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

[Hawke64]

4 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

I am planning to start DS2:SotFS playthrough, but I am still considering what build should I go for. How hard is it to defeat Fume Knight with melee? My reaction time is not, what it used to be, so melee will bring me some troubles. Is there a chance for a guy with bad reflexes to beat him, or should I go for Hexes right away?

I did beat him in melee and I would not say that my reflexes are particularly good. On the successful attempt, I remember eating a brightbug (?) and him staying in the first phase until ~30%HP.

---

Cookie Cutter. Spent about an hour on a platforming section with a lot insta-killing spikes only to discover that it was optional. I also think that the earlier levels did not have the collision boxes for the projectiles, rather than all projectiles passing though walls.

Edited July 20 by Hawke64

[Mamoulian War]

After almost three busy months, when I spent about 1 hour per week on gaming, I have finally found some more time during today, and started Dark Souls 2: SotFS on PS4. I have cleared few areas and I had some comedy wipes already I have defeated The Last Giant, and I’ll be deciding if I should go for the Pursuer or Dragonrider. For me, It’s easier to get to Pursuer, but it’s easier to defeat Dragonrider. So for now, the winner is Dragonrider. We’ll see how it changes tomorrow, when my ass will get kicked few times

Anyway, I started this time with Cleric, as I plan to go for melee Paladin-like lightning build, so the toon needs a lot of Faith. If I get steamrolled to much during my playthrough, I will still have chance to switch to Hexer caster, which should be easier to play for my skills. But hopefully I’ll get as far as possible into the game, before I will have to switch.

[melkathi]

I played Jack Move.

It is a cute little cyberpunk pixel art indy rpg.

It is very short, probably under 8 hours. At the same time, I found the combat to be overstaying its welcome.

I uninstalled during the final boss fight. It is too tedious and boring for me. I know I could beat it if I invested the time, but there is nothing rewarding about slowly nibbling at the silly health of the boss, defend before the big attack, heal, repeat.

I can watch the ending on YouTube.

[Mamoulian War]

Dragonrider and Flexile Sentry have been defeated. I am still trying to get back into the controls after not touching controller for three months, so I am using summon mechanics at bossfights. It’s much easier that way, but if the game offers me helping hand, I do not say no  The other good thing is, that it looks like, I became much more patient than few years ago, when I have played it for the first time, so after three bosses only 15 wipes. This will probably change a lot at the Pursuer, but we’ll see on PS3 I have spent more than 3 hours and countless wipes to get through No-man’s Wharf, today just 1 and half and 2 wipes. Not bad, not bad. Mace is fine weapon and Old Knight Chest armour helped me a lot with mitigating damage. Although, I am running a lot out of Stamina due to this combination.

[sorophx]

finally got to Malenia in Elden Ring, attempting her pushed my total play time over 240 hours, and I have yet to even burn the friggin' tree. at least I'll be ready for the DLC once I get around to trying it.

[Mamoulian War]

Pursuer down, and to my surprise on a first try. And it happened at the elevated platform next to the exploded wall. I have summoned the shade behind the door locked by Soldier’s Key, and cleared the area, before climbing the ladder. The funny thing is, that soon after the start of the fight Pursuer knocked him down and he was not able to find a path back to ladder so I had to finish around 70% of his HP alone. It was anything, but walk in the park, the only thing, which saved my ass was higher level and Old Knight armour chest piece, which soaked a lot of damage. But, I have to admit, this platform gives much better opportunity to defend agains the Pursuer compared to his arena, due to being bigger. The downside is, that it is easy to drop down, if you are not watching the surrounding. 

In the end, it was a good decision to leave this boss for a later time, after clearing No-man’s Wharf. The extra levels and gear helped me a lot. Next in line will be the Ornstein Cosplayer, whose name I can’t remember now   Of course, first I have to get through the big dragon guarding the cathedral, which might be also an issue for me In that case, I will have to go to Skeleton Lords or Ruin Sentinels. I sucked big time in vanilla DS2 at Sentinels and even bigger time at getting through trash mobs before the Lords. So I am not looking much forward to my next play sessions

16 wipes after 9 hours of playtime. 

