What are you currently playing?

[Piscian]

NOTHING. I AM PLAYING NOTHING.

Because I finally beat persona 4 golden and Im having a midgame..inbetween game crisis.

I think Im prepared to step back and respect peoples opinion of Persona 4 golden not being the best game in the series.

Its very distinct between Persona 3R and Persona 5R because its so much smaller in scope. Its got fewer playable characters, fewer things to do, a small town mystery and its far more of a visual novel than it is an RPG. I think someone could absolutely enjoy Persona 5 and not enjoy persona 4.

Im a little miffed, maybe at myself because I beat persona 4 golden a few years ago on Psvita and thought wow its so much shorter than P3R or P5R, only to replay it this last month and find out I missed a whole 3rd of the game. Until the other two which really only have a couple ending options, with P4G Theres two more entire storylines and dungeons, one of which is literally the actual end of the game youd miss if you didn't choose just the right dialog options. In a way Im kinda just mad because Im supposed to just casually be enjoying a game and they withhold major story content for not playing with a guide and completionist mindset. Thats just stressful and thats not why I play videogames.

Anyway I think I largely enjoyed it. If I had one reasonable complaint it would be that the dungeon "key" treasure chests in P4G are largely repetitive useless baubles where as in the other two, especially P3R all the chests had actual important equipment or Outfits. Towards the end of P4G I started skipping them because I just didn't care.

That and P4R has a lot of cringe horniness that genuinely made me uncomfortable even as a standard bog horny guy. I felt like the friendships in P3R could be relatively platonic where as P4G had a near constant press for ecchi.

Now Im torn, Im once again trying to tell myself "ok dude, do something productive or at least play a normal game" and yet the one on the other shoulder says "Whelp better restart Persona 5R even though you just recently complained about how massive and mindnumbingly long it is!"

 

[laggyteabag]

I finally finished Baldur's Gate 3. Incredible game. I did get the feeling like the overall quality was slowly deteriorating as the Acts went on, but I still thoroughly enjoyed myself, and the level of care and detail in just about every aspect is astounding. Even briefly scrolling through YouTube to see all of the other interactions that I missed shows just how much consideration was made for seemingly over possible interaction and outcome.

My only real gripes are realistically nitpicks in the grand scheme of things. After leaving Act 1, Speak with Dead seemed like less and less of a possibility, and similarly Speak With Animals never felt as impactful or as common as it did in Divinity Original Sin 2, which frequently offered whole questlines for animals.

As for an oddity, I do find it quite strange that not all classes were represented as companions, but we had two Druids for some reason. Obviously this is definitely a nitpick because you can easily just respec any of the characters to be whatever class you like, or you can just hire a hireling, but I thought it was still pretty odd. Similarly, I find it quite strange that the game has such a massive variety of different races, and yet everyone that you meet (with the exception of Karlach and Lae'zel) are either humans, or elves. No dwarves(?!), half-orcs, gnomes, halflings, or dragonborn. I think this was a massive missed opportunity.

Otherwise, now that I have finished the game after 100 hours, im struggling to get it out of my head. I played as a custom Drow (not Dark Urge) Sword Bard/Thief Rogue/Fighter, and Im just theorycrafting my next playthrough as to which class im going to play as, which character im going to play as, and which companions im going to run around with, which is really unusual, because Im normally quite happy to move onto another game after finishing one.

Alas, I really don't have another 100 to dedicate to Baldur's Gate 3 at the moment, so im moving onto something different, and hopefully much shorter, and i've landed on Black Mesa, which is that semi-official Half-Life 1 remake. Not too much to say about now, as I have only just started, but Half-Life has always been a bit of a blind-spot for me, as I only ever played bits of Half-Life 2 via the Orange Box on the Xbox, and I never finished any of the chapters.

