So, what're you playing?

[Ironwood]

It is pretty weird to not dislike a group that framed you for murder and you lost your job, too.

Borderlands 3. So far, it is almost all good things.

I would be interested in your view of it with more depth.

[Mandella]

I dunno. One murderous thug pissed off because he was screwed over by other murderous thugs, chooses to work for more murderous thugs.

I mean, sounds pretty believable to me....

 

[Yegolev]

It is pretty weird to not dislike a group that framed you for murder and you lost your job, too.

Borderlands 3. So far, it is almost all good things.

I would be interested in your view of it with more depth.

Alas, depth requires patience. I can toss over a few more observations, though.

First, please be aware that I loved Borderlands 2 more than almost any other game. I purchased it and all the DLC twice. I also enjoyed the Pre_Sequel and Tales, which are story canon anyway.

Looks much better while retaining the style. Models have more detail but still look like Borderlands.

Controls are a bit more slippy-slidey but the good side of that is how responsive it is. I'm playing on a new PS4 Pro.

Only played maybe an hour of one character but I am enjoying the voiceover of the protagonist. No more mostly-mute with basic grunts from your guy.

References to BL1 and BL2 make me happy. Meat bicycles were referenced very early. Nod to the beginning of BL1 was appreciated. I'm lumping this under "good atmosphere" but it's early.

There are a few areas where the polish does not exist. Animations of hands on the ECHO during inventory mgmt got glitchy once or twice, but points for animating the char model completely. Minimap icons sometimes are huge, not sure if intentional. Haven't seen anything else glitchy yet.

Additional features make me happy, even if I'm otherwise agnostic on their use. Mantling, for example. It just means I'm going to try to clamber into more hard-to-reach spots looking for secrets. Decorative trinkets to hang on your guns. Weapon skins (paint jobs). Apparently I'm going to have a home eventually and can put shit in it. Hijack vehicles, scan for parts upgrades.

Weapons reworked. This is just a thing that happens, not going to opine on if it is good or bad.

The Challenges from BL2 are here and I am incrementing them, but I have to finish the story before I can use or manage them. Not sure what to think about this, so I'll defer that until I can work with them.

Controls are extremely configurable.

Can fast-travel to fast-travel points from the map without running to a fast-travel point. ++QoL

Can more easily mark items as junk/favorite and Sell All Junk as in Moon Borderlands. ++QoL

Selecting a equipment slot will filter the backpack to show only items equipable in that slot. ++QoL

[Speedy Cerviche]

Downloaded this and played a few hours last night, had to force myself to bed. Pretty fun RPG

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1058430/A_Legionarys_Life/

[Hawkbit]

Greedfall is growing on me now that I'm out in the open world. It feels like budget Dragon Age: Inq, though I think I'll likely remember this game more. It really suffered for the first five hours; the first town and quests were not a good intro.

I also think the loot is a bit boring. I just got my first 'legendary', but it doesn't do anything special other than have better stats. That's unfortunate.

I'm slowly falling for the world and the quests are fairly well written past the first few hours. I really enjoy how I can try a skill check in dialog and fail, yet have other options to go about resolution. For one quest I failed all the skill checks and was basically stuck mowing the opposition down.

Next step is to figure out how to disguise myself in different faction outfits.

[Sky]

I mean, that's the thing. I could grind through 5 hours hoping to get to the part that's good...or I could keep playing Witcher 3. Which I need to play for another 20-30 hours to get to where I was on the PC version, yet is still fun to play. Or, as you say, try out Inquisitor (which is sitting in my library) and play the not-budget version.

Greedfall was an impulse buy just before my vacation, and probably the first game I'd have refunded if it were on Steam instead of PS4.

[Goldenmean]

The Challenges from BL2 are here and I am incrementing them, but I have to finish the story before I can use or manage them. Not sure what to think about this, so I'll defer that until I can work with them.

