What Are You Playing Right Now, Part 2: Daggerfall

[Resileaf]

Playing through Baldur's Gate, I find on my second playthrough that the game is much easier if you spend time faffing about in the surrounding areas for XP before diving in the main quest, even if some of your party members are a bit insistant on getting to Nashkel already.

Looking forward to when Imoen is finally able to use her rogue weapons and skills again though. I have too many pure casters right now.

[Man_Over_Game]

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.

You might like Guilty Gear. It has a similar vibe to BlazBlue, but I feel like BlazBlue is a bit less technical to have less of a difficulty curve, and Guilty Gear has such a high difficulty ceiling that it's hard to get into at first. They both utilize characters that focus on unique playstyles and concepts that other fighting games barely graze on (Guilty Gear has a character that places traps all over the battlefield and uses counters, as well as someone who spawns an obstacle that sits on the screen at a location of your choosing until it's activated with one of several special moves).


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I've been REALLY into Slay the Spire lately. It's just so easy to pick up and play. The Hunter, with all of her awesome discard combos, is the tits. There's nothing like getting ahead of the difficulty curve at the cost of a few curses, just to discard those curses when they try to get in the way.

I still can't get a handle on the robot guy, though. I guess you're supposed to, I dunno, block and rely on DoT effects, but it just feels consistently bad. The block you get from the freeze orbs, the damage you do, it all seems so low. With the Hunter, at least, I can MAKE a solution with some really clever combos, but I haven't really been able to adapt as the Robot too well. It constantly feels like I'm just patiently watching my HP drain down.

[Spacewolf]

You might like Guilty Gear. It has a similar vibe to BlazBlue, but I feel like BlazBlue is a bit less technical to have less of a difficulty curve, and Guilty Gear has such a high difficulty ceiling that it's hard to get into at first. They both utilize characters that focus on unique playstyles and concepts that other fighting games barely graze on (Guilty Gear has a character that places traps all over the battlefield and uses counters, as well as someone who spawns an obstacle that sits on the screen at a location of your choosing until it's activated with one of several special moves).


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I've been REALLY into Slay the Spire lately. It's just so easy to pick up and play. The Hunter, with all of her awesome discard combos, is the tits. There's nothing like getting ahead of the difficulty curve at the cost of a few curses, just to discard those curses when they try to get in the way.

I still can't get a handle on the robot guy, though. I guess you're supposed to, I dunno, block and rely on DoT effects, but it just feels consistently bad. The block you get from the freeze orbs, the damage you do, it all seems so low. With the Hunter, at least, I can MAKE a solution with some really clever combos, but I haven't really been able to adapt as the Robot too well. It constantly feels like I'm just patiently watching my HP drain down.

Heh that's one of the reasons I like slay the spire I can't really get the silents builds to work but with the defect I always do really well and if I get electrolysis that's basically GG for that run. But then people say they have the opposite problem and it makes me want to play again.

If it helps I almost never play frost orbs, electric orbs are my bread and butter with the occasional dark or plasma orb in there as well. Also I love the 0 cost cards with the defect, claw, scrape and rebound plus the occasional vulnerable + weakening zero cost cards gets pretty absurd quickly.

He also has a nice stacking power build if you get the relic that makes one of your cards cost 0 whenever you play a power.

[Man_Over_Game]

Heh that's one of the reasons I like slay the spire I can't really get the silents builds to work but with the defect I always do really well and if I get electrolysis that's basically GG for that run. But then people say they have the opposite problem and it makes me want to play again.

If it helps I almost never play frost orbs, electric orbs are my bread and butter with the occasional dark or plasma orb in there as well. Also I love the 0 cost cards with the defect, claw, scrape and rebound plus the occasional vulnerable + weakening zero cost cards gets pretty absurd quickly.

He also has a nice stacking power build if you get the relic that makes one of your cards cost 0 whenever you play a power.

