What are you playing 4: HD Remaster Gold Collector's Edition Thread of the Year

[Anonymouswizard]

Oh, saying the worlds in ME1 were maybe a bit *too* empty is fair criticism, but the answer to that was to make the worlds more interesting, not dump the Mako entirely and add the probe game!

Eh, the Mako was fine as an element to shake up missions, and worked very well there. It's not the Mako I had a problem with.

I really don't think we need those maps to make the galaxy feel big. Heck, I remember the Citadel feeling tiny in one of the games, especially when I worked out just how much space the ME1 map represented. I'd much rather have a sense of scale come from the story, and honestly I fid RPGs to work better when they focus on the personal scale rather than the epic scale. If the game is about killing a dragon focus on why I'm killing the dragon.

[MCerberus]

Are you at the original WoWS RTS carriers, or no CVs at all?

In either case, get ready for suffering. If it ends up on consoles like it is on PC, it's by far the worst at low tiers, where AA mostly functions as an aircraft alert system, because heaven knows it doesn't actually inconvenience them at all. Its particularly galling because CVs start at T4 - because if there's one thing I associate with pre- WW1 warships its carrier operations - so unless you have a thing for very low tier cruisers there's simply no escaping the damn things. At higher tiers they get somewhat less obnoxious, since ships start to get catapult fighters, defensive fire consumables, and a much thicker coating of AA guns in general. Still total misery for the poor DD players though.

Don't know, not on super test and the devs are being silent about stuff.

edit, misread, we're at no carriers

It should be noted that tiers are squished on console. PC tier 1 boats don't exist and battleships effectively don't exist until console tier 3 (roughly PC tier 4), so what could happen is that Carriers could not exist until you have things like AA-retrofit US Battleships and every line of cruisers having catapult fighters.

Oh and comparing tiers gets REALLY WEIRD at the top. Console tier 7 is a mix of PC tier 8s and 9s. "Legend tier" with ships like the Yamato are time gated through a research system (like the infamous PR port, but only whales boost progression and the only time-limited project so far gives up historical camo patterns instead of ships)

[Cespenar]

Eh, the Mako was fine as an element to shake up missions, and worked very well there. It's not the Mako I had a problem with.

I really don't think we need those maps to make the galaxy feel big. Heck, I remember the Citadel feeling tiny in one of the games, especially when I worked out just how much space the ME1 map represented. I'd much rather have a sense of scale come from the story, and honestly I fid RPGs to work better when they focus on the personal scale rather than the epic scale. If the game is about killing a dragon focus on why I'm killing the dragon.

Sadly we're getting further and further away from that mentality, at least on average. If it's a big title RPG, you better believe you're going to kill that dragon, then kill the mother of all dragons, and on the 3rd game you'll probably kill the metaphysical concept of "dragon". Or something.

[Anonymouswizard]

Sadly we're getting further and further away from that mentality, at least on average. If it's a big title RPG, you better believe you're going to kill that dragon, then kill the mother of all dragons, and on the 3rd game you'll probably kill the metaphysical concept of "dragon". Or something.

Yeah, as well as 'open world' so they can flog you microtransacctions with more ease.

But I've been liking Shadowrun: Hong Kong because the initial stakes are lower than it's predecessor (I've been warned that they do jump up at the end). In Dragonfall you very early on establish that your goal is to kill the dragon before it kills you. In Hong Kong the initial stakes are 'looks like dad is dead, and you're being hunted by the police'.The scale has jumped down to an arguably lower point than the previous game began, but it's still engaging because the stakes are engaging.

I actually think that the early game, at least, in Hong Kong because the stakes are low but personal to the PC and Duncan. Yes being on the run from the police is as dangerous as being on the run from a dragon, but there's clear areas where you're safe.

Like, CRPGs seem to have done from 'primitive copy of D&D' to 'play some kind of role, which we may give you' to 'who needs to have an actual role when you can have epic^TM'. As much as Ultima 4-7 annoy me with their primitive interfaces, taking on the in-game role of 'The Avatar, paragon of the virtues' is legitimately more fun, and Ultima 4 showed how it's possible to have an engaging fantasy plot without any villain. And yes, the games were open world, but in a much less annoying way than modern open world games.

