What are you Playing Now? - Right Now at the moment edition

[Sven_]

13 hours ago, Humanoid said:

I never felt that dungeons ever actually went up in difficulty, and indeed you probably outscale the dungeons if you know which trinkets to farm, because that's the only place where you actually have decisions to make in terms of the power level of your units. The rest is, as you say, just farming gold in order to unlock and buy better skills and gear levels, no decisions required there.

It seems I was a little unlucky with my first veteran (lvl3) dungeon. And that right in the first encounter. I've done a few since -- and that was a better ride. Not going too much into Meta / Wiki though initially, as I feel this is a game that is meant to experienced like that.  

On another note, on a low level dungeon I made an experimental party to send them there: 

Vestal -- Grave Robber -- Grave Robber -- Grave Robber.

The Vestal heals from the backline. The Grave Robber in the front uses "Shadow fade" (invisible, damage buff, 2 places backwards, so ends up being in front of the vestal). 

From there I'd pickaxe and throwing knife enemies with the stealth/invisible damage buff. Don't think that would be viable at the higher levels. But it was fun whilst it lasted (and last the party did).  

 

[Humanoid]

3 hours ago, Sven_ said:

From there I'd pickaxe and throwing knife enemies with the stealth/invisible damage buff. Don't think that would be viable at the higher levels. But it was fun whilst it lasted (and last the party did).  

Not quite there yet, but you're well on the way to discovering the fun of "dance parties". Maybe not with three Grave Robbers as such, but equip one with her best move, Lunge. Then add two or three more party members who also move themselves forward (and optionally backwards) with their best attacks.

Grave Robber Lunges then Shadow Fades. Highwayman Duelist Advances then Point Blank Shoots. Shieldbreaker ...well, basically all her skills move her either forward or back. And while less explicitly dancers, the Jester (Dirk Stab/Finale) Crusader (Holy Lance), Man at Arms (Rampart), Hellion (Breakthrough) can also participate in this style of play. It's both very fun, and makes it so that you're far less vulnerable to being surprised by enemies.

But yeah, the boring meta team is "Jestal", Jester and Vestal. Coldly effective but it's just so boring to play. You can easily complete the game with static parties where every member just operates independently, but dance parties and a third type of party, built around using Mark (using 3-4 of Bounty Hunter, Occultist, Hound Master and Arbalest), are great to keep yourself from burning out with the same old strategies.

[Sven_]

3 hours ago, Humanoid said:

You can easily complete the game with static parties where every member just operates independently, but dance parties and a third type of party, built around using Mark (using 3-4 of Bounty Hunter, Occultist, Hound Master and Arbalest), are great to keep yourself from burning out with the same old strategies.

 

Actually, the latter I've been thinking about almost since starting out. I may even need it for a boss I'm facing atm (hides in the back row, has high resistance against being moved around and lets it rain deadly rubble upon the "heroes").

It's a more obvious thing to do though: There's multiple classes that can mark an enemy -- and multiple classes that can deal extra damage against marked enemies. This screams for a "nuke the **** outta currently marked enemy" type of compositions.  Might go with two arbalests ( + 90% of damage against marked enemy), an Occultist for healing stuff (though he's a more prone to RNG in how much he heals than the Vestal) plus a bounty hunter in the frontline.

I like this stuff. But then I've played Icewind Dale once exclusively with casters.  

Edited May 19 by Sven_

[melkathi]

I am trying to play Necromunda Hired Gun, but I have two traits that do not mesh well in this game:

I am a completionist and I suck at jumping/platforming.

I can't get to one of the five loot chests in the first area

[Humanoid]

11 hours ago, Sven_ said:

Might go with two arbalests ( + 90% of damage against marked enemy), an Occultist for healing stuff (though he's a more prone to RNG in how much he heals than the Vestal) plus a bounty hunter in the frontline.

Yeah, one commonly overlooked thing is how good the Occultist is at the front. People tend to have the impression he's a standard RPG wizard and hide him at the back, but he's got the most reliable single-target stun in the game (Hands from the Abyss) and his melee attack has both a high crit chance and bonus damage against Eldritch (the most common enemy type in the game). Accuracy isn't great, but the general rule for every class is one accuracy trinket, except Leper where you take two accuracy trinkets.

Don't forget Houndmaster who has the best Mark skill, with a big Prot debuff on the target. And of course he's the only one of the four Mark classes with a stress heal.

That said, Mark isn't a universal solution to boss fights because of how the duration ticks down. When bosses have two or even three moves a turn, that means the Mark wears off two or three times faster.

