Author Archives: Azuriel
Impressions: Starfield
TL;DR: Consider me… whelmed. Not overwhelmed, not underwhelmed. Just whelmed.
The initial few hours of Starfield are incredibly weak. Like, insultingly bad for a Bethesda game. I had no sense of grounding in the game world like with Skyrim, Fallout 4, Fallout 3, or even Oblivion. After an hour or so, you get dumped into New Atlantis, which is the Starfield equivalent of Dragon Age: Inquisition’s Hinterlands. There is plenty of things to do in the city, all of which you absolutely should not be doing. Not to say the quests are bad per se, but I felt myself burning out of the game after sessions 2 and 3 were all just questing in the city with zero combat.
I decided to break away from New Atlantis and things began to improve. Following the main quest, I get to Mars. Instead of going to the bar where the quest wants me to go, I instead strike out towards an unknown marker. Looks like some kind of rocket structure. I see a spaceship just sitting nearby… so I steal it. The devs have a heavy thumb on the economic scale in this game, so while you can certainly steal a better ship than you have, it costs like 90% of the sell price of a ship to register it, which you need to pay before you can sell it (or customize it). My profit is like 1700 credits, which is the equivalent of selling four guns from dead pirates.
I fast travel back to the rocket pad, climb all the way to the top, which it seems like the devs intended. At the very tippy-top, I see three chests up there containing common gun drops and ammo. Yay.
That is when it hits me. “Exploration” only happens in instanced content in Starfield. Had this been a Fallout title, there would have been a skeleton up there or some other environmental storytelling (audio log, etc). Had this been Elder Scrolls, there may have been some Daedric portal or a unique item or something. The rocket pad is a Point of Interest, yes, but I will no doubt be seeing similar rocket pads across the 1000s of planets in the game, and they all need to have a chest at the tippy-top.
Or maybe I am wrong, and the launch pad on Mars was specifically hand-crafted. In which case… yikes.
On my next play session, I go into the bar as intended. Along the way, I overhear a conversation about how some miners are being turned away by the mining supervisor. I talk with him, and he asked me to mine some Iron “off the books” so that it looks like his team exceeded quota and thus will get approval to some badly-needed upgraded equipment. I do that, and now he’s asking me to become an executive assistant to “help” the Fiscal manager to sign the paperwork. No doubt there will be further shenanigans in the space station as I try to get the request approved.
The above is the type of thing I’m actually impressed with while playing the game: mundane-sounding side-quests end up becoming more involved and interesting. There are a tons of these and you can do them or not do them at your leisure. It makes the game world feel a bit more alive and interconnected. As opposed to the literal game world, which is dead and fragmented by loading screens.
Having said all that, I am becoming increasingly okay with it. In Buddhism, “unfulfilled expectations” are the root of all suffering. In a recent Starfield play session, I cleared out a random den of Spacers on Mars, went outside, fast traveled to New Atlantis and off-loaded my loot to vendors, then fast traveled back to the Martian surface to continue looting the building. Is that, strictly speaking, dumb game design? Yes. Is it all that different than fast traveling to vendors in any other Bethesda game? Er… no. It only feels dumb because I have some unfulfilled expectations that this is a good game space games are necessarily immersive sims that play out more like No Man’s Sky.
I dunno. I typically do not mod games on a first playthrough, but I’m feeling like maybe giving myself 1000 more carry weight might actually make the game more immersive than leaving it as-is.
[Baldur’s Gate 3] Random Tips
The internet is replete with Baldur’s Gate 3 (BG3) tips, but most of them seem to be the same sort of obvious nonsense you pick up in the first 10 minutes of pushing buttons. I am… also probably going to give you a few of those too. However. Tip #3 may surprise you!
