What are you currently playing?

[Satinavian]

During Dragon Age Inqusition I was disappointed by the fact you don't do a lot in actually running the Inquisition. There's some token nods but mostly it's "Collect power points" then "Use power points to unlock new missions and regions". Skyhold is cool but doesn't do much other then be a cool base. The War table is really cool in concept but feels really.....ok in execution. There are some nods to getting allies and political wranging but not very much considering your position of running what's essentially a crusading order.

So arguably Kingmaker is hitting that note better then DAI did even if it's still flawed.

A better comparison to DAI would probably be Pathfinder : Wrath of the Righteous, where you are actually running a crusade.

But yes, i kinda liked the barony management in kingmaker as well. Generally liked both of the games but i had tabletop experience wit Pathfinder so i kinda knew the rules.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

A better comparison to DAI would probably be Pathfinder : Wrath of the Righteous, where you are actually running a crusade.

But yes, i kinda liked the barony management in kingmaker as well.

Honestly, Kingmaker is one of the few games where all the management bollocks make sense because it outlines from the start that becoming a Baron is your goal... Makes wayyyyyyyy more sense than a group of murderhobos moving into an abandoned castle, fixing it up and the local feudal lords being okay with that.

 

[meiam]

Honestly, I keep wanting to find something between Dragon Age and Crusader kings that works on the strengths of both. So far haven't found it though.

Depending on what exactly you want from each of these, there's a lot of game that kinda touch both.

You can go the mount and blade (or battle brother if you want fantasy) and that's kinda close.
There's the age of wonder franchise that's also sorta like an in between (or spellforce: conquest of Eo if you want more RPG less 4x)

Problem is more that there's not much like crusader king and having a serious story combined with the freedom of a CK is really hard.

 

[Drathnoxis]

So is it me (and my 2 controllers) or does the game refuse to tilt the screen to the right? I have zero issues "looking" left, down and up but anytime I want to veer the screen to the right the game is unresponsive 9 out of 10 times.

I didn't ever notice a problem looking right. Like it won't let you move the screen more than like 30% off center, but I didn't notice any difference between right and left.

There're some very weird shenanigans going on during boss fights. With The Forgotten I get the impression that sometimes the game confuses the golf swing & birds carrying the ball animations, so she'll do one thing but the game will show you the other, making it look like an impossible shot. The game also tends to stutter or freeze during the bosses' intro/outro. Lots of falling through the ground or animations looping in slowmo. And I'm pretty sure one time I defaulted even though I still had an active Gimmie left. Got sent back to the tutorial, then the game crashed, and the save data got corrupted.

The game remains buggy as hell.

I don't mind the final hole being a gimmicky My Friends Are My Power moment. I consider it a nice victory lap after all the hell that is the rest of the game. The Forgotten remains the toughest boss too, although I think I finally figured out a way to break her with a drillball. Explorer too.

Portals also make the bosses a joke as well, and I'm sure phasing would also. Although the way portals work is a little weird, you can only use a portal if there is enough room beside you for the portal, and the first time I used one I used my wedge, and despite the game saying the ball would go through the portal and where I wanted it, the golfer hit the ball over the portal and into some spikes.

Couple of things I wish changed for the game:

1) Either add shops to the final three holes in the game or stop awarding me money I can't spend after defeating the third boss.

Money is just kind of odd, in that the only purpose seems to be to buy card packs and there's no point to not always just buy as many of the best packs you can afford. I was really surprised that all the different outfits were unlocked by default and you didn't need to spend money or do anything to unlock them. Money may as well not be in the game.

2) The Scotsman's powerup is kinda pointless when you can just quit a hole and reload any time you want, for as many times as you want. Scotsman just gives you one extra try per ROUND, not HOLE. At least make it an extra try per hole, if anything.

I never quit scummed the game at all (not that I haven't in other games), but this is a common problem in roguelikes that don't have the guts to delete your save once you load it, a la Nethack. To be honest, I wasn't really a fan of the boss power-ups at all, they felt a little too OP for my preferences.

3) Banking cards in the binder is useless (why bank stuff you might need if you're about to lose?), especially after The Forgotten lets you keep them.

