For sure if I beat the first one I will move on to the second one (unfortunately this being Nintendo it is sold at near full price and will almost certainly remain so given that many, iike me, are interested in due to the new one coming out soon).
What are you currently playing?
- Thread starter Nick Calandra
- Start date
Xenoblade Chronicles 3
So here it is, the fourth Xenoblade. It's got a mixed gender bathing scene in like the first hour of the game ... and it's not shitty otaku bait fan service. I admire the restraint, considering the last time this series had a bath scene. I suspect this may have made some fans very angry tho. Anyway, Xenoblade game. Huge maps. Big robots. Tons of systems. Flattened by the giant lv 80 monkey. Some welcome quality of life improvements. Button combo to change character in and outside of battle i.e. set up combos without needing to rely on AI? Yes please. Button combo to remove all hud elements for screenshots? Yeah, nice. Fighting while swimming? Thank the gods.
So here it is, the fourth Xenoblade. It's got a mixed gender bathing scene in like the first hour of the game ... and it's not shitty otaku bait fan service. I admire the restraint, considering the last time this series had a bath scene. I suspect this may have made some fans very angry tho. Anyway, Xenoblade game. Huge maps. Big robots. Tons of systems. Flattened by the giant lv 80 monkey. Some welcome quality of life improvements. Button combo to change character in and outside of battle i.e. set up combos without needing to rely on AI? Yes please. Button combo to remove all hud elements for screenshots? Yeah, nice. Fighting while swimming? Thank the gods.
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I didn't go for 2 because I felt like it didn't have as good of a start as the original one did, and while I own X I've never actually gotten around to playing it. Been considering 3, but I'm still kinda on the fence even though everyone's saying it's good.
OT: Genshin Impact, still. I'm trying to catch up on a bunch of stuff that came out in the time I haven't been playing, mostly the Chasm and Tsurumi Island. Once I've done the Chasm quest line I'll probably move on to Enkanomiya.
Playing Outer Wilds: Echos of the Eye. I don't know how to access the DLC so I'm just replaying the game for now. It's a really fantastic game, just full of unique ideas I've never seen before. And it doesn't hold your hand at all, just gives you all the pieces and lets you figure it out on your own, which is always a good experience. And it's the perfect size for an open world game, you are never more than a minute or two away from something interesting to discover. Giant's Deep still gives me anxiety though, flying around all those tornadoes is like something out of my nightmares. There's just something about the game that makes it feel really immersive flying around the solar system. Overshooting your speed and hitting the planets surface at 500 m/s or using too much jetpack thruster on a tiny satellite so you go hurtling into space just really makes you feel vulnerable out in the harshness of space.
Update stuff:
WARCRAFT III
Alright, piece of advice - if you ever end up playing against me somehow, know that if I pick Sentinels, I'm as good as finished. I "get" the other three factions, and have generally adjusted my playstyle around each of them, but I just can't get the hang of the Sentinels. I know what I'm meant to do - focus on mobility, rely on spellcaster buffs - but just can't seem to get the hang of it.
Have me play as anything else, and there's at least a reasonable chance of me winning.
WORLD OF WARCRAFT
So I installed Burning Crusade Classic, which has left me in a rut. Part of me wants to take advantage of the buffed levelling that's going on, on the other, playing TBC doesn't really help with the Warcraft story I'm writing, since the timeframes are wrong, no blood elves or draenei are around, etc. I'm still working out on how best to balance things around, since right now, my main focus is on levelling to get abilities, which makes it easier to write combat scenes. But anyway, speaking on TBC itself...I don't know if it's just me, or it's the game, or if the buffed levelling is having an effect, but everything seems so much faster. Every starting experience in WoW Classic was slow, designed to open you up, whereas for both draenei and blood elves it's hit the ground running. This is reflected contextually (draenei have just crashed, blood elves need to stabilize their magic crystals or something), and mechanically (the no. of quests available to you all at once).