They actually changed this around a bit. The challenges in BL3 don't tie in with the guardian rank (what used to be badass points in BL2) system. In BL3 you just get some Eridium when you hit thresholds. The guardian rank system is purely xp based this time around. Once you finish the story, you get an additional account wide xp bar, and everytime it fills, you get a new point to spend, so there's something to be said for racing for story completion and then going in and backfilling optional quests, etc. I sort of wish I'd done this, because it meant I "wasted" a lot of xp that could have gotten me more guardian points if I'd done things in a different order.

I really liked Borderlands 3 quite a bit (and am a big fan of 1 and 2 as well), but there's some issues that need addressing. I'm fairly confident they *will* address them, but right now there's some clunkiness.

1) The inventory system needs some major tuning. The QOL changes are nice, but there's noticeable lag in the item menus. My PC sometimes freezes for a good 10 seconds when I go to switch things around, and I'm not running a decade old machine.

2) They've actually already made some attempts to fix this, but endgame balancing is wonky. Until the hotfix yesterday, loot was absolutely raining from the sky on higher maniac modes. I could load into the game, kill a boss in a few seconds and get 4 legendaries for my troubles. I haven't actually played since the patch, so am not certain how much this got fixed, but on top of that, I'm not clear on why true vault hunter mode exists in this game. You can easily hit 50 in normal mode, and TVHM doesn't really seem to interact with loot much at all. You get some extra cash (meaningless) and some extra xp (kind of nice for guardian ranks, but not a huge deal), at the cost for monsters hitting harder and taking more damage. I'm really hoping they incentivize this more, as with my other character's I just don't think I'm going to bother

3) Tangenting off of that, they desperately need a dialogue skip/quest acceleration feature. For my alts and TVHM, I just turned in quests and alt-tabbed to web browse while the characters yammered on. Yes, there's a bit more personality to the different hunters, but you still need to listen to the same NPCs babble on for a while before you get to see how this new hunter responds. It's really killing my desire to replay the story on different characters

4) Things need nerfing. I really wasn't exaggerating when I said I could kill bosses in a few seconds at maximum mayhem in TVHM mode. It literally takes me longer to quit out and enter the game again to fight a boss again than it does to kill it. There's some pretty degenerate builds in this game (looking at you Fl4K cloak/crit build)

Other than that though, Yegolev covered most of the reasons it's good. If you liked the previous games, you'll like this one.

[carnifex27]

Next step is to figure out how to disguise myself in different faction outfits.

Chest pieces have a symbol next to how much they cost in the lower right corner of their information. The symbol is a coat of arms that tells you which faction they belong to. All you have to do to disguise yourself is wear the chest piece of the faction you want to infiltrate. It's so simple that they never explain it and I didn't notice until I'd been playing 4-5 hours myself.

[Hawkbit]

Next step is to figure out how to disguise myself in different faction outfits.

Chest pieces have a symbol next to how much they cost in the lower right corner of their information. The symbol is a coat of arms that tells you which faction they belong to. All you have to do to disguise yourself is wear the chest piece of the faction you want to infiltrate. It's so simple that they never explain it and I didn't notice until I'd been playing 4-5 hours myself.

THANK YOU!!

[Khaldun]

Glad to hear GreedFall feels more interesting later. In the initial town, it really screams "We have good ideas but we don't have even remotely the number of people with even close to the necessarily skills to realize those ideas".

[Sky]

It's kind of bizarre in an industry that tends to pour inordinate amount of time into the first few hours and generally lets the quality slide later on.

I'll keep an open mind and revisit later, after Witcher 3...and some patches 

[koro]

I want to like Greedfall, but it's hard to get past the incredibly bad controller dead zone issues the game has.

