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Post by Wolfgang on Jun 11, 2024 15:14:21 GMT -5
Shadow Tactics
I finished mission #4 (Tsuru Mountain) which introduced Aiko. The end was a bloodbath. I probably brute forced it instead of finding an elegantly smooth solution. Still, I accomplished my objectives and escaped the mountain. So far, none of the four early missions were brutally difficult. Some were slightly more time consuming than others. One was relatively easy.
I just started mission #5 and from Takuma's "lay of the land" description and tactical instructions of Lord Yabu's Palace, it seemed complicated. Holy f---! From the outset, it looks like this mission is going to take me more time than all the other missions combined.
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Post by Wolfgang on Jun 11, 2024 15:24:56 GMT -5
Battlefield 1 I re-started this game from the very beginning after a long hiatus. I had forgotten almost everything about it. Ed Speleers, the guy who played Jack Crusher (Jean-Luc Picard's son), stars in it in the opening chapters. ![](https://i.ibb.co/88qqXb2/speleers1.png) It's a lot more cinematic than I remembered. In between FPS sections, there are lengthy cutscenes that "breathe life" to the characters in an effort to tell some sort of story. It's very well done.
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Post by bbg95 on Jun 12, 2024 18:15:20 GMT -5
I finished Desperados 3 on desperado difficulty. The final mission is a major pain on that difficulty. It was annoying enough on normal. I originally planned to take the left path the way I did the first time, but when I got to the last couple of sections, the enemy placement was just nightmarish. I used mind control to get rid of three ponchos, and then I looked at the remaining enemies and concluded that I would need to use mind control again, and even that might not be enough. And that was even before the final section with the windy path. Not only was there a long coat guarding the beginning of the path and another long coat perched high above on a cliff, there was a third long coat watching them from a tower. That enemy was a poncho on normal difficulty, so he could just be sniped. This setup was just awful and probably would have required all three mind control uses, leaving none for the final encounter.
The situation was so dire that I was seriously thinking about going back to the beginning and trying the right side. Fortunately, there is another bridge much further up that connects the two sides. I had already cleared out the area on the left side of the bridge, and there was a cannon that helpfully killed a long coat and two other enemies on the other side of the bridge. This bridge enabled me to bypass roughly 30 enemies on the right side. And the ones that I did have to deal with were just a lot more manageable. There was a bridge with a regular enemy in the middle and a long coat at the end. I mind controlled the normal enemy and had him shoot another enemy near the long coat, removing both of them. And then I brute forced the long coat with three bullets from Cooper and Doc. I got to the end with Hector luring the normal enemies, another use of mind control for the ponchos, and Hector or sniping for the long coats.
In the final part, I got rid of the enemies near the entrance pretty easily and lured a couple others away. I used my last mind control to get rid of the annoying roaming enemy on the right side, as he would have made things a lot more difficult. For the final showdown, I used a different strategy that I saw in a speed run video. The problem with the original strategy is that Hector has to sneak to a spot that puts him in the enemy sight cone briefly. It was okay on normal, but I was worried that this would result in a game over. The other strategy is safer in that you can get into position without being seen at all.
The way it works is to have Isabelle connect the two enemies closest to Cooper on his left side. Hector then gets into position to shoot three enemies on the left, which will kill the fourth one too, since they're connected. Meanwhile, Kate shoots the enemy closest to Cooper on his right side. Isabelle sneaks into position to melee kill the next enemy from behind a gravestone (this one requires pretty careful movement to sneak between enemy sight cones). And Doc uses his swamp gas vial to knock out the final two enemies farthest away from Cooper on the right side. He actually can get Frank with the gas as well, though I don't think that's necessary, as I'm pretty sure it's just scripted for Cooper to shoot Frank as long as the other eight enemies are dealt with.
As I expected, I had to use every character to get through this. They were all valuable in different situations. Hector had the most kills per usual with 39. Isabelle was next with 26, but she set up a lot of kills for other characters beyond her own with connect. I used her 29% of the time, which was the most (Hector was second at 22%). Cooper was next with 12, though I used him the least overall at 11%. Doc had seven kills, and Kate had six, though I used them 20% and 18%, respectively. With Kate, her higher usage was due to her having a disguise that could help her sneak around and distract enemies. With Doc, I'm not sure, but I think I was using him a lot to stealthily hide bodies. And I think I moved him around a fair amount to get good sniping positions.
