What are you currently playing?

[hanselthecaretaker]

Finished Ranni the witch’s quest in ER, cleaned out most of the Capital from what I can gather, and am hunting down the dungeater in its underbelly now. I’ve lost about 120k runes so far. The brutes by the shunning grounds grace site aren’t a problem as they can easily be stunlocked. The slugs are among the most passive things in the game.

*sigh*

It’s the stupid little rock fuckers that swarm the high rise pipe areas, then farther on of course FROM had to throw in another one of those bloody coked out revenants, only now in a dimly lit, cramped area adjacent to a bunch of finger fuckers. So I lost a couple levels worth of runes maybe. At least I get the feeling late game stuff is just around the corner from here.

Also, Nutella city was pretty neat looking, and the Estel Getty of the natural porn void boss was pleasantly painless enough. I’ve heard horror stories about insta-kill attacks but it never hit me in my three attempts. Either she had really bad aim or it’s just a really telegraphed attack. Definitely not like Radahn’s laser in my experience. Her grab got me a couple times though because I got greedy up close, emboldened by my +10 mimic.

Oh, and Lake of Rot. Just ugh. I suppose in terms of swampy or generally hazardous environments it was relatively simple, and preferable to say, the Lost Izalith lava fields. Glad there doesn’t seem to be much else there worth getting besides the beeline to the boss room. The descent was kinda fun. I grabbed the few shinies scattered about and raised some pillars but might’ve missed one. Maybe I’ll return once I’ve grabbed a bunch of cave moss to restock preserving boluses.

 

[Dalisclock]

Oh, and Lake of Rot. Just ugh. I suppose in terms of swampy or generally hazardous environments it was relatively simple, and preferable to say, the Lost Izalith lava fields. Glad there doesn’t seem to be much else there worth getting besides the beeline to the boss room. The descent was kinda fun. I grabbed the few shinies scattered about and raised some pillars but might’ve missed one. Maybe I’ll return once I’ve grabbed a bunch of cave moss to restock preserving boluses.

Apparently there's a Dragonkin Soldier there but I'm honestly at a loss why that place exists other then to be an obstacle between you and bubbles of the void after you fight the red Blaidd dude. Did I miss something or did Miyazaki just need to throw in another poison swamp to satisfy his weird poison swamp kink? There's even a Rot temple just past it which at least is interesting to traverse down into but the lake itself is just an obstacle that can be surpassed without too much trouble and then you never need to go through it again.

I mean, yeah, it's annoying but there's enough islands available to be able to sprint between islands. Apparently you can also just hoof it across, heal a couple times along the way and then cure your rot once you reach the far shore. I'm gonna assume there was more planned for this at one point and it got cut for time somewhere along the way.

In other news I decided my next big game will be 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim and I just finished he prologue. It's a wierd mix honestly, with these very narrative/character heavy story vignettes interspersed with these turn based battles, except for the fact at least in the Prologue, it's clear that the battle sections(all implied to be sections of the same battle) and the vigettes are not directly connected to each other, but rather a way to introduce the characters and the combat in an admittedly unique way.

I got to admit I'm hooked. THe combat is engaging enough and I want to know just what the fuck is going on here. It's also rather confusing storywise because they've made it clear that there's time travel going on quite a bit here but also that the story bits are presented out of chronological order, so just trying to keep track of what's really happening here is quite tricky. I did notice there's a menu that allows you to replay story bits again and it looks like they're being auto-sorted into the correct order as you play them, and from that I can see there's a lot of them and a ton of gaps. So I can only imagine I'll be rewatching a lot of them later to get a better understanding of what's going on.

Oh, and it's very Japanese Anime Tropey. I mean, it is a Japanese game set in Japan about Japanese high schoolers fighting what I can only presume are aliens in giant Mecha because of course they are so I'm not at all shocked that it's super filled with tropes from Anime.I do admit the one story bit where you get the JUDGMENT DAY: Last Line of Defense BROKEN and it's all but stated the enemy won did a lot ot grab me considering the time travel aspect, as well as the reveal that apparently different time periods are getting invaded and it's not just the 21st century that's clearly fucked, but also if we're seeing events that have already happened in the future or events that will happen in the future and if it's possible to prevent JUDGEMENT DAY. I also noticed that the battle you fight in the prologue gives you a date/time but not a year, so I suspect that's notable part of the plot.

 

[wings012]

So after not playing Atelier Lydie & Suelle for about a year, I tried picking it up again and of course I don't remember a damn thing. And all the alchemy systems confuse me. And I'm not sure if I care about finishing it.

