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Highway Blossoms

A VN - how do you call one of these where you don't have any choice to make and just follow the story to unfold? - about a girl on a memory trip in her mobile home just after her granddad passed away. Saying more would risk to kill the story, so i'll let it at that.

Oh, and it's a lesbian story, in case you might not want to read such a thing and avoid it a all cost.

I liked it a lot, even if I'm a guy and so maybe not the "target market". But i liked it a lot. The characters are cute, quite well written and you can relate. The story is what it is, and to be honest maybe it drags a little towards the end, but it's never easy to end a story, so it didn't bother me.

Expect between 4 and 6 hours of reading, depending on if you're a fast reader or not. I'm a quite fast reader, so it took me a little more than 4 hours. No replayability of course, except a "goofball mode" which apparently makes the dialogue crazier, but I didn't try and most likely won't ever.

So far in 2018: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2018/post12
Panzer Dragoon (Xbox One)

I unlocked the original game after completing Orta, so went straight on to play it as well. The first game in the series is much closer to what you would expect from an arcade title of the time. It's shorter than Orta and it needs to be since you don't save between levels...you just get a number of continues and have to complete the game in one sitting. Like I said this is pretty much a game you would find in an arcade rail shooter, such as Space Harrier.

It was good, especially considering it's from 1995 from a failed console, the Saturn. Though compared to the later Orta it lacks much of the gameplay to make it more interesting- you don't have the ability to change forms or speed up and slow down for example. This one did get a PC port though, it's what the Xbox version is based on. There was a PS2 version as well, so between all the option plus emulators, anyone should have something that can play the game.

Now I really want to play Panzer Dragoon Zwei and the really interesting RPG Panzer Dragoon Saga. But for those the only options are a real Saturn (and paying near $800 for the ultra rare Saga RPG disc) or emulation. I've never emulated A Saturn, I'll have to look into it, I want to finish this series.
Post edited April 26, 2018 by CMOT70
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F4LL0UT: ...Meanwhile Satellite Reign has some painfully slow RTS-style combat with a rock-paper-scissors system on top of it where you, comparably slowly, work yourself through shields, then armor and finally health of almost each friggin' enemy. ...
Did you try playing with that ultra damage setting? I think I briefly tried it out and it completely changes the game. You kill enemies far, far faster, but you are also a lot more squishy yourself.

Personally I loved Satellite Reign. Only sometimes did it get a little monotonous since it's such a long game and you kind of do the same thing over and over. Still, the variety in the level design kept things fresh for me, as well as the multitude of approaches to each objective.
I never played the first Syndicate, but I played Syndicate Wars a lot. I sort of prefer Syndicate wars' overall vibe, with its cleaner sci-fi aesthetic, and of course the fact that you can totally destroy everything up to and including skyscrapers. But apart from that I thought of Satellite Reign as a big improvement. Though for a next playthrough I'm definitely going to go for ultra damage since yes, combat could become a bit too drawn out sometimes.

What I'd love to see one day is another Satellite Reign type game, but with Commandos 2's approach to buildings. I.e. you can enter buildings, and guards inside buildings can spot you inside, and vice versa. I can only replay Commandos 2 so many times dammit!
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CMOT70: Now I really want to play Panzer Dragoon Zwei and the really interesting RPG Panzer Dragoon Saga. But for those the only options are a real Saturn (and paying near $800 for the ultra rare Saga RPG disc) or emulation. I've never emulated A Saturn, I'll have to look into it, I want to finish this series.
Saturn emulation is far from ideal but it's made a lot of progress in the past year or so and I think the Panzer Dragoon games run pretty well under Mednafen.
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CMOT70: Now I really want to play Panzer Dragoon Zwei and the really interesting RPG Panzer Dragoon Saga. But for those the only options are a real Saturn (and paying near $800 for the ultra rare Saga RPG disc) or emulation. I've never emulated A Saturn, I'll have to look into it, I want to finish this series.
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andysheets1975: Saturn emulation is far from ideal but it's made a lot of progress in the past year or so and I think the Panzer Dragoon games run pretty well under Mednafen.
I had a look at the system requirements for Mednafens Saturn emulation plugin...minimum recommended: 4 core Haswell 3.5G plus CPU...that rules me out! It must be using one core for each Saturn processor and brute forcing the rest. BizHawk and RetroArch use the Mednafen core too. That only leaves Yabause. No harm in giving it a try.
Kivi's Underworld

Not wanting to commit to longer, more complicated games, I thought this title might be able to fill that void that my completion of Crimsonland left last week, albeit in a different genre. Soldak Entertainment's second game seems to be less well known than the first, Depths of Peril, and the third, Din's Curse, and to my knowledge it's only available on the developer's website (EDIT: and GamersGate!) .

