VGChartz Video Game Book Club -- July game: Ghost Recon Shadow Wars

Player2

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Player2 on 29 March 2014

RolStoppable said:

Player2 said:

The game is a franchise-tainting disgrace.

I knew it was bad before picking it up, but like with other games like Final Fantasy X or Soul Calibur III I had to see it with my own eyes, and it ended being way worse. The story, the "unmetroidistic" level design, the "find Waldo" puzzles (the game won't tell you who or what is Waldo, of course) or the excruciatingly slow over the shoulder sections are a small nuisance in comparison with how rotten the game is at its core.

How some people have been able to enjoy is a mistery to me.

Gameplay that makes a noob look like a pro has been a big thing ever since Ubisoft rebooted Prince of Persia. It also greatly helps to have no standards when it comes to stories.

Beware of Muramasa. It's essentially a string of boss fights that is padded with a lot of nothing inbetween. The level designs get often reused and enemies that level up with your character (thus making the RPG aspects pointless) are forced on you on a regular basis. Only the bosses and the few special challenges scattered across the game world have fixed levels. The attack and block button are one and the same, and there aren't many attacks/combos to pull off; since the bosses have very long health bars, the fights get quite repetitive.

If the gameplay autotune wasn't anough, the game loves to not let me use Samus' skills the way I see appropriate. Boss fights where you must do A, then B, then C.... otherwise you won't cause any damage at all, walls you can't use to wall jump, cliffs you can't fall off, missiles you can't fire unless you are in first person and have a "missilable" target locked...

Regular enemies level up with you in Muramasa? Haven't devs learned anything since Final Fantasy VIII?

Akiran

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Akiran on 29 March 2014

Player2 said:

Regular enemies level up with you in Muramasa? Haven't devs learned anything since Final Fantasy VIII?

I've never understood the problem with level scaling, mind telling me your thoughts?

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Player2

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Player2 on 29 March 2014

Akiran said:

Player2 said:

Regular enemies level up with you in Muramasa? Haven't devs learned anything since Final Fantasy VIII?

I've never understood the problem with level scaling, mind telling me your thoughts?

I can't speak about Muramasa, but in the case of Final Fantasy VIII:

Due to it the most effective way to play the game is to run away from every battle (or just use the no encounter skill) to stay at low levels, and use alternate ways to boost stats. This means junctioning magic to stats, which involves hours of drawing spells and Triple Triad. If it doesn't sound fun... it's because it isn't.

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Akiran on 29 March 2014

Player2 said:

I can't speak about Muramasa, but in the case of Final Fantasy VIII:

Due to it the most effective way to play the game is to run away from every battle (or just use the no encounter skill) to stay at low levels, and use alternate ways to boost stats. This means junctioning magic to stats, which involves hours of drawing spells and Triple Triad. If it doesn't sound fun... it's because it isn't.

I have no idea what drawing spells and Triple Triad meant but it sounds boring.

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Player2

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Player2 on 30 March 2014

Akiran said:

Player2 said:

I can't speak about Muramasa, but in the case of Final Fantasy VIII:

Due to it the most effective way to play the game is to run away from every battle (or just use the no encounter skill) to stay at low levels, and use alternate ways to boost stats. This means junctioning magic to stats, which involves hours of drawing spells and Triple Triad. If it doesn't sound fun... it's because it isn't.

I have no idea what drawing spells and Triple Triad meant but it sounds boring.

- Some required info:

Whatever spell you link to a certain stat the higher amount of said spell the higher the bonus, so you'll always want the maximum (100).

Magic doesn't recover after resting and there aren't magic shops where you can buy spells, only drawing points that replenish after some time, and there aren't enough to provide a decent supply. That's why you have to rely on drawing and the card minigame for spells.

- Now about the drawing and cards:

Triple Triad is the card game. You can morph cards into items and then into spells. At the end of each card game if you win you choose one of the cards used by the loser and get it. Of course different cards morph into different things so you don't get always what you want, plus you have to be careful about spreading crappy rules that make winning harder (like the "use random cards from your collection to play" rule).

Drawing spells is using the draw command in battle. It's like stealing, but with spells. So basically you enter a battle, spam draw until each character have 100 of every spell you want from the ones the monsters you met carry, then run away.