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

[Hurlshort]

Solasta - I owned this on Steam and never got very far. I'd make a party, and then re-think my choices, and start again. I did this a half dozen times. So basically I had 20 hours of making characters.

I decided to try again, but I wanted the DLC classes, so I bought the Lightbrimger Edition on GoG, as it was on sale for a good price. I managed to push past the first mission and now I'm starting to get into the rhythm. Hopefully it lasts.

[Mamoulian War]

I have started the playthrough of Star Ocean 6. As always for my blind playthrough, I have picked Galaxy difficulty, but it feels so easy this time  Besides that, they implemented flying/gliding mechanics into the game, which added nice twist to the game, with few interesting environmental puzzles, which use this feature. Especially in the second town, where I have spent almost an hour to get all of the chests

I am now a little bit over 6 hours into the game, so can’t comment much on the story yet, as it still starts to unfold. I have picked Raymond for my first playthrough.

[BruceVC]

16 hours ago, rjshae said:

My biggest issue with P:K is

  Reveal hidden contents

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.

 

I just has my most difficult battle around strategy, it was the Womb of Lamashtu quest

And it was at  the end where you need to split your party, lucky I double up on roles but it was very tough. 

The hard part was the second battle because I hasnt rested and my party was wounded and low on spells. But I used scrolls, potions and then a Wyvern summon that helped distract all the monsters that appear 

 

15 hours ago, majestic said:

0/5, no Jubilost.  

Havent come across him yet but I see he should be available in my city 

[Wormerine]

14 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

Solasta

I really, really like their implementation on 5e. I hope the sequel will improve all other aspects of the game.

[Wormerine]

6 hours ago, BruceVC said:

Havent come across him yet but I see he should be available in my city 

Like many things in Kingmaker I would miss him completely, if I didn't get frustrated with a substantial lack of available advisors and looked for a guide. In fact I found playing Kingmaker without a guide on the 2nd screen to be a miserable experience.

Anyway, I am glad you enjoy it and I hope you continue to do so. I am still scared to dive into Wrath of the Righteous. I started it and PTSD started to come back.

[MrBrown]

WotR is linear longer, so it's harder to completely miss stuff. But you'll miss some things, like Mythic Paths. So if you want to be a Lich, yeah, use a guide.

 

16 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

Solasta - I owned this on Steam and never got very far. I'd make a party, and then re-think my choices, and start again. I did this a half dozen times. So basically I had 20 hours of making characters.

I have this problem with every RPG.

[Hawke64]

Finished Broken Roads and wrote a text wall of feedback for the devs. Also found a bug and a workaround for it for the Steam version (backup the remotecache.vdf file before uninstalling).

[melkathi]

19 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

Solasta - I owned this on Steam and never got very far. I'd make a party, and then re-think my choices, and start again. I did this a half dozen times. So basically I had 20 hours of making characters.

I decided to try again, but I wanted the DLC classes, so I bought the Lightbrimger Edition on GoG, as it was on sale for a good price. I managed to push past the first mission and now I'm starting to get into the rhythm. Hopefully it lasts.

 

That game really clicked with me. The plot isn't groundbreaking. The UI isn't the prettiest. But it was the closest a PC game got to the fun of being a teenager and hanging out with friends playing DnD.

[Mamoulian War]

My oh my, I went for the first casual fights in new Fatal Fury. In MK11 I was able to keep 55/45 win loss ratio, but here… not a single fight won in 1 and half hours  I suck horribly at that game  

[LadyCrimson]

Schedule I - sounds like a joke game, right. And it's Early Access. But it has a good longplay demo so what the heck. I load in, spend a few minutes deciding what colors I want my character to have, and then am given quick tutorial tasks like "grab a cash-stash over there, get a motel room, go to a hardware store to get starter stuff" etc. Which is all fine and dandy, but what I immediately became obsessed with for 20 minutes was dashing around, picking up trash off the street. Because for every can you stick in this box, you get $2! Plastic bottles are worth $3! Who needs a drug empire, I'll become a millionaire recycling trash! Sold!

---Worth noting: a save from the demo doesn't carry over/transfer to the full/priced game, you'd have to start over. I think the demo simply restricts/greys out progression re:what you can make/sell, etc, but you could probably get several hours with just the demo, or more if you like it enough. Best demo (technically/what it gives you) in ages.

[melkathi]

That sounds a bit like removing chewing gum in Arcade Simulator. I can't build a gaming empire, I am too busy scraping gum off random spots customers stuck it.

[marelooke]

On 3/24/2025 at 11:42 AM, Wormerine said:

edit: Finally started to getting around to giving Kingdom Come: Deliverance a go. I like it so far, though the game works really hard to reinforce how much of a dufus Henry is. What I like less is how little agency I had so far. Henry seems to get into scrapes and challenges his betters and leaves me to deal with the aftermath. I hope the game will let go of the reins soon. I really enjoy the setting though.

