Is it your first time playing Blasphemous? How are you liking it? I just finished it and have… mixed feelings about it.

If either the puzzles are better or there is more of a story to it I can see myself liking INSIDE more. Most people seem to prefer it, after all.

Any puzzle platformer will face an uphill battle with me though as it’s just not a genre I enjoy. Sometimes - like GRIS - they come through, but often not. I also really liked The Unfinished Swan, if that counts as a puzzle platformer.

LIMBO had a couple of good puzzles (the antigrav one with the boxes near the end comes to mind) but also a huge amount of either forgettable ones or frustrating and/or outright bad ones. A few too many relied on trial-and-error instead of observation and deduction, which I don’t find fun or interesting.

Why did you stick with Blasphemous 😂 I remember you hated it a couple of weeks ago.

I bought it and so I wanted to finish it, especially since it’s not all that long. And I don’t like leaving things unfinished 😂 And I did really like the art, story and world building.

INSIDE is better than LIMBO, IMO—in terms of production and sound design, at the very least. Without revealing too much, some sections are more fun. Although the core gameplay is not much different, unfortunately.

That makes me feel so-so about it, especially having spent I think around $9 on it (last chance before it getting delisted). I heard there is somewhat more of a story in it? That was one thing holding LIMBO back for me.

Word of warning about Ninja Gaiden 2 Black: it’s more or less Sigma 2 reskinned, unfortunately. They called it “Black” for marketing, but it’s not really the definitive version. You can pick it up and install the White mod, which brings it closer to OG NGII, but if you already have Xemu set up, might as well just play OG NGII—it’s an incredible experience, but also get ready to experience a ton of NES bullshit moments in 3D 😂 It’s downright hilarious how OG NGII just doesn’t give a flying fuck about balance, but it’s definitely part of the charm.

Yeah I’ve heard. Ninja Gaiden series really is a clusterfuck of multiple versions of each release that both add and subtract things. Original NG2 was on 360 unfortunately, and is trapped on that ecosystem. It apparently runs okay on Xenia Canary but I haven’t looked into it yet. I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. I’m currently thinking playing both NG2 and NG2 Black (those visuals look so good). But… that’s all contingent on me beating NGB first! I’ll definitely look into that mod, there is also the Ninja Gaiden Sigma Black mod, but I don’t know how much they’ve been able to restore considering the huge differences between Black and Sigma.

Extra long post today, so I’m experimenting with spoiler tags to not take up too much space. Let me know if it’s a good idea.

After that I was in a mood for something different, and after realising how easy setting up Xemu was I went headfirst into Ninja Gaiden Black. I played Ninja Gaiden (2004) on the original Xbox as a kid back in the day, but I never finished it and always wanted to go back. With Ninja Gaiden 2 Black being released recently-ish and Ninja Gaiden 4 on the horizon this felt like the perfect time to play the definitive version of the best game in the series.

Now, I don’t know whether I’ll be able to finish it. I’m playing on “Normal” and not “Ninja Dog” (the easy mode). I’m 8 chapters in now and so far so good, but I’m well aware of the game’s reputation as being prohibitively difficult. And I never did beat it back when I still had teenage reflexes.

That being said, I’m loving the ever-loving shit out of every moment so far. There is nothing like Ninja Gaiden combat out there, the relentless nature of every single encounter with extremely aggressive enemies constantly forcing you to push yourself to the limit and use every tool and trick at your disposal is satisfying like nothing else. It’s extremely fast, but at the same time measured, deliberate and precise. You can’t get away with button mashing, you have to consciously use actual combos and you have to use the right techniques and right weapons at the right times. The essence mechanic is also unique and offers constant mid-battle decisions.

The story is… it’s there I guess. It’s pretty terrible, truth be told. And the voice acting is hilariously bad early 2000s style. But let’s face it, nobody plays NG for the story. At least the environments are cool and well designed, as are most of the monsters and characters (let’s not talk about Rachel). The futuristic mashup with traditional Japanese ninjas and samurai is a very cool setting.

The graphics also need to be shouted out. Sure, I turned up the rendering resolution by 6x in Xemu, but still. Barring some low-res ground textures and the like the game looks phenomenal for a 2005 console release. What Team Ninja were able to extract out of the scuffed ass original Xbox hardware is just black magic. Character models still look great and the animations are fantastic.