I did get really into the power build, unfortunately I also picked up the relic that let me draw extra cards each turn, but randomizes the cost of my cards. I later realized that the Defect generally has really low cost cards, so this ended up biting me in the ass in my best run.

I try to do something similar to your playstyle, though, when I do play him. Focus on Lightning and powers, get some powerful block abilities and try to stall out the game.

[Rodin]

Frost orbs are supposedly the most consistently powerful way to win at high Ascension with the Defect, but like yourselves I've never managed to get that to work. Well, except for once or twice when the stars aligned, but you can say that about any build.

My most consistent way to victory with Defect is lightning spam. Upgrade Zap and Dualcast early (because 0 cost = good), then I go looking for Storm, Tempest, Biased Cognition, and importantly Electrodynamics to help with AoE. A Thunder Strike is nice if you can get it for finishing bosses. The rest is all defensive cards like Leap.

Another build I will try o go for is the "infinite 0 cost" build, using cards like Scrape and All For One. It's very dangerous to go for though - it's immensely powerful if you can trim your deck enough for it to work, but if you don't get the key cards your deck will collapse very quickly.

My most powerful build ever was a really weird one - I got a Hyperbeam from Neow at the start, then got the duplicator event to give myself a second one. I spent the rest of the run grinding my other cards into dust and then the deck went bonkers when I found the Necronomicon (play the first 2+ cost card you play per turn a second time for free). I had an Echo Form too if I ever needed it, bringing me up to 75 damage AoE.

Still, I definitely find the Defect to be the weakest of the 3, at least for me. Ironclad is most consistent to get a decent (but not fantastic) deck and win the game, Silent is harder to survive early but can grow significantly more powerful late game, and Defect has a pretty easy early game but is far more difficult than the other two to put together a winning deck. I feel like he relies on combos more than the other two, and if you don't get the right cards it just ain't happening.

[Silverraptor]

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

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.

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.

Subnautica is great for first time playing. What's great is watching all the YouTube's reaction to different things.

[Lord Raziere]

I'm really having fun with modded skyrim right now. the things people have done with dwemer ruins and tech is amazing, and now I've got a dwemer character with cool and four robotic followers to kill things for her on top of already having automatic crossbows and laser guns, so I don't even have to kill things myself, but if I need or want to, I can. combined with a motorcycle, just really adds up to different playstyle and feeling like I'm playing some dwemer post-apocalypse survivor trying to rebuild from scratch.

[Man_Over_Game]

On Slay the Spire, do the permanent card unlocks generally make the game easier, or do they just add more complications to the game (to artificially maintain the difficulty curve)?

[Zevox]

You might like Guilty Gear. It has a similar vibe to BlazBlue, but I feel like BlazBlue is a bit less technical to have less of a difficulty curve, and Guilty Gear has such a high difficulty ceiling that it's hard to get into at first. They both utilize characters that focus on unique playstyles and concepts that other fighting games barely graze on (Guilty Gear has a character that places traps all over the battlefield and uses counters, as well as someone who spawns an obstacle that sits on the screen at a location of your choosing until it's activated with one of several special moves).

Oh, I'm well aware of Guilty Gear, trust me. I've tried a whole lot of fighting games in the past decade, including almost every ArcSys game I could get my hands on, so Guilty Gear is of course among them. I didn't wind up playing too much of it though, mostly because I was never able to find a character that gelled with me well enough. Which is weird, because I have the opposite problem in basically all of ArcSys' other games (regular BlazBlue, BBTag, Persona 4 Arena, and DragonBall FighterZ), narrowing down my character choice from a bunch that I like playing, or just hopping back and forth between characters because there's so many that I want to play (which I find easier to do in the team games than the 1v1s). But in Guilty Gear for some reason nobody quite works out for me. There's a couple that I wish I could play, but who are unfortunately charge characters, which I can't play to save my life in any fighting game (Leo and May, specifically). The one that did initially stand out to me as seeming fun when I first tried the game was Ramlethal, but my attempts to play her just turned out frustrating and I never felt like I was getting any kind of understanding of her, so I dropped her. The one character I could play marginally okay was Ky, but I didn't really want to play him - I kind of got my fill of that shoto-ish gameplay style back when I played a lot of Jin in BlazBlue, and just haven't felt drawn to it ever since I kind of burned out on him.

