What are you currently playing?

[Worgen]

Still playing Blaster Master Zero 2 and I gotta say, these games keep impressing me. The difficulty is nicely bumped from the first game, which was much too easy. (there is a higher difficulty mode called destroyer, but you have to beat the game with the true ending to play it) the new characters are fun, it also goes some places that I wasn't expecting. I think I am getting near the end, looking forward to seeing where the story goes and what I will be doing in 3.

 

[BrawlMan]

Playing Ninja Gaiden III (NES) - A special rom hack version where the US version plays more like the Japanese version, and brings back missing graphical features and sounds.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

For the last week or so, I decided to go back to The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and finish that up, which I finally achieved tonight. It's... I don't want to dislike it. It's got a lot going for it; a good story, a great visual style, a charming cast of characters, some decent dungeons and items... but ultimately, what brings the game down is a non-stop sequence of minor issues building up until they're too big, as a group, to ignore. That and it's just kind of easy, which may not necessarily be a "flaw" as such (YMMV), but I just don't really go for it. Ocarina's generally better put together, Majora is the storytelling GOAT, and while I won't say Twilight Princess is a perfect game, far from it, its highs are a lot higher than TWW's in my opinion. And then there's Breath of the Wild, which is practically just its own (really great) thing...

Probably won't play it again, with all those other options from the same series on my list (I did beat Ocarina once before but a replay could be nice), but if you've ever thought about it, and you have the means to play it, worth giving a shot. The worst main-series Zelda (which is not TWW) is still better than most games. Just, don't feel bad if you end up giving up on it, like I almost did several times.

 

[Dreiko]

Been playing a bunch of Darkest Dungeon 2 since the ps5 version just came out. It's streamlined in some ways and the rng impacts you more heavily now that you can't permanently store trinkets so you kinda have to adapt on the fly based on what you end up finding, but besides those growing pains it's just more of the amazing atmosphere, cool art style (they did an amazing job translating it into 3D, it looks identical, to the point where if it's static you can't tell it's not 2D) and difficult but fair boss fights. I love how they give roles to the classes so each of them can play differently, they even change what their attacks do.


The best part so far is giving some backstory to all the classes, which unlock more skills too. The only issue is you kinda have to prioritize them early on cause without all the skills you can't really take on the harder bosses, so it's basically a slow grind for the first 10-20 hours or so.

But yeah, this is the sort of indie everyone should support. I heard they're making a new dlc expansion too, and that it's free for everyone.

 

[meiam]

For the last week or so, I decided to go back to The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and finish that up, which I finally achieved tonight. It's... I don't want to dislike it. It's got a lot going for it; a good story, a great visual style, a charming cast of characters, some decent dungeons and items... but ultimately, what brings the game down is a non-stop sequence of minor issues building up until they're too big, as a group, to ignore. That and it's just kind of easy, which may not necessarily be a "flaw" as such (YMMV), but I just don't really go for it. Ocarina's generally better put together, Majora is the storytelling GOAT, and while I won't say Twilight Princess is a perfect game, far from it, its highs are a lot higher than TWW's in my opinion. And then there's Breath of the Wild, which is practically just its own (really great) thing...

Probably won't play it again, with all those other options from the same series on my list (I did beat Ocarina once before but a replay could be nice), but if you've ever thought about it, and you have the means to play it, worth giving a shot. The worst main-series Zelda (which is not TWW) is still better than most games. Just, don't feel bad if you end up giving up on it, like I almost did several times.

WW had to be rushed out the door and lots was cut and it shows sadly, still quite enjoyed it, but doesn't reach the height of ocarina. Twillight left very little impression on me outside of it being just really easy.

 

[Drathnoxis]

... but ultimately, what brings the game down is a non-stop sequence of minor issues building up until they're too big, as a group, to ignore.

Kind of curious what you are referring to in particular.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Kind of curious what you are referring to in particular.

It's hard for me to put into words, especially after the fact, but it's things like certain enemies that are just constantly annoying to fight, that the game forces you to fight a lot more times than it should. Pretty much every time a Wizzrobe or Darknut appeared, I was like 'oh god, not another one.'

