RPG – MRAAKTAGON

Unicorn Overlord – first GOTY candidate for 2024? Yeah.

Vanillaware are naughty, naughty sumkas to be sure, with their cute but sexy Odin’s Sphere leading into their side scrolling answer to Diablo, Dragon’s Crown, with the largest breasts on record for a playable character. You’d think a studio so obsessed with giant barbarian woman’s thighs wouldn’t be able to crank out such good games time and time again, but they certainly have in the past and have done it again!

Before I gush all over Unicorn Overlord, I would be remiss if I did not mention that I did not like Vanillaware’s last game, 13 Sentinels, and wished I had never bought it. The story was Soul Nomad and The World Eaters level confusing with the difference being that the story parts completely got in the way of the combat. The early game the sequences where you run around as various characters in frustrating side-scrolling puzzles were so long and arduous as to negate the fun of the tactical mech combat once you eventually got to it, and even then, it was far to short in the mech, and way to long out of it. Even my kids that tend to like those sorts of games on the Switch just won’t bother with 13 Sentinels. Luckily, that is the past as we now have a game from Vanillaware that does the exact opposite: has a story and it gets the fuck out of the way for the joy of the tactical combat!

Unicorn Overlord, for those that may have never heard about it yet, is a modern Ogre Battle, which means it is an RPG with tons of different characters that are organized into battle units. Each of these units ends up having different capabilities in tactical as well as strategic contexts. Characters level up and have light item management (nothing like Dragon’s Crown/ Diablo though) and also grow affinity with their different combat groups over time. Choosing the right battle group for the right job at the right time is critical to success and building out those ‘right’ battle groups is half the fun of the game, the other half is the slaughter parts.

There are so many games around to put time into, why play this over other games? First, it’s absolutely gorgeous. For a tactical battle game, the art, character design and animation is over the top. Player’s have an option to skip battle animations but I almost NEVER do, just to see my plucky characters in all their animated glory.

Second, the core gameplay loop is done extremely well. You unlock new characters during the story and can combine them with existing units, form new ones and then try them out vs enemies or in practice. The strategic aspects of positioning, blocking, the action point economy and special leader/member powers on the strategic map is all just superbly done. As a fan of Ogre Battle/Soul Nomad and the World Eaters style games, I’m going to hazard to say that this is probably already my favorite in the genre.

Lastly: Tits. Everyone loves them. Every man, woman and child on earth. Vanillaware knows this.

Negatives, and there are a few, consist of a bit of chaos and confusion during the real-time strategic portion of the game, where, especially on the Switch, it can be hard to see what unit is next to another unit. I did get into a forever loop situation where two units, both out of action points, were constantly going to fight each other and neither could harm on another. One unit was up against the side of the map so the loser could not be pushed back. Lastly, while this is minor, the main character and his best friend are the most GENERIC anime fantasy characters imaginable, which is odd since Vanillaware typically has such cool designs for the main characters in other games.

While I haven’t finished the game yet (it’s long), I already highly recommend the game to everyone that likes this style at all.

Tactical view of a battle

Some basic tips

Do not line characters up in a row where possible, they will get hit by attacks that effect everything in the row, and your soft-bosom’d witches will get dropped in one shot, and we can’t have that!
Use the 20th level horse guy to help level up your weak dudes. He pounds ass early game– use him.
Restoration deliveries to harbors allow access to islands that have neat stuff on them.
Do not rest if you can help it on the strategic map. Units can defend with 1 Action Point FOREVER, so you can just sit there and get attacked all you want. If your unit is in a resting state when attacked it’s fucked.
Do not set the difficulty to Normal. Go to Tactical at least.

This is only out on consoles (Switch/PS5) and not the PC. Looking for something like this on the PC? Check out Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga.

Malenia, Malekith and me

Finalment! I have beaten the Elden Ring, which took me months too long and many, many tries against Malenia, the Fire Giant and some other boss I can’t remember any more.

