u/darkfireslide

I've been really excited to try Time Stranger since it came out and waited for a good sale to finally pick it up, but I just finished the radio tower fight and I have some serious hangups about it compared to CS/HM.

1. The tone of the story is much, much less mature. CS/HM delved into some actual topics narratively that matter or were at least interesting to think about, and so far TS has been... completely inoffensive, if not outright juvenile for the most part. I think even the Tamers season of the anime was darker and had more mature themes. So that's a bit disappointing. And compared to HM's story, there is so far for me no comparison at all in the character department. HM was genuinely good in a way where I don't feel like I have to add caveats like I do to a lot of video game stories, so this is pretty unfortunate even though I don't even really play RPGs for the story.

2. CS/HM's battle mechanics are more interesting to me. Digimon are properly differentiated by their stats, unlike TS where every mon can reach 9999 in every stat. The ability to move abilities around like equipment in TS removes a layer of strategy and planning that came from Digimon in CS/HM learning moves within a general family of available evolutions they could reasonably reach without excessive grinding, which also hurts mon identity and differentiation. Older games like World Dawn/Dusk also had Digimon able to reach max stats, but they were also limited by their evolution trees in terms of what moves they could learn. As such the main differentiating factor for mons in TS is mostly just type and resistances, which while resistances are more robust in TS by mons having multiple resistances and weaknesses apiece, it also means you need to experiment or memorize what mons are weak to instead of in CS/HM where you could dependably rely on the type chart to understand weaknesses. I also preferred the Party Memory system to the Agent Rank system, and I'm not happy that I went from having a robust team of up to 11 mons down to just 6+guests.

3. I don't like Aegiomon. I was happy at first to see the game had an English dub, until I realized that the voice acting in question was for two not untalented but sadly still annoying characters that has me moving to mute the voice acting, with Aegiomon's lines+delivery just being too immaturely written to the point of being grating. To be completely fair, I ended up muting the CS/HM voice acting as well, but because of the extremely repetitive lines that play at the end of battles rather than because the game was devoid of performances I actually liked, with Kyoko, Arata, Matayoshi, and Yuuko all being fairly pleasant to listen to even though I don't understand a lick of Japanese. Voice acting aside, I'm not really thrilled to have Aegiomon in my party as he exists mechanically. The fact that he is a permanent tanky vaccine type fixture of the team with no way to customize his build or affect him via the story that I can tell so far feels lame. His design also feels weak to me, we've always had humanoid designs in Digimon but a 10 year old kid with goat hooves and horns just does nothing for me compared to classics like Wizardmon and Angemon.

I know most of this is completely subjective, but I wanted to know if anyone else had these issues with Time Stranger coming from CS/HM specifically. I don't outright hate Time Stranger, but I do kind of regret buying it without a better sale because it just is not living up to the hype for me.

Hey everyone. Apologies in advance because this is a long one, as I have a lot of feelings about the video I just watched. This year I played and completed Bravely Default 2 for the first time, finishing the story completely for the final ending but not doing optional bosses or postgame content. I found the game fun, and a nice homage in many ways to Final Fantasy V, one of my favorite RPGs of all time.

Fast forward to now, and a video pops up in my YouTube feed from the creator AcousticHarmonia, who I remember did takedowns of some of the newer Pokemon games that I enjoyed listening to. His video on Bravely Default 2 gets mentioned, and with a title like "Bravely Default 2 is an Insult to RPGs," I naturally wanted to listen because I enjoyed the game, assuming that most of the criticism would be levied against the story, which has fairly forgettable characters and only a few interesting plot moments worth mentioning in the midgame. Now, I'm about to do a dissection of his gameplay here, but I want to make it clear that my ultimate point isn't that he played poorly, but rather how his poor play informs other people's perceptions of a game when he makes a review about a game he doesn't understand very well.

His actual critique starts by talking about how the boss encounters in Bravely Default 2 are poorly designed. He talks at length about how, in essence, it's bad design that bosses can be trivialized by doing things such as picking accessories to nullify certain status effects, certain abilities can nullify counters, condemns the whole boss counter system (something for which Final Fantasy V is usually praised for), and claims that building a coherent team isn't possible in Bravely Default 2 so much as choosing correct/incorrect decisions the way a toddler puts shaped blocks into the correctly-shaped hole.

