Yearly Archives: 2018

Nintendo Switch News – Week of 9/28/2018

by Jason Parker (Ragachak)

Good morning, Internet! I haven’t been able to do Nintendo Switch news in a while, thanks to being busy and a Hurricane that was on our doorstep for a week or so. But I’m back, and there’s some good stuff happening this week for the Switch! Before that, one or two items I’d like to address. We got some Sword Art Online news recently, and to celebrate the 5th anniversary of Sword Art Online, we learned that Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization Deluxe Edition and Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet Complete Edition will both be available on the Nintendo Switch.

 

There’s also new DLC for Haunted Dungeons: Hyakki Castle on the PS4/Steam, but more important: The Switch. This free dungeon map, “Revenge of the Doman” is live, and in it, players have the most formidable bosses in the game awaiting. There are new dungeon areas to explore, and players will also unlock a time mode, after completing the main story. That way they can test how good they truly are by clearing as fast as possible. There were some other fixes and adjustments made to the game:

  • Adjusted enemy spawn locations
  • Adjusted drop rate for food
  • Corrected text errors in the game and game trophies
  • Fixed the bug where enemies that drop from the ceiling clumping together
  • High-level dungeon enemies have around 20% less HP

And with those things out of the way, here’s what’s hot this week for the Nintendo Switch!

Dragonball FighterZ (September 28th): I was hoping it would release on the Switch at the same time, but I get why it wasn’t. I love Dragon Ball FighterZ, even if I haven’t really played it in a while. The ability to play DBFZ on the go and have all of your friends playing at the same time is a really big selling point. Bored on a flight? Get some combo practice in! I can see a lot of FGC pros who use a pad practicing on flights or on long drives to tournaments. It’s a sharp, easy to pick up fighter, with a lot of depth and a lot to learn. Definitely in the easy-to-play, hard-to-master camp. I’m not as big on DLC fighters as I used to be, but you can always skip the ones you don’t care about. (59.99)

Valkyria Chronicles 4 (September 25th): It’s a coming-of-age story in a time of war! How could you not love that? Plus it has an adorable dog. I adore the CANVAS graphics engine, it makes Valkyria Chronicles continue to stand out as a unique, and engaging game. Players get to experience the other side of the Second Europan War, and its most brutal campaign – Operation Northern Cross. Valkyria Chronicles as a franchise is really underappreciated, and having it on the Switch really makes me happy. It’s beautiful, it’s challenging, it has tanks and awesome, but grim war stories. (59.99)

TowerFall (September 25th): TowerFall features all of the content from Ascension and DarkWorld, and also has Nintendo Switch exclusive additions. TowerFall itself is the ultimate version of the much-beloved archery combat/party game, with up to six player battles, adorable pixel graphics, and lot sof gameplay types, arrow types, powerups and more. And if you think it’s going to break friendships, wh y not teamup in the 1-4 player co-op modes, where you instead do battle against waves of enemies? That’s probably more my speed anyway. TowerFall looks like an absolute blast. (19.99)

 

Boundless

Boundless is a subscription free voxel MMO with a strong focus on exploration, crafting, and hunting, developed by Wonderstuck Studios. Players aren’t pigeonholed into those roles, however, and the possibilities for play are as boundless as the name.

Features:

Crafting: Wide variety of crafting recipes unlockable.

Market Stalls: Sell your items with an automated market platform object.

Politics: Become elected to lead your settlement!

Dynamic Events: Want the really good loot? Head over to a meteor fall, and hang onto your hats.

The Bard’s Tale IV Review

by Andrew Skelton (Outfoxed)

I recently previewed The Bard’s Tale IV wherein I found it charming with a few issues that needed to be ironed out.  InXile has finally gone along to release the game in its entirety, and I was provided a copy of the game for review purposes. If you’re not in the know, The Bard’s Tale series has been around since the early/mid 1980s, and has a very dedicated fan base.  It was known for its difficulty, unique puzzles, and party management systems. So how does a sequel that came out decades after the last official game fair? Can it live up to the lofty expectations set upon it?

Bards Tale Review Screenshot

Sing a Song To Be Proud Of

First of all, you don’t get to create a party right away like the previous three Bard’s Tale games.  You start as Melody, a bard who bears witness to a public execution of suspected heretics, of which adventurers like herself are suspect of being.  Right away you meet up with Rabbie, head of the Adventurer’s Guild of Skara Brae, and he leads you through the city to the hall itself. Once there, you can finally create your character.  Yes, I said character — only the main character is created at this point.

