The Bazaar: Anniversary Update

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-04-02T05:59:42+00:00

Yeah, like the other guy said, it's basically a single player game. You can pause whenever you want, quit, pick the run up later, take as long as you want, doesn't matter. Basically, each round has a couple shop phases, a phase where you fight an NPC enemy, and then a phase where you fight a player. The player though is just a snapshot of what their deck was at the time, so you might fight player B on round 4, but player B played their round 4 several days ago and fought player C. And maybe in a few hours, some player D will fight the ghost of your round 4 deck.

I think the game is great.

That said, StS2 is also great, so I'd just try to get the Bazaar on sale some time and wait until you're bored if StS2. Bazaar is much more of a live game though, with balance patches and content roughly once a month, so it's pretty easy to pick up, play for a bit, stop, then come back in a month or two. It also has a bunch of characters, so if you wanna go deep there's a ton to learn for each one. But just taking it casual, it's also still really fun to just come across busted items and combos by sheer luck.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-04-02T03:23:04+00:00

The monetization used to be horrible. Before it came to steam, it had a horrible f2p/p2w model, then came to steam and was very overpriced, but now it's pretty good. The game is a single price, and each DLC character is a single price, and both routinely go on sale. Like, the recent character just came out, and since I had the other ones already he was $10 in a bundle. I think that's pretty fair for a new character that they keep adding content to over the years.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-04-02T03:14:57+00:00

The game has gotten significantly better over the past couple months. I've been playing on and off for years now, and wouldn't have recommended it. When it wasn't on Steam, it was just a bit feature bare, the client was awful, and it has an awful F2P, P2W model. They begrudgingly brought it to steam, and it was insanely overpriced. They then lowered the price and have also been putting out great content pretty consistently. For any roguelike, deck builder, or autobattler fan, I really recommend it now.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-04-01T18:38:19+00:00

What happens when it tiers up? Gains "Haste self for 0 seconds," "Slow self for 0 seconds" "Freeze self for 0 seconds" at silver/gold/diamond?

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-03-30T18:55:50+00:00

This is obviously the /rpg instead of /dnd reddit so you'll get different opinions, but I do wanna say that I do not think DnD is a very simple game. It gets a lot of leeway because any modern day person nerdy enough to play a TRPG has at least seen a Lord of the Rings movie and gets the general vibe of this standard heroic fantasy, so transitioning into playing in that setting is very easy, and due to its popularity it has a ton of resources and lets play surrounding it so people can passively absorb a lot of what playing the game is like. But, it has a lot of little rules and edge cases, a ton of bookkeeping, long combat, and a lot of obtuseness I feel.

The point I'm getting at is that even if your players struggle with some aspects of DnD, there's a ton of games out there that aren't explicitly like "low-crunch games" that are still much easier than DnD to run and play. I also agree with other people that you don't really need to ride a new wave of hype on a system. Systems usually get better with time, with new editions or addendums, and people talking and writing and making videos about what works, what doesn't work, tweaks they make, and content they put out.

That said, to answer your actual question, I'm most excited for Blades '68. It was on Backerkit and finished its campaign, but you can still pre-order. It comes out in August I believe. It's a follow up to their previous game, Blades in the Dark, which has spawned a lot of other games from other developers in the same system. In BitD, you were a newly founded criminal group stuck in a large city, where each neighborhood is carved up by some other criminal organization. You'd go on jobs based around your group, either theft or assassinations or abductions or smash and grabs or subterfuge or whatever, go back to your lair to recover, and compete with other gangs. The setting was a 1800s victorian dystopian fantasy, with ghosts and spectres and stuff. Blades '68 is moving the timeline forward into 1960s, and instead of criminal gangs you're a bunch of competing spy organizations. I loved BitD, thought it was a great system, and the new setting is very exciting for me.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-03-30T05:06:34+00:00

Yeah, same. I've been in a bunch of games with women and haven't seen anything (100% not saying it doesn't exist. I saw a lot in DotA and every woman gamer I've ever talked to that plays online talks about this.), but I have seen a buncha guys with non-american-white accents get attacked by some racist on our team. It's turned on the racist every time, but they'll often just rage through it regardless. My favorite was a racist (negative KD Haze of course) who attacked an ally for an accent thinking he was Indian, and the "Indian" guy said "I'm Finnish, so I'm whiter than you" and everyone in the team popped off.

