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

[Helz]

On 11/19/2023 at 12:33 PM, Theonlygarby said:

Is a melee build viable?  I restarted with high endurance and strength.  It's much easier but I feel like late game is going to be tough.  It's nice being able to hold so many items, that's for sure.

Sorry for the late reply.

Yes, Melee is strong. Late game weapons will smash or rip armored enemies apart. I think the only bad combat skill in Fallout is Throwing.

[Zoraptor]

Some people wanted some feedback on the Colony Ship RPG so here it is a decent (15 hours maybe? Not sure how much I put into the indev version) way through.

TLDR: basically no change from my reaction to the indev version. It's far more polished than AoD and generally looks nice and crisp. UI is fine and there are some QoL improvements too. The skills are well thought out and pretty balanced with maybe one(ish) exception and that may be classic pebkam rather than a game issue. Combat is hard but there is an easy difficulty for people who aren't masochistic think RPGs are for running around feeling awesome. I, of course, am hard as nails and tough as teak so am playing on underdog.

Character development is almost entirely by skill use. You get a feat on level up, and can add implants and the like for stat boosts. Could, maybe, do with some extra tools to improve skills? Maybe. That's related to one of the complaints below. There's definitely a best way to do things (ie do all skill level 2 checks, then since you now have level 3 skill do all skill level 3 checks etc) but it's far better than AoD's saving up of LPs(?) so you can add them appropriately to pass the skill checks you want.

Slightly longer positives: Jack of all trades/ generalists are a lot more feasible since you have a party (up to 4). I actually haven't found any more than 3 recruitables (or maybe you don't get offers if your party is full, doing it spoiler free so not checking) but they cover the general archetypes pretty well. The world/ ship feels good, and the game has a pretty compelling atmosphere. The backstory/ factions aren't going to win prizes but are pretty believable and consistent and the dialogue is good, with a decent amount of appropriate skills/ stats being referenced. As prior, the combat is hard, but I've only found two fights I couldn't do- and that's with a stealth and chat specialist among the 4. Just don't be afraid of using grenades etc and know when to use them (and energy weapons, where the ammo is scarce). And you can avoid combat.

only major gripe is stealth. It doesn't work that well with a TB system unfortunately, and... well it kind of forces you into having an out and out specialist rather than an assassin archetype. ie you need stealth, stealing and lockpick on one character minimum, and in some case computing (so far). While you can get training in computers to boost it for someone who doesn't have it tagged some hack tools or similar might be useful. OTOH, don't think any of stealth missions have been compulsory but, can't avoid the fact that someone with all stealth feats and high skill (and a stealth gadget) still finds some missions to be impossible. As above, I may be missing something and I'd spec Faythe differently in retrospect. Dunno, from what I've seen if you want maximalist stealth you'd have to build your character on a prescribed path.

Minor gripes: all the combat takes place super close together, there's no 'strategic depth'. Probably too many interrupts too, occasionally they get comical where an enemy seems to get off more shots in interrupts that they can in their main combat round. Gear/ itemisation is fairly generic. Could at times do with a more detailed quest log? Some of the maps are confusing in that it's difficult to tell where you can/ can't go, and some of the blocking is clumsy. Ironically, it's kind of like how in Mass Effect you'd suddenly start encountering waist high barriers whenever a combat encounter was coming only here it's narrowed doors and similar. Not much really, and very little of real substance.

Obviously it's a game for a certain type towards the grognard end of the gaming spectrum but it's a pretty unequivocal recommendation from me, so far.

Edited November 30, 2023 by Zoraptor

[majestic]

Lies of P, just got the Rise of P ending.

If you like Soulslikes and are not someone who needs exploration with any sort of depth or great rewards, this is definitely one to try out. The game is fairly linear, i.e. at best you have a secondary path with some loot or two along the way, which is a clear break from the usual From Software style. There are plenty of arcane stats and mechanics, although nowhere near as bad as they were in Dark Souls. Combat wise it is a hybrid between Sekiro and Bloodborne, but different enough to be its own thing. The game is a lot more rewarding - and probably easier - to play if you remove preconceptions from earlier Soulslikes. Perfect guarding (the term for parry in Lies of P) attacks can stagger enemies, but dodging has a definite place in the combat system too. Dodging a slow, sweeping attack that would knock you back even with a perfect guard gets you close to the enemie and lets you attack them, for instance.

