What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

[Rynjin]

Been playing through Devil May Cry 5, after finally picking it up on the Steam summer sale.

It's real good, to no one's surprise, though I WAS surprised at how easy it was to slip back into the groove after having not played DMC for *checks notes* 12 years!?!

I'm no master, by any means, but by what I assume is near the end of the first playthrough on Devil Hunter I'm consistently getting A and S ranks, which I feel good about. I do typically die once in boss fights, but I don't feel as bad about that; I always consider the first playthrough of one of these a "scouting run" for when I play on higher difficulties later, so I'm fine with spending the gold orb (which they seem to SHOWER you with in this game anyway).

I was pleased by how good Nero feels to play in this one. I always felt he was a little lacking in 4 in terms of playstyle (I never hated his CHARACTER as much as some, but never really enjoyed how he played), but the robo-replacements for the Devil Bringer feel quite fun, and with the addition of Tomboy to the repertoire I even use the ability to rev the Red Queen on occasion, if only by proxy.

V, I'm sad to share the popular opinion about. He's so damn clunky, so when you start getting your ass beat it doesn't feel like your fault, and when you dominate a fight you don't feel like it was earned; really the worst of both worlds there. Playing as, essentially, a collection of bosses from the first game should feel more empowering, damn it.

Dante is...Dante. Same as he's been since at least 3, and that's not a bad thing at all. They really make you feel the difference in power (and thus attitude) between Nero and Dante in this one, without outright going for the in hindsight quite mean spirited emasculation of Nero. Your main sword is your main sword as it's always been, up to a point, which I'll get to in a sec, and the Balrog is hella fun, taking everything I liked about the Beowulf and amping it up a lot. The third weapon I'm not as keen on, and I haven't had a chance to play with the gamble-hat yet.

Spoiler: Minor stuff, overall

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I was kind of sad when Rebellion was shattered, and hated the look of the Sword of Sparda performing its moveset. Then Demon Sword Dante happened, and it was cool for a sec, but uh...did anyone else who played the game feel it was a downgrade? Not in the macro sense, of course, since Sin Devil Trigger seems really damn strong, but its Swordsman moves seem hella lackluster, and it's really annoying me how much harder it is to kill anything with the sword in that style now; the air juggle combo from Swordsman was damn near the only air game the sword had before its "upgrade".

Overall, having not finished the game, solid 8/10, maybe more. Exactly what I wanted out of this game.

[Zevox]

Dante is...Dante. Same as he's been since at least 3, and that's not a bad thing at all. They really make you feel the difference in power (and thus attitude) between Nero and Dante in this one, without outright going for the in hindsight quite mean spirited emasculation of Nero. Your main sword is your main sword as it's always been, up to a point, which I'll get to in a sec, and the Balrog is hella fun, taking everything I liked about the Beowulf and amping it up a lot. The third weapon I'm not as keen on, and I haven't had a chance to play with the gamble-hat yet.

Spoiler: Minor stuff, overall

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I was kind of sad when Rebellion was shattered, and hated the look of the Sword of Sparda performing its moveset. Then Demon Sword Dante happened, and it was cool for a sec, but uh...did anyone else who played the game feel it was a downgrade? Not in the macro sense, of course, since Sin Devil Trigger seems really damn strong, but its Swordsman moves seem hella lackluster, and it's really annoying me how much harder it is to kill anything with the sword in that style now; the air juggle combo from Swordsman was damn near the only air game the sword had before its "upgrade".

Overall, having not finished the game, solid 8/10, maybe more. Exactly what I wanted out of this game.

Agreed about Nero and V.

As far as Dante goes, I agree about Balrog, it's the best incarnation of the gauntlets & greaves weapon to date IMO. The third weapon IIRC is the motorcycle, yes? If so, yeah, that one's a bit awkward - can do some cool stuff, but it's always kind of relegated to the slow-but-strong weapon category, making it more limited in uses than most of the others, especially as you go up the difficulties. The Hat I never found myself using, since I wanted to save red orbs for upgrades and didn't really run out of those until I was almost done with Dante Must Die difficulty, but it can do some powerful things if you're willing to spend the orbs on it.

