What are you currently playing?

[Worgen]

I think the overly empathetic part is what bothers me. Just seems like she gets choked up and emotional in nearly every conversation.

I really didn't get that.

 

[Ag3ma]

though dame Aylin being in my camp doing nothing at all is a little disappointing. Even when Mizora starts hanging around camp you'd think this literal angel would have some comments on this, but no.

Honestly, one of the things that doesn't really work for me in a sense is that you've got a load of people sitting in your camp doing SFA whilst only a few go out questing. And yet you can also swap them in out instantly (if you don't count the clumsy camp cutscene), as if they really are tagging along with you actually, just off-screen.

There's a lot to really admire about BG3, especially in terms of the interactability of the world and the stuff you can do and it's up there in GOTY shortlists just for that. But some of the elements (including writing and narrative) are very, very average or awkward.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Not really, hacking is what changed the most, it was super simple and pretty much boiled down to hiding in a corner while the hack did everything, if you want the same experience you can just drop the difficulty. The other build all had less skill that would change the gameplay, instead they just had more skill that would give you passive buff. The options in cyberpart really increased and most of them now have actual gameplay effect rather than just stats and there's impact from leveling your character skill.

Its true that tech is hard to pass up on, but you don't really have to fully invest in it, you get most of the impact from getting to 9 in it (the third stats from parts). 15 unlock two new cyberpart slots, but its unlikely that you'll fully fill all your slot til much later in game. 20 give yous + 50 cybemodification point, thats a lot early game, but not that much as the game progress. Int can be passed up on easily, hacking is fun, but you have to give up bullet time for it, and you need to heavily invest in int for it to actually get good. I'd say reflex is more useful for that air dash.

I wasn't just talking about regular combat gameplay when it comes to Int and Tech. I've seen far more attribute checks for Int and Tech than any other attribute. The last attribute check I can remember for Cool was to let me take a fucking selfie.

More often than not these attribute checks lead to almost objectively better endings to quests, and more importantly, they make you feel like your decision to be a techie or a netrunner actually matters.

So far my decision to focus on being a headhunter hasn't exactly affected the story in any way. Any characterization of my V as a silent bringer of death is all in my head and not in the game.

 

[BrawlMan]

Prison City - An 8-bit retro platformer taking place in my home city, Detroit. In the far off year of....1997! The game is basically Escape from NY, but in Detroit. Radical. There are some minor Metal Gear shout outs as well. Tough platformer too, but comes with plenty of difficulty options for those that want an easier game. There are 8 stages total, and they can be selected in any order you wish. So far I cleared the Rooftops stage.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Honestly, one of the things that doesn't really work for me in a sense is that you've got a load of people sitting in your camp doing SFA whilst only a few go out questing. And yet you can also swap them in out instantly (if you don't count the clumsy camp cutscene), as if they really are tagging along with you actually, just off-screen.

Every turn-based combat game man. *sigh*

I'm still hoping that one day, ONE DAY, someone is going to make one where you can have your whole gang on the field with you. Just 6 or 7 guys during combat... a guy can dream.

There's a lot to really admire about BG3, especially in terms of the interactability of the world and the stuff you can do and it's up there in GOTY shortlists just for that. But some of the elements (including writing and narrative) are very, very average or awkward.

One thing this game runs into that practically every morality infused RPG runs into is that being evil really doesn't seem worth it. Most quests are designed to have the player help someone, and if you're going for an evil or even just a jerk run, why would you bother helping anyone? Being a good guy is still easier and grants you a lot more content than being a bad guy. Not that I really wanna be the bad guy though - I've heard a lot about Minthara as a character, but I'm not going to kill off a refugee camp just to get her on my team. And the recently patched method where you don't have to do that but can still recruit her later breaks the narrative if you have Halsin at your camp (who refuses to acknowledge her eventhough she's standing right behind him at his tent).

I've also found that now that I have a better understanding of how to build the characrters to their strength, Balanced/Normal difficulty is really kinda a cake walk. I remember the first floor at Moonrise with Z'rell being impossible on my initial (unfinished) run, and I had to find a way to sneak past. But on my current run I had Lae'zel misty step right to her and just terminate the fuck out of her in one turn.

