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Oct 15th, 2022 at 22:13:01 - Ring of Pain (PC) |
I thought Ring of Pain was a card game going in. It was a freebie on Epic recently and looked interesting because of the art—the creepy yellow owl character specifically—and…well, whatever the “ring” was. Videos looked like cards in a circle that you choose among and fight. Okay so, something like that, but not quite what I thought.
There aren’t cards. No cards. Well, cards, maybe. But no deck. You’re dropped in with very little explanation. The game has card elements, dungeon crawling roguelike elements, and RPG elements. Each level (a “depth” in some horrible place of light and dark) has a ring of creatures and treasures. You’re standing at the front of the ring, with two…I don’t know what to call them generally…objects…in front of you. Objects can be creatures, treasures, potions, doors, etc.—things to interact with. You can rotate the circle clockwise and counterclockwise, bringing some objects toward you and sending others away. In another universe, this game was a locker opening simulator. Spin the dial back and forth…
You need to kill monsters to get soul points to spend to get equipment. Harder monsters and better rarity equipment = more soul points. You have like 15 equipment slots and various stats (health, attack, defense, etc.). The name of the game is increasing stats. The bigger stats you have, the better you fare against increasingly strong monsters. Your attack can overcome their defense (and their attacks will crush you if you don’t get more defense), your speed determines who attacks first (and increases dodge chance and stealth chance—your ability to be able to move past an enemy without them attacking), and your clarity affects a variety of things: how much extra healing you receive from potions; critical hit chance; chance to be cursed by items; and bonus souls from enemies. So far, I have found that the best strategy is to focus on attack, speed, and HP so that you can generally one-shot everything. However, I have also found that stacking clarity can net you tons of soul points, which means you’ll get tons of useful items. Stacking speed is only useful to a point (after around 20, you’ll attack before most every enemy) and stacking defense doesn’t really matter if you’re one-shotting everything.
Some enemies move toward you on their own. Others explode upon reaching you. Some you can’t move past unless you kill them. Others shoot projectiles at you from a few spots away. There’s a nice variety of enemies to deal with. Although the RNG is heavy, there is a lot of strategy to manipulating the ring to deal with enemies and get as much treasure as possible. You can use exploding enemies to blow up one another, for example. You will learn which items are more important than others, and learn how to create synergies from items that you can use to your advantage in dealing with various types of enemies. You’ll learn how to use the various scrolls and spell books to your advantage.
For example, in my last victory (I’ve beaten the game twice on normal, one “light ending” and one “dark ending”), I early on got some pants that did 1 poison damage to an enemy. Poison does damage every turn (defined as an action; you act, then the monsters act, and that’s a turn), and 1 poison is removed every turn. So 1 poison damage is basically just 1 damage, applied after you attack. But then I found some other item that did 3 damage to poisoned enemies. Ooh. Now if I attack my poisoned enemy, I hit for another 3. So by this point, I’m on the lookout for poison items. I found another that does 5 poison damage on attack, and another that lets you double the poison applied. Now I’m stacking 6 poison on enemies and can make it 12 on a cooldown. Hit them, apply the 6 poison, rotate the ring away (which is an action, 1 poison is removed, and the enemy ticks for 5). Rotate the ring back to them (1 poison removed, enemy ticks for 4). Rotate away, tick for 3. Etc. That one attack that applies 6 poison will deal 6+5+4+3+2+1 extra damage. And if the enemy is especially tough, double it to 12. 12+11+10+…that’ll kill most anything.
In my first victory, I built an item set that buffed my HP to almost 70 by the end (it was barely half that in the second victory). I did this with an item that gave me 1 HP every time I consumed a potion at full health. Usually, you want to save potions until you’re really hurting because they’re finite, but with this item, I decided to try to do what normally would be wasteful and use them at full health. I found another item that gave me 1 HP every time I equipped an item. And I grabbed any other incidental health bonuses I found. Between those things, I gained a boatload of health and was basically untouchable by the end. Amping up any of your stats is like this. If your attack is ridiculous, you one-shot everything. If your defense is ridiculous, nothing can kill you. If your clarity is ridiculous, you get tons of extra souls from enemies (which means you can unlock most any chest you find and reroll for better items), health potions become super powerful, your crit chance (double damage) goes way up, and you avoid almost all curse damage (which means you have more usable potions and acquire more stat bonuses).
