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Ok, so let’s ignore the semantic issue of the definition of the word grinding.

The issue at hand is whether a game has a time gate. That meaning, a player can not progress through the game, no matter how much skill or knowledge they have, until they spend some amount of time performing busywork, such as fighting random encounters.

You seem to be OK with a time gate as long as the game did not offer even the illusion that the time gate could be avoided. I am not OK with any time gate whatsoever.

Let us consider a basic example. Final Fantasy 1. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve always had to fight lots of random encounters outside the elf town to get enough gil for a silver sword or two. It takes time. It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to progress through the game without spending this time. However, the game doesn’t explicitly make the player do it. A player is free to attempt to progress, and probably die, without spending this time.

What if the game were slightly altered? Change the map, and only the map. Now there is a very long path on the way to the elf town. A player has no choice but to go along this path. The path is long enough such that when the player arrives at elf town they have enough gil to buy a silver sword, maybe a magic spell, and a stay at the inn. They also have enough levels to progress to the next area.

In both scenarios the player is spending the same number of minutes fighting random encounters and doing busywork before progression is possible. I don’t really care if that busywork just occurred along the long path between two Pokemon towns. I don’t care if you want to call it grinding or not. Either way, it’s X minutes of my life wasted on bullshit.

Ok. In that case would it also be waste of time, even if the battles weren’t menu based, or in separate screens? Let’s say you play Zelda, and you have to go from town to a dungeon, is that journey a waste of time? It’s just walking, or maybe riding a horse, and maybe fighting trivial enemies or just running past them. Anyways I don’t see anything what you’d consider to be “valuable”, happening in there.

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Just remember, Scott will now continue arguing from a position of deliberate ignorance, not having played most of the games you are discussing, nor even interested in trying out Elden Ring, despite it being an almost universally acclaimed example of open world directed gameplay.

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That’s going to all depend on definition of busywork and what you find valuable.

I’m sure there’s someone out there who just loves JRPG combat and is happy and excited when there’s a random encounter. Good for them.

Is Zelda time gated? I mean, you have to get 8 triforce pieces before you can get in the final dungeon. And that does take time to do. But is that time spent on what we could reasonably call repetitive busywork? Is there an amount of skill or knowledge that can greatly reduce that time?

If you play most any JRPG, at some point you have to spend time making numbers bigger. No amount of skill or knowledge can reduce that time below a certain point without cheating. Whether the game explicitly forces you to spend that time along the way, or allows you to choose when and where to spend that time, doesn’t really make a difference to me.

I might play it when it’s very inexpensive.

Apropos of nothing, I just got round to watching this video:

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This is why I prefer the Monster Hunter series to Dark Souls. DS has levels, so if you hit a wall, you can go elsewhere and level up.

MonHun has a “grind” in the sense of needing to do hunts repeatedly in order to get materials and gear, and there are places where you can divert to the side, but at any given game state there is a hard cap on the numbers. There is a point where you cannot make the numbers go up anymore, and your only option is to get better at the game. A wall is a true wall. Git gud.

The question of “grinding” to me is predicated entirely on the degree of engagement required. A repeated or escalating challenge along a path is not a grind, that’s just progression. If the game provides an obstacle I cannot currently overcome, and other meaningful options with which to engage, it’s not a grind to engage with those other options and then come back to the challenge.

It becomes a “grind” when I can just faceroll my way through the challenge, but have no choice to bypass it.

It’s really not a “time gate” issue, IMO. Honestly, that’s a silly concept, because all games necessarily involve some kind of series of choices through time. Metroid is literally this thing - go collect this upgrade to get through this passage you couldn’t before. The question then isn’t about time spent, but about engagement over time. If my time gates are all novel challenges of skill, that’s fantastic; if I’m just pressing A to auto-attack through random encounter #473 (thanks FF1), that is vastly less engaging.

Anyway, Elden Ring looks baller af and I’m gonna grab it soon.

I watched this yesterday and it was one of the things that influenced my view of why it might be the Souls game I actually spend more time with.

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I was thinking, just the other day, That you might like The Surge series. It’s styled after dark souls, but with much more of a neon mechanical future sci-fi setting, bunch of transhumanist stuff. It’s an interesting game, one way or the other, though the two do share some very different elements and vibes. Plus, they’re somewhat getting on in age now, so they can be had pretty inexpensively.

So recently I was looking for a video game to play and scrolled though my Steam library when Dishonored jumped out at me. I must have bought it at a Steam sale or something ages ago but never played it, which is probably a failure on my part as I had heard that it was good and it came out a decade ago. And I very much like it so far.

Two years ago I played Arcane Studios’ subsequent game Prey and was very impressed. It also takes a lot of Dishonored, though Dishonored is much more episodic with individual missions and clear story breaks instead of one connected space you can explore at your own pace if you so choose. Dishonored is also much less action focused, being a sneak-and-stab stealth game primarily, though the game still gives you several options to achieve your goal. There is of course a lot of similar tropes among the immersive sim genre, such as audiologs, looting everything you can get and changing effects depending on your in-game choices, which are much better executed than simple buttonpresses.

