What Are You Playing Now: The meaning of life

[Malcador]

21 hours ago, HoonDing said:

Is that the game where you cook up some pure alcohol in the police lab so you can drive a beggar drunk and steal his money to make a phone call?

Yep.  Not even the stupidest thing in this game so far. I chucked a handful of salt on a mausoleum which caused it to collapse.

[Ophiuchus]

I finally got around to Neverwinter Nights 2 (complete set on GOG) and have been playing the original campaign off and on the last few weeks. Some aspects like the camera, inventory management, and commands have aged awfully but I think I've discovered how to navigate around them. The story is baseline and simple, but I'm cool with it since deconstructions and in-your-face meta-commentary have been done to death at this point.

I'm also getting ready for the next Diablo 3 season (my old college buddies and I traditionally play it every November) as well as my yearly Final Fantasy 3/6 run: another tradition in that I've played through it once a year since '97.

[Tale]

Got dragged back into Destiny 2. I'm not sure why, it always fail to live up to the promise it presents.

Previously, it was nice coming in late to enjoy stuff after it had settled. But this time they deleted half the game.

[LadyCrimson]

Death Stranding looks so good on an OLED screen.  

Also checked out the one new change to Borderlands 3 that is rather nice - a new Mayhem mode that is M10 difficulty but zero of the weird modifiers applied. You just lose some of the higher drop rate/xp increase percentage that normal M10 would have.  Very nice not to have to deal with death spheres, ground turning to lava, lowered crits, and rerolling modifiers forever.  I wish you could apply that to all the M-modes.  Just not into that weird stuff, give me straight ARPG sponge increasing.

[MedicineDan]

Going through Stygian Lovecraft game.  I restarted because I thought I could do a better job and then got busy, but I have some time coming up.  I want to finish it and then look into other Lovecraftian games.

[Mamoulian War]

Getting slowly to the finish of Shadowrun Hong Kong. The game feels more like book than a game Or more like Visual Novel with a fight now and then Just got to little bit of over 40 hours of gameplay

[Keyrock]

I'm in the early stages of Yakuza: Like a Dragon. Unlike the previous Yakuza games, this isn't an action/adventure game, rather it's a RPG. Not RPG-Lite either, this is a full-fledged, old skool, turn-based jRPG, complete with stats, skills, equipment, summons, the whole shebang. So far I have a party of 3: Kasuga (the main protagonist), Nanba (a bum), and Adachi (ex-cop). I think max party size is 4 and it's implied that eventually I can get more companions than I can field at once. I'm assuming Kasuga always has to be in the party.

Anyway, the change in combat system works really well. Beyond that, it's a Yakuza game through and through; full of drama, charm, heart, and with a healthy dose of wacky shenanigans. 

Edited November 19, 2020 by Keyrock

[Malcador]

Finished Mystery of Druids, that last puzzle was pretty funny, I recalled someone here saying "stab the girlfriend", so...that was it.  I must be dumb as I never really would have come to that conclusion otherwise.  Not a...terrible game. Some of the puzzles are pretty out there, I found the monastery bit confusing as I'd no idea what to do. 

 

All in all, well worth $2.  No more.

 

Now on to Secret FIles : Tunguska.  As I can't stop playing weird German adventure games..

[BruceVC]

Im still playing  Divinity 2 and I think I am really getting into it and finally appreciating the way combat works around RTWP 

Last week I nearly stopped playing as I losing most battles as I was level 4 and had left Fort Joy and was literally battling to survive in places like Hallow Marsh. But I then started adopting a much better combat strategy and ensured any party members who basically were Tanks were equipped better and I started being more strategic around magic usage 

Anyway once I got to level 5 and 6 the combat became much more manageable and I also now understand the RPG mechanics unique to this type of Larian game  

[BruceVC]

9 hours ago, MedicineDan said:

Going through Stygian Lovecraft game.  I restarted because I thought I could do a better job and then got busy, but I have some time coming up.  I want to finish it and then look into other Lovecraftian games.

