LadyCrimson

@BruceVC As long as the difficulty feels good for you/is what you want. Besides, if it starts to feel too easy with later game progressions, I assume you could just remove some party members then, when you feel like it? I mean, sounds fine to me - like turning up difficulty if a game starts to feel too easy. Back when I was still more - motivated - I remember in BG1, after the first play, every restart I kept removing party members (4 max, then only 2), until I finally tried to solo run it (probably didn't finish but I think I got semi-far) and in MM7 sometimes I'd let party members die and never revived them, heh (had to create four, couldn't tell them to leave). Party members are just difficulty slider options. 😄 Edit: and/or strategic challenges

I haven't played this game so know nothing specific, but in general terms, I'd say since extra party members are not the intended party size the game encounters "expect" and were designed around, I would put it in the unbalanced modded category - whether you want to call it a "cheat" or not is up to you. And in SP, who cares. Do what is fun for you, imo. I mean, it's fun to alter rules sometimes, whether a little or a lot. Having all companions in FO:NV was pretty much a "win" thing for that game, but it was hilarious. Also, made for a better dance-mod line.

I'm apparently wrong. At least a couple enemies that only appear during the night-fogs do scale. One isn't a big deal, the other is. I see one of those, I run away. Night = all enemies are a little stronger then during the day, but these two are night-specific spawns.

Hubby had a new round of MRI/x-rays done and sent to a surgeon for analysis. The non-surgeon back doctor has now also mentioned disabling/removing (something) the nerves around the affected spine/vertebrae, re: pain management, if the back surgeon doesn't think disc/other major surgery is a course. Which sounds better than spinal fusion (maybe) but then again, pain exists for a reason. Wouldn't want to have zero pain to let you know if you're over-extending. As always we'll see. When they mentioned the nerve disabling tho, I have to say that what lept into my mind immediately was Serenity/Mal and the "shrapnel tore out that nerve cluster" moment.

Tainted Grail: ---I had a long and intriguing conversation with a chicken who had a long backstory. ---some side quests (dunno about MQ) can have choice consequences too, which can alter rewards or access/who survives, or just offer different conclusion to a "tragic tale." More than MMO/Diablo questing, but not as in depth as some. -- VA's are hit and miss, sometimes they're great (who voices Arthur? what a great voice) sometimes they're very mediocre. ---there is no level scaling within an Act area, so difficulty re: each one will be front-loaded. That is, could be super hard/die all the time in the beginning, then you're 1-shotting everything by the end of Act depending on how much you've explored and build/items/upgrades etc. ---loot appears non-random, at least the good loot. I suppose a deranged peasant randomly drops "fancy underpants" instead of "underpants" at times. ---I am told when the story ends, there is no "continue", but you can travel between Acts to finish things before that ---town stash box is infinite. Player inventory is weight based but there's ways to up it and it hasn't been a real issue even for a picker upper like me. If one *wants* it to be an issue, just don't increase weight limit. (EDIT) items with 0.0 weight do appear to weigh something. You won't notice with a stack of 10 such, but having 1000 arrows and 1000 various picked herbs in your backpack will still weigh you down a fair bit. Dunno if intentional/bug. Just saying. ---Beyond jank, have run into minor glitches but nothing terrible (yet). Still just simple, old fashioned, tightly/fast paced crpg fun. My current "concern" is the entire game may be "front loaded." eg, Act1 may have had the most time devoted to it, it feels full, planned out, interesting. I've played games like that where after that, it becomes less interesting, shorter, etc. That said, there's 25-35 hours to be had from Act1 alone - more if you're the type to seriously linger.

Tainted Grail - ok, I officially like this game. I don't think I'd say I love the game, but I sure do enjoy it. My description of overall gameplay/feel, from my game-life experiences, might go something like this: Elder Scrolls+Might and Magic 7 (or similar)+Diablo (the darker themes). --There's this weird charm, and old-school crpg flavor/nostalgia (including the jank and cheese here and there) that I'm getting while playing and exploring. I can't explain it. --I was in a tavern and some drunk side npc's at a table started debating to each other whether if you removed Excalibur but damaged it slightly, but then repaired it, was it still Excalibur (in the sense you could still become King for removing it). Their convo went on and on and I just stood on the stairs listening to it. It was pretty funny. --dual wielding two different spells, baby --initial slow rate of progression or good gear finds feel satisfying That said, there's still my personal "too many quests, bah!" irritation. More than half the NPC's I talk to want to give me little side quests and my log gets bigger and bigger. . I so have issues re: "I'll head off in that direction for that" but then totally sidetracked by finding an underground huge water cave/secret and forget. 😛 Temper expectations (it's not a polished AAA/uber graphic game) and for the $45, it's a pretty fun time. I'll be very interested in what this dev team comes up with next.

