What are you playing now: The New Thread

[LadyCrimson]

1 hour ago, GhostofAnakin said:

he just stands there looking at the boss until he gets killed. 

He's done that with me occasionally with mobs, haven't noticed on bosses. I think he's just a little buggy at times, gets AI-stuck in a way.  He's also gotten stuck on objects and thus not fighting. Hubby noticed that if Jabber gets the kill-shot, you get less XP, too - I checked that more closely myself and yup, seems to be true, at least with none of the online hotfixes applied.  The thing with Troy still sounds weird. I haven't reached him yet so dunno.

I use Flak's Fade  as an emergency "cheat" and only crit-fire when it's almost over. I went green tree until I got Jabber's rocket launcher then down the blue tree from there. Not sure which tree I'll go to the bottom with, there's a lot of skills I don't care about at all.

Side note: I don't like static-position behemoth sponge bosses in that (I think?) Japanese fashion, where the only challenge is avoiding predictable timed attacks between  bouts of attacking a special crit. spot or whatever. I find such boring. I hope there aren't many more of those. Couldn't stand it when Diablo3 did it with Belial either. BL1's Destroyer or that Rakk Hive was stupid enough. I'm assuming Troy will at least be mobile but he'll have to wait because I let hubby play most of the time on weekends.

Edited October 18, 2019 by LadyCrimson

[Keyrock]

I defeated the Gilded Hunter boss in Code Vein. I've lost count at this point, but that's the... 10th (?) boss I've defeated so far (not counting boss reprisals in The Depths). Anyway, that was my favorite boss fight so far. It took me 4 tries to get the job done. The first few times he roughed me up pretty bad, but over the course of those defeats I learned that

you can't try to fight him when he goes into phase 2. He's way too fast, strong, and aggressive to fight during phase 2, you just need to survive. Eventually he'll tire out and you can go in for the kill.

There was a story bit after said boss fight and it seems that the game has finally revealed the central villain. It was hinted at before, but this pretty much confirmed suspicions.

[MedicineDan]

Ended up going into a confusing temple where I suspect I'll end up facing other enemies a second time.  I'll have to find out tomorrow because it's too late to continue tonight.

[marelooke]

I was playing Shadowrun: Hong Kong, but I got distracted by Tyranny.

I'll show myself out.

Mostly still messing around with Conan Exiles, been building more stuff. Had a Purge spawn inside my base, nasty surprise. That's supposed to only happen if they can't reach whatever they set their sights on, so I'm guessing maybe some of my mob building components aren't correctly recognized by the game since there was kind of a massive gate that was easily reachable... Or the AI is just too stupid to figure out doors and stairs, that's equally likely, really.

[Hawke64]

Started Thief of Thieves. It's a quite nice adventure-stealth game. Though, for some reason my GPU's temperature becomes uncomfortably high. The game's pretty light on polygons-per-model. Thief of Thieves reminds of Seven: The Days Long Gone, but less action-RPG-like.

Started the 3rd playthrough of GreedFall. I've come to admire the ability to publish a completed mostly bug-free game more after several unsuccessful attempts to download one of the recently released RPGs, which seemed to be updated daily, thus resetting the download progress.

[GhostofAnakin]

Borderlands 3 seems so empty of life on each planet.  Seems like literally the only "humans" on each planet are either working with my group or working with the Calypsos.  There doesn't seem to be many people doing their own thing.

I think another thing that makes it seem empty is they opted for multiple planets that are sparsely populated, rather than just one giant planet with a bunch of different "regions" with the various people you meet.  IMO, it lost some of its charm of being set in sort of a desert wasteland and almost feels space-y.

Near the end now (I think).  Only one bug I've found is one of the Typhon logs doesn't seem to want to activate.  So I'm stuck with literally one log unaccounted for, even though I've clicked on the thing multiple times now.  It just never registers as "found" or "played".

[Humanoid]

My CK2 run is petering out to a natural death, just in time to switch to The Outer Worlds. Tried to play a little tall initially with me initially trying to just limit myself to De Jure Italy. But in the end it became crush-or-be-crushed and I had to take bites out of neighbouring realms just to keep up with them, and before I knew it the usual thing had happened and I had all of Italia, Francia and Germania. Truth be told, I don't think the game balance is in a great state at the moment, with too much attention on "sexy" extraneous features like bloodlines and artifacts and not enough on the core game balance. It's been over a year since I played a full game with any serious intent, but somehow Empires seem more stable (and consequently blobby) than ever. India is a perfect red blob ...under the Western Protectorate. Ideally, I don't think something like that should ever be possible without serious abuse of game rules but such is the game right now.

