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Jagged Alliance 3 I decided to start with Dr. Q, Vicki, and Blood: A fairly expensive team to begin with, hopefully that doesn't bite me in the ass. I wanted high agility stats on everyone so that I could be stealthy. First impression is positive, definitely captures the JA vibe. I like Blood, I'm glad I hired him. With the burn on her face, she's got secretly a villain written all over her, the only bigger giveaway would have been a pinky ring. That may seem too trope-y, but if there's one thing JA has always been, it's trope-y. I guess I'll find out eventually if she turns out to be a secret villain.

Meanwhile, in the Isekai mod:

I don't think any of that on it's own makes the game sterile tbh. It's not like I didn't feel powerful as a Cipher (before the nerfs) and a Watcher....but I did feel a more than a little bored at many points throughout the game. I'm just going to say the combat mechanics and dry text bombs made the game feel like it dragged on, and there wasn't enough things that were funny or silly to kind of add texture. And the health/stamina in PoE sucked ass ngl. As the numbersman wrote I think there's a difference between relatively worse choices and stuff that is just garbage on it's own terms, like Assassin. WotR has too much stuff like that in it and it does amount to clutter you have to navigate around in order to get to the stuff you're actually going to use. "All the creatures you've read about in this book are nothing compared to the Polpovir. Barely the size of a man, what they lack in size and strength, they make up for in numbers and terrifying viciousness. Their lower halves are a mass of tentacles like an octopus or squid, but more numerous. The tentacles are long, black whips with suction cups on the underside and small thorny barbs on the top. The sheer number of tentacles gives them frightening speed when walking on land, pulling themselves forward almost as fast as a running horse. While they vaguely resemble a human from the waist up, any extended examination proves how wrong that assumption is. Long, stringy black hair falls from the top of their heads to cover a face taken directly from a nightmare. A wide, gaping mouth, cuts across the bottom of its head from ear to ear, full of wicked dagger-like teeth. Two large round eyes are sunken into its head, black as coal, shining with a malevolent fire. A small antenna protrudes from the middle of its forehead, ending in a small nodule that can glow with an eerie blue light. One can imagine a sailor on the deck of his ship at night, looking out across the black water, blood freezing as countless lights appear beneath the surface, rising toward him as the Polpovir swarm upward. Because they seem to be more octopus than man, they can collapse in on themselves, fitting into spaces no person should be able to. The smallest crack in a hull, the slightest separation between boards offers them entrance. It is not unknown for them to slaughter an entire crew from hold up to deck by infiltrating the ship from underneath. Fortunately they do not seem to have spread too far outside of the archipelago, but there may come a day when Polpovir attacks become commonplace." Absolutely not, any polpovir is getting burned to ash just to be sure it's dead. Not as well as I thought. Shifter Aspects are solid and Shifter's Fury works but I didn't get that x3 crit multiplier that you get with Shifter polymorphing. It's a 10 attack per round (before haste or items) with monk AC that can hold it's own though.

The best thing about this is the Steam page for Divinity Original Sin 2, which says "from the creators of Baldur's Gate 3". Can we just not overhype stuff before they're out...

Yeah this has been my own assessment as well, because I believe the Russsians actually going on the offensive recently in the Kar'kiv and Donetsk regions is their desperate attempt to draw Ukrainian forces away from the southern front.

I played Firaxis' XCOM for like 3h before I threw it out. Tried XCOM2, a bit better, but still fundamentally the same game. Expansion made it better, though that was not hard. Long War (of the Chosen) is a different story. It made the game genuinely good in my eyes. They really nailed the cat-and-mouse feeling of running a guerilla campaign against an overwhelming alien occupier, and there is now an actual strategic layer to the game. Mind, it still is not a "proper" remake of OG X-Com. That niche is meant to be filled by Xenonauts. How about Aliens: Dark Descent?

New Xcom is definitely an entirely different type of game from old Xcom, so I get your worries, but JA3 is very close to the template that JA2 created. Get it. It's good.