I shall join this club. After originally backing it I finally started a play through.

On 3/26/2025 at 1:52 PM, Wormerine said:

Thanks. Yeah, I decided to leave Ginger be for a while, and spent couple days doing other work, including(@BruceVC) taking lovely Theresa for two dates (2nd one in Tavern gave me strong Mafia "walk lady home" flashback). I got better in fighting, gained some gold, bought an actual sword, collected some bandit ears (BTW. How do they now it's a bandit ear and not someone elses? Could I slaughter a random village and collect their ears? Does it always have to be same ear, so I won't double dip with two ears per single bandit? It feels like a shaky system). I think I am ready to go back to the main story.

Hah, this is the last part i completed, I've been doing every single side quest I could find so far, slowly getting Henry from being totally useless to being less totally useless. I might even venture outside of Rattay soon

On 3/26/2025 at 5:40 PM, majestic said:

So, I, like, never having played Kingdom Come: Unwoked Incline, just went and looked up Theresa, because @BruceVC has kept mentioning her for a while now. I had certain expectations going into this image search, mostly because the aforementioned poster said that Veilguard did not cater enough to the horny incel core audience of these games.

Now, to make this comparison properly, here's one of these character models from Veilguard that doesn't cater to the horny incel core audience. Probably because of her rack size, but that I do not know for sure, because said poster refused to actually tell what it was about that game that made it unappealing for horny incels.

This is Neve in her civilian attire, i.e. in non-combat locations. Take not of the lack of anime style giant boobies.

Now, before looking up Theresa, here's what I thought I would get:

That's how Neve should look, I guess, to make the incels happy?

And this is Theresa, apparently. At least according to a quick googling.

Imagine my surprise when Theresa turned out to be a plain country bumpkin, completely unremarkable. Normal, one might say. Certainly less catered to horny incels than Neve was.

This is so confusing.

I mean, given the game it makes sense, though the DLC made me appreciate her a whole lot more. The Theresa part of A Woman's Lot was absolutely great and I'm confident has something to do with people liking her so much.

Oh yeah, and someone posted a (I presume) edited picture with her hair loose...
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Falikwyhz24l61.jpg

On 3/27/2025 at 1:50 AM, Zoraptor said:

On KCD romances..

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..there is one romance in KCD which is mildly cringe, but Teresa certainly ain't it.

 

The map in KCD has quest markers and Henry shows up on it, same as any modernish game. It also has fast travel and the rest of the modcons.

It only doesn't show Henry's location (or have fast travel) in hardcore mode. Which is what I'm playing. No matter how much of a crusty boomer gamer you are you wouldn't have much fun playing KCD in hardcore mode first time through.

A Women's Lot overall is a great DLC, might actually be the 2nd best I've played.

Just completed the Theresa part of the DLC yesterday and it was fantastic. Think it really set the tone better than the same part done as Henry, because you get to experience more of the Skalitz part, and Theresa just starts of as a much more ... engaging(?) character than Herny (imho).

Of course being more competent at the game's systems helped (still can't hit much of anything with a bow though). There were some minor niggles, like the nightly herb picking being more about fighting the terrain and the dog AI than the actual quest, as well as what happened to Tinker, which felt like more of a gameplay thing than something that really made sense.

Still came away really liking Theresa a whole lot more than I did before.

Edited April 23 by marelooke

[Wormerine]

1 hour ago, marelooke said:

Hah, this is the last part i completed, I've been doing every single side quest I could find so far, slowly getting Henry from being totally useless to being less totally useless. I might even venture outside of Rattay soon

I mean, given the game it makes sense, though the DLC made me appreciate her a whole lot more.

Yeah, I got a hang of when I can go venture out and when I need to follow the next objective ASAP. 

The result was me faffing around a lot, and doing a lot of side activities and sidequest. I am now fully plated, killing machine that scoffs with contempt at charging bandits and Cumans. I find the game a bit less magical, but still lots of fun. Stopped changing clothes for combat/town exploration, though I do have my outfit set up so if I take out all noisy bits it becomes good stealth kit. 
Progression through main story - currently pursuing fake coins trail.

I ended up switching to mace, as I just found ot overwhelmingly more Effective against plated opponents - and while it makes sense, I don’t think there is much upside to using other weapons. A bit disappointing. 

Edited April 23 by Wormerine

[BruceVC]

On 4/22/2025 at 3:59 PM, Wormerine said:

Like many things in Kingmaker I would miss him completely, if I didn't get frustrated with a substantial lack of available advisors and looked for a guide. In fact I found playing Kingmaker without a guide on the 2nd screen to be a miserable experience.

Anyway, I am glad you enjoy it and I hope you continue to do so. I am still scared to dive into Wrath of the Righteous. I started it and PTSD started to come back.

