What are you Playing Now? - What doesn't kill you, gives you XP

[Mamoulian War]

More SO 5. I have started to create some powerful armour through Synthesis and Augmentation. And started to unlock secret items through Synthesis as well. Crafting armour is pretty fine and fast, although it needs some save scumming. But the Synthesis mechanics is creation of Hell… Some recipes are easy to create, but today, I’ve spent 40+ minutes to create one specific secret item, without success… So despite defeating 3 out of 5 entry level superbosses in Ex Dungeon, I feel very bad taste in my mouth now… Le sigh… 

[majestic]

Well, finally done:

Time to shelf D4 until January 23rd.

[melkathi]

Finished Solasta: Palace of Ice

It was fun with a few more enemies, some choices that matter, and a superfluous cold mechanic.

The story was fun. I enjoyed it. Also, as Annie the rogue would put it:

 

Because there are choices, the ending also changes a bit based on those (mainly who rules the Snow Alliance at the end).

There are a couple obviously wrong choice (at least one anyway). But some choices I would have expected to show up in the ending slides but didn't.

[LadyCrimson]

Ghostwire Tokyo -

--Installed. Oh it has Ansel! Wait and its own photomode on top. which does not play well with Ansel/Ansel doesn't seem to work quite properly. Ok, their more limited photomode it is.
--Performance - get rid of all the blur: turn off chromatic aberration, DoF, sharpened my TV a little.  On my rig I seem to manage what I might call default/High 4k with reflection-ray tracing on medium (kept the RT shadows off) and DLSS at Quality while maintaining 60fps. Still looks good, and with the tight mega-city/often rainy environment, all the reflections do add some atmosphere. If no RT/no DLSS, hovers close to 60.
--Tutorial phase: on rails, invisible walls and "don't go into the fog!" until you do initial tasks.
--magic finger casting combat, using a controller, while simple aim and shoot spell, feels weird. Like latency or something about button mashing timing I'm unclear on.
---visuals: so far looks nice, not cutting edge but atmospheric and nice, but most of the attention is in the city details. Rendered cutscenes, human chr. faces can often look comically bad.
---I like the Japanese VA for the whatever it is giving your chr. powers (like a ghost possession?)

Tutorial phase is far as I got. Mostly I'm in it for the city (and eventually, rooftop?) wandering and photomode. I heard the "true open wandering" is semi-limited until you finish story or something.
 

[Mamoulian War]

More Star Ocean 5.

I was able to defeat the boss of the first floor (Daril) in Ex Dungeon for the first time ever. I was not able to defeat him in my first playthrough, as I did not knew much about Synthesis and Augmentation. This time, I have prepared some good armour for that fight, and I have finally defeated him, even though I have completely forgot to exchange sucky sword o one of my characters, which I am using for low level farming He was pretty big pain in the ass, as he had one ultra powerful AoE attack, same as a Limit attack of the main character, but he could use it at random. And he used it few times as hit first attack, which instantly wiped out my whole party   I spent more than a hour to find a working strategy how to survive him, but I had a lot of fun. Unlike when I was trying to synthesize Metal Pipe for 45 minutes of reloading Two more floors in Ex Dungeon to go to reach the Ethereal Queen for the first time

On the second floor, I have finally found enemies for easier XP farming, so it will be a little bit easier from now on to move forward I still need to get some more recipes for crafting better gear, but I am slowly getting there

[Hurlshort]

Is anyone playing Return to Moria? I'd love a solid Conan Exiles type game in Middle Earth, but I don't trust reviews and can't tell if this game is good or bad.

Apparently they are working on a Shire version too.

[Hurlshort]

16 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

Is anyone playing Return to Moria? I'd love a solid Conan Exiles type game in Middle Earth, but I don't trust reviews and can't tell if this game is good or bad.

Apparently they are working on a Shire version too.

Never mind, I decided to get it myself and be the guinea pig.

I only got to play a bit, but so far it seems like a solid survival crafting building game set in Moria.

[Mamoulian War]

Second Ex Dungeon superboss defeated. Two-winged Gabriel Celeste. The fight looked pretty easy and straightforward, but around 20-30% of HP, he started to use super AoE, which have few times almost wiped out my whole party. 4 times only one character survived Thankfully, I had prepared 5 Resurrection Mists from Synthesis for this fight alone, but my oh my, only one left at the end of battle. I will have to prepare up to 20 for next superboss and I have to level up a lot my party as well. I have also finished 100% of quests again, and I will be slowly getting to 100% bestiary, I will need to defeat 5 more superbosses for that. The hardest Trophy will be the collection of 100% items, because I am unlucky with Orichalcum and Moonstone drops

[Keyrock]

The Talos Principle 2 got me like

[melkathi]

So it is good?