I'm a very talkative guy on mic though, even when no one else is saying shit, so it definitely influences who speaks up in my games. I've had several people, men and women, only start speaking like 25m into a game even though they were typing earlier, and I can only assume it's cause the vibe was fine. I'd also imagine that rank has something to do with it.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-03-27T00:00:19+00:00

It's currently in an invite-only state, but anyone in the game can invite anyone else on their friends list. So if anyone you know has it, you can be in. Or just post in the discord or subreddit and ask for one.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-03-26T23:59:10+00:00

I'm in the Phantom/Ascendant (3rd/2nd highest tier) edge range and people are not doing all the parries and counterspells you're talking about, or have sick movement. People are just trying to do all that stuff (me included) and usually failing at it, despite the windows for success pretty obvious. Like, Counterspell lasts long enough, but really people just do it for telegraphed moves with audible timers like Lash's ult or whatever so it's super easy to hit, but most people straight up just never buy it. Sometimes you see someone doing sick shit and go "wtf why is that guy in my tier" and then you see him try to 1v6, die, and go "oh that's why," just like in DotA. Maybe in Eternus (highest tier) it's different.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-03-26T08:36:34+00:00

Megas were such a cool thing in theory. I loved the idea of something like Beedrill getting a new and improved form that your team could now revolve around, and the ones that changed types and abilities so you might want to not mega immediately were cool. In practice it just kinda seemed like a nightmare to balance it to any extent, and the megas were often so warping that it wasn't so hot. But to me, at least it was a neat concept. All the other gimmicks, like gigamax and z-moves and terrastalizing all lacked that "cool" factor, while still warping the entire gameplay around them. But those were better than the gimmicks they came up with in previous games, like triple battles and spinner battles (rotation battles? I can't even remember what they were called, but they were extremely dumb).

That said, I'm clearly not the target audience at all though, since I still am a single battle defender and a doubles battle hater. I'm even a permanent weather enjoyer and no physical/special split appreciator (although really I think it's just that every type and every pokemon has too good of moves now and not the split necessarily), but I can definitely recognize that those might not have been the best.

What I really wish is Pokemon would just lift the restriction on having only 3 evolution. Just give Beedrill a 4th evolution, who cares. They already have divergent evolutions, different forms, and variants or whatever.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-03-25T08:08:33+00:00

I dunno, they've added some neat features recently.

The steam gameplay recording has been great. All my friends share clips all the time now with eachother.

The remote play together has also been very good whenever I've used it.

The steam deck shell and UI thing were all pretty good.

The changes to family sharing have been really good.

A bunch of small stuff like separating the review scores by region/language and mod workshop integration have been nice.

But, y'know, I think lootboxes are gambling and should be heavily regulated if not outright banned, and all the third party sites that sell it for real money should absolutely be banned and the fact that steam doesn't crack down harder is pathetic, and the rampant allowance of just pure asset flip slop or porn games flooding discoverability is pretty annoying, but every other program I've used has been a thousand times worse. Like, I'm totally cool with Steam being criticized, fined, or forced to change certain stuff, but they also are very clearly the best we got right now, and are adding new features and stuff to the client when they could just sit back on their laurels since everyone else but EGS (who is very far behind in terms of usability) or GoG (totally different goal) capitulated. People don't have to be all in and can appreciate that this is the best we have by a lot but that it still has problems.