There do seem to be some items that are no-brainers in your run. There’s a mask, for example, that makes it so projectile enemies don’t fire at you (this prevents you from getting caught by ranged enemies). There’s armor that nullifies explosive damage, boots that make it so you can only take 2 poison damage at a time. There are a couple items that make it so you can see every object in the ring. Typically, enemies are shrouded until you encounter them, so the visibility lets you plan. Winning without it seems nearly impossible. Once you beat the “dark ending,” you unlock a new default starting candle that lets you choose a common item to start with. This seems really powerful—that +1 HP mask I mentioned earlier is a common item.
Some paths are also no-brainers. There are 16 depths, but you can take “side” paths in between them, which add extra challenges and rewards. One of the side paths is a wishing well into which you can toss up to three items to permanently gain their primary stats. This is fucking awesome. You want to burn your highest stat items that don’t have great secondary benefits. This has the double benefit of permanently boosting your stats and freeing up an item slot to find something else. Toward the end of a run, you can easily boost your stats variously by 15 points at the wishing well. In one of my victories, I actually found two wishing wells. Other paths lead to specific treasures if you sacrifice some health or other stats, guaranteed chests, rooms with specific enemy configurations, and so on.
You’ll also want to go achievement hunting, as you unlock new items that can be found in the ring by completing achievements. This adds the permanence to the metagame; once found, they have a chance to appear forever. So, the more achievements you get, the more variety of items you unlock, the more cool stuff you find, and the farther you will get in the ring (to unlock more achievements, to unlock more items, etc.). I’ve so far gotten about 40/120 achievements and have unlocked over 2/3 of the items. I definitely want to see more and, even though I’ve beaten the game twice, will keep at it because I unlocked the next difficulty level and another starting item. I feel like there are more secrets to find and more story to uncover too (what is the backstory with the owl and the darkness? Who am I?). Plus, the game gets easier as you approach the final rings. Every time I’ve made it to ring 10, I’ve finished the run. Until then, the game can throw you. I’m sure it still can, but I seem to be really tough by around ring 12.
I wonder how much harder the next difficulty is!
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Oct 12th, 2022 at 09:34:12 - Gloomhaven (PC) |
Serious procrastination at work this morning. So let's watch YouTube and think about Gloomhaven before I have to go grade annotated bibliographies. I've "retired" Gloomhaven as of last night. It's too slow. I appreciate that the digital version automates much of the tabletop game, but I suppose therein lies a challenge with digitizing tabletop. It's still going to be slow (and when playing alone, instead of with friends, it matters). I was surprised to see that I put almost 20 hours into the game. It didn't feel like that long because gameplay is quite engaging, but the scenarios take a long time, especially if you create a party of four. Last night, I played one scenario and it took two hours. The campaign has 95 scenarios. I did the math and uninstalled.
The game is really cool though, and I would like to find some people to play tabletop with at some point. It's set in a dingy fantasy town (Gloomhaven) and surrounding areas. There are shady characters, sinister plots, cults, bandits, and the like. You'll fight ghosts, skeletons, oozes, ratmen, thieves, archers, and so on--basic fantasy fare. The story seems interesting, but I didn't get enough of it for it to really stand out.
I haven't played a ruleset quite like Gloomhaven's; it seems innovative in many ways. One feature is the card-based action system. You'll have a party of 2-4 mercenaries, each one being a specific class. Each class has a set of cards. These aren't normal cards that do one thing; rather, each card has a top half and a bottom half. You can select which cards to bring in a scenario (varies by class, but around 10 cards). Each round, you select two cards for each of your mercenaries. On their turns, you play the top half of one card and the bottom half of the other (or vice versa). You can't play 2 tops or 2 bottoms, and you can't play the top and bottom of the same card. So you basically get 4 options (2 tops and 2 bottoms) on each mercenary's turn and choose a top/bottom combination. This will let you "prepare" for a variety of situations that your mercenaries may find themselves in on their turns, depending on how they move and attack and how enemies move and attack.
Enemies also have cards, though they work a little differently. Enemies of a particular type share cards, and they draw one card per round that dictates their actions. For example, the skeletons might draw a card that says they move 1 space, attack for 2, and have 2 targets. All skeletons in that round will do the same thing. The living corpses might draw move 2, attack for 4, and take 1 damage. This gives you some predictability in choosing what to do. You select cards for all your mercenaries first, and then the game shows you the enemies' draws.
