Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of November 26th

I'm replaying Prey (2017) and Fire Emblem Awakening. Also, some Super Mario Wonder, when my children and wife are not hogging the switches.

Finally finished up my first playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3 and started a new playthrough two days later, ha ha! I did not find Gale at all in my first run, so I got him this time around and am traveling with a different party. Still having a ton of fun with this game, and I’m excited to explore parts of the story that I missed the first time around!

Also about halfway through a third playthrough of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, siding with the Black Eagle house this time around.

On a whim, I decided to start a Total War Empire campaign as Poland-Lithuania. I saw a meme about playing games in your Steam library instead of buying something on sale, and I felt justifiably attacked.

I always say that buying the games and playing the games are two separate hobbies, ha ha!

I'm going through the story mode of Backpack Hero, and I wish it was better. If I get too frustrated with being unable to tell how to progress, maybe I'll just stick to the classic roguelike mode. It does do a decent job of walking you through the various play styles the game offers though.

I started and finished Cocoon. It's a puzzle game that works a bit four-dimensionally, but it's also a very linear experience, so even though it seems like there are so many options in front of you that you can never figure it out, they actually keep the possibility space small and manageable. I can't imagine what the QA effort must have been like to make sure that you didn't get yourself into an unwinnable state, but they seemingly pulled it off.

I started Starfield. $54 on sale felt like a good price. It meets expectations for what you're getting out of a Bethesda game, with the exception of a lack of city maps (which I knew going into it was a complaint, but I really feel that criticism now). It's still early goings, but I'm enjoying it so far. I mostly had to put it down for Thanksgiving weekend, because I knew I'd have games that would run better on the Steam Deck while I was out of town.

Wargroove 2 has been a satisfying continuation of Wargroove so far. No complaints. It scratches that Advance Wars itch, arguably better than Advance Wars itself.

Speaking of which, in an effort to start carving through my RPG backlog and prevent myself from starting another long playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3, I started a game I picked up on sale this week, Pillars of Eternity. I never picked this one up back in the day due to its real time with pause mechanics, which always felt like a sloppier way to handle an RPG than just doing real time or turn-based. I still stand by that, but at least the game's mechanics seem to work with it in a way that matters with its "interrupts" where the casting time of each ability really matters. I'm still very early on in this one too, but the game does me the favor of showing me all of the dice rolls like any good CRPG should so that I can start to deduce the things I should be prioritizing. I want to get through this game and its sequel before Avowed comes out, since it's set in the same world.

I played maybe half or more of PoE and still do not get RTwP at all. I was playing on normal difficulty but started getting absolutely trounced frequently, so I gave up. If I'd thought about it at the time, I would have just dropped the difficulty, but it didn't occur to me until so late I'd forgotten too much to pick it back up.

Shame cause it was a lot of fun otherwise.
- Really? There's not much to get. It's just turn-based but harder to wield, in most cases. PoE just assigns lengths of time in seconds to particular actions rather than turns (or "rounds") like old D&D games did. You can also set the game to auto-pause when certain events happen, like when a spell is done casting or a target is killed, so that you can immediately assign a new action when the thing happens.

Finally decided to get Mass Effect Legendary Edition since it was on sale. It's been such a long time since I played the original ME and I hadn't gotten to the 3rd. Loving every moment so far. Gonna go for a renegade run across all three just to see what happens lol

Gonna go for a renegade run across all three just to see what happens lol

I told myself the same once but I just couldn't do it. 😭
- Oh I don't doubt it. I get tempted to choose the nicer options but I'm staying firm. I almost never go the bad/evil route in games like these so I'm excited to see how things are going to play out. Probably going to hate every outcome though lol.

Sea of Stars.

It's a nice take on an old school JRPG. Keeps the complexity manageable, doesn't take itself too seriously on the story, but stays engaging.

EA Sports WRC: I'd have though that EA would take the easy way, get DR2 gameplay which was ok, upgrade graphics to be next gen, rebrand to the official license and sell for 70$.