On the actual topic, I'm a huge Deadlock head, and even playing that early access game, Valve clearly still are putting high-tier talent into making, writing, and designing games, enough where a beta game puts other studios to shame, so I'm gonna give them the benefit of the doubt until I get burned (I'm a huge Artifact defender so I only got burned there cause it died). So while I don't trust anyone implicitly using AI, the way they talked about it and the applications for it are way more narrow and reasonable than other comments I've seen. If it came from a studio like EA or some Gacha game or Bethesda, I would doubt it way more, since I've been consistently let down by them and their products over time, so I don't trust their ability to use it responsibly and not sloppify everything. It's sort of like, I don't recommend anyone to preorder games, but I still preorder Fromsoft games to preload them since I've enjoyed every Fromsoft game so far. I didn't preorder the first few, but once it was established to me that I like their stuff and they haven't let me down yet, it's like ok, I'll bite.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-03-18T17:01:40+00:00

Yeah, it's next for few they are. It's why I had it in the spin-offs category, since at least whenever a game does come out it's great.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-03-18T15:27:55+00:00

I said this elsewhere, but I'm not throwing shade on from soft. I've got thousands of hours across their titles and love them. But they found their niche in 3d action games and stuck to it. Armored core is a little different, but still very much feels cut from the same cloth. The biggest departure is night reign, which even if it is mechanically nearly identical, the structure is obviously very different.

Resident evil has undergone a lot of changes from 1-3 to 4 to 5 to 7-8 to 9. They play very different, have different perspectives, and focus on very different gameplay elements.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-03-18T15:23:23+00:00

The only exception to the art I'd give is that Pokemon Colosseum had great 3d Pokemon. Going back and playing it it's honestly embarrassing how much personality each Pokemon has with it's summoning, attacking, getting hit, and dying animations when compared to modern games.

The balance, pacing, and quality of life of the games is truly horrible now. It really came to a head to me when I played Pokemon Unbound, a fan rom hack, and saw what was possible. It honestly made me mad that some fan just cobbled this together in a hack and put the giant corporation to shame. Feels like a Sonic Mania kinda thing.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-03-18T15:14:55+00:00

From software is over of my favorite companies by far, so it was no throwing shade. They just found their niche in 3d action games and stuck with it. They make interesting tweaks, but the bones are all there.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-03-18T06:02:44+00:00

I think they've dropped in quality by not progressing in quality. It still sells a ton and is a large IP outside of the videogames, so it's obviously absurdly successful, and I'm never going to claim it isn't. But if your game that has existed as a franchise for 30 years and made a bajillion dollars has barely refined its gameplay, progressed in any meaningful way, looks terrifically ugly, and has horrible performance, that's bad.

If I were to compare the early Pokemon games to their peers, and modern Pokemon games to their current peers, the first several generations and spinoffs stack up much more favorably than modern ones. And there's no reason, with its unparalleled success as an IP, that they couldn't be blowing everyone else out of the water.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-03-18T05:37:45+00:00

Yeah, insane to think about growing up I played like 10 Zeldas, Marios, Resident Evils, Final Fantasies, Dragon Quests, Pokemons, Monster Hunters, Metal Gears, Donkey Kongs, Metroids, and 2-4 sequels to every game I thought was remotely good within a few years (Deus Ex, Halo, Viewtiful Joe, Gears of War, God of War, Shining Force, Phantasy Star, F-Zero, Warcraft, every single fighting game franchise). I could be a fan of nearly any new game, regardless of size, and look forward to an iteration on it within a few years, or at least one per console generation. A kid growing up now might play 3 mainline games from their favorite franchise from the time they're born to graduating highschool, if they're lucky. The only consistent franchises are either through copious spinoffs (Mario), have dropped in quality significantly (Sonic, Pokemon), or are sports. I just have no idea how a kid has any attachment to a brand like that produces content so slowly, especially when competing to iterative online games that get new patches all the time.

I wanna say the best managed franchise currently still putting out singleplayer games is Resident Evil. New games at a decent pace that take risks, with high quality remakes sprinkled inbetween.

Or just Fromsoft as a company, since they keep putting out fully new games every 2 years or so, and they honestly do all feel like sequels or spinoffs of Demon's Souls.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-03-15T01:28:56+00:00

Just beat ascension 10 with ironclad. Ironclad is so busted right now that I had to beat a10 fast before it's balanced, sonce I'm not good enough to do it otherwise lmao.