[Lord Raziere]

I replayed Kotor 1. The play through where I wild-carded back and forth between light side and dark side, bought only dark side force powers, wielded a red double light saber and dark robes, force choked, life drained and sith lightninged by my way through my foes, romanced juhani and still ended up the savior of the republic. I can do so much evil yet still be a hero, this game is forgiving. as long as I didn't go full cartoon evil technically I stayed on the light side even as I did jobs to get credits, never turned down rewards, my alignment meter was closer to red than blue. yet still somehow I'm a light sider. guess Kotor considers anti-heroes lightsided enough to put them into the lgiht side ending category.

gonna replay Kotor 2 next, you can say all you want about it being darker and such, but it is technically a smaller story about certain characters rather than epic for epicnesses sake.

[Spacewolf]

I think one of my fav open world game maps is Dragons dogma because it's small enough you can remember it but big enough that you feel progress I mean when I went back to it after probably a decade recently I could remember almost every quest chain and even most of the enemy placement. It actually helps the map doesn't have a bunch of pointless collection junk cluttering it up as well. As opposed to say Odyssey where I never even finished the game because the size of the map just got to much and was too full of icons.

[Cespenar]

Yeah, as well as 'open world' so they can flog you microtransacctions with more ease.

But I've been liking Shadowrun: Hong Kong because the initial stakes are lower than it's predecessor (I've been warned that they do jump up at the end). In Dragonfall you very early on establish that your goal is to kill the dragon before it kills you. In Hong Kong the initial stakes are 'looks like dad is dead, and you're being hunted by the police'.The scale has jumped down to an arguably lower point than the previous game began, but it's still engaging because the stakes are engaging.

I actually think that the early game, at least, in Hong Kong because the stakes are low but personal to the PC and Duncan. Yes being on the run from the police is as dangerous as being on the run from a dragon, but there's clear areas where you're safe.

Like, CRPGs seem to have done from 'primitive copy of D&D' to 'play some kind of role, which we may give you' to 'who needs to have an actual role when you can have epic^TM'. As much as Ultima 4-7 annoy me with their primitive interfaces, taking on the in-game role of 'The Avatar, paragon of the virtues' is legitimately more fun, and Ultima 4 showed how it's possible to have an engaging fantasy plot without any villain. And yes, the games were open world, but in a much less annoying way than modern open world games.

Even when Shadowrun's stakes get raised, it only reaches the city-level (as far as I remember?). It would be more jarring if it jumped from personal to world-level, for example.

Like, I remember ME3's "Shepard fixates on that one kid" scene, and that was really funny. Do that in the first game (or never), not when the entirety of existence is at stake. You lost every low-stake story hook on your arsenal already when you amped the story up to "not one Reaper, but alllll the Reaperssss!"

Shadowrun's writing can teach a lot of companies how to write an RPG, really, overall.

[factotum]

Ah, my old nemesis has reared its head once again--level grinding! For reference, my characters in DQ11 are all around level 51/52, and I've got to the point in Chapter 3

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when I'm supposed to start the trials prepatory to taking on the final (really this time) boss

. However, I can't even beat level 4 (out of 5) of the Angri-La trials, so I suspected I might be a bit underlevelled--so I looked it up, and turns out I'm probably not going to get anywhere near the endgame unless I'm at least level 70. I have a whole bunch of sidequests available but (a) a lot of them are the ones where you have to use a particular Pep power to finish them, which are just annoying and (b) sidequests don't themselves offer any XP, only the monsters you fight during them do.

So, not sure where to go from here. I suppose I could play the game for half an hour a day just to grind out the levels, but I really don't fancy sitting down and just playing it solid until I get to an appropriate level!

[Zevox]

Finished up Mario 64. I wound up ending it at 106 stars - collected everything except the 100 coin stars from all but one of the worlds (one of the early ones was so easy to get that I did it without really trying). I probably could go and do that, but it just seems too tedious.

