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Blog Your Current Game

Playing a little Undecember today because 1) It's free and 2) It's free and 3) it's an ARPG

Negatives first:

The name.. the name is dumb.

This game installs an anti-cheat that uses rootkits. I generally hate this trend. I have never seen the urgency for such drastic security measures for a game, the the always online/big money nature of games these days leads to game developers treating cheating as federal crime.

The game qualifies as pay to win. It's economy has a lot in common with POE, except that in this game you can just buy the currency directly. The random chance nature of mod-materials-as-currency would also tend to make it a bit like loot boxes as well.

That being said, I remember the heady days of multiplayer ARPGs when cheating in games like Diablo 2 was rampant. Back then you could have a random cheater drop into your game and shower you with perfect roll gear that would essentially ruin the game if you chose to accept it, so the effective impact on the game of pay-to-win is really not all that different, and none of that effects the solo game, and the game seems perfectly soloable.

Now some positives:

I'm a big fan of any RPG or ARPG that tries to eliminate character classes, and Undecember does that. I suppose that in the late game the Min/Max will favor archetype builds, but right now the biggest differentiation comes from the weapon bonuses. Those bonuses will push you into favoring one type of attack over the other, but you can get a long way with a sword and a good spell build.

The spell build system is the most interesting aspect of the game. It is most similar to POE gem system, but the gems are not tied to gear. Instead you have a hexagonal space where you place a spell, and then augment that spell by placing augments in adjacent hexes. What augments can work and where they have to be placed depends on the random arrangement of color coded facets of the spell and augment. So if you can place a spell with a blue edge next to an augment with a blue edge that lines up the spell gets the augment.

It's cool, and kind of reminds me of an indie game called ... Keplearth (?) though the passives in that game were multiple hexes and the challenge was to fit them into the space like a jigsaw puzzle.

Anyway, not a terrible game if you play it solo. If you delve into the random multiplayer I'm sure all the pay-to-win options would end up dominating, which is unfortunate.
 
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SEKIRO: SHADOWS DIE TWICE

So juiced right now, I just beat the final boss of the game. (Actually it was a couple of night ago when I first drafted this.)

Did it with skill, no cheese. Really proud of myself. Took me 150 Hrs (Steam tracked) but I finally did it. Now a lot of those hours fall into (a) farming to upgrade skills, and (b) many, many hours in runs at very specific bosses such as the Guardian Ape, Father Owl, Demon of Hatred and the final Genechiro and Isshin Ahsina the Sword Saint.

So I bought the game on sale a while ago for, IIRC, $40. At 150 hours that is about $0.25 cents per hour. That’s a pretty good deal. As with other games such as Dark Souls, Fallout Series. The Witcher, and Cyberpunk – it was less about starting the game and running to the finish. It is the journey I enjoy.

The final fight is a 4 phase fight:
  • Genechiro, Way of the Tome – After you beat him, he basically commits suicide and calls forth his dead grandfather (Isshin) using the Black Mortal Blade to open a gateway to the dead who you then fight for the rest of the encounter.
  • Isshin Phase I – The man was basically the greatest sword master that had ever lived. It showed.
  • Isshin Phase II – He adds this big ass spear that will wreck you.
  • Isshin Phase III – Finally he get the ability to call out a lighting sword/strike as if everything else wasn’t bad enough.

Like other bosses I really struggled with, I wasn’t able to beat them the way the game intended. Stay aggressive and get in their face. Use the combat systems to counter their attacks and inflict your own damage as punishment. I had to figure alternate strategies and this resulted in many nights and many runs figuring out their battle techniques and telltale signs for each. Where both Genechiro and Isshin are supposed to be fast intense combat, I changed the rules and slowed things down to tickle them into an expected action and then punish them for that action. Instead of a fast kill it was chip away slowly at their health until victory was achieved. YouTuber’s that advocated the fast-n-furious were pegged at 30-45 seconds per phase, the whole fight being over in 2 to 3 minutes. For me? Oh no - no. It would take me 5 minutes just for one phase. So as I got better able to transition to the next phase each run would take 10-15 minutes.

I won’t go through each part of the fight, but it boiled down to staying mid-range way from them which really disarmed a lot of their close in melee attach patterns. Basically I’d bait them into closing the distance which usually resulted in an action that I’d worked out the counter for in my head in advance. They’d move in, I’d counter, then punish them for the mistake. Then back out to get separation, move where I wanted, then bait the next attack/counter attack/punish sequence.