Spoiler: Minor weapon spoilers

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Have to disagree about Dante's swords though. Even before getting Devil Sword Dante, I felt like Rebellion and Sparda seemed lacking in this game, with very few options compared to the other weapons - and it turns out that's because their moveset was literally incomplete, as DSD is just a strict upgrade on them. It still has that air juggle you referenced - it air combos as its standard jumping attack, and Helm Breaker became back + attack in the air, IIRC. The only thing it can't do that Rebellion/Sparda can is Prop Shredder on demand (it still exists, but as a delay combo), but that's just an alternate launcher really, so no great loss. Its swordmaster moves are amazing and make it one of the best weapons in the game, since they act completely independently of Dante himself, and include a version of Round Trip that doesn't require disarming yourself to use. The only other Dante weapon I found myself liking using as much as DSD was King Cerberus, which you may or may have come across yet, as it's the last new weapon Dante acquires. And overall, DSD just seemed to end up being the better weapon for the end-game bosses, especially on the highest difficulties. DSD in (regular) Devil Trigger with swordmaster style gets godlike damage on some moves, especially Stinger.

[Rynjin]

I hadn't realized it air combo'd as a standard already, that removes my only huge complaint since I never used Prop Shredder all that much anyway.

Also...Cerberus comes back? Rad. Kind of disappointing that by that implication there's no third gun for Dante in this one, but having variants of most of the DMC 3 arsenal back is cool.

[Zevox]

I hadn't realized it air combo'd as a standard already, that removes my only huge complaint since I never used Prop Shredder all that much anyway.

Also...Cerberus comes back? Rad. Kind of disappointing that by that implication there's no third gun for Dante in this one, but having variants of most of the DMC 3 arsenal back is cool.

Yes and no. King Cerberus is based on Cerberus, but there's a lot more to it than the original, in very good ways IMO.

And there is another ranged weapon, although it's not a gun.

Spoiler: That ranged weapon.

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Technically, there's two or three, depending on how you're counting, though all are basically variants of the same thing. At a certain point in the story you'll get Kalina Ann II, an upgraded version of Lady's rocket launcher. You can also find the original in one stage (Lady lost it in the fight at the start of the game), and if you do, you can use the two of them together at once. Yep, dual-wielding rocket launchers - and Kalina Ann II is actually designed to link up to the original, so they even get a fancy combined laser move. Again, very much the slow-but-strong weapon type, which makes them hard to use, especially on higher difficulties, but very awesome.

[Sermil]

Playing Hue, 'cause it was free on Epic. OK, but doesn't feel like anything I haven't seen before. It's a puzzle-platformer. The central "color" mechanic allows you to hide certain objects; many objects have a color and you can make all the items of the one color disappear from the world. There's some puzzles with making objects disappear in the right sequence, and some platforms where you have to switch which color of object disappears in mid-jump so that your target platform exists or making boulders disappear in the right sequence as they roll towards you. That sort of thing.

There's a narration which feels very standard indie game "mysterious voice telling you stuff for some reason with a few random philosophical observations." Didn't hook me at all.

I dunno, didn't really do much for me, felt too similar to lots of other indie games.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Finally got Age of Empires II (the HD upgrade) to work and OH BOY I'D FORGOTTEN HOW MUCH I LOVE THIS GAME! After breezing through the William Wallace tutorial campaign and starting on Joan of Arc, I feel like a kid again. I want to at least get my money's worth on this before upgrading to the Definitive Edition.

I'm also back into Warframe again, and I feel like I'm finally making some progress there again.

[Zevox]

So, I have been playing through FF7R on hard mode. Honestly have been surprised that it isn't as hard as I thought it would be. Oh sure, enemies do a lot more damage; and yeah, bullets actually causing hitstun is annoying sometimes. But by and large I've been able to get by doing the same things as on normal. The inability to use items at all or recover MP except through slow in-battle build-up (and Aerith's Soul Steal move) had me worried that healing would become a hugely limited resource, but it turns out that's not so much the case, it just forces you to re-evaluate certain materia - especially the Chakra and Prayer materia, which provide 0-MP healing options in battle.

So yeah, for a long while there, hasn't been as tough as I thought, though some boss fights were decently challenging. But then I hit the Hell House. Oh god, that thing on hard is insane. It gets so much harder than any other boss up until that point, especially with the extra allies hard mode throws it in its final phase. I took like six different tries and several different materia configurations before I finally found a way to take it down. Very satisfying victory when I finally did.