The gameplay is hack and slash dungeon crawling like the other two, but its concept is different in that it's score-based to a certain extent and split into shorter levels (30, in total; I'd estimate one level takes about 10-20 minutes to play through on average). You don't just play one character that you build up by leveling, gaining more and more abilities. Instead you unlock lots of different characters, each with their own Active and Passive Ability, and you get skill points depending on your performance/score in a level and then distribute them to permanently raise Offense, Defense, Health, Mana, Active Ablility and Passive Ability for *all* characters. Your score is based on the opponents you kill and the treasure you find, and there are bonus points for finding secrets, completely clearing levels, as well as killing several enemies or destroying several crates within a short time window, or for overkills or close calls. Loot crates contain treasure and power ups only, no equipment. So you don't get to find and use different weapons and armor and such, each character always sticks to the same two abilities and their stats are based on the general stats shared by all characters. You can find power ups to raise those stats in a level, but those raises will only be temporary until you finish the level. Other power ups are like one-use special abilities, you can pick them up and your "inventory"/quick bar can hold three of them at the same time. If you want to pick up a fourth one, you first have to use up one of the other three. They include area of effect attacks like fire or ice magic, buffs like stone skin, critical strike, holy shield etc. or other useful stuff like health and mana leech or refills. All of that makes it seem even more like an action game than the average ARPG. And I really like this concept.

But in practice it isn't as great as it could have been. To me the gameplay often felt rather slow, tedious and repetitive. Like in most ARPGs, attacking is a simple matter of clicking or holding down the mouse button, but in this game it's made even less interesting by the lack of choices in character building and abilities. This should have been offset by the arcade style approach, but I felt like its implementation was lacking. The walking and attacking speed isn't that fast, and the animations sometimes makes it seem like the character is floating instead of walking. Pathfinding isn't very smooth either. You can get cornered or surrounded by enemies with slim chances of surviving, and if you die, you can click to get resurrected, but in the same spot you died. If you run out of lives (you usually have 2 per level and can sometimes find a temporary extra life), you have to repeat the level from scratch. Apart from that, the game is not really difficult at all though. There are just as much loot crates to hack through as there are opponents, or even more, and they're often spaced in such a way that you can't quickly destroy them all at once but have to attack them individually. I thought there was way too much focus on loot crates, it just isn't as much fun to fight crates as it is to fight opponents, it just kills the momentum of the game, but you need to destroy the crates if you want pick ups. IMO, it would have been better to remove the crates and let enemies drop the pick ups. Enemies are usually spread over the levels in small groups of 2-6 and don't leave their spot unless you draw attention to your character, so if you want bigger carnage you'd first have to try and draw several groups together.

Also, it's quite hard to get the bonus points for doing lots of damage in a short time window if you hack at everyone and everything individually, it's much easier to do with area of effect spells, and they also make the game more fast-paced and fun. But of all the many characters I unlocked (18/21), there were only three with decent area of effect abilities, only one with regular ranged attack (so you don't have to walk up to every loot crate to destroy them), and few really fast melee fighters. Many of the other characters' abilities were too similar and boring. Like, why would you select a mage with a fire bolt special attack that can only target one creature at once and doesn't do that much more damage than your regular attack, when you could choose the one that has fire bolt as regular attack and can cast ice storm on top of it, being able to quickly destroy several enemies with one spell? The former didn't even feel like playing a mage to me, it could just as well have been a fighter with a fire bow. And most of those lackluster characters are unlocked later than the badass mage with the ice storm ability. So while I gave every character a try, the huge majority of them I only played for one level and never again, and in the end I mostly played with the ice storm mage. What's the point in having so many characters anyway if they feel so same-y and imbalanced? As mentioned above, of course other characters can still try to get bonus points by using area of effect pick ups, but since those are randomized, the chances of these characters for getting good scores are much weaker compared to a character who can cast an AOE spell at will.

