What are you Playing Now? Volume XIX: The New Beginning of the End of the Middle

[Tale]

The Last of Us Part 1

Maybe my third or fourth playthrough, but first time on PC. Never actually finished Part 2 and decided it's time to do it. It's been long enough that I really don't remember some of this.

[Wormerine]

I didn't know there is a new Heroes of Might and Magic in works, and there is even an early demo to try out. 

It looks like it's being done on budget, but it is actually quite snappy, and seems like could be a nice entry to the series. As the series have been in limbo for a while, it is nice to see a return to form, though it might be a bit too conservative. HoM&M3 die hards might not be willing to move on at this point, and I am not sure how much new blood with a budget title like this one attract. 

[melkathi]

I have a game breaking bug with New Arc Line where the game crashes if I try to leave the area I am in. 

Personally I believe it is some resource leak that corrupts the character's save files. But I am not a dev.

 

I have put it aside for now and hope they fix it.

[Hawke64]

I have finished Promise Mascot Agency. I stand by my initial assessment - Saints Row without combat and all your gang members are mascots. 

I have started and finished Fear the Spotlight. It is a horror game, it is (surprisingly) shorter than I would like (~5 hours), but it does not overstay its welcome, so fine, I guess. It looks nice, the pacing is good, the puzzles are on the easier side. 

[melkathi]

I messed around with the graphics settings in New Arc Line and now it doesn't crash.

 

Which means I now had a "choice that matters" and I hate those. For me, ethically it is an easy choice - don't force the factory to replace the workers with automatons, because I don't want people to loose their jobs. But, that is the choice that benefits a magic playthrough and this is my Diesel Engineer...

[Theonlygarby]

I started over "those who rule" due to FOMO.  Turns out one of the people i thought was receuitable was not.  I did save him and let him live though, so maybe there will be a call back to it at some point.

 

I am stuck on a level I struggled hard with the first time.  If I just wanted to beat the level it would be no problem. It is the side objectives.

Main mission is "survive for 12 turns"  easy. 

Side missions:

"Save the villagers" this one gets me occasionally but for the most part it's easy to save them unless you get some bad RNG

 

The hard part comes with there being two boss type characters on opposite sides of the map.  These boss characters are holding useful items.  You don't have to kill them but FOMO.

 

You have to defend a church from waves of enemies coming from two directions.  All while pushing forward towards the item holding boss characters.  These boss characters are standing behind where the waves of enemies spawn in.

 

Even all this would be doable.  But 12 turns makes it very difficult.  You essentially have to get close enough by turn 11 to have the boss come out of his spot and attack you.  While hoping that does not kill any of your characters.

 

I have gotten close so many times but then an archer comes out and kills one of my characters and I have to restart.

 

The worst part is that you can't skip the enemies turn, so after failing my self imposed mission, I have to watch the rest of their dang turn before restarting.

 

Edit: also the AI is not stupid so they will attack the person closest to death

Edited October 11 by Theonlygarby

[melkathi]

So I have been looking at the task manager while playing New Arc Line. On average the game is around 2.600-4.100MB memory usage. When it loads a map it goes just above 11.000MB. That seems like a lot...

[BruceVC]

Im about 23 hours into Cyb2077 and Im really enjoying it

Firstly no serious or noticeable bugs, I have been able to complete every quest and do everything without any real problems

I am not a big player of the cyberpunk genre so the " hardest " part of the game has been learning how to effectively use all the new mechanics like quickhacks and braindances but once you understand them its simple. I enjoy the concept of implants and how they make a real difference in combat

I am enjoying all my adult mods, everything is working fine

I like the city and all the side activities and general NPC details, I havent used fast travel yet because I enjoy travelling and seeing the sights. They did an excellent job at making Night City seem alive and populated

And the NPC are interesting, I like there side-quests and potential Romance arcs

Further updates to follow once I have completed 50 hours 

[Wormerine]

Dragon Age: Veilguard was added to GamePass so I played it while I wait for Outer Worlds2. I thought it was pretty alright. Easily my favourite of Dragon Age sequels though it is not a high bar to pass.

Few complaints, sure. Tonally, it is a bit inconsistant - but that's something I would say about every Dragon Age game, but Origins. The game is probably quite a bit longer than it should have been (again, Dragon Age staple). Combat sucks and gets really boring - again nothing new to DA... though as it tries to pivit a bit more into action-RPG territory it hurts it by how clunky and unresponsive it feels. There is also artificiality around the quests and systems which I found really detracting from the narrative. I don't know if it's because game's origin as liveservice, or just current Bioware team sensibilities, but how game was structured, how quests were presented I felt really made it difficult to feel immersed in the narrative, and therefore care. 