The weapon system is fun, being able to freely switch between movesets and special attacks by combining different handles with different weapon blades, but in one of the more arcane design choices combining handles with blades that were not meant for their combat style results in doing less damage than usual, and this is only inidicated by an easily missable and small double down-arrow on the weapon assembly screen. Guess it makes sense, putting a giant wrench head blunt weapon on a dagger handle is possible and gives you fast attacks, but it will not be optimal for damage. Might still be a good combination though.

One of the patches along the way changed the behaviour of the combined weapon parts, so more options became viable, apparently. Never played before 1.3, so no first hand experience.

A lot of things are straight up taken from the Souls series, like special boss weapons and boss souls ergo that you can trade in for special items.

Anyway, as I never played it before the patches, I cannot comment on the difficulty of the game too much. I did not get stuck anywhere, and even the final three bosses, arguably the hardest in of the game, took only a handful of tries to defeat. They're all definitely easier if you're used to Sekiro-style parrying though, so maybe keep that in mind if you want to check it out.

Oh, lest I forget, unlike the Souls series, this one has actual storytelling, which is always a great plus in my book. The Belle Epoque steampunk setting is also pretty neat.

[Bartimaeus]

they need a new cover image for the game on the steam store

because i saw that crap months back and put it on my mental blocklist within approximately .2 seconds

hope it's better than nioh, which is one of the worst games i've ever played to the end for a legion of reasons and is some pretty concrete evidence for why indirect storytelling is usually better - direct storytelling by game developers (particularly within the action genre) tends to score highly on being overly simple, annoyingly distracting, incompetent, and/or downright embarrassing

[majestic]

Well, you know what I think of Dark Souls fabled "story", although that is probably the fandumb's fault. For years before I actually tried the game I just heard two things about it, one is how hard it is, and two just how great the story of the game is.

Imagine how disappointed I ended up being when the game was neither very difficult nor did it have an actual plot, the game is worse than Mass Effect 2 in that regard, and that is hard to achieve. It does have great world building and interesting (and bizarre) lore, yes, but story? Now, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed playing Dark Souls a lot in spite of my expectations not being met (which is a testament to how good the game really is), but the protagonist does not even have any motivation to do anything in the game. It starts with you locked in a cell with no explanation how you got there, someone throwing you a key telling you to get out, and that's it.

In light of that experience, a Soulslike trying actual storytelling is all well and good in my book. Even if it is bad, it still beats Dark Souls because they at least tried. Hell, Hellpoint, for all its flaws, tried both, as you just spawn into the world moments after a disaster and try to figure out what the hell happened and fulfill your purpose, after all, an AI made your body for you to collect that information for it.

Eh. Time to step down from the soapbox.

Edit: I guess part of the issue is that I feel like the setting of Dark Souls was creative and unique, and it feels a little wasted on the game it houses. I don't really know if the second or third game improve on that aspect, but somehow I doubt it.

Edit 2: Pinocchio being very uncanny valley is part of the game. He looks like he looks. Eh. Well, most of the time, you just see his back anyway.

Edited December 1, 2023 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Fire Emblem: Engage - Maddening

Every cutscene or dialogue makes me feel embarrassed and the (optional) skirmishes give the Pathcat Owlfinder games a run for their money in terms of being stupidly punishing, but the main route encounters are consistently well designed in a way that's tactically challenging but also fair for the most part. However I'm only about halfway in and the emblems I got are already starting to break the game so I assume when I collect 'em all my army of shonen stock characters will start to steamroll everything.

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Even if it is bad, it still beats Dark Souls because they at least tried.

