What are you Playing Now? No really, tell us more...

[the_dog_days]

19 hours ago, KP the Torque Dork said:

It's the stat array for The Detective in Disco Elysium. Or maybe it is a secret code, the game is HARDCORE.

If your core is hard for more than four hours please seek medical help.

[uuuhhii]

how are bannerlord play right now

remember the game looks very overcomplicated and slow a year ago

[Keyrock]

I played a bit of the Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity demo. It's a musou with pointy-eared green tunic boy & co. I am impressed by the variety of play styles, given that I've only played as 3 characters so far.

I started out as Link, obviously, and he plays like a standard Dynasty Warriors or Samurai Warriors character. It's the standard 2 button musou controls with a regular attack and a heavy attack that acts as your combo finisher and it changes depending on how many regular attacks you performed prior to the heavy attack. It's Dynasty Warriors controls.

Then I got to play as Impa who plays completely differently. She essentially casts different spells depending on how many regular attacks you used before the heavy and that manifests different objects onto the battlefield that you can then essentially detonate. Plus, she can teleport from target to target. It looks cool as **** but it's rather disorienting.

Zelda seems really weak but that's probably because I haven't figured out how to play her properly yet. She conjures(?) a rainbow colored cube on a chain and swings it around then casts a spell or something. I dunno, it's really weird and I haven't gotten the hang of her moveset yet.

 

[Bartimaeus]

4 hours ago, Keyrock said:

I played a bit of the Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity demo. It's a musou with pointy-eared green tunic boy & co. I am impressed by the variety of play styles, given that I've only played as 3 characters so far.

I started out as Link, obviously, and he plays like a standard Dynasty Warriors or Samurai Warriors character. It's the standard 2 button musou controls with a regular attack and a heavy attack that acts as your combo finisher and it changes depending on how many regular attacks you performed prior to the heavy attack. It's Dynasty Warriors controls.

Then I got to play as Impa who plays completely differently. She essentially casts different spells depending on how many regular attacks you used before the heavy and that manifests different objects onto the battlefield that you can then essentially detonate. Plus, she can teleport from target to target. It looks cool as **** but it's rather disorienting.

Zelda seems really weak but that's probably because I haven't figured out how to play her properly yet. She conjures(?) a rainbow colored cube on a chain and swings it around then casts a spell or something. I dunno, it's really weird and I haven't gotten the hang of her moveset yet.

 

I remember trying the first Hyrule Warriors when it came out on Wii U* and more or less having a small mental breakdown where I couldn't stop laughing because of how hilariously...nothing everything about it felt. It was a real "am I even alive right now" kind of surrealist/existential experience. Based on the evidence, I do not believe that the Dynasty Warriors games were made for me, and I think that is okay.

*Yes, I am one of the ten people in the entire world that own a Wii U, so you can laugh at me for that one.

Edited February 8, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Humanoid]

I remember trying the first Hyrule Fire Emblem Warriors when it came out on Wii U* Switch and more or less having a small mental breakdown where I couldn't stop laughing because of how hilariously...nothing everything about it felt. It was a real "am I even alive right now" kind of surrealist/existential experience. Based on the evidence, I do not believe that the Dynasty Warriors games were made for me, and I think that is okay.

*Yes, I am one of the ten people in the entire world that own a Wii U, so you can laugh at me for that one.

[Bartimaeus]

I don't know if it makes sense to keep the Wii U asterisk if Fire Emblem is actually on the Switch...unless you also happened to own a Wii U, I suppose. If you're one of the other ten people that own a Wii U, then you can do whatever you want, just like me! Also, I thought Fire Emblem Warriors was a joke, but no, it's also somehow a real thing. I know there's some kind of market for these, but they seem to make me long for the heat death of the universe, which is not a great feeling.

Edited February 8, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Humanoid]

52 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I don't know if it makes sense to keep the Wii U asterisk if Fire Emblem is actually on the Switch...unless you also happened to own a Wii U, I suppose. If you're one of the other ten people that own a Wii U, then you can do whatever you want, just like me! Also, I thought Fire Emblem Warriors was a joke, but no, it's also somehow a real thing. I know there's some kind of market for these, but they seem to make me long for the heat death of the universe, which is not a great feeling.

I had a Wii U, it was stolen. So then I got another one. That probably makes it worse.

 

EDIT: Actually I misremembered. I didn't need to buy another one. I had previously bought a Deluxe one for my sister, but due to a shipping mixup they sent her two of them. My Basic one was stolen, but we had a backup all along.