Fun game to replay, despite the camera and occasional control issues. Those issues are really the only thing that makes it any challenge at this point in time though, it was shockingly a lot easier than I remembered. Still, I just love those worlds, and the whole setup of going throughout Peach's castle, jumping into paintings to enter all of these varied worlds. There might be better Mario games now, but I think that'll always be one of my favorites to actually play.

Ah, my old nemesis has reared its head once again--level grinding! For reference, my characters in DQ11 are all around level 51/52, and I've got to the point in Chapter 3

Spoiler

Show

when I'm supposed to start the trials prepatory to taking on the final (really this time) boss

. However, I can't even beat level 4 (out of 5) of the Angri-La trials, so I suspected I might be a bit underlevelled--so I looked it up, and turns out I'm probably not going to get anywhere near the endgame unless I'm at least level 70. I have a whole bunch of sidequests available but (a) a lot of them are the ones where you have to use a particular Pep power to finish them, which are just annoying and (b) sidequests don't themselves offer any XP, only the monsters you fight during them do.

So, not sure where to go from here. I suppose I could play the game for half an hour a day just to grind out the levels, but I really don't fancy sitting down and just playing it solid until I get to an appropriate level!

Huh, I don't recall needing to do any grinding once I got there - if anything I think I often felt over-leveled. But then I was doing every side-quest I could all the time.

For what it's worth, if you do want to try and finish it, the Dragon Quest series has a built-in way to speed up grinding: Metal Slimes. You probably encountered them a few times over the course of the journey, metallic versions of normal Slime-type enemies? Very hard to hit, only take 1 damage at a time when you do, immune to magic, likely to run away? They're worth an absolute ton of experience points to kill. The regular ones won't mean much to you at that level, but look up where to find Metal King Slimes, the biggest and most potent of them. If you go there, you can just run from any fight that isn't them until you find them. You'll need to take advantage of certain abilities to maximize your odds of killing them, though, since as mentioned, they like to run away. The best are the abilities that give you a 50/50 shot of either critting or missing, because 50% is higher than your normal odds of hitting them anyway, and they take full damage from a crit, so they're guaranteed one-shots if successful. Beyond those, multi-hit attacks are best, particularly with Metal King weapons, which do 2 damage per hit to them instead of 1. The Metal Slash ability that sword wielders might get is the last one, which just does 2 damage per hit to them - not as good as the other options, but still better than just doing basic swings.

[Razade]

Ah, my old nemesis has reared its head once again--level grinding! For reference, my characters in DQ11 are all around level 51/52, and I've got to the point in Chapter 3

Spoiler

Show

when I'm supposed to start the trials prepatory to taking on the final (really this time) boss

.

You're not even close to the final boss. You're at the final boss of the first leg of the game. You've got like 80 hours of more content to go before you get to the actual final boss.

However, I can't even beat level 4 (out of 5) of the Angri-La trials, so I suspected I might be a bit underlevelled--so I looked it up, and turns out I'm probably not going to get anywhere near the endgame unless I'm at least level 70. I have a whole bunch of sidequests available but (a) a lot of them are the ones where you have to use a particular Pep power to finish them, which are just annoying and (b) sidequests don't themselves offer any XP, only the monsters you fight during them do.

Angri-La isn't meant to be beat until the end of the post-game stuff. You're not under leveled. Or at least not enough that it'll matter. You need to be around level 50-54 for where you are. Which you seem to be. You can do all the side quests, or most of them, in the post-game.

So, not sure where to go from here. I suppose I could play the game for half an hour a day just to grind out the levels, but I really don't fancy sitting down and just playing it solid until I get to an appropriate level!

Do the fight. You don't need to grind.

[Anonymouswizard]

Even when Shadowrun's stakes get raised, it only reaches the city-level (as far as I remember?). It would be more jarring if it jumped from personal to world-level, for example.

Like, I remember ME3's "Shepard fixates on that one kid" scene, and that was really funny. Do that in the first game (or never), not when the entirety of existence is at stake. You lost every low-stake story hook on your arsenal already when you amped the story up to "not one Reaper, but alllll the Reaperssss!"

