What are you currently playing?

[Xprimentyl]

Spider-Man Remastered. I thought I had the PS5 controls down, but as Chunk put it:

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I'm in the tutorial mission, and as the game keeps trying to teach me mechanics and button combinations, I find myself pausing to look down at the controller like a novice. This was a similar problem I had with Crimson Desert on the Xbox, but at least I know THAT controller meaning that game just has a shit combat system. But my combat in Spider-Man has mostly been me mashing "X," and I've died may more often than the tutorial probably has intended.

 

[FakeSympathy]

Borderlands 3

I think I was a bit too harsh on this game. I mean the story still sucks, Ava is still an annoying little shit, and the humor doesn't hit as hard as Borderlands 2, but the gameplay has been great so far. Maybe I am seeing this in a more favorable light after seeing how much BL4 sucked.

 

[Worgen]

Borderlands 3

I think I was a bit too harsh on this game. I mean the story still sucks, Ava is still an annoying little shit, and the humor doesn't hit as hard as Borderlands 2, but the gameplay has been great so far. Maybe I am seeing this in a more favorable light after seeing how much BL4 sucked.

BL3 does play the best out of all the games. Its hard going back to older or newer ones because of how much better it plays then them.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

Thats what I was worried about. Its a bit disappointing, especially after disco elysium came out and proved that you can make a game about just talking to people still feel like a game.

Dunno if you ever played it, but there's endereal, a mod for skyrim that has kinda similar story in some way.

Yeah, that's a German mod! I've played it and I've played its predecessor Nehrim, an Oblivion mod. I think they were decent but I barely remember anything specific about them.

 

[FakeSympathy]

BL3 does play the best out of all the games. Its hard going back to older or newer ones because of how much better it plays then them.

Honestly, the only complaint I have about the gameplay itself is that we got extra skill trees instead of extra class.

IDK, they all look fun to play with, but I would've preferred more quirky characters to play as

 

[Worgen]

Honestly, the only complaint I have about the gameplay itself is that we got extra skill trees instead of extra class.

IDK, they all look fun to play with, but I would've preferred more quirky characters to play as

More characters would have been nice, but the skill trees do feel much better in 3 then in the others and do mix up how you play nicely.

 

[meiam]

Started Yakuza pirate in Hawaii and I'm not really feeling it unfortunately.

There's no aspect of getting to know a city like earlier Yakuza game, you mostly island hop to small islands, none of which have much character.

The early game story is bizarre because it goes out of its way to start you with a clean slate, but then quickly bring back the old stuff... but no wait it discard them again? Otherwise you mostly deal with this boring kid and his drunk dad, and I just don't care much for them (some of the other side character are fun, but the de facto main character is the boring kid). Conversation are also too slow, they constantly repeat stuff that we obviously already got, with frequent flashback to stuff that happened not long ago and there's too many character involved in most of them, so they tend to circle around, with everybody giving their 2 cents on everything.

The combat is pretty basic ultimately, nothing wrong with it, but it doesn't have much to it either and it doesn't seem like it evolve much over the game.

And the wacky stuff kinda lose its wackiness when everything is wacky, it worked in early Yakuza when it was mostly serious, cause it would be weird and out of nowhere. But here the "Isn't it wacky that You have an timey pirate ship in modern time?!?" really doesn't work when there's a ton of them around and nobody comment on it.

There's no exploration to speak of, you have all these buried treasures to find, but they're shown on the map, and once on the island its just a battle arena, and the reward is always just money, there's no cool loot.

 

[BrawlMan]

Started Yakuza pirate in Hawaii and I'm not really feeling it unfortunately.

There's no aspect of getting to know a city like earlier Yakuza game, you mostly island hop to small islands, none of which have much character.

The early game story is bizarre because it goes out of its way to start you with a clean slate, but then quickly bring back the old stuff... but no wait it discard them again? Otherwise you mostly deal with this boring kid and his drunk dad, and I just don't care much for them (some of the other side character are fun, but the de facto main character is the boring kid). Conversation are also too slow, they constantly repeat stuff that we obviously already got, with frequent flashback to stuff that happened not long ago and there's too many character involved in most of them, so they tend to circle around, with everybody giving their 2 cents on everything.

The combat is pretty basic ultimately, nothing wrong with it, but it doesn't have much to it either and it doesn't seem like it evolve much over the game.

And the wacky stuff kinda lose its wackiness when everything is wacky, it worked in early Yakuza when it was mostly serious, cause it would be weird and out of nowhere. But here the "Isn't it wacky that You have an timey pirate ship in modern time?!?" really doesn't work when there's a ton of them around and nobody comment on it.

There's no exploration to speak of, you have all these buried treasures to find, but they're shown on the map, and once on the island its just a battle arena, and the reward is always just money, there's no cool loot.

I literally bought this game on a deep sail, physically, just so I can play Spikeout Final Edition from the main menu. I have not touched any other part of the actual main game.

 

[Worgen]

I ended up not getting R-type tactics since they released it for $50, which feels a bit much. I was thinking it would be like $40 at most.

Anyway, grabbed Kotama and the Academy Citadel. Its an anime styled metroidvania where the main character is cute, but kinda looks like someones vtuber, along with most of the cast. It plays well, but playing on hard was probably a mistake, cannot take many hits but you regen health... shield? When you weaken an enemy then hit them with a heavy attack. It has this interesting time mechanic where when you go to a new area time passes and you only have enough time orb things to get so far from a big save point, as time passes things change, new enemies might show up, conversations change, other stuff. I'm still early enough that I don't really have a firm grasp of it. Oh, I also get the feeling it will have some pretty hard platforming.

