolls while a Curse doubles the consumption of food for each new location you travel to. It is up to you to decide what risks are worth the rewards and how to maximize your Gains while mitigating any accumulated Pains in order to accomplish your quests.
The Tools of the Trade – Equipment, Companions, and the Camp
A rusty sword, battered shield, traveling gear and a companion can get you far, but there are a variety of honed tools to acquire and use—should you be able to obtain both the item and the Fame to wield it during the course of the challenge.
There are three main types of weapons: one handed sword and shields, two handed weapons and dual handed weapons. Each has strengths and weakness against particular opponents. For example, a two handed weapon will wreck havoc on armored Empire infantry but is less useful against agile thieves. Should you lack a particular weapon, you can switch to a rusty variant of that weapon before combat (assuming you aren’t ambushed) to gain these combat advantages. Each weapon also has a specific weapon ability that can be used once a hit-streak is reached. So a two handed hammer may be used for a mighty slam while a pair of daggers knocks down an opponent These weapons may have additional benefits against particular enemies or reward some limited rewards. Overall, weapons are there to help you kill the various enemies so bring the right weapon for the right enemy type if you can.
There are a multitude of other equipments compromised of helmets, armor, artifacts, and rings. All except rings can only be worn at a time so you may want to consider which pieces you want to be caught wearing. Some pieces provide specific gambit or encounter advantages while others provide high armor and the best will even do both. Naturally stacking rings can give you all the benefits without the downsides but they will be mostly situational and won’t help in combat as much as other gear. Still, balancing equipment to help with combat and gambits is an important aspect when balancing your deck.
Next are companions which are four in all. Each will provide a combat partner to help distract your enemies and do some damage of their own. They also come with their own special activated ability such as the Mage’s protective shield. Each will also provide a unique benefit to one of the four gambits such as providing an extra dice for an otherwise failed roll. However, using these gambit abilities will cause your companion to be unavailable until you’ve explored three new encounters so choose to use their abilities wisely. They also have their own personalities and stories for your to explore leading to an eventual improvement to your abilities.
Lastly is the camp. Once you unlock the ability to make camp you can do so anywhere on the map between encounters. Here you can cook food to heal yourself, review notes on the current mission, visit a trader who sells limited amounts of food and one equipment (albeit at much higher gold costs) or merely pass time. Should you find yourself with heavy bags of gold but nothing to spend it on, the camp trader can be an excellent place to get an extra boost should you be able to afford it.
A Grim Harvest – Combat
Combat is the fifth game of chance. Just like the other gambits it can be mastered but unfortunately has a bit of lack of polish that keeps it from being as great. Overall it’s pretty standard Arkham Asylum Batman combat, passing from multiple opponents using a combination of hit, counter, dodge and bash. Should an enemy take enough damage they may lie exposed to a finisher before they can recover. Also thrown into the mix is whatever artifact you have equipped which can have various effects such as turning enemies hostile to each other. Should your companion be present they will also join the fray and can have their ability activated to help you get an edge. Fighting close to your companion will also help this ability recharge, encouraging you to fight together as you can also instantly revive your companion should they fall.
How the combat differs is it is much more defensive in nature, not requiring an endless stream of blows to maintain your hit streak in order to activate your weapon’s special ability. The hit counter is in fact quite generous, seeming to not reset until around 10 seconds of non-action of your part—that is unless you are hit in combat. The warnings of incoming hits can also be slower to appear, having the action sometimes over half completed thus only giving a small window to react unless you have been reading the body language. Unfortunately avoiding damage is one of the problems with the combat. While activating your weapon ability instantly makes you invincible, using the finisher move keeps you exposed for a second or two till you’re in the actual animation. Dodging can also be inconsistent, sometimes allowing you to push enemies so you can move out of a lobbed bomb while other times not. Suffice to say it is still a solid, but flawed combat system that you probably find to be the weakest part of the game.
The Road Not Taken – Unlocks and Side quests.
Some challenges are not so easily completed. They will have additional objectives to secure their highest rewards. Such additional objectives may be finding all the clues to an assassin’s identity or reaching an objective before the allotted time expires. The resulting gold tokens will give you access to some truly powerful cards to help you with other challenges for gold begets gold. Do not feel too disappointed you are unable to achieve a gold ranking on these challenges however as frequently the cards you unlock from the silver completion will help accomplish the gold. Of all of these gold challenges only one felt to be a chore but all in all they were worthy additional challenges.
But challenges are not the end all be all. Many encounters, equipment and even your companions have their own quests to be pursued. Equipped with a signature bronze token, it will be up to you to perform the required task or discover how to properly achieve these tokens to unlock new cards. Some will merely give additional options while others are lengthy quests leading to platinum cards--the most powerful encounters and equipment in the game. These cards are so powerful that many challenges will limit how many you can have in your deck or not let you take any at all.
A Whiff of Brimstone – Dangerous Denizens and Hazardous Environs
Such powerful equipment and encounters will be needed to help tackle the difficulty of later enemies marked with their own unique design: brimstone. Enemies thus marked will hit faster and harder, testing your skills in combat. Brimstone encounters will be particularly perilous, requiring inordinate skill, luck, or equipment and blessings to tip the scales in your favor. But frequently from these perilous encounters come the best rewards making them well worth the effort.
