What are you currently playing?

[Ezekiel]

Ace Combat 7 is my first aerial combat game since Ace Combat 4 on the PS2.

I hate that you restart from checkpoints with all your damage up to that checkpoint voided. It's just like those Sony games. The new God of War and Spider-Man, where you always get to restart the latest segment of the level with a clean slate and there's little thought put into continuous balance. An auto-checkpoint should log everything up to that point, including your damage.

 

[Dalisclock]

Ace Combat 7 is my first aerial combat game since Ace Combat 4 on the PS2.

I hate that you restart from checkpoints with all your damage up to that checkpoint voided. It's just like those Sony games. The new God of War and Spider-Man, where you always get to restart the latest segment of the level with a clean slate and there's little thought put into continuous balance. An auto-checkpoint should log everything up to that point, including your damage.

I think that was to basically keep you from getting locked into a no-win situation where you'd reach the checkpoint with little ammo and a lot of damage, meaning you're pretty much fucked and need to re-do the entire mission anyway.

Especially since the game already allows you to use the return line to basically reset health and ammo anyway, this is just cutting out the middle man.

I mean, if you want realism, you're in the wrong series. MS Flight Simulator is that way. I may complain about dumb plot points/holes in the Ace Combat series but it's hard to start nitpicking realism in a game where everybody and their mom has at least 1 superweapon in addition to a superpower sized military and every plane can carry 7 thousand missles while also taking at least 2-3 missles hits up the ass and still flying fine.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

I found Ikaruga still installed on my Switch today and decided to give it a shot.

God, I'm rusty.

When I was seriously playing it, I always bombed out at Stage 2, but I could at least get through the first stage without dying, and usually with a score in the 1.5m range for that stage. The furthest I ever got was to the second boss, playing without continues. I got through about 6 attempts today and only half of them made it to Stage 2, and my best score for 1 was only just barely over 1m. I know the game's hard, and that I haven't played it in a while, but I feel like I've lost a lot of what little progress I made before.

With most of my time lately going into OS Runescape, I'm not sure how much I'm going to be able to keep practicing Ikaruga too, but I don't want to leave it at a performance like that either.

 

[Bartholen]

Now that it's finished and I've had a good night's sleep, some final thoughts on Elden Ring.

Yeah, it's phenomenal. If it isn't at least in the top 3 of every GOTY list at the end of the year, we're in for some great gaming. I think it has probably the most interesting and engaging lore and story in the Fromsoft catalogue, not the least because you can, well engage with it. Characters tend to stay in the same places and their questlines tend to be much easier to follow. Due to how much longer it is characters feel more fleshed out instead of chuckling enigmas that you occasionally bump into. The world feels much more alive and inhabited than any Souls game ever did, and that's the point. For the first time perhaps ever any kind of character build feels viable and legit, and won't become invalidated 2/3 through the game. The environment design is just mind-boggling, and truly feels like it's taking advantage of the new gen hardware.

However, the game is too big. With its size and the amount of environments it simply can't sustain its quality all the way through. This is most obvious in the optional side dungeons which, despite some occasional interesting mechanics, feel mostly like filler. While all the main bosses are fantastic, a ton of the side bosses are reused time and time again, and mostly fail to deliver on new or refreshing mechanics. Even the dragon fights tend to be exactly the same with maybe one or two different attacks: this on does Scarlet Rot. This one has a surrounding frost AoE. You could definitely cut some of the fat from the game and shrink the map down some 10%, and I think the game would be better for it. While the environment design is great, Limgrave is very samey past the initial impression. There were areas I hadn't explored simply because I couldn't tell if I'd been to them before, just because it all looked the same.

Same goes for the amount of gameplay mechanics, though I suppose that's where replayability comes in. I ended up playing a dual greatsword faith build, and still skipped like 90% of all the different incantations, spells, ashes of war and most consumables. This is in part due to the game's imbalance: the Blasphemous Blade is simply OP. Compared to a maxed-out Heavy Zweihander (my initial weapon) it does more damage, strikes faster, is lighter, has lifesteal and simply looks cooleron top of that. Why would I bother with optimizing normal weapons when this win button is right there?