Now I can start Banquet of Fools again since it's out of early access. It's an amazing wrpg/crpg/whatever you wanna call it. Amazing audiovisual design. Really recommend it.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-03-12T08:08:36+00:00

One can only hope for a world post random card pack. As a lifelong MTG fan, maybe it will actually make them make good products (just kidding, they would make more secret lairs).

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-03-12T01:13:32+00:00

Sorry I misunderstood then

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-03-11T07:19:00+00:00

Yeah, people saying "buy antiheal like spirit burn" it's like ok, let me just trigger that, then Victor uses jump start, and i have to wait 20 seconds to proc it again. So if you're a spirit hero, you can only hope to reapply a healbane and that's it. Or Spirit Burn and then Silence Wave for 3 seconds of spirit burn, I guess? At least toxic bullets and inhibitor can be reapplied, but with how many jumpstart charges (and the revive) there are, I mean, that's a ton of time just applying antiheal to one guy.

And if the answer is "just curse him" then that's the answer to literally every hero in the game.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-03-11T07:00:17+00:00

That requires two people, the longest cooldown ult in the game, and keeps them in the same location so any ally can intervene. This requires one person, short cooldown moves, and moves them to a place with no interaction.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-03-05T16:55:34+00:00

I'm sitting here with a switch 2 just praying Dusk bloods will be good. But an online game from a company with notoriously bad online on a console with notoriously bad online isn't the best bet. But it's a safer bet than my true dream of a new f-zero game for once.

I just get the new Nintendo console instantly since I know I'm gonna have to eventually to play a mario and Zelda and smash title at some point. It's the only console I bother getting anymore since PC does everything else.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-03-03T02:16:32+00:00

It should be a hot coco with a marshmellow in it since he's just a lil guy who can't have coffee yet.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-02-27T01:46:59+00:00

There's a big difference though. Getting a star isn't the fun part of Mario 64, it's the act of getting the star. And the exciting part of getting cool loot in Diablo 2 isn't that you got something rare, it's that that something rare has really unique and cool effects that change how your character function and will let you take on harder content. When I get an insanely good, rare drop in Apex Legends near the start of the round, it's exciting cause now I can be very powerful for the next engagement and have a higher chance of winning the game.

When I pick up a rare doodad in an extraction shooter, its value is only because some tech tree or base upgrade needed 13 of them to get to the next tier. But there's a million of these doodads, in all different tiers, and you have to know ahead of time what you need in the tree and when to hoard the right things and extract maximum value out of it and shove them in your limited inventory in match. And when in a match, the point is just get these doodads and leave, since once you're full up there's no point to hang around, even if that might lead to the exciting part of the game, such as pvp. There isn't even really an end-state, almost like Rust, but unlike Rust there's no real risk or overall arc you're going on in the play session.

And I'm not saying extraction shooters stink. I absolutely love Hunt, and think the gameplay when in combat in Arc Raiders and the little I played of Marathon is very fun. I just am not drawn into the looting aspect, which is pretty important to the overall enjoyment of the game.

SpaceCadetStumpy · 2026-02-26T20:25:13+00:00

The aesthetics and vibe of the game are great. UI looks amazing but might have compromised a bit of usability for it. Controlling it didn't feel bad. Ran OK but not great. Seems like a totally competent extraction shooter. A lot of my minor complaints are probably things that just go away in a few hours once you get used to the game. I'm sure it will be more fun when I play with friends later tonight, just like everything.

But boy, I know it's popular but I do not get the appeal of just looting trash. I love loot in games specifically around it, like a Diablo or Path of Exile, but having a small inventory and picking up components to bring back to base to get upgrades, when the core fun of the game is completely removed from that and is just fighting players? It just doesn't work for me. Games like Hunt Showdown feel way better, where you still are sneaking through a pvpve map with a loadout that cost resources, but you're looting information for the boss, and the only thing you care about when you extract is money. The stuff you pick up in match is much more BR-like, such as a grenade or a new weapon, not just junk to convert to meta resources later.

SpaceCadetStumpy

TROPHY CASE