[bugarup]

Weather being what it is, reinstalled Skyrim. Made a couple builds to roleplay someone other than stealthy archer who's a vampire werewolf fighter Arch-mage of thieves guild (though you'd have to pry kleptomania-for-everyone trait from my dead sticky fingers, that's one thing I'm not ready to not roleplay). Learning new things, such as how to kite when you play a mage. Anyways, there is a lot of things to do in Skyrim, but I'll have Cryostasis and Frostpunk queued in case hell-on-earth season lasts longer. 

[BruceVC]

5 hours ago, bugarup said:

Weather being what it is, reinstalled Skyrim. Made a couple builds to roleplay someone other than stealthy archer who's a vampire werewolf fighter Arch-mage of thieves guild (though you'd have to pry kleptomania-for-everyone trait from my dead sticky fingers, that's one thing I'm not ready to not roleph

 

glay). Learning new things, such as how to kite when you play a mage. Anyways, there is a lot of things to do in Skyrim, but I'll have Cryostasis and Frostpunk queued in case hell-on-earth season lasts longer. 

I have been preparing myself for my first Skyrim play through, I have waited 13 years for this monumental  and significant occasion 

Its early days and Im reading up on  ideas of mod lists and doing research 

But Im almost guaranteed to play Requiem with the Wildlander mod list, Im undecided about what mod list to use with Requiem but Wildlander looks awesome 

[Serrano]

4 hours ago, BruceVC said:

I have been preparing myself for my first Skyrim play through, I have waited 13 years for this monumental  and significant occasion 

Its early days and Im reading up on  ideas of mod lists and doing research 

But Im almost guaranteed to play Requiem with the Wildlander mod list, Im undecided about what mod list to use with Requiem but Wildlander looks awesome 

I never tried it myself but I remember seeing a YouTube video about an AI companion mod called Herika. Not only can you talk to her using your actual voice but you can actually *talk* to her. She's also surprisingly sassy. It uses chatGPT and it looks like a pretty unique experience;

 

Edited July 22 by Serrano

[Malcador]

Played the Tempest Rising demo, is pretty much C&C as expected. Should go back and finish the Nod campaign in C&C 3. 

[Hurlshort]

Xenonauts 2 - They still have one big update to go before the game is able to be finished, but I couldn't help myself. The game is fantastic early on. Fighting the cleaners at the start instead of jumping right into it with aliens is a nice touch. The combat is great. I've got 17 soldiers right now and they are starting to get a bit decent. I've got one sniper who leads the pack in kills. In the first downed UFO mission, he ended up with 4 kills, and the last one was with his sidearm after his rifle ran dry. He's a legend already.  

[LadyCrimson]

No Man's Sky

--Since I don't build giant bases, and I also build most of them hanging in mid-air, so far none of my chrs/larger bases were an issue. And I lucked out where most of my main "planets" didn't change too much, either. A little here and there, like foliage shapes or fauna, nothing big.
--the new water is nice, although it's mostly a big difference on oceans/coasts. Overall cleaner graphic looks. Maybe sometimes almost too "clean." And some lighting is ... overblown re:whites/contrast. I do not have any HDR settings on. Still had to turn such settings down on the TV to not be blinded occasionally.
--performance is about the same at native4k, did turn more things to High vs. Ultra to be 60fps/safe, don't notice a visual difference.

But I think I'll go back to 7 Days for now. NMS supposedly will have a "Worlds version 2" update coming later - maybe that'd be a better time to jump back in.

[BruceVC]

13 hours ago, Serrano said:

I never tried it myself but I remember seeing a YouTube video about an AI companion mod called Herika. Not only can you talk to her using your actual voice but you can actually *talk* to her. She's also surprisingly sassy. It uses chatGPT and it looks like a pretty unique experience;

 

Im very far away from ever considering using AI in Bethesda games and particularly not with companion  dialogue options

It needs to be much more refined and functional and even then it doesnt appeal to me. It would take some major improvements and marketing before I adopted it 

[bugarup]

Playing Skyrim reminded me of one pure 100% Bethesdian trademarks - Needlessly Belligerent NPC. You know, the one that upon meeting you for the first time greets you with "Hey f†ckface, the f-- you doing here?! Tell me RIGHT NOW you useless piece of shoit or I smash your ugly face in!" Fallout 3 has them, Skyrim has them, Fallout 4 has them too.  Usually your reply to them consists of 1. (meek explanation of what I am doing here), 2. "Try me, b†tch" and you can guess which one I always take. 