Maybe whenever they release a new Guilty Gear there will be a new character (or returning old character that didn't make it into Xrd) that fits with me, or some changes to old ones that make them feel better for me, but sadly for now, there just isn't anyone.

[Man_Over_Game]

Maybe whenever they release a new Guilty Gear there will be a new character (or returning old character that didn't make it into Xrd) that fits with me, or some changes to old ones that make them feel better for me, but sadly for now, there just isn't anyone.

Eh, sorry about that. I'm not too familiar with the new GG stuff, but from the looks of it, Ramlethal is pretty technical and relies on a lot of combo memorization, as her basic attacks string together like Mortal Kombat/Tekken style fighting games (as opposed to BlazBlue or GG, which generally have a Street Fighter feel, where combos come more from special moves than specific combo strings).

Hmm...you might like Slayer. Lots of feints and modifications to some basic attack combos to really make your opponent panic and make mistakes. He hits like a truck, and you feel like a badass the entire time without needing any weird gimmicks to justify it. Rather, he DOES do cool stuff, but more in the line of slides, powerful attacks that bounce the enemy when you counter with them that have great hitboxes to make those counters reliable, and amazing basics that keep your opponent from doing anything but blocking. Not sure if he's in the new one or not, though.

I also was a big fan of Potemkin. Hard to play, but he'd brutalize you if you made one mistake.

[Zevox]

Hmm...you might like Slayer. Lots of feints and modifications to some basic attack combos to really make your opponent panic and make mistakes. He hits like a truck, and you feel like a badass the entire time without needing any weird gimmicks to justify it. Rather, he DOES do cool stuff, but more in the line of slides, powerful attacks that bounce the enemy when you counter with them that have great hitboxes to make those counters reliable, and amazing basics that keep your opponent from doing anything but blocking. Not sure if he's in the new one or not, though.

I also was a big fan of Potemkin. Hard to play, but he'd brutalize you if you made one mistake.

Slayer is in Xrd, yes. I don't recall why exactly he didn't feel right to me, but I know I tried him - I tried basically everyone to one degree or another.

Potemkin's probably the only one I didn't even need to try though. He's the big-body grappler of the game, and that's the one major fighting game character archetype I've never gone for (unless you count charge characters as an archetype I guess). I've found versions of most other archetypes that I've liked, from rushdown all the way to zoner, even some partial grapplers who just aren't the big slow type (Laura in SF5, Yang in BBTag), but those slow big-body sorts just aren't for me.

I don't know, it was strange and disappointing that I couldn't find anyone to play in Guilty Gear when I like all of ArcSys' other games so much, but not a huge deal at the end of the day. There'll be future Guilty Gears I can try to see if anybody new gets me in later, and I've got plenty of other fighting games I love in the meantime. Last year was possibly the best one of the decade for that - Dragonball FighterZ, BlazBlue Cross Tag, and Smash Ultimate all in the same year. Between those three I won't run out of fighting game entertainment for quite a while, even if somehow no new ones that I like released for some time.

[Yora]

After having finished Sekiro, I've started playing Dark Souls 3 again. In comparison, this is such a more relaxed game.

[Cespenar]

After having finished Sekiro, I've started playing Dark Souls 3 again. In comparison, this is such a more relaxed game.

Truth. Most boss battles in Sekiro left me outright tired out, as if I was doing jogging for an hour (heart-rate and duration wise, it could be similar in actuality, now that I think about it). While DS3 had fewer and slower boss battles, or at least that's what it feels like now.