Journey’s End – Completion Time and Achievements
To accomplish a 100% completion in this game it came to about 54 hours and seeing as I paid $27 that’s an about 2 hours to $1 for those looking for value. Naturally there is less playtime if you just go through the main challenges but even then it’s substantially longer than the ~13 hours of Hand of Fate 1’s campaign.
Overall the achievements felt quite doable and while one ended up needing to be farmed at the very end of the game, most can be accomplished during the course of normal gameplay. Some will have you return to previous challenges to accomplish heroic feats or others may just be related to the unlocking of powerful equipment through a hard mode of a previous challenge. Knowledge of your cards and the challenges will help you accomplish several of these achievements that would otherwise be up to blind luck. Only one achievement did I find annoying as it is possible to easily fail it at the very end but once again with careful manipulation of the deck and challenge once again overcame this obstacle.
I wish you well in being dealt your own Hand of Fate…2.
TLDR: if you want a solid video game based on board game mechanics, randomized encounters, and decent but flawed Arkham Asylum Batman combat then this is a great game for you.
Pros (+):
+Great setting, music, writing and graphical style
+The board game and gambit mechanics match really well
+Deck building gives you a sense of control in an otherwise thoroughly randomized experience
+Wonderfully stylized art helps give added character to the delightful text
+Loads of completely optional side quests to pursue but very rewarding if you do so
+Interesting challenges that make you think of how to exploit the rules of the game in order to succeed
Mixed (~):
~The Dealer is a great for engaging you in the setting, though might not be liked by all
~Character customization is now available, albeit limited
~Some challenges can feel a little too based on luck, but with the right cards they are still doable
Cons (-):
-Combat could use some polish
-Some Dealer’s lines are repeated a bit too often
-Minor equipment clipping through the character model
@Pixelated Pixie is a monster who takes statements out of context to hurt those who said them
Thank you monster! Making my steam library lewd one game at a time
One monster begins, and another joins in.
Thank you @destroyah87 ! Listened to many in chat talk about how great this game is, very much looking forward to playing this soon
I've done it! I set out to beat all the previous Assassins Creed main games and buh gawd they're beat! Just finished Unity, it was alright. Not the worst of them but it was definitely in the lower half of AC games that I like. Onwards to Origin!
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
I've done it! I set out to beat all the previous Assassins Creed main games and buh gawd they're beat! Just finished Unity, it was alright. Not the worst of them but it was definitely in the lower half of AC games that I like. Onwards to Origin!
I wish I had a rig capable enough to do the more recent ones. Black Flag I had to run on mostly medium-ish settings. Not sure about Rogue, I still need to start that, but Syndicate was . . . not running well, even on low.
It somehow started being a game that irritated the hell out of me on the PS3 and became a game series that is one of my top favorites. It's one of the reasons I think I'll enjoy Far Cry from 3 onwards. It's sort of insane . . .
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
I've done it! I set out to beat all the previous Assassins Creed main games and buh gawd they're beat! Just finished Unity, it was alright. Not the worst of them but it was definitely in the lower half of AC games that I like. Onwards to Origin!
I wish I had a rig capable enough to do the more recent ones. Black Flag I had to run on mostly medium-ish settings. Not sure about Rogue, I still need to start that, but Syndicate was . . . not running well, even on low.
It somehow started being a game that irritated the hell out of me on the PS3 and became a game series that is one of my top favorites. It's one of the reasons I think I'll enjoy Far Cry from 3 onwards. It's sort of insane . . .
I'm terrified of starting Origins as Unity was pushing my system to the max but Syndicate wasn't so bad so I might be fine. I'm just stoked I'm beating games!
Having a blast with Card Quest tonight as I've stumbled upon what I think is a super OP combo (please don't nerf). I'm a berzerking, flail-weilding clergy man. Each time I resist damage (with my holy pecs, looking at the card art), my next attack gets +2 damage, which can be stacked 3 times per round for a total of +6. If I chance upon the "Inner Rage" card that's another +2 damage and puts me into berzerker mode where all my attacks do +2.
Stacking all this together onto the only card I have in my deck that attacks all enemies very weakly now suddenly does an absolutely humongous 12 damage to everyone just ANNIHILATES the AI. It's uncommon to have more than two enemies out of a possible eight having more than 12 health so it's an absolute monster of a combo.
Fucking top game. Really snuck under the radar there with it's completely low-rent graphical aesthetic, but damn if the gameplay loop isn't completely on point
Just poking through its Steam page, this game seems like Risk of Rain and Card Hunter had a baby. Is it single character or party combat?
@mugsley ahh I'm not too sure where the Risk of Rain comparison is coming from, it's a bit more like this -
You have a choice of 4 different kinds of characters, each with their unique equipment. Equipment and items are unlocked permanently once you've gotten one in a run so you've got plenty to mix and match with.