That worked really well for Genechiro and Isshin Phase I, but Isshin Phase II and III was another story. He added a long spear to his repertoire which really made life difficult. So Isshin Phase II and Phase III involved a lot of running away to get to range as there was one specific attack where I could tank the damage and inflict punishment so lots of running around to set that up.

I wasn’t really expecting to beat the final boss sequence tonight, but I was on a run and everything just “clicked”. Genechiro went down and I still used no health recovery items and no resurrections (second life). Time just disappeared and the next thing I know I’m fighting Isshin Phase III and holding my own (for a change). I got him down to about 25% health when I realized I just might be able to do this – then he caught me in an exchange and I died. Most of my normal healing items had been used in Phase II and Phase III and I was down to my last resurrection and I said screw it, I’m doing well, I can beat this guy. Part of the reason my normal health items were gone is I was using a mechanic to use a tank device. For those familiar with Seiko I was using an umbrella shield with living force to reflect attack damage back. However I had to use the ceremonial dagger to replenish the ability to use it during Phase III. So I popped my last resurrection to get back up and used my remaining “super heal” (major health restoration over time, about 30 seconds – i.e. Fine Snow).

It was show down time, time to put up or shut up. At that point the dance resumed and, I’m proud to say, I didn’t make any more unforced errors and Isshin the sword master fell to the blade of the Wolf.

WW
 
SEKIRO: SHADOWS DIE TWICE

Final thoughts.

This was an impressive game, the story, the combat, the graphics were great. It ran – what I’ll call very well – on my 3 year old PC gaming (i7-8700K, 16Gb RAM, 256G SSD, GTX108Ti). On occasion I’d get a game stutter (1-2 times an evening) that it would recover from and at least once a night it would crash necessitating a restart. However due to its auto save functionality this wasn’t to frustrating as I’d always be right round the corner from the crash site.

But as I said, awesome game, highly recommended if you are into this type of action RPG.

The story was very well put together, it drew you in and you became the Wolf. I found the game to be much more linear in terms of traversing specific areas then either the Dark Souls or (as I image) Elden Ring. However there was still some hoping around to different areas to complete some side quests and areas that were reused/reskinned for different parts of the story – but in general this was done very effectively.

DISCLAIMER: However I’m more interested in the story and combat and not getting frustrated trying to piece together obscure lore and figuring out side quests where there is little to know guidance. So I did tend to use FightingCowboys walkthrough as a guide and the wiki to better understand usage of items as I acquired them.

Combat is the star of the show, IMHO. I loved it and was very scared of it going into the game. I’d played Dark Souls and The Witcher 2 – which for combat were the closest games I can relate it to. However a couple of things:
  • There are no shields, which means no parrying. You use your katana for all your melee combat and instead of using a shield you have to use your sword to deflect. It took a little getting used to but once you did the combat flowed exceptionally well.
  • You have no real ranged options to cheese encounters, the only way to beat an opponent for a regular play through is to get close to deal damage. (Yes you have a limited number of shurikens [i.e. throwing stars] but not enough at any one time to consider them a ranged combat option.
  • Dark Souls rolling and the associated iFrames isn’t a thing, you can dodge, but not roll. As part of the dance though you will need to get into a different mindset for the Seiko dodge v. Dark Souls rolls.
If I were to ask for one thing in the game, I think it really needs a Witcher 3 style Journal. Something that Wolf would make entries on as materials, key items, and enemies were encountered. Something that provide a little more in the way of lore, properties and usage. Miyazaki’s games often don’t layout the lore in an in-your-face manner and a lot of people like that. Maybe make the usage of a Journal an option so that purists can leave it off but casual gamers can turn it on for the story experience.

Even though the various endings to provide for maybe a sequel, and I won’t spoil them here. I don’t think so. I think Sekiro will remain a one off. Sadly.

Awesome game. If you like story? If you like close in combat? This is a game you will enjoy.

WW
 
Well, you can really tell the dedication that Undecember has to being a Diablo 3 clone because the Spin-to-Win build (Whirlwind) is OP as all hell.

For one thing, the 3 Stats in the game (STR, DEX, INT) are simply not created equal. Much like PoE, the armor is divided in three flavors Armor (STR), Dodge (DEX) and Barrier (INT)

Armor is the indisputable superior defense type since it generally slows the rate you take damage while DEX changes the chance of taking damage, and barrier just absorbs damage up front.

