@Mewtamer What are some of the best games you’ve played since losing your vision?
I’ve read good things about The Vale: Shadow of the Crown which happens to be on sale for 50% off until July 11th on Steam.
It’s not a Final Fantasy, but “Square RPG with combat vaguely similar to Parasite Eve” is probably Vagrant Story. It’s another PS1 RPG with pausable real-time combat. But the closest it comes to being a FF title is that it was developed by most of the same team that made the original Final Fantasy Tactics.
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Unfortunately, I haven’t done much gaming in the last decade or so.
Dabbled some with If a few times, but without knowing about this forum at the time, it was hard to expand beyond Infocom’s library of Harder than Nintendo Hard titles* and there’s only so much “Oops, should’ve reloaded the save I overwrote 2 hours ago” a guy can handle at a time.
*If I ever make a game with humorous difficulty settings, Nintendo Hard is going to be the second hardest setting and Infocom is going to be the hardest.
Did play Arcade Spirits when it first came out and want to give it a replay along with trying a few other RenPy Visual Novels, but despite being written in Python and having a machine a decade newer than the one I played Arcade Spirits on originally, I can’t seem to get any RenPy games to run on my Linux machine.
Haven’t messed around with steam much due to reports that the client’s accessibility is debatable on Windows and borderline non-existant even on a good day for Linux and prone to breaking with every update.
Was addicted to a console version of 2048 for a while that kind of scratched that abstract puzzle game itch I’d usually turn to Tetris or Panel de Pon/Tetris attack/Puzzle League or another match 3 type game for, but between the nature of the game(Each new higher value tile takes twice as many moves to construct as the tile before it) and how much reviewing the board slows down as the numbers get bigger(2, 4, and 8 are one syllable, 16 is 2, 32 and 64 are three, 128, 256, 1024, and 2048 are 7 syllables, 512 is five syllables… never got to 4096, but it’s 7 syllables too, 8192 is 10 syllables, 16384 is 11 syllables, and so on), getting a higher score just became too tedious. Plus there was no way of telling quickly where the gaps in a row are and there were several blank lines between the printed rows… plus, at the time, I was using a console screen reader that used caps lock plus arrow keys for screen review and the game used arrow keys alone to shift everything on the board in that direction, so any finger slippage on the caps lock key while reviewing the board could lead to a game ending mistake… tried writing my own version where instead of new tiles being 2s and mathcing tiles adding their values when they fuse, the starting tiles are As and matching tiles become the next letter of the alphabet(nice thing about the Alphabet, in English, every letter is monosyllabic excluding W, this scheme would make the monosyllabic X equivalent to the 22-syllable 16,777,216) when they fuse, but I never quite got the hang of coding arrow key controls for C++ terminal apps and using cin for this kind of game would be clunky as heck.
Though, since joining, I’ve beeten two of the games in the parser Recommendations for Newbies thread, namely So you’ve never played a text adventure and 77 Verbs.
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It’s available on other platforms, in case you’re still interested.
I’ve been having the best time watching hilarious Let’s Plays of Chained Together.
It’s simple: Climb from Hell up to Heaven. Don’t fall.
The gimmick is if you play multiplayer, you are connected by a chain to your companions, either in a line up to four, or for more difficulty, in a loop. This means players must manage slack as they can’t make a jump if someone is hanging back too far. If one person falls, they dangle by their chain and have to be pulled up. If they panic, they may yank everyone else off the structure with them. The chains have forgiving physics and won’t catch on most things, but there are thick pillars the chains can tangle on, and certain instances where players must dangle on both sides of a beam and slide down dangling by the chain.
If you fall, you fall all the way to the bottom unless you can catch part of the architecture on the way down to not fall as far. It’s miles and miles, falls are like skydiving. You don’t die from hitting the ground, you just start over. There are easier modes that allow checkpoints, and harder modes where rising lava chases you up the absurd climbing structure. My favorite part of the ambient soundscape is you occasionally hear and may catch a glimpse other groups screaming in rage as they fall from higher up past you.
Luckily the platforming is solid. If you fall it’s usually your own fault or that of your teammates panicking and not correcting, or not paying attention to what’s going to happen. There are driving sequences where one person is in control and the passengers can only watch in terror as the vehicle speeds up a twisting platform with holes in it and spinning windmills that can bat you into oblivion. This game will trigger acrophobics, and there’s one terrifying underwater maze that inspires the claustrophobia of cave diving.
The best part about this is hearing grown people scream at each other in panic and improvise wildly when things go wrong. Monotony sets in, people get comfortable and then chaos ensues. This game notoriously can end friendships. Reviews are hilarious.
my friend keeps going AFK to text his WAIFU and he wont LOCK IN im going to hit him with HAMMERS
Luke if you read this, i despise you with every fibre in my body. You ARE 4’3 you said it yourself, you DID jump on 2. its 3 2 1 GO not 3 2 jump, hang, flail around like a baby on a bunji cord and scream " PULL, HURRY UP" I hate you and I will always hate you. And you’re short so there’s that too
Before playing this game i had 3 really good friends, a girlfriend and a healthy family. After playing this game for no more than 3.5 hrs i lost all my friends, my girl left me, broke my monitor, destroyed the house, the cat is no longer with us and im facing 7 years in prison.