They have instead reworked the physics to the point they are probably the best ever a in non - hardcore - sim(RBR) rally game, tarmac is finally fun. They've added 12 rallies which is twice as many as DR2 had at launch and mostly based on real life stages, not fantasy, not to mention they are available in different seasons (Monte Carlo in winter with ice feels completely different to summer). There are plenty of cars which look and sound great. They have sacrificed graphics on the other hand, the game looks no better than last gen DR2 and there were stutters. All of that for 50$.

It's very weird for EA but I'll take it. They've been, surprisingly, well behaved this year although I don't play their sports games so maybe they doubled down there to compensate 😂

Other than that I've finished my "normal", good, 3 druid BG3 playthrough, started an evil, dark urge Bard one.

CrossCode!! One of my top favorites of all time. It's such a good charming game with awesome gameplay. I wish there was more 😭

The devs are making Project Terra, so eventually

Ys IX Monstrum Nox

I'm at the final chapter of the game, and here's my thoughts:

The game has adopted many bad trends from other games that it becomes annoying halfway thru the game, here are some of my complaints:

The dialogue, a lot of useless fluff dialogues that takes extra 2 seconds for the characters to animate. If there's 10 people in the scene, then those 10 feel the need to chime in to say something frivolous.
Just can't get emotionally invested in the character, maybe it's the writing, maybe they just follow cookie cutter anime tropes most of the time (thrown in some 'twist' later on). I weirdly care more about the side characters from Lacrimosa than this one.
The constant interruption of the flow. You gained control of your character, moved to main/side quest point, cutscene, walked forward 10 steps, another cutscene. And the problem is, most cutscenes are just insubstantial.
Side quests that are not side quests anymore, since you need them to remove those artificial barriers. You can farm nox, but it's way slower. Side quests also suffer from 'everything needs lengthy writing' RPG syndrome nowadays. Better writing, not more writing. I had the same issue with Horizon Forbidden West, where most side quests contain way too much dialogue that's been used to pad the game to 100+ hours, where it could be a 30 hour game.
The raids / grimwald sections are bit too much. I like how they are mostly optional in Lacrimosa. In this game, you even need to do them to remove the barriers to optional area.
Third Eye / detective mode is a mechanic that devs should move away from. Just outline the points of interest, don't make it so it's hard to see everything else.
The lock-on in combat is a wild mess for me. I don't know whether it's my settings, or the game.

On the other hand, what I like about this game:

The vertical mobility, that's to shake up the exploration. The problem is it's kinda janky, I'd often fall down after grappling to a ledge, because the ledge is too small. Wall run often ends up being blocked, etc. I hope that they will polish the mechanic more in the future. In combat though, I barely use them to fight enemies thanks to the messy lock-on
I enjoy doing the collectibles (petals, treasures, graffitis) in this game.

Besides that I've been slowly progerssing Resident Evil HD Remake, trying to get infinite rocket launcher.

The dialogue, a lot of useless fluff dialogues that takes extra 2 seconds for the characters to animate. If there’s 10 people in the scene, then those 10 feel the need to chime in to say something frivolous.

I haven't played the game, so I don't know how that's handled exactly, but I played a bunch of CRPGs these last few months and I wish the companions in those games were more like this. 99% of the time it's just the MC talking with one or two other people, and it's just so boring.

The constant interruption of the flow. You gained control of your character, moved to main/side quest point, cutscene, walked forward 10 steps, another cutscene. And the problem is, most cutscenes are just insubstantial.

This is just super annoying. I'm going through the same thing in Crisis Core right now, where you're interrupted by a tiny cutscene every few steps in the main missions. Just make one longer cutscene, or tell me whatever useless thing you wanted to say, while I'm playing.

Taking it a bit slow this week after more than 200h of Pathfinder Kingmaker the last month.

More Risk of Rain Returns. I finished all the Providence Trials, that I have available, the only ones missing are for the two characters I haven't unlocked yet. I gotta say, those trials are a nice way to unlock and get to know most of the alternative abilities.