XENOBLADE CHRONICLES 2
So I've completed the Spirt Elpys dungeon, and am still comfortably a few levels ahead of what the game seems to expect me to be. Anyway, random thoughts:
-Zeke's an absolute beast, now that I've gotten the hang of him (or at least found a playstyle that I'm comfortable with). Morag, though, I don't get. She's not as tanky as Tora, she's not as good at dealing damage as Rex or Zeke, so what's the point of her from a gameplay standpoint? I ask, because I've seen a retrospective that claimed that as soon as you get Morag, Tora's useless, so maybe I'm a weirdo, but...
-The Phantoms...well, that they look like Dark Link aside, I think this is a nifty point. I admittedly had to look up how to beat them, but there's also the cutscene. Y'know, "THAT" cutscene. Truth be told, I like it, but I think people have really run with the idea of Rex "friendzoning" Nia. I mean, it's kind of cute as to how oblivious he is, but it's a mistake to put Nia in the same ballpark as Melia. Nia seems perfectly fine with the 'rejection,' and this is an uplifting moment for Nia, whereas poor Melia not only fails to get the guy, but loses pretty much everything over the course of XC1. I guess the difference is that in XC2, the writers wanted Nia to have some moments of happiness, whereas they looked at Melia, asked how they could make life as miserable as possible for her, and answered "yes."
-There's also the other thing that I think this is one of the best cutscenes in terms of choreography. No fancy acrobatics, just actual swordsplay that's good on its own, plus reinforces how Blades function (the shields). Also, while Nia's true form is a mite sexualized, it's still much better than everything else we've seen. The kimono-esque dress gives her a sense of grace and regality, whereas characters like Pyra are more in the realm of "how much skin can we show without having to make this game R rated?"
Oh, and speaking of XC2...
I guess the thing that irritates me about XC2 more than anything is that it while it's not "bad," it's coming off XC1, and inferior in pretty much every way. Maybe it's better in music, or at least equal to it, and maybe I could say the same about the combat system, but, well, yeah. There's numerous games with "2" in the title that are significant improvements over their predecessors, but XC2 isn't among them.
WARCRAFT III
Alright, piece of advice - if you ever end up playing against me somehow, know that if I pick Sentinels, I'm as good as finished. I "get" the other three factions, and have generally adjusted my playstyle around each of them, but I just can't get the hang of the Sentinels. I know what I'm meant to do - focus on mobility, rely on spellcaster buffs - but just can't seem to get the hang of it.
Have me play as anything else, and there's at least a reasonable chance of me winning.
WORLD OF WARCRAFT
So I installed Burning Crusade Classic, which has left me in a rut. Part of me wants to take advantage of the buffed levelling that's going on, on the other, playing TBC doesn't really help with the Warcraft story I'm writing, since the timeframes are wrong, no blood elves or draenei are around, etc. I'm still working out on how best to balance things around, since right now, my main focus is on levelling to get abilities, which makes it easier to write combat scenes. But anyway, speaking on TBC itself...I don't know if it's just me, or it's the game, or if the buffed levelling is having an effect, but everything seems so much faster. Every starting experience in WoW Classic was slow, designed to open you up, whereas for both draenei and blood elves it's hit the ground running. This is reflected contextually (draenei have just crashed, blood elves need to stabilize their magic crystals or something), and mechanically (the no. of quests available to you all at once).
XENOBLADE CHRONICLES 2
So I've completed the Spirt Elpys dungeon, and am still comfortably a few levels ahead of what the game seems to expect me to be. Anyway, random thoughts:
-Zeke's an absolute beast, now that I've gotten the hang of him (or at least found a playstyle that I'm comfortable with). Morag, though, I don't get. She's not as tanky as Tora, she's not as good at dealing damage as Rex or Zeke, so what's the point of her from a gameplay standpoint? I ask, because I've seen a retrospective that claimed that as soon as you get Morag, Tora's useless, so maybe I'm a weirdo, but...
