What Are You Playing Right Now, Part 2: Daggerfall

[Yora]

Made it to the end of Sekiro. If I am not mistaken, I'm right at the door to the final boss. Compared to Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 1 and 3, and Bloodborne, it feels like a much smaller game. It still took me over 70 hours to get to this point, which isn't meaningfully faster than the other games took me, but there seems to be little replayability. Once you know the levels, the standard guards all drop instantly, and I guess a second playthrough would mostly be interesting to see how quick you can do it. Since you don't have weapons, armor, and stats to adjust in different ways, and the special attack tools all seem not worth using, I think every playthrough would be pretty much the same.
The game has four different endings, but from how it looks to me, the only difference is in which bosses you fight in the final hour. Gameplay is fun, but not that fun that I would want to play it four times. Even if the third and fourth time would be a quick breeze through.

It's not a bad game, but it feels a bit similar to a B-List God of War clone. Something to play once and then quickly forget, not like the other big epics with hundreds of hours of entertainment.

[Rodin]

Made it to the end of Sekiro. If I am not mistaken, I'm right at the door to the final boss. Compared to Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 1 and 3, and Bloodborne, it feels like a much smaller game. It still took me over 70 hours to get to this point, which isn't meaningfully faster than the other games took me, but there seems to be little replayability. Once you know the levels, the standard guards all drop instantly, and I guess a second playthrough would mostly be interesting to see how quick you can do it. Since you don't have weapons, armor, and stats to adjust in different ways, and the special attack tools all seem not worth using, I think every playthrough would be pretty much the same.
The game has four different endings, but from how it looks to me, the only difference is in which bosses you fight in the final hour. Gameplay is fun, but not that fun that I would want to play it four times. Even if the third and fourth time would be a quick breeze through.

It's not a bad game, but it feels a bit similar to a B-List God of War clone. Something to play once and then quickly forget, not like the other big epics with hundreds of hours of entertainment.

I think the game's actually a fair bit bigger than Bloodborne (which is tiny in comparison to every other game in the franchise), and probably around about the same size as Dark Souls 1 and 3. Speed of movement and the ability to stealth/parkour by enemies makes the zones feel smaller than they are.

On replayability, I'm right there with you. I did a second playthrough in order to get a different ending, but beyond that the replayability is effectively zero. There aren't really different skill trees or builds to go up, there are no alternate weapon strategies or different "classes" to build, and the boss strategies are all the same.

[Erloas]

It gets no more realistic than Arma. And it handles DLC intelligently. You can play on maps with DLC stuff, you just will get told you need the DLC to use it. I think you can ride in DLC vehicles, but need a DLC owner to drive them. But I'm not sure.

So I watched a few twitch streams of Arma, RS:Siege, and GR:Wildlands (apparently watching games on stream is a thing I do now?). I think of the 30 minutes of Arma I watched 25 minutes of it was people standing around. While that is probably realistic, it didn't look engaging. Siege looks a lot faster, but there are a lot of gimmicks going on there, not totally out of line with the RS I remembered, but maybe a bit much. Not really super powers, and only a bit futuristic. People at least still die pretty much to just a bullet or two even if there is technically health bars. Of course even ARMA had people getting healed and someone had little blood splotches pop up when they were being hit from long range, so maybe can't get away from that. Both ARMA and Wildlands seem to have a lot of vehicle combat, which I'm not really interested in.


Beat my second game in Civ 6, cultural victory. It wasn't really clear how it worked even after checking some guides. Get all the tourist things and great people and that was about it. I think the other civs won it for me though. First Rome took out China, the closest nation to me, but then lost many of the cities to uprisings, so I could swoop in and take them without the warmongering hits. But Rome also had a very strong culture and I don't think I could have taken them directly, but Genghis Khan took out quite a bit of Rome's cities and diluted their cultural strength enough.
So far I've done almost no fighting. I'm thinking I might do another run with more conquest, maybe not total, but at least a very early rush on one or two other civs to free up some space.

[Triaxx]

Arma really depends on the kind of server you get on. But you did say realistic.

[Erloas]

Arma really depends on the kind of server you get on. But you did say realistic.

That I did. So I would amend that to be fun, and on the realistic side of things, but fun is more important than realism.
I know PUBG was the big thing a few years ago, and still relatively popular but surpassed by other battle royale games. The premise is of course entirely contrived but the combat/control seems to mostly be realistic, though unmistakably gamey. (Not that that is entirely a bad thing, just a thing)

It is also hard to tell which games are "buy and then play" and which are "buy and then you need a dozen DLC/sub to actually get into any games" because they've all got some sort of pass but unclear what they actually cover.

