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

[Mamoulian War]

I just went into the third year in the third installment of Atelier Arland trilogy (NG+ of Atelier Meruru). Compared to the previous two games, you spend more time doing synthesis and less time adventuring, but only if you want to go for all trophies. When I’ve played it for the first time in 2013/14, it was the simplest game from the trilogy, to play without walkthrough. The most difficult was Atelier Totori. Now with the walkthrough, it looks like you have to spent much more time to get the right synthesis to progress further into the game.

[kanisatha]

13 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

I don't think I'll try/buy it until they've patched/updated it a couple times first - these kinds of games can change a lot between updates after first EA-release, imo - but eventually I'm sure I will, while it's still in EA. Maybe a couple months from now or early winter. The food always spoils thing turns me off but I am curious about the rest/what else they'll bring to the table, if anything. I suppose outside of graphics I'm not really expecting anything super exciting re: town builders since I'm quite familiar with the genre already but man I'd be happy with a new one that I simply like enough to play/revisit for more than 2-4 days. >.>

Like me you seem to have a love for these kinds of city-management games, so let me ask you a question. I've tried out quite a few of these games: Dawn of Man, Patron, Settlers, Surviving Mars, and of course Civilization (and on my wishlist: Old World, Kingdoms Reborn, Terraformers). The problem for me with these games always is that I love how they start out, and love the early turns in the game. But eventually, at some point in the development of my settlement, the job of managing the city becomes a painful, repetitive chore and I lose my interest in further developing my city. For all the many times I've played these games, I've never once finished a single game. So, is there some secret to getting around this problem? Are there any city management games that have successfully overcome this problem?

[Malcador]

Reminds me I need to take a peak at Guild 3...can't possibly be that bad, could it.

Still grinding along in Andromeda, being the foreign saviour to these useless Angara that can't fix their planets.  Is an "okay" experience, all said, combat is fun, the somewhat tedious Architect fights were enjoyable.   I do like the crafting, grindy-ness aside, being able to augment the items and such, I dislike the UI a little but that's nitpicky. 

 

[LadyCrimson]

1 hour ago, kanisatha said:

So, is there some secret to getting around this problem?

Short answer - well, not really - like any strategic sort of game (or any game really) once you've mastered mechanics, a map's terrain/resources, or developed a town/city past a certain point, it's just going to be a sense of "grinding" for completion or personal goals.

Longer answer - it also depends on exactly why you like the games/genre. I do not personally, for example, like stuff like SimCity or Civilization. I don't care about making alliances or politics for resources/peace, outside of simple "pay open a trade route/place docks for trading", for example. On the flip side, the reason I played Banished as long as I did was because  it had a random map generator so I could create/try new towns without already knowing the map/terrain, and an obsession with trying to achieve the highest population before it either PC-lagged to a stop or the AI mechanics just couldn't handle it anymore and it would all fall apart due to buggiess, haha.

I do not tend to long term enjoy the ones where you keep working on/adding to/upgrading the same city forever and ever as time and eras pass. I don't care about playing the same city "forever" because yeah, that gets boring even if you're unlocking new "tech" or whatever. For me the fun is the challenge of efficient designing and utilizing that against new terrain/maps.  Also, map editors. (all the Impression's ones had those IIRC).  Patron had some other minor problems but the main issue for me was the lack of random maps or map editor - experimentation/layout challenges dried up fast.

What I started with is the early Impression's "city builder series", where their motivator was their fixed and increasingly difficult map/city goals and once you achieved those, you'd move to the next campaign scenario and have to start all over, on a totally different map, with different resource/terrain challenges, each one being quite different for layout challenges.  If you haven't give Casear 3 a try (GoG has it), if you can put up with some of the old wonky AI challenges (which to me is part of the fun but...)

The only "city builders" with official campaigns that I ever finished - or came very close to finishing - are Casear 3, Caesar4 (not as good), and Pharaoh (altho those monuments took too long/were aggravating). 