Transferring items across characters is instant, even in battle. If one of your party members is taking an unfortunate amount of damage in combat, but you just now realized they don’t have any healing potions, don’t fret. Just click on whomever has the potions, go into their inventory, right-click said potions, and choose Send To –> X. Viola! This works with anything, actually, including Alchemist Fire, Blunt weapons to give to your Barbarian to take advantage of vulnerabilities, and so on. You can also send Camp supplies out of your inventory at any time, freeing up a lot of weight.
Seize your potential (energy). Everyone finds out pretty quick that attacking from higher ground confers Advantage. What you might not know is that Throwing weapons/objects from higher ground introduces Crushing Damage to the (F=m*a) equation. And there’s no damage roll for Crushing Damage – your enemies just get slapped by science and that’s it. For example, one character threw a Javelin and dealt 10 damage from dice, and dealt an additional 9 Crushing damage for hitting someone with a 0.9kg object from a 10.2m drop. That’s a lot of extra damage not normally accounted for on the preview pane. Also, if your character gets 2 attacks, they get two throws as well. You don’t need to go full Barrelmancy here, but just understand that the lowly Javelin and similar tools/objects can pump out some serious numbers when you have the high ground.
Do not sleep on Sleep. The text: “Put creatures into a magical slumber. Select targets up to a combined 24 hit points. 18m range.” Now, you may be asking why anyone would bother with this spell over something a bit more direct, like Chromatic Orb or whatever. But here’s the thing: there is no saving throw for Sleep. If the target(s) have less than 24 HP, they just lose their next two turns… unless you hit them first, which is automatically a critical hit. Even better, the effect can be split between multiple enemies. Three 7 HP goblins giving you grief? Not anymore!
Is Sleep better than Fireball? No. Also, that’s a level 1 spell vs level 3. But it’s a great follow-up to Fireball to ensure problematic enemies (including bosses!) don’t get a chance to turn things around. It’s just as powerful on your weakest character as the strongest. And bonus tip: the Warlock version of Sleep is always automatically upcasted, letting you knock out higher HP totals for the same Short-Rest slot.
Hello Darkness, my old friend. There is a classic cheese strategy involving using the spell Darkness combined with the Devil’s Sight invocation option granted via Warlock 2: cast Darkness, stay in Darkness, ???, Profit! Basically, you can attack as normal and everyone else cannot. The cheesiness doesn’t end at combat though, as Darkness comes in real handy when doing nefarious things… like stealing. Specifically, Darkness will give you cover to pocket anything not nailed down in the environment, with relative impunity. Just note that shopkeepers will positive ID you 100% of the time if you fail a Sleight of Hand check, even fully engulfed in Darkness.
Spirit Guardians is better than you think. When I read the text, I assumed the spell would cast like a stationary whatever in a 3m range, blah blah, who cares about 3d8 damage when Wizards have Fireball? What actually happens is that the Cleric gains a 3m aura effect that deals 3d8 damage to enemies you walk by. Emphasis on walk by. Since your team is immune, your Cleric can spend all their movement walking in a straight line, zig zagging, or whatever movement set brings one or more enemies 0.1m past the edge of the aura. While you unfortunately cannot just dance back and forth to hit the same enemy multiple times (it only deals damage once per round per target), the aura will stick around an deal additional damage next turn as long as you maintain Concentration. It also reduces enemy movement speed, which generally keeps them close by.
Glyph of Warding is also better than you think. You wouldn’t know if from the awful tooltip, but Glyph of Warding is an amazing spell with seven distinct features, which can be used as traps or just straight-up fired off (if an enemy is inside). Five different flavors of 5d8 elemental damage, a large AoE pushback effect, or a no-HP cap Sleep effect. Granted, the Sleep effect (and others) provide a DEX save which is not always ideal, but it’s hard to argue with how powerful a CC that can be.
