So, what're you playing?

[01101010]

Played the demo for FF7 and wasn't thrilled with the combat at all. I adored the turn-based combat in the original so of course I went into the demo with that in mind. Combat just seemed messy...

I do like the look of it and it felt like the old game, but some of it just wasn't to my liking. Barrett was annoying as always, but seemed unbearable in this version... as did the rest of the crew.

[Falconeer]

With that said, I am a sucker for a well realized and visually stunning world, and this has it all so I am eating it with a big spoon. But you have to love games that are 60% cutscenes and 40% game. Luckily, I am. Also, Japanese voice dub or bust. And if someone is inbearable (in all languages) is Wedge.

[Cyrrex]

With that said, I am a sucker for a well realized and visually stunning world, and this has it all so I am eating it with a big spoon. But you have to love games that are 60% cutscenes and 40% game. Luckily, I am. Also, Japanese voice dub or bust. And if someone is inbearable (in all languages) is Wedge.

That’s probably enough for me.  I will pick it up at some point, I suspect.

[Khaldun]

My daughter is trying to get me to play Danganropa 2. Gameplay is really not my kind of thing but I'm patiently doing a bit at a time.

Mount and Blade 2 has got me hard. The basic intensity of the combat design in Mount and Blade is just so good--I lean this way and that in my chair as I swipe at enemy troops from my horse. The sieges are better in MB2, you can't cheese them quite as easily and they can be super-visceral. It's still pretty easy to beat armies larger than your own if you have Tier 5 and 6 troops and you move your guys off to the left or right before charging--you can create a really nasty flanking trap that the AI pretty much always rides its cavalry into. Every once in a while I go off too quickly by myself into a swarm of archers and get into a bit of trouble, but once you have tier 5 or better armor, you can usually get out of it.

[Falconeer]

Danganrompa is mean! How old is your daughter? Just curious, not judging or anything.

[Khaldun]

20. She played it with her high school friends quite a bit.

[lamaros]

So after playing PoE2: Deadfire a whole bunch....

It's close to being a good game. Sort of good systems, fun combat, fun locations... but just bogged down with so many boring, uninteresting and uneventful activities that lead nowhere. It really suffers for the MMORPGing of RPGs. Pointless crafting for the most part, dead end go here and see/fetch/kill quests. Poor curated narratives.

But it was diverting enough for a while.

[Khaldun]

Yeah. I enjoyed it fine but it was also pretty grindy and boring in parts.

[Falconeer]

Fallout 76 is out and it's good. It's a Bethesda Fallout 4.5 so your mileage may vary but I liked it alright at launch and I am loving it now.

Now my problem is time, which is ridiculous in the only time ever when I am basically government forced to stay home and play videogames all day, but each morning I have to try and decide if I want to play Final Fantasy 7, Fallout 76 or The New World. I am liking them all a lot, and while abundance is good I really don't know which one I want to play the most.

That, and Offworld Trading Company which five years too late is getting its f13 moment of glory! You should get a cheap copy, jump on Discord, and play with the rest of us.

[lamaros]

I've started up playing Blood Bowl again with some local boardgaming mates. We've got an isolation league going via Blood Bowl 2.

Good fun game, the f13 seasons were great fun too.. so long ago now!

[Falconeer]

Good times! All destroyed by Andy Davo Blood Bowl Famous Streamer.

[lamaros]

Haha, so softly spoken. I feel bad for ranting about how he voodooed the system to allow him to roll all those stat ups now.

[Sky]

No, fuck that asshole and whoever brought him into our league.

Anyway, I'm warming up to Days Gone. Definitely feels like a variant of State of Decay (I enjoyed the 2nd one quite a bit). I prefer the characters and recruiting of SoD (because thus far the story is horribad in DG, and that's the main thing it brings to the table). I'm hoping that they are able to improve the formula as SoD did with the second release, because I think they've got a decent framework.

Not sure if it's my headphones (Steelseries wireless), but the zombie sounds are amped up and are throwing off my spatial audio awareness. The positioning is good (I just test by closing my eyes and turning toward a sound source, if I'm looking at it when I open my eyes, it's decent enough), but I keep thinking they're 20 feet away and when I look they're 200 feet or more away. Weird, and not too shabby that that is maybe my main gripe (other than VO/story).

Both are decent sandboxes and I guess I like sneaking around bashing zombies.

[Sky]

I was messing around in Days Gone trying to dial in the aiming controls, I'll always be terrible with thumbsticks, I guess. So I saw a setting for controller motion aiming...takes some getting used to, but I want from a headshot every once in a while to getting to 3 in a row with maybe a dozen tries. Thumbstick aiming still, but you can dial it in with motion. Nice.

