Will I need to finish Cultist Sim first?

[Crysanthium]

i lightly dread trying to finish and actually understand what's going on in cultist sim, i have visions of hours slipping away in the interminable grind. i keep restarting and getting bored and completely bouncing out again. it doesn't help that it's hard to pay attention to lore drops and esoteric messages when you're bored-bombed out of your skull from the moment to moment gameplay.

do i just need to nut up and play to try and get into book of hours?

[Shot_Trip]

Eh, nah, there's some repeated names and a lot of concepts (same setting) and the gameplay is similar (cards into boxes) but it's much more laid back and much less about a bunch of spinning plates.

[Crysanthium]

Originally posted by Shot_Trip:

Eh, nah, there's some repeated names and a lot of concepts (same setting) and the gameplay is similar (cards into boxes) but it's much more laid back and much less about a bunch of spinning plates.

i dont really care about the spinning plates. i liked the idea of a more high pressured environment to absorb the lore in (although im not opposed to a laid back approach). i care alot more about how I basically needed to do the same thing over and over and over again way passed the point of boredom in order to progress to the next interesting part.

anyway, im really more concerned that not fully absorbing cultist sim's lore is gonna make me miss out on book of hours

[Wintermute]

It's not a direct sequel. As for absorbing lore... you'd be chasing a lot of endings in CS. Dancer has 3 endings each, Ghoul and Priest each add one, plus 3 core endings, plus 3 apostle endings. Exile, if memory serves, has 3 Edge endings, 1 Secret ending, and a bunch of mundane ones that don't really add anything.

They are excellent, they add a lot of cool lore and context, but the process of getting them is largerly the same. If you don't enjoy the gameplay that much - don't torture yourself. Or just blitz through it with console commands.

[Krake]

Agree fammiliarity with Cultist is added value but you play a diffrent person in a diffrent part of the world. Its like two books by same author. Did you feel you had to play Mezoberanzan before you play BG3 then yes, but doing so anyway might be a good way to combat fomo.

[Devilfish]

So far I haven't encountered anything in BoH that I wouldn't have understood if I hadn't played CS. But keep in mind both games are very opaque with their lore and you won't grasp all of it in one sitting anyway. I'd say you can absolutely treat them as separate games that happen to share are universe. If the worldbuilding and lore of BoH confuses you, it's not because you haven't played CS, it's because it's designed to be dense and opaque.

One thing I will say though is that BoH adds to the language of CS. I already "speak" CS so I know what it means if something has a winter aspect and I know what hour the color purple refers to or what happens when you go through the stag door, to give some examples. BoH adds a bit to that language. Both these games demand you learn to speak their language before you really grasp what's going on, and BoH has a larger vocabulary than CS.

I'd personally play CS first for that reason, and because it is my bae, but it shouldn't matter too much.

[Crysanthium]

Originally posted by Krake:

Agree fammiliarity with Cultist is added value but you play a diffrent person in a diffrent part of the world. Its like two books by same author. Did you feel you had to play Mezoberanzan before you play BG3 then yes, but doing so anyway might be a good way to combat fomo.:WaveMagicSigil:

the forgotten realms is expansive enough to not need to have the entire context in order to enjoy an immersive experience regardless of where you might start a campaign

in CS the untangling of the lore is the entire context, it's not exactly an equivalency

if for example, something is completely contextless, in TFR it doesn't exactly matter, but in CS it essentially becomes a loose plot thread, checkov's gun never went off. CS is *really* good at not doing that, so i was a little worried that BoH was gonna hop off a foundation I only partially understand, like going from 101 to 102

[mhm_cake]

Definitely don't be afraid to ask about lore. It's very confusing for most people at the start, and most of us here are willing to help guide you through the rocky beginning.

[Devilfish]

I wouldn't right away. Figuring it out is part of the gameplay, it's designed to be rewarding to sit with the frustration and confusion for a while, but I certainly don't begrudge anyone a wiki.

