What are you Playing Now? Whatever happens, at least we're out of that mudhole, Gilded Vale.

[xzar_monty]

10 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

I'm not sure whether that is the best or worst start to a 'D&D' game ever. It's certainly the most stereotypical in pretty much every way.

This was precisely my feeling, too. It was actually hard to believe what I was seeing, everything was so stereotypical.

I was sort of half-expecting the game to give me a hint to show the developers were doing it deliberately and that everything was a joke. Now, that sort of hint might have been a bit tasteless, I agree. But every now and then I still wonder: is this what the developers regard as good writing, or are they having a ton of fun coming up with this stuff? I'm still not sure, like at all. This feeling persists throughout the game, but it was definitely at it strongest right in the beginning.

I'm going to make a guess now as to the point where you're definitely going to get wiped out on Core. There's going to be some gnashing of teeth involved, too. Consider that guess made (I'm not saying what it is 'cos it'd be spoiling).

Btw, the water elemental is indeed cheesable, and at least one of the ways (the only one I know) felt like such a letdown to me.

Edited September 15, 2022 by xzar_monty

[MrBrown]

10 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

I've started Pathfinder: WotR. Not posting in the main thread because, well, just started and lots of spoilers there (no complaints about that, the game isn't exactly new).

I'm not sure whether that is the best or worst start to a 'D&D' game ever. It's certainly the most stereotypical in pretty much every way. Stilted cutscenes, immediate great disaster, Chosen One Has Been Chosen etc. 

I replayed a bit of Kingmaker after WotR, and the writing has improved, IMO. In Kingmaker, it was sometimes just so horrid...

The background plot I felt was better in Kingmaker, WotR is pretty standard D&D fare, with demons and all that.

I'd still claim that WotR is one of the best D&D games, not because of the writing, but because of choices it starts giving you and how they're realized in the game. Spoilery stuff, so won't go into it too deeply. 

[HoonDing]

I was interested at one point because of the lich path.

But I can't get past the setting. It makes Forgotten Realms look like Malazan.

[uuuhhii]

7 minutes ago, HoonDing said:

I was interested at one point because of the lich path.

But I can't get past the setting. It makes Forgotten Realms look like Malazan.

setting didn't hinder kingmaker too much

the whole one small block of land have one trick setting was pretty bad fit for anything other than pathfinder society play

[Hawke64]

Mortal Shell. I cleared the last (I think) area. Unlike the previous locations, this one was covered in fog from the start. Considering that there are few landmarks in general, it was not a welcome change. Also there were portals without clear indication where they led. Finally, the deadliest foe in Souls-likes appeared - the gravity. Basically, when the HP depletes the first time, the MC, who is some sort of spirit, gets knocked out of the shell and rolls a bit to the side to get up. Which means instant death on ledges that were numerous in the area. The fall damage was featured in the boss arena as well - in order to reach it, you had to fall and with the assassin shell (Tiel) and without the ability that negates fall damage, you was losing one "life" even before the battle.
The boss itself was fairly easy, partially due to the sword being fully upgraded, partially due to it having only 2 combo attacks in the second phase, which led to a rather repetitive but simple battle.
On a positive note, the opponents were more diverse, though only 3 new ones, the rest were present in other locations, and the last stretch of the area was reasonably straight-forward and good-looking. And running back out was quite engaging, especially when I saw a row of crossbowwomen on the top of the staircase.

[Mamoulian War]

I have finally beaten the Atelier Meruru optional superboss Eternity Goddess. I spent few hours on many tries and had to create a lot of new items and a special Elixir which activates automatically under 50% of health, to have at least some chance to beat it, because I do not have crafted any Ultimate Armor yet. There is still one DLC boss, which I've never tried, but so far, this was the hardest boss in Atelier Series so far. At some point, she activated few automatic skills, which were kicking my ass, and every time, she knocked down one of my characters, she healed 3000HP... So to find out the real recipe how to defeat her took me a lot.