It goes without saying that the game is a masterpiece. The attention to detail, the unbelievable scope, the number of bosses, the incredible amount of build options and weapon combos, the multiplayer (both partying up and PVP) and especially the rather interesting purgatorial storyline. It is a really good time to be alive and able to wield a mouse and keyboard or controller, I will say that much. Is it my favorite From Software game? No. I think even after all the fun Elden Ring is, Bloodborne is still my number 1, but I need to go back to it and play again and see if it stands up to ER.. and then finish Sekiro or Armored Core… did I mention it was a good time to be able to play video games? Will I play through ER again? Certainly, with stupid builds that can only make it with tons of help from other people.

One of the issues for me is that the game is… too long. I feel like the battle with Morgott should have been the natural end of the game, and the first DLC should have been up to the Fire Giant, Malekith, Malenia and the Elden Beast. These are generally good bosses, but for the base game? I had my fill of ER when I beat Morgott in May of 2022 for awhile and set it down except multiplayer with a second or third toon to jagg around with. It took me a long time to get back to the game and when I did, I think it wasn’t with the same fervor as the first 2/3rds.

That said, the final battle with Malenia, the probably 100+ tries against her were really epic, attempting different tactical paths, failing, trying new ones, failing, going back and beating up bosses I missed to get certain items, then going back and failing and finally running into the fight with no spells and just the GUTS Sword (and a mimic tear…) and getting a bit lucky with dodging the Waterfowl during her second form and then blammo– the hardest From boss in the can!

Unlike Bethesda games, From doesn’t necessarily care if you miss a bunch of stuff, so they hide their big dungeons quite well in ER, and the first instance of this in Stormveil Castle was pretty eye opening for me– the majority of the castle and dungeon beneath was not only totally optional, but fairly difficult to find to boot. This theme continues throughout the game, which is both good and bad. Good because the sense of exploration and discovery is certainly there all the time, especially after stumbling across the giant hole left by Radahn getting his arse kicked. Bad because– you miss stuff. If I didn’t have Nathan around mid-game for multiplayer, I would have missed tons of dungeons, just walked right past them. Later I was a bit more careful and was looking for particular items for my GUTS sword build. I think a bit more GO THIS WAY for some of the dungeons would have helped so I wasn’t looking online for hints all the time.

Favorite Bosses list:

Radahn – worth buying the game for just this

Redwolf Radagon – yeah, easy fight but really fun boss.

Godrick – just a jerk that needed to be put down for good!

Godskin Duo – Made me think of some other skinny and fat guy…

Malenia – can’t deny it, this was a good fight.

Well that’s it on ER for now. This is a lifestyle game for many people and for good reason, it is absolutely excellent. I can’t wait for the DLC and it’s hard to imagine what they could even do that they haven’t done before.

Russ Nicholson has passed away

Along with Dave Trampier, there is one other TITAN of the old school D&D art, and that is the incredible Russ Nicholson, who brought to life the entirety of the Fiend Folio as well as gobs of other art for games throughout his career. While the original Monster Manual’s art was a huge inspiration, the Fiend Folio took both the monster designs and art to a new level.

Unlike Trampier, who quit doing any art in the early 80’s (and missed the MTG cash cow that he would have fit into perfectly), Russ kept on doing art for OSR modules, DCC and other games his entire career. RIP Russ!

Crusader kings 3 FTW

Block of text from Reddit with no context because NONE IS NEEDED.

Bleeding Kansas – Mythras

I didn’t want to spill the beans before the sessions up North last weekend so didn’t go into any details other than it was “old west” stuff, but this scenario is set directly in the early months of the Bleeding Kansas proto-ACW era. We had a very solid couple of sessions over the weekend and I had a lot of fun as the GM for a few reasons. First, Mythras (Runequest 6) makes everything just work and I’ve played enough where I don’t need the book much at all. I love about 3 other systems (DCC, 13th Age, FASERIP), but Mythras is the numero uno. Second, the excellent Call of Cthulhu old west supplement by Kevin Ross called Down Darker Trails. It’s an excellent sourcebook for the genre and easy to read (very easy on the eyes too). Third, the Firearms supplement for Mythras– just made it easier to run gunfights with the custom special effects. Why Mythras over Call of Cthulhu 7? It’s just better.