Next I started Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII- Reunion. I'm in chapter 3 currently, and so far it's not that interesting. You can pretty easily tell that it's based on a 16y/o PSP game, even if it's a remake. The cinematics look alright, but are full of upscaling artifacts. The animations are pretty stiff at times, which is a bit disappointing, since I thought FF7R did that really well. As for the combat, it's kinda one-note. You only have one attack button, along with four materia slots, so you can do some super basic chains. Although, since those four slots also include pure stat increases, like HP Up, you might just run around with one or two offensive abilities, so it can feel really samey. The main missions are really annoying, since you get a short cutscene every few steps, it feels like. Outside the main missions, you have tons of tiny side missions (300 apparently). So far these have been super short, like less than five minutes most of the time, four or five environments, and almost all in linear corridors. To be honest though, I like a mindless grind like this from time to time, I just wish the rest was a bit better. I will keep playing though, since the game is on the shorter side, so it shouldn't be too bad.

Then, I also got me one of those new Steam Deck OLEDs, and sold my old one for cheap to a friend. I haven't played a lot on it yet, tried Crisis Core and Risk of Rain Returns, and did like two runs in Peglin, but I quite like it. I barely used my old one (I found the fan to be super annoying), and this OLED model might end up the same, but the improvements are really great. Even during Crisis Core, which had the GPU at 90%+ and the chip at 20W TDP, it was pretty quiet and a more pleasant frequency, same with Nioh 2. Maybe I should replay Ori and the Will of the Wisps on it, since everyone's always saying how great the HDR is in the game and how beautiful it can look on an OLED screen.

Started playing Minecraft again, some FC 24 and various racing games (GT7 and ACC mostly with some Wreckfest thrown in).

Mars First logistics, it fucking rocks.

I've been playing Soulstone Survivors. I kida forgot it existed and was searching the Steam Store for a Vampire Survivor like and was reminded I own it.Itt is clear that the makers were in the middle of making a ARPG rougelike when VS came out, and they successfully made the change. As a result, it has well fleshed out systems across the board.

Started playing Yakuza like a dragon. I wanted to start a new RPG. Also started a new playthrough of Eden Ring, following the wiki since I missed a lot of stuff in the past. Going with a samurai build

Diablo 4

Just started The Forest. The surfaces are a little wonky sometimes, but it's been a fun survival game.

Can you tell me how it compares to Subnautica if you've played it? I've been looking for something that scratches that very particular itch that Subnautica hit so well, and so far I just don't like the aimlessness of the other survival/crafting games I've played. Subnautica's purposeful progression really hit the sweet spot.

I keep trying No Man's Sky, but after 2 years I finally figured out why it never clicks for more than a few hours at a time: it's essentially a live service game, which for some reason I never recognized. It throws all its updates at you immediately, which destroys any real sense of earned progression in some ways, and its economy is designed for frequent and persistent play and multiplayer, so if you're just playing casually, progress is sloggy as hell in other ways. And there's just a thousand discovered things to do at all times, it's overwhelming. It's my fault for misunderstanding, but I've been trying to play it like I played Subnautica, and that's just not what this is.

The closest I've come so far to recreating the Subnautica magic was Dysmantled, which is a totally different game in a lot of ways but really terrific in its own right. Looking forward to their next game, Dysplaced, next year.

Anyway, I've had my eye on The Forest lately. Waiting for a sale, wondering if it will fit the bill.
- The Forest should be on sale (just checked, it's $5 on Steam until Nov 28), and it's somewhat Subnautica-like. There's a definite horror element to it, though, so in that way, it's a different experience, but you still do the "find food, find water, build a base, craft tools" thing.
  
  I don't think it's as good as Subnautica, but for $5, it's still a fun experience, and there is an ongoing story/quest to give you something to focus on. I sank 8 hours into it in the first two days, and there's still a ton to uncover, so I think it's worth a play.

Just finished Half-Life, now I'm playing Half-Life: Source. :3

Charrua Soccer.

