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Finally completed my Solasta: Palace of Ice run. Overall I liked the game very much. The only issue was that because I was using the big UB mod for the game in which I had set allowing the XP cap to go above the game's 16 levels, I ended up being rather over-leveled at the end (level 18), which made the final battles a bit too easy. But that's my bad. The DLC had a very interesting story all the way through to the end, and I actually ended up caring about at least some of the NPCs I interacted with in the game. Now I have to figure out what to play next. I'm still waiting on a good sale price to buy my new gaming computer (with a 14th-gen i9 processor and the RTX 4090 GPU), so I cannot yet buy the "big" games like CP2077 or Starfield.

Today I got a website! forkcat.com I am really happy with it. Very happy I got the domain name. Then again who else would have wanted that? The internet is full of all kinds of weirdos...

I'm on the last of the Legacy missions for Xcom 2. They do a good job of tying the narrative together, and it is fun playing with both Bradford and Shen. I've also been getting my strategy swagger back and enjoying a few flawless missions. They don't let you save scum in these legacy missions. You can restart but you lose points, so it's a good challenge. I did have a sniper bleed out on the last mission. I felt bad, but there was no healer on the squad. It haunts me a little.

I went to AEW Revolution at the Greensboro Coliseum for Sting's retirement match (and the other matches too). What a fantastic show top to bottom and a great sendoff to an all-time legend. Tony Khan did right by Sting, it's hard to imagine a better way to go out. Anyway, good thing I can still type because my throat is all types of hoarse after all the yelling I did.

Taking over all the utilities for the house at the moment, plus organising times with my sister to do house jenga as we tidy and sort stuff figuring out dad's things. Have the solicitor's appointment this afternoon to double-check legal aspects of probate and all in regards to his will and inheritance tax. Have to get on track for dealing with dad's bank stuff and related matters. Also need to dig through the paperwork for the house insurance documents and such... On the flip side, having a few random days off work here and there so that's making an odd end to the working FY. And randomly spacing out time on City of Heroes in the background.

Since Australia is a bit backwards when it comes to the internet I wanted to try a “novelty” (for me) and join the… not the mile high club but posting forum post from 37000 feet altitude Bastard turbulence over the South Australian coast makes typing hard though, almost knocking the phone out of my hand twice while typing …. Wheeee! edit internet access becoming generally available for free on domestic flights and relieves boredom on a five hour flight

You may want to check out this site. It not only gives you info on the new expansion coming for this game but also a whole bunch of additions and improvements coming for free to the base game: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/grapeocean/black-geyser-dlc-tales-of-the-moon-cult

I think ( I may be wrong) the gap between you and Monty is that you are talking about all RPGs whereas Monty is being limited to classic, old-school cRPGs. I also used to limit myself that way, but eventually decided I wasn't going to get too many of those old-school cRPGs without TB combat nowadays. So now I have embraced ARPGs up to a point. I still won't do games that are pure dungeon-crawlers or pure hack-n-slash. They still have to be story-rich, character-development-rich, and roleplaying-rich. It is interesting that given the choice of expanding to ARPGs versus accepting cRPGs with TB combat, I am very much more accepting of the former over the latter.

from my wishlist https://www.gog.com/en/game/black_geyser_couriers_of_darkness released in 2022 all of the others are turnbased, as this is my preferred style.

Though it helps the worst person you know, letting individual states decide who they can disqualify for federal elections would be heading down a pretty dangerous path - even if the Supreme Court had strictly limited any implementation of disqualification to the 14th amendment and insurrection, that was a Pandora's Box that I was not particularly eager to see opened. The whole thing was pointless with regards to Trump in the first place: even if the Supreme Court had allowed it, the only states that would've went ahead with it would be Democrat-controlled states anyways. He'd have lost a single electoral vote from Maine's second district (Maine does not grant its electoral votes as a whole state, and Trump won Maine's second district while Biden won Maine's first district), and maybe guaranteed that he would lose Michigan. Meanwhile, you'd be possibly opening the door for Biden and Democrat senators to get kicked out of Republican-controlled states like Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia based on novel interpretations by executive and judicial office-holders in those states. No, as is usually the case, the voters get the candidates they deserve and we're going to have to save ourselves from ourselves. With civic virtue being at an all-time low, I'm not very optimistic.

