Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Topics - Mephisto

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 6
1
Other Games / Re:Legend: Stardew meets Monster Rancher, out now
« on: August 31, 2019, 02:01:41 pm »
I mentioned this game in the "games that don't deserve their own thread" thread a few times as it wasn't out yet. But now it's out.



Home page
Kickstarter campaign
Steam - Normally $20 but is discounted to $18 for the first week.

Re:Legend was the subject of a successful Kickstarter campaign just a smidge over two years ago as of this post. It was slated to fulfill about a year ago but didn't. If you've been on the platform for any length of time, you probably expected that. They kept people in the loop with a monthly interactive update, however, so that helped to alleviate concerns.

Pretend I didn't read the final 4/5 of the thread title. What is this?

Re:Legend is a game of many hats.

You can do all of your typical farmgame things. Grow crops. Forage. Mine. Fight wild creatures for their body parts. Raise animals in your barn (I think).
You craft new equipment using things you've gathered and you seem to be able to unlock new stuff at some point. You have a number of "elemental" tabs in your crafting bench that you can cycle between but most are empty.



Pictured: Three of the... elemental item types? Water, plant, and... desert? poison?
You can do quests for the townsfolk, who are a mix of humans and penguins for some reason. I have no clue what rewards you get as I've only played a few in-game days at the moment.
Finally, you can tame wild creatures. These give you new abilities based on the creature. I've only tamed the mandatory water creature at the moment, which has proved helpful. It can water three tiles at once (a feat that would require upgrading your starting watering can) and uses its own pool of SP (energy, if you've played Stardew) to do it.

There's an overarching quest regarding the wild magnus (read: Poke-creature things) becoming more aggressive lately. Some ghost voyeur dude hangs out in your house while you're sleeping whispering to you about corruption and how you're the only one who can help. Oh, and some asshole tries to murder you as soon as you finish customizing your toon.



So there are boatloads of things to do. I'm assuming that more villagers arrive at some point as most of the businesses seem to be empty. And there are a lot of them.

My only complaint thus far is that the controls are a bit wonky. My controller mostly worked in the menus. But then to go back to the previous menu, you've got to hit Esc. While you're playing, you can hit F to progress conversations and interact with things. Except after a save, where you've got to click a button. Targeting attacks is a bit weird as well.

And upon firing up the game, I discover that one of the early quests seems to be bugged now. I can no longer resolve the differences of the blips and the prunis so I guess I get to restart. That's annoying but I suppose I shouldn't have went to sleep, saved, and then quit mid-quest.

Those issues should be fairly trivial to fix and the game's in EA at the moment so I suspect those low-hanging fruit to be addressed before the full release.

Multiplayer

You can play with a total of 1-4 players. I don't know anyone with the game, however, and my second key hasn't arrived yet so I've been unable to test it out. Just know that it supposedly exists and there's a menu item for it.

2
General Discussion / Homebrewing thread - turning evil carbs into alcohol
« on: June 04, 2019, 11:30:18 am »
A few rules to start off:

  • I don't condone underage drinking, whatever that may be wherever you happen to be. Here in the US, that would be under 21 without parental approval. Keep this in mind.
  • Also here in the US, home distillation is illegal. Don't do it. You could go blind.

We don't want to bring trouble upon the Toad so just don't go there.


With that out of the way, let's get this started. Are you a beer brewer? Amateur vintner? Toilet wine/pruno aficionado? Here's your place. Pics approved, recipes optional, words are okay too.

My first content addition is in the works. Feel free to ninja me if you can.

3
Other Games / Volcanoids - the latest in mining, crafting, and the combination of the two
« on: January 09, 2019, 09:03:40 am »
I received a closed alpha key for this game and played it for a bit. Thought some of you might like it. Wrote a review for my gaming group. Thought some of you might like that too. The review hasn't been updated with the results of my second session but it's still a pretty good overview of the first 30 minutes. Doesn't go in-depth on any mechanics, though.

Discuss?


Marketing wank
Enter the lotto here (#alpha-key-lottery room, drawing on Jan 11)
More wank



You play as the unnamed, unvoiced, unseen protagonist in a very steampunk world. The submarine you arrive on is entirely made of polished brass and is captained by the most stereotypical of ship captains.

You can immediately tell a few things from this screenshot. You start with a pickaxe. The red thing on the left says "refinery." The blue thing on the right says "production." You'll be doing lots of mining and then crafting those things into other things.



You do missions for the stereotypical captain. You get no reward for finishing them, aside from the incidentals. The initial quest chain, for instance, involves you being voluntold to mine things, voluntold to craft those things into components, voluntold to kill the evacuees of the pictured damaged shitbox, and then voluntold to install one of your faction's ship cores for a bit of grand theft drillship.