-The Phantoms...well, that they look like Dark Link aside, I think this is a nifty point. I admittedly had to look up how to beat them, but there's also the cutscene. Y'know, "THAT" cutscene. Truth be told, I like it, but I think people have really run with the idea of Rex "friendzoning" Nia. I mean, it's kind of cute as to how oblivious he is, but it's a mistake to put Nia in the same ballpark as Melia. Nia seems perfectly fine with the 'rejection,' and this is an uplifting moment for Nia, whereas poor Melia not only fails to get the guy, but loses pretty much everything over the course of XC1. I guess the difference is that in XC2, the writers wanted Nia to have some moments of happiness, whereas they looked at Melia, asked how they could make life as miserable as possible for her, and answered "yes."
-There's also the other thing that I think this is one of the best cutscenes in terms of choreography. No fancy acrobatics, just actual swordsplay that's good on its own, plus reinforces how Blades function (the shields). Also, while Nia's true form is a mite sexualized, it's still much better than everything else we've seen. The kimono-esque dress gives her a sense of grace and regality, whereas characters like Pyra are more in the realm of "how much skin can we show without having to make this game R rated?"
Oh, and speaking of XC2...
Xenoblade 2 has got to be one of the worst cases I've seen of a game putting its worst foot forward. I'm up to ch. 7 now, and my view's improved, but the early chapters..good lord.
I guess the thing that irritates me about XC2 more than anything is that it while it's not "bad," it's coming off XC1, and inferior in pretty much every way. Maybe it's better in music, or at least equal to it, and maybe I could say the same about the combat system, but, well, yeah. There's numerous games with "2" in the title that are significant improvements over their predecessors, but XC2 isn't among them.
Funny, I felt the same way about Final Fantasy 13, and I still liked the first few chapters of FF13 better than the start of Xenoblade 2.
Even funnier: I reckon that FF13 starts getting really good around... chapter 7. (Palumpolum)
Ok well that's it for Neon White for me, I think. I'm close to the end and there is a "boss fight" and in a game that is all about quick little levels to clear, now there is a long slog of bullet hell areas, wtf. I can only get past the very first little area half the time and then there's like a whole 5 minutes left of other stuff (which in this game is like an hour). There have been other levels where I felt were impossible but it was still doable so I got over myself and kept trying and beat it. This one is just too much.
Oh well that's ok I wasn't really thinking I'd actually beat a game that literally combines 3 of my 4 most difficult gaming mechanics- platforming, first-person perspective, and shooting (the 4th being darkness thank goodness that is not a factor here). I got pretty far and I enjoyed the change of pace and challenge. If they ever patch in an easy mode maybe I'll come back and finish it.
Oh well that's ok I wasn't really thinking I'd actually beat a game that literally combines 3 of my 4 most difficult gaming mechanics- platforming, first-person perspective, and shooting (the 4th being darkness thank goodness that is not a factor here). I got pretty far and I enjoyed the change of pace and challenge. If they ever patch in an easy mode maybe I'll come back and finish it.
So I finally got around to playing expedition rome, and I'm stopping almost immediately. The game is a tactical team based RPG where you deck out a main team for some cool tactics fight. And then randomly there's a bunch of important mission that force you to use a randomly generated character (with awful skill distribution) for some of the toughest fight in the game. You can't even form bond with the rando because they're only used for those specific fight so they become incredibly underlevel very quickly and you have to kick them all and re recruit a full new team.
What pushed them to do that is beyond me. Every expedition game eventually introduce something that just makes me stop playing despite really enjoying myself before that. Conquistador eventually force you to burn down a village of innocent if you want to gain favor with the main faction (necessery to complete the main quest), oh but no worries there's a group of rebel.... who want you to burn down the same village if your going to get favor with them, sigh. Viking has a random right that force you to use a a much larger team than usual, so you have to use character that are essentially level 1 or non combat skill mule (also it makes the fight takes forever since there's so many enemy that have to move).