Man, I miss these pure arcade football games. Feels a bit like FIFA circa early 2000s, although a lot more fast-paced, no commentary, and no offsides. I would have said FIFA Street, but this sticks with the general rules, stays eleven-aside, and without super powers (although you do get some crazy screamers from outside the box and knocking in a bicycle kick feels ridiculously fun).

A little bit like Redcard in terms of silliness, though it's been a couple of decades since I played that.

Also, bonus for having women's teams and leagues/cups. Only about four (maybe five, I've forgotten) cups/leagues in total, but that's just a touch less than FC 24 which has two women's tournaments and five leagues.

When I saw the "store", I was immediately all, "oh, fuck no" only to realize we're doing good ol' PS2-era stuff where you actually unlock things by playing (earn coins from games, buy random shit).

Now I need to try the other one I bought, Kopatino All-Stars Soccer. Looks wild with all the powers and gameplay modifiers and what have you.

Edit: Lol, Kopatino is basically a "cute" version of Redcard. No rules, foul the fuck out of everyone because no cards, score crazy goals. Powers can also result in some funny scenarios. Turns out you can teleport yourself with the ball directly into the opposing goal net because why the fuck not.

All that said, I can see myself getting a bit bored of these because I get the sense that they're geared heavily toward multiplayer (offline included). They do have a shit ton of stuff to do, though, even single player, so who knows. Probably best for short sessions here and there, rather than longterm.

Thanksgiving and family visiting kinda threw me for a loop as far as gaming goes, but for Diablo 4: Season 2 I managed to move into the Champion chapter at the beginning of the week before anyone showed up. I'm finally in World Tier 4, so I'll be working on that when I have more time.

Neon White, it's fun and scratches the same time trial competitive itch Mirror's Edge had. I like the story as well, it's quirky and funny, not too serious.

Got around to finishing all endings for Lunacid. It's inspired by kings field, which I never played, but I really enjoyed my time with Lunacid. Highly recommend anyone to check it out if you are looking for a first person dungeon crawl.

I also completed the campaigns in Age of Mythology again. Played through that game so many times growing up it was nice to load it up and feel nostalgic for a time.

I’ve been jumping around between BG3, Control and Moonring. I highly recommend Moonring for anyone looking for a modern old school style rpg. It’s completely free too

More of my last couple months overview... I've been continuing Monster Hunter: Rise basically since the beginning of October, went across the country for a road trip and since getting back near the end of October have been pretty heavily attempting to 100% the game. I've put thousands of hours into the MH series but this would be my first technical 100% in these games since MH Tri.

In between all that I also rebuilt my music PC downstairs which has enough space for VR, more than I've ever gotten to try before. It's been great, although I'm still mostly doing my usual games, Pistol Whip, Blade and Sorcery, Holoball with some hobby applications like Vermillion and Vinyl Reality.

However outside of that, my friend got me Lethal Company which has been pretty fun. I like the Phasmophobia style game when I have a friend to play it with, and Lethal Company fits that well focusing on junk collecting and monsters instead of ghosts. I've also been playing games I wouldn't usually play on the PC on the Steam Deck instead. Much better experience for my preference, Kingdom Two Crowns, Hero's Hour, Everhood, and the more arcade style games like Moose Life and Ubermosh.

But this past week? MH: Rise, Moose Life, Ubermosh, Crypt of the Necrodancer!

Just started Star Citizen. It runs so terribly

EA FC 24 is so unrealistic.

Imagine Barcelona Feminí actually conceding more than like 2 goals in an average Liga F game IRL.

Ridiculous.

Deliver Us Mars, loved the first game and this one was free on EGS

Nier: Automata.

Tried to get into it earlier this year after I got it on sale. Was not in the right mindset then to have to replay the whole intro just because I died to the first boss.

Retried again this past weekend and have since been enjoying a pretty decent action RPG.

This past week I started playing again Stellaris. I unfortunately had to start over a new save since the many updates made my old save impossible to use at full power. Still, this new run seems to be better than my old save!