Final Fantasy Record Keeper

Final Fantasy Record Keeper

I don't play a ton of iPhone games. Sure, I've spent thousands of hours on hundreds of games, but mostly that was the past. Lately I have enough free time to sit at my desktop to play "real games". When I'm out and need to be entertained by my phone, I'm more likely to catch up on news or something.

Puzzles and Dragons

FFRK is quite similar to Puzzles and Dragons, which I played for a bit. In the end I quit Puzzles and Dragons because I didn't like the puzzling part. FFRK uses the typical Final Fantasy tactical combat, which isn't especially deep but doesn't bother me too much.

Too Much Initial Grinding

I haven't totally given up on FFRK because I feel like I haven't given it a real chance. The problem is the initial grind. I've done over 100 dungeons and they are almost always too easy. I hit "autoplay" and wait for the boss encounter. For the boss I use the friend Soul Break to kill the boss. No decisions or anything. Just an annoying process. 

The boards talk about interesting strategies and tough encounters. I'm sure that's true but I might not have the patience to get there. You are pretty much forced to clear the initial dungeons to improve your max stamina and pick up magicka. But clearing hundreds of dungeons on auto-play isn't fun.

Even worse, it takes a fair amount of attention even to do the auto-play. There are a lot of loading screens and a lot of "push to continue" buttons. Worst of all, there is a "start" button followed by a long load followed by combat. However combat isn't paused and doesn't default to auto-play, so if you put the phone down for 45 seconds you might end up dead. If they simply paused combat before it started I would be able to grind these dungeons while doing something else. Instead I have to spend 10 seconds staring at a loading screen before each encounter. Multiply this by 3 encounters per dungeon and 500 dungeons and that 15000 seconds staring at a load screen. That's over 4 hours staring at a load screen.

Recommendations

Because the grind is so bad I don't know who to recommend this game to. I suppose a big fan of Final Fantasy would enjoy unlocking all of the characters more than I do. Also, it revisits the stories of all the Final Fantasy games so that might entertain someone who has played more than I have.

World of Warcraft: Legion

Legion

Where Has the Time Gone?

I've been playing so much WoW that I haven't gotten other games off my Steam backlog. I hope to get back to other games, and I left Mass Effect 3 in the middle.

MMORPGS

I've played lots of MMOs. I mean lots. I got the rank of Wizard in a MUD in 1990 and have logged countless hours in so many different MMORPGs. I've played most of the major ones. 

The only one I regret not trying is Ultima Online. Not sure how I missed that given that I had friends who worked on it at Origin. That was a busy time in my life -- I was working 60 hour weeks, had an active social life, and was steeped in Final Fantasy XII. 

Despite all of the time I spend with other MMOs, nothing has stolen my time like World of Warcraft.

WoW

I've played all of the expansions but for some reason I was never there at launch. Even for Vanilla WoW I was months late to the party. The one exception was Warlords of Draenor, which launched while I was working for Blizzard. My account was free, all my coworkers were playing it, and it was common to see everybody log in during lunch hour.

Starting late to the party made me feel like I was always behind and that shaped my perception of the game. Also, the interference of real life made it hard to join a raiding guild. I never did real raiding until Legion. Instead my end-game was focused on casual battleground PvP, where I could log off pretty quickly if the family needed me.

Legion

You can see a definite evolution to WoW with each expansion. Not only is the basic content of instances and raids easily obtainable, the more difficult modes are facilitated with the dungeon finder. I just did a pick-up group for Nighthold, the toughest raid, on Heroic mode with no wipes. 

The leveling process has also become more friendly. There is a central location where some guy will give you quests to know where you should be. The mobs in the different areas scale with your level, so you can go to any place you want. There are a lot of interest plots going on, and some fairly large stories lines (like Suramar). 

Plenty of missions, daily quests, and weekly quests make sure you keep coming back. It's insidious.

The Force Unleashed 2

I'm still going through some of the older Star Wars games I got in a bundle.

