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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.
After being on the fence about the immediate good word of mouth around Animal Well, I read one comparison to "Outer Wilds and The Witness" and immediately bought it. Didn't think it was the best comparison at first, but the game convinced me otherwise. Some of this stuff it does makes me cackle with glee. Like, cackle with glee. Remember that feeling? Christ.
Games like this, Riven, and Outer Wilds aren't just special because puzzles; it's not just that moment you learn something was in front of you all along; it's not just the integration of puzzles into the environment, anthropology, or story. It's getting the hand-turn reveals to make something else click in your head - and making you want to adventure back across the world, and trip on something along the way, and tumble into a whole other rabbit hole. (Literally, here!) There's such whimsy and I have no idea where else it's going. I'm absolutely loving it.
Dunkey picked the right game to stick his brand on, his money's where his mouth is on games bucking AAA trends.
I've also been digging further into Animal Well, really enjoying it. I've just gotten to 32 eggs, not sure if I'll go for all 64, but I'll definitely poke around a bit more with the newest rewards and items I've found.
I kind of disagree with the Outer Wilds comparison (though a lot of people have been making it), AW is much more explicitly gated by having the right items, and there's not really any narrative outside of some hints and design elements that you can try to interpret.
That said, the creativity and sense of discovery when you realize the clever ways you can use the items you get does remind me of the way I felt playing OW or The Witness for the first time.
I was along the same thought until I realized I'd played about 50% of the game without even utilizing something in my inventory - to me it feels like it doesn't really gate progress as much as it does give you a crapload more flexibility with navigation. It is definitely more traditionally item-dependent as a Metroidvania - but hey, Outer Wilds is item-dependent! Technically. :^)
I've also been playing Animal Well and I agree it's a really great game.
Billy (the solo dev!) has achieved something really remarkable where "layer one" as he calls winning the game for the first time, is probably achievable by anyone who plays it and spends enough time with it. The puzzles are quite tame, with multiple solutions and you'll get through it one way or another.
Layer 2 is more tough, you try to get all 64 eggs and other collectables, which takes more time and brainpower. I'm here right now, I'm at 51 eggs and I've got a bunch of stuff to do.
He says layer 3 is for the real nerds though. ARG, cryptography, puzzled within puzzles. Crazy stuff. That's not really my bag but I love to see the community try and solve it (Noita is one of my favourite games!)
Well done Billy, what an incredible developer!
Sounds a lot like Fez.
And Tunic too. I'm really tempted to try Animal Well but I have soooo many games I feel guilty buying anything new. There was a dude on a podcast that said the Layer 3 stuff required cooperation on-line because different instances of the game had different parts of the puzzle. Sounds like the kind of stuff that in a couple of years will be spoiled on a wiki somewhere so I don't have to interact with anyone :-P
Animal well is actually one of my favorite games in my steam library at the moment, it just feels good to play and is fun to explore. The puzzles aren't too difficult but are really fun.
After hearing about it for so many times, I finally gave a shot to Balatro. I went in blind, and I can't say much, honestly. I think it's my second favorite roguelike, right after Hades. The most surprising thing is that it's so much more deeper than I expected. Everything is very well designed, it oozes style and I am constantly surprised (and chuckling) at the dev's creativity.
I also bought Balatro last week because "why not", even though I've never liked deck building games.
This game presses ALL the right buttons in my brain. The concept is so simple (draw cards, add multipliers), but the execution is incredible. Even the shop is fun.
My turn! My first FromSoft experience was getting Elden Ring super soon after release, and it was the most amazing and unique experience I've ever had with a game; it was possible early on to literally be the first person to spot something in the game (or at least put it online lol), going to the wiki page and just seeing frantic statements was amazing, it felt like such an expansive world. I finished it, I beat everybody, I found out the Dark Souls Remaster was available on Switch—perfect, I could take it to work and play at lunch!
Not so haha. Wow, a lot changed in game design from 2011-2022, even for a genre known for being grueling. My Elden Ring character started out puny and stayed puny for quite a while, but I learned to run from the tree sentinel and leave Varre alone and don't get greedy &etc, and once I found the hookclaws it was on. My Dark Souls character started puny and gosh just never changed lol, I couldn't wear any armor and move, I couldn't lift a decent weapon, wtf do I do. Sparse bonfires to recharge and no warping meant I was getting slammed and losing all my souls in the slamming—use a humanity to ask for help? I only have two and every time I use one an actual person tries to murder me? Lol I didn't get far, finally beat Gaping Dragon after spending ages trying to get un-cursed, because I couldn't get back up to buy the thing without being murdered... I put it on the shelf.
