What games are you playing now?

Main thing you need is a stress healer early on. So at first inn get the plague doctor upgrade for ounce of prevention.

Game isn't too difficult after that.

They did buff the late game enemies somewhat making it harder to win but the rest of the game shouldn't be too hard.

You don't need to clear the lairs all the time. The bosses there are very strong in early game. Go for the first two fights and then leave. That should help a lot.

Yes, most of the time it's not that hard, and I always have at least one stress heal character, often two.

Having the plague doctor be almost obligatory isn't that fun, though. I can't seem to find a good way to make the Jester good enough to replace her yet. Maybe it has really good stress reduction skills which I haven't unlocked yet? I choose a lot of the same characters over and over since they must be able to overcome all challenges. And then I don't unlock new skills for the other ones.

It's only two out of maybe ten runs I've gotten the "meltdown of doom spiral". And both times it was against regular enemies (the cosmic big ones, two encounters in a row one time and the monster that does skull toss and howl, several regular encounters the other run), which are really annoying and cause a lot of stress. I had almost no stress before those encounters, and every character hating every other after those. I managed to get to the mountain one of those times, but it wasn't fun with regular negative banter and interrupts and a guaranteed loss against the boss. (BTW, the final boss is not very fun to me. Very grindy.)

It's still quite fun, but I feel like I've seen most things available this far into the development. I'll try it again eventually.
 
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Yes, most of the time it's not that hard, and I always have at least one stress heal character, often two.

Having the plague doctor be almost obligatory isn't that fun, though. I can't seem to find a good way to make the Jester good enough to replace her yet. Maybe it has really good stress reduction skills which I haven't unlocked yet? I choose a lot of the same characters over and over since they must be able to overcome all challenges. And then I don't unlock new skills for the other ones.

It's only two out of maybe ten runs I've gotten the "meltdown of doom spiral". And both times it was against regular enemies (the cosmic big ones, two encounters in a row one time and the monster that does skull toss and howl, several regular encounters the other run), which are really annoying and cause a lot of stress. I had almost no stress before those encounters, and every character hating every other after those. I managed to get to the mountain one of those times, but it wasn't fun with regular negative banter and interrupts and a guaranteed loss against the boss. (BTW, the final boss is not very fun to me. Very grindy.)

It's still quite fun, but I feel like I've seen most things available this far into the development. I'll try it again eventually.
Yeah after a few runs I have seen everything. The one thing I hadn't managed was to beat the Tangle's boss so I did another run after the final enemy was buffed with an alternate party. Many members actually get stress reduction so its a matter of using them properly.

Man at arms has bolster for the entire team
Hellion can reduce own stress with one skill
Jester can do strong single stress heal
Grave robber can reduce own stress
Leper can reduce own stress by a lot.

I think a few others too.
 
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Yeah after a few runs I have seen everything. The one thing I hadn't managed was to beat the Tangle's boss so I did another run after the final enemy was buffed with an alternate party. Many members actually get stress reduction so its a matter of using them properly.

Man at arms has bolster for the entire team
Hellion can reduce own stress with one skill
Jester can do strong single stress heal
Grave robber can reduce own stress
Leper can reduce own stress by a lot.

I think a few others too.

I mostly play with man at arms for bolster for stress heal of one character (plus himself) and with plague doctor for stress heal for all. I've tried the Jester, but can't find a good way to play him. The problem with the Jesters stress heal compared to the others is that it is only a stress heal with no other effect (I think).
 
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I mostly play with man at arms for bolster for stress heal of one character (plus himself) and with plague doctor for stress heal for all. I've tried the Jester, but can't find a good way to play him. The problem with the Jesters stress heal compared to the others is that it is only a stress heal with no other effect (I think).
Yeah it's mostly true. Does also remove horror but that's situational. Although very helpful against those enemies you seem to struggle against.

Jester can remove 3 stress at a time though compared to 2 for most other abilities.

I think the jester works well to help reposition as well as he has lots of forward and back moves. It's one of the things I do like.
 
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Yeah it's mostly true. Does also remove horror but that's situational. Although very helpful against those enemies you seem to struggle against.

Jester can remove 3 stress at a time though compared to 2 for most other abilities.

I think the jester works well to help reposition as well as he has lots of forward and back moves. It's one of the things I do like.
Yes, reposition is great against certain enemies. Unless good or bad relationships interrupt it...

If one character gets horror it's good, if all get it, like some enemy skills do, it's not that effective. I wish the shops didn't have such a random selection, since having the right combat items make a huge difference (like laudanum when encountering strong stress attack monsters), and sometimes they just don't show up the entire run.

I also wish it was possible to sell extra stuff instead of just deleting it.
 