Unfortunately, Bethesda loves to troll players with making the most insufferable ones essential and thus unkillable, though sometimes just temporarily and then you see videos of people launching nukes at that one settler in FO4. I now recall that cathartic feeling I had from going to town in Riften when I was finally allowed to; cannot wait to repeat the experience. 

[BruceVC]

20 minutes ago, bugarup said:

Playing Skyrim reminded me of one pure 100% Bethesdian trademarks - Needlessly Belligerent NPC. You know, the one that upon meeting you for the first time greets you with "Hey f†ckface, the f-- you doing here?! Tell me RIGHT NOW you useless piece of shoit or I smash your ugly face in!" Fallout 3 has them, Skyrim has them, Fallout 4 has them too.  Usually your reply to them consists of 1. (meek explanation of what I am doing here), 2. "Try me, b†tch" and you can guess which one I always take. 

Unfortunately, Bethesda loves to troll players with making the most insufferable ones essential and thus unkillable, though sometimes just temporarily and then you see videos of people launching nukes at that one settler in FO4. I now recall that cathartic feeling I had from going to town in Riften when I was finally allowed to; cannot wait to repeat the experience. 

Are you playing vanilla Skyrim or are you using Requiem or a specific mod list?

[bugarup]

1 hour ago, BruceVC said:

Are you playing vanilla Skyrim or are you using Requiem or a specific mod list?

Vanilla for now. Really miss my "Not Completely Horrible UI" and "Highlight unread books" mods, but, you know. There are cheevos and I'm weak. 

[Serrano]

I had a bit of free time the last couple of days so I decided to install one of the games I've purchased on sale and never got around to playing. I picked Company of Heroes. I think gameplay-wise it's held up pretty well, I've only spent a couple of hours with it but I'm having fun. The only downside right now is that it's been about 20 years since I've had to use the arrow keys to scroll around the screen and it's taking a while to get comfortable with that again. Relic are amazing though, I'd forgotten how much fun I used to have with the Dawn of War series. Dawn of War IV is long overdue, hopefully if Space Marine 2 does well they'll give Relic and the franchise the boost it needs to do another.

Edited July 23 by Serrano

[Mamoulian War]

DS2 again after day of break. Had only 1 and half hour of free time today, so I have decided to go for Old Dragonslayer and not Ruin Sentinels. The summon near Dragonlancer helped me to defeat the Dragon guarding him, despite me being to slow and being hit by his fire few times. Got stomped by him few times as well, but in the end, I have been victorious and now I have one very nice shield, which raises Item discovery as well  The summon survived, so I went right away after Old Dragonslayer, and defeated him on first try. 

From his soul reward, I bought the Silver Cat’s Ring and dropped naked into the pit of Majula and started my move toward Royal Rat Vanguard. I had not very nice memories of this fight, when learning it for the first time on PS3, and they came back in first attempt as soon as I got poisoned by him, and eaten some dust. Despite that, I found the first attempt pretty promising, and I found out, that I can soak a lot of damage with heavier armour, compared to the cloth I wore as sorcerer, which did not saved me much. All I had to do, was running a little around the arena, occasionally chug some Estus or Lifegem, and the victory has been mine on second attempt. As always Firebombs helped a lot during the fight.

Deathcounter is currently at 19, and my plan for next session is clearing of Bastille  

[Wormerine]

10 hours ago, Serrano said:

I had a bit of free time the last couple of days so I decided to install one of the games I've purchased on sale and never got around to playing. I picked Company of Heroes. I think gameplay-wise it's held up pretty well, I've only spent a couple of hours with it but I'm having fun. The only downside right now is that it's been about 20 years since I've had to use the arrow keys to scroll around the screen and it's taking a while to get comfortable with that again. Relic are amazing though, I'd forgotten how much fun I used to have with the Dawn of War series. Dawn of War IV is long overdue, hopefully if Space Marine 2 does well they'll give Relic and the franchise the boost it needs to do another.