After the ER DLC announcement, I figured what the heck, maybe I got gud. I finished it in about a week, and it was just successive realizations and catharsis. I feel like I spent that time in therapy lol. I started upgrading the zweihander, doing pretty well for myself, made it to Ornstein & Smough and just got beat down, I have no idea how many times. But at a certain point I started feeling like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix, where I could actually see it, and I was just struck by the balance of it, the time committed to making it painfully, painfully fair. Every time I died I deserved it, no weird jumps or slippery controls like a Mario game, no one to blame but myself. After those guys I knew how to power through and when to hold back, and I felt gloriously unstoppable. Sif and Artorias got to me, for sure, but when Gough wastes that dragon and says "What is bravery, without a dash of recklessness?" man, it felt so good. So anyway starting DSII this evening, wish me luck.
Fine work skeleton. You got gud.
Ornstein and Smough is such a rite of passage that there's little that matches the tense skill check of that fight, even with Elden Ring.
It's also the peak of the first game so it's good you went to the DLC after because the rest of the base game remains a bit of a slog.
Dark Souls 2 again feels a lot different than 1 and Elden Ring and if anything I recommend reading up on ADP (adaptability) as a skill because it affects your roll and i-frames.
Keep up the good work, and don't you dare go hollow.
Update: after beating my head against iron keep/smelter demon, turns out you were 100% about ADP lol
Ha, some people love it and some hate it. It's back to weight based in part 3, so that may say enough.
ADP aside, have you tried powerstancing anything yet? If there's a part of DS2 that's universally loved despite its other flaws, it's powerstancing.
oh yeah, once I found two zweis it was on
Good on you for persisting and getting through it.
All that said, I do think your correct in your assessment about game design changing. This year I've been playing both Dark Souls and Lies of P parallel and I believe Lies really blows it out of the water from a game design perspective; this from me for whom Dark Souls was a revelation back in 2011.
I still like it, but this run for me really petered out in Sen's. I've completed it, but just haven't felt the motivation to go back into the Fortress and collect the things I missed.
Sen’s was the -worst-, like a Super Mario Bros 3 level lol
One of the things that I think elden ring really missed the mark on was the level scaling.
Dark souls really made you specialize and get a build that did one, and only one thing well.
By midgame in elden ring, your character starts being able to do almost everything really well. It's rare to see an ER character that doesn't use magic in some form, for instance.
In dark souls, you really had to commit if you wanted to be a magic user. The level design also felt the most elegant out of any soulsborn game.
After a brief hiatus I'm back with a new update on my journey through Noita for @ICN. - Spoiler warning -
With another handful of attempts under my belt my progress and skill as a noita was beginning to accelerate rapidly. Death was becoming more and more avoidable, especially by my own hand as I had learned many of the fatal combinations of wand building already and more importantly to test things with trigger spells when possible.
This time as I entered the dark cave, something was different, it was far more damp than usual. Strange pipes protruded through the walls, trickling water slowly into the mines. Despite the plumbing issues luck was on my side and delivered a wand with some luminous drills right out of the gate. Continuing on, I cleared the mines finding a good amount of items and potions. Now up until this point I was only a novice with the alchemical reactions that are possible in this world and in my haste I spilled a tiny amount of concentrated mana into a nearby pool of water. It was then that I learned it only takes one drop of mana to cause a reaction that converts all water it touches into more mana. After traveling through the rest of the mines amongst the ever leaking pipes I made my way down to the first portal only to discover that singular drop of mana had now become a flood.
Moving along, the trip through the coal pits was mostly routine, with the search for hearts and wands being quite rewarding this time around. I was able to find a fast wand with an always teleport modifier which would allow me to escape the Holy Mountain and avoid collapsing them so I could come back and tinker with wands as needed. Fortune smiled upon me as I also found a wand with 6 healing bolt spells and a small shop with some new spells I hadn't seen before, namely Ping-Pong Path.