Definitely feeling my age here, I used to be so into anime JRPGs but not anymore. I still got Trails in the Sky 2 sitting around unfinished as well.

 

[BrawlMan]

Finished Act 3, and part way in to Act 4 of Quantum Break. Getting the hang of using the time powers. I upgraded the Time Run to max. The game definitely wants you to use all the powers you get, and I have little complaints on that. That said, by the halfway point, you'd have seen every enemy type. The game could have used a few more.

 

[meiam]

So after not playing Atelier Lydie & Suelle for about a year, I tried picking it up again and of course I don't remember a damn thing. And all the alchemy systems confuse me. And I'm not sure if I care about finishing it.

Definitely feeling my age here, I used to be so into anime JRPGs but not anymore. I still got Trails in the Sky 2 sitting around unfinished as well.

Ehhhhhhhhh I'd say that has more to do with the quality of the atelier game lately, they tend to be very low effort.

 

[XsjadoBlaydette]

Slime Rancher. I can't stop. Can't stop counting my chickens. Help. Why has this game out of everything else been the one to ensnare the attention within a tireless death grip? I still need to get back to Elden Ring at some point too. Fuck! But these chickens. But my perfectly optimised poop collection agency is running so smoothly now. And the chickens are now stone chickens. They must be counted! Fuck! They must be fed to the doe-eyed Kittie blobs to stop them staring at me with their creepy bleeding mouths.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Finished Horizon 2, took a long weekend break, this morning started Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart thanks to the Days of Play sale (in which I also picked up Guardians of the Galaxy).

Played through the intro and my god is it pretty. I mean, that's why I got it, it has been promoted as a PS5 showcase and yeah, it's just so vibrant and colorful, it's overloading my eyeballs with feelings. A true delight.
One thing that annoys me a bit so far is lots of transitions between playing and cut scenes but I'm hoping that goes away as I get used to the game or there is less of that once I get past all the tutorial stuff.

 

[wings012]

Ehhhhhhhhh I'd say that has more to do with the quality of the atelier game lately, they tend to be very low effort.

I don't refute that, but this sorta jank slice of life stuff used to be my kind of jam. Also my standards aren't very high, I solo-ed God Eater 1 and 2 wasting 120 odd hours total between the two games.

But it's not the only JRPG I've put off. Trails 2 is on the backburner alongside Disgaea 4.

I also used to be a fan of Super Robot Wars, and wouldn't mind playing through some of the Japanese titles. Now there's actually titles in English on Steam. I played a decent amount of SRW V but ended up aborting anyway. SRW X and 30 are out and I give no fucks.

Maybe I should just get back to Yakuza 3. This one I aborted for a different reason, cause the tech downgrade whiplash from 0/Kiwami/2 was incredibly severe. I did start a new playthrough on Easy cause the first boss was just blocking every attack and was incredibly obnoxious and I didn't want to deal with an entire game full of that. I've also heard people say that I should just skip 3 and hop onto 4. But eh, sufficient time has passed since I last played Kiwami 2 so maybe I'll be more accepting of the last-gen jank.

I kinda feel like I just want to play multiplayer stuff with friends or just mindless FPSes.

 

[meiam]

I don't refute that, but this sorta jank slice of life stuff used to be my kind of jam. Also my standards aren't very high, I solo-ed God Eater 1 and 2 wasting 120 odd hours total between the two games.

But it's not the only JRPG I've put off. Trails 2 is on the backburner alongside Disgaea 4.

I also used to be a fan of Super Robot Wars, and wouldn't mind playing through some of the Japanese titles. Now there's actually titles in English on Steam. I played a decent amount of SRW V but ended up aborting anyway. SRW X and 30 are out and I give no fucks.

Maybe I should just get back to Yakuza 3. This one I aborted for a different reason, cause the tech downgrade whiplash from 0/Kiwami/2 was incredibly severe. I did start a new playthrough on Easy cause the first boss was just blocking every attack and was incredibly obnoxious and I didn't want to deal with an entire game full of that. I've also heard people say that I should just skip 3 and hop onto 4. But eh, sufficient time has passed since I last played Kiwami 2 so maybe I'll be more accepting of the last-gen jank.

I kinda feel like I just want to play multiplayer stuff with friends or just mindless FPSes.

I usually replay old game that I liked for genre that I'm not sure I like anymore to check if its a me or game things, usually is game tbh but your mileage may vary.

As far as super robot wars, I played trough SD gundam g generation *catching breath* cross rays not too long ago and it wasn't terrible if you like the idea of collecting mech from gundam franchise.

