What are you Playing Now? - Back to the Grind

[BruceVC]

I completed Steve Jackson's Sorcery  and I really enjoyed the nostalgic experience as  the book series was my favorite Fighting Fantasy series of all time.   The developers understandably changed several things for the PC  experience but many aspects of the game were traditional and appreciated 

I then decided to play NWN2 again, Im loving it. I loaded  some recommended  mods and the journey is great  so far,  I love my companions and the party interactions....hilarious exchanges 

Early days, 20 hours in so further updates to follow 

 

 

[Hawke64]

Since Steam Winter Sale has started, has anyone played Cloud Meadow? I can see that it has erotic content, the question is it any good as a party-based RPG? That is to say, there are few titles I find both interesting, discounted, and possible to run (so no Lies of P or Tunic). Definitely getting Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood, though.
Edit. Got Dread Delusion instead. Somehow reminds of Morrowind. Also sold 62 cards from the Steam inventory. No idea why they are still so popular, but can't complain in the context.

Ghostwire: Tokyo is free on EGS today. Judging by the system requirements, I will not be able to run it on my main PC, though the storage space seems reasonable (26GB). Could try later, I guess.

3 hours ago, BruceVC said:

I enjoyed Vampyr and it was always a conundrum about who I fed on...I didnt  really like killing any  good people but I had to survive  

Is it at any point necessary to bite the civilians? XP-wise, the amount from the ones I can mesmerise (level 2) is too low and the vampire hunters and zombies have been sufficient so far.

Edited December 24, 2023 by Hawke64

[Mamoulian War]

Heh, I have performed probably the lamest Smough and Ornstein kill ever First, I have summoned Solaire. Then I have started to attack Smough. He went down really fast, as Solaire was tanking Ornstein (he almost killed him first ) After entering the second phase, Ornstein finished off Solaire, while I was trying to slowly hit him. The damage was very low, so I was running around more than hitting him . And because I fought him with melee weapon for the first time ever, I had no clue how this fight works . So after a minute or two, I got down from 9 Estus to last one with him still being over 90% HP, then, while I was trying to hide behind a broken pillar, he got stuck casting lightning spells behind another one . So I have finished him with my INT 15 Soul Arrow (weakest spell in game, which I am using only for pulling enemies ) 

As much as this kill was lame, it was still on first try and the worst feared enemy in the game is done for. After that, I have defeated Pinwheel as well, and now I am slowly starting to prepare for the Ruins of New Anor Londo and Valley of Drakes. My two most hated areas in DS1.

[Hawke64]

Vampyr. Due to the spoiler nature of the boss of Chapter 3, I shall refer to them as Vampire Boss #3. So, the battle started easily enough, with the boss hitting slowly and me counter-attacking. Occasionally, the boss was throwing up blood and spawning 3 delayed AoE areas, centred on the MC, while still attacking. At 70% HP, the boss ate the human who was sitting in the middle of the arena and regained their full health. The AoE attack pattern and length kept changing during the battle, ending with covering most of the arena in uneven patches, while the boss' normal attack speed increasing. Somehow, putting XP into the biting damage helped.

On another note, the area design has become irritating - too many corridors, too inconsistent rules for movement. Why can I teleport only to some ledges from some angles, but not the others that look the same? Why can't I interact with gates in combat? On a funny note, the aggro resets when the MC enters a non-combat area, i.e. the foes just turn around and return to their previous positions.

[BruceVC]

2 hours ago, Hawke64 said:

Vampyr. Due to the spoiler nature of the boss of Chapter 3, I shall refer to them as Vampire Boss #3. So, the battle started easily enough, with the boss hitting slowly and me counter-attacking. Occasionally, the boss was throwing up blood and spawning 3 delayed AoE areas, centred on the MC, while still attacking. At 70% HP, the boss ate the human who was sitting in the middle of the arena and regained their full health. The AoE attack pattern and length kept changing during the battle, ending with covering most of the arena in uneven patches, while the boss' normal attack speed increasing. Somehow, putting XP into the biting damage helped.

On another note, the area design has become irritating - too many corridors, too inconsistent rules for movement. Why can I teleport only to some ledges from some angles, but not the others that look the same? Why can't I interact with gates in combat? On a funny note, the aggro resets when the MC enters a non-combat area, i.e. the foes just turn around and return to their previous positions.

I checked  now   on Steam and  I played Vampyr on  the 1 October 2020  so I dont remember much of the game except for having to find  people to feed on which was  fun and then advancing certain skills  over others is advantageous in combat 

I do remember the final boss fight which involved an incredibly painful and laborious strategy to win,  I cant remember exactly what that was but you will find that out yourself    

 

[melkathi]

You guys aren't really selling me on playing the game.