If anyone is curious about the fight, feel free to watch it on my Youtube channel

 

[Mamoulian War]

Second playthrough of Atelier Meruru after 8 and half year on my PS3 is behind me. Again, the goal of this playthrough was to get all missing trophies and one new ending. Because I have already spent a lot of time on raising friendship with all characters for these trophies, the obvious choice was the Miss Popular ending. Besides that, I was able to defeat Eternity Goddess and Masked G for the first time. Unfortunately the free DLC boss was to powerful for me, so his demise has to wait a little bit longer.

Edited September 16, 2022 by Mamoulian War

[LadyCrimson]

Finally updated 7 Days to latest stable (20.6) to use the updated map generator. Thus briefly I was obsessed with making maps again. Didn't last too long however. The force-repeatable drone-duplication "glitch" - the reason I avoided updating for a while, I like having two drones - actually still works, apparently. Anyway...I feel like I need a bunch of games like Stray - short, simple, linear, adventure/emotive, atmospheric/pretty to look at. But more involving then a pure walking simulator. Cat not required. But as usual, can't find any offhand. Most more "casual" games now are full of crafting, survival, skillz, 9million items/materials, enemies, clvls etc.

Although I guess the dev who made Stray had a game before that that some people really like. Outer Wilds. Don't usually like "space/planets" games but maybe I should try that. Or just replay Stray even if I said I likely wasn't going to.

[Keyrock]

I feel like I'm probably 2/3 of the way through Steelrising. I quickly abandoned my earlier strategy of switching between halberd and fans as it would force me to split points between power and agility and just went into a power build. The two weapons I use now are both halberds with the same moveset. My main halberd does a little more damage and, more importantly, significantly more impact, and it has a shield special ability, which I almost never use since I prefer to dodge to create distance to take advantage of the halberd's massive reach. The other halberd I use exclusively for its ranged attack special ability. Both are upgraded to level 5, which is max. I do so much impact that I nearly always knock enemies down with charged attacks, even bosses, and often knock non-bosses down with regular heavy attacks.

I wonder if this game has NG+? If so, I hope it allows you to respec; I'd like to try out a different build for a second playthrough.

[Bartimaeus]

Apparently, older builds of Windows 10 don't work for this game; this was kind of the risk I took being on Windows 10 LTSC (specifically LTSC 2019, which is built on 1809 and cannot change). I'd have to reformat or try to do an upgrade with LTSC 2021 in order to try it, which...seems less than optimal to me at this time.

[majestic]

I played Raft with my nephew, and we've just finished the final story island. The game is probably more survival focused when not playing it on the Easy difficulty setting*, because that takes out the punishment of dying, i.e. no inventory is lost upon respawning in the game world. Hunger and thirst are staved off longer, making the exploration of the islands less ardous. Overall, this is an okay survival game, even though the raft design becomes far out there relatively quickly once you start smelting ore in your smelter made of unbaked bricks put on plastic and wood foundations and fired by driftwood.

Making fire is never a problem with driftwood pulled directly from the sea and once the smelter is active, a bit of plastic, some scrap and copper ingot will produce circuit boards. I guess whoever the player character is, they're brilliant engineers that would make MacGyver envious. There are story islands that one locates by setting up a triangulation system on your raft and building a radar out of trash and metal ore (which one gathers with a plastic hook, initially). It's just a perfunctory way to progress, although I appreciate having an ultimate goal. The game itself is fun enough in co-op, the aftermath of finishing it wasn't. My nephew was supremely unhappy to find out that there's nothing new to discover now.

So, next week, we'll be trying a Team 17 multiplayer mini-golf game. God help me. Maybe I can get him to play Worms with me.

*Thank god for the easy setting, really. I don't like open world survival games, like, at all.

Edited September 18, 2022 by majestic
Holy mother of Christ I made a BruceVC :(

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

19 minutes ago, majestic said:

Holy mother of Christ I made a BruceVC

Stop being naughty

[Humanoid]

It's been a few years since I last played Civ4, let's just play a short game on a small map to get back into shape. 15 hours across the weekend later...

