I’ve reported this post and a Democracy Officer should be with you shortly.
I dunno if “surprised”, more of a “This is bullshit”. Part of it typical internet gamers, part of it some miscommunication/misunderstandings* and some of it just dumb bad optics on Capcom’s part. Plus this is one of Capcom’s largest launches ever so that amplifies things.
*For instance, the developers spoke about how fast travel wouldn’t really be part of the game and some of the purchasable items were fast travel stones, giving some people the impression that fast travel was a cash-only feature. In reality, you can get stones in game as well but they’re limited enough to not be a casual option and actual places you can travel TO are quite limited as well. So the system exists, you just won’t be using it as your primary means of getting around.
This is a really tepid recommendation for a game you’re describing as great, but improved upon to make it even better. What’s great about it at its core? I’ve been on the fence but the discussion online mostly centers around the mtx stuff, which is kind of a non-issue for me since they seem completely unnecessary.
ETA: I never played the original so I have no point of reference for this one.
This explains why Don Draper fired me.
The core parts of the game are epic boss fights, exploration, switchable class system and the pawn system. Aside from the pawn thing, I’d say it’s sort of like Elden Ring: The world and NPC interactions are a framework to hang the “Go explore and find things to beat up” part of the game on.
It’s NOT like Elden Ring in 2hard4u difficulty. Dragon’s Dogma fights focus more on being epic than being technically difficult. A “boss” is basically anything with more than one health bar and you’ll come across plenty of cyclops, minotaurs, ogres, golems, etc in the wilds in addition to more set piece bosses. All of these can be climbed on, tripped, parts lopped off or otherwise interacted with for a cinematic fight. Smaller common enemies can be picked up and thrown, shield-based flying, yanked with rope snares, etc as well.
The environment is full of hidden things and small puzzles. Not in a Ubisoft map icon spam sense but in a way that rewards poking around. Secret caves, chests hidden up on cliff faces, that sort of thing.
Pawns are interesting and well done. They have different potential personalities, driven in part by your own actions and game style. Taking on other people’s pawns lends a sense of community without actually having to, ew, talk to online randos which I appreciate. Unlike some games, the pawns are actually competent members of your party – I recently maxed the Thief vocation and my pawn maxed Fighter so I flipped our vocations and, by her third rank in Thief, she was embarrassing me 
There’s also mage type classes, archers, subclasses/specialties, etc.
If someone was curious but hesitant, I’d recommend buying the original game off Humble right now for $5 (for the next nine days). Aside from less exploration (not bad, just less) the core is basically the same and, if you get bored of hanging one-handed off a bucking chimera as you attempt to slice its snake-headed tail off as your companions pelt it with spells and arrows, then you’re only out five bucks.
Thanks for the details!
How does the combat compare with Monster Hunter, if you’ve played that? I’ve always felt like those games just barely miss the “epic combat” mark with frustrating level design and difficult controls.
Speaking of Ubisoft, I started a new game in Far Cry 6. Having fun, it’s not as wild a ride as the earlier FC games but it also doesn’t have the annoying drug sequences that were stupid, pointless, annoying, and completely distracting from the actual game play, so it balances out. I had restarted Doom 2016 too recently but it gets a bit too twitchy for this old man sometimes.
In the spirit of the thread, I’ve been playing a couple cheap but excellent games. Both have amazing dollar:hours ratios for me.
Deep Rock Galactic Survivor is a Vampire Survivors clone with a DRG skin. It’s lacking sone necessary depth (heh, mining joke) but is still early access. If you liked VS this is a good pick.
Balatro is a deckbuilding roguelike that came out of nowhere and is incredibly fun. The basic concept is that you’re making traditional poker hands, modified by other cards that change the rules and scoring. I think it has a steam demo, but my recommendation if you like it is to consider waiting on the inevitable mobile port. It’s the perfect game for playing on a phone. I don’t think it has as much replayability as other deckbuilders, though.
I also put a bunch of time into Final Fantasy Rebirth but burned out on the (admittedly bloated) side content and have put it down for now. A vicious cycle I repeat with every single open world game I play.
Unfortunately, I haven’t. I own it (MH: World) but only got as far as testing the weapons in the tutorial and none of them felt fun to me. It was a pretty short Monster Hunter career. DD’s combat feels much more fluid and full of fun little tricks like pinning enemies to the ground for a companion to stab or parrying an attack then leaping over the foe to slice their throat. (There’s other non-melee stuff but I’ve been leveling Thief & Warrior and leaving magic/support/ranged to the pawns so my personal experience is all in poking things)
Combat isn’t especially hard; an appropriately leveled/geared person could probably get away with button mashing against smaller enemies and even do okay against the bigger guys provided you weren’t a complete monkey about it and refused to dodge telegraphed major attacks and stuff. Fighting the actual dragons and similar will require a bit more thinking but, again, doesn’t come down to perfect timing dodge rolls or i-frames.