Otherwise as far as japenese game I haven't played too many lately, I can pimp trial of mana but it's not exactly super deep game from both a story/gameplay point of view. Cute visual and music though.

 

[Godzillarich(aka tf2godz)]

So I just 100 percented completed Super Mario Sunshine for the third time (Yes I am a masochist) and there's a few points I want to bring up.

It wasn't nearly as hard as people made it out to be, I completed stuff like the watermelon Festival and the balloon popping on my first try and I completed most of the secret Areas relatively easily. I only had trouble with the Pachinko machine, Lily Pad and I'm a chuckster levels. I only had to look up a few blue coins in each level. It's hard but not nearly as frustrating as people make it out to be.

There's a weird glitch where sometimes you will phase through objects, it doesn't happen often but I'm surprised they didn't fix that for the switch release.

I maintain that sunshine has some of the best immersion of any Mario game. A lot of levels feel like real places and managed to get clever platforming in. Each world has an ongoing storyline and while the characters are not really three-dimensional they're nice to talk to them. And the game still looks beautiful. I feel like Odyssey took a lot of cues from Sunshine's presentation and greatly expanded upon it

And lastly there is an NPC no one really talks about. In the hub World there is a guy who has been trapped on an island for three years. No one comes to help him (including Mario, complete jerk.) At some point he washes too shore when a massive flood happens and in the post game he has Stockholm syndrome and wants to get back to the island. Is slightly rememberable NPC I just wanted to talk about

 

[wings012]

I usually replay old game that I liked for genre that I'm not sure I like anymore to check if its a me or game things, usually is game tbh but your mileage may vary.

As far as super robot wars, I played trough SD gundam g generation *catching breath* cross rays not too long ago and it wasn't terrible if you like the idea of collecting mech from gundam franchise.

Otherwise as far as japenese game I haven't played too many lately, I can pimp trial of mana but it's not exactly super deep game from both a story/gameplay point of view. Cute visual and music though.

I dropped Trials of Mana myself. I was super into Seiken Densetsu 3 on the SNES which I played extensively emulated on zsnes many years ago, so I was kinda looking forward to Trials. Then I played a few hours and dropped it like a rock, it just couldn't hold my interest.

 

[Chimpzy]

F.I.S.T. Forged in Shadow Torch

Weird title I think got lost in translation on account of being a Chinese game aside, what we have here is a pretty decent metroidvania. Got nothing on the genre's greats, but still like a solid 6/10 in real grading. It looks nice, featuring your dystopian urban fantasy setting that's a bit FFVII Midgar by way of the Kowloon Walled City, except populated by furries. It controls well, for the most part, but doesn't really come unto it's own until you've unlocked most of the movement abilities, as metroidvanias are wont to be. Story is nothing special, but serviceable. Progression is satisfying enough.

Overall, more polished than other Chinese games I've played so far, tho not without some bits of sinojank. Mostly in the combat. It's very combo focused, almost Devil May Cry like, except not as fluid and snappy because attack animations are sort of lenghty and can't be cancelled, and timings are also kind of weird. You have to wait until an attack animation is nearly finished, almost right before you go back into neutral, and only then do you enter the next button press to continue the combo string. Kind of like those combos in DMC where you need to hold like a half second between button presses, except the entire combo is like that. Also, for some reason it takes a long time before you get your block, parry and a decent dodge, respectively a third, two thirds and 90% through the game.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim and I just finished he prologue. I got to admit I'm hooked. THe combat is engaging enough and I want to know just what the fuck is going on here. It's also rather confusing storywise because they've made it clear that there's time travel going on quite a bit here but also that the story bits are presented out of chronological order, so just trying to keep track of what's really happening here is quite tricky. I did notice there's a menu that allows you to replay story bits again and it looks like they're being auto-sorted into the correct order as you play them, and from that I can see there's a lot of them and a ton of gaps. So I can only imagine I'll be rewatching a lot of them later to get a better understanding of what's going on.

I finished it not too long ago. While you certainly could redo sections, it's one of those games where you need to keep going before the pieces start coming together, tho keep in mind that doesn't really happen until like 80% into each characters' route.

Also, little gameplay tip, at one point you'll be able to upgrade your Sentinels, both the weapons and the mech itself. You might be tempted to think the latter is better since it unlocks later, but unlocking and upgrading weapons is definitely the way to go. Also, if you feel like a weapon is way better than other options, it's probably because it plain is better, some of which might seem prohibitively expensive to use, but become "fuck everything in that area" when fully upgraded

 

[Worgen]

I finished the campaign in Warhammer 40k BattleSector. Ended up being really good, story was good and interesting, I ended up liking the characters. Plus it was just neat watching the units do things. Sound choices they made were still weird, most of the sound effects are still oddly chosen and the weird issue with sound effects not overlapping. Bang bang banmonsterscreamang. Odd. Also I don't think the voice for the main point of view character really matches, but the rest are good. I started a planetary annihilation campaign, even in a beta state, its really neat and playing as the nids in it is quite fun.

