What are you Playing Now? - Back to the Grind

[ShadySands]

Bought NBA 2K24 from a shady key reseller so now I'm re-installing Steam and downloading the game.

[Mamoulian War]

First Great Demon defeated in NG+ of Dark Souls. Seath. He seemed to me a little bit more aggressive than in first round. So needed three attempts this time. IIRC. And Ceaseless Discharge as well. Nothing special, just after pull he got stuck in some kind of single ability spam, and I was not able to hit him at all. Soo two attempts on him.

and during last week while having a break from DS, I had 6 GT4 races on Monza in ACC. In three I got destroyed, in two I got disconnected, and the last one was dominated by Mercedes cars, which got broken in the latest patch on this track, so I was happy that i got into Top 15 in that race with Aston Martin (with only two other non-Mercedes cars achieving the same)

[melkathi]

Playing some Troubleshooter. Hadn't tried the second DLC, but it should be content complete now (you never know with these devs, they keep churning out updates).

Haven't gotten the hang of Misty. As a stealth character I am not sure what role she is filling in the team.

But it also added more side missions, upped the level cap slightly, and added new opponents apparently, so there is enough to do to justify playing again.

[ShadySands]

NBA 2k24. Not sure if it's only because I suck with the timing in this game or if it's because of the way the game is designed (to sell VC) but I'm really struggling in my MyCareer game. I can't beat most of the challenge quests and my point guard is as responsive as a brick though not nearly as agile.

[Malcador]

On 2/9/2024 at 9:00 PM, Bartimaeus said:

I played like ten minutes of Citizen Sleeper and then was like "this seems cool, it's definitely gotten past my 'should i immediately chuck this into the garbage' test - not going to play it for real right this second, but I'll get back to this".

It currently sits directly above Disco Elysium in my games directory, which I also did the exact same thing with. Whoops.

 

It was a good novel, I finished it, got to see the credits twice - was a bit funny. Was expecting more based on some screeching about it being woke and anti capitalist.  A cyberpunk adventure where corporations are scumbags. The shock. The horror.

Really liked the setting on an abandoned space station and the world building was enjoyable.

Now not sure what to play, maybe will go on to finish Wing Commander 2 fully, need to do the expansions.  I have the talkie version of WC2 off GOG and good Lord....

[Mamoulian War]

2 hours ago, ShadySands said:

NBA 2k24. Not sure if it's only because I suck with the timing in this game or if it's because of the way the game is designed (to sell VC) but I'm really struggling in my MyCareer game. I can't beat most of the challenge quests and my point guard is as responsive as a brick though not nearly as agile.

It was definitely built around VC, so no, you do not suck

[ShadySands]

It's a glorified mobile game and even has event passes now. You know, pay 10 or 20 bucks for better and best rewards from in game events. At least there's no unskippable ads this time around.. at least none that I've seen.

[Mamoulian War]

Sigh. This is terrible friend. And a reason, why I have completely stopped to play any sports game long time ago, despite enjoying some of them in the past.

Anyway. Got some time to play around with DSR yesterday again, and was able to get 3 more bosses and a Chaos Weapon Trophy of the list. Demon Firesage was easy peasy, I just have "decided" to give him some chance, by invoking my typical clumsiness into the play, and got owned few times, losing 80k souls at him Centipede was easy as well, but again, my clumsiness came into the play, and after getting him to 25%, I have rolled inside the lava for a nice party of BBQ The last boss was again Bed of Chaos... And I really hope this one was the last fight against this boss ever! My ass was kicked around the whole arena by its attacks, that I really got frustrated with it. There is no way to learn anything from this encounter over the time to git gud. It just smack you randomly with random skills and if you do not cheese him, depending on the dice rolls, it will either kill you in 5 seconds or you kill it. There is practically no middle-ground in between these two states. Or at least, I have never experienced it.

Now I have to reconsider, if I should go to Catacombs or to DLC, to save Sif before fighting him again, for a bonus cutscene .

[Hurlshort]

Yeah I think I played one of the recent NBA 2K games, and had a similar experience. It's a shame because I really enjoyed a few from the previous decade. At least I still have MLB The Show. 

We really need a decent hockey game on the PC.

