Hawke64

Nenio gives some hints for dialogue-based puzzles (one or two, if I remember correctly). Though, the dungeon itself is an exercise in frustration - the puzzle rules are not exactly clear, the interface is not meant for puzzles, most of the combat encounters are very similar in nature. I have been thinking about replaying WotR (haven't done the Angel Mythic Path and it is said to be the most developed one), but the length of a playthrough is quite discouraging. Also the Enigma.

Sable. While still lovely, the game is getting slightly repetitive. I suppose, it is a very minimalistic version of Conan: Exiles - no combat or crafting. The MC can stand in fire, get hit by lightning, and fall from 20+ metres without any consequences. Though, admittedly I've been mostly travelling, instead of going straight for quest objectives or looking for dungeons/space ships. On the other hand, the last quest I've picked is to gather 3 pieces of excrements and before that 3 crystals. But the writing is still quite nice - stylistically consistent, fitting, and of reasonable length.

Wasteland 3. The attention to details is amazing - I've been replaying Denver and the area changes slightly as the story progresses. The former Godfisher camp was inhabited by drools, then a quest-unrelated NPC appeared, whom I had not seen on the previous playthrough. The base game has quite impressive quality and quantity of voiced dialogues. While I wouldn't mind it being only partially voiced and having more dialogues, the VA is reasonably good and the options are plentiful and meaningful. I also found the Golden Toaster and now it is following the party (by levitating).

Completed Mortal Shell after taking a month-long break. In general, it runs perfectly well, the controls are comfortable and rebindable, the graphics are well-made, the file size is reasonable, the save files are located in /Documents/My games. The sound and movesets are adequate. What I strongly disliked was the encounter and area design - too many too similar regular enemies, too corridor-like similarly-looking locations with few to none landmarks - walls/high cliffs and fog effectively prevented from meaningful navigation*. While it was nice that after defeating an area boss, the area changed slightly, the fog got old rather quickly. As for the bosses, most of them* had 1 very punishable and baitable attack and it was just a matter of patience, which is better than total randomness, but not exactly engaging. About the final boss. Unlike the previous ones, it was not a armoured humanoid, but he was just as easy to bait. The difficulty came from his summons, fragile as they were, - around a dozen of them beelining to you and doing jumping attacks. 3-4 times during my successful attempt. Another thing that the boss was regenerating after getting to ~20% HP, and seeing the bar getting to ~70% was rather discouraging. Preventable, though. *the exception is the second part of the ice area - you had a hole in the middle of it and that's where you needed to go. The boss as well had different movesets in different phases and was less predictable than the others.

Scrolls of Atonement. Not particularly RP-friendly/immersive, but efficient. Considering games cannot track the player's thoughts unless they are clearly expressed (e.g. setting the alignment at character creation) and most actions can have wildly different motivations, removing the alignment system and replacing it with faction-/NPC-specific affiliation/loyalty (e.g. Tyranny) seems preferable. Speaking of writing, comparing to the Larian games, Owlcat's feel tamer or more subtle, though both are rather sarcastic (not the right word, but "over-the-top humourous" does not fit either).

Started Sable. It seems to be a platformer/exploration game and strongly reminds of Shadow of the Colossus in terms of the climbing mechanic, which I like. There are (thankfully, unvoiced) dialogues, but since all options have led to the same replies, I found it meaningless. Slowly replaying the main part of Wasteland 3, trying out different builds and companions. SMGs with explosive ammo are OP.

The new Steam mobile application keeps throwing errors at me, but I was able to customise the four first-showing sections, which still don't quite work. Not sure if one less click is preferable to the pages actually loading.

While I like the Bayonetta series, VA is not something I find essential or important*, and I can't tell the difference between the two voices either way. Considering that it is at most 4 hours of cut-scenes with 1 hour of VA, $4K seem like a decent offer. *In Nioh 2 one of the bosses had spoken lines mid-battle. The speaking did not affect his attack patterns or movement anyhow, but successfully distracted me, so I turned it off for the following attempts. *Player's agency, writing, gameplay systems, optimisation, and QA are essential and often overlooked. Not saying that they are mutually exclusive with VA, but if the funds are limited, VA should go first.