Some of this is probably down to the Jade Dragon CBs (this being the first game I've played with that DLC installed), notably Force Vassalisation. On my own part, gaining (or rather forging) Alexander's bloodline has broken the game apart, with essentially free Kingdom-level CBs allowing me to sweep in and easily rip the heart out of the HRE by taking all of Germany instantly, and doing the same to the Muslim realms in Africa. I think that if I ever play the game again it will probably be with Jade Dragon off, because it feels like it was never balanced properly, and with the announcement of CK3, never probably will.

Crusades are kinda broken too as there's basically no reason for any Catholic ruler to ever turn them down now, but I can't comment on how it is from the perspective of being a Crusade target. It's certainly not something I'd look forward to.

 

P.S. Elective governments are still pants-on-head levels of stupid too.

[the_dog_days]

Wrapped up Jade Empire yesterday. I forgot how bad the combat was. Halfway through I shamelessly turned the difficulty down to easy and started demon frog strong attack spamming just to get through the fights. There were a several of quests I didn't do. One quest wasn't available to me because I didn't have the right 'alignment', another because I didn't want to do the flying mini game, and then I got in too big a rush to wrap it up the main quest to do all of Lord Lao's Furnace so Kang's personal quest wasn't finished. I played Open Palm; the only other time I finished JE I played Closed Fist but aside from getting Death's Hand as a follower and siding with Sun Li, there wasn't as much difference as I thought there would be. Thankfully, JE is blissfully short (both times I've played it took me less than 25 hours and that's doing all or most of the content). Liked it a lot, but it'll likely be another 7+ years before I replay it.

Oh, and Dawn Star is best girl, of course.

Other than that, I returned to my New Game + of Trails of Cold Steel 2 (PC). ToCS 3 is due to come out in North America for the PS4 later this year. If the timeline for 1 and 2 releases are anything to go off of, that means they'll get ported to PC sometime in the next year and a half. I'm waiting for that to happen 'cause I ain't buyin' a console just to play the nest Trails game, despite how much I love the franchise.

Edited October 20, 2019 by the_dog_days

[BruceVC]

41 minutes ago, the_dog_days said:

Wrapped up Jade Empire yesterday. I forgot how bad the combat was. Halfway through I shamelessly turned the difficulty down to easy and started demon frog strong attack spamming just to get through the fights. There were a several of quests I didn't do. One quest wasn't available to me because I didn't have the right 'alignment', another because I didn't want to do the flying mini game, and then I got in too big a rush to wrap it up the main quest to do all of Lord Lao's Furnace so Kang's personal quest wasn't finished. I played Open Palm; the only other time I finished JE I played Closed Fist but aside from getting Death's Hand as a follower and siding with Sun Li, there wasn't as much difference as I thought there would be. Thankfully, JE is blissfully short (both times I've played it took me less than 25 hours and that's doing all or most of the content). Liked it a lot, but it'll likely be another 7+ years before I replay it.

Oh, and Dawn Star is best girl, of course.

Other than that, I returned to my New Game + of Trails of Cold Steel 2 (PC). ToCS 3 is due to come out in North America for the PS4 later this year. If the timeline for 1 and 2 releases are anything to go off of, that means they'll get ported to PC sometime in the next year and a half. I'm waiting for that to happen 'cause I ain't buyin' a console just to play the nest Trails game, despite how much I love the franchise.

Great game Jade Empire, I played it for the first time about 8 years ago on recommendation from members on this forum

And it has some exciting Romance arcs which always adds to the immersive RP element of these types of games 

Edited October 20, 2019 by BruceVC

[Zoraptor]

1 hour ago, the_dog_days said:

Wrapped up Jade Empire yesterday. I forgot how bad the combat was. Halfway through I shamelessly turned the difficulty down to easy and started demon frog strong attack spamming just to get through the fights. There were a several of quests I didn't do. One quest wasn't available to me because I didn't have the right 'alignment', another because I didn't want to do the flying mini game, and then I got in too big a rush to wrap it up the main quest to do all of Lord Lao's Furnace so Kang's personal quest wasn't finished. I played Open Palm; the only other time I finished JE I played Closed Fist but aside from getting Death's Hand as a follower and siding with Sun Li, there wasn't as much difference as I thought there would be. Thankfully, JE is blissfully short (both times I've played it took me less than 25 hours and that's doing all or most of the content). Liked it a lot, but it'll likely be another 7+ years before I replay it.

That was pretty much exactly my experience with JE as well. I enjoyed it mostly, but somehow despite being fairly short for an RPG at 20ish hours it ended up dragging, and the combat quickly became boring. Plus the longer it went on the more overt Biowarisms I hit in terms of plot and characters. The one thing that really disappointed me though was that it had a 'unique' setting, but failed to take much advantage of it and ended up feeling like the standard Bioware game with a Chinese theme; and it really needed a bit more to differentiate it from being KOTOR/ NWN with a Wuxia reskin.