 

[Worgen]

I beat Axiom Verge 2. Overall I think I enjoyed the game, but it didn't make things easy. It's not a hard game, but it does do things that tend to annoy me in a metroidvania. Like when you go through an area you will feel like you're missing things, a lot of things and while the game gives you points you need to go to, the path there tends to be pretty meandering so you feel more like you are stumbling upon where you need to go rather then finding it. But the plot is interesting if not the best told and the music is just fantastic, might even be better then the music from the first game.

 

[laggyteabag]

Oh, im also playing Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective on my Steam Deck.

I heard some pretty positive things about it from Skill Up on YouTube. I understand that it is a remake of a DS game (never played it myself), but it piqued my curiosity enough to add it to my wishlist, but firmly under the proviso that I get it at a deep discount, because I wasn't really too sure of it.

Fortunately/unfortunately when my partner asked me what games I wanted for my birthday from my Steam wishlist, I basically gave her zero direction other than "whatever is Overwhelmingly Positive", and this ended up being one of those games.

So far, im not really feeling it. Im still in the early hours which I suppose more or less functions as a tutorial, but because there is zero voice acting or contextual hints, the game is constantly interrupting itself to tell me something, which is quite frustrating. But it still happy to give it a chance because it is early days, and because Overwhelmingly Positive games usually aren't labelled as such without merit.

 

[Worgen]

Oh, im also playing Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective on my Steam Deck.

I heard some pretty positive things about it from Skill Up on YouTube. I understand that it is a remake of a DS game (never played it myself), but it piqued my curiosity enough to add it to my wishlist, but firmly under the proviso that I get it at a deep discount, because I wasn't really too sure of it.

Fortunately/unfortunately when my partner asked me what games I wanted for my birthday from my Steam wishlist, I basically gave her zero direction other than "whatever is Overwhelmingly Positive", and this ended up being one of those games.

So far, im not really feeling it. Im still in the early hours which I suppose more or less functions as a tutorial, but because there is zero voice acting or contextual hints, the game is constantly interrupting itself to tell me something, which is quite frustrating. But it still happy to give it a chance because it is early days, and because Overwhelmingly Positive games usually aren't labelled as such without merit.

I absolutely loved Ghost Trick on the 3ds. Haven't gotten it on pc yet. But, I'm also not sure how well it translates to pc since the touch part of it is a huge part and you don't really get that same kinda thing with pc. Once you get past the first case it should really take off the training wheels.

Started playing Cookie Cutter... I've never played a game that seemed so squarely aimed at edgy lesbians as this. The game is pretty decent, the combat is more involved then most metroidvanias with light heavy dodge and parry. Although the parry seems rather iffy. The animation is really really nice and very fluid. Characters are kinda what you would expect form a edgy game, just with more lesbian then 13 year old boy target. It does have one of the same problems I had with Axiom Verge 2, where when you go into a zone, it really feels like you're missing a lot. Although with Cookie Cutter, you don't feel so much like your stumbling on your destination and so far you will find a traversal thing that lets you get further in the area, where as in Axiom you kinda just have to choose to ignore things and later on you will probably find something.

 

[meiam]

Oh, im also playing Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective on my Steam Deck.

I heard some pretty positive things about it from Skill Up on YouTube. I understand that it is a remake of a DS game (never played it myself), but it piqued my curiosity enough to add it to my wishlist, but firmly under the proviso that I get it at a deep discount, because I wasn't really too sure of it.

Fortunately/unfortunately when my partner asked me what games I wanted for my birthday from my Steam wishlist, I basically gave her zero direction other than "whatever is Overwhelmingly Positive", and this ended up being one of those games.

So far, im not really feeling it. Im still in the early hours which I suppose more or less functions as a tutorial, but because there is zero voice acting or contextual hints, the game is constantly interrupting itself to tell me something, which is quite frustrating. But it still happy to give it a chance because it is early days, and because Overwhelmingly Positive games usually aren't labelled as such without merit.