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Post by bbg95 on Jun 15, 2024 21:12:44 GMT -5
I started playing Shadow Tactics on my laptop, since I bought it on Steam a while back. After getting used to the much smaller screen, I've been liking it. Mugen's sword wind in particular is a very strong ability, as it can quietly kill multiple normal enemies in an area. It also has a decent range on it, so you can just hide in a bush and wait for the enemies to get close or activate the ability while out of sight. His sake lure is also helpful for setting this up. And it's fine if multiple enemies come for the lure, which was something I tried to avoid in Desperados 3, since there wasn't a comparable ability to sword wind.
Hayato is basically Cooper, which is serviceable. I do like the ability to vault up to rooftops and then jump from one rooftop to the next. Yuki is a fascinating character. Her trap and flute are basically the same as Hector's trap and whistle, but she can climb vines and vault to rooftops. The way she talks is quite interesting. She seems to treat inanimate objects as if they're living. She tells her flute to "wake up" when she's about to play it. She also says things like, "that icicle wants to fall on the samurai's head" or "that key wants to be taken." She's a teenage girl who is a kunoichi or female ninja. Speaking of which, kunoichi is one of the jobs that the female characters can be in Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. I need to get back to that game at some point. I basically played through the Hawaii content, including side quests, but there's still all the Japan content (the story then goes back and forth between chapters).
Edit: actually, Hayato's melee kill speed is only 1.3 seconds, which is significantly better than Cooper's. One thing about this game that's slightly annoying is that you can't tie up enemies or civilians after knocking them out, which means they will recover. For the enemies, this isn't that big of a deal, since you usually just want to kill them anyway. For civilians, I've found that Mugen's ability to just toss them on a rooftop with no ladder will neutralize them.
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Post by mikegarrison on Jun 15, 2024 21:15:28 GMT -5
I started playing Shadow Tactics on my laptop, since I bought it on Steam a while back. After getting used to the much smaller screen, I've been liking it. Mugen's sword wind in particular is a very strong ability, as it can quietly kill up to three normal enemies in an area. It also has a decent range on it, so you can just hide in a bush and wait for the enemies to get close or activate the ability while out of sight. His sake lure is also helpful for setting this up. And it's fine if multiple enemies come for the lure, which was something I tried to avoid in Desperados 3, since there wasn't a comparable ability to sword wind. Hamato is basically Cooper, which is serviceable. I do like the ability to vault up to rooftops and then jump from one rooftop to the next. Yuki is a fascinating character. Her trap and flute are basically the same as Hector's trap and whistle, but she can climb vines and vault to rooftops. The way she talks is quite interesting. She seems to treat inanimate objects as if they're living. She tells her flute to "wake up" when she's about to play it. She also says things like, "That icicle wants to fall on the samurai's head" or "that key wants to be taken." She's a teenage girl who is a kunoichi or female ninja. Speaking of which, kunoichi is one of the jobs that the female characters can be in Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. I need to get back to that game at some point. I basically played through the Hawaii content, including side quests, but there's still all the Japan content (the story then goes back and forth between chapters). Edit: actually, Hamato's melee kill speed is only 1.3 seconds, which is significantly better than Cooper's. One thing about this game that's slightly annoying is that you can't tie up enemies or civilians after knocking them out, which means they will recover. For the enemies, this isn't that big of a deal, since you usually just want to kill them anyway. For civilians, I've found that Mugen's ability to just toss them on a rooftop with no ladder will neutralize them. "Many cuts; one death."
