Videogames 2023 pt. II: Can We patreon This Man an Alienware Already?

[Arakasi]

If you’re willing to switch genres and locales some of the Koei games do pretty well. Mainly thinking of various iterations of Nobunaga’s Ambition and Romance of the Three Kingdoms. There is a mix of different styles from them. Some have turn based fighting but it’s moved more to real time battles over the years. Some have separate campaign vs tactical maps and some just have it together. (I prefer separate) Some are Ruler only and some support officer play. Most have pretty strong civil options but there is a mix of styles on how many intrigue options there are. (Some barely have intrigue options at all)

Anyway I tend to prefer Nobunaga these days because their history has dozens of strong fiefs and at least as many other playable ones while RotK often gets bogged down into playing as 3 factions. The later starts in RotK to me are unplayable since Wei starts out so strong. Nobunaga only has one of these where he’s that strong and then right after he dies and it’s back to multiple options. I have many of the same issues as some here do with Paradox games. I tried CK but never really got into it. If I need to scratch that itch I just play Koei games.

[Ran]

Much smaller scale, but always loved Koei's Celtic Tales: Balor of the Evil Eye. Very character driven, I suspect it was a big influence on King of Dragon Pass.

[Werthead]

7 hours ago, Darryk said:

Yeah I'm also struggling to get into it, as much as I crave a medieval strategy game.

I wish there was a Medieval Total War 3

Given the direction of travel in the historical Total War games, I'm not certain I do wish there was one. I suspect they'd carry over the big focus on heroes from the Total Warhammer series and Three Kingdoms, so you'd have El Cid, Saladin and Barbarossa as individual hero units smashing seven kinds of shit out of each other whilst the armies gathered around and cheered them on, sieges would just be attacks on a single gate with abominable defending AI and so forth.

I would be interested to see what their plans are for the historical games, so far they've had to rely on the Chinese audience and massive gimmicks (giving Troy away for free) to get their sales to even vaguely look respectable next to the WH trilogy. They will be doing more fantasy games, but I'm not certain their promise to carry on the mainline historical series can survive when the sales are so down compared to the fantasy ones.

Fortunately, the Medieval II remaster is almost certain to be announced relatively shortly. Being able to play that game without it melting my PC's CPU because it only uses one core and puts a ton of graphics stuff on the CPU rather than graphics card, would be very cool. And if they update the Westeros and Middle-earth mods, that would be genuinely amazing.

[Proudfeet]

12 hours ago, Arakasi said:

If you’re willing to switch genres and locales some of the Koei games do pretty well. Mainly thinking of various iterations of Nobunaga’s Ambition and Romance of the Three Kingdoms. There is a mix of different styles from them. Some have turn based fighting but it’s moved more to real time battles over the years. Some have separate campaign vs tactical maps and some just have it together. (I prefer separate) Some are Ruler only and some support officer play. Most have pretty strong civil options but there is a mix of styles on how many intrigue options there are. (Some barely have intrigue options at all)

Anyway I tend to prefer Nobunaga these days because their history has dozens of strong fiefs and at least as many other playable ones while RotK often gets bogged down into playing as 3 factions. The later starts in RotK to me are unplayable since Wei starts out so strong. Nobunaga only has one of these where he’s that strong and then right after he dies and it’s back to multiple options. I have many of the same issues as some here do with Paradox games. I tried CK but never really got into it. If I need to scratch that itch I just play Koei games.

I tried buying the RotK games for nostalgia recently, but I got stuck because of some character input issue where the game won't recognise anything from my keyboard or something. I returned it.

I haven't tried Nobunaga's Ambition, but it looked like a mess of DLC and versions. Maybe the base game is good enough, but its very off putting. 

[Heartofice]

10 hours ago, Werthead said:

Given the direction of travel in the historical Total War games, I'm not certain I do wish there was one. I suspect they'd carry over the big focus on heroes from the Total Warhammer series and Three Kingdoms, so you'd have El Cid, Saladin and Barbarossa as individual hero units smashing seven kinds of shit out of each other whilst the armies gathered around and cheered them on, sieges would just be attacks on a single gate with abominable defending AI and so forth.