There are three campaigns but I've only played one so far so I can't speak for the others. You play an introductory mission and after that it branches off to two and eventually a mix between two and three mission choices as you progress to the end of a 7-misson long campaign. So of the 7 you play, there are something like 8 or 9 missons that you didn't. Each mission completion has a unique unlock per character so the focus squarely on replay value. Once you've finished all three 3rd mission options you can start the campaign from there too to avoid the easy bits.
The game also provides you a small preview of the kind of unique monsters found in a given mission (something I would KILL for in Darkest Dungeon) so you can spec your build beforehand. A neat twist on this is that when you unlock an item after finishing a mission, you can choose to equip it there and then. So if one item is good for early stages but another good for latter ones, route your campaign through a mission to unlock it and you're free to equip it over your initial choice.
Combat is turn-based with cards. The key thing is that you don't want to spend all your resources attacking as this'll leave you short for defending and will therefore be walloped. There's also a combo system and a few other things and so far I've found it to be like a backyard pool - shallow where you hop in and deeper the further you go.
I've barely scratched the surface of character and item combinations for even one of the campaigns. I reckon there's a good 100 hours of lunch break gaming to be found here, it's really good. My only bugbear is that I wish they either spent a lot more or a lot less on the game art. I wonder how easy it'd be to go in and edit it... no workshop support either (yet?)
TeeMan on
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BeryllineOne Tiara to rule them allRegistered Userregular
I have a bunch of keys to clear out. I won't post them all tonight, but here are a few. I have some DoubleFine stuff to start with. A handful are from the Amnesia Fortnight, so they're basically demos for future possible games. They are steam keys though.
The first one is Kiln. I believe this one is a multiplayer game, so there are a handful of keys for it. Loading...?
I've done it! I set out to beat all the previous Assassins Creed main games and buh gawd they're beat! Just finished Unity, it was alright. Not the worst of them but it was definitely in the lower half of AC games that I like. Onwards to Origin!
Which of the AC games do you consider to be the worst, out of curiosity?
I've done it! I set out to beat all the previous Assassins Creed main games and buh gawd they're beat! Just finished Unity, it was alright. Not the worst of them but it was definitely in the lower half of AC games that I like. Onwards to Origin!
Which of the AC games do you consider to be the worst, out of curiosity?
I'd say the first one, easily. It was a great proof of concept and I had a lot of fun with it but it isn't somethign I could play today at all. The rest of them hold up really well and whilst 3 and Unity drag on a little, they're perfectly fine today. It's weird cause I consider Rogue to have the best character arc in a single game but the trilogy for 2 is by far the best overall character progression for me. Unity was a little to erratic with the protagonist and main characters and syndicate was just bizarre in the final hours.
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
2, Brotherhood, and Revelations has the strongest characterizations, 3 and 4 (thus far) have the strongest mechanics, and the original is solid but not in any way better than any of the others.
Liberation, thus far is my most disappointing.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
2, Brotherhood, and Revelations has the strongest characterizations, 3 and 4 (thus far) have the strongest mechanics, and the original is solid but not in any way better than any of the others.
Liberation, thus far is my most disappointing.
To be fair, Liberation was a portable game ported to PC/consoles, so I can kind of understand why it'd be disappointing.
I've done it! I set out to beat all the previous Assassins Creed main games and buh gawd they're beat! Just finished Unity, it was alright. Not the worst of them but it was definitely in the lower half of AC games that I like. Onwards to Origin!
Which of the AC games do you consider to be the worst, out of curiosity?
I'd say the first one, easily.
I agree. But not to the point that I'd make it sound like it was terrible. I didn't understand the complaints about the game being so 'repetitive'. You're an assassin. Throatstabbing people over and over again is what you do! Then I realised they were talking about the side missions and, yeah.
Frankly, I would say the reason I most hesitate to replay it at this time is because the newer games have simply added things that made the gameplay more enjoyable. A bit like playing GTAIII after having played, IV. Or even just San Andreas. Perhaps I'll start playing AC3 to earn my Christmas/New Year's achievements.
I've done it! I set out to beat all the previous Assassins Creed main games and buh gawd they're beat! Just finished Unity, it was alright. Not the worst of them but it was definitely in the lower half of AC games that I like. Onwards to Origin!
Which of the AC games do you consider to be the worst, out of curiosity?
I'd say the first one, easily.
I agree. But not to the point that I'd make it sound like it was terrible. I didn't understand the complaints about the game being so 'repetitive'. You're an assassin. Throatstabbing people over and over again is what you do! Then I realised they were talking about the side missions and, yeah.
Frankly, I would say the reason I most hesitate to replay it at this time is because the newer games have simply added things that made the gameplay more enjoyable. A bit like playing GTAIII after having played, IV. Or even just San Andreas. Perhaps I'll start playing AC3 to earn my Christmas/New Year's achievements.
Did you play the PC version? supposedly the console version only had half of the pre-assassination busy work variety
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
2, Brotherhood, and Revelations has the strongest characterizations, 3 and 4 (thus far) have the strongest mechanics, and the original is solid but not in any way better than any of the others.