I almost didn't buy Bravely Default 2. It rarely goes on sale, and not by much when it does on Steam, and the reviews for the game are fairly harsh. I haven't played BD1 or Bravely Second, so I have no point of reference there, only my otherwise extensive knowledge of RPGs generally speaking. In short, without even watching the entire video, I was at once prompted to, using basic deduction skills, analyze AcousticHarmonia's critique of the game for the first 20 minutes or so, in which he makes many of the criticisms I mentioned above about accessories and counters. In the background, he shows the fight against Anihal, which is definitely one of the game's biggest difficulty spikes.

The actual footage of the Anihal fight paints a pretty unfortunate picture of the review. It's been months since I played, but the gameplay footage being shown shows AcousticHarmonia resetting the fight over and over again. I don't think his video is as egregious as the now-notorious Cuphead tutorial debacle, but it's fairly evident that his party setup is not a very good one, and worse still is that his actual play is not very good, either. His party consists of:

Adelle as Monk/Freelancer
Elvis as Bard/White Mage
Gloria as White Mage/Black Mage
Seth as Vanguard/Monk

Granted, Anihal is a relatively early game fight but I noticed a few key problems with AcousticHarmonia's battle tactics. The first, most obvious one is that he never goes into negative turns when Braving. For Bard in particular, this means he is only ever really using the 15% physical damage protection, as opposed to the 45% he could have if he used his first turn to go to -2, as opposed to casting the ability once and then spending turns healing. Bards have a decent Speed stat which makes them great for spending extra turns. This also means he is spending a lot of turns Defaulting to make his BP go all the way up to 3, which can be a good idea sometimes for burst damage if the enemy is capable of doing a lot of healing, but this also means you're spending several turns not casting buffs, not casting debuffs, and effectively cutting your action economy in half, which leads to the healer death spiral where too much pressure gets put on your healer because other party members aren't pitching in with item usage to heal or clear debuffs.

I also want to push back on the accessory choice criticism he makes. Not only does the game give you an accessory which prevents Silence, but there is also a magic hat which prevents it as well. For a character whose primary job is casting, immunity to Silence is a generally good idea to have regardless of whether or not you have knowledge beforehand about a boss, as this debuff completely shuts down spellcasters. In other words it's poor play and strategy to not *plan* for the possibility when you know such a debuff exists.

Then there's the actual class setup, where some other very questionable choices are made. Putting Black Mage and White Mage on the same character is a bad idea in most RPGs, and in Bravely Default 2 especially so because the two classes use different spellcasting stats, and at this point in the game for an RPG veteran like AcousticHarmonia there really isn't an excuse for not understanding what the base statistics of characters do, *especially* when critiquing a game's mechanics and systems. On top of the different spellcasting stats problem, this also puts too much action economy pressure on a singular character; Gloria here is clearly meant to be his primary healer, so between curing debuffs and healing HP damage, when is she meant to actually be using her secondary class? Freelancer and Bard are both far better choices for a White Mage secondary class, offering other support abilities for the support character you're meant to be using. Meanwhile, Freelancer does almost nothing as a secondary for Monk save the eventual Blind debuff clear necessary if trying to defeat Anihal with physical attacks. Elvis and Seth's builds seem fine for this fight, although again I have to mention that the actual gameplay for the Bard was hampered by the lack of Braving to increase survivability.

The game also communicates to you that you should be using magical attacks in this fight, because your story companion at the time uses a Lower Magic Resist attack on his turns. There is also the obvious synergy of the Monk's ability which lowers fire resistance combined with the Black Mage's spells, or even that the Black Mage can poison targets for large damage over time on the tougher enemies. None of this is used from what I can tell, as AcousticHarmonia continues trying to plow through the fight with the tried-and-true JRPG staple of spamming physical attacks and healing damage. Instead, he continues attacking Anihal on turns when she's defaulting, eating her counters to the face when he already knows it's going to happen, and then getting visibly frustrated when he couldn't just mash the attack button through the fight.