One time, at (band) Camp. I’ve talked about this before, but you can rather easily leverage the fact that you have both a large roster of party members and a means to instantly interact with them from anywhere (Camp button). More specifically, you can designate a few members (including the generic hirelings) to be buff bots to the A Team. For example, suppose your main character is a Sorcerer. Should you spend one of your limited slots on Mage Armor? No need! Smash that Camp button, add the buff bot to your party, and have them cast Mage Armor on you and/or any other companions waiting around the camp, then sit them back on the bench where they belong. Some relevant spells:
- Mage Armor
- Light
- Goodberry
- Longstrider
- Aid
- Darkvision
- Warding Bond
- Protection from Poison
- Daylight
- Death Ward
- Freedom of Movement
If you drop a character out of your party, they get super sad and automatically lose Concentration on any spells, so don’t bother trying that.
My Ward is my Bond. Just to highlight this hilarious interaction from the previous list a bit more: you can get a Hireling to cast Warding Bond on your character and then keep the hireling in camp. This will give your character +1 AC, +1 Saving Throws, and only take half damage. Granted, the hireling back in camp will be the one taking the other half of your damage, but who cares about them?
You are not Prepared… but can be! In a big departure from tabletop rules (and general balance), spellcasters with Prepared spell slots can change those slots at any time. Like, any time any time, aside from during combat. As a practical example, a Wizard could cast Mage Armor on themselves and then switch that spell out for something else. Where things get goofy is when the spells in question are Rituals. Casting a Ritual spell (outside combat) means you can get the benefit of the spell without using up a spell slot. So, to put two plus two together, simply knowing these Ritual spells at all means you can effectively cast them at will as long as you play with the UI a bit. A list:
- Disguise Self
- Feather Fall
- Find Familiar
- Enhance Leap
- Speak with Animals
- Speak with Dead
- Detect Thoughts
- Silence (weirdly)
For the most part, this perk is primarily a benefit to Wizards. But, honestly, they deserve it for how much the other spellscasters eat their lunch.
[Baldur’s Gate 3] Too Late Now
One of the infographics from Larian regarding Baldur’s Gate 3 (BG3) is how over 93% of players created a custom character for themselves. I… did not. And it is very clearly a mistake. One that I cannot possibly “fix” now that I’m like 45 hours deep into Act 1.
Why did I not create a custom character? I thought that the game was going to be like Divinity: Original Sin 2 wherein there were very specific story beats that would be better with an Origin character. Although, to be fair, I am not exactly certain that was the case even in that game. But it seemed important enough to do there, so I did so here as well, picking Gale.
If you are one of the overwhelmingly vast majority of players who haven’t rolled an Origin character, let me explain why it is a mistake: your character doesn’t speak. Yes, custom characters don’t speak either, but I am assuming that Gale has a lot more to say about things beyond 1-2 quips at the conclusion of side quests. I have no clue how much of his background is normally explained by the end of Act 1 (around where I’m at), but I assume that it’s more than practically nothing. Beyond talking to a cat with wings about my mother – of whom I know nothing and have no reason to care about – all this “origin story” business appears to be about as deep as the blurb you read on the character select screen.
Maybe things open up in the later Acts? But what I’m worried about is how that plays out narratively. Are there exclusive scenes that you only see if you are playing as Gale? That would be the ideal, I imagine. But I’m also worried about how much any of that really matters in comparison to just doing his companion quests. For example, I was all down for smooching Shadowheart until the awkwardly direct Karlach literally stole the show. What about Gale though? What is his personality like? What kind of hilarious banter would he be getting into with my current party? I’ll never know, because I am him, and I don’t say shit, apparently.
Well, I choose all the dialog, but you know what I mean. It’s not the same.
Kinda makes me wonder if this is a uniquely Larian game problem. Most other RPGs don’t have “Origin” characters, right? Or they do, with no option for a custom character, so you’re not stuck in this dilemma. Which apparently is only impacting me and the other 7% suckers. Oh well.
[Baldur’s Gate 3] (Un)Intuitive
I continue to play a lot of Baldur’s Gate 3. Indeed, I’m at 40 hours and still in Act 1.