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For those that like environmental puzzles (and I have reason to think this forum may have one or two), The Talos Principle II by Croteam has just been released a DLC called Road to Elysium which has a number of (very) tricky puzzles. If you have not played the game, it is maybe not as well-rounded as the original, but it is very well crafted and engaging, and I wholeheartedly recommend it.
P.S.: Firewatch is a gem. The game deserves to be better known.
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Amen, brother! That’s a walking simulator done right.
The Stanley Parable also “walks the path” very well.
Both games are excellent.
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I went with the original Final Fantasy 7.
This is my preferred style of graphics and I’m not disappointed. The game uses its limitations well. The pre-rendered backgrounds give you a sense of place that I think is missing from a lot of recent games. There’s one area where there’s a waving poster in the foreground … that’s the sort of presentation you can’t really do in full 3D.
The simple character models are animated well too. There are small gestures, like when one of the characters cleans dust off of Cloud’s face, which are really nicely directed and add a lot of charm.
So far I’ve only gotten to the world map outside Midgar, and the battles haven’t been difficult. I found the boss battle where you have to break your allies out of barriers and the one where you can only use distance attacks engaging.
The story is interesting. I know the main twist/climax already but don’t know much else, so I’m interested to see where it goes.
I’m using a few mods: a toggle for random battles, a 60FPS mod, a new soundtrack arrangement and a CRT filter.
My only complaint so far is that the game asks you to navigate pre-rendered backgrounds where depth and paths aren’t really obvious. I had to watch a longplay for a few sections.
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The first time I played, I remember getting stuck in several places in Midgar (I think the train graveyard and the slums) for what felt like forever because of this. (And I did not have the option to turn off random encounters.) But, as you mentioned, at least the backgrounds look good.
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There is an assist button that points out entries/exits and ladders but nothing else, which makes it even more frustrating.
Some are clearly meant to be puzzles though, like the part where you climb the tangled wires/pipes to install several batteries, and the train graveyard you mentioned (with the moving trains).
Ok, I’m about halfway through through Final Fantasy 7. I thought I had a grasp on the intricacies of the plot until some seemingly random person called Cloud a murderer and I had no idea who it was or why. (I’ve got it figured out now after someone else asked the same question 15 years ago.)
Red XIII is a great character, a perfect blend of goofy and serious.
Some of the mini-games are getting on my nerves. I can’t believe they made me do a CPR mini-game, a dolphin jumping mini-game, a very extended military march mini-game, and a military salute mini-game in more or less rapid succession. The last two you can fail and proceed anyway, but it would be better to skip them from the beginning.
Other than that I’m enjoying it, even the battles.
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In the past few weeks I played two great games:
- What Remains of Edith Finch is wonderful and beautiful and heart-wrenching and surprising and poetic and enthralling and enchanting and painful and gut-twisting and delightful. It also has about 83 copies of The Nordic Cookbook spread all over the house. In fact, every single book in the house has dozens of copies lying around. 58 times Norwegian Folktales anyone? 106 copies of whatever other book there is to be found among the thousands in the house? Yeah, that seriously annoyed me.
- My son and I played Machinarium together, a point-and-click adventure from Amanita Design*, the creative studio that also made the Samorost-series. What a great experience to work together and pit our wits against the sometimes silly but always challenging puzzles in this game. Whereas the Samorost-puzzles are incorporated nicely into the story, Machinarium teeters a bit to the solve-the-soupcans** situations sometimes, but that didn’t bother us one bit. Lots of fun, lots of brainflashes, and lots of laughs.
---- *Amanita Design (amanita-design.net)----
---- **Solve the Soup Cans - TV Tropes----
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Seconded. I often cite that as how an exploratory text adventure might best be realized in fully 3-D graphical form successfully. My god, the feels this evokes. It’s a tragedy about a cursed family and an impossible house but still manages to ultimately feel cosmically hopeful and soul-affirming despite reducing most players to blubbering wrecks by the end.
The fact that you identified that the Finches own 83 copies of the same book is actually a testament to the intricate physical detail you want to pore-over inch-by-inch although I don’t blame them for repeating the same object/texture. The Finches have so many books - you’ll want to live there whilst also experiencing the horror-vacuui of an extremely lived-in space.
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Not to once again bring up one of my favorite games, but do you happen to know about the Toby Accessibility Mod for Doom?
If it’s also not your kind of game, that’s entirely valid. I’m just really interested in the process of making games that comfortably don’t require vision to play, and this mod intersects that interest with one of my favorite games ever, so… the universe obligates me to mention it, lol. 
