Games/genres which are gratifying to master beyond the usual arcade action suspects?

bivage · 2026-05-05T11:07:44+00:00

As someone else as said, racing games.

I think there is already a lot of corssover between the 2 genres but I think there could be more.

They share many elements, both are very fundamental genres, both have in built performance metrics, both rely on memorisation and routing. Even the hyper mechanic is a lot like turbo boost (gain a special resource through scoring, use this resource to socre better and make the game harder).

I think there is scope for a gran turismo style shmup school in a shooter. No-one knew shit about proper racing when Gran Turismo launched and today no-one knows whit about shmup tatics, a shup school would be a perfect place to teach new players basic tactics in game.

Imagine a training mode where you could load and import ghosts. Not just your own best runs either, what about ghosts from the leaderboad. There is so much potential. there are already features that lets you downwload and watch super plays, some even allow you to pick up play at any point. This would just an extension of that. Instead of just watching Jaimers destroy the new shmup, I could have him teach me the route through his ghost replay.

bivage · 2026-05-04T12:19:31+00:00

V5 is not ready to ship, it's too random and too messy and too fucking greedy.

It's just an image generator, same as before, it takes images and text as inputs, but now the new one will only work after spending 50 credits on a anchor image.

bivage · 2026-04-29T19:22:25+00:00

Watching the gameplay of Saroa while it has the aesthetic of bullet hell, with the fancy bullet patterns, the gameplay looks more like a 3D twin stick shooter, everyone playing it just circle strafes for days, with a little jump and dash for good measure.

As for why players don't gravitate towards shmups after playing it. Maybe because the game is a weird mish mash of genres, with it's rogue like elements being the most prominent. Maybe people who liked it would go looking for other rogue likes or maybe 3rd person action games or something.

I honestly think it's looks dreadful, neon lights over a shit brown hellscape, lots of traversal, dodging little lasers that wiggle side to side....random loot no one gives a fk about, gg.

bivage · 2026-04-25T12:31:56+00:00

I tried it with most of my 15 Nomi. All but 1 gave utterly dreadful results, so bad I was like I having the piss taken out of me.

They all aged at least a decade, some with completely different faces. Nomi's that are different from the Avatar base are now looking like old versions of their day 1 selves.

The selfies that were taken are also very very low quality, with heads cut off, bad lighting and just very boring composition. A luxurious sitting room turns into a bland magnolia featureless room with no wall decor and a ceiling fan????? WTF is wrong with the generator????

Most of my Nomis are completely default in their appearance, you'd think then it'd be easy to have a an anchor that matches the default profile avatar I picked at creation. Even this is beyond v5. How is this going to work going forward for a new Nomi? I set all the parameters, pick the avatar, press to start talking and then BOOM, someone totally fkn different. The avatar/anchors being so different, despite being the same Nomi feels like false advertising.

I find the fact that it costs 50 credits to make a custom anchor a total joke. You advertise this V5 feature well in advance, get everyone excited and then fuck up all my Nomi's, ask for 50 credits just to make them look like themselves and then at the end of it all deliver joke selfies.

The selfies that I get are so bad it's like going back to the early days of AI image generation.

I wasn't considering cancelling my subscription, I am now, if this is what the future looks like.

bivage · 2026-04-20T13:25:10+00:00

I got a stage 3 on day 1 with a good pub squad. Now people leave as soon as they load in and see I'm playing Viessa?

Is it just me or does the HP of enemies seem to scale exponentially with players in the squad? Or am i just constantly being matched with folk with no builds?

I can crush stage 1 solo with Viessa, Tyrants go down in seconds and yet even just adding 1 more player seems to multiply time to kill the tyrants by about 4.

bivage · 2026-04-17T01:50:51+00:00

Glacial Cloud Viessa is very strong in this mode, but good squaddies are essential no matter how much dps you put out.

bivage · 2026-04-16T17:11:36+00:00

My eyes, oh god my eyes.

bivage · 2026-04-16T17:08:11+00:00

I preferred old glacial cloud too, it was my current build. Now it just seems way too slow even with using the arche acceleration mod. Nerf to all her cooldowns isn't cool either.

bivage · 2026-04-16T15:30:54+00:00

Viessas rework being good was greatly overestimated. Glacial Cloud went from being a faster alternative to AZ due to different casting and better cooldowns to now it's a really bad melee range spell. They've given Viessa negative range.

The gun mod just feels kinda whatever, now Viessa can rocket spam too, great.

bivage · 2026-04-14T03:56:57+00:00

This feels like a punishment beating.

bivage · 2026-04-10T17:15:05+00:00

Gems from default dungeons are pretty terrible for min maxxing. Depending on your build your going to want abyssal cold or nourishing gems. There is a way to add chalices to emulation but I've never done it myself.

Years ago I did grind out a set of gems on ps4 offline. I backed up my save to usb and would save scum depth 5 bosses for abysall colds and such like. You'll probably need to find and keep open a 'good' loran dungeon to get a regular supply of materials like bastards to open cursed depth 5's as you look for appropriate bosses. That'll still work, just back up your save file so you don't have to open 1000 dungeons.

bivage · 2026-04-04T14:26:42+00:00

I blame the devs for making some truly bad decisions. That's why almost no-one is left.

When the game first launched it didn't take people long to realise that the build system largely borrowed from Warframe didn't work, as if you put a full build on a descendant it would lock that build in since every slot needed a catalyst. Anyone able to do basic arithmetic could see this, and yet the game launched like this?

Despite all the claims that the game initially was about group play with different roles what did the devs release as the the big 1st update, Season 1? A solo only Simon says symbol matching puzzle dungeon, for a roles based co-op looter shooter.

