TheRealTurk

OK, soooo . . . started the game and my fears about the level scaling are 100% confirmed. Tried the Nomad background on hard. I kept getting wrecked in the very first car chase. Like, I absolutely could not beat it. Looked online and it turns out it may very well be impossible because of the way the level scaling was implemented.

Apparently, you're supposed to take set amounts of damage at pre-determined intervals. In the past, it was always tuned to leave you with a sliver of health to make it feel like you barely made it. Problem is, they didn't take into account the new scaling system, so on hard, the enemies will always do enough damage to kill you, no matter what.

While I was able to get through by bumping it down to normal, that's a shitty solution. If the very first encounter in the game demonstrates such a low level of care in implementing and testing the system, then I'll pass.

I guess it's BG3 for the foreseeable future.

I'll be diving in for reals pretty soon. I avoided it early on given the reviews, then picked it up when they were offering it for like $5 as a mea culpa. Then other games happened and I never really looped back to it.

I was initially excited that they seem to have largely put the game in a good place, but then I read about the implementation of level scaling and I'm a lot more trepidatious. I have a reflexive hateof level scaling. It gives me the Inspector Dreyfus eye twitch just thinking about it. I mean, I get the arguments for it, but I have yet to find a game that has actually implemented it in a way that makes the game better/fun. It's always been a net negative, especially in an RPG.

So we'll see. People seem to be raving about the new update, but man, I don't know if I'm gonna take to it unless there's an option to turn that shit off.

@cozmicaztaway: That sentence alone is enough to give me the Inspector Dreyfus eye twitch.

After about 40 hours, I'm enjoying it, but I see it being more of a guilty pleasure game than something that's truly, objectively, "good." I mean, the game's got systems for days, and none of them are what I would call "bad." But every one of them feels like it's a rough draft of something much better. Just about every system could have been substantially better if they'd invested a little more time into a more elegant implementation.

The end result is that I feels like the game has a "who is this for?" problem. On the one hand, the game has enough systems and complexity that people who just want to LT/RT things to death with space lasers are unlikely to enjoy it. On the other hand, those systems are simultaneously too finicky and also not deep enough to appeal to folks who really want an in-depth space sim.

On the plus side, I do think the game nails the vibe it was going for. They definitely hit the nail on the head with the 70s/80s sci-fi fantasy aesthetic, and the music sounds like it could have been an unreleased track for The Wrath of Khan. I just wish the game around that stuff was a little better.

Anything but radio stations. I never had them on in the Fallouts because they were always one of the most obnoxious parts of the soundscape in those games.

@bigsocrates: It's iconic, but I don't know that Nintendo would view it the same way. I mean, isn't Mario mostly just a lot of "yahoos" and "wahoos" and "lets a gos"? Seems like a situation where if you got close enough most people probably won't notice.

Also, that Mario movie made like a bajillionty trillionty dollars without Martinet doing the voice. Since that might be a lot of non-gamer's first exposure to the franchise, it probably puts the idea in Nintendo's head that the voice isn't all that important to the continued popularity of the character. If they can get a reasonable approximation at a cheaper price, then they'd probably do it.

Or, since we definitely live in the darkest timeline, maybe we should all get ready for "It's a me, Chris a Pratt! Lemme a tell you about a Jesus."

The Switch is fine for what it is. I only bought mine a year ago when I was going to have a long flight for a vacation and it was perfect for that. It's a great thing for travel.

I can't say I really play it much at home, since it basically doesn't run very much other than some indie games I already have on other platforms. Outside of some first party stuff, there just really isn't that much game-wise that couldn't be done better on other systems.

I haven't put very many hours in yet, but I think reviewers are considerably off the mark when they reflexively compare this to Fallout or Skyrim.

I mean, I get why that comparison would be made. It very much looks like those games. In some respects in also plays like them. But where those games were gradually shifting out the RPG mechanics in favor of more action-y gameplay, Starfield swings that pendulum back in the other direction pretty aggressively. This is much more of an RPG than a lot of outlets are giving it credit for.

If I had to make a comparison, I'd actually say the Bethesda game it has most in common with is Daggerfall. That game had a gigantic world and a ton of skills - I think you could learn something like 5 or 6 separate languages. None of these were particularly useful in gameplay terms, but they were cool from a role-play perspective.

It's kind of the same thing in Starfield. The map is also huge, but just like Daggerfall, there isn't a huge reason to explore most of it. Instead, it's much more of a tone thing - it's meant to be as much to be part of the set-dressing as it is to provide meaningful gameplay content. Similarly, there are a ton of skills that look like you'd have no reason to actually use (Gastronomy? Really?), but I could absolutely see picking if you wanted to build a very specific character to role play.

This doesn't mean I'm saying any of this is good, mind you. There's a reason why the Elder Scrolls series has reduced the number of skills over time, and there are tons of mechanics in Starfield that are either badly tutorialized or feel kind of half-baked. But if you're going in with the expectation that this is "Skyrim in space" I think you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

@atheistpreacher: Is there any point to S-ranks beyond the S-rank? I was kind of operating under the assumption that you'd be rewarded with parts or something if you did enough of them. If it's just to get a big "S" on the mission screen, though, I think I'll skip it.

It's my first AC game and I'm mostly having fun. I enjoy the parts where I'm bombing around in a mech and blowing stuff up. The actual assembly of those mechs, not so much.

This game really could have done with a lot more UX focus, because the menus are all pretty terrible. Which is bad given how much you need to be in them. It just does a poor job overall of fronting the numbers that are actually important in an intuitive or useful way.