Definitely recommend checking it out if you like character action games. NGB is considered by many to be the peak of that genre and it’s easy to see why.

If you don’t like anime, and you’re too old to relate to teens anymore, and you might cringe at edgy youth fiction… Is P5R still worth playing?

I’ve heard some people really love it, but I’ve been very hesitant to play it for the above reasons. Also it’s like 200h long so it’s a big commitment.

I just want more granular difficulty/accessibility settings. Give me more sliders to tweak my experience. I know it might be greedy and asking for a lot but Easy/Normal/Hard or whatever is just so clumsy.

Imagine we had sliders to tweak dodge i-frames and parry window lengths? I might actually dare pickup Sekiro if that was the case.

I wish that was all the negative consequences it lead to, instead of well… *gestures broadly*

Very cool!

Yeah install sizes are getting outrageously large these days, I can see you running out of space if you like to keep many games installed and ready to return to. I never run into it because I am typically “install -> play through once -> uninstall”, but it could definitely be a problem yeah.

Would also be interesting to hear from Hannah, Red Bull are usually on top of strategy but even though they didn’t have much hope for a great result here (terrible track for them) a one stop would surely have been better for Max. Undercut was unusually weak (probably due to temps) and it was extremely hard to overtake.

Lucas Pope is so fucking talented it makes me mad. Not only has he designed genius level compelling gameplay out of ostensibly boring professions (border guard and insurance inspector?!), but he also composes absolute bangers for the soundtracks.

I don’t play D&D - in fact I don’t play any TTRPG anymore (imagine having friends) - but I’ve heard a lot of criticism about WOTC’s products, yes. A lion’s share of it is about how unhelpful the official adventures are for DMs, but I’ve also heard the writing criticised from time to time.

I’ve heard good things about Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and the Curse of Strahd remake though.

90% of the games I play are bought on Steam or GOG, 9% are free Epic giveaways and the last 1% is Alan Wake 2 which I had to buy on Epic because it’s not available anywhere else and I wanted to support Remedy.

I know the discussion about digital only, and I think game preservation is a great cause. There is definitely a danger with digital only. However, for me as a user having a digital library is just unbeatably convenient. My whole library is easily browsable and sortable and with modern high speed fiber internet any game I feel like playing or re-playing is just a click and a few minutes away.

I don’t really have any desire to go back to having to constantly fuck around with discs when I want to play something.

Well, canonically Edwin gets punked by Elminster and lives out his days as a bar wench. And since they decided from the get-go to set BG3 a hundred years after the originals he’d be long dead, along with any other human NPC from the older games. Which, the fact that they started from the point of “let’s set it 100 years later” tells you enough of how much they wanted to deal with the older games. Viconia is not the only thing in BG3 that gives vibes of disdain at worst and disinterest at best for the originals. Flail of Ages is a useless trash weapon randomly sold by a vendor, for fucks sake!

I wonder how many at Larian even played BG1&2. I get such a Wiki-research vibe from a lot of the callbacks.

I think it has quite a few issues, not least its length (I had a like 230h playthrough I think which is… too much). Its high points are really high, but the lows are pretty low. The encounter design towards the endgame especially leaves a lot to be desired.

It’s still worthwhile checking out if you’re a fan of the old Infinity Engine CRPGs it clearly draws inspiration from. I’ve also heard Wrath of the Righteous is much better, but it’s still on my backlog.

I was banned anyway as I brought the dog around.

Plus carry around literal tons of garbage required to craft stuff so you’re always overencumbered and your inventory is full, plus spending half your playtime in menus as you’re looting, buying and sorting every component you find.

I keep forgetting about tags, that makes more sense for you recognising me than me being some sort of household name around here 😂

Watching other people play it is the only way to relive it, anyway. First time reactions to the Final Dream hit like crack.

By the way I forgot another CRPG recommendation: SKALD: Against the Black Priory. Shorter and more limited in scope than the others, but a really nice tight game with a concise story and no filler. Played it earlier this year and really loved it.

I’ll play Infinite for the first time this year (maybe… it keeps getting pushed back in my backlog) and I am so curious about it. Some people say it’s one of the best games of all time and some that it’s overrated and meh.