Whatcha Been Playing?

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Rhaegyr
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Rhaegyr »

I absolutely adored FTL and played it for nearly 100 hours - could never get on with Into the Breach though (which seemed far more difficult).
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markfm007
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by markfm007 »

FTL's a wonderful game. It's a rogue-like, or whatever term you prefer, so although it's hard to win, it never really felt like a failure to me when I didn't. Each time through feels complete and has its own story, whatever happens. It takes a few tries to get used to, for example you need to liberally pause the game during combat so you can assess the situation. It's a great game though, I still listen to the soundtrack all the time, and when I did finally win I was ecstatic!
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SludgeWizard
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by SludgeWizard »

I started playing Dead Cells again on a train trip and now it has its hooks back in me. It's just wonderful.
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Tolkientaters
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Tolkientaters »

Been playing Fire Emblem Three Houses via the Black Eagle route and I'm loving it. Just got to chapter 12 and I'm liking the way it's ramping up.
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MattL
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by MattL »

SludgeWizard wrote: September 9th, 2022, 5:37 pm I started playing Dead Cells again on a train trip and now it has its hooks back in me. It's just wonderful.
As much as I loved this game, I was never able to beat The Hand of King, even on the starting difficulty. The one time I did beat him, it was because he glitched and got stuck in place and didn't attack me. Then after that I tried playing 1 Boss Cell difficulty and I just couldn't make any head way. Anyhow, I learned about two weeks ago that the developers added an Assist Mode that allows you to alter lots of different bits of the difficulty. Lowering enemy damage and health to 20% is only way I've been able to make any further progress.
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ThirdDrawing
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by ThirdDrawing »

Undernauts - Labyrinth of Yomi.

It's a first person dungeon crawler with a real horror vibe. The monster designs are excellent and there are a lot of real quality of life improvements. (Like being able to click almost anywhere on the map and fast travel there)

There are some original ideas and the localisation is good. If I had one complaint, the music in the dungeons doesn't stand out that much.

Overall, recommended if you like dungeon crawlers!
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Kos or some say Kosm
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Kos or some say Kosm »

Just started The Witcher 3 GOTY. Already have the platinum for the base game but want earn the trophies for this edition as well. Also never played any of the DLC so really looking forward to that. Also GWENT! Haha
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by bixer »

Had something of a series of 'RPG' fails recently unfortunately...

Paper Mario & The Origami King - So it's kind of an RPG but also not really. Despite the mixed reception it got at release I decided to finally give this a go. For maybe 8-10 hours I was having an absolute blast. The game is just bursting with charm. I didn't adore the battle system, but everything else around it was more than making up for it so it really wasn't a problem...until it was. At about the 10 hour mark that tedium really started to hit and I would almost audibly grown every time I was forced to participate in another. It's a real shame as this game was so close to being a masterpiece, but the battle system and lack of any levelling/worthwhile rewards for participating in them really just brings the whole experience down and I found myself less and less motivated to continue until I called it and decided to put it down.

Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling - Lots of people that disliked The Origami King insisted that this was the real Paper Mario game. The battle system is inherently better (in that it's basically just traditional) I'll give it that, but pretty much everything else is worse. I appreciate it comes from a much, much smaller team, but after experiencing the highs of The Origami King, I just struggled to look past this game's limitations. It's good, but in my humble opinion it's nowhere near as good as many corners of the internet seem to insist.

Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - This had been on my 'to do' list for...years but the reported length of it had always put me off. After twice being in the mood for an RPG of sorts and twice being let down, I thought maybe this was the time to sink my teeth into something beefier. I am honestly surprised at how much consistent praise this game seems to get. It's basically a PS2 game with a new coat of paint. On a gameplay level it's fine I suppose, but it offers absolutely nothing you haven't already seen a million times by now. I can see the 'comfort food' element in that and it might be okay if it were around the 20-30 hour mark, but for a game that seems to take people anywhere from 60 hours to 100 hours to complete? Not for me. Part of that is also that it possibly wins my award for worst music in a game ever. Bland, forgettable music I can live with, but the soundtrack in this is actively grating in its repetition.

