What are you playing right now?

[Humanoid]

There's a reason I have several hundred hours in XCOM1 but just the one campaign worth 40 hours or whatever in XCOM 2. Didn't even bother buying the expansion.

 

Granted that's probably not a fair comparison because realistically about 3/4 of the time in XCOM1 was with the Long War mod. Vanilla XCOM I did one normal campaign, one classic campaign, and one classic campaign with the expansion.

[GhostofAnakin]

My biggest issue as I go farther in the game is the fact everything happens so quickly (the "timer" for the enemy finishing their project and me being forced to do "main story" missions), except for my scientific stuff.  It's moving at a snail's crawl, and honestly I can't even keep track because most of the projects seem to just be main quest related.  When I try and do equipment or technology-related stuff, it takes forever and I end up falling behind in the timer.

 

It feels almost like they don't even want you to explore the various different things you can research and instead should just focus exclusively on the "mission" related stuff.

[Katphood]

Yakuza 0.

 

Training my staff so I can beat Club Mars in a duel. I've lost once so far, so I guess I have to run the club until my staff are better experienced. Though I still don't understand why certain customization/training are only available for Yuki Chan and not the other staff.

Edited August 1, 2018 by Katphood

[213374U]

 

UFO: Enemy Unknown > XCOM 2 > XCOM

Baldur's Gate > Divinity Original Sin 2 > Divinity Original Sin

 

 

I see a pattern here....

 

#JustSonicThings

 

Fixed that for you. And yeah, there's a pattern.

 

 

 

 

(currently going through BGEE btw. I simply CANNOT describe how much I hate huge empty areas filled with random groups of 1-5 skeletons or gibberlings. Thank Todd Howard we've moved past that)

[majestic]

To be honest I think that Baldur's Gate 2 is a much better game than Baldur's Gate, but I recognize that the reason I have an issue with the empty areas is because I just can't leave them be. The obsessive having to look everywhere problem is also ruining most (semi-)open world games for me. Especially those where most of what you do is busywork. There's a reason I spent 160 hours on Dragon Age: Inquisition and it wasn't because the game was so great it warranted the time invested.

 

I'd still rather replay BG than D:OS. I get bored in the first area already, and I've only seen it once. Even Bioware's dreaded first level offerings were more interesting. It took me longer to get sick of Taris or Chataeu Irenicus than Cyceal...

[Chilloutman]

Hah seems i was only one who liked that 'exploration' feel of first BG. Granted some encounters were just filler and once you played through game at least once exploration dies out a bit but still, there were some quite memorable quests outside for its time. I would love to see some combination of BG1 maps and Fallout overwolrd map traveling

[Mamoulian War]

I liked exploration of BG1 more than BG2 as well. Although the encounters on some of them were real pain in the ass.

[Humanoid]

I tried BG1 sometime after BG2 - probably after IWD2 too, and only got maybe a couple of screens out of Candlekeep. And that was back when I still liked party-based RPGs, something decidedly not the case today.

Edited August 1, 2018 by Humanoid

[melkathi]

I played BG 1 and enjoyed it for one 80 hour playthrough.

My pc at the time couldn't cope with BG 2, so never played it and don't have the patience anymore to try now.

[kastle]

Me for now I play Dead Island.

[Humanoid]

I only bought BG2 because I had a $20 Electronics Boutique voucher from a PC gaming magazine that I needed to use that month.

 

I wonder if I'd even be posting here right now if that never happened, because I registered for the BIS forums to follow IWD2 which came afterwards. That of course only because I ended up liking BG2 way more than I expected to. Not a game I could play today though, my tastes have changed far too much in the intervening years. God, it's been almost 20 years since BG2. Hold me.

[majestic]

I finished a quest in Octopath Traveler without even knowing there was one. I just randomly challenged townsfolk to duels and after one my characters gave a verbal smackdown to someone and cashed in 20k. I'm a bit confused now, but that's okay, I'll just be looking up what the quest was about.

[SonicMage117]

 

UFO: Enemy Unknown > XCOM 2 > XCOM

Baldur's Gate > Divinity Original Sin 2 > Divinity Original Sin

 

 

I see a pattern here....

 

#JustSonicThings

Fixed that for you. And yeah, there's a pattern.

Nostalgia will be the blinding death of us all!!!

 

 

To add to the current convo, yes I agree that the exploration of the first BG was more authentic, but the activity of the second is what pulled me in.

 

Essentially, BG2 is like Skyrim minus the unused territory of course. That said, I hit the head right on the nail - as America would say.

 

With the exception of badly written characters of D&D world, I very much enjoyed the games. Not my favorite but recommended.

 

"Gotta get fries Boo, GOTTA GET FRIES"

Edited August 1, 2018 by SonicMage117

[Gfted1]

"Gotta get fries Boo, GOTTA GET FRIES"

*squints*

 

Not sure if serious.

[HoonDing]

"Gotta get fries Boo, GOTTA GET FRIES"

 

[SadExchange]

Some Titan Quest on the switch after playing some Ghost 1.0. Tomorrow Salt and Sanctuary and then Dead Cells next week. As always, need more time.......lol

[GhostofAnakin]

XCOM2 does it again.  So, I know I said I was giving up, but I tried to slog through again.  I'm doing a mission to lower the Avatar project bar, and everything's going well.  My squad is handling the enemies and even sets up the bomb with minimal issues (one of my soldier's took a hit, but survived).  So now I've cleaned up the map of all enemies and set the bomb.