The most recent one was WotR, which came out in 2022. I suppose that could be described as "recently", but none of the others are recent, at least in my book. So, if we aren't lacking in games in production that fit my criteria, can you name one? I'm asking because I can't.

Story-heavy fantasy role-playing game where turn-based combat is not obligatory (i.e. something in the vein of BG(2), PoE, Deadfire, P:K, P:WotR). Anyone developing any anywhere?

Fair warning, both the Waylanders and Black Geyser have been abandoned due to the studios closing. The Waylanders specifically is really buggy. Black Geyser's better but both have a much smaller scope than you might be expecting if you're coming off of BG3 or PF:tWotR.

I would add The Waylanders, though it is not exactly the best of the genre. The wishlist shows Sovereign Syndicate, but I can't tell if it is turn-based or not. The Way of Wrath, Worldstone Chronicles, New Arc Line seem fine? That is to say, there are few high-quality* party-based CRPGs in a fantasy setting at the moment. *have a professional writer and functional gameplay systems --- https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/that-189gb-epic-games-hack-may-have-been-a-scam-aimed-at-other-hackers Well, I still have changed my password.

Moar Fire Emblem Engage - Maddening The main chapters aren't that hard but holy **** the paralogues are brutal. The Ike one has a great "oh ****" moment where Ike just blows up half the map and you get rushed by everything from the top of the map and stupid busted reinforcements (with no xp gain from fighting) that pop up to **** up your backline. If Ike had used Great Ather I'd have had to restart.

It is two more days on sale, if you have not played it yet Anyway, just in case, I will post you one more game from my wishlist, which should be released soon , although it is Turn-based one, but I think, it might fulfill all of your other criteria. https://www.gog.com/en/game/realms_beyond_ashes_of_the_fallen

Dirty shameless save-scummers.

Saving for both achievements goes without saying But my head-canon choice is saving the soul

Haha. I saved and did both to get both achievements. For someone staying behind I also left my PC behind <sob>

I have sympathy for @kanisathaand @xzar_montybecause I was in a similar position some years back. I believe they are specifically looking for isometric RTwP CRPGs. A little while ago both isometric and turn-based games were out of fashion, so you can imagine that isometric turn-based CRPGs were few and very far between. Since then we have had a resurgence both in isometric games and in turn-based games, which is right up my alley because that's my jam, but now RTwP fans are the ones getting the cold shoulder. I unfortunately have no suggestions for y'all since, as I've mentioned, RTwP isn't my thing, so I have no reason to seek those games out, but hopefully some isometric RTwP games are in the works, plus RTSs. I feel bad for RTS fans, they've been malnourished for years. I don't play RTSs, on account of being complete dog**** at them, but, man, it's been tumbleweeds in RTS land for like a decade, I hope y'all get some good games eventually.

What choice did you make in the end? My cleric stayed behind.

It's from the current version. But if you have any doubt I can just add those new modified lines to the next version of the mod.

