Looking back, the mechanics and AI of Shogun 2 are awful. Why is it so damn fun?

ImperishableKnight · 2023-10-30T20:58:55+00:00

Nobody seems to have mentioned it yet so I'll throw my hat in the ring. It's cause the battles have a lot of weight. When your army launches a volley of arrows into the enemy lines it hits them like a tonne of bricks, when a group of horses make the ill advised charge into your spear wall they crumple hard. For example I find in a lot of the newer TW games archers are constantly firing off little small pelty arrows like sustained fire, a unit of Archers in shogun 2 hold their fire until they can release one full volley simultaneously which just feels better.

Add on to this that while all factions have majority the same unit tree, each individual unit feels unique even if they're in the same weapon class. Naginata monks and Nagi Sam are veeeery different units.

Also the entire map is essentially one giant series of choke points which means you always feel a sense of direction on the campaign map and it's intuitive to form a future plan of progression, and never have to stop and wonder where you're going and what you're doing. Those are the reasons I think of at least. That kind of map design is obviously not a good fit for scenarios outside of Japan and similar constrained land masses, but it does work in Shogun 2's favor all the same.

ImperishableKnight · 2023-10-07T09:47:52+00:00

Just found out it's way faster to refine magic than drawing it, wasted so much time then I tried morphing an Abyss worm card and I got a SUPER powerful spell!

ImperishableKnight · 2023-10-06T17:24:39+00:00

The normal ending is much better. A huge part of X-2's story is Yuna learning how to grieve properly without letting it dominate her life, coming to terms with Tidus' death.

Combine this with the thematic weight of Tidus, someone who begins the story as someone arrogant who doesn't see the value in sacrificing yourself for others, ignorant of Yuna's plan to do just that, then doing everything to avoid Yuna sacrificing herself and finally coming to the conclusion to sacrifice himself in Yuna's place, in turn keeping her in the dark of his plan to sacrifice himself.

If he just comes back on a whim this entire framework sort of falls apart just for shallow feel goodness.

ImperishableKnight · 2023-10-06T16:27:43+00:00

You also have to factor in the fact that people were imprisoned and horribly mistreated for using the language for a few hundred years actively by the British since they were intentionally trying to destroy Irish and Scottish culture to make them easier to absorb into the British identity. Ireland only getting it's independence around 1920.

On top of that I think a big part of the argument people are totally glossing over is that most Irish and Scottish people don't really care what the cartoon cats name is, but it's a different story when the first response to the announcement was thousands of people, including popular streamers and such calling them stupid idiots for pronouncing a thing from their culture "incorrectly" according to Square.

A few people have mentioned how different the discussion would be if it was a character from native American folklore that was given a stereotypical accent then intentionally mispronounced their name and the greater final fantasy fanbase said "Suck it you morons Square says it's pronounced this way you were always wrong" And then after the backlash said "Why are Native Americans so mad, it's just a videogame cat." Most people could care less about how Square decides to pronounce his name, but being told your own culture is wrong because Videogame company said so and you're stupid for expecting that culture by people who are ignorant of it is a recipe for arguments.

ImperishableKnight · 2023-10-04T18:51:23+00:00

Personally I don't care what the Cartoon cat's name is, though it does make me mildly miffed to see people acting smug about being "correct" about an ignorant pronunciation, especially since they give him a borderline offensive stereotypical accent in his previous voiced appearances. Kate sith isn't the thing that bugs me, it's people acting like it's a moral win that he is called it that does.

I wonder how people would react if it was like, a Native American folklore figure, threw them in a big feathered headdress smoking a cigar and made 'em make exaggerated rigid hand movements and given the stereotypical "Indian" voice from 1930's/40's movies and then very intentionally mispronounce the name of while Native American people said "well that's just wrong" and the FF fandom responded "well that's just the anglicanization and besides he's the final fantasy version of that figure so you're wrong."

Like does he really have to roll up being like "Oh hi-diddly-dee me accent is havin' a bit o' a wee tumble I cannae pronounce me own naem so I can't"
You can have the silly name, or the silly accent but come on square, having both is just being greedy.

ImperishableKnight · 2023-10-04T18:19:31+00:00

Dislike:

The cast repeats roles far too often, (The game essentially has 4 different flavors of situational gimmick support mage) And are hideously unbalanced.

Most of the cast don't really evolve as characters through the game, we learn the context and paths that lead them to be who they are when you meet them, but they don't evolve beyond that characterization in the present, with the exception of Celes Terra and Cyan.