There are probably other things one could mention about the fight and AcousticHarmonia's strategy in it, but what I really want to talk about is how his lack of understanding the gameplay's core systems led to him reviewing the game negatively. This is a problem I have encountered with many RPG reviews over the years: that the reviewers overestimate their own skill level and knowledge with gameplay systems that are more complex than people give them credit for, and when these games actually challenge players, these kinds of players will often blame the game for being poorly designed rather than realizing that their own skill level with the game is not as high as they assume it is. The Anihal fight is obviously possible, tons of people have gotten past it even on their first try, and I'm sure they've done so with tons of party compositions, too. Bravely Default 2 is a wonderfully open game in terms of design and party customization and even I as someone who only completed the game a single time realize this.

He also mentions at one point that Surpassing Power is a skill tax for damage dealer characters, but this is only true for characters that deal large single-hit damage, as opposed to the number of other character builds in which you deal many attacks at lower damage ceilings, in which you do not need Surpassing Power since you will not or will only barely break the 9999 damage limit. Again, he assumes he understands the game when he has only begun to grasp the surface of what is possible, and what skillful gameplay looks like. I don't assume I'm that good at this game, and there are people in this sub who will probably recognize even more mistakes and incorrect statements in this review.

Had this been my first exposure to Bravely Default 2, I probably would have believed AcousticHarmonia. After all, the video is well-edited and his points sound compelling. But with actual analysis of his gameplay, it's clear he did not understand the lessons the game was trying to teach him regarding Braving and Defaulting, and how diverse party compositions only work if you use them effectively on top of gearing them properly. I don't think Bravely Default 2 is a perfect game by any means, but this review was clearly not well-informed and is built largely on the reviewer's frustration at being unable to build effective teams.

And the long and short of it is... reviews like these damage a game's reputation unfairly. It is different when a reviewer can demonstrate that they understand a game and criticize it based on that understanding, but in this case I am thoroughly convinced that the reviewer was not in a qualified position to be making many of the gameplay critiques he made on account of not understanding the gameplay mechanics themselves.

Thankfully, this was not my first exposure to Bravely Default 2, and I'm glad I got to enjoy the game this year. In fact, after watching this critique I'm already thinking of doing another run, utilizing jobs and strategies I didn't the first time around. Speaking of which, if anyone knows a good alternative to elixir spamming with salve-maker during some of the later fights to counteract the HP and MP drain, I'd love to hear them :)

For starters, I'll say that I'm someone who prefers guns with wooden stocks in real life; I think they're more aesthetically pleasing. But the Stalker games take place in 2015. The CNPP would have been abandoned in 1986. Fully black polymer rifles are in service already during the time period of the disaster, as well as patterned camouflage, night vision, and other things many people might be associating with recent times. Moreover, many of the weapons being plundered in Stalker are from abandoned military bases and convoys that were left behind during the second disaster, including the special forces that would end up becoming the Monolith as we know them. Even the black gas masks seen on things like exosuits and late game armor are correct for the time.

I'd actually argue it'd be more rare to find guns closer to WW2. I often see things like the PPSh and other similar era weapons in mods like Gamma and these are actually *more* anachronistic because most of these older firearms would have been phased out by the time of the original CNPP disaster. Something like a Mosin-Nagant 91/30 is still going to be relatively common, but so are double barrel shotguns because these are common weapons for hunters. This is to say nothing of the relatively high frequency of weapons chambered in 9x39mm (Vintorez, Val, Groza) because of the presence of special forces.