I would be interested to see what their plans are for the historical games, so far they've had to rely on the Chinese audience and massive gimmicks (giving Troy away for free) to get their sales to even vaguely look respectable next to the WH trilogy. They will be doing more fantasy games, but I'm not certain their promise to carry on the mainline historical series can survive when the sales are so down compared to the fantasy ones.

Fortunately, the Medieval II remaster is almost certain to be announced relatively shortly. Being able to play that game without it melting my PC's CPU because it only uses one core and puts a ton of graphics stuff on the CPU rather than graphics card, would be very cool. And if they update the Westeros and Middle-earth mods, that would be genuinely amazing.

Thrones of Britannia was also a total disaster. I can't believe I bought that, I played it maybe twice and lost interest almost immediately. 

I would like them to go back and redo Empire:Total War. It is probably their biggest and most ambitious game that never really got to a state of being good. Initially I hated the idea of gunpowder line battles, but as a counterweight to the clicky click fast paced nature of Warhammer battles I miss it. Plus naval battles.
 

[Werthead]

Death Stranding is free on the Epic Store this week.

A very strange game, but quite unique in its atmosphere, worldbuilding and storyline. An easy game to bounce off, but if you track into its headspace, very rewarding. Plus it does some quite unusual things, like continuing a storyline from Cyberpunk 2077 (!) in its own universe.

The base game is free but the Director's Cut upgrade is reduced to £5. I think that's worth it because it makes the roadbuilding mechanic much better and adds a lot of extra quests, missions and vehicles which makes getting around a bit easier. But not an essential purchase.

[IlyaP]

Looks like Nightdive Studios is preparing an enhanced edition of System Shock 2, per PC Gamer.

[Ompog]

On 5/16/2023 at 12:43 AM, Rhom said:

 And as soon as I did, he got all uppity and he and Dynaheir left.

Was that because I decided to kill the evil Wizard?

Did your reputation drop super low? Did you accidentally fry a nearby chef or librarian or something? That could do it. Otherwise, probably a bug as mentioned. Stoning and de-stoning can screw up a lot of stuff. Curious as to how you do in the finale; the fight is a real doozy.

[Rhom]

1 hour ago, Ompog said:

Did your reputation drop super low? Did you accidentally fry a nearby chef or librarian or something? That could do it. Otherwise, probably a bug as mentioned. Stoning and de-stoning can screw up a lot of stuff. Curious as to how you do in the finale; the fight is a real doozy.

I saw some stuff about that... so I left the town and I'm working my way through Durlag's Tower.  Another buggy mess.  Got stuck outside the tower a couple of times because I couldn't get my party to go through a door.   

[Durckad]

17 hours ago, Rhom said:

I saw some stuff about that... so I left the town and I'm working my way through Durlag's Tower.  Another buggy mess.  Got stuck outside the tower a couple of times because I couldn't get my party to go through a door.   

Ah, so you've modeled your party after Vox Machina: able to defeat powerful, world-shaping threats but stymied by a simple door.

[Corvinus85]

WHAT? Most left field game announcement ever

Edit: It appears it is set in the period of the Bronze Age Collapse, with the primary cultures being Egyptian, Canaanite and Hittite. It's unclear on the level of fantasy this game may have. It appears to be made by the Sofia team, which made Troy, though this game isn't advertised as a saga game.

Edited May 23, 2023 by Corvinus85

[Ran]

Saw that. Interesting choice of a setting.

[Werthead]

Rome I had "fantasy Egypt" as a faction and Rome II had "actual Greek-influenced Egypt" as a setting, and both were pretty interesting (the inherent lunacy of the former aside). I'm not sure you can extrapolate either out to be a full game though.