Story

The story isn't bad. Good voice acting, great cinematics. There isn't a lot of meat there and it relies on knowing the previous game to really feel it. The events are a little too important to the Star Wars universe for my taste. Darth Vader is an obvious villain and this lets us live out our fantasies of confronting him. I prefer plots that are more subdued.

Gameplay

The gameplay bothered me enough that I set the difficulty on Easy so I could just zip though the story. 

Encounters

Most of the encounters were really fun. There were a variety of threats that required different tactics to beat. Many of the environments were really interesting and added a lot. Sadly, for me by the end of the game I would just do "mind trick, stab" over and over. At least the mechanical mini-bosses were immune and I never found a good trick for beating them.

One complaint is that many of the encounters felt rehashed. Like, "wasn't that a fun encounter? Now do it again!"

Boss Fights

While the boss fights had great cinematic quality, I didn't find them fun. I felt like I was mostly getting knocked down and standing up while trying to figure out how to hurt the boss. There was also a lot of "hold E and left click" which is fine for a while but here it was overdone.

Platforms

I really hate platform jumping puzzles. This game had plenty and with the quirky controls (see below) it was just annoying. I don't mind having to do this sort of thing as part of a larger encounter but jumping platforms by itself isn't fun.

Odds and Ends

The Force Unleashed 2 forces you to do a lot of minor things to keep you engaged while the story is being told. I appreciate that sort of thing, like in Telltale Games. Here it felt a little clunky but not overly annoying. I hope I never have to put another power cell in another door.

Controls

Ugh. The game loses at least half a star for the controls. I'm a PC snob and want the controls for my game to be right for the PC. This game had that clunky console-port feel. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great. Maybe equivalent to Assassin's Creed. Not as good as Fallout 4.

Overall

As a Star Wars fanboy, this was well worth the 7 or 8 hours I put into it on easy mode. 

More Heroes of the Storm

I'm still playing Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch. I've gotten most of the new heroes to level 5. Here are my impressions.

Zarya

Felt lackluster. Maybe her role isn't so great as primary tank and in quick match you don't often get two tanks. I like playing tanks so why waste my time with this one?

Diablo

I already had this guy at level 5, but he is a big part of the meta these days so I'm re-learning him. Fun, beefy, tank.

Alarak

Hated him. Just didn't get a feel for his skillshot. Decided I didn't want to even get him to level 5.

Greymane

This guy was fun and I could see learning him for real. He isn't part of the meta right now, so I'm not keep to put too much more time into it.

Guldan

Feels clunky. I often had top damage but didn't feel like I was doing much. I see his value and I didn't hate him, but I won't be rushing to learn him.

Li-Ming

Fun long range hero with decent damage. I haven't played Chromie yet but I see the appeal of Li-Ming. If I was going to learn a ranged mage, it would be her.

Ragnaros

Holy crap this guy is awesome. Just my style. Combines powerful 1v1 melee with amazing wave clear and some extra map utility. Kerrigan is my favorite melee but this guy offers more.

Tracer

Loads of fun but needs support which you don't get in Quick Match. If I were playing with a team I might consider her, but that isn't likely.

Tychus

I already had this guy at level 9 but I really suck with him. I think his only role in the meta is vs. Cho'Gall or multiple tanks. Had one fun game vs Cho'Gall where I really ate him up.

Samuro

The first no-mana hero that I sort of like. Normally I like my melee assassins to be YOLO and have no escape, but this guy is pretty fun. I had trouble securing the kills but it's nice to be able to bail out of a bad situation.

Auriel

Didn't feel comfortable. Had a hard time generating mana and healing effectively. I'm not so good with most healers and this is no different. Except Uther. I love that guy.

Medivh

Fun and unique play style. I don't think he is so good in quick match, or maybe that's just me.