Dang, I have such fond memories of CoH1. I am still meaning to getting around to playing the sequels. At least CoH2 was supposed to be good. Ha! I remember people not being happy how it negatively represented Russia. I wonder how it would be received in the current climate. 

I don’t think Relic is working on Space Marine2. From what I can find the sequel is made by Saber Interactive. I don’t know if there is any overlap in devs. 

[Hawke64]

Finished Mail Time. The game was nice, but short and the story was linear.
Review:

Spoiler

Mail Time is a very easy action-adventure/platformer in a fantasy setting. The protagonist, who is a Mail Scout, delivers various parcels and letters from and to residents of a small valley. The story is completely linear and there is only one ending.

The character customisation is reasonably well done - name, gender, hair and skin colour, and the outfit can be chosen at the beginning, while during the game, there are several mushroom hats to find. The chosen appearance is shown both on the 3D model and the 2D sprite. All abilities, such as gliding and double jump, are available from the start and it is very easy to use them. The controls, while not rebindable, are generally comfortable, with both WASD and arrow keys being assigned to movement.

The world is of reasonable size, almost fully open from the start, and does not have a map, though there is a quest journal and an unlimited inventory. The quests involve finding items or NPC on the map. The protagonist auto-dialogues away upon interacting with an NPC. While the writing is lovely, the lack of interactivity in dialogues is not.

The graphics and visual style are very clear and expressive, with the characters and interactive items being reasonably easy to notice (the NPCs have exclamation marks above their heads and the items sparkle or rotate). The music is present and not annoying, and there is no voice acting.

The game has only 1 save slot, which auto-saves the progress frequently, so the only option for save file management is Windows Explorer. Though, as mentioned, the story is linear and short (3-4 hours for all quests), so, unless one really likes the very well done platforming, one playthrough is all it takes to experience everything the game has to offer. I have encountered only two minor bugs (an invisible NPC in the epilogue and the collectibles unlocking incorrect hats).

Overall, I would recommend the game when it is on sale. The lack of dialogue choices, rebindable controls, and save file management are more unappealing than the length of a playthrough.

Finished Cookie Cutter. Somewhat ambivalent about the game, will write a review later.

[Mamoulian War]

I had little bit of time today again, so I have continued to play DS2 again. Spent whole time at the Bastille and moved slowly to Ruin Sentinels. But before that, I had few comedy deaths. 6 in total today. I have also encountered the Forlorn Invader for the first time, and emerged victorious  To my surprise, this one spawns even if you are in Hollow Form. During picking up all of the items around the area, I have encountered 3 mob Pursuers. Two of them I have defeated on the first try, but the one, near the crossbowmen on wooden constructions was pain in the ass, and died there few of the times, while trying to avoid the fire bolts and dogs trying to bite my ass off. I have also rescued Straid, but I do not have required attributes for any of his spells yet Anyway, after wandering a little bit around, I went for the Ruin Sentinels. This fight kicked my ass in vanilla DS2, so I have decided to summon both the summons, to have relaxing time today and were victorious after first try.

Next in line Huntsman Copse. Which trash mobs I hate almost as much as Shrine of Amana. I planned to visit Gargoyles, but I have used all of my Pharos Stones, so they will have to wait a little bit for our encounter.

[Mamoulian War]

Huntsman Copse has shown again, why I hate that area. The way to Skeleton Lords was not that bad, but I have made some stupid and ridiculous mistakes as well. Moving slowly helped out though. What I liked the most, was that they moved the key for the locked bonfire closer to it, which IMHO saved me from more wipes. So after a hour of slow grind, I have finally entered the Lords arena, with a help of single summon. They also changed this fight. The first Lord spawned 8 small skeletons, and while I was slowly fighting them and trying not to die, my summon finished off the second Lord. Thankfully after that he joined the clearing of adds, but still I had my hands full with trying to stay alive, especially due to Armored Skeleton adds, which have been jumping out of reach of my mace, when I have swung with it. I somehow survived, and started to fight the last Lord. This one spawned only two Bonewheel Skeletons, which made the last seconds of fight much more manageable than trying to outrun 4 of them in vanilla DS2.

