What are you Playing Now? I name all the operations that go down in Taipei.

[Oner]

1 minute ago, Malcador said:

You've been long suffering then

Would I like more good adaptations? Sure. But it's not like the world is devoid of fun because of that. 

[InsaneCommander]

Solasta: Lost Valley. I was waiting because I heard there were some bugs and save files corrupted. Not sure it is still happening, but I got tired of waiting.

[Majek]

monster hunter rise sunbreak Demo. 10 days to go to retail release. can hardly wait.

[Hawke64]

The Waylanders. It is a party-based RPG with RtwP combat. I guess, the developers tried to make something like Dragon Age, but it is not anywhere close. The levels and most of the dialogues are extremely linear, the exception being companions'. There are several classes and equipment, but very few abilities, though they are diverse enough.
Missed 1 companion so far, because the recruitment cut-scene did not trigger. There are numerous missing descriptions and subtitles occasionally are different from the spoken lines, but the game has not crashed yet.

Nioh 2. Completed the main game and tried the last DLC. Got repeatedly slaughtered by the boss in the first mission. I suppose, I was too underlevelled for it.

[kanisatha]

4 hours ago, Hawke64 said:

The Waylanders. It is a party-based RPG with RtwP combat. I guess, the developers tried to make something like Dragon Age, but it is not anywhere close. The levels and most of the dialogues are extremely linear, the exception being companions'. There are several classes and equipment, but very few abilities, though they are diverse enough.
Missed 1 companion so far, because the recruitment cut-scene did not trigger. There are numerous missing descriptions and subtitles occasionally are different from the spoken lines, but the game has not crashed yet.

I had this game on my Steam wishlist for ages, mainly because I automatically put any cRPG with RTwP combat on my list. But after it came out of EA and still had huge issues, I dropped it from my list. Would be interested in hearing more from you about how it is.

[the_dog_days]

Just finished Symphony of War. TLDR: Best indie trpg I've ever played. Fire Emblem is one of my favorite video game franchises and SoW scratched that Fire Emblem itch. I mainlined the whole game starting Friday night and finished early this morning. It was that good. I have only two problems, 1) the game has a menu based UI, which will make it a great game on the Switch when it gets ported but makes me frustrated that all I'm doing is left and right clicking the mouse, and 2) the Player Turn and Enemy Turn cards that come up at the end of each turn and can't be turned off--I know its my turn 'cause the enemy isn't moving. Everything else, the combat, the unit diversity, the enemy verity, the deep gameplay systems, the characters, the world building, and the story are wonderful. If you like trpg's, you have to check this game out, and its cheap.

[Keyrock]

I finished The Quarry again... And again and again. After saving all the camp counselors on the 2nd playthrough, I went back a couple of times through the last couple of chapters trying to figure out how to save more of the Hacketts. Eventually I found some success. In my final run only Kaylee, Chris, and Silas died. Everybody else lived. I think this is the best possible ending.

Movie Mode has 3 options:

1) Everyone Lives

2) Everyone Dies

3) Director's Chair

Option 3 allows you to set 4 parameters for each of the camp counselors: How they act under pressure, how they act in conversation, how they act in a fight or flight situation, and how observant they are. I'm definitely going to watch "Everyone Dies". It will hurt to watch my girl Kaitlyn die, but it will be worth it for all those sweet gory deaths. Maybe I can figure out how to do a Only Kaitlyn Survives run? 

 

Kaylee Hackett dies no matter what, there is no way to save her. I'm 99.9% sure that Chris Hackett surviving means other characters die. I don't think there is any way to have him live without that causing someone else to die. Silas has to die to break the curse. You could almost certainly have all the camp counselors survive and have Silas live, but the curse would still be out there which would almost certainly lead to future deaths.

The way to save a couple of the Hacketts requires you to fail some QTEs, which is unintuitive. I won't say which and how many.

Edited June 20, 2022 by Keyrock

[Agiel]

23 hours ago, Gromnir said:

am gonna admit am mild surprise seeing the f-14. woulda' expected an f-15 variant.