There's a bunch of other annoyance too, pilla are just stupid, at any point any character can just completely negate a character shield and it doesn't even burn their attack and it also means the shield is broken for a couple of turn. It makes dealing with shielded character trivial and makes using your shielded character annoying (you can repair the shield, but its a skill that not all of them will have and that burn your character action). Similarly there's a bunch of item that can be throw to set enemy on fire, they have perfect accuracy and fire deal a crap ton of damage and you can use item without using action, so you just throw them all the time no matter what and they trivialize everything, but the enemy also use them and its really annoying to deal with.
What pushed them to do that is beyond me. Every expedition game eventually introduce something that just makes me stop playing despite really enjoying myself before that. Conquistador eventually force you to burn down a village of innocent if you want to gain favor with the main faction (necessery to complete the main quest), oh but no worries there's a group of rebel.... who want you to burn down the same village if your going to get favor with them, sigh. Viking has a random right that force you to use a a much larger team than usual, so you have to use character that are essentially level 1 or non combat skill mule (also it makes the fight takes forever since there's so many enemy that have to move).
There's a bunch of other annoyance too, pilla are just stupid, at any point any character can just completely negate a character shield and it doesn't even burn their attack and it also means the shield is broken for a couple of turn. It makes dealing with shielded character trivial and makes using your shielded character annoying (you can repair the shield, but its a skill that not all of them will have and that burn your character action). Similarly there's a bunch of item that can be throw to set enemy on fire, they have perfect accuracy and fire deal a crap ton of damage and you can use item without using action, so you just throw them all the time no matter what and they trivialize everything, but the enemy also use them and its really annoying to deal with.
Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of the pacification mission thing. I get it's to get you to use your recruited npcs and not just your main team but it's wierd you can use your main team for all the other missions and you still have to roll out there to do the pacification missions so it's not like your main team is doing one thing and your other dudes are taking care of these. I'm also not a huge fan of having to do them almost every single time you conquer a province, which slows the progression down because I can't just unlock the resources of said newly conquered province, I have to do the mission after the battle before I can make use of the resources to upgrade my outpost or build a damn road. Oh, and the fact you can't check and swap out tactical items once you've committed to a battle, so you can't tell who has what until you're in the battle and, well, what if everyone you didn't bring has all the good stuff?
I disagree about the pllia, I use those damn things all the time to get another hit in or make the heavies a lot easier to deal with since shields replenish every turn otherwise. Also, it's appropriate to the warfare of the time, a bit more then everything else you use(Poison bombs, ahem). Also, fucking caltrops are great for area denial, because the computer will run right through them and get crippled/bleeding over and over. It's just a pain to make them because spikes are a rare item for some fucking reason, same with naptha for greek fire. Also, FUCK BERSERKERS! Every time you kill them, they get back up, get one free turn to do another attack(which is almost always hit you with a big fucking war club that can break shields) and then die for real. EVERY FUCKING TIME! There is no apparent way to prevent and since they do this during their turn, you can't just hit them again to stop this from happening.
I'm curious how your recruited party members are that underleveled, because like Viking the experience is leaked, just not as much as those who go on the missions. I've been using the same party members for pretty much the entire game thus far and I think the recruited ones are maybe like one level behind the story important ones.
I've gone back and forth on this, because I generally like the story missions and sieges but the pacification missions feel like padding. I did turn it down to easy just to make the game go faster because I hit a pair of missions that I had to restart a couple times due to how badly I kept getting beat up in them. I do think in this game bigger wasn't neissciarly better and I feel Viking was tighter and less annoying. Also, unlike Viking, this game has at least 3 acts, so I'm at like the midpoint or somewhere thereabouts getting close to finishing up the Egypt campaign. At least this game doesn't have a time limit.