 

And suddenly those snake men drop out of literally nowhere as I'm about to escape.  Like, what?  They weren't there, then 3 of them (plus an insectoid) just show up out of the blue.

 

This is supposed to be a strategy game where if you plan properly (ie. position your troops well), you should do well.  But when the game literally makes enemies pop out of thin air for no reason other than to heighten the difficulty of reaching the extraction zone, it becomes idiotic.

[marelooke]

Well, I finished up my Fallout 4 playthrough. Given that I spent most of my time messing with settlements, radiant quests (gotta get materials for building them settlements!) and mods and avoiding anything main quest related I managed to reach lvl135 after completing the main quest (which felt actually even more anticlimactic than I feared, tbh)

 

Given how I went about this playthrough I didn't interact with most "main" characters for most of the game so I established a personality for my character (as one tends to do), but then I get to meet $IMPORTANT_CHARACTER in $SUPPOSEDLY_EMOTIONAL_SITUATION and the voice acting is totally off with the personality I created in my head. That's just a pretty great way to destroy any semblance of immersion left by the terrible writing.

So the voice acting (which was good) ended up often detracting from the situation, so I'd still greatly prefer a silent protagonist in my open world sandboxes in the future. Thanks.

 

The factions also weren't particularly appealing, all 4 of them are basically idealistic zealots: the Minutemen are your "stupid good" faction, the BoS are your fascist militaristic faction, the Railroad are your synth-loving hippies and The Institute are your typical loopy scientists lacking a moral compass.

They're also way too in your face, which was arguably already a problem in Skyrim (hey, did you know? I heard Aventus Aretino is performing a ritual to summon the Dark Brotherhood!). I wonder if it's even possible to finish the game without being inducted into either the Railroad or the BoS.

 

If nothing else I hope Bethesda finally gets the memo that "forcing" a family bond on the player does not usually work, there might be companies and games that can make it work, but Bethesda is not one of those companies and FO/TES are not among those games. Sure players need some sort of motivation to do stuff, but something like getting shot and left for dead provides ample motivation without forcibly trying to establish an emotional relationship.

 

Anyway, got my money's worth out of the game, mostly thanks to the modding community, without which I most certainly would have shelved the game ages ago. I'll probably muck around with it more at some point, though whether I'll ever bother finishing another playthrough...not so sure.

Edited August 3, 2018 by marelooke

[GhostofAnakin]

I'm a glutton for punishment.  Since I'm a completionist, I'm trying to push through XCOM 2.  Yet another mission where it's basically impossible.  Two berzerkers, two mutons, a couple of those lancers, and a couple of shield builders.  And all while I have to rescue 6 hostages.

 

Yeah, that's totally fair.

 

The worst part is it takes so damn long to build anything.  So I haven't built the shadow chamber, haven't built the PSI ops chamber, haven't been able to upgrade my squad to 5, etc.

 

I feel as though I'm essentially a Level 2 character who is suddenly being put in missions that require Level 20 abilities I don't have access to yet.

[Katphood]

Played some more Fable against all odds. It got a bit better once I got to Bowerstone, it seems as if people have their own schedules but...do they?! 

[Bartimaeus]

For the most part, not really.

[HoonDing]

You could kill your wife in Fable and get a new one a minute later by doing some poses. Hilarious game.

[Katphood]

You could kill your wife in Fable...

 

 

*stops playing Yakuza*

 

*Starts playing Fable*

[Fenixp]

Binging on Star Traders: Frontiers since yesterday.

Great news is that, as of yet, I did not have to do any star trading whatsoever - I did, however, investigate a political play between two factions which spanned throughout an array of quests and side-quests, did some minor diplomatic missions across friendly systems, told a whole bunch of pirates and mercenaries to feel free to investigate my cargo hold as it was entirely empty, pissed a bunch of people off, encountered a Xeno ship multiple times, and found out that my chief engineer is a greedy POS, but damn good at his job. I also explored a bunch of uninhabited worlds and locations, mostly to find resources or pirate stashes. There's a ton of other things to be found tho...

 

Not so great news is that while this may very well be the best freeform story generator thing I've ever played, it still doesn't quite hit the mark with me. I mean, I'm enjoying the hell out of it and can see myself playing it for loads of time, especially when I understand the mechanics better and when I'll be able to fully build my own captain, with the attributes I want, ship I want and crew I want, but that'll still take a bit of time.

 

In other news, Captain Snape's mug is so ugly I may buy him a helmet.

 

Edit: Oh yeah, I also learned just how easy it is to make a side-view 4-lane combat system with absolutely no impact or weight to it, and thus appreciate Darkest "Executed with impunity!" Dungeon system even more.

Edited August 3, 2018 by Fenixp

[SonicMage117]

 

You could kill your wife in Fable...

 

*stops playing Yakuza*

 

*Starts playing Fable*

It's quite strange that you can do things in Fable that you can't do in other rpg's.

 

But there's nothing really that you can do in other rpg's that you can't you can't do in Fable. Despite its shortcomings, the vision was huge and it shows in the situations that the game allows for.

 

Kinda reminds me of the freedom that Larian gives players in Divinity Original Sin series (in different ways of course).