You’ll have the option of six different races to create from.  Three of them are different types of humans, each with different abilities to set them apart.  You’ll also have the option to create an elf, dwarf, or trow (a sort of goblin-esque race). From there, you’ll select from one of four classes: bard, fighter, rogue, or practitioner.  This is vastly fewer than the previous Bard’s Tale titles. The lack of races makes sense, due to the story, but while there are hidden classes in the game, unlocked far, far in the future, some popular classes being omitted is a step in the wrong direction to me.

Bards Tale Review Screenshot

Adventuring with a Song

The controls of The Bard’s Tale IV are simple enough.  WASD to move, right mouse button to move the camera about, and left click to interact with everything.  It works for a first person adventure RPG like this. In your inventory screen, right click can also be used to inspect, split, or discard items.  Your various menus can be accessed via hotkeys (M for map, I for inventory, et al). All of these keys can be rebound, thankfully, to suit your needs.

Adventuring wise, things are also very straight-forward.  In fact, this is one of my complaints — it’s too simple. Most puzzles I encountered are simple block pushing ones, or an easy switch style puzzle that can normally be solved with trial and error.  As you gain more party members throughout the story, various other abilities are unlocked, such as the ability to find secret treasure stashes, or the ability to knock down flimsy walls, but it feels a tad too dumbed down.

Bards Tale Review Screenshot

You Gotta Fight For Your Right to Party

Let’s talk combat.  Each of your characters can equip up to four abilities.  You can have up to six characters in a party. That’s 24 active abilities across the party.  Many have cooldowns associated with them, anywhere from 1-3 turns, so combat itself becomes strategic usage of abilities to maintain pressure on opponents.  There is no hit or miss feature here; if you can target an enemy, your ability will always hit. Likewise if an enemy can hit you, they will.

That being said, you’re further limited by one huge problem:  opportunity. You start the game with the ability to take three actions by default.  You’ll probably play through most of the game with only the ability to take three actions by default.  Sure, there are abilities that are free actions, like a rogue’s stealth or a practitioner’s magic missile, but you only have three actions across a party of six.  Yes, there are ways to increase your party’s starting opportunity, but that won’t happen for a very long time. It’s an artificial limitation on a system that’s already gated by cooldowns, and adds a ton of frustration, especially when your full party encounters a group of enemies who have five or six points of opportunity to your one.

Bards Tale Review Screenshot

Secrets Galore, Treasures Untold

While most of the puzzles are simplistic, there are still plenty that can challenge you.  For the first time in a very, very long time, I used a code wheel to solve a puzzle. Not one in game, mind you, an actual, physical, in-my-hands-turning-the-dials code wheel.  Various shrines exist that have two symbols, and said wheel tells you two numbers. These numbers correspond to items you have in a journal you pick up in the Adventurer’s Guild, and giving up those items to the shrine grants you a very good reward in exchange.  One early one was a torch that never goes out, and can be snuffed at will. An adventurer’s dream come true, that is!

In addition to the shrines, there are also Elven puzzle weapons to be found.  These items require you to find places to interact when you inspect them, and solve a small puzzle associated with them.  By doing so, and inserting a proper gem, you unlock more powers from them and another puzzle to solve. Most of the ones I encountered seemed to have three puzzles to them total, and the rewards for solving them were super helpful.  Also, exploration is highly rewarded in The Bard’s Tale IV, with various chests, barrels, and crates scattered about. Sure, most have crafting mats or gold in them, but there’s satisfaction in searching a space knowing something has to be there, and it turns out there was.

Bards Tale Review Screenshot

Managerial Skills for the New Bard

Inventory management always seems to be some sort of issue in a lot of games.  The Bard’s Tale IV tries to alleviate this by giving you multiple pages to work with, but also makes it cumbersome by not allow you to switch pages without clicking.  A minor inconvenience, absolutely, but it’s there. The worst offender, however, is selling loot to NPC vendors. Your items take up space in their stock, and eventually you might not be able to sell to that specific vendor anymore because their inventory is clogged up with your useless detritus.  There may be quite a few vendors in the game, but there’s also tons of loot to be found, and you’ll end up having to decide what you want to sell and what you just want to get rid of all around.