Not sure if I could possibly disagree more with the thrust of this statement: I will take a game (or movie) not even attempting something 11/10 times over trying and being miserably bad at it. Not trying to do something means you can put your effort and focus towards something you actually do well instead of bringing the whole product down with your sorry excuse for [element]. Dark Souls doesn't have much of anything in the way of a main plot (and the little that is there is fairly nebulous and relies on some creative interpretation by way of the player), so I would agree it is fair to ask yourself questions like "who is my character", "what exactly are we trying to accomplish and why", and "so why should I care"...but I can personally tell you that having to ask yourself those questions and not being able to immediately come up with answers is a hell of a lot better than the games that give terrible answers to those questions and destroy my interest with a bad story that actively distracts me from the things I do think are good (or could be good if not for the bad elements). Playing as a silent protagonist is infinitely preferable over playing as someone whom I wish I could throw off the nearest cliff. Speaking of protagonists...

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Edit 2: Pinocchio being very uncanny valley is part of the game. He looks like he looks. Eh. Well, most of the time, you just see his back anyway.

Remember, I'm the person that very nearly quit Dark Souls II at the character creator because I didn't like any character I tried to make...and actually did quit Hogwarts Legacy at the character creator for the same reason, . Having to look at and listen to a total nonce to whom I have share zero affinity or connection to for a whole game will not (or rather cannot) be tolerated on my part, even if I only see them just from the back, .

Edited December 1, 2023 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

19 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Not sure if I could possibly disagree more with the thrust of this statement: I will take a game (or movie) not even attempting something 11/10 times over trying and being miserably bad at it. Not trying to do something means you can put your effort and focus towards something you actually do well instead of bringing the whole product down with your sorry excuse for [element]. Dark Souls doesn't have much of anything in the way of a main plot (and the little that is there is fairly nebulous and relies on some creative interpretation by way of the player), so I would agree it is fair to ask yourself questions like "who is my character", "what exactly are we trying to accomplish and why", and "so why should I care"...but I can personally tell you that having to ask yourself those questions and not being able to immediately come up with answers is a hell of a lot better than the games that give terrible answers to those questions and destroy my interest with a bad story that actively distracts me from the things I do think are good (or could be good if not for the bad elements). Playing as a silent protagonist is infinitely preferable over playing as someone whom I wish I could throw off the nearest cliff. Speaking of protagonists...

Hey, Pinocchio is a silent protagonist.

Well, jokes aside, it is okay for characters to have motivations that the player needs to come up with, but in such instances the games surrounding that decision need to support that. I am uncertain if I can come up with a video game example, but since I played D&D with friends in the past, well, while there is a DM that prepares an overall game to go through, everything else is player driven. That is fine with me, really.

It does not have to be much, I was fine with IWD's character motivation. You're an adventurer and there's money to be made, then you just stumble into the game's story - although I did not really enjoy the game too much, as having no connection to any of the characters in my party was not a very enjoyable experience for me. Having to come up with something on my own in a world and/or scenario that does not support it at all just makes my mind go . That is different from being shown something that needs a whole lot of personal interpretation, for instance, something like Utena is acceptable as long as all the other elements are good enough (which in Utena they were not).

See, I almost quit playing Dark Souls right after the tutorial area because nothing about it made sense, and then it got worse, because not only are you the chosen one, you're the "chosen one" for a reason that is entirely for your own to come up with. What? It is a good tutorial area to explain the gameplay, but it does such a poor job at explaining the whats and whys of anything else that I just had no desire to continue, although the biggest reason I continue to talk about Dark Souls whenever such a topic comes up is because there's an army of fanboys telling everyone what a great story the game has.

Insofar, yes, I'll take a poor explanation and attempt at giving me motivation and a plot to follow than none. I find it easier to deal with (slightly) worse gameplay when there's an attempt at storytelling, than vice versa, i.e. the absence of sense and motivation weighs worse than anything else in a game, and that extends to a whole lot of games, not just ARPGs. Sins of a Solar Empire was the biggest disappointment ever, in spite of being an otherwise enjoyable game with fantastic presentation (well, for the time). Way, way back my fellow students in high school all raved about how great Total Annihilation was, so I checked it out, and... never got beyond the third mission or so. The game's just a collection of skirmish maps. Thanks, but no thanks. I finished the ludicrously terrible Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight, where every single element is horrible, from the gameplay to the storyline where it is revealed that Kane is in fact the biblical Cain, and an alien that got stranded on Earth thousands of years ago. I dropped Total Annihilation like a hot potato, because the game allowed me to, and because I did not like it.