[BruceVC]

2 hours ago, melkathi said:

You guys aren't really selling me on playing the game.

I did enjoy the game, its definitely worth playing. It scored   a 70/100 on the " BruceVC game  rating system  "

But I do remember the final battle being very frustrating, @Hawke64 may have  a different opinion on that battle. I did some research afterwards  and there certain abilities you can take that make it less exasperating 

 

 

[Mamoulian War]

Ruins of New Londo together with the Four Kings have been defeated. Still not tried to get into Valley of Drakes, as I needed to farm some souls to get Faith from 12 to 25 for the next requirement in my Platinum checklist. Spent around 1 hour killing Royal Giants at Anor Londo for that. As a side effect, I was able to upgrade my Lighting Spear to +5 and unlock my first weapon trophy.

[Wormerine]

56 minutes ago, Mamoulian War said:

I was able to upgrade my Lighting Spear to +5 and unlock my first weapon trophy.

I remember it took me a while before I realised I can upgrade my weapons - game got much easier after that.

[Mamoulian War]

24 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

I remember it took me a while before I realised I can upgrade my weapons - game got much easier after that.

Oh yeah. And it is for the first time, when I am upgrading my armour as well. And I get killed much less with midroll than when I have used the “ninja ring”, even though I get hit much more often. I have also enough material to upgrade Ornstein’s Spear to the max, but it will have to wait some time before I get high enough stats, that it would make the difference compared to maxed out Lightning Spear.

[Hawke64]

10 hours ago, melkathi said:

You guys aren't really selling me on playing the game.

What I do like about Vampyr is the atmosphere and visual style, voice acting and facial animations (much better than Larian's), and the MC being generally nice and unintentionally funny. About a half of the game is spent asking people random questions about their lives and occasionally about quests. The cast is reasonably interesting and diverse, and surprisingly willing to talk about their love lives and childhood traumas to a random guy at night. Technically, the information gained increases the amount of XP from the NPC should the player decide to eat them, but doing so (eating them) also damages the District's health and blocks the good ending. On the negative side, only killing the civilians, including serial killers and gang leaders, has undesirable consequences. Slaughtering legions upon legions of vampire hunters is fine. Also, it is not possible to partially drink a civilian and let them be on their merry way, while insta-killing a vampire hunter by biting is not possible either*. Additionally, only some information leads to quests. So, you can't report the above-mentioned serial killer to the police or fix a patient's arm or encourage some criminal to become a law-abiding accountant. Still, overall, it is an enormous improvement over the developer's previous game, Remember Me, where because of the MC’s unavoidable actions, an assassin blew up a hospital and the MC herself caused a flood in several parts of the city. I can't quite recall if the MC was an antihero or not. If compared to other developers, the combat and controls are significantly better than in The Witcher 3, and the MC does not get stuck in book stacks nor suffers from falling damage.

*The XP gains from a civilian range from 500 to 5000, while a vampire hunter, even if he was repeatedly stunned and bitten, yields 5. Which is weird logically - the hunters seem healthy enough, but it does make sense from the gameplay perspective, as eating the civilians is supposed to be tempting.

While it is not the best game ever made, if you like action-adventures with light RPG elements, it might be an enjoyable experience. It is also on sale at the moment (80% discount).

Edit. Forgot to mention, the only unique boss so far is the Vampire Boss #3. The rest started to appear throughout the city.

Edited December 26, 2023 by Hawke64

[Hawke64]

Finished Vampyr. It is mostly fine, though, there are issues. In Chapter 5 (out of 6), I found a police officer, but was unable to report the previously-met serial killer, gang leaders, the child abuser, or the poisoner. The only way to anyhow prevent them from causing harm to random people was to lethally bite them, which would result in a worse ending. From what I've read (haven't tried myself), killing or not killing civilians is the only way of interaction with them - quests do give XP, but the NPC's state does not seem to change, while, for example, if the serial killer is killed, his mother adopts the homeless orphan. Additionally, as mentioned, slaughtering the nameless vampire hunters was perfectly fine and did not affect the endings or the MC's appearance (again, haven't tried myself, but the more civilians are eaten, the redder the MC's eyes become).