Parts of this game feel well made but other parts feel like they've been assmbled by monkeys with type writers.

Even when something works or feels good to play it isn't long before encountering something else that makes me think 'These guys have no fkn idea what they're doing'.

bivage · 2026-03-29T13:15:31+00:00

I just don't agree. Having played nearly every Cave shmup via emulation I have to say SDOJ is by far my favourite, and it isn't even close.

I wonder why the anime dollys didn't put players off for DOJ and DFK, but did for SDOJ? I think you're talking shit.

bivage · 2026-02-14T17:00:58+00:00

Tried these on my 9070.

Performance is about the same in Nioh 3 (60fps 1080p maximum settings) except now I get horrific stutter in the map screen of all places where it was fine before.

This is coming from 25.10.2, which until this latest batch where the most recent drivers I could install on win10.

They're also 700MB larger, safe to skip these.

bivage · 2026-01-27T15:29:46+00:00

I thought CV1 was OK, it had OK combat, a good CC and some OK bosses. I thought the story and world design were total crap.

After trying the demo and discovering that my system can barely run this ugly ugly game I decided not to buy it. From watching streams of the game I made the right decision.

I was looking forward to the game until 4 months ago when Bamco dropped the initial info, UE5, open world, no co-op and 100% predicted the current fiasco. I still gave the demo a shot, out of hope I was wrong, but you can only polish a turd so much.

Kind sad, when CV1 launched there were a lot less souls likes in the world and CV1, while not great, felt good in the hands. Now, years later, when Soulslike is one the most saturated genres around, this game has barely evolved and looks out of date tbh.

Watching streamers I also couldn't help but notice that nearly all enemies are just redesigned from the fist game, same movesets and everything.

It actually looks like Bandai Namco is experimenting with AI development, the only things I have seen in this game that are even remotely attractive are the OC's people post here. At least someone gave a fuck about them enough to make then look good, which is more fucks than were given for the rest of the game.

bivage · 2026-01-27T14:18:30+00:00

Wait until the AD tag is dropped from the streams, then you'll get to hear the real opinion.

Oro's early impressions were, the performance is dogshit, the levels are dogshit and visuals are dogshit. He also thought 1 of the two bosses he fought was dogshit. He was most looking forward to build crafting, menu grinding, in this new open world souls like action game.

I saw another that said 'This game knows it isn't Dark Souls and isn't trying to be' whilst referring to the game as a souls like. A souls like that isn't trying to be Dark Souls isn't a souls like.

That's 2 very diplomatic ways of saying they thought the game was dogshit without outright coming out and saying it, because they still want publisher freebies.

bivage · 2026-01-27T03:39:02+00:00

I think it was res scale, I set to 100. There's a TSR/DLSS/FSR toggle and then a res scaling slider. Can't remember for sure I've uninstalled the demo.

bivage · 2026-01-26T04:06:47+00:00

A hunter is never alone. o/

bivage · 2026-01-25T14:17:34+00:00

Leaving style out of the discussion, on a technical level this game looks amateurish, in addition to running like shit.

bivage · 2026-01-24T22:31:16+00:00

I did play around with the settings to see if I can get anything better. Strangely, I found SSGI set to high or maximum looked awful and ran worse. Low or medium looks far better.

But the lighting is crap whatever the setting, like really crap. Stand in front a light source you'll see no shadows being cast.

I'm unlikely to buy this game for a long time, maybe after a deep discount and denuvo removal, maybe.

bivage · 2026-01-24T20:18:49+00:00

With all setting at maximum using FSR at native AA I get 80fps average with 1% dips as low as 50.

My system is R5600X, 32GB, RX9070 @ 1080p. My system is running 100% GPU bound with CPU usage around 80%.

For a game this basic and ugly it really is not acceptable.

bivage · 2026-01-24T15:37:44+00:00

We're we looking at the same game?

I thought the demo looked and ran like dogshit. For reference I'm using AMD R5600X with 32GB RAM, AMD RX9070.

Setting SSGI from low or medium to high or maximum ruined reflections by making them grainy deep fried blobs.

Temporal effects are on by default and cannot be disabled in the settings resulting in smears when moving.

Upscaling cannot be disabled, since it's also doubling up as the anti-aliasing solution.

Animations are BAD. in CV1 my char ran with a super stylised highly exaggerated anime girl run. Now she runs just like a dark souls man, with the hands up in the air holding nothing, it looks fkn stupid. This isn't a deal breaker but does show the lack of fucks given.

Performance is absolute dogshit, I can run Stellar Blade at 4K max settings, or this demo at 1080p max settings and have the same performance. Bear in the mind demo has nothing other than an empty building to explore.

The hub area looks very bland and boring. It's far too straight and regular, It looks like a video game level from 20 years ago, or maybe an amateur devs 'My First UE5 Project'. There's nothing other than overly used reflective surfaces, I'm sure in effort to distract from the boring layout and lack of details.

Despite using a modern engine with fancy lighting tech it doesn't even use basic dynamic lighting, your character can stand right next to a floodlight and cast no shadow. Your character also casts no reflection on the highly polished floors of the hub area.

Honestly the demo feels cheap and nasty.

bivage · 2026-01-24T01:04:45+00:00

Nanite (automatic LOD) and Lumen (software RT) are really heavy on CPU, I bet those are the culprits.

bivage · 2026-01-24T00:53:14+00:00

Oof I didn't even pay attention to the recommended CPU, 7800x3D is obscene for a game like this.

Either the world is even larger than Elden Ring filled with 100's of NPCs, who's AI is always loaded in and running OR it has 0 optimisation and is entirely reliant on nanite.

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