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 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Also on sale is Chrono Cross but missed that one back in the day. Anyone play it? Recommend it?

Chrono Cross is a decent game on it's own, but fails miserably as a sequel to Chrono Trigger.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Also on sale is Chrono Cross but missed that one back in the day. Anyone play it? Recommend it?

i remember playing it when it first came out, and not terribly enjoying it
the pile of characters to recruit was neat, but i think you had to newgame+ several times to get everyone or something, and i didn't care for the stat growth mechanic
now granted, this was 20 plus years ago, so it could be i'd like it more now.
if its on sale for a reasonable price, its probably worth a try

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Also on sale is Chrono Cross but missed that one back in the day. Anyone play it? Recommend it?

Chrono Cross remains to this day one of my favourite games ever made. I never played Chrono Trigger so I didn't go in with any baggage from that first game, as I understand it most CT fans don't like Cross much for that very reason. It's got a great story, a killer soundtrack, and some pretty memorable characters IMO. I would definitely recommend it.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Also on sale is Chrono Cross but missed that one back in the day. Anyone play it? Recommend it?

Chrono Cross remains to this day one of my favourite games ever made. I never played Chrono Trigger so I didn't go in with any baggage from that first game, as I understand it most CT fans don't like Cross much for that very reason. It's got a great story, a killer soundtrack, and some pretty memorable characters IMO. I would definitely recommend it.

The worst of it is that by and large, the elements that tie it to Chrono Trigger are almost non-existent. There's a crayon drawing of Luca in a cut-scene, hints that Robo is the AI that ran a certain ruined facility, and maybe one or two other things like that. And aside from a moment just before the climax of the game where phantoms of the original characters show up and give the player a hint about what's going on, that's basically it. It's a sequel in that the game plot is set in motion by the main characters from the original attempting to save <spoiler>, but that's it. You never interact with them, and their appearances within the game (aside from the aforementioned phantoms) are all "blink and you'll miss it" moments. With some very minor modifications, the game could be made completely independent of Chrono Trigger, and you would never realize that anything was missing. Even the lands that you travel through don't appear to have anything to do with the original game.

My main complaint about the game (as someone who didn't play CT until later), though, was that I liked

I've been playing Total War: Warhammer 2 as Khazrak with Beastmen on hard/hard. I'm not sure how other beastmen sub-factions play differently if at all (a few skaven factions play differently) but it's been pretty fun.

I won a pyrrhic victory ambush vs leon leoncour of bretonnia and practically wiped his force. It said i would decisively lose i think so i felt good about winning that one. I basically pinned down all his horses and archers during the ambush and destroyed them pretty hard.

It's also pretty silly that if you boost buildings far enough in encampments that you can make like 5 siege towers for every siege tower you build during a siege up from the normal 2. Also since i could build 2 of those per turn i ended up with 10 siege towers after a turn of waiting if i was sieging someone in the blood grounds which is honestly quite hilarious. I mean for a faction trying to bring down civilization they certainly know how to build fast.

Moar Cyberpunk 2.0 going through the motions a bit now. Almost about to talk to Meredith Stout before confronting the Maelstromers to get the bot thingy. Overall, I think it's a pretty cool quest that, while it isn't as complex as the demo version seems to be what CDPR wanted Cyberpunk 2077 to really be.

Spent the very rainy weekend with BG3, pushing a Dark Urge run, just to get it done. As a tribute to the size of the game, I just got out of the act 1 (bar the monastery)/early access areas last night. Which still feels fairly insane.

Still finding new stuff as well, some of it Dark Urge linked and some not. Not sure I needed the flashback fantasy about how many meals a baby would make when divided and cooked properly, but here we are. (One of the legs is apparently a good choice for a peppery winter stew).

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Also on sale is Chrono Cross but missed that one back in the day. Anyone play it? Recommend it?

