What games are you playing now?

[Couchpotato]

Just wait till you both finish the game. The revelation is cringe worthy not shocking.

It's revealed that the world of Lumière and its inhabitants are part of a painted canvas created by the Dessendre family, specifically by Aline, to cope with the grief of losing her son, Verso.

 

[Drithius]

Still playing Path of Exile 2, Solo Self Found. I think the game has legs, taking the gameplay loop from PoE 1 basically starting anew with content.

Started a new character and felt the need to share the simple character screen. Gorgeous

 

[Carnifex]

I finished the demo for Metaphor, and these demos are gonna break me, as this is yet another game I'll have to buy. I should have known I'd love it since it also was brought to us by Atlus, the same folks that did Persona three: reloaded. If anyone sees Metaphor at a substantial discount from a reputable seller, please let me know.

Now I'm going between Long Dark and the expansion for Persona three, which seems to focus more on Aigis, one of the characters that I really enjoyed in the base game.

 

[henriquejr]

Yeah, I noticed there are two options (All Content or Classic) when starting a new game, so the changes must be significant that they kept them separate.

The biggest change seems to be that the robot you mentioned expands the squad size to 5. Let me know how it compares to the classic version after you've played a few missions.

I didn't wanna take too long to give you some feedback. I've done a few missions with Jack (if I'm not mistaken, he becomes available starting from the 3rd mission). Unlike the GREMLIN drones from XCOM2, which are necessarily linked to a Specialist character, Jack is an independent member of the team: it has its own action points, health points, abilities, and skill tree where we can assign skill points when it gains a level. I categorize him as a support unit (he can buff our team members, debuff enemies, you know the drill).

As for the new Deviant enemies, the ones I've found until now are nothing more than stronger variants of the enemies that already were in the 'classic' game, with an added new ability or 'power'. Example: the Deviant Wretch buffs the ordinary Wretches around it with a raging aura.

As for the difficulty level, this time I tried to play the Insane difficulty and I found it really too hard. I've restarted a given mission a lot of times, enough to make me give it up and restart the whole game in the Experienced level.

The game is still as good as I remembered, JDR13. And I still recommend it for all fans of tactical squad games. A pity that Gears Tactics hasn't the same modding community as XCOM2 does.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

Got a little further into Act 1 of Clair Obscur and I'm liking it a lot. The combat system feels a little bit like Disciples as well, in the sense that you don't get to move your party members around.
I like the little touch with the dodge and parry mechanic. It's very manageable most of the time. You just have to look at the animation, and it's decently telegraphed. And because it's turn based and nothing else changes or moves around you're not under constant stress to be on the look out of a lot of stimuli and animations, as in Sekiro. You just have to look at the animation, and learn their flow. I suspect later on enemies will start to use feigns and tricks to throw you off, but it's good.

It certainly is also a looker. While the graphical fidelity might not be outstanding, the art direction is quite nice.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

Seems I spoke too soon. Some of the parries are just either bugged, or my game is stuttering in that microsecond when I input the parry, or I'm just missing the timing.
To be fair I had similar things happening in Sekiro, where I could not for the life of me get some timings down. Fortunately here it's very fast to get back into the action.
But I'm also dealing with what seems to be a much higher level encounter, at least according to what Lune comments upon seeing the creature, so it's gonna take a bunch of perfect parries to have a chance to down the creature.
But it's very addicting to keep trying to do the timing, since there's such a short loop between retries.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

I really got stubborn and spent around 1h in total on this Chromatic Lancier, with my group at level 3 I believe. I could not get the timings consistently right for it for parries, so I finally gave up and opted for the dodge timing. Even that took a decent number of tries, but it finally went down.
I do not plan to bash my head against fight like this. This sounds like it was over my level. By how much I don't know, but I'll have to see how I can mitigate this.

Also, am I getting right that it also has the bonfire mechanic from Souls games? I went back to one flag and it did indeed respawn encounters.
Also, I do hope I'm not bricking my character build. I really don't know what to invest in. So far I kinda invested in agility, to get more opportunities to attack. But that also means more chances to miss-time dodges/parries. So I'm not sure that's so smart. But the scaling on damage or life bonus seemed pretty low instead. So who knows. I wonder how frequent the respecs can be? I see they have such a mechanic.

Anyway, I should probably start a journaling thread instead of spamming this one.

 

[JDR13]

Also, am I getting right that it also has the bonfire mechanic from Souls games? I went back to one flag and it did indeed respawn encounters.

