Wormerine

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? 🤨

It’s 4 days work week, but 20h shifts per day 😛 It is interesting to read about constant Shipbreaker crunch. I always though that updates are far and few inbetween and updates to be minimal in content. I do assume it is a relatively tiny team, working on a very complex, simulation driven title. Constant save wipes made me stop playing the game a long time. Patiently waiting for 1.0.

You watching too much SkillUp, or something?

it’s currently on Kickstarter

Finished God of War. Mostly. There is still some sidecontent to do, but I am not sure how long I will be willing to put up with forced RPG elemenets, grinding, and flawed combat system. I am having less and less fun everytime I boot it up. We will see when the well will dry up completely. I feel like I am getting really snobby as of late. I didn't like God of War much. I didn't dislike it either. It's a very AAA affair (but in good way) aiming for as wide of a market as possible, juggling multiple different things people might want to play a game for, and mastering none, though at the same time doing none of those too badly. I think I just prefer games that do one thing, but really well. I think the game has potential, though. I felt in similar way about DOOM 2016 - a game which I appreaciated on some level, but it just let me somewhat bored. But DOOM: Eternal was a surprise delight when i played it on gamepass recently. Let's hope Ragnarok will address GoW issues, figure out how to make combat work without all the flashing arrows (I mean seriously, what's the point of creating zoomed in cinematic experience, if you have to add so much UI elemenents for it to be managable?!) and just make combat more mechanically consistant. It's a looker though. Honestly, I enjoyed watching GoW more then playing it. A perfect silent YouTube walkthrough game perhaps, at least the main storyline. The game made me reinstal DMC5 though - that's a godly combat system.

There was no communication regarding Avowed, but all the marketing stuff advertises it as a First Person RPG. The only info we got, Windows Central preview, also describes it as first person game.

I don't do scores. Game? Yes, so far. Combat, no so far, I find it annoying. EDIT: Too appease @BruceVCI will go with 5 star rating which I personally can somewhat tolerate. At this point I would give God of War 4/5 stars, and would give just combat 2/5 - there is some good stuff in it, but designs contradict each other and the whole thing doesn't come together.

some 10 hours into God of War. Overall I think it is a superb high quality production action adventure with very good pacing, but I have been using this forum to vent my frustrations so here it is: Combat is not very good. It is the usual AAA's tendency to focus on presentation over gameplay. Sluggish animations, zoomed in camera do the game no favours. What the point of "immersion" and "being closer to your character" if to make the combat work you need to rely on big flashing UI arrows? And I just dispise animation lead combat - enemies teleporting to hit you even though you moved away, or your hits not regiestering, because the enemy initated some kind of action animation. With plenty of targets I find it difficult to make "the father" hit whom I need him to hit. On top of that, visuals seem to be designed to look good rather then communicate important information. I am currently fighting the elves and it is such a visual cluster**** I have trouble seeing what is going on. It feels to me like a game designed for casual, easy play, and higher difficulty levels (playing on second hardest) just dont work well. I feel like I can't use half of the skills I unlocked, unlike lets say DMC5 in which character mastery is key to succeeding on higher difficulties.

Some things which make me feel unleasy - like Endlen Ring being the easiest of Softworks games? With the difficulty of their titles being greatly exaggerated I somewhat worry it will be a duller experience. That was a worry some people (including myself) had seeing gameplay demos.

Further scoop on StarWars games in the making. Seems like Respawn is "overseeing" other StarWars projects. 1) There is already roumors sequel to rather decent Respawn's own Fallen Order 2) There is Star Wars FPS lead by one of the creators of Force Unleashed, Empire at War and original SW: Battlefronts 3) and previously mentioned ex-Firaxis turn based tactics studios, Bit Reactor is working on Star Wars strategy game.

I played NWN2 many times, but I would consider my 3.5e knowledge to be basic. I always found it to be convoluted and not rewarding to learn - complicated but not complex kind of design. Pathfinder seemed to be on another level, with illogical exceptions, spells requiring one very particular counterspell (which is normal for D&D but becomes unweildy due to how much junk like that Pathfinder had). I suppose the downside of Kingmaker for me was it's determination of testing player's encyclopedic knowledge of Pathfinder while other D&D and D&D-like titles are more interested in campaign allowing lack of understanding of the system to slide. Heck, playing PoE1 on Hard, I wasn't forced to dive deep into the systems until I started to tackle hardest, optional encounters in the game. It helps that in PoEd figuting an encounter was saved for elite encounters - rewarding narratively and item wise. Pathfinder required it for a trash encounter, that then it would copy paste throughout 3 levels of a dungeon.

That would be a nice IP to revive.

I found it interesting, that I found PoE systems to be transparent and intuitive enough for me to enjoy the game (though the game does have some deeper oddities that could be ironed out), while I find Pathfinder to be incredible obtuse and confusing and a chore to play.