I just noticed Verena wrote this one. Which is interesting as I thought Jonas wrote the first one and they are married. Kinda makes me want to overcome my dislike for the type of game and play through them to compare the styles.

[Hurlshort]

15 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

Never mind, I decided to get it myself and be the guinea pig.

I only got to play a bit, but so far it seems like a solid survival crafting building game set in Moria.

After playing a 2nd session, I decided to refund it. I wouldn't say it was bad, but it was still fairly clunky. Maybe I'll give it another try down the road. I also don't love buying games on Epic, so that was another issue. At least it was easy to refund.

[Keyrock]

11 hours ago, melkathi said:

So it is good?

I consider The Talos Principle to be one of the finest puzzle games I've ever played and TTP2 has the potential to surpass it, it's certainly more ambitious. I'm still fairly early in the game. Were this a flight it would be after takeoff and the plane has leveled out but the majority of the voyage is ahead of me. TTP2 still needs to get through the rest of the flight and land safely, but so far it's been nothing but a joy to play. No really difficult puzzles yet, I've had a couple that stumped me for about 10 minutes before I got my brain to adjust its manner of reasoning and figured them out, but nothing truly challenging yet, I'm expecting those deeper into the game. I'm still being introduced to new tools and taught how to use them, first on their own and then in conjunction with other tools. If the first game is anything to go by, I'll eventually need to figure out new ways to use said tools that are not explicitly taught to me. As far as narrative goes, TTP2 is exploring the same types of themes the first game did; what it means to be human, the nature of existence, is there a purpose to any of this, that sort of stuff. The storytelling is much more robust in the sequel. In TTP you just had Elohim talking to you and a bunch of messages to find on computer terminals and QR codes from various sources from which to piece the story together. In this game you also have that (not nearly as much Elohim) but there are characters around you that you can physically interact with, not just a voice in your head, and there are a lot more of them you can have exchanges with, both in person and via the game's version of social media. It's a broader and somewhat more traditional way of telling a story than just trying to piece it together from audio logs and text files, though there are plenty of those too. 

Edited November 4, 2023 by Keyrock

[uuuhhii]

playing stellaris again

got 4 paragon for 100 years

some of them give one little quest some doesn't even give that 

no idea how to trigger all their content

[Theonlygarby]

Playing Wasteland 3 and classic fallout a little.

 

For wasteland I played closer to launch, before the DLC.  Decided to play steeltown.  bit of a mixed feeling.  On the plus side, you get to make lots of decisions on how to deal with the issue.  I'm not sure how different it would be with different choices.  Seems you can avoid a lot of fights if you choose to cooperate/have appropriate skills. 

The downside would be the combat.  It's fine, but it's so repetitive.   All the disruption weapons make the battles very tedious.  Low damage but if you get disrupted enough that character can't act for a turn.  Every robot deploys endless robo dogs.  My assault rifle guy still uses an early game weapon because i just never get assault rifle weapons.

 

Also I much prefer having a main character.  Creating a crew makes it less immersive imo.  Who am I even?  At a certain point you pass every skill check due to sharing skills.

 

For fallout classic, I think its just too dated for me.  I have visited every location and I'm level 5.  NPCs don't acknowledge other NPCs being dead.  Quests like saving tandi seem very anti climactic.  I didn't play RPGs back then, so I think it's just hard to go back and play them.

 

Maybe I'm just a hater

[BruceVC]

4 hours ago, Theonlygarby said:

Playing Wasteland 3 and classic fallout a little.

 

For wasteland I played closer to launch, before the DLC.  Decided to play steeltown.  bit of a mixed feeling.  On the plus side, you get to make lots of decisions on how to deal with the issue.  I'm not sure how different it would be with different choices.  Seems you can avoid a lot of fights if you choose to cooperate/have appropriate skills. 

The downside would be the combat.  It's fine, but it's so repetitive.   All the disruption weapons make the battles very tedious.  Low damage but if you get disrupted enough that character can't act for a turn.  Every robot deploys endless robo dogs.  My assault rifle guy still uses an early game weapon because i just never get assault rifle weapons.

 

Also I much prefer having a main character.  Creating a crew makes it less immersive imo.  Who am I even?  At a certain point you pass every skill check due to sharing skills.