As far as equipment goes, characters have a weapon, off-hand, armor, helmet, boots, and trinket slot available to them.  Outside of weapon specializations giving power to certain attacks, as a rule of thumb, the more of a stat the item has, the more value to your characters it brings.  Strength is used for most damage calculations (yes, even magic). Constitution equals your hit points. Intelligence provides you focus for channeled attacks – taking more damage than you have focus interrupts your channel and can have detrimental effects on the character depending on what ability was used.  Finally, armor class straight up negates a point of damage taken per point of armor class. There are also the aforementioned Opportunity points, and spell points, which function like opportunity points, but are on a character by character basis.

Bards Tale Review Screenshot

Final Thoughts:  3/5 (Good)

I was really hoping The Bard’s Tale IV would blow me away.  It’s enjoyable at times, certainly, but there are design frustrations that left me scratching my head.  The music direction is phenomenal, but the sound effects are lackluster at best. Combat is strategic and involved, but I also found myself bored with it.  Classes are not balanced; rogues and practitioners have a serious advantage throughout the game. Races are not balanced; trow get one opportunity refunded every time they score a killing blow, for example, so why use anything but a trow when opportunity is at a premium?

It’s a game that wears the trappings of promise, but robes it all in mediocrity.  There were plenty of issues with the game at launch, with optimization practically non-existent, and player feedback outright ignored.  I found myself stuck on terrain not five minutes into the game as I went up a staircase, yet somehow couldn’t climb back down. It’s small things like this – things that were well reported during the beta testing – that really hamper The Bard’s Tale IV from being an exceptional title.

The Bard’s Tale IV Screenshots

Neverwinter Ravenloft Banded Fawn Mount Giveaway (PS4)

We’ve partnered with Perfect World Entertainment to celebrate the launch of Neverwinter: Ravenloft on PlayStation 4 with a limited giveaway of Banded Fawn Mounts!

Banded Fawn

On behalf of Lord Neverember himself, Neverwinter’s bravest are called to investigate a group of Vistani wanderers outside Protector’s Enclave. Assisting them leads to Madam Eva, a fortune-teller who divines a connection between adventurers and the cursed land of Barovia. As intruders in the dominion of the dreaded vampire lord, Count Strahd von Zarovich, players must navigate the darkest corners of an all-new campaign for console. Ravenloft offers new zones to explore, classic D&D scenarios to experience, and a challenging showdown with Strahd deep within the walls of Castle Ravenloft.

Neverwinter: Ravenloft is now live on consoles! Learn more about the game and its latest expansion by visiting http://www.playneverwinter.com


Suratuk’s latest custom mounts are on offer in limited quantities! Banded with ghostly white and blood-red markings, this fawn mount will strike fear into the hearts of Barovia’s monsters…or at least look great while it is bounding through the hordes of Ravenloft.

Item: Suratuk’s Banded Fawn mount

  • +50% Movement Speed
  • Illuminated & Universal Insignia Slots

Platform: PlayStation 4 (North America Only)

For Your Chance At This Mount:

  • Visit the official entry thread. If you don’t have one, you will need to sign up for a forum account to post. We cannot award prizes to guest accounts.
  • Post a reply to the thread telling us what you like most about the Ravenloft update!
  • Winners will be announced on Friday, October 5. Codes will be sent via PM on the forums, so make sure to check back and see if you’ve won!

Rend Reveals Early Access Development Roadmap from Frostkeep Studios

Rend - Artifact Armour Sets_Tiers (New)

Rend has been in Early Access for two months now, and Frostkeep Studios have been continually making tweaks to the game, based on the community’s feedback. Frostkeep revealed in a recent blogpost their roadmap for the Fall and Winter, leading into 2019. The following points are on that roadmap, which can be found at this link:

  • Comprehensive Combat Improvements:  Tightening up gunplay is key to make it feel more like modern shooters. They also wish to adjust biomes to make them feel more full and challenging.
  • Streamlined Features: An overhaul for a host of game aspects (crafting, storage and more) to make it more accessible for all levels of player.
  • Legendary Artifacts: Epic items from the Norse mythos can definitely shift the balance of power within a saga.
  • Dynamic Siege Combat: Raiding faction strongholds needs to be engaging and exciting. Siege weapons are also on the way, like catapults.
  • Refined Social Mechanics: Decision-making should go from the Elders to the faction, via permission requests and voting. They also want to mitigate griefing via forcefields that repel players to faction stronghold doorways.