New thread! Whatch’a all playing!
I have been playing Blasphemous 2! Its really good so far. I think if you’re a fan of the first there’s nothing to dislike here (so far)
Trying not to commit to anything too strenious with Lies of P and Starfield on the horizon, but I have found the time to start two games over the last few days. Those games are:
XCOM: Chimera Squad
It’s an XCOM game. I’ll probably play a it until I inevitably make a mess of the base management stuff and find my city in ruins, you know, like every other XCOM game that’s come out over the last decade.
The Life And Sufferings of Sir Brante
I started this today and I’m kind of blown away by it in all honesty. It’s a story heavy RPG where you play the role a child born into a semi-noble family. During the game you’ll do an awful lot of reading and then make decisions and judgements based on the character your playing. I’m maybe 2 hours in so far and it’s unlike anything I’ve ever played.
Vampire Survivors co-op!
I’m dealing with thumb injuries, so I’ve mostly been playing Vampire Survivors for the last few weeks. WASD and no mouse is perfect to let my thumbs heal.
I only just bought it recently. I’m still working through unlocking everything and just beat my first Inverted level, which took me quite a few attempts. I also realize that I probably shouldn’t be trying to kill Death on Inverted mode, but I’ve been building around that goal each game…
Really fun game. I prefer Soulstone Survivors, but I can’t play it with my thumbs rn!
Like many, I’ve been playing a lot of Baldur’s Gate 3. I love the game, but part of me is already longingly looking at the Pillar of Eternity or Pathfinder games for a bit less complicated level design.
The 3d worlds are nice, but I always have the feeling like I’m a little lost.
The Pillars and Pathfinder games are both relatively daunting in terms of world size and, at least for Pathfinder, the rules are much more gritty… remember Pathfinder is a spin-off of DnD 3.5e and sticks relatively closely to that. While BG3 is based on the much more “friendly” DnD 5e rules. Pathfinder is much closer to BG2 than BG3 is, gameplay wise.
The big differences between BG3 and the other modern CRPGs is that BG3 does an exceptional job at presenting unprecedented player choice in traversal and combat. Other games have dialogue skill checks and all that but traversing the world is flat, literally practically menu driven and combat is all measurements and numbers. BG3 has free-form qualities that, in the world of video games, have so far only been utilized in immersive sims like Deus Ex and, oddly enough, I’d say the modern 3D Zeldas.
Oh, I agree on all those points. The rules are definitely easier to understand, especially compared to Pathfinder. And I do like that you are more free in how to resolve a conflict.
The thing I meant was that for me, personally, interacting with the world is daunting. Having a 3rd person view of a fully 3d world filled with tons of items to interact with and with different elevations makes it hard for me to make a mental map of the game world. It’s not such a big deal for Deus Ex (where it’s in 1st person and you can get really up close to things) or with Zelda (where the amount of stuff to interact with is a lot more sparse). In BG3 I just constantly feel like I’m lost and missing out on things that might have been hidden from view because I looked at it from the wrong angle.
It’s just me. I miss the overview of the flatter maps in those other games. It allows me to focus more on the story and the exploration funny enough.
Again, I agree with everything else. I still love the game and the design, I just realize what I’m missing from my other favorite games.
I feel you on that front. I have a Steam Deck and use it over my PC 90% of the time and even have BG3 running well on it but I prefer to sit at my desk for this game because the clutter is so dense that I need that big monitor and mouse to pixel hunt for all the little items and clicky things hidden around the world… and being able to spin that camera quickly around with a mouse while traversing is super important to catching things
I played most of Cat Quest 2 only to reach the difficulty cliff that is Lioner. For the most part the game was quite easy then bam! multi-phase boss that’s immune to one of the game’s two damage types. Multi-phase bosses and total immunity to damage types are bullshit. The quest that involves killing Lioner is a level 80 quest and I first tried it at level 92 and failed. I grinded up to level 97 but I haven’t had the… passion? to fight him again. I’m seriously considering using something like Cheat Engine to lock my health at max. And apparently there’s a second difficulty spike.
I played a couple of hours Borderlands GOTY Enhanced and I’m sure the XP gain has been changed. In the OG Borderlands I’d get to Nine Toes around level 5, maybe level 6 if I grind a little bit but in GOTY I was level 7 when fighting him with no grinding at all. The graphics don’t seem to have changed much although it’s been a while.
I tried playing Baldur’s Gate 3 but I just could not get into it. It’s kind of odd though because I was able to get much further into DOS2 (I got bored early in the third act). It didn’t help that my GPU fans were going full brrrr the entire time.
I played a little bit of Holocure after watching Kronii Ouro play it but what she played and what I played seemed to be completely different games gameplay-wise, reverse bullet hell isn’t really my jam.
I bought Dwarf Journey and Shakedown Hawaii for a trip I’m taking this week so hopefully they’re good.
I have been playing Subnautica exclusively for over a month now and I can’t stop. Halp!
Edit: I got to the ice worm part in Below Zero, and now I feel ready to quit.
