The Ancient Gods -- review from someone who DIDN'T like it

2 minutes ago, chemo said:

Even if it were just a bragging rights reward, there's no real disadvantage to having it in the game. 

Then I question why it was at all necessary to nerf it with the Overdrive powerup. Or bill it up as a huge unlock when it barely makes any impact on the game due to being unusable during normal (not cheating) gameplay because of its tiny ammo pool and underwhelming DPS relative to it. Maybe if it was just a higher tier plasma gun you found during the normal campaign I'd find it a bit less troubling.

But no, it was promised as a reward, and it doesn't function as one. It is an extraneous element in the game design, ultimately. Yeah it's fun to blast through levels with cheats turned on with, but so are all the other weapons almost equally.

Getting back on the topic of game balance changes, what I need to see to tip my opinion back more into the positive range, where it was when the game first released, is either like I said earlier, leaving things alone at the least, or some player-positive changes for once, like the above hinted possibility of toning some shit down in the lower skill levels.

Right now, if they go ahead instead with the rumored ice bomb and chaingun shield bash nerfs I've heard constant rumblings about since the release of TAGP1, I may just be finished with the game after a playthrough of TAGP2. I'm not prepared to tolerate more SP nerfs, especially not with something as critical as the ice bomb, just because people were putting stupid-ass memes about it on reddit and Hugo saw them, or because some streamer he watched one time fired one too many of them. I'm tired of *my* gameplay being affected by what other people are doing. If I want meta, I'll take up WoW or play some more trading card games like I did back in the day.

That's a good video with some explanations of how it may be useful in the expansion; I'll have to give it another shot there. TBH it felt like I was always out of BFG ammo but I probably didn't find them all either.

I've played the normal campaign on nightmare around 15 times and I've ended 2 UN attempts on final sin. TAG1 however, is less fun to replay. I love the blood swamps and parts of atlantica, but the holt is forgettable. The addition of the blood maykr was kind of dissapointing. I just felt nothing when I fought one of them for the first time. The fact that the blood maykr is a traffic light enemy makes it kind of annoying and less usable in a variety of fights. Same goes for the spirits, I felt nothing except for some slight irritation that I had to pause my dance and focus on this one blue sucker with my ghostbuster-beam. 

TAG2 is probably something I will enjoy, but I don't think it's going to blow my mind like Eternal did. I would rather see a new game where you start over from scratch and gain utilities as you go. Like they did with doom2. Add a couple of new monsters, some new weapon and make new interesting maps. Also, less focus on story so people can stop arguing over the quality of lore blah blah blah. I love a good story, but when it comes to games like this (or games overall for that matter) I just couldn't care less. But I guess they are stuck with expanding on this story now, since they've put so much focus on it.

I find it quite fun that they are focusing on this super hard gameplay. I have always been quite masochistic towards myself when it comes to games, so it's a welcome thing for me. You can call it niche and gimmicky, but you can always lower the difficulty. Hell, you are almost immortal on ITYTD.

About the unmaykr: In horde mode, you only get the unmaykr and no BFG. There it works wonders against archies and barons! I'm having a hard time coming up with how they should have made the unmaykr a better reward in the base game though. 

@dannebubinga Your post gave me an idea.

If they're to keep the unmaykr the same level of power, perhaps make it a rechargeable weapon. If you kill a Demon with the unmaykr, you get a small percentage of ammo back. Maybe it can have a secondary option to absorb dead demon essence but with a limited timeframe, perhaps you can sacrifice some of your own health or demon pickups to acquire ammo (so probably no longer uses BFG cells). This would encourage more usage from players.

Just some brainstorming, I haven't really thought this through.

I leaned heavily on the chaingun shield when completing the first two missions of the DLC; it's very useful for focusing on particular enemies against which it's effective, without getting too badly mangled in the process. I know Hugo doesn't like players to lean on particular weapons, but I think the chaingun shield has enough shortcomings already with its limited time and cooldown. Please don't nerf it and leave some of us a little bit of cheese, not all of us are lactose intolerant.