[kanisatha]

15 minutes ago, LadyCrimson said:

Short answer - well, not really - like any strategic sort of game (or any game really) once you've mastered mechanics, a map's terrain/resources, or developed a town/city past a certain point, it's just going to be a sense of "grinding" for completion or personal goals.

Longer answer - it also depends on exactly why you like the games/genre. I do not personally, for example, like stuff like SimCity or Civilization. I don't care about making alliances or politics for resources/peace, outside of simple "pay open a trade route/place docks for trading", for example. On the flip side, the reason I played Banished as long as I did was because  it had a random map generator so I could create/try new towns without already knowing the map/terrain, and an obsession with trying to achieve the highest population before it either PC-lagged to a stop or the AI mechanics just couldn't handle it anymore and it would all fall apart due to buggiess, haha.

I do not tend to long term enjoy the ones where you keep working on/adding to/upgrading the same city forever and ever as time and eras pass. I don't care about playing the same city "forever" because yeah, that gets boring even if you're unlocking new "tech" or whatever. For me the fun is the challenge of efficient designing and utilizing that against new terrain/maps.  Also, map editors. (all the Impression's ones had those IIRC).  Patron had some other minor problems but the main issue for me was the lack of random maps or map editor - experimentation/layout challenges dried up fast.

What I started with is the early Impression's "city builder series", where their motivator was their fixed and increasingly difficult map/city goals and once you achieved those, you'd move to the next campaign scenario and have to start all over, on a totally different map, with different resource/terrain challenges, each one being quite different for layout challenges.  If you haven't give Casear 3 a try (GoG has it), if you can put up with some of the old wonky AI challenges (which to me is part of the fun but...)

The only "city builders" with official campaigns that I ever finished - or came very close to finishing - are Casear 3, Caesar4 (not as good), and Pharaoh (altho those monuments took too long/were aggravating). 

Hey thanks! Everything you say here is exactly how I feel also and are my preferences as well. Even when it comes to playing Civ, I play exclusively by using the game options to make myself the only civ on the map and play purely against myself to build the most efficient empire I can. I too have no interest in the military/political/extermination elements of Civ, and only in "perfectly" placing my cities and then building them up (until that gets boring).

[bugarup]

Disco Elysium's Jamais Vu edition gave Egg Head German accent and to celebrate this I dedicate this screenshot to @majestic :

Edited August 17, 2022 by bugarup
too much capital letters

[majestic]

3 minutes ago, bugarup said:

Disco Elysium's Jamais Vu edition gave Egg Head German accent and to celebrate this I dedicate this screenshot to @majestic :

Well, you asked for it:

[Chilloutman]

yeah I knew it was hint on scooter when I played it, was my fav part of the game, turning that church into rave club

[LadyCrimson]

I've just been farting around in 7 Days to Die again. The next Alpha is going to radically change some game systems - AGAIN - and this time I'm not sure I like them. Course it could play a lot better than it sounds so we'll see. At any rate, at least up to A20, with zombies turned off, modded to rain 24/7 in the game and a rainstorm track playing in the background, I still find this game a chill experience for just wandering, building, and repairing/restoring/converting the POI buildings already in the game (I often cheat building blocks in, because I'm not into spending 100000 hours to reconstruct a whole city).

Passes the time really well, at any rate. Like yesterday I found a POI that was a riff/homage to the hotel/house from Psycho and started restoring it...and 4 hours were suddenly gone. Every day I can walk a while in the map, find some new terrain spot or cluster of buildings that makes me go "I could do something with that" and go to town. Repeat.

Edited August 17, 2022 by LadyCrimson

[Hawke64]

Nioh 2. Defeated the Ancient Nyotengu with the power of 3 cats and several Yokai charging items. Fought the Nightmare Bringer again in a side mission. It certainly felt much less epic.
Mass Effect 2. The cut-scenes are unintentionally hilarious sometimes - in the Lair of the Shadow Broker the MC switches guns with the camera angles (on a positive note, at least those are the guns equipped this time) and it is assumed that he does not wear a helmet.