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Post by mikegarrison on Jun 15, 2024 21:27:59 GMT -5
Yuki is a fascinating character. Her trap and flute are basically the same as Hector's trap and whistle, but she can climb vines and vault to rooftops. One thing about this game that's slightly annoying is that you can't tie up enemies or civilians after knocking them out, which means they will recover. For the enemies, this isn't that big of a deal, since you usually just want to kill them anyway. For civilians, I've found that Mugen's ability to just toss them on a rooftop with no ladder will neutralize them. I'm pretty sure Yuki is actually supposed to be pre-teen, but it's not 100% clear. "-chan" is used for children and other small, cute things, although it can be used for young women. She is usually the character that gets the most kills for me, because there are three different ways to lure enemies even without using bodies or environmental lures, so her trap gets a lot of work. Some civilians will run and hide forever. Some will run and hide in a corner, and then drift back to their previous location. Some will run to tell a guard, but this does not cause an alarm unless the guard sees you. I learned, over time, that in many cases it just doesn't matter if a civilian sees you. Or even if a civilian sees you make a kill. The guards apparently despise the peasants, and don't believe anything they report unless the guard sees it with his own eyes. Hiding in the bushes may or may not protect you from a guard search. They can see partway into the bushes and they often will look for you in there. But rooftops or cliff ledges ... they never see you up there unless you do something silly like stand up or there is some guard actually on your level who looks over and sees you. Buildings are very unsafe to hide in, because guards will sometimes enter them to search, but they are better than nothing. If you hide a body in a building, though, it is gone forever. Same with bushes, wells, large tubs, water, over cliff into the void, etc.
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Post by bbg95 on Jun 15, 2024 21:54:29 GMT -5
Yuki is a fascinating character. Her trap and flute are basically the same as Hector's trap and whistle, but she can climb vines and vault to rooftops. One thing about this game that's slightly annoying is that you can't tie up enemies or civilians after knocking them out, which means they will recover. For the enemies, this isn't that big of a deal, since you usually just want to kill them anyway. For civilians, I've found that Mugen's ability to just toss them on a rooftop with no ladder will neutralize them. I'm pretty sure Yuki is actually supposed to be pre-teen, but it's not 100% clear. "-chan" is used for children and other small, cute things, although it can be used for young women. She is usually the character that gets the most kills for me, because there are three different ways to lure enemies even without using bodies or environmental lures, so her trap gets a lot of work. Some civilians will run and hide forever. Some will run and hide in a corner, and then drift back to their previous location. Some will run to tell a guard, but this does not cause an alarm unless the guard sees you. I learned, over time, that in many cases it just doesn't matter if a civilian sees you. Or even if a civilian sees you make a kill. The guards apparently despise the peasants, and don't believe anything they report unless the guard sees it with his own eyes. Hiding in the bushes may or may not protect you from a guard search. They can see partway into the bushes and they often will look for you in there. But rooftops or cliff ledges ... they never see you up there unless you do something silly like stand up or there is some guard actually on your level who looks over and sees you. Buildings are very unsafe to hide in, because guards will sometimes enter them to search, but they are better than nothing. If you hide a body in a building, though, it is gone forever. Same with bushes, wells, large tubs, water, over cliff into the void, etc. It's hard to tell with Yuki's age. I would have guessed 12-14. Some people seem to think she's in her mid-to-late teens, but as you said, it's not clear. In the Like a Dragon games, Ichiban uses -chan for a lot of women, including your other party members who are in their mid-20s or so. He's a bit socially awkward due to spending most of his adult life in prison, so the women generally are a bit taken aback when he does it the first time. Anyway, that's interesting about the civilians. In Desperados 3, the civilians are often nearly as annoying as the enemies. If they see you do something hostile (or even just see you), they pretty much always raise the alarm apart from fellow prisoners in the mine and things like that. Yeah, I quickly learned that about the bushes. In Desperados 3, the guards usually won't look in the bushes unless see your tracks lead there. Sometimes, they might bump into you in the bushes, and they'll definitely notice when that happens. I remember the first time I played the mission with no weapons, I had some close calls with the long coats at the end, as I had to have Cooper move around the bushes to not bump into either of the long coats. I do like hiding on the rooftops in Shadow Tactics.