Hey, perhaps you do have a point. The absence of anything that drives my need to finish something might really be a good thing, after all.

19 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Remember, I'm the person that very nearly quit Dark Souls II at the character creator because I didn't like any character I tried to make...and actually did quit Hogwarts Legacy at the character creator for the same reason, . Having to look at and listen to a total nonce to whom I have share zero affinity or connection to for a whole game will not (or rather cannot) be tolerated on my part, even if I only see them just from the back, .

Well, still beats playing the chosen undead who is chosen for no reason, locked up for no reason, and freed for no reason just so the game can begin in a tutorial prison. Although, well, I don't think Lies of P is a game that you would enjoy. It might not lock you into one particular playstyle like Sekiro, but it shares some other elements that you heavily criticised. Next to having a group of uncanny valley characters, justified since they are puppets or not, there's still the issue of exploration being absolutely limited and not really worthwhile.

Edited December 1, 2023 by majestic

[Sarex]

Went on another Civ6 binge...

[Wormerine]

16 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

hope it's better than nioh, which is one of the worst games i've ever played to the end for a legion of reasons and is some pretty concrete evidence for why indirect storytelling is usually better - direct storytelling by game developers (particularly within the action genre) tends to score highly on being overly simple, annoyingly distracting, incompetent, and/or downright embarrassing

Didn’t play Nioh, but player their more recent game “WoLong dynasty?” I thought it was pretty bad, and narrative was atrociously incoherent. 

I thought Lies of P was alright. Overstayed it’s welcome for me, but it was good enough to recommend. Not on the level of most FromSoft releases, but I probably liked LoP more than DS2. Some neat gimmicks, but they had little depth behind them. That said, for a studio’s debut it’s a really impressive achievement. 

As far as the plot goes: it’s still pretty light. I don’t think it adds much to the game - I never though FromSoft games would be any better with NPCs had cutscene saying “now you need to go to place X to find McGuffin Z”. Which is pretty much most that there is to it. You will have a better idea who you will be fighting and why, but I found myself caring less than in your usual FromSoft. DS1 was light on plot, but thematically rich, this one is the opposite. A lot of who, what, but not much “why”. 
 

Speaking of games with vague story: I picked up two Sony titles: Uncharted and Returnal. Uncharted will have to wait, but I gave Returnal a go. Eh, not feeling it right now. I thought it will be right up my alley - a roguelite with minimal meta-progression, acting like 3rd person bullet-hel. 

Initial impressions were great - the game controls great, fantastic utilisation of Dualsense rumble and adaptive triggers, it looks fantastic (though I had to turn off ray tracing in later stages, which made th game look much more plain:-( ). I do find the game rather boring so far. Procedural generation is very limited, so runs don’t feel distinct so far. They also take a very long time - compared to Hades when on full run could take about 30 minutes, here I easily spend an hour per zone. So far bullet hell was also rather generous though things do seem to be ramping up. So far, I am doubting if rougelite is a right structure for this titles - it seems it might work better as a more traditional linear structure. And while here is no blatant power grind, there is more subtle empowerment of the player. Early on you are set up to fail. That seems to be just how things are with roguelites that don’t quite have a depth and balance to ensure organic mastery. 
I do dig the vibes - it has a decent SF feel to it, and I wonder how the story will evolve. I just hope it won’t go full J. J. Abrams and do something trivial (like: this is just in your imagination dealing with pas trauma). It made me think of DS as it feels thematically dense, even if I am still not sold on it as a game. (If anyone else played it: FYI I finished “act1”, and reached second zone of act2). 