Edited February 8, 2022 by Humanoid

[Keyrock]

7 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

*Yes, I am one of the ten people in the entire world that own a Wii U, so you can laugh at me for that one.

I can't laugh at you, I'm one of the other 9 people that owns a Wii U. 

Musou games are definitely not for everyone My favorite of the bunch is Dragon Quest Heroes 2. I never played the first, but word round the campfire is that it was essentially Dynasty Warriors with a Dragon Quest coat of paint. 2 is more of a hybrid of a musou and an open(ish) world RPG.

[Mamoulian War]

Hmm, looks like that all of the Wii Us in the world were bought up by the bunch of Osbidianites

[Theonlygarby]

Started playing guitar again... does that count?  No games have been able to hold my attention lately (years it seems)

[melkathi]

My curiosity got the better of me, and since a friend still pirates games (and then wonders why people don't take him seriously when he wants to earn money as a designer himself), I decided to look further into Expeditions: Rome and just how much I would dislike this.

 

The positive about Rome is that it is the most evolved of Expeditions games. You play three military campaigns in three different parts of the world, with different aesthetics. You carry over everything, though you will have to rehire your praetorians when you muster your legion once more.

There is no timed content, so you can play at your own pace and you are clearly warned that a chapter ends, so you can complete other things. Great example of Devs listening to the players.

Characters become powerful, so as your character's reputation grows, you also feel that reflected in what your character can do.

There is cool loot.

The five story companions should all grow on you, while staying humans of that era. There was no attempt to create a Morte or HK47 to be cool.

The story premise works. What if a certain well known historic figure died before getting a chance to become well known and your character and their antagonists ended up reshaping history.

The female playthrough works. If you play a woman you may even have to arrange a marriage to be able to own property through your husband. 

That said, the writing is all over the place quality wise, and the plot becomes worse as the game progresses, even while the gameplay becomes better.

During your third military campaign the plot will be a nonsensical mess, which is a shame, as the game has been steadily improving. The mess culminates in one of the worst mission designs accompanied by the worst plotting, where even the NPCs tell your antagonist that his actions make no sense. You are given the mission objective to die honourably in combat. Problem is, that as in many RPGs, late in the game you may find it quite hard to lose (I clicked skip turn 20+ times) and keep fighting endless waves of enemies who die as they show up (as I mentioned above, there is cool loot, for example a unique bow early on that refunds overwatch shots, allowing a high crit chance archer to kill whole waves of enemies as they rush towards you). All that to lead into a nonsensical Deus ex machina situation for your character to be saved and ruin both gameplay and plot enjoyment at the same time.

To add insult to injury, that is then followed by you having to skip time resting, to heal up your injured party.

Which leads us back to the bad random events design, which very often simply is the same event triggering again and again to cause injuries to your characters and force you to return to camp and heal them, wasting time. How many times your experienced party can slip on slippery stones, breaking bones, is beyond me.

The game gives an unfinished impression, to no little part because of the constantly repeating small number of random events, that add nothing but interruption of the game flow.

Voice acting improves in the third act. Mainly because they didn't tell non Romans to try and sound foreign. So from the terrible voice work for Greeks and the bad voice work in Egypt, it improves to mostly the indifferent voice acting you actually want in a game: the voice work that doesn't make you think about it, instead just allows you to hear what is being said and play the game. Because in the end, that is all that is needed, no whistles and bells, just voice acting.

 

So I would give the game a thumbs sideways. A big thumbs down for the antagonist and the way the plot progresses in act 3, which closes with a bad impression a game that after a mediocre first impression works hard to overcome that first impression and make players enjoy it.

I guess you can't stop Devs from shooting themselves in their own feet.

Edited February 9, 2022 by melkathi

[Humanoid]

I have the sincerely held opinion that, up to this point in the Switch's lifetime, the Wii U has still been the better console for me. In most regards they have pretty comparable first-party titles, except that Nintendo Land crushes 1-2 Switch, so that's the tiebreaker.

[Wormerine]

Finished God of War. Mostly. There is still some sidecontent to do, but I am not sure how long I will be willing to put up with forced RPG elemenets, grinding, and flawed combat system. I am having less and less fun everytime I boot it up. We will see when the well will dry up completely.

I feel like I am getting really snobby as of late. I didn't like God of War much. I didn't dislike it either. It's a very AAA affair (but in good way) aiming for as wide of a market as possible, juggling multiple different things people might want to play a game for, and mastering none, though at the same time doing none of those too badly. I think I just prefer games that do one thing, but really well. 