 

For fallout classic, I think its just too dated for me.  I have visited every location and I'm level 5.  NPCs don't acknowledge other NPCs being dead.  Quests like saving tandi seem very anti climactic.  I didn't play RPGs back then, so I think it's just hard to go back and play them.

 

Maybe I'm just a hater

I haven't played any of  the Wasteland games yet but I intend  to but I  did play FO1&2 recently and I loved them.  I enjoy   the old-school  design of these CRPG  where you need   to  explore and there  is no  map handholding 

I love the whole sandbox and  open world  design of  older games like FO1&2

 

[Hawke64]

7 hours ago, Theonlygarby said:

At a certain point you pass every skill check due to sharing skills.

Not quite - there are high-level checks (and one of the difficulty options makes them even higher). Also, it is so nice when the team is actually a team and the party members help each other (unlike Larian's game where everyone for themselves).

[BruceVC]

I completed Arx Fatalis last night after about 45 hours, it was good fun and an appreciated CRPG experience. Its gets a solid 72/100 on the globally followed " BruceVC game rating system "

I particularly enjoyed the random exploring and finding things and I thought the magic system was unique and worthwhile. I did use some game guides like with the crypt wheel puzzle and the creation of the meteor sword. I found some of the accents and Goblin dialogue hilarious 

And I thought the final battle was unreasonably hard but I defeated Akbaa after about 2-3 hours by running away from him and using fireballs and my trusty bow

[Theonlygarby]

7 hours ago, Hawke64 said:

Not quite - there are high-level checks (and one of the difficulty options makes them even higher). Also, it is so nice when the team is actually a team and the party members help each other (unlike Larian's game where everyone for themselves).

I like the companions in wasteland 3 a lot.  I just would prefer to have a main character instead of starting with 2 that you can switch out and replace.  It's almost more like I'm a general giving direction than actually a part of the crew.

 

10 hours ago, BruceVC said:

I haven't played any of  the Wasteland games yet but I intend  to but I  did play FO1&2 recently and I loved them.  I enjoy   the old-school  design of these CRPG  where you need   to  explore and there  is no  map handholding 

I love the whole sandbox and  open world  design of  older games like FO1&2

 

Maybe I'm just not talking to the right people, but it feels like there aren't a lot if quests.  Do I rely on random encounters to level up?

[BruceVC]

16 minutes ago, Theonlygarby said:

I like the companions in wasteland 3 a lot.  I just would prefer to have a main character instead of starting with 2 that you can switch out and replace.  It's almost more like I'm a general giving direction than actually a part of the crew.

 

Maybe I'm just not talking to the right people, but it feels like there aren't a lot if quests.  Do I rely on random encounters to level up?

No  I completed every side  quest I could in FO1 and I used  companions for battles.  There aren't  lots  of side quests  but at  least  2-4 in most towns. I also  used  the Fixed  Mod  which may have added quests?

Edited November 6, 2023 by BruceVC

[Theonlygarby]

34 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

No  I completed every side  quest I could in FO1 and I used  companions for battles.  There aren't  lots  of side quests  but at  least  2-4 in most towns. I also  used  the Fixed  Mod  which may have added quests?

One stupid thing I did early on, was take Alex (I think that's his name) to the scorpion cave.  Then when I didn't need his help I told him we should part ways....  I kinda figured he'd return to his house in shady sands...  now he's in that cave, and as far as I know I can't reenter that cave.  So he's as good as dead me thinks

Edited November 6, 2023 by Theonlygarby

[Keyrock]

The Talos Principle 2 is ****ing awesome, it just continues to impress. I'm fairly far into the game now.

Big ol' goose egg in golden gate puzzles, but that's because I haven't managed to open any golden gates yet. I've played enough of the game to say that unless something goes horribly horribly wrong in the second half of the game, this is a STRONG GotY contender. It's been 16 hours and 23 minutes of awesome and zero hours and zero minutes of less than awesome. It's a puzzle game, so it's not going to appeal to everybody, but as a gateway puzzle game it might work fairly well because the puzzles are really well done and the game is so fantastic looking folks could appreciate it just as a walking simulator. Seriously, they took all the graphics and they crammed them all in here. Well, Croteam did cut some corners, there's no deformation, meaning that when you walk through water you don't make waves and when walking on sand or in snow you don't leave footprints. It's just snow painted solid ground; really really nicely painted, but painted nonetheless. I'm not going to complain about it when the game looks this good (the UE5 games are finally here), but I had to point it out to be fair. There are so many different environments and they're all so big and ridiculously detailed. I mean, they reused trees and some small rock outcroppings and stuff like that, but all these environments are meticulously arranged.