3 weeks of my life imprisoned by this game. Time to try and get my life back now.

 

[Dalisclock]

I put it in the ER thread but I just finished. Really enjoyed it but after 73 hours over 3 months I'm exhausted and happy to be done. It's very EPIC, the Map is amazing, I love the lore and all the shit there is to find there and there are some really cool boss fights and dungeons. There's also a lot of Mediocrity in mini-dungeons and boss fights but a lot of that is skippable and I did skip a lot of it by using the wiki and occasionally the chicken farm/genocide ridge.

I go into a lot more detail on the ER thread if anyone is interested but I'm keeping my thoughts short here.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Now that it's finished and I've had a good night's sleep, some final thoughts on Elden Ring.

Yeah, it's phenomenal. If it isn't at least in the top 3 of every GOTY list at the end of the year, we're in for some great gaming. I think it has probably the most interesting and engaging lore and story in the Fromsoft catalogue, not the least because you can, well engage with it. Characters tend to stay in the same places and their questlines tend to be much easier to follow. Due to how much longer it is characters feel more fleshed out instead of chuckling enigmas that you occasionally bump into. The world feels much more alive and inhabited than any Souls game ever did, and that's the point. For the first time perhaps ever any kind of character build feels viable and legit, and won't become invalidated 2/3 through the game. The environment design is just mind-boggling, and truly feels like it's taking advantage of the new gen hardware.

However, the game is too big. With its size and the amount of environments it simply can't sustain its quality all the way through. This is most obvious in the optional side dungeons which, despite some occasional interesting mechanics, feel mostly like filler. While all the main bosses are fantastic, a ton of the side bosses are reused time and time again, and mostly fail to deliver on new or refreshing mechanics. Even the dragon fights tend to be exactly the same with maybe one or two different attacks: this on does Scarlet Rot. This one has a surrounding frost AoE. You could definitely cut some of the fat from the game and shrink the map down some 10%, and I think the game would be better for it. While the environment design is great, Limgrave is very samey past the initial impression. There were areas I hadn't explored simply because I couldn't tell if I'd been to them before, just because it all looked the same.

Same goes for the amount of gameplay mechanics, though I suppose that's where replayability comes in. I ended up playing a dual greatsword faith build, and still skipped like 90% of all the different incantations, spells, ashes of war and most consumables. This is in part due to the game's imbalance: the Blasphemous Blade is simply OP. Compared to a maxed-out Heavy Zweihander (my initial weapon) it does more damage, strikes faster, is lighter, has lifesteal and simply looks cooleron top of that. Why would I bother with optimizing normal weapons when this win button is right there?

3 weeks of my life imprisoned by this game. Time to try and get my life back now.

I’m pretty convinced the repeat stuff like catacombs, caves, hero’s graves, field bosses, etc. is due to the game being somewhat hamstrung by the sheer amount of content and loot. Like, every realm has its Erd tree avatar, Ulcerated tree spirit, dragon, etc. variant that yields its respective loot.

The alternative would pretty much be purchasing this stuff at vendors, which would negate the need for an open world or exploring, and introduce more grinding for currency to buy it all. They wanted to make an open world for whatever reason(s), so it’s what we got. The other thing is, what open world game doesn’t have repeated content. It hasn’t bothered me since it’s one game, but I wouldn’t want to play several more like this either.

FROM (Miyazaki) has stated they designed the game as a culmination of past games, and to me it’s felt like they’ve achieved that, despite its handful of dedicated flaws. I’m over one hundred hours in and still haven’t seen much of the late game stuff, so I’ve certainly gotten my money’s worth.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Feudal Alloy

Yet another indie Metroidvania. This one seems mostly inspired by the title pun (medieval robots) with almost no thought spent on setting, story or characters. The hand drawn art style is very pretty but the environments get repetitive fast. Almost everything does - the enemy gauntlets, the rewards you get for exploring, the medieval music that loops like a broken record. Not a bad game but once you get over the gift wrapping it's pretty run of the mill.