I think the game has potential, though. I felt in similar way about DOOM 2016 - a game which I appreaciated on some level, but it just let me somewhat bored. But DOOM: Eternal was a surprise delight when i played it on gamepass recently. Let's hope Ragnarok will address GoW issues, figure out how to make combat work without all the flashing arrows (I mean seriously, what's the point of creating zoomed in cinematic experience, if you have to add so much UI elemenents for it to be managable?!) and just make combat more mechanically consistant. 

It's a looker though. Honestly, I enjoyed watching GoW more then playing it. A perfect silent YouTube walkthrough game perhaps, at least the main storyline.

The game made me reinstal DMC5 though - that's a godly combat system. 

[BruceVC]

I  really am having fun in NWN EE SoU

I mentioned I love the D&D ruleset and the myriad of combat strategies in these games and here is one example to illustrate that point 

I encountered my first Shield Guardian and its immune to level 4 spells and below and my character is a wizard who didnt have access to level 5 spells. Plus my familiar cant harm it and my henchmen, who is Dorna, can only do minimal damage so I got slaughted the first 3 times I tried to defeat it 

And then I realized I luckily  had some level 5 scrolls. So I used Bigbys Interposing hand to make the Guardians attacks more ineffective, used Chain Lighting and Cone of Cold and threw numerous Alchemist Fire at the foul creature. And with Dorna hacking away I was able to defeat it ...great battle 

[Hawke64]

Completed Shattered - Tale of the Forgotten King.

Shattered - Tale of the Forgotten King is an action-adventure game with platforming and RPG elements. The story follows an amnesiac entity who tries to recover their memories. The protagonist canonically does not speak, but can nod or shake their head in some dialogues.

The gameplay involves mostly hack&slash combat with stamina and few spells. I used a melee-focused build, thus the spells were used as utilities - to pull enemies from groups or sneak past them. There are 2D platforming sequences in early-/mid-game and 3D ones throughout the whole playthrough. Due to the level design, it is hard to determine if a path found is the main one or optional. While the spells vary from simple magic missiles to weapon buffs to invisibility (which for some reason messes up collision detection for elevators), weapons feel quite similar - all are swords with roughly the same movesets and slightly different stats and one different animation per weapon. Also there are the traditional for Souls-likes Estus flask (Catalyst) and Homeward Bone (infinite), as well as bonfires (Wells). Level design and items suit the sci-fi setting and the story well. The optional bosses are diverse and engaging, while most of the main bosses are very similar to regular enemies, all of which are humanoids with weapons, with one or two extra attacks. There are no penalties for death by environment and it is possible to recover all souls (essence) lost by killing the enemy who has defeated you. The saving system is typical for Souls-likes - auto-saving with checkpoints.

The visual design is consistent, reasonably detailed and generally beautiful. 2D portraits look gorgeous and expressive. The soundtrack is beautiful and fitting. There is very little VA, only at the end.

The controls are comfortable and responsive, 5-button mice are supported.

There are numerous bugs, starting with the game freezing when I was trying to rebind the controls, to the MC clipping through walls. None of them were progress-breaking and the former was possible to overcome.

The endings have quite specific conditions to achieve them and it is hard to make an informed decision in advance.

I have used a guide for the last area after running in circles for an hour, because I have missed a passage that looked like a part of the wall. In terms of navigation, it was similar to the Cathedral of the Sacred Blood from Code Vein - a lot of indoor spaces with white walls.

In general, I would recommend the game.

[BruceVC]

15 minutes ago, Hawke64 said:

Completed Shattered - Tale of the Forgotten King.

Shattered - Tale of the Forgotten King is an action-adventure game with platforming and RPG elements. The story follows an amnesiac entity who tries to recover their memories. The protagonist canonically does not speak, but can nod or shake their head in some dialogues.

The gameplay involves mostly hack&slash combat with stamina and few spells. I used a melee-focused build, thus the spells were used as utilities - to pull enemies from groups or sneak past them. There are 2D platforming sequences in early-/mid-game and 3D ones throughout the whole playthrough. Due to the level design, it is hard to determine if a path found is the main one or optional. While the spells vary from simple magic missiles to weapon buffs to invisibility (which for some reason messes up collision detection for elevators), weapons feel quite similar - all are swords with roughly the same movesets and slightly different stats and one different animation per weapon. Also there are the traditional for Souls-likes Estus flask (Catalyst) and Homeward Bone (infinite), as well as bonfires (Wells). Level design and items suit the sci-fi setting and the story well. The optional bosses are diverse and engaging, while most of the main bosses are very similar to regular enemies, all of which are humanoids with weapons, with one or two extra attacks. There are no penalties for death by environment and it is possible to recover all souls (essence) lost by killing the enemy who has defeated you. The saving system is typical for Souls-likes - auto-saving with checkpoints.