 

[thebobmaster]

On a lark because it was on sale, bought Bug Fables. Not very far into it, but even having not played Paper Mario, I can tell this game is very much similar to that one. I can also say this is not a problem for me, and I already am quite enjoying Vi as a character. "Generosity is its own reward." "It's really...really not."

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Finished Figment 2: Creed Valley. Maybe not as good as the first game but out of nowhere you get this banger:

 

[Drathnoxis]

This playthrough of Pokemon Crystal Legacy is really lucky. Not only did I get a shiny Cleffa from the odd egg, but I just got Pokerus at the very moment where I need to grind a few levels. My pokemon are all right around lvl 30 and Pryce's 5 lvl 37 pokemon are wiping the floor with me.

 

[Worgen]

Finished Figment 2: Creed Valley. Maybe not as good as the first game but out of nowhere you get this banger:

KREED!

 

[Worgen]

Beat Clair Obscura Expedition 33. Its fine. Has some great music, art direction and nice battle animations. The story is ok, but has a nasty habit of not explaining a damn thing, also the overall story ends up being something that needs a therapist for. Also the story is pretty far up its own butt with pretention. I think I would have enjoyed it more if it had explained a damn thing and if it hadn't beaten Silksong for rewards, it is not better then Silksong. Oh, also the equipment system sucks. You choose up to 3 pictos (not explained) that you equip on a character, they give stats and a special skill that you learn after 3 fights, after you have learned the skill you can unequip the picto and use lumens (also not explained) to lock the skill onto a character to get its benefit. The issue is that managing these becomes a pain in the ass. Cause you get a lot of pictos and with 5 characters thats a lot of picto swapping using a menu that kinda sucks then having to find the skill you unlocked to use another menu that kinda sucks to lock it in. Also weapons skills and in battle abilities that you can only have 6 of at a time, managing that is annoying and I tended to go long periods just using the same things to avoid it, which is easier to do then you might think since its not hard to break the difficulty, especially if you get good at dodging and parrying.

TLDR, Expedition 33 is decent, but not worthy of all the awards.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I'm bored and don't know what to play next. It's been nothing but backlog since Elden Ring and nothing really stands out or leaves much of an impression (Child of Light was neat).

 

[Worgen]

I'm bored and don't know what to play next. It's been nothing but backlog since Elden Ring and nothing really stands out or leaves much of an impression (Child of Light was neat).

Any genre have any interest in you atm?

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

I'm bored and don't know what to play next. It's been nothing but backlog since Elden Ring and nothing really stands out or leaves much of an impression (Child of Light was neat).

There’s a reason the backlog generally stays a backlog lol. Yet, sometimes the requisite mood comes back around and sticks better. I’m getting back into some old Final Fantasy stuff after leaving it sit for years. FFV in particular (digital version from the Anthology on PS3), but I also just picked up the Pixel Remaster on a current Steam sale, having never played the original three games. Started the first one and am really digging it. We’ll see how long it lasts, but I’m setting aside RE: Requiem for it on a new PC that can crank all the settings up, so that’s gotta mean something.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Finally finished replaying Mother 3. I first played this game in 2010 and thought it was amazing. I was blown away by all the NPC dialogue. In most JRPGs you talk to an NPC in a town and they say their couple lines of dialogue and that's the extent of their character. In Mother 3 the NPC dialogue gets updated after every major event, and the character opinions and circumstances change as the game goes on. It's amazingly deep in comparison to what other games did.

However, 16 years later I find I don't enjoy the game quite as much as I did before. It's still wonderfully charming in visuals and writing, and the music is great. Maybe it's that I don't enjoy JRPGs as much as I once did, maybe it's that the combat system is fairly shallow, maybe it's that my standards are higher, or I'm simply a more bitter and cynical person than I used to be. I did still enjoy it, but it took me a long time to work my way through it and I'd end up not touching it for months at a time. The side NPCs have a lot of dialogue, but I didn't find many of them well developed or interesting. I didn't tear up during the prologue this time, though I did during the ending. I found some of the late game reveals to be strange and I admit that I don't really completely understand the story. It was very good, but fell short of the excellence that it held in my memories.

I also did a bit of a low level challenge that made things rather tedious towards the end. After the first chapter or so I started running from every non-mandatory fight. I also didn't spend any money before reaching New Pork City. I ended the game at level 43, around 10 levels lower than my first playthrough, which is kind of surprising, I thought it would be lower. It obviously made a difference as I struggled with a lot of the later fights and needed to stack as many buffs and debuffs as I could to make it through them. That's pretty much the extent of the strategy in this game. Pray you can survive until you can stack shields and defense and offense up on every character with Lucas while Kumatora and Duster stack defence and offense down on the opponent. It takes a long time and sometimes you will get bad luck and the enemy will just spam too many full party damaging attacks for you to deal with. The way health ticks down after taking damage is nice and adds a bit of strategy, but sometimes it's frustrating when someone is dying and the enemy does an attack with a lot of text. Also, to take full advantage you need to wait for your HP bar to completely fill before allowing the enemy to take their turn. Thankfully emulators have a speed up key.

Overall, it's a very good JRPG, especially in the retro 2D genre. Definitely still worth playing and incomprehensible why Nintendo never made an English release.

 

[Worgen]

However, 16 years later I find I don't enjoy the game quite as much as I did before. It's still wonderfully charming in visuals and writing, and the music is great. Maybe it's that I don't enjoy JRPGs as much as I once did, maybe it's that the combat system is fairly shallow, maybe it's that my standards are higher, or I'm simply a more bitter and cynical person than I used to be.

Go buy Octopath Traveler 2, win it and report back.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Go buy Octopath Traveler 2, win it and report back.

You're going to have to say more than that to sell me on it.