I've started playing Saint's Row, the new one. They really flubbed the marketing on this game. I was a big fan of SR2-4, but this one didn't appeal to me in the trailers. Imagine my surprise to find it is a very good game. I do miss my British accent option though.

[Mamoulian War]

Again few hours of Dark Souls. Second Hydra has been defeated, this time on first try (to my surprise ), and later Sanctuary Guardian as well. Besides that, I have finished my Magic Balder Side Sword for another trophy and finished up few more of the Boss Weapons. Still missing few of them to get all of them. The NG+ so far is much easier than NG. We’ll see if that changes, when I fight again with Artorias and Manus  

[Wormerine]

So:

I think I gave up on Resident Evil2 Remake. Perhaps will be in the mood to try it again in the future, but I am done with it for now. In short: it is too good. Game nurtures anxiety rather well, and I do enjoy inventory/resource management, and how tempted it is to avoid enemies only to regret it later on. Just as one starts feeling comfortable the game drops something new to put you off balance. 
I didn’t appreciate gory cutscenes - but mostly I am just not in a mood for stressful experience. Schedule have been rather hectic for me lately, so RE2 just isn’t something I need right now. Might come back to it later. Reached the point where the guy in trench coat starts to chase you around the station.

so things I gravitated towards:

Immortal Fynix Rising - it’s very good! It has some Ubi staples, except it’s fun, and has actual mechanics, and tries to be funny, and there some neat challenges and dungeon. It’s just fun time all around. Story (with Adam Jensen actor doing questionable Greek accent as the narrator Prometheus) is silly, often cringy sometimes funny. I like it, even if jokes don’t always land. Writing isn’t exactly stellar but it is still fairly novel for a Ubi title.

Street Fighter6. I have been trying to get into fighting games for a while now, and so far it is the most successful attempt. Single player campaign, while not amazing, is easily the best one I have seen in a fighting titles. Does a decent job easing into game’s systems and introducing characters and their kits. I am nearly done with single player content and am diving more into PvP features. Now the real test will be how engaged I will with online play - am I hooked enough to keep learning, or will I give up after getting my face smashed over and over again?

Edited February 15 by Wormerine

[ShadySands]

About to give up on NBA 2K24 because it's too frustrating and I'm not opening my wallet to lessen the frustration. I only play MyCareer because it's like a basic basketball RPG and so I figured I'd try to edit the sliders because I don't ever play against other people but the game closes as soon as you open any modding tools and if you have them open when you launch the game then instead of opening the game it opens a webpage saying they don't allow any tinkering. So, yeah... if I paid more than a few bucks for this game I'd probably be pretty upset instead of just disappointed.

[BruceVC]

Im 76 hours into Deadfire and loving it
I decided to change my approach to completing the game, when I got near the end with the journey to Ukaizo and who should I align with around  factions for the journey I was only level 15-16. So I decided to complete all the DLC and get my party to level 20 before heading for Ukaizo

Great idea and it allowed me some epic end boss battles that demonstrate for me the best part of the game, the strategic nature of tough battles

And for most of the DLC I couldn't defeat the end boss but then I came back later on level 20 and I have been successful on every end boss so far
I loved all the DLC with my favorite probably being the Crucible arena fights and I really enjoyed the Beast of Winter. Neriscyrlas was my hardest fight and particularly because of Llengrath's Safeguard but once I had access to Arcane Cleanser the battle became much more manageable

But my favorite spell  is Concelhaut's Crushing Doom, nothing better that seeing enemies getting smashed by the hammer  

I also have Concelhaut and Nemnok as pets, Nemnoks comments are some of the funniest I have ever heard in any game 

Now I still need to complete the final battle with Porokoa who I haven't been able to defeat but now Im level 20 I should be victorious and I need some new crocodile skin shoes and a handbag

And then I will complete the main quest and the journey to Ukaizo

But overall, fantastic and enthralling party based RPG. Obsidian created a gem with this one

[melkathi]

I am through the mines in Vampire: Redemption and on my first mission as a vampire into the Capadocian haven.

I fight the UI/gameplay more than the enemies.