[Zevox]

So, thanks to Banjo and Kazooie being announced as coming to Smash Brothers I found myself in the mood to play something like those games again. I though about pulling out my 360 and buying the downloadable versions of the Banjo games that are on that, but then I remembered the supposedly Banjo-Kazooie inspired kickstarter game that I kept forgetting exists: A Hat in Time. So I bought that and have been giving it a try.

Wow, if it's not one of the most charming little games I've played in a long time. Seriously, the game had me feeling like a kid mere minutes in, when Hat Kid wakes up in her enormous room on her spaceship, which contains among other things a diving board over a giant mound of pillows that she can literally go swimming in. That's just fun - and basically the kind of room every kid would love to have. Then you take a look at your closet, and get the message "You only really wear one outfit, so there's plenty of room for skeletons." Yeah, okay, that's some fun Banjo-style writing right there. And then the gameplay starts up, and you're wandering around fighting cartoonish mafia thugs who all refer to themselves in the third person as "Mafia." One of whom remarks about how learning that little kids can double-jump makes him feel very self-conscious about his body.

And it doesn't take long to figure out how you unlock new abilities - you collect yarn, which you then make into new hats, each of which has its own special ability. Within the first hour I've already made a visor that gives you a dash ability, and a witch's hat that lets you throw explosive potions around. Yeah, this is all very silly and quite fun, and I look forward to seeing more of it.

[Corlindale]

Hat in Time is such a delightful game. They clearly didn't have a Mario-level budget, but man do they use what they have to good effect. I think you nailed the description about it making you feel like a kid, many areas of the game just truly feel like playgrounds - especially Mafiatown - and it's great fun simply to move around (I love that you can both double jump AND hurl yourself forwards a good distance, giving you a crazy degree of horizontal movement).

The various levels are also super creative, and often surprise you with changes in tone and style. There's even a

Spoiler: some minor spoilers about levels

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genuinely scary haunted house level at one point. Though my favourite is probably Train Rush, a hilariously over-the-top parody of every single gauntlet-style lava corridor in a platformer. I was literally grinning for the entire length of that level.

Also, as a protagonist Hat Kid has just about infinity more charisma than Mario.

[Anteros]

I picked up They are Billions after watching a streamer play it. It's pretty enjoyable but also supremely frustrating. I'm playing 800% difficulty right off the bat though so it's supposed to be frustrating. It took me quite a few tries, but I'm finally getting to the point where I can win consistently.

Made it to the end of Sekiro. If I am not mistaken, I'm right at the door to the final boss. Compared to Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 1 and 3, and Bloodborne, it feels like a much smaller game. It still took me over 70 hours to get to this point, which isn't meaningfully faster than the other games took me, but there seems to be little replayability. Once you know the levels, the standard guards all drop instantly, and I guess a second playthrough would mostly be interesting to see how quick you can do it. Since you don't have weapons, armor, and stats to adjust in different ways, and the special attack tools all seem not worth using, I think every playthrough would be pretty much the same.
The game has four different endings, but from how it looks to me, the only difference is in which bosses you fight in the final hour. Gameplay is fun, but not that fun that I would want to play it four times. Even if the third and fourth time would be a quick breeze through.

It's not a bad game, but it feels a bit similar to a B-List God of War clone. Something to play once and then quickly forget, not like the other big epics with hundreds of hours of entertainment.

On replays you get the ability to return Kuro's charm to him at the start. This means you now take damage when you block, and have to parry. The game also gets harder with each replay.

Sekiro isn't about making different builds or a diverse combat system. It's about truly mastering one very good combat system. Personally, I like it a lot better than Dark Souls.

[Balmas]

I picked up Slay the Spire during the Steam sale, and have been having a blast. Currently, I probably have the most time spent with the Silent. I feel like an anime villain when I play them--shivs and poison, all while o-ho-hoing behind seventeen layers of Block.

[Triaxx]

I like the idea of Defect better. Oh, you attacked me? Well it did no damage because of the frost orbs, oh, and I've just sliced off half your HP with my lightning orbs. Now I get to actually attack.

[Balmas]

I like the idea of Defect better. Oh, you attacked me? Well it did no damage because of the frost orbs, oh, and I've just sliced off half your HP with my lightning orbs. Now I get to actually attack.

Huh. Well, I was going to say that I didn't like how slow it was with orbs.