The visual design is consistent, reasonably detailed and generally beautiful. 2D portraits look gorgeous and expressive. The soundtrack is beautiful and fitting. There is very little VA, only at the end.

The controls are comfortable and responsive, 5-button mice are supported.

There are numerous bugs, starting with the game freezing when I was trying to rebind the controls, to the MC clipping through walls. None of them were progress-breaking and the former was possible to overcome.

The endings have quite specific conditions to achieve them and it is hard to make an informed decision in advance.

I have used a guide for the last area after running in circles for an hour, because I have missed a passage that looked like a part of the wall. In terms of navigation, it was similar to the Cathedral of the Sacred Blood from Code Vein - a lot of indoor spaces with white walls.

In general, I would recommend the game.

Hi Hawke

Nice to chat again. Great review and it sounds like a worthwhile game 

Any Romance options...I know you mentioned the taciturn nature of the protagonist but you never know ?

[Mamoulian War]

I've just finished second playthrough of Tales of Arise Demo on my PS4. I just needed some break in between of my simracing trainings, so I took something short and easy. This time, my character of choice was Kisara.

 

Edited February 13, 2022 by Mamoulian War

[Keyrock]

I'm close to finishing Castlevania: Circle of the Moon. I've dabbled in going through the Battle Arena, though I'm not nearly strong enough to go through all 17 rooms yet. I'm not sure if I'll ever go through all of it, because it's a brutal slog, though the Shining Armor you get for completing the Battle Arena is really great. Still, I may be better served farming Lilith for the Sage Robe, though I currently lack the cards to make that fight easy and without the proper cards it's a rough battle (she gives a ton of XP though). My best bet might to farm Lilith's daughter, Lilim, for Dark Armor, which is arguably the best armor in the game. It's a rare drop but Lilim is much easier to kill than Lilith.

[Malcador]

Beat Forged Alliance as UEF on Hard, that was not too bad.  Aeon is a bit tricker, but working well with massed GC assaults, shockingly 16 experimental units work well against enemies.

[Hurlshort]

Picked up Far Cry 5 and I'm enjoying it. It is an interesting documentary on life in Montana.

[kanisatha]

I'm now far enough into playing Solasta that I can provide a first report. Personally, I'm loving playing this game. It's finally a game that sincerely scratches my D&D itch. I've also come to appreciate 5e a whole lot more because of this game. I think I will always like 3.5e the most, just because that was my personal prime D&D-playing years edition. But 5e is definitely second-best. The game is extremely faithful to 5e rules, and even such things as held actions and reactions are done beautifully. For a TB game, combat goes by pretty quickly. You have a good amount of options available to you in each turn of combat. The tutorial explains everything very well. The game includes character backgrounds that actually matter, and passive skills and spellcasting outside of combat are used extensively. Verticality and movement in 3D is awesome, including flying, spider climbing, etc. And yes, TA did this first. Larian copied TA for BG3. All in all, a truely delightful gem of a game.

For negatives, a very superficial one would of course be that the graphics and character models are not very fancy and sometimes look a bit odd. For some people this may be a big issue. For me, I couldn't care less. It is good enough. The voice acting is fine, though both written and spoken lines could use some more polish in places.

The main criticisms I'd offer are party size of only four, no multi-classing, level cap not all the way up to 20, and the game needing more content to explore. For the first issue, this may be the one game where this is okay, because they often attach critical NPCs to the party for certain quests. Early in the game we even get two such NPCs attached, effectively forming a party of six. As for the other three issues, I feel they all will become moot after we get the next DLC or two. TA's approach for this game appears to be to provide the core game plus a complete campaign first, and then release new DLCs every so often with a completely new, standalone, full-sized campaign. The DLC they're working on for a March release is exactly such a DLC. So TA seems to be doing what NwN was originally supposed to be, with TA's terminology being "campaign" in place of "module." You also have available to play user-created campaigns made with the "Dungeon Maker" toolset they have created and included with the core game. These are available in Steam Workshop and can be very easily added to your game.

More to come.

[Keyrock]

I'm grinding Lilim in Circle of the Moon for Dark Armor. No luck so far, but that's not surprising given that it's a rare drop, so even while wearing 2 Luck Rings the chance of it dropping is still quite small. It's not a total waste, though, since she gives 8K XP, so I've leveled up several times. Once I get the armor I'm straight off to fight Hugh and Dracula.