 

[Ezekiel]

I don't remember the last time I was so angry at a game. Was throwing my pillows and keyboard around on the bed, punching my mattress, cursing. The mission where you have to protect base 444 from the bombers. I hate my comrades. Utterly worthless. I'm the one shooting almost all the bombers and they do NOTHING to protect me from the incessant fighters. Dodge, dodge, dodge as I'm supposed to protect this base. I'm not just gonna stop to fight them because I've already failed the mission that way, letting 444 get destroyed. So annoying. The game has no AI. AI would be my wingmen following me as I'm making my attack run. And for some reason my missiles are not locking onto the bombers, so I'm doing almost the whole thing with bullets.

 

[Dalisclock]

I don't remember the last time I was so angry at a game. Was throwing my pillows and keyboard around on the bed, punching my mattress, cursing. The mission where you have to protect base 444 from the bombers. I hate my comrades. Utterly worthless. I'm the one shooting almost all the bombers and they do NOTHING to protect me from the incessant fighters. Dodge, dodge, dodge as I'm supposed to protect this base. I'm not just gonna stop to fight them because I've already failed the mission that way, letting 444 get destroyed. So annoying. The game has no AI. AI would be my wingmen following me as I'm making my attack run. And for some reason my missiles are not locking onto the bombers, so I'm doing almost the whole thing with bullets.

Oh yeah, the Wingmen are pretty much completely useless in AC7 so you're expected to do everything yourself(I was shocked in some of the other games where your wingmen were actually somewhat useful because I played AC7 first). Though at least during the Prison arc it's somewhat justified because none of them want to be there and frankly the whole idea of giving convicts fully armed Jet Aircraft is really fucking dumb anyway. Especially the dude who was literally convicted for assassinating the president with a military fighter jet. I suspect the reason they pegged you as the murderer is you're the only pilot in the Osean air force who can hit anything.

Really, I think you're generally supposed to dislike a lot of characters in the prison arc, especially Bandog and McKinsey. The best part of failing the 444 mission is hearing everyone cheer the base gets bombed and presumably McKinsey gets exploded.

 

[BrawlMan]

I decided to get Quantum Break. Got my copy from a Disc Replay and used some store credit on a movie I brought back that did not work. I am in the middle of Act 2. The game is fine, and Remedy did awesome with graphics and sound production, but the scope is limited. The time powers are cool and fun to use, but it's another cover shooter that is only barely better than most of the riff raff cover shooters. It's a game about time manipulation. This is a 3rd person shooter that should not be a cover shooter! QB itself feels like a discount Vanquish. This game is a somewhat Max Payne style shooter! Where's my dual wielding? We can't have that; not grounded and realistic enough?! Go full nuts with it!

Another thing, who's dumb idea was it to not give Jack a dedicated cover button?! He automatically goes in to cover with certain vertical or horizontal surfaces. It's a non-standard feature they did put in, only to be different from the rest. I don't like it, and wish they went with the standard press B to go in to cover. Something else I noticed is I think they upped the difficulty for Normal mode. I know when the game first launched, QB was criticized as being too easy, even on Hard mode. You can die fast in this game on Normal if you're not careful, so I think patched the game at some point to make the difficulty harder.

I won't harp on this too much, but I am still disappointed by the game failed potential. I am having fun, but this is a 7th generation game, with a 8th generation coat of paint. All of these years of delays, and this the best Remedy could come up with? Microsoft stuck their dicks in too much! I refuse to even bother with the weird TV, live action segments between each chapter. They're not filmed great, they suck, and have badly filmed action that tries to be Jason Bourne. Waste of time; skip them. Thank you Remedy, for allowing people to skip them. Though if you're on PC, you are screwed. You have stream this dumb TV shit. I'll play more later, but I am stopping for tonight. I got the game cheap and only had pay $5 for it through store credit. So I got my money's worth. No way I would have paid $60 for this back in 2016.