Yeah, to be fair I did string it out a bit. Standard Monarch game on Continents which is my old level, mowed down my own continent with ease then messed around until the modern era to invade the other continent with combined arms, full carrier groups and amphibious assaults and all that. That's probably why I'll never be an Immortal, let alone Deity level player, playing optimally over the course of a full game is far too mentally taxing and you don't get to mess around with the fun toys.

 

Meanwhile I'm up to the second-last level of Two Point Campus. It's fine, but the feeling I increasingly get with it is that I wish they'd port the various quality-of-life improvements it has back to Hospital. Maybe I should try sandbox mode because it's a very easy game when you're just going through the motions to tick the objective checkboxes.

[LadyCrimson]

6 hours ago, majestic said:

I don't like open world survival games, like, at all.

It's funny because I wouldn't say I like them very much either. Especially ones with zombies or evil dino's or big boss fights or tower defense or any kind of combat or...hm. I guess I want zero challenge. 

I may play 7 Days for long periods now and then but, see, it used to be very easy combat wise, or I could largely avoid it. When they made it harder/more annoying over time, I turned off the tower defense, then I turned off all zombies, then just started cheating in stacks of food, then materials instead of mining for them, then whole blocks because even materials took too long, then...

...oh sure I occasionally play "legit" for a few days, like if a new version comes out. Then I go right back to my chill sandbox.
I don't even care about crafting per se anymore. I just want to pull things from a menu out of thin air like Lego's and just plonk them down to make stuff, not have to spend 1000's of hours grinding/fighting for mats. so I can smelt, forge, then wait for some crafting timer 10000x and THEN build....

Hm. Maybe I should buy some Lego's. Real ones. The blocks, not all the pre-fab build a car kits.

[Malcador]

Got Farthest Frontier, very Banished like.  Need a search tool for the buildings.

[xzar_monty]

10 hours ago, Humanoid said:

It's been a few years since I last played Civ4

Is that still the best, btw? Obviously a matter of opinion, that, but my sense is that there's a consensus. I tried Civ5 or Civ6 for a bit and it was just so obviously so much poorer than Civ4.

[BruceVC]

Im 60 hours into BG2 and as was expected Im loving it, I have just got to Chapter 3 and I had to ruminate on who I should align with Bodhi or the Shadow Thieves. It was tough decision because Bodhi offered advantages like she was less arrogant and didnt attack me immediately, possible hot Vampiress Romance  and a litany of magic items

But I then decided I couldnt align with the undead against humans so I decided to assist the Shadow Thieves
And then I have been on some excellent side quests like The Planar Sphere, Umar Hills and the entire Windspear Hills and the Firkraag story arc

I am also enjoying the cheesy BG2 Romance mod and the entertaining dialogue options. My Romance with Viconia is proceeding nicely and so is my Vienxay relationship

I also dropped Hexxat as a party member and included Valygar because he is more effective fighter and archer

Further updates to follow 

[Mamoulian War]

After finishing the original Atelier Arland Trilogy, I have started the PS4 sequel Atelier Lulua... So far, a little bit mixed feeling about it. It is completely different game from the Trilogy. Some areas were improved, some were not. What I liked the most (smaller areas) have been changed to "open-world-like" design. A lot of these small areas look gorgeous in PS4, and their design is kept intact, with few cosmetic improvements added, but it takes much, much more to explore these areas now, including the harvesting. Because of this, I am spending much more time running around the world aimlessly, compared to previous games, which is the biggest downturn for me. The other downturn was, that the game kind of started to long, to move little bit forward with the story, but that might be the side effect of the "open-world-like" design, and my disdain to it. The synthesis system is also different to original trilogy, but it is on par with Atelier Meruru system. The humour is still the same as in previous games. What I like about the game the most, is the Riddle System for acquiring most of your new recipes. Game gives you few clues, and you have to find correct locations, materials, monsters or synthesis to move forward. Again, the downside is, that it might take to long to get some of the answers, due to area design

So far 6/10. Hopefully it gets better further in the game

[Humanoid]

5 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

Is that still the best, btw? Obviously a matter of opinion, that, but my sense is that there's a consensus. I tried Civ5 or Civ6 for a bit and it was just so obviously so much poorer than Civ4.