In terms of combat, while most of the regular opponents were possible to interrupt with normal attacks (thus, just hitting them until the stamina ran out was a viable strategy), it only partially worked with the bosses, though the later ones resisted the interruptions with normal attacks (the abilities mostly worked). The targeting was somehow odd - sometimes, the opponents could glide several meters forward while also changing directions mid-swing, sometimes, the attacks worked like they would in Dark Souls. On a positive note, I quite liked the second form of the final boss, easy may it be, - the boss was impossible to bite (so, no healing in combat) or interrupt, but the boss' damage was low and attacks clearly telegraphed, so it was defeated on the first attempt (the first stage took several, because I counted on being able to stagger the boss and did not notice how much damage the stacking poison clouds were doing).

The ending was funny, partially, because the information told by the NPCs was presented in a diary found 2 minutes before the dialogue. I also found the best sword (by accidentally seeing it mentioned on the forums and having the collectible required to solve the puzzle leading to it) and water for the plant at the MC's office (that one I almost missed). I did not rest after the Chapter 5 boss battle, because I was worried that the districts' condition might worsen and did not have enough XP to level up. Another thing I noticed is that one of the Irish NPCs was using the American date format for his diary, mm/dd/yy, instead of dd/mm/yy.

Overall, while Vampyr was not anyhow close to VtMB, it was playable. Considering that I still have the manual saves created via Windows Explorer, I might try to see what happens if more people are bitten.

[uuuhhii]

vampyr never should have been a combat focused rpg

narrative focused game like night road work far better

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Vampyr is an interesting concept and decent story trapped in a bad videogame. I think that the Disco Elysium (which I know was released after Vampyr) approach is much more enjoyable than doing terrible gameplay like Vampyr or Torment, putting more emphasis on Johnathan's investigative abilities and medical knowledge instead of clumsily slicing into thugs or ghouls would have been more fitting and less boring. It also looked weird at times for me.

[Malcador]

EU4 game is devolved into madness, Austria and Sweden control all of the continent.  I'm playing as Russia and Austria was my friend until I finished off Poland and took 3 provinces they really want bad

Got Door Kickers 2 over Christmas, so also doing that. I suck at the game, but there's fun in the failure.

[uuuhhii]

trying to play holocure

got headache from insane amount of shiny object on screen

might need to give up

[BruceVC]

I just bought both DLC for PoE1 and then PoE 2 

Great price on Steam with 75% off   

I am currently playing  NWN2 and its expansions so I will play White March and PoE  2  after  that 

Edited January 2 by BruceVC

[xzar_monty]

4 hours ago, BruceVC said:

I just bought both DLC for PoE1 and then PoE 2

All the three DLCs for PoE2 are also very good, and I heartily recommend them. If you only want one, do go for Beast of Winter, as it is the best, storywise.

[Helz]

I bought Marvel: Midnight Suns on the Steam sale. The gist of the reviews seemed to be that the turn-based combat is a win, but there's a lot of socializing in the base that drags on. Struggling with loneliness, this sounded like a plus to me. The first 10-15 hours have mostly been good. The characters are well-written and the combat is fun, but the missions are already getting stale. 95% of the battles have been against 3-4 varieties of henchmen, the combat maps are tiny and contain identical environmental items. Normal mode is too easy and harder difficulty levels have to be unlocked, which is dumb.

I knew what I was getting into with the social part, but I have to admit that there's a whole lot of it. Every combat mission is bookended by 30-60 minutes of talking to your teammates, taking them on 'dates', improving your base, etc. This increases your relationships and unlocks team attacks. I accept this because I knew what I was getting into and it's done well, but there's also a whole bunch of collectables (crap) to run around and find. You don't strictly have to, and I've been avoiding it, but it unlocks new powers and more junk. Ultimately though, it's the repetitive combat missions that I'm getting tired of, and I did not expect that. The combat system is not the problem and it's still early, so I'm hopeful that the fights will improve.

Edited January 2 by Helz

[Wormerine]

2 hours ago, Helz said:

I bought Marvel: Midnight Suns on the Steam sale. The gist of the reviews seemed to be that the turn-based combat is a win, but there's a lot of socializing in the base that drags on. Struggling with loneliness, this sounded like a plus to me. The first 10-15 hours have mostly been good. The characters are well-written and the combat is fun, but the missions are already getting stale. 95% of the battles have been against 3-4 varieties of henchmen, the combat maps are tiny and contain identical environmental items. Normal mode is too easy and harder difficulty levels have to be unlocked, which is dumb.

(...)

Ultimately though, it's the repetitive combat missions that I'm getting tired of, and I did not expect that. The combat system is not the problem and it's still early, so I'm hopeful that the fights will improve.

You do unlock new chess pieces, but unfortunately, combat does lack in complexity and variety. Combat is definitely the better part of the title, but outside novelty, I didn't think much of it. 