[BruceVC]

I completed  Deadfire,  it gets a  solid   80/100 on the globally  popular " BruceVC  game  rating system" and I know people are  thinking " thats a  very high score  for  this highly respected game rating system  " and  I will  summarize why

But I had a surprising end to the game,   I was  expecting an epic and final battle at  Ukaizo like  with Thaos and PoE1  and as  I  mentioned  I prepared  for  this by getting my party to  level  20. But  because  I had  released the Water  Dragon in a previous quest the Ukaizo guardian was  automatically defeated  by the Water  Dragon....so no  final epic battle,   I  was  disappointed  

But in summary what I loved  about the game and some of this I have  already mentioned  in previous posts  

• Obsidian successfully created a  new IP  with lore  and mechanics  that works, this is a feat in itself  and  it should be recognized  if  you think about the popularity of D&D  or  Elder  Scrolls  
• The strategic nature of  combat for hard battles is fantastic,   its  one of the main reasons why I play  party based RPG 
• The  overall narrative and lore of the world  is very thought provoking and  you really end up thinking about who you should align with and what will the outcome  be. But I cannot stress enough how important the Enhanced User  Interface  mod is  so you become familiar with  the lore  and understand it.  I used  it a lot 
• Deadfire is as close to open world   as  you can get   with this type of  game. You can sail  to almost  any  island you want, explore   any dungeon  you want and face the consequences...brilliant risk vs reward outcomes and  you feel motivated to explore and find new  islands  
• I enjoyed the crafting and how you can customize your character  build   and especially the abilities and spells   at higher levels,  they make a  significant  difference  in combat 
• Deadfire  also provided some uncommon but appreciated features  like the  sailing mechanic  and how naval  combat works.  I ended  up just doing normal  combat on the decks of  the ships but there was  the  other  option

So  excellent game  and Im  really disappointed there  wont   be a PoE3 

 

 

Edited February 18 by BruceVC

[melkathi]

More Vampire Redemption.

To quote the Clash:

I fought the UI

And the UI won

I tried to click things

But clicked none

I fought the UI

The UI won

[Keyrock]

I'm at the point in Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth where I'm starting to get my characters into their final jobs. Compared to the previous game, it's much easier to kit out your characters exactly how you want them because they made the skill inheritance system a lot more open. In Yakuza: Like a Dragon you could inherit skills from jobs you were no longer actively using, as you can with many JRPGs that use the job system. However, in Y:LaD only a few of the skills were eligible to be inherited whereas in LaD:IW you can inherit pretty much any skill with one restriction. You can only inherit one Essence and only once you unlock the 6th and final inheritance slot. Essences are the strongest skills in the game, every job gets 2 of them, one at level 22 or 24 and another at level 30.

I have all my characters rotate through a variety of jobs with the intention of getting a good variety of skills to inherit from. I want every character to have at least 1 heal, preferably an area heal, and I want 2 of my characters in each team (you have 2 teams, the Hawaii team and the Japan team, each team can have up to 4 characters at a time) to have a revive skill. Beyond that, I try to have a grapple skill on every character (grapple breaks guard). It's also useful to have a variety of different attack types to get around resistances/exploit weaknesses.

The first character I've settled on a final build for is Saeko, who's on the Japan team. She's going to be the pure caster on that team, effectively a druid type of character. With that in mind, I've settled on Geodancer, which is the most druid-esque female job (every character has their own unique job that only they can use, the rest of the jobs are divided into male and female jobs, they more or less cover all the standard archetypes). Geodancer has super high magic power which will serve me well both healing and dishing out magic damage. She will be very much a glass cannon, though.

I'm fairly confident I'm going with Host for Ichiban (Hawaii team) as the final job. He'll play a similar role to Saeko, the main healer, but less of a focus on magic damage and more on buffs and debuffs. More of a bard type role, I guess. I'm not 100% locked into that yet, but I think that's the way I'm going to go. The rest of the team is still in flux. My current leanings are: Hawaii Team: Ichiban - Healer/Support, Adachi - Tank, Chitose - DPS, Tomi - Jack of all trades. Japan: Kiryu - Tank, Seonhee - DPS, Nanba - Healer/Support, Saeko - Healer/DPS, Zhao - Benchwarmer, not sure where I'm going with him yet.

[Hawke64]

Sands of Aura. Slowly progressing through the game, should be past 50%, unless there is another world map/new locations opening up.