Unfortunately, yes. I guess it's good if you need to grind, but I didn't like it in this game.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

Unfortunately, yes. I guess it's good if you need to grind, but I didn't like it in this game.

Yeah, and just like in souls games it seems some of the enemies are flagged as bosses or mini-bosses and don't respawn. The Chromatic Lancier I spent 1h to kill doesn't respawn.

 

[JFarrell71]

Also, am I getting right that it also has the bonfire mechanic from Souls games? I went back to one flag and it did indeed respawn encounters.

Not quite. You have to rest at the bonfire for respawns to occur. I often stop at a new bonfire to force a save but don't rest.

Chromatic anything are bosses, yes.

I don't try to parry anything. There's no point once you have the Dodger picto, which you get super early. That gives you the same 1 AP you get for a parry, and it only takes up one point in your lumina. There are some pictos that more things more involved with parries, and there is a condition that can be inflicted on you that looks like chains and disallows dodges, but for the most part dodging works just fine for me. There are even times when I get antsy and dodge so early that I'm still able to dodge the attack when it gets there. That couldn't happen with a parry.

 

[JDR13]

Not quite. You have to rest at the bonfire for respawns to occur. I often stop at a new bonfire to force a save but don't rest.

I'm not sure how that's significantly different.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

I don't try to parry anything. There's no point once you have the Dodger picto, which you get super early. That gives you the same 1 AP you get for a parry, and it only takes up one point in your lumina. There are some pictos that more things more involved with parries, and there is a condition that can be inflicted on you that looks like chains and disallows dodges, but for the most part dodging works just fine for me. There are even times when I get antsy and dodge so early that I'm still able to dodge the attack when it gets there. That couldn't happen with a parry.

Doesn’t the parry also do damage back to the enemy as part of the move? Even quite significant a few of the times, from what I remember. Whereas the dodge doesn’t at all.

 

[No_.ne]

Spoiler

I have NO idea why Ellie wants vengeance so bad! Sure they killed Joel, but he was an asshole that deserved it. The creepiest scenes for me were the flashbacks with him in them. She even tells him to go to hell after finding out what he did at the hospital, so why is she angry with the survivors - they were the victims! I'm also mad at Abbie for shooting Jessie, the hero of the story so far.

Spoiler

They killed her father. He was essentially just that. As for their fight, you've never faced that moment of telling someone something and regretting the fact that you never got the chance to take it back? And to her, the people that killed Joel weren't the people that he left to die, they were the ones that took him away.

As for the stuff about Ellie's appearance, she's buff, that's all. Not entirely sure how that's freakish. Idk bout the animations being bugged, didn't face any of those.

 

[No_.ne]

Started Divinity: Original Sin... kinda.
It's been an hour and I'm still making my character. As someone who never gets really into character creation stuff, this is a first, I've had to take a break coz of this thing.

Decided to take the chance to ask if there were any mods y'all would recommend for a first playthrough.

 

[JDR13]

As for the stuff about Ellie's appearance, she's buff, that's all. Not entirely sure how that's freakish. Idk bout the animations being bugged, didn't face any of those.

I think you meant Abby there. Yeah, I wouldn't call her freakish, although it's rare for a girl to get that buff without the use of testosterone and/or a steroid.

Started Divinity: Original Sin... kinda.
It's been an hour and I'm still making my character. As someone who never gets really into character creation stuff, this is a first, I've had to take a break coz of this thing.

Decided to take the chance to ask if there were any mods y'all would recommend for a first playthrough.

Good game. I personally didn't use mods or feel like it needed any. Mods are a lot more popular and plentiful for D:OS 2.

 

[Carnifex]

The Aigis-focused expansion for Persona 3 is super tough, and I love it. They've ramped up everything, not simply making the creatures with more health and such, they actually approach combat differently and it's causing me to evaluate each and every level of progression. The treasure obtained for difficult fights also seems much better than the base games.

 

[greywolf00]

I am playing Assassin's Creed: Shadows. Since I just completed the main story, I could also have posted this in "Last games you finished", but since there is still much side content open, I will be playing it for several more hours, I guess.

I love the game, it has the same qualities as AC:Origins and AC:Odyssey and I like it even more.