To me, yes. But to be fair, I skipped Civ5 pretty much entirely so I can't say much about that game. Civ6 I played a moderate amount, a fair few starts but maybe only 2-3 saves to completion. It's fine as a standalone game with all DLC and I have no singular big problem with it, but I find it's just slight lacking a bit in pretty much every aspect compared to Civ4 and consequently playing well does not give me any real sense of satisfaction.

A big caveat is that I'm not ashamed to say I never did particularly mind the stack of doom "issue" in Civ4. Given that it's most commonly stated complaint about the game, I wouldn't be surprised to see people's preference on the old versus the new system might be entirely down to which approach they prefer.

A big knock-on effect of that fundamental change however is that while the AI is extremely poor in every single instalment of Civilization, the one-unit-per-tile rule of the newer games massively trips it up to the point of near-paralysis. As a result, it's commonly believed that the hardest difficulty in Civ6 is only about as hard as the third-highest difficulty in Civ4 even with the extreme levels of cheating it does.

It's interesting to me that I can love a game with so many problems so much. The AI as mentioned is primitive, the graphics were bland even for its time, the balancing of the various leaders and units is non-existent, it lost all the personality of its predecessors (and Alpha Centauri in particular), and the UI needs modding to reach the level of simply "reasonably usable". And yet it's an everpresent in any list of my top 5 games of all time.

[Gorth]

4 hours ago, BruceVC said:

Im 60 hours into BG2 and as was expected Im loving it, I have just got to Chapter 3 and I had to ruminate on who I should align with Bodhi or the Shadow Thieves. It was tough decision because Bodhi offered advantages like she was less arrogant and didnt attack me immediately, possible hot Vampiress Romance  and a litany of magic items

But I then decided I couldnt align with the undead against humans so I decided to assist the Shadow Thieves
And then I have been on some excellent side quests like The Planar Sphere, Umar Hills and the entire Windspear Hills and the Firkraag story arc

I am also enjoying the cheesy BG2 Romance mod and the entertaining dialogue options. My Romance with Viconia is proceeding nicely and so is my Vienxay relationship

I also dropped Hexxat as a party member and included Valygar because he is more effective fighter and archer

Further updates to follow 

Just a suggestion... play the game multiple times and try out both options. It does play a bit different during the middle part of the story. Also, no less than 3 romances for a guy character, there should be something to your liking there. Romances carry over to the dlc/expansion (Throne of Bhaal) iirc.

Edit: As usual, the female gamers gets shafted badly by a single romance option, with a cringe worthy guy, who is as awful as any female romance option in any video game of that age (give or take ten years).

[Bartimaeus]

29 minutes ago, Gorth said:

female gamers gets shafted badly by a single romance option, with a cringe worthy guy

I've played Baldur's Gate II quite a number of times, and I've never consciously realized that the human trashcan known as Anomen is your only option as a female character. While I always play as a female protagonist, I've never had Anomen in my party because I throw his bloated corpse into the nearest dumpster the moment I get to the Copper Coronet, and I guess I really just thought about none of the other characters attempting to initiate a romance. Well, it's just as well anyways - Aerie is almost as much of a trashcan as Anomen is, and Jaheira and Viconia are both better as bitter and mean respectively, .

Edited September 19, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Gorth]

3 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I've played Baldur's Gate II quite a number of times, and I've never consciously realized that the human trashcan known as Anomen is your only option as a female character. While I always play as a female protagonist, I've never had Anomen in my party because I throw his bloated corpse into the nearest dumpster the moment I get to the Copper Coronet, and I guess I really just thought about none of the other characters attempting to initiate a romance. Well, it's just as well anyways - Aerie is almost as much of a trashcan as Anomen is, and Jaheira and Viconia are both better bitter and angry, .