 

[Ag3ma]

Every turn-based combat game man. *sigh*

I'm still hoping that one day, ONE DAY, someone is going to make one where you can have your whole gang on the field with you. Just 6 or 7 guys during combat... a guy can dream.

I think the reason that they often don't is that it can cause massive balancing problems. Because AIs tend to be cheaply coded (e.g. AI keeps preferentially attacking the squishy mage), the end result is that any and every combat - especially an ambush where the AI gets first strike - is liable to end with party members knocked out or even killed almost instantly. Other forms of RPGs are able to handle this better, for instance blobbers where your party often has a built-in formation which means the back characters can't be readily targetted (in cRPGs, the enemy just tends to bypass your tanks even if they take attacks of opportunity doing so.)

One thing this game runs into that practically every morality infused RPG runs into is that being evil really doesn't seem worth it.

Agreed. Games are set up for neutral-good heroes because devs know that's what most people want to play. Evil run-throughs exist because at least a few players want them, but not so many players it's worth putting the same development effort in so it's more like an afterthought. Fundamentally you behave like a dick but people agree to work with you. Why? In reality, they'd kick you to the curb, or have no motivation to help you even if you're the "chosen one" because why replace one big bad with another? Never mind that you're like an evil half-arse who had to hijack someone else's domination scheme because you were too shit to make your own.

 

[Zykon TheLich]

So far my decision to focus on being a headhunter hasn't exactly affected the story in any way. Any characterization of my V as a silent bringer of death is all in my head and not in the game.

Yeah, it's not really an RPG where you can play your own character and make any real choices, it's a set story to play through in which you can choose slightly different combat skills and an open world that you can kind of fuck around in a bit but not really interact with. It's a good story, but yeah...

 

[NerfedFalcon]

I'm still hoping that one day, ONE DAY, someone is going to make one where you can have your whole gang on the field with you. Just 6 or 7 guys during combat... a guy can dream.

It exists and it's called Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War. While I struggle to recommend it on the whole, perhaps you'll enjoy it based on the feeling of moving up to 20 units (representing your entire army at any one time) per turn. And there will be a lot of turns to do this with, because maps are huge and bad guys are plentiful.

The story's excellent, at least. I recommend Project Naga's translation (originally only released in Japan).

~~
OT: Just before the special Trailblazer League mode of Old School Runescape ends (on Wednesday), I managed to clear my first raid. Not on the 'I can actually expect to get the unique loot table' difficulty, but I've at least managed to move up from 'is this your first time raiding ever?'

 

[Piscian]

Honestly, one of the things that doesn't really work for me in a sense is that you've got a load of people sitting in your camp doing SFA whilst only a few go out questing. And yet you can also swap them in out instantly (if you don't count the clumsy camp cutscene), as if they really are tagging along with you actually, just off-screen.

Coming into the conversation late so I may be off-base, but that was my big complaint about FF:tactics. You get like 35 characters and can only use like 5 or 6 per battle. Killed a lot of the joy for me.

It exists and it's called Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War. While I struggle to recommend it on the whole, perhaps you'll enjoy it based on the feeling of moving up to 20 units (representing your entire army at any one time) per turn. And there will be a lot of turns to do this with, because maps are huge and bad guys are plentiful.

On the flipside if you want full on psychotic levels of troop deploy theres Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga. Last I played I had something like 105 characters, spread among 15 squads going into each battle. The Micro management got a little intense for me after a while though.

 

[Bartholen]

I played through some of the various endings in Cyberpunk 2077 yesterday. Christ, the deviations can be huge. To my knowledge there are like 10 different endings counting Phantom Liberty, each of which can have like 2 hours of completely unique content. Though playing through them it can feel like the game is contriving itself to give you feels-bad vibes or deny you closure in order to preserve the "no happy endings" mantra.