Edited December 1, 2023 by Wormerine

[Hawke64]

On 11/30/2023 at 10:28 PM, Bartimaeus said:

they need a new cover image for the game on the steam store

because i saw that crap months back and put it on my mental blocklist within approximately .2 seconds

hope it's better than nioh, which is one of the worst games i've ever played to the end for a legion of reasons and is some pretty concrete evidence for why indirect storytelling is usually better - direct storytelling by game developers (particularly within the action genre) tends to score highly on being overly simple, annoyingly distracting, incompetent, and/or downright embarrassing

Nioh had a rather straightforward story - an Irish pirate has his spirit BFF kidnapped by a Japanese wizard and goes to save her, while participating in the most well-known historical battles in the region. Can't say that it was horrible (though, any "great unifier" is a genocidal maniac; then again, the concept of the human rights was different even 70 years ago), but the story was not particularly deep or compelling. The boss and spirit guardian design was probably the best aspect of the game if one is anyhow interested in folklore.

In DS, on the other hand, there was the lore and the context of the PC's actions - basically, the Chosen Undead prophecy was sending the newly-arisen zombies to become firewood and to prolong the Age of Fire.

I will probably get Lies of P when I am more confident that I can run it - the reimagining of the classic story seems like an interesting concept and I am fond of Souls-likes in general (though, not so much of the Sekiro combat style).

18 hours ago, Wormerine said:

Didn’t play Nioh, but player their more recent game “WoLong dynasty?” I thought it was pretty bad, and narrative was atrociously incoherent. 

I thought Lies of P was alright. Overstayed it’s welcome for me, but it was good enough to recommend. Not on the level of most FromSoft releases, but I probably liked LoP more than DS2. Some neat gimmicks, but they had little depth behind them. That said, for a studio’s debut it’s a really impressive achievement. 

As far as the plot goes: it’s still pretty light. I don’t think it adds much to the game - I never though FromSoft games would be any better with NPCs had cutscene saying “now you need to go to place X to find McGuffin Z”. Which is pretty much most that there is to it. You will have a better idea who you will be fighting and why, but I found myself caring less than in your usual FromSoft. DS1 was light on plot, but thematically rich, this one is the opposite. A lot of who, what, but not much “why”. 
 

Speaking of games with vague story: I picked up two Sony titles: Uncharted and Returnal. Uncharted will have to wait, but I gave Returnal a go. Eh, not feeling it right now. I thought it will be right up my alley - a roguelite with minimal meta-progression, acting like 3rd person bullet-hel.

Haven't played the newer ones, but Uncharted 1-3* were ridiculously dumb actions with a lot of explosions and cut-scenes. Might be fun, if the expectations are very low. 

*the first one was structured as "3 waves of enemies => cut-scene => running => repeat", so haven't finished. Uncharted 3 had some puzzles and more climbing at the beginning.

[majestic]

Let me take a moment to revel in the genious design decision to have a record collection in Lies of P. As you are playing Pinocchio, it should be no surprise - and not a great spoiler - to say that by the end of the game, you can become a real boy. To do so one needs to make the right choice at a certain point in the game and to participate in certain game activities to increase a hidden humanity counter, basically behaving like a human, including lying your sweet butt off (including a growing nose, even if it is not on Pinocchio himself) and the aforementioned record collection. To score humanity points, you can listen to the records you find on a gramophone.

However, you can only get the points after listening to each record in full, and as they're regular music pieces, their runtime is somewhere between two and four minutes. This process cannot be sped up, and make no mistake, what a mistake speeding up the process would be, otherwise why else would you be forced to take a break to appreciate the game's soundtrack to unlock the best ending.

Have you ever experienced a better, more interactive way to appreciate a game soundtrack than to stop the game dead in its tracks, forcing the player to pause and take in everything they experienced? To put a soundttrack in front and center in game mechanics, even, is such a stroke of genius, that I find myself unable to express it in words befitting the idea, and that is before appreciating the genre of music you can collect, as it is perfectly fitting music for a Belle Epoque game. Not the usual grand, orchestral pieces with a choir, no, but intellectual music: jazzy pieces often including a bandoneon. How can it possibly get any better than that?