But it is not all bad. Like Inquisition I think story has more potential than Veilguard takes advantage of - and I do feel they are playing loose with some established lore. But for a very casual and distanced DA player it felt like it actually paid off on many things that previous games were establishing. Companions were alright, and I quite enjoy some of their banter. Finale is pretty alright, if contrived at times.

I don't think it is a great game, but frankly best I have seen from Bioware since Mass Effect2 (didnt' play Andromeda nor Anthem though). I enjoyed most of it, but it's overstayed it's welcome and I am glad it is over. 

[Malcador]

Think I have gone as far as I can in D4. Playing WoW for Legion remix, is fun to make the game an ARPG or more so. Though the speed focus does make me lament the rush players are in constantly.

[majestic]

21 hours ago, Wormerine said:

Combat sucks and gets really boring - again nothing new to DA... though as it tries to pivit a bit more into action-RPG territory it hurts it by how clunky and unresponsive it feels.

That depends way too much on your class and your choice of weapons. I played a mage and thought the 2-handed playstyle was slow, unresponsive and not fun to play, so I switched to dagger/orb Spellblade and never looked back, stacking burn, shock and arcane bombs while zipping around the battlefield was very satisfying. Rounded the build out with some burst damage attacks, and it was a hoot and a half to play. At least it was for me, but I like high dps glass cannon characters whose only defense is high mobility and good cooldown management. There's a reason I tend to play sorcerers in Diablo IV and used the Stinger in Everspace 2. 

But yeah, game is definitely too long. The mage's ranged playstyle with the staff and the entire Control tree is probably also a leftover from the days where you were supposed to have actual players keeping the attention of the enemies, instead of semi-braindead AI companions. 

21 hours ago, Wormerine said:

I don't know if it's because game's origin as liveservice, or just current Bioware team sensibilities, but how game was structured, how quests were presented I felt really made it difficult to feel immersed in the narrative, and therefore care. 

Probably. You have your home base to upgrade your gear, and the Crossroads were most likely meant as a lobby of sorts where you could pick where you want to go and check for groups. Most likely the entire reason why you have to reach everything through the Crossroads and not have a more connected game world like in the other games. Pretty standard for the live service game they were going for before pivoting to a single player experience. All the level designs - especially the much maligned city maps - are also left from it being supposed to be a co-op crawl through dungeons, rather than exploring traditional RGP areas.

Game's pretty decent for its chaotic development. Certainly better than the negativity heaped on it, but also not great by any means.

[Sarex]

Wrapped up with Control. Again I got the bug where I couldn't upgrade all my weapons even though I did all the quests, ie. missing one endless potential. Not that it matters as I am not fussed about finding all the secrets, just the interesting ones.

Probably going to play Alan Wake 2 next, but I kind of don't want to have epic store...

Edited Wednesday at 07:29 PM by Sarex

[Lexx]

You know, I was just thinking.. back when Pillars 2 released and they added voice over for every dialog, I was like.. why, what's the point of that? Such a waste! But now I'm kinda glad they did. Feels a lot better and interesting to play, also it stops writers from text bloat, which I find highly annoying and tedious to read.

Same thing with Disco Elysium. With one of the later updates, they added VO to every single line of dialog, and while I hated it at first, now I think it's good and nice and I like it. 

I'm playing WH40k Rogue Trader right now, and it sucks that not everything is voiced. I get why, of course, but still... if I could, I'd prefer full voice nowadays.

[Sarex]

I guess it's a sign, Epic Store installer is erroring out. Both the standalone and MS store...

[kanisatha]

23 hours ago, majestic said:

On 10/14/2025 at 4:36 PM, Wormerine said:

Combat sucks and gets really boring - again nothing new to DA... though as it tries to pivit a bit more into action-RPG territory it hurts it by how clunky and unresponsive it feels.

That depends way too much on your class and your choice of weapons. I played a mage and thought the 2-handed playstyle was slow, unresponsive and not fun to play, so I switched to dagger/orb Spellblade and never looked back, stacking burn, shock and arcane bombs while zipping around the battlefield was very satisfying. Rounded the build out with some burst damage attacks, and it was a hoot and a half to play. At least it was for me, but I like high dps glass cannon characters whose only defense is high mobility and good cooldown management. There's a reason I tend to play sorcerers in Diablo IV and used the Stinger in Everspace 2. 