And that is why I’m playing on normal. 🤣 Most of the time I only use some buffs, usually Death Ward and the AC bonus spells. Boss battles are a different matter, of course. Then I buff with everything and summon lots of elementals/azatas as cannon fodder, even though it ends up being overkill. Dazzling Display is basically cheating, even with the penalty for using it as a swift action. But sometimes I forget to use it or avoid it so that I won’t have to run after the enemies all over the map. Same with the overpowered Azata Crusade spell that heals and damages everyone. It’s almost like being an Isekai anime character that doesn’t need to fight at all. I leave it for when it will take too long to destroy an enemy’s doomstack. Btw, my Persuasion is so high that I could probably frighten enemies even on higher difficulties, except when they become immune to fear, like Playful Darkness. My next games will be on higher difficulties though, just like I did with PoE, where I started on normal, went to hard and ended up with two pts in Path of the Damned. I don't have that much problem with PoE, but I think you nailed it here. I enjoyed the game very much and could play it again, but now I’d rather play Deadfire. I love how it looks and lots of things that work much better than in Owlcat’s games (like being able to click beside a character without selecting it! Or not having to expand and scroll down an enemy's stats page) but I prefer Pathfinder/D&D’s setting and system far more, so I'm more interested in playing WotR a few times, maybe even replay Kingmaker before going back to Eora. Or maybe not, since I did start a second Deadfire pt and stopped halfway through, at level 9. Perhaps I will finish that one after BG3 and my Lich WotR character. P.S.: I did the mandatory TB battle in the shrine of the three and Elemental Swarm was the last spell I should have cast. The battle took ages. It was past midnight and I was sleepy, which made me take more time to understand some things, making the battle last even longer. Also, it had no music so I had to play Baphomet's theme on youtube or I would have fallen asleep faster than Woljif getting angry when I suggest he should become a Crusader. Yes, my character did that. Her intelligence is only 10 so she thought it would work. Even as a Persuasion check it probably wouldn't, despite it being 89.🤣 Edit: @Gromnir also makes lots of pretty good points about PoE. Muscled Wizards and Intellectual Barbarians definitely don't make sense.

Girkin’s take on current status at battlefield. Very similar, to what ChrisO_wiki presented in his assessment, which I posted sooner.

I started a new game of Jagged Alliance 3. I was going broke in my previous playthrough, so I'm going to try to stick with one good squad until I get a couple diamond mines under my control. I also didn't do great job of making my own Merc, so this time I focused on wisdom and leadership, and dropped mechanical and explosives. My first character was too mediocre in everything. My new team is Hitman, Red, Livewire (she grew on me!), Thor, and a new guy, I think he's Mongolian. So far they seem pretty competent, but it also helps that I'm getting better at positioning and understanding how to flank. Also, be warned. I took a boat to a mine at the northwestern part of the map, and nearly got massacred! There are definitely harder regions out there. My team wasn't ready for that yet.

am only a midling fan o' star talk as topics is dumbed down a bit too much, but we always check to see who is the guest 'cause frequent there is win. case in point, am rare turning down a chance to hear michio kaku though you are gonna get better quantum computing feedback than from this video. even so, is always worth a looksee and so we do. we also regular check out berkeley lectures series lunch poems series is worth the time but am admitting we only got an average ear for poetry. in addition to the oppenheimer lectures, we ordinary catch the nimitz speakers. two others: the linus pauling memorial lecture series and for something a bit different edit: in the unlikely event @Amentep @ShadySands or other trek fans have an urge to watch the leonard susskind video, am offering a word o' caution 'cause the stanford professor tangential points out how a few o' the scifi theories which is cornerstones o' trek lore are unsupportable based on current understandings o' quantum mechanics and general relativity. HA! Good Fun!

I don't know what you mean with low endurance or godlikes' endurance bonus. Do you mean healing? Like the racial ability "Silver Tide" of Moon Godlikes? Animal companions do not benefit from any equipment enchantment that only applies to your ranger (like Might +1 or something). But if you are a Moon Godlike and trigger a Silver Tide because you drop below 50% endurance for example, then your boar companion would get healed by Silver Tide like any other party member in range would get healed, too. Equipment like "Shod in Faith" boots also work well for a ranger: if the healing (Consecrated Grounds) of the boots gets triggered it will heal the animal companion and other party members. But in general: Animal Comanion and Ranger are two totally seperate characters. No individual stat buff the Ranger gets will be transferred to the Animal Companion or vice versa - unless explicitly stated otherwise like with the abilities "Marked Prey", "Defensive Bond" and "Vengeful Grief" (and those are the only abilities I recall that apply to the ranger AND the animal companion).