Monster Sanctuary - Part RPG but also part 'Metroidvania'. Unfortunately in my opinion, something of a poor attempt at both. The 'Metroid' aspect in particular just feels redundant in this as it basically boils down to arbitrarily placed floating platforms that add nothing to the exploration. The battle system feels quite poorly explained, I think in part due to the pixel art icons not being overtly clear. In an early tutorial, someone tells you that a monster you're fighting has a weakness to wind. Does it? Where? Does that symbol mean 'wind'? You seem to get bombarded with a lot of items early on that don't really make much sense to you as you haven't had enough battles to know what to do with them. I got the impression there is probably a relatively deep battle system in here somewhere if you're willing to take the time to sink your teeth into it, but the opening hour or two just didn't really grab me enough to want to do that.


With Ni No Kuni getting a surprise release on Gamepass yesterday, I've been considering taking another punt on that in my quest for an RPG that actually clicks with me, but equally I'm wondering if it's time to cut my losses and move on to something else entirely.
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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Alex79 »

Kos or some say Kosm wrote: September 16th, 2022, 9:28 am Just started The Witcher 3 GOTY. Already have the platinum for the base game but want earn the trophies for this edition as well. Also never played any of the DLC so really looking forward to that. Also GWENT! Haha
I nearly bought that in the sale recently, was only about £6 for the GOTY edition, but held off because I know if I do a playthrough again now they'll release the next gen update as soon as I finish...
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Angry_Kurt
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Angry_Kurt »

bixer wrote: September 16th, 2022, 11:16 am Had something of a series of 'RPG' fails recently unfortunately...

Paper Mario & The Origami King - So it's kind of an RPG but also not really. Despite the mixed reception it got at release I decided to finally give this a go. For maybe 8-10 hours I was having an absolute blast. The game is just bursting with charm. I didn't adore the battle system, but everything else around it was more than making up for it so it really wasn't a problem...until it was. At about the 10 hour mark that tedium really started to hit and I would almost audibly grown every time I was forced to participate in another. It's a real shame as this game was so close to being a masterpiece, but the battle system and lack of any levelling/worthwhile rewards for participating in them really just brings the whole experience down and I found myself less and less motivated to continue until I called it and decided to put it down.
Agree with all this, great characters and writing but eventually got repetitive and was too long for its own good. I did like the combat in the boss battles which seemed to change the formula up a bit each time though. I did finish it but wouldn’t say it was satisfying to do so by the end.
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ThirdDrawing
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by ThirdDrawing »

Was watching some videos on Yakuza and had an itching to get back into Yakuza 3.

I'm quickly remembering why I dropped it.

I'm at the beginning of Chapter 6 and it is genuinely one of the single most frustrating things I have ever tried to do.

I cannot escape the police. I get caught every. single. bloody. goddamn. time.

I am frustrated to the point where I am actually thinking of just watching the game on Youtube and skipping to Yakuza 4.

I cannot for the life of me figure out what I am doing wrong. It is absolutely maddening to the point where I just want to whip my controller out the window.

An absolute brick wall pace killer of an event. It is killing all interest I have in the game.
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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Alex79 »

ThirdDrawing wrote: September 18th, 2022, 6:42 pm I'm at the beginning of Chapter 6 and it is genuinely one of the single most frustrating things I have ever tried to do.

I cannot escape the police. I get caught every. single. bloody. goddamn. time.
Ha! That's exactly where I am in the game, or at least was when I stopped playing it months ago. I do want to go back to it, but it was so annoying.
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ThirdDrawing
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by ThirdDrawing »

Alex79 wrote: September 19th, 2022, 1:24 pm
ThirdDrawing wrote: September 18th, 2022, 6:42 pm I'm at the beginning of Chapter 6 and it is genuinely one of the single most frustrating things I have ever tried to do.

I cannot escape the police. I get caught every. single. bloody. goddamn. time.
Ha! That's exactly where I am in the game, or at least was when I stopped playing it months ago. I do want to go back to it, but it was so annoying.
I got to the point where I went out today and bought a new controller. Turns out there was a dead zone in my other one but I also was dashing too much and kept running out of stamina.