Shadowrun's writing can teach a lot of companies how to write an RPG, really, overall.

Shadowrun does hit upon world-level stakes, at least in Dragonfall, but it's still from the perspective of the personal and city scales. The BBEG's plan has consequences that change the entire world, but the perspective every other character focuses on is not 'you're going to cause a massive power vacuum and probably disrupt the global economy', but rather 'you're going to raxe Berlin to the ground'.

ME3 could have done with dropping the kid bit entirely. The dream sequences could have easily been reworked, and I'd take the catalyst more seriously if it had presented itself as an authority figure. But yeah, they'd honestly driven up the stakes to high to pull off anything low stake except as a low consequence side thing (i.e. who's Shepherd inviting to her cabin before the final mission).

I think the key with Shadowrun's writing is that they took what worked from Dead Man's Switch and built on it. There were a couple of things worth salvaging there, so they learnt to give the main character a personal stake and built up. And honestly a lot of the greatness comes from breaking RPG conventions, neither the Berlin crew or the Hong Kong crew are a cast of representatives, are intentionally missing in-setting archetypes*, and the characters are picked so that they in the most part get along. You also spend a lot of time getting to know the hub area, I can't think of any other game that puts every major shop on one map.

* Neither has a Hermetic Mage or Adept, Dragonfall doesn't have a dedicated Rigger, and Hong Kong doesn't have a classical Street Sam.


Picked up Stardew Valley again as a low stress game to play after work, with an eight button MegaDrive controller set up to work with it. Iyt just feels nicer to be using the d-pad instead of an analog stick, I'm not sure why.

[tonberrian]

Actually level grinding in endgame DQ 11 is even easier than that. To start you'll want a few pep pips (or the one that peps your whole party at once), Hero's Pep Up magic, Erik's Critical Claim (auto crit, no accuracy issues) and Jade's Lightning Thrust (auto crit, 66% hit). You'll also want a few pep powers: Hallelujah (Hero, Erik, and Jade), Electro Light (hero, Sylvando, and Jade), and Dirge of Dundrasil (Hero and Rab, both need Kasnooze).

The strategy goes like this. Get Hero, Erik, Jade, Rab, and Sylvando pepped up (you can preserve pep status by switching them out). Then save, then start any (non-boss) encounter. Use Hallelujah with Erik to double the exp gained and guarantee item drops, Pep up with Hero, use a pep pip with jade, Sylvando uses Electro Light (this can sometimes fail, and it's easiest to reset at this point). If it's successful, it'll banish the original enemies and replace them with metal slimes, depending on your level. Finally, Pep up with Hero again, and then Rab uses Dirge of Dundrasil which will put even metal enemies to sleep. Then proceed to kill metal slimes with all your most effective crit moves and anti-metal attacks. You should be able to finish them all off before any wake up from sleep, but sometimes a few can run away.

Now this requires one pep pip per cycle. And those are pretty limited... but eventually you'll level up enough and Electro Light will summon Vicious Metal King Slimes. Each Vicious Metal King Slime can drop a pep pip... and will, thanks to Hallelujah. Repeat until you reach level 99, only takes a few hours, and those can be shortened considerably with pep pips since most of the time is just grinding up pep power, though you'll only get one pep pip per cycle.

[factotum]

Do the fight. You don't need to grind.

OK, I'll take your word for it, even though another 80 hours of content sounds somewhat scary!

Oh, forgot to mention--remember the mermaid quest I spoke about a while ago? I've discovered what's happened with that in Act 3, and I'm not impressed:

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I went to the Strand to see if anything was amiss, only to see the mermaid (who died long before the point I arrived back in the present day during the timeskip) sitting there as if nothing had happened. So I spoke to her, and she said she was waiting there for her lover Kai to turn up, *as I'd told her he would*. Except that is totally *not* what I told her--I told her he was dead! I realise Japanese RPGs tend to be somewhat linear, but to retroactively change the outcome of a quest I've done just to suit the narrative is ridiculous--why give me the choice in the first place?

