Videogames - The definitive Edition, remastered

[Ramsay B.]

God of War next year too! I’m seeing preorders start tomorrow here in the states, or some retailers maybe even today?

[Fez]

The only bit that truly excited me was Final Fantasy XVI (in Yoshi-P I trust), and that's coming to PC.

Demon's Souls looked amazing, but I've played enough of those games to know that I'd suck at it and bounce off after about 15 hours.

[Ser Drewy]

Werewolves in Resident Evil! 

Also Hogwarts Legacy looks interesting, seems like they've added some of the Fantastic Beasts creatures as well. 

[Ramsay B.]

So the pre-orders for the PS5 have been hectic. Everything sold out in minutes from all different spots(Walmart, Target, Gamestop). I had one in my cart from Target but when I went to pay it was no longer available. Luckily my buddy somehow got 3 of them and is gonna sell me one so I’m covered. Good luck, everyone.

[l2 0 5 5]

The Hogwarts Legacy trailer looked like a lot of fun. I'll definitely get it. Played the hell out of Sorcerer's Stone through PoA on the PS2 and then 360 for OotP and HBP. Here's to hoping HL delivers something new and exciting in that world.

[A True Kaniggit]

1 hour ago, Ramsay B. said:

So the pre-orders for the PS5 have been hectic. Everything sold out in minutes from all different spots(Walmart, Target, Gamestop). I had one in my cart from Target but when I went to pay it was no longer available. Luckily my buddy somehow got 3 of them and is gonna sell me one so I’m covered. Good luck, everyone.

I'll just wait a bit.

[Rhom]

8 hours ago, Ramsay B. said:

So the pre-orders for the PS5 have been hectic. Everything sold out in minutes from all different spots(Walmart, Target, Gamestop). I had one in my cart from Target but when I went to pay it was no longer available. Luckily my buddy somehow got 3 of them and is gonna sell me one so I’m covered. Good luck, everyone.

Damn.  I didn’t even know they had gone live yet.  I just knew the vague “tomorrow” date.

[aceluby]

11 hours ago, Ramsay B. said:

So the pre-orders for the PS5 have been hectic. Everything sold out in minutes from all different spots(Walmart, Target, Gamestop). I had one in my cart from Target but when I went to pay it was no longer available. Luckily my buddy somehow got 3 of them and is gonna sell me one so I’m covered. Good luck, everyone.

Same thing happened to me.  Was hoping to get one before I went on paternity leave, but I have a big enough backlog to keep me entertained until they stock up

[Fez]

Something I haven't gotten to the bottom of yet in CK3 is why some kingdoms mysteriously change their name from time to time, but aren't changing their primary title. E.g. The kingdom north of England has flipped back and forth at least five or six times between being 'Scotland' and being 'Alba.' But it's the same coat of arms and same map color. It's not the like the times when it's been 'Ireland' because the two kingdoms joined for a ruler (before splitting again on succession) and the Ireland title was primary.

That's been the one I've noticed most often, since I am playing in Europe and mostly looking there on the map. But I did notice the 'Seljuks' were briefly 'Persian Empire' once, and 'Fatmids' were 'Egypt' once. Also, 'Mongolia' and 'Mongol Empire' have flipped a couple times too.

I haven't had any opportunities to change my realm's name without changing my primary title too. Supposedly there is actually a way for me to become the Roman Empire, but I don't see the option. Which is a bit odd, on my list of decisions there's plenty of things I don't meet the requirements for and so they're grayed out. But becoming Rome isn't there.

[argonak]

51 minutes ago, Fez said:

Something I haven't gotten to the bottom of yet in CK3 is why some kingdoms mysteriously change their name from time to time, but aren't changing their primary title. E.g. The kingdom north of England has flipped back and forth at least five or six times between being 'Scotland' and being 'Alba.' But it's the same coat of arms and same map color. It's not the like the times when it's been 'Ireland' because the two kingdoms joined for a ruler (before splitting again on succession) and the Ireland title was primary.

That's been the one I've noticed most often, since I am playing in Europe and mostly looking there on the map. But I did notice the 'Seljuks' were briefly 'Persian Empire' once, and 'Fatmids' were 'Egypt' once. Also, 'Mongolia' and 'Mongol Empire' have flipped a couple times too.