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Post by bbg95 on Jun 15, 2024 22:23:38 GMT -5
Yuki is a fascinating character. Her trap and flute are basically the same as Hector's trap and whistle, but she can climb vines and vault to rooftops. One thing about this game that's slightly annoying is that you can't tie up enemies or civilians after knocking them out, which means they will recover. For the enemies, this isn't that big of a deal, since you usually just want to kill them anyway. For civilians, I've found that Mugen's ability to just toss them on a rooftop with no ladder will neutralize them. Some civilians will run to tell a guard, but this does not cause an alarm unless the guard sees you. I learned, over time, that in many cases it just doesn't matter if a civilian sees you. Or even if a civilian sees you make a kill. The guards apparently despise the peasants, and don't believe anything they report unless the guard sees it with his own eyes. I just had my first experience with this on the first Aiko mission. I snuck behind a guard, since it was the only real way to get past without the other guards seeing. This put me in direct view of a civilian, and he immediately ran to warn the guards about "attackers." But at that point, I had ascended some vines where the guards couldn't follow. So they just conducted their search of the area and went back to their posts.
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Post by bbg95 on Jun 15, 2024 23:41:53 GMT -5
Shadow Tactics I finished mission #4 (Tsuru Mountain) which introduced Aiko. The end was a bloodbath. I probably brute forced it instead of finding an elegantly smooth solution. Still, I accomplished my objectives and escaped the mountain. I just did this mission. I pretty much killed the enemies before I rescued Takuma. Well, at least the ones on the way. There were some others in another part of the map that I just ignored. Anyway, you can take a secret passage to the exit point. Though with no enemies around, it probably wasn't even necessary.
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Post by mikegarrison on Jun 15, 2024 23:55:43 GMT -5
Shadow Tactics I finished mission #4 (Tsuru Mountain) which introduced Aiko. The end was a bloodbath. I probably brute forced it instead of finding an elegantly smooth solution. Still, I accomplished my objectives and escaped the mountain. So far, none of the four early missions were brutally difficult. Some were slightly more time consuming than others. One was relatively easy. I just started mission #5 and from Takuma's "lay of the land" description and tactical instructions of Lord Yabu's Palace, it seemed complicated. Holy f---! From the outset, it looks like this mission is going to take me more time than all the other missions combined. This mission is actually quite interesting. It's rather like a Hitman mission, actually. There are two "story" methods for killing the target. One of them can be a delayed kill, which makes for the most elegant method of extraction, which is to set up the kill and then exfiltrate the compound before Yabu dies. There is even a badge for this, I think. Or you can go full assault mode and use a bomb carried by Takuma to take out Yabu and all his main guards in one explosion. I usually never have Takuma even enter the place, and don't bother to take out the samurai at the main gate. There are actually two ways over the wall that don't involve going through the main gate (neither of which can be used by Takuma), but I think only one of them allows for an exit.
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Post by bbg95 on Jun 16, 2024 2:15:06 GMT -5
Shadow Tactics I finished mission #4 (Tsuru Mountain) which introduced Aiko. The end was a bloodbath. I probably brute forced it instead of finding an elegantly smooth solution. Still, I accomplished my objectives and escaped the mountain. So far, none of the four early missions were brutally difficult. Some were slightly more time consuming than others. One was relatively easy. I just started mission #5 and from Takuma's "lay of the land" description and tactical instructions of Lord Yabu's Palace, it seemed complicated. Holy f---! From the outset, it looks like this mission is going to take me more time than all the other missions combined. This mission is actually quite interesting. It's rather like a Hitman mission, actually. There are two "story" methods for killing the target. One of them can be a delayed kill, which makes for the most elegant method of extraction, which is to set up the kill and then exfiltrate the compound before Yabu dies. There is even a badge for this, I think. Or you can go full assault mode and use a bomb carried by Takuma to take out Yabu and all his main guards in one explosion. I usually never have Takuma even enter the place, and don't bother to take out the samurai at the main gate. There are actually two ways over the wall that don't involve going through the main gate (neither of which can be used by Takuma), but I think only one of them allows for an exit. I'm doing this mission now. There is a tower that you can use your hook shot to get to. You can also jump back down outside the compound. I did take out the samurai because you actually get more ammunition, at least on normal, than I was expecting. Every character has a medium-range gun with five bullets, and Takuma also has his long-range rifle with another five bullets. I figured that had to be plenty, so I used Takuma's medium-range gun to shoot the samurai and had Yuki take him out. I then placed Takuma inside the tower where he can potentially snipe any problematic enemies in high places. The guns in this game also have some advantages over Desperados 3, the main one being that they're quieter. The noise radius is less than half of Cooper's pistols. Takuma's grenades also seem quite useful. There's a normal explosive, but there's also a knockout one that seems like Doc's swam gas vial, though with a much larger radius. The advantage of that one is that it is silent, so it can theoretically be used to neutralize a large group without setting off an alarm. I haven't tested it yet. I've also been impressed with his lure, since it has a large range and can be combined with Yuki's whistle to pull enemies pretty far from others. Anyway, I think the plan is to use the poison to take out Yabu and then make a stealthy exit. We'll see how it goes tomorrow.