Obviously Stalker isn't a historical game in a strict sense, but the game very much takes place during a time period where optics are as common as iron sights, wooden stock guns as common as black polymer ones, and modern combat armor and other equipment. So my question is why shouldn't Stalker feature a lot of this equipment? Why does it take away from the setting to feature such weapons? Am I misunderstanding the argument? Would be really curious to know

Hey everyone, I'm playing Call of the Zone (+IWP) and wanted to know how to get the psi-helmet in order to start doing endgame stuff. Do I even need one still? If so, where do I go to find it? I do have Story Mode turned off and I'm playing as the Freedom faction, if that changes anything. I've visited both Barkeep and Sakharov and no luck still. Is it tied to rank? I am currently at Veteran rank (only Expert, Master, and Legendary left) and I also have Friendly status with both the Loners and Ecologists. I'm kind of stuck because I'm ready to do the end game but I just assume going into either of the labs will kill me instantly. Any help would be greatly appreciated for anyone who's played CotZ

In short, do not use dynamic faction relations, and you should probably have "All Factions At War" turned on. Now let me tell you what happens if you don't.

The first few days, weeks even everything will probably be normal. They were for me. How the system is intended to work is that the relations change somewhat randomly, and are affected by actions taken. If you play as the Loners and Loners shoot Military faction members, it makes Duty upset as well. That sort of thing. However, there's a critical flaw in the system, that I can't begin to fathom why it was implemented this way: factions have a relationship with themselves. In my playthrough, it actually started with the Military. One day I noticed the message: "Military is now at war with the Military." On the fronts where I was fighting them as Clear Sky, their troops began to evaporate. Even after the ceasefire, we began to push them out of several bases.

At first, I thought to myself: "Oh, there must be some kind of Civil War mechanic." But then the same thing happened to Duty, Freedom, and the Mercenaries. Fast forward another week into the playthrough, and one day I fast travel from an anomaly field back to Clear Sky's main base in the Great Swamp. Then I see the message: Clear Sky is now at war with Clear Sky. All hell breaks loose. Everyone from the guys sitting around the campfire playing guitar, to the guards posted at the entrances, to even the merchants and Cold himself joined in the sudden massacre. The bodies piled up, until finally one survivor remained: Spore, the merchant, who glitched back into his shop like nothing had happened. I was unaffected on account of my goodwill being so high with the faction.

This obviously completely ruins the playthrough. While watching the entire base slip into madness as though affected by the brain scorcher or a psi-storm was funny at first, the save is now basically unplayable. Even if I use an add-on to reset faction relations, nothing seems to help - after a certain amount of time has passed, the faction still implodes and starts killing itself.

So if you're going to play the Warfare mode, turn off dynamic faction relations because eventually, it seems every faction will butcher itself. And because you can't have dynamic faction relations on, you must also make sure every faction is at war so the game will progress. I hope this advice helps at least one person avoid a similar fate lol

I haven't played Stalker in years and have been trying Call of the Zone + IWP, and I wanted to know what sorts of goals people like to set for themselves long-term when playing. Obvious ones I can think of are to have maxed armor and weapons, but what about faction elimination and such? Curious what other people like to accomplish before ending a playthrough :)

Title, but basically I've just done a back to back of Call of the Zone and now Anomaly+Warfare, and I can't find any anomalous zones. I'm playing as Clear Sky in the Great Marsh and I've gone to every anomalous field that I found in CotZ, and while they still all have the deadly anomalies in the areas themselves, they aren't being marked on my map when I visit them and they aren't generating any artifacts, at least not with a level 1 Echo anyway. I turned off Dynamic Anomalies *after* starting the playthrough, but idk if this would help. It's been 6 in-game days since I turned it off and about 4 emissions since then. I've seen some glowing green spots on the ground here and there that I thought might be higher tier artifacts since they weren't dangerous or radioactive, but my Echo didn't pick them up.

Yes, I have my Areas and such enabled on the actual map screen. I guess it's not the end of the world if I don't find it, but is it so rare to find artifacts at all in Anomaly? I've visited fields directly after emissions and just not found anything time after time. If it's a case of the level 1 detector just not being able to pick anything up basically, that's fine, but it'd be nice to have other players confirm this.

EDIT: Turning off Warfare mode allowed me to find anomalous zones again. Still no artifacts, though.

Now I'm not hoping for miracles here but I was playing vanilla again and losing my mind at having to cut down the endless 2-3 stacks of artillery or archers since auto resolve doesn't work. Which mod have you played has the best/hardest AI, especially in campaign?