Then I did my most recent run and discovered the stacking bonuses of gaining focus, more than three spheres, and the absolute powerhouse that is Creative AI.

[Silverraptor]

Grabbed a few games this steam sale. Looking forward to "Into the Breach". Loved FTL and I'm pretty sure I'll like this game. As long as I go in expecting to lose. (Yes, I know how this game works!)

[MCerberus]

I'm back to playing league, and taking it easy on ARAM since it makes playing the main mode... well you get bad habits.
I think I should turn into an Ashe 1-trick. My last game had a support Lux who mainly thought "Out of mana in a bad idea anyway fight? I can't wait. and I parlayed that into an S- hard-carry

[Kyutaru]

I've been playing and 100% cleared two games that recently came out.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night lives up to its Castlevania: Symphony of the Night roots. And why shouldn't it? Look who made it. It scratches all sorts of itches from the action need to the Metroidvania longing to the anime-style violence.

Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark meanwhile lives up to Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre, from which it pulled much inspiration. Each class feels viable and mastering several is mandatory to access all the side traits you want to perfect your final builds, along with the capstone stat benefits that come from mastery. Experimenting with different assortments of gear and classes has never been this much fun.

[factotum]

I've just given up on playing Star Control: Origins. It really didn't gel for me, and I think the reason for that is that the game was just too much like a pretty graphical reskin of Star Control 2--even down to the main plot. It made sense that my ship was super-powerful in Star Control 2 because it was an ancient Precursor relic, it really doesn't in SCO because it's literally the first starship ever built by humans, yet it doesn't take much in the way of upgrades to match even the most powerful Scryve cruiser. The game also didn't *add* much to the gameplay loop of SC2, which, good as it was, is more than quarter of a century old--you'd expect they'd have made *some* improvements to it!

[Anteros]

I've been playing and 100% cleared two games that recently came out.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night lives up to its Castlevania: Symphony of the Night roots. And why shouldn't it? Look who made it. It scratches all sorts of itches from the action need to the Metroidvania longing to the anime-style violence.

Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark meanwhile lives up to Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre, from which it pulled much inspiration. Each class feels viable and mastering several is mandatory to access all the side traits you want to perfect your final builds, along with the capstone stat benefits that come from mastery. Experimenting with different assortments of gear and classes has never been this much fun.

I liked Fell Seal but got bored halfway through. The class system was decent, but I didn't enjoy the art style or the story very much at all. I was literally only playing to make good class combinations and once I unlocked everything I wanted I didn't have any drive to continue.

[warty goblin]

Dug into Spellforce 3 for no particularly clear reason this weekend. As with previous Spellforces, it's a blend of RTS and RPG, this time leaning pretty hard on the RPG.

Somehow it turns out to have a definitely good story, in a sort of slightly gritted up early 2000's fantasy nonsense type of way. At one level there really isn't anything story-wise that you haven't seen before - oppressed mages, magical plagues, religious extremists, a main character referred to only by their last name - etc, but most things have like a 25 degree twist from Standard Fantasy. It isn't subversive in the sense of directly inverting tropes, so much as somebody sat down and thought about how to do fun stuff with those tropes, then thought about it again and came up with something more interesting than the same-old same-old. It's about the perfect level of changing things up, because you get the benefit of all the familiar old stuff, with just enough curiosity about how they'll play things up.

It also inherits Spellforce 2's penchant for really seriously Epic Fantasy landscapes and buildings. And holy crap does this engine look good, and know how to use it. It's been a long time since I've seen a game really leverage its technical chops this effectively. The aesthetic has shifted from the maximally goofy style of Spellforces 1 and 2 to a sort of reality, but with the wow factor cranked up to like 11, which works out a nice line between the ultra-grit of something like Witcher 3, and the rather goofy style of Divinity: Original Sin 2 or outright cartoonishness. Definitely fantasy with no interest in pretending it's Reality But With Dwarves, but still interested in a detailed and pretty grounded sort of world. Except for the architecture, which is gloriously over the top.

Oh, and there's an RTS bit, which is perfectly fine and also both rather inventive and somehow completely uninteresting. This is actually fine; it's not like Spellforce 2 was exactly Age of Mythology, but instead used the RTs maps to emphasize the scale of the whole fantasy battle thing. Which worked quite well at sidestepping the usual RPG problem where you unite the different races so their armies can have a grand showdown against evil... but because Ye Olde RPG Engine shrivels and dies if more than like 20 people are on screen at a time, the grand battle is a totally hands-off background affair. I'd be surprised if SF3 didn't go for a similar style.