Also, I'm kind of at the point of telling Cleopatra to stuff something in her cake hole, because pretty much every interaction with her is "Why are you taking so long?" "Why are you making ME wait?" "Do my Bidding, Servant" . Ma'am, I'm the one busting my ass with both my legions trying to conquer Egypt from your Brother/Husband for you while you hang out in your villa drinking Classical-era Cocktails(or whatever they drank), so show some fucking respect.
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At precisely the half-way mark of Bayonetta, I dropped the difficulty to Easy (but on the advice of someone on the internet I unequipped some item that completels combos automatically for you) because there was this big ball that would also stun me even if it didn't hit me AND there are multiple enemies that are lightning fast AND the ball does practically no damage to me AND I die in two hits.
This is par for the course for me- at some point a game like this just adds bullshit on top of bullshit to where yeah I guess if I try hard enough I could eventually get past it but I been playing for a bunch and the I want to get to the end. I regret nothing- there were no new interesting enemies after this but the visuals were cool so I'm glad I finished the game regardless and look forward to the sequel at some point.
But I'll take a break from that series and the Switch to come back to XBox and Game Pass and this weekend will check out Boyfriend Dungeon, a game that I been meaning to try out because, lol, that name, but now it's actually leaving Game Pass.
This is par for the course for me- at some point a game like this just adds bullshit on top of bullshit to where yeah I guess if I try hard enough I could eventually get past it but I been playing for a bunch and the I want to get to the end. I regret nothing- there were no new interesting enemies after this but the visuals were cool so I'm glad I finished the game regardless and look forward to the sequel at some point.
But I'll take a break from that series and the Switch to come back to XBox and Game Pass and this weekend will check out Boyfriend Dungeon, a game that I been meaning to try out because, lol, that name, but now it's actually leaving Game Pass.
I don't mind pilla as an idea, but they really should take the character action, I shouldn't be able to use the same character to pilla a shield user and immediately attack him/her. That just waste the entire point of the shield, especially when most of the heavy infantry skill are tied to using shield, which they can't do when its broken by pilla. At minimum it shouldn't break the shield and just lower shield strength. It's even weirder considering there's a bunch of regular skill that do use the character action yet are way less involved than throwing a pilla.
Dunno why my rando character are underlevel, not sure if the pacification mission are tied to main character level or something, maybe I didn't capture the territory in the right order and I accidentally went to a high level territory. I'm playing on insane so maybe there's just massive level gap because of that, but then again, regular mission don't have the level difference. It's a shame cause the difficulty for regular mission is pretty nice and force good level of tactical decision. I'm mostly annoyed that there's no good reason for pacification mission to not let you use your regular team, this is one of those cases where the developer doing less work (ie just having pacification mission function like others) would make the game better, and those should never exist, which just sour me on the whole experience.
Well, technically a Pillia did "Break" shields. Or more accurately, they would get stuck in the shields and now someone would have the choice between "Keep trying to use this shield with a big spear throwing off the balance" and "Discard shield and hope for the best". Though arguably they were meant to just impale through armor(or soft flesh, notably weak to impaling weapons).
I don't really mind, since half the time the enemy not only outnumbers you 2 or 3 to one, they often get reinforcement waves when you don't or you're under a time limit to achieve your goal.
Yeah, it might be because of the difficulty level. I was playing on medium and bumped it down because I was getting tired of some of the BS the game throws at you. I can only imagine what it's like on INSANE.
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Its really not bad (outside pilla and throw able) for regular fight, by far the hardest fight was the very first one since you have few skills to use and no way to heal (plus all the character initial skill are in the wrong tree).
Finished The Darkness and had a great time.
It incorporated enough different mechanics to stand out amongst the many other post-CoD4 FPs games, and enough attention to detail to make me feel like the developers were passionate about making it. The game was often gory and high octane (if a little janky), but sometimes mellow and touching and overall felt refreshing to play. Will definitely check out the sequel at some point.
