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Im about 15 hours into Dark Messiah of M&M Im really enjoying it, I think the myriad of combat mechanics are well done and Im enjoying the overall narrative I like Xana, she makes me laugh and I have just found out who I really am. Very unexpected twist

I prefer Deadfire over Baldur's Gate 3, mainly because it features RTWP instead of TB, 2D instead of 3D and a more 'realistic' fantasy setting. Original Baldur's Gate was designed with RTWP and therefore POE is the actual spiritual successor. Now BG 3 was way more financially successful because the audience consists mainly out of people who love cringe writing, bear sex, Shadowheart and rpgs as romance simulators. If BG3 was a real-time strategy game with all the aforementioned, it would still be very popular. The rpg elements are just the potatoes that do not constitute the 'meat' of the game.

I do not want to turn this into political debate, but since 2022, there is really not much nice, that Ukrainian can say about Amnesty International, due to some of their reports about the war, which were really “sloppy” there has been a lot of debate about these reports in Way Off-Topic threads during that time as well.

Oh, Man. I love that game. Not flawless, but nothing like that. Creating ice puddles for enemies to slipped on never gets old.

Goal nr. 10/2024 October 26, 11:45 – More of Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate on my PS4. I have decided to finally finish the last missing branch to get 100% in the Aftermath story mode and finished the story as evil Shang Tsung.

I'm the same with any game that treats me like a tool -- or as if Looking Glass had never existed. Yeah it's a mockup, but you probably know by looking what I mean. Unless it's something I really wanna play. It's funny how studios spend gazillions on photo realistic visuals. There's entire task forces dedicated to hairdos alone. And then it's all down the toilet as you're either reminded constantly you're playing a damn video game and/or you can't touch anything without being told when, how and if to do so. Waste of time, people and money -- doubly so if you consider the ridiculous dev cycles mainly caused by visual fidelity. Speaking about which, Drova is scary. I'm hesistant to post my playing hours, because the game must scratch an itch that hadn't been scratched recently much. And reading about the devs, I know which one it is. Aside of the obvious Gothic1+2 inspirations, what really drove them forward was the desire to make a game where you get to explore and figure things out for yourself. I think I may revisit some of these thereafter...

I finished Drova. Will probably do a second playthrough to get all the achievements, it'll be much less annoying when you know where everything is. Overall I'd say it's a decent game. It's generally what it looks like from a quick glance on the Steam page, so if that seems your thing, you should probably try it. My two big negatives are: - The map is way too maze-like, and it can take a lot of time to just find things because you can never go somewhere in an even remotely straight line. - The main plot forces you to do things you wouldn't want to. In my game, the 2nd in command of my faction had me do some stuff under the nose of the 1st, and I was called a traitor afterwards. No option to do anything else.

Completed all of the season journey objectives and the Dark Citadel on Torment IV, which means I am done for the season, I guess, unless Blizzard adds something. They are adding "Meat or Treat" with The Butcher for Halloween, so I'll check that out. I'll probably also occasionally check if Blizzard managed to fix the Tenets of Akarat, silly little puzzles strewn through the expansion area that often bug out and cannot be completed. The first wing of the Dark Citadel was by far the hardest as the wing final boss is both a gear check (given the damage Spiritborn do, more like a defensive stat check, as I found out to my detriment when the unavoidable damage instantly killed me) and requires some coordination between the party members in different zones and you need one group to activate a portal for the other once they're done. All the other bosses have more involved mechanics, but you're always in the same screen with your party members. Well, maybe not at the last wing's final boss where you can miss a portal, but that respawns really quickly. The in-game timer tells me I have played for 86h, which is fine. It felt a little more grindy than the other seasons thanks to the Infernal Hordes being basically the best at any farming activity outside of levelling your glyphs (and that is just because you can't level glyphs in hordes) or getting runes, but some of that time is playing the expansion "story" which I won't have to any more from this point forward. Luckily. The Diablo games never had intricate storylines, but they used to be interesting and well written, and ever since Diablo 3, they're just neither. Although that can be said for every game Blizzard made since 2009. Wrath of the Lich King was the last time a story told in a Blizzard game was interesting and they actually cared for world building, and it is such a pity that the story of Warcraft 3 was completed in an MMORPG. The wording implies that Blizzard will be making more of these group only dungeons. Can't say I am looking forward to that, but maybe the next one is going to be more interesting. I also hope Blizzard finds some way of making them challenging without overly relying on either timed instant death mechanics where you need to complete an objective before the timer runs out or spamming the room with instant death effects. Torment IV can also use a wee bit of rebalancing. Having enemies deal so much damage that you die almost instantly is fine when that damage can be reasonably avoided. It is not fine when the entire screen is full of player effects that overlap and make it impossible to see the attacks happening, or cause so much lag that you can't see the enemies perform their actions. World bosses are particularily egregious, The Wandering Death does a giant laser instant death effect that plows through the screen and you're supposed to dodge it, but it was invisible due to massive server side lag. Most of the players near the boss died. I had a good laugh, but that can't be fun for Hardcore players. I guess it is understandable though, Blizzard is a newcomer at this online play business, they only have like three decades of experience, things like that can happen, right?

