Wormerine

Mostly because I didn't play and as for years EA hid all their games from me on Origin it didn't remind it about myself. Now with gamepass I am considering jumping into Andromeda and DA: Inquisition, but I need to run out of things I actually want to play or replay before I get there.

They work on the ending already, though I think they just made final battle less of a snooze fest. The new content they are working on, I think is just a new campaign.

Cause I picked samurai dude class.

Another pleasant, but not smooth performance wise, session in the whimsical world of the Elden Ring

Waiting is good. Game so far seems excellent, but performance is uneven. Trying to do an outside boss now, and while I would blame FPS drop for all my deaths it is distracting when the game looses 20FPS for a second. While I noticed little stuttering at first, things get worse once you jump on horse and start moving fast.

I don't know about bloodborne, but yes quite a few effects are lifted straight from DS games.. as well as many other things.

Yeah, no kidding. Original Dark Souls reminded me of playing Tomb Raider for the first time.

I meant to just see how Elden Ring runs, but here we are it's 3AM I sunk 3,5 hours into the game. I actually still don't know quite how it runs as I didn't reach the open world. So what happened is when creating my character I picked an item which as it turns out allowed me to open immediately a mini dungeon right after the tutorial. I am pretty sure I was underleveled but not that underleveled to discourage me from exploring. As I was about to call quits I run into the boss of the dungeon - Oscar the Grouch looking thing. One hit would take most of my life, but at one point enemy bugged out and I managed to bring him to the bring of death - and then he came back to life and that happened:

I really enjoyed Sekiro The story didn't necenssary grab me, but I enjoyed all that was too it. It was still far and beyond what most action games have to offer. Still the best bits IMO were indirect storytelling that FS is sooo good at.

FromSoftware games always excel is storytelling but they stray away from more traditional movie/dialogue heavy exposition. You won’t get much plot from their games. Sekiro had a bit more traditional structure but ER stays close to DS roots - there are NPCs with their own stories and probably they can end different ways and probably the game will have couple endings, but it’s more about doing things and learning things organically then watching cinematics or reading texts. I hear ER reveals more of its lore in a straightforward way, but don’t expect spending much time in it talking to NPCs. Those are kind of games that you can finish and don’t know what the story is, but there are some really great stuff for those who pay attention. Unfortunately, as is tradition, port is apparently pretty garbage. 60FPS lock and stuttering issues. Apparently they just patched the game and made things straight up worse. If I can’t run it with stable 60 FPS, which by all accounts seems likely, the game will go on hiatus until it gets better.

Dark Souls and Breath of the Wild is my impression. From what I understand: 1) It dark souls combat, but due to its open nature you can turn around and go other way if you hit a wall of difficulty making it more noob friendly. There are also mechanics like summon to reduce difficulty somewhat. 2) everyone says how uniquely engaging exploration is - it has relatively little predictable content and game forces player to engage with exploration. No map markers to follow only only way to find something it to peak behind every corner. World is apparently constructed in a very unique way, often hiding things on purpose, rather then drawing attention to main things. It seems that many people found the loop of “I wonder if there is something very cool around the corner” very compelling. From handful reviews I skimmed it sounds like it might be Souls-Like that does exploration and variety of build the best, even if tight power progression and challenge might be somewhat loose in this one. Something I heard multiple times is that this one feels more like an adventure, then intimidating, desperate push against overwhelming forces.

Nothing worries me more then IGN giving a game 10/10. It's funny that universal acclaim makes me only more nervous about the game. Still: Only one way to find out.

The next DLC they are currently working on is a new campaign for Solasta. I enjoyed my time with the game a lot as well. Looking forward to jumping back in.

That's a good question, and one I would like a clear answer as well, though my worry is from the oposite. From what I gathered the gist seems to be that dungeons can be just as intricate and challenging as they always have been, while open world offers a more forgiving experience with variety of approaches and opportunities to gain an upper hand - SkillUp in his review mentioned being at a point when he one shots bosses - though as he never mentioned it as a problem, which confuses me. DS games (outside Sekiro) always had easy modes - stuff like summoning other players could and would make your playthrough a cakewalk. ER has couple aditional mechanics that should make things easier for those who want it - like summons and expanded magic. General consensus seems that it is by far the most inclusive game FromSoftware made, but how inclusive it is I have no clue. I recommend checking review and seeing if it is something that would interest you. After watching a SkillUp review I had an impression that ER might get dangerously easy once we start raking XP, but two other reviews stongly suggested that the game still is hard. We will see starting Friday.

Eh, I thought they did decent job with Deus Ex reboots. Thief, however, is another story

Here is english version for those two of you who aren't fluent in japanese.

God of War made me crave for some good spectical fighters. I gave DMC5 another playthrough to refresh mechanics, before continuing my work on S ranks on higher difficulties, but once I started to feel resistance I got distracted... again. I finally played through DMC reboot - which wasn't awful. Gameplay doesn't have a depth and potential of originals, but it is still fun. Story is a bigger problem. The punk Dante is insufferable at the start. It's not that originals had "better" story, but I found myself not caring for the original cast, while disliking nearly everyone in the reboot. One playthrough was enough, I don't expect to ever return to that game, but I don't regret my time spent with it. Reinstalled Bayonetta after a long while, and after playing DMC5 I don't have as high opinion of it as I used to - story is abysmal. I need to at least to know why I am fighting and for what, and Bayo story is an incoherent mess. I also dispise insta kill quick-time events and other non-combat encounters. I hate that the game hides encounters for the players and then punishes them during ranking for not doing those. Combat is still great though.

And in the future it might not be 20s Microsoft anymore. I am not terribly worried about next couple years, but after that - who knows. What will Microsoft become once aggresive expansion ends and they will have to find a new way to increase income for investors?

Still waiting for reviews to make sure that nothing got botched, but yes, I plan to jump in on day1. It should be interesting - never played FromSoftware game before it was figured out completely.

Ah, that made sense why he defended BG3 so much.

Wait... are they streaming KH2? Surely Switch is not that underpowered.

While I am myself catless , from my family experience I would say that 3 is a good number. Do not, however, under any circumstances go beyond that. I know "it's just one more" but 3 is reaching critical mass. 4 is trouble and 5 is an unending disaster.

Finished Death's Door. The start was slow - but the more time I spent with the game the more I enjoyed it. It's a simple, zelda-like affair, with a minor touch of mandatory Dark Souls influence but it's well done. Enjoyed exploration quite a bit. The only disappointment was end game - after main story there is "true ending" you can pursue. But outside two new combat encounters it is just running around empty maps 100% find-them-all chores. Payoff wasn't even remotly worth it.

The best of the modern (and possible not modern) Fallouts is underrated?