What are you Playing Now? - the man sez Video games are bad for you - fight the man!

[Malcador]

Trying to defeat Phantom Doctrine again, seems like it'll fail like previous attempts.

[Majek]

I started a playthrough of Jagged Alliance since it has it's 30th anniversary this year.

 

 

[BruceVC]

Im 20 hours into Pathfinder  and its going great, fantastic experience so far

I have just defeated the Stag Lord which was tough. I succeeded on my 5th try by
 

• locking the Owlbear in the cage
• defeating the bandits in small groups
• getting Akiros to help me

The game offers loads of choices and ways to win these types of battles

And after that battle I was finally able to defeat the Kalannah and her slavers of the Technic League

And I gained 2 new potential party members so I am happy with my decision to kill Kalannah  

[Theonlygarby]

Beat avowed.  I enjoyed it.  The worst part about is it that you are aedyran.  Limits role playing.   The best thing about the game is how they managed to make it feel like Eora.

 

Don't want to go into particulars. Maybe I will write something in the avowed spoilers page.

 

One thing is for sure.  After playing kcd2 and avowed back to back, I am done with first person RPGs for a while.

[melkathi]

I tried to start a new playthrough of Outer Worlds - and try the dlc - but am realizing that I care so little for the story, I find it a chore.

[Malcador]

Not too interested with Phantom Doctrine, will go down as yet another waste of money.  Shazbot.

[melkathi]

Yeah, I gave up on Phantom Doctrine pretty quickly as well and put it into the wasted money category.

[Malcador]

6 minutes ago, melkathi said:

Yeah, I gave up on Phantom Doctrine pretty quickly as well and put it into the wasted money category.

Apparently disguises make the game a breeze, I'll have to try that so I can finish it.

[Serrano]

I started playing Disco Elysium. I put on most of my clothes. Reached for my tie which was on a ceiling fan, then had a heart attack and died and went to the game over screen. That counts as completing a playthrough right?

[Zoraptor]

I think you can die even earlier than that if you pick the right (wrong) options in the first dialogue.

(Not the earliest death in a game in any case, if you play Kingdom Come in hardcore mode you have a 90% chance of dying from measles/ childbirth/ smallpox/ typhoid/ cholera/ whooping cough/ plague/ misadventure/ non specific infection immediately after leaving the main menu. You even get an achievement for it)

[Wormerine]

Yeah, I was super excited for Phantom Doctrine, then my enthusiasm lessened when they learned it’s by Hard West folks. I think I played about 2 mission of PD. I just found stealth gameplay to be so very boring. Not a fan.

[MrBrown]

Played a bit of Blue Prince, which is receiving a lot of indie-hype.

Didn't feel it was worth the hype. Not a bad game of sure. Feels too random.

[Mamoulian War]

Goal nr. 5/2025 achieved.

April 17, 16:30 – 8 years and 4 months after I have booted Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness for the first time on my PS4, I have finally finished my 3rd and final playthrough on hardest Chaos Difficulty. With that, I have acquired the last missing trophy. Skipping most of the quests and optional content, it took me about 23 hours. I had to repeat few boss encounters, because they hit harder than a truck, so my main character was knocked out a lot of times. And I have to say, without the special crafted Reserve Rush gear, which helped me to get faster my “ultimate attack”, it would be much harder and take much longer to finish the game on this difficulty. In total it took me about 185 hours to get the Platinum Trophy.

 

[MrBrown]

Finally managed to complete a playthrough of Avowed. Got quite bored of the repetitiveness in the 4th area.

Weell, it was ok. Plot was good enough, but didn't like the characters that much in the end, Lödwyn especially was just confusing. Ending didn't show the results too much, for the Dreamscourge they just said "ok, it's fixed now, everyone go home".

Kinda think the whole thing would have worked better as a DLC side-story to a PoE game.

[Theonlygarby]

10 hours ago, MrBrown said:

Finally managed to complete a playthrough of Avowed. Got quite bored of the repetitiveness in the 4th area.

Weell, it was ok. Plot was good enough, but didn't like the characters that much in the end, Lödwyn especially was just confusing. Ending didn't show the results too much, for the Dreamscourge they just said "ok, it's fixed now, everyone go home".

Kinda think the whole thing would have worked better as a DLC side-story to a PoE game.

It felt like each new area got progressively worse.  That first map i was having so much fun.  By the time I got to the 4th map it was so desolate I barely bothered to climb and find new things.

 

Story wise it did that thing where the player knows the mystery way before any of the characters.  I imagine it would be less obvious if I hadn't played previous games.   

 

"It was ok" sums it up pretty well

[BruceVC]

Im 36 hours into Pathfinder and I have just ended the Troll threat

I am absolutely loving this game. It has a wide depth of mechanics and rules around the Pathfinder system but  this is my first time playing Pathfinder  and  I have never been someone too concerned with a deep understanding of mechanics in these types of RPG, I obviously learn how to be effective in combat and what buffs and roles are best to adopt in a strategic way in battles

And then I just have fun and go wild. And this game really delivers. Some components that are entertaining and really well done
 

• I love how you need to explore to find things like the troll lair.
• combat is obviously the best part of the game, very strategic and complex around how you need to use different approaches
• I like the lore and the history of the gods
• no level scaling from what I can see, when I get annihilated I come back at higher level and I can win battles
• loads of Easter Egg encounters like the Young Dweomercat and how he randomly appears to help me
• some really interesting companion side quests

I am not sure how I should configure my XP gain around active party members only getting XP? Because the downside is when you select another party member they not on the same level but I now think I have my "ideal " party and its based on a combination of tanks, healing and combat magic

This is my current party selection
 

• Gimar ( my main character ) as the primary combat magic user
• Amiri as a tank
• Valeri initially as tank but I have now adopted Ekundayo because his archery and dog companion seem much more effective?
• Octavia as thief and secondary combat mage ( I decided to replace her with Kalikke)
• Tristian as main healer and also combat mage
• Linzi as main buffs and very useful in combat with spells and healing (Tashas hideous laughter has literally saved me several times fighting trolls )

 

[Wormerine]

12 hours ago, Theonlygarby said:

Story wise it did that thing where the player knows the mystery way before any of the characters.  I imagine it would be less obvious if I hadn't played previous games.  