Edited October 20, 2019 by Zoraptor

[MedicineDan]

I've been going through the Beast of Winter DLC for Deadfire.  DLC can be hit or miss, but Obsidian nailed it with this one.  Deadfire is superior to Pillars, at least to my tastes, but Pillars captures the creepy a bit better.  The Beast of Winter does a wonderful job of recreating some of the surreal atmosphere of Pillars.  In fact, Rymrgand is a much more interesting figure in this game.  Still plodding through slavishly whenever I get the chance.  I would say that I hope to finish soon, but I'd be a liar.  I'm having great fun.  Some games feel like a race to the finish or a chore of ferreting out the nitty gritty.  Deadfire is just plain fun.  The sailing is fun.  The NPCs are fun.  The exploration and unfolding story are fun.  Truly an excellent game.  Whenever I waste time hashing out a thorough review, I'll be up front about those issues that detract from my enjoyment, but the fact is, at this point, there are few such things to cite.  Meanwhile, I finished one... side chapter?  in Rymrgand's realm.  Lady said she'd repay me by helping against tall, dark, and bony when I finally have to duke it out.

EDIT:  I just started The Bridge Ablaze. Incredible.  I don't know were' they'll go with this, but it's ****ing brilliant!  Even if they screw it up in execution, the underlying idea is just phenomenal!

Edited October 21, 2019 by MedicineDan

[GhostofAnakin]

Finished the main story in Borderlands 3.  That final boss fight was ... what the heck?  After the previous bosses being a chore with their million HP and area attacks that kill you in two hits, this one was insanely easy.  Like, really easy to the point where after I won the fight I was waiting for the boss to stand right back up and be like, "You didn't think it would be this easy, did you?" before morphing into a more powerful version with a trillion more HP and dangerous attacks.

But that never happened.  The final boss fight really was that easy.

Not sure if I want to play through it again.  I kind of want to reach Level 50 just to unlock that trophy (yeah, yeah), but other than that I'm not really invested enough in the story or deal with some of the more annoying boss fights to go through it again.

[bugarup]

12 hours ago, the_dog_days said:

I played Closed Fist but aside from getting Death's Hand as a follower and siding with Sun Li, there wasn't as much difference as I thought there would be.

You can also kick those tiny yappy dogs in the city if you're sufficiently evil!  Anyway, I love Jade Empire, warts and all. Combat on KBM sucks, but I just set it on easy and then plod with Frogbert and later Statue everywhere. But my, that game is so pretty -- Tien's Landing with its sunset, the city, the eerie cemetery, the gloomy forest, the spirit fox place, Assassins Inc. HQ -- all distinctive locations and all beautiful in their own way. I keep reinstalling that game just to run about soaking up the view. 

[Keyrock]

I defeated the Successor of the Claw boss in Code Vein, first try too. It was less about figuring out her patterns and more about I just happened to have the best, or nearly the best, setup of blood code(class), gifts(abilities), and equipment when I faced her. She hit me quite a bit, but I was able to tank and regen through it well enough to keep myself alive. I came close to dropping once, but survived it, found my opening, and went all out to deal the finishing blow before she recovered.

If I had to guess, I'd say I'm about 2/3 of the way through the game now. They keep giving me new blood codes to work with, and with them new sets of gifts to inherit, it's pretty impressive the sheer amount of build options available, and I'm sure I haven't seen them all yet.

[LadyCrimson]

Well I'm stuck on Troy. I've gotten him down to about 1/4 health a couple times but invariably between input lag and controller drift I miss a timing or two with his main attack and I die. He's a two hits and you're out + you can hardly see anything while in FFYL, plus his attacks kill the little guys to get 2nd winds off most of the time. Cheap. Looks like it's going to be a matter of doing it repeatedly until you get lucky and don't miss any avoidance timings.

Only story boss so far that's gotten the better of me. The rest were pretty easy.  Pffft.