[marelooke]

Factorio. The spiceore must flow.

[Chilloutman]

waiting for Immortal Empires for Total war which should be live next week. in meantime getting my arse kicked in Dota

[InsaneCommander]

Axiom Verge 2 is finally released on Steam. Much inferior to the first game. This time you have a pickaxe, a boomerang and the drone. None of the cool weapons from the first game. Still a good game, but I'm disappointed.

[Bartimaeus]

12 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

Axiom Verge 2 is finally released on Steam. Much inferior to the first game. This time you have a pickaxe, a boomerang and the drone. None of the cool weapons from the first game. Still a good game, but I'm disappointed.

It appears their banner image game has regressed as well. First game:

That banner image was why I tried the game in the first place! I didn't end up caring much for it (well, I played it for a couple of hours, looked up online how long it was and realized I didn't want to play another ten hours of it - I have a noted aversion for too-long Metroidvania games), but still. Now the second game...:

Pathetic: I wouldn't even notice this if I was scrolling past!

Edited August 19, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[InsaneCommander]

9 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

It appears their banner image game has regressed as well. First game:

That banner image was why I tried the game in the first place! I didn't end up caring much for it (well, I played it for a couple of hours, looked up online how long it was and realized I didn't want to play another ten hours of it - I have a noted aversion for too-long Metroidvania games), but still. Now the second game...:

Pathetic: I wouldn't even notice this if I was scrolling past!

The graphics look worse. I don't know if they really are or if it is because the areas look different, they are less alien now, basically forests and mountains just like on Earth. It's definitely a downgrade.

[Bartimaeus]

12 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

The graphics look worse. I don't know if they really are or if it is because the areas look different, they are less alien now, basically forests and mountains just like on Earth. It's definitely a downgrade.

I noticed that as well - a lower level of detail, a way less striking color palette, and actually really bad bright/dark dynamics a lot of the time, it looks like. Even a cursory look at the Steam store screenshots for both games does not flatter the second game visually.

Edited August 19, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[BruceVC]

I got back to Cpt this week so the exciting " Saga of the Sword Coast " chronicles can continue 

I arrived in the iconic and bustling city of BG and loads of events occurred. What a city, lots of shops and side quests. Freeing nymphs from licentious wizards and helping Necromancers find bodies to name a few of the activities. I have also thwarted Saveroks diabolical plans to control BG, he fled into the maze under the Thieves Guild and I have reached the dungeon under the maze and I expect a final confrontation with my half-brother who I may spare after agreeing to do this with beautiful Tamoko

I had the most difficult battle so far with 2 x Skeletal Warriors in the maze and I only succeeded by separating them, I had to swop Khalids weapon to a mace because only crushing damage was effective and magic was useless due to MR....very hard battle

Further updates to follow 

[Gorgon]

On 7/11/2022 at 2:48 AM, LadyCrimson said:

Tiny Tina Wonderlands -

TLDR: I like the more concentrated maps and sense of idle discovery vs. lots of empty space designed for driving cars, re:map designs. It's tons better than BL3 by far, with plenty to do beyond the short main campaign and that Tiny Tina BL2 DLC flavor, but the lack of NG+ or lengthy replay value (eg, BL loot grinding obsessions) hurts it. Still, it's the type of game most might play thru once or twice initially and have quite a bit of fun for that first run or two, and many only want that anyway, so in my mind it was "worth" buying. But I think they should've release-priced it at $39.99-49.99 vs. $60+.  Oh, and "normal" difficulty has been mostly a little too easy, so some might want to start off with the harder setting right off the bat.