Jesus wept, I got through it, but that is one of the most annoying things I've ever done in a game. Really ruined the experience.
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Rhaegyr
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Rhaegyr »

Angry_Kurt wrote: September 17th, 2022, 8:25 am
bixer wrote: September 16th, 2022, 11:16 am Had something of a series of 'RPG' fails recently unfortunately...

Paper Mario & The Origami King - So it's kind of an RPG but also not really. Despite the mixed reception it got at release I decided to finally give this a go. For maybe 8-10 hours I was having an absolute blast. The game is just bursting with charm. I didn't adore the battle system, but everything else around it was more than making up for it so it really wasn't a problem...until it was. At about the 10 hour mark that tedium really started to hit and I would almost audibly grown every time I was forced to participate in another. It's a real shame as this game was so close to being a masterpiece, but the battle system and lack of any levelling/worthwhile rewards for participating in them really just brings the whole experience down and I found myself less and less motivated to continue until I called it and decided to put it down.
Agree with all this, great characters and writing but eventually got repetitive and was too long for its own good. I did like the combat in the boss battles which seemed to change the formula up a bit each time though. I did finish it but wouldn’t say it was satisfying to do so by the end.
Bobby's storyline affected me in a way that's rare for a Nintendo game. Left me in bits!
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MattL
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by MattL »

bixer wrote: September 16th, 2022, 11:16 am Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - This had been on my 'to do' list for...years but the reported length of it had always put me off. After twice being in the mood for an RPG of sorts and twice being let down, I thought maybe this was the time to sink my teeth into something beefier. I am honestly surprised at how much consistent praise this game seems to get. It's basically a PS2 game with a new coat of paint. On a gameplay level it's fine I suppose, but it offers absolutely nothing you haven't already seen a million times by now. I can see the 'comfort food' element in that and it might be okay if it were around the 20-30 hour mark, but for a game that seems to take people anywhere from 60 hours to 100 hours to complete? Not for me. Part of that is also that it possibly wins my award for worst music in a game ever. Bland, forgettable music I can live with, but the soundtrack in this is actively grating in its repetition.
Regarding it being very similar to the PS2 game, that's the thing about the DQ series; they're all super nostalgic. That's part of their appeal. Having played basically every mainline DQ game except 5, 7, and 10 (was that the MMO one?), they all reference each other and have callbacks. So I understand your criticism, but you've just got to accept that as part of the DQ series.

As to the length, yeah, I'm with you. I actually really enjoyed the game, but the length was excessive, particularly from a narrative perspective. The game should have ended after Part 2's bittersweet ending. Parts 1 and 2 together were a complete story and I was so pleased with it. It felt like the first real adult story in a DQ game. Then Part 3 comes along. Without getting into too many spoilers, Part 3 literally undoes all the sacrifices, conflict, and character development from Part 2 for the sake of a traditionally happy ending. It just cheapened all the emotions of Part 2 and made it totally superfluous.
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Caligulas Horse
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Caligulas Horse »

I'm playing the FFX HD remake and have decided to go for 100% completion. I was appreciating the relaxation of grinding, good for music/podcast listening, so I thought I might as well give it a go.

Unfortunately, this means I have to play a heck of a lot of Blitz Ball in order to win all of Wakka's overdrives and the upgrade for his ultimate weapon. I've had a tempestuous relationship with this mini game from the start, but it's become such a slog now that I can't wait to be done with it for ever. The problem is that the difficulty curve is all out of whack.

When you first play, you just get battered, which is especially frustrating since your opponents, the Luca Goers, are a bunch of obnoxious jerks who have done nothing but taunt you relentlessly in the build up. If you play the game the way it tells you to in the tutorial (with player movement on automatic), there is no way for you to win. I find that kind of insane. The Luca Goers' players have much higher stats than yours and will beat you in just about any encounter, so you have to cheese your way through. It's maybe an indication that you're not expected to win that there is no real fanfare if you do.

But despite how much I despised that introduction to Blitz Ball, I actually started to get into it once my players levelled up enough to challenge the other teams fairly. I was enjoying accumulating skills, trying to scout new guys and basically turning my Besaid Aurochs into Blitz Ball gods.