The game is fine, I suppose, not counting the top-down-ish camera angle. There are some character customisation, reasonably interesting equipment and their upgrades, some quests with light branching, etc. The story and writing are not exactly engaging*, but serviceable. The absence of stamina is welcome and the spell-like abilities are generally decent (e.g. teleporting behind a foe on hit). I think that there is some synergy between equipment, runes, and spells, but considering the upgrade costs, I am going to continue to use the starting swords and the armour set from the first non-tutorial area.

Some of bosses are rather interesting, some are infuriating for wrong reasons. In particular, Einar and his ice ball bullet-hell attacks. After the first attempt, I improved my equipment quite a lot and just face-tanked the attacks. I don't understand how could one dodge the wall-piercing ice (the balls clipped through any obstacles), while also being pushed by invisible wind.

*

Spoiler

The only thing I am not certain of is whether the blue spirit girl will betray the MC. I know that there are at least 2 endings for the main story, but not what they are or how to achieve them.

In terms of bugs, I got stuck between boxes and could not get out (quitting did not help, so had to get back to the "bonfire") only once.

---

If anyone played, is King's Bounty II any good? Seeing a 90% discount this early is slightly suspicious (bugs?).

Edited February 18 by Hawke64

[Malcador]

Replaying Dawn of War 2, finding Captain very difficult for me, although I beat it at that level of difficulty back in 2012.  Now, the answer is they patched the game to be harder or I just suck.  The answer is obviously the former.

 

[rjshae]

19 hours ago, BruceVC said:

So  excellent game  and Im  really disappointed there  wont   be a PoE3 

At the time I had a sense that the game suffered a lot of criticism on release and didn't sell as well as expected. That may be why we didn't see a sequel. However, the responses seem better these days so perhaps there will be growing nostalgia?

[Zoraptor]

There was some talk a few weeks back of PoE2 having a very long tail sales wise, and PoE 3 being a possibility again because of it- and because of BG3's success.

(PoE2 was far superior to 1 in every respect, imo)

[BruceVC]

7 hours ago, rjshae said:

At the time I had a sense that the game suffered a lot of criticism on release and didn't sell as well as expected. That may be why we didn't see a sequel. However, the responses seem better these days so perhaps there will be growing nostalgia?

 

6 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

There was some talk a few weeks back of PoE2 having a very long tail sales wise, and PoE 3 being a possibility again because of it- and because of BG3's success.

(PoE2 was far superior to 1 in every respect, imo)

I  really hope  Obsidian looks at the significance of post release  sales  numbers and decides to make PoE3, I can understand choices  made on  initial revenue sales because thats  just  how future decisions on all  products  work 

But  if post release  sales  numbers are consistent  and worthwhile then an investment in PoE3  makes financial  sense 

I know Avowed is set  in the PoE  world and I will definitely play it  but  its FP  and not party based so it doesnt have the same  interest  as PoE3 

[xzar_monty]

7 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

There was some talk a few weeks back of PoE2 having a very long tail sales wise, and PoE 3 being a possibility again because of it- and because of BG3's success.

(PoE2 was far superior to 1 in every respect, imo)

I think the success of BG3 might be the more important determining factor, in the sense that Deadfire was released in 2018 and would therefore represent an "old world" (in computer-gaming terms) despite its long tail. But BG3 would now suggest that there is still a market for games like this.

I am almost in complete agreement with you, the only notable exception being that I think PoE began better, storywise: the sense of foreboding in the early moments of the game was superb and not surpassed by anything that came after in either PoE or Deadfire.

I also remember my first serious disappointment in PoE: when you get to the castle of that one guy, Lord Raedric I think he was, and enter the final fight, one of his guards is an "archmage". I remember being at lvl 4/5/6 at that point and thinking, how on earth am I going to survive this. Well, easily, that's how. And so my next thought was: well, "archmage" doesn't mean anything in this game. Boy was I disappointed.

[melkathi]

Archmage: a mage arching his back.

It's all about posture.

[Sarex]

15 hours ago, Malcador said:

Replaying Dawn of War 2, finding Captain very difficult for me, although I beat it at that level of difficulty back in 2012.  Now, the answer is they patched the game to be harder or I just suck.  The answer is obviously the former.

I think I am one of the rare few who liked DoW2 more than first one.