[oxybe]

Mario Maker. fully completed the story mode and playing horrible, horrible kaizo and tech levels. loving every hour of it.

[Yora]

I finally beat the final boss in Sekiro. It really didn't feel that long, but when I first tried fighting it my save file time was 79 hours, and I completed the playthrough with a total of 89 hours. Which is a bit longer than all the Soulsborne games took me, but not much.
Now I am in NG+, and it's pretty laughably easy. Having ten healing potions to waste instead of having to make it past the early bosses with only three certainly helps a lot, though. I did beat the flaming bull on first try, but it took me all 10 healing plus resurrection. If I had to take it with just 3 healing, I think this would have taken some time again.

[Man_Over_Game]

Helped my wife beat the optional boss in God of War. Sigrun was tough, but it only took me about 3 tries to get her, which is a big deal considering I've only played the game for a couple hours.

I do like how almost all of her abilities have some means of being dealt with.
Her ice storm ability? Block all the projectiles until they stop, then dodge the last one.
She's rising up in the air? She's either shooting something at you, or she's doing her ultimate grapple attack that requires Atreus to shoot her before she does it. So pull up your shield and tell BOI to shoot and take care of both problems.
She's trying to tackle you? Time your dodges to dodge her 3 dashes, then pound on her.

I did end up using a resurrection stone, which felt bad, but was still a really fun fight. Kinda disappointing, though. She ended up basically having all of the unique abilities of her 8 Valkyries, but she didn't do anything unique. If you got enough practice on the small-fry, she's just slightly more complicated, with slightly more health.

One thing I will say, though, I'm really impressed with how personable the Valkyries are in the short time you get to talk to them. They did a good job with God of War, and I'm looking forward to the Sequel (which was hinted at recently, if you haven't heard. Ragnarok is coming).

[Rodin]

Currently playing Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. This is the first Igavania that I've played and actually enjoyed, despite my abiding love of the broader Metroidvania genre. It's been a blast so far, if a bit easy. True Arrow just melts enemies and since I got it ranked up I've been waltzing through. It does still have some the irritating "where the bleep do I go now?" moments I've come to expect from (and which make me quit playing) Igavania games though, and I just had to look up where to go for the first time.

Spoiler

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After getting the double jump, you talk to the nun lady and ask her about the narrow passages you can see all over the place. There are a couple of these passages in the library, which is the place you got the double jump. Obviously where you need to go next, right?

So, she gives you a cryptic clue saying which area that particular upgrade is located in, which is nowhere you have yet been. A good explore later will reveal that...this area is nowhere to be found. Instead, you can go somewhere else and get an item that allows you to get your picture taken in proper old-timey sit there for hours fashion. Yay.

At this point, there were several different sealed routes, and I had an inkling that the train station was where you might need to go next. It's locked with a gate and just says you "need something".
Needing a ticket would be the obvious thing, right?

Wrong! You need Photo ID. In 18th century England. For a unmanned train station gate that apparently has facial recognition. Because reasons.

This alone would have been enough to blow my mind, but it gets better. To get the photo ID, you need the photo you just got, and somebody else's ID card. There is no hint about where to get it.
It so happens that the random vampire librarian you've met has one, and allows you to swap out your picture for his and thus, board the train. At no point does the game hint that you need an ID card, or that speaking to Mr. Alucard Knock-off again might be a good idea. It just leaves you to it.

And here's the kicker: When I finally got to the next area after riding the train? It wasn't the area with the tech to get through narrow passages, but a different movement tech entirely. I still don't know where the narrow passage tech is, but it's obviously much deeper into the game.

The game could learn a lot from Hollow Knight about multiple paths of progression is what I'm saying here.

[Dienekes]

I finally beat the final boss in Sekiro. It really didn't feel that long, but when I first tried fighting it my save file time was 79 hours, and I completed the playthrough with a total of 89 hours. Which is a bit longer than all the Soulsborne games took me, but not much.
Now I am in NG+, and it's pretty laughably easy. Having ten healing potions to waste instead of having to make it past the early bosses with only three certainly helps a lot, though. I did beat the flaming bull on first try, but it took me all 10 healing plus resurrection. If I had to take it with just 3 healing, I think this would have taken some time again.

The FromSoft replay rule remains true. NG+ is a victory lap. Though Kuro's Charm does offer a chance to make it a bit more difficult.