[Hurlshort]

Y'all convinced me to load up Darkest Dungeon as well. I just beat the Sonorous Prophet. I have like 18 poor souls on my roster, but only a couple are good for anything. My arbalest was pretty useful in that boss battle.

[BruceVC]

I completed EOB3 after about 30 hours

I enjoyed it more than EOB2, the game started off terrible but it gets better as you progress. In the beginning you start off hacking trees in the forest and I thought " this is not fun" but once you get to the main dungeons it really improves. And there was a real problem with my sound on an early dungeon level. The background noise was this constant ringing but that seemed to go away once I left the level but it was so annoying I nearly stopped playing and disabling the sound ruins immersion

But what I appreciated is there were tips to puzzles and you could basically find everything you needed on the same level, you just needed to explore which is fine. The combat felt unbalanced at times, most enemies you could defeat easily except for earth elementals and these iron scorpions called Scaladars. The game has some improved features that help in combat where you can configure your whole party to attack at once and if you using long weapons like a Pole Arm then you party in the second row can attack without missile weapons. And this makes a noticeable difference

The game design did a job of providing you with several "healing oasis " if you dont have a healer and it also allowed some strategic NPC to join your party which made a difference to my overall combat effectiveness

The final battle with the Dark God was incredibly easy, I defeated him the first time with no save scumming and I was expecting another EOB2 Dran battle but it wasnt like that. I just moved away from him when he cast spells and I killed him after about 4-5 rounds

EOB3 gets a well deserved 62/100 on the globally respected " BruceVC game rating system" and its worth playing

I have now played the whole EOB series and EOB1 was my preferred game because it captures the overall classic dungeon explorer experience in the best way

I am going to have my normal genre break from these classic SSI games but the games I will play next from a Gold Box perspective is going to be Forgotten Realms Collection 2 which includes the Pools of Radiance and other similar games  

[melkathi]

Turns out, Necromunda Hired Gun let's you replay old levels, so you can go and search for things you missed and you can go back with a grappling hook, so you don't need to do the super tricky jumps.

 

[Hawke64]

Finished Ghost Song. A very good Metroidvania in a sci-fi setting. Highly recommended.

Review:

Spoiler

Ghost Song is a Metroidvania with Souls-like elements. The story follows a newly-awakened Deadsuit who took upon herself to assist the surviving crew of a crashed spaceship. There are no story-related choices (the main character auto-replies in dialogues), though some of the mandatory objectives can be achieved in different order. The story and the dialogues are written well, and the characters are likeable, so the protagonist’s lines are fitting and going along with the objectives comes easy.

The combat is functional - the main default weapon is a gun with rather limited range, while the damage decreases the farther the target is. There are other ranged weapons with different attack types and abilities, as well as melee weapons. Also a combat drone. It should be noted that there is contact damage and it hits as hard as a normal attack from the respective foe, which usually makes ranged combat preferable.

The main character has few attributes which can be upgraded at the infrequent fast travel points, while the save points are much more plentiful. Additionally, there are modules, which provide quality changes to the protagonist’s abilities, such as healing while attacking in melee, double jumping, or being able to see foes’ health bars.

The bosses are diverse, challenging, and have some background story. Most of them have several stages or additional mechanics. A few are the same as the regular enemies, but larger.

The main aspect of a Metroidvania is exploration, and the world is interesting and engaging to explore. There are a lot of optional paths and secrets, while the traversal is comfortable. There are very fast travel points, but the map is not too large. Additionally, the locations change slightly as the story progresses, most notably, during the return-to-camp sequences, while new abilities allow to access previously unreachable areas.

The visual design is stunningly beautiful and easy to read at the same time. The music is pleasant and does not block foes’ attack cues nor distracts from the game. The dialogues are partially voiced, with the VA being of good quality.

The controls are reasonably comfortable and rebindable. No significant bugs have been encountered during the playthough, only a couple visual ones. The only technical flaw I can see is auto-saving in the same slot, which is typical for Souls-likes and can be circumvented by copying the save files with Windows Explorer manually.

Overall, highly recommended.

Somehow amusingly, my playthrough have taken about 14 hours, while there is an achievement for beating the game within 3 hours. I am really curious how one could do so.

---

Continuing with There is no Light. The combat became reasonably enjoyable, though the encounter design ("lol, ambush") is not. I also have realised what was bothering me about the story (aside from the part where every nice place was turning grimdark very quickly) - everything felt like descriptions of the actual dialogues or notes. Like something you give to the writer to start with, not the final script.

