I’ve been playing Disco Elysium for a few months, a few hours here and there on weekends.
It’s so interesting. I don’t usually play games that are so clearly based on tabletop RPGs.
There are obvious rolls, but also lots of passive rolls that happen behind the proverbial GM screen you might not notice if you’re not used to TTRPGs.
There are also clever ways to “no, but” after failed rolls. Situations where a game master would just want to railroad the players into success, for the benefit of the narrative. Having been in that position, I respect the way this is pulled off.
I also enjoy the options for doing completely unhinged things. Obviously counterproductive things that may bring up a “you can certainly try” or a “sure, why not?” at the table.
In terms of accessibility the interface text gets pretty big, the highlighting for points of interests isn’t bad at all and the voiceover for speech is very nice, even if a lot of text ends up not being read.
This is essentially a point and click game, so I ended up having to buy a vertical mouse for it.
Overall, it’s been a great experience. I’m into it.
God, I love Disco Elysium so much. For me it’s the best game of all time. It’s funny you single out what you call DM railroading, because it was one thing that was talked about a lot around the release, but they called it a “fail-forward” design philosophy. And it’s so important to the game because failure is such a major theme of the game, and trying and failing checks is a big part of that. That’s why there are several red checks right at the start of the game that actually have advantageous outcomes on failure - to teach you that trying and failing is okay. A lot of my favourite moments in the game comes from failed checks.
And the same goes for all those “wacky” dialogue options. A lot of people miss out on so much because they are afraid to “sound crazy”, because we have been conditioned by every other RPG that picking stupid options leads to being punished. Buy Disco doesn’t really work like that, it’s one of the least punishing games ever in that sense. You’re more often than not rewarded for picking those dialogues. There is even a loading screen tooltip encouraging them.
Anyway sorry my latent hyperfixation got awakened and I’m ranting…
The game has a really vocal fan base, I love it!
Making failure fun is one of the hardest things to learn when running games and it’s super understood that they managed to do it in this format.
I haven’t played anything this week yet but lately I’ve been cycling through Stardew Valley, Cyberpunk 2077, and Stray. I just got death stranding too but I’ve been waiting til I have a chunk of time to dive into it
Almost done with fallout 3. It got a lot more fun when I realized I can just drop the difficulty when I run into bullet sponge enemies and put it back to normal after they’re all dead. It feels like an invulnerability glitch or something when fighting them and it’s just unfun. The main story is neat though.
Not had much time to game these past few weeks but managed to squeeze in a little bit of DS 3 to get back to where I was before my save went kaput.
Easiest soulslike I’ve played made even easier by the Farron Greatsword. Very fun!
I love DS3. It was my first souls game so it holds a special place in my heart, but aside from that it’s just such a well made game too. Revisiting it after having played through a bunch of other souls games made me realize how far I had come, because stuff I used to struggle with became manageable which was an awesome feeling. I remember first playing it, I was so bad and was completely stuck on the tutorial boss. Probably dozens of attempts, maybe even 100+. I was awful at the game. Now that I’m actually good at souls games, when I went back to play it again and killed him without taking damage, I felt amazing. Same with the twin princes, that was my wall forever, then when I revisited it I got them first try and didn’t even use all my estus. It was pretty awesome.
I had practically the same experience with bloodborne, and I was an inexperienced gamer so to say I struggled at first is an understatemet :P
I’ll admit I’m being a little cheeky saying DS3 it’s the easiest (conveniently ignoring the thousands of hours I have poured into these games XD) I’ll clarify that it’s not to diminish the game, but, the formula feels so ironed out in this entry that its what I’ve felt like playing through it.
there is a notorious lack of weird stuff, like world tendency or progression order to figure out, no much risk of gravity and restricted mobility, or even something like the root chalices… I have not played DS2 but I know it’s qUiRkY, so I really wish DS3 had something bizarre going on.
All in all, I can see why it is a lot of people’s favourite.
( and the jump in quality in fabric physics from BB to DS3… huge! )
My favourite is usually either DS1, DS3, Sekiro, or Elden Ring, depending on which I played most recently.
I get what you mean, DS3 definitely has the least amount of weird stuff in it from the trilogy for sure. I still love it though.