Definitely, I only banked 3 fireball spells before I got to the jungle biome... then I took them back out again the same round. Honestly, the game gives you so many cards there isn't ever a reason to bank them. I don't know, maybe if you wanted to do some crazy low scoring round it might be worth it to grind for a bunch of OP cards and then be able to use them from the start, but just for a typical run definitely not useful.

4) Wish money would... Maybe not carry over, but change into another form of currency at the end of every round that might slowly build up to some kind of purchase. Like how in Rogue Legacy you get to spend whatever you made before going back in.

Definitely does seem lacking considering the game seems to be going more for rogue-lite than -like.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Nope, regular monitor.

Wow, you are that susceptible to motion sickness? That sucks. I played an hour or so of Danganronpa, and I wouldn't have expected the game to cause it. The only game that ever gave me motion sickness was The Talos Principle for some reason.

 

[Dalisclock]

Depending on what exactly you want from each of these, there's a lot of game that kinda touch both.

You can go the mount and blade (or battle brother if you want fantasy) and that's kinda close.
There's the age of wonder franchise that's also sorta like an in between (or spellforce: conquest of Eo if you want more RPG less 4x)

Problem is more that there's not much like crusader king and having a serious story combined with the freedom of a CK is really hard.

Well, basically there were times during DAI I wished that I got to engage more with the politics of running the Inquisition. WEWH gave me a taste of being able to play the political game but only a taste. Ideally it would be a more expanded, in depth take on the war table where I got to recruit and deploy spies and armies around Thedas while securing alliances by doing power plays and stuff like that. DAI kinda hints at this but it's mostly tell Josie/Cullen/Liliana to deal with it and then you get a blurb of text and maybe an item/money for your trouble.

Especially the whole thing with the new Divine when in game there's a hidden counter that chooses who becomes the new divine based on stuff you say and do but you basically have to look at a guide to figure it out. I'd prefer something like having a more active hand by charming/bribing/intimidating/blackmailing/bumping off members of the chantry and nobility to secure a vote in favor of your preferred divine or something like that. Or have the SIt in Judgement be a lot more meaningful and happen more often.

It's just that everything remotely interesting concerning the Inqusition seems to happen in the background while you go traipse around looking for elf root and planting random flags in the hinterlands. Who is funding the Inquistion? Someone. Joise apparently knows. Where are the Inqusition forces hanging out? Offscreen somewhere. Cullen probably knows. What happens to the Templars/Mages after you seal the breach? Something I guess, they just kinda vanish from the plot after that.

Like not as nitty gritty logistically deep as Crusader Kings but I would have liked to have had some illusion of control and power over this big organization I presumably lead.

 

[meiam]

Well, basically there were times during DAI I wished that I got to engage more with the politics of running the Inquisition. WEWH gave me a taste of being able to play the political game but only a taste. Ideally it would be a more expanded, in depth take on the war table where I got to recruit and deploy spies and armies around Thedas while securing alliances by doing power plays and stuff like that. DAI kinda hints at this but it's mostly tell Josie/Cullen/Liliana to deal with it and then you get a blurb of text and maybe an item/money for your trouble.

Especially the whole thing with the new Divine when in game there's a hidden counter that chooses who becomes the new divine based on stuff you say and do but you basically have to look at a guide to figure it out. I'd prefer something like having a more active hand by charming/bribing/intimidating/blackmailing/bumping off members of the chantry and nobility to secure a vote in favor of your preferred divine or something like that. Or have the SIt in Judgement be a lot more meaningful and happen more often.

It's just that everything remotely interesting concerning the Inqusition seems to happen in the background while you go traipse around looking for elf root and planting random flags in the hinterlands. Who is funding the Inquistion? Someone. Joise apparently knows. Where are the Inqusition forces hanging out? Offscreen somewhere. Cullen probably knows. What happens to the Templars/Mages after you seal the breach? Something I guess, they just kinda vanish from the plot after that.

Like not as nitty gritty logistically deep as Crusader Kings but I would have liked to have had some illusion of control and power over this big organization I presumably lead.

