What are you Playing Now? It's not how you play the game, it's how you place the blame

[Hawke64]

Momodora: Reverie Under The Moonlight. I've just defeated the first boss and the game seems to be an action/metroidvania, though it has been rather minimalistic - few enemy types, easy platforming, no puzzles, checkpoint-based saving system. Also the contact damage. On the other hand, the pixel art and animations look good, there is no VA (except for the MC's death screen/m), the controls are rebindable, equipment provides some bonuses. The story follows a priestess who uses a (magical?) leaf for combat and is looking for the queen, judging by the intro dialogue, so it should be straightforward enough.

[Hurlshort]

Whelp, I finished my New Vegas run. I played through 2 of the DLC (Old World Blues, Dead Money) but when I went to play Honest Hearts, it started to crash frequently. I tried a few things that didn't work, so I decided to just skip the last 2 DLC and finish the game. I sided with the NCR this time (last time I went with Yes Man.) so it was nice to see that ending. I was actually hoping to finish more content, but the game was locking up too often. That being said, I still finished way more of the side quests than I did back when I originally played it.

Now maybe I'll play Subnautica, since they just upgraded the habitat options and I can make my sprawling sea base better.

[Bartimaeus]

8 hours ago, Hawke64 said:

Momodora: Reverie Under The Moonlight. I've just defeated the first boss and the game seems to be an action/metroidvania, though it has been rather minimalistic - few enemy types, easy platforming, no puzzles, checkpoint-based saving system. Also the contact damage. On the other hand, the pixel art and animations look good, there is no VA (except for the MC's death screen/m), the controls are rebindable, equipment provides some bonuses. The story follows a priestess who uses a (magical?) leaf for combat and is looking for the queen, judging by the intro dialogue, so it should be straightforward enough.

My patience for metroidvania is pretty low, but the Momodora games are an exception as short and simple examples of the genre - I've played them all (except for the side-game Minoria, which was pretty horrible from like the hour or two I played of it), and I think they're making another one.

1 hour ago, Hurlshort said:

Now maybe I'll play Subnautica, since they just upgraded the habitat options and I can make my sprawling sea base better.

This reminds me that I should finish Below Zero...I seem to only play like an hour or two every couple of weeks...

Edited December 17, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Hurlshort]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

This reminds me that I should finish Below Zero...I seem to only play like an hour or two every couple of weeks...

Finish? I thought the goal was just to build cool bases in the water and live your best life as an Underwater Ice Road Trucker.

Edited December 17, 2022 by Hurlshort

[majestic]

Games without defined ending parameters / victory conditions are death.

[Humanoid]

Or is it the exact opposite of that, lack of death?

[Bartimaeus]

56 minutes ago, Hurlshort said:

Finish? I thought the goal was just to build cool bases in the water and live your best life as an Underwater Ice Road Trucker.

Even in the original, I tried to do as little base-building as possible (in fact, I deconstructed the literal singular room I had built the moment I got the big ship that served as a mobile base), which is probably why I only play an hour or two of Below Zero every couple of weeks: unlike the original game, there's really not much that feels like it's driving me to keep playing it. A kind of awkward and uninteresting story and no great depths to explore (or at least not any that I've found), it's O.K. but not nearly as compelling. As far as video game experiences go, taking the Prawn all the way down the Lost River in the original while not having any clue where I was going but being inexorably pulled deeper in while trying to avoid leviathans and crabsquids to be able to solve the story was pretty top tier - dinking around decorating rooms has never been my thing and never will be.

Edited December 17, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Chilloutman]

I enjoyed few hours of bellow zero but one I found out there is land to explore I lost all interest, like do I have to build SECOND base to explore there? no thanks ciao

[SellSwordDev]

4 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

Whelp, I finished my New Vegas run. I played through 2 of the DLC (Old World Blues, Dead Money) but when I went to play Honest Hearts, it started to crash frequently. I tried a few things that didn't work, so I decided to just skip the last 2 DLC and finish the game. I sided with the NCR this time (last time I went with Yes Man.) so it was nice to see that ending. I was actually hoping to finish more content, but the game was locking up too often. That being said, I still finished way more of the side quests than I did back when I originally played it.

