Okami

Farming? Really? Man of your talents?

That makes a lot more sense now. Thank you. I know where to look for troubleshooting next time I play.

I was not counting mana cost, no. So it’ll just drop modifiers if it doesn’t have enough mana, and still cast the base spell? That does explain some of the behavior I was seeing. I figured it would fail to cast entirely if I didn’t have enough mana for the full block.

One theory I had, if you can confirm, is that shuffle doesn’t just shuffle spells, it shuffles all spell nodes.

So if I have a 4-slot shuffle wand with: PPMP (P = Projectile Spell, M = Modifier)

I was thinking the cast table could either be:

P1 - 33%

P2 - 33%

MP3 - 33%

Or

P1 - 25%

P2 - 25%

MP3 - 25%

P3 - 25%

Depending on whether the modifier block was a valid place for the shuffle to land.

I was planning to try to build some wand experiments to differentiate which of these scenarios is true. Good to know that mana can be a confounding variable.

Edit: Also, is shuffle fully random or does it draw without replacement like a deck of cards until all stored spells are cast and it can recharge? Just thought of this and realized I hadn’t tested for it.

The issue I’ve been trying to work out is getting modifiers to work consistently. My understanding is that modifiers are supposed to stack and affect the next projectile spell to the right, but they either don’t apply at all or will apply sporadically, and I haven’t figured out what rule I’m missing.

I assume some modifiers just don’t work with some projectiles, but the game doesn’t seem to communicate whether this is the case. I also suspect it has something to do with shuffle, as you warned against, but I haven’t been getting any non-shuffle wands for experimentation, and my starter wand doesn’t have much mana to work with.

It doesn’t help that I can only experiment with builds in the airlock chambers between levels.

The specific issue I remember having last night was that I couldn’t get the pentagon shot modifier to apply to any of my projectile spells no matter what I did.

I did get the flametrail modifier working consistently, so I’m doing something right, but I’m not sure what was different between that and the pentagon spread modifier I was trying.

I’ll back up that Civ 4 has been the best entry in the series so far.

Civ 5 is when they dropped unit stacking, which made combat much slower and more finicky since you couldn’t just build up a massive deathball and tear across the map, and Civ 6 doubled down on that design space by tying city upgrades to individual tiles as well. They’re not bad changes, and they do add more strategic depth to the combat and city-building, but they do make an already slow game substantially slower, since combats that used to be done in a turn or two now require several turns of rotating and repositioning units to get them in and out of the fight.

Civ 4 was the last “pure” civ experience, building off and adding to the previous games without sweeping mechanical changes to shake up the meta.

I’ve started and bounced off Noita a couple of times already. It’s been fun but I do need time to dig in and wrap my head around the mechanics.

I’m stuck on wand building at the moment. I’ve watched a couple video guides explaining how it works, but something still isn’t clicking. None of the wands I’m making have worked the way I expect them to, and I’m not sure what I’m not understanding.

I just finished both Borderlands 3 and God of War (2018) so I’m in gaming limbo again.

Leaning toward Stardew Valley, Noita, or finally buckling down to finish Far Cry 3.

Nope. I can’t even tell the difference between 30Hz and 60Hz unless they’re actually running side by side.

Void Stranger, Chip’s Challenge, and BABA IS YOU are all Sokoban style puzzle games with minimal performance requirements and no need for a mouse.

Siralim Ultimate is a creature collector RPG that will run on a potato and provide endless grinding, if you’re into that.

The Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters of the first six games are all excellent if you’re into JRPGs.

Dungeons of Dredmor if you like rogue-likes, or you could go old-school and pick up NetHack or ADOM.

Bunch of games on my Steam wishlist I’m mildly interested in but not willing to pay more than about $10 for, since they’d just wind up sitting in my backlog until I have time to play them. Waiting for a steep sale.

Some of the highlights:

• Cassette Beasts
• Sonic Frontiers
• Cyberpunk 2077
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Dark Souls III

Edit: Didn’t see the “year ago or older” caveat in the title.

I was a child with extensive free time and limited game options. I spent hours mowing grass to grind shells for the machine.

That wasn’t even the worst part. Combing through every NPC looking for the last few kinstone fusions if you missed one was way more annoying.

Minish Cap was my first Zelda. I remember using my allowance to buy the strategy guide back in the day so I could 100% it. Lots of nostalgia there.

CHLOE YES!

I really like how the web serial Sideways in Hyperspace handles this problem.

In short, the faster ships catch up with the slower generation ships, facilitating trade, arranging transport for those who want to leave, and allowing them to become extrasolar cities and stepping stones to the wider galaxy.

So far I’ve picked up:

• Dead Cells
• Signalis
• Owlboy
• Starship Titanic
• Balatro
• BORE BLASTERS
• Melvor Idle
• Night in the Woods
• Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Ultimate Edition
• Dome Keeper
• Pentiment
• Blackshift
• Ouroboros

Having a blast with Balatro to the exclusion of all else.

Abzu fell kinda flat for me after Journey, but The Pathless more than makes up for it. It seems to be set in the same world as both prior games and has several references to each, so playing the first two does make it more rewarding to play.

I definitely recommend it since you liked Journey. The movement and combat feels great. It’s refreshingly short and focused for an open world exploration game, so it respects your time, and it also has some excellent storytelling with plenty of nice emotional highs and lows. It’s a worthy successor.

Agreed. The art looks straight out of an anime, and Dust’s combat animations are really smooth and satisfying. I think the cutscenes looked really good, too, but it’s been long enough that I don’t remember.

Outer Wilds certainly was. It was started as a college project and the devs stayed together to finish it after they graduated.

Journey I’m not so sure. I don’t think it’s indie? If it is indie, then I’d put The Pathless up for consideration. That game finished what Journey and Abzu started, and it has some of the best feeling overworld movement of any open world exploration game I’ve ever played. Flawless.

Dust is great, but it’s deeply flawed.

The art is phenomenal, but the writing is cringeworthy. I loved it as a teenager but I have a hard time taking it seriously now. I wish I never replayed it so I could have kept my nostalgia.

The combat mechanics are fun and feel amazing when played as intended, but they’re massively unbalanced. IIRC with two exceptions (enemies that require a parry to enter a vulnerable state) every single fight can be won flawlessly by spamming Dust Storm even on the highest difficulty.

It’s a remarkable game, all the more so since it was only one dev. I 100%'ed it, and it sits in a place of honor in my collection, but it’s not one I’ll ever return to.