I'm in the final dungeon. I'm just working my way through Bowser's kids before I beat down his possessed ass.
I get that too. I kind of had to force myself to finish Icewind Dale II so I could move on to games I'd rather play, and I am glad I got it over with. It's just kind of sad when you have to "get games out of the way" instead of just playing them for pure enjoyment. How much do you have left to go?
I'm simply trying to finish up loose ends so I can start playing all of my new stuff.
Like i said before, the Witcher also gave me Vagrant Story vibes because of how important timing was in battle and the fact that you had to make everything for yourself. I mean, it was just potions, but then, potions are basically the biggest mechanic of this game. While I'm a fan of Mario and Luigi (Bowser's Inside Story is one of my favorite games of all time), I think you should just play what you feel like. Gaming should never start feeling like a chore.
Actually, come to think of it, the Souls series really does feel like a spiritual successor to Vagrant Story in terms of style. You'll know what I mean whenever you get a chance to play it. I know I should be playing Mario and Luigi right now, but I actually kind of got back into Terra Battle.
Heh, thanks. Figured it was time to change it. I haven't played AC so maybe that's why, but the Bulgarian -inspired chants remind me a lot of The Beginning and the End which was ALSO inspired by Bulgarian folk music, so I guess that's why I made the connection. But yeah, I think I may enjoy folk influences in video game music more than I thought. It's kind of weird to me that they didn't go for Polish folk for the inspiration, but I guess Bulgaria is close enough in that it's Slavic, but it's still exotic to us. So I guess it might be a case of Keeping It Foreign I remember the last game I played that really put a great emphasis on gear was Vagrant Story and that game was immensely satisfying to me. Granted, the fact that you had to make it all and then "train it" so to speak was a big part of that satisfaction, but from what you're saying I should enjoy the way Souls handles it a lot as well. I'm also glad the Witcher 2 has more emphasis on gear now, even if the more streamlined approach of 1 had its charm.
Yeah, it's one of the reasons why I got into Souls as much as I did. I honestly feel those tracks remind me more of Assassin's Creed surprisingly enough. Like I can get where you get the Xeno vibe from, but the style isn't quite right. Also, I like your new profile pic.
That sounds very involved. It's great when games try to be realistic when it comes to gear and stats instead of just making stuff better for you. I always appreciate a good balanced approach. I'm actually thinking of making a dexterity/evasion-based hitter like you mentioned, but mainly because I'm now playing the Witcher and Geralt is pretty much set as that from the getgo and is pretty dancey and acrobatic. But that might change for me by the time I get to the Soups series As a side note, been listening to some of the Witcher 3 tracks and these two battle themes are giving me Xeno vibes, of all things
Gear is absolutely important. The director initially built the combat around realistic combat. Wearing heavy armor gives you better defense, but restricts your dodging ability and consumes more stamina. The opposite is true with light armor or magic gear. Weight Load is a major mechanic in the series (except Bloodborne) and Dark Souls introduced Poise as well which is a stat that determines how easy it is to stagger you or your opponent. The game uses a variety of different weapons with slight variations to their attack ability making certain weapons better for some occasions than others. Shields run the gambit of being small and ineffective for defense but great for parry, while Heavy Greatshields offer great protection at the cost of being cumbersome and lacking the ability to parry attacks. There are three different types of magic with different tools and stats needed to utilize them well, with each having their own unique flavors to combat from beam spam sorcery, defensive miracles, or pyromancy's complimentary style with melee combat. All gear, weapons, and magic are tied to your stats. You can't use greatswords or heavy armor until you have enough strength and certain magic is restricted by how much intelligence or faith you have. Sine leveling works like MegaTen where one level allows you to only raise one stat, you have to consciously build what you want your character to do. My Demon's Souls character was a tanky strength build whereas my DS1 character was a stregnth/dex Ranger type build with emphasis on dodging. You can choose from a multitude of starting classes, but you're free to build them however you want. The character building in this game is surprisingly deep and their are multiple ways to deal with bosses and certain areas of the game. I think if I was to knock it for anything, it's that until Bloodborne, building character models in the series was an uphill battle that often resulted in the player making sure they always wore a helmet. I think I just made all my characters look like Misurugi's ugly stunt double. Bloodborne turns a few things on it's head because it drops the need for equipment load and poise. The game is designed to be more fast paced and feels closer to games like Devil May Cry than the traditional Souls series. Armor is still important for giving you an edge over certain types of damage, but it's the weapons that are more important. You're character carries one melee weapon and usually a gun as their left weapon. Guns mostly do minimal damage, but you can use them to stun an opponent while their in the middle of an attack and give you an opening to perform a heavy visceral attack against them. Weapons are "Trick Weapons" which have two forms, a simple one handed form and then usually a powerful secondary two handed form. For instance, my starting weapon as the Threaded Cane. In it's simple form, it's a cane sword which can do both slash and thrust damage. In it's secondary form, it's a chain-whip sword that's great for crowd control and it's serrated blades do extra damage to beast type enemies. The cool weapon I just picked up, the Rakuya, is a double bladed saber in it's normal form and then turns into duel-wielding blades in it's advance form. Bloodborne doesn't have magic in the traditional sense, instead it has Hunter Tools which do similar affect and work off your arcane stat, but consume bullets instead of mana or spell charges. Most of them are similar to various sorcery and miracles from the Souls series.
IS Gear important? I was kinda disappointed that it didn't matter too much in the Witcher, and you only got like, three armors and three of each sword in the game, but it made up for it by placing heavy emphasis on alchemy.