I have always loved the concept of the Lovecraft universe and I tried to get into one or 2 of the PC games that are set in this world 

I started playing Cthulhu : Dark Corners and I wasnt impressed, I stopped after about 3 hours 

Maybe the latest game, 2018, Call of Cthulhu will be better. I am not sure what game you playing ?

[Oner]

14 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

I have always loved the concept of the Lovecraft universe and I tried to get into one or 2 of the PC games that are set in this world 

I started playing Cthulhu : Dark Corners and I wasnt impressed, I stopped after about 3 hours 

Maybe the latest game, 2018, Call of Cthulhu will be better. I am not sure what game you playing ?

 

[Hawke64]

Nioh. It seems to be an action game with light RPG elements. The controls are rebindable and quite comfortable, though, on-screen prompts refer to controller buttons. The graphics and sound (OST, VA) are good, but most lines that are supposed to be in Japanese are a bit too authentic (the VA is in Japanese with English subtitles, which I rarely read during gameplay, because everything kills me in 2 hits).

The story starts with the protagonist who is a privateer in the 16th century England. He is locked in the Tower of London and his bird-fish-spirit friend comes to rescue. She (they?) shows the PC a way out, but then the spirit gets kidnapped by a bald guy in dark robe and with glowing tattoos, who initiates the second phase of the first boss battle shortly before that. Then the PC (in a full set of heavy armor) falls from the wall into the river and escapes successfully (by swimming, of course). Then the PC is shown pursuing (?) the bald guy by ship. As I understand, they all travel to Japan to mine some mystical mineral, called "Amrita". The PC disembarks in a random village and goes forth to slay demons and find his spirit friend. So he ventures to a random ship, finds a bigger demon there, slays it (took around 6 attempts) and sets the ship on fire (not sure if it was intentional).

I suppose, the story is not the main selling point, but this was somehow too random. The PC version also includes a helmet with a valve for better immersion.

The combat and level design are quite decent, but each level is disconnected from others, i.e. there is no interconnectivity between locations.

[Gorth]

Grrrr!

I definitely made some bad choices when it comes to base placement in Xenonauts. Soviet Union, North America and Australia. Bad, bad bad... half the world is outside radar range. I made the mistake of looking at initial economic benefits of having bases in the Soviet Union and later North America. I can either build 3 more bases or just pretend half the world doesn't exist. South America, Africa and Indonesia are pissed off at me

Lesson learnt for the next run through the game. Go for Europe, Central America and Indonesia instead if wanting to limit it to 3 bases.

[Mamoulian War]

Hmm I think I've had my bases in South America, North Africa and one more, which I do not remember anymore. But the covered almost 90% of the land with maximum upgraded radars. The income was maybe not very stellar, but I was able to deal with aliens everywhere.

[Malcador]

Secret Files: Tunguska isn't terrible so far, but not holding out much promise to get any better given the VA (Everyone sounds generic American even though they are Russians and Germans, it's Syberia 3 all over again). 

[HoonDing]

I still haven't played Secret Files 3 and likely won't

Best game from that dev is Lost Horizon really

Edited November 20, 2020 by HoonDing

[Keyrock]

Is Secret Files a point & click or a hidden object series? (I realize there is quite a bit of similarity between the two genres)

[Malcador]

7 hours ago, Keyrock said:

Is Secret Files a point & click or a hidden object series? (I realize there is quite a bit of similarity between the two genres)

Point and Click

[LadyCrimson]

Can anyone tell me how much you can "ignore" the main story in The Witcher 3?  That is, how much do you have to do in order to access all the main open areas/crafting etc?  That kind of thing. Example:  in Morrowind I largely just ran around doing "stuff" and raising skills/exploring, fighting/collecting and building houses (mods).  I never even joined a faction.  :P

[Zoraptor]

Hmm. The ultimate problem is that Morrowind and Witcher 3 are fundamentally different approaches to an open world RPG. You can't really play Witcher 3 as if you were playing Morrowind. You can ignore the main plot almost entirely eventually, but to reach that point you do have to do a fair bit of the main plot first.