On another note, I have discovered the health-increasing NPC on the last of the 3 available paths (which I could have taken as the first). Then again, I did not gather enough McGuffins for the NPC to increase my HP by much at that point either way (~16.6%, if I read the progress bar correctly).

On a positive note, the locations differ from each other quite a lot, there are a lot of enemy types, and the visual style is quite lovely. Also, the inventory screen slightly changes as the optional quests are completed. Which supposedly unlock something and show the MC's background story.

---

Downloaded a bunch of demos and have not played them yet. There is a good chance that by the time I have done so, the games themselves will be released, patched, and discounted.

[Malcador]

Doing the Pandaria Remix even in WoW, is nice to be a little bit OP, although not as much as I'd like.  Raid bosses getting dropped in 30 seconds by LFR morons is pretty ideal though.

[Hawke64]

Finished There is no Light. Tried to do the true ending*, but the 2 stages of the final boss were not particularly inspiring (the first one was timed and had to be repeated in case of failure later on). Overall, I am not unhappy that I have played it, but the game is not good due to the story/lore, level and encounter design. I will try to write a proper review some time later.

*it required completing all side quests. The one where I repeatedly led the local military to be slaughtered by me, while they were trying to murder random civilians, was funny. The quest giver at no point suspected the MC of killing his subordinates.

[melkathi]

Got to the point in Necromunda Hired Gun where you can farm reputation with the different factions. I think it is funny these include a Genestealer Cult, a Helot Cult, and the Corpsegrinder Cult, with the devs not having bothered to give any of the three some cover name.

[Cyprian]

On my second playthrough of Expeditions: Rome. A pretty fun turn-based RPG, I just dislike sieges and hate pacification quests. Don't like managing 12 characters at once or being forced to use non-companions. Otherwise being a legate felt cool.

[melkathi]

Would be nice if the legate didn't suffer from so much plot stupidity

[Cyprian]

2 hours ago, melkathi said:

Would be nice if the legate didn't suffer from so much plot stupidity

So true you get railroaded so often and so badly. Act 3 is atrocious in that regard. "Die with honour" Oh come on And I think they killed off the guy at the start of act 2 too quickly and unceremoniously. I don't even get a goodbye? After the reveal at the end it's just sad.

In the republic path in act 3 in Rome certain someone's demise was so... Unneeded. It didn't even matter in the end.

Also I think it's understandable that you're given an option to sleep with Cleopatra but banging Cato is... So funny.

[LadyCrimson]

Manor Lords: there have been two experimental patch opt-ins. I tried the 2nd one.

---The market wonkiness has been improved, it works better now, with a little better control. Less headache. So that makes things easier.
---a King's tax has been implemented, something you have to pay, and it's based on number of citizens you have. Currently it's almost a nothing burger tho (on Normal), once familiar with game logistics. And you can turn it off if you wish.
---overall it's actually easier than before - for town-scaping. Less weird headaches. Crop farming is better, backyard gardens have been nerfed somewhat (mostly a time slow down).
---the patch changes will likely go live fairly soon

I've reached the familiarity point where it only takes me a few game years and/or 1.5-2 irl hours to make any town stable and get what I want from it. The only reason to have a larger population, mechanics wise, is for pulling army numbers from and you can just make a single city for that. Everything else is just because "you feel like it." The "magic number" of bored/restart is now down to about 400, although I have gotten total map/regions population up to 1600 or so a couple times.

The dev has said the next regional map he has in mind will have ... water? coast? ships/ship trade? not sure. It would be a change of pace tho.
Current state: you can/could spend 20-100+ hours messing around with it, sandbox and beating the combat/Baron, but it's very much early-access lacking long-term content/motivation. My biggest curiosity is what the dev plans for the supremely not-finished tree node paths.
 

Edited May 30 by LadyCrimson

[Hawke64]

Finished the There is no Light review. After some reflection, the general thing is that it is an action-adventure (and not a Souls-like nor a Metroidvania) with nice art and character development system and not so nice story/writing and level design. The foes clipping through each other and environmental hazards were also unpleasant.

I am thankful for the key provided by ShadySands.

Spoiler

There is no Light is an action-adventure game in a post-apocalyptic grimdark fantasy setting, as in someone opened the portal to hell, and humanity retreated into the metro tunnels with some eldritch horrors following closely. A few generations later the story starts with the main character’s family being sacrificed to the local deity, while the protagonist makes a deal with a demon to avenge them. The writing and lore are the weakest point - all dialogues and notes feel like drafts describing things rather than the final script, not to mention the occasional typos.