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I'm getting along well in my replay of Swords and Sorcery: Underworld, just hit level nine with most of my group and I'm exploring some new territories. It's funny how much I forget about games, even taking notes I tend not to remember much. Fortunately I did note the solution for the quest sword, so that gave me a serious leg up and I picked up some ancient bow that I don't recall ever having in my first run, so that's exciting! The archer is a force to be reckoned with, now.
 
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Yet another long-ish hiatus, but fortunately, not without some quality gaming time.
This time I'm totally obsessed with Shin Megami Tensei V (Switch)

This is a very niche game series, not many of you might know about, so here is the skinny:

SMT is a a brutal dungeon crawler at heart (although SMT V has no "traditional" dungeons).

You must recruit your party members from enemies (demons) and alter them to your liking (fuse demons together). Kinda like Pokemon on steroids.

The turn-based battle system is easy to learn, but hard to master: your strategies center on elemental strengths/weaknesses. Exploit a weakness, and get one more free move - miss an attack, and lose one move. Enemies play the same game and, boy, they are ruthless.

The story / setting is very unique: after a cataclysm, you must reshape the world to your existential liking. It is very mature, unsettling, and full of choices and consequences. Heavy on religious themes, definitely not for the easily offended.
Note: this is NOT a cinematic RPG though.

The interface is mostly okay (gameplay is heavy on stats and whatnot), and the graphics are gorgeous (a very Japanese take on several culture's mythological being -- YES, it has Christian saints as well, and they are not always flattering)

All in all: SMT is a JRPG that is more Western than most mainstream cRPG nowadays: if you are curious what would be the unholy bastard child of Wizardry and early Final Fantasies while Ultima IV goes voyeur -- give SMT a whirl. You might like it.
 
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Replaying The Outer Worlds with both Gorgon and Eridinos expansions on the Switch. I really hadn’t paid attention to the details of these, and so am pleasantly surprised with how much content is added. I am still massively overpowered, and for this play through also maxed out Persuasion, which has opened up loads of possibilities. Still love this game - for exactly what it is (I.e. not pretending it is an open world free-form RPG).
 
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I'm still playing SCUM. If you like survival games with mild roleplaying, then this game could be fun for you. The game has been in early access for over 3 years and I'd guess it'll be early access at least another 5 years. The devs are constantly adding things, taking our what doesn't work, and adding team members since the game made buckets of money.

Premise as I understand it: You are a clone of a prisoner sentenced to life and given over to a corporation called TEC-1. This company implants your consciousness into a body and then dumps it in a prison colony based off real world Croatia. You can commit suicide and you'll just respawn back in the colony immediately, but without your stuff. You can retrieve said stuff if you want.

At some point in time there will be a way to escape the prison but that won't be implemented for years if ever.

Your goal is to avoid prisoners that have gone insane from too many clonings and have become puppets of TEC-1. These puppets just wander the map and are programmed to attack sane prisoners at the behest of TEC-1. TEC-1 has a very popular TV show set on the island. Camera drones will check in on you constantly. You can destroy them but it has no impact as the drones are everywhere.

Game elements: base building, body needs (hunger, thirst, injuries, nutrition, stamina), looting, lock picking, vehicles (paddle boats, motor boats, bicycles, motorcycles, tractors, pickups, sports utility vehicles, quads, etc.), combat with tons of different weapons from stone knives to assault rifles. The motorcycles and fishing are newer developments and it's fun riding around on a dirt bike. My favorite vehicle is either the tractor or the police SUV. Tractor is very loud but it hold an absolute ton of loot. The cop car is extremely fast and is great on the open road.

The game tracks all of your skills and everything goes up or down very slowly. You have 4 stats: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution and Intelligence. Each stat has two or more skills that are based off that stat.

To master a skill would take hundreds of real life hours. For instance, it takes 10,000,000 to be at advanced in a skill and the average XP gain is 1 to 5 points per action. Youch!

So, SCUM is my Skyrim replacement. It's what I play in between replays of Bethesda's offerings.
 
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Sometimes I will play different games depending on my mood and if I get bored of a certain game. So right now I have been playing Painkiller occasionally, a game I played a long time ago, but one that is well worth replaying.

And I recently went back and was playing Pathfinder: Kingmaker. I finally made it to the Kingdom management part, and am not a fan of it, just as I expected that I would dislike it. I put my kingdom on invincible and auto, but it still wants me to do kingdom management crap. Gonna try to push through it, because I still very much enjoy the dungeon exploring and combat, and party building/character progression, which is first rate.

