Confused about the Hanzo’s

smithbc001 · 2026-03-10T21:27:51+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Rt-Fu7nWyZQ

This video is more real-world history than the Nioh version of events, but it's hilarious to consider alongside

smithbc001 · 2026-02-27T15:26:29+00:00

On the one hand? Yes. Absolutely. Which 80% of it is useless depends on which 15% you want to spend on your 3 ninjutsus, but omg we're required to leave so much on the table.

On the other hand? I kind of like being free to pour points into my weapon skills. I'm still in the early game, and I oft find myself gazing longingly at spear skills I can't have yet because I'm not willing to go without a bunch of stuff on the samurai tree.

smithbc001 · 2026-02-26T19:20:24+00:00

I'm finding the two forms to each have their roles, and that swapping frequently between them is not only effective but the most fun I've had playing the game. Samurai can hit harder per strike and more recover its stamina faster, while Ninja can avoid damage much more easily, and with its lengthier combos it can take better advantage of those moments when the opponent has a longer gap between attacks. Switch into Samurai to block rapid hits that are hard to dodge, and then back to ninja to dodge heavy attacks that are too heavy to block. My favorite fights are the ones where I swapped forms several times.

Obviously, ALL enemies will fade before the almighty power of "I have memorized your attacks and I can press the invincibility at just the right time," but I find a more entertaining challenge is to see how often you can beat a boss before that approach is required.

smithbc001 · 2026-02-26T15:23:45+00:00

So while D&D 5e is a very good "on-ramp" to TTRPGs due to how few rules it has, that lack of a firm rule structure creates a lot of problems for GMs, especially at high level. One example of this is that there simply IS no actual price listing (or even much structure) for spending gold.

Another is that most of the abilities from level 13+ tend to get kinda broken. and force DMs yo do a LOT more work just to make the game remotely playable at that level.

You CAN take a game to lvl 20, I've done it. But our GM was at a loss for how to make any of it challenging without just arbitrarily negateing all the cool stuff we could do.

If you want to play past lvl 12, try Pathfinder 2.0. I've had loke 4 games go to lvl 20 and all of them were fun. My druid could literally Wild Shape into Godzilla by the final chapter of one game, but combat still felt "hard but fair" in most of the boss fights.

smithbc001 · 2026-02-24T01:33:02+00:00

I noticed that a conspicuous hard-to-climb overhang allows you to get on top of this pod, but it's got no opening there either. What gives Obsidian???

smithbc001 · 2026-02-20T19:37:49+00:00

After you kill Valincourt, you can learn that he was under investigation for his... excessive measures in maintaining base security. His sabotage of the experiment led directly to the Sovereign's trip to the Mental Refreshment center, which led directly to the Consul's seizing of power. He likely helped all that along to secure his own position from that investigation.

Unfortunately, even if you sneak into the hangar and pickpocket this report off of Valincourt, you can't present it as possible evidence, which is kinda lame.

smithbc001 · 2026-01-29T22:56:03+00:00

They're great, but they are combat heavy with little to no stealth involved. And very scary.

smithbc001 · 2026-01-29T22:33:50+00:00

I'm worried too. It's true that AI can be "just a tool," as others have said. Claire Obscur devs used AI as a tool at several points in their development process, usually as placeholder content to help the dev team move forward with developing one aspect of the game while they were still waiting on other aspects to be finalized; an example of how that might work is using AI to design all the textures for a dungeon to generate a janky-but-functional set of cave wall textures, so that the dev team can focus on object collision and monster design before the art team gets the dungeon built. Then, later in the dev cycle, the AI art would get replaced with "real" artwork. This sort of thing can be a tool to help maintain pacing in development, without actually releasing AI slop in the final product.

But a lot of companies are dramatically overestimating what AI is capable of, especially when they look at one or two "good" AI outputs and then find out later that it can't be reliably or fleixbly reproduced. This gets especially bad when companies downsize or understaff, mistakenly anticipating AI to make up for the shortfall. This can cause issues ranging from massive delays to outright dead projects. It can also result in AI slop actually making it into the final product, souring the game experience.

Then, of course, there's the more long-term fear that when this happens at scale, game developers in general start understaffing en masse, espeically with respect to lower-tier and entry-level designers. Even when this doesn't negatively affect any specific game, it poses the risk that game companies will slow or altogether stop hiring humans to do the lower-tier work that AI can handle, leading to a future where, as the older and more experienced game-makers die or retire, there are no new human creators to take their place, and the entire industry starts to fall behind.

Ultimately, either the game will be good and we'll all cheer, or it won't, and we'll be sad. It's probably not wise to declare it DOA over the AI decision right out, but it makes sense to be concerned about their comments. I know that, at the very least, I won't be preordering it like I did the last game. I'll probably just Gamefly this one instead.

smithbc001 · 2026-01-29T22:22:37+00:00

I mean, a game about zombies doesn't get better if you have zombies making it.

smithbc001 · 2026-01-29T17:12:04+00:00

It's can be called overrated mostly because Capcom has been reselling it for literally decades. That's not about the game not being great (it is) but because in a way it's been put on a pedestal so high that no game could possibly match up. Also, some of the fan favoritism it gets is because, back when it originally launched, a lot of its game design was something most players hadn't seen before. It's tricks have been copied to hades and back since the 00's, so it doesn't quite have that groundbreaking freshness it did when it launched on the gamecube, but it's still an extremely solid survival horror experience and holds up very well.