[NowhereMan]

New Graphics card and monitor up, I'm finally starting to properly play Rome II. It's... fun? I'm playing on normal difficulty but it's feeling kind of like a TW game where the turn based parts feel like filler to make progress to the real time battles, except they've thrown a whole load of design elements that almost seem like a cargo culted strategy game. I get that they've put building trees in and there are limited options but I'm left feeling like there's a whole load of micro that there is no point trying to mix/max besides choosing where to have military production capacity. At least apart from learning not to try and have military production capacity in every settlement (bad habits carried over from Rome). Actually being able to play the real time battles makes it much more fun. Now I just need to get through the Marian reforms or start producing higher quality armies, Hastati stacks are getting a little boring to general.

Trying to play Battlefleet Gothic as well but I'm still hitting fatal errors in the middle of battles  :nda:Edit: In fact I've tried a few more times and it's specifically every time I order the lightning strike action in the second tutorial mission. Apparently I'm not alone in this crashing the game but I can't see any solutions apart from 'update your graphics drivers'. Going to try skipping the tutorial next time and see but considering the loading times on my machine there's 0 way I'm playing this if there's a greater than 5% of a play session ending in the game crashing. Total Warhammer is looking like a good option though.

[eldaec]

Sentinels of Freedom.

It is turn based tactics based on the sentinels of the multiverse card game (which is a nightmare to manage as real cards but great as a mobile game). Feels a lot like freedom force, and anything that feels like freedom force is a good thing.

[Rasix]

PoE, Persona 5 Royale, and Animal Crossing.

PoE is kind of done for this league. Either you play a busted build or this league will beat you into submission. I don't have the currency or desire to roll a busted herald stacking build. My low life, archmage, storm brand hiero is busted enough, but at least it's not immortal. Every other build I try feels like crap, and I can't stomach grinding another character through the acts (I've done like 4-5 already).

Just bought P5 on the PS4. I had played this on PS3, but wanted to try out the better visuals and improvements made with this release. So far, so good. So so good. This game is a treasure. Don't know if I'll be able to get through all of it. It is rather long.

Animal Crossing is fun for downtime and just easy to pick up.

[Draegan]

I feel the same way about POE and I can't afford any of the good builds.

Ice shot is fun, I just got one into maps, not sure I feel motivated enough to get them past level 70.

[Sky]

I finally burned out on Persona 5 about halfway through and not sure I can get back into it. Still well worth the money and time.

I've changed my mind on Days Gone, it somehow manages to be a really good game. It borrows a lot from several other games but bakes it into a really nice gameplay experience. I'm currently about 3/4 of the way through the game. The story gets much better, lots of nice little hooks in it (it is still a video game, so limit your expectations accordingly). It does get a bit too graphic for me, some things that could've been suggested with the same impact. That said, those scenes aren't just shock, they're integral to the story (the most horrific scene sets up one of my favorite scenes in the game thus far). The story and writing doesn't showcase well early on, but it does gel and keep the experience moving forward and avoid getting stale.

The gameplay is a nice variant of the Ubi-style POI infiltration. Decent tools for the playground, though they unlock pretty slowly with long stretches between. You get 4 weapon slots (melee, sidearm, primary gun and special gun). This limitation is interesting but the decision to put the crossbow in the special group means I basically never use a sniper rifle outside missions that give you one. Crossbows are great stealth weapons and the ammo can be crafted with a single scrap and wood, vs scavenging ammo for the tiny clips in sniper rifles. The limited ammo means I'd almost never use it, vs the crossbow which is useful in 90% of situations (and maybe even moreso as you open up ammo types). Anyway, once I hit on a decent long rifle that can be a ghetto sniper rifle (the M14, unlocks fairly early on), I have yet to find a replacement (accuracy + damage > rate of fire). I'd be tempted by the great shotguns in the primary group....but there is an early available sawed-off shotgun in the sidearm group that is adequate for room-sweeping needs.

So basically you use the most upgraded crafted melee weapon, the shotgun sidearm, a medium-range rifle with good penetration, and the crossbow. Actually, I was using whatever they call the AK47 for the first half of the game (even after I unlocked the M14). It's maybe the best general-use weapon but loot-only (can't store it, can't buy ammo). I only traded over to the M14 when I got in a segment with more zombie missions because it's easier to pick ammo off human foes.