EditEdit: I think hubby and I have about 40 hrs. on our chrs - we are fairly slow players, however. We might finish "everything" in another 24+ hours.
===========================

We are, I think, at the point where the next main quest/small area forward leads to the last boss fight of the campaign. So we're ignoring it and cleaning up other areas and the Overworld stuff as well. There are still quite a lot of side quests we haven't done and we haven't done the supposedly very short DLC missions that came with the edition we bought, nor the end-game rift-like grind.

Two gameplay mechanics that I was disappointed in:

----While you can dual-class, you still can only have one Action Skill active/usable at a time. So if you dual class, you have 4 total possible Action skills and have to pick only one at a time. eg, if you're the spelllcaster class, you're unlikely to want to use anything but the one that lets you have two spells equipped (vs. Spell+ attack Action Skill), thus making the dual-class only for, say, a npc companion partner, or a few 2nd class skill bonuses that might synergize well, just like putting points in other trees in previous BL games.
----the whole "find all lucky dice"/luck chance bonus is credited account-wide. So you do not have to "find" them again with any new character you make, the spots they're in are just empty. I mean, once you know where most are, the fun of first-finding them would be gone, but I still find that a bit annoying, since they also acted like small loot chests which is nice for a new playthru. No other stat/puzzle/chr stat-record stuff carries over like that. I've seen no way to disable it for new characters.

Soo, how is it compared to borderlands 2, the only borderlands worth mentioning. 

Does it have an arena mode. 

 

[LadyCrimson]

11 hours ago, Gorgon said:

Soo, how is it compared to borderlands 2, the only borderlands worth mentioning. 

Does it have an arena mode.

My favorite by a hair is still BL1, but that's largely because I liked Mordecai too much - BL2 certainly tops in chr/villain etc. Plus the 1st is the only one where snipers really felt significant (BL2 they were still very useful, just not quite as OP'd). Every sequel has made snipers more and more irrelevant (because of the way the AI works and enemies spawn out of thin air close to you) to the point I never even carry one around at all anymore, where I used to consider one a must-have in the 4-slot loadout.  At any rate, if BL2 is your favorite, as I've already said, Tiny Tina is vastly better than BL3, even tho it retains some of the too-much-chr-yapping issue of BL3, but in the end isn't quite equal to 1 or 2, simply because it has very low replay or even "grinding" value.

As to arena ... if you mean something where you're stuck in a room having to fight waves of enemies, in a way most of the Overworld "random encounters" or missions are like that, as well as the so-called end-game (and the small DLC mission/maps), which is just repeatedly doing that sort of thing a set number of times (small area, defeat enemies/survive, another small instanced area, defeat enemies, repeat several times).

Edited August 20, 2022 by LadyCrimson

[BruceVC]

I completed BG1 last night, it was a great game and highly recommended and gets a solid 72/100 on the globally respected " BruceVC game rating system "

But the final battle with Sarevok was almost impossible, I spent about 4-5 hours trying different strategies and combinations and I could only finally defeat him by dropping the difficulty to easy. Then I used my invisible mage to go to right of the screen and used AOE spells to weaken him, without drawing aggro, and his companions and then when they attacked me I used a combination of
 

• my 2x fighters has potions of cloud giant strength
• I used arrows of dispelling and biting
• I used potions of magic resistance

I cant believe people defeated him on the harder difficulty but my party was level 6 and 7? What level were you on when you fought Sarevok and what strategy did you use in the final battle?

I am now playing Siege of Dragonspear, I hear its not that good but I am going to play it anyway because it starts straight away and Im in a " BG " mood for gaming 

[Gorgon]

3 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

My favorite by a hair is still BL1, but that's largely because I liked Mordecai too much - BL2 certainly tops in chr/villain etc. Plus the 1st is the only one where snipers really felt significant (BL2 they were still very useful, just not quite as OP'd). Every sequel has made snipers more and more irrelevant (because of the way the AI works and enemies spawn out of thin air close to you) to the point I never even carry one around at all anymore, where I used to consider one a must-have in the 4-slot loadout.  At any rate, if BL2 is your favorite, as I've already said, Tiny Tina is vastly better than BL3, even tho it retains some of the too-much-chr-yapping issue of BL3, but in the end isn't quite equal to 1 or 2, simply because it has very low replay or even "grinding" value.