I haven't had any opportunities to change my realm's name without changing my primary title too. Supposedly there is actually a way for me to become the Roman Empire, but I don't see the option. Which is a bit odd, on my list of decisions there's plenty of things I don't meet the requirements for and so they're grayed out. But becoming Rome isn't there.

That's been happening in my game too.  I'm doing a William the Conqueror run and I've been taking bites out of Scotland, but sometimes its Alba instead.  They've also gone Cathar.   

I just won a holy war against them and I noticed that it lowered my catholic Fervor, and increased the Cathar fervor.  Does that make it more likely for more Cathar's to show up?  I'm trying to wipe the heretics out but they keep re-appearing.  My own brother, the Duke of Normandy converted for crying out loud.  Had to imprison him for ten years before he was willing to convert back.

Also I've been stuck with an enourmously powerful Northumbria that controls everything north of Wessex, the bugger keeps having only one heir and then dying.  Current dude even has almost the whole of Wales under his thumb.   So far keeping him friendly, but he just married another old lady, so now I guess his sister will inherit?  

Why does the AI seem to love marrying old infertile people?

 

[Fez]

1 hour ago, argonak said:

I just won a holy war against them and I noticed that it lowered my catholic Fervor, and increased the Cathar fervor.  Does that make it more likely for more Cathar's to show up?  I'm trying to wipe the heretics out but they keep re-appearing.  My own brother, the Duke of Normandy converted for crying out loud.  Had to imprison him for ten years before he was willing to convert back.

Yeah. So the way fervor works is that it's another currency, like piety or prestige. And religions spend fervor on things like Crusades, causing it to go down. It also goes down when religion-related problems happen, like yet another archbishop getting caught sinning big-time. Fervor goes up over time and also goes up a lot if the religion is facing a lot of external pressure; e.g. just losing a crusade.

The idea is that it's supposed to cause a balancing between religions, with power swinging back and forth, and it being really hard to wipe out a religion. That's why it is so hard, without the right perks, for lower fervor religions to convert provinces of higher fervor religions.

However, I think Paradox needs to significantly re-work the system. I've only experienced one game so far, my Italia run. But what has happened without fail after every crusade is that there's a mass wave of heresy across Europe because Catholic fervor is low. It also has caused newly formed crusader kingdoms to convert to the local religion because of the fervor difference. Neither of these outcomes make any sense.

[Fez]

Apparently Hades surprise launched out of early access today. So, shit, there's another game I need to get back to playing. I put in over 60 hours during early access, I gotta see the true ending. Hopefully I'm not too rusty at it now.

[Leofric]

I just finished an Ironman game in CK3 starting in Castille and definitely saw the issues with fervor, I was trying to get the Reconquista achievement which requires conquering the Iberian Peninsula and converting it all to a christian religion.    I had conquered everything by the 1200's but by that time the Catholic fervor had dropped down to close to 0%, so it was saying it would take close to 100 years to convert each muslim county to Catholicism.       I finally figured out that by getting a couple of the early Faith perks in the learning focus, you could remove fervor from the conversion calculation, and that changed the Conversion rate from a century to less than decade for each county.   It still took until 1420 for me to finally complete the Reconquista achievement as each ruler needed to get those perks to keep up the conversion rate.

[Caligula_K3]

44 minutes ago, Fez said:

Apparently Hades surprise launched out of early access today. So, shit, there's another game I need to get back to playing. I put in over 60 hours during early access, I gotta see the true ending. Hopefully I'm not too rusty at it now.

Any thoughts on this game for someone who usually doesn't like rogue-likes? My issue is that I usually get frustrated and bored continually losing all progress. That's obviously a big red flag, but I've loved all other Supergiant Games, so I'm still curious to try this one...

[Fez]

11 minutes ago, Caligula_K3 said:

Any thoughts on this game for someone who usually doesn't like rogue-likes? My issue is that I usually get frustrated and bored continually losing all progress. That's obviously a big red flag, but I've loved all other Supergiant Games, so I'm still curious to try this one...