HA! Good Fun!

There is an incoming module for the F-15E Strike Eagle coming for DCS (bringing back warm and fuzzy memories of Jane's F-15), and the same F/A-18 stick is largely identical to that of the F-15, both having been designed by McDonnell-Douglas (now part of Boeing Defence, Space & Security in the aftermath of Les Aspin's "Last Supper").

17 hours ago, kanisatha said:

Now if only we could use our tax returns to buy an actual F-14 Tomcat. I'm sure they're cheap at the Boneyard.

Try literally shredded, as after its retirement from the Navy the only operator remaining (and indeed the only other operator ever) for the F-14 was the IRIAF. The measure was arguably well-warranted as there have been a few cases of Iran attempting to purchase spare parts from the retired American fleet. 

Edited June 21, 2022 by Agiel

[Hawke64]

The Waylanders. I've encountered my first softlock during a main quest, because the boss despawned on reload, thus I will have to replay from the last autosave (10 - 15 minutes). On a positive note, dialogues started to be more interactive - I avoided a battle in the same quest by not insulting the NPC. Also, the party members all abilities available at the moment (there are 6 active and 2 passive for each class), making the combat more engaging.
The game is not bad, but it can be frustrating at times. It feels much closer to Avadon* with more linear maps and RtwP combat than to Dragon Age.
*turn-based combat and mostly large open maps, even if there is an expected path to traverse them. Stylized writing, but in a very different style than The Waylanders.

[Keyrock]

Sniper Elite 5. It's on game pass so I figured I'd give it a shot. It's pretty good. There are some annoyances like only being able to scale walls in specific spots, so I can easily climb that 6 foot tall wall, but that other shin-high "wall" is impassable because reasons.  Overall, though, it's a fun game of sneaking around. I fancy myself a stealth game expert, so I'm playing on authentic difficulty (the highest difficulty) across all difficulty options. This not only means enemies have more health and do more damage, but they also spot you much quicker. Plus I have no HUD. No ammo count, no indicator of whether I've been spotted, nothing whatsoever.

[InsaneCommander]

Solasta does have a problem with save files. The limit is 50 and every time I start the game, it shows 50+ because the files I deleted are magically back. I even lost one for my current playthrough, apparently because it had the same name as another.

I disabled cloud saves, let's see if it solves the problem.

[Mamoulian War]

I just do not understand what is happening anymore. I have just for the sake of it, turned on my wheel again... And it worked... OMGWTFLOL...

So I have just used the oportunity, and driven 4 short races to finish the GT4 part of Career Championship in Mercedes SLS AMG GT3 in Assetto Corsa. I bet, it will not work again tomorrow...

[Theonlygarby]

So I decided to take the western path to Vegas (fallout new vegas) and I found north Vegas...  I'm ashamed to say I had never found north Vegas in all the times I've played.  Weird to play I game i thought I completely explored, only to find I've probably missed a lot of content

Edited June 22, 2022 by Theonlygarby

[melkathi]

Chaos Gate Daemonhunters isn't a bad game.

I'll start with the cons:

The story. It is being let down by the fact it is 40K. Greyknights are simply not engaging protagonists, just like most space marines. For 40K fans the story is great. The premise is suitably epic. The adeptus mechanicus dominus in charge of your ship's maintenance is well written. It seems 40K writers like the adeptus mechanicus to lighten the grimdark. 

What makes less sense is how you get reinforcements and equipment sent from Titan. The Greyknights send a single, small shuttle with a single knight and a spare storm bolter? That seems silly. In that the old Chaos Gate did better: you had a roster of marines on board, and that was it.

 

I can see how people can find the game getting repetitive. On the one hand you only fight Nurgle. Even though attempts have been made to give your opponents a large roster, it doesn't change that they all are Nurgle.

On top of that, the maps start to repeat. A few of them add insult to injury by basically being a pretty corridor, with no choice but to advance down one single path. And there seem to only be two mission objectives.