 

[Piscian]

I threw in the towel on 13 sentinels aegis rim. It was just too much non-interactive interactive dialog. I wouldn't mind if it were just a cinematic, but having to stop every couple seconds to click something to start the dialog going again was just driving me insane. I think it wanted me to believe it was a point and click adventure, but there's no puzzle solving or anything in my 3-4 hours. Just *click dialog..click dialog..pass out from boredom*. Maybe I'll come back to it someday. It's a shame because I'm fairly easy to please and I searched out the game a while back and was excited for it.

On a more positive note I finally started Final Fantasy XII in earnest after a million years. Playing Zodiac age on PS4. I'm quite enjoying it. I like that I'm not being bombarded with a lengthy kid becoming a hero tutorial. This is one of the things Final Fantasy generally shines in over typical JRPGs that feel like you're spending too many hours getting going. I'm also enjoying this game being a kind of return to classic storytelling. I can remember and pronounce the names. At least so far theres not any kind of unapproachable scifi vaguery.

I remember struggling to get engaged with FFX because from the get go I just had no idea what was going on, and characters constantly references things thats arent real words. I think the most succinct word for me and Final Fantasy is "unapproachable". This really started with 10 where the storytelling really went off the rails. LIke that Spirits Within movie.

Final Fantasy XII has all the fantastical shit, but its understandable. Kid thief vann, just like Locke, is dragged into a provincial war. I'm sure it'll jump a shark at some point, but by then I'll be hooked in the gameplay. I just need something simple I can hang on to for these first so many hours.

On the con side I don't much care for the pseudo action mmo combat system. Its trying to make you think this frenetic high octane action, but it just turn-based combat with messy characters roaming around on screen. Moving around doesn't serve much purpose as theres no hitboxes or anything. Actually thats all I can think of to complain about. The gambit and license system is probably dumb, but I'll admit I love resource management games. I'm an easy mark for this complex character management.

 

[Dalisclock]

I threw in the towel on 13 sentinels aegis rim. It was just too much non-interactive interactive dialog. I wouldn't mind if it were just a cinematic, but having to stop every couple seconds to click something to start the dialog going again was just driving me insane. I think it wanted me to believe it was a point and click adventure, but there's no puzzle solving or anything in my 3-4 hours. Just *click dialog..click dialog..pass out from boredom*. Maybe I'll come back to it someday. It's a shame because I'm fairly easy to please and I searched out the game a while back and was excited for it.

On a more positive note I finally started Final Fantasy XII in earnest after a million years. Playing Zodiac age on PS4. I'm quite enjoying it. I like that I'm not being bombarded with a lengthy kid becoming a hero tutorial. This is one of the things Final Fantasy generally shines in over typical JRPGs that feel like you're spending too many hours getting going. I'm also enjoying this game being a kind of return to classic storytelling. I can remember and pronounce the names. At least so far theres not any kind of unapproachable scifi vaguery.

I remember struggling to get engaged with FFX because from the get go I just had no idea what was going on, and characters constantly references things thats arent real words. I think the most succinct word for me and Final Fantasy is "unapproachable". This really started with 10 where the storytelling really went off the rails. LIke that Spirits Within movie.

Final Fantasy XII has all the fantastical shit, but its understandable. Kid thief vann, just like Locke, is dragged into a provincial war. I'm sure it'll jump a shark at some point, but by then I'll be hooked in the gameplay. I just need something simple I can hang on to for these first so many hours.

On the con side I don't much care for the pseudo action mmo combat system. It trying to make you think this frenetic high octane action, but it just turn-based combat with messy characters roaming around on screen. Moving around doesn't serve much purpose as theres no hitboxes or anything. Actually thats all I can think of to complain about. The gambit and license system is probably dumb, but I'll admit I love resource management games. I'm an easy mark for this complex character management.