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Two-thirds in, Final Fantasy 7 is turning into everything that I’m afraid of in JRPGs. An overworld with vague directions about where to go next, a map full of unlabelled locations, interrupted by the need to chase one of the game’s least interesting characters around a place you’ve already been to.
But above all…I cannot believe that shortly after you fight an incredibly easy boss that comically loses halfway through (Palmer), you fight a boss with an extreme difficulty spike and no opportunity for grinding. The difficulty spike is the first time that I turned on the invincibility mod.
That said, I’ve liked most of the early battles where it’s fairly clear how to win, and the non-boss random encounter rate is decent.
The story is also as interesting as ever … it’s just that the gameplay had me turning to a walkthrough constantly pretty much after Cosmo Canyon.
I’m definitely going to finish FF7, but at this point I’ve gone from really wanting to play another entry in the series to only kind of wanting to. I’m still interested in FF12.
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Has anyone here played Beacon Pines? It’s an adventure with branching narrative so I recommend it to IF fans. The story is a bit dark and it really made me emotional. Basically a supernatural murder mystery where a bunch of anthropomorphic animal kids try to save their village.
Just finished beating the platinum in Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. Now all that’s left is Kiwami 1/2 and Ishin (successfully beaten other platinums, and oh boy, I don’t want to do it ever again). It’s been a long journey, and there’s still so much to do.
I’m actually a bit concerned that so few people know about these series. Or am I mistaken?
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I haven’t played any of the Yakuza/Like of Dragon games but I got the Shenmue games for free and on discount a while ago.
I hear the Yakuza series is (debatably) Shenmue’s spiritual successor. I guess Shenmue is a lot more slow-paced. I don’t know. I still haven’t set aside the time.
I get the impression is that these are games where you’re really supposed to sink into the world. I haven’t really had time to do that since elementary school, before I started having to worry about homework and after-school jobs. I really liked getting lost in Harvest Moon for an afternoon at that age, but at this point, I mostly play short, linear stuff that I can schedule.
I finished Final Fantasy 7.
I said earlier that I knew about the main plot twists. However, I didn’t know exactly how they would play out. I was surprised that the story actually undermines its most ambitious plot twist (“Cloud wasn’t in Nibelheim” becomes “Cloud was actually in Nibelheim in a different role”).
I also noticed some unexpected parallels between Cloud and other characters. Obviously Cloud and Sephiroth are meant to have had similar identity crises and reacted differently. But there’s also:
- Red XIII trying to be act more mature than he really is. Cloud had similar ‘wanting to grow up’ reasons for joining SOLDIER.
- Cait Sith being a puppet of Reeve. Sephiroth similarly refers to and uses Cloud as a puppet around the time of a Cait Sith-heavy part of the game.
- Aerith presenting herself in need of protection/a bodyguard but being several steps ahead of the other characters at various points.Cloud similarly considers himself weak but is a driving force in the plot.
- Cid being abusive but turning altruistic, a sort of outward and aggressive version of Cloud, who starts out brooding but gradually opens up
FF7 is widely considered to deal with themes of identity and memory but at times it seems narrower than that … it’s often about how we present ourselves, whether that presentation is authentic, and our motives for doing so.
Except Cait Sith (spoilers)...
You really have to read between the lines to get anything out of Cait Sith’s character IMO. Nearly every development reduces his stake in the story due to him being a remote controlled puppet that can be replaced indefinitely. When his pupeteer, Reeve, is found out as a spy, the writers drop the plot thread entirely. IMO the writers should have upped the amount of risk Reeve was putting himself at toward the end. I’ve read some ad hoc explanations that are pretty intriguing though.
Of course the themes are much broader than the above. FF7 is especially heavy on themes of natural harmony and cosmic balance. That part seems kind of generic to me (this is going to be hugely unpopular but … Aerith’s sacrifice to save the world is touching but not especially original). I guess there might be nuances that I can’t see though.
As for combat … I managed to get through it until the final boss battle. I gave the last battle, Safer Sephiroth, three good tries and then cheated with the invincibility mod. I don’t know if I was underleveled or whether I didn’t understand what I was supposed to do (some sort of 8-turn cycle I hear). I also remember spending weeks trying to beat final bosses as a kid in the 1990s, so maybe three tries wasn’t enough. I think I was missing some important Materia too.
Overall I’m glad I played it. It’s just as great as it has a reputation for being. The story isn’t perfectly told but the characters do enough lifting that the story is great.
Also, this took me almost a month’s worth of evenings to play. I wouldn’t have had the patience to get through it without cheating at two points, nor would I have had the patience to play through the triple-A remake trilogy. I still need to get FF12 when it’s on discount…
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I don’t know if this is true of the remakes, but in the original, Sephiroth is always leveled up to the exact extent Cloud is. So grinding up to Lv 99 for the final boss battle is not necessarily an advantage.
This doesn’t apply to the bonus quests like the Weapons, though. Personally I spent too much time breeding chocobos.
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