Harder difficulties do help. I remember normal being quite a bore. If you do well (stars of something of that sort in missions) you should unlock new difficulties farily quickly. You should be unlocking one anytime now and I recommend trying it out as soon as its available.

[Hurlshort]

I also bought Midnight Suns during the sale, but haven't bothered playing it yet because I'm not really in the Marvel mood. I have no idea when that mood will strike. I mean, I loved all the Xcom games, so I'm all about the combat, but it's hard to get excited about more super hero stuff.

[melkathi]

Magik is the most fun character. 

[Hawke64]

Played Cult of the Lamb. It is an action-roguelite with management elements. The management elements include raising the titular cult and taking revenge on the gods who demanded you to be sacrificed. The cult requires members, who can be found during expeditions or recruited after boss battles. In turn, these members produce Devotion, which is used to purchase new abilities and unlock new buildings, and require food and housing. The resources can be gathered during the above-mentioned expeditions, the Crusades, or grown at the base. The Crusades include venturing into the randomly arranged rooms, slaughtering the regular foes and the bosses, gathering resources, rescuing potential cult members, and occasionally meeting NPCs.

The only negative aspects of the game are the random elements which are rather unpleasant - an unwieldy weapon, such as a hammer, can make a Crusade unsuccessful, and the requirement to sacrifice 3 followers to progress in the post-game. As I understand, it was added after the initial release.

The controls are rebindable, 5-button mice supported, no critical bugs have been encountered (some minor issues with building placement). The accessibility options allow to auto-pass the mini-games and stop the time at the camp when the MC is on a Crusade. The graphics and visual style are lovely and expressive, the sound design is not annoying.

---

Finished The Outer Worlds and the Peril on Gorgon DLC. While the main game is quite touching and enjoyable, the Peril on Gorgon made the issues more noticeable - there was too much random loot (which, fortunately, was still possible to sort and dispose of easily after obtaining it), and the main NPCs were

Spoiler

experimenting on humans (judging by the hostile Test Subjects in the Manor, Wilhemina did so too). I would also add that the remark made by one of the companions, that animals in farming were treated with more dignity, was blatantly false. Then again, I assume he had never seen the gestation crates.

I think, the game would have benefited from a more thoughtful approach to the enemy and item placement. Still, I am looking forward to Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2.

Edited January 5 by Hawke64

[Helz]

On 1/2/2024 at 4:42 PM, Wormerine said:

Harder difficulties do help. I remember normal being quite a bore. If you do well (stars of something of that sort in missions) you should unlock new difficulties farily quickly. You should be unlocking one anytime now and I recommend trying it out as soon as its available.

I had just unlocked the next difficulty level and it didn't seem to make much difference at first, but the game might have read my post because the very next mission I played, it handed me my ass. I went from never having a character knocked out to wiping 10 times before I got lucky with a 5 enemy KO. The henchmen are using new skills that I've never noticed before, so things have definitely taken a turn. I've also spiced things up by changing which heroes I'm using in every fight.

On 1/2/2024 at 9:46 PM, Hurlshort said:

I also bought Midnight Suns during the sale, but haven't bothered playing it yet because I'm not really in the Marvel mood. I have no idea when that mood will strike. I mean, I loved all the Xcom games, so I'm all about the combat, but it's hard to get excited about more super hero stuff.

I'm not a fan of the Marvel movies and haven't seen one in a long time. Superheroes are a complete change of pace for me, but the only problem is I don't know who half of them are.

Midnight Suns is growing on me. I don't think I'll ever like running around and collecting stuff, but in the Emo Kids meeting when I had failed to gather enough ingredients, Majik just shrugged and said she hates doing that too 

[Wormerine]

2 hours ago, Helz said:

I had just unlocked the next difficulty level and it didn't seem to make much difference at first, but the game might have read my post because the very next mission I played, it handed me my ass. I went from never having a character knocked out to wiping 10 times before I got lucky with a 5 enemy KO. The henchmen are using new skills that I've never noticed before, so things have definitely taken a turn. I've also spiced things up by changing which heroes I'm using in every fight.

(...)

Midnight Suns is growing on me. I don't think I'll ever like running around and collecting stuff, but in the Emo Kids meeting when I had failed to gather enough ingredients, Majik just shrugged and said she hates doing that too 

If I remember correctly difficulty mostly just raises enemy health and attack, requiring more effective use of your skills. Complexity comes with story progression.

Stuff like collecting ingredients for EMO Kids just helps in acquiring cards quicker. Speaking of which, look for opportunities to upgrade your character's base cards by combinging two of the same kind. Heroes don't quite show their capabilities until you upgrade their cards (I can't remember how early this mechanic get introduced, but it took me too long to figure out how impactful it is)