After that I had to decide where to go. As the way to Executioner’s Chariot is for me as awful part of game as Shrine of Amana, I went towards Covetous Demon. They changed this area little bit as well, but it was still manageable, although trying to outrun and defeat the ambush of fat Artificial Undeads with melee only, would be worthy addition to Benny Hill Show iconic chase scenes I ended up alive to my surprise After that I had again few comedy wipes, but all in all, getting to Covetous Demon seemed to me little bit easier with melee guy, than with caster. He was defeated on first try with no summon at hand.

Then, there came the most painful experience in my current run, the gauntlet before the bridge to Executioner’s Chariot. Even the shade I have summoned few time’s did not helped me. The guys up there have some stupid aggro mechanic or something, as there have been attempts, when I had no problem to pull them one by one, by entering into their aggro range and then there were the attempts, when they have attacked me all at once I was not able to find any pattern, why was that happening, and how to be 100% sure, that it will not happen. All in all, the sum of the wipes on these guys, before I have made my final attempt at Chariot, was more than 50k souls, which is pretty serious amount of souls at my current stage of game. The Chariot itself, was not that bad, the only issue was, that I had a lack of sleep due to my arm injury, and I was getting extremely tired at the end of my gaming session, but my stubbornness outplayed me, and “forced” me to stay behind my PS4, until I defeated the boss. Of course, that cost me few more wipes, due to my reflexes being even worse than usually. Not to mention, that I had a “brilliant” idea to attempt the bossfight, until the trash mobs drop me the Lizard Staff. And yes, in my state of tiredness it was really as stupid idea as it sounds Thankfully I was so tired in the end, that even my stubbornness gave up, and I have defeated him after few tries, when I was able to survive the previous gauntlet.

Summary of today: 3 more bosses down, with deathcounter stopping at 41. (16 for today)

[bringingyouthefuture]

Edlen Ring finally got around to playing it ... very great game but very much typical of a JRPG:  grinding, oversized weird looking weapons ... and the side quests omg please save me from them lol.  If they threw a flying ship in there we would close the loop.  And very much suffers from what I hate most about action games and why I don't really play them anymore, having to do that jump from one ledge to the other that takes way to long to perfect.  Otherwise fantastic and fun, beautiful too, great lore, great exploration, great combat, and damn if it doesn't have me sitting on the edge of my seat ...

Also, just gonna mentioned played Cyberpunk 2077 ... around Xmas of 2023 - it might be my favorite crpg of all time, not sure if that is controversial or not, but the story and quests, rpg elements, graphics, combat, progression ... that game really surprised me with how good it was considering all the controversy.

EDIT:  Cyberpunk2 is definitely my most anticipated sequel that I am waiting for right now.

Edited July 26 by bringingyouthefuture
addition

[Wormerine]

1 hour ago, bringingyouthefuture said:

Also, just gonna mentioned played Cyberpunk 2077 ... around Xmas of 2023 - it might be my favorite crpg of all time, not sure if that is controversial or not, but the story and quests, rpg elements, graphics, combat, progression ... that game really surprised me with how good it was considering all the controversy.

It seems people warmed up a lot to Cyberpunk. In my personal opinion the 2.0 update made it a much, much better game. I think it makes for a fine narrative shooter. Though, it wouldn't made into my list of favourite anything, and definitely not as an RPG.

[uuuhhii]

2 hours ago, bringingyouthefuture said:

Edlen Ring finally got around to playing it ... very great game but very much typical of a JRPG:  grinding, oversized weird looking weapons ... and the side quests omg please save me from them lol.  If they threw a flying ship in there we would close the loop.  And very much suffers from what I hate most about action games and why I don't really play them anymore, having to do that jump from one ledge to the other that takes way to long to perfect.  Otherwise fantastic and fun, beautiful too, great lore, great exploration, great combat, and damn if it doesn't have me sitting on the edge of my seat ...

Also, just gonna mentioned played Cyberpunk 2077 ... around Xmas of 2023 - it might be my favorite crpg of all time, not sure if that is controversial or not, but the story and quests, rpg elements, graphics, combat, progression ... that game really surprised me with how good it was considering all the controversy.

EDIT:  Cyberpunk2 is definitely my most anticipated sequel that I am waiting for right now.

 

elden ring does have a lot of classic jrpg problem

weird so few player even notice

maybe because few player play older jrpg

cyberpunk can be visually too busy sometime

atmosphere of the city is amazing