Buy IN

The initial events for the characters began on a train headed to St. Louis in April, 1855. The rear car was detached, unbeknownst to the passengers, and after it slowed to a stop, it was then boarded by miscreants who stated that it was a robbery, yet, it clearly wasn’t. The ruffians were after the daughter of a soon to be legislator in the newly organized territory of Kansas for reasons explained below. The girl was accompanied by a bodyguard and her nanny, the former being instantly shot on sight when the ruffians entered the train. The characters being of a violent sort, the guns (and knives) came out instantly and the PC’s, none of which knew each other, were then united as so many parties have been in the past in a shower of lead and wholesome violence. The heist set up was three men enter the train, shake down the passengers and grab the girl. Two waited outside in a carriage and one shooter perched 100 yards out from the train was to peg off anyone that tried to follow the carriage or run off. Once the girl was away the others would grab some hidden horses and be off.

This didn’t go as planned. The PC’s knifed and shot the three men on the train, leaving two stone dead and one with a gutshot, unconscious. They were then pinned down by the outside shooter but were able to shoot one of the men from the carriage (blowing his leg clean off) who came to investigate the shootings inside the train. The man in the carriage rode off top-speed at that point and the sniping shooter outside the train called it quits after taking a hit to the arm from another passenger and then being nicked in the head by one of the PCs.

From a combat perspective, this was very exciting with the length of reloads on all sides, maneuvering and using distractions in order to get the drop. Luckily only one of the PC’s was hit, and it was but a minor wound. I wanted the players to understand, outside of using luck points, they could be gunned down in a single round and needed to be cautious–the opposite of nearly every other RPG we play with the exception of DCC funnels and LotFP. Always use the firearms supplement actions and special effects in Mythras, even when just playing with bows and crossbows.

Now stranded between somewhere and St. Louis with two ruffians still about, they hid with the other passengers in a nearby dell for the night waiting for the next train or some help to arrive. They kept watch all the next day and the ruffians didn’t make another appearance. Eventually a train arrived and they were interviewed by the marshals on the incident.

The Hook

This lead to the big hook of the scenario where the players were interviewed by one Judge Morris who asked them to handle a sensitive mission to accompany three slaves through Missouri to the Kansas territory, using whatever guile, tricks and violence they needed to to make it to Lawrence over the border and meet with a contact there. This seemed simple, except one of the “slaves” happened to be an Englishman of mixed birth who was carrying a packet of papers that would be difficult to hide if he opened his mouth or was allowed to act normally (remember in these times, a slave would never meet the eye of any white folks present unless directly spoken to and would walk in a non-threatening manner as to not draw attention to themselves). The other two were skilled tradesmen and would be set up as freemen in the new territory. Morris explained that this was a test of what may occur if other slaves in larger groups tried to cross into Kansas via the route they chose. The group was given an enormous sum of money to equip themselves and I was pretty scared as a GM that they would simply run off, but the prize at the end per-person was enough to start a business or some sort of racket, or innumerable bottles of whiskey, countless nights with whores of any race, creed or persuasion, so they agreed to pick up the soon to be freed slaves. They went to purchase materials for the trip (including a trunk full of ammunition) and while waiting for it to be delivered, went to pick up the ‘contraband.’

I made an apocryphal small town where they were to pick them up called Forsythe which was influenced by the “porters quarters” area of Gainesville where all the porters who all worked in mansions (not by modern standards) downtown, but lived in the middle of the town in an area with shacks, dirt roads and little running water. When I was there for college the area still had gravel roads!!

They picked up the slaves at a festival in the town that was just beginning and made off into the fields straight away, the biggest issue at first that that Englishman was wearing a suit, but realized they had a tail of a couple mounted men, and that’s where we had to call it.

I wanted to introduce some moral quandaries with the characters, but not so early in the scenario so they didn’t know what to do and didn’t follow story flags. The people who are sponsoring the slaves getting to Kansas by our standards would still be considered racists (maybe these days everyone born before 2001 would be considered one anyway), let alone your normal inhabitant of Missouri, but culturally things are on a continuum and not black and white, and this is a period where multiple groups came together to politically and violently oppose human bondage, even if they themselves felt they were superior to all other races (and were still in the process of wiping out the Native Americans). Like the article in the last post, if you want characters to talk to NPC’s and have political shenanigans, you must have a VERY deadly system, otherwise everything just gets attacked and overwhelmed when people get tired of talking. Within this backdrop of oncoming disorder and madness, the characters are thrust, with huge potential for both profit, roleplaying and being gutshot and left for dead or strung up on a tree limb in the middle of nowhere. Likely their involvement will throw gas on the fire and we will get some double or triple Hendersons out of the whole thing as we go on or they will just take the (ample) money they have at the first sign of danger and leave the foppish Englishman and his two companions to their fate…

Mythras Old West this weekend!