During my stop in the Holy Mountain after the coal pits I began to experiment with the ping-pong modifier on my bouncing burst attack wand. As I added one of the luminous drills in an attempt to increase the firing rate I stumbled upon a frighteningly powerful combination. My wand was now not only incredibly fast but also launched a luminous drill beam that stretched across the screen, zig-zagging to and fro amongst a hail of bouncing green pellets. The only downside was that the mana consumption was very demanding.
Not long after entering the snowy depths with my arsenal beginning to steadily climb in power I decided to take a trip back up to the surface by ascending the chasm that lays beyond the lake of lava. On my way I noticed what could only be musical notes chiseled into the wall, something I will have to try playing on the Kantele at some point. After reaching the surface I traveled to the East on a mission to test my new wand by attempting to kill the green spider boss within the pyramid. The fight was over before the green beast knew what hit it, reducing it to a pile of mush before me. As a reward it dropped a non-shuffle wand that not only had fast cast/recharge but also a mana regeneration rate of over 1200 per second which would mostly solve the mana drain issues I was currently having with this bouncy-laser setup.
After exiting the pyramid I avoided grabbing the orb of knowledge on top as a friend had informed me that collecting the orbs made the final boss harder and was the reason it was able to throw a nuke back at me on my last encounter with it. I briefly returned to the Holy Mountain to set up my new wand and then made my way into the frigid snow to the West of the tree. Since I saw some tunnels under the snow in one of my very early runs I wanted to go back to see what was down there. This time using a luminous drill I didn't have to worry about falling into a plasma beam.
As I marched through the snow I spotted the glowing eyes of one of the hopping zombies beneath me and began to tunnel my way down. It didn't take long before I found something else. That familiar music began to play and a boss health bar appeared, it was Ylialkemisti. Never having encountered this thing before I wasn't sure what to expect and began firing from above. The lasers didn't have enough reach to hit it but the bouncing burst shots did, though they were fairly weak against whatever was down there. The Ylialkemisti began to return fire but never approached me so I remained on my perch above, mostly safe with my deflector shield thankfully doing its job for a change. Not wanting to test my luck, like a coward, I opted to stay out of harms way and fire my weak green bouncy marshmallows at it for 5 minutes before it eventually perished.
I found no corpse or evidence of what I had killed down there other than the loot that it had dropped which consisted of some immensly useful spells, a heart and a voiceless glass key of some sort. Upon my return to the mountain I found a wand mysteriously floating by the entrance. I'm unsure why it was there but don't believe it was a result of killing Ylialkemisti as it was a pretty useless wand.
It took a while but after trying a number of things I figured out that you could give the key a voice by setting it down near the music machines and playing their songs for it. However I had no clue what the key was for and put it in the Holy Mountain for safe keeping while I continued on my quest for glory. It was now time to take on the mech-squid boss, the one that had claimed my life more than any other creature so far. Through the many trials I realized that the monster copied most of the spells that I was throwing at it, so what better way to kill it than to get it to kill itself... which at this point I had become somewhat of an expert on.
Hoping the end result would be different this time as I had access to a teleport wand to retreat and both a plasma cross and plasma orbit modifier to launch at the mechanical terror. I readied my wand and put them on a trigger before traveling to the squids domain. I launched the spell at it and teleported away immediately, going far enough that its health metre no longer displayed. I waited for a few moments before venturing back to see what had happened. Success was finally mine as were two new spells laying where it had destroyed itself, Matosade and Meteorisade.
Matoside, which summons a silly amount of large worms ended up being quite useful as it gave me an endless supply of worm blood to help me find my way through the darkest depths. Meteorisade on the other hand was far too dangerous to be used at this point, I'm sure my good luck would immediately run out had I tried to use it in combat.
Heading into the Holy Mountain I took some time to see what I could do with my new spells namely the letters that were obtained from the Ylialkemisti. With one of those I realized that not only could I make an infinite black hole wand but I could also use that same letter to use my healing wand infinitely without the need for the spell refresh pickups. It was at this point I began to feel truly powerful, I no longer teleported out of the holy temples but instead dug my way out with intent to anger the gods and summon Stevari. It was time for these so called gods to fear me.
The Hisii base was laid to ruin, with only destruction left in my wake as I descended upon them.