 

Last con: the soldiers just aren't memorable. Firaxcom managed to make you care about your troops and remember them, even though for the most part they were random grunts. Phoenix Point has the roster grow so fast, other than maybe your first squad, it is unlikely you'll think of any of them as anything but sniper, commando, heavy etc. Chaos Gate is the same, your marines are melee dude in terminator armour, melee dude in power armour etc, even though you may count your troops using your fingers.

 

The pros:

Destructible terrain makes everything better. Lots of bits to interact with to kill your opponents makes it betterer. If your opponent is hiding behind a statue, it is very satisfying to slam into the statue and bury them underneath the rubble.

 

Enemy variety is actually quite good, even if the focus on Nurgle gives a feeling of repetitiveness. In reality though there may be more variety than XCOM.

 

Boss fights seem to be thought out. I have done two big story missions. The first one had a good premise but was a bit let down by the Greyknightytness. It makes sense and allows for super fans to have some fanservice, but for the rest of us it's a "if I cared I guess I would care" moment. The second one was tough as well, but I beat it by using my marines abilities well, while realising there was a smarter way to do the mission. I like that: a boss fight I could beat two ways. 

 

Stuns/crits/Knockback etc all work quite well and give you some tactical choices. Crits are pip boy style targeting and make for some grotesque funny situations: stop an opponent from shooting their gun? Chop their arm off and disarm them. If I were the opponent I'd be dead after that, but people in the game are a bit tougher than that.

 

Skill trees are quite large for this kind of game, so you could tune your marines the way you like. And with 8 classes you get to tune your 4-man team.

 

Bloom actually works reasonably well as a mission timer. It increases every turn and every special ability you use. Later you may be able to reduce it or limit the passive increase to gain some breathing room. But it isn't a mission failure timer.

 

It isn't drawing me in like Troubleshooter did or any good story based game will. I don't feel the need to fire it up to see what comes next. But when you have it launched, you may want to go for just one more mission.

[Hurlshort]

I agree with everything Melky said. I think if I dug WH40k more, it would help. The lack of squad personality is the toughest pill for me. Why do I care more about my squad in Xenonauts? It's not like they have any unique personality either. I think it is because in Xenonauts or the original Xcom, soldiers were the underdogs. If they survived a toe to toe fight against an alien, it gave them a story. These Space Marines are pretty much OP. 

[uuuhhii]

40k have some interesting style but always drag down by how overwhelmingly boring space marine are

and age of sigmar seems to be repeating the same problem but somehow worse

how do they never learn

[BruceVC]

15 hours ago, Theonlygarby said:

So I decided to take the western path to Vegas (fallout new vegas) and I found north Vegas...  I'm ashamed to say I had never found north Vegas in all the times I've played.  Weird to play I game i thought I completely explored, only to find I've probably missed a lot of content

I remember the first time I played F:NV and I was following the standard mission where you dont immediately get to travel to NV and you go to  other places on the map as part of side quests

After about 12-16 hours I was short of ammo, wounded and lost in the wasteland with a sniper companion when we were  attacked by deathclaws....in order to survive I fled and left my sniper companion behind to make a final stand. His death screams will always haunt me but his sacrifice was appreciated

It was night and the deathclaws started running after me and I realized death was imminent but then I went around a hill and in front of me I saw something that was the greatest sight I have ever experienced in any RPG....the lights of NV city, green and welcoming ...I was saved 

I have never been so happy to see a city, I entered NV and naturally did the most obvious thing any man would do who looked into the face of the Grim Reaper and survived. I immediately visited the brothel and took full advantage of my adult mods. Life never seemed so good 

 

[Hawke64]

The Waylanders. I've completed the first act. There seem to be some branching in dialogues and at least short-term consequences.
Also there is a side quest called "The Brotherhood of Blacksmiths", which I find somehow oddly designed - the quest giver provides the locations of the merchants (not really merchants) you need to visit only once in an unvoiced dialogue, the above-mentioned not-merchants are not marked on the map, the dialogue icon above them is really hard to notice, all NPC in the game are named and you don't have to visit the places where they are during the main quests.
Fortunately, I had taken a screenshot of that dialogue and was able to collect the quest items (by interacting with most of the NPCs at the locations indicated). I suppose, it is good that the game requires attention?
I've started the second act. There seem to be more bugs, but the few locations I've visited are less linear (on the map; at that time, all optional paths were blocked). The not-recruited companion recognized me and (re)joined the party. In terms of classes, branching is achieved via advanced classes (3 per base class, class-specific upgrades for the existing abilities, 4 new ones). Granted, there are way too many <MISSING STRING TABLE ENTRY> now, but the game has become more engaging and I've been enjoying the story, even if I might be slightly biased.

