This game flew entirely under my radar, but maybe it’s the Dungeons & Dragons 5e-compliant tactical RPG we need right now. Coming out at almost the same time the Baldur’s Gate 3 D&D 5e-compliant game was released to Steam early access, you can’t help but compare them. Like when “Volcano!” and “Dante’s Inferno” came out at the same time, or “Armageddon” and “That Other Giant Asteroid Hitting the Earth Movie” I can’t remember. (“Deep Impact”. Thanks, Google.) ...

The problem with playing an older game straight from CD like Lords of EverQuest is that these kinds of games go to production before they’re actually finished. Long lead times, that sort of thing. I think that’s what must have happened here. The SOEGames.Net patch servers have long since been taken down, and the game I am playing here is whatever was on the disc and nothing else; I am very much assuming that if I’d been able to patch up this game, that it would have fixed the issue with the “Contention” map in the Shadowrealm campaign. ...

I am not a Real Time Strategy gamer. I haven’t played Warcraft, or Starcraft, or Dune or even Total Annihilation. So, I really have nothing to which to compare Lords of EverQuest, a game developed by Rapid Eye Entertainment for SOE to tie into the MMO way back in the day. It has the word “EverQuest” in it, though, so when it came out in that far ago time, I wanted to play it, but money was tight and I was already playing the actual game and besides, it would probably be around for awhile… ...

I haven’t really been blogging, streaming or even talking about my progress in Ogre Battle lately. I’ve been mostly just working my way through the story. The last time I wrote, my character was headed for the very worst of endings. Her alignment was the absolute worst. Her charisma was headed to the same point. Cities hated me. I couldn’t get the good character promotions. I found a solution. It was obvious, really: I had to stop playing the main character, and I had to stop liberating cities and temples if there were any possibility that the enemy could retake them. ...

This is the fourth scenario of Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion. We’re still in the tutorial for the game – this scenario introduced scenario goals and city events. I’m not sure how fast people play through this game, but we’re going super slow. With COVID, we only meet every two weeks, and if something comes up on that day, we skip additional weeks. If we used Tabletop Simulator or something similar, I suppose we could meet – whenever, but we love seeing each other, eating pizza, and being together. ...

Before I decided to consolidate my groups a bit, my lord’s alignment and charisma were sky-high. I’m even proudly wielding the holy sword Brunhild. They just don’t toss those out to just anyone. But now, I am in dire straits. My charisma is a nice, round zero – and it’s the same for the rest of the group. My alignment has plummeted – wasn’t too long ago it was at 100, shining like a star. Now, my moral compass is pointed to a dark place. ...

The first time I tried to play Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen, I didn’t know how there could be any sort of strategy or planning when every map was just continually battling enemies that are continually attacking you. How anyone could take the time to be concerned about making sure each unit only fought higher level enemies with lower alignment (if the unit contained good characters, like Knights), or ignored those rules (if the unit contained evil characters (like Wizards), while also juggling reputation, the time of day (good characters stronger in day, evil ones at night) along with fifteen thousand other fiddly bits… every time, I put the game aside and promised to get back to it later. ...

I took Wednesday night off to watch the VP debates, which were way more fun than any dumb game. Thursday, with the drop of Fall Guys Season 2, was already pretty full, but after embarrassing myself for awhile dodging swinging axes and spiky rollers, I thought it was about time to check in on the battling ogres. Deneb is the Ogre Battle series’ answer to Final Fantasy’s Cid. She’s always going to show up somewhere. Rumor has it that she’s not even human – in reality she is an evil spirit that possesses young women, though she denies this. ...

In a little bit of serendipity, fan site RPG Site posted up on Twitter yesterday that the successor to : turned 25 yesterday. ...

I just don’t know about this game. Other tactics games, you take your best guys, you win a fight, you’re done, grats, everyone cheers. Sometimes you save someone, sometimes you condemn someone, sometimes you take the left path and other times the right. Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen weaponizes fighting itself. You could win the battle and lose everything. That’s what happened to me in the Pogrom Forest. ...