Some of the problems I have with the game are my own fault. I was super into 3.5e D&D way back in the day, and a lot of my “intuitive” understanding of such systems are still based on that clearly superior ruleset. Just kidding – stuff like Short/Long Rests and similar refinements over the years are definitely welcome. But it did come as a bit of a shock that, say, Rogues are only able to get one Sneak Attack per round in 5e (and BG3). Back in my day, the only way a Rogue could keep up with spellcaster DPS output was being able to poke someone three times in one round and get a pile of d6s each poke.
Okay, that’s clearly my bad. But then the line starts getting a little blurry.
For example: Mage Armor says to increase a target’s AC to 13 + DEX modifier, as long as the target isn’t wearing armor. This sounds like a great bonus for a Barbarian who is already encouraged to not wear armor… but it doesn’t “stack” with their own Unarmored Defense ability (Add CON and DEX modifier to AC when unarmored). Like, I get that it would probably be a bit overpowered, but I had to reread the text several times to understand why it didn’t work – Mage Armor specifically puts AC to “13 + DEX” instead of simply increasing the base AC of 10 to 13.
Of course, that’s just the classical Mage Armor gotcha, that apparently has been getting people for 8+ years. Worked in 3.5e, by the way, but clearly if you read page 14 of the 5e Player’s Handbook: “if you have multiple features that give you different ways to calculate your AC, you choose which one to use.” Okay, Rules As Written, got it. But riddle me this, Batman… what does the BG3 spell Warding Bond do?
If you answered “create an unstoppable priesthood of clerics that only take half damage from everything,” you would obviously be wrong. Conspicuously absent from the BG3 description of Warding Bond is that the missing half of the damage you take can be found on the casting Cleric. Imagine my chagrin when I found that out, only after reading the “buff” that appeared on Shadowheart. But this is again a case of “just read the 5e Player Handbook to know how this 2023 CRPG works.”
Oh, hey, did you know that in BG3 prepared spells can actually be changed at any time outside combat? This is a big change from traditional (and 5e!) D&D rules that otherwise force you to, well, prepare which spells you can cast that day. What this means is that you can cast Mage Armor on yourself (which lasts until a Long Rest), and then drop it out of your list and put something else more useful in its place. You still use up one “casting” for the day, but now you get more options.
You can take things a bit further than that though, by having characters you’re not actively using cast things like Mage Armor while in camp. For example, you can have Gale cast Mage Armor on whomever, then swap Gale out for someone else. I had already been building my party in such a way that one person took utility spells and everyone else took offensive options, but knowing I could basically press the Camp button to essentially hotswap anyone at a moment’s notice took things to the next level. Now you can have your very own early-WoW era buffbot paladin, whose sole purpose is to stay at camp and buff your team.
A lot of this highlights perhaps the biggest issue I have with BG3 at the moment: its inscrutability. A lot of the media praise thus far as been for the exact opposite, that the game is making 5e D&D or CRPGs in general more approachable. And that could certainly be technically accurate. But consider this: there’s no in-game way to determine what your characters will get at the next level up… until you level up. You can’t browse a list of magic spells. There’s a staff you pick up that gives you +1 to unarmed attacks and I have no idea how that works. Do staff attacks count as unarmed? Do you hold it in your off-hand and then make unarmed attacks with your on-hand? Does it only work with Flurry of Blows? I don’t even have a Monk character for which this would be relevant, but it vexes me.
And who knows, I might well turn Gale into a Monk next time I gain a level.
Perhaps the “average” player doesn’t care about any of this and will just take their character to level 12 just as they are. But that doesn’t mean Larian shouldn’t also include some kind of indexed in-game encyclopedia or something. If you have time for a Show Genitals button, surely you can have a Preview Level button. I would settle for a Wiki worth a single god damn, because the Fextralife one is near unusable and filled to the brim with outdated Early Access nonsense.
Anyway. Larian has indicated that they are working towards a Patch 1 with a “gigantic list of tweaks and changes.” Here’s to hoping that a little more clarity and intuitiveness is amongst them.
