• Tag Archives Fantasy
  • Indexing: Reflections & Wayward Children

    The second entry in Seanan McGuire’s Indexing series does not appear to have any reason to exist. Oh sure, the foreword says something about people asking “What came next” and that this was the answer… but basically nothing is resolved here, a few additional things are now unresolved, and it ends in pretty much the exact same place the first book did. Just skip it until/unless a third entry is ever written.

    Speaking of things that should be skipped: Wayward Children.

    I know better than to buy something just because I liked some of the creator’s other works. I know better. Worse, I even have a long history of bad experiences with young adult works by authors normally known for writing standard novels. And yet, I still bought the first four of these books and forced myself through them. There are so many negative things I could list about them, ranging from their physical length to their themes to their structure, but ultimately it’s probably best to keep it as succinct as possible and just say “They are young adult novels through and through”.


  • Sparrow Hill Road & Laughter at the Academy

    The first of Seanan McGuire’s Ghost Roads novels is a collection of related stories/songs which were repurposed into four ‘books’. Book 1 is very good, the follow-up is not. Book 3 fluctuates a bit, while the conclusion is abrupt/lacking. It’s interesting… but ends up too uneven to really care about whatever the sequel might contain.

    Laughter at the Academy is somewhat similar in that it’s a collection of stories, but here they’re all quite independent and run the gamut from Wayward Children to Newsflesh. You can see shades of those series, October Daye, the above mentioned Ghost Roads, Indexing, The Deep, and even Middlegame in the large assortment of mostly chapter-sized tales arrayed here.

    Being anthology bait as many of them are, don’t expect a consistency of quality (’cause there isn’t any), but they succeed quite brilliantly in showcasing the range of topics/foci found in the author’s full-sized works. Interestingly, pretty much all of them are ‘dark’ in some manner and one of the stories (The Tolling of Pavlov’s Bells) may as well have been written specifically for the current viral crisis. My only complaint would be that the intermittent/inconsistent introductory trigger warnings lifted from the fanfic community are aggravating to read.


  • THE LEGEND OF HEROES: Trails of Cold Steel III

    It would’ve been easier had this game followed the lead of its predecessor down into the gutter. Yet it miraculously does not, instead ending up better than the first game in the series by combining elements from both prequels into a far more focused/streamlined product reminiscent of Xenosaga.

    This puts potential players in a bind, leaving them the choice of either starting the series here (effectively playing from Juna’s PoV and missing out on all the reunion content) or having to force their way through the first two games in order to see things from Rean’s perspective. After thinking about it a bit, I think the best course of action (if you haven’t played any Cold Steel games before) is to play the first normally, and then play through the second on the lowest difficulty while avoiding all side-content (make sure to pick up Mint, Alan, Hugo, Becky, Munk, and the twins though). You’ll still be in the dark on the Crossbell references of course… but since those games don’t have official translations there’s not much to be done on that front.

    Speaking of translations: That’s this game’s one weak point (aside from the cliffhanger ending). Similar to the second installment, the character interactions here more often resemble a rewrite than a translation. It’s thankfully not character assassination-level (looking at you Neptune), but it’s pretty noticeable if you’re playing with the original voice actors and I had hoped that using a different localization team would’ve resulted in a more faithful adaptation. Oh well.

    The DLC situation is the same as previous games, which is to say there’s little reason to buy it aside from supporting the developers, and the gameplay progression is quite smooth on normal difficulty. There’s no need for grinding, or going particularly out of the way to find all the sidequests if you simply want to beat the game; just kill the various monster spawns at least once and you’ll be fine.

    Now comes the long wait for the fourth and final Cold Steel game, which was announced for release sometime next year… but may end up delayed due to the whole global pandemic issue.


  • Divinity: Original Sin II – Definitive Edition

    For one reason or another I decided to finally see what all the fuss was about regarding Original Sin II‘s “Definitive Edition” update (having never bothered to play Original Sin‘s Definitive Edition).

    As it turns out it’s nothing but a glorified balance patch, the kind a game like, say, Grim Dawn releases regularly without any sort of fanfare. Which isn’t to say it’s worthless, since the changes are welcome enough even if they don’t actually affect how the game plays in any way, but the re-branding is pretty misleading.

      I ended up playing through on Honor mode using a group of Steam Guide builds:
      Necromancer (insanely powerful)
      Elemental Conjurer (summons are always good, but lacks finishing power)
      Fire Fury (weakest link, garbage against a single target)
      Ranger (great at eliminating single targets)

    That was actually my second attempt, as the first used an Elemental Archer instead of a Ranger and died during the Lost & Found quest because I had forgotten the game’s cardinal rule: Never, ever, fight fair. Fittingly, toward the end of this successful run I switched over to a barrelmancy strategy to guarantee I’d get all the ending achievements.

    Now I think I’ll play through it again to try out some Fextralife builds that look interesting and grab a bunch of miscellaneous achievements I’m still missing (not on Honor mode though… I’m quite through with that).


  • Eschalon: BOOK I

    Similar to the Spiderweb Software games, Eschalon is a throwback to much older titles. Though sadly, it doesn’t feature the same graphical upgrades those do; 800×600 is the only resolution option.

    The gameplay here is also turn-based, albeit with just a single controllable character, while the plot and dialog is significantly more sparse. Health and mana both regenerate, but they do it at such a glacial pace that progress through any dungeon area ends up a tedious stop-and-go affair… even when using a save editor to fully restore the mana pool between fights. I’ve read that the sequel significantly increases the regen rate, so I think I’m just going to stop playing this installment now (~5 hours in at 6th level) and jump to that one.

    If you do decide to play this, here are a few tips:
    – Pressing F3 displays the various hotkeys.
    – Right-click on the map area to show the fast travel menu.
    – Closing a portcullis on a monster instantly kills it.
    – Loot is randomized the moment you open a container, so save beforehand and then reload until something useful appears.