I haven't played FFXII but I've been reading a long form essay on it that was posted on this site a LONG TIME ago by someone called The Rocketeer over on Shamus Young's blod(who also used to write for this site a long time ago in the beforetimes). https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=53030

And to be fair I've long since lost any fucking track of most of what the hell was going on in that game. Maybe it makes more sense if you play it honestly the essay sure as hell didn't sell me on it. I just keep reading all these names I have no idea how and why they're supposed to relate to each other and the most understandable take on the game I've been given is that it's ripping off a lot of plot points from Star Wars: A New Hope.

 

[Dalisclock]

So after finishing OOOOOOOOOOOO ELDEN RING(I'm sorry.....but not sorry) I decided to cleanse the palate with a couple of smaller games and demos.

Death Trash Demo

This is one of those weird games that came out a year or so ago and didn't seem to make much impression, but I decided to check it out after seeing a stream on the Escapist youtube channel. It's an isometric RPG that reminds me of the original fallout but with real time combat more like Zelda. This feels like a post-apocalyptic world with lots of weird creepy fleshy things all over the place and apparently you can be infected by it. The beginning has you being kicked out of an underground habitat because you're "contaminated" and apparently you've had a bomb implanted in you, with the explicit orders not to breed or enter a habitat or you will be insta-killed by the bomb(and the bomb is something you can see in your inventory but you can't do anything with it, at least not right now).

There is a little surface training course you can choose to do before you go outside to get you acquainted with the controls and such which was appreciated. I didn't get very far before stopping but I do plan to continue on. I do kinda like how you get a gun early on but it's a single shot rifle(possibly bolt action) you have to reload between shots so there's a risk to using it in close combat. It's also unclear how plentiful ammo is.

One interesting thing I noticed is that you can get meat and organs and it does appear to restore your health when you eat them, but each one also raises "infection", which means each one used slowly kills you over time or something. I'm curious to see how that works and if infection can be reduced or your supposed to find healing that doesn't raise infection. And yeah, the grossness of eating flesh you get off the ground or out of dead enemies seems to track with the fact you have a "puke" command and can carry some of your own puke around in your inventory(and even use it to solve a very simple puzzle in the training course). Keeping it classy, Death Trash.

Orbit.Industries Demo

All I know is that this is a game about building up a space station to accomplish various tasks and it's fine I guess. I got the gist of how the game works, ,but very little of it seems to be building out the station and more of it seems to be queing up projects and waiting for them to be completed by watching a progress bar tick up and in the demo you can't work on more then one project at time. I do kinda like how you provide resources to modules using a interactive schematic diagram to make connections but mostly this game feels like an excel spreadsheet with some pretty views that occasionally dumps exposition on you when you finish a project.

I'm sure there are people who this will appeal to but after 20 minutes I'm pretty confident I'm not one of them.I'm familiar with and kinda like the City builder genre but this game didn't seem to scratch that itch.

Delta V: Rings of Saturn Demo

So being a big fan of Kerbal Space Program I decided to check out the demo for this and.....I kinda get what it's supposed to be but honestly the demo doesn't feel good. I immediately get a cluttered interface and while it seems like it's trying to tutorialize, trying to control the spaceship feels difficult and awkward and not in a good way. I think I struggled with it for about 10-15 minutes before quitting and deciding I wasn't interested. Maybe it gets better but it didn't sell me very well.

Honestly, I felt like I could just be playing KSP instead and that's never a good sign that I could be playing(what I feel like is) a much better game I already own instead of what I'm trying out.

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger,

After all those, I decided to finally bite the Bullet(thank you, I'll be here all week) and check out Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, which I've had in my Steam Library for fucking years at this point. And it does it's job well because within 10 minutes of booting it up I was very much enjoying it.