Now maybe I'll play Subnautica, since they just upgraded the habitat options and I can make my sprawling sea base better.

Two great picks there. Which reminds me, need to play Subnautica again soon.

[Wormerine]

I have managed to finish my two ongoing big games before Holiday break.

Spider-man. Yeah, fun, open world time waster. It's one of those games I would be rather critical of when talking about it, but I did enjoy playing through it. Will no doubt pick up the standalone expansion for a right price. It does swinging, punching and open world activities well and not a lot more. After finishing my playthrough I was left with two achievements - completing game plus and hardest difficulty unlockable after beating the game. I didn't have enough swinging so I decied I might as well do that. I must say it soured me quite a bit on the game. Hardest difficulty was hardly noticable change and game plus hold no surprise, unlike Arkham games where enemy encounters get remixed. And rushing through the story made me realise how little I enjoyed playthrough through the actual campaign. Story is decent, but those are mostly cutscenes inbetween openworld travel. "Dungeons" are few and they are brief. Non-spiderman moments are just not fun. Good thing there is option to skip puzzles. Still, I did surprising amount of side content all over again. Swinging and punching is still fun.

Persona5 Royal - easily my favourite jRPG to date. Every complain I have about jRPGs just doesn't apply here. No weird spikes in difficulty, force grind, boring combat. You are over leveled? Fine you don't have to do combat. Pacing was great - any individual part of the game would quickly loose me, but with how they were intertwined kept me going. A tiny criticism - I wasn't a fun of extra dungeon at the end. I wouldn't mind it on its own, but it comes right at the end of the game, interrupting an epilogue of the main story and it really feels stitched on. And it must be said - as far as Waifu's go, Persona5 selection was rather excellent.

[Mamoulian War]

Goal number 28/2022 finished

Yesterday, I have reached alternate ending in Final Fantasy XV – Episode Ignis DLC on my PS4. It was just a short session, but I had more fun, than in the rest of DLC. Probably because Ignis was overpowered by the effects of Ring of Lucii from the beginning of the final battle, so this overshadowed the need for better reflexes, which I lack .

[Mamoulian War]

About an hour ago, my goal nr. 29 for this year has been completed

December 18, 16:30 – After 1 hour and 6 attempts, the Friendly Match challenge versus Noctis in Final Fantasy XV – Episode Ignis DLC has been won, and with it, the last PS4 trophy of this DLC is mine. The final attempt took me 10 minutes and 54 seconds, which surprised me a lot, because most of the guides to this fight, that I have watched, lasted more than 15 minutes. With the rumours floating around, that this fight is the hardest fight in Final Fantasy XV, I was postponing the playthrough of this DLC for 10 days, and then for another two days, to start this challenge. I just wanted to have as good mood as possible, and feel well rested, before attempting it . Now, that it is behind me, I have to say, I had more trouble to defeat Cor in Episode Gladiolus. I think, it might be due to both Cor and Noctis having similar patterns in a lot of their attacks, so I already knew when was the best time to press dodge, to avoid damage. But the most crucial thing to be able to win against him, was to execute almost flawlessly the counterattacks, which healed Ignis, and have caused big damage to Noctis. Thankfully, because of the animation of Noctis’ attacks, it was a little bit easier to perform them, than against common enemies or Ardyn, so even the old slowpoke as me, was able to successfully perform them in more than 90% of cases . But even with that, I had to use all of the consumables, with the exception of 1 Phoenix Down, which the game gave me at the start of the fight. Another crucial thing was, to save your High Jump special move, when Noctis unleashed his Armiger Chain, which needed crazy fast reactions as well. And as expected, I have missed it few times even in my final attempt . I feel now as much adrenaline and satisfaction, as when I have beaten False King Allant in the Demon’s Souls, for the first time  