 

[BrawlMan]

Quantum Break is now finished. The final boss is weak and has a one hit kill. All it really is fight some goons, then wait for him to explode with red energy and avoid it. Shoot him a couple times, then do it one more time, with some stronger goons, and then you're done. Like I said before, the game is not bad, but it could have been so much more. When a sequel ever happens, I like them to remove the cover shooter elements and just be a straight-up regular third person shooter. Have it work similar to Control where you get more movement and verticality. I'm glad to finally get a chance to play and beat the game though. Now Remedy, when is Alan Wake II coming out?

 

[Casual Shinji]

F.I.S.T. Forged in Shadow Torch

Weird title I think got lost in translation on account of being a Chinese game aside, what we have here is a pretty decent metroidvania. Got nothing on the genre's greats, but still like a solid 6/10 in real grading. It looks nice, featuring your dystopian urban fantasy setting that's a bit FFVII Midgar by way of the Kowloon Walled City, except populated by furries. It controls well, for the most part, but doesn't really come unto it's own until you've unlocked most of the movement abilities, as metroidvanias are wont to be. Story is nothing special, but serviceable. Progression is satisfying enough.

Overall, more polished than other Chinese games I've played so far, tho not without some bits of sinojank. Mostly in the combat. It's very combo focused, almost Devil May Cry like, except not as fluid and snappy because attack animations are sort of lenghty and can't be cancelled, and timings are also kind of weird. You have to wait until an attack animation is nearly finished, almost right before you go back into neutral, and only then do you enter the next button press to continue the combo string. Kind of like those combos in DMC where you need to hold like a half second between button presses, except the entire combo is like that. Also, for some reason it takes a long time before you get your block, parry and a decent dodge, respectively a third, two thirds and 90% through the game.
I finished it not too long ago. While you certainly could redo sections, it's one of those games where you need to keep going before the pieces start coming together, tho keep in mind that doesn't really happen until like 80% into each characters' route.

Some nice hefty action to this game, I need to get back to it. This is how an Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee remake should've looked.

 

[Hawki]

Random thoughts:

XENOBLADE CHRONICLES 2


If you can watch the above video and not understand why I partly despise this game, then we're completely different people.

What irritates me is that I'm starting to like the combat more than I did - working out what Blades to use for Rex, when to use them, how to chain attacks, etc. But the story and waifu stuff is just so damn stupid, it's managed to make me embarassed to even play it. Even if I didn't have XC1 to compare it to, I'd still hate this stuff. And it's not just the waifu bait, it's not just that it's stupid from any logical standpoint (if you need to make a bi-pedal mech, why the hell are you basing it on fucking maids?), it's that when you actually consider the stuff going on in the world (I've already talked about Mor Ardain and Uraya, now Indhol's entered the mix, which as far as I can tell is some kind of theocracy), the setting of XC2 is pretty interesting. It's just that there's so much crap that I have to sit through in the meantime because the developers value boobs more than consistency.

Speaking of consistency:

QUAKE CHAMPIONS

So I waited 40 minutes to get through matchmaking...yeah, this game is dead.

Which is a shame, because having played with bots, the gameplay's pretty fun actually. Good arena shooting fun, and the bots are actually pretty challenging. Also, call this blasphemy, but I like the abilities the champions have. No, this isn't a hero shooter (it really isn't - Overwatch and Paladins are example of hero shooters, QC has little to do with them), and the abilities spice up the core gameplay without changing it.

And you may be saying at this point "wait a minute, don't you hate Quake? Isn't the only reason you played Quake all those years ago is because you got into a shouting match on these forums on the subject?" Well, if you are saying that, you have a good memory, and second, I'm more forgiving of a multiplayer-only game on story than a singleplayer one, and third, that actually does segway into how...weird, Quake Champions is from any lore standpoint. It's some weird mix of the setting of Quake 1 (except apparently eldritch dimensions are a lot more colourful) combined with a random assortment of characters that don't have any real overall theme to them. So, basically, yes, the 'lore' of Quake Champions has the excuse of being detached and nonsensical, but it's more likely that Id just didn't care. Which is a shame, because Doom Eternal showed what happened when they do put effort into lore and characters.

Still, it's fun, wish I'd have some humans to play with.

