Wildermyth - where did those hours get off to, anyways?

 So, again, Ukraine and Gaza are still ongoing things, but no major changes of late, so we'll leave that there.

Meanwhile, here I am, just two weeks after praising Liberté, supplanting it on my "games that have my attention" list with Wildermyth (Compatibility: Verified), a tactical RPG more in line with games like Disgaea 2 (which I also, reluctantly, dropped from the list for now).  Am I just that fickle, or is Wildermyth just that good?  Arguably, both explanations are valid, but let's focus on how good the game is.  At a glance, it doesn't look like much, due to its "papercraft" style.  Watch or play a bit of it, however, and the good (maybe even unique) bits come to the fore fairly quickly.

Let's start with the more mechanical aspects of the game first.  Your party in any given encounter consists of up to 5 characters, each representing one of three classes.  There's warriors, your standard hit-things-with-big-weapons sorts.  There's hunters, your "good with a bow, but also able to sneak in close" sorts.  Finally there's mystics, who are not your standard fireball-slinging magicians - rather, they're "environmental" magicians, able to "interfuse" with different parts of the environment to produce a range of effects, centered or originating from the pieces they've interfused with.  Just to give one go-to example from my playtime, interfusing with stone things always gives you an option to use an action to chuck a stone discus from that item as a direct attack... however, depending on the skills your mystic has learned, you might also get a passive bonus just for having that interfusion, or be able to create stone walls, or help protect your other characters actively or passively, that sort of thing.

Combine that with a simple grid-based tactical system, where characters lining up next to each other provides a small defensive bonus, while attacking an enemy from multiple directions improves your chances of hitting them, and you end up with a lovely little tactical puzzle for each combat encounter.  Compared to something like Disgaea 2, it's a lot simpler to keep track of your options with a limited number of characters, while the customization of each character still lets them feel like more than "standard third-level fighter".  If this were the whole of the game, it might get easy to get bored after an hour or two, but that's just the start.

You see, each game of Wildermyth is a story of sorts, with a chapter-based setup, and an overworld where non-combat things usually dominate.  Traveling from one region to the next takes time, as does things like patrolling, building defenses against incursions of monsters, establishing outposts for crafting resources, and, especially importantly, recruiting.  After all, people die, or they grow old and need to retire from an adventuring life.  Plus, while the most you can have in a party is 5 characters, that's not to say that you can only have one party - and sometimes, for various reasons, you might only want (or be able to support) three or fewer characters on a particular task - maybe you don't want a full group bogged down while getting your newest recruit up to speed, so they're not just a farmer with a pitchfork out in the wide world facing horrible beasties.  Or maybe a bridge needs built or a mountain pass needs work.  Or maybe, there's a side story that's popped up that's tied to one of your characters.

And there is the real thing that elevates this game above most similar things, the stories.  Usually, there's an overarching story to attend to, but it's not the story.  Things come up during gameplay, and it's not in the form of a quest-giver with a question mark over their head.  Rather, sometimes, things just come up, depending in part on where your group is and what they're doing, and how you react to those events can have a big influence on how your game goes from there.  Just as an example, one event that came up on two games I've played has your group stumbling across a hill that's been shaped to resemble the head of a wolf.  You climb up and don't find anything, but then there's a bit of godly rumblings followed by a voice talking to your hunter about a pact their ancestors made, which you kind of have to acknowledge when the god's name comes unbidden to their lips.  In my first game, my options were to basically either have the hunter offer themselves up to receive the change the god offered, or for the warrior accompanying them to object strongly and loudly.  I went with the flow, and my hunter transformed into a wolf-man, gaining the ability to bite opponents on top of their usual attacks.  The second game, I had a mystic along for the ride, who condescendingly spoke of the "Woof-god" that he had tried to bargain with before, but admitted their faithful made some nice things, which resulted in the hunter getting a wolf-head amulet with some bonuses.

All in all, it's an amazing little bundle of a game.  If anything, the only thing I could point to as dragging it down a bit is that I'm pretty sure it's not an English-first game, and some of the translations are a bit clumsy.  Even with that, what I intended to be a quick "let's fire this game up and see what it's about" session turned into 10-12 hours of straight playtime (excluding the time needed midway to install it on my Steam Deck so I could play it on my couch more readily).  As long as you aren't scared off by anything turn-based, I heartily recommend giving this game a try.

Liberté - a lovely mix of horrors

 The world continues to burn in Ukraine and Gaza, but those horrors are too real and too fresh to be in any way "entertaining".  How about a nice mix of French Revolution horrors and Lovecraftian horrors instead?