But yeah, game is definitely too long. The mage's ranged playstyle with the staff and the entire Control tree is probably also a leftover from the days where you were supposed to have actual players keeping the attention of the enemies, instead of semi-braindead AI companions.

Interesting. So is there any melee build available that is high DPS but not a glass cannon?

[LadyCrimson]

NMS - Started Abandoned Mode save #8. 

--found a good A class Interceptor ship, certain type of multi-tool, maxed carry inventory, hit a certain amount of units/nanite currency, purchased all upgrade/craft stuff, and looted/scavenged enough tech-upgrade modules to make it all decent gear wise.
--since planet/system you start in is different each time, any of those aspects could be easier, or harder, to achieve (especially tech modules in Abandoned Mode), so a bit of variety in that way. Sometimes it takes 30ish hrs, sometimes it takes 60+ hours. I see/scour a lot of cool planets, caves (terrain and water), pretty lagoons, vast oceans.

But then I reach that point where the ship/gear/all that set up is done and ... the methodical task oriented part of the save is gone. And apparently all I want lately is to obsessively "zone out."

Starting Abandoned Mode save #9 ...

[Gfted1]

Is there ever any hostile fauna or flora? Or is the point of the game just base building?

[majestic]

1 hour ago, kanisatha said:

Interesting. So is there any melee build available that is high DPS but not a glass cannon?

I have no idea, sorry. I only did the one playthrough with the mage. The game has a whole bunch of options to tune combat, in addition to several presets. You can just drop enemy health to low and turn off death if you don't want to bother with the combat too much. 

[Hurlshort]

1 hour ago, Gfted1 said:

Is there ever any hostile fauna or flora? Or is the point of the game just base building?

There is a story, and it does lead to some conflict with these robot things. But it is mostly exploring and resource management.

[LadyCrimson]

1 hour ago, Gfted1 said:

Is there ever any hostile fauna or flora? Or is the point of the game just base building?

Depends on game mode and/or custom settings. One of those games where there's the default pre-set modes, but there's like 3 screens of difficulty game settings and you can mix/match as you wish  It's a giant sandbox - once you figure out what you like, you can do it almost exclusively if you wish.

There are predator type fauna that will attack - but not all fauna will. Or you can set them to be defensive only so they only attack if you attack/hit them first. Or never at all. You can turn on-foot and ship combat off/minimal/standard/hostile, which has affects on planet/space sentinel hostility conditions and certain system warp random encounter stuff. That said, outside of very early game, most of isn't really much threat.

As to base building - if you don't want to ever build a base, you don't really have to, outside of any quest, or a weather/temperature shelter. Some ppl go super all out on bases ofc. It can be fun but is has no purpose (don't need to defend etc). Most of the time I just build 1-2 prefab room shelters with a few crafting/storage tools in them and that's about it.

You could also disable the ability to alter difficulty settings entirely (can't change on the fly).

Very wide, not very deep.

Edited yesterday at 08:56 PM by LadyCrimson

[ShadySands]

On 10/16/2025 at 1:11 AM, Lexx said:

You know, I was just thinking.. back when Pillars 2 released and they added voice over for every dialog, I was like.. why, what's the point of that? Such a waste! But now I'm kinda glad they did. Feels a lot better and interesting to play, also it stops writers from text bloat, which I find highly annoying and tedious to read.

Same thing with Disco Elysium. With one of the later updates, they added VO to every single line of dialog, and while I hated it at first, now I think it's good and nice and I like it. 

I'm playing WH40k Rogue Trader right now, and it sucks that not everything is voiced. I get why, of course, but still... if I could, I'd prefer full voice nowadays.

It's kinda funny that I don't think I've played a game with the volume on for like 10 years.

[kanisatha]

18 hours ago, majestic said:

You can just drop enemy health to low and turn off death if you don't want to bother with the combat too much.

Oh, this is good news. Very useful info for me. This is what I'll do. Thanks!

[Lexx]

1 hour ago, ShadySands said:

It's kinda funny that I don't think I've played a game with the volume on for like 10 years.

Do you have ADHD or something, where you need to blast ****ty techno music over everything.  

[ShadySands]

1 hour ago, Lexx said:

Do you have ADHD or something, where you need to blast ****ty techno music over everything.  

Worse, it's usually completely quiet.

The reason is that most of my gaming takes place while working and/or when everyone in my house is asleep. 

[Hurlshort]

Starcom: Unknown Space - I grabbed this on GoG for cheap and it has been fun. It is lot like Star Control. Less silly, but still has lots of weirdos to meet and planets to explore. It's good. I never played the first one, I guess this is a sequel, but they don't seem too connected.