For those not familiar with it, CoJ:G is a Western FPS following the exploits of Silas Greaves, a legendary Gunslinger who is retelling his exploits to a crowd of admirers in a saloon(in exchange for them buying him drinks, of course) and man, he apparently had a long and storied career. SIlas apparently interacted with or killed every famous gunslinger in the old west in a serious of crazy and amazing adventures over his bounty hunting career. Except it's heavily implied that a Silas is exaggerating his exploits at best and flat out bullshiting at worst. The game plays with this by having one of the people listening occasionally ask questions or make comments on the story and then SIlas will change the story, sometimes outright retelling a section how it "really happened" because he apparently remembered it wrong the first time. There will also be some of this storytelling/commentary over the gameplay which works pretty well.

Just to emphasize the dramatic nature of it, a lot of the bosses/notable enemies get a comic book style intro....and in one case a certain shotgun gets one as well, not because it's special but because apparently it's the shotgun of someone notable(it's referred to as that guy's shotgun for the rest of the level).

And it works. It does a good job of handwaving how Silas guns down like dozens of people in every mission and occasionally pulls off some crazy shooting(in game done as bullet time or as QTEs), as well as being intimately invovled with like everybody who was ever remotely famous in the West(like taking credit for accidentally causing the shootout at the OK Corral). The levels go by fairly quickly with little downtime in a very arcady fashion and you even get little point counters for your kills(with combos and higher points for more difficult shots) which can then be used to buy upgrades in a fairly simple skill tree.

So it's a lot of fun and I'm digging it. It feels like the opposite of Red Dead Redemption as far as pace and tone but you know I'm cool with that.

 

[meiam]

I haven't played FFXII but I've been reading a long form essay on it that was posted on this site a LONG TIME ago by someone called The Rocketeer over on Shamus Young's blod(who also used to write for this site a long time ago in the beforetimes). https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=53030

And to be fair I've long since lost any fucking track of most of what the hell was going on in that game. Maybe it makes more sense if you play it honestly the essay sure as hell didn't sell me on it. I just keep reading all these names I have no idea how and why they're supposed to relate to each other and the most understandable take on the game I've been given is that it's ripping off a lot of plot points from Star Wars: A New Hope.

That's not really a bug of the essay, it's because there's both a lot happening in the game and almost nothing. There's a background story about geopolitical but that has essentially nothing to do with your main cast after the first few hours, instead the main cast deal with some demi god entity which is never resolved and just peter out. The game insist these two things are intertwined, but they absolutely aren't and you could easily remove one without affecting the other. So to throw you off and make sure you don't notice that, the game makes everything as confusing as possible.

I don't think the star wars part were intentional, I think the story is pretty simple so it naturally fall into the same tropes as star wars.

 

[Dalisclock]

That's not really a bug of the essay, it's because there's both a lot happening in the game and almost nothing. There's a background story about geopolitical but that has essentially nothing to do with your main cast after the first few hours, instead the main cast deal with some demi god entity which is never resolved and just peter out. The game insist these two things are intertwined, but they absolutely aren't and you could easily remove one without affecting the other. So to throw you off and make sure you don't notice that, the game makes everything as confusing as possible.

I don't think the star wars part were intentional, I think the story is pretty simple so it naturally fall into the same tropes as star wars.

That's the impression I got from the early parts of the essay before I lost any ability to follow the plot. To be fair Final Fantasy Tactics does something similar but it feels like it actually worked there. And I say that with full awareness that all the interesting political stuff in tactics gets sidelined for stupid demon stuff in the final act. Also FFT either needs a PC Port and/or a Current gen port, though a remaster for any of the above would be nice too.

Seriously, like every other FF game(that's not a FF7 spin-off) is available on PC at this point so why the hell is Tactics not? And no I don't want to play it on my phone. My battery runs out fast enough as it is.