Wandered on to a ship, found scratches on metal. Immediately knew I should have left Thankfully, I guess the genestealers just stayed there and let me kill them, so that was ok.

Finished Steelrising. 20FPS in some areas definitely was not exactly comfortable. The hitboxes are very tight (the foes miss a lot) and the difficulty overall is on the easier side. The writing is rather odd - between the occasional random French words (why???) and all characters having more random memory gaps (a major plot point was explained, everyone was calm, then in the next scene it was explained again, everyone was shocked). The level design is Spiders and I would not be able to finish the side quests without the compass (a regular in-game item, not an accessibility setting). The rebindable controls and the somewhat customisable character were most welcome.

I had a similar link for Space Marine 2, but it seems dead now ._.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Scratching their games off my wishlist. For now…

Ok, now I sat down and tried a chanter/wizard in order to find out what pauses his chants. Did lower DEX to 1, than raised it to 30 and so on. Also used weapon and shield modals that affect recovery and switched armor types. This is what I found out: 1) Chanting speed is not affected by DEX and/or recovery. It is only affected by Troubadour's Brisk Recitation. 2) Invocation cast times are affected by DEX and universal speed buffs (from abilites such as Frenzy or drugs or potions), not armor or weapon modals or dual wiedling or styles. 3) The general recovery after an invocation (you can't attack) is affected by armor, DEX and also speed buffs - but not weapon modals. 4) unlike PoE, the special chanting pause after casting an invocation is not affected by DEX, armor penalty or whatever. It's always the same: round about 2 or 3 seconds pause after an invocation happen. You stop chanting as soon as the invocation goes off and after 2 to 3(?) seconds you resume. When I set DEX to 1 it had no effect on the pause. When I raised it to 30 it had no effect. When I used an invocation with a long recovery or one with a short recovery - it had no effect on the chanting pause. It seems to be a entirely fixed amount of time. Hooray for turtles then! I learned something new today. 5) Casting an invocation (or anything else like spells) does not pause chanting. When the casting animation is done (and as soon as the invocation goes off) the pause happens. 6) Chanting only has that special pause after an invocation. Every other ability I tested (spells, FoD and so on) don't cause that pause. You can cast Fireballs without interrupting your chants. It's like Mongolian Throat Singing. What a mess. Hope that helps.

It also makes the environment harder to read, so we get the yellow paint on the breakable barrels. Since it was bothering me a lot during my Steelrising playthrough, I would like to share - some platforms could be jumped on/ledge-grabbed and also there were special hook points. The former were usually marked by white chalk or cloth and the latter by amber lights (and an interaction prompt). The thing is that the white cloth often was hanging on random non-grabbale fences and platforms and all street lights were amber (not in the "look, the path/loot is here" way). Same with the slightly-broken bushes and random indoor doors* - some were walls, some were paths, and the only way to find out which is which is by trying to pass through/open them. *the outdoor gates had clear indicators that they were openable - a small wooden lock panel in the middle. --- EA App. This piece of DRM refused to launch Dragon Age: Inquisition after a week, so I uninstalled the app, forgetting that it also removes the save files. On a positive note, I have managed to un**** Origin (by dropping a totally-not-suspicious DLL into its folder), which is still a very good reason to pirate every last EA release, but it at least runs offline. Ironically, the game looks much better than Steelrising, because the style, unlike the tech, remains.

It could be that Paizo doesn't want to do buisiness with Ruzzians. https://en.ain.ua/2023/12/07/warhammer-40000-rogue-trader-developers-are-calling-ukrainians-ethnic-slurs/