Here we go. This weekend is our annual camping trip and when the weather is bad or after sundown, we get some roleplaying in the deep dark northwoods region.

This year, inspired by a lot of stuff, I’m going to do Old West with Mythras. While the characters take a long time to make (PC’s, I can generate NPC’s pretty quick), the combat system was just too good to not try out for a least a couple sessions. I’m using the Mythras Core rules plus the Firearm rules. I’ve been wanting to run something like this for a long time reminiscent of both our days with Call of Cthulhu where we started to ignore the mythos and run rum as anyone in the 1920’s should and this excellent blog post about boot hill.

Dark Souls on the Switch – it’s good*

Right after Elden Ring came out I had to take a trip and was away from my PC. I grabbed the Switch for my kids but remembered I had Dark Souls on it. The Switch, from many, many hours of whatever the fuck the kids play on there was messed up with a really bad drift-stick on one of the sticks that made DS nearly unplayable. Somewhere at some random Walmart in Indiana, I found a HORI Split Pad Pro and not only did that solve the drift-stick, it made Dark Souls a far better experience to play without the stock controllers. Very much recommended for everything unless you are worried about it fitting inside your little case (like if you have to shove it up your ass when you are sent to prison), otherwise the HORI sticks make everything play better.

Build

I was mulling over the build to use but when Pinwheel dropped the DAD mask (1/3rd chance), I knew what had to be done– Giant Dad with a fucking Chaos Zweihander. It’s a LOT of work to get all the pieces, and for new players of Dark Souls it is NOT worth it, just get the rest of the stuff and do a lightning Zweihander instead. Why? The Chaos Zwei scales off HUMANITY which means you have to run around with 5-10 humanity all the time. If you drop your souls and can’t get them back, you are farming fucking RATS in the depths for hours and hours to get what you need to hit hard enough to win.

Rings: Havel’s Ring, Wolf’s Ring

Armor: Giants + the Dad mask

Shield: Grass Crest

Weapon: Chaos Zwiehander, a bitch to create, and a bitch to use but hit’s so hard…

Bosses

This is my second time all the way through the game so I was familiar with just about all the bosses I fought. Most of the bosses I thought were scary the first time were pushovers and some I thought were easy earlier were challenging.

Fatty Demon: Easy, but punishing later versions make me still hate this guy (like the Erdtrees)

Taurus Demon: Super easy.

Capra Demon: STILL a bitch to defeat, took me a lot of tries, not because of the Capra, but because of the dogs

Insideout Dragon : a tough fight, but the first real “boss” in the game so it better be. I lost a lot of souls during this battle for sure.

Bell Gargoyles: this was really easy, and I remember emotionally suffering in my initial playthrough.

Iron Giant: Not too bad but took me a lot of tries.

Queelag the topless: I used the summon because that one is so silly (a lady with a cleaver with a sack over her head) and she wasn’t too hard. Took me a few tries for sure and of course, that’s after Blighttown so you are always emotionally drained before fighting her, but at least there’s cleavage.

Ceaseless Discharge: this is a trick boss, so really doesn’t count. He’s easy if you know what to do and just a sad sack of fiery shit really.

Smough and Orenstein: Well… I summoned the Sunbro for help and followed the basics: Kill Orenstein first, don’t get hit by Smough and it worked out. This took me countless tries the first time through so I made sure I was good and ready for this battle, including walking in there with 10 Humanity so the Zwei was hitting hard. Big risk, big reward of the beautiful chest ahead.

NITO: one of my favorite bosses in the end game because he’s pretty easy and also scary. Advice I got was to not go in the room to trigger the big skellingtons. Getting to NITO was terrible for me though…. ugh, Tomb of Giants was worse than Blightown this time.