In this procession of pictographs, you can see me ramming my steely rod (flying the GRG banner) into the planet shortly before it explodes hot sticky stuff everywhere. The island recovers quickly (grass is green and trees have regrown their leaves in about a minute) and is ready to do it again in eighteen minutes.

The end goal is to stop the Cogs (enemy steampunk automaton faction we jacked our own drillship from) from doing whatever it is that they're doing. They've got three drills around the volcano that you need to disable. Conveniently, you need to upgrade your ship over the course of many hours in order to reach drills 2 and 3.


Final thoughts:

This was written at the 30 minute mark. The timer is already grating on me. I'll probably put a few hours into it anyway. Each of the two unlockable regions add a new resource and journalistic integrity or something like that demands I see them.

At the very least, I'll revisit the game when updates occur until my access is revoked at the end of the alpha period (projected to be the end of Jan).


Updates:

I received confirmation in their Discord that the first eruption is timed a bit differently. It's only 10 minutes, I'm assuming so that it'll show up pretty soon after you've hopefully taken ownership of the enemy drillship. I kind of want to start a new game and see if being incompetent leads to a Non-Standard Game Over. That at least explains my experience and I've updated the review text to reflect that.

4
Other Games / We farmers now (Farm Sim thread)
« on: December 05, 2018, 12:06:11 pm »
For the purpose of this thread, "Farm Sim" refers to games wherein you farm, possibly using heavy machinery, and the various materials that you buy/sell may have variable prices. This discounts things like FarmVille and Farm Together - things always cost the same amount and things always sell for the same price, meaning there's rarely a reason to change what you plant.

I'm relatively new to playing the genre, though I've been aware of it for quite some time. I'm currently working my way through Farmer's Dynasty (think of it like a realistic Stardew Valley minus magic and combat - farm with big machinery, repair buildings, raise your social standing with the locals, and then get married) on PC and Farming Simulator 18 on mobile, though I also ran through the Farming Simulator 13 tutorials on PC this week. That last one is probably going to be shelved - it's so far out of date that I'm probably better off waiting until I "finish" Farmer's Dynasty and then jumping ship to FS19.

So, any other fans of the genre? Favorite games? Any must-have mods?

5
Life Advice / Self-hosted software recommendations
« on: August 03, 2018, 10:38:34 am »
I'm considering self-hosting my long-form RPG reviews and any other random textual shenanigans I may do. As such, I need to compare loads of software or write something myself.

Thoughts I've had:

- Standard forum software. One thread per review. Reviews consist of several comments, roughly one comment per chapter/other logical breaking point. The community can get involved in between the review comments.
- GeekList-style. That list was chosen at random but makes for a good example. The basic premise would be that review updates would be top-level items. Comments relating to that update would be in threads associated with that item. Basically, "Reddit-style" but there's only one subthread per item and ranking doesn't change order. Comment-level conversation would be straightforward but meta or whole-review talk would be fairly hidden all the way at the bottom of the page.
- Write something myself if nothing exists.

So, thoughts? Responses? Insults?

6
General Discussion / Make someone sad (sad song thread)
« on: March 06, 2018, 10:12:13 pm »
What's the absolute saddest song you know (links appreciated)? Make this deeply broken individual ugly cry, if you can.

7
Other Games / Be dwarves, dig holes, shoot bugs (Deep Rock Galactic)
« on: February 28, 2018, 10:17:02 am »
This came out in Steam Early Access/Xbox Game Preview today.

Steam
The other place

Basically the subject. Be one of four dwarves with different abilities. Get shot off to a rock somewhere in a giant drill. Go mining for resources while defending your group from bugs.

I'm going to wait until work ends in about seven hours, hoping some good first impressions come out. I've seen some alpha footage but I'm curious what's changed since.

Note the two stores I linked. Windows Store purchasers (Windows 10 only, apparently) can play with Xbox players but not Steam players. Make your decisions accordingly.

Now go forth and squash bugs (or don't, I'm not your parental unit).

8
Other Games / Vintage Story - I Can't Believe It's Not TerraFirmaCraft
« on: January 25, 2018, 07:21:07 pm »

Website
Discord

Someone over in the Minecraft thread mentioned this. I went and checked it out, realized exactly how similar to TFC it was, and bought it. Crop rotation, knapping, more in-depth blacksmithing (though less annoying than TFC had). There's modding support, though there aren't really many mods yet. It's currently going for $9.



The devs like to watch people play so if you stream or otherwise record yourself, join the Discord or let me know.

9
Other Games / Mephisto's Gaming Servers
« on: January 11, 2018, 09:08:59 am »
<snip>

10
Other Games / Deep Sky Derelicts - Darkest Dungeon in SPESS
« on: November 17, 2017, 11:05:12 am »
I saw a few videos of Deep Sky Derelicts on YouTube. The art and theme made me pause the video and go buy it before resuming. One of the videos I watched compared it to early Darkest Dungeon. You know, right when it was released? There wasn't much to it but the potential was there.