Posted this a few pages back in response to a similar question:

Chrono Cross is a really really great game, its just a terrible sequel to Chrono Trigger. It has almost nothing to do with the original except it IS a sequel unlike the Final Fantasy standalone stories. It takes place in a completely separate part of the world, it doesn't have any returning characters, the art style and battle system is completely different and the only times it ever even references the original is to tell you that after the game all the characters of the first were murdered horribly. Technically the whole thing is just a missing side quest from the original too, but that's a reductive complaint that simplifies the legitimately great story that Cross has to tell.

To me that's the worst part. Cross is great. It's not the pinnacle of its generation (that would be IX followed closely by Xenogears) nor does it surpass the original, but its a game that stands out even among the heyday of its genre as one of the best. It just really didn't need to have any ties to Trigger at all. They add nothing and just come across as mean spirited, leaving you with a feeling that the game knows its inferior and decides to be petty about it. It sucks, because it taints every conversation about the game because its best experienced as its own thing rather than a sequel to Trigger, but its hard to just say that to people asking about it while riding the high that is Trigger.

Personally, I like Xenogears more than FFIX. But I admit that the Disc Two issue hurts Xenogears quite a lot.

^^;;

Regardless, it's a game that I'd love to see rereleased for modern consoles (asking for a remaster would be... risky...). Also, I need to play the new Theateryrhm again. I think the Xenogears add-on tracks are available now.

 Flinty wrote:
KUPI KUPOPO! I played it a lot with my brother when I was a kid. Happy memories. Gotta get the big numbers going though

I did the same. But we only had it because my brother swapped my birthday copy of Super Metroid for it, without asking, on my birthday.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Still haven’t finished this run. I’m in the Mana Fortress bit where it’s clearly a subway system, and I’m now finding the game caught up to my levels, as I’m struggling a bit.

But, Square being Square? Just got to chicken run the same section a few times to start levelling up beyond the game, and it’s back to being fairly easy.

Messed around with the RE4 Remake's new options in Mercenaries, as well as Separate Ways. Good times

Was running around in Cyberpunk, doing the odd gig and killing gang members to level up as much as possible for the gig that introduces Keanu. Probably do that mission and put the game on ice until Phantom Liberty drops in a little while.

Messed with graphics settings for a bit and got it running beautifully and smooth.

I really need to plan out my skill selections, as it seems much more strict on what kind of character you can build(which I like, in principle). It'd been a long while since I played, so I could be wrong, but I get the impression that it wants to make you specialize now, rather then be good at nearly everything. I'm still obviously very early in the game, so I'm probably just not seeing the path clearly yet.

While I haven't played Cyberpunk 2.0 myself, I've heard that it's fairly easy to respec your skills.

You can freely refund any perks as many times as you want, and have a one time respec of your stats

 nels1031 wrote:

I really need to plan out my skill selections, as it seems much more strict on what kind of character you can build(which I like, in principle). It'd been a long while since I played, so I could be wrong, but I get the impression that it wants to make you specialize now, rather then be good at nearly everything. I'm still obviously very early in the game, so I'm probably just not seeing the path clearly yet.

From the way it sounds, the skill system is completely overhauled. What was/wasn't true was simply jettisoned. Plus a new system on top called Relic points, which means waiting to do the DLC missions is probably a bad choice.

From what I understand tech governs how much cyberware you can jam in, so that seems like a contender. For example, armor is from cyberware, and actual clothing/armor sounds almost entirely cosmetic now.

I don't normally go heavy into wiki pages for information, but once I do get back around to this one, I'm going to have to do some hard crunching, because the rpg mechanics are completely foreign and new again.

The Xenogears tracks for Theatrythm: The Final Cut were released this month, so I started SE's music game back up to take a look at what had been delivered. There are three tracks from Xenogears - Awakening, Soaring, and Blazing Knights. The enemies during the sequences are the standard game enemies (i.e. all Final Fantasy monsters), but the backgrounds are unique to Xenogears. The Zohar looms over the stage in Awakening, and - appropriately enough - Seibzehn puts in a background appearance at the start of Soaring.