Impressions: Baldur’s Gate 3
Basically Divinity: Original Sin 2.5. But (more) balanced this time!
First, let’s acknowledge the obvious: Baldur’s Gate 3 (BG3) is already a smash hit. As of this post, Steam indicates a peak of 814,466 concurrent players, which makes it the 8th out of the top 10 of all time. Concurrent players doesn’t really mean much in a vacuum, but it is an impressive feat given its peers on that list. It makes me wonder if, like Elden Ring before it, BG3 will generate a renewed interest in an otherwise niche genre that no longer feels like such.
But what about the game itself? Is it as good as they say? Yes. And… sorta.
The game is gorgeous and highly, highly detailed. You have near-infinite freedom in designing your character(s), including the Cyberpunk-esque ability to mix-and-match genitals. There are Origin characters you recruit that have their own personal stories and special powers, or you can skip all that and just recruit mercs you make yourself. There are environmental dangers such as webs and oil slicks which you can combo with your spells. You can pick up damn near everything, including forks, knives, incense, exploding barrels, skulls, and most everything else your heart desires. Quests are detailed, dialog has multiple branching paths to take depending on skills, and there are many different ways to complete tasks.
Aside from the genitals though, all of that just describes Original Sin 2.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. My biggest issue with Original Sin 2 was the game balance, or lack thereof. A lot of those issues neatly evaporate in the near-RAW (Rules As Written) embrace of 5E D&D. There is no Physical Armor vs Magic Armor to worry about. Spells and abilities are much more limited, and (sometimes frustratingly) balanced thereby. You can still perform some crazy combos depending on the environment, but there is not an expectation that you will be electrifying pools of blood/water every battle without fail.
An embrace of “traditional” D&D rules can sometimes be annoying however. Spellcasters are limited to a finite amount of spell slots per Long Rest. This is perhaps more balanced than the alternative of being able to alpha-strike enemies all the time. The issue though is how the majority of attacks – at least at level 3 where I’m at – have, at best, a 65% chance of hitting. This naturally leads one to more highly consider the spells less reliant on attack rolls, which heads back into traditional Larian surface-prepping. And once you start heading (back) down that path, you start having your rogue collect explosive barrels and planting them next to foes while in stealth so you can blow up three enemies in the first surprise round of combat. While very fun to do, we’re right back into “Original Sin 2.5” territory.
Also, can I just say that I am immensely annoyed that the devs have surpassed even Witcher 3 in the ludonarrative dissonance department? The game opens up with you getting a mind flayer parasite planted into your eye, and everyone repeatedly talking about how you will turn into an mind flayer yourself after 7 days. I am not very far into Act 1 as I understand it, but I have Long Rested twice thus far, and so I should only have five days left before I turn. But I presently see no indication that a time limit actually exists, and would probably have heard about it on the internet by now if it did. While I understand that perhaps the greater narrative will eventually expound on why we don’t turn after 7 days, this false sense of time-sensitivity – combined with the game mechanics of Long Resting for spellcasters – really rubs me the wrong way. It was absurd in Witcher 3 when you “just missed” Ciri despite spending 40 hours dithering around, and is even more absurd here in BG3.
If it seems like I’m just shitting on Baldur’s Gate 3, well… sorry. I have played for 19 hours thus far and the game came out like four days ago. It’s a fun game! But I do recognize that it is benefitting from an unusual sort of marketing zeitgeist way out of proportion to what it is currently (at least in the early stages) bringing to the table(top). It isn’t even the first game to faithfully recreate 5E rules either – Solasta came out three years ago. I have played both Solasta and Divinity: Original Sin 2, so none of what I’m seeing is particularly groundbreaking.
That said, if someone hasn’t played either of those two games or perhaps never seemed interested in CRPGs before, Baldur’s Gate 3 is probably the best place to start. It’s popular, it’s shiny, and it is certainly the most approachable the genre has ever been.
Time will tell whether Larian can stick the landing past Act 2 or if it’s all downhill after the bear sex.
