KPWHYS

I've finished Ascension 20 for all the characters in Slay the Spire.  Between PC, Switch and iPad it took me 900 hours to do this. The durability and value you get here is one of the best qualities of a great roguelike, and I love that. That said, I'm not sure if I want to ever attempt anything like this again even though I did similar on other roguelikes like Dungeon of the Endless and FTL.  I kept playing even after I complained about how it felt like playing against random chance and it is not really about skill when you're playing at the highest levels. So the grim, absurd reality did not end up killing my desire to climb this mountain. Dice mountain. That's the power of a great game (and ego).

As a big fan of the original, I was hyped for this one. I played it for an hour or three every day until completion, and it's a great game for the most part. Some thoughts. 1. It's very fun to play The excellent combat in the 2018 prequel got better. Combat as an abstraction is about problem solving expressed in 3 primary ways: Character kit, Enemy design and Level design. GOWR is better in every respect especially Enemy design which was previously too limited, and more space and verticality is incorporated into fights better it never hits the traversal heights of an Uncharted or Returnal.  Outside of the strong underlying combat interaction design, the actual expression in the visuals, animation, SFX and ambient commentary is top notch. 40 hours into the game in the final level, I'm still thrilled and satisfied at performing an R3 execution.  The world is also larger and filled with content, which makes it a joy to explore. The RPG component worked about as well as it did ...

I haven't played anything in the Yakuza series since Y2, but Y:LAD appeared on PS+ as a free game so I quickly downloaded it as the series has come up a bit since the early days. Some of what I think are my more interesting thoughts: 1. The JRPG fantasy integration is creative The realistic Yakuza aesthetic doesn't lend itself well to the variety of enemies you encounter in a traditional JRPG so the developers made some interesting transitions to accommodate for fantastical human enemies. When encountering fantastical human enemies, your characters move around the world and these human enemies initially appear like normal persons but when combat is triggered, there's a transitional outright  transformation  scene where they become.. more . These normal appearing people have a bright pillar of light engulf them and they become men wearing trashbags, heavily armored Samurai, giant sailors with pirate hats.. the list goes on.  Not every enemy is fantastical. Particularly, ma...

First game I bought after getting a PS5 after a near two-year wait was Deathloop. I finished it in a couple of weeks back in June, and looking back, some thoughts on things that stood out to me. 1. Amazing use of limited assets The developers created a story using 4 maps in 4 time segments that you replay over and over again, in the style of Groundhog Day, peeling away the game like an onion.  The map geometry is reused, and the level design and scripting per map & time never really changes, with a lot of the peel-away constrained by content locking mechanisms like a code or puzzle of some sort, uniquely generated per player and run instance. Even with the repeated plays, if you're uncovering new story clues in a reasonable way, there's enough new map discovered, new critical story bit revealed and/or new arsenal the next time you revisit a zone that it doesn't feel boring. If you do run into a bug or fail to push the story fast enough, it does start to feel repetitive,...

  My philosophical musing about the RNG and multiverse for rogue likes didn’t stop me from attempting more runs and burning more hours. Had an incredible run with The Defect, won’t try Asc20 with the remaining two. Game done!

Any one playing any roguelike at a high level knows the RNG is critical to it. For certain designs like Slay The Spire, you end runs prematurely if the dice is stacked against you early game, because you need a certain number of positive rolls early on to accumulate an advantage or profile for later on.  I've started to feel like starting a new run is like instantiating a different path in the multiverse. It's simply "another me", that "could have happened".  Delving further deeper into it, I start to feel like the RNG itself becomes everything, because if things don't fall my way I just restart into a new run. And the primary difference in that new run is RNG. And it's almost like, why does it even matter at that point, because I'm not stopping a run because of more or less skill -- though to be fair, as you play more, the depth to which you understand turns, cards, choices and meta-decision dynamics in the campaign tree continue to deepen. It d...

It took me a week to get through all the Ascension levels and it was my first run on Ascension 20. I have a confession. I didn’t beat the 4th secret chapter but only because I forgot to claim the Blue shard. No one will believe me. But I’m speaking to the dozens of us, dozens!! Who know what beating Ascension 20 means. There goes my street cred for not beating Act IV at Ascension 20. I could've, I was OP as heck. I have no insight here for this post. I'm sad. Update: Turns out I don’t need excuses, I just needed time to play more. Now all I need is to figure out how to play Elden Ring while on a plane.