Oh, and on hard mode I finally finished up the last intel report I didn't before finishing normal (the one that wants you to master all 12 different magic materia), and unlocked the final summon fight. Had to move back down to normal difficulty to beat that, and it was still hard. Goddamn.

Yeah, there's some good endgame boss fights in this game. I was max level already for both of those, and with my weapons pretty heavily amped up (thought not yet maxed out - if that's even possible, I'm not entirely sure if it is) and plenty of maxed-out materia, but they were still plenty challenging. I like that quite a bit.

[Yora]

Yesterday I got to the point in Dirt Rally 2 where I no longer move the controls but move the car. I no longer think about what my fingers are doing, it's more like I am watching myself play instead of making any decisions. This allows me to pay much more attention to the pace notes and predict the road around the next corners, and that makes my racing speeds go a lot faster!

Spoiler: Aaaaaahhh!!!

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Also makes me crash much, much harder when I make a mistake.

I really regret that I didn't think to record my first race in this game. I wasn't even able to drive straight for 10 meters without bumping into anything. When I was able to complete a 6 minute race without rolling over or going over a fence, I was really proud. Now driving instinctive really is a completely new experience again.

[Rodin]

I'm attempting my first ever Steel Soul run of Hollow Knight.

I initially intended to do a "safe" run and take the easiest path through the game. Once I realized how OP the "Fragile" charms are I transitioned over to 100%. I don't intend to try and 112%, since that requires beating Godhome. 100% seems feasible though, and it lets me skip some almost impossible fights like Trial of the Fools.

I just had my first real scare of the run. My final build requires all charm notches, which means beating Grimm. I had forgotten how hard he was. Spent the latter half of the fight bouncing between 1 and 3 masks, and several times I had 1 mask left and no Soul to heal with.

I'm left with only a few zones left, along with assorted cleanup. Unfortunately, everything that's left is really freaking hard. Queen's Gardens and The Hive are both SCARY areas that usually cause a lot of death for me, and the bosses are no joke. I still have Nosk, Marmu, Galien, and the Hive Knight to fight - all bosses that took me numerous attempts on previous playthroughs.

And then there's White Palace. Yuck. Even without Path of Pain there's a reasonable chance it will end me.

I'm most scared of the Radiance. It's a really hard boss, and it's one I have very little experience with. I've beaten it a couple times, but I don't have the farm time on it like I did with Grimm. Re-learning the attack patterns on the fly with only one attempt is going to be...dicey.

[Anteros]

I'm attempting my first ever Steel Soul run of Hollow Knight.

I initially intended to do a "safe" run and take the easiest path through the game. Once I realized how OP the "Fragile" charms are I transitioned over to 100%. I don't intend to try and 112%, since that requires beating Godhome. 100% seems feasible though, and it lets me skip some almost impossible fights like Trial of the Fools.

I just had my first real scare of the run. My final build requires all charm notches, which means beating Grimm. I had forgotten how hard he was. Spent the latter half of the fight bouncing between 1 and 3 masks, and several times I had 1 mask left and no Soul to heal with.

I'm left with only a few zones left, along with assorted cleanup. Unfortunately, everything that's left is really freaking hard. Queen's Gardens and The Hive are both SCARY areas that usually cause a lot of death for me, and the bosses are no joke. I still have Nosk, Marmu, Galien, and the Hive Knight to fight - all bosses that took me numerous attempts on previous playthroughs.

And then there's White Palace. Yuck. Even without Path of Pain there's a reasonable chance it will end me.

I'm most scared of the Radiance. It's a really hard boss, and it's one I have very little experience with. I've beaten it a couple times, but I don't have the farm time on it like I did with Grimm. Re-learning the attack patterns on the fly with only one attempt is going to be...dicey.

You could always practice the boss on another character. I've seen streamers do that before when they're going for no death runs and such.

[Rodin]

You could always practice the boss on another character. I've seen streamers do that before when they're going for no death runs and such.

I considered it, but decided that would be cheating. Besides, I was so powerful that the first thing to threaten me was a DLC boss. What could go wrong?

Alas, I shouldn't have been so confident. Nosk, Galien, and the Hive Knight were easy. You deal so much damage and have so much health that you can damage race them easily.