Edited December 2, 2023 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

7 hours ago, Hawke64 said:

Nioh had a rather straightforward story - an Irish pirate has his spirit BFF kidnapped by a Japanese wizard and goes to save her, while participating in the most well-known historical battles in the region. Can't say that it was horrible (though, any "great unifier" is a genocidal maniac; then again, the concept of the human rights was different even 70 years ago), but the story was not particularly deep or compelling. The boss and spirit guardian design was probably the best aspect of the game if one is anyhow interested in folklore.

Story, not plot, and I was talking about it specifically in the context of answering questions like "who am I?" and "why should I care?" (among others, like "who are all these characters and what's up with them?" - I can confidently say that Dark Souls answered that stupendously more effectively than Nioh for me, even if I never quite fell in love with all the weirdo characters in Dark Souls as many other players apparently did). You can make most any story sound fine if you just boil it down to some bulletin plot points, but what actually matters is the overall execution of all the smaller elements into a cohesive and compelling story, and Nioh's was ghastly and I'd have preferred it if the entire thing had been completely excised from the game. Now, it probably would've only pushed my rating of the game from like a 3/10 to maybe a 4 or 4.5/10, but that's pretty significant improvement on the totality of a crap sandwich that was Nioh, and it would have taken it out of "games I've least enjoyed playing of all time" territory.

Edited December 2, 2023 by Bartimaeus

[Malcador]

Think I got a bad economy seed on this Japan scenario in RT3, is annoying when the place I need to shuttle supplies to - that is apparently in desperate need of aid - has non profitable demand for the supplies.  Bah.

Also playing WoW's season of discovery.  Of course, WoW players' idea of exploration is checking WoWhead, but it's fun enough.

[Wormerine]

8 hours ago, majestic said:

Have you ever experienced a better, more interactive way to appreciate a game soundtrack than to stop the game dead in its tracks, forcing the player to pause and take in everything they experienced?

I will probably come out more negative than I really am - I think overall I just didn't paricularly care or mind for the mechanic.

I would hesitate to call it a soundtrack - you don't listen to the game's music, as far as I can tell the songs for the gramophone and unique to it, and dont' appear anywhere else in the game (as opposed to Supergiant's in game soundtrack playlists, that allows you to play a particular piece of a soundtrack that plays during the gameplay).

Staying a puppet/becoming human wasn't a choice I was particularly invested in (in general Lies of P story felt pretty dry and uninteresting to me), so I didn't find gramophones to be particulalry meaningful addition. More damingly Songs were pretty bad IMO. Yes, they lasted 3-4 minutes, but in true pop songs tradition in first 30s you heard all there was to hear. Not uncommon, but also not something that IMO really made itself worthy being forced to listen to.

Fortunately, one can put a gramophone and go around his business, so I would usually pop a new one and run around and do chores around the base - by the time I was done the song would be close to being over.

So overall - meh. A cute idea, though.

[Bartimaeus]

3 hours ago, Wormerine said:

I will probably come out more negative than I really am - I think overall I just didn't paricularly care or mind for the mechanic.

I would hesitate to call it a soundtrack - you don't listen to the game's music, as far as I can tell the songs for the gramophone and unique to it, and dont' appear anywhere else in the game (as opposed to Supergiant's in game soundtrack playlists, that allows you to play a particular piece of a soundtrack that plays during the gameplay).

Staying a puppet/becoming human wasn't a choice I was particularly invested in (in general Lies of P story felt pretty dry and uninteresting to me), so I didn't find gramophones to be particulalry meaningful addition. More damingly Songs were pretty bad IMO. Yes, they lasted 3-4 minutes, but in true pop songs tradition in first 30s you heard all there was to hear. Not uncommon, but also not something that IMO really made itself worthy being forced to listen to.

Fortunately, one can put a gramophone and go around his business, so I would usually pop a new one and run around and do chores around the base - by the time I was done the song would be close to being over.

So overall - meh. A cute idea, though.

majestic is saying that it's a roddy, cloddy, stupid idea. I can tell from some of the words and from seeing quite a few sarcastic posts in my time.

[InsaneCommander]

On 11/27/2023 at 4:25 AM, LadyCrimson said:

Does Steam do this a lot? Do all the folks talking about their 3000 hours in some Steam client game really only have half that?

