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What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
Uhh... Do @cfabbro and I even dare admit the untold hours we've poured into Lost Ark at this point?
Yeahhhhh... I think I'm a bit addicted.
I have begun the new Baba Is You level pack: New Adventures! It's great fun! I'm so happy to be babaing again
Vampire Survivors is pretty fun. All you do is move and kite around but it has some good strategy with a lot of builds. Each weapon changes the way you have to position against the hordes. Music is pretty catchy and sometimes it reminds me of the broodwar soundtrack in a weird way. It's not the most unique game but I like their take on this genre.
Incredible game for $3, I've gotten ~40 hours out of it. It's insanely addictive and super simple to play (all you can do is move around) so it's easy to lose hours to "one more run".
I'm at a point where the vast majority of my runs succeed but based on the most recent update from last week (and that they're only at v0.3), I think it's got a bright future.
I got 10 hours out of it so far. Still a lot of stuff to unlock. Santa Water carries me through all my wins. It does so much damage with a few upgrades.
It's funny because the game I'm creating myself is also all about movements. There are no other controls but the game design forces you to move in certain ways. I like the simplicity. snip It's cool to see simple games that can still have depth.
I’m many years late to the party, but I’ve been playing a lot of Skyrim (Nintendo Switch edition). I’m playing as a sneaky cat, although I’m not great at archery yet. I run from a lot of dragons. I make Lydia do most of my fighting for me. I bought a house!
My partner and I are a few hours into Skyward Sword HD. It’s fun and light and a good break from the gritty world of Skyrim.
Skyward sword is one of my favorite Zelda games. It’s so fun and the dungeons are pure classic Zelda gameplay. I actually enjoyed skyward sword more than breath of the wild, but botw is one of my least liked Zelda games so that’s not a surprise.
That’s so interesting! BotW was my intro to Zelda, and I dumped a lot of hours into it. Did you not like it because you were expecting something different? I know it was a deviation from the typical Zelda formula/series.
The thing about botw was they put so much focus on the open world aspects of the game that it absolutely destroyed what makes a Zelda game so fun for me, the dungeons and the story. They littered the world with horrible copy/paste shrines that you’re supposed to “find” to encourage exploration, but instead ended up with this boring slog of a gameplay loop where I only did the shrines I needed to do for the hearts and power ups and ignored the rest unless I needed a specific weapon.
Then there’s the weapon degradation…it is simply the absolute worst mechanic I’ve ever seen in a Zelda game. It was so bad I did a speed run to the master sword so I would at the very least have a weapon that doesn’t break only to find out even the master sword “breaks” by losing its charge for about 3 minutes. Not only that, the hylean shield of all things breaks…the most iconic shield in the series that requires you to beat a giant ogre or whatever they’re called underneath hyrule castle breaks. I was so fed up I found a spot on the map that has weapons that spawn every blood moon and just kept restocking my weapons. That’s not Zelda, that’s some bone headed Ubisoft gameplay nonsense shoehorned into a Zelda to provide artificial gameplay. There isn’t even a repair mechanic or way to grind out the strength of a weapon to improve durability! There were weapons and shields I didn’t even use simply because I didn’t want them to break and I wanted to use them at the most beneficial times, but those times never really happened so they never got used.
Finally the divine beast dungeons…omg the dungeons…Breath of the wild had the saddest excuse for Zelda dungeons and bosses I have ever seen. It felt like I was fighting the same boss for each dungeon just a slightly different way. The dungeons themselves are nothing more than really crappy giant digital rubics cubes. All the work was clearly put into the shrines in terms of puzzles and gameplay, but nothing actually went into the divine beast dungeons and the items needed to complete the dungeons or even the story elements of those dungeons, just copy/paste the same theme four times with slightly different bosses and there ya go, you have the botw divine beasts!
I get what they were trying to do, make a modern version of the very first Zelda game, but it’s like they built the world and forget it needed stuff to go in it, instead they chopped up the dungeons, scattered them about and then added the divine beasts as an afterthought. I won’t even get started with the ending…I’ll say this, when I beat skyward sword, I put the controller down and just gave it a standing ovation becaus the story and the gameplay were just phenomenal, when I beat breath of the wild I put the controller down and just said screw this game. I couldn’t believe they killed the essential gameplay elements that make a Zelda game, so I’m really hoping they put more effort into botw 2, because I’ll be extremely disappointed if they don’t.
Yeah, it sounds like you and the game didn’t mesh well (which is totally fine and acceptable). I actually didn’t mind anything that you had complaints about, so maybe that title was specifically to draw new people like me in. I do vaguely recall playing Ocarina of Time and not getting more than an hour into it because it was so frustrating, haha.
Oh for sure, a ton of it is simply I grew up on Zelda. Played the original game, played Zelda 2, beat a link to the past, best ocarina of time, beat majoras mask, played through a large majority of wind waker, beat a link between worlds, beat skyward sword. The list goes on. Breath of the wild is an excellent open world game, but it’s an absolutely terrible Zelda game.
Been rushing Deep Rock Galactic to get the last few season levels before the next season drops. Its only cosmetics that I'm earning, and they wont even be gone for good after the new update drops, but the core gameplay is so fun in itself that it doesn't feel like a grind at all.
Ive been playing with a lot of peeps on the DRG discord, having an absolute blast just exterminating hordes of hungry spiders and the odd robot while mountain-goating around a fully destructible cave. Something about forming the terrain you want to fight on alongside very satisfying gunplay just keeps you going for one more mission.
Also started up stardew valley for the first time. Im in the second week of summer so far, and am focusing more on the community center than on social progress so far.