It incorporated enough different mechanics to stand out amongst the many other post-CoD4 FPs games, and enough attention to detail to make me feel like the developers were passionate about making it. The game was often gory and high octane (if a little janky), but sometimes mellow and touching and overall felt refreshing to play. Will definitely check out the sequel at some point.
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I found an old shmup in my Steam library that I bought forever ago and forgot about called 'ZeroRanger'. It's a fairly standard setup, with a prototype fighter ship, an alien invasion, and a number of different weapons. The main difference is that you're given a choice of which weapon to unlock and add to your fire buttons after each boss fight, which changes how you approach subsequent stages; e.g. after the first boss, stage 2 plays a bit differently if you took the side-firing weapon or the rear-firing one.
It also tracks your lifetime score to determine how many continues you're allowed to use each time; the more points you've scored overall, the more continues you get. As for the presentation, besides the green and orange graphics, there's kind of a Buddhist overtone to it that I don't think I fully understand, with lines like 'may you attain enlightenment' and being held back from it the more you reincarnate and accrue attachments. Other than that, so far, it seems pretty stock-standard, and I admit I'm far from qualified to judge stuff like level or pattern design in shmups, given that my prior experience with them pretty much begins and ends with Ikaruga (still haven't gotten past stage 3 because I'm too stubborn to use continues still) and a few from Touhou.
Probably worth looking into if you're a fan of bullet hells, but it's not going to be the one to get you into them if you're not, as far as I can tell.
It also tracks your lifetime score to determine how many continues you're allowed to use each time; the more points you've scored overall, the more continues you get. As for the presentation, besides the green and orange graphics, there's kind of a Buddhist overtone to it that I don't think I fully understand, with lines like 'may you attain enlightenment' and being held back from it the more you reincarnate and accrue attachments. Other than that, so far, it seems pretty stock-standard, and I admit I'm far from qualified to judge stuff like level or pattern design in shmups, given that my prior experience with them pretty much begins and ends with Ikaruga (still haven't gotten past stage 3 because I'm too stubborn to use continues still) and a few from Touhou.
Probably worth looking into if you're a fan of bullet hells, but it's not going to be the one to get you into them if you're not, as far as I can tell.
Red Earth - Played as Mai-Ling this time. I love her move sets. She's basically the flame version of Chun-Li, but younger. I'm gonna go play as Kenji next time. I will say, that I hate the final boss. He's basically Gill without the "RESSURECTION!", but twice as annoying. The final boss has the fire and ice elemental similar to and raining meteor shower on the player. Cheap does not even explain how annoying the final boss is.
Started playing ghostwire tokyo again and its an absolutely perfect example of a game that I really wish was better. I love the city, I love gliding around it and I love looking all over it for random dodad. But boy is the story and character boring and the fighting gameplay is so repetitive, all the enemy are very samey, there's only 4 weapon, none of which are very interesting, and while the dungeon environment are stunning recreation of Tokyo, they all boil down to linear corridor.
It feel like the game is like 80% of the way to a masterpiece and they just dropped the ball at the end.
It feel like the game is like 80% of the way to a masterpiece and they just dropped the ball at the end.
Finally decided to sit down and really start playing Persona 5. Only a couple of hours into it, but I'm liking it so far. Soundtrack is great, combat system is serviceable with enough depth to make it feel like I'm not just mashing attack all the time, and at least the first villain is appropriately loathsome.
As someone who's played through it almost three times, there's a lot more to the battle system than it seems at first glance. The best advice I can give is that no spell in the game is completely useless, no matter what other JRPGs have gotten you used to. Use everything at your disposal to win fights, and you'll be able to get a lot further on each dungeon trip with your limited resources, and have an edge over bosses that you'll sorely need.
Crusi'n Blast - I finally completed the Dino and UFO Course on Normal with Gold Rankings. After that it's hard mode and expert, but I honestly don't care too much. I unlocked an ATV, Triceratops, and a UFO as vehicles. You read that right.
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