I finished Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth clocking in at a svelte 150+ hours; probably a good 50 hours of that was on Dondoko Island. I also defeated the final bosses of both the Yokohama dungeon and the Honolulu dungeon. These are extra hard boss fights above the level of the final boss of the game, your Ruby and Emerald Weapons, if you will. Really great game that builds on the foundation of Yakuza: Like a Dragon. They made positioning in combat more important this time around with a whole array of combo attacks and assists. You have a bond level with each of your companions and at certain thresholds (10, 20, 30, 40 , 50) you gain assists with said companion. With that in mind, it's a good idea to get all your companions' bond levels up to 50 ASAP. Ideally, you get them up to 100 to unlock the 6th and final skill inheritance slot which you can use for Essences, but 50 is the big number because it unlocks the full spectrum of assists. You can set up some crazy chain reactions with assists, the enemies can do it too, the system works both ways, but the AI doesn't exploit the system that often, it mainly occurs by happenstance, whereas I'm constantly purposely setting up these chain reactions. I've one-shot groups of enemies using a standard, single-target physical attack by exploiting this system. Standard physical attacks and some skills have the knockback property, it's exactly what it sounds like, the attack knocks the victim back, sending them flying in a direction. This can knock them back into something in the environment, causing more damage to them, into one (or more) of their allies, damaging the ally(ies) in the process, and/or into one of your characters, triggering a free attack on the poor sod, provided you have a high enough bond level. You can ping pong enemies around the battlefield if you set things up correctly, it's pretty great. Battlefield positioning is also important for lining up enemies for AoE skills which hit enemies in a line or a cone, but that was already present in Y:LaD. The new map, Honolulu, is freakin' awesome. It's definitely RGG's largest map yet, it's significantly larger than Ijincho and absolutely dwarfs both Kamurocho and Sotenbori (no Sotenbori in this game, just Honolulu, Ijincho, and Kamurocho), that said, it's still tiny compared to other games. Honolulu, Ijincho, Kamurocho, and Sotenbori COMBINED would still be much smaller than Night City in Cyberpunk and that's without Dogtown. It's not the size of the map but the quality of its contents, though, and I'm happy to report that Honolulu is just as wonderfully meticulously detailed as all of RGG's previous maps. Back to Morrowind I go.

Do you consider Druid as a religious class? Because he/she could add CC and DPS more than a paladin. Otherwise a chanter is also good for CC and some other variant abilities of 3 paladins

Yes, Skald/Soulblade might be a nice combination with WotEP/Offensive Parry. I did Shattered Pillar/Soulblade once because of those reasons. If you feel you cannot gain enough deflection to get enough parries you can always use Nomad's Brigandine or Gipon Prudensco with their immunity to disengagement attacks. That will turn all disengagement atacks against you into misses which will get parried then. That way you can be a very mobile melee character (no fear of disengagment attacks, always best position for cone AoEs and so on) and profit from the parries on top.

Honestly, I'm surprised you managed to get that. Given that fork (verb) is a rather common term in the programming world, especially in the open source space, and given that a rather sizable percentage of the population are people obsessed with cats, there has to be significant overlap in that Venn diagram. I'm shocked some cat loving programmer out there with a penchant for splitting projects off of other projects didn't snatch it up.

Overturned the Colorado ruling, 9-0 which I guess was expected from the hearing. 3 of them had qualms with the opinion, if that matters. https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4506318-supreme-court-trump-colorado-14th-amendment-ballot-challenge/

Oh, yes, it could be, as Death Godlike I maybe was near death! Good point

Yeah, who else but the guy making those painted forks? Congrats

Maybe once the spell was launched you gain some PL ? Abilities and spells are dynamically affected by PL, this is why Eld Nary is very nice for Bellower.

Out of interest, I checked on this a bit, because good SF is really enjoyable and I love to read it. I have to say I was a bit disappointed by how predictable some facets of the whole thing were: three titles, lots of pages, all titles very similar to one another. It's getting very formulaic, I think. (And of course the books really can be superb, but given the above, the odds don't seem great[*].) [*] Case in point: The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe doesn't really grip you with the fact that there are four novels in the series and they all have fairly grandiose titles, but dear god the books are good, just about the best kind of literature you can expect to see in SF/fantasy. Actually Wolfe transcends genre completely.