[Zevox]

I recently finished up A Hat in Time, which is just a completely delightful game from start to finish. My only real complaints are that it's too short and I wanted more, and that there were camera issues here and there. I was especially happy with the boss fights, they were very well designed and at times surprisingly challenging for the genre.

Honestly, this is not a thought I've ever had before since I am not a parent and have no plans to become one, but if I were, I think this would be a strong candidate for the game I'd use to introduce my kids to video games. It's great fun, wonderfully cartoony, not too hard aside from maybe some optional Time Rifts and and boss fights, and just a very high-quality title of a genre we don't see nearly enough of anymore. Quite possibly the best 3D platformer I've played since the Banjo-Kazooie games, honestly.

[unseenmage]

Ark. PoGo. Rarely a little MtG. A spot of pbp here and there.
Work has consumed what's left of my life.

[Razade]

Finally got around to beating The World of Light on Smash Ultimate. It's a good feeling having it done and over with. Booted up Skyrim since I had the itch, I expect it to go about as well as it normally does. Play for six hours and get bored and drop it. Not doing an offensive mage build so maybe it will finally hold my interest long enough to accomplish some things. The last time I played I ran through the actual story so now I don't feel I'm obligated to do that.

Speaking of itches, I am fighting one to re-buy Minecraft. It's an itch I'm not doing very well fighting, the appeal to having a game just to relax in is rising when all the other games I've got are either roguelikes or similar challenging experiences. Also resisting the urge to buy Hollow Knight on the Switch. I feel like it's more an obligation, the game was on sale when I bought it for like 10 bucks and I honestly feel like I robbed Team Cherry. I'll probably hold off until Silk Song comes out, which I'll probably get on the Switch instead of the PC. If I'm going to play it with a controller, I just feel like it's more sensible to have it on a fairly portable machine.

Also been clearing through Slime Rancher. I'm at a point where it's just hunting down treasure spheres and doing the side stuff with the NPCs...and it's just so much grinding on the latter bit. I want to like Slime Rancher and there are parts of the game I enjoy but...the ranching part is just sorta boring micromanagement in a way that Stardew Valley, a game I am eager to get back to when the next update lands, isn't. Feeding is the largest issue, but so is having so much fruit and veg that I can't do anything with it. I just wish there was more to the game. The Slime Science helps but...nothing really matters except grinding for resources. The Teleport pads are useful but I only feel like I need one of them to get to the Glass Desert easier. Everything else is pretty close that I feel I can just run to them. Because what else is there to do in the game? Some actual story for the game would be nice. The world is cool but not diverse and absolutely not large enough. Giving you a jetpack just makes getting around way too easy. I'm not looking for like...Breath of the Wild level openness...but where Breath of the Wild fails in...it gives nothing to explore, I think an expansive world like that with Slime Rancher would actually do it a great deal of good. It'd make the teleport pads more useful at least.

Age of Wonders III was free and picked that up. I haven't played any Age of Wonders games since 1. I need to invest more time into it, it's nice to be back to a game series I haven't touched in...20 years. The first one never ran great on my parent's PC and a friend stole the discs. I never really got a chance to play it indepth between the theft and my family not liking me spending oodles of time playing games. If Age of Wonders: Planetfall turns out to be good I might well invest in that as well but I don't feel any rush. I like Age of Wonders III enough to drop money on the DLC now that it seems all of those are out. So I might do that with Planetfall.

Other than that...not playing much. Just don't have time. I've got Fire Emblem: Three Houses coming Friday, Link's Awakening pre-ordered for September and so jazzed about that and Pokemon Sword in November. I feel like between that and all the other games I'm chugging in on...I won't need another game for two or so years. With the rumor that Breath of the Wild II comes out at the end of next year, I have some pressure to just be a bad adult and slam through all my games and make time for that.

[MCerberus]

Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Thus far I have named my PC "Frizzle" and am going to plan some field trips

[tonberrian]

Also playing Fire Emblem. Not as creative in the naming department. But Black Eagles for the win!

