Other Games & Random Stuff 2020 (Off-Topic)

by cheapLEY , Saturday, January 02, 2021, 12:43 (1208 days ago) @ INSANEdrive

Sans Diablo II, I don't think I've played any "Roguelikes" styled games. Even then, I have heard much praise about this game. What about it makes it so cream of the crop?

Literally everything. Starting with the combat: it’s just a good feeling game to play. There are six weapons. Sword, bow, shield, spear, fists, and a gun. Each feels very different, so it’s six distinct styles of play with their own strengths and weaknesses. There is a great dash ability and movement feels good in general. As you play each run, you can find boons from the gods, which serve as modifiers for certain aspects. Dashing leaves damaging areas in your wake or cause explosions or allow you to reflect damage. Hits cause chain lightning or slow or poison, etc. Some change abilities almost completely. So based on the weapon you pick to start a run and the modifiers that drop, each run feels very different. But it’s not just completely random. Each room you finish has multiple doors to leave, and those doors always have symbols, which show the reward you’ll get for beating the next room. It’s not specific, but it lets you know which god you will get a boon from, and as you learn what they drop, you can focus each run around trying to create a build.

Then there’s the story. It’s good, the characters are all incredible. And this is where the game really works, because it’s a rogue like where the story is central to the game. Failure doesn’t mean you’re going to just start another run, it just means you get to go back home and talk to all the characters and get more bits of the story. It’s just brilliant. And the game has so much writing. The characters around you comment on how far you made it, recognizing early failure or reaching milestones, and I’ve never heard a repeated line.

Then the art style is just great. It’s gorgeous while still being well considered and readable for gameplay. The sounds and music and voice acting are all top notch. It really is a complete package.

So how "This is a modern UBISOFT game" is it?

It’s very much that. I think it’s smarter than a lot of the previous ones, though. The game has multiple zones on the map, and each of them has a main story quest line associated with it. They are all mostly interesting, and they work as self contained little stories that take like two hours to complete. So it’s easy to do one of those and feel like you did something satisfying. As far as these sorts of games go, this is a really good one of those, I think. It’s still much too large, but it also feels more focused than the last two games did.

Man... you've really been all about that dungeon crawler life in 2020. Two Roguelikes and a third person dungeon crawler? Seems kind of freudian. :P

They’re just sort of inherently satisfying to me. I like games where I can consider character builds and focus on getting gear to enhance those builds or try new ones.

Is "Remnant: From the Ashes" as hard as Dark Souls, but in a shooter setting?

Yes and no. It’s the comparison everyone reaches for, and I understand why. There are similarities, down to the way healing works with bonfire like checkpoints that respawn enemies. It doesn’t feel as punishing as Dark Souls, but it also is challenging in the same way. Low level monsters can absolutely kill you quickly if you aren’t careful.

It’s also not as considered as Dark Souls. Dark Souks is completely crafted, Remnant has more randomization. You can straight up reroll the world to get a different configuration with different layouts and different bosses. I haven’t done it enough to know how random it really is, though. Is it procedurally generated in any sense, or is it just a specific number of hand crafted zones that it just picks from? I don’t know.