The combat is generally functional - the main weapon is a sword, which can have several different stats (e.g. higher damage and slower healing), a regular attack, a thrust attack, and a special rage ability attack. A throwable greatsword, a pair of breakable gloves, and a shield can be obtained after clearing one of the three main paths. Only the greatsword was somewhat useful, but only situationally. I obtained the shield last, so did not have the time nor the inclination to use it, while dashing was fast and reasonably reliable. The issue with combat comes from the encounter and enemy design - a lot of the encounters are ambushes, where the protagonist also cannot interact with various doors and ledges, thus, must defeat the foes to proceed. A lot of enemies are very fast, have little to no attack windup, and can clip through each other and the environmental hazards (e.g. to stand in the laser that hits the main character for 1 HP per second). The only reliable indication is the interruptability icon flashing above them, with red meaning that any protagonist's attack will stagger the enemy, yellow for special rage ability attacks, and white for impossible to interrupt. On a positive note, there are a lot of diverse and location-specific regular foes, while the bosses also have their own features.

The locations are beautiful (as far as eyes on yellow or on red goo can be) and distinct, with unique mechanics and systems to get through them (e.g. a boat to sail through lakes or a lamp summoning the memories of how the location looked like before), the level design is lacking - it is never clear where or why to go, aside from the few areas with maps (of variable usefulness), and the walkable surfaces are not clearly visible. It is hard to tell whether something is a path, a wall, or a part of the background. Checking by dashing into them costs health on unsuccessful attempts, while the ability to negate might come very late, depending on the path chosen. After the prologue, there are 3-4 paths leading from the main hub. One of them becomes available only after clearing the other three. The exploration in general is not satisfying and there are only a few collectibles (the pages unlock lore after completing a side quest and the spider toys allow to increase the maximum health) and the single-use health-restoring items in the optional rooms.

The character development system consists of weapon upgrades and the souls of the defeated bosses. The latter can drastically alter the survivability, but only one can be equipped per unlocked weapon, while some of them worked only with the weapon they were slotted into. The idea felt novel enough, but barring sprinting behind it was not. Additionally, the only way to increase the health and number of carried single-use health-restoring items was by collecting spider toys and bringing them to a certain NPC. On which path the NPC was, one should guess.

There are side quests. On one hand, it is possible to pick up the quest items before receiving the corresponding quest, on the other, it is also possible to lock yourself out of them accidentally, while the general logic of the quests and how they connect to the main story (the protagonist regaining memories) were lacking. Though, it certainly was funny when I repeatedly led the local military to be slaughtered by me, while they were trying to murder random civilians. The quest giver at no point suspected the MC of killing his subordinates. The karma system overall is more of a guessing game, but the range of dialogue options (yes, no, question) is satisfactory for the genre. The protagonist does not exactly talk, thus, the exact wording of the lines is open to interpretation. Additionally, there are a lot of chained or caged NPC civilians. It is not possible to help them, even after defeating all foes in the area.

I turned off the soundtrack when it switched to rock during one of the early ambushes, thus, successfully drowning the few audio cues for enemy attacks. There is no VA, the characters speak gibberish, but it is enough to understand the tone of the voice.

The controls are rebindable and the 5-button mice are supported. The game saves progress upon entering areas or interacting with the fast travel/level up point. There are some shortcuts between them, while being defeated in a boss battle usually allows to be reviewed right at the entrance. I have encountered only one minor visual UI bug.

---

Started The Last Express Gold Edition. Failed after wandering around the train for 10 minutes - could not find the quest NPC. The game looks amazing for its time, though the screen resolution and the mouse-based controls suggest it would work wonderfully on handheld devices. The in-game navigation is somewhat challenging.

[BruceVC]

I completed Dungeon Hack after about 50 hours, its  similar  to   EOB and is a  Gold  Box  game but simpler than EOB  because all keys are on the same levels and there arent any complicated puzzles

Its just a fun D&D dungeon crawl with all  the same rule mechanics  as EOB

I did have to use a cheat twice to progress on certain levels because doors were closed with no keys and on one level I couldnt find the steps down and I think it was a bug which certain Dungeon Hack forums confirm can happen so I had  to '' cheat " just to progress

The game gets a well deserved 62\100 on the globally respected "BruceVC game rating system " and is a recommended CPRG to play from a more light-hearted perspective

[Hawke64]

Dread Delusion. So far so good - I have been mostly avoiding combat by running and closing the doors in front of NPC. The writing and the visual style are excellent, the soundtrack is present (I noticed it changing significantly only around the Hollowshire Castle). The RPG systems (as in numbers) are simple, but present and generally satisfactory, same for roleplay - some quests have options for the methods and outcomes. The equipment has been rather limited - I have found 1 piece of armour, bought a stat-increasing hat and another armour set, and upgraded the rusty sword I got in the tutorial. Also found a bow, which I have not yet used. Somehow, it is nice when the game does not vomit Legendary Fire Swords +99 on you.