My goal of getting 100% trophies before the end of the year, seems little bit more realistic than before. And thankfully because of these DLC challenges, I am starting to enjoy the game more, than when I have started to play it. So my current rating for the game have raised from 2/5 to 4/5. We'll see how long it will last, when I start again to play little bit more the main game to finish the rest of the trophies

[bugarup]

I was playing SWTOR again, and by playing I mean "Spending way many hours giving every single character a secondary class that came with one of mini-expansions". I'm not going to ever touch 90% of them, but I did it anyway, because what if one day I wanted to?... Sigh. Why can't I be this diligent with my IRL chores.

[Keyrock]

On 12/12/2022 at 12:53 PM, Mamoulian War said:

Has anyone here played Encased or Atom RPG? How long are these games, and which one would you recommend more, and why?  

I played Encased a good while back and I remember enjoying it, then I stopped playing it for some reason I can't recall and never got back to it. I should remedy that eventually.

[Hawke64]

Momodora. Learned that when you defeat a boss without taking damage, you receive better loot, so I have been trying to do so and quite successfully - 4 bosses (the witch, the bug, the Pardoner Fennel, and the Heretical Arsonist) have been defeated and the loot (indeed, quite powerful) has been obtained. The areas became more diverse, though the number of insta-killing obstacles and the saving system are somehow discouraging. Or Ender Lilies just was too easy - I could loot an area and die, then just ran past everything. Unfortunately, it does not work in Momodora. On another note, the MC's bow has the fire rate of an SMG.
Also, the winter sale has begun on EGS and there are free games daily. Today it is Sable, which I had purchased and played on Steam a month or so ago. Mixed feelings on the matter.

Edit. To continue with Momodora. It is counter-intuitive that playing well makes the game easier. It would be interesting if defeating a boss without taking damage gave a new skin/accessory, but not a power-up.

Edited December 19, 2022 by Hawke64

[InsaneCommander]

5 hours ago, Hawke64 said:

Momodora. Learned that when you defeat a boss without taking damage, you receive better loot

I only discovered that after finishing the game. I'll need to replay it someday.

[Bartimaeus]

12 hours ago, Hawke64 said:

Momodora. Learned that when you defeat a boss without taking damage, you receive better loot, so I have been trying to do so and quite successfully - 4 bosses (the witch, the bug, the Pardoner Fennel, and the Heretical Arsonist) have been defeated and the loot (indeed, quite powerful) has been obtained. The areas became more diverse, though the number of insta-killing obstacles and the saving system are somehow discouraging. Or Ender Lilies just was too easy - I could loot an area and die, then just ran past everything. Unfortunately, it does not work in Momodora. On another note, the MC's bow has the fire rate of an SMG.
Also, the winter sale has begun on EGS and there are free games daily. Today it is Sable, which I had purchased and played on Steam a month or so ago. Mixed feelings on the matter.

Edit. To continue with Momodora. It is counter-intuitive that playing well makes the game easier. It would be interesting if defeating a boss without taking damage gave a new skin/accessory, but not a power-up.

Oh yeah, that never made sense to me. Weird design, basically just rewards you for already being too good at the game. It's like a much more extreme version of cutting off tails of Dark Souls bosses for special weapons.

Edited December 20, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Mamoulian War]

One more backlog goal in 2022 finished (nr.30)

December 20, 13:00 – After finishing all PS4 trophies in Episode Ignis, I have decided to relax a little bit and run around in the main game to finish some sidequests. During that, I have found a meal in an restaurant in Lestallum, with Equalizer buff, which boosts your attack by 2% for each level between your level and the level of the monster you are fighting against. So I have decided to take advantage of it, and went straight to finish the quest involving Melusine superboss, which were added to main game as a free update/DLC. I have defeated her on a second attempt, although she gave me some hard beating when she was under 3% of HP, and almost obliterated my entourage. Thankfully the game offered me invocation of a summon and then, Shiva took care of the rest of her HP pool . After reporting the quest at the Hunter HQ, I have received the trophy, and with that, Final Fantasy XV – July 2017 Update is 100% complete.