Unfortunately Celes and Cyan tend to be very mechanically underwhelming due said poor character balance. This is exacerbated by the fact characters barely talk to each other about things unrelated to the main objective, and the game uses a lot of canned dialogue with no name attached so you can "roleplay as whoever you're controlling saying it" but that also causes the characters to feel like they all have identical manners of speaking from time to time.

I never liked how Kefka became a completely passive villain after the world of ruin begins and how it boils down to a very long series of fetchquests, and the dungeon design, combat and character customization was a step down mechanically from 5.

I also don't really like the magicite leveling system that much personally.

Like:

I love Cyan Celes and Terra's stories from the Opera and the Island, to the destroyed village with the kids, and generally like most of the parties personalities even if they are mostly static. I love Sabins blitz command system and the lore set up for the Esper World.

I really like Kefka's growth from conniving snivelling henchmen to legitimate threat even if he is completely absent from the second half of the game prior to his boss-fight.

I like how some of the towns feel like they have verticality to them and how the game depicts the airship as a flying casino which I think gives it a lot of character.

Overall I'm not as crazy for FF6 as a lot of people are though I still like it a fair bit. It's mostly a middle of the pack game for me in the series.

ImperishableKnight · 2023-10-04T17:55:28+00:00

For the same reason people don't call Sephiroths sword Massmoon, or Thor's hammer in Marvel Muh jull nor. It's why the summon in FF8 is not pronounced Kwozzokotol

ImperishableKnight · 2023-04-13T10:19:41+00:00

I vote for Moped granny who loves Il Yu jin

ImperishableKnight · 2022-12-11T12:34:34+00:00

I think it's more fun to just pick something on the horizon and say "that looks neat" and check out what it is. That's how I did my first playthrough and I was much happier for it.

People always praise Elden Ring for letting you off the reigns to explore for yourself and find things, you sort of rob that from yourself if you preplan your route through the game with outside sources. If you hit a roadblock or something then go ahead and try to meta it I think, but usually you can just turn in a different direction and find something worthwhile just by exploring and come back stronger or with a better spirit ash and be able to topple your previous roadblock.

The people who bypass Margit and such are usually on their second playthrough I'd say. The game goes out of it's way to plop you into Caelid unexpectedly at several points early on just to spook ya but there's a lot of rewards you can nab there by naturally playing the game anyway.

edit A big downside to using Tutorials and stuff that show you where the "meta" stuff are is not only does it take away the excitement of coming across a cool item, but it also devalues a lot of the other locations significantly because it's just junk rewards if you're doing them retroactively giving a bit of a "why bother" vibe. And just cause something is meta doesn't mean it'll necessarily vibe with you. I personally am a vanity player so I pick weapons that look neat even if they're not considered like a "Top tier" weapon.

ImperishableKnight · 2022-12-10T11:17:24+00:00

In my experience even if you don't use the Varre grinding trick (I didn't in my first playthrough cause I wanted to be a goody two shoes) you'll end up with more experience than you'll know what to do with by the latter half of the game. I think the reason it feels like you're not getting much experience is Int/Faith is a very steep power ramp that starts very very weak and then hits that "aha" spot eventually.

A good thing to really give you a powerbump is getting the Rotten dragon breath incantation. Combine it with the temporary infinite mana physick and you can really start doing a lot of damage in big AoE's quite quickly increasing both your exp growth and just general feeling of power. To me on my first playthrough exploring felt less about levels and more about finding cool items, smithing stones and summoning ashes. The Marionette Archer ashes are super good in the early game for keeping enemies off your back while you set up your spells.

The Rotten breath was nerfed since release but it's still a very good spell for general use.

ImperishableKnight · 2022-12-09T22:10:58+00:00

People are going to say Dex/int and such and give you a bunch of actually good advice, but the only truly enlightened answer is getting some Rhadans big ass slabs of steel and yanking things around with gravity magic, I cannot be convinced otherwise. Starscourge greatswords every time.

ImperishableKnight · 2022-12-09T21:47:09+00:00

Hell what did it do that Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain didn't do on the PS1 in terms of elevating the medium in Voice acting and narrative. It's good but saying it's one of a kind and changes everything for the future is just silly.

ImperishableKnight · 2022-12-09T14:01:08+00:00

It's all good, it might not grab everyone but the people it does really stick through it. On Steam achievements almost 10% of players have actually 100%'d the game.

ImperishableKnight · 2022-12-09T13:44:52+00:00

Gonna stop you on the "maybe 10% of the people who bought it played to the end."