As I continued downward into the jungle I was greeted with an abundance of gold, hearts, and powerful spells on the plentiful wands. With those spells I stopped to see what I could craft for a bit; using liquid detonation and slime mist on a timer trigger I made this really fun gunpower shower wand. Though I didn't use it for long, both because my laser wand was far higher DPS but also not having fire or explosion immunity would certainly not end well with this sort of weapon. Moving on with that wildly powerful laser in my hands the dragon worm was nothing more than a footnote, dying before it could move beyond the perimeter of its eggshell.
Delving deeper I rampaged through the vault, seemingly unstoppable. I started noticing small piles of gold dust which seemed out of place in this area amongst the viscera on the floor. Upon further investigation I began to find small specks of a bright blue liquid called Alchemic Precursor. As some dropped down into the pools of blood below I witnessed it turn into gold dust and then create another byproduct called Draught of Midas. The golden hands of Midas continued to bless me as I stumbled into fungal area with a small cave that contained a sizeable pile of gold dust.
I spent the next few hours backtracking, going to the surface, checking out the cabin at the lake and upon my return began meticulously clearing out the upper levels of the mountain when I made a great discovery in another fungal area. Sitting right there on the ground lay a full bottle of Alchemic Precursor. Remembering what I saw when the reagent mixed with blood in the vault I rushed to find some and scooped it into the bottle. I now had a full bottle of Midas' touch, my 24 karat run of good luck continued.
Further down now, I entered the Temple of the Art. It was the first time in this area that I felt confident in my capabilities and that I was powerful enough to be there. While exploring I happened upon a great triangle that was protected by some magical force, bending my beams away to protect itself. As it did, it glowed, clearly highlighting the image of an egg on its core. This puzzle appeared simple enough, so I went to get an egg spell and proceeded to feed it a handful of them. This awoke the giant tablet which then split into 4 pieces and began moving towards me with demonic speed. Thankfully it was even less dense than the holy brickwork, my lasers once again cut a boss down before it could harm me. Entering the place beyond where the triangle had been I was greeted by multiple mages and everything was shrouded in complete darkness. Ultimately deciding it was best to back away from this area.
On a trip to the surface I noticed that due to some careless digging with my black hole wand the ocean of concentrated mana in the mines was no longer confined and was seeping deep into the world. I wish I took more screenshots of it because by the end of the run it had mostly filled both the mines and coal pits, then continued to make it all the way down to the temple of the art.
At this point I was sure I could take out the final boss with ease but didn't want to finish the run just yet so I reached out to ICN for some hints on things to complete before making my way to the end. ICN suggested that I travel West to the great barrier wall and climb. This would lead me to some refreshing gourds that are said to be a favourite snack of the three-eyed monster awaiting me below as well as a hint for what I might unlock with the glass key I found earlier.
As I went West I stopped at the island in the lake, I was not there for more than a moment before a blue portal began whirling above my head and an electric deer named Tapion Vasalli appeared. It began pursuing me immediately with great hostility and after seeing how much health it had I retreated to keep some distance between us. It didn't take long before it lost interest as I teleported a screen away, then after a minute returned to see what it was doing. I was surprised to see that it was swimming in the lake, seemingly stuck and firing randomly. Taking this opportunity I fired my death-ray at it, but this time to no avail, it was completely immune to my weapon.
With no way to defeat Tapion I continued to the wall and upwards into the sky. Eventually I found the cave with the gourds and the hint seemed to suggest there was something I could unlock in the sky with that key. I spent about two hours searching the skies which didn't yield anything that could be unlocked but instead found a new instrument, an alter that had a rainbow spell, and a brickwork-like zone with lots of very dangerous monsters and many expensive spells.
The last place I visited in the sky was the Kivi Temple and when I entered there was a rock named Kivi, who appeared to do nothing other than roll around. I should have left it alone but regrettably fired a quick test shot at it which instantly cut my health in half. I was fortunate that I resisted the usual urge to shower it with the full force of my lasers or else that would have been the end for me. This event made me realize I was pushing my luck, it was time to finish this run and forget about finding the lock for my key.
There was one more moment of panic in the Temple of the Art as I made my way through when a bottle of unstable polymorphium broke above me, raining down and turning me into a meatball. Thankfully there were no enemies close enough to do any harm. Another clear sign to me that my luck was quickly running out.