The Traitor Lord was a different matter. He deals 2 masks of damage with every attack and I wasn't familiar with his patterns at all. My run ended there, with only White Palace and Radiance remaining to do.

It was still a very fun experience. Hollow Knight is easy enough for me now that I wouldn't normally feel at risk, but having the spectre of permadeath made it much more fulfilling.

I don't intend on trying again immediately as it is a long run, but the urge to play Hollow Knight comes up often enough that I'm sure I'll be ready to give it another shot eventually.

[Cazero]

So, I got Gears Tactics.
It's a singleplayer game demanding an Xbox live account and a ****ty porting of an AAA console game. Huuuuurrrk.
I'll need a couple weeks of cooldown to give this a fair chance.

[tonberrian]

So, I got Gears Tactics.
It's a singleplayer game demanding an Xbox live account and a ****ty porting of an AAA console game. Huuuuurrrk.
I'll need a couple weeks of cooldown to give this a fair chance.

...It's a pc-first game. The console version isn't even out yet!

Still, about that Xbox Live account, are you saying i have to pay extra money to microsoft monthly to play this game? Hard pass.

[warty goblin]

...It's a pc-first game. The console version isn't even out yet!

Still, about that Xbox Live account, are you saying i have to pay extra money to microsoft monthly to play this game? Hard pass.

No. You can buy it on Steam one time and that's it. Literally the only extra thing it requires is a Microsoft account. It is included in the Microsoft game pass, but you do not need to have this to play if you buy it through Steam.

[tonberrian]

No. You can buy it on Steam one time and that's it. Literally the only extra thing it requires is a Microsoft account. It is included in the Microsoft game pass, but you do not need to have this to play if you buy it through Steam.

That's better then. I'm going to consider buying it again.

[Cazero]

...It's a pc-first game. The console version isn't even out yet!

Wut? It has full Xbox controller support. The menus are ****ty to navigate because they're designed for the controller. Cover is divided into blocks so you don't need an accurate mouse. The localisation automaticaly picked the full french voice acting but couldn't be bothered to have an AZERTY keyboard setting by default. And it's a PC first game?
What a joke.

Still, about that Xbox Live account, are you saying i have to pay extra money to microsoft monthly to play this game? Hard pass.

No need to pay anything fortunately.
Having to make one harmed me on an emotional level. Like when I had to make a google play account to have games on my smartphone, but at least that one had a profile picture of a shark with lasers on its head.

[Anteros]

Full controller support and having to make a Microsoft account seem like pretty nit picky complaints. Since when is full controller support even a bad thing?

[Aeson]

Since when is full controller support even a bad thing?

When it means poor mouse and keyboard support, especially in a nominally-PC game in a genre where controllers are pretty much a strictly worse choice of input device.

Mind you, I have not tried Gears Tactics, but that's the impression I got from Cazero's complaints.

[Erloas]

Having many hours into Gears Tactics, I would say I can't think of any UI or mouse/keyboard controls that seemed weird or out of place to me and I almost never play anything on consoles. If there is something then it wasn't big enough to notice. I guess the one UI thing is having to go to the main overview screen in order to quit to the main menu and exit the game.

During the actual gameplay and unit controls it always seems right.

[Anteros]

I considered it, but decided that would be cheating. Besides, I was so powerful that the first thing to threaten me was a DLC boss. What could go wrong?

Fair enough. I made a similar decision when I tried for a zero death Sekiro run. Sadly it ended in a very similar way.

I really wish that game had a boss rush mode.

[Cazero]

Full controller support and having to make a Microsoft account seem like pretty nit picky complaints.

I already had a microsoft account. But I hate being sneakily forced into that "all online, always online" crap. Especialy on a singleplayer game, that's just plain ridiculous.
And as I just noticed, it also does things without informing you like configuring my computer to launch Skype at bootup, and this should be illegal. I've seen packaged malware with better installation ethics (a small tickbox that you can opt out of).

Having many hours into Gears Tactics, I would say I can't think of any UI or mouse/keyboard controls that seemed weird or out of place to me and I almost never play anything on consoles.

I've played (and enjoyed) others games clearly meant for consoles. Like the Batman Arkham games.
I've played ****tier console port. Like Megaman X Legacy.
It's the account thing. It put me in a bad mood and amplified nitpicks to dealbreakers. That's why I said I needed a couple weeks to cool down.