I wonder if this a test game to see how a new "full" historical game does. Three Kingdoms was both a bit fantasy-ish and also heavily marketed in the gigantic Chinese market, and did very well on both accounts, so arguably we haven't had a full, proper historical game (versus the smaller Saga games and DLC for older titles) in the series since Atilla in 2015. Thrones of Britannia wasn't very good and Troy also pursued a heavy fantasy/historical combo approach.

CA have said they want to split between historical and fantasy games, but given the sheer sales juggernaut of the Warhammer trilogy, I wonder if that's remotely viable, given that Sega's sales expectations for the series must now be massive. The resources needed to create Medieval III or Empire II are absolutely massive, so they may be testing things out with a smaller, more focused game (but not as small as a Saga game) first, whilst they wrap up Warhammer III's DLC cycle and then start on their next fantasy project, whatever that's going to be (smart money is on Middle-earth, but I wouldn't rule out Westeros).

[Fez]

9 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Rome I had "fantasy Egypt" as a faction and Rome II had "actual Greek-influenced Egypt" as a setting, and both were pretty interesting (the inherent lunacy of the former aside). I'm not sure you can extrapolate either out to be a full game though.

RPS has some details: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/total-wars-next-stop-is-ancient-egypt-with-total-war-pharaoh

Basically it's Bronze Age-era Egypt (with 4 factions, unclear on the differences between them yet), alongside the Canaanites (2 factions) and Hittites (2 factions also). And the map will extend up to Anatolia.

Based on the faction names, and what might make sense in terms of having at least one recognizable name in the marketing, I suspect the game is set right after the death of Ramesses II' successor, Merneptah. And there was in fact a civil war then. So 1203 BC.

[Kalbear]

In proud parenting news I believe I've gotten both of my younger kids hooked on Civ 6, with the added bonus that they really like it when I sit with them and micromanage help them along the way. 

[Corvinus85]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

RPS has some details: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/total-wars-next-stop-is-ancient-egypt-with-total-war-pharaoh

Basically it's Bronze Age-era Egypt (with 4 factions, unclear on the differences between them yet), alongside the Canaanites (2 factions) and Hittites (2 factions also). And the map will extend up to Anatolia.

Based on the faction names, and what might make sense in terms of having at least one recognizable name in the marketing, I suspect the game is set right after the death of Ramesses II' successor, Merneptah. And there was in fact a civil war then. So 1203 BC.

Yes, though Ramses III, who is the guy in the trailer most likely, ruled a few decades later. I fully expect the game to contain the mysterious "sea peoples" who Ramses III fought successfully and who are partly responsible for the collapse of the Hitittes and other states in the period. I'm not sure how they intend to reconcile all these factions with the timeline.

[IlyaP]

Do the above Total War games have a narrative focus? Or are they more around resource management and Civ-style city/nation-state building? 

I have friends who absolutely rave about these games, but whenever I see them play it, what my brain picks up on is the (for me personally - not an attack!) tedious resource management components, which just does not excite me in the slightest. 

[Corvinus85]

20 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Do the above Total War games have a narrative focus? Or are they more around resource management and Civ-style city/nation-state building? 

I have friends who absolutely rave about these games, but whenever I see them play it, what my brain picks up on is the (for me personally - not an attack!) tedious resource management components, which just does not excite me in the slightest. 

Total War has always been about giving you a setting in which to build an empire through conquest. Until Warhammer, they were all historical in nature. Some of the more recent games have a bit of a narrative. Warhammer II and III have a narrative that focuses on racing other factions to achieving some goals, Three Kingdoms is RPG heavy set in the backdrop of the collapse of the Han Dynasty, and of course Troy has the characters of The Iliad as the leaders of the factions you can choose from.

Resource management isn't a complex thing in TW games. It's just a means to an end, which is to build up armies and fight battles with thousands of soldiers.

[Jace, Extat]

5 hours ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

In proud parenting news I believe I've gotten both of my younger kids hooked on Civ 6, with the added bonus that they really like it when I sit with them and micromanage help them along the way. 

good man.

[Darryk]

Interesting choice of setting.

I'm not that enthused personally; I don't find the tactics from that era particularly interesting. What did they have besides chariots?