SEATH: This one was tough, but I just stayed near his leg and kept circling and took him down. I had forgotten the whole prison thing so that was again a surprise!

FOUR KINGS: Super easy. I remember having a ton of trouble with these guys the first play through. Just hit them again and again.

hey I’m one of the good guys right? right? …

Demon Firesage: what an asshole. I kept getting the RNG on his AOE and it just killed me over and over and over. This boss I didn’t like too much because it felt ALMOST unfair.

Fire Centipeed: I lost 10 humanity the first time fighting this jerk, but summoned Sunbro again and we took her down.

BED OF CHAOS: this is my least favorite fight in Dark Souls. Just being constantly pushed off a cliff is not great fun. You can’t do anything but just suffer through this one and get it over with.

SIF: funny doggy. Not a tough fight. Maybe he’s the only good guy among all these bosses and you’re the bad guy.

Gwyn Lord of Cinder: For the final boss, he seems intimidating at first even for my second play through the game, but after playing Bloodborne where you MUST parry as part of normal play, this was a very easy fight that took only two tries! I just parried him over and over and had enough health to tank the shots I missed on… and the chaos zwei with 10 Humanity.

Final verdict

The Switch version of Dark Souls is excellent, plays great, performance is fantastic. It’s all there and right in the palm of your hand and really good if you get the Hori controllers. If they work well with DS, they will work well with Breath of the Wild and everything else.

Elden Ring – a golden shower of FROM hits

I’m 17+ hours in and I’ve seen a few things and suffered some bad beatings, had my first character’s save file corrupted and had to start over from scratch. I’m going to comment on a couple reasons why people may not like this game even though reviewers have given it 10/10 almost across the board. Do you like Dark Souls? This is absolutely a 10/10. Fan of Breath of the Wild or Monster Hunter? This is probably 7/10 for you. Lukewarm or couldn’t get through Dark Souls? This may not be your thing, and that’s OK!

First off, this is fundamentally a FROM game, but open world. It takes a lot of things from previous FROM games, mixes them up, improves them and throws you into this gigantic area to try to deal with all of it at once. There are wandering giants, mud men that rip their chests open and shoot their insides out, gigantic fighting trees, parades of low-lifes, mount and blade style mounted warriors, harpies, sirens, and just so much more. The game feels like a best-hit collection from the previous games, yet due to the new context, without being repetitive or redundant.

Mechanically, the game is closest to Dark Souls compared to Bloodborne or Sekiro. I think there is a ton to learn and the nature of the game forces you to deal with aspects of the mechanics that you may not have bothered with in the previous Souls games, such as the magic system, summons, mass healing, AOE attacks, and so on. At the root of this is the incredibly varied nature of the enemies you will face. The Tank and Spank style that I went with in the original Dark Souls works, but there are mobs and bosses that will really cause problems for this style and will force players to add other aspects (like summons) to their repertoire. I went through the entirety of Bloodborne using the Kirkhammer to smash things with no thought to any other mechanics, but there’s no way I will make it through Elden Ring with such basic tactics that I can see. Add to this that many battles will be fought on horse-back and you have a totally new dimension to the game. And speaking of horse stuff….

The Mount and Blade Parts

Mount and Blade is an awesome series with excellent mass combat mechanics and really groundbreaking horseback combat. Elden Ring borrows from this extensively and creates many of the same type of feels with it’s horse-based combat. I am addicted to running around and challenging other dudes on horses to fight. The best part is dragging your weapon along the ground and just mowing through dismounted enemies. This is very similar to the feeling of smashing into a formation of foot soldiers in Mount and Blade and hacking them down with a giant sword or scythe. If you dig Mount and Blade, you will feel instantly comfortable with the horse-based combat of Elden Ring.

Classes

There are a lot of classes in the game and they all give you a basis for a playstyle that you may or may not follow through the game. It’s fundamentally if you want to go Strength, Dexterity or some sort of magic. Class doesn’t matter that much and if you are stressed about it, just take the wretch and let what you find in the game define what you become– it almost always works out that way anyway.