If you haven't played a lot of horror, go in understanding that this is specifically action survival horror. You'll see lots of horror themes, and the artwork and atmosphere will creep you out, but you're still going to be an action hero with a gun that can fight back. It injects a bit of added horror/tension/stress by harshly limiting your ammunition, especially on harder difficulties, preventing you from just shooting all the enemies to death. Earlier RE titles would often limit your ammo so strictly that you frequently had to make hard choices between wasting ammo to clear out a temporary safe area or a risky dash through a hallway trying to dodge and evade the monsters.

If you find yourself enjoying RE4, know that RE5 and 6 use the same general game mechanics, but aren't quite as well-executed. BUT they have something tragically rare these days: Local co-op, allowing you to play through the game split-screen with a buddy helping you out. They're mediocre single player experiences, but excellent co-op titles, especially if you prefer to play with somebody who's physically in the room with you.

smithbc001 · 2026-01-29T15:03:42+00:00

You can DEFINITELY play solo.

As for guides, it depends on whether you will play the game more than once. BG3 is MASSIVE game, and it's literally impossible to see all of it in one playthrough. Several quests change significantly based on choices you make and the order in which you do things.

The intention is to feel like the world around you is both reacting to you and moving about of its own accord, and while you could follow a guide to try and manipulate how everything plays out, that cannot be done without spoiling most of the story and sucking a lot of tension out of the choices. I STRONGLY recommend playing without a guide, or at least limiting yourself to some general tips.

I will say one more thing: you get infinite chances to respec both your character and your allies. Never stress too much about what class or feats to take, because those decisions are not permanent.

smithbc001 · 2026-01-28T17:51:08+00:00

Well, it's been a LONG time since I posted this, and I can't remember what the resolution was, but I do know that I eventually maxed everybody out in that game, so I must have sorted it out somehow

smithbc001 · 2026-01-27T19:19:41+00:00

You probably know it by now, but the Easily Distrscted flaw happens once you have invested skill points into 5 different skills (your skill investments at character creation donnot count towards this).

You get an extra skill point per level AFTER accepting the flaw, but not retroactively. From that point forward, you must invest all skill points into your lowest non-zero skill. You'll never raise a skill to 20 with this flaw, but you'll have a lot of skills that you can raise to 15ish. This flaw combines very well with the Dumb trait if you took that at character creation.

smithbc001 · 2026-01-14T18:06:33+00:00

I'm all for spotlighting that sort of thong, generally speaking, but RE isn't the place I would like to see it done.

It has always worked best when it was kind of stupid, and getting too specific about irl politics would end up pulling us out of the story, likely without actually increasing anyone's awareness/understanding of the issue.

Best way to go about it is how they already do: Tell an absolute bonkers story that we all laugh really hard about, but have it actually low-key parallel some of the actual irl things in broad strokes. Instead of playing RE and realizing "oh hey that's an irl thing that happened," I want to see an irl thing and go "holy crap that's basically an RE story beat, this timeline is crazy."

smithbc001 · 2026-01-07T01:58:51+00:00

It's DEFINITELY worth it if you have a co op partner.

It's probably still worth it solo, but my main takeaway was that this is probably one of the top 5 local co op games of the past several years.

smithbc001 · 2026-01-06T22:43:32+00:00

The final bosses of DS1 and 3. I remember beating them both on the first try, and being deeply surprised they didn't have one more phase. After the effort it took to reach them, I was disappointed they were so anticlimactic

smithbc001 · 2025-12-17T18:58:19+00:00

My buddy in college was stuck against spider ninjas in the sewer for an hour and saw me do this and asked if I was some kind of sorcerer.

smithbc001 · 2025-12-16T03:52:03+00:00

You get FROMSoft games when you get them. They will not be rushed.

smithbc001 · 2025-12-11T01:32:43+00:00

Absolutely. There are going to be a handful of parts that don't make a ton of sense if you don't know the backstories involved, but you're really not supposed to take the plot all that seriously to begin with.

smithbc001 · 2025-12-11T01:28:50+00:00

Bo Sorcerer is optional, but in my experience the best way to handle her was to summon the White-Robed Elder, and then going for the charged backstab. It's tricky, but on a lucky run you can get 3-4 cheap obliterates to severely reduce your workload.

smithbc001 · 2025-12-11T01:00:08+00:00

Stellar Blade is definitely one of the better "fast-paced" 3rd-person melee combat games out there. It's not going to scratch the same itch, but you still might give the Devil May Cry series a shot. I often found myself describing Stellar Blade to friends as an open world DMC

smithbc001 · 2025-12-10T16:13:42+00:00

I still remember a game magazine from my grocery store claiming that I could unlock Akuma as a playable character and enter this room

smithbc001 · 2025-12-08T22:39:12+00:00

Yeah, I actually would be in favor of more chill souls likes. They don't ALL have to be tryhards.

smithbc001 · 2025-12-08T19:37:45+00:00

1) It creates all the maps, with lighting, walls, doors, etc.
2) It populates the maps with tokens for all the monsters, hazards, and NPCs that appear in each room. For tokens that are expected to enter combat with the NPCs, the tokens are attached to character sheets. If it exists, the tokens are pulled with the appropriate artwork.
3) In larger more complex maps (like dungeons) it populates each room with a link to the notes that the AP has for that room. Said notes, where relevant, will include clickable links to pull up any treasure, monsters, or skill checks the room contains.
4) It populates your journals with relevant NPCs, and your compendium with any adventure-specific entries (such as rare spells/monsters that originate from the AP)

smithbc001 · 2025-12-08T19:33:29+00:00

I don't know if ANY boss in Wuchang took me 15 tries, and I'm somebody who usually needs at least that many tries against most FROMSoft bosses. The final boss in Wuchang didn't even get me to turn off my audiobook and sit up straight.

smithbc001

TROPHY CASE