What are you Playing Now? Games = Life

[ShadySands]

Is there a trial? 

[Chilloutman]

Dinged lvl 100 on my 3rd char. Now I have to pimp him out, but as I know myself I will soon just start another one xD

 

[Hurlshort]

3 hours ago, ShadySands said:

Is there a trial? 

Not that I've seen. They don't seem to be hurting for numbers, since I'm in a queue right now. 

[Katphood]

Wait...Psychonauts 2 ain't getting a physical release?! Seems to me that only the fig backers are getting a physical copy.

 

Both Microsoft and Doublefine Productions can kiss my hairy Iranian a**.

[Malcador]

Bored as well in D2R, must just be that Act 2 sucks, heh.  Didn't play that much of it back in the day, so am really approaching it fresh.  Remaster is pretty well done though, game looks good, sound good.

[Chilloutman]

16 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Bored as well in D2R, must just be that Act 2 sucks, heh.  Didn't play that much of it back in the day, so am really approaching it fresh.  Remaster is pretty well done though, game looks good, sound good.

GO with Grim Dawn than!

I am waiting for ladder for D2R before I even try it

[Hurlshort]

New World is very fun so far. It plays a lot like Guild Wars 2 in terms of gameplay. There is a lot of resource harvesting options, and so far the story is interesting. It is definitely an MMO, but it is nice to have a new one to play. 

[Keyrock]

I finished the main story in Lost Judgment. If you've played RGG games before, you know the drill. While there's a lot of levity in side content the main story is all gripping drama. The ending had all of the emotions: Tragedy, heartbreak, anger, it was bittersweet because there was justice but at a severe price, but it was also uplifting because there was the culmination of a great redemption arc. There's not many things more uplifting than a well executed redemption arc.

Anyway, I have tons of side quests and school stories left to complete in Premium Adventure.

 

[LadyCrimson]

16 hours ago, Malcador said:

Bored as well in D2R, must just be that Act 2 sucks, heh.  Didn't play that much of it back in the day, so am really approaching it fresh.  Remaster is pretty well done though, game looks good, sound good.

Act 2 was always the least interesting Act, outside of Hardfore Chr. Killer Mr. Duriel. I would almost never go back to it/farm there with high level characters.
I haven't bothered yet because honestly I played D2 for 3-4 years, maybe 4k-5k hours. The remake looks good and more stash sounds nice (although I had D2 mods that allowed that in single-player anyway) but I have a feeling after an hour admiring the new look and any QoL changes, I'd stop caring. Perhaps one rainy day.

Tales of Arise: progressed story.  There was this huge segment (20-30 minutes?) of nothing but dialogue cutscenes and skits, all mandatory or auto-triggered. One after another after another. That's a bit much. I hope that's not the start of a trend, but oh well whatever. I still love the action/environment etc. so I can put up with it until post-game anyway. They weren't all boring, but again the general writing style doesn't really work for me. They're either preaching or giving each other inspirational "you/we can do it!" speeches or something and because they go on for far too long I sorta fall asleep.

Edited September 30, 2021 by LadyCrimson

[Mamoulian War]

For me the most boring was always Act 3, the jungle and the exploding creeps were pain in the ass, which made the game a chore for me whenever I got there.

[Malcador]

Almost done, that Arcane Sanctuary was a pain in the ass, especially with my rogue merc getting lost every so often.  One shotting the Summoner was funny, didn't even realize I killed him.  

[Hurlshort]

New World has some pretty good weapon builds, but so far my favorite is the hatchet. I'm having a lot of fun doing my Last of the Mohicans impression in the game.

[ShadySands]

9 minutes ago, Hurlsnot said:

Last of the Mohicans

Lucky! I took the "which Daniel Day-Lewis character are you?" test and got Lincoln. 

Must avoid the theater

[melkathi]

Trying to do the test but if has this question:

Which is most important to you:

Happiness

Morals

Power

Doing the right thing

 

Doing the right thing is Morals.

