I am having a good time with Shogun II. For the moment I can only run it on my laptop, but it works decently with all the pretty turned down.
The map is a little limiting, as there are only 2 or 3 paths from anywhere that you can head down, but I like the commerce addition, and the many different characters you can employ.
Still RIFT. Still loving it, and they've started releasing addon API hooks.
__________________ Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
It's like watching your uncle tell racist jokes at Thanksgiving and praying someone has the guts to tell him to cut it out, but this time it's interactive—and you're the uncle.
Borrowed Dragon Age 2. My wife tends to get in more playtime than I do, but we're both enjoying it so far. It's an xbox copy while my DA 1 copy is PC, so I still haven't bothered finishing the story in 1 to sync them, but that's ok as the third preset DA 1 option (ruthless dwarf noble) is pretty close to my main playthrough, except that I put Harrowmont on the dwarven throne and killed my bastard of a brother. I also probably wouldn't have exiled Alistair, but I definitely would have sent Loghain to his death, so meh.
DA 2 is way fun though, I love all the new mage trees to explore and blast people into tiny pieces with. My current playthrough is a Primal/Spirit mage, with forays into Arcane since they start you with Mind Blast. I'm looking to pick up the Force Mage specialty as soon as I unlock it, since the keystone ability there gives you 100 fortitude, rendering you practically immune to knockdowns and interrupts.
It looks like archery doesn't suck in this one, so I'm planning to do a playthrough as an archery rogue.
It looks like archery doesn't suck in this one, so I'm planning to do a playthrough as an archery rogue.
I did this. It owns.
Just make sure you develop whassername as a taunt tank. This is imperative. Once you get her all badass damage resistant and she can round things up for you (do this manually then switch back to your archer), you can tear shit up like you wouldn't believe.
__________________ Father Helel, save us from the dark.
So I managed to get my grubby hands on a copy of Shogun 2, and I'm rather enjoying it. I've never really been interested in the Feudal period of Japan, but it's TW, and all the refinements they've made come off well.
My only real complaint is that the auto-resolve AI is, if anything, worse than previous incarnations. I've had several castle defenses in my first play through so far where, when I tell it to auto-resolve, I get slaughtered. When I go in a play manually, without any special tactics or trickery (I just put soldiers on the walls and hit stuff) I lose maybe 10% and utterly destroy the attackers. What is the AI even doing, marching each unit alone out of the castle until it's dead or breaks, and then sending the next one?!?!?! So, unless my army is overwhelmingly better, I pretty much can't let the AI do anything.
One question I have is that all my general's bodyguard cavalry appear to have giant balloons on their backs, is that for real or is it some bizarre graphical glitch? I'll post a screenshot if anyone's wondering what I'm talking about.
ETA: Looks like the balloon-thing is an actual thing. A horo. I did not know that.
Also, I pretty much completely missed Empire and Napoleon TW, any opinions on whether they're worth picking up?
Also, I pretty much completely missed Empire and Napoleon TW, any opinions on whether they're worth picking up?
My second hand impression is that Empire, at least, is a broken mess. Apparently, the AI can't handle naval invasions either offensively or defensively, in a game that's largely about naval strength.
__________________
"Trans Am Jesus" is "what hanged me"
And I just finished Bioshock. Farking incredible game but the end...what happened at the end? Did they run out of ideas?
Which end did you get?
__________________
What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. ... The origin of myths is explained in this way.
__________________
What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. ... The origin of myths is explained in this way.
ETA: Looks like the balloon-thing is an actual thing. A horo. I did not know that.
Weirdly enough - they work! A horo will actually stop an arrow.
Yeah, most of the complaints about them I've seen are that A) they're just slightly on the comical side of too big, and B) supposedly only high-ranking warriors would normally have one, while in the game most of a general's bodyguard as well as some other cavalry units sport them.
It's been a pretty fun game so far, but really damn hard, downright brutal even. There's so many clans that it's really tough to get started, if you play a clan that's not based along the fringes of the islands it will take years to get a good offense going, as nearly every turn you're repelling yet another invading army from yet another bordering clan. And should you get that far, and become one of the dominant clans, your fame will reach Legendary and the Shogunate will declare war on you along with all other clans, including allied clans. Even vassal clans will turn on you when this goes out. So then you get to try to fight off everyone else on the island all by your lonesome, or else make a desperate bid for Kyoto once you have enough provinces to win, and end it before they can mobilize too many troops. To add to that, you don't make much money most of the time and all the upgrades above stage 2 or 3 are prohibitively expensive, like the price of a dozen+ units of Ashigaru, the cheapest foot troops. Since you're on a timetable, what that usually means is that you're a lot better off raising boat loads of troops than doing anything but cursory development in captured provinces. Since large-scale development is so expensive, it's very difficult to raise your income, and it's a cycle that's hard to break out of. And, of course, the AI continues its hallowed TW tradition of maintaining maximum-plus-a-few-sized armies even when they only hold one province that can't possibly provide enough income to support that many troops. In earlier TW games, this was usually only the case with Rebels and other non-factions, where it wasn't much of a worry 'cause they almost never went on the offensive, but in Shogun 2 pretty much all the minor clans do this, which is why it's so devastating and difficult when all the little guys you made vassals on your way suddenly turn on you and start tearing through your back-country with full-scale invasion forces.
The battles are pretty standard, though I think the interface is more streamlined and friendly. Castle defenses and attacks happen a lot, and the lack of need for siege weapons feels a little weird. Attacking infantry just crawl right up the sides of the earthworks and over the wooden walls of at least the first three levels of fortress. I haven't managed to build any of the higher levels because of the problems mentioned above, so I don't know if that's the case with all of them.
Anyway, it's fun, but probably the hardest game they've made so far, even on the low difficulties.