The positives:
- Great world, which is fun to travel. I loved this already in the other games and it is at least as good here. The landscape and buildings are great, also the overall atmosphere.
- Exploration is even more fun than in the other games, since you can choose to find locations on your own, based on general direction hints given. As an alternative you can also decide to send scouts to narrow down the targets for you.
- While I can't judge the accurateness of Japanese history, the presentation of historical lore etc. is great. If you assume that it is as accurate as Hellenistic Egypt in Origins or classical Greece in Odyssey, it is surely worth learning.
- I liked the main story even more than the ones in the predecessors and I found the fates of the two protagonists very moving. Also the motives of the villains are presented in a way that you can understand them. You even get doubts, whether you are on the right side from time to time.
- I found stealth and fighting well done and fun.
- A change in character progression, which I liked very much: Besides the normal way to gather experience through fighting and completing quests, you can get knowledge points from peaceful activities like meditating at new shrines or finding lost scripts in temples. The normal experience gives you mastery points to learn new skills, as usual. The knowledge points allow you to access higher levels of skills in the skill trees. I liked that combined mechanic.

The negatives:
- One small nitpick I have: You can play two characters and even change the character, as you wish. This is the good side. But from time to time you are forced to use one of the characters for specific tasks and I didn't like that. If, for example you have infiltrated an area with the stealthy character, you may find an obstacle, which can only be removed by the fighter guy. Since you have to leave the area in order to change the character, this can be annoying. However, this is only a small nuisance.

All in all, this is a 10/10 for me and recommended to everybody, who likes Open world exploration games with story and stealth like Origins and/or Odyssey or games like Horizon Zero Dawn or the newer Tomb Raider games.

Some statistics: Steam says that I played 130 hours, the save game says 110 hours, the difference my be idle time or time lost by reloads after death. I assume that I will spend 50 more hours completing the side quests and exploration of the map. I played on the highest difficulty level with one modification: I chose the option to auto-complete quick time events, since I don't like those. Such QTEs are only relevant for some of the meditation tasks and samurai training tasks needed for knowledge points.

Is it more like Origins or Odyssey? I thought Origins was amazing and definitely the reboot the series needed. It's been downhill since imo completely losing the assassin v templar thread and turning into a historical power fantasy simulator. The itemization also went too watered down with too many drops in Odyssey to not enough in Valhalla. And Valhalla dragged the game loop out way to far.

 

[greywolf00]

I started Clair Obscur. Pretty cool start, and I like the combat system. It is a bit hard to make out the animations but hopefully will get used to it. But the fact that it's turn based, and you control when you need to be on best timings is way easier than a real-time combat system like Sekiro's. I think it's gonna be cool. I'm also playing on the hardest difficulty, just to see how hard it gets.

I liked the beginning and was surprised how easily it got me teary eyed, even with characters i did not know 1h ago. The music is a good contributor, but the premise is quite sad.
I do wonder if they explain this something which just occurred to me. Why does Gustave leave his expedition until after Sophie is gone? Couldn't he have done this 1-2 years ago and also save her for himself, if he's gonna attempt this? Even if broken up. I'll be curious if they touch on it.
Though I assume other people also have their loved ones, and everyone would be pulling for leaving as soon as possible? Anyway, I'll be on the watch for any explanation.

The idea is expeditions are overwhelmingly undertaken by people in their last year of life as a suicide mission. Rarely do you get people going before that as it would be a "waste" of what precious time they have left. Maelle is obviously the exception and they will touch on it a bit if you do the optional camp conversations.

 

[greywolf00]

I started Avowed last weekend and am sitting in Thirdborn now. I will probably finish it next weekend. This is shaping up to be a stronger year than 2023 as a whole even if no single game hits BG3 heights. I had also finally tried KCD a few weeks ago and ended up grabbing 2. Will work through both of those next.

 

[bkrueger]

Is it more like Origins or Odyssey? I thought Origins was amazing and definitely the reboot the series needed. It's been downhill since imo completely losing the assassin v templar thread and turning into a historical power fantasy simulator. The itemization also went too watered down with too many drops in Odyssey to not enough in Valhalla. And Valhalla dragged the game loop out way to far.

This is hard to answer for me, since I liked Odyssey and Origins equally and don't see that much of a difference there. However, Shadows clearly continues the Assassins versus Templars theme. Also I found the RPG-system more fun than in the predecessors. Shadows is not about explicitly meeting Isu/Gods, so it is more like Origins than like Odyssey in that regard. I assume that you may like it, if you liked Origins.

By the way I am playing Valhalla now and I would call that the weakest of the four. Shadows is much more like Origins or Odyssey than like Valhalla, I feel.