 

[Malcador]

5 hours ago, melkathi said:

Doing the right thing is Morals.

Not if you work for an Intelligence agency

[LadyCrimson]

10 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

For me the most boring was always Act 3, the jungle and the exploding creeps were pain in the ass, which made the game a chore for me whenever I got there.

Yeah those Fetishes were super annoying, especially if a crunchy sorceress. On the other hand. teleport let me avoid them a lot of time. Those Act 2 tomb guys who raised the dead or summoned skeletons or something could be a serious PITA too if you didn't kill them fast enough. Actually, thinking back on it, I think I liked Act1 the best, then Act 4, then Act5.  The only reason one went back to Act3 was to farm Mephisto over and over and over and ... honestly the main appeal for me re: Diablo games was starting completely over from lvl1 and the loot hunt. Which was sort of missing in D3 - loot just wasn't as fun, stats/uniques/sets etc wise, imo.

Edited September 30, 2021 by LadyCrimson

[Malcador]

Duriel was indeed an experience

[melkathi]

I played the first mission of the Starship Troopers RTS Demo.

First impression is that it's better than Dawn of War 3. Though that isn't too hard.

It is a bit stressful in that you have to position your units correctly. The game has line of fire, so you can't shoot through friendly units. You can't therefor just run around with Attack-moves as a murder ball.

[uuuhhii]

didn't play anything for the last two days after pc broke again and couldn't run chrome while play some video file upside down

but resuming trickster run of pathfinder wotr now

really miss all the 24 hours crazy buff angel get

[Sarex]

Still on GoW new game +. Killing the last 2 Valkyrie and then Sigrun... Wondering how much of a pain she is on new game plus (on the hardest dificulty).

[LadyCrimson]

On 9/29/2021 at 11:08 PM, LadyCrimson said:

There was this huge segment (20-30 minutes?) of nothing but dialogue cutscenes and skits, all mandatory or auto-triggered. One after another after another. That's a bit much. I hope that's not the start of a trend,

It is. A trend. I try to be patient but it's starting to be a tad annoying, because almost none of it feels important to furthering plot or chr. arcs, at least not for me. I'm clicking thru most skits faster and faster and faster ... Death Stranding had some super long cutscenes and things but at least they were intriguing sometimes...Tales of Arise writing is just long, dry repetition. Male lead is particularly one-note. I won't explain but ... sigh.

...my husbando makes it worth it tho.  
...and the environments keep getting prettier/better. I just wish some of the areas were a little bigger. Don't need "open world" or huge, just ... a little bigger.

[the_dog_days]

Just finished The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel 4. Man, this a long time in coming. CS4 isn't just the conclusion to the Cold Steel subseries, but also the end of the main story of Trails in the western half of Zemuria (the name of the continent on which the games take place). (While Trails of Reverie is supposed to be the last Trails game on the western side of Zemuria, from what I understand Reverie is a denouement while CS4 is the conclusion to the primary conflict.) I've said about a million times, but the Trails games are the Marvel Cinematic Universe of video game series. Each games ties into the overall story and forwards parts of each of the other plot lines. It's crazy to think that this all began back in 2004 when the first Trails in the Sky game dropped in Japan. Zemuria has changed a lot since then in the game world and in the technology used to create it. It's hard to go into detail about CS4 without diving headfirst into spoilers, so instead here's a list of things it did well and a list of things it didn't do so well.

 

The Good

Wrapping Up Minor Plot Threads--There were very minor NPC plot threads that I haven't seen in so long I forgot they even existed that the writers still went out of their way to conclude. Some of them going as far back as Sky 1. Most of these were satisfying and you could tell the devs put a lot of thought into them, including in some lingering questions that fans had long since given up on expecting any real conclusion on.

Combat Evolution Over the Series--Trails games have turn based combat but they've always had hidden or semi-hidden mechanics that if you dig into can really break the game. Over time they ditched the hidden mechanics to make combat more transparent and consequently more engaging. If you don't like turn based or if you hate crazy itemization that can break the game, you won't like Trails. I happen to like both of those things.

