After some longer break from the game due to my busy work schedule, I have finally acquired Platinum Trophy in Tales of Arise on my PS4 today. This game has one of the most balanced roads to Platinum Trophy, I have ever achieved. I had no need for any kind of excessive grinding. Just now and there going back to some easy to get material for weapon crafting or few minutes of fishing. Even the post game was one straightforward way to level 100 while clearing all new content. Both post game quests have been fun and challenging, and I had not feel burned out from for a single minute during whole 111 hours of gameplay. That's what I call quality game design!

I just finished Return of Obra Dinn, and while a great game, it has some annoying achievements that require you to re-play the game in a stupid way. So yeah, great achievement design is fun.

Elden Ring. Reached the late-game dragon area. Ironically, the only boss who didn't have long delayed and extendable combo chains, abilities to cross the arena in an instant or attacks faster than I could see them coming, was the Fire Giant. Granted, he also had an enormous health bar and the attacks were hitting hard if they landed, so even my upgraded tower shield could only take one. Also, visually, the boss strongly reminded of Daimon from Dragon's Dogma.
Defeated Alecto the Ringleader. Took quite some time, as Alecto could cross the arena quickly and one-hit the PC at any point with little time to react (the AoE blood jump attack and the grab) and could extend the normal combo seemingly indefinitely unless interrupted, which could result in trading hits which is not a good idea with any boss. Fortunately, I was able to corner her between the mist wall and a rock and her health ran out before my stamina did.
Edit. Also defeated a Godskin Noble (?) mini-boss. The boss jumped off the bridge where the battle was taking place, which was rather amusing and certainly preferable to fighting it head-on.

Edited July 30, 20232 yr by Hawke64

fight black knife assassin boss without summon was the hardest boss fight experience in elden ring

tried 5 different build and finally lucked out of it

10 hours ago, Hawke64 said:

Elden Ring. Reached the late-game dragon area.

Which late-game dragon are we talking about? The two headed one?

After I thought I have lost a video of my Druidstone gameplay during my PC upgrade, after almost two years I have finally found it 😛 It is a guide and walkthrough of Speedrunner achievement on Hard Difficulty. This is the only video of this achievement on Hard on YT, so it might be possible, that no one else so far, has bothered to get it this way 😛 The preparation of tactics for this took me more than two hours and then another half hour to have a luck with RNG on book spawn to be able to perform it correctly 😛

 

Continued from old thread...

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/131770-what-are-you-playing-now-games-dont-make-you-violent-lag-does/

 

I finished Gothic 2 after about 100 hours and as I mentioned in a previous post its a highly recommended, classic PB design game which includes all the things we love about PB games which are
 

• no level scaling and no map hand holding
• an open world and multiple ways to advance skills and lots of side quests

I played as a Paladin and I also used scrolls in certain combat strategies. I adopted a good approach to defeat the dragons which included a Summon Demon spell and then I attacked while the dragons were distracted

G2 gets a well deserved 70/100 on the globally respected " BruceVC game rating system "

Now the next exciting question, what next to play? I have several options which I will post later

11 hours ago, Wormerine said:

Which late-game dragon are we talking about? The two headed one?

The Crumbling Farum Azula. Though, I have not encountered the two-headed dragon and the one-headed ones kept disappearing after I tried to shoot them. Met the Godskin Duo, had to rethink my strategy and gather some flowers at river banks. When I entered the arena via the balcony I thought that the dragon's head would be the boss.
Not sure what the area was in terms of lore or how I got there. I assume that the certain door could not be accessed as the barrier could not die on its own, while the area's boss held the rune, hence why I had to defeat him.
On another note, the pacing has become much jollier - not counting the ash-upgrading diversion, the progress has been reasonably straightforward, though the balance is still odd - the Duo was rather challenging, Malekith was fine (but would have been more unpleasant without the AI companion), the following boss fell within seconds (something-something All-Knowing).

There is one more dragon in the Forum, but I would miss it myself if not for the wiki. Guidance on finding him in spoilers, if you are curious:

 

From the Beside the Great Bridge Site of Grace, turn around and take the elevator back down into the church. Go past the Beastmen and exit the church. Head straight ahead out of the church, towards the cluster of trees, and look over the edge for a platform to fall down to. Follow the path down to the end, and look for a cubby on the stone floor that doesn't have bones in it. Approach and look for the Lie down prompt. This will teleport you to Placidusax's arena

Edited July 31, 20232 yr by Wormerine

2 hours ago, BruceVC said:

Now the next exciting question, what next to play? I have several options which I will post later

Baldur’s Gate3? It’s out on Thursday and available for 2nd round of beta testing 😛 

3 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

Baldur’s Gate3? It’s out on Thursday and available for 2nd round of beta testing 😛 

Yes, BG3 is my most anticipated game of all time 

But Wormie remember my policy, I always wait 3-6 months to play new games so that the official patches are released and relevant mods are created 

Thats how I avoid a Cyb2077 disappointment and anger 

 

1 hour ago, BruceVC said:

Thats how I avoid a Cyb2077 disappointment and anger 

That's a great policy. I waited 2 full years before playing Cyb77 and I was still disappointed 😅

22 hours ago, Wormerine said:

There is one more dragon in the Forum, but I would miss it myself if not for the wiki. Guidance on finding him in spoilers, if you are curious:

  Reveal hidden contents

From the Beside the Great Bridge Site of Grace, turn around and take the elevator back down into the church. Go past the Beastmen and exit the church. Head straight ahead out of the church, towards the cluster of trees, and look over the edge for a platform to fall down to. Follow the path down to the end, and look for a cubby on the stone floor that doesn't have bones in it. Approach and look for the Lie down prompt. This will teleport you to Placidusax's arena

Spoiler

Found the path on the second attempt - on the first dropped onto a wrong ledge, the lower one. Not sure how it could have been found naturally - the ledges are hard to see and there are quite a few deadly drops before that looked possible to reach.