  • Darkest Dungeon – Update

    Two possible solutions came to mind to address my main issues with the game:

    A) Mod the inventory/provision system to be less nonsensical.
    B) Refuse to buy any provisions besides food/torches and retreat the moment further progress became impossible.

    As it would happen, modding the relevant parts of the game is beyond simple; the inventory files are in plain text. Even better, it’s also pretty simple to remove/reduce the ridiculous hunger checks.

    Those changes helped quite a bit. I still have to treat every adventurer as disposable meat, to be dismissed the moment they return from a failed quest, but at least some tangible progress can be made toward building up the Hamlet facilities. Can’t say I enjoy the game though… since having to face near-constant failure/retreat is more than a little exhausting… but at least it’s now tolerable as a periodic diversion. Sort of like an actively antagonistic Rezrog (which is far more stable today than it was at release) in a way.


  • Darkest Dungeon – First Impressions

    After having long ignored this game‘s existence, as I’m not fond of difficulty for difficulty’s sake and don’t play games with the intention of dying/failing, I finally broke down and picked it up during the most recent sale.

    The idea was that it might be tolerable if I went into it as an adventurer torture/death simulator rather than a conventional RPG. And, honestly, in that framework it delivers in spades; lost three of them on the second quest after the triple-threat of starvation, insane stress generation, and a hateful random number generator that thinks a 75% chance to hit should be more like 10%. It wasn’t anywhere near as frustrating as I thought it would be (as new adventurers are always arriving).

    No, the frustrating thing is the provision/inventory system. Rather than a weight system or individual character inventories you just have a universal set of slots. Every type of item takes up a single slot, and the slots have strict stacking limits. So 1 Bandage and 1 Antidote take up exactly as much room as 8 Shovels and a 1-person party can carry just as much as a 4-person party. Gold takes up a slot (and can only stack to 1750), each individual type of gem takes up a slot, each individual resource type takes up a slot (there are 4), and… each journal page takes up a slot. Care to guess how many slots you get? A mere sixteen.

    That, right there, is the most bullshit of bullshit examples of fake difficulty and honestly just makes me not want to bother continuing. What’s the point of dungeon delving if you can’t carry any loot?


  • Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls – Conclusion

    Having just beat the the main storyline with two characters (one for each of the ‘good’ endings), and having fully mapped both the Shiin and Trials dungeons, my main takeaway from this game is that the item drop rate is just too damn low.

    It takes forever to farm the weapons you need in order to handle the notable difficulty jumps on Shiin floors 4 and 9, and even with good equipment the last two Shiin levels (and the later Deep Dungeon levels) are just a slog filled with enemies that do 200+ damage to the entire party, regenerate, and dodge a chunk of your attacks besides. It’s not fun in a conventional way… just a masochistic one.

    Good for one playthrough, but no more unless you’re in the market for a mindless timesink.


  • Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls – First Impressions

    Having only played Wizardy 8 before, my only hopes going into Labyrinth of Lost Souls were that it not be as overtly antagonistic as Elminage: Gothic. Fortunately, that is indeed the case.

    Which is not to say that it’s user-friendly… because it’s emphatically not; nothing is explained or documented. Nothing. Want to know what attributes do? What the class requirements, abilities, or spell gain rates are? Which spells affect a group, all enemies, or have a permanent duration? Well, you’ll have to just use them all yourself and figure it out. It also has similar annoyances to Elminage regarding overly complicated item-related menus, equipped items mysteriously taking up inventory space, and party members in the back row being dead-weight for quite some time.

    It is however better than that game in three ways that make all the difference in the world: An easily accessible map feature, no character aging system, and class changes not resetting attribute points. At the moment I’ve fully mapped the first three floors of both the main and Trials dungeons (alternating between them, Trials # -> Shiin #, appears to be the best way to proceed) and am at level 11-12 with a party consisting of a Thief, Lord, Samurai, Mage, Priest, & Bishop.

    Some advice:
    – The bonus points you get at character creation can allegedly range up to 40 (the highest I’ve gotten is 30, and over 20 is quite rare).
    – Everyone can use Agility & Vitality (and Luck affects drop rates).
    – Immediately buy the two available maps (later ones are loot drops).
    – Buy 2-3 short swords for your front-liners as soon as possible.
    – Be on the lookout for armor that increases magic resistance; magic deals crazy high damage.
    – You absolutely need both a Thief and Bishop in every party.
    – Save after every (successful) battle, before opening any chest, and before trying to resurrect anyone.
    – Levitation, Battle Aura, & Advanced Reflex all last indefinitely (until you either leave the dungeon or hit an anti-magic area).
    Item Drop Chart someone put together.
    Alternate text version sorted by dungeon level.


  • AVADON 3: the WARBORN

    Ah, now this is a proper successor to Avernum. Good enough that I’d suggest completely skipping the first two Avadons to avoid the issue of retcons, if nothing else.

    No wild swings in difficulty, smooth leveling progression, Fatigue now regenerates automatically (so no more battles consisting of 90% basic attacks), a sensible selection of skills without any bizarre cross-tree requirements, a varied assortment of companions with relatively frequent commentary, quite a number of choices to be made, far better integrated (non-PC) Tinkermage content, and no main quest related backtracking. The only real negatives are a couple of bugs (e.g. Healing Turret won’t work if it’s the first one you place), the game once again being blind to playing as a Tinkermage, and the persistent oddity of everyone acting like the other Hands in your party are just random mercenaries.

    If you liked Avernum or anything about the earlier Avadon games then definitely pick this up, and if you haven’t played any Spiderweb Software games before then consider giving this one a chance (so long as you like turn-based RPGs).