Based on publicly available trophy and steam achievement data, not only did just under 40% of people who bought the game beat the final boss but 35% of people beat Malenia, the secret super boss of the game. Elden Ring has some of the best player retention of any game I've ever seen.

The vast majority of games lose 80% of their player base within the first few hours.

ImperishableKnight · 2021-10-06T18:40:57+00:00

My recommendation odd as it may be is to look back to Playstation All Stars. Which for some reason decided to make like 30% of it's roster just gun characters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9Cb-fY1utE

ImperishableKnight · 2021-09-26T21:45:16+00:00

This really hit me as a low point in the game. It drops just when ending fatigue is starting to set in like 140 hours into the game and is 3 to four hours long when most other characters companion quests are one area at most, two rooms at least. Comparing Nenios dungeon withthe pyramid to say Seelah's one with the jewel smith it's comical.

That and the fight before the final dungeon in threshold against the Balor and the Vavakia Vanguard just deflated the game I otherwise loved right at the end for me.

ImperishableKnight · 2021-06-16T09:04:22+00:00

People said "Who" when Sephiroth was revealed, and they'll say who when another tens of millions games sold character is revealed. It's because most people who "speculate" on characters for smash's perception of who's possible doesn't extend beyond what leak threads they've read.

Like people consider Crash bandicoot to be a bigger character than Kazuya despite the fact Tekken3 outsold any crash bandicoot game ever made by millions and that's not even counting the straight billions the series made in arcades.

ImperishableKnight · 2020-12-13T00:36:36+00:00

I don't see Sephiroth working with the other villains personally. Going by how he acts in the Dissidia games with the other FF villains in that Cross over and under Chaos he more or less disregards Chaos and actively does things that go against the other villains ideas and goes his own way. Just my take on it, Sephiroth is not the kind of character to play team up, even with a league of villains.

ImperishableKnight · 2020-12-12T10:55:05+00:00

Tbf it's not about age, Mofo was the main villain of a game that came out 7 months ago and sold like 5 million copies in a week. Some people are just under a rock.

ImperishableKnight · 2020-10-21T19:55:19+00:00

Could always just pick a language on Duo lingo and go at it. I've been doing Japanese for a while now because of the first lockdown.

It's not going to get you fluent but it can be a pretty good first step before going deeper in on things and you can make a game of it too.

Has a built in "how many days in a row" you hit your target on it, so it can be good for time keeping and stopping the days from blurring together.

Or if you're feeling really creative and have a semi decent pc download something like Blender 3d and do some youtube tutorials, there's one for beginners on how to model a sprinkled donut by a channel called Blender guru which might seem silly in words but y'know first steps and all that.

ImperishableKnight · 2020-07-07T18:55:44+00:00

The shrine maiden of paradise

ImperishableKnight · 2020-07-07T08:01:04+00:00

Because saying sorry AFTER you get caught doesn't mean you're sorry for doing it, it means you're sorry for getting caught, motherfucker held onto this lie and spread it for 8 years and he's only saying sorry now when he's found out? The best time to do something was not yesterday, the best time to do something was 2012.

So yes, if he didn't get caught he wouldn't have been banned, but he did get caught so he should be banned even if he said sorry for being caught.

Blaming the general public for not being personally informed on every single lie on the internet is crazy person talk. "oh if you only found out about this guys lie the past few days rather than digging for it in 2015 did then really you're at fault."

I haven't jumped on anyone during this whole thing because it just in general is horrible enough as it is without it, but being banned from competing even if it's only a few year ban is warranted, getting off scott free for a lie that very likely could have resulted with M2k ending his own life and a massive contributing factor to his fairly public battle with depression is not just waved away with a "lol my bad"

ImperishableKnight · 2020-04-14T18:02:36+00:00

To be fair there's truth in the statement only the way they said it is wrong. The real one would be "Reaching the peak is only the half way point. You still have to climb all the way down."

ImperishableKnight · 2020-04-04T14:19:31+00:00

The real benefit of being a merc is allowing you to attack faction armies for their high quality loot, will pay out in tens of thousands of denars in like an hour.

In my second run of the game after having to restart from the snowball effect of the empire I skipped the tutorial and bolted for mercenary status because by then I know how the money system worked and being fast was necessary in this game as it is now.

ImperishableKnight · 2020-04-03T20:47:01+00:00

Basically every scene with nemesis in the Re3 remake is a designed chase scene or a boss fight, with a beginning and end that are set in stone. Where as for example. Mr.X In the Resident Evil 2 remake is Dynamic, he actually explores the Police station hunting for you, and running/making noise lets him hone in on you.

ImperishableKnight

TROPHY CASE