That’s good info. The “dark souls” combat experience is, charitably, not for me. Good tip on picking up the original cheap, I’ll probably give that a go.
Played some Starsector recently. It is an open-world game so you can pretty much do whatever you want. Not like Elite, though, it’s top down and you command a fleet of ships.
Since this post last year, Against the Storm has moved into 1.0, and now into 1.2. I just got back into it, after the late game in Enshrouded started to drag (I love that game, but c’mon, not every quest has to be a fetch quest).
Against the Storm is still excellent. There are lots of systems to balance, and the random acquisition of buildings means that every game plays a little differently. Maybe this game you have all the meat you need, but you can’t access clothes; so you load up on lizardpeople and jerky, and try to provide temples to keep the humans happy. Or maybe you have no access to stone, so you have to buy lots of jars from the traders in order to make the pickles that your beavers crave.
I’m really enjoying it, and still recommend it if your favorite part of a city-builder is the first two hours.
I couldn’t really get into it. I can see that it’s a really excellent game at its core, but I didn’t like supply chain fulfillment being its primary mechanic.
Using the map as a noncombat antagonist is clever.
Mortal Kombat 1
Been playing Millennia the last three evenings, still on my first game. It’s a 4X strategy similar to Civilization 5, but has some interesting new ideas, like a menu on the left with Cultural, Government, and Exploration and other sorts of points that you can spend on instant abilities and bonuses. There are production chains so you can harvest wood on one tile, build a paper mill on another, and build a book bindery or religious scribe building on another. Some people dislike the graphics but the look and feel is good to me.
I’ve been putting way too many hours into Against the Storm and fully recommend it. It’s been many years since a game made me lose track of time to this extent.
I’ve dabbled a bit before in city builders and Factorio like simulators, but I always lose interest when the city gets too complex to manage. I like how Against the Storm is objective driven, and there’s always that one next thing to work towards. I also like how your objective is just to finish the level, and not to build a perfectly running rube goldberg machine. Something that gets the job done is enough. The random drafting of buildings and adapting to events adds a lot of variety, and there’s a lot of risk-reward systems to consider.
I felt the early difficulty levels were maybe a little bit too easy. I’m up to Prestige-7 now, and haven’t come close to losing a level yet, and rarely had more than 30% filled on queen’s impatience (the time limit). The last two Prestige at 6 and 7 were very significant steps up in difficulty, though (increased building costs and food consumption).
Heh–I just got back into it, and I’ve been slumming it at the second-easiest difficulty level. Maybe it’s time for me to start pushing myself.
I recently finished Unicorn Overlord, which is an excellent tactics game from Vanillaware on everything except PC. As with all Vanillaware titles, it features some top-notch 2D art. People compare the gameplay to Ogre Battle 64, but I didn’t know about that. You form squads from the available characters and use their synergies to crush the opposing forces in real-time-pause tactical battles. It’s excellent. There is a meaty demo you can play and progress carries over to the full version. Currently my GOTY. Sorry LAD: Infinite Wealth.
I’m currently playing Witch Spring R and Monsters’ Den: Godfall. WSR is the remake of the first game in the Witch Spring series, which I never heard of until seeing this title on an Overwhelmingly Positive JRPG list. Its recent 1.3 patch introduced a Very Hard mode. I’m enjoying the very hard mode. It makes me think about the next turn in what otherwise feels like it’d be very easy. People say it’s like the Atelier games. I think that’s accurate for its vibe and resource-gathering, but not so much the crafting. The Very Hard mode makes it feel vaguely like Labyrinth of Touhou 2 lite, which is a great hard dungeon crawler.
Monsters’ Den Godfall is one I got in the Fanatical gift gacha. I gave it a spin wanting more tactics stuff after Unicorn Overlord. This is the best free game I’ve gotten, which isn’t saying much. I like that the developer tried to mechanical transparency, which more games need. It’s like Battle Brothers with fantasy classes, I guess. It’s a bit rough, even by indie game standards. I’d have never bought it, so it’s kind of neat that it worked out.
I’m not sure what’s up next. Probably Star Ocean Second Story R.
Good story and characters?
Very standard fantasy stuff about love and evil wizards. It’s all serviceable.
I played the demo but didn’t like the autocombat aspect, which is weird because I do like some autobattlers.