[Razade]

OK, I'll take your word for it, even though another 80 hours of content sounds somewhat scary!

It's worth it. The game really gets good after you beat what you might call "the main" game and a lot of the questions raised in the main game get addressed in the post-game content. Or at least, some of them. DQ11 does a really good job keeping you around the level you need to be throughout. You could beat the true final boss around level 75, which is where you're going to be around when you reach that point. Grinding is pretty easy to do once you hit a certain level and with the right team. You've already been told about metal slimes, but if you're really interested in getting to level 99 with everyone just go on youtube and look for the grind guide. Yeah it'll take you a little bit of time and yeah it'll be boring but it's not as boring as just doing tons of random encounters mindlessly. It takes some strategy and engagement.

I also don't suggest grinding until all you have left is the final fight unless you want the game to be a cakewalk.

[Cespenar]

Shadowrun does hit upon world-level stakes, at least in Dragonfall, but it's still from the perspective of the personal and city scales. The BBEG's plan has consequences that change the entire world, but the perspective every other character focuses on is not 'you're going to cause a massive power vacuum and probably disrupt the global economy', but rather 'you're going to raxe Berlin to the ground'.

ME3 could have done with dropping the kid bit entirely. The dream sequences could have easily been reworked, and I'd take the catalyst more seriously if it had presented itself as an authority figure. But yeah, they'd honestly driven up the stakes to high to pull off anything low stake except as a low consequence side thing (i.e. who's Shepherd inviting to her cabin before the final mission).

I think the key with Shadowrun's writing is that they took what worked from Dead Man's Switch and built on it. There were a couple of things worth salvaging there, so they learnt to give the main character a personal stake and built up. And honestly a lot of the greatness comes from breaking RPG conventions, neither the Berlin crew or the Hong Kong crew are a cast of representatives, are intentionally missing in-setting archetypes*, and the characters are picked so that they in the most part get along. You also spend a lot of time getting to know the hub area, I can't think of any other game that puts every major shop on one map.

* Neither has a Hermetic Mage or Adept, Dragonfall doesn't have a dedicated Rigger, and Hong Kong doesn't have a classical Street Sam.

Could be, yeah. Shadowrun's NPC cast was honestly one of their biggest strengths. It felt more like they just wrote what they thought are cool, instead of the almost recipe-like list of the bigger RPG titles: Bro Fighter, Romance Interest #1, Fun Guy, etc.

[Taevyr]

One thing I also liked about Hong Kong is that when the larger-scope, more metaphysical trouble gets introduced late in the story, it doesn't just focus solely on the local, low-level impact, but also feels like that scope is way beyond what you should be involved with. The endgame generally feels like a hail mary by a group that's completely out of their depth, which they only manage to pull off by the skin of their teeth. Which is also what makes it so great.

Dragonfall's similar, but has you prepare for that one run for most of the game: it gives more of a feeling that you're as prepared as can be, at the least. HK's more "you more or less know what's going on, and had an inkling if you read between the lines from the start, but this is still way beyond what you expected and you gotta deal with it NOW".

And the main hubs in both games are just great. You can actually get a feel for the pulse of Heoi and the Kreuzbasar, thanks to the small stories of the shopkeepers and the other NPC's, which fits perfectly with the small-scale focus on the game: you end up caring for the neighbourhood and the people in it, so the threat also feels more real and personal.

[Spacewolf]

It's worth it. The game really gets good after you beat what you might call "the main" game and a lot of the questions raised in the main game get addressed in the post-game content. Or at least, some of them. DQ11 does a really good job keeping you around the level you need to be throughout. You could beat the true final boss around level 75, which is where you're going to be around when you reach that point. Grinding is pretty easy to do once you hit a certain level and with the right team. You've already been told about metal slimes, but if you're really interested in getting to level 99 with everyone just go on youtube and look for the grind guide. Yeah it'll take you a little bit of time and yeah it'll be boring but it's not as boring as just doing tons of random encounters mindlessly. It takes some strategy and engagement.

I also don't suggest grinding until all you have left is the final fight unless you want the game to be a cakewalk.