 

[LadyCrimson]

8 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

Equalizer buff,

That buff (there's at least two variations of it) is the main way to rather easily beat the entire game while remaining level 1, if one was into that sort of thing (by wearing that Nix ring thus never leveling up). Although I found even with that it was pretty tough going with a few post-game challenges at that lvl. Not to mention costly to get all the ingredients to use it constantly, lol.

The funniest thing about remaining lvl 1, imo, was how the summon damage was apparently reliant on or largely based on your chr. level. Thus they became useless in short order as they'd appear, do like 1-3 dmg or whatever and one would just ignore the summon-available music.

At any rate, yes, a good/very useful recipe.

[Malcador]

Never finished Wing Commander, so going to do that. 

[Hawke64]

Death's Door. Defeated the Urn Witch. The game is very lovely in all aspects (visuals, controls, combat), though I would prefer a better GUI - exploration (backtracking, in particular) becomes frustrating without a map, and it is hard to tell how successfully boss battles go without their HP bars shown. The stages are noticeable and there are visual indicators on all enemies (magenta cracks start appearing as they take damage), but they are not precise.

Larian's D&D game. Played with the character creator. It was decent, but worse than Wasteland 3 or (if I remember correctly) Solasta - some of the options required to click through to get something specific (heads, hair styles, etc.), while others had all available options shown (mostly, the colour palettes). Most heads (non-customisable) and hair styles (same) were unpleasant to look at and there were no options for body types beyond masculine/feminine, while both of them were built like wizards (no muscles; fighters and barbarians looked ridiculous). No option for the PC to be unvoiced either. On a positive note, the gender identity and VA were not bound to the body type, there were several backgrounds to choose from, the preferable class attributes were highlighted (not sure how correct the default recommendation was, though - created a dex-based drow fighter called Bob).

[Wormerine]

7 hours ago, Hawke64 said:

Larian’s D&D game. Played with the character creator. It was decent, but worse than Wasteland 3 or (if I remember correctly) Solasta - some of the options required to click through to get something specific (heads, hair styles, etc.), while others had all available options shown (mostly, the colour palettes). (…) while both of them were built like wizards (no muscles; fighters and barbarians looked ridiculous).

Yeah, character creator has been heavily criticised for on Larian’s forum for reason you mentioned and others. In recent PfH devs were gushing how far they came with their character creator UI, and I sincerely hope they are talking about version we haven’t seen yet, and the one we have since Early Access dropped has been underwhelming and clunky. 

At the very least, different body types should be coming in 1.0 - recent Trailer shows player character with a beefy bod.

[Keyrock]

Picked up Valheim again. It's been a very long time since I last played so I made a new character (named him Beefstick) in a new world. I haven't bothered reading changelogs, I'll discover what's been added and changed as I go. I was almost instantly reminded just how lovely the game looks despite the pixelated and lowpoly aesthetic. The lighting effects are just fantastic.

I don't remember if there was gamepad support last time I played, but it feels super comfy playing with a gamepad.

Edited December 22, 2022 by Keyrock

[majestic]

22 hours ago, Malcador said:

Never finished Wing Commander, so going to do that. 

Which one? All of them? One particular? Some?

[InsaneCommander]

I started Pentiment but then realised I'll travel next week and will probably forget some important details when I resume playing next year. So I'll quit for now.

I liked the beginning, especially after I got enough information and managed to remember who is who. My favorite part so far was

Spoiler

Returning the books the men were hiding to the librarian. What a bunch of scoundrels.