Spoiler: For example

I played through both the Aldecaldos endings, ie. gave Johnny my body and also not. In the ending where I gave Johnny my body you specifically don't hear from Panam, and many other characters end up not really knowing what happens to V in the end. But in-universe Panam is literally the first living person to see what happens to V/Johnny. She knows, she's right there with you. And the game going out of its way to not show her reaction in any way feels kind of cheap. She's probably not happy, but it would have been an amazing emotional payoff regardless. Now, I don't know if the ending messages change based on your relationship with Johnny (and I'm not about to go through another 40 hours to try to find out), but after everything V and him went through, him just peacing out and not even letting his friends know what happened just feels hollow. V literally gave you his life, dude, the least you could do is a text!

 

[Drathnoxis]

For a number of months I've been playing 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim and I find it difficult to make progress. I'm 50% through the game now. I think the story's pretty interesting and the tactical segments are fine if a bit abstract, but I'll do a couple story chunks and a battle and then think "well, that's enough for today." Meanwhile my percentage counter has gone up by 1 or 2 percent. I don't know, something about it doesn't grab me. It's basically a visual novel with a real time strategy bolted on, the story and gameplay are even located in completely different modes. There really isn't much to do in the VN segments but interact with the one or two things available and when there is a branching path you need to do them all anyway. The RTS bits are a bit easy, even on 'Intense' I'm S-ranking most missions first try and getting the bonus objective. I think the game should have been an anime instead.

Maybe I'll be finished the game by next January.

Also I ascended a knight in Nethack. That's every role now except caveman. Knights were kind of annoying with their code of conduct and their big advantage from jousting on a horse is hard to make work. First the lance is way too heavy to really carry around. Second you need a bit of luck so your lance doesn't have a chance of breaking. Third you need a mount and it's pretty tough to keep a mount alive if you don't have the healing spell. Poor Rocinante stepped on a polymorph trap within the first 20 steps of Dlvl 8 (the first floor they can generate) and turned into a bat. I used up a wand of polymorph trying to make them into something I could ride again, but they ended up as an ice devil. That was a pretty convenient monster for the early game, but still nothing I could ride. Basically by the time you have everything ready to start using your lance (if you still have your horse) you might as well not bother because you probably have an enchanted Excalibur by that point. The only other notable occurrences were that I accidentally ate the food shop clerk instead of the food ration and got stuck with cannibalism for the rest of the run. I don't think this was that bad for a knight actually because the aggravate monster intrinsic helped wake up monsters so I didn't get an alignment penalty for hitting sleeping monsters and the luck penalty was pretty easy to correct by that point in the game. The run wasn't too hard overall, especially since I found a wand of wishing on Dlvl 15, so there wasn't much challenge with 14 wishes.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Since I played the campaign of Diablo 4 in 2023 I figured it would only be fair to try the free to play Path of Exile. I know that game is a whole... thing but I was just curious about the look of it and mechanics. And, yeah, just confirmed this sort of thing is not for me- walking around pushing two buttons to attack the same enemies over and over. I know the thrill of it is the leveling and stats and whatever but... meh.

Not sure if I mentioned I was playign Crisis Core Final Fantasy 7 Reunion but I finished it. I was actually going to 100% but when I saw how many repetitive missions there were and the huge difficulty spike between beating the main game and doing all the side stuff I tapped out. Leveling bullshit aside, the game was fun and I'm sure anyone who likes FF7 story and characters would get a kick out of it, as four major characters from FF7 appear in it (at least three, I dunno if there are other easter eggs or whatever, since I only played FF7 Remake).

 

[Casual Shinji]

Just beat Cazador in Baldur's Gate 3. That dude was one hot steaming pain in the ass to fight. Neither Ketheric nor Orin were this aggravating to beat. But I think I just fucked up by freeing what I thought were a dozen or so vampire spawn, but are actually a couple of thousand into the Underdark. Maybe I'll reload.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Finished Chants of Sennaar and loved it! Cool adventure game with a fun, diverse array of deduction puzzles and an unexpectedly lovely ending. You're not just figuring out languages, you also end up translating from one to another, with the added challenge that each peoples phrases their sentences slightly differently, and some languages are more abstract or scientific than others; numbers (fantasy sigils) and equations eventually show up to complicate things further. This is all the precise measure of complication, with the precise refreshment of ideas, to keep me riveted.