In a sentence: Hub-based dungeon exploration where you're intended to die repeatedly.

You've got a party of three. You can choose their class at the beginning but that's it. Each comes with a different loadout of equipment. Generally that's a weapon (or two), a tool (or two), and a shield. Each item gives a selection of "cards" that are randomly drawn from at the beginning of combat. Continuing the card theme, I'm pretty sure skills are shuffled back in immediately after use. You can also add two mods to each item, adding more cards to your deck.

You grab quests from the hub. You head out to derelicts. You explore, gathering loot and experience and using energy. You head back to the hub to sell your loot, hand in any quests you might have finished (you don't have to complete them in one go), and refill your energy before heading back out.

You're going to have money issues unless you play smart. When you start off, you may notice that you begin with 1500 credits and there are many nice items you'd like in the pawn shop. Those items go for 2-500 credits each. It takes upwards of a hundred credits to refill your energy each time you come back. Healing damage costs several hundred per character. Resurrecting a character takes a thousand. You rarely sell an item for more than a hundred. The starting quests may give you 500 or so, while progressing the main quest may result in 1500.

As I said, play smart. My most successful game thus far has me spending as little as possible on "stuff", instead saving it for life support costs and any healing I may have to do. My equipment and mods come from loot.

The game is heavy on resource management. Keep your shields up so you don't have to do expensive healing back at the hub. Watch your energy, making sure you've got enough to get back to your ship. Energy decreases in combat as well so keep an eye on it and don't enter combat (or just run) if you're running low. You can't completely disregard combat, however - leveling up your characters gives you skill points that greatly improve your surviveability.

The videos I watched:
SplatterCat
ChristopherOdd

The game

11
Other Games / Harvest Moon: Light of Hope
« on: November 13, 2017, 08:18:59 am »
I heard DangerouslyFunny (YouTube guy who loves Stardew Valley and basically all other Harvest-Moon-likes) mention that this is going to drop in a few days and had to go check it out. I'm not sure about "in a few days" but it is supposed to come out this month.

I've owned every Harvest Moon (, Rune Factory, and Innocent Life) game on a Nintendo console from N64-Wii, portables included, and the PSP games. I'll probably be picking this up soon after release assuming reviews aren't ass.

Check it out. There's not a whole lot of info there but it's Harvest Moon. You should know basically what you're getting.

12
Play With Your Buddies / Mephisto Reads Shadows Over Sol
« on: November 03, 2017, 09:25:02 pm »
Welcome to Let's Read!

In this thread, I'll be taking a book, reading it cover-to-cover, and posting my thoughts. You can think of it as a long, rambly review. Anyone who wants to comment, ask questions, or generally kibbitz is welcome to do so. If you have the item yourself, then please follow along and share! I'll do roughly a chapter per post, and aim for a new post every couple of days.

If you like this format, and want to read more threads like it, please see (and subscribe to!) the megathread.

Carrying on my RPG Geek tradition, I'll be doing a Let's Read of another Kickstarter product I received, Shadows Over Sol.

Shadows Over Sol was the subject of a successful Kickstarter back in 2015. It, the core system backing it (Saga Machine), and the one other game using that system (Against the Dark Yogi, an interesting RPG set in Mythic India) are authored by Thorin Tabor. Tab Creations then went on to create Dime Adventures, their one RPG that I don't own but should probably look into at some point.

They originally sought $1200 but ended up with $7800, unlocking all 15 listed stretch goals. I've given most of the products I received at least a once-over and was pleased with them. Everything is in full color. The core book that I received is the standard hardcover but the pages feel nice to turn. I'm not sure what the premium printing would add. I ordered my at-cost copy four months after the estimated delivery date which, as far as Kickstarters generally go, is ahead of schedule.

The system's tagline is "Science Fiction Horror Roleplaying". That's wide open to interpretation, however - it includes three different "modes", survival, investigative, and action horror. Each, in turn, gives an increasing amount of Wealth and Purchases. We'll cover them once we progress through a significant portion of the book.

* I have not yet played this, so take my findings with a grain of salt.

I hope the above interests you in some manner. If so, stick around and I'll start my actual review over the coming days.

Feel free to jump straight to any section you may be interested in. I'll update this list as we go.

Table of Contents and partial Introduction
Introduction (conclusion)

13
Play With Your Buddies / Let's Read Megathread
« on: November 03, 2017, 01:38:32 pm »
The "Let's Read" has a long and storied past. In general, a Let's Read involves going through a creative work and commenting as you go. This can be like a super-in-depth review, it can facilitate community discussion, or it can complete basically any other objective you can come up with.