[Crysanthium]

Originally posted by mhm_cake:

Definitely don't be afraid to ask about lore. It's very confusing for most people at the start, and most of us here are willing to help guide you through the rocky beginning.

i have the framework down.

aspects are human metaphysical philosophical concepts that can be given physical manifestation, assigned to deities that embody these manifestations and smashed together in an effort to metaphorically force the concepts to interact and intermingle. it's the finer points. what the ♥♥♥♥ is this about a broken sword and a colonel, a god that hates gods, a death and a rebirth of the mansus that is both infinite and seemingly finite in time simultaneously, there seems to be three gods for every aspect that seem to blend together with each other like the lesser zodiac, there exists war as a fundament but hardly anything for me to go off

filling these blanks would require playing a game i find super boring moment to moment, coming from someone who loves immersive sims but cant get into this one

[Devilfish]

Oh in that case, I can release you from this prison of your own making: you can't fill in all the blanks. The lore is constructed to feel threatening and opaque and Lovecraftian, and it does that by only giving you contradicting stories and differing interpretations and snippits of information you may or may not be able to trust. It's cosmic horror at its core. It leaves a lot to the imagination. There's no Grand Truth here for you to discover and understand.

The fun is in you becoming one of those fevered scholars trying to root out ever last bit of knowledge and testimony you can and going a bit nuts in the process while being hypnotized by the systems. If that's not your experience, if it's not fun for you, it's absolutely not worth finishing the game. There's nothing there the wiki can't tell you. The gameplay just elevates that lore by making you feel like you're working for it in the same way the characters are.

[Crysanthium]

Originally posted by Devilfish:

Oh in that case, I can release you from this prison of your own making: you can't fill in all the blanks. The lore is constructed to feel threatening and opaque and Lovecraftian, and it does that by only giving you contradicting stories and differing interpretations and snippits of information you may or may not be able to trust. It's cosmic horror at its core. It leaves a lot to the imagination. There's no Grand Truth here for you to discover and understand.

The fun is in you becoming one of those fevered scholars trying to root out ever last bit of knowledge and testimony you can and going a bit nuts in the process while being hypnotized by the systems. If that's not your experience, if it's not fun for you, it's absolutely not worth finishing the game. There's nothing there the wiki can't tell you. The gameplay just elevates that lore by making you feel like you're working for it in the same way the characters are.

if there's ludonarrative harmony in grinding stats, then grinding money, then grinding dungeons to grind books to grind lore and grind items, then being a cultist is overhyped.

[Devilfish]

If joining a cult was bad you'd think I would have heard something about that by now

[Crysanthium]

it's not that bad, nice people, drank some flavorade once and now i have IBS, but i'd overall recommend

[Krake]

Originally posted by stun:

Playing CS has drastically reduced my understanding of this game because BoHs doesn't seem to have any sort of structure or consistency whereas cultist sim had pretty clear ways to figure out what options you had.

I must agree having played more, that to compare this to cultist is almost pointless. Closer to citizen sleeper, but with immersive rpg elements. It took me a bit to get out of the cultist sim mindset. me oh my this is on another level. I constantly have to stop playing to bask in how clever I find this game and how clever it makes you feel (like good puzzles should) I want to become best friends with the blacksmith and poison the priest. I never exspected it to be this good.

On the ludonarrative: The grind of cultist might have simulated the hard work and struggle of an aspirering artist / writer (don't be fooled by the cultist metaphor, it does not simulate being in a cult) this feels like it comes from a much happier place, more about exsploring the inner worlds of Imagination and books versus conecting with the ppeapole around you. Cant wait to make the house cozy and recive guests!

[frostfire20]

[/quote] filling these blanks would require playing a game i find super boring moment to moment, coming from someone who loves immersive sims but cant get into this one [/quote]

You should check out the Characters page on TVTropes. It explains a lot of the Hours' background.