I digress. The gameplay loop between story missions and side stuff (clearing camps, collectibles, QoL unlocks) is nice and the game world works well. Sound is good, I'm playing with headphones and positional audio works (though they amplify the monster sounds a bit, making distance estimation tough). Only niggling complaint is the ambient monster/wolf sounds at night, I prefer to only have 'real' ambience, meaning no faked in monster sounds. If I hear a groan, I want it to be an actual actor in the world, not some filler sound to ratchet tension falsely. 7 Days does this a bit, too.

Overall I'm hooked pretty deep to the point of contemplating a New Game+ because it's one of those games where the story evolves things enough to want to spend time in some of the happier chapters or just explore the game world itself earlier on before the enemy types and density makes it more challenging.

[Threash]

Bannerlord is getting most of my time. Its still very unfinished, but what is there is already amazing. Gears tactics when i feel like some turn based strategy, gave up on chimera squad until they patch it a bit.

[Rendakor]

Went back to Smite because I've needed some PVP in my life. This remains the best MOBA I've ever played, hands down. I wish more adopted the third person camera/combat instead of RTS-style click to move.

Also playing Animal Crossing on the Switch; getting my 2nd floor tomorrow for a whopping 1.2 million bells.

On my cell I'm playing the new Final Fantasy Tactics gacha game. It's got some horrible name and an equally horrible acronym (WOTV FFBE) but it's pretty fun.

[Trippy]

Streets of Rage 4

[Falconeer]

I just finished Final Fantasy VII Remake. Bullet points!

- I loved it.
- It took me 60 hours. I did all the sidequests. Main plot only is probably 40 hours.
- It takes a long time for the combat to click, and even when it did I still did not like it. It's better when you are alone, or against one enemy. It's still my least favourite part of the game. I played "Normal". "Easy" is a joke, and "Classic" is still "Easy" so a joke.
- It's more an interactive-explorable movie than an RPG if you ask me, but a good nerd movie. Also, there's definitely a lot of Materia-juggling so calling it a movie is a hyperbole. Did I mention that it's a cool movie?
- Healing is overpowered.
- Yes, they changed plenty of things from the original, but I don't hate them at all.
- I loved it.

[Khaldun]

Peaked on Bannerlord. Will now give it a long rest. Knowing Taleworlds, they probably won't do a lot of the basic fixes that the game just has to have, let alone some of the features it really needs, but who knows.

[Mosesandstick]

Just finished Pillars of Eternity II. Mixed feelings, as it has some notable flaws, but it improves on the original Pillars of Eternity in so many ways. It is one of the few games where I've basically gotten fed up and tired, turned everything to the easiest setting and rushed through the end.

Thanks to some recent sales I'm finally going to get the chance to finish Mass Effect 3.

[HaemishM]

Thanks to some recent sales I'm finally going to get the chance to finish Mass Effect 3.

You will not be rewarded for your trouble.

[Rasix]

It's a good game. Just don't pay any attention to that end part. Nothing to see there.

[Trippy]

Yeah I agree. The gameplay is good and it provides a lot of closure to its various character storylines.

[HaemishM]

I actually thought it was the weakest of the series in every aspect (note: I did not play the multiplayer). I thought the shooting mechanics were a step back, the level design was even more on rails and restricted than the second and DAT STORY DOH.

[Mosesandstick]

Thanks for the advice folks. I enjoyed the first two immensely so I'm not too worried, and I've not been living under a rock so I know what happens with the ME3 ending. Plus after the ME2 ending/final boss it was kind of obvious that Bioware were getting some stupid ideas.

[Falconeer]

I don't know what people were expecting at the time, anyway count me among those who think the ending is OK, especially after they "fixed" it a few months after launch.

Now, I wish I could force myself to finish Mass Effect Andromeda, but I am not sure I can.

[Cyrrex]

I don't even remember how it ended, but do recall thinking that people, as usual, got their panties up in a twist about nothing.  Some things never change.

[Khaldun]

The "fix" made it much more palatable. I actually was less annoyed with the ending per se than I was with all the bullshit with Kai Leng. I cannot STAND that kind of "here's a big boss fight, whoa wow something happened that you can't control and you lost the fight, you'll have to wait to fight the boss again I guess".

[Goumindong]

Mass Effects overall plot has been shit right from the idea for a sequel. Mass Effect 2 starts with "you stopped the reapers but it didn't matter" and in Mass Effect 3 you start with "you stopped the reapers but it didn't matter". At least 2 had the decency to tell you that what you just did was pointless at the end of it. All the villains after ME1 were shit.

But the shooting and the character vignettes for your crew were pretty good.

[Reg]

After swearing never to buy another Larian game I find myself playing Divinity: Original Sin 2 and enjoying it. They seem to have sanded off the most annoying shitty parts of the first game. I guess I'll give Baldur's Gate 3 a try after all.