The reason armor is superior is because it essentially slows the game down, and makes it more manageable. In Undecember there is also auto-potion taking, so your character will take potions at low health, followed by a cool down... with high enough armor you slow damage to the point that the potion is almost always off cool down when you need it. With High Dodge or Barrier you may need fewer potions, but when you fail a dodge, or lose your barrier, you can easily get 2-shot, so you have the illusion of invulnerability until you aren't.

So with armor your health really depends on how many health potions to bring to the fight.

STR not only influences your amount of armor, but also your total health pool, and your damage with physical attacks. Other than the annoyance that Whirlwind has a small DEX dependence, you can dump all points into STR and cover your armor/health/Damage all at once.

The most unbalanced issue with Whirlwind, though, is the ability to free walk through groups of mobs. Where a DEX or INT based build might need a movement skill to avoid getting trapped by crowds or mobs, a Whirlwind build literally can't get trapped, and does damage the whole time, and a lot of it.

I ran an INT Chain Lightning build through Act 3 and decided to try a Whirlwind build yesterday and passed my INT build in level and story progression in half the time with zero deaths.. not even near deaths.

Finally, an interesting choice for this game is that pretty much all itemization, especially early itemization, is crafting based. You will get a lot of non-magical gear drops through tthe game, and even more crafting materials. This allows you to choose base gear by min-maxing on a few base states and then pump up the power through crafting. This incremental method is more reliable, but robs you of a lot of the dopamine of getting good weapons to drop.

That being said, I got my first unique drop off of a minor boss yesterday and it looked cool AND was perfect for my build and it felt good... so the potential is still there.

I think my next session will start with trying some minor boss farming to see if I can get some more uniques.
 
Victoria 3 releases Tuesday(finally!!), and I am stoked! First youtuber videos went up today, they got 17 youtubers from 17 countries and had them play their own country. Some where simply fascinating, especially the US guy, who set the goal to be nice guy USA, and had some success(slavery ended in 1845, civil war averted), some failures(native Americans had it rough). Massively complicated, and tons and tons of information, but really well organized and easy to find things.

 
I just finished stray. It’s a fun if short and easy game.

I paid $20 but it’s more of a $10 game IMHO

Next up is evoland

Mainly I’m focusing on stuff that works on my new steam deck right now.
 
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Playing UFO: Enemy Unknown, aka XCOM: UFO Defense, the OG of the XCOM series. I gotta say, for a game from 1994-era graphics somewhere in the SNES range, they did a phenomenal job with the atmosphere of the game. Nighttime missions at the start of the game against Sectoids, which are in the art style of the classic little grey men aliens, and the weird creepy music with a heartbeat-like pulse amps up the horror aspect. Add to that the fact that aliens see better in the dark than you do, often your first indication of the presence of an alien is when plasma fire erupts from the dark.

The game definitely has the old-school design difficulty that you don't see much these days. There's no tutorial, you start the game with a prompt for where to place your base. Anywhere in the world, as long as it is on solid ground... and no indication of how this decision matters! Then, the clock starts ticking. You have some cash. Buy stuff, build facilities? Priorities? Where are the aliens? It can be days or even weeks before a UFO pops up on your radar. I hope the game had a good manual, back in the day, because it can be overwhelming to someone walking in blind.

Pro tips:
-You're not the American military set off to save the world, you're Lockheed Martin. Producing and selling aircraft laser cannons is a money fountain.
-Replacement troops are very cheap. You can lose three for every alien you kill and still turn a profit, as long as you're not blowing up alien corpses and gear with explosives. (killing the alien with explosives is fine, don't hit too many corpses with explosives)
-With the above, some of your troops will have awful stats. If it gets you an important objective, do not hesitate to run them face first into reaction fire to soak up the shots. A good example is early game captures of an alien Navigator or Leader. (especially a Sectoid leader)
-If you've played the 2012 XCOM or its sequel, think of it this way: every soldier has Squadsight, and reaction fire only works in normal sight range. You also always know the position of any alien you spotted this turn, even if you move back out of sight. Spot an alien with a scout, move the scout back, any soldier in a sniping position can take shots without fear of return fire!
-Priming a grenade takes a ton of TUs. To prime and then throw means a soldier can barely move this turn. However, picking up a live grenade off the ground requires very few TUs. Think relay race, but with a live grenade.
-If your first Alien Terror mission is Sectoids, you're in for a bad time. If any alien spots any soldier, the psionic Sectoid Leader will be able to hit any soldier with psionic attacks, including mind control. They will target soldiers with weak psionic strength... a stat you do not know yet. Pray it's not the guy with the rocket launcher, he could wipe out half your squad. Keep tabs on which troopers get targeted repeatedly, they're gonna be the ones weak to psionics. Don't execute them! In future missions where psionics are present, they can be psionic bait. They can't harm your squad if they don't have any weapons.
-Don't worry, psionics are just as overpowered when you unlock them yourself. If you manage to identify a Sectoid Leader (mind probes can do this)), capture them by any means necessary. Stun them and carry the body back to the skyranger and abort if you have to, the sooner you get one of these bastards the better.
-Do not exit the Skyranger on your first turn. Toss out a smoke grenade for cover and end turn. (shoot aliens if they start in view, of course) Aliens start in their spawn locations with full TUs. If they are facing the Skyranger ramp, they'll start blasting. Giving them a turn to move around makes them spend some TUs, so less are available for reaction fire.
-Yes, even on Terror missions. There are civilians around their deaths cost you some score, but so do the deaths of XCOM soldiers. (score affects your funding, so it's not just points) If your casualties aren't too terrible, even losing every civilian isn't a real problem. Get the points back by killing aliens and taking their stuff.
-Property damage is never penalized. Aliens can't take cover in a barn that is no longer standing.
 