 

[meiam]

That's the impression I got from the early parts of the essay before I lost any ability to follow the plot. To be fair Final Fantasy Tactics does something similar but it feels like it actually worked there. And I say that with full awareness that all the interesting political stuff in tactics gets sidelined for stupid demon stuff in the final act. Also FFT either needs a PC Port and/or a Current gen port, though a remaster for any of the above would be nice too.

Seriously, like every other FF game(that's not a FF7 spin-off) is available on PC at this point so why the hell is Tactics not? And no I don't want to play it on my phone. My battery runs out fast enough as it is.

Its a fair point about FFT having more or less the same structure. But FFT resolves the political plot before it gets side line by the demon stuff and the game use Delita as a pseudo secondary main character for that side of the story so you do get a resolution to it. FF12 demon plot line is literately never resolved, its not even mentioned it the ending.

I'd love a FFT port, hell I'd do SE a solid and even be okay if they bundled it with FFTA and A2 and forced you to buy them together.

 

[laggyteabag]

Just about to finish Mass Effect 3 again, and it is definitely my favourite of the trilogy.

ME1 has good main-story content, but its side content was generally poor.

ME2 has good side content, but its main story (the Collectors) kind of felt like an afterthought.

ME3 is just a consistently great time from start to finish.

Sure, its not a perfect game. I would probably point to Cerberus, Kai Leng and (as a nitpick) the introduction of the Crucible as a few examples of what I think the game could have done better. Im sure a lot of people would also point to the ending (though I never personally had a problem with it, especially after the Extended Cut). But with that aside, I genuinely feel like ME3 is a worthy finale.

In the end, I would probably rate the games as: 3, 1, 2. I am just so grateful that the Remaster exists, because without it, I just found ME1's combat to be unbearable.

 

[BrawlMan]

Finished Leon 2nd Run on XONE. I did not get the S+ Rank, but it is not that big deal. I already accomplished that on the PS4 version.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

After playing the demo, I found myself buying Triangle Strategy. I am usually very much not a tactics person, it takes a very unique or particular/special tactics game to catch my interest (my fave being Knights in the Nightmare). But I needed something to play on a trip out of town last week, so I downloaded the demo and gave it a go just to see what it was like.

Even though I've only done 2 combat scenarios so far, they've got me deeply thinking about my combat options in ways that pushed my critical thinking. This game does NOT play nice if you're not careful. Even if the tactics gameplay didn't do it for me as much as it does, I'm finding myself getting absolutely absorbed into the world, characters, writing, and music. The voice acting is hit or miss (but I honestly don't have the highest standards for video game voice work so it's good enough for me to not be pulled out of things too badly), but overall I'm quite enjoying some of the performances.

It's rare that a game gives me world building lore stuff for me to read that I'm genuinely interested in engaging with to help further influence my choices in game. It's made me think about my own world building for my D&D campaign and world I set it in, and how I wanna portray some of that information (while inspiring other ideas I never would've thought of on my own). I'm not done chapter 3 yet though so I'm still early game, but I'm looking forward to seeing where it all goes!

 

[Kyrian007]

I had decided to give up for the time being on My Time at Sandrock's early access... due to huge optimization issues and awful loading times. But I started up Steam this weekend and there were several hotfixes and patches. So I gave it a shot. It is in much better shape now. Load times still too long, but it plays without horrid pop-in and the odd stutters and crashes it had the weekend before. So I deem it for the most part... playable. At the moment. Still though, not changing my recommendation. Buy now in early access, and save about $15 dollars on the planned release price... then don't play it until release. It is playable and fun now, but I've seen the "road map." There is a lot of content on the road map and this will be a much better game by (tentatively) Halloween. Also, I'm not liking the autosave function. Portia it was simple, autosaved at the beginning of every day and kept about a half dozen savegames. Now in Sandrock it is autosaving after turning in commissions, finishing events, leaving ruins, basically lots more often. Which is good, but it is only keeping 2, as opposed to 5 or 6. Not as good. Now if I want to just start a day over... if I triggered too many autosaves I can't. This is something they say they are working on.