I am not quite fond of the checkpoint-based saving system, but it is not the first game where save file management performed in Windows Explorer. Reloaded once so far -

Spoiler

an NPC initiated a dialogue when there were 2 unfriendly creatures right behind me. It led to an intriguing curious cut-scene and I decided to reload.

 

[Katphood]

Bought both Ghoswire: Tokyo and HI Fi Rush from the PSN because I couldn't find physical copies and I simply had to jump in the 'Xbox closed down Tango Gameworks' bandwagon.

Tried Ghostwire: Tokyo a bit on the PS5. The vsync is non-existent no matter which mode I choose. The game looks great regardless. 

Finished Alan Wake and now I am heading for Alan Wake: American Nightmare. I also started Batman: Arkham Origins on the Xbox. 

Still have to finish Control. Goddamn was this game big!

Once I am done with all of these I'll head for Alan Wake 2 and Psychonauts 2. 

Edited June 3 by Katphood

[Malcador]

D4 works for me again, so trying to catch up. The tempering gambling is nice, some nice perks even in Wt2.

Hellfire maidens sure hurt in Wt3, though

[Sven_]

LOAD"*",8,1

SEARCHING FOR *
LOADING
READY.
RUN

 

 

What actually sealed the deal for me wasn't merely the Ultima/Goldbox aesthetics. But rather: This is a horror-themed RPG, in a sense? When did the last major one come out, really? Bloodlines some five football Eureopean Championships ago? You've gotta be sh*tting me!!!!1





Light sources can be switched out for improved stealth chance (that, is outside of the sun). Combat and character mechanics seem straight-forward enough. But then, a lot of oldies used to be pretty straight forward in that. And I needn't even gather my party before venturing forth.

Edited June 4 by Sven_

[LadyCrimson]

Tiny Glade demo - I've had it wishlisted for a bit.

...it's cute, but in the end I'm not sure I'm into the artstyle. I feel like I'm building something that would go into a rich person's ceramic collector fantasy curio cabinet. Which is odd because I might like some of such in a curio cabinet, but on-screen/game it doesn't appeal to me. But it is cute, the mechanics work well enough/are cool (maybe a bit finicky/over precise), and if the style is your thing, looks promising a small/chill time waster. One of those games with essentially no point but use tools to create a small castle/town in a small area.

[Gorth]

19 hours ago, Sven_ said:

LOAD"*",8,1

SEARCHING FOR *
LOADING
READY.
RUN

 

It's almost a reflex...

LOAD"$",8

SEARCHING FOR $
LOADING
READY.
LIST

[Sven_]

6 hours ago, Gorth said:

6 hours ago, Gorth said:

It's almost a reflex...

LOAD"$",8
 

Even after four decades, you just can't get it out of yer head.  (Later on I had one of those Action Replay cartridges though. Came with a turbo loader as well as simply hitting the C64's F-keys to shortcut the "loading routines".)


Oh man, SKALD is actually good. I mean real good. It feels like those oldies but with updates where needed: No bloat, just an intriguing setup and off ya go. It's a narrative heavy game, too, but it doesn't drown you in exposition. I'd rather play focused games like these than a 100 hour campaign full of filler. The character system is complex enough, the battles are about the same. There's even a simple faction system in place. What kills it though is the vibe the guy was going for and manages to hit.


Sure, it's pixels. But there's a skill check fairly early on whether your character can withstand the stench of rotting corpses in a cave... succeed, and all is well. Fail, and get a debuff 'til resting. This isn't a "poop your pants" kinda game. It's rather all very oppressive and feels like uncovering dark ancient secrets in the best of ways. There's even dynamic weather (and of course day/night cycles), with the island you visit apparently being fogged permanently.

Clearly, the oft expressed notion that horror kinda themes and RPG's inherent level-up kinda power fantasy wouldn't gell is nonsense. Then substantial companies had shown such in the 1980s and 1990s. They just stopped trying it mostly with Bloodlines. 

Edited June 5 by Sven_