Deciding it was now time to prepare for the final battle I went to Kolmisilma and fed him the gourd as instructed... which oddly turned him into a gourd. Curious of what was through the rock to the East of the now gourd-based creature I unsheathed my black hole wand and started tunneling once more. Eventually emerging into another dark labyrinth but this time I continued on exploring, using a steady stream of lasers to light the path before me. I ended up finding another boss arena but there was no boss this time, only an orb with a cement spell. Content with everything I had done I returned from whence I came.
I made a final pass through the Holy Mountains to pick up my few remaining perks and mess to around with my wands one last time. At this point I no longer had any use for my remaining Draught of Midas so I had a golden party before engaging Kolmisilma in battle.
I had become so powerful that I almost felt bad for turning the gigantic gourd monster into green vegetable paste.
With my work complete and I had a last celebratory sip from my draught before my greed caught up with me. The end?
TL;DR
I won
I enjoyed the update, thank you. Meant to reply a bit sooner, but had a busy couple days there. Congratulations on winning! Turns out the noita was the bad guy all along. There are 3 other endings possible (though one of them I'd say is more tedious than entertaining to get), all of which are triggered by bringing the Sampo to a different location (same location for all 3 alternative endings; the ending you get depends on a different factor).
Fun fact to add on to concentrated mana, it also dissolves all kinds of metal. Ping pong path + luminous drill is a classic; the way that one works is that ping pong path adds a significant boost to the hidden lifetime modifier stat. Good eye catching those musical notes on the wall. That wand you found floating by the mine entrance is really strange; my best guess is that a chest got destroyed and the wand inside clipped up through the terrain.
Great job with the minibosses. Half the point of flexible games is creatively cheesing encounters, and tricking the mech squid into making the same mistakes you've previously made with spells is clever. Honestly, you got very lucky with Tapion Vassali; they're new, so I'd forgotten about them, but they're real mean. Small spoiler here, but otherwise you find out by just dying: They scale based on the number of innocent animals you've killed, and they reflect damage, with a minimum of 300% of damage dealt if you're seeing them (you have to kill 30 animals for them to spawn in the first place). Really dodged a bullet there fortunately.
It's possible to create so many types of wands in Noita, but sadly some tried and true styles are often better than the really fancy ones.
You were very scary that run, but I'm afraid you need to deal a million damage in one shot to get the gods to fear you.
Alchemic Precursor and Lively Concoction (Dark blue and pale green respectively) are two alchemic substances whose recipe is randomly determined each seed, each being a combination of 3 different liquids or powders. There's no way in game of determining the recipe for your seed, but it's worth keeping an eye out for them (Lively Concoction heals).
Polymorphine and its variants are the most dangerous substances in the game. There are ways to get to the point where you can swim in acid without worry, but poly will always be a threat.
The refreshing gourd and the final boss thing is an example of what I meant as secrets built on a community level. The chances of any specific player trying that are pretty low, but the chances of somebody trying it is quite high.
On the key quest, I'm afraid you were in the area of the wrong staircase. That's very understandable though, considering the "staircases" are normally invisible.
And again, congratulations on winning, and thanks for the updates; it's really been fun for me seeing someone else experience it.
Other ending location spoiler
The Mountain Altar, which floats right about the point of the mountain. There are actually quite a few things you can sacrifice on it.All good, it's been a busy month for me as well and took a bit longer than expected to get around to writing that update.
That's what I was thinking in regards to the wand floating by the entrance as I've had a few things clip up through the ground at the start of a run. This one just seemed odd with how high up it was since all the previous items were laying on the ground.
Very good to know that about Tapion, glad I wasn't able to hit it at all then! I didn't think I had killed many animals at this point, I thought I was being pretty good about not killing the fish in the mountain... I guess not.
A million damage? I'm not sure if my CPU can handle that! That said, I had previously forgotten to turn on GameMode for Noita (playing on Linux) and thankfully it takes a bit more than 20 circles of stillness to make the game really drop FPS hard now. It's sort of funny that a game which looks like Noita has me thinking about building a new computer.
I haven't run into lively concoction yet and will keep an eye out for it. I have certainly come to fear the polymorphine as it's led to a number of hair raising moments and one rather silly death. I used some to escape the Holy Mountain and dropped into the coal pits as a sheep where a lava wasp immediately roasted me.