Not in the release version, which I guess is both a mercy and a letdown

"Summon Calamity"

Well now, that is roughly the idle consumption of a 7900XTX, to be fair. Though the XTX obviously has a bit more... oomph when not idling. If it actually is a fully home grown card it isn't that bad of an effort. Rather like Intel it'd not doubt improve if they were able to fix up the drivers.

It wasn't so much launched as it was dropped. People said it was da bomb, so I guess it was well received?

My biggest takeaway from MI7 is that Hayley Atwell should be getting a lot more leading roles than she has been. She was Peggy Carter in Captain America and the Agent Carter show and then... What has she done since then? She should be an A-list Hollywood actor, she should be on the Jennifer Lawrence level, she's really good. I hope it's not too late for her, she's around 40, I think, and after a certain age the roles for women in Hollywood get rather narrow. It would be nice to see her be the lead in a few big blockbusters before she's relegated to just playing witches.

Seems like a waste of money, Swedes are ok with joining the alliance. Not to mention that with Finland in, Sweden's pretty secure as is, regardless. And marketing a military alliance is odd to see as well, heh.

Completed Xenonauts a few times. Loved it. Looking forward to where Xenonauts 2 is headed In the end, I'll probably get JA3 from GOG in a few days time. Just need some real life stuff out of the way first

i wonder how they clinically prove which species have the most/least deadly venoms Some people just love certain animals so much they can't help but be deeply involved and surround themselves with them. The passionate lunacy is what makes them tick, and presumably how we learn so much about these things in the first place. Completely insane people putting their interests and talents to good use is what makes the world go round! I don't really care too much about snakes so I'm not terribly tempted to follow this guy beyond the odd video majestic posts in here, but if there was a YouTuber whose presentation that I liked that covered spiders in much the same way, I'd probably keep up with it.

Clint continues to be funny: "The Eastern Green Mamba has the mildest venom of any mamba. Which is a bit like being called 'the least dangerous hand grenade'."

Companions take part and in some cases you can even choose who will do the task. But if I'm not crazy, there was at least one event where they checked my character's skill level only. I failed the check and the DC it wasn't that high.

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Pt 1 - My first trip to a movie theater post pandemic. I don't know if I'll go again any time soon because $#!+'s expensive and I have a pretty good setup at home, but I don't regret going today because the movie was awesome. This might be the best of the MI movies, which is impressive given that they've mostly been good to great. You know, Tom Cruise is a weird dude, he clearly has quite the ego, I mean he got a hilariously giant gold medal from Scientology, but God bless him for making these movies. God bless him for still making old skool action movies with real stunts in real locations. If there was any question of whether Tom Cruise could still do this at age 60, the answer is a resounding yes. Dude is still a fantastic action man and he delivers the goods here. This crazy mother****er jumped a motorcycle off a mountain. He didn't jump a motorcycle into a foam pit in front of a green screen, he jumped a motorcycle off a mountain, potentially multiple times (I don't know how many takes they did). The movie is quite long, roughly 2 hours and 40 minutes, but it didn't feel 2 hours and 40 minutes, it felt more like and hour and 45 minutes. It never dragged, it was always engaging, thrilling and spectacular at times. There were some really great action sequences. There was a really long car chase that managed to be simultaneously comical and adrenaline pumping. There were great fight scenes that felt visceral. And don't you worry, there was plenty of Tom Cruise running. You always have to have Tom Cruise running. It seems like they may be setting up Hayley Atwell as Tom Cruise's replacement, or for a spinoff. I'm all for it, she was terrific as Grace. I would be totally down for her to be action woman. She was everything you would want in a leading action star; charming, witty, resourceful, even vulnerable at times, and it doesn't hurt that she's rather attractive. I would also welcome a prequel of sorts about her exploits as an international thief. My only complaint is that Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames weren't in the movie enough, especially Ving Rhames. But, that's a small complaint in an otherwise terrific action movie.