[Cyrrex]

Halfway through the very last chapter of FF13.  I just want it to be over now, and by God I will do it.  I am awful at finishing FF games, so I am determined this time.  There was potential here, but they just fucked up the feel of the whole thing with the endless corridors, and the story which, while it could have been interesting, just leaves too many unfilled blanks.  “Oh No!  Rosch is here to confront us.  But Rosch, we’re on the same side!  We should be working together!  Oh look, we’ve defeated Rosch, and he is in a bad way.  Come with us Rosch!  Oh crap, Rosch, whom we’ve just beaten like an old drum, just sacrificed himself heroically by exploding himself and some charging behemoth thingies to save us possibly!  Oh, sweet, Rosch, our dear friend, so sad....”

Meanwhile, who the FUCK is Rosch and why the shit am I supposed to care?  Oh right, he’s part of Cavalry, I think.  Wait, who or what the fuck is Cavalry?  That is FF13 in a nutshell.

[Falconeer]

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night was added on the XboX PC pass, so I tried it out cause it's free aannnnd.... got instantly hooked. Everything else is now on pause until I finish this. Nothing has clicked so quickly and so deeply for me in a long time, almost like a From Software game. I know it's just another *vania, but hey hey hey.

[Khaldun]

Doing Mutant Year Zero. I think it's pretty fun, but I see what Haemish means--you frequently get RNG Fucked. I can't imagine playing this without save scumming, really.

[HaemishM]

Doing Mutant Year Zero. I think it's pretty fun, but I see what Haemish means--you frequently get RNG Fucked. I can't imagine playing this without save scumming, really.

Yeah, I can't imagine trying this on Ironman mode. I wouldn't have minded it if there was an "Easy" mode that was just slightly less deadly than "Normal." I didn't want a cakewalk but I did want there to feel like there was more possible outcomes besides "Slaughter everything" and "Die horribly without the faintest hope of success."

[Khaldun]

Part of the fun of tactical turn-based games is improvising when shit goes wrong, where there's some looseness. When the bad guys all have way more health than your guys, some of them will fuck one of your guys in one round, where you can only use your strongest abilities once every fourth kill, etc., that looseness is completely missing. To some extent it's my complaint about the Hitman games too--they promise creativity and improvisation but in the end you are really just doing the puzzle of a given scenario in exactly the way that the designers meant for you to do it.

It's Dragon's Lair game design--pretending the player is doing anything beside memorizing exactly the sequence of things that gets you through the game.

[Sky]

To some extent it's my complaint about the Hitman games too--they promise creativity and improvisation but in the end you are really just doing the puzzle of a given scenario in exactly the way that the designers meant for you to do it.

Couldn't agree more. I love sandboxes that reward messing around, that is never what Hitman has felt like. I always feel like I'm trying to figure out how the developers think you should be clever.

[Yegolev]

To some extent it's my complaint about the Hitman games too--they promise creativity and improvisation but in the end you are really just doing the puzzle of a given scenario in exactly the way that the designers meant for you to do it.

Couldn't agree more. I love sandboxes that reward messing around, that is never what Hitman has felt like. I always feel like I'm trying to figure out how the developers think you should be clever.

This is why I don't like escape rooms.

[Khaldun]

Yeah, every time I've gone to one, I spend all my time looking at every single object in the room and thinking about how it could be a clue, whereas the people who want to win immediately dope out what the clue they're supposed to find actually is.

[Paelos]

It's best in an escape room to have one player who can manage the entire project, without doing any puzzles themselves. They are the ones who can work backwards where you need to go and make sure people aren't working on the same thing that's already been done or unnecessary.

[Hawkbit]

fuckit, we’re doing agile.

[ezrast]

But are you really doing agile?

[Cyrrex]

Finally got around to starting up Persona 5.  I have only ever played like 30 minutes of Persona......3?......on PSP, so I am pretty much completely unfamiliar.

So far, I rather like it.  But I feel that the first couple of hours are totally on rails and I am already feeling like it needs to open the fuck up.  Please tell me it opens the fuck up, because I suspect their is something here I might like a whole lot.

[Ironwood]

Anyone pick up Surge 2 ?