The gourd thing was so random, had me laughing pretty hard when Kolmi turned into one. Was not sure what to expect.
A friend did actually spoil a couple small things like sacrificing stuff on the alter and bringing a tablet to the lake cabin to get the colouring spells. One run after bringing a few tablets to the alter instead of dropping gold it spawned one of those meatball monsters which almost took me out. The only other sacrifice I've made was a fish... which made it rain fish for a moment.
You're welcome! I really enjoyed writing about my experience with the game. I'm taking a bit of a break from Noita for now but will return soon and will probably start using the wiki when I do. I may even return with an update on the weekly gaming thread if I have a story-worthy run and I'll make sure to tag you if I do!
I'm also amused by the mismatch in how Noita looks versus how demanding it can be. It runs at 60 frames; hopefully per second, but it's entirely capable of lagging out systems that run much fancier looking games without breaking a sweat.
Oh, yeah, the coloring spells are nice. A bit of customization can go a long way.
If you return to the game and use the wiki, I'd recommend throwing on some mods. The game comes with one (alternate starting loadouts, gives you a build around a theme to shake up the beginning), I like the Better Enemies mod for more variety, then I also use Inventory Bags and Edit Wands Always for convenience; when I've got a way to get in and out of the holy mountain without collapsing it, I start using them to save me the trouble of ferrying wands back and forth. There are quite a few on the Steam Workshop, and they work on Linux.
Thanks again, and happy gaming!
I played Hades 2 after telling myself that I wasn't going to play Hades 2 until it left early access. I adore it. There is so many small things that felt like upgrades to the first one. I'm positive it will stand up to the first one once we all get the full experience.
Replayed Ghost Trick on Steam this time. As during the DS years I could only play it through uhrm alternative methods, so I could finally pay for it. On one UI complaint aside, it's an excellent port and I can highly recommend it.
I picked up V Rising yesterday having found out it went into 1.0, and was always curious about it.
I put 7 hours into it in one go, and I've barely progressed. I've beaten the first 5(?) bosses, and am currently working on getting my castle's foundation laid out now that I've unlocked walls.
I'm just playing solo for now, I think multiplayer would be fun, but I don't think I would want to join any public / official servers, because public PvP sucks.
The game does in fact live up to what people say.
I just finished a full run-through of the content with a friend. In my opinion the best way to play is run a private server. You can configure as you like and play together with friends cooperatively or pvp style. The bossed are fun and plentiful and there is lots to do together. If you don't want to pay a host you can just run the server app on your own system, this is just another free steam download. It may require opening ports on your router though so just purchase from a host if you aren't comfortable with that.
But I agree with you that the game lives up to the hype. They really did a lot of things very well and the world is easy to love. You really start to feel like a vanpire, shunning sunlight and garlic, and craving high quality blood. Fantastic design here.
The final bosses are fairly challenging, especially on Brutal settings, and you will wipe and need to be patient to clear them if you aren't a gaming god.
I also just picked it up and have put almost 10 hrs in. I'm playing on a private server with a few other friends and I'm really enjoying it. The atmosphere is stellar. I like how streamlined the building mechanics are. I just made a decked-out upper balcony lair that houses my stone coffin flanked by stone gargoyle statues.
Looking forward at the boss roadmap and how little of the total map I can see that there's a lot of content ahead of us. It feels like this 1.0 release has really knocked it out of the park.
After another user here mentioned Vintage Story in another post I decided to give it a go with my Brother and I was really impressed.
It's honestly like playing modded Minecraft but better. The devs are really, really good and they've included basically every quality of life and Vanilla plus feature you could ever want (except maybe inventory sorting but there's a mod for that) in Vintage Story.
Huge fan, we've been having a blast, I'd recommend it to anyone who likes (or liked) modded Minecraft because it's got it all.
I was surprised it had a healthy modding scene too!
I think I saw the same post your referring to and have been considering picking it up. Used to love modded MC but there hasn't been any interesting packs in years. My biggest issue is I'm worried it'll be too difficult or grindy for my liking (kinda like Gregtech stuff)
How would you compare the game difficulty?
It's not very difficult that's for sure. I was worried it'd be hard core survival and on my first game I played the "explorer" mode which turns off enemies and relaxes a lot of the survival mechanics, which was way too easy.
We quickly reset on standard difficulty and had a great time.
