So, what're you playing?

[Riggswolfe]

In general I've gotten to where I play female protags if given the choice and a huge reason is that it almost always feels like the female voice actors do a better job than their male counterparts with a rare few exceptions. Male VAs always seem to be sort of bland or going for some kind of 80s action movie parody voice without realizing it.

[Phildo]

Funny, I picked a female hunter after seeing folks unhappy with the male VA and I don't much care for her either.  I think it's just the poor writing coming through for both of them.

[Rasix]

Started Chained Echoes. This OK so far. Feel like I'm playing bootleg Chrono Trigger. If I had gotten this on Steam and not Switch, I probably would have refunded it based on the first hour. So, I guess it doesn't pass the BIIF test.

Otherwise, lots of Snap. Following my run killer incident with Valheim, I've been fairly uninspired to start much of anything gaming wise. Hogwarts just isn't drawing me in and the PC performance issues aren't helping with this.

[Rendakor]

Chained Echoes is on XGP, and I still haven't been able to pull the trigger. It feels petty, but that font they use just makes it look cheap because it's in so many indie games.

[Zetor]

Well, Chained Echoes passed my BIIF test with flying colors (edit: I gushed about it a few pages back) and was definitely worth the $25. I enjoyed its first few hours way more than any modern JRPG (Octopath Traveller, Triangle Strategy, FFXII, etc). I think it's how individual fights don't feel samey the way they do in typical JRPGs through the combination of the overdrive system and starting each fight with full hp/tp (so you're encouraged to use your skills in different patterns each time, no tedious autoattack spam here), and an overall lack of grind / filler / shit that feels like it's wasting my time just to pad out playtime.

(Also, it's not just bootleg Chrono Trigger, there's plenty of bootleg Xenogears / FFVI / Suikoden in there as well )

[Chimpy]

Picked up Nier:Automata (goty) with some leftover amazon gift card money from xmas and have been playing a bit of it. Not very far in but it is definitely visually pretty cool and the music is good.

I know a bit about it having played the FFXIV crossover content (which I had no idea where it came from) and heard it was a cool game so there we are.

Also probably didn't hurt that I saw quite a few 2B action figures/dolls that were <SOLD OUT> when wandering Akihabara and an ad for the new anime series on the TV while I was in Tokyo :)

[Riggswolfe]

Picked up Nier:Automata (goty) with some leftover amazon gift card money from xmas and have been playing a bit of it. Not very far in but it is definitely visually pretty cool and the music is good.

I know a bit about it having played the FFXIV crossover content (which I had no idea where it came from) and heard it was a cool game so there we are.

Also probably didn't hurt that I saw quite a few 2B action figures/dolls that were <SOLD OUT> when wandering Akihabara and an ad for the new anime series on the TV while I was in Tokyo :)

Nier: Automata is one of the best games I've ever played. I hope we hear back from you when you get through Ending E. I won't say more than that!

[Cyrrex]

Playing the Hogwarts game.  So far, I have a positive opinion of it.  Have heard complaints of the visuals being not so good, but I can only imagine that is from hardware limitations because it looks fantastic in 4k Ultra.  The realization of the castle itself is incredible, they just nailed it.

[Riggswolfe]

Playing the Hogwarts game.  So far, I have a positive opinion of it.  Have heard complaints of the visuals being not so good, but I can only imagine that is from hardware limitations because it looks fantastic in 4k Ultra.  The realization of the castle itself is incredible, they just nailed it.

It is a genuinely fun and well made game. The RPG parts of it are shallow but a lot of work into the game. It is too bad it is almost impossible to talk about and enjoy without acknowledging the Rowling problem.

[Reg]

It's a great game. My only criticism is that I think it falls a little short on story and writing. A real Bioware-style companion system with companions I can actually care about would make a huge difference.

[Rasix]

Well, Chained Echoes passed my BIIF test with flying colors (edit: I gushed about it a few pages back) and was definitely worth the $25. I enjoyed its first few hours way more than any modern JRPG (Octopath Traveller, Triangle Strategy, FFXII, etc). I think it's how individual fights don't feel samey the way they do in typical JRPGs through the combination of the overdrive system and starting each fight with full hp/tp (so you're encouraged to use your skills in different patterns each time, no tedious autoattack spam here), and an overall lack of grind / filler / shit that feels like it's wasting my time just to pad out playtime.