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Post by mikegarrison on Jun 16, 2024 2:54:19 GMT -5
Pay attention to the gong signals for when "tea is served". There are scenarios where you have to ring those gongs yourself. Without the gongs, Yabu will never go to tea.
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Post by bbg95 on Jun 16, 2024 22:23:49 GMT -5
Pay attention to the gong signals for when "tea is served". There are scenarios where you have to ring those gongs yourself. Without the gongs, Yabu will never go to tea. Yeah, I rang them myself. I was trying to get the badge to not enter the water, so I had to clear out all the enemies in the courtyard. Some of them were surprisingly easy because I could snipe one and the guard standing just a few feet a way somehow didn't notice. As I expected, 20 bullets was more than enough. I ended up using eight, three from Takuma's rifle and five from the pistols to take out samurai or multiple enemies simultaneously in shadow mode. I used Yuki the most because her ability to hide enemies while crouching is very useful, and I think she also has the fastest movement in the game. Plus her trap and flute, of course, along with her ability to climb vines and use the hook shot. She had 28 kills, and Hayato and Takuma combined for 10. Anyway, I knocked out the civilian that serves the tea and poisoned it. I hid the civilian in a bush and rang the gong and returned to the bush. As soon as Yabu and his wife didn't have the bush in their sightline, I made a break for it and got the badge for leaving the estate before he drinks the tea.
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Post by bbg95 on Jun 17, 2024 9:40:32 GMT -5
I also just downloaded Shadow Tactics on my PS4. It appears that the expansion, Aiko's Choice, is not available on PSN yet, which is annoying. Supposedly, it's coming this year. But it's only $5 right now in the Humble Store (Steam key), and it's standalone, so I'll probably just get it there. Playing these games on a controller took a little getting used to, but now that I got the hang of it, I'll probably just plug a DualShock 4 into my laptop. The skills are a little mixed up, but it's much the same (except guns are even more rarely used). There is no tying up of anyone -- only kills. Aiko (the Kate analog) is more effective than Kate in almost every way, except she can't make people follow her like Kate can.That's actually a big difference. Kate also has some other advantages. Her perfume has a longer duration at 4.1 seconds compared to 2.5 seconds for Aiko's sneezing powder. Also, Kate stays in disguise when she crouches, which is nice in certain situations (e.g. needing to sneak past a long coat). And I think her gun is better, since it has such a tiny noise radius and more available ammo. All that being said, the fact that Aiko can melee kill enemies and can swim, climb vines and use hooks makes her the better overall character, at least for soloing a mission. If Kate always had a disguise, it would be closer. Kate really needs a disguise to be extremely effective, whereas a disguise is more of a luxury for Aiko. It's nice to have, but she isn't nearly as reliant on it. While I'm here, I think Mugen is better than Hector. He doesn't have the trap and whistle, but his sake lure is very similar to Doc's bag. It's weaker, but since he has sword wind, it doesn't really matter, as you can just use that once the enemy gets in range. Also, the bear trap and whistle are less effective in Hector's hands than the trap and flute are in Yuki's. The main reason is that Yuki can climb vines and vault to rooftops, which makes it a lot easier to put the trap on the ground level and then use the lure from a higher level, which gives it more utility. Hector has to use ladders to do this. And sword wind is better than the shotgun in nearly every way. It doesn't have limited ammunition and doesn't make a lot of noise. The shotgun does have a larger range, but I really haven't run into situations in Shadow Tactics where that actually would have mattered. Hector also has a reusable full heal, but I avoid damage anyway.
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Post by mikegarrison on Jun 17, 2024 19:35:02 GMT -5
I also like Mugen's character better than Hector's. Hector is simple, while Mugen is complex. However.... well, spoilers.
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