Well, I liked the prologue demo (it was still .9 vs. 1.0) enough to buy Tainted Grail. It is sometimes a bit janky/unpolished, combat is ok and so far straightforward, although for those that like "hit impact impression" or smarter AI - probably not going to find it here. Easy difficulty for me is almost too easy, Normal sponged it up more than I like. Wish there was an inbetween but oh well. It has the learn by using/doing, which led me to crouch-walk into a wall for 10 minutes just to see if that worked, and it did. Haha. The wandering around picking up everything, cooking, alchemy, swimming out to see if a boat was lootable, copious lore notes everywhere, satisfies the exploration/looter in me - that aspect doesn't feel "empty" and the pacing/design of exploration is quick/good, at least so far. I haven't yet had any major performance issues or trouble finding decent settings vs. 60ish fps, but there is occasional (shader loading?) singular hitching sometimes, like on a first spell cast. It wasn't in the demo, so perhaps a patch will come along. Dunno if I'll like it to the end, but it certainly has that early "lI'll just look around one more corner" vibe down pretty well.

@Agiel What game is that? I like the art direction.

Since Tainted Grail is out, gonna download the demo just to see if I like the early mechanics. Supposedly you can largely ignore the MQ if you want, decent difficulty options etc. Skyrim and Elder Scrolls had a baby? Maybe I'd like it more than either of those on their own, so to speak. Or not. We'll see.

^ The series always was,for me, just like Black Mirror, hit and miss. Like 1-3 episodes a fair bit, most "ok-meh", 1-3 "ick." Oh, and when I said cat episode, I meant the blue animated cat vs. devil one. I just watched another bit with a more realistic orange cat animation. I didn't like it as much.

Loved the first one, so I will definitely be watching Nobody 2. When it's available to watch by pressing a button on my remote. But I will definitely watch it.

I liked that cat episode of Love/Death/Robots. shocker, right. I watched a couple others, didn't care for them, the usual. Started watching Bullet Train Explosion, it looks pretty good for the genre, but then I was distracted 1/3 in and haven't gotten back to it. Before bed, I've begun watching the old series Castle via Prime. I never watched it before, only knew of it/clips. I think hubby did watch some of it before so I might've seen a random episode years ago. Anyway, I'm up to ssn1/eps. 8. It's ok. I wish there was more focus on the crime part of episodes. The intriguing thing to me is that even tho I'm not super-into Castle (yet), I rarely FFWD and it mostly keeps my attention. More evidence that for me, certain pacing, camera work, dialogue setups and other patterns in modern tv/films is a factor re: my short attention span/dislikes. I will say that I think I greatly prefer Nathan Fillion as Mal over Castle. Mal felt like he had a bit more substance behind the sarcasm. So far, Castle is just the "entitled rich but lovable goldheart" dufus. Maybe he grows up a bit later.

The Four Seasons (a series adaptation of the old film) - 1st and 2nd episode I think it's supposed to be a comedy, and it did make me chuckle here and there, but mostly it's kind of ... sad commentary re: friendships, marriages and life etc. One of those types. I recall my parents liking the Alan Alda film, so I know the basic premise, but I can't remember if I ever watched it fully. the Big Chill was the one I watched and loved ages ago. Just not my thing anymore I guess.

It's probably my imagination or poor camera angles, but over time re: all the brief little clips I've seen, I've felt like Trump has been slouching further and further downward in that oval office chair. If it continues, at the end of the four years all we may be able to see of him is the top of his fluffy toupee hair. Edit: oh, and I'm taking some singing lessons. Nothing serious. Just something to do. I used to be able to sing "average/ok" but now age and never doing it at all, I'd break eardrums, I'd like to at least not break eardrums.

Don't know - I guess it would depend on what they mean by "imported resources." I'm more concerned with panic buying re: news stories and human nature. Gonna become a real doomsday prepper at this rate. My bunker will have a dedicated room for a cat, of course. Could get lonely down there. On the other hand, too much work. Cat will have to be content sleeping on top of a chest freezer instead.

Another one of those larger stock-up type household buying days. I'm not completely convinced anything (for us) is going to be hugely impacted by tarrifs - day/weekly/general I mean, in terms of shortages/empty shelves - but I did buy enough toilet paper, paper towels, and meats (for the freezer) to last a few months or more. Y'know, just in case. I'm not getting caught flat footed, running around desperate to find even a single 4-pack of the cheapest/roughest 1-ply, or having acquaintances gift you with a couple rolls, like Covid times, again, ever. It's probably more a concern for back to school shopping or for anyone who likes to get a lot of smaller goods, cosmetics/clothes, "impulse" buys, specific needs etc, regularly. Edit: I looked at the package of my fave TP and it said "Made in USA from domestic and imported resources." I can't wait to pay $30 for 9 rolls of TP!

Watched the longish Borderlands 4 gameplay reveal thingie. Looks like Borderlands 3, except with the potential of a less annoying story and characters. Maybe. Didn't hate it, but didn't do anything for me either. None of the "Vault Hunters" look interesting to me. It looks/feels less and less like "Borderlands" all the time, and more and more like a kind of generic action game. Except with giant loot explosions, ofc. Although, at least Legendaries supposedly won't be raining from the sky anymore. BL3 was absolutely ridiculous with it - and the fact 95% of them were useless joke gimmick weapons that would drop over and over (sometimes multiples of the same one from the same boss) made it even worse. Just have the 5%. I keep hinting/reminding hubby that if he wants a new gpu or PC to play it (he's using a 1660 in the pc he plays BL on, I think, and some (newer/not ancient) Xeon type cpu), better get one soon if he doesn't want to pay out the nose just to play one game. So far he hasn't made any move on that tho. >.> I guess he could play at 720p on mostly Low settings. He doesn't care much about fidelity/phat fps.