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First impressions of Victoria 3: holy hell this is complex. Your economy is everything, and so many goods, and so many production chains, and it is the era wheere the world economy was really getting going. Your people want food, and clothes, and furniture, and intoxicants, and a bunch of other stuff, so making sure they can afford all those things is quite the trick. In the meantime, your army needs guns and cannons and bullets and gunpowder and ships. Your government needs bureaucracy so it can administer the trade routes you need to bring in stuff you are not making enough of, and sell the stuff you have too much of. And before you build that furniture factory, are there enough workers of each type, because if not, it is not going to produce much. And you need building capacity and infrastructure to make the factories and distribute the resources. And the prices of everything constantly fluctuate based on supply and demand.

All that barely scratched the surface of the complexity of the economic model, and does not include politics, both internal and external, and warfare, and a bunch of other systems, each incredibly complex. It does a good job of making the information you need to make decisions easy to access, but it will take a long time to learn how everything interconnects, and what is peak and what is inefficient.

Game looks incredible(really incredible), the UI is top notch, the gameplay is fun, but oh lordy, that learning curve is insane.
 
Undecember is starting to feel a lot like original release Diablo 3 to me, good and bad.

Pros -

1) I've grown to like the crafting system. Once you know what you are doing you can make some good gear. The gear drops in the game are essentially crafting materials, and the randomization is in stages. So, for instance, a dropped weapon might have essentially 3 to 9 characteristics that are randomized, but only 2 are essential: Base Damage and eapon Type

Base damage is generally a narrow variability, but you want a high roll on min and max damage, because those numbers are fed into your attack and spell RNG

Type matters for more than the obvious reasons since there are different flavors of every weapon type at a given level, so a summoner would wat a wand with a base minion bonus while another caster would want the wand with +Elemental%, etc.

From there the item can have 0 to 6 bonuses, but materials that you collect in the game allow you to add bonus slots and reroll all bonuses until you get the mix you want.. or run out of materials.

With this system you will constantly be rebuilding and augmenting your gear throughout the game.

2) The magic crafting is easily my favorite magic system in an ARPG. It borrows heavily from PoE, but manages to improve it. This system as a LOT of potential.

3) The graphics are polished, the story is interesting-ish, and the release of the game comes with 10 chapters.

Cons -

1) It's hard to ignore the pay-to-win aspects of the game. Difficulty ramps up a lot from the first half of the game to the second half, and it is so stark that it has a real gatekeeping feel. There are some materials for crafting that you only get in small amounts as quest rewards that are the basis for the spell/skill customization mechanic that you can just buy by the hundreds in the shop. Since a good roll of a random attempt is very rare, the only way to guarantee you'll get the best rolls is by doing them repeatedly, in numbers greater than you could get in game.

So, it's a con if you want to actually play the game for free. It's not impossible that you will get what you need in spell customization, but it's pretty unlikely..

That said, when you join the game for get one free upgrade to one spell/skill to 5 facets guaranteed... it just happens so early in the game that you better know what you want to be playing in act 10, and know what spells are good and what spells are trash or you will waste it.

2) As I said, the gatekeeping between the first and second half of the game is pretty obvious. I have a rather well geared whirlwind warrior going into the final fight of Act 5 and the boss, Christen, one shot me... like 20 times in a row. It was ludicrous. I was specked for max protect on his element (cold) and maxed in Armor mitigation, for even stopping 80% of damage AND reducing unmitigated damage by 75%, he still one shot me.