Worst instance of that is when you have to redo all the dungeon bosses again in Ganon's Tower at the end, and for some reason the game takes away a bunch of your items from your inventory to make you do the fight exactly as you did last time rather than experimenting with faster methods using newer items. And because it changes your inventory like that, it removes all the items from your equipment slots so that you have to re-equip everything, even if you were already equipped with items you're "allowed" to use. And it gets better - most of the bosses aren't varied enough that having access to items from later in the game would even make it possible to do the fights any differently to the first time, because they're only weak to the one item from that dungeon anyway, so there's no reason to take away all the other items in the first place.

It's things like that that make me not want to go back to it again any time soon.

 

[Drathnoxis]

It's hard for me to put into words, especially after the fact, but it's things like certain enemies that are just constantly annoying to fight, that the game forces you to fight a lot more times than it should. Pretty much every time a Wizzrobe or Darknut appeared, I was like 'oh god, not another one.'

Worst instance of that is when you have to redo all the dungeon bosses again in Ganon's Tower at the end, and for some reason the game takes away a bunch of your items from your inventory to make you do the fight exactly as you did last time rather than experimenting with faster methods using newer items. And because it changes your inventory like that, it removes all the items from your equipment slots so that you have to re-equip everything, even if you were already equipped with items you're "allowed" to use. And it gets better - most of the bosses aren't varied enough that having access to items from later in the game would even make it possible to do the fights any differently to the first time, because they're only weak to the one item from that dungeon anyway, so there's no reason to take away all the other items in the first place.

It's things like that that make me not want to go back to it again any time soon.

Huh, not really what I expected. A lot more minor really. I kind of expected you'd complain about the triforce hunt or constantly changing the wind direction. Were you playing the original or the remaster?

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Huh, not really what I expected. A lot more minor really. I kind of expected you'd complain about the triforce hunt or constantly changing the wind direction.

Figured those go without saying, and I'd rather talk about something that I experienced that I'd never heard anyone else talk about.

Were you playing the original or the remaster?

Original.

 

[Worgen]

Been playing a bunch of Darkest Dungeon 2 since the ps5 version just came out. It's streamlined in some ways and the rng impacts you more heavily now that you can't permanently store trinkets so you kinda have to adapt on the fly based on what you end up finding, but besides those growing pains it's just more of the amazing atmosphere, cool art style (they did an amazing job translating it into 3D, it looks identical, to the point where if it's static you can't tell it's not 2D) and difficult but fair boss fights. I love how they give roles to the classes so each of them can play differently, they even change what their attacks do.


The best part so far is giving some backstory to all the classes, which unlock more skills too. The only issue is you kinda have to prioritize them early on cause without all the skills you can't really take on the harder bosses, so it's basically a slow grind for the first 10-20 hours or so.

But yeah, this is the sort of indie everyone should support. I heard they're making a new dlc expansion too, and that it's free for everyone.

I keep having the urge to play that again. I should really also prioritize getting skills before other stuff. I have a weird thing that makes me subconsciously try and make roguelikes as hard as possible by playing sub optimally since I worry about unlocking everything and making things too easy. Usually it works fine, but I'm also just not very good at Darkest Dungeon, so it really just ends up frustrating me.

 

[Dreiko]

I keep having the urge to play that again. I should really also prioritize getting skills before other stuff. I have a weird thing that makes me subconsciously try and make roguelikes as hard as possible by playing sub optimally since I worry about unlocking everything and making things too easy. Usually it works fine, but I'm also just not very good at Darkest Dungeon, so it really just ends up frustrating me.

This time around the rng is so heavy that it feels more like trying to make lemons out of lemonade than getting OP and having it feel too easy so I really wouldn't worry about that lmao. Like there's this one boss that locks you out completely unless you use the evade mechanic, which is only ever present in 2 out of the 14 or however many classes there are, and one of them doesn't even unlock it until later lol. Basically you wanna just slowly accumulate information about how to approach the game, and then you should always barely survive at best, if you're not too unlucky.


I played the first one a ton, and while the combat gameplay itself feels more or less the same but more complex and intricate, the stuff surrounding it is all totally different so just learning how the game behaves in those parts takes tens of hours.