So I decided to get this game since I need something to play and it was pretty cheap but why does it use controller prompts even on PC? Is it just the usual bad Japanese porting?

[Anonymouswizard]

Could be, yeah. Shadowrun's NPC cast was honestly one of their biggest strengths. It felt more like they just wrote what they thought are cool, instead of the almost recipe-like list of the bigger RPG titles: Bro Fighter, Romance Interest #1, Fun Guy, etc.

Yeah, while some of the archetypes do come up they're not the 'standard' implementation, and seem to be because the writers just wanted to use that kind of character. Plus I just adore Duncan, the writers actually managed to create a believeable brother-sister relationship.

Anyway, finally got back to where I was, and it looks like Craft isn't bugged this time. That museum mission is a lot easier if you've got the spells to punish grouped enemies, Chain Lightning covers a vast wealth of tactical situations. Tomorrow I'll do the NPC rounds and another mission or two.

[Zevox]

You're not even close to the final boss. You're at the final boss of the first leg of the game. You've got like 80 hours of more content to go before you get to the actual final boss.

Uh, are you sure you understand where he's at?

Spoiler: DQ11 Part 3

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He's specifically mentioned having gotten to the part where you time-travel back into the past to prevent the events of the mid-game from happening, which is quite close to the end. Unless they truly massively expanded that in Definitive Edition (I've only played the original PS4 release), that part is much shorter than either parts 1 or 2.

Oh, forgot to mention--remember the mermaid quest I spoke about a while ago? I've discovered what's happened with that in Act 3, and I'm not impressed:

Spoiler

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I went to the Strand to see if anything was amiss, only to see the mermaid (who died long before the point I arrived back in the present day during the timeskip) sitting there as if nothing had happened. So I spoke to her, and she said she was waiting there for her lover Kai to turn up, *as I'd told her he would*. Except that is totally *not* what I told her--I told her he was dead! I realise Japanese RPGs tend to be somewhat linear, but to retroactively change the outcome of a quest I've done just to suit the narrative is ridiculous--why give me the choice in the first place?

Ah, they didn't fix that in Definitive Edition, eh? Pity. Not sure if that was a bug or an oversight on their part, because yeah, it makes no sense. Even more so than what you said, because

Spoiler: DQ11 Part 3

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if you think back, that Mermaid quest happened before the point in time you traveled back to. So there's no reason it should be impacted by your time-traveling at all.

[MCerberus]

How does Hong Kong and Dragonfall measure up to Returns anyway? I've only played Returns

[LibraryOgre]

How does Hong Kong and Dragonfall measure up to Returns anyway? I've only played Returns

There's a number of technical upgrades in the engine, and I think the story is a bit tighter.

[Anonymouswizard]

How does Hong Kong and Dragonfall measure up to Returns anyway? I've only played Returns

Dragonfall has a much better story with a specific team who don't cost nuyen to take on runs, and the Directors Cut has some gameplay upgrades.

Hong Kong is just as well written as Dragonfall (at least as far as I've got), has some balance tweaks compared to Dragonfall, a redesigned and IMO much nicer level up screen, more cyberware slots, and a new skill for increasing proficiency with cyberweapons and getting a couple of extra Essence points. On the downside it hss a lot more reading to do.

Dead Man's Switch, Dragonfall, and Hong Kong all share one problem: some Etiquettes are better than others. Pick wisely.

[Razade]

Uh, are you sure you understand where he's at?

Spoiler: DQ11 Part 3

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He's specifically mentioned having gotten to the part where you time-travel back into the past to prevent the events of the mid-game from happening, which is quite close to the end. Unless they truly massively expanded that in Definitive Edition (I've only played the original PS4 release), that part is much shorter than either parts 1 or 2.

I do in fact know where he's at. Tockletown adds a ton of more time into the game. Easily twenty hours where as the regular post game is like 40. So 80, with grinding, isn't far out.

[factotum]

Um, but you literally just said grinding wasn't required?