 

Edit: the funny thing tho, is with money grenades and all the running/jumping around, you can make oodles of money even as you're dying all the time. It's hilarious. I've made 100's of thousands even tho I've died like 20 times. LOL

Edited October 22, 2019 by LadyCrimson

[MedicineDan]

Finished Beast of Winter.  Judging from the fact that my characters are down to the next to last tier on their skills tree leads me to believe I'm almost done.  I can't imagine getting more that four or five more levels at this point.  Currently at 18th level.  I took Ydwin with me, but I prefer Serefen.  I will say that Ydwin is the only NPC  defaulted to multiclass and it seems to me that Rogue and Cipher complement each other well.  Makes me think they did it that way because it's an easy multiclass to ease people into exploring multiclass options.  I'm not a multiclass fan.  I'm not sure how it works, but it seems to me that there is no specific special abilities gained from multiclass, only a broader array of lower level abilities.  As far as I'm concerned, it's not worth losing the highest tiers just to dabble in a couple different mid tiers.  Now, that's undoubtedly a characteristic of my personality.  Ironically, considering my real life, I prefer my characters to be a master of one class rather than a jack-of-all classes.

So, I faced big and bony again.  I convinced her to come with me the first time, but then I did something uncharacteristic and reloaded because I didn't know if the game would allow me to destroy her later and that had to happen.  On reloading, I fought her and she handled me easily.  At some point, and I don't know when, I simply couldn't penetrate her defenses with anything other than spells.  I also foolishly empowered an attack, which missed anyway, and didn't recharge the abilities on my mage.   The third time, I convinced her to go after Destructo on her own, whereupon I ended up fighting the avatar of Dudenheim.  He went down like a ton of rocks on the first try.  I didn't even have to get all that creative during the battle.

It's quite possible that The Beast of Winter has become my favorite DLC/expac evar.  I'm completely surprised by the brilliant design.  There were some small things that could occasionally be a downer, such as having to use transport portals to a bunch of different places that made exploring a bitch, but even that didn't get to me.  The truly shocking and fascinating twists that they put into The Bridge Ablaze portion really explained things in a way that I don't see how people could truly understand the entire story without playing it.  It makes me wonder if they had that in mind when they created Pillars One, like laying bare the outer layers of an onion and peeling them away to find the inside.  Whoever worked on that portion did a superb job... and then enchanted it to legendary.

[Keyrock]

I defeated the Successor of the Throat boss in Code Vein, first try. That makes 2 bosses in a row I have beaten first try. I don't know if I'm overleveled or have just gotten better at the game, either way, I'll take it. I'm surprised I survived, I was down to a sliver of health with no healing left for the last 30 seconds or so of that fight, I thought for sure I'd fall. With the victory I picked up another new blood code, this one perfect for an offensive caster build. Not my jam, but there is at least 1 gift I very much want to inherit from this blood code.

[Hurlshort]

I don't understand any of the posts about Code Vein. Like, I know what the words mean individually, but the sentences that are constructed using those words seem like an impenetrable puzzle. 

[Humanoid]

It's utterly inscrutable to me as well, though that also applies to the far more common scenario of people talking about Pokemon.

[ShadySands]

I don't understand many of the screenshots either but I still enjoy being exposed to all this stuff I wouldn't even know existed if not for good people like Melkathi and Keyrock

[Keyrock]

41 minutes ago, Hurlshot said:

I don't understand any of the posts about Code Vein. Like, I know what the words mean individually, but the sentences that are constructed using those words seem like an impenetrable puzzle. 

blood code = character class

gift = special ability

inherit = master the gift so that it can be used by other blood codes

They could just simply call things what they are instead of substituting fancy words and phrases to make things more confusing, but it's a (very) Japanese game and Japan gonna Japan. 

Edited October 23, 2019 by Keyrock

[ShadySands]

On 10/20/2019 at 7:44 AM, Humanoid said:

snip

Similar thing has been happening to me when I try to play as a count or duke and end up an emperor.  I started a game a couple of days ago with the intention of taking over Latium as a pagan and just seeing how long I could defend it before the Christians tried to take it back and today I'm the emperor of a restored Roman Empire.

[the_dog_days]

8 hours ago, Keyrock said:

blood code = character class

gift = special ability

inherit = master the gift so that it can be used by other blood codes

They could just simply call things what they are instead of substituting fancy words and phrases to make things more confusing, but it's a (very) Japanese game and Japan gonna Japan. 

Ya gotta love it when they take an English adjective, slap an 's' on the end and use it as a plural noun.

[Keyrock]

I beat a couple more boss fights in Code Vein. The first was 2 bosses in 1 fight, the Cannoneer and the Blade Bearer. I defeated them on the first try and I was never that close to death. I figured out what to do very quickly in that battle. The next boss I will not name because spoilers, but it was a much tougher battle. It took me 6 attempts to get the job done. I have now entered what I believe is the final area of the game with, presumably, 1 boss fight remaining. Hopefully the final encounter is suitably epic. The game hasn't disappointed yet, so I'm confident it won't be a QTE final boss or something similarly bull****.

[GhostofAnakin]

Looking forward to the Outer Worlds on Friday.  Early reviews suggest I'm going to enjoy it.