Haven't played it, but this just released.


and there's

 

[Bedinsis]

Wow, you are that susceptible to motion sickness? That sucks. I played an hour or so of Danganronpa, and I wouldn't have expected the game to cause it. The only game that ever gave me motion sickness was The Talos Principle for some reason.

Well I've not experienced it so far; I just fear that if it is a regular thing I might feel it. In Virtue's Last Reward I felt queasy in the Crew's Quarters, since that was a puzzle room that was really four rooms connected via a corridor and the only way to traverse was to rotate around your central axis and click at doors to enter the different rooms, in other words where there was a lot of neck movements. Other than that I think I felt queasy maybe once.

See also post #4970 of this thread.

 

[Baffle]

Geneforge 4. Died in the tutorial.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

It's just that everything remotely interesting concerning the Inqusition seems to happen in the background while you go traipse around looking for elf root and planting random flags in the hinterlands.

And this is the crux of the matter for RPGs that saddle you with running something. If you're supposed to be leading something, why are you off doing stuff that could be handled by some rank and file members? Why aren't you able to delegate the scutwork?

In DAI for the most part, the entire Inquisition seems to consist of all the dead arses that only hang around your base, your companions, Iron Bull's crew and a scout company (who's leader seems to be the only person who wonders why the head of the fucken Inquisition is out doing gruntwork). As the Inquisition supposedly grows the entire set up gets dafter and dafter. You come back from high level diplomatic intrigues and, oh, seems you need to go take down a bandit camp because the mighty Forces of the Inquisition don't seem to be able to round up a few dozen bods to go burn them out... also, because no one else did Flags 101, you have to go stick a few up every where you go... because that's just much more logical than taking an afternoon to teach Introductory Flag Planting to some of your brighter troops.

I guess what I'm getting at is throwing quests and objectives that would fit the average wandering adventurers (murderhobos) at someone who supposedly has rank, status, resources and power makes no fucking sense.

Now all I want to know is how much hotbunking was going on in the Normandy II

 

[EvilRoy]

Decided to give the recent epic freebie Duskers a shot. Very interesting concept, although I found it excessively stressful at times. Its a rougelike which lends itself to exploring the story but leads to very annoying situations at times.

You are alone on a ship that you zip around systems/galaxies in. Everybody is dead, both on your own ship with you as a lone survivor, and every ship you encounter. The goal is effectively to figure out what the hell happened by going to derelect ships that you find and exploring them remotely with drones. You gather info, supplies to travel with, drones, and at times murder... stuff.

The really interesting part is that you can only see the insides of the ship via the drones, and the drones seem to use something along the lines of LIDAR so you don't have a particularly amazing understanding of what is going on in the ships. Stuff that doesn't move is pretty obvious in LIDAR, but moving bodies aren't and you don't get the level of detail to really understand what you're seeing when driving over a corpse. Because of this the different types of what the game calls infestations are readily distinguishable from eachother and have their own behaviors, but without the context of the ship logs you really don't know what you're facing. It adds a neat layer of intrigue and suspense over everything.

The game is played by text commands. The most interactive you can be is grabbing a single drone and using the arrow keys to drive around. The rest of the time, however, you're just typing commands into your little DOS interface to instruct the drones in the ship what to do. Instead of grabbing Drone 02, you just type "Navigate 2 r1; motion" Which causes the drone to first drive to room r1 and then activate a subroutine that runs a motion detector on the rooms adjacent to the drones room. Its a pretty intuitive way to keep track of up to 5 different drones all concentrating on their own tasks.

Each drone can only do three subroutines, one at a time max and the subroutines you get are semi random. That is where the annoying crap comes in. Certain subroutines like motion detection and interface, which allows you to access ship consoles, are kind of friggin critical to making any progress at all. I'm sure a skilled player would do fine without them, but after my tutorial run I literally never got both these commands at the same time again. Didn't exactly get the time to really figure the situation out before losing the two things the game teaches you to use. The many other subroutines, like Lure, Trap and Tow you learn by an in game help prompt and then you just sort of swing wildly and hope to be successful.

I ended up clocking out after a while. I really am interested in the story of the game and the intrigue, but I just cannot be fucked to hope and pray for a good drone loadout on a new run to get there.