Liberation, thus far is my most disappointing.
To be fair, Liberation was a portable game ported to PC/consoles, so I can kind of understand why it'd be disappointing.
The sad thing is that even as a portable game, it was based in 3's engine (which was also Black Flag and Rogue's engine), AnvilNext. so it could, have, potentially, been a better and bigger game, but the trappings of originating on a handheld system limited it to a sad degree.
I feel like Aveline deserved better, as a character, and New Orleans and the other areas of the game deserved a better class of game level design. What could have been an open, lightly settled, large swamp area became a fraction of what it needed to be to feel interesting. I loved the open wilderness of III, but this took that idea and just shrunk it to nothing, and it made me a bit sad. Also, the changing of clothing to access different areas and complete different objectives was a cool addition, but after full upgrading, it felt like the lady was the easiest to wander into places with, excluding her inability to jump in that dress.
It also showed that Ubi's excuses of not being able to make female characters because they were "too hard to animate" were exactly the bullshit everyone called them.
The Assassin version of Aveline at least got a bit of attention in some additional content in Black Flag (in the Deluxe Edition, which is why I always get those), but it felt like a consolation prize.
I know Evie is in Syndicate, but we still have yet to get a mainline AC game led by a woman, and I'm most disappointed because Aveline's story would have been the perfect story to tell in the main line.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
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SteevLWhat can I do for you?Registered Userregular
I've done it! I set out to beat all the previous Assassins Creed main games and buh gawd they're beat! Just finished Unity, it was alright. Not the worst of them but it was definitely in the lower half of AC games that I like. Onwards to Origin!
Which of the AC games do you consider to be the worst, out of curiosity?
I'd say the first one, easily. It was a great proof of concept and I had a lot of fun with it but it isn't somethign I could play today at all. The rest of them hold up really well and whilst 3 and Unity drag on a little, they're perfectly fine today. It's weird cause I consider Rogue to have the best character arc in a single game but the trilogy for 2 is by far the best overall character progression for me. Unity was a little to erratic with the protagonist and main characters and syndicate was just bizarre in the final hours.
I'd definitely agree about 1 being the worst, although I did finish it. I remember that they really updated the combat system from 1 to 2, but the first game still had some things unique to the series that I haven't seen in the other ones I've played (through Rogue thus far). The assassination missions seemed like a bigger deal and you could, in theory, find a "right" way to kill your target by actually reading the intel you got before the mission.
There was a neat thing you could do where if you were in combat and killed a soldier with a hidden blade, one of his fellow soldiers in the group would be visibly shocked at your brutality. If you were quick enough, you could insta-kill him immediately after the killing animation happened. And once again, you could look at the group for someone else who was recoiling in horror and take him out too. It was actually pretty hard to chain them together. The later games made it much easier to chain kills like that together, and it didn't require looking for a specific guy, but there was something neat about that original system.
One thing I didn't miss was all those damn flags whose only purpose was getting you an achievement.
1 was really more of a proof of concept. It was really awesome when it came out, in my opinion, but yeah, the other games in the series sort of made it look bad in comparison.
I've done it! I set out to beat all the previous Assassins Creed main games and buh gawd they're beat! Just finished Unity, it was alright. Not the worst of them but it was definitely in the lower half of AC games that I like. Onwards to Origin!
Which of the AC games do you consider to be the worst, out of curiosity?
I'd say the first one, easily.
I agree. But not to the point that I'd make it sound like it was terrible. I didn't understand the complaints about the game being so 'repetitive'. You're an assassin. Throatstabbing people over and over again is what you do! Then I realised they were talking about the side missions and, yeah.
Frankly, I would say the reason I most hesitate to replay it at this time is because the newer games have simply added things that made the gameplay more enjoyable. A bit like playing GTAIII after having played, IV. Or even just San Andreas. Perhaps I'll start playing AC3 to earn my Christmas/New Year's achievements.
Did you play the PC version? supposedly the console version only had half of the pre-assassination busy work variety
No. Just the 360 version. I would intentionally choose the pre missions I disliked first just to get them out of the way.
-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
edited December 2017
IIRC they said when making the first game they spent such a long time on the concept and engine they were running out of time to build a story, so they let the freeform structure of the assassination targets form the story.
I mean, AC1 definitely did a lot of cool things that I don't think I'd ever seen in a game before. The way crowds moved and how you could blend with them and really the sheer size of the crowds was super cool at the time. And obviously, the parkour stuff was cool, too. It's sort of industry standard now, but it was fucking crazy at the time. And the whole past/future thing was a fresh, exciting thing at the time (and it still was for a couple of games after that, too).
2, Brotherhood, and Revelations has the strongest characterizations, 3 and 4 (thus far) have the strongest mechanics, and the original is solid but not in any way better than any of the others.
Liberation, thus far is my most disappointing.
To be fair, Liberation was a portable game ported to PC/consoles, so I can kind of understand why it'd be disappointing.
One of Julian Gollop's most disappointing games. Also had more people involved than any other game he's directed. Coincidence?
Or maybe he's only great at tactical XCOM-y things.