There're some irritating (forced) stealth sections but nothing that ruined the experience for me; they're too infrequent and not that punishing. I think the irritation mostly comes from them being so unlike the rest of the game.

 

[XsjadoBlaydette]

Doubling up on cute capitalism simulators with Dave the Diver and Moonlighter. The interlocking system loops are particularly sly with their addictive properties, as it's kinda difficult to promise oneself to put down game after a run when all these items gotta be sorted n stacked first, oh and while here might as well check what new stuff they may have made available...ooh damn, looks like we're just short of a shiny upgrade alright let's briefly open shop to sell some goodies first. - after some sales, got the cash plus more, let's gooooo retail therapy! What that? There's enough for 2 upgrades and a new item?? Excellent! Now's the perfect time to bookmark this and put it down till tomoz or whatever.


Couldn't ask for a more perfect bookmark opportunity, really.


...

ok still sticking to plan but first gotta quick test these new bad boys out in the fields ...

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I started my first foray into Dogtown. It really is just Cyberpunk at it's best. The side missions have good writing, interesting characters, and are all more or less unique, which helps lessen the feeling of burnout that I was getting from trying to complete all the gigs in Night City. The world is dense, detailed, and gorgeously awful. I guess you could still say the game world still is really only there for eye candy, but what eye candy it is.

As for the actual Phantom Liberty quest line.... Hmmm, I don't know. Rescuing the President is a fun idea, but both Johnny and V's reactions to the whole shebang seem off. I would have thought Johnny would be wayyyyy more pissed about having to do the gig, and V just takes the whole thing in stride.

I had heard that Idris Elba is a bit of a disappointing voice actor, and yup. Gotta agree. Sometimes it even feels like his audio files are of a lower quality or something, because he is just so noticeably monotone. Keanu was hardly consistent, but I always felt his Johnny really fit the game and the character. Idris is just... here.

 

[BrawlMan]

I started my first foray into Dogtown. It really is just Cyberpunk at it's best. The side missions have good writing, interesting characters, and are all more or less unique, which helps lessen the feeling of burnout that I was getting from trying to complete all the gigs in Night City. The world is dense, detailed, and gorgeously awful. I guess you could still say the game world still is really only there for eye candy, but what eye candy it is.

As for the actual Phantom Liberty quest line.... Hmmm, I don't know. Rescuing the President is a fun idea, but both Johnny and V's reactions to the whole shebang seem off. I would have thought Johnny would be wayyyyy more pissed about having to do the gig, and V just takes the whole thing in stride.

I had heard that Idris Elba is a bit of a disappointing voice actor, and yup. Gotta agree. Sometimes it even feels like his audio files are of a lower quality or something, because he is just so noticeably monotone. Keanu was hardly consistent, but I always felt his Johnny really fit the game and the character. Idris is just... here.

Kind of sad, because he killed it as Knuckles in Sonic 2 (2022). I'm wondering if it's a voice direction thing.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Working past my discomfort with first person games, I played the entirety of Firewatch while waiting for a utilities repairman that never showed up.
Folks really love this game and it's gotta be the vibes, the intrigue, because it's really just wandering out and talking. But those vibes are good and when I wasn't confused about trying to follow map I got into it.
In true modern indy game sprit it's about a potentially supernatural or conspiracy creepy situation but it's really about your own sadness, isn't it always. I liked it and the length was perfect for it.

 

[gorfias]

Rearranging my office and dug up my NES and SNES classic and set them up. Just played Super Punch Out (1994) on my 39"LED TV that I am using as a PC monitor for now. Didn't look to bad.

 

[BrawlMan]

Rearranging my office and dug up my NES and SNES classic and set them up. Just played Super Punch Out (1994) on my 39"LED TV that I am using as a PC monitor for now. Didn't look to bad.

I should remind myself to bust out my T-16 Mini some time, and the Sega Genesis Mini 2.