The levels were a mixed bag; some were a bit more interesting and had smaller bosses, but many were linear and lacklustre (their layout is pre-made, not randomized, so replaying them isn't that much fun either). Some levels are split in 2 or 3 floors, but stairs are one-way only, so if you missed secrets in the floor above (including unlockable characters), you can't go back to search for them unless you replay the level. The story wasn't much to write home about, and the narrator's voiceovers, despite his efforts, came across as a bit monotonous and actually made it harder for me to follow; I often read the text again after he was finished. But I hardly ever gained anything gripping from it anyway (reminded me a bit of the narration in Faerie Solitaire: lots of spoken words, next to no story to speak of). All in all, it's just about the people of the lumen (which is a fancier name for something like gnomish hobbits, I guess) organizing their resistance against a dark elf attack. No shades of grey, no twists, nothing.

TL:DR
A fresh concept that could have been tons of fun but unfortunately didn't seem to have enough man power, expertise and creativity behind it to fulfill its potential. As is, it's a nice enough mindless time waster that is easy to get into and play during coffee breaks, with a certain charme that might appeal to some, but I wouldn't really call it a great game. Most fast-paced ARPGs still offer more action than this title that tried to focus on score hunting and pick ups rather than character builds, but didn't go all the way and ended up being kind of slow and repetitive in the long run. On the upside, I still managed to finish it, while abandoning most of the "real" ARPGs halfway through.
Post edited April 27, 2018 by Leroux
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andysheets1975: Saturn emulation is far from ideal but it's made a lot of progress in the past year or so and I think the Panzer Dragoon games run pretty well under Mednafen.
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CMOT70: I had a look at the system requirements for Mednafens Saturn emulation plugin...minimum recommended: 4 core Haswell 3.5G plus CPU...that rules me out! It must be using one core for each Saturn processor and brute forcing the rest. BizHawk and RetroArch use the Mednafen core too. That only leaves Yabause. No harm in giving it a try.
Huh. I didn't realize Mednafen's specs were that high. I can play a lot on it with my measly 2.9 ghz CPU but I guess it would explain why Burning Rangers runs like crap... :)

I tried Panzer Dragoon in the latest version of Yabause last night and it worked great. I've found in the past that Yabause can be a little twitchy but when it works, it works great. You can also upscale the graphics in it, which I think really helps a game like PZ which relies on you being able to clearly see the enemies and fire on them accurately.
Post edited April 27, 2018 by andysheets1975
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magejake50: When you think FPS, you think of a shooter, ...
Yeah, really weird that... could it be that the 'S' stands for Shooter?
Panzer Dragoon Zwei (Yabause)

My first time emulating the SEGA Saturn and it went really well. My old PC could handle running it at an internal resolution of around 1440p equivalent. The result is sharp 3D polygons, but the 2D stuff stays pretty much the same. The only issue I had was some sound stuttering which was fixed by setting frame limiting on. I was easily able to set up my Xbox One controller using the DirectX input setting, though it doesn't recognize the triggers. Yabause is a very easy to use emulator with an interface and feel very similar to my preferred PlayStation emulator pSX.

I started playing Panzer Dragoon Zwei to test out the emulator, and basically just kept testing it until I finished. Zwei adds some gameplay elements over the first game, namely different routes through levels and your dragon upgrades depending on what routes you take and how many points you earn through the game. The different routes really are quite different too, resulting in a very different game and varying difficulty and different end game. It also introduced a beserk mode (Ithink that's what it's called) like Orta has...though I only realised this during episode 6, the second last episode. So I played almost the entire game without using one of the strongest abilities- that's what you get from going in blind and not reading up before play I suppose.
Last of all it's harder than the first game, mainly because this time you can save at the end of episodes, so they had to increase the difficulty to compensate.

So that's all 3 Panzer Dragoon rail shooter games done. Honestly the latest game Orta is by far the best, it has all the gameplay enhancements of Zwei plus some extras like the 3 different Dragon forms and it looks amazing, plays on any Xbox system (though the 360 has performance issues), looks like a new game, is still purchasable digitally and runs at 60fps. Zwei is pretty decent still, and the first game feels a bit basic. I'm going to give emulating the amazing sounding Panzer Dragoon Saga RPG a try at some point, but not now.
Post edited April 28, 2018 by CMOT70
Bravelands

Enjoyable short strategy game, with cartoony graphics. Let's say it's Heroes of Might and Magic 101.