Played through & beat Team Four Star RPG in one sitting, which was a F2P ~4 hour game. I have no idea who team Four Star is, or what all of the references were to, but it felt very much like an SNES era RPG. Not overly complicated & a lot of little mistakes throughout the game, like spelling errors, but it wasn't too bad. Disappointed that there wasn't a Steam achievement for beating the game or anything but, eh. Gave me something to do tonight.
Posts
It's a fantastic game piece of art. I love it. One of my all time favs.
It is incredible
it's funny, I just stopped Doom to play Flame in the Flood, which I stopped to play Skyrim which I will probably end up stopping to play Okami
what a time to be alive!
lets see what i have not beaten....
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
for me, I enjoyed the story, but I love it because every frame looks like a beautiful piece of art. Also, I like finding stuff and Okami delivers on that like crazy
What's your opinion on Zelda games? Because Okami is inspired very much by Zelda. If you enjoy Zelda-likes, I'm willing to bet money you'll enjoy Okami a bunch - it's legit real good.
I enjoy Zelda-like games quite a bit. Especially Darksiders.
”Come, sit, catch your breath. They will not follow you here. Your memories are fading even now, as we set the pieces in place. Gone to form the soul of the game we play…” –The Dealer
Hand of Fate 2 review
And Thus Defy the Tyrannous Stars – Story and Challenges
You find yourself with no memory, you sit across the table from The Dealer. A large table with various curios resides between you two while a large map sits to the side. You have no choice but to sit and play The Dealer’s game.
The Dealer, the cowled figure in front of you with most of his face hidden, is your traveling companion, guide, but not your friend. His piercing eyes taking analyzing you and your surroundings to see if they are fit for the task he has set ahead of you. His hands deftly manipulate the aspects of the game, from cards to pendulum they all obey is beck and call. His sharp tongue narrates the game, offering measured praise for success and quick mockeries for failure as you progress. Through this journey, he will speak of his future revenge of the entity known as Kallas. Yet his visible flesh betrays a corruption of his own though he pays it no mind.
Memory is a fluid thing here and you may customize your character at any point during the game, even during a challenge when you make camp—which will be explained later. While relatively basic, the customization options are gender, skin tone and facial features, hair style and color, and color pattern of the basic adventurer’s garb, they are all welcome additions.
Inspecting the map will lead to various challenges the Dealer has constructed using your memories, each named after a particular Tarot card. The challenges are vastly different from investigating signs of corruption in townships or escorting a farmer to find his lover just to name two. There are 22 challenges in all and each is constructed from a series of cards specific to the challenge and any cards you choose to add to the challenge deck. Failure may come in a variety of ways: from inappropriately preparing for a challenge, dying from starvation, combat or pain cards, or failing the challenge’s specific goals. You can always return, forewarned and forearmed with a deck more prepared to deal with each challenge’s foibles. In the end, the game is all, and mastery of its mechanics will allow mastery of the game in total.
Once a challenge is completed, you will unlock some of the cards used during the challenge for your own card catalogue. These cards can then be used for future—and past—challenges to further help you to manipulate the hand of fate.
Your Fate is in Your Hands – Deck Building, Encounters, and Games of Chance (Gambits)
At the start of every challenge, you are prompted to build a deck consisting of a chosen companion, encounters, equipment and supplies (items you start a challenge with). Each of the four companions has unique attributes reflected in their combat style, active ability in combat, and an ability to help with a specific game of chance—though the companion must recover for three encounters after this ability is used.
The Dealer will then take the encounters you have chosen and quickly show you a series of encounter and enemy cards specific to that challenge. Do not worry about memorizing them as over the course of the challenge you will become intimately familiar with them. These encounter cards will build the map you will explore, with only some specific and static encounters, such as the map start and exit which depends on the challenge, the rest will be randomized in the configuration of the level’s map. You will explore this map, uncovering new threats or opportunities as you go. Perhaps you find a call to arms to help Empire soldiers to fight corrupted paupers or an arm wrestling competition. Each encounter is a small written encounter where you will choose to interact or walk away, select options of how to interact, or be forced to perform an encounter such as an enemy ambush. These choices, if you are allowed any, will help determine what challenges you face during the encounter be it a game of chance or combat against enemies pulled from the Dealer’s monster deck. The randomization of the deck dictates that you will not truly know what you will find on each level. Yet, if you encounter a new card from your deck, then regardless if you succeed or fail your catalogue will be updated with the aspects of that card, such as the arm wrestling competition having Gold Gain and a Dice Gambit. Therefore your knowledge, and desirability, of each card is learned for future decks you may build.
Lastly, there are four games of chance you will encounter during the course of the game; listing them from the most random to the most skilled: dice, card shuffles, wheel, and pendulum. Each is inherently random and can be played by just closing your eyes and letting fate decide. But, each game can be mastered to a degree: how vigorously you roll the dice, track the cards during the shuffle, predict where the wheel will stop, and choosing where and when the pendulum stops. Each gambit has varying degrees of difficulty, from low dice rolls to pendulum Should pure skill not be enough, or a challenge has several specific gambits, you can add encounters (which can result in gaining helpful equipment or blessings) and specific equipment to the deck to give you an advantage to these gambits such as slowing down the pendulum swing or adding values to dice rolls.