Then I realized that there were a ridiculous number of songs that had been released that I hadn't downloaded (I purchased the package that includes everything, including all three season passes), so I took care of that. One interesting little tid-bit - there are ten songs from Chrono Trigger (iirc, the most from any single non-FF game), but only two from Chrono Cross. More on those two later.

I went back into the main portion of the game to make some progress on clearing the core FF songs in the base game (over 400 of them, iirc). And once that was done...

As I mentioned, there are two songs from Chrono Cross. One is the opening song, while the other is the vocal piece that plays during the closing credits after you beat the game. I'd paused to listen to the attract music for the Chrono Cross opening theme, and remembered what a fun and catchy tune it is (it's quite possibly the most catchy tune that's ever been released for a Square game, imo). So I went back and played through it. And then I played through the other song, which I also enjoyed back in the day. Both are a lot of fun to listen to.

I might have to get Chrono Cross and play through it again...


Some other items that amused me...

When I was clearing the Final Fantasy songs, I started with songs from FF3 (the real FF3, not the original American release of FF6). I was playing the second to last song on the list, thought that it sounded familiar, and realized that it's the same basic tune that's used for the Cloud of Darkness fight in FFXIV (i.e. the final boss fight of the third Crystal Tower raid). And then I got to the final song - titled, appropriately enough, "This is the Last Fight" ( ) - and found that the boss of that song sequence was the Cloud of Darkness.


Two more DLC music packs left. The one in October will have music from Bravely Default. And, surprising absolutely no one ( ), the November pack was recently revealed to be packed full of songs from FFXVI (which doesn't have any music in the base game, since it was released later).

Cross is great. It's not the pinnacle of its generation (that would be IX followed closely by Xenogears) nor does it surpass the original, but its a game that stands out even among the heyday of its genre as one of the best.

Cross has a rather neat layered storyline. The top layer is the one that involves the protagonist, and it's fairly straightforward (aside from what's going on with Schalla; and if you're playing CC without playing CT first, that name will mean *nothing* to you, so don't worry about spoiling things). The other layer is the *HUGE SPOILER* My recollection is that it took me a couple of playthroughs to realize what was going on with all of that (though I didn't know the CT connection since I didn't play CT until later).

Eumerin wrote:

As I mentioned, there are two songs from Chrono Cross. One is the opening song, while the other is the vocal piece that plays during the closing credits after you beat the game. I'd paused to listen to the attract music for the Chrono Cross opening theme, and remembered what a fun and catchy tune it is (it's quite possibly the most catchy tune that's ever been released for a Square game, imo). So I went back and played through it. And then I played through the other song, which I also enjoyed back in the day. Both are a lot of fun to listen to.

Radical Dreamers is one of my favorites tracks ever. My copy of the game came with the soundtrack and that was a mainstay on my playlists for years.

Eumerin wrote:

When I was clearing the Final Fantasy songs, I started with songs from FF3 (the real FF3, not the original American release of FF6). I was playing the second to last song on the list, thought that it sounded familiar, and realized that it's the same basic tune that's used for the Cloud of Darkness fight in FFXIV (i.e. the final boss fight of the third Crystal Tower raid). And then I got to the final song - titled, appropriately enough, "This is the Last Fight" ( ) - and found that the boss of that song sequence was the Cloud of Darkness.

I missed the FFXIV connection so when you mentioned The Cloud of Darkness I just assumed you meant the final boss of 3 and got very confused

Eumerin wrote:

Cross is great. It's not the pinnacle of its generation (that would be IX followed closely by Xenogears) nor does it surpass the original, but its a game that stands out even among the heyday of its genre as one of the best.

Cross has a rather neat layered storyline. The top layer is the one that involves the protagonist, and it's fairly straightforward (aside from what's going on with Schalla; and if you're playing CC without playing CT first, that name will mean *nothing* to you, so don't worry about spoiling things). The other layer is the *HUGE SPOILER*

Spoiler:

messing around with the timelines by the dragons in an attempt to undo the destruction caused by Lavos in CT.