[Humanoid]

I resubscribed to FF14 for a month, messed around updating my hotkeys and fixing my inventory for a few hours. Almost a week since then, I've actually played the game for maybe an hour, so I'm thinking I probably made a mistake coming back. Still, I got to transfer my character over to the new Oceanic servers and I have 1/20th the ping I had before so if nothing else it satisfies my curiosity on how well the game plays with the right infrastructure in place.

In hindsight the experiment was probably doomed from the start because I never could stand the story being essentially being forcibly told at me when I had lost interest some 40 levels ago.

 

Besides that, nothing really happening. AoE2's recent patches have messed up my mods and I can't fix them. I still can't get ETS2's force feedback on my Logitech wheel to work satisfactorily and I'm not yet ready to implement the supposed solution of buying a Thrustmaster wheel. So after all that, I'm thinking I may just start a new game of Privateer this week.

[BruceVC]

20 hours ago, kanisatha said:

I'm now far enough into playing Solasta that I can provide a first report. Personally, I'm loving playing this game. It's finally a game that sincerely scratches my D&D itch. I've also come to appreciate 5e a whole lot more because of this game. I think I will always like 3.5e the most, just because that was my personal prime D&D-playing years edition. But 5e is definitely second-best. The game is extremely faithful to 5e rules, and even such things as held actions and reactions are done beautifully. For a TB game, combat goes by pretty quickly. You have a good amount of options available to you in each turn of combat. The tutorial explains everything very well. The game includes character backgrounds that actually matter, and passive skills and spellcasting outside of combat are used extensively. Verticality and movement in 3D is awesome, including flying, spider climbing, etc. And yes, TA did this first. Larian copied TA for BG3. All in all, a truely delightful gem of a game.

For negatives, a very superficial one would of course be that the graphics and character models are not very fancy and sometimes look a bit odd. For some people this may be a big issue. For me, I couldn't care less. It is good enough. The voice acting is fine, though both written and spoken lines could use some more polish in places.

The main criticisms I'd offer are party size of only four, no multi-classing, level cap not all the way up to 20, and the game needing more content to explore. For the first issue, this may be the one game where this is okay, because they often attach critical NPCs to the party for certain quests. Early in the game we even get two such NPCs attached, effectively forming a party of six. As for the other three issues, I feel they all will become moot after we get the next DLC or two. TA's approach for this game appears to be to provide the core game plus a complete campaign first, and then release new DLCs every so often with a completely new, standalone, full-sized campaign. The DLC they're working on for a March release is exactly such a DLC. So TA seems to be doing what NwN was originally supposed to be, with TA's terminology being "campaign" in place of "module." You also have available to play user-created campaigns made with the "Dungeon Maker" toolset they have created and included with the core game. These are available in Steam Workshop and can be very easily added to your game.

More to come.

Kanie how would you compare it NWN or BG and I mean around the combat strategies, spell usage and monsters you encounter because for  me those Bioware games  are brilliant and utilize the D&D ruleset nicely

[kanisatha]

3 hours ago, BruceVC said:

Kanie how would you compare it NWN or BG and I mean around the combat strategies, spell usage and monsters you encounter because for  me those Bioware games  are brilliant and utilize the D&D ruleset nicely

A side-point and a caveat: Side-point: I never cared for the first NwN game because I love my D&D games to be party-based and that game, even with the minions you control, just doesn't sway me much. I did/do love NwN2. But, I always loved the 'regular release of modules' game concept of NwN, something akin to the old Gold Box games model. Caveat: I am only at level 3 in Solasta right now.

The enemy combat strategies are quite sophisticated.

Spoiler

This is especially true given verticality in the game, which enemies take full advantage of, so a bunch of goblins shooting at me from above on cliffsides was a serious pain in the ass to clear (in a challenging way and not a frsutrating way). I just needed to learn that in this game you don't want to ignore spells like Levitate, Spider Climb, and Misty Step. Even an encounter with spiders proved quite challenging because they fought intelligently, including using "pack" tactics and flanking and the like. I've had to fight a spellcaster only once thus far, a 3rd level evil cleric. He was pretty tough. He cast fly and took to the air to avoid my melee warriors, counterspelled my scorching ray, used magical shielding to block other directed attack spells, and cast healing on his own minions.

Pretty good so far, I'd say.

Edited February 15, 2022 by kanisatha