Like for example, you know how you can spend your hope candles to improve your heroes, giving them more passives and unique trinkets and unique roles and whatnot? Well, the last thing in that tree gives you an inn item. Nothing too crazy right? Wrong! Those inn items are special, the hero comes having them in their inventory right away for every run, you don't have to rng them or buy em. And they're all super effective too. But nowhere in the game does it tell you this, so if you try to level each class evenly and don't just go ham on your favorite (did that with Rogue, riposte is still OP) you will not discover this until way later. I just found out yesterday and just that little bit makes a huge difference in starting out a run on the right foot, and there's tons of stuff like that where you just gotta experiment yourself and figure out what works and what doesn't a little at a time.



But yeah for some classes, like the Occultist especially, they don't shine until you have their entire skillset available. I really love what they did with him, he went from a debuffer healer to a glass cannon powerhouse.

 

[Drathnoxis]

This time around the rng is so heavy that it feels more like trying to make lemons out of lemonade than getting OP and having it feel too easy so I really wouldn't worry about that lmao. Like there's this one boss that locks you out completely unless you use the evade mechanic, which is only ever present in 2 out of the 14 or however many classes there are, and one of them doesn't even unlock it until later lol. Basically you wanna just slowly accumulate information about how to approach the game, and then you should always barely survive at best, if you're not too unlucky.


I played the first one a ton, and while the combat gameplay itself feels more or less the same but more complex and intricate, the stuff surrounding it is all totally different so just learning how the game behaves in those parts takes tens of hours.

Like for example, you know how you can spend your hope candles to improve your heroes, giving them more passives and unique trinkets and unique roles and whatnot? Well, the last thing in that tree gives you an inn item. Nothing too crazy right? Wrong! Those inn items are special, the hero comes having them in their inventory right away for every run, you don't have to rng them or buy em. And they're all super effective too. But nowhere in the game does it tell you this, so if you try to level each class evenly and don't just go ham on your favorite (did that with Rogue, riposte is still OP) you will not discover this until way later. I just found out yesterday and just that little bit makes a huge difference in starting out a run on the right foot, and there's tons of stuff like that where you just gotta experiment yourself and figure out what works and what doesn't a little at a time.



But yeah for some classes, like the Occultist especially, they don't shine until you have their entire skillset available. I really love what they did with him, he went from a debuffer healer to a glass cannon powerhouse.

Is the game painfully slow like the first was? I remember I had to mod the walking and combat speeds to make grinding up heroes in the same dungeons over and over bearable, and I pretty much never mod games.

 

[Dreiko]

Is the game painfully slow like the first was? I remember I had to mod the walking and combat speeds to make grinding up heroes in the same dungeons over and over bearable, and I pretty much never mod games.

There's no walking, it's very different outside of the combat. You're riding on your stagecoach towards a mountain which automatically moves at a steady pace, crossing multiple zones that are like the first game's dungeons, with inns in-between them for resting and purchases, and you fight a boss at the end, and then repeat it with increased difficulty and complexity, the more bosses you beat the longer the trip becomes, and new zones unlock. As you ride there's dozens of randomized encounters with all sorts of things from helpless people asking to be saved to enemies and shrines that play story segments and merchants and an oasis and so on.

The game is streamlined in that you don't really need to grind and you don't lose as much from dying, you always have every class available and if someone dies mid-run but you survive to the inn (not an easy task at all) you can fill their spot with someone else from the unrecruited classes, and those who survived a mountain boss get these memories that are passive buffs, significant ones, and if they die they lose those, but that's all, things like upgraded skills are done on a run-by-run basis as opposed to being things you build towards with your resources after adventuring, and there's no equipment or hero leveling either. Heroes just unlock more skills by you doing their shrine events, and skill unlocks are free and permanent, which is very easy to do, it just takes a while cause they have way more moves now, each one has like 11 moves now, and can have 5 active at a time. And trinkets again you just find as you are out on the field when you defeat enemies and run into merchants and so on. It's all very streamlined, there's just 1 resource you collect to power up which is these candles of hope, and everything else you just scrounge up as you're doing the adventure. Each run gives you just enough money to buy stuff with too.