The only fix was to completely rework my warrior into a ranged spell caster. Luckily, there was a build online for a spell build for a whirlwind warrior that worked alright after I got used to it. It eventually got past Christen, but with a warrior build I didn't want to play...

3) While the spell crafting system is great, it lacks in numbers of interesting spells and interactions. One day someone will make an ARPG with synergies like The Binding of Isaac and it will sell a bazillion copies... until then we'll have games like PoE and Undecember that just hint at it.

Anyways, I'm enjoying the game so far even with the complaints. After I reworked my whirlwind build to defeat Christen it introduced me to a spell I had ignored called "Toxic Flame" that the build used to proc off of whirlwind. I decided to take toxic flame and make it the center of my mage build that I had abandoned and it's hilariously OP.
What Toxic Flame does is send out a fan of piecing green fireballs and do high damage on hit, but then apply a DOT that does the same damage per tick per application, up to 4 (?).

It's a spell that basically can't miss, and melts bosses and elites.

It's all I ever wanted.
 
So I managed to send the US into default last night. I was not managing my economy at all well. I got a tech which allowed me to upgrade my mines, and switched to that technique, without realizng that there simply where not enough explosives on the market or for import to supply those mines, so their production dropped to about zero. Since I wanted the employment, I started subsidizing all my mines, but that only really increased my expenses, still no iron being produced, which brought my tool industry(which was too small as well for my needs), my food industry(which was using canning), and a bunch of other industries to a screeching halt. No tools of course brought my forestry industry to a halt, which brought my furniture industry to a halt. Unemployment went through the roof. Then I got invited to join a war in South America with the promise of Chile as a puppet, and puppets send a a portion of their tax income to their masters, so I thought that would help my cash situation, but I forgot that wars are expensive. Next thing I know, I get a notice that I was in default since I could not pay my loans. That is the kind of game Victoria 3 is.

My run tonight I am going to try and more efficiently and smartly handle my economy. Build up resources, then the tools needed for those industries and slowly build up industries further up the supply chain. Be more smart about importing what I can cheaply, and exporting my excesses. I was doing much better managing the social aspect and was well on my way to eliminating slavery, and getting close to being able to improve healthcare.

Did I mention the learning curve is steep? It is however fun, and zooming in and seeing the trains chugging across the landscape to factories I had built, and ports with big clipper ships sailing out of them, and seagulls flying by is really satisfying. This is far and away the best looking Paradox game.
 
Euro Truck Simulator 2. I have not started playing because of the time involved, but have enjoyed watching videos on Youtube of people playing. If I were to start playing a game, it would be this one. Being able to drive a truck across all of Europe, seeing many places I know, would be a hoot. I suppose it brings back some memories as a boy. My uncles would take me on runs across country during my summer breaks. I must have crossed the states some 10 times before graduating high school. Being able to live that feeling again in my advancing age, but in all the capitals and landscape of Europe, would be worth the money.
ZetaEuroTruckSim2x500pix.jpg
 
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Deuce said:
Playing UFO: Enemy Unknown, aka XCOM: UFO Defense, the OG of the XCOM series. I gotta say, for a game from 1994-era graphics somewhere in the SNES range, they did a phenomenal job with the atmosphere of the game. Nighttime missions at the start of the game against Sectoids, which are in the art style of the classic little grey men aliens, and the weird creepy music with a heartbeat-like pulse amps up the horror aspect. Add to that the fact that aliens see better in the dark than you do, often your first indication of the presence of an alien is when plasma fire erupts from the dark.

The game definitely has the old-school design difficulty that you don't see much these days. There's no tutorial, you start the game with a prompt for where to place your base. Anywhere in the world, as long as it is on solid ground... and no indication of how this decision matters! Then, the clock starts ticking. You have some cash. Buy stuff, build facilities? Priorities? Where are the aliens? It can be days or even weeks before a UFO pops up on your radar. I hope the game had a good manual, back in the day, because it can be overwhelming to someone walking in blind.