I also can’t help but feel like I missed out on not playing it sooner, simply because of how much the world reminds me of The Gentleman Bastards series, particularly The Lies of Locke Lamora which I am also a very big fan of. The world of Dishonored is also a medieval world with a certain amount of technological advancement located in a city full of canals, though the set-dressing is more english instead of italian. It is a crap-sack world with a religious order and your character is tied to the heretics of that religion. There is also also magic, and even monstrous creatures you sometimes have to avoid to advance. I guess the feel isn’t the same as you are an assassin instead of a conman, but you could tell me the game and the books are set in the same universe and I could almost believe you.

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So I’m back into Nightmare Reaper over the last few nights, as the full release is now out, and the game has all the major features. And so it now has all the things I was hoping for, and some other stuff on top of that.

The dev added new game + finally, which is huge. And they added an arena mode where you fight endless waves of mobs. It isn’t perfect, as jt gets pretty repetitive and the arena is more or less static, but it is fun for a quick blast session.

Also added are 2 new types of minigames, each has their own upgrade trees for both the minigame itself and for your character in the main FPS sequences. One is a sort of rudimentary Pokemon clone and the other is a basic sidescrolling space shooter. To be fair they are somewhat of a let down in that being minigames, they lack some of the complexity elements of a full title. They definitely don’t feel very engaging beyond being a good mental break from the shooty shooty. But being minigames, guess that is the point.

The story also finally closes out, tho I don’t really care much about it still. It’s really just background flavor. But at least they wrapped it such that it at least somewhat pays off for those who do care about the lore.

I just banged out Lucifer Within Us by Kitfox Games in a couple hours. It was in the Ukraine itch bundle, if you got that:

It was really solid. The stylings are great - you play a cybernetic exorcist (hello) working under the auspices of Saint Walpurga, who you may remember from such hits as Walpurgisnacht. You have to investigate murders and conduct exorcisms.

Mechanically, it’s similar to Phoenix Wrights. Click on evidence, listen to the stories of witnesses, call them out on contradictions.

The whole thing is a couple hours, across 3 levels. Play it!

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I’ve recently gotten back into playing Rock Band, or rather now Clone Hero. I play Drums using a Roland midi drum kit. I haven’t played in like 3 years, but I am easing back into things, playing mostly on hard but with drums+, i.e. separating out toms and cymbals which you have to hit separately.

But anyhow, wtf just happened?

The song is very easy, particularly on hard difficulty. A steady beat on the hi-hat and snare with a kick drum beat underneath. It is the same beat the entire way through with no deviation or variation. But still, I would expect to drop a note somewhere, just for missing a kick or randomly missing the hi-hat.

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Finally picked up Victoria 3 and I’m less than 10 hours in and its a tough learning curve but also I feel like its sorta auto-tutoralization between the Journal entries for your country and techs that auto-generate and the actual tutorial missions it gives you based on you country if you go in with one of the “learn the game” prompts is far and away better than any previous paradox game. Think CK3’s tool tips but actually leading you through taking game actions to make improvments/make changes. Really excited to actually learn the game over time, but for now I just keep doing runs at Belgium (Tiny 2 core, relatively stable country) to learn the systems.

Also a new wipe happened in Escape From Tarkov just after Christmas and I’ve been enjoying playing it again with some of the changes and just having way more experience with the game after a few wipes.

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Citizen Sleeper is a highly atmospheric, lite-RPG/visual novel that I’m really digging so far. Definitely worth checking out:

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That is at the top of my list too, after hearing about it on a couple of “Games of the Year” podcasts. Should be able to squeeze in a couple more games before Zelda hits, then it’s all over for the next 6 months :slight_smile:

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I’m a handful of hours into Tunic, and I can say it’s a very well executed Metroidvania.

Best part is the mechanic where as you explore, you find pages of the instruction booklet, complete with maps, artwork, tips, and indecipherable Fox language that makes more sense as you discover what’s going on.

It’s on xboz game pass right now.

I’ve beaten Tunic. And… well. I underestimated the instruction booklet, to put it mildly.

I think it’s a very good game. It’s half Zelda, half Dark Souls, half Metroidvania, half Metroidbrainia.

The veteran Metroidvania player will recognize many aspects of the game. “Hmm, lots of things seem to be decorated with some 3-slot design, I wonder what that could be about.”

But! There were a number of times I was taken by surprise. Both in good ways, and “oh… oh no” ways.

There are also very nice accessibility features. I did turn on invincibility for the last bit. I also reached a point where I recognized a puzzle was there to be figured out, and didn’t want to do the legwork to do so. I looked it up online, and was happy I made the right call on that one.

If you enjoy Metroidvanias, I think you should play it. I would suggest not finding out much before you play. It’s really a game you should discover as you go along.

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Arstotzka border control has been checking passports for 10 years, so they made a Tiger handheld version of Papers Please:

https://dukope.itch.io/lcd-please

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This is amazing.