It's really good! And I'm not much of one for rogue-likes either. It helps that there's a ton of progress that does save up (so I guess it's more of a rogue-lite?). There's a bunch of different currencies, and only one of them resets each death. All the others last, and all the things they buy last as well. There's also a huge focus on world-building, character development, and the story. And all that progression keeps as well. Because the world-state of the starting area never resets, and thanks to the backdrop of the game being in the underworld, it is part of the lore that you are constantly dying. And the characters know you're dying and will comment on it. Speaking of that, there's an absolutely absurd amount of unique dialog that all the characters have.

The game itself is also just plain fun to play. It's a really well-balanced top-down action game, with a ton of variety in play styles.

[Werthead]

Empire of Sin - from the Romeros - got a trailer today and a December release date. I've had my eye on this for a while, it's yet another XCOM-alike but this time remembers to bring the strategic layer. You're basically trying to take over Chicago and form a criminal empire, and you can do that by upgrading your businesses, deciding how to treat people and pitting rivals against one another as well as the more familiar isometric gunfights.

I've been burned on several XCOM-alikes in a row (Phantom Doctrine was poor and Phoenix Point disappointing, but reportedly much-improved in recent updates), but if they can get this right, it'll be cool.

[Fez]

Just now, Werthead said:

Empire of Sin - from the Romeros - got a trailer today and a December release date. I've had my eye on this for a while, it's yet another XCOM-alike but this time remembers to bring the strategic layer. You're basically trying to take over Chicago and form a criminal empire, and you can do that by upgrading your businesses, deciding how to treat people and pitting rivals against one another as well as the more familiar isometric gunfights.

I've been burned on several XCOM-alikes in a row (Phantom Doctrine was poor and Phoenix Point disappointing, but reportedly much-improved in recent updates), but if they can get this right, it'll be cool.

I've been keeping that on my radar too.

Agreed that a lot of these games have ended up being disappointing in the end. Gears Tactics had really great gameplay, but it lacked any strategy layer (seriously, why does this keep happening?!) and got stale before the end. 

[Caligula_K3]

30 minutes ago, Fez said:

It's really good! And I'm not much of one for rogue-likes either. It helps that there's a ton of progress that does save up (so I guess it's more of a rogue-lite?). There's a bunch of different currencies, and only one of them resets each death. All the others last, and all the things they buy last as well. There's also a huge focus on world-building, character development, and the story. And all that progression keeps as well. Because the world-state of the starting area never resets, and thanks to the backdrop of the game being in the underworld, it is part of the lore that you are constantly dying. And the characters know you're dying and will comment on it. Speaking of that, there's an absolutely absurd amount of unique dialog that all the characters have.

The game itself is also just plain fun to play. It's a really well-balanced top-down action game, with a ton of variety in play styles.

Thanks for this description! It sounds like a great game and the rare rogue-like/lite that I might enjoy. I'll pick it up at some point soon.

[Werthead]

49 minutes ago, Fez said:

I've been keeping that on my radar too.

Agreed that a lot of these games have ended up being disappointing in the end. Gears Tactics had really great gameplay, but it lacked any strategy layer (seriously, why does this keep happening?!) and got stale before the end. 

I think it's integrating the two layers which is an absolute nightmare. The story of the making of XCOM: Enemy Unknown - the 2012 version - is insane in itself, it took them eight years and three complete restarts to get it right, and as we've seen from the games since, it's something that's quite hard to perfect. You're essentially creating two different games and mashing them together.

[A True Kaniggit]

4 hours ago, Fez said:

Something I haven't gotten to the bottom of yet in CK3 is why some kingdoms mysteriously change their name from time to time, but aren't changing their primary title. E.g. The kingdom north of England has flipped back and forth at least five or six times between being 'Scotland' and being 'Alba.' But it's the same coat of arms and same map color. It's not the like the times when it's been 'Ireland' because the two kingdoms joined for a ruler (before splitting again on succession) and the Ireland title was primary.

That's been the one I've noticed most often, since I am playing in Europe and mostly looking there on the map. But I did notice the 'Seljuks' were briefly 'Persian Empire' once, and 'Fatmids' were 'Egypt' once. Also, 'Mongolia' and 'Mongol Empire' have flipped a couple times too.

 

I believe it depends on the culture of the current ruler. If it's a Scot, it'll say Scotland. If it's a Gaelic, it'll say Alba.