Gains, Pains, and Fame – The Resources of the Board
There are four resources you need to keep track of while tackling the various challenges. In order of important they are Health, Food, Gold, and Fame.
Health is the most obvious as reaching zero health will result in death and an end to the challenge.
Food is required to travel around the map and 1 food is consumed on moving to a new encounter. Consuming food also heals 5 health and can also be used at camps without needing to move, providing respite between encounters. Should you run out of food and continue to travel then you will take starvation damage, which is more per movement than the health recovered by eating.
Gold is the currency of the trade. No harm will befall you if you run out of gold, but many doors will be closed if you have insufficient amounts. Gold can be used to buy all manners of goods: food, equipment, health and, in some rare instances, fame. Gold can also unlock unique interactions during encounters such as paying a priest for a blessing or greasing Empire palms.
Fame is the state of your notoriety. Most challenges will see Fame start at zero, no more known than anyone else in the faceless masses. This is not necessarily a bad thing as it will help you keep a low profile, being harder to be tracked by the law or avoid a lynching for your past actions. However, most powerful equipment requires a certain amount of fame to be wielded and being famous can have its own perks for certain encounters.
All of these resources can be traded in various challenges and encounters and some may be more valuable than others based on the goals you are pursing. A careful balance of each is required to increase your odds of success for any given challenge.
Wild fluctuations can occur during a challenge due to the various encounters dealing out Gain and Pain cards depending on the result of said encounters. Success can deal out various Gain cards providing additional Health, Food, or Gold to help you on your quest. Failure is frequently met with Pain cards robbing you of these resources and hindering your chances of future success. Sometimes Pains are exchanged for gains, such as spilling your own blood to gain the trust of a thief or to Gain additional Gold. The pinnacles of these shifts in power are the Blessings and Curses that can radically alter rules of the game, helping to ensure success or failure. For example a Blessing may add additional values to all your dice rolls while a Curse doubles the consumption of food for each new location you travel to. It is up to you to decide what risks are worth the rewards and how to maximize your Gains while mitigating any accumulated Pains in order to accomplish your quests.
The Tools of the Trade – Equipment, Companions, and the Camp
A rusty sword, battered shield, traveling gear and a companion can get you far, but there are a variety of honed tools to acquire and use—should you be able to obtain both the item and the Fame to wield it during the course of the challenge.
There are three main types of weapons: one handed sword and shields, two handed weapons and dual handed weapons. Each has strengths and weakness against particular opponents. For example, a two handed weapon will wreck havoc on armored Empire infantry but is less useful against agile thieves. Should you lack a particular weapon, you can switch to a rusty variant of that weapon before combat (assuming you aren’t ambushed) to gain these combat advantages. Each weapon also has a specific weapon ability that can be used once a hit-streak is reached. So a two handed hammer may be used for a mighty slam while a pair of daggers knocks down an opponent These weapons may have additional benefits against particular enemies or reward some limited rewards. Overall, weapons are there to help you kill the various enemies so bring the right weapon for the right enemy type if you can.
There are a multitude of other equipments compromised of helmets, armor, artifacts, and rings. All except rings can only be worn at a time so you may want to consider which pieces you want to be caught wearing. Some pieces provide specific gambit or encounter advantages while others provide high armor and the best will even do both. Naturally stacking rings can give you all the benefits without the downsides but they will be mostly situational and won’t help in combat as much as other gear. Still, balancing equipment to help with combat and gambits is an important aspect when balancing your deck.
Next are companions which are four in all. Each will provide a combat partner to help distract your enemies and do some damage of their own. They also come with their own special activated ability such as the Mage’s protective shield. Each will also provide a unique benefit to one of the four gambits such as providing an extra dice for an otherwise failed roll. However, using these gambit abilities will cause your companion to be unavailable until you’ve explored three new encounters so choose to use their abilities wisely. They also have their own personalities and stories for your to explore leading to an eventual improvement to your abilities.
Lastly is the camp. Once you unlock the ability to make camp you can do so anywhere on the map between encounters. Here you can cook food to heal yourself, review notes on the current mission, visit a trader who sells limited amounts of food and one equipment (albeit at much higher gold costs) or merely pass time. Should you find yourself with heavy bags of gold but nothing to spend it on, the camp trader can be an excellent place to get an extra boost should you be able to afford it.
A Grim Harvest – Combat
Combat is the fifth game of chance. Just like the other gambits it can be mastered but unfortunately has a bit of lack of polish that keeps it from being as great. Overall it’s pretty standard Arkham Asylum Batman combat, passing from multiple opponents using a combination of hit, counter, dodge and bash. Should an enemy take enough damage they may lie exposed to a finisher before they can recover. Also thrown into the mix is whatever artifact you have equipped which can have various effects such as turning enemies hostile to each other. Should your companion be present they will also join the fray and can have their ability activated to help you get an edge. Fighting close to your companion will also help this ability recharge, encouraging you to fight together as you can also instantly revive your companion should they fall.