Watched Dune 2 and it was boring. For a first entire hour, Brian Paul not-the-Messiah was trying not to be Messiah in the land of noble savages while having the most sterile romance this side of Anakin (was it because of sand? I keep hearing it can really ruin them romances) with absolutely nothing of interest happening save for cool new machinery getting exploded. Then Feyd-Rautha is introduced in black and white sequence for some reason, gets hyped out of proportions like a triple A corporate-manufactured video game and, later, fizzles out with a tiny fart just like as one, Brian drinks blue epiphany liquid, goes "F†ck yeah, lets be Messiah, dunno why I resisted for that first hour anyway", starts seeing all the futures and picks one where he wins, unfortunately it's the same one where everyone acts like idiots in order to let him win. Also Josh Brolin shows up outta nowhere mid-movie and contributes nothing. And ending's open, because of course it is. First movie at least was pretty with a great soundtrack.

Caesar 3 Augustus/Julius mods work great. With Augustus version's zoom-out, I can now finally get a shot of an entire messy city. Yay! Unsure re: all the added gameplay options (you can not check/have most not active I think, at least) but maybe I'll try a campaign with it to see how it works and if I can make it feel closer to vanilla but retain some QoL stuff. Will the workers still cut across gardens? I mean, I want them to. Some quirks were fun! (from a very old save file of the final Peace map)

I did some more testing with Grave Calling, and the behavior I mentioned above with Skald Phrase generation was consistent across repeated attempts. To be fair, it may have been too much to expect uncapped Skald Phrase generation, on top of Grave Calling's already powerful ability to create multiple Chillfogs that can also generate Focus on Ciphers. I also added St. Drogga's Skull and Keeper of the Flame to the list of tested gear in the OP. While I was at it, I also tested some of the armors that do retribution damage like Kahako Nihi and the High Harbiner's Robes. I wasn't really expecting them to generate Focus or Skald Phrases but wanted to see on the off chance if there was some weird implementation where the game considers it a weapon attack. Unfortunately, they don't generate either Focus or Phrases, as you would predict. I can confirm that Offensive Parry will generate both Focus and Skald Phrases. I think a Soul Blade/Skald like my test character, who wanted to gain "free" and passive class resources this way from counter attacks, would actually be a fairly decent fit for Whispers of the Endless Paths. You have the +20 Accuracy/Defenses from Borrowed Instincts, which you can stack with your multiple sources of Perception and Resolve Inspirations, plus engagement slots from Tactical Meld. While you wouldn't be able to stack your deflection as high as some of the other dedicated WotEP builds, you have various abilities to debuff enemy accuracy and deflection to partly make up for it. Additionally, you have some nice synergies like penetration boosts from Hammering Thoughts and Their Champion Braved, which you can combine with enemy armor debuffs like Body Attunement or Hel Hyraf, enemy under-penetration potential with the aforementioned Body Attunement granting you armor and WotEP inflicting Daze, and the ability to direct Soul Annihilation in an AoE cone with the weapon.

Two priests can be very benefical - especially early in the game - because their Inspiring Radiance (+10 accuracy in an AoE) will stack with everything, even with each other. That's either "free" and stackable +20 ACC for a shorter time or 2 times +10 ACC (twice the duration). Also a problem of a priests can be the time it takes to put out multiple buffs at the start of an encounter. Two priests speed up that process immensely (for example one is casting Blessing while the other casts Devotions for the Faithful). And of course after a certain level priests also become offensive powerhouses.

Dragon's Dogma 2 is less than a month away. I've long been puzzled as to why more games don't copy Monster Hunter's combat. Over the last decade or so, everybody and their grandmother have tried to copy Dark Souls combat, and with good reason. Very few games have tried to copy Monster Hunter combat, despite the fact that it is the gold standard for fighting gargantuan beasts IMHO. One of the few games that did copy Monster Hunter was the original Dragon's Dogma, I believe some of them worked on Monster Hunter previously, so it makes sense. Anyway, this game looks ****ing awesome.

