Started playing The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures on Switch today. The last time I played an Ace Attorney game was back in 2016 when Spirit of Justice came out. It feels great to be back playing this series again. I have to say though that my sense of deduction was terrible back then, so I'm curious to see if I've become better since then. I've only played the first couple of hours (still on the first case but I'm nearing the end of it) but I definitely feel more confident than I did back then. Although I do have to say that there are moments in this game, which are also present in the other games, where you have no idea where it's going with that specific reasoning. But I guess that's just part of the series' charm and I just have to roll with it. Anyway, I feel like this is going to be a great title to play during my vacation as I just love a gripping visual novel.
Still Wakes The Deep is my most recent, jumped in last night for about an hour. Good pacing, incredible character expositions and world building before everything goes to ****. I expect no less from The Chinese Room, they delivered something special in A Machine For Pigs and I’m seeing notes of it here already. Supposed to be a short game, so I’m hoping to finish it before heading to the Lake next week.
Currently trying to get Lost Odyssey out of my backlog to also stop myself from getting addicted to yet another musou or R* sandbox game. It’s a neat RPG, feels like a spiritual successor to FFX.
“One thing you can count on: You push a man too far, and sooner or later he'll start pushing back.” -Max Payne
With Veilguard seemingly here in the next couple of months, I decided to go back and try to finish Dragon Age Inquisition. I'm one of those guys who has been with Mass Effect from the start, but has little interest in fantasy, so the DI franchise was just something I never explored, despite replaying the ME trilogy more than I have any other game.
During the pandemic for obvious reasons I finally had the time to properly sit down and explore the franchise. I finished 1, a game which is extremely dated and honestly just isn't that fun to play, but the amount of mechanical depth, the complexity of its systems, how dynamic it all was, the vastness of its scope. Its a game I admire so much, I think this is the peak of what BioWare have achieved and seemingly they won't hit these heights ever again. Even with 2 really readjusting expectations by being a major step down from one, Inquisition still felt like a let down all the same, as its just so far removed from the games which came before it. I actually disliked Inquisitions change in direction so much, I never bothered to finish it. It probably would have stayed that way, but since Veilguard is a direct continuation of a game I never finished, and a DLC I never played, I figured it was time to now try to roll credits.
I'm about 30 hours in now, did that over basically two weekends, so as you can tell, I am really enjoying my time with Inquisition this time around. Maybe its feint praise, maybe I'm just a different person four years later, but either way, playing Inquisition without fresh memories of the first two games has absolutely been a better experience for me. It sorta makes me want to go back and replay the first two as well, if it also works in reverse.
My original playthrough I was a Qu'nari Warrior. This was the first time you could pick this race so I was super excited, but unlike say Origins where your race was a really core part of your story, for Inquisition this choice basically just made you a big human with horns. Knowing this, I just went for a human and went for a mage, as its furthest removed from my first go around. Much like with your race choice, the class choice also has remarkably little bearing on things. Mages are a central part of the story, given its a continuation of what happened in 2, which was set up in 1. Like I feel like the game at least addresses me being a mage more than when I was a Qu'nari, but if you are expecting it to have some transformative effect on how the game plays out, you'll be disappointed. Its also especially weird cause you eventually get specialisations, one of them being a necromancer which is what I picked and was shocked it had no bearing on the story whatsoever.
Veilguard is apparently going to be a more linear, more mission based, experience and this is great news to me. Inquisition is designed like some sort of open world MMO but you are the only person playing. It can make the game extremely tedious as the game regularly grinds to a halt, forcing you to grind through mindless, boring, busy work to unlock the next story development. I feel very blessed to be playing this on PC, where there are extensive mods available to speed up, or just remove, a lot of this stuff for a far more focused experience that seemingly Veilguard will deliver without mods.
Combat itself is... fine, I guess? Levelling feels quite slow, and the skill trees are all rather shallow. This is kinda like a summary of combat in general to be honest, it all looks quite nice, but a lot of it is just quite hollow. Its also weird to play an action game where things like a dodge or a parry is a skill to be unlocked in your skill tree, and not just a core part of your kit. I will say it feels a lot better to play on a controller than it does on a keyboard and mouse, although navigating a lot of the menus and stuff on a controller isn't great.
My main issue with Inquisition the first time was how almost all of the depth and tactical nature of the first two games has been removed, and I still think this is a fundamental problem with this game. I never felt like I was fighting in a party, shoulder to shoulder with my allies overcoming challenges in the same way I was in the first two games, which allowed me to truly build and shape my companions in my image. You can technically control your party if you want here, but it sorta feels like its not really designed to be played like that. You can give your AI very limited instructions to follow, but the AI on your companions also isn't really quite good enough to be left alone with those limited instructions, so I dunno, I just feel like fundamentally at the core combat is just sorta broken. It seems like the main solution for this is just to make the game extremely easy so you aren't reliant on your companions, or failing because of them. When I played the first time, it really made me kinda hate this game, now with some distance I still think it kinda sucks, but I'm generally more just apathetic to it. I guess it helps that a mage is absolutely a lot more fun to play than a warrior is.