My recollection is that it took me a couple of playthroughs to realize what was going on with all of that (though I didn't know the CT connection since I didn't play CT until later).

The dragons are such a weird bit of the game. They're so important to the world but are completely alien to Trigger. They're definitely part of the reason it just feels like a completely separate game. I get the timey whimey connections to Trigger, but I think a big part of the problem is just how much Cross tells these connections rather than shows them. One of Triggers best elements is its tendency to show you the results of major events and then have you stumble your way into them. Cross on the other hand just lore dumps through heavy exposition rather than letting you experience things first hand. I feel like if the dimension hopping had expanded out to really let you encounter the Reptites and Dinopolis directly it would have had a bigger impact for Trigger fans.

 LunarSol wrote:

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Also on sale is Chrono Cross but missed that one back in the day. Anyone play it? Recommend it?

Posted this a few pages back in response to a similar question:

Chrono Cross is a really really great game, its just a terrible sequel to Chrono Trigger. It has almost nothing to do with the original except it IS a sequel unlike the Final Fantasy standalone stories. It takes place in a completely separate part of the world, it doesn't have any returning characters, the art style and battle system is completely different and the only times it ever even references the original is to tell you that after the game all the characters of the first were murdered horribly. Technically the whole thing is just a missing side quest from the original too, but that's a reductive complaint that simplifies the legitimately great story that Cross has to tell.

To me that's the worst part. Cross is great. It's not the pinnacle of its generation (that would be IX followed closely by Xenogears) nor does it surpass the original, but its a game that stands out even among the heyday of its genre as one of the best. It just really didn't need to have any ties to Trigger at all. They add nothing and just come across as mean spirited, leaving you with a feeling that the game knows its inferior and decides to be petty about it. It sucks, because it taints every conversation about the game because its best experienced as its own thing rather than a sequel to Trigger, but its hard to just say that to people asking about it while riding the high that is Trigger.

Thanks everyone. I've decided to pass on it for now. Not forever, I'm sure I'll play it some day. I did get the Collection of Mana though.

I've been messing around a bit with Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. But I set all of the options to "Classic" mode, which meant I had no mini-map. And since wandering around giant mazes with no map is just a little bit suicidal, I didn't do more than pop in and out of the dungeon until I'd purchased a pad of graph paper.

This proved to be a wise decision.

My initial trips into the dungeon were largely in and out hops while I leveled up my characters. I had a couple of combats that went quite poorly, and at one point was down two characters while I waited to earn enough money to raise them. Fortunately, there's a group of pre-generated characters just hanging out in the inn, so I had temporary replacements until I earned the money that I needed. But it was still annoying. And expensive. And then, after getting both characters raised, and getting everyone a few levels, I finally felt confident enough to start seriously exploring the first level of the Proving Grounds.

It helped that the intelligent enemies now tend to flee on sight when they encounter me...

Graph paper in hand, I started seriously exploring. And mapping. As it turns out, I found the stairs to the second level very quickly. But I don't feel confident enough to head down there yet, so I'm still exploring the top floor of the dungeon. Most recently, I found a secret door at the end of a corridor, found another long corridor behind that secret door, went down to the T intersection at the end of that long corridor... and suddenly found myself teleported to an unfamiliar room with a *lot* of doors.

Uh oh...

Amusingly, when I opened the door directly across from me, I was immediately teleported back to my arrival point in the room. With that in mind, I picked another door to open. I quickly found myself in a magically dark corridor (which, unfortunately, the Light spell doesn't dispel; apparently the only thing that it does is reveal secret doors). I blundered around in that for a while, finally found my way out into the light and a familiar looking area, and breathed a sigh of relief. The last thing you want when you're exploring a dungeon is to not know how to get back to the exit.