Schedule I - I definitely feel like I'd like this game, although it does have a curfew/cops mechanic that is occasionally annoying. It's quite solid/sim addictive for what it is. I'm still just messing with the demo a bit tho. Not sure I'd want to EA it. Another "1 guy" project that (imo) is likely to take a long time to finish, unless they consider it almost finished to begin with. One for the wishlist. They keep updating the demo, too - having options greyed out bothers me not at all for the moment. And of course, still No Man's Sky off and on. They need to add a Freighter to abandoned mode so I can have my orbit-traveling storage and garden base. Don't care about having a "fleet" or "fleet missions" available or flavor NPC's wandering around inside (that just get in your way/glitch out sometimes anyhow), just disable all that for Abandoned mode. There are destroyed/derelict freighter encounters in the game - could pretend the chr. takes one of those and fixes it up just enough to be useful. 😛

There has been no actual update for Manor Lords for a while, but there was this "what we're up to/doing" post recently. I think he/they like to use Discord more than anything else last I knew, so it's nice to see something on Steam. I like these types behind the scenes posts. It's not a "1 man" project anymore, either. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1363080/view/573753783490708647 And the thought process idea of where the progression nodes/skills will be going finally sounds more full-fledged. Although from a city-build pov, it's starting to sound a little bit over-typical vs. something more unique, if that makes sense. I'm still not really getting a sense of Stronghold+citybuilder like I was hoping, tho. We'll see.

^ Postscript: I think I became sick of the XP/character leveling loop. I'd rather skills/abilities be gained through some other method than characters simply "leveling up". There are no chr. levels in No Man's Sky. Granted that's not an RPG but that's what I mean. The Exped.33 mostly intrigued me because of the story elements, which is rare for me. Sounded kinda like some weird surreal fantasy/sci-fi variation of Logan's Run + sci-fi game.

Oh, yeah, I didn't mean it was something like bullet-point dialogue tree rpg's like BG or something. More like some of the jrpg's. Big emphasis on story/plot/dialogues and characters but not full blown multiple choice/consequence ala D&D or something. I was picturing maybe FF/Tales of Arise type story telling. I mean, I've grown tired of even simplistic action-rpg's like Diablo's, Path of Exile, Borderlands. And I don't think I ever really liked/cared about mega consequences, although two or three simple ending paths are nice. Since I'm more of a do it all in one (maybe two, with the 1st run being the learning run) mega-hours-single run type, too many choices for me = analysis paralysis and/or "none of these choices are what I want to do/I feel restricted" and I either never choose anything (eg never finish the main plot), or I quit. Hence my general favoritism towards sandboxes or RTS/sim over the years.

Yeah, I started looking into that Clair/Exped. 33 game because of all the mega positive reviews. My reaction so far goes: ---"Turn based, urgh, not my thing. But it has some real time aspect or something? Maybe that'd be all right?" --"oh, qte's and dark-souls/sekiro parry timings." Then I also saw a long thread in Steam fora from people who thought they were getting just good ol' turn based and not qte semi-dark souls with precise timing. Where half the replies are "git gud" of course, but others gave me a better understand what to expect and some weaknesses of the system etc. Which is a shame (for me). The story sounds actually interesting, the visuals look fantastic, the VA sounds great. I thought it might be an RPG that might make me like an RPG again. I still put it in my wishlist tho - maybe a year from now when it's done patching and with mods. I was definitely interested in the world building/story, for once.

My confusion whilst walking by was seeing Pike mixed in what looked like the ST:OS Balance of Terror episode goings on. Edit: ofc I have no idea what was going on, just sliding by, but that immediately screamed time jumping/alternative times lines. I remember the whole Pike point is him having visions of his future and wanting to alter it I guess. Which makes me roll my eyes. At this point I don't care how they justify it. Such used to be occasionally fun, sure, but I'm so over it. 2ndedit: I can still kinda like one-off time jump episodes, just a fun adventure romp, ala that ST:OS movie, but when they try to get all serious I clock out.

--Spring. Where it's semi-warm one day and goes back to (wimp Californians) a tad chilly the next. Not complaining, I like it. --The ducks are back to occasionally flopping into our little swimming pool - they're not very timid re: human approach so hubby ends up chasing them out with the pool net stick. I think it's hilarious but apparently their poo encourages black mold on pool walls etc which is very hard to get rid of once if it takes hold, so hubby is very annoyed. Resulting in my great entertainment. Other than that, all the usual stuff. Constant fluctuations of boredom and happy contentment. And ofc, the hubster that makes me giggle (not just chasing ducks, ofc, heh). Very important, that.