I know its a ten year old game, so we can't be too harsh on visuals, but I think the actual art style or maybe the way the engine outputs things just isn't very good. Almost every character in this game is so ugly, with these big mouths and tiny eyes. Everyone has unnaturally glossy hair (especially facial hair, which just looks so weird) and seemingly is perpetually sweaty. It is a shame, as I think the game has some excellently written characters and great voice acting (sans all the weird made up vaguely European accents) but I couldn't help but experience a micro jump scare any time a face took up the screen. I feel like every character that has made it to Veilguard under the new art style has had an immeasurable glow up, I guess just by changing the engine.
Outside of the main story thread and the cast, which I think are both genuinely excellent, probably my favourite part of Inquisition is how it makes you feel like you are truly in charge of this sprawling, volatile, organisation. There is a lot of like political machination navigation you are tasked to do, which I appreciate could risk being somewhat dry, but I sort of can't think of another game like this that offers this kind of fantasy in this context. Its like the systems of some sort of dry, text based, RTS or something layered into a proper cinematic action RPG and it just really sings for me. I believe The Veilguard is another organisation you are in charge of in the sequel so I hope a lot of this carries over.
So I just finished case 2 of The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures and I was rather surprised to see that there was no trial in this case! Very interesting and refreshing, I like that!
Also, while the characters aren't as funny as the Phoenix Wright ones, they're definitely as likeable as those characters. Cannot wait to keep playing this game.
@Pizzamorg It’s interesting to read your comments and experiences returning to DA:I.
Like you, I couldn’t finish the game back when I first played it. My route to the game was a little different though. I never played the first two DA games, outside of some very limited time with the first game, which I found clumsy to play and only spent a couple hours with. But I jumped into Inquisition since it had a design that was more appealing to me. Despite my not knowing the lore and ongoing narrative, I was enjoying the game quite a bit, but the vastness of the game and the resultant tedium was what caused me to eventually lose interest. I think I sank maybe 50 hours into it. It’s always been a regret of mine that I never finished it. It was a weird time in my gaming life and I can’t put my finger on what kept me from completing it other than the overwhelming open world and then I also remember running into an enemy (a dragon, I recall) who I couldn’t beat and so it was all the obstacle I needed to just quit the game.
Around that time I joined Push Square and one of the first articles that I really enjoyed and sold me on the site was Robert’s recounting of his return to DA:I. You might find it an interesting read: https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2017/09/soapbox_open_world_oc...
I was able to search and dig that out of the PS archives. The article really spoke to me and I always thought that if I tried to go back to the game that I’d try to take the golden path and skip all the side content and see how that changed my experience.
Your expanded impressions show that the open world bloat isn’t the only problem with the game, though. So I’m not sure it’s worth my time to find out. If Veilguard comes out to high praise and has firm connections to Inquisition then maybe I’ll try to revisit it before playing the new game. As it stands, I don’t think I have much interest to return to the franchise.
Yeah it is funny @Th3solution cause the open world both has central vital purpose and is also probably the worst thing about it, at the same time. Again, for me, one of the coolest parts about the game is how directly it makes you feel in charge of the Inquisition, not just passively or just in key decisions, but in almost every layer of it.
Sure, like every "choices matter" game, the bulk of your choices are static and you are really just picking bits of flavour, but the Inquisition itself is almost like a cheat code to get around this, as it gives the player a lot of choices to make that can have tangible cause and effect, but can be kept ultimately quite isolated from the core narrative, so the core narrative can just continue along its path unimpeded.
As such, having these mini open worlds you push into, clearing out the monsters and setting up camps, fits with your wider organisational mission of bringing peace, order, control to the land (and what other values you assign to the Inquisition) as you stretch out into the world and quite literally plant your flag on it, in a way you couldn't probably do if each location was just a one mission sequence and then onto the next.
But at the same time, the open world design - like the article you linked to (which was a great read so thank you for that) just isn't that good. There is so much narrative dressing that seems so easy to slap onto your tasks here but they choose to not really do that with so much of it, making it feel more like you are doing Destiny public events without any other players. The maps are also huge, but mostly empty and annoying to navigate. Everyone you speak to adds a new laundry list of MMO busywork tasks into your log. Tasks, which are sorta half mandatory cause of the way you need to complete them to earn power, which is your currency to unlock more story missions.
Like with a lot of Inquisition, I see the vision but the execution just isn't there.