Epic Final Boss--They really build up the final boss in a similar fashion to Final Fantasy games. They managed to capture the hype and drive the emotions up along the way, giving the feelings of a truly enormous stakes are on the line. In fact, if anything they might want to tone it down a bit in the next subseries.

Pom! Pom! Party!--Falcom loves their mini-games. They added a PvP (you versus the AI) connect three with some interesting quirks that I sunk more time into than I care to admit. Suffice to say, my play time could've been noticeably shorter if this min-game hadn't hooked me.

The Ending Slides--I teared up. Can't go into details. Spoilers.

 

The Bad

Bonding Events--I wasn't a fan of the Persona-like elements the CS games adopted in the beginning and if anything CS4 vindicated me. When every interaction with the opposite sex is romantic and you have four games, it brings new meaning to the term, "slow burn romance". Forgetting the fact that some of those romance options weren't appropriate (usually in the age difference), it actually got tiresome going through the female half of Class VII's bonding events. I frequently found myself at the start of a new day playing Pom! Pom! Party! rather than sit through another awkward confession scene.

Bonding Events (2)--Some of the bonding events should've been playable companion quests instead of having to passively read through them. In fact there are two off the top of my head that basically were companion quests but rather than me being able to solve the mystery or fight the monster I read through how Rean (the main character) solved the mystery or fought the monster. This was frustrating and even knowing that Falcom is an independent AA studio, it felt cheap.

Lack of VO--I'm pretty sure that CS4 had the exact same amount of voiced over lines as CS3, which had the same amount as CS2, however CS4 has far more dialog so keeping the same amount of voiced lines means you hear them less often. And it's noticeable.

Lengthy Cutscenes--There were at least three cutscenes that were at least an hour long apiece. That's three hours of game that I sat passively reading dialog with no pause for actual gameplay. Not even a few rounds of Pom! Pom! Party! Given that you can usually tell in what direction each of these huge cutscenes was going, at the halfway point those scenes in particular felt like bloat to pad playtime.

Story Pacing--CS4 mirrors CS2 in many ways. Both change so much from act to act it feels less like playing one game rather than playing three or four games duct taped together. The pacing feels all over the place because of it.

The Final Plot Twist--While I didn't know what the twist was going into this game, I was aware that it was controversial when the game first launched in Japan. CS4 is to date the only Trails game to receive mixed reviews from fans. Having now played through it, I'm on the side of those who found it disappointing. It doesn't ruin the game or the story but it is still disappointing.

 

Conclusion: CS4 is a very flawed, but very good game. To date I would say I haven't played a bad Trails game but I would rate CS4 right at the bottom of a Trails favorites list because of it's many difficult to overlook flaws. But yeah, I'll probably still new game plus it. 

Edited October 3, 2021 by the_dog_days

[BruceVC]

On 9/30/2021 at 5:34 PM, Hurlsnot said:

New World has some pretty good weapon builds, but so far my favorite is the hatchet. I'm having a lot of fun doing my Last of the Mohicans impression in the game.

 

On 9/30/2021 at 5:45 PM, ShadySands said:

Lucky! I took the "which Daniel Day-Lewis character are you?" test and got Lincoln. 

Must avoid the theater

I have been following this MMO for a few months and I liked the design and game world, also because its a Amazon product they wont allow it to fail so its nice to know their are not unplanned budget cuts

My one brother started playing it 2 weeks ago and he loved it but he said their was major latency with things like combat.....and this is unusual for MMO we play in SA because our international bandwidth is fine but apparently the combat is very bandwidth intense which may create this problem?

[Oner]

3 hours ago, BruceVC said:

also because its a Amazon product they wont allow it to fail

You haven't followed all the other games Amazon threw into the trash, have you? 

[BruceVC]

32 minutes ago, Oner said:

You haven't followed all the other games Amazon threw into the trash, have you? 

I havent at all....but now I need to  know, what did they fail at ?

Its important because it may negate my earlier point