Its very slow in the beginning. Nintendo adjacent game, so they want to make sure even little kid understand the concept, it takes awhile before any puzzle actually make you stop and think.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Vanillaware's last great story in their games is still Odin's Sphere. That was nearly twenty years ago now. After that they really faltered with story or don't care. It's been pretty clear though that they've always been gameplay over story even with their best titles. Odin is just the one that got Westerners invested in their future titles.

13 Sentinels was pretty good and the gameplay felt like filler. I do think the story had one twist too many, but it was still good overall.

 

[BrawlMan]

13 Sentinels was pretty good and the gameplay felt like filler. I do think the story had one twist too many, but it was still good overall.

I keep forgetting that exists. I do remember dropping the story, because it didn't work for me when I was watching Woolie do a playthrough.

 

[Drathnoxis]

NOTHING. I AM PLAYING NOTHING.

Because I finally beat persona 4 golden and Im having a midgame..inbetween game crisis.

I think Im prepared to step back and respect peoples opinion of Persona 4 golden not being the best game in the series.

Its very distinct between Persona 3R and Persona 5R because its so much smaller in scope. Its got fewer playable characters, fewer things to do, a small town mystery and its far more of a visual novel than it is an RPG. I think someone could absolutely enjoy Persona 5 and not enjoy persona 4.

Im a little miffed, maybe at myself because I beat persona 4 golden a few years ago on Psvita and thought wow its so much shorter than P3R or P5R, only to replay it this last month and find out I missed a whole 3rd of the game. Until the other two which really only have a couple ending options, with P4G Theres two more entire storylines and dungeons, one of which is literally the actual end of the game youd miss if you didn't choose just the right dialog options. In a way Im kinda just mad because Im supposed to just casually be enjoying a game and they withhold major story content for not playing with a guide and completionist mindset. Thats just stressful and thats not why I play videogames.

Anyway I think I largely enjoyed it. If I had one reasonable complaint it would be that the dungeon "key" treasure chests in P4G are largely repetitive useless baubles where as in the other two, especially P3R all the chests had actual important equipment or Outfits. Towards the end of P4G I started skipping them because I just didn't care.

That and P4R has a lot of cringe horniness that genuinely made me uncomfortable even as a standard bog horny guy. I felt like the friendships in P3R could be relatively platonic where as P4G had a near constant press for ecchi.

Now Im torn, Im once again trying to tell myself "ok dude, do something productive or at least play a normal game" and yet the one on the other shoulder says "Whelp better restart Persona 5R even though you just recently complained about how massive and mindnumbingly long it is!"

I liked P4 a lot, but I've never replayed it, never played Golden either. It's not even close between P4 and P3 to me though, P3 is just worse in every way. I'm actually playing P5 right now and it's really cool and stylish, we'll see if it supplants P4 as the series top for me. I haven't posted about it in this thread yet, however, because technically I'm not supposed to be playing the game as I declined to accept that it was entirely a work of fiction. Don't tell Igor.

Oh, im also playing Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective on my Steam Deck.

I heard some pretty positive things about it from Skill Up on YouTube. I understand that it is a remake of a DS game (never played it myself), but it piqued my curiosity enough to add it to my wishlist, but firmly under the proviso that I get it at a deep discount, because I wasn't really too sure of it.

Fortunately/unfortunately when my partner asked me what games I wanted for my birthday from my Steam wishlist, I basically gave her zero direction other than "whatever is Overwhelmingly Positive", and this ended up being one of those games.

So far, im not really feeling it. Im still in the early hours which I suppose more or less functions as a tutorial, but because there is zero voice acting or contextual hints, the game is constantly interrupting itself to tell me something, which is quite frustrating. But it still happy to give it a chance because it is early days, and because Overwhelmingly Positive games usually aren't labelled as such without merit.

I love Ghost Trick. The story is A tier for me, the puzzles are decent too, if not exactly brain busters.