 

[Hawki]

Still going through Path of Radiance, I've now completed the pair of ship missions. I'm going to broadly divide my thoughts this time in accordance with their respective areas:

GAMEPLAY

-Boyd's still my MVP. I know that, because for the last few missions Soren's battle report has designated him as such, but still, he's probably my most valuable unit at this point (yes, even more than Ike).

-So I recruited Jill, and...okay, I know a lot of people like Jill as a character (I do, certainly), but as a unit? Compared to Marcia, despite being at similar levels at this point, Jill just comes off as a less efficient version of Marcia (odd, since wyvern riders are usually better than pegasus knights in my experience). Considering the nature of the ship missions, flyers are of course valuable, but the difference is that Marcia usually manages to hit her foes, while Jill doesn't.

-So I recruited Astrid (fun fact, she'll almost certainly die in the first turn of the second ship mission if you don't act quickly), and...oh. Level 1. Yikes. I certainly don't see much point in levelling up Sothe (even if having two thieves was useful in the second ship mission), but I'm torn as to whether I should level up Astrid or not.

-In what's probably against the grain...I'll say it, Brom's actually pretty useful. He's nothing special, and is outshone by Gatrie (who of course, is back in the party now), but as a damage sponge? Yeah, he's got his money's worth. I really don't get why so many people disregard him.

STORY

-I can't help but wonder about the Laguzslayer sword that you can equip characters with. I'm sure Lethe and Mordecai have absolutely nothing to say on that...

-Oh Sanaki, you little scamp.

-I'm going to say something else that may ruffle a few feathers, but this far into the game, I really don't like Elincia as a character. It's not necessarily bad writing, but so far, almost all she's done is just be meek (her sprite represents this), say "oh, my Lord Ike" over and over, and be passive while more assertive characters are around her. This, despite the fact that the main goal of the story at this point (heck, the story as a whole) is reclaiming Crimea, yet as an individual, she's not really doing anything about it.

Now you may say in response that her meekness is the point. Elincia grew up sheltered, hidden from the world, was never intended for the throne, and she's been thrust into circumstances beyond her control. All of that is correct, but multiple chapters on, and over two months having passed in-universe, she's still the same meek girl that Ike and co. found way earlier. You could make the argument that Path of Radiance should actually be Elincia's story rather than Ike's, but the difference is that Ike is a compelling protagonist, while Elincia is just a doormat.

-Other people have explained this better than I have, but basically, when it comes to FE stories, there generally seems to be a spectrum of how far said stories lean towards the fantastical as opposed to the political, with most having a mix of the two. Out of all the FE games I've played to whatever extent (FE6-9, 11), PoR is easily the most political of the bunch, at least of what I've played so far. This doesn't necessarily make it better or worse than the others (e.g. FE7's focus is on telling a smaller, very personal story, and accomplishes it), but it's something I think the game has done exceptionally well so far, especially when it comes to the sense of realpolitik. I'm skipping ahead slightly, but at this time of playing, here's the in-universe situation as it stands:

1: Daein has invaded Crimea, decimiating its army and put it under occupation.

2: Gallia, despite having an alliance with Crimea, can't help, because despite Cannhegis's sympathies, realpolitik prevents him from acting since most laguz hate beorc (and vice versa)

3: Goldoa remains in firm isolation, while Phoenecis and Nevassa don't care about a beorc war.

4: Bengnion, the most powerful country on the continent, has no reason whatsoever to aid Elincia and Crimea, since they stand to gain nothing, and Elincia's claim is highly tenuous.

To be clear, I'm not saying that PoR is some kind of in-depth look at war and politics (it's no A Song of Ice and Fire for instance), but by the standards of the series and most games in general? Pretty well done. It's actually refreshing to see so much cynicism in the world, where despite Daein's attrocities, the reaction of every other monarch is "fuck you, got mine."

So, yeah. Pretty neat. Could see FE10 surpassing FE7 for me, which means it enters my top ten GOAT list, and would be high on an RPG list, so, um, yeah.

 

[meiam]

Geneforge 4. Died in the tutorial.

That's one of the franchise that I always see but never actually tried. I've never really been into ultima still of RPG so I don't think it would suit me, but it always intrigued.