[Rendakor]

Finally got around to starting up Persona 5.  I have only ever played like 30 minutes of Persona......3?......on PSP, so I am pretty much completely unfamiliar.

So far, I rather like it.  But I feel that the first couple of hours are totally on rails and I am already feeling like it needs to open the fuck up.  Please tell me it opens the fuck up, because I suspect their is something here I might like a whole lot.

3 and 4 both had a really long tutorial before you got freedom to choose whatever you wanted to do with your days. I haven't played 5 yet, but I suspect a similar situation.

[Cyrrex]

It feels like it must be that way, because there is all this stuff sorta staring you in the face that you just cannot engage with, at least not yet.  It is good enough so far that I will find out sooner or later.

[Yegolev]

Somehow failed to mention my favorite improvement to Borderlands 3: I don't have to hold a button to pick up money and ammunition.

Finally got to the real game. I think. Still need to collect more crew. Found that I'm not good enough at lv10 to take on a gang of lv12 minibosses, so backtracking to do some sides.

Like it greatly despite the glitches, bugs, stutters, and quirks.

Also spending some time in FFXIV. Probably going to do Greedfall this coming weekend.

[HaemishM]

It feels like it must be that way, because there is all this stuff sorta staring you in the face that you just cannot engage with, at least not yet.  It is good enough so far that I will find out sooner or later.

It's kind of odd. I think I might have been like 30-40 hours into the game and they were STILL adding some game systems on top of what was already there. Now normally, that might piss me off, but I felt like they did a really good job of seeding these things here and there without overwhelming you. There are a LOT of dials you can twist to change the game a bit and you'll be learning them most of the way to the end. As for the tutorial part, I think it might be a few hours in before you get off the leash, but unless you hate the combat at the start, it's totally worth persevering through. I ended up at around 100 hours played I think and I probably could have kept going if there was more story.

[Cyrrex]

I like the combat fine so far, so should be good to go.

[Khaldun]

Eh, Mutant Year Zero disappointed me in the end enough that I don't feel inclined to do the DLC. I just feel like once developers have established a strong baseline of "what makes a particular genre or template for a game fun", it's kind of inexcusable to dramatically underperform that benchmark. Plus the world-building/story-telling is just kind of meh. There was a vague attempt at having the duck and the boar be comedic buddies but that's about it. I didn't even get a clear picture of what the ghouls *are*, or who "Nova Sect" is exactly, or how they manage to program some of the robots to work with them. The big 'twist' is visible a million miles away. I didn't really get much of an attachment to the characters, there was never any reason to swap in the two you weren't using because the mix-and-match of skills doesn't specialize them that much. It annoys me a bit more than other games being small and flawed might be because this is normally my favorite genre.

[Cyrrex]

Slowly plugging away at Persona 5, about 8 hours in maybe.  I decided to start the first palace at the first opportunity, and have nearly gotten to the end of it.  I had been going through it thinking “man, this is kinda tough.  Not really looting HP or SP items, and it is not looking good for getting through to the end of this”. Despite, in restrospect, obvious hints......I did not occur to me that I could just fucking leave the palace and come back later.  Stupid fucking turd.  Was down to almost no heals left, and almost no SP.

[Falconeer]

The game is not hard in my opinion unless you want to rush through it. One piece of advice though: stock up on SP items for the last part of the game, meaning don't use any unless you reeeeeeally need to. Keep them all for the final part.

On second thoughts, I think you unlock something at some point that gives you SP back just by walking around, yet I clearly remember hating myself in the end for not having enough SP potions (and yet somehow it all worked out).

[Cyrrex]

No, none of it seems hard on a act by act basis, but trying to plow through the first palace without knowing how shit worked just doesn't work because the SP does not regen.  Stepping out into the world is the obvious solution.  In hindsight 

[HaemishM]

Just remember for those dungeons, you can only go back to the save points you've saved at - so you could be doing entire floors over if you leave without a save.