Pro tips:
-You're not the American military set off to save the world, you're Lockheed Martin. Producing and selling aircraft laser cannons is a money fountain.
-Replacement troops are very cheap. You can lose three for every alien you kill and still turn a profit, as long as you're not blowing up alien corpses and gear with explosives. (killing the alien with explosives is fine, don't hit too many corpses with explosives)
-With the above, some of your troops will have awful stats. If it gets you an important objective, do not hesitate to run them face first into reaction fire to soak up the shots. A good example is early game captures of an alien Navigator or Leader. (especially a Sectoid leader)
-If you've played the 2012 XCOM or its sequel, think of it this way: every soldier has Squadsight, and reaction fire only works in normal sight range. You also always know the position of any alien you spotted this turn, even if you move back out of sight. Spot an alien with a scout, move the scout back, any soldier in a sniping position can take shots without fear of return fire!
-Priming a grenade takes a ton of TUs. To prime and then throw means a soldier can barely move this turn. However, picking up a live grenade off the ground requires very few TUs. Think relay race, but with a live grenade.
-If your first Alien Terror mission is Sectoids, you're in for a bad time. If any alien spots any soldier, the psionic Sectoid Leader will be able to hit any soldier with psionic attacks, including mind control. They will target soldiers with weak psionic strength... a stat you do not know yet. Pray it's not the guy with the rocket launcher, he could wipe out half your squad. Keep tabs on which troopers get targeted repeatedly, they're gonna be the ones weak to psionics. Don't execute them! In future missions where psionics are present, they can be psionic bait. They can't harm your squad if they don't have any weapons.
-Don't worry, psionics are just as overpowered when you unlock them yourself. If you manage to identify a Sectoid Leader (mind probes can do this)), capture them by any means necessary. Stun them and carry the body back to the skyranger and abort if you have to, the sooner you get one of these bastards the better.
-Do not exit the Skyranger on your first turn. Toss out a smoke grenade for cover and end turn. (shoot aliens if they start in view, of course) Aliens start in their spawn locations with full TUs. If they are facing the Skyranger ramp, they'll start blasting. Giving them a turn to move around makes them spend some TUs, so less are available for reaction fire.
-Yes, even on Terror missions. There are civilians around their deaths cost you some score, but so do the deaths of XCOM soldiers. (score affects your funding, so it's not just points) If your casualties aren't too terrible, even losing every civilian isn't a real problem. Get the points back by killing aliens and taking their stuff.
-Property damage is never penalized. Aliens can't take cover in a barn that is no longer standing.
Click to expand...

The original X-Com is my GOAT for PC games.

If you haven't already, you should check out the OpenXcom and especially the X-Piratez mod, which explodes the game in every possible direction.

For my part, I'm re-doing Fallout 3 after a few years to give New Vegas a rest. I'm using the Vortex launcher with the Rebirth mod packages, and it's been the easiest setup of the largest number of mods ever for me (~350 mods, 99% installed in one move by Vortex.)

The story still sucks, but it's beautiful and there's all sorts of new stuff to shoot at and with!
 
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Since the last update, I started playing No Man's Sky again. I havent played this since it first came out, and now you can build a base--yipee...

But several hours into it and Im bored as ****. The grind between gathering minerals and building the base is really tedious. It's not fun like in Subnautica and nothing ever happens. Does this get any better or am I just wasting time?
 
PoS said:
Since the last update, I started playing No Man's Sky again. I havent played this since it first came out, and now you can build a base--yipee...

But several hours into it and Im bored as ****. The grind between gathering minerals and building the base is really tedious. It's not fun like in Subnautica and nothing ever happens. Does this get any better or am I just wasting time?
Click to expand...
That was my experience as well.

Right now I just figured out how to get Xbox game pass games to work (streaming) on my steam deck, so am enjoying persona 5
 
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PoS said:
Since the last update, I started playing No Man's Sky again. I havent played this since it first came out, and now you can build a base--yipee...

But several hours into it and Im bored as ****. The grind between gathering minerals and building the base is really tedious. It's not fun like in Subnautica and nothing ever happens. Does this get any better or am I just wasting time?
Click to expand...
Gathering minerals is something that you do less and less as the game goes on. With pirate systems you can spend much more time doing combat if you choose. Setting up multiple bases with teleporters makes travel much less tedious. You can take over a minor colony and guild it up for something different to do(kinda a city builder minigame kinda thing with combat against sentinals every so often), you get the log entry for that fairly early on.

It is still primarily an exploration and base building kinda game however.
 