Sgt. Hammer

I finally got this guy up to level 5. Previous he was avoided because I tend to not like the heroes with no mount. I like to mount up a lot when I play, especially if I'm not a warrior. A mounted assassin can really threaten the back line. With this guy I kept trying to mount and blowing the escape cooldown. Still, fun hero with straight-forward playstile. 

Xul

While I loved playing a necromancer in Diablo 2, this guy didn't cut it for me. Not sure why since I tend to enjoy melee and specialists. The abilities were never comfortable. Maybe if I was going to dedicate a lot of play to him I could make it work, but for now I really enjoy Zagara, Nazeebo, and Gazlowe who all push lanes well. 

Lunara

Getting to level 5 in quick match wasn't so great. Often there was no front line so I just got to play the poking game mostly. Eventually I started to take the leap ability to play around with it. I might like Lunara if I dedicated some time to her.

Invisible Inc Review

Summary

A fun turn-based squad style tactical stealth game that borrows heavily from X-COM set in a cyberpunk world.

Review

It takes a while for me to play all the games out there. A Steam friend had been playing a lot of Invisible Inc and the reviews were really good so I picked it up during a sale. It languished for months before getting the CPU cycles to show itself off.

I'm definitely an X-COM fan. The original first and second saw a lot of action but I didn't care for the third. For the recent reboot, I liked the first one but a bug kept me from finishing it and I didn't have a good save game. I still haven't played the second one, as I am waiting for a good sale.

Stealth

The primary focus of Invisible Inc is stealth. It isn't pure stealth and you kill plenty of guards, but you simply can't go in guns blazing. The default mode shows you all enemies' lines of sight so you can plan where to hide and how to approach. The less stealthy you are the more alert the enemy is. This can snowball into dangerous situations.

Alarm

The alarm system provides time pressure. Every turn the alarm increases. This provides tension as you decide between a slow and careful approach or a fast a reckless approach.  You can stealthily knock out guards, but they will wake up and cause trouble later, or you can kill them which provides an immediate increase to the alarm.

Hacking

The hacking system in this game is really fun. There are a variety of objects to be hacked, like security cameras, corporate safes, and databases. You have limited energy to spend for hacking so you must prioritize. Every game you choose two programs used for hacking and those really influence the game. One program might hack quickly while another hacks slowly but is really cheap.

Improving Squad

There are three ways to improve members of your squad. There are augments which provide a permanent, usually passive, bonus. There are items like guns and stim packs. You can improve your skills, like speed, strength, and hacking. Most of those can be purchased with money, although you need to find (and hack) terminals in-game to access item shops. 

Missions

You start with two squad members and can acquire two more. The only way to acquire them is to run missions. You can also acquire items and other upgrades by running missions. Each mission takes time and over time the missions get more difficult. Eventually time runs out and you must do the final mission.

Rating

Overall I give the game a solid A. It doesn't have the glitz of the major title but the voice acting is good and the comic style is solid. The game is clean, fun, and cheap. It doesn't have the depth of X-COM but it has plenty of offer at a fraction of the price. Also, if you bored with X-COM, it can inject new life into the genre.

Heroes of the Storm

I haven't played Heroes in over a year but their new cross promotion with Overwatch has me revisiting the game.

Why Play Heroes of Storm

I'm a bit of a Blizzard fanboy so take this with a grain of salt, but Heroes is by far my favorite MOBA (oh, sorry Blizzard, I mean "Team Brawler"). Other than momentum, I don't understand the continuing popularity of League of Legends and Dota.

Heroes has a lot of team fighting and all of the characters have epic abilities that can change the game. It feels great to land a perfect hook with Stitches, snipe an enemy with Nova, or gobble three people with Zagara's sand worm.

The game has a lot going on and even after thousands of hours there is more to learn. Just consider taking mercenary camps. The thought might go like this, from lowest skill level to highest:

1. What are camps? Let's fight.
2. Camps are good if someone else on my team takes them.
3. We should take camps when the opportunity arises.
4. Let's take camps right before the objective spawns so they can push while we fight.
5. The enemy will be taking a camp before the objective so let's ambush them there.
6. We need good scouting to know if the enemy is ambushing our camp, taking their own camp, or doing both.