[Zevox]

So, after not taking too long to decide I didn't like Samurai Shodown very much (think I played it for maybe a week and a half), I took a brief break from playing any fighting games, and have now decided to return to BlazBlue Cross Tag. Wow, the difference between how much I enjoy this game and how much I liked the last couple of fighting games I gave a shot (Mortal Kombat 11 and SamSho) is stark. In those, even when I was winning, I was frustrated and annoyed by various things; in BBTag, even when I'm losing or frustrated by something, I'm still having fun. It makes such a huge difference.

I never did narrow down a main team so much as just a main character (Yang), so I started out just pairing her with another character I was enjoying last time I played, Weiss. After a couple of days of that I decided to try and learn another character that has a fun intro with Weiss and got a bunch of buffs in the balance patch a couple of months ago, Nine the Phantom, and while she's a bit hard to get used to in this game since she moves very differently from almost anyone else, I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of her, and she's quite fun. Especially since it turns out that some of those buffs she got opened up a very fun new combo route that's just to my liking - not too easy, but not so hard as to feel impractical; pretty widely applicable so that you can get it off a variety of starting hits; and quite rewarding in terms of damage and corner carry. I definitely need to get a better handle on when to use certain things with her, but she's a relatively complicated character, so that's to be expected, and part of the fun. Seems to go okay as Weiss' teammate too, so that's good.

I want to hope for the game to get some big DLC announcements at Evo in a couple of weeks, but it's hard to guess how likely that is. At this point, as a niche game that's over a year old, its player base is fairly anemic, so I can't say I'd ordinarily expect anything... but then again, I didn't expect it to be at Evo at all because of that sort of thing, but there it is. So who knows? And I still want to hold out some small hope of seeing Rise in BBTag someday.

[IthilanorStPete]

I picked up Subnautica, started playing it, and discovered that I'm pretty afraid of large underwater creatures. Fun game, though.

[Yora]

I've always been scared of large (and small) underwater creatures, but I am still tempted to play that one. What I've seen of the graphics, it seems to have just enough of a slight cartoony touch to not make my brain react to them like actual fish or squids.

[Aspheric]

I had somehow missed the announcement trailer for Evil Genius 2, so I've been replaying the original game. I've been running it with some mods, and managed to switch my henchmen starting henchmen around, though it's not a perfect fix. I'm playing Alexis, and after swapping Eli out for Jubei, and while I got him working out fine, it does seem like the game expects me to still have Eli, since his recruitment mission didn't show up, while Jubei's did. I could probably find the Act of Infamy related to his recruitment mission and switch the flags, but at this point, I've decided to run with the bugs.

In any case, I'm loving my return to this, though there's definitely stuff I hope they clear up for the sequel. They're mostly minor things: the delay in trap activation, minion pathfinding, the fact that everything in your base violently explodes when destroyed, etc. I'm hopeful that the game's new engine will fix a lot of these things, but I suppose we'll see. I like the new masterminds from the trailer, and I'm looking forward to the prospect of building multiple levels. I'm curious what they'll do with tourists, since they're one of the parts of EG I like the least. I establish a base of operations on what the game describes as "a remote island of indeterminate location," and a bunch of tourists just... show up? I never understood that part, and building hotels to keep them occupied (when they just end up getting stuck in your lair's entrances anyways) always struck me as tedious. I'm glad they have kept the bright and colourful aesthetic and goofy character animations, too. I'm very much looking forward to this, even though I'm 90% positive that my current PC won't be able to handle it.

[Zombimode]

I picked up Subnautica, started playing it, and discovered that I'm pretty afraid of large underwater creatures. Fun game, though.

Large underwater creatures are one of the most terrifying things for me. Sadly (because I like to be terrified) not many games really have them.

Maybe I should check out Subnautica then



As for myself, I'm on Pools of Darkness.

[Triaxx]

It's fine, they're either no threat, or they insta-kill you.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

My SO decided to give Rimworld a go, and absolutely loved it, so now that's what the whole family is playing, because I can't watch a Rimworld game without wanting to play one myself, as it turns out.

Grey Wolf

[sihnfahl]

It's fine, they're either no threat, or they insta-kill you.

Mmm, not entirely. It's possible to survive an attack - so long as you're not, you know, silly enough to swim near them without being in a PRAWN or a sub of some sort.

Even then, you'd be surprised what you can do with a stasis gun with a few batteries and a properly upgraded knife...

I have pics of me killing the Dragon. Fun thing, though, found a bug that getting close to the mouth was an instakill, even when it was dead...