Asset Flip
One of the games I was looking forward to during the previous Steam sale was one called Grand Emprise: Time Travel Survival. The trailer was amazing, the premise novel, the gameplay was survival-crafting, it had it all! So, imagine my dismay when I read this review:
You can read the full review yourself, but the gist is that the one-person “dev” downloaded a bunch of Unreal marketplace assets and just dumped them as-is into his game. These environmental assets have demo areas already built, along with tools to customize that area or create new ones, but apparently the dev just used the demo areas. Other reviews point out that the dev has a very cynical marketing mindset wherein he publishes a lot of similar asset flips in Steam trying to determine how to generate traffic (and revenue) using as little effort as possible.
This is further supported by the fact that “Karagon (Survival Robot Riding FPS)” – yes, that’s the actual name – was another indie title this dev released three months ago. I had been looking forward to Karagon too, as a sort of ARK substitute to hold me over until the remaster/sequel got released. The reviews further reinforce the notion that the dev swoops in, dumps a game with recycled assets, and swoops away with whatever cash wasn’t refunded.
The concern about asset flips is not limited to this one specific dude, of course. In my last post, I was talking about Craftopia and all the cool things (and a lot of jank) going on there. What I had not realized was that the devs of Craftopia are the same ones as the upcoming Palworld. If you haven’t seen the amazing trailer for Palworld, take a quick peek now, because it’s worth it. Big publishers can have multiple teams working on different products, but something tells me that that isn’t exactly the case here. In PocketPair’s defense, Palworld is slated for an Early Access release January 2024 and Craftopia has a roadmap that ends in September of this year.
In PocketPair’s non-defense though, their latest trailer showed this area for a split-second:
Is it exact? No. I suppose there are only so many different ways you can construct a stone bridge. And, you know, if you need to put out a trailer for an alpha game to generate buzz, you may as well use whatever you have laying around in any case. That said, the shenanigans with Grand Emprise have made me a bit sensitive to this situation. Was Craftopia’s “Seamless Update” really intended to enhance the game? Or did they want to beta-test their Palworld alpha?
There is potentially a conversation to be had as to whether asset flips are bad at all. Things like microtransactions and DLC put the monetary side of the industry front and center, but it is easy to forget that these things that bring us joy are a product being sold. Therefore it is a bit presumptuous of me to characterize someone as being lazy and cynical when that can technically describe all capitalistic aspects of product development. I’d very much prefer devs to have a passion for the game they are making, but as long as it’s fun, who cares? There are apparently many people who played Grand Emprise and had fun with it.
…yeah, no, can’t do it.
I try to have at least one paragraph where I take the opposite side of the argument just to see if there is something I’m missing, but I don’t think so in this case. Asset flips are shitty and it’s especially frustrating to be a fan of the survival genre when it’s apparently ground zero for this chicanery. We are indeed deep in this bizarro world in which even “completed” games feel like abandonware, but Grand Emprise is a whole other level of nihilism.
I suppose we as gamers are not “owed” the same level of passion as ConcernedApe (Stardew Valley) or the people behind Terraria, but it’s still just sad. We become invested in these gaming experiences in a way that we don’t for other products. So, to me, exploiting that investment oftentimes diminishes my very capacity to be invested in things in the future. That is… just restating the definition of being jaded, but the actual diminishment feels much more personal somehow.
Oh well. Caveat emptor and all that.
Impressions: Craftopia
A lot of developers, even in the indie space, like to play things safe. Even if the genre is something out of left field, a lot of the basic game design still feels like +10% skill bonus here, clearly defined tutorial there. Early Access is treated as a soft launch – which it definitely is – of the final product instead of an opportunity to just go nuts.
Meanwhile, Craftopia is the nuts. I don’t remember the last time I played something where you could just feel the devs sitting around a whiteboard saying “That sounds cool, let’s try it out.” And since the team is from Japan, they are already coming at design from sometimes extra weird angles.