You think it’s even easier than DS1? Those bosses have like three moves and punish windows for aeons, plus you have broken poise that lets you just facetank whatever you want if you feel like it. And pyro without mana costs. Anyway in typical Fromsoft fashion the challenge level is stepped up in the DLCs, so maybe those will satiate your appetite.
Also… Farron Greatsword my beloved <3
Kind of. I’m not really talking about boss fight difficulty but as the whole game in general. I answered some of it in my response to Burnwits above. Particularly this section
Tap for spoiler
I’ll admit I’m being a little cheeky saying DS3 it’s the easiest (conveniently ignoring the thousands of hours I have poured into these games XD) I’ll clarify that it’s not to diminish the game, but, the formula feels so ironed out in this entry that its what I’ve felt like playing through it.
there is a notorious lack of weird stuff, like world tendency or progression order to figure out, no much risk of gravity and restricted mobility, or even something like the root chalices… I have not played DS2 but I know it’s qUiRkY, so I really wish DS3 had something bizarre going on.
To further elaborate Both DS1 and DeS have easier bosses yes. But mechanically, they both have stuff that personally gave me more resistance, that I think.adds to the whole “difficulty” thing. This is personal of course
for example navigation was harder in DS1 to me. I died so much traversing the world in this game more than any other mostly to gravity. Thats on me, of course. And… figuring out the god damn world tendency in DeS. Figuring out Dragon God.etc. I’ll admit as well it’s because I’m a dummy. But it makes the game harder to “solve”
But DS3 felt easier to me because mechanically it’s very… like proto elden ring? (With easier fights) And I know exactly what the game wants from me an how to deliver it. No friction at all.
That’s very fair, well explained! I think I may be underestimating the areas of DS1 simply because I know them so well. Some of them are treacherous and it definitely has more opportunities to get stuck for example, like accidentally touching the bottom bonfire in Great Hollow before the Lordvessel or whatnot. At the same time the bosses are so so simple.
Also yeah I know what you mean. I think the lack of rough edges is part of why some people don’t like DS3 so much and others like it the most out of the trilogy. It’s definitely the most “smooth sailing”. And I really don’t like how the game is just one long corridor.
Graveyard Keeper 2 is out, and I’m playing 1 for the first time. It’s fun and rather like Stardew Valley but with somewhat more story. I’m not playing very optimized so I’m sure I’m wasting efficiency by unlocking things in the “wrong” order, but I’m having fun.
Subterrain: Mines of Titan
I’m nearing the climax, I think. I guess it’s a roguelike in the original sense. Everything moves at the same time in turns. You have equipment, abilities, do quests, crawl a dungeon.
There are personal needs and base needs which need to be maintained, a lot of running back and forth, an overall story and collectibles which empower characters for future playthroughs. Though i doubt I’ll stick around for them as one run is lengthy enough.
If you like stuff like Maj’Eyal, cataclysm dda, dungeon soup, pixel dungeon etc, then this should feel familiar enough while it does its own thing.
I finished Death Howl over the weekend. In the end I enjoyed it quite a bit, it’s probably a solid 8/10 for me. If you can pick it up on sale especially I think you’ll definitely get your money’s worth, at least provided you like both grid-based strategy and deckbuilding since it’s pretty much equal bits of both. I was a little dismayed at first that your freedom in deckbuilding is stifled by having the cards of one area cost an additional mana if you attempt to use them in another area, but that concern was alleviated a bit by the final zone of the game where - in the run up to and including the final boss - you can use all your cards from all your zones without extra costs. So you do even get a little bit of creative freedom at the end.
The story was so-so for me, but mostly because it was so predictable. It even tries to include a little twist, but unfortunately that twist has no impact on the overall story or moral of the conclusion, so it didn’t end up moving the needle much for me. I could see where the story was going pretty much from the get go, and that was exactly how it unfolded. That being said the message is good, the story isn’t offensively bad or anything and it’s not a story heavy game. 90% of it is gameplay, which is good. And the art is fantastic - some really great pixel art that I liked a whole lot.
Currently Orebound. Another factory building game, but with a dwarven theme. Kinda interesting twist, ground is fully minable and gold can be actually stored in a pile of gold coins.
D4 new patch is lined up for next.