For enemies there's normal animals which for a lot of the game are going to be really dangerous unless you're prepared, which is fine because 95 percent of the time they wont bother you unless you bother them or you walk right into a hungry pack of wolves by accident.
The other enemy is the drifters which aren't that big a deal, they spawn from these temporal rifts that randomly spawn around the place and they come in waves of being more or less powerful, but for the most part they are annoying unless you get caught with your pants down in a mineshaft on your own.
I'd say we struggled most with food, crops and some of the randomness of funding materials.
Crops seem to take eons to grow, even with fertiliser, which I'm not loving right now, I'm tempted to change the world setting.
Food isn't trivial with 3 people, it's a bit of a constant battle, which is good and bad.
I'd say the most annoying thing is the randomness though. You need say limestone (or other substitutes) for leather making and we spent hours looking for that to spawn. Some ores are a pig too.
The game is a little grindy if you want to make some higher tier things, like smelting and smiting chain mail is a real task, but you only need to do it once.
Overall I'd say the good outweighs the bad by a long way, and you can mod/configure pretty much anything you like anyway. It's got a surprisingly healthy modding scene, and looking at the modding it looks shockingly easy.
Interesting, thanks for that insight! Appreciate the perspective!
Picked up Homeworld 3 despite probably needing to focus on my schoolwork. I had some extra money though, and Homeworld is such a nostalgia trip for me. It's the first game I played online, one of the best RTS games I've ever played, and just holds a lot of warm and fuzzy memories for me.
I'm only on Mission 4 (of... 12? 13? not sure yet) and I feel that they've got the pacing just right. I feel like things are beginning to really ramp up in intensity and I'm excited to see how things progress. I'm not very good at RTS games so I anticipate a few restarts along the way, but I'm also still learning new controls and interactions.
The graphics are pretty, level design is gorgeous, and unit diversity is as expected for a Homeworld game. The new addition I'm really looking forward to trying out is the war games mode - a sort of rogue-like scenario for multiplayer, designed as a PvE mode. I'm trying to find folks who might play with me.
Overall, I've put only 3-4 hours into the game so far but it's holding up.
Homeworld 3. See my review here: Homeworld 3 review from someone who treasures HW as perhaps the best game in 25 years (w/ minor spoilers)
In short, wait for total conversion mods to come out. The base game just isn't worth it.
Not much.
I went on a week long vacation and at the start of it, I'd been playing Dragon Quest 3 on GBC and I did make more progress, got the boat, but then just kind of stopped there. I do like the game, I just think I've had enough of it at this point, as it's not really going to have any substantive change from here to the end.
But it was the main thing I was playing and now I'm kind of lost as far as game time goes. I've been dabbling here and there, made some more progress in Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom, which is still good, but I'm not feeling the same level of passion for that I had been prior to my trip.
Also tried playing a bit of I am an Air Traffic Controller 4, a game in a series I really love, but the game is so flawed from a technical standpoint, I have a hard time really getting into it. There's just too many annoying things about it compared to the 3DS games, that I'm really not sure it's worth getting into, although there's nothing else like it.
Did you not get sub-classes in DQ3? I thought that was just before the boat-getting moment, in the area past the "Hobbit", near where you get the pepper for the king (is that what it is? I'm going from memory here). That opened things up in terms of battles because you can have a healing-fighter or whatever. If you've had enough though, then that's understandable. It's quite a grindy repetitive game, and it doesn't get any better really. I imagine getting that boat was like "OMG, now I have to go everwhere, this is too much!" :-)
I did get the extra classes, though admittedly, I didn't investigate them at all because I was already hitting that burnout.
But yeah, the boat definitely means now I need to explore everything and I end up feeling more directionless, which the first quarter of the game isn't about. You really get pointed to a specific thing and told to do that and I found that pretty appealing for my mood at the moment.
This isn't my first DQ though, so I did expect this to happen at some point and my mood tends to shift periodically as well, as far as what I'm interested in playing at any given moment. I'll probably come back to it, but I'm not exactly sure when that'll be at this point.
I wrote notes and I have one from Portoga that says "blue guy says to sail south first" so the game doesn't totally abandon that style and still gives some clues. And doing that you reach a place pretty quickly and from there it goes fairly clue-driven again. Just saying, in case you ever return to it.