As for the combat itself, they have de-emphasized healing and defensive tactics including stun a whole hell of a lot (healing skills require you to be under a certain % of health to become usable) so the old approach of stunlocking and constantly healing your team to max health to slowly defeat enemies is not valid any longer, but there's a ton more stuff in the combat to take its place too. I wouldn't say it's overall that much faster but it's more aggressive and complex by a whole lot.


Basically this game is not nearly as much about leveling your stuff as the first one was, and more about trial and error so you figure out how to defeat the enemies and what skills do and what skill combinations work and so on. It's like you're trapped in an endless nightmare while the world around you has gone to hell and you're trying to stay sane while keeping hope alive and confess your sins that somehow caused this situation. Each sin corresponding to a boss fight.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Well, I just got a copy of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door on Switch, so there go the next two weeks of my life or so probably.

 

[Drathnoxis]

There's no walking, it's very different outside of the combat. You're riding on your stagecoach towards a mountain which automatically moves at a steady pace, crossing multiple zones that are like the first game's dungeons, with inns in-between them for resting and purchases, and you fight a boss at the end, and then repeat it with increased difficulty and complexity, the more bosses you beat the longer the trip becomes, and new zones unlock. As you ride there's dozens of randomized encounters with all sorts of things from helpless people asking to be saved to enemies and shrines that play story segments and merchants and an oasis and so on.

The game is streamlined in that you don't really need to grind and you don't lose as much from dying, you always have every class available and if someone dies mid-run but you survive to the inn (not an easy task at all) you can fill their spot with someone else from the unrecruited classes, and those who survived a mountain boss get these memories that are passive buffs, significant ones, and if they die they lose those, but that's all, things like upgraded skills are done on a run-by-run basis as opposed to being things you build towards with your resources after adventuring, and there's no equipment or hero leveling either. Heroes just unlock more skills by you doing their shrine events, and skill unlocks are free and permanent, which is very easy to do, it just takes a while cause they have way more moves now, each one has like 11 moves now, and can have 5 active at a time. And trinkets again you just find as you are out on the field when you defeat enemies and run into merchants and so on. It's all very streamlined, there's just 1 resource you collect to power up which is these candles of hope, and everything else you just scrounge up as you're doing the adventure. Each run gives you just enough money to buy stuff with too.


As for the combat itself, they have de-emphasized healing and defensive tactics including stun a whole hell of a lot (healing skills require you to be under a certain % of health to become usable) so the old approach of stunlocking and constantly healing your team to max health to slowly defeat enemies is not valid any longer, but there's a ton more stuff in the combat to take its place too. I wouldn't say it's overall that much faster but it's more aggressive and complex by a whole lot.


Basically this game is not nearly as much about leveling your stuff as the first one was, and more about trial and error so you figure out how to defeat the enemies and what skills do and what skill combinations work and so on. It's like you're trapped in an endless nightmare while the world around you has gone to hell and you're trying to stay sane while keeping hope alive and confess your sins that somehow caused this situation. Each sin corresponding to a boss fight.

Ok, you've sold me, I'll give it a shot since I've been trying to decide what to play after Persona 5.

 

[Worgen]

Finally finished Spiderman Remastered. Story was good and ended in an emotional way I didn't expect. Had some really cool boss fights, did all the tedious map things, didn't do the DLC yet. Really my main annoyance with the game is just that I never found the right sound option that made the voices clear but also made the in game sounds have umph. So even in the middle of a big action scene with cars crashing and things collapsing, it sounded like a quiet fart, but voices were pretty clear. This is one of those weird issues I end up having with AAA games that try and match your audio equipment with a setting. I have really good stereo speakers but they are still just stereo speakers.

 

[Bartholen]

More ME1: Legendary. It's a testament to this game's writing, worlbuilding and characters that it secured the legacy it did, because good god it definitely wasn't for gameplay reasons. This is all well known stuff anyway, but I guess the minor adjustments the Legendary edition did kind of brings it into sharper focus. The gameplay outside of dialogue sections just feels very sluggish and boring. Combat often devolves into either potshotting each other from behind cover, or a random mess where the participants shuffle back and forth awkwardly and blast each other. Combat is also incredibly easy even on the second hardest setting, and often over before I can even gauge presicely what's going on. If I've died, it's been 90% of the time from an attack that basically one-shots me, so there's little sense of tacticality to it. The difficulty curve feels flat as a pancake, and it feels the game can do very little to switch up its encounters or make them more chellenging in some distinct sense.