[Lord Raziere]

played some Skyrim SE modded. with my mage-build altmer vampire. despite a a couple freezes and a few deaths, I managed to defeat some powerful mod-made dragon that was so annoying with calling down meteors everywhere, but I'm not exactly sure HOW, because I had to use a spell to keep myself from getting damaged that couldn't allow me to damage it back, but I think I somehow lured it into getting killed by one of its big meteors falling on itself and dying from its own shout while I stood there ethereal, because my two followers certainly weren't dealing enough damage to kill it, and I wasn't dealing enough damage because the meteors kept interrupting from casting spells that would damage it enough, and there wasn't any other monster around, so I can only assume that the big house-sized rock that was falling nearby was the killing blow and that it wasn't immune to its own meteor storm shout.

freaking mods man, they're crazy.

[MCerberus]

Also playing Fire Emblem. Not as creative in the naming department. But Black Eagles for the win!

I went with Huffl Golden Deer

[warty goblin]

Been mostly playing Warhammer 40K: Inquisitor- Martyr -- 2018: Most Cumbersome Title Grand Champion.

It's a 40K ARPG, an idea that has lain shockingly fallow since Dawn of War II. This is very much a modern breed of ARPG, in that your skillset is at any point entirely determined by your equipment, and character upgrades are entirely relegated to passive skill trees. I'm not necessarily a huge fan of this design, but it works here because WH40K has such an agreeably huge arsenal of crazy guns, chainswords, etc that you end up with a lot of diversity.

It helps that the engine is capable of throwing genuinely huge numbers of unnatural demonic mutants at you, and they blow up real good. Occasionally it just goes all out and bum-rushes you with a giant horde of some nasty little chaos spawn. It's at this point that the bolter in particular goes from an excellent gun to the Grim Reaper's Fully Automatic Scythe of Exploding Gibs, since it has a rapid-fire fragmentation round ability that is just ace for clearing out hordes.

[IthilanorStPete]

Still playing Subnautica; I've got the PRAWN suit and the Cyclops, now. They both look amazing, especially the Cyclops, but I've yet to take them out for real work. I've also picked up WoW, because a nice simple Skinner box is oddly relaxing.

[Dienekes]

Continuing on through Divinity 2 in the brief free time I get. Still plugging away in Fort Joy. Only level 4 now, but I can’t help but compare the games opening to the last big party rpg I played: DA:I. And just, wow, is Fort Joy so much better than the Hinterlands. You find all your companions quickly. It’s large enough to make it feel like your exploring while small enough to remain interesting. All the side quests seem important to at least somebody and all the fights feel earned.

Enjoying it a lot so far. Though I do have some criticisms. Far as I can tell, to have your status effects apply you have to deplete the enemy’s armor or magic armor first. Which would be fine, but since there are effectively two types of damage magic or physical and you won’t be engaging in crowd control until after the resistance is gone. Wouldn’t that mean that the best party is either all physical or all magic? That way you only have to whittle down one resistance. And since my starter was a knight I’m pretty pigeonholed into physical damage. Which at least has been working well. After the admitted initial struggle to learn the combat system it’s gotten much easier. Though I’m not as much a fan about buying your spells. They’re expensive and I’ve wasted a bit of money trying to figure out how it all works. Which means my one mage I have to be my healer only has the one kinda weak healing spell I could afford. She either casts that, or rain to remove fires. Then she more or less is just twiddling her thumbs. It’s not like her offensive spells actually do anything. By the time she gets past the opponent’s magic resistance they have maybe another hit left.

[DigoDragon]

Just started playing the first Phoenix Wright in the series. It's a fun puzzle game, tho I need to brush up on my "out of box" thinking as May said. Poor boss. Hardly knew ye.

[Balmas]

I've been enjoying a super-modded New Vegas in the course of my Let's Play. AWOP is delightfully unfair; after an hour-long dungeon delve at the Ivanpah Maintenance Tunnels complex, after an hour of fighting robots and turrets, the mod author throws four upgraded and beefed-up sentry bots at you. Fun times.