Skimmed across the demos from the replayability fest. Aside from the stunning fact that so many modern 2d games force joystick for movement instead of D-pad, here's what caught my attention:
Tax-Force
2d sidescroller beat-em-up with a choice system for making sure a planet pays off its debts by shaking down the megacorps and choosing whether to keep the greedy CEOs in charge for direct profit, directing the corp to work for the public good as an indirect revenue boost, or compromising between them. Combat feels lackluster, but I'm hoping the style and story make up for it.
Beat Slayer
Isometric action roguelite that asks you to stay with the beat while slaying robots in 90s Berlin. Difficulty is a bit mixed: offensively, normal dashes build up the beat meter and you have a kick move that can stun enemies against walls so there's not much challenge there, but defensively, a normal attack from a grunt deals about 6 damage to your 25 hp with not many hp recovery options. There's also a skill tree that locks the kick move and ultimate special (the big DPS for bosses) which kinda sets expectations for how much grinding will be needed to reasonably win.
Galactic Glitch
Room-based twinstick shooter roguelite like Gungeon, but with challenge rooms for items instead of locked chests that need keys. The main thing here is the ability to grab small asteroids and enemies to lob them at each other; simple, but effective in the demo and just kinda fun. Hoping the end result has more variety though.
Glyphica: Typing Survival
You're a turret in the middle of the screen, type the words out to shoot them before they reach you and choose weapons/upgrades for a build. Unexpectedly fun for its simplicity.
Foretales
Single player resource management card game with animal people; you have a hand of skill cards that automatically draw from each character's limited deck which can be played on the field's location cards to convert to resources and progress each mission's 3-act structure. Story-wise, the main character is a thief who stole a special lyre and now has horrific future visions that he's trying to avert. The narrator unsubtly pushes pushes at using resources to bribe people rather than kill them in combat, so I'm interested in seeing how the story goes.
Stand-Alone
2d sidescroller action roguelike; somewhat reminded of Skul: The Hero Slayer from the focus on skills and possibly limited item slots, along with the tutorial having the main character be the sole survivor of an attack. The main thing here is the skill customization, with certain room rewards allowing for augmenting skills with new passives or follow-up skills. No idea how SP recovery works though.
RAM: Random Access Mayhem
Body-snatching twinstick shooter that feels like it leans on the stylish action genre with a skill floor to match. There are 4 enemy types with in-depth tutorials for each: a shotgunner with a charged punch that can parry/focus the blast, a dasher that carries its momentum into fastballing grenades, a heavy grapple hook puncher, and a flamethrower recoil-boosting unit that can blow itself up. Gain score and body snatch meter by successfully killing enemies and gain more score by jumping bodies before getting hit or dying. Honestly, I am not skilled or patient enough with the mechanics to vibe with it, but I am intrigued.
Vintage Story after a thread here about it. I kept dying to pigs, wolves, eldritch horrors from beyond the veil. I have a mod now to set my bed as spawn but need to be in the roght mindset for this game.
I set up Minecraft b1.7.3 to scratch a long-standing itch. I found Prisma Launcher in Flathub and figured "why not?" I also have a rolling/up to date install and plan to work around to those win scenarios/deeper mechanics.
Baldur's Gate 3: I'm mostly through Act II, which is brief, apparently, but can't wait to finish this game, just to see the story.
Black Mesa. It's excellent. Perhaps the best game ever made even better. Can't wait to get to the Lambda complex.
I've spent a lot of time playtesting Combat Complex after the dev appreciated my feedback when their Steam demo went up, and let me loose on a less restricted version. It's a procedural twin-stick shooter ARPG with bugs and robots that plays really well and has a lot of nice touches, especially for being in a prerelease state of an early access game. No chance I don't buy this as soon as it's got a price tag. It's got a distinct feel the way you blend your three guns together as you fight, plus the getting enemies to hit each other. Twin-sticks are definitely my wheelhouse and I haven't had one with this kind of thrill for a while.
I've put a solid four hours into Fez, found 25 cubes out of the minimum 32 I need to finish the game, and I think I've had enough, I'll watch someone else's playthrough of the rest
I've unlocked the hint rooms that I know will lead to more cubes, but the backtracking is so painful. There's too many doors on every map, and I need to remember the routes to get to each puzzle, and it's not fun going back and checking every map. If there were more fast travel points that might help