 

[Absent]

It adds a neat layer of intrigue and suspense over everything.

I had played it a bit back then and indeed loved its atmosphere. Very "aliens", somehow. I just love exploring derelicts and piecing out what had happened (spoiler : the exact same thing has happened everytime in every game, movie, whatever).

Also, as the KSP2 release is an abject failure, heartbreakingly enough, I decided to reinstall KSP1 and check out my old save with some visual mods. It's nice. But it makes my computer's fans whirl fast enough to propel it to orbit.

 

[Bedinsis]

Playing the first Danganronpa. The first murder mystery has been solved and the second murder has occurred.

It feels like a lesser Phoenix Wright so far. A more fast-paced and forgiving Phoenix Wright. In Phoenix Wright there is usually a witness that might present a series of statements which you must present the correct argument to counter, akin to

Witness statement 1: "I could not have possibly have killed Mr. Body!"
Witness statement 2: "I was not even in this country at the time."
Witness statement 3: "I had gone to Nairobi. On tiger safari."
Witness statement 4: "The mere thought that I would do something like that? Ridiculous."

and then you pick out a piece of evidence to counter from your inventory, in the example you'd present the book The Great cats on statement 3 to reveal that there are no tigers in Africa, so the witness is lying. You can also Press certain statements to find out additional info/hints/just general dialogue.

In Danganronpa there is still a series of statements, but they are all collectively told by all the people present, some statements are marked as weaker i.e. one of the ones that must be countered, and the game has already said that "It is one of these pieces of evidence/this piece of evidence that you must use to counter.". It is also presented with a time limit, but it is generous enough that I've not had any problem there.

Due to the presentation I don't think the puzzles will be that challenging; in the first trial I got an A ranking and I still made a couple mistakes. I had also figured out the solution more or less before the trial started. The above description was not the only way they presented murder mystery puzzles in the trial, and it was a bit annoying to interrupt what I was doing to listen to another tutorial of how the next section would be presented, but I might get accustomed to it. One mode, bullet time battle, was however superfluous and boring.

Apart from that: this has gotta be the weirdest key layout for navigation I've encountered in a video game. It might be more intuitive if you are accustomed to WASD-movements but for me it was confusing.

 

[XsjadoBlaydette]

Bloodroots. Seems to have high reviews, and as a Hotline Miami type game, was kinda hoping to enjoy it more than did. Not sure why. Just something ain't clicking, not feeling as cathartic or visually clear. The colour palette also looks like it talks about me behind my back.

So Ruined King it is then. It keeps saying it's some shit to do with League of Legends, but every time I play it i just gravitate to the assumption it's in the Battle Chasers universe. Doesn't help they share the same artist: the one perhaps more well known for the Darksiders series. Nor the same turn based gameplay (with some interesting new mechanics tbf). Nor the same streamlined loot/equipment screen and system. Nor the similar tone of earnest cartoon fantasy dialogue. You know what, it's just more comforting for my peace of mind to think of this as a Battle Chasers spin-off...the thought of having to look into League of Legends outside of this is unpleasant and intimidating. Game ain't bad so far, is what I was trying to say.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Decided to give the recent epic freebie Duskers a shot. Very interesting concept, although I found it excessively stressful at times. Its a rougelike which lends itself to exploring the story but leads to very annoying situations at times.

You are alone on a ship that you zip around systems/galaxies in. Everybody is dead, both on your own ship with you as a lone survivor, and every ship you encounter. The goal is effectively to figure out what the hell happened by going to derelect ships that you find and exploring them remotely with drones. You gather info, supplies to travel with, drones, and at times murder... stuff.

The really interesting part is that you can only see the insides of the ship via the drones, and the drones seem to use something along the lines of LIDAR so you don't have a particularly amazing understanding of what is going on in the ships. Stuff that doesn't move is pretty obvious in LIDAR, but moving bodies aren't and you don't get the level of detail to really understand what you're seeing when driving over a corpse. Because of this the different types of what the game calls infestations are readily distinguishable from eachother and have their own behaviors, but without the context of the ship logs you really don't know what you're facing. It adds a neat layer of intrigue and suspense over everything.