 

[Piscian]

I liked P4 a lot, but I've never replayed it, never played Golden either. It's not even close between P4 and P3 to me though, P3 is just worse in every way. I'm actually playing P5 right now and it's really cool and stylish, we'll see if it supplants P4 as the series top for me. I haven't posted about it in this thread yet, however, because technically I'm not supposed to be playing the game as I declined to accept that it was entirely a work of fiction. Don't tell Igor.

I love Ghost Trick. The story is A tier for me, the puzzles are decent too, if not exactly brain busters.

Not sure if you meant vanilla P5 or P5R, but Despite my agony over its 140h length I do recommend P5R over vanilla, obviously you get the 30-40 hour expansion story, but also it fixes a few things like the gunplay mechanic which is kinda useless in Vanilla. I only recall because I got about 10h into vanilla before finding out about Royal and restarted. It was definitely worth it.

For some reason I feel like P3R was breezier than P4G, but it definitely had a far more generic story and characters. It was very..tropey..?? It did have a nice twist towards the end I enjoyed, but I have little desire to replay it. Atm anyway.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Not sure if you meant vanilla P5 or P5R, but Despite my agony over its 140h length I do recommend P5R over vanilla, obviously you get the 30-40 hour expansion story, but also it fixes a few things like the gunplay mechanic which is kinda useless in Vanilla. I only recall because I got about 10h into vanilla before finding out about Royal and restarted. It was definitely worth it.

For some reason I feel like P3R was breezier than P4G, but it definitely had a far more generic story and characters. It was very..tropey..?? It did have a nice twist towards the end I enjoyed, but I have little desire to replay it. Atm anyway.

I do mean P5R. I lucked out and the only copy of P5R that I've seen in my town, which was a steel book for the PS5, that I've had my eye on for like 8 months finally came on sale and nobody else bought it before I did.

I don't know how P3 was breezier than P4, unless the later editions changed things. All I can think of about P3 is the endless samey floors of Tartarus, fighting color swapped enemies.

Changing gears, I think P4 has one of my favorite intro songs out of the games I've played.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Vanillaware's last great story in their games is still Odin's Sphere.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Started MGS2... we'll see how much I can tolerate.

There is a lot of Snake being surprised women are a thing though; In MGS1 when told about Nastasha his first response is 'a female analyst?', when confronted by Sniper Wolf he's like 'a female sniper', and then when he meets Olga in MGS2 he again remarks 'a woman?' You'd think by the time he got onto that tanker he'd realize women might be around.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

There is a lot of Snake being surprised women are a thing though; In MGS1 when told about Nastasha his first response is 'a female analyst?', when confronted by Sniper Wolf he's like 'a female sniper', and then when he meets Olga in MGS2 he again remarks 'a woman?' You'd think by the time he got onto that tanker he'd realize women might be around.

I get the feeling Kojima was simply being his not-so-subtle self about projecting that very realization to his audience, which back then was certainly almost entirely male.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Yup, I'm hooked on Balatro.

I've managed to beat the game 4 times so far - three times on white stakes (2 blue decks, 1 green deck) and once on red stake with the blue deck. The game is basically pure distilled synergizing between actives, passives and RNG. I'm coming off a run where I leveled up flush hands and had Jokers that would 1. Turn clubs and spades, and hearts and diamonds, into the same suits, 2. Each spade (and therefore club) played added +4 to the multiplier, 3. Added a X3 multiplier whenever a hand was played more than once, 4. Even cards added another +4 to the multiplier. So by basically discarding or turning every red card into a black card (or a wild card) I was able to concentrate on the same winning strategy over and over.

Because there're hundreds of different passives/actives it's also basically guaranteed you'll never put together the same set up twice, so it's a game about coming up with new synergies every time. Although some runs I'm just in it for the collecting and will absolutely ruin the run if it means I can buy a card I don't have featured in the collection yet.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Persona 5. Crosswords are BS. What the heck are the May Blues and why is Malaise the answer? I was thinking the answer must be some sort of flower or bird or maybe a band I've never heard of because I've never heard of people getting depressed because it's spring. There could have been a better hint if they wanted me to get malaise.