I also thought that there were bits were game acted as if your PC learned things for the first time, while I was thinking "didn't we already learned that in one of the Flashback vision collectibles?".

I don't mind the story being pretty predictable for someone with Eora knowledge. What I was more bothered by was NPCs not being particularly impressed by it either, as if they too played both PoE games.

I would think that learning that a god (or something approximate to a god from their point of view) could be born just through closed reincarnation cycle, should be a great revelation and raise a lot of questions to anyone without Watcher's knowledge. I mean we have an Animancer in our party, and all her scientific input comes down to running around with what might as well be a magical wand.

[melkathi]

Blame Star Trek. Tricorders became the easy excuse to have insta-science.

[rjshae]

On 4/19/2025 at 10:30 PM, BruceVC said:

Im 36 hours into Pathfinder and I have just ended the Troll threat

My biggest issue with P:K is

Spoiler

the end game. I'm doing a play through with character builds that focus on defeating that chapter. Yes, if it were properly balanced I shouldn't have to do that, but so it goes.

 

[majestic]

On 4/20/2025 at 7:30 AM, BruceVC said:

This is my current party selection
 

• Gimar ( my main character ) as the primary combat magic user
• Amiri as a tank
• Valeri initially as tank but I have now adopted Ekundayo because his archery and dog companion seem much more effective?
• Octavia as thief and secondary combat mage ( I decided to replace her with Kalikke)
• Tristian as main healer and also combat mage
• Linzi as main buffs and very useful in combat with spells and healing (Tashas hideous laughter has literally saved me several times fighting trolls )

0/5, no Jubilost.  

[Mamoulian War]

I have decided to give a go to Fatal Fury: City of Wolves fighting game. The optimization is very good, I can play the game on Ultra Settings on my 4 year old Ryzen 9 5900X with Radeon RX 6900XT.

I have went through all of the Tutorials, and then trained a little bit with one very good King of Fighters players. My biggest issue with that game is blocking. I have almost exclusively played Mortal Kombat games since Sega Mega Drive/Genesis days, where you have dedicated block button, and this game has the classic blocking with  or  input, and I can’t force my brain into accepting that and of course, my opponents can easily exploit this.

I am still having fin, but I will probably have to spent a lot of time to recondition my brain to different behaviour.

[Wormerine]

1 hour ago, Mamoulian War said:

I have almost exclusively played Mortal Kombat games since Sega Mega Drive/Genesis days, where you have dedicated block button, and this game has the classic blocking with  or  input, and I can’t force my brain into accepting that and of course, my opponents can easily exploit this.

I feel ya. When I tried the beta, I struggled to switch to 4 button layout and kept pressing "Guard" instead of heavy punch. Wasting two base roster slots on odd real-humans killed any interest I had in the game for the moment. Might reconsider, once first season of DLC characters is done. That said, I am not sure if I have time for a 2nd fighting game in my life. SF6 might be enough for now.

[rjshae]

6 hours ago, majestic said:

0/5, no Jubilost.  

Jubilost might not necessarily be available at that point.

[Mamoulian War]

3 hours ago, Wormerine said:

I feel ya. When I tried the beta, I struggled to switch to 4 button layout and kept pressing "Guard" instead of heavy punch. Wasting two base roster slots on odd real-humans killed any interest I had in the game for the moment. Might reconsider, once first season of DLC characters is done. That said, I am not sure if I have time for a 2nd fighting game in my life. SF6 might be enough for now.

Ronaldo is IMHO very strange choice for this kind of game, but his gameplay is certainly very interesting. Salvatore on the other hand, is ridiculous and hard to learn meme character, but IMHO he is kinda fitting into the roster, especially due to he being close friend to Duck King in the lore (he has few moves resembling his). And SNK did really good job researching the guy.

MK has gone to far from what I liked about the franchise in his last two installments, so I have purchased Fatal Fury as my new Main fighting game, and from my first impressions, it seems good choice for me, although I am fully aware, that I will be struggling a lot in the next few months

 

[LadyCrimson]

I spent 12 bucks on a photography sim called - Lushfoil Photography Sim. I like photography, I like taking game screenshots. I probably will like this game.

---location areas are locked until you take pictures of certain things. I suppose this helps it mentally qualify as a "game" (goals) but I was hoping for more freedom from the start.
---based on real locations, it's quite beautiful in that game-y way. But it's empty. No ppl, I haven't noticed any wildlife to speak of - maybe I saw a cat - so it feels kind of hollow. And kind of over-brightened and monotone outside of occasional splashes of bright color buildings. I bet it would be cool in VR tho.
---it's basically a make your own nature wallpaper walking sim. Pics you take get put in a folder as png and you can do what you want with them.

In the end, I didn't finish (yet). I would say I didn't dislike it, but it didn't feel creative to me (taking pictures). Just walk along take a picture of a lake, a tree, a rocky vista. It might be immersive visually for some for a while, but that's about all it has. I would rather roam around in Death Stranding and take screenshots.

Edited Monday at 10:11 PM by LadyCrimson