So far in 2018: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2018/post12
Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor

Fun RPG, spent 75 hours on it if Galaxy is to be believed :)

Towards the end it was a bit anticlimactic, with no final boss to speak off (the penultimate quest was supposedly to kill some demon chief, but I didn't even notice one that looked different from the rest, just held down attack button pew-pew-pewing until all enemies were dead). Used online guides a LOT for finding out where things (particularly trainers) are and how to get to them. I guess it can be seen as cheating, but 75 hours even with that is I think plenty of time to give a game :)
Pajama Sam 2 - Thunder and Lightning Aren't so Frightening

I'm absolutely sure I don't belong to the target group, but I love this game. It's funny, it's colourful, it has charming graphics and whenever you click somewhere something cute or funny happens. Puzzles aren't really hard, but also not that easy that you would call this adventure a casual game. Probably one of the best games for kids I've ever played, can't think of anything bad about it.

Complete list of finished games in 2018
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kalirion: Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor

Fun RPG, spent 75 hours on it if Galaxy is to be believed :)

Towards the end it was a bit anticlimactic, with no final boss to speak off (the penultimate quest was supposedly to kill some demon chief, but I didn't even notice one that looked different from the rest, just held down attack button pew-pew-pewing until all enemies were dead). Used online guides a LOT for finding out where things (particularly trainers) are and how to get to them. I guess it can be seen as cheating, but 75 hours even with that is I think plenty of time to give a game :)
Remember trying that one after playing 6, compiled my own guides off on-line ones for both and printed them out, still have the papers somewhere actually, where trainers where, what each class could get, recipes, schedules... Then started it and went for learning first, and actually made it all the way through those tunnels with a very low level party, running and save scumming every few steps. Also earned a lot from card game there. But didn't have required int for... sorceress I think? Not naturally, I mean, had it boosted and found that it didn't count. Was an altar that should give +10 there too I think, wanted to make for it, but couldn't find my way around some... hydras with ranged attack I think? And just gave up and didn't touch it again.
M&M bundle was my first GOG purchase, but didn't try again then either.
Broforce

It's nuts, simply nuts, but a blast all the way through. Here and there some of the bossfights felt a bit unfair, especially since you don't have any control over what bro you start with from a checkpoint. For a given boss some bros can be all but useless, while others are perfect, or even completely overpowered. The brominator in particular is devastating against most bosses.
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kalirion: Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor

Fun RPG, spent 75 hours on it if Galaxy is to be believed :)

Towards the end it was a bit anticlimactic, with no final boss to speak off (the penultimate quest was supposedly to kill some demon chief, but I didn't even notice one that looked different from the rest, just held down attack button pew-pew-pewing until all enemies were dead). Used online guides a LOT for finding out where things (particularly trainers) are and how to get to them. I guess it can be seen as cheating, but 75 hours even with that is I think plenty of time to give a game :)
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Cavalary: Remember trying that one after playing 6, compiled my own guides off on-line ones for both and printed them out, still have the papers somewhere actually, where trainers where, what each class could get, recipes, schedules... Then started it and went for learning first, and actually made it all the way through those tunnels with a very low level party, running and save scumming every few steps. Also earned a lot from card game there. But didn't have required int for... sorceress I think? Not naturally, I mean, had it boosted and found that it didn't count. Was an altar that should give +10 there too I think, wanted to make for it, but couldn't find my way around some... hydras with ranged attack I think? And just gave up and didn't touch it again.
M&M bundle was my first GOG purchase, but didn't try again then either.
I'm guessing your problem was that you tried to rush through the game "with a very low level party"? I used the default party and I tried doing every side quest before moving on to story quests. I explored every map I found myself in as far as I could, unless there were some monsters that were just too high level for me. If there were only a few high level monsters, I kited them (actually killed the Red Dragon in the starting island's caves by "sort of but not quite circle strafing" when my part was only level 2-3). By the time I got to the hydras, my sorceress was a Master at all 4 elemental schools, and I could use Fly for hit and run tactics, and my party could wipe out any hydra in melee in seconds. As far as required stats, there are wells around the maps some of which give permanent stat boosts, and barrels as well ofc. Starting with the Bracada Desert you can get lucky enough to find to find Black Potions in the shops which can give permanent +50 to stats (only one of a type per character).
Post edited April 29, 2018 by kalirion