 

[BrawlMan]

Redout II. I'm getting acclimated to the controls. This game is jammed pack with so much single player content, it kills all of the current and 8th gen AAA racing games out on the market. It can be a bit challenging getting a handle on the controls as you are driving and piloting at the same time. Once it clicks, it clicks. I am still early in the game and doing the career mode content. I got the Deluxe edition so I got the summer and winter eevents for free and I can play them at any time. In this game, you do move really fast.

 

[laggyteabag]

I've put a decent chunk of time into Black Mesa (Half-Life 1 remake), and I'd wager that I am about half way through.

For the uninitiated, you play as Gordon Freeman, a silent protagonist and scientist/lab assistant working in an underground facility, who unwittingly opens a portal to an alien world(?) which floods the facility with all sorts of alien creatures, who promptly begin to slaugher the inhabitants. Early into the game the military shows up, but instead of trying to rescue anyone, they're actually trying to kill any survivors they come across. And you are just running around, trying to survive I guess.

And yeah, it works pretty well. First of all, I'm immediately very surprised that this is a fan remake (though it appears to have been given the official go-ahead by Valve as they are selling it on Steam, which is very bizarre for unofficial projects like this). If someone had told me that this was a professionally made 7th gen title, I probably would have believed them. The game looks decent, the weapon animations are surprisingly solid, but the shooting is quite floaty.

I also notice that even though the majority of the environments are grey hallways, I'm not really having any trouble navigating or getting lost, and they have done a pretty decent job of (so far) giving each level a gimmick to navigate around (mostly giant aliens).

As for the stuff that I'm not so hot about: the music is very good, but it only shows up during specific setpieces, and it isn't very dynamic - which is to say that it doesn't play during the entire set piece, and will end if you take too long. It also does occasionally run into that issue where the music is going absolutely crazy, and all im doing is rummaging around crates.

I do enjoy fighting the alien creatures, but im not a big fan of fighting the military guys. The alien creatures either attack exclusively in melee, or telegraph their ranged attacks, so if you take damage, it was probably your fault. In contrast, the military guys use guns, which are basically hitscan. If you can see them, they can see you, and fights with them almost always result in you taking some damage. This is fine in a game with regenerating health, but it does not in Black Mesa, and so you are reliant on finding health kits to patch yourself up. Admittedly they don't deal much damage, and the health kits are rather abundant, but it does still feel rather unfair to take damage that you couldn't avoid.

There also doesn't appear to be much in the way of a story. You will have some immediate objectives (eg kill the giant tentacle monster), but so far there is nothing to link one chapter to the next seemingly other than "don't die". Very little is communicated to you, and you play as a silent protagonist, so it often feels like you are going from one objective to another "just because". Similarly, the game doesn't even have a pause objective screen, so I'm anticipating coming back to this game after a few day's break, wondering what I'm supposed to be doing.

In general though, I'm enjoying myself. There is a steady drip-feed of new weapons, enemies and scenarios, so it always feels like I'm discovering something new. it isn't doing anything particularly incredible for 2024, but when I see it through the lense of 1998, I can see why this game has stood the test of time.

 

[BrawlMan]

HF Rush - Hard Mode on NG+.

 

[CaitSeith]

I'm playing Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. It's an action-RPG looter spinoff based on the first Final Fantasy, made by Team Ninja, and it's a funny "contrast" after having played Final Fantasy XVI (and not so funny to be pressing the wrong button to block because my muscle memory from FFXVI's controls is still fresh).

Something hilarious is how the cutscenes like to show the characters' facial expressions, and how it gets ruined by the headgear equipment covering the characters' faces (either partially or fully). It reminds me of this...