@Pizzamorg Are you a fan of Witcher 3? (apologies if you’ve discussed it in the past, I can’t remember) It’s cited as the standard for which single player narrative open world adventures should aim, but I also ran into open world / icon chasing fatigue with it and so never finished it. Another gaming regret that I have. If I return to an old PS4 open world fantasy then W3 is probably the one to try again. (It has a PS5 patch too, which helps)
@Pizzamorg Are you a fan of Witcher 3? (apologies if you’ve discussed it in the past, I can’t remember) It’s cited as the standard for which single player narrative open world adventures should aim, but I also ran into open world / icon chasing fatigue with it and so never finished it. Another gaming regret that I have. If I return to an old PS4 open world fantasy then W3 is probably the one to try again. (It has a PS5 patch too, which helps)
I never finished it and this has also been a regret of mine. I have tried to get back into it over the years and just feel like maybe I missed my window, as I usually bounce off with a matter of hours.
The combat is really bad and unless you play it on the highest difficulty, you don't really get to properly engage with its full suite of systems. I don't like when games are designed like this and while Witcher 3's combat is more mechanically interesting on higher difficulties, it becomes even less fun for someone like me who wants a mostly frictionless gaming experience.
Plus, while it does what Inquisition doesn't do in giving lots of narrative dressing to your activities, I feel like Witcher 3 had even less to do and what there was to do was so incredibly boring, that all the narrative dressing in the world could not hide from me the repetition, and tediousness of every task.
@Pizzamorg My issues with Witcher 3 are well documented, but boil down to two main things: I didn’t click with Geralt as a character, and the overwhelming open world, in particular the copious icon/question marks populating the map. The gameplay itself wasn’t too much of an issue, but I don’t know if I even made it far enough into it to really get a good feel for the combat. I think I played it for about 5-ish hours, maybe a little more. Got through the initial town, did some side quests, and some flashback sequences, did a few main storyline arcs, and got to an open area and started chasing question marks and ended up at one point underwater trying to get a chest or something and was attacked by some water creature and I was a little lost as to how to fight in the water, so I got frustrated there. Then I figured if all these icons are so random and get me into scenarios that I don’t know how to handle then I just need to throw in the towel since I wasn’t enjoying it. That’s my recollection, but it’s been several years so I might have the details wrong. 😅
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
I picked up The Legend of Heroes: Trails From Zero on my Switch. I plan on diving deep into that this week while I’m on vacation. As of right now, I’m halfway through Beyond Good and Evil. I’ve been taking my Switch to work and playing the game on my lunch break. My goal is to beat it within the next couple of days.
@Th3solution I am very much a gaming OCD sufferer. If there is a marker on a map, I feel I need to complete it, but it usually always spoils my experience. I am a Ghost of Tsushima stan, but I risked completely ruining that game for myself as I got to the last act, and spent God knows how long ticking off every check box, rather than just riding the momentum wave and just focusing on seeing it through to a natural conclusion. I'd also probably have finished Starfield if I didn't burn myself on the mountain of garbage side "content" (it barely counts as content being honest).
Started playing DiRT 3 on Series X today. I've been in a mood to play a racing game and also something on Xbox on my new TV. It's a great game, although it doesn't have the same charm as DiRT 2. I feel like the sequel is a huge step back, at least in terms of the career mode. There's just not enough variety and there's less freedom in terms of choosing events. Still a lot of fun to play and the game looks gorgeous even if it's over a decade old.
I've started my replay of Dragon Age 2. Just finished Act 1, roughly 15ish hours in. Feels like I have so much to say and almost nothing to say at the same time.
Much like with my first playthrough, the most striking and defining aspect to Dragon Age 2 is probably how unfinished it all feels. How most quests involve you just clicking on an icon, loading into somewhere, killing one of the same half a dozen or so enemy types in the same half a dozen or so location tile sets, before its quest complete with almost zero narrative dressing at all, as you're fast forwarded through a vague skeleton of a wider story in a completely lifeless world.
In this story you're stuck with just one human preset character where your class choice has almost zero bearing on the story (unless you pick mage) and it feels like an especial shame here, as the opportunities to tell unique stories as a dwarf, or elf or Qunari all seem so perfectly set up here, in the boiling pot of Kirkwall, arguably better set up than any other game and its the one you can't pick a race in.
And yet there are clearly things lost in Inquisition, which I think is a shame. Having a proper tactics screen again to properly shape my companions is great. Companions having unique specialisations to give them clear roles is wonderful, as it makes almost every companion viable to use, whereas in Inquisition I basically felt like I didn't need 90 percent of the companions, using them for unique narrative flavour to quests and then throwing them back in the cupboard the moment it was over. Having an approval system you can see that unlocks unique passives for your companions is great. Being able to bring companions into conversations, to either close them off completely or alter the direction is great. I guess also because the companion pool is smaller, you're more likely to see them having things to say on missions, whereas I feel like so often my companions in Inquisition just stood silently in the background while I did everything.
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