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Brotato is my newest indy, cheap(5$ IIRC), Vampire Survivors-esque game. There are 20 waves per run, each wave until the last is 1 minute or less, enemies spawn in, when they die, they drop material for you to pick up. Pick up enough and you gain a level. Between waves you can pick a skillup for each level you gained in the previous wave(most I ever got was 4, with a character with a built in exp multiplier), then you can buy more weapons and items with the material you collected. Simple fun, but the variety is staggering. There are 32 different classes, each wildly different. 1 may specialize in melee weapons, one ranged weapons, one gets a bonus to turrets, one has no weapons but explodes every time he is hit, another has major debuffs to weapon damage, but damages a random enemy every time he picks up a material. Skills add HPs, regen, life steal, armor, dodge, attack speed, attack damage, range damage, melee damage, luck(get this, it is huge with most characters), engineering(improves turrets and mines) harvesting(gives you bonus material at the end of a wave) and more. Each run is different, and can be completed in half hour. Well worth the 5 bucks.

Victoria 3 is still great, and I am still playing it, and it is still massively complex. You usually have factories building to improve your economy, but building factories uses resources, which you have to buy. Then the factory may use resources, which it has to buy, and the cost to buy them from the market, and pay wages is more than what the market will pay for what you build, the factory looses money and either you have to subsidize it(expensive) or it shuts down until demand for their product goes up or the cost of what they need to work goes down. But it is more complex than that. You can of course import stuff if it is expensive on your market, or export it if it is cheap. Plus technologies can make the factory much more efficient, but may need new resources not yet in production(motors, dynamite, electricity are examples of things you will have to make factories for before you switch your other factories over to use them). But wait, it is more complex than that. Factories employ people, who come from serfs working substance farms. Serfs are not politically active, but some of the jobs they might take in a factory might make them politically active, and people in certain jobs will favor certain political movements. Lots of laborers might boost power of the labor unions, lots of engineers might increase the power of the intelligencia, lots of clerks might increase the power of the church, and so on. And each of these politicaql movements favors certain laws, and you will want to change your laws. To change those laws you will need support. So you may build certain industries in part because you want to empower certain political movements so you can pass certain laws. And when you do pass those laws, you will piss off certain groups of people, who may become radicalized, and enough radicals means you may have a revolution. Plus, something like banning slavery means lots more serfs wanting jobs, and lots more demand for basic products, plus more supply of what they make on their substance farms.

And that is just how one system affects things. Not the only one. War, politics, colonization, etc and so on all have to be controlled, and all interlink.
 
Just beat a max difficulty run at Brotato. Loving the game, and still have 6 unlocks to go. It gets really difficult, and can be really RNG, but a lot of fun. Even when the RNG works against you and you fail, it is still less than half an hour lost, and still fun.
 
Still playing Undecember after completing the main story. The only game off the top of my head with more main story (that isn't a lo running MMO) is probably Sacred 2... that game just kept going too.

Anyway, it's a good game that is marred by the pay to win that really doesn't show itself until the End Game content, and it shows up in subtle ways. For instance, magic gear comes in essentially two flavors, identified and unidentified. How they differ comes down to a stat tiering system.

Every bonus on an item has 10 tiers where 10 is the highest. Within each tier there is a small amount of variability... for instance, if you get Tier 1 Strength then the bonus is +1-2, while Tier 10 is +25-30.

Identified gear randomizes the tiers on stats with a weighting on lower tiers, and an occasional tier 10, on the other hand, unidentified items, once identified, tend to roll on the very high end with at least 1 Tier 10 bonus being guaranteed. Because of this the unidentified gear tends to be somewhat prized since you will usually get some tier 10 bonus, while you still aren't guaranteed it will be in a bonus your want.

Anyway... so now on to Pay-to-Win: The issue is that Identify scrolls drop at a very low rate, and are dolled out in small amounts in quests, but in the end game dungeons the unidentified gear drops VERY regularly, meaning that you will be invariably starved for Identify scrolls ... unless you buy them on the game store.

Now, some would argue that it's not really a big deal since these scrolls translate to about $0.03 each... but every Dungeon has about 10 unidentified items, and each Dungeon is abut 10 minutes between running and evaluating the loot... so that ends up costing about $1.80/hour if you want to keep yourself in scrolls.

That being said, in theory you can sell gear on the auction and exchange your scrolls, but there is a "bug" right now in the AI hack buster software that is issuing suspensions in the game if your account has been deemed as dealing with illegal accounts, which includes buy gear from or selling gear to accounts that have been labeled as hackers. Since there is no way to know whose auctions are valid and invalid, you are playing with fire just dealing with the in-game auction house.. so few people use it anymore.

Anyway, this all sounds crazy, I know... but it really is a fun game and I'm still playing it...
 
Just found out that Darktide has gone into early release for people who bought the game early.