 

[Dalisclock]

Random thoughts:

XENOBLADE CHRONICLES 2


If you can watch the above video and not understand why I partly despise this game, then we're completely different people.

What irritates me is that I'm starting to like the combat more than I did - working out what Blades to use for Rex, when to use them, how to chain attacks, etc. But the story and waifu stuff is just so damn stupid, it's managed to make me embarassed to even play it. Even if I didn't have XC1 to compare it to, I'd still hate this stuff. And it's not just the waifu bait, it's not just that it's stupid from any logical standpoint (if you need to make a bi-pedal mech, why the hell are you basing it on fucking maids?), it's that when you actually consider the stuff going on in the world (I've already talked about Mor Ardain and Uraya, now Indhol's entered the mix, which as far as I can tell is some kind of theocracy), the setting of XC2 is pretty interesting. It's just that there's so much crap that I have to sit through in the meantime because the developers value boobs more than consistency.

I mean, that was weeby up the fucking ass, pardon my french. I also had no fucking clue what was going on there and I'm unsure if the weirdly broken English in some cases is normal for the game/series or something just on display here but it was slightly distracting. Come on Japan, you know how to properly translate to English at this point. If Kojima and FROM can do it, you certainly can.

 

[Worgen]

If you can watch the above video and not understand why I partly despise this game, then we're completely different people.

Is it cause its got silly anime bullshit? Cause there are like 3 or 4 things I can see that could freak someone out, depending on who they are.

 

[Dalisclock]

I finished it not too long ago. While you certainly could redo sections, it's one of those games where you need to keep going before the pieces start coming together, tho keep in mind that doesn't really happen until like 80% into each characters' route.

Also, little gameplay tip, at one point you'll be able to upgrade your Sentinels, both the weapons and the mech itself. You might be tempted to think the latter is better since it unlocks later, but unlocking and upgrading weapons is definitely the way to go. Also, if you feel like a weapon is way better than other options, it's probably because it plain is better, some of which might seem prohibitively expensive to use, but become "fuck everything in that area" when fully upgraded

Well, I noticed that there's like one character who you can go back to a certain scene, do something different and get a different sequence of events, though others basically just sent you back down the other paths the next time you do it anyway and man does this feel wierd and trippy at times.

Also, I have no idea why doing story bits gets you money to upgrade your mechs and weapons but since I ended up doing a bunch of story bits first I went into my first battle with a metric fuckton of money and thus upgrades. Not that any of these battles have been hard because the battles have a clear "Hey, this mech/weapon works best against this type of Kaiju" dynamic so if you're not a total dummy(trying to use Melee vs flying enemies, for example) you should do fine. To be fair, I'm playing on normal difficulty because the story is what's got me here.

Oh speaking of which, we've got Time Loops, Terminator Androids and NANOMACHINES involved now. I'm concerned Kojima might have snuck into the writers room at some point considering how often I'm starting to hear NANOMACHINES NANOMAHCINES NANOMACHINES. Though I'm also getting distinct Evangelion vibes from some of this, notably the whole setup that the teens mentally connected to their mecha need to play defense in every battle because the unknown enemy is targeting a vast underground structure and if any of them get through it's an instant game over, though Shikishima(?) also seems to be playing the role of NERV/SEELE here. To be fair I haven't seen that much mecha anime so it's entirely possible these are common tropes and I'm the one with the small reference pool.

On a lesser note, I'm gonna throw out that Natsuno spends ton of time wearing tiny little shorts because.....fanservice I guess. I get she's a track and field kid but man they keep finding reasons to keep her in her stinky gym clothes(and yes, people do comment on it, but still). It's not nearly as egregious as Ms Morimura who quite often wears a form fitting catsuit for no particular reason and always seems to have the Butt and Boob pose going. Stay classy, Japan.

Also you get this awkward thing from the 1940's character when they find out Japan lost the War 40 years prior and bemoaning how awful this is and how they wish they could use the mecha to change history. Yeah, I get the nationalism thing but OTOH, there's the whole Japanese Warcrimes thing that's kinda not being acknowledged here. I've visited both China and the Philippines and one thing I learned firsthand is that neither of those nations are particularly sad Japan was beaten back to the home islands. The population of Nanjing would definitely have strong feelings about this and those 1940's characters might wanna remind themselves exactly who Japan was allied with during WW2. The "poor us" card feels a bit hollow here, just saying.

 

[Worgen]

Ended up with Mechwarrior 5 from a humble bundle awhile ago, started playing it today, so far its neat, looks great with really cool destruction. Too early to tell how things will turn out since it does start with one of the most generic calls to action that things like to do.