"Enough of this," you say, "That doesn't make much sense. What's a Let's Read?"

"You must not have very good reading comprehension," would be my response, given you ignored my short Let's Read definition. I guess you'll probably want examples, though.

Spoiler: Tabletop RPGs (click to show/hide)

And that's the extent of my knowledge. Thanks to MetalSlimeHunt, however, I now know about the following:

Spoiler: Other Works (Traditional books, graphic novels, comics, movies, TV series, and more) (click to show/hide)


Rules
  • Don't do anything that would bring toady wrath (or government organizations) upon this megathread or any component threads.
  • Have fun!

Guidelines
  • Don't write too much at a time. If you're struggling to finish a chapter, for example, just post what you've got and come back later. I didn't do this and my Let's Read suffered for it.
  • Make your own thread, titled whatever is appropriate. "YourNameHere Watches Soylent Green", "Let's Read The Satanic Verses by OtherUser", whatever.
  • Include a header in your OP if you like supporting community works. Nothing too intense, and I'll include a sample header (it's the one I'm going to use) shortly.
  • Post your thread here. If you want to make a new reply for each thread you make, that's fine. If you want to make one post and continually edit new threads into it as you make them, that's fine as well. Whatever works for you.
  • And last, but not least, have fun!

Mephisto's header, stolen straight from RPG Geek
Code: [Select]
Welcome to Let's Read!

In this thread, I'll be taking a book, reading it cover-to-cover, and posting my thoughts. You can think of it as a long, rambly review. Anyone who wants to comment, ask questions, or generally kibbitz is welcome to do so. If you have the item yourself, then please follow along and share! I'll do roughly a chapter per post, and aim for a new post every couple of days.

If you like this format, and want to read more threads like it, please see (and subscribe to!) the [url=http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=168118.0]megathread[/url].

Spoiler: Old OP (click to show/hide)

14
Other Games / Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - First Assault Online: The Subtitling
« on: June 18, 2017, 12:06:45 am »
I wanted to poke fun at the game's title in the thread subject but this is all you get. It's two chars shy of our subject length limit.

Anyway, I received a key for the $20 DLC in the E3 Humble Bundle (13 hours left as of this writing). Decided to pick it up because I've played too much TF2 in the past and wanted something new. It's been great fun thus far but I definitely won't be springing for any of the DLC with my own cash.

Store page

The good:
It's not dead, unlike some team-based shooters you can probably find.
There's always a game going on. With the matchmaking system, I always get a game within five seconds.

The meh:
There are supposedly going to be PVE and PVP matches. As of the current beta, there's just the different PVP types.

The bad:
Sometimes the game spawns me in when joining a match before giving me control (and sometimes before the loading screen ends). This results in my invincibility going away and usually ends up with me getting killed before my play time even starts.

The ugly:
There are eight operatives you can play as, each with different skills, weapons, and so on. You pick one when starting out. You purchase the rest with a good amount of in-game cash. Until then, you better be sure to pick someone you like.

I went with the sniper character even though I suck at sniping. That's really not a hindrance though - he also starts with two alternate loadouts containing an smg and an assault rifle. See below screenshot for one possible result of not sniping as the sniper.

And now the one solitary screenshot I took. No gameplay or anything, just something I found intensely amusing after a grand total of two hours of play:
Spoiler: I did a thing! (click to show/hide)

Hit me up if you decide you want to play with a fellow Bay Watcher.

15
Other Games / Let's pretend to be a PMC (Arma 3 Exile thread)
« on: May 22, 2017, 11:22:51 pm »
I've been playing a lot of the Arma 3 Exile mod lately. The process of taking my truck around the map, loading up on shit, then heading to the trader to sell it all was fun for a bit but it's growing a bit tiring. I'd like to check out some missions and possibly start building a base.

About Arma 3: A 20 minutes into the future military sim with go-karts.

About Exile: A PvE/PvP (depending on server) game mode involving base building, loot acquisition, and zombies to kill or random events to participate in (again, depending on server).

How to play: Download A3Launcher, pick a server, wait for mods to download, and don't worry about manual mod installation.

Why would you want to play this? I've got a few stories. You can decide for yourself if it sounds fun. These are fairly similar and take place on one of the servers with bandit AI and random missions.

Spoiler: Story 1 (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Story 2 (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Story 3 (click to show/hide)

Now that all of that's over, I'd like to propose a Bay12 unit. Chat through Discord or something, build a base, do missions or raids together, whatever sounds like fun at the time. I'd suggest the server I'm on now if only because I've managed to garner a bit of respect with the traders (more awesome equipment, vehicles, etc require a given level of respect) but I'll hold off for now - I'd like to gauge interest and see what kind of mod selection any interested parties may have.

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 6