I've now played two missions and it's just great. Combat is fast and frenetic and harrowing, and melee and ranged combat are equally meaty.

If I had any knock on the game it would be that missions might be TOO hectic, which makes the side missions all but invisible.

Unlike the predecessor games in the Vermantide series, this game has a fully built out sector of a hive city, and rather than having a set number of set maps for missions, this game randomly blocks off sections of the continuous map to stage a mission... eventually, in theory, you can learn the city.

Apparently launch day was seeing queues of 50k+ players, but today I'm getting right in as the scale up the servers.

10/10 so far.
 
This is probably because I'm on a Mac, but Divinity Original Sin:2 Definitive Edition plays way better than the first one enhanced via Steam. First one was/is a blast and I do mean to try other parties, but

The second one partially redoes systems and thus far seems to have nailed it. Gameplay itself isn't plagued by the porting or whatever-the-cause issues that made the first a bit of a hassle. (A minor one for example: you'd be trying to select an item in your inventory or somesuch, but the game would act like your cursor was over the environment pictured behind the window you've opened, so you have to rotate the cam so there's only one thing "under" the cursor. Minor problem, but you know how they can add up to annoyance).

The first one I played pretty close to a guide's directions. This one I'm approaching it as I please. Definitely going to get Baldur's Gate III once it's out (why play an incomplete/unbalanceddwq game?)



Basically, while I'll still go back and play the ancient Neverwinter Nights ports now and then, this is what I wanted those to be back in the day. Dynamic responses to who you are and what you do. Smooth-as-hell play. Non-clunky turn based combat. Very well balanced. Etc. A bit less focus on pain in the ass puzzle-traps that dominated the first Original Sin.

I can only hope people make a lot of full-scenario mods for when I'm done crashing through the original story with different party make-ups.
 
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A few more hours into Darktide and still enjoying it a lot. I have played 3 of the 4 classes, and so far it's hard to choose a favorite.

The Sharpshooter is a great all-around class with a good selection of ranged and melee weapons. Sharpshooters are usually tops in total kills in every mission I have played. I run a Lasegun and a sword with sweep attack, so I do pretty well at long range and melee. It's fun, given the long ranges you can have on some maps, to be able to snipe enemies long before you would normally be engaging them.

The one downside with the Sharpshooter is not really YOUR problem, it's just that the average Sharpshooter in the game is grenade happy and they can't aim or time them well so mostly they end up rupturing environmental hazards that are more a problem for the team than the enemy.

I started an Ogryn just to see what it was like and originally was ready to dismiss the class for his slow speed and attack, and focus on close range, but I'm glad I stuck with him because of his special move. The Ogryn's special move is to just sprint forward knocking down every enemy in his path. This move makes horde attacks hilarious since his can knock down pretty much anything. In most missions my teammates and I get in a rhythm where I sprint though a group of enemies and they follow behind, killing everything before they can get up.

I have tried to play the Psycher class but... I can't figure it out. I've tried but they seem way underpowered compared to the other two.

The priest class looks like it will be pretty good, but I can't decide if I want to learn that class fore I move forward with Ogryn or Sharpshooter.

The only real downside to this game right now is that it has fewer classes than Vermantide, but unlike Vermantide the classes are archetypes that you name and customize so you are not limited running only 1 of each class in the missions. You can run 4 Ogryns if you want and that would be hilarious.
 
Currently still playing Sekiro. Wonderful game for it's genre. Combat is up-close, personal and very satisfying.

Finished the base game and started a NG+, took a break at about 40% complete and have been doing the Gauntlet of Strength (GOS) DLC.

Facing a series of bosses in Thunder Dome situations (sequentially in their native arena), you and the boss enter. Only one leaves alive.

The biggest thing for me is it really is making me rethink strategy (I don't use cheeses) because rare consumables (Fine Snow/Rice Balls) and your two Kuro's Resurrection nodes take on a whole different importance. Regular consumables will restock as you rest between bosses, but because those items are restocked with a different game mechanic they don't reset between bosses. Say the boss sequence is 5, with the final boss being the hardest. If you use the nodes and rare consumables for the 3rd boss they won't be available for the end. So the strat that may have worked in the game may be untenable in the GOS because using them to early is a bad thing.

Currently working on GOS: Severance and I have a strat for Guardian Ape, Great Shenobi, and last night I finally figured out one that I think will work on the True Monk. After that it's on to Genechiro (WOT), I don't know who the final "inner" boss will be yet.

WW
 
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