As to arena ... if you mean something where you're stuck in a room having to fight waves of enemies, in a way most of the Overworld "random encounters" or missions are like that, as well as the so-called end-game (and the small DLC mission/maps), which is just repeatedly doing that sort of thing a set number of times (small area, defeat enemies/survive, another small instanced area, defeat enemies, repeat several times).

I played the original bl1, not the remaster. And it's pretty terrible. It's locked at 60 fov or something. It feels like you are playing the entire game through a sniper scope. But yeah get the remaster if you want to sample bl1. It made me fov nauseous, and I don't get fov nauseous. 

[Gorgon]

4 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

My favorite by a hair is still BL1, but that's largely because I liked Mordecai too much - BL2 certainly tops in chr/villain etc. Plus the 1st is the only one where snipers really felt significant (BL2 they were still very useful, just not quite as OP'd). Every sequel has made snipers more and more irrelevant (because of the way the AI works and enemies spawn out of thin air close to you) to the point I never even carry one around at all anymore, where I used to consider one a must-have in the 4-slot loadout.  At any rate, if BL2 is your favorite, as I've already said, Tiny Tina is vastly better than BL3, even tho it retains some of the too-much-chr-yapping issue of BL3, but in the end isn't quite equal to 1 or 2, simply because it has very low replay or even "grinding" value.

As to arena ... if you mean something where you're stuck in a room having to fight waves of enemies, in a way most of the Overworld "random encounters" or missions are like that, as well as the so-called end-game (and the small DLC mission/maps), which is just repeatedly doing that sort of thing a set number of times (small area, defeat enemies/survive, another small instanced area, defeat enemies, repeat several times).

the arena mode in bl2 was really good, it's just a botmatch with waves of enemies, like in the main game mission, but much better.

[LadyCrimson]

1 hour ago, Gorgon said:

But yeah get the remaster if you want to sample bl1.

I dunno if that's general advice or aimed at me, but I already played it, when it was the only Borderlands in existence. For 1000's of hours.   I still have the disc version on old Win7 PC, the one where you can't install it anymore if you uninstall it because the DRM server it would want is defunct now or something. I tried the remaster but I couldn't stand that they took away the text inventory list and some other things.

Did you play BL1 after playing BL2? I could see not liking it much that way., since BL1 is much more bare bones/basic in most ways. I had no issue with the FoV but back then I rarely played any FPS that didn't have a narrow FoV/no options to compare it to anyway/was fine for me.

I have no idea what "arena mode" is in BL2, unless you mean that Torque DLC, which I think we did once, maybe doing that fight in the big pit area a few times. Not really my thing. Also, I really dislike Torque as a chr. (he's horrendous in Tiny Tina too) Pfft.

Edited August 20, 2022 by LadyCrimson

[Gorgon]

Finks arena is discoverable near starter town once you advance the main plot and go looking for.... I can't remember the plot at all, but you go looking for something underground, probably a vault. It's usually a vault. 

yeah I started with borderlands 2 so I'm a bit spoilt. 

 

[MrBrown]

6 hours ago, BruceVC said:

I cant believe people defeated him on the harder difficulty but my party was level 6 and 7? What level were you on when you fought Sarevok and what strategy did you use in the final battle?

7 is about the max you can get in the game, no matter what tricks you use. Depending on your class, of course.

I've beaten him on the highest difficulty, Legacy of Bhaal, but I have no memory of what I did. Probably a lot of potions and reloads.

But yeah, that fight is significantly harder than most of the game, discounting maybe the final boss of Durlag's Tower, which is a save-or-die fest. Luckily you only need to kill Sarevok.