First issue would be that Witcher 3 isn't a fully seamless world like Morrowind. You don't start off on the 'big' map, you start off in a far smaller one called White Orchard. You have to do the main quest line there to get to the main map, though it isn't a particularly onerous set of quests. The main issue you'd face with that Morrowind style approach though would be that the 'plot' questlines in Witcher 3 tend to be those that give you lots of experience, there isn't level scaling and the skill system is not an 'improve by use' one but a far more orthodox 'level up and gain an ability' one. If you don't do the main quests you'd run out of level appropriate content and over leveled enemies are exponentially more... well, they aren't particularly hard to kill in most cases, but they have so many HP relative to your damage that they take forever to kill, and if you run into more than one of them or one with the wrong attack type you effectively have to run away or die.

[Oner]

3 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

Can anyone tell me how much you can "ignore" the main story in The Witcher 3?  That is, how much do you have to do in order to access all the main open areas/crafting etc?  That kind of thing. Example:  in Morrowind I largely just ran around doing "stuff" and raising skills/exploring, fighting/collecting and building houses (mods).  I never even joined a faction. 

The world opens up once you finish the prologue, apart from that Skellige is locked off behind a short side quest. Unfortunately you'll still be gated off by every area having a level range, though tackling enemies up to 4-5 higher than yours is feasible.

@Zoraptor While it's true that main story quests give you a ton of xp (and I think they're not subject to diminishing xp if you do them above level?), I did them last in each given area and was still consistently over-leveled, to the point that -and despite- most quests gave me between 5 and 125~ xp.

[Zoraptor]

It's based on a lot of the early quests being story related and the main early level area being a pretty small section of Velen. A decent number of non plot quests (or non direct plot quests) are also soft gated behind the initial main plot quests in the area too (eg there's about half a dozen non main plot quests that require you to have met Keira, which is a main plot quest). It's a lot more ignoreable after the first sets though certainly.

Some of the early non main line quests are also hard to complete (the ghoul one by the bridge in particular where you have to keep someone alive) and several feature annoying enemies where an extra level or two makes a lot of difference.

OTOH, there really isn't any reason to actively avoid the main plot in Witcher 3 and several of its plot lines are really good, while if memory serves me correctly it was really easy to avoid the main plot in Morrowind, even by accident (that was the game where it seemed no one could find Caius Cossades?).

[uuuhhii]

6 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

Can anyone tell me how much you can "ignore" the main story in The Witcher 3?  That is, how much do you have to do in order to access all the main open areas/crafting etc?  That kind of thing. Example:  in Morrowind I largely just ran around doing "stuff" and raising skills/exploring, fighting/collecting and building houses (mods).  I never even joined a faction. 

play main story first are a good way to level up quickly

but the map full of question mark are so distracting

often forgot what the last main story quest was about when finally get back to do the next one

[LadyCrimson]

54 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

OTOH, there really isn't any reason to actively avoid the main plot in Witcher 3 and several of its plot lines are really good

I don't feel like listening/watching to tons of "hey we're cinema" cutscenes and hours of talking heads if I don't have to. When I tried the game ages ago (I do own it already, btw), so much went on and on and on, people talking for long minutes at times, that I just didn't care to listen after a while. I just wanted to explore, as usual. 

 

[kanisatha]

2 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

I don't feel like listening/watching to tons of "hey we're cinema" cutscenes and hours of talking heads if I don't have to. When I tried the game ages ago (I do own it already, btw), so much went on and on and on, people talking for long minutes at times, that I just didn't care to listen after a while. I just wanted to explore, as usual. 

Once you get past the first little part of the game, yes you can just explore and kill stuff and do side quests while ignoring the main questline. It is exactly how I tend to replay the game. You can also opt to do certain bits of the main questline without completing the whole questline. The game is very flexible in this regard and allows you to do whatever you want. Eventually you'll run out of things to kill and places to explore, with only the main questline still available to you. For me, that's my cue to go find another game to play.