(Also, it's not just bootleg Chrono Trigger, there's plenty of bootleg Xenogears / FFVI / Suikoden in there as well )

It took about another hour or so, but Chained Echoes grew on me. This game has a lot of charm and some interesting systems present. The music is fantastic. The story is interesting. While it's a little goofy (I'd expect this from a single dev), it's still compelling.

I'll probably keep playing to the end. There are some oddities going on with the Switch. I'm not sure if it's a game bug or one of my joycons is wigging out. Probably the later.

[Khaldun]

Midnight Suns is a really queasy mix of design and gameplay structures but somehow I kind of like it.

[Mandella]

Picked up Terra Invicta a few days back. About nine hours in and I still have no idea if I'm enjoying myself or not. I'm always drawn to these super micromanagery board game-likes, but I have to wonder if it's more obsessive behavior than fun.

Anyhoo, didn't mean to start off with self analysis, but the game itself starts modern day (game commences in the year 2022) and does a really interesting job of giving numbers to the various government and social types around today as you try to get everybody onboard to prepare for what seems to be an imminent alien invasion, while of course pushing your favorite agenda. And to my surprise you can even play factions that welcome the alien overlords.

So far I'm only up to March 2023, and I think I've already lost this playthrough.

[Velorath]

Midnight Suns is a really queasy mix of design and gameplay structures but somehow I kind of like it.

Venom DLC drops on the 23rd.

[arnulf2]

Dead Space Remake (PS5).

On my third playthrough, hard, NG++. I wonder if I could do the Impossible thing in NG+++.

Having just one save slot, which converts back to Hard if you die just once is a daunting prospect for me.

[arnulf2]

[..] I wonder if I could do the Impossible thing in NG+++.

Well, scratch that. I tried it and died in the beginning. Of course I can't use NG+ for that. Have to start a new game. I was naive.

Platinum trophy is unreachable for me. It's a great game nonetheless.

[Sky]

I played the heck out of Spider-Man on the PS and I'm about halfway through on this pc playthrough and the traversal just doesn't get old.

[Count Nerfedalot]

I played the heck out of Spider-Man on the PS and I'm about halfway through on this pc playthrough and the traversal just doesn't get old.

sounds like superjump in City of Heroes. 

[Khaldun]

I cannot think of a game I miss more than City of Heroes, all told.

[Zetor]

I cannot think of a game I miss more than City of Heroes, all told.

The "City of Heroes: Homecoming" private server is pretty good (and active), I hear... 

[Rendakor]

Yea, it feels exactly like the original but with more power customization available. The game itself isn't super sticky for me anymore, but I like being able to hop on every so often and have fun.

[Zetor]

Finished Fire Emblem Engage. Gameplay is excellent, the best in the series so far, especially the design of individual combat maps (I felt Three Houses was a bit 'meh' in this area, other than for spectacle). The harder difficulties felt HARD, but also very fair. Like, in Three Houses, the hardest difficulty was just stat bloating every enemy, giving them completely bullshit skills, and having enemy-turn reinforcements that just appear in the middle of your army and act instantly, probably gibbing a squishy or two unless you have metagame knowledge about the map (and otherwise you gotta undo the last turn and reposition everyone in advance). Here it's some level of stat bloat, but (especially) it makes the enemy AI a lot more aggressive and smart, forcing me to be a lot more proactive and take a lot more risks than I usually do in these games. E.g. if you have an unkillable or unhittable tank, enemy physical attackers will just ignore it unless they can do chip damage to it via chain attacks, enemy bosses will proactively go for the player instead of just waiting around until the end of the map, reinforcements will be hyper-aggressive (but they spawn at the beginning of the player turn, so the player gets to move before they do), etc. A lot of maps have some unusual mechanic that needs to be worked around (and/or switch up usual tactics) without feeling like a throwaway gimmick. The visuals are also surprisingly good for a Switch game. The online portion seems kinda fun with the pseudo-pvp against other players' armies just like the castle sieges in Fates and the relay matches that give some cool rewards (I didn't try them though).