The game is played by text commands. The most interactive you can be is grabbing a single drone and using the arrow keys to drive around. The rest of the time, however, you're just typing commands into your little DOS interface to instruct the drones in the ship what to do. Instead of grabbing Drone 02, you just type "Navigate 2 r1; motion" Which causes the drone to first drive to room r1 and then activate a subroutine that runs a motion detector on the rooms adjacent to the drones room. Its a pretty intuitive way to keep track of up to 5 different drones all concentrating on their own tasks.

Each drone can only do three subroutines, one at a time max and the subroutines you get are semi random. That is where the annoying crap comes in. Certain subroutines like motion detection and interface, which allows you to access ship consoles, are kind of friggin critical to making any progress at all. I'm sure a skilled player would do fine without them, but after my tutorial run I literally never got both these commands at the same time again. Didn't exactly get the time to really figure the situation out before losing the two things the game teaches you to use. The many other subroutines, like Lure, Trap and Tow you learn by an in game help prompt and then you just sort of swing wildly and hope to be successful.

I ended up clocking out after a while. I really am interested in the story of the game and the intrigue, but I just cannot be fucked to hope and pray for a good drone loadout on a new run to get there.

Played it for an hour or two because I'm interested in roguelikes with different gameplay styles. It's pretty dull, though. Ok, search this ship for minimal rewards, ok do it again, and again, and again, and again. Great I found 13 scrap at that last ship, that will be enough to repair one of the drone upgrades that started breaking on that last mission, wow. The game is very slow and methodical too, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the puzzles, at least early on, were pretty simple. Just open doors strategically and route enemies into out of the way rooms or into turrets or a room with a bomb or something. I think you might also be able to suck them out of airlocks, but I never tried that.

Yeah, not really sure what you'd do if you didn't have anything like motion or sensor. I guess just open a door and run away if you see red. Interface didn't seem all that useful, pretty much every terminal I used it on just gave me a map of the ship.

I'm also not really sure of my goal. I went through a warp gate and ended up in a different part of the universe map, but I'm not really sure how that matters.

The game could also use some music.

 

[Piscian]

I finished Tales Of Arise tonight.

I think my last few hours with it can most accurately convey my thoughts. I played in around 1 hours sessions throughout the weekend. I just kept getting kind of worn out on the enemies in the final dungeon, just the same thing over and over, so Id need to take a breather and go watch tv or something. That said I actually took time to go beat a couple optional bosses for fun before the final fight. I enjoy the combat quite a bit when its new enemies. Theres a fishing minigame thats fairly amusing so I finished that.

The ending was pretty solid. Not convoluted or particularly deep. It definitely felt rewarding seeing the characters finish their story.

That said, I just was not enveloped in it. Theres a few post game side quests, but I could not talk myself into doing anything more in the game.

I think I ended up around 58 hours and did literally everything worth doing in the game. Youd think 58 hours means it must have been good, but Id have to counter that for me it was largely just sunk cost.

Was a solid 7.5/10 but I just dont think youre missing on any kind if hidden gem. Very overrated imo.


I started Atomic Heart. Good God the dialogue is atrocious. Its a pretty game though. Gonna try and stick with it.

 

[Zykon TheLich]

I bought a hitman bundle on the steam xmas sale and keep meaning to start playing but having had no experience of the games I wondered which would be recommended as the starting point. I have Blood Money, Absolution, sniper challenge and hitman 1 and 2 (the recent ones). Blood money is 1st chronologically but I guess might be a bit old and janky feeling. Absolution I heard was a bit stinky. Any advice etc?

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Bloodroots. Seems to have high reviews, and as a Hotline Miami type game, was kinda hoping to enjoy it more than did. Not sure why. Just something ain't clicking, not feeling as cathartic or visually clear. The colour palette also looks like it talks about me behind my back.

I really loved Bloodroots. I can't say if it's like "objectively" great or not, I dunno, I think it was just something I was really in the mood for. I like the fast pace of the game, and that it's really a puzzle platformer disguised as a combat game, and how satisfying it is to string together a series of kills that uses the objects around you. It's this perfect mix of strategy and button-mashing.