[factotum]

Turns out my habit of always keeping multiple save points in a game has worked out for me in Persona 4 Golden:

Spoiler

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I defeated the killer and then found that Marie had disappeared from the Velvet Room. I was a bit puzzled about that so I looked up a spoiler, and it turns out there's an entire dungeon I was potentially missing, because you need to have maxed Marie's Social Link to get it and I only had rank 9. So I rolled back to the previous save and got Marie's social link maxed out--means I have to re-do the killer's dungeon again, but I'm only losing a couple of hours; otherwise, I'd have to play through the whole game on NG+ to get back to this point, and I don't think that's likely to happen, at least not immediately.

[Sermil]

Turns out my habit of always keeping multiple save points in a game has worked out for me in Persona 4 Golden:

Spoiler

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I defeated the killer and then found that Marie had disappeared from the Velvet Room. I was a bit puzzled about that so I looked up a spoiler, and it turns out there's an entire dungeon I was potentially missing, because you need to have maxed Marie's Social Link to get it and I only had rank 9. So I rolled back to the previous save and got Marie's social link maxed out--means I have to re-do the killer's dungeon again, but I'm only losing a couple of hours; otherwise, I'd have to play through the whole game on NG+ to get back to this point, and I don't think that's likely to happen, at least not immediately.

Almost the exact same thing here. Glad I had that save, except for me

Spoiler

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I only had the social link at about 5 and was lucky there were just enough sunny Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays left to get to 10 by the cutoff.

[Zevox]

Completed Final Fantasy 7 Remake on hard difficulty. That was a roller-coaster - much of it wasn't that much harder than on normal difficulty, but when it was, oh boy, that difficulty spiked a lot. Hardest bosses were Hell House, Eligor, and of course, the final one.

Spoiler: Do I even need to spoiler this? Eh, just in case I guess...

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Sephiroth, of course. He actually had a very satisfying flow to that final fight, with the match starting off relatively easy during the period where Cloud fights him solo, the difficulty spiking a bit once Tifa joins in but not too much, and then things getting crazy once Barret arrives. He just gets more and more aggressive, and by the second half you frequently have to just let him wail on someone and switch to the other party members and hit him while he's occupied doing that. Cloud's counters are effective, but only to a point, as he's not interrupted by them after the full party is assembled, and is frequently pouring damage into you after the initial blocked hit since everything he does is multi-hit.

Then you get to his final phase, and good lord, I am not sure how you're expected to win that. I wound up cheesing it by saving Cloud and Tifa's Limit Breaks for it, and unleashing both on him managed to kill him before things got too nuts. Without that though, goddamn.

I did wind up doing it in fewer tries than Hell House or Eligor, but I wouldn't blame anyone who said they thought Sephiroth on hard was the game's hardest fight at all.

So yeah, I really liked this game, a lot more than I expected to. I will be eagerly awaiting Part 2, and probably will try the original game once again, to see if I can get through it and see the (original) story in full for myself.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Just had a real fun run in Slay the Spire as The Watcher. Got an Alpha/Beta/Omega early, and supported it by switching between stances repeatedly to pull back my one Flurry of Blows. Things got crazy when I got an Omniscience... then managed to duplicate it with that mirror relic, letting me Omniscience to double play the second Omniscience, then double playing Beta and another card of my choice (usually Wish)... and then right at the end I got a third Omniscience, letting me chain an additional time to double-play the two Omegas for a total of 200 damage at the end of each turn. Killed the Spear & Shield elites on the first turn. Also got a Strange Spoon relic from the last shop, which kept a few of the cards from exhausting in the fight with The Heart, letting me play them an extra time later.

EDIT: I can only imagine this post is nigh incomprehensible to people unfamiliar with the game, and for that matter those specific cards within the game. I regret nothing.