I configured Kingdom Management to auto, I regret that now because I think I would have liked to try my hand at managing my kingdom but once you set this option you cant change it 

So the AI makes all decisions around my lands  and so far so good 

[Malcador]

New WoW patch but the new grind is bugged, figures. I think Old Skies is out today, may grab that.  Tempest Rising is out as well. Spoiled for choice 

Edited April 23 by Malcador

[rjshae]

On 4/22/2025 at 6:59 AM, Wormerine said:

Anyway, I am glad you enjoy it and I hope you continue to do so. I am still scared to dive into Wrath of the Righteous. I started it and PTSD started to come back.

Yeah, if you don't like fighting demons then this isn't the game for you. That being said, it's at least as good as Kingmaker, and I liked the companions more. At least the non-evil ones.

[Lexx]

Played some Expedition 33 on game pass. 3 hours so far and I'll continue for sure. I like how very french it feels. Also has that classic jrpg thing going on, which I didn't thought would still be a thing today. In some way it has vibes of a game from 15 or 20 years ago.

[Theonlygarby]

I will be playing detective dotson as my next game.  It's a bollywood styled pixel detective game.   Looks cute.  Hopefully its actually good, either way, it will at least be somewhat original.

[Tale]

April is just ridiculous this year.

Played some Blue Prince. Only so far as to hit the credits. There's a lot more to the game, but the deck-building roguelike mechanics cause me more frustration than joy. The game has tons of interesting mysteries to explore, but it also has like 3 different currencies you have to spend to progress including STEPS and lots of randomness that will just stop you from getting anywhere.

Oblivion Remaster came out. If the leveling or balance are improved, that might fix my one frustration with it. I always did like it more than Skyrim until that point, at least. I've farted around a few hours and am enjoying it so far.

The Hundred Line Last Defense Academy. I have to say I feel kind of sorry for Tookyo Games. Launching this aggressively Japanese game this month where the primary audience are a couple of heavily overlapping cult fandoms. I happen to be in that overlap, so this is the game I plan to focus on

Then there's the much hyped Clair Obscura. I've fallen into the trap and I'll be doing this after Hundred Line. 

[BruceVC]

I learnt an important lesson about finding items and then cleaning screens when you leave an area in Kingmaker

I have mod configured that gives me an option to clean every area of items I leave and it helps with save file bloat and makes the game more stable 

Anyway I am busy with the Varnhold Vanishing quest and I am  finding the Sisters for the barbarians and at the end you go back to the barbarian camp and the Sisters end up attacking you. I killed them and looted some items and then left for Valley of the Dead and cleaned the area in the barbarian camp 

But I didnt loot the one Incense Burner and you need all  3 to enter the Valley , I missed it and I ended up cleaning all items. Luckily I save regularly and I just restored to before the Sisters battle. But the lesson of the story, I am now very careful before I say " clean " when I leave an area because this one oversight meant I could unintentionally not being able to finish the game 

 

[Hurlshort]

Played a bit of the fancy new Oblivion. I forgot how much I prefer the levelling and character system in this game compared to Skyrim. 
So far I'm having fun with it. I don't remember much of anything from playing it like 20 years ago, so it's fresh.

[melkathi]

On 4/24/2025 at 11:54 PM, Lexx said:

Played some Expedition 33 on game pass. 3 hours so far and I'll continue for sure. I like how very french it feels. Also has that classic jrpg thing going on, which I didn't thought would still be a thing today. In some way it has vibes of a game from 15 or 20 years ago.

I understand there is some real time aspect to it. What is that like?

[Lexx]

It's quick time events in combat. To increase your damage, you have to hit the attack button at the right time (not that hard to do). On enemy attack, you either dodge, parry, or jump to avoid, mitigate damage, or counter attack. This is the part that feels kinda Dark Souls-ish, but so far it's not *that* hard. Also you can change the difficulty settings at any time to "story mode", which makes it a lot easier as well. Personally I'm playing on default. Some fights have been harder and I had to repeat them a couple times, but it feels quite rewarding once you memorize attack pattern and get through it on your own.

I am in act 2 now with approx 16 hours played. Needed a break right now, but will continue later today. The characters are very likeable and it's generally a quite addictive game. The only thing that kinda bothers me is the lack of a map and directional guidance at times. You need to watch your surroundings closely, or you can end up running in circles a lot.

Edited Saturday at 09:23 PM by Lexx

[melkathi]

Vielen Dank!

 

Not for me then.

I lounge in very impractical ways when playing turnbased games, I can't do QTEs.

[Humanoid]

39 minutes ago, melkathi said:

I lounge in very impractical ways when playing turnbased games, I can't do QTEs.

While I haven't played the game myself, there's an in-game option to turn off QTEs when the player attacks, which solves half the problem. However it doesn't affect the QTEs for when you're defending, which I assume is a game balance thing - if you succeed every single time, you never take damage and thus the game completely breaks.

Fortunately there's already a mod to tweak them by increasing the window by 50/100/200%.