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 On 12/12/2016 at 01:11 AM by KnightDriver See More From This User » |
I played several turn-based strategy games today, and boy did they frustrate the heck out of me: XCOM 2 and The Banner Saga. What's the point of leveling a character just to watch him/her die in the next few battles? Mistakes are fatal in these two games.
In XCOM 2, I got infuriated by "dice rolls". If I'm five feet from a enemy, even if I'm facing him, and he's partially around a corner, or in front of a low obstacle, I should not be getting a 38% chance to hit with a chain gun and then miss with no damage. I missed shooting head on at close, partially obscurred enemies six times in a row in one battle. That kind of thing will lead to complete team death for sure, and it's total nonsense! The other factor was that I was using rookies (I think they're called "squaddies" in the game) on a challenging mission because that's all I had after many of my veterans were injured or killed in previous missions. After a while, I realized the game wants you to outflank enemies regardless of range. So if you're behind, or to the side of the enemy, you get like a 78% chance to hit and big damage to boot. WTF! If I'm five feet from an enemy with a chain gun, there's no way it matters what they're partially obscured by or what side of their body they're showing me. Seriously! . . . I know, I know, it's a game. Learn the rules. It's not real life. Whatever.
In Banner Saga, I felt the battle system wasn't well explained. I'm fighting with two archers, a human fighter and a big Varl giant. The Varl giant did exactly 1 damage every attack the whole fight while one of my archers went from doing 1 damage to 6 over the course of the fight. What the heck is going on? Do you get bonuses to damage every time you successfully hit? If that were so, my Varl giant should've climbed to higher damage as well as my archer. I found it unbearable to watch my biggest, meanest character on the field fight like a kid with a wooden sword. I won this fight in the end, but I lost a female archer who, because it took so long for my Varl giant to dispach the enemy, got surrounded and butchered. And that's another thing. Why are archers not allowed to be far from the melee? Enemies can rush right up to them and attack. That's pure foolishness for an actual archer who normally has little armor. Archers are always back from the front lines for ranged attacks. Letting them be with the skirmishers is totally stupid! It's so hard to keep them from getting beaten up. I hate that. So many games put the archers in jeapardy. It's just stupid! . . . I know, I know. It's just a game. Learn the rules. It's not real life. Whatever.
As much as I complain, though, these two games are fantastic to look at and brilliant in their design. They just take too long to learn their ins and outs. By now, after a combined 35 hours in these two games, I'm completely burnt out and don't want to see another strategy game. Ever!
So I played the Recore demo and really liked it. It has good real time action fighting. Your character has a grappling hook for fighting and interacting with objects, and jet shoes for easy traversal of the world. You have a robot dog too that helps you in both battle and with the environment - I like making it dig for me. The timer ran out after an hour. I looked on Gamestop.com and saw it's now $20. I'd be picking it up soon if I weren't pining for Diablo III.
Tomorrow I'm picking up two copies of Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition for Mark and me, and we're co-oping that thing all over again on XBO. It's $20 right now at Gamestop, and with some trades, I'm going to make that nearly free. I'll be back on the Diablo train. Oh yeah! Bye bye dry strategy mental floss, hello fast action loot lust!
Happy looting!
I have a hard time with strategy games, too. Jason loves them, though. Me, I just want to run in and hack and slash or sit back froma distance and snipe the snot of things. My favorite weapon in the second Ratchet & Clank game was the Pulse Rifle. I took down most of the creatures in the desert area with it.
Right on! Me too!
I don't like strategy games either.
I like them, but I'm not good at them. They take an analytical mind. I think I want to be like that, but I'm not. That's why I'm drawn to them, and then fail at them over and over again.
Yeah that type of turn base game would drive me nuts. $20 is a nice price for Recore. I'd like to give it a spin on PC but not for $40.
Thing is, I think I love strategy games, but then playing them usually is a chore. I don't think I approach games analytically like you have to in a lot of strategy titles. I approach them more like a sport. I like the physical challenge but not a repetitive one like in a lot of platformers. I like a free roaming game with good physics but not so much a sports game. Stuff like Halo, or other shooters, or games with also a lot of exploration and natural environments is my thing, I think.
I like strategy games now because they force you to play by their rules, even if the rules don't make sense in the context of realistic simulation. You either make the right play or you lose a unit. Also rogue-likes, action games made by Platinum, indie games, sports. Mainstream action games and RPGs don't do this anymore.They give the player tools to break the rules and circumvent any potential challenges (e.g. wall hacking in stealth games; double jumps, boosting and auto correction in platformers.)
The trend towards making games easier has dominated recently. Not in Banner Saga or XCOM that I've noticed though. I just want to make some progress in XCOM. I just can't keep dudes alive for very long. I was playing a bit wrecklessly that day though. I really didn't want to be so awful cautious. I wanted to wreck house SWAT style. Guess I gotta micromanage to win in XCOM. Not my style at all.
Original X-Com is more forgiving yet far harsher in some ways. New recruits have little value and you can order them by the dozens. And you aren't on such a strict timeline to progress. XCom is more linear, or railroaded. If you don't get those satellites up in time you lose a nation's funding.
I've got the original. I want to get to that. I was just listening to an interview with one of the devs of XCOM Enemy Within. That version sounds interesting as well.
in banner saga you have to take out an opponents' armor first. It's the blue number. The different abilities of different combatants becomes more clear as u go on.
I've been hitting the armor if it's more than my attacker's, then going for their health after that. I'm not sure that's exactly right, but it worked ok today when I played for an hour while I waited for Diablo to install.
the more you hit their armor, the faster it will go down. IF you hit someone's health when their armor is zero, you will smash them. This is especially necessary when you're fighting the black armored guys. I mean, the combat for Banner Saga isn't spectacular, but it is pretty cool. The story and artwork is the main draw for this game, but from what I understand, the combat gets a little deeper in the second one.
Ok, I'll try that next time. It's still something I want to finish, hopefully this year.
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