Each card has an initiative value, 1-100. The character with the lowest initiative moves first, and they go in turns by initiative after that. So, if you choose cards with low initiatives, you'll have the advantage of acting first. Or, you may purposefully choose cards with higher initiatives to let the enemies go first (like if they're far away, letting them move first and get closer to you is smart). The tricky part is that you don't know the enemies' initiatives (because you don't know their cards) until after you make your selections for a round. You might select cards with low initiatives, planning to go first and get the jump on them, and then be dismayed when the enemies use a card with an even lower initiative and go first, complicating your plans!
There is a real focus on adapting to the situation in Gloomhaven. This is clearly illustrated by how card selection and initiative work, but even more so by the damage roll modifiers. Each mercenary has a number of modifiers, generally ranging from -2 to +2 (and including a x0, a x2, and some others you can get later). When a modifier is used, it is removed from the scenario, and you can always see your modifier list. So, even if you think you've come up with the perfect plan for a round, it will be derailed because you'll roll a -2 and not do the damage you need (or roll a cursed x0 and do nothing!). You'll need to be able to adapt to the situation not going like you thought it would. Enemies have the same modifiers and can either pleasantly surprise you when they draw a -2 or make you cry when they draw their one x2 modifier and one-shot your low-HP character.
As your mercenaries meet certain challenges in scenarios (which you get to choose beforehand, e.g., "Loot 5 piles of gold" or "Open a door to the next room on your turn"), they are awarded perk points. Once a mercenary earns 3 perk points, then you can unlock a new perk, which changes their deck of modifiers. For example, you can remove two -1 modifiers, or add a x3 modifier, or choose a perk that adds 3 +1 pushback modifiers. There are a lot of options, and it allows you to tilt the odds in your favor. The first thing I did with each mercenary was to get rid of as many negative modifiers as possible so that I could plan my rounds using base attacks, knowing that they would always do at least that much damage.
Even though Gloomhaven thrives on adaptability, certainty is also nice because you can't just take your time in scenarios! No! Your characters become exhausted if you take too long. Every time you use a card, it goes into the mercenary's discard pile. Say you have 10 cards. You'll use a pair each round. So, after 5 rounds, well, you're out of cards! At that point, you can rest to get all but one of them back. If you choose a "short rest," one card is randomly "burned" and unusable for the rest of the scenario, but you can act in that round. If you choose a "long rest," you get to choose the card to be burned, but you can't act in that round (and you recover 2 HP). Once all your cards are burned, you're screwed. More specifically, once you don't have two cards to play in a round, your mercenary becomes exhausted. Some more powerful card halves also have burn conditions, whereby they are burned when you use them (e.g., card halves that do a ton of damage or something).
There are...so many other neat aspects of this game (the unique looting mechanic, the way items work, ways to sacrifice cards for health, the numerous classes, Gloomhaven's reputation counter, leveling up and retiring characters, elemental synergies, etc., etc.). It's a lot to learn. Beating the game would take forever though, and I'm glad to have spent time getting the basics down. I've lately gone through a lot of card games (and have more coming up). This was definitely a unique game with cards, worth a whirl if you've got no imminent prospects of Gloomhaven tabletop.
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Sep 27th, 2022 at 23:27:08 - Loop Hero (PC) |
I was initially intrigued by Loop Hero. It has a neat gameplay and narrative premise. I read that this was originally created for a game jam with the theme “start with nothing.” Indeed, you start with nothing each run. Well, no equipment. There are persistent unlocks. The game is a unique hybrid of deck-building, town-building, RPG, tower defense, and roguelike. The world has been destroyed, and you enter “the loop” over and over again on expeditions, collecting fragments of memories to bring back to your village to build it.
There are two halves of the game, the loop part and the town-building part. The loop has two phases, the expedition phase and the planning phase. In the expedition phase, you circle the loop and fight enemies. Note that by "fight" I mean that your character fights. You watch. The only thing you actually do is in the planning phase, where you basically are pausing the game to sort equipment and place tiles (both of which you’ll do a lot). When you kill enemies and pass over tiles, you’ll get equipment and cards. You need to keep an eye on equipment upgrades and cards to place around the loop. You go on expeditions in order to get supplies to build your town. There is a building tree. New buildings unlock new cards for your deck, new classes (warrior, rogue, and necromancer), the ability to collect and craft supplies, and other effects. You place buildings on a map in the town-building part of the game, though I’m not sure the significance of building the town out in any certain way. I saw a couple buildings that need to be near a couple other buildings, but my town was pretty haphazard and it didn’t seem to matter.