Thanks a lot Elric. So BW is the dps option now with 20% more damage (especially for soulblade with 33% damage), that still generates more focus than before (it always does with dps) but still not as much as DW. DW is still the focus option, 25% better in that regard then BW. I'll indeed go for BW for the first time in my life in PoE 2

14 RU jets downed in 13 days. And the reasons behind it. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/03/02/13-sukhois-in-13-days-the-ukrainians-are-shooting-down-more-russian-jets-because-the-russians-are-flying-and-bombing-more-often/

I liked the intro in Saints Row. I like the player character trying to keep an honest job as a Merc and get a paycheck. Yeah, it aims at a different audience, but I realised I am this audience as well I found the jailbreak intro of SR2 the most powerful, but the reimagined SR's the most enjoyable. The bank robbery in SR3 I found annoying and nearly quit playing because of it.

Personally, as a german, I really couldn't care less about this. In fact, I want us to send more weapons and ammunition. /Edit: Saw someone else on reddit summing it up quite well.

Thanks Chaospread! Yeah, the more conservative DPS monk idea is growing into me. My two priests are brothers and sisters tho, I can't really separate them And although I love ciphers, they would not fit in that religious party.

You can test the bounces and the damage mechanics of bounces (afaik bounce dmg malus gets displayed in the combat log) with the help of enemies of the type "CRE_Dummy". They cannot move and so you can put them where you like (use "SpawnPrefabAtMouse CRE_Dummy") and try chain lightning on them for maximum bounces. Keep in mind the double inversion of dmg maluses.

as i mentioned chain lightning will not bounce back to enemies you've already hit. So if there are three enemies: A, B, C and you target A, chain lightning will bounce to B and then to C and then be unable to find another target it hasn't already hit, and give up. some abilities will bounce repeatedly. If you cast firebug, then what will happen is: you target A, firebug will bounce to B, and then to C, and then bounce again randomly to A or B and then again, and then again, etc until all bounces are exhausted. So the number of bounces you see on the tooltip for Chain Lightning is not what you'll see in practice, unless there are lots of enemies. Some abilities bounce to enemies they've already hit, some don't, there's no real pattern, and there's no way to really know without just manually testing.

Thanks for all the advice! I'm trying out an Ancient Debonair with the intent of picking up Whispers of the Endless Paths and the Lance of the Midwood Stag. Cheers!

Having just watched the entire Ethan Hawke tiktok, it goes even harder than what the article quoted. I would love to see a movie without any dialogue. But that would still require interesting characters and nothing that Villeneuve has done makes me think he can pull that off as all his major characters are flatter than Hank Hill's ass. There is no damn emotion in any of his films and as such all of the sound is noise and all the image is lifeless. Cinema is not just photography with motion and sound.

This guy stupid or something? No wonder all his movies are hot garbage. . . . Theoretically, there's nothing wrong with what he's saying. Obviously, what we value is very different, since I almost entirely remember movies by characters and what they do (and yes, especially dialogue!), but I'm not everyone, and clearly some people do like his films. This kind of thinking will probably, 999/1000 times, mean you're not going to have characters that I think are interesting or fun or pretty much anything else, which almost certainly means that at best, I'm going to be pretty neutral towards your film. So yeah, I guess it starts to make a lot of sense why I hate Denis Villaneuve films. That French Canadian bastard. It was nice they gave Ethan Hawke the last word with the obvious rebuttal to that nonsense to end the article.

Highly popular Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu was sued by Nintendo last week, and today agreed to fold and pay 2.4 million dollars to Nintendo to settle it, along with some other terms like the dev team never being allowed to work on emulators for the rest of their lives. Although painful for the future of Nintendo Switch emulation and preservation, I think they pretty much deserved what they got: they did the stupidest thing possible, the one thing you absolutely cannot do unless you want to bring the law down upon your head, which is blatantly advertise and monetize leaked/pre-release content. How stupid do you have to be to sell Patreon-only builds (they were earning tens of thousands of dollars a month, by the way!) that can run The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom before the game has even officially released? Any support for pre-release/leaked content is bad enough and will draw the ire of crime investigators and lawyers alike in of itself, but then going so far as to actively monetize it... Woof.

Not seeing the aggression in the protest, they blocked the entrances ? You're clutching your pearls over this one, oh well. If there was any actual work to be done on this trip, was probably done beforehand anyway.