The thing is, you become Blitz Ball gods way before you're even close to winning all of the prizes. That's when it starts to get real tedious. I'm going 3 or 4-0 up in the first half of every game. It doesn't feel like I'm doing much at all anymore. I just waltz up to the goal, score with ease, repeat a few more times and then kick back somewhere in my half (which causes the players to glitch) until the time runs out.

I guess a slog is exactly what you ask for when you decide to 100% one of these games...
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Caligulas Horse
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Caligulas Horse »

Kos or some say Kosm wrote: September 2nd, 2022, 11:39 am Playing Final Fantasy 8 for the first time since release! After listening to the podcast about this show I definitely now see how bat shit crazy the story turns… I was enjoying the story until the start of disc 2. And then yep and a fat alien named NORG is in the basement of the garden running the show!

Haha story aside I have really enjoyed the battle system and the whole junctioning set up. I was loving triple triad ( I loved Gwent so there was no chance I wouldn’t) until all the rules change permanently so it was random cards, same/plus & sudden death and became unplayable. I didn’t realise rules would change permanently but oh well that’s on me. On the road to the platinum and have really enjoyed my time with FF8!
Haha, I love how loopy it gets. Definitely the maddest story of any FF game I've played -- and that's really saying something!

It's been a while since I played it, but I'm pretty sure there's a mad scientist who you can ask to explain what is happening towards the end, and his response is along the lines of "it's too complicated for you to understand". Basically: it's total nonsense, just go with it!
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Scrustle »

I've been struggling to find a game that I actually want to stick with lately. But I think I've finally broken out of that now, with a somewhat unlikely candidate. I've picked up Morrowind again. A game that I've always wanted to get in to but never been able to, over many years and attempts. This time I seem to have finally cracked it and I've been getting really in to it. One thing that has stood out to me is how the game really makes you feel like you're involved in something that is very historically and culturally important to this world. It's a feeling that I've always liked about this series, but haven't felt in a very long time as I've become more familiar with these specific games. Skyrim struggled to evoke it even on the first run. And it's not even necessarily because I'm new to this game. I'm fairly familiar with a lot of the plot points and concepts, having played it before and watched many videos about the game. But it's different when you're actually experiencing it yourself. And the way the world building is done here is much more intricate and interesting compared to later games. How there are many different perspectives on the same events that might give conflicting accounts, how there are many different factions with different motives that might overlap or oppose each other in different ways. It's really intriguing, and it's actually got me enthusiastically reading a lot of the lore books. I can't even remember the last time any game motivated me to do that, let alone had me enjoy it.

The game itself is still pretty hard to get on with though. Although I do find a lot of the jank charming in a way, I don't think I could manage this without the wiki open the whole time, or knowledge from previous attempts. Yet I still feel like I'm struggling, and I think I've realised my character build is complete trash and I've wasted a bunch of skills on useless stuff. Still managing to stumble through though, I definitely want to see this to the end of the main story at least, finally.
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ratsoalbion
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by ratsoalbion »

That's really cool. I often fantasise about doing the same. Morrowind definitely has its own atmosphere.
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Truk_Kurt
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Truk_Kurt »

For the first time I did some tinkering with my Steamdeck (if that's what you want to call it) by getting Xbox Cloud gaming working on it. It was relatively simple to do, only a bit of a pain to use the Steamdeck keyboard but you could easily attach up a USB one to use instead.

I have been blow away by how well it works, it's running via the Edge browser but you wouldn't know. Granted I do have good internet but I was still very impressed with how well it ran the game I was playing, Nobody Saves the World. I honestly forgot I was streaming it as there was no lag whatsoever and the frame rate was smooth as you'd expect. Maybe that will change with a more demanding game like Deathloop.

Nobody Saves the World impressed in it's first couple of hours. I have always been impressed by Drinkbox games so always knew I would get around to this. It is a top down 2D dungeon crawler with a cool character class system which you swap between through the game. As with their previous games, it feels great to play, even though it's a different genre to what they've made before. They remind me of the Steamworld games studio in that sense. I have also had a good few laughs at the dialogue in a positive sense, there was a very good "30 under 30" joke.
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