On the face of it, Craftopia is… well, let me just post this from the Steam store page:
Craftopia is the brand new multiplayer open-world survival action game.
We have imagined what would happen when we combine our favorite video games altogether.
Chop trees and mine stones as in Sandbox,
Explore the world as in Open-world,
Fight the hunger as in Survival,
Cultivate and harvest as in Farming,
Collect loots in dungeons as in Hack-and-slash,
Automate activities as in Factory management,
Hunt monsters and creatures as in Hunting action,
Cast magical spells as in Fantasy RPG.Now we have a utopia for all of us. That is Craftopia.
After destroying the world in the opening credits, your character emerges from a tutorial cave and you can basically do whatever you want. The game looks like Breath of the Wild and/or Genshin Impact, including the ability to gecko-climb up every surface from the get-go (and build a glider soon after). Following the breadcrumb quests will take you to some NPCs and a small town where you can get acquainted to the crafting. The thing to know is that you can basically build anywhere, which will be important later.
Before the big Seamless World update in late June, the game was basically a series of instanced islands and you needed to unlock things to open portals to other places. Now, you can basically go anywhere you want right off the bat, although you will of course encounter higher-level enemies the farther afield you explore. One of the principle progression mechanics is unlocking special pillars across the landscape using crafted goods. Once you supply the necessary ingredients and then press the button at the top of the resulting pillar, you progress the “Age” and unlock new crafting possibilities.
Let me talk about the pillar for a second though, because it was amazing to me. I supplied the ingredients and then it shot up into the sky. I started climbing the pillar, which is something you can just do, but I started getting nervous halfway up because the ledges were very tiny and, admittedly, the game has a lot of jank. So I threw down a wood platform so I wouldn’t fall off. And then I slapped my forehead with the realization that I could have just built a spiral staircase to reach the top. Which I then did. There’s a floating island you need to reach to get some upgrades, and I presumably would have learned that lesson had I done that earlier, but whatever.
Aside from the crafting aspect, there is a lot of experimentation in the Skill trees as well. You can choose to use Magic of various flavors, enhance your normal weapon attacks, unlock basic movement skills like double-jump, and more. When I played, a large portion was simply unselectable placeholders, but what exists is plenty inventive and makes me feel excited for the possibilities. One Skill lets you throw a knife and then teleport to that location. I was a tad disappointed that its range is limited, but it reminded me how much fun I had with Rogues in WoW with Grappling Hook and Shadowstep.
Also, apparently there is an entire Pokemon element in the game wherein you can capture and breed anything in the game, including NPCs (!!), and ride them into battle (!?!). Actually, I haven’t tried to see if you can ride the NPCs, but I have ridden a cow and what looked like a Shy Guy from Mario 2, so I wouldn’t be surprised.
Also also, there are dungeons with traps and boss fights. Building is more limited inside, but there was a sequence where you had to come up with something to avoid fireball turrets and infinitely falling giant iron balls that roll down the main ramp. I hesitate to call the boss combat Soulslike, but you do need to dodge and counter-attack at precise moments to avoid damage. Or summon a bunch of pets/NPCs and spam attacks? Didn’t try that, personally, but maybe it would work.
What I will say though, is that currently Craftopia has a lot of jank. Like, a lot a alot. When I played, damn near half of the NPC dialog was in untranslated Japanese, and what was in English was very clearly machine-translated. According to one patch note the untranslated dialog was due to a bug, but let’s just say that this isn’t exactly an AA game experience at the moment. It certainly is A game experience, and definitely a BBB game if I ever saw one.
And that’s fine. What I love about Craftopia already is that it can improve in so many different ways and directions from here. That sounds like a backhanded compliment, perhaps, but my point is that these guys threw the entire box of spaghetti at the wall, instead of just a normal amount. With what they got going on so far, I am not worried about them necessarily cutting features and/or nerfing certain builds into the ground. Which means we could just have fun for once in completely unique ways. How many times does that happen?