How the combat differs is it is much more defensive in nature, not requiring an endless stream of blows to maintain your hit streak in order to activate your weapon’s special ability. The hit counter is in fact quite generous, seeming to not reset until around 10 seconds of non-action of your part—that is unless you are hit in combat. The warnings of incoming hits can also be slower to appear, having the action sometimes over half completed thus only giving a small window to react unless you have been reading the body language. Unfortunately avoiding damage is one of the problems with the combat. While activating your weapon ability instantly makes you invincible, using the finisher move keeps you exposed for a second or two till you’re in the actual animation. Dodging can also be inconsistent, sometimes allowing you to push enemies so you can move out of a lobbed bomb while other times not. Suffice to say it is still a solid, but flawed combat system that you probably find to be the weakest part of the game.
The Road Not Taken – Unlocks and Side quests.
Some challenges are not so easily completed. They will have additional objectives to secure their highest rewards. Such additional objectives may be finding all the clues to an assassin’s identity or reaching an objective before the allotted time expires. The resulting gold tokens will give you access to some truly powerful cards to help you with other challenges for gold begets gold. Do not feel too disappointed you are unable to achieve a gold ranking on these challenges however as frequently the cards you unlock from the silver completion will help accomplish the gold. Of all of these gold challenges only one felt to be a chore but all in all they were worthy additional challenges.
But challenges are not the end all be all. Many encounters, equipment and even your companions have their own quests to be pursued. Equipped with a signature bronze token, it will be up to you to perform the required task or discover how to properly achieve these tokens to unlock new cards. Some will merely give additional options while others are lengthy quests leading to platinum cards--the most powerful encounters and equipment in the game. These cards are so powerful that many challenges will limit how many you can have in your deck or not let you take any at all.
A Whiff of Brimstone – Dangerous Denizens and Hazardous Environs
Such powerful equipment and encounters will be needed to help tackle the difficulty of later enemies marked with their own unique design: brimstone. Enemies thus marked will hit faster and harder, testing your skills in combat. Brimstone encounters will be particularly perilous, requiring inordinate skill, luck, or equipment and blessings to tip the scales in your favor. But frequently from these perilous encounters come the best rewards making them well worth the effort.
Journey’s End – Completion Time and Achievements
To accomplish a 100% completion in this game it came to about 54 hours and seeing as I paid $27 that’s an about 2 hours to $1 for those looking for value. Naturally there is less playtime if you just go through the main challenges but even then it’s substantially longer than the ~13 hours of Hand of Fate 1’s campaign.
Overall the achievements felt quite doable and while one ended up needing to be farmed at the very end of the game, most can be accomplished during the course of normal gameplay. Some will have you return to previous challenges to accomplish heroic feats or others may just be related to the unlocking of powerful equipment through a hard mode of a previous challenge. Knowledge of your cards and the challenges will help you accomplish several of these achievements that would otherwise be up to blind luck. Only one achievement did I find annoying as it is possible to easily fail it at the very end but once again with careful manipulation of the deck and challenge once again overcame this obstacle.
I wish you well in being dealt your own Hand of Fate…2.
TLDR: if you want a solid video game based on board game mechanics, randomized encounters, and decent but flawed Arkham Asylum Batman combat then this is a great game for you.
Pros (+):
+Great setting, music, writing and graphical style
+The board game and gambit mechanics match really well
+Deck building gives you a sense of control in an otherwise thoroughly randomized experience
+Wonderfully stylized art helps give added character to the delightful text
+Loads of completely optional side quests to pursue but very rewarding if you do so
+Interesting challenges that make you think of how to exploit the rules of the game in order to succeed
Mixed (~):
~The Dealer is a great for engaging you in the setting, though might not be liked by all
~Character customization is now available, albeit limited
~Some challenges can feel a little too based on luck, but with the right cards they are still doable
Cons (-):
-Combat could use some polish
-Some Dealer’s lines are repeated a bit too often
-Minor equipment clipping through the character model
Thank you monster! Making my steam library lewd one game at a time
Thank you @destroyah87 ! Listened to many in chat talk about how great this game is, very much looking forward to playing this soon
I wish I had a rig capable enough to do the more recent ones. Black Flag I had to run on mostly medium-ish settings. Not sure about Rogue, I still need to start that, but Syndicate was . . . not running well, even on low.
It somehow started being a game that irritated the hell out of me on the PS3 and became a game series that is one of my top favorites. It's one of the reasons I think I'll enjoy Far Cry from 3 onwards. It's sort of insane . . .
I'm terrified of starting Origins as Unity was pushing my system to the max but Syndicate wasn't so bad so I might be fine. I'm just stoked I'm beating games!
Hrrrrrgh.
@mugsley ahh I'm not too sure where the Risk of Rain comparison is coming from, it's a bit more like this -
You have a choice of 4 different kinds of characters, each with their unique equipment. Equipment and items are unlocked permanently once you've gotten one in a run so you've got plenty to mix and match with.