I would like to be working on my minis, but my body is too achy from just digging a big hole. So, I have been playing a lot of Cyberpunk 2077, mostly doing sidequests, grinding and somewhat doing the main quest, only because I found out that I have to keep doing it to get to the Phantom Liberty DLC, which is making me lick my lips and rub my hands like that dude behind the tree in that meme which I have no idea the origin of and can't be bothered researching right now.

Mad Max

Love this game! Harpoon is fun, Ed;epically once you’ve upgraded it a bit,

I briefly started up Cyberpunk 2077 before I went to bed last night. Checked my character screen, went to the Perks page, and tried to start selecting the perks for a Netrunnet build in 2.0.

They were all locked.

Uh...

It was late, and I hadn't intended to do anything of substance anyway, so I shut it down.

I keep meaning to play Sea of Stars but find myself booting up F-Zero 99 instead.

Eumerin wrote:
I briefly started up Cyberpunk 2077 before I went to bed last night. Checked my character screen, went to the Perks page, and tried to start selecting the perks for a Netrunnet build in 2.0.

They were all locked.

Uh...

It was late, and I hadn't intended to do anything of substance anyway, so I shut it down.

Were your attributes (body, cool, etc) also reset? If so, you need to raise those first. Perks are locked behind different attribute levels (4, 9, 15, 20)

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

Eumerin wrote:
I briefly started up Cyberpunk 2077 before I went to bed last night. Checked my character screen, went to the Perks page, and tried to start selecting the perks for a Netrunnet build in 2.0.

They were all locked.

Uh...

It was late, and I hadn't intended to do anything of substance anyway, so I shut it down.

Were your attributes (body, cool, etc) also reset? If so, you need to raise those first. Perks are locked behind different attribute levels (4, 9, 15, 20)

No, they weren't. Skills and attributes were how I had left them. The only thing reset was my perks.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Mad Max

Love this game! Harpoon is fun, Ed;epically once you’ve upgraded it a bit,

Oh that's crazy! I just started it too! It's surprisingly good. Had it since it came out but just got around to it now. Also, seems like the only sequel to Fury Road were ever going to get....

Eumerin wrote:
I briefly started up Cyberpunk 2077 before I went to bed last night. Checked my character screen, went to the Perks page, and tried to start selecting the perks for a Netrunnet build in 2.0.

They were all locked.

Uh...

It was late, and I hadn't intended to do anything of substance anyway, so I shut it down.

I figured it out.

I'm an idiot. I'm used to perk/talent trees that start at the top, and have you work your way downward. But these ones start at the bottom, and have you work your way up.

Oops!

^^;;


One of the Netrunner perks is called "Shadowrunner".

/shiftyeyes

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Mad Max

Love this game! Harpoon is fun, Ed;epically once you’ve upgraded it a bit,

Oh that's crazy! I just started it too! It's surprisingly good. Had it since it came out but just got around to it now. Also, seems like the only sequel to Fury Road were ever going to get....

Prequel 🙂

And we’re getting a Furiosa movie in the coming months!

The game itself is a competent one. And for me? An absolute ton of fun.

fired up warhammer total war 2 for the first time in forever and played a campaign as brettonians
early game sucked with keeping the peasant balance, but once i had enough territory to have an army of flyers it was ok for the most part
might have a go at a goblin swarm and just burn huge chunks of the map to the ground

Restarted Cyberpunk 2077 at the start of this week, trying to figure out the new system and whatnot, spent more then 13 hours playing through the prologue, doing every side job, frying every ganger I came across to level things up as much as possible. Will probably go with a pistol / hacker build again, hacking is once again quite OP, even if they try to trace you. Once I got the contagion hack things got hilariously fun.

Also more Payday 3, we're playing it in bursts for now, just doing challenging heists in stealth more for the thrill and the bragging rights than the actual rewards the game hands out. Playing an entire stealth heist without having to mask up once, using the right perks and skills, is an amazing feeling.