For the less-than-good side of things: the story is total ass, characterization of the player units is paper-thin (even though some of them cool designs and VAs), and it's going all-in on series fan service instead of having anything resembling a coherent narrative, but that was clear from the get go... apparently the Awakening/Fates team did this game, so yeah. Almost all the conversations and interactions are skip fodder (with a few exceptions). But at least it's a "B movie / saturday morning cartoon" type of dumb story instead of whatever the hell was happening in Fates. I was also not a fan of the forced menuing back at the base (like, learning a skill from a ring requires 3 load screens, a lengthy and pointless combat animation, a bunch of popups that have to be skipped individually, and interacting with 3 different menus), that could've been managed from a single menu somewhere. There's also a lot of almost-mandatory busywork at the base between missions that tries to capture the vibe from Three Houses and fails pretty badly because it's extremely samey and obnoxious with no thought needed (a weird-ass ring polishing minigame, workouts, feeding/petting the guardian spirit). Most of these activities are also NOT optional on the hardest levels because you need every possible bonus for the story missions, and if you don't polish the rings, your characters will gain even less SP (which is already scarce).

Overall, still recommended, but it's absolutely not Three Houses 2.0. If anything, it's Fates:Conquest 2.0 (which was good for me, since I loved the gameplay of Conquest).

[Sky]

I was thinking of getting Kenshi but realized I had not explored much of Conan Exiles. Not sure how much longevity it has for me, but it's been fun running around exploring a bit. My favorite part is still running away from enemies by jumping off a cliff, and sliding down the side to safely walk away. Slick.

[Khaldun]

Absolutely my favorite part of the game--makes getting across the map so much easier once you get the hang of how to Butch-and-Sundance even the highest cliffs.

[Rasix]

Trying out the Sons of the Forest early access. It's buggy (AI, clipping, items respawn between loads). It's got some bad QOL changes. The new building system is great for the most part and the AI companion is quite helpful. The inclusion of a GPS with preset "go here" spots is probably a mistake. However, finding shit without this feature could be near impossible given the landmass size.

It still needs a good amount of work, but the core is there and if they manage to improve this, it could be quite good. As of right now, it's The Forest, warts and all with a special layer of early access jank.

At kind of a loss as to what I want to play right now despite a plethora of options. Kind of lost interest with Chain of Echoes after I got the airship. Plus, my arm is getting sore holding the damn Switch. 

[Sky]

Conan Exiles is a weird game. I'm enjoying it, but my biggest issue goes back to one of my fundamental issues with pc gaming: pathfinding. Trying to herd a couple thralls, especially in a dungeon, works in direct opposition to the enjoyment of the game. I've lost a few trained thralls when we accidentally aggro'd a boss in a dungeon and one of the thralls will eventually get stuck on something and get slaughtered (which also usually means losing their body because who knows where they went down).

The thrall mini game is cool enough, if janky and frustrating (no, I said use /concussive/ weapons...ok nvm, I guess my thralls just want blood again). But for the effort to find a decent thrall and train them up, losing them to pathfinding whims reduces the fun of exploring a dungeon and punishes experimental exploration. Like, oh here's a 3-skull dude at the bottom of this dungeon, should I risk losing one of both of my thralls to see if I can take him? Because if I do, party is over, no more exploring for a few hours while I find, capture, break, gear, and train another goddamned thrall to replace the one that died due to pathfinding. And this is with a mod to add key commands to control the thralls, I can't imagine trying to manage them in vanilla (though I'm very close to vanilla otherwise).

Ahem. It's still a pretty cool game.

[Samwise]

And this is with a mod to add key commands to control the thralls

I was boggling at how you ever thought it was a good idea to bring those dudes into combat in the first place until I got to that part.   

To me, the only way thralls ever seemed worth using in combat was if you parked them on top of towers with bows.  Keeps them from wandering off and getting into trouble, generally keeps bad guys from being able to get at them, and they have infinite arrows!  But even then I feel like sometimes they'd mysteriously clip off the spot where I'd left them and end up dead.

[Khaldun]

I find I can keep thralls alive in combat except for a few of the high level dungeons--the stupid one where you have to go get the keys and if you don't have an extra key back at your bed base you can't do a naked corpse run is a nearly guaranteed thrall death no matter what I do.

Mostly thralls are just fun decorations.