The one negative I’ll say is that it’s difficult to justify playing exactly right now. For one thing, there is apparently some kind of critical Save Game bug, which is about the worst thing that can happen with a survival-crafting game. But more than that, I worry about playing through things, getting my fill with the novelty, and then them releasing a whole bunch of new elements that I don’t get to experience because I’ve moved on. That’s a Me problem, 100%, but it’s there. The roadmap suggests that an official release may come in or after September, which isn’t too far away, and may be just as well considering that’s when Starfield comes out.
But overall, if you want to experience a game where it feels like almost anything can happen, Craftopia is where it’s at.
Dog Days
I have a tag called “ennui” and that’s what is currently going on over here:
a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement.
Usually the ennui I experience comes as a sort of post-game depression after-effect of spending 6+ hours a day on some particular videogame and then beating it. That is not the case currently – in fact, I have found myself incapable of completing anything lately. The motivation just isn’t there. The proximate cause in these situations is typically that I really want to play X game but cannot, for whatever reason. You know, because the game isn’t on sale or some equally asinine thing.
This time around, it’s possible there are two things going on. First, I have a number of games in my “Early Early Access” Steam category, which I am deliberately not playing. Well, deliberately stopped playing in some cases. The second is that we have the imminent release of Baldur’s Gate 3 and some other titles, to which I want to play quite a bit. Hard to enjoy an independent experience when you know you’re under a time crunch to finish before heading to something you are anticipating more.
We’ll see where things go. By many accounts, BG3 is supposed to be 75-100 hours of playtime just for the main story, which is a bit absurd. On the other hand, I’ve been “throwing away” about a dozen hours on 7 Days to Die (and some other random titles) these past few days. I feel guilty doing so when I have Elden Ring and other meaty games waiting for completion, but that’s just the mood right now.
In An Age 
The Early Starfield Reviews Are In
Sep 1
Posted by Azuriel
To be clear, I have not played Starfield – the Game Pass version is not out yet. However, there is a Reddit megathread with many of the top review sites linked. Verdict? Mostly good. Ish. A fewer big outlets like GameSpot, PC Gamer, and IGN have given it 7/10 scores though.
One common complaint about the game is the disjointedness of fast travel. There are 1,000 planets to land on in the game, but the actual landing bit is a cut-scene and/or menu prompt.
At first, this seemed like a silly complaint to me, especially when people compared it to No Man’s Sky. Yes, there is an element of fidelity to the simulation in NMS when you fly towards a planet, break through the atmosphere, and then choose to land literally wherever. But that is something they have to incorporate because the fundamental gameplay is so repetitive and shallow. If you could just instantly warp to a Point of Interest, you would “consume” everything it had to offer within 30 seconds and then be done with all the, e.g. language unlocks in an afternoon. Heading back out into space feels good, yes, but its function is padding.
The criticism harder to shake off is when the reviewers point out how segmented exploration gets vis-a-vis fast travel. You may have seen this Skyrim meme before:
That is absolutely something that happened to me while playing Skyrim. Or the times you are just wandering around and stumble across a faction fight, or bandit camp, or whatever else. There are bandit camps in Starfield, and (presumably) faction fights, and other similar events. But the nature of the game would appear to make these things less organic. They just appear on the planet menu. And so I can see how that could become an issue with some people, and possibly myself.
That said… we’ll see. I have always been a proponent of flying in MMOs despite that encouraging the exact behavior I was describing, e.g. drop in and drop out gameplay. I don’t necessarily feel the need for the NMS flying around if the destinations and Points of Interest are themselves are a worthy goal. And if planet exploration is just the equivalent of driving around with the Mako in Mass Effect, we can… just not do that.
Again, time will tell. I have been looking forward to Starfield for a long time and I love sci-fi as a setting and Bethesda games in general. I’m not quite sure why they felt the need to add 1000 planets though.
Posted in Commentary
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Tags: Bethesda, No Man's Sky, Sci-Fi, Skyrim, Space, Starfield