[Lord Raziere]

I've got into starbound. with mods of course. and I'm loving it. I've only played the tutorial and already there is so much to do and explore from just one planet, its a bit annoying having to craft literally everything in some respects but there is a level of unparalleled freedom and customization that I don't get from other games, not even from Skyrim. I'm sure that once I get past all the more tedious/tiresome bits I'll really start having fun because the quests are the most meh part of starbound, the most fun I have is just going around and building my own stuff, exploring for materials, killing things with cool weapons and so on. I don't think I've gotten to even half the things this game is capable of. the only thing holding me back is that I've got all my crafting stations on my first planet and I don't know if my teleporter has a maximum range or not, and thus whether I need to bring my crafting stations with me when I go zipping off into the stars.

[Triaxx]

Just had a real fun run in Slay the Spire as The Watcher. Got an Alpha/Beta/Omega early, and supported it by switching between stances repeatedly to pull back my one Flurry of Blows. Things got crazy when I got an Omniscience... then managed to duplicate it with that mirror relic, letting me Omniscience to double play the second Omniscience, then double playing Beta and another card of my choice (usually Wish)... and then right at the end I got a third Omniscience, letting me chain an additional time to double-play the two Omegas for a total of 200 damage at the end of each turn. Killed the Spear & Shield elites on the first turn. Also got a Strange Spoon relic from the last shop, which kept a few of the cards from exhausting in the fight with The Heart, letting me play them an extra time later.

EDIT: I can only imagine this post is nigh incomprehensible to people unfamiliar with the game, and for that matter those specific cards within the game. I regret nothing.

Ascension climb starts when?

[Zevox]

Completed the final challenge I had left to do in FF7R: the "Top Secrets" simulation match that's only available on hard mode. And honestly, I was kind of disappointed in the final fight.

Spoiler

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The Pride and Joy Prototype is the big final bonus boss there, but it was the second easiest fight of that five-boss gauntlet - only Fat Chocobo was more of a pushover. I was never in any danger of losing to it. I mean, it's weak to lightning, which I brought on all three characters for Leviathan anyway, and simply doesn't have any particularly threatening attacks aside from that big laser it only did right at the start. And you can attack its legs to knock it over and give yourself time to do a ton of free damage even though it's not technically staggered, so yeah, just an easy fight.

Getting to it was the hard part. Shiva's defensive ability, ice familiars or whatever it was, made her pretty insane until I found out that you could remove them through casting low-level fire spells, so setting up an Arcane Ward with Aerith and then double-casting fire with her and Cloud worked to get rid of them and make the fight easier - though even then I'd say she was the second hardest of the bunch. Leviathan was still reasonably challenging, though it didn't really get anything new compared to its normal fight. And Bahamut, oh my lord, hard-difficulty Bahamut was the real challenge there. The damage he does, how hard it is to take him out before he gets off Megaflare, and the fact that he summons Ifrit to help him once he reaches half health made him pretty nuts. I wound up clutching him out barely before he could use Megaflare: had him at very low health, but still too high to easily take out with normal attacks, and hit a situation shortly before he'd do Megaflare where I went for an ATB move while Tifa was extremely close to death and there was no way to heal her before Bahamut's damage aura finished her. So I had her summon my Ifrit, which worked since the fight basically pauses during a summoning animation, and then when she dropped his timer immediately went to 0 and he did his ultimate move, killing Bahamut before he could do Megaflare. Pretty satisfying way to finish him - and the fact that I still needed to kill his Ifrit even let me revive Tifa before going into the final fight with Pride and Joy Prototype, though I'm sure I'd have been fine even I hadn't.

So yeah, that all done, I think I will give the original FF7 another try now. We'll see if I can get through it this time.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Ascension climb starts when?

That was Ascension... 3, I think? Only just started doing Ascension. I'm actually really annoyed with myself because I lost an Ascension run by 2HP because I forgot the Time Eater gained 2 strength when its thing activated. I could totally have played one less FoB and Finesse instead for the two block I needed, and the Time Eater was probably a bigger threat to my build than anything in the Final Act other than bad luck.

[Yora]

Still playing Dirt Rally 2. A lot!

I think I'm even playing it more than I did when playing new Dark Souls games. Though I feel I am making very little progress now. I managed to win the tournament for the first difficult class but couldn't get past the second, and when I switched to more modern cars that supposedly have better handling (partly true), I did so bad with 4WD that I was put back down to the first level again.
Getting back to second from first was easy though. Pretty much won every race with my Golf there.

But man, four wheel drive is weird! Not as nightmarish as rear wheel drive, but I have no idea why these cars are spinning so much.