Considering Bioware created what I consider the best RPG economy ever in Dragon Age: Origins, the ME1 economy is a straight up joke in comparison. Money is so completely useless in this game that I almost laughed when Gianna Parasini raised my reward from a measly 500 credits to... 750 credits. Lady, I pick up weapons upgrades worth more than that out of my teeth in the morning! Not that I'd need the cash anyway, the game vomits new weapons at you at such a blistering rate that pretty much the only time they ever feel different is when a weapon has a much lower fire rate. As much as the game touts several upgrades like increased physics threshold, toxin resistance and shield recovery as big bonuses, it feels like there's next to no difference in how my team plays.

 

[meiam]

More ME1: Legendary. It's a testament to this game's writing, worlbuilding and characters that it secured the legacy it did, because good god it definitely wasn't for gameplay reasons. This is all well known stuff anyway, but I guess the minor adjustments the Legendary edition did kind of brings it into sharper focus. The gameplay outside of dialogue sections just feels very sluggish and boring. Combat often devolves into either potshotting each other from behind cover, or a random mess where the participants shuffle back and forth awkwardly and blast each other. Combat is also incredibly easy even on the second hardest setting, and often over before I can even gauge presicely what's going on. If I've died, it's been 90% of the time from an attack that basically one-shots me, so there's little sense of tacticality to it. The difficulty curve feels flat as a pancake, and it feels the game can do very little to switch up its encounters or make them more chellenging in some distinct sense.

Considering Bioware created what I consider the best RPG economy ever in Dragon Age: Origins, the ME1 economy is a straight up joke in comparison. Money is so completely useless in this game that I almost laughed when Gianna Parasini raised my reward from a measly 500 credits to... 750 credits. Lady, I pick up weapons upgrades worth more than that out of my teeth in the morning! Not that I'd need the cash anyway, the game vomits new weapons at you at such a blistering rate that pretty much the only time they ever feel different is when a weapon has a much lower fire rate. As much as the game touts several upgrades like increased physics threshold, toxin resistance and shield recovery as big bonuses, it feels like there's next to no difference in how my team plays.

Yeah ME1 gameplay is kinda just there, all aspect of it fall flat in one way or another.

I'd love a full remake of the ME trilogy.

ME1: Keep the story/worldbuilding/character but shift gameplay more along the ME2/3 side.
ME2: Keep the character but ditch the story (cerberus focus) and make it more about finding a way to stop the reaper
ME3: Keep a few section of the story (Geth/genophage) but ditch most of the rest and build on what ME2 would have introduced

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

I had to take a break from Elden Dingus because after some dragon fights there were more dragon fights and then a really big dragon fight. I already got sick of dragon fights in the base game and here I am in a whole world of freakin' dragon fights. Blech.

So... Ender Lillies: Quitus of the Night, which, you know, sounds like a FromSoftware boss fight. It's on PS+ if you have it and are interested.

The good: It's like Hollow Knight! A soulsbornemetroidvania with beautiful art, and intriguing mysterious world, and melancholy lovely music. The delight and reward of opening old areas with new powers, thematically resonant boss fights, and gameplay mechanics that are extremely basic at their core but executed well and smoothly.

The bad: It's like Hollow Knight! Padding difficulty with painful backtracking and boss fights that just drag on and on.

I stopped at a boss fight where one of the moves is a pillar of damage-sucking energy so you can't cross it, and she shoots projectiles which means that I'm dodging but I can't hit her. Plus I die in like three hits plus her health bar is huge- which means trying over and over again to get near-perfect performance on my end and each trial taking a long time. F*** that s*** I can't be playing games like this no more.

 

[Worgen]

So... Ender Lillies: Quitus of the Night, which, you know, sounds like a FromSoftware boss fight. It's on PS+ if you have it and are interested.

I really enjoyed Ender Lillies. Quite a good metroidvania and I really like summoning spirits as your attacks. Its not too hard to 100% and you can do that in a single play through. There is even a sequel out, but its still in early access.