It happens to me all the time. And on GOG too. What is even worse for me is that I frequently pause the game and go do other things without saving and reloading. That is why I have 661 h for a single pt of PF:WotR and 403 h of BG3. Well, actually that includes dozens of hours of character creation and test pts too...

[kanisatha]

13 hours ago, InsaneCommander said:

It happens to me all the time. And on GOG too. What is even worse for me is that I frequently pause the game and go do other things without saving and reloading. That is why I have 661 h for a single pt of PF:WotR and 403 h of BG3. Well, actually that includes dozens of hours of character creation and test pts too...

Same with me.

[BruceVC]

Im 20 hours into  PoE and Im loving it, Im comfortable now with the ruleset changes compared to D&D and Im starting to  appreciate many of the differences

Full disclosure, I decided to use a mod that lets  you Camp without camping gear. I realize this goes against the philosophy of "limiting " how rest is used but its  unrealistic to suggest you cant rest without  camping gear or that a bedroll  can be used up.  So I have changed my game to make it similar to other IE games where  you can rest without camping gear

But Im enjoying many things about this game and they include 

 

• I love the lore and the narrative, the quests are  interesting and worthwhile 
• I really enjoy the combat and different strategies you need to adopt. It can  get frenetic at times but if  you  slow down combat speed and use pause then you can micro-manage  your party nicely if you want
• I like the classes and their abilities,  I decided to be a Godlike Priest and a follower  of Wael
• I also enjoy  features like the Bestiary which allows  you to learn about monsters   the more you fight them
• I like reading peoples souls, its a  pity you cant  act on what you find 

But so far  so good, really entertaining RPG in a new world with different mechanics   

Oh, one negative. No Romance at all and I only seem to have men in my party...where are the chainmail bikini armour women?

Edited December 4, 2023 by BruceVC

[melkathi]

I recall having three ladies in my party, the paladin with a name that reminded me of bottled mineral water, the Eskimo dwarf, and the grieving mother.

[marelooke]

Haven't really been gaming much outside of a lot of The Division 2 (crashiest game I've had the honour of playing in a while), and the ongoing raiding in FF XIV (finally cleared the final savage boss and got my BIS set for the first time ever. Party!).

Aside from that I've been mostly poking at Star Citizen after I sorta lost interest in Elite Dangerous since it feels like it's in maintenance mode on top of being actively new-player hostile (think I've mentioned that part before, but it's been a while )

It's one of the things I really enjoy about Star Citizen, there's an out-of-MMO component (Arena Commander) where you can practice against AI (can also play with/against players without having to deal with...MMO-things), so you don't blow all your starting money on rookie mistakes, like having no idea what the flight controls are.

Don't know if I mentioned it before, but I sprang for a HOSAS (dual stick) setup and it's been a game changer, really. Recently I also added face-tracking to look around during flight, which was another game-changer.

Unlike what the manufacturers of stuff like the Tobii Eye Tracker would want you to believe for this purpose all you need is a halfway decent webcam where refresh rate and ability to discern things in the dark are the most important (unless you like to play in bright rooms, I guess). Personally I got a Nexigo N660P (as it supports 60fps, which is more important for tracking than resolution) which I use with OpenTrack/AITrack and it's been pretty great. Bonus is that you now also have a halfway decent webcam for...webcam things

It does measurably impact CPU usage though, which I doubt is really a problem with any modern CPU, but figured it worth mentioning.

[Malcador]

Skipped the RT3 Japan scenario, got gold on the scenario where I have to spray seed all over Greenland, although not very elegantly, but win by an inch or a mile..

 

[ShadySands]

12 hours ago, BruceVC said:

Oh, one negative. No Romance at all and I only seem to have men in my party...where are the chainmail bikini armour women?

They added romance and nudity to the second game

e: PS I'm not here to kink shame.. unless your kink is specifically not being kink shamed and if that's the case then...

Edited December 4, 2023 by ShadySands

[Sarex]

Rogue Trader waiting lobby.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

47 minutes ago, Sarex said:

Rogue Trader waiting lobby.

3 days until release, 3 years until it's stable.