So, before you go on an expedition, you can select cards to be in your deck. Some cards have to be played on the road (the loop is a road), others have to be played adjacent to the road, and others have to be played in the “surrounding area”—think the landscape around the road (mountains, meadows, rivers, etc.). At first, I was confused as to the point of some of the cards. Most of them exist to spawn monsters, and others spawn monsters if a condition is met (e.g., every 10 rock/mountain tiles spawn a goblin camp by the road). I didn’t quite know why you wanted to fill the road with monsters. Like, you’re making it harder for yourself to progress, right? Well yes, and no. You see, there are two meters that fill as you circle the loop. One is a day meter. Upon new days, enemies spawn, your health refills a bit, and other things can happen. The second is the boss meter. This has to do with how many tiles you’ve placed. Once it fills up, the boss spawns on your camp (which is a special starting tile that, when passed, refills some HP and lets you end the expedition with 100% of your loot intact). The first boss killed me twice before I beat him the third time (and then a fourth, fifth, and forever after). This was after learning some tricks. I learned, for example, that you want to kill as many enemies as possible and go around the loop as quickly as possible. More loops = stronger enemies (enemy power increases each loop) = better equipment (equipment level increases each loop) = better preparedness for boss. So tackling the boss on, say, loop 6, is not nearly as good as doing it on loop 8. Yeah, the boss will be a bit stronger, but so will you. Plus, another thing I learned is that you can use the Oblivion card to destroy the boss’s castle tiles (which spawn all around the boss). For every castle tile you destroy, the boss loses HP and damage. And the more enemies you kill and the more times you go around the loop, the more Oblivion cards you probably have. I typically have 3 or 4 to burn on the boss’s castle.
There are lots of card interactions to learn. The strategies for placing tiles here or there, in curves in the loop or on straightaways, what tiles synergize and what tiles are bad together, etc., are overwhelming at first. But after a while, you learn what works best. I think that’s the crux of my boredom with Loop Hero. I’ve figured out what works best. The game has become repetitive. I understand the mechanics. I unlocked all the classes, figured out ideal stats and builds for each class, built a lot of buildings, tried a lot of cards. People say it “plays itself.” I originally found myself actively engaged in making decisions to: place tiles, put on equipment. Well, I guess that’s it, but if you set the game speed on max, it flies. But one run, I killed the first boss for the umpteenth time and decided to risk staying in the loop to collect resources. Well, round and round I went. Eventually I didn’t have to pay attention. The game did indeed play itself because I was so powerful I couldn’t die. These expeditions can take half an hour or longer, and you wind up watching your character go in circles waiting for your resources to cap out so you can go back to town and maybe have enough to build a building. Then back into the loop.
That’s not to say that I’m anywhere near beating this game. No, it’s like a 40-hour game! I can’t imagine putting 4 times what I’ve played already into this. I haven’t even seen the second boss (of 4). The second act kicks my butt. But here’s the thing. Progression is a matter of grinding resources to unlock buildings to unlock cards to get more supplies to place things a little better in the loop to grind more resources, etc. There is little skill, no action. Winning is inevitable if you just go around the loop enough times. Eventually I’ll automate my way to beating the second boss, then the third, then the fourth. So, I am setting Loop Hero aside. Neat premise, grindy execution.
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Sep 26th, 2022 at 11:41:02 - In Other Waters (PC) |
Didn't realize this never got an entry. This was a freebie on Amazon and one I'd heard of for its innovative UI. Indeed, and briefly, the UI is quite neat. You play as an AI, awoken in a dive suit by a researcher who is pursuing a colleague/ex-lover into the depths of the ocean on a mysterious alien planet. You navigate, scan things, use tools, and so on by clicking on the UI instead of traditionally controlling a character in the underwater environment. You can see the environment represented on your radar, and move by setting (pre-determined) waypoints. It's quite linear in this fashion. It was really weird not being able to "see" what is being described, what the human in the suit is looking at. A metal door barring the way is just a line on the map. Sea creatures are little moving dots. Points of interest are triangles.
The story is really what kept me going through the game. It's intriguing for sure. There is mounting dread as you go deeper into the ocean, encounter more mysteries, and eventually something sinister and tragic. It could get a bit boring because it's mostly reading and no action. There is a big focus on building a taxonomy of marine life, taking samples, learning about the alien flora and fauna. Having recently played Subnautica, I didn't really care to do all that again and mostly ignored the "biologist" part. But it's a short game and yeah, like I'd heard, has a neat UI. Do you like to use a novel UI to play a game? Do you like science fiction? Are you a marine biologist? Then this is for you.
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