[Sky]

I guess I play completely differently. I rarely even bother with the weapon degradation of combat unless they pull a bit too much aggro or it's a skull+ npc (and even those I can generally ignore long enough to clean up the adds. The mod I use is pretty basic but gives me guard/attack all/passive as well as heal/switch weapon type (concussive/lethal). It could be way better, but again, couldn't really play well without it. I also use a lightweight minimap.

Since I'd already be done with it without admin tweaks for solo play (ironically, turning /down/ xp dramatically was the first), reducing grind with 3x harvest, and giving myself enough perks to unlock recipes as I unlock them. For solo play, not sure I'd get enough knowledge points to unlock everything since it's meant to be spread across a guild, apparently.

I tried an archer thrall, but his bow kept reverting to shitty arrows, I guess he needs them in his inventory but won't burn through them? Dunno, didn't mesh well with my melee playstyle. I tank if needed and have an entertainer who is decent str weapons and a fighter with daggers. Gets me good bleeds and buffs from the dancer. Though I think the dagger thrall is too slow and she might be getting a new weapon set after the dungeon runs I did.

[Khaldun]

There's a Tier 4 entertainer who is worth taking along, yeah--and some good Tier 4 agility fighters.

Agreed  that there's no point to archer thralls coming along with you. They're good to have for the purge, though I'm pretty close to turning purge off if I play again soon, it's just kind of annoying.

[Sky]

I turned that off before I knew what it was. Sounded like nonsense, though I could maybe see turning it back on for an endgame thing, not that I'm likely to last very long unless the game starts really upping the interest factor.

Sam, as far as wandering off, I also set their leashes, which is supposed to control the attack and pursuit distances. It's not great, since the attack radius still seems a bit too small for the overworld stuff, but the pursuit leash seems ok (to keep them from running across the map after a gazelle or something).

[Sky]

Are any of the DLC worth it for Conan Exiles? Looks like mostly cosmetic stuff, and while I'm about a cosmo ho as they come, without a 'wardrobe' or whatever cosmetic-only slot, I'd just end up in whatever the most effective armor is despite how hobo it looks. There's an option to ride a rhino, I believe I've unlocked a rhino saddle, but can't craft it or ride without one, so I wondered if I was blocked via DLC.

Finally hit 60 and really getting into being able to explore more of the map now. Travel is kind of cumbersome, but I've come to enjoy that (to an extent) after RDR2 (which did have some fast travel but I rarely used it) and Outward (which made the lack of fast travel a feature, you carried camping gear and whatnot). Got a couple combat thralls from under Conan's bar that are pretty fierce (Vito and Nunzio, my enforcers heh).

[HaemishM]

There are a bunch of DLCs that were all cosmetics - the armor sets at each tier were all the same statwise, it was just a matter of what motif you wanted to be able to sport. That may have changed, but I think only the ones called "expansion" actually had any gear that was different.

[Khaldun]

The expansion is super disappointing in that you have to start over with a new character--it's a new world, not really an expansion in the usual sense.

However, the new Sorcery content is pretty substantial. It's kind of gross--you can't utilize some of the best stuff without capturing people and draining their blood and/or life essence in a very gruesome way. If you've always wanted to be Thoth Amon or Thulsa Doom, well, here's your chance.

There's one DLC, I forget which it is, that unlocks fire pits for light that are super-cheap (just stone, I think) compared to all the rest. Aquilonian, maybe. There's a few little weird things like that with the DLC--some armors that are good that are cheaper to make, etc.--but it's mostly about the cosmetics.

[Sky]

Thanks, decided the DLC's a bit too steep for the amount of time I'll likely be putting into the game. Even with the slowed xp rate, I hit 60 a couple nights ago. I'll likely just explore with my enforcers a bit and not worry about looking bad, since I just made my first epic set of....the same armor I've been wearing for most of the game. Seems a shame to have so many cosmetic options and basically one set that's clearly ideal for any given playstyle.

Anyone who played on our minecraft server knows I'm definitely not about building cool things. Though I did make my 2nd dumpster base into a pyramid in this one!

On the other hand, I did apparently unlock a bunch of crap from the daily challenge stuff that I guess goes on my next character? So maybe I'll look into Siptah at some point.