[DeadMech]

Relatively recently I discovered I had a 2000 hour save file of factorio rendered unusable by an update that rebalanced a bunch of recipes or something. Haven't really had the motivation to fire it back up again in a bit after that discovery.

Unfortunately I have discovered what might be my next unhealthy addiction. Dyson Sphere Program. It is factorio except you pilot a mech on a Planetary Annihilation sphere world. And you can travel to different planets and stars to gather different resources. And your end goal rather than just launching a rocket to space or seeing how many rockets per minute you can build a giga factory for you instead launch parts into orbit of a sun to build a dyson sphere.

It's an early access title so buyer beware. 20 bucks Canadian at the time I purchased it. Apparently it's a 5 person dev team out of china. So far I'm really impressed. Other than a few typos I haven't experienced any bugs or crashes. Though I hear they need to work on a better way to control logistic ships travelling between stars. Haven't gotten that far yet personally but what I understand is they need a type of fuel item to make the trip at warp speed and reach their destination in any sort of useful time but they will try to fulfill a demand even without said fuel. Managing transport belt is a bit fiddly as well I find. They haven't posted their roadmap yet but that's supposed to come out soon. So far they say they plan to implement multiplayer and combat but other than that it seems mostly a finished game.

Right now in the game I'm procrastinating at making my first trip to my second planet to set up miners and processing for titanium and silicon. Since the first planet doesn't have direct deposits of. So that I can finish setting up the production for the third research item or yellow energon cubes as I've been calling them. Taking abit of a breather having just finished setting up a bunch of oil production. In true factorio fashion oil being a huge step up in terms of production complexity due to multiple outputs whose products aren't matched perfectly with your consumption needs. Right now my solution has been to pump the surplus hydrogen production into generators to be burned for power so that a backlog doesn't shut down my production entirely. Since the game's come out so recently there aren't many good guides for layouts so I'm making my own spaghetti as I go.

[Thomas Cardew]

So I just finished some achievement hunting in Divinity Original Sin 2 and found a nice little easter egg in retrospect.

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When you get to epilogue on the ship, if you kept Tarquin (your friendly neighborhood shady necromancer) alive, he talks about Gustavchen a written language that comes from a mysterious race on another world that feeds on minds. Retrospectively, a nice little nod to the Baldur's Gate 3 being developed by Larian. I wonder if he'll show up somewhere in the background.

[Cespenar]

Hong Kong is just as well written as Dragonfall (at least as far as I've got), has some balance tweaks compared to Dragonfall, a redesigned and IMO much nicer level up screen, more cyberware slots, and a new skill for increasing proficiency with cyberweapons and getting a couple of extra Essence points. On the downside it hss a lot more reading to do.

Downside or upside?

[Rodin]

Downside or upside?

Downside I'd say. Hong Kong isn't as well paced as Dragonfall. As interested as I was in the story there were a number of occasions where I wanted to get out and play the game instead of standing around in long conversations. Dragonfall did a better job of providing the background via the conversations and then showing the rest through missions.

[Eldan]

Just finished Control over the past few weeks. It's... fine?

Like, the characters, atmosphere and worldbuilding are pretty good, even if a reader of, say, the SCP Wiki or the Laundry Files (or any number of weird conspiracy thriller movies) has an idea of what's going on. But there's the shooter sections. Now, the gunplay is fun, once you get a few powers light flight, telekinesis and shield, but for my tastes, there was far too much shooting mostly samey possessed bad guys on pretty repetitive maps, and not enough monster boss fights and strange artefacts. Could have used a bit more variation. The puzzles were for the most part so easy, they might as well not have been there, too. (There's a mirror reflecting the room. Things in the mirror look different to the real world. Your character points this out. And also that mirrors mirror things. Thanks.)

Overall, entertaining enough, but no desire whatsoever to go back and do side missions I missed or expeditions.

[Anonymouswizard]

Downside or upside?

Downside simply due to the concentration. The writing is great, but between every mission there's potentially a lot of conversations, and one of the first available missions is nothing but conversations. And you have to go through them all for the good endings. So that was about two hours of reading on a screen not designed for sustained reading.