My latest game I went back to playing is Fallout 3. This game has enchanted me ever since I first played it, and I still find it awesome. The freedom and exploration is still amazing. And I'm finally making some progress in the main quest story line as well. I will probably focus on this game and Pathfinder: Kingmaker for the upcoming Thanksgiving long holiday weekend.
 
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Since a couple of days, I put aside Pathfinder:WOTR to concentrate a bit more of MTG:Arena with the release of Innistrad Crimsom Vow. In pathfinder, I'm now at chapter 5 and while I'm really curious to continue the story, the strategic mode with its HOMM battles take way too much time and is boring me to death. So I decided to take a break.

Yesterdays, I also finally started Trudograd. Same old goodness than Atom RPG with its great setting and fast paced tactical battles. I hesitated between Trudograd and Encased but it seems that Encased is due for a few more patches.
 
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I thought I'd try playing another game at roughly the same time as I'm revisiting Swords and Sorcery: Underworld, so I fired up God Wars: Future Past last night, and did the first two battles in that game. So far it seems really good, it seems like a Final Fantasy: Tactics-type game, so it's right up my alley. I'll likely knock out a few more battles today and see how it goes.
 
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I'm finding it hard to focus on any game at the moment.
Stalled on Pathfinder 1 (yet again).

Playing a little bit of SCUM, mainly because I got another key from a recent bundle and my son wants to play with me.

Playing a little bit of Cyberpunk 2077 again. Making certain to make a few different choices re: character development and story choices from my first run through.

Tried a little bit of DOOM (2016). Pretty slick game.

Hopefully I get my gaming enthusiasm back soon.
 
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I'm finding it hard to focus on any game at the moment.
Stalled on Pathfinder 1 (yet again).

I've managed to burn forward quite a lot since the last time you posted, when I think we were both at the same place, I've now completed the Varnhold chapter and the chapter after that.

Be warned, the chapter after Varnhold (one that has three or four different quest-lines), will be a massive test of your patience and your will to continue as the options become hilariously bad and obtuse. However, with ample googling every time you feel blindsided it is manageable to some degree.

Hopefully the remainder of the game settles down a bit, but if you're in any mood to quit and looking for any excuse to stop bothering, there'll be plenty of opportunities in the chapter after Varnhold.
 
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Hopefully the remainder of the game settles down a bit, but if you're in any mood to quit and looking for any excuse to stop bothering, there'll be plenty of opportunities in the chapter after Varnhold.
I was doing the Varnhold chapter when I last played. However, I just started the game to see where I was at with that and the damn thing wouldn't even start properly. In-game cursor with a black screen. Awesome.
This sort of thing, plus the plethora of minor bugs (do you get spammed with messages about characters not being affected by so-and-so "due to game settings", when that is patently not the case? Besides which, there are no settings set that would make it so). Some of these bugs seem to be the type that would be easy to fix, yet here they are releasing another one.
I want to like the game as much as most others do, it should really be my jam, but the bugs, plot choices, and game structure are just grinding away my enthusiasm.
 
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No, I haven't had any game settings bugs.

To be honest, I haven't noticed any bugs of any note really. I probably wouldn't know one if I saw one, but the only ones I tend to find are the graphical ones, which can be hilarious, well, as long as they don't break anything, which they haven't yet.

Stuff like an enemy body flying around the screen upon death, rag-doll on acid style. Or a companion turning into a small sun and blinking rapidly until I exited the screen, and, of course, the occasional 'stuck on the scenery'.
 
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I've completed two of the three regions in Far Cry 5 now. I'm still enjoying it, but I'm also looking forward to finishing and moving on to something else. It's got a lot of cool moments but also a lot of "wtf?" ones too.

I'm surprised at some of the songs I've heard in the game, and I wonder how much Ubisoft paid to be able to use them. There was a driving sequence where it was playing the BGM from the first level of the original Doom. I thought that was pretty neat.
 
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To get myself out of my gaming funk I decided to tackle something out of my normal comfort zone. So... I'm playing Code Vein.
It has souls-like gameplay (and I generally suck at Dark Souls and games like it) and anime (which I usually have a low tolerance of), but I'm... kinda enjoying it? It helps that there is plenty of exploring and secret stuff to uncover, and you have a companion who can help keep you from being mobbed, and the story is pretty dark.
I can't imagine I'll get anywhere near finishing it as I'll eventually hit a challenge/boss wall, but for now it's a welcome diversion.
 
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Back to Solesta. Time to discover those new classes they have added and to play those cool user created modules. It's already pretty good despite de lack of scripting.

I also realized that I don't feel much like playing WOTR anymore. Chapter 5 has basically killed the fun for me. Not sure if I will ever complete the game. Perhaps I will get back to it, once they have added some new contents.
 
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