I edited my comment in the last thread to say I got Elden Ring, but it's really all I've been playing, and some Olli Olli to break up the monotony and darkness.
I'd been watching streamers play ER, and kept getting super excited, so decided I would just buy it myself. I'd issued a refund after playing 90 minutes in a moment of psychological defeat, but decided my problems were me not playing well enough, so I figured I'd intentionally play until I couldn't get a refund. Twenty minutes later I killed a troll with Torrent. Watching somebody play a Samurai caused me to rethink my Vagabond, so I made a new character, and have had a much better time with a Samurai. It's a play style that best matches how I enjoy the game: Move quick, stay close, rollrollroll. It also lines up with the meta: Light weight high damage, high speed, but I'm simply finding the experience more fun. I want to spec into some magic, but don't know where to start on that with regards to spells.
With the Samurai I managed to beat Margit at level 21 with Rogier and the jellyfish, at 11:30, on what was going to be my last run for the night. I then cashed in my runes, leveled up Vigor, Strength and Dex, and shut it down, because it wasn't going to get any better than that.
The recent Guild Wars 2 expansion came out and I've gotten back into it. I'm really enjoying it, the new region and content is absolutely top quality and the story is emotionally gripping. Arena Net really pulled out all the stops on this one. I'm loving my classes new abilities and I recently completed the quest to get my own siege turtle to ride around in, which was a long and difficult process, but it was a lot of fun and I joined a new guild along the way. They seem really cool so far.
Unfortunately the latest patch has been an absolute glitch fest, but they've been pushing out constant updates to fix them, but I've personally had multiple crash to desktops and BSODs since it went live. And the end boss which is necessary to defeat in order to start work on your siege turtle is uh... we'll say over tuned. It's an extremely difficult fight on its own, but has a long lead up to it, it's very RNG heavy and you have to play on the public maps, so if the people you're playing with don't know what they're doing, you're basically out of luck. And it's new enough that everyone is still figuring it out
But the positives still massively outweigh the negatives for me anyway and as ANet continues to polish the rough edges it's getting more and more fun.
Oh and they added fishing. I think they even retrofitted all the old maps to have fishing spots, but I haven't spent much time in the old areas since the patch
I’m barely playing the newest Doom Eternal update because I am a pleb and only game on the Nintendo switch. But god damn they ported the shit out of that game, it plays really smooth on switch and it’s mind blowing.
The graphics are not nearly as sick as the next gen consoles but good enough for me being a Nintendo head. The 6.66 update is amazing and horde mode is exactly what I hoped it would be. I played my way through the ancient gods DLC and really enjoy the story and the twists they were able to drop in.
The new update has added so much content I will be playing for a long time. I am only able to play on ultra violence right now, I got smoked on nightmare but it was still fun trying.
I've been playing a bunch of Lost Ark, though I've recently set it down. Not necessarily burned out, but maybe more somewhat bored and slightly overwhelmed. I wasn't following the hype of Lost Ark and wasn't even planning to play it at first, but after some friends said they would, I tried it out. And I was pleasantly surprised. I didn't think I was going to like it, honestly. But I do very much enjoy the combat system. I also like that they've stripped out or tamped down a lot of the traditional grindy BS in other MMOs. So for quests where you have to get 50 of Item X by killing mobs, each mob will give like 10-15, so you only have to kill a few mobs instead of 50. Love it.
It is a bit overwhelming though. Since this is an older game that's finally been released in the West, it's packed with tons of complete and mature systems and mechanics. We're not having to "beta test" everything. But it does mean a lot is thrown at players from the start.
Overall, I'm just taking my time with it. I've put in over 100hrs already, but I'm still not at endgame and have no desire to get there that quickly. Been exploring and trying things out and doing some of the completionist side-quests like finding all 2000+ Mokoko Seeds (I'm at 10%, I believe). I'll pick it up again later.
In the meantime, I've been playing Triangle Strategy on the Switch. I LOVE Tactical RPGs like Final Fantasy Tactics and Fire Emblem, so this was a definite buy. This is made by the same group as Octopath Traveler, which I'm still playing, so I knew TS would be a solid game. And it largely is.
Except for one section of the combat system: The turn-based system is by unit, instead of by side. So not like, I move all my units, then the PC moves all it's units. The turn-based system is more like a traditional JRPG. Kinda annoying since my normal strategies don't work.
But otherwise, I'm enjoying the story. Typical political story with intrigue and backstabbing. Like "Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together," your choices matter and determine the storyline. The characters are cliché, but that's OK. The English VA are mostly awful though.
Anyway, back to actually playing the game!
I finally snagged Road 96 and I really have enjoyed it! The soundtrack is beautiful and the visuals are pretty nice save for the pop-up trees when you're driving/riding along the road. I've finished one playthrough and am starting again, this time trying to trigger a different ending. Favorite character is definitely Papa Bear
Beat Saber - just picked up a quest 2 with my Christmas gift certificates, and got purchased Beat saber. I used to love the guitar hero games, so a good rhythm game is delightful. Then I obviously immediately got the Lady Gaga song pack, and have been greatly enjoying that.
Edit: I had played a couple of times with friends a long time ago, so I jumped in on Hard, and quickly progressed to Expert, but Expert+ is rough and I haven't completed one yet. I'm impressed at how much energy an hour of Beat Saber takes - it's almost a workout in and of itself, which is great. My shoulder aches are reminiscent of when I was lifting a lot, which is maybe an indication of how I've treated my body for the last 10 years and not necessarily an indication that a normal person would have a problem with playing this for an hour. That said, I'm trying to do 30 - 45 minutes a day - it's relaxing, gets you moving, and is tons of fun.