Completed the second DLC for Wasteland 3. Between collecting 3 McGuffins, infinite waves of enemies in every location, and quest markers, it was not impressive. I suppose, it is ironic that the worst aspects of the game, the DLC, had DRM, while the base game did not. The base game was complete, consistent, and trusted that the player is reasonably intelligent or prone to loot every container and corpse and talk to every NPC.

It's down to the personal preferences and habits (and wrists and thumbs not hurting after half an hour with a controller). In my personal experience Dragon's Dogma, a 3rd-person action-RPG, was nigh unplayable with a controller and it was originally released on PS3, but perfectly comfortable and enjoyable with KB+M. The only issue I can think of is the developers being inconsiderate (a**holes) - Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition on PC had awful controls, Dark Souls: Remastered was perfect in that regard, while technically being the same game. I can't remember any problems with Fallout 4, except that dialogue wheel thing, may it be buried and forgotten, which was fixable with mods. So, TES6/Starfield should be fine in that regard.

@BruceVC There are two succubi who can engage in romantic relationship with the PC. Just in case, they are in Wrath of the Righteous. The tieflings and the tentacle monster are in Kingmaker.

The polyamorous option is present in the base game (Kingmaker) and they are surprisingly chill and friendly. The "secret" romance, though, is "why...".

Completed Wasteland 3. An excellent RPG and I wholeheartedly recommend it. Discovered that the DLC are online-only on Steam, so installed the GOG version (had it on both platforms for co-op reasons). Completed the first DLC, "The Battle of Steeltown", which was infuriating on many levels.

Same issue, I was unable to add a list to my post repeatedly on the Grounded Tech Support forums, thus added a screenshot from Notepad.

PC, Steam Single-player (tried both offline and online modes) When I try to start a New Game, the application crashes on the loading screen after naming the yard world. Steps to reproduce:

Thank you for the link. (That looks.. curious. Would say that all portraits are usable if you remove the additional heads and hands, which does not take long, so very nice).

Thank you. The portraits look good. I might try Stable Diffusion at some point.

It looks impressive, despite the issues with faces. If requests are still open, it would be interesting to see Death and Nature Godlikes. ("Painted portrait of a faceless demon paladin with horns in modern digital paining style" and "painted portrait of a male dryad cleric with antlers in modern digital painting style"?)

Mortal Shell. I cleared the last (I think) area. Unlike the previous locations, this one was covered in fog from the start. Considering that there are few landmarks in general, it was not a welcome change. Also there were portals without clear indication where they led. Finally, the deadliest foe in Souls-likes appeared - the gravity. Basically, when the HP depletes the first time, the MC, who is some sort of spirit, gets knocked out of the shell and rolls a bit to the side to get up. Which means instant death on ledges that were numerous in the area. The fall damage was featured in the boss arena as well - in order to reach it, you had to fall and with the assassin shell (Tiel) and without the ability that negates fall damage, you was losing one "life" even before the battle. The boss itself was fairly easy, partially due to the sword being fully upgraded, partially due to it having only 2 combo attacks in the second phase, which led to a rather repetitive but simple battle. On a positive note, the opponents were more diverse, though only 3 new ones, the rest were present in other locations, and the last stretch of the area was reasonably straight-forward and good-looking. And running back out was quite engaging, especially when I saw a row of crossbowwomen on the top of the staircase.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/babylons-fall-is-shutting-down-in-february-2023-just-before-its-first-birthday "BABYLON'S FALL will be ending service on February 28, 2023, 18:00 JST / 09:00 GMT / 01:00 PT. After that point the game, along with any in-game currency and in-game purchased items, will no longer be accessible". It is somehow satisfying to see an MTX-filled online-only GaaS model game shutting down. I was quite fond of the developer before that. I suppose, it will not affect Bayonetta 3, because the publishers, genres and platforms are different.