Defeated the Dragonlord and at the same time the boss killed me. Fortunately, I was able to teleport to the newly-discovered site of Grace and collect the runes.

Reached the secret snowy area. The invisible assassins were unpleasant and I doubt that I would have purchased the item that makes them visible even if I had found the merchant. I managed to sneak around and light the bonfires to open the portal while having to fight only one of them and running away from another.
The Walking Mausoleum launching magic missiles from afar in the same area looked very impressive.

The canyons east of Santo Ilesso in Saints Row look like somewhere hurlshot would go on family vacation. 

So I never steal RVs in the game, just in case it is his.

 

Anyone else play Saints Row and encounter this issue?

1 hour ago, Hawke64 said:

  Reveal hidden contents

Found the path on the second attempt - on the first dropped onto a wrong ledge, the lower one. Not sure how it could have been found naturally - the ledges are hard to see and there are quite a few deadly drops before that looked possible to reach.

Defeated the Dragonlord and at the same time the boss killed me. Fortunately, I was able to teleport to the newly-discovered site of Grace and collect the runes.

Reached the secret snowy area. The invisible assassins were unpleasant and I doubt that I would have purchased the item that makes them visible even if I had found the merchant. I managed to sneak around and light the bonfires to open the portal while having to fight only one of them and running away from another.

Uhh, completely forgot about this bit. This and Haligtree gave me strong “DS2 cruelty” vibes.

Finally completed my first (Angel) run through Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous yesterday. Successfully completed the full secret ending. All in all a fun, great experience with the game. I more than got my money's worth, including money spent on the two DLC season passes. Looking forward to Azata, Aeon, and Legend runs in the future.

Trying to decide what I should play next. Maybe go back to Solasta to the play the last DLC. I'm surely going to be buying Starfield, but I won't be able to actually play the game anytime soon.

Like @BruceVC, I also have the rule of not playing a new game, especially a big new game, for several months until major patching is done (and possibly even the release of some DLCs). But in Starfield's case there's also the issue of needing to buy a new gaming computer because my current machine is 8 years old and won't handle it. I want to be able to spend a good amount of money on a really good new machine maxed out on processor, memory, graphics, and SSD. So I want to take my time and shop for a good deal/sale prices.

i'm debating jumping in with baldurs gate 3.  the full release is today, but.. i've been burned before. 

1 hour ago, Gorgon said:

i'm debating jumping in with baldurs gate 3.  the full release is today, but.. i've been burned before. 

I thought its on 3rd? ...

1 hour ago, Gorgon said:

i'm debating jumping in with baldurs gate 3.  the full release is today, but.. i've been burned before. 

Yeah, I have been thinking about it too. It should be an easy choice, since I enjoyed Divine Divinity and the Original Sin games well enough. But I am hesitant to drop full monies on a game nowadays, and since I am still on a bit of a high from Jagged Alliance 3 being amazing, I figure it will be easy to regret my purchase. 

15 minutes ago, Chilloutman said:

I thought its on 3rd? ...

It is. Unless Gorgon assumes the 3 day early access is still a thing - it is not. It's been scrapped for PC once the game's release has been moved a month earlier.

https://twitter.com/baldursgate3/status/1684597242496253952?s=20

As I don't want to start anything new before BG3 come out I have been finishing some leftovers:

Weird West - oddly enough the final character had some decent sidequests. I wish there was more of those in the game. I liked it alright, but I thought content was a bit too repetitive. And the game wasn't balanced enough to encourage using the sandbox.

Return to Monkey Island - I really liked it. I don't know why people were upset about the ending. It is very Monkey Island - like. MI2 went very meta as well.

Edited August 1, 20232 yr by Wormerine

I played BG3 EA just last week, and unless they massively change things about the early game, there's a good bunch of it that's pretty bug free.

But they may have fixed that with the last week of EA.

Not playing, more like ... should I buy? Should I not buy? I hear "story"/campaign isn't long at all/is super short, but it does have the D3/PoE sort of endgame grinding.  Mostly, it sounds like the simpler play I'd like vs. modern arpg's.  Edit: and the short campaign may be great for replaying/new chrs.  Hm. 

 

Edited August 2, 20232 yr by LadyCrimson

12 hours ago, MrBrown said:

I played BG3 EA just last week, and unless they massively change things about the early game, there's a good bunch of it that's pretty bug free.

Thats is such great feedback, keep us updated about your non-spoiler views 

I am not joking when I say BG3 could be a candidate for  "best  RPG of the decade "