JSo I started Fallout New Vegas for the first time ever. The steam cleaning event encouraged me to look at all the old games that I never played. I keep hearing this one is still good. But wow, it's very brown, isn't it?

Yep. Much like Fallout 3 throws a green filter over everything, New Vegas has a bit of a yellow filter.

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 .

Definitely do it. I haven't replayed it in a bit, but it's definitely a good game to make you distrust the deep.

[Anteros]

Continuing on through Divinity 2 in the brief free time I get. Still plugging away in Fort Joy. Only level 4 now, but I can’t help but compare the games opening to the last big party rpg I played: DA:I. And just, wow, is Fort Joy so much better than the Hinterlands. You find all your companions quickly. It’s large enough to make it feel like your exploring while small enough to remain interesting. All the side quests seem important to at least somebody and all the fights feel earned.

Enjoying it a lot so far. Though I do have some criticisms. Far as I can tell, to have your status effects apply you have to deplete the enemy’s armor or magic armor first. Which would be fine, but since there are effectively two types of damage magic or physical and you won’t be engaging in crowd control until after the resistance is gone. Wouldn’t that mean that the best party is either all physical or all magic? That way you only have to whittle down one resistance. And since my starter was a knight I’m pretty pigeonholed into physical damage. Which at least has been working well. After the admitted initial struggle to learn the combat system it’s gotten much easier. Though I’m not as much a fan about buying your spells. They’re expensive and I’ve wasted a bit of money trying to figure out how it all works. Which means my one mage I have to be my healer only has the one kinda weak healing spell I could afford. She either casts that, or rain to remove fires. Then she more or less is just twiddling her thumbs. It’s not like her offensive spells actually do anything. By the time she gets past the opponent’s magic resistance they have maybe another hit left.

Yes, as you've learned having a single magic user in the party is largely useless when it comes to dealing damage because of the armor system. There are tons of utility things mages can do for you though. In general physical does more damage while magic gives a lot of utility, so the composition can still work. Your mage just won't be your damage dealer for most fights.

[factotum]

I had two physical dealers and two magic ones--probably wasn't the most efficient way of handling things, but some critters are heavy on physical armour and some on magic, so I preferred having the tools to deal with both.

[Anonymouswizard]

Well I've picked up New Vegas for PC, time to give it a whirl. I remember it being quite good when I played it on the 360, at least better than Fallout 3 even with the lack of a mouse. None of the DLC, because honestly I'm not sure what to get and I'm not overly interested (and don't have that much hard drive space).

Planning to go straight in with hardcore mode once I've downloaded some mods, maybe see if I can find one that'll make the survival elements a tad more complex, and build me a high Intelligence high Agility gunslinger (it's not the most optimal build, but it's the kind I tend to prefer playing in Fallout). At least the tutorial is less boring and more skippable than it was in Fallout 3 (unless you were sensible and got the mod that let you skip the tutorial, of course).

[oxybe]

New vegas is tons of fun. Buggy, but even with it's issues, the Mohave is always a blast to return to. Last character I played was a merc/gun runner.

Was technically a good guy but I managed to set things up where I coukd sell arms to multiple sides that didn't particularly like each other. I only ended up playing nice with some of these factions because it was more profitable to keep my sales and rest stop options open.

most of my skills were into science, repair, medecine, etc... type stuff, with some demolitions and energy weapons (mostly for the flamethrower) to flavor. Fighting was mostly left to my companions.

[Balmas]

I had two physical dealers and two magic ones--probably wasn't the most efficient way of handling things, but some critters are heavy on physical armour and some on magic, so I preferred having the tools to deal with both.

For my party, I went three physical damage dealers--Ifan as a ranger, Fane as a rogue, Beast as a frontliner/CC monster--and the Red Prince in the backlines slinging debuff and condition spells.