The puzzles are equally meticulously designed. I haven't found one I could cheese yet. In the first game, I'm pretty sure I did at least 2 or 3 puzzles not how they were intended to be solved, out of well over 100 puzzles that's not bad; zero so far in TTP2. I've encountered a few puzzles with decent challenge, a few that stumped me for 15 or 20 minutes, one that I slept on and solved the next day (I felt like an idiot because it was so obvious), and there's one Sphinx puzzle I haven't figured out yet. There are various types of puzzles. There are regular puzzles, these are walled off and self-contained. You are provided a set of tools with which to get to the podium at the end. The tools stay within the puzzle's arena, nothing goes in or out, only you can pass through the gate, nothing you are carrying. There are what I call delta puzzles because they have a delta/triangle symbol (I'm sure they have a name, I just never moused over the symbol, I guess?), these are just like regular puzzles, but they are not numbered and signs don't point to them, you need to find them with no guidance. Then there are 3 types of star puzzles: Prometheus, Pandora, and Sphinx. These can be anywhere, they are not walled off in their own rooms, they're just somewhere on the map. Prometheus puzzles are less puzzles and more scavenger hunts. You find his spark and you follow it back to him. It's really just finding the spark, following it is fairly trivial. Pandora puzzles are a receptacle you need to power somehow. Sphinx puzzles, fittingly, are the most riddle like. On the Sphinx monument will be a clue of some sort. It could be numbers, letters, a drawing. You need to figure out what the clue means then use said clue to find something. No clue what golden gate puzzles are like, on account of not having opened a golden gate yet.

I can't imagine the amount of work that went into this. How big of a studio is Croteam?

 

[BruceVC]

10 hours ago, Theonlygarby said:

One stupid thing I did early on, was take Alex (I think that's his name) to the scorpion cave.  Then when I didn't need his help I told him we should part ways....  I kinda figured he'd return to his house in shady sands...  now he's in that cave, and as far as I know I can't reenter that cave.  So he's as good as dead me thinks

The Companion AI is  frustrating and problematic in FO1,  its  much better  in FO2 because  you can trade with them and decide  there   combat  strategy

I use to laugh in FO1  when my companions use  to go off script in combat and attack  illogically, none of them survived by the  end 

Oh and in FO2  raise the Outdoor skill  because  the random encounters become very annoying and slow down your travels 

Edited November 7, 2023 by BruceVC

[Hawke64]

Serpent in the Staglands. Had a large pack of wolves appear upon loading a quick save (within their aggro range). The party quickly, but safely, retreated to the nearest settlement. So, the only things of note in that forest were a cave with at least 3 levels (I got somehow bored by reaching lvl 2 and fighting the same randomly placed foes) and the talking bandits who attacked after a short dialogue (I assume, I didn't have the right skills). Somehow disappointed by the lack of area maps.

Shadow Tactics. Reached Kage-sama's camp and slowly cutting the way to the boss.

[BruceVC]

I am considering playing SW Knights of the Old Republic, I haven't played  any SW games and I have this and  SW2 on Steam

What are peoples  views   on SW1&2? @Gorth arent you  a   fan of these games?

[Gorth]

12 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

I am considering playing SW Knights of the Old Republic, I haven't played  any SW games and I have this and  SW2 on Steam

What are peoples  views   on SW1&2? @Gorth arent you  a   fan of these games?

I have both games and I've played both games through a few times. The second one more so, especially after a few restored content mods (for me a must). The first one has less bugs, but the story is... not good (imho) and the characters feels paper thin so to speak (very 2 dimensional). Biggest crime for me was an encounter which they repeated in Mass Effect 3... you beat the living snot out of the boss and use his face to wipe your boot soles clean, after which the game designer decided "oh, thanks for winning, but you have now lost". And then proceeds as if you lost the fight. Pissed me off no end in both games. The second one has a horrible first map, which I struggled to get through the second and subsequent times (it's a mystery/whodunnit kind of thing and after knowing the background it becomes a grind to do again when the mystery is no more). Apart from the first map, the story is way more up my alley and it has some rather memorable (if criminally underused) Sith Lords and protagonists. Just listen to @Gromnir waxing lyrical about Kreia

I hope somebody some day do a if not a remake, then a spiritual successor to the second game (the swtor mmo sort of continued the first game)

 

Edit: About the mods, it feels like almost a third of the game ended up in the cutting room, because of some extreme deadline requirements, like a year or less. The bugs are many and the wtf? moments too, when you feel something is missing (not kidding, it's obvious in several situations, more was supposed to happen).