I think (based on something I read 15 years ago on the internet), that Haer'Dalis (sp?) was supposed to be the second option for female characters but got left on the cutting board together with a lot of other content. I'm sure more diligent BG2 veterans can correct me here

Anomen usually stays in my party until his personal quest is complete, never to be seen again. That being said, I did once play through the romance option, to satisfy my curiosity. That's probably why it stayed at "once"

Edit: I didn't take that game into ToB, so no idea how it progressed there

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

5 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I've played Baldur's Gate II quite a number of times, and I've never consciously realized that the human trashcan known as Anomen is your only option as a female character. While I always play as a female protagonist, I've never had Anomen in my party because I throw his bloated corpse into the nearest dumpster the moment I get to the Copper Coronet, and I guess I really just thought about none of the other characters attempting to initiate a romance. Well, it's just as well anyways - Aerie is almost as much of a trashcan as Anomen is, and Jaheira and Viconia are both better as bitter and mean respectively, .

Y-y-y-y-y-y-you naughty Bartimaeus ! Surly you don't think mean and bitter are bad ! All the women in my life are bitter and mean ?

But yeah, Anomen as the sole paramour for ladies is something that I heard consistently as a bad thing about BG2. I usually try to do an even split of ladies to fellas in RPGs, and if I was into Bioware romancing it would be bad that the ladies only option would be a prick like Anomen while the fellas get to pick between shy anime girl, milf, and bad lady. Well now that I think about it, that doesn't sound so great either.

[Bartimaeus]

20 minutes ago, KP From Another World said:

Y-y-y-y-y-y-you naughty Bartimaeus ! Surly you don't think mean and bitter are bad ! All the women in my life are bitter and mean ?

No, that's why I said they're better off that way: it'd be weird if they were supposed to be all lovey-dovey or whatever. The thought of Jaheira being anything but the grumpy old lady that she is seems pretty weird to me...but really, it all goes hand-in-hand with the last sentence of your second paragraph: I don't want to romance anyone at all. Player romances in video games are universally bad(?) - certainly BioWare ones are, at least. Always playing female protagonists* mercifully saved me here, I suppose.

*Technically, I first played BG2 when I was like ten or so and initially selected a male protagonist...buuut I'm pretty sure Aerie joined my party and tried to romance me and I summarily threw her out of the party and that was that, .

29 minutes ago, Gorth said:

I think (based on something I read 15 years ago on the internet), that Haer'Dalis (sp?) was supposed to be the second option for female characters but got left on the cutting board together with a lot of other content. I'm sure more diligent BG2 veterans can correct me here

Anomen usually stays in my party until his personal quest is complete, never to be seen again. That being said, I did once play through the romance option, to satisfy my curiosity. That's probably why it stayed at "once"

Edit: I didn't take that game into ToB, so no idea how it progressed there

Wow. Haer'Dalis was the next option? Really? ...I'm not a girl, so my opinion on such things is eminently worthless, but...I mean, I guess he's better than the second worst option after Anomen, which would have to be stupid baby man Cernd. That creep gives druids a bad name. So at least it wasn't intended to be him, I suppose.

Edited September 19, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Humanoid]

I think BG2 might have been the last RPG I played where my primary run was with a male PC. This may have been influenced by Anomen, but I can't say for sure. I don't think I ever let him join, but then I was never one to rotate companions much.

Looking at a list of BG2 companions to try to remember who was in my core party and I see BG2EE added ...a bear? Well, it has the best portrait of the new additions at least. Anyway, I was a boring goody two-shoes back then so I probably just had a fairly default looking party - Sorcerer PC, Minsc, Jaheira, Aerie, Valygar, Keldorn I think? These days, well, I'd probably try to play a solo pure Thief and fail to get out of tutorial dungeon.