With gestalt and datamining I have once again abandoned Lich. I was going to do an Alchemist/Wizard and Grenadier works just fine but....god damn if Reanimator hasn't been living in my head rent free. So I'll either be going to Hyrule engineering school or giving (true) Aeon or Gold Dragon a go while I wait for the new archetypes to drop in the next updates. Time to do some theory crafting to see how a Gold Dragon Shifter goes. One thing I will say is that WotR has effectively killed Kingmaker for me. Make of that what you will. I'm a laughable centrist on PoE/Deadfire, it's a game that I don't despise (and sometimes enjoy) but long stretches playing it wear me out in a way that the Pathcat games don't. Aside from the armor system and double inversion, both of which can go die in a fire, I found Deadfire to be a competently designed game that looks and sounds incredible. However gameplay felt even slower than PoE for me, the storylines are a disjointed mess, and of course there aren't any sea monsters to fite despite that Monsters of the Deadfire book being pure hype. Everytime I go back I end up leaving after a few hours. But dat armor tho, Deadfire breastplate hands down destroys any piece of armor in an Owlcat game.

Thank you!

I also started over because, like the dumbass I am, I forgot to make my own merc and was just rolling with the hired mercs. I was very early into the game (just liberated Ernie) so rather than wasting precious time to wait for my created merc to meet up with my squad I just started over. Here's my merc: They didn't give me enough characters to call him "Death Wish" or even "Deathwish", so he's "Dethwish". That's the most Charles Bronson of the available faces I could find. My team is the same as before: Blood, Dr. Q, and Vicki. They worked really well previously so if it ain't broke don't fix it. Everyone on my team has high agility so that I can sneak around and set up nasty ambushes. Blood is particularly great at stealth kills with his throwing knives. I can sometimes take several goons out before battle begins, which is obviously of great advantage.

Starcraft Immortal. You all have phones, don't you?

Merciless Companion gives your animal companion +30% additive weapon damage, Apprentice's Sneak Attack gives your character +15% additive weapon damage. There is no stacking (on one character). You will not profit from Merciless Companion and your animal companion will not profit from Apprentice's Sneak Attack.

Noclip got their hands on some old tapes of game related media that were to be thrown out. They will be digitising and uploading stuff on a new dedicated channel. Probably worth keeping an eye on what they upload in case something interesting pops up. https://youtube.com/@NoclipArchive

When you bring a few friends to fight a Demon Lord.

I'm gonna wait for goatee GOTY Extended Edition going on at least 60% sale, so that's probably 3 or 5 years. Meanwhile, I'm gonna experience it vicariously through eye-rolling and teeth-gnashing on the forums.

GRIME free on Epic: GRIME | Download and Buy Today - Epic Games Store

people should know they leak their own fetish very easily when they write novel

I never played the Gold Box games when they were new, but every time I've tried them in the decade since, I could never get over the dead feeling of the locations. Y'know, how you're in a starting city or whatever, and it looks just like a dungeon because it's literally just a maze of walls until you interact with a shop door. Obviously the tech isn't there to show actual NPCs milling around in the first-person navigation view, but the games just feel so dead when compared to something like Ultima where the world felt so alive, and where I could spend hours just wandering around town without a single fight.

Bruno is in Deadfire?

https://gameworldobserver.com/2023/07/12/baldurs-gate-3-new-standard-for-rpg-genre-opinions

I’m so tempted to get JA3. Wish there was a playable demo as the disappointment that was the x-com remake still stings 😔

I may be mistaken, but I think companion bonuses sometimes apply even in KC's dreams. The implications are... interesting.

Apparently, even the rabbits are aware you can find water in toilets. Anything works in an apocalypse, right. ...but sorry, Mr. Bunny, my hunger trumps your thirst. It was a strange game day where I kept finding those bunnies in places you usually never see them in the game, like hardware stores, under shopping carts, inside cargo trailers on top of boxes, etc. 😄