What Are You Playing 5: New Thread+

[CircleOfTheRock]

Stacking up hours on Team Fortress 2 like there’s nothing else to do, because there is, in fact, nothing else to do.

With just a few settings tweaks, it’s a really good game. Cleverly designed — each class has incentives to do what’s good for the team, and it’s team-focused enough that good communication and coordination will win you games, but individual-focused enough that, one, you can lose and still have most of the fun, unlike many other team-based games, and, two, you can play as if you don’t really have a team, and still benefit — and, mostly, not hinder — your team.

I won’t get into everything else that makes it a masterpiece, but that great mix of team-focused and individual-focused sets it apart from basically all the other multiplayer team games that I’ve also played and liked because they were mechanically satisfying and rewarding to get good at — Valorant, Overwatch, League of Legends.

Casual game’s a good game, I guess.

[Lord Raziere]

Finished NEO TWEWY:

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just as good if not better than the original.

between Rindo, Nagi, Shoka, Neku returning and such TWEWY once again successfully gives me characters that I as an introvert can personally relate to.

Josh is still a prick, and acts cool even though he only came in at the last second and did absolutely nothing except save Shoka in the most jerkish way possible. 10/10 always love to hate and hate to love.

Sho is as lovably crazy and evil