Some screenshots (the settings are closer to the minimal):

Spoiler

An optional encounter that was more challenging than most boss battles - the arcane formation kept 1-shooting the party and the pillars healed it, thus I spammed the summon until it destroyed the pillars and weakened the formation.

Alas, no reward.

 

[BruceVC]

Guys Im  looking for some feedback around what I should play next, I have been through my GOG  and Steam unplayed game list and I have narrowed down  my choices to 2 games

 

• DA:I
• BG1

I have already started doing some research on mods for Dragon Age: Inquisition and I have the EE edition for BG1 so I dont know if I need to mod it?

 

All advice is welcome but ideally Im looking for input from people who have played both and why you recommend one over the other

[Malcador]

Time to get a new football team to manage in FM18, so need suggestions.  Or I should go buy FM22, but still too expensive.

[Hawke64]

40 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

Guys Im  looking for some feedback around what I should play next, I have been through my GOG  and Steam unplayed game list and I have narrowed down  my choices to 2 games

 

• DA:I
• BG1

I have already started doing some research on mods for Dragon Age: Inquisition and I have the EE edition for BG1 so I dont know if I need to mod it?

 

All advice is welcome but ideally Im looking for input from people who have played both and why you recommend one over the other

If you have played DA1 and DA2, then DA:I. Otherwise, BG1. While it is essentially still BG1, there are new quests and an expansion. Secondly, the controls and graphics are excellent. And finally, the length of 1 playthrough is much more reasonable, than DA:I.
Neither game needs any mods, but one might want to skip the wartable missions in DA:I.

[kanisatha]

2 hours ago, Hawke64 said:

If you have played DA1 and DA2, then DA:I. Otherwise, BG1. While it is essentially still BG1, there are new quests and an expansion. Secondly, the controls and graphics are excellent. And finally, the length of 1 playthrough is much more reasonable, than DA:I.
Neither game needs any mods, but one might want to skip the wartable missions in DA:I.

I would suggest playing BG1 first anyway, exactly because it is so much shorter. But you have to keep in mind how old that game is now, and on account of having led the way in the cRPG genre it didn't get to benefit from the lessons of many other games.

DA:I is also a fun game to play. Make sure you don't allow yourself to get bogged down in the Hinterlands map. And I personally liked some of the war table quests and would recommend taking a case by case approach to whether you want to do those quests.

[Mamoulian War]

22 hours ago, BruceVC said:

Guys Im  looking for some feedback around what I should play next, I have been through my GOG  and Steam unplayed game list and I have narrowed down  my choices to 2 games

 

• DA:I
• BG1

I have already started doing some research on mods for Dragon Age: Inquisition and I have the EE edition for BG1 so I dont know if I need to mod it?

 

All advice is welcome but ideally Im looking for input from people who have played both and why you recommend one over the other

BG1 Enhanced Edition with the Siege of Dragonspear DLC/expansion.

[Hurlshort]

I got hooked on a fun little game called Spellcaster University last night. I had actually picked it up on GoG, but then I noticed I had gotten it for free through Amazon Games awhile back. I always forget about those free games they give through Prime. Anyways, the game is a pretty fun simulation of running Hogwarts.

[BruceVC]

39 minutes ago, Mamoulian War said:

BG1 Enhanced Edition with the Siege of Dragonspear DLC/expansion.

Yes I have decided to go with BG1 EE and I just checked now on Steam and I have the Dragonspear DLC 

I will start playing it tomorrow