That said, I really like the prisoner for the silly helmet and the Samurai who starts with a longbow and katana (this would be a dexterity build). I started with the bandit for a dex/arcane build, but my second character was, of course, a wretch. While lots of builds are effective, not all of them are easy and you could be setting yourself up for HARD MODE if you go down the magic path (at least at first) without ever playing the game. Basically there are a lot of foundations to choose from, but they don’t matter all that much and even out as you gain even 10-15 levels.

a wretch, doing what wretches do which is being naked and afraid.

Weapons

Weapons will feel very familiar to Souls players, in fact, many are nearly the same but with one critical exception: weapons have special abilities called Ashes of War that allow one of the heavy attack buttons to invoke a special move– some of which are pretty mundane (like Determination that gives you extra damage) and others that are spectacular like Glintsword Arch which turns your weapon into a massive one for a single strike, or super useful such as a special dodge. What’s more, you can change these special powers out, which also can change your ability affinities with each weapon (for example, some Ashes will change a STR affinity from D to B, etc.). These use you characters spell points (FP) to use, so most of them you can’t use all day. Great addition to the game so far that you may miss early in your play.

Magic

I have never run a balls out magic user, just added a bit of Faith to my STR builds to heal on the fly. I’ve seen some magic during multiplayer and it is NUTS in this game. This is an area of Elden Ring I can’t wait to explore more, as soon as I get more confidence that I can survive!

In addition to the normal spell builds available (pyro, sorcery, faith), all players can use SUMMONS. These are NPC’s that join you in a fight /period of time and range from sorcerers to wolves, undead and many other things I haven’t seen before. This helps a ton with bosses and you can tell that they made bosses more difficult assuming that all players would use summons.

Multiplayer

I ran all of Dark Souls 1 and 2 without using multiplayer the first time, and boy I missed out. Multiplayer is one of the best parts of the game despite the fact that it is obtuse to try to get going at first, and currently prone to drops on the PC fairly frequently.

The beauty of multiplayer is the fact that it can ease up the difficulty vs mobs and bosses and allow non-standard and sub-optimal builds as well as allowing more experienced players to carry newer folks through some of the really rough spots so they can progress.

Invasions are a bit odd in Elden Ring– you can only invade players that are already using summons of other players, so you are walking into a 1v 2 situation at least every time as an invader. If your goal is to hunt and kill people, that’s great, but if you want to duel, this is very different from Bloodborne /Dark Souls.

There are invasion arena areas where you can get duels in designated areas, but it’s definitely not the same as the old games– seems like it’s a bit friendlier for new players who don’t have to worry about getting invaded while alone.

Onward!

Elden Ring is awesome and absolutely deserves the hype it got before release and is getting post release, confusing (by design) and very difficult to try to solo. I have a long, long way to go in the game and will probably do a real review in about a year– likely when Elden Ring wins GOTY for 2022.

Mythras Combat Modules

Mythras, in my opinion, has the best hand to hand combat system of any RPG. Nothing else even comes close. It can be a bit challenging to learn at first, though even as a beginner with this system I was able to run the game without the book with the exception of the special effects list, and some references to weapons here and there.

Knowing there is a bit of a learning curve, Design Mechanism in their infinite wisdom has released not just one, but THREE combat training modules to get you over the hump and enjoying some FORCED FAILURES and tasty impaling available on DrivethruRPG

New Marvel RPG in the Works

This is a bit OFN, but the original teaser was so sparse I was waiting for more information before posting anything, but it looks like it’s all still under the covers except for the press release. First off, this looks like it will be heavily influenced by FASERIP, using it’s own acronym for stats (M.A.R.V.E.L. – Might, Agility, Resilience, Vigilance, Ego, and Logic) which is good because FASERIP has influenced nearly all Supers RPG’s since it’s release. The system it’s using is new, called D616?

When we pulled the first Marvel RPG out of the shrinkwrap and realized you couldn’t create characters, it was a bummer, especially after having played Champions for quite some time where frankly creating characters is the best part of the game. They ain’t messing around with this new one, you will be able to create characters right away, they’ve made that abundantly clear (see the image below). After reading Invincible, there’s no reason NOT to start from scratch completely rather than be bound tight in the hidebound MCU.

Lastly, you can buy the “Playtest Packet” for 10$ off Amazon here (not out until March 2022 though).