There are three campaigns but I've only played one so far so I can't speak for the others. You play an introductory mission and after that it branches off to two and eventually a mix between two and three mission choices as you progress to the end of a 7-misson long campaign. So of the 7 you play, there are something like 8 or 9 missons that you didn't. Each mission completion has a unique unlock per character so the focus squarely on replay value. Once you've finished all three 3rd mission options you can start the campaign from there too to avoid the easy bits.
The game also provides you a small preview of the kind of unique monsters found in a given mission (something I would KILL for in Darkest Dungeon) so you can spec your build beforehand. A neat twist on this is that when you unlock an item after finishing a mission, you can choose to equip it there and then. So if one item is good for early stages but another good for latter ones, route your campaign through a mission to unlock it and you're free to equip it over your initial choice.
Combat is turn-based with cards. The key thing is that you don't want to spend all your resources attacking as this'll leave you short for defending and will therefore be walloped. There's also a combo system and a few other things and so far I've found it to be like a backyard pool - shallow where you hop in and deeper the further you go.
I've barely scratched the surface of character and item combinations for even one of the campaigns. I reckon there's a good 100 hours of lunch break gaming to be found here, it's really good. My only bugbear is that I wish they either spent a lot more or a lot less on the game art. I wonder how easy it'd be to go in and edit it... no workshop support either (yet?)
The first one is Kiln. I believe this one is a multiplayer game, so there are a handful of keys for it.
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(If I remember correctly, this is a VR game.)
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Guacamelee (2 copies)
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I'll post more another day!
Which of the AC games do you consider to be the worst, out of curiosity?
I'd say the first one, easily. It was a great proof of concept and I had a lot of fun with it but it isn't somethign I could play today at all. The rest of them hold up really well and whilst 3 and Unity drag on a little, they're perfectly fine today. It's weird cause I consider Rogue to have the best character arc in a single game but the trilogy for 2 is by far the best overall character progression for me. Unity was a little to erratic with the protagonist and main characters and syndicate was just bizarre in the final hours.
Liberation, thus far is my most disappointing.
To be fair, Liberation was a portable game ported to PC/consoles, so I can kind of understand why it'd be disappointing.
I agree. But not to the point that I'd make it sound like it was terrible. I didn't understand the complaints about the game being so 'repetitive'. You're an assassin. Throatstabbing people over and over again is what you do! Then I realised they were talking about the side missions and, yeah.
Frankly, I would say the reason I most hesitate to replay it at this time is because the newer games have simply added things that made the gameplay more enjoyable. A bit like playing GTAIII after having played, IV. Or even just San Andreas. Perhaps I'll start playing AC3 to earn my Christmas/New Year's achievements.
Did you play the PC version? supposedly the console version only had half of the pre-assassination busy work variety
The sad thing is that even as a portable game, it was based in 3's engine (which was also Black Flag and Rogue's engine), AnvilNext. so it could, have, potentially, been a better and bigger game, but the trappings of originating on a handheld system limited it to a sad degree.
I feel like Aveline deserved better, as a character, and New Orleans and the other areas of the game deserved a better class of game level design. What could have been an open, lightly settled, large swamp area became a fraction of what it needed to be to feel interesting. I loved the open wilderness of III, but this took that idea and just shrunk it to nothing, and it made me a bit sad. Also, the changing of clothing to access different areas and complete different objectives was a cool addition, but after full upgrading, it felt like the lady was the easiest to wander into places with, excluding her inability to jump in that dress.
It also showed that Ubi's excuses of not being able to make female characters because they were "too hard to animate" were exactly the bullshit everyone called them.
The Assassin version of Aveline at least got a bit of attention in some additional content in Black Flag (in the Deluxe Edition, which is why I always get those), but it felt like a consolation prize.
I know Evie is in Syndicate, but we still have yet to get a mainline AC game led by a woman, and I'm most disappointed because Aveline's story would have been the perfect story to tell in the main line.
I'd definitely agree about 1 being the worst, although I did finish it. I remember that they really updated the combat system from 1 to 2, but the first game still had some things unique to the series that I haven't seen in the other ones I've played (through Rogue thus far). The assassination missions seemed like a bigger deal and you could, in theory, find a "right" way to kill your target by actually reading the intel you got before the mission.
There was a neat thing you could do where if you were in combat and killed a soldier with a hidden blade, one of his fellow soldiers in the group would be visibly shocked at your brutality. If you were quick enough, you could insta-kill him immediately after the killing animation happened. And once again, you could look at the group for someone else who was recoiling in horror and take him out too. It was actually pretty hard to chain them together. The later games made it much easier to chain kills like that together, and it didn't require looking for a specific guy, but there was something neat about that original system.
One thing I didn't miss was all those damn flags whose only purpose was getting you an achievement.
No. Just the 360 version. I would intentionally choose the pre missions I disliked first just to get them out of the way.
One of Julian Gollop's most disappointing games. Also had more people involved than any other game he's directed. Coincidence?
Or maybe he's only great at tactical XCOM-y things.
I mean, this seems overly optimistic about my financial situation and ability to upgrade my PC.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970