Drafting in Hero League is lots of fun. At the lower levels it's mostly about trying to make a half decent team from the few characters that your team wants to play. Then you get into countering enemy hero picks and finding synergy in your own picks. 

So basically, play Heroes of the Storm because games are reasonably short, have a lot of action, reward teamwork, and require both strategy and tactics.

Why Not to Play Heroes of the Storm

Some people don't like that style of game. But then why are you reading this review in the first place?

Teamwork can be difficult. In some ways low-level play is more difficult than high-level play because it's about mitigating bad decisions rather than making good ones. Sometimes a player will solo push his lane and wont fight with the team. Or a low-dps warrior might take a mercenary camp by himself when you should be capturing the objective. At higher levels of play, those obvious mistakes don't happen but at low levels you need to adapt.

Communication is lackluster. There is a decent system to ping the map, and there is team chat, but I don't like to type much. I find the chat is mostly filled with people blaming each other for their losses. I suspect voice chat would help. For some reason, the voice chat in Overwatch is actually helpful and not full of salt. I don't really know how to fix the communication in Heroes. I want more complicated planning, maybe pings that persist or an obvious way to declare an enemy to focus on.

Team composition is frustrating. In Quick Play it tries to balance number of healers and warriors but you often end up with really frustratingly terrible compositions. Maybe I kind of want to play Kerrigan but I don't want to be the only melee hero on my team. In Hero League, it is difficult to communicate preferences. You can "show" one hero that you are thinking of playing but that isn't enough. If I show a healer but the enemy bans that hero, the team might expect me to pick a different healer than I'm not comfortable with. Why can't I show three or five heroes that I'm happy to play? If someone shows five healers, nobody has to worry about healing and he focus on the best healer for our comp. If I show two healers, two assassins, and two specialists, people know that I can fill any role except warrior so they can be sure to draft a warrior early. Disclaimer: I haven't played unranked draft mode. Maybe it will replace Quick Play for when I want to play casual and only have a few choices I am willing to make.

The length of the game is almost too long for me. Overwatch has shorter games so when Real Life needs me I can say, "give me 5 minutes" instead of "give me 10 minutes".

Conclusion

Heroes of the Storm is certainly worth trying. It's free, easy to get into and lot's of fun. 

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine

I stopped playing this a while back so I'd better write a review before I forget.

Summary

Play it if you are a 40K fanboy.

Review

In some Warhammer 40K games the space marines are the wimpiest unit around. In Space Marine you get to see how badass they really are. The campaign has you single-handedly saving platoons of regular military from the relentless orks. 

The campaign story is pretty good, although I admit I'm only moderately into the lore. The voice acting is also good. Visually, the game holds up despite it's age. However the game isn't perfect and two flaws come to mind.

The first flaw is the complicated melee system. Some players will appreciate this and it's certainly fun to slaughter orks with a chainsword, but I found it clunky. Certain moves are required to pull of combos and special attacks. I kept having to pause the game to remember how to do an area attack vs. a power attack. And why is the power-attack a kick when you are holding a friggin' chainsword?

The second flaw is the difficulty of boss fights. Again, some people will probably love this feature. Personally, I find it frustrating. You try shooting it but it's immune. You try to slice it up, nope. You try your power attack, it takes a sliver of health. Really, I have to hit it 300 times with a power attack while dodging missiles and claws? No, wait, there is a tank over there I can drive. Oh, but it destroys the tank if I don't sneak into it. I'm not a fan of fights where you have to make 20 mistakes to learn the pattern to kill the boss. It's why I don't play a lot of platform games these days.

Eventually I quite playing because I got stuck on a boss. I probably should have read the spoilers but the plot wasn't quite compelling me. The game was awesome at first but once I got over being a badass it didn't hold my attention.