Liberté (Compatibility: Verified) is just such a mix.  In an alternate-universe France, around the time-period of our French Revolution, King Louis has died and the crown prince is going through his coronation, when a giant "monster" appears, wreaks havoc, takes the crown, and disappears.  You awaken in the rubble, with a bit of the ol' amnesia at play, get identified as one of the Rebels, hack down a few soldiers with your rapier... and are led to meet with what's left of the monster.  One thing leads to another, you rescue a few more Rebels from the Monarchists, slip away to get the monster quietly established underground (running into (and through) a few Inquisitors of the Congregation in the process), whereupon you get the guiding quest for the rest of the game.  The monster (which calls itself Lady Bliss) sees itself as an agent of balance, while the world its in is wildly out of balance (there's a definite ecological aspect involved as well).  They want you to go out into Paris, which is in the throes of revolution, and ingratiate yourself with each of the four major factions involved (mainly by slaughtering loads of their enemy of choice at the moment), learn what truly drives each of them, and find someone worthy to receive the crown from Lady Bliss.

Now, that's a fun enough combination of ideas to begin with, but honestly it's not that much to hang a compelling rogue-lite game from on its own.  In particular, there's nothing there to justify central mechanics like reviving after dying to start a new run... or so I thought, until I died the first time.  Turns out, you're more pod-person than human, you just absorbed the appearance and memories of an unlucky Rebel named Rene, and you are sufficiently "attached" to Lady Bliss that she can squirt out a new clone of you whenever you die - and you don't have to come back as Rene, if you have unlocked access to other forms while getting in good with the factions.  So, handily, that not only covers respawning, but also different weapons and combat styles to experiment with.

All in all, it's a fun setup for a game, and I'll get some mileage out of it... but it's also fair to note that I likely won't see everything it has to offer.  The gameplay I've seen so far is what I would call "thoroughly adequate", consisting mostly of fights against a few enemy types per faction in fairly close quarters.  In part, that's because most of the fights happen in the streets of Paris, which tend to be pretty repetitive.  In fact there are some maps that, from what I could see, take advantage of your inability to move the camera to present themselves as a different map by simply rotating the map a bit.  Combine that with different "world tiers" that it offers when you go to select a mission, with each tier mainly increasing the difficulty level of the enemies, and it's clear that the intent of the game is for you to get to know the patterns of the enemies over many multiple plays... and, much like souls-likes, I doubt I have the patience.  But, who knows, maybe the story of Lady Bliss infesting everything while the various factions squabble with each other will be enough to keep bringing be back for one more run.

So, about Destiny 2...

 First, per tradition, the shit state of the world at large... Russia's invasion of Ukraine churns on, with nothing significant happening (from the outside view at least, not to minimize the sacrifices of everyone directly involved).  Israel has basically decided to stop playing games in Gaza, and are going after Hamas with the intent to kill... and look to believe that any incidental casualties among the Palestinians are unfortunate, but worth the price.  Sure, they've told people to move to another area if they don't want to be treated as combatants, but that's the barest of fig-leaves to try to cover their abandonment of the "rules of war".  Mind you, I've long been of the opinion that any war where one side tries to follow the rules while the other side blatantly ignores them is a losing proposition for the rules-follower, but I didn't think I'd see anybody follow through on that line of thought in my lifetime.  It will be interesting (and likely horrific) to see where this all ends up.

Well, that's the world at large, how's the shit state in gaming and corporate America going?  Recent events at Destiny 2's developer Bungie seem to show a little more creaking at the seams, at least.  The story, as best I've gathered, goes something like this:  Destiny 2's most recent major DLC, Lightfall, has not been well received by the gaming public.  Recognizing this, people at various levels of the company have, over the past several months, brought up issues and possible solutions, which by and large have been shut down by Bungie's leadership.  Fast-forward to a week ago, and Destiny 2's revenues are coming up significantly short against leadership-projected revenues, to the tune of 45% less.  Sony asked Bungie to come up with an 8% reduction in expenses (possibly reflecting that shortfall, possibly for other reasons), and Bungie leadership decided to meet that request by laying off about 100 staff, especially in areas that they might be able to outsource, without the input of the team leads, while the leadership team themselves faced no consequences whatsoever.  Oh, and they tried to somehow keep a lid on this by, effectively, telling the fired staff to GTFO without handing over to anybody still employed.

My takes on all of this:  so, in a game that's riddled with problems and whose player base is hungry for content, you're laying off the people who fix problems and create content.  If I were a shareholder in a publicly-traded Bungie, I would be long gone at this point.  Also, if unionization efforts don't take off at Bungie in short order, I'll be quite surprised.

As for my playing the game... well, I did already pay for the next season as part of my purchase at the beginning of the year, so I'll probably be around at least enough to pick up any story-beats from that.  Past that, though, I've already basically tuned out for the retread "Festival of the Lost" this year, playing mostly Starfield instead, so it's not looking good long-term.  That's especially true when they've announced they're pushing back the next major DLC, so there will be a nice, long period of "why would I play this game?" going on, to remind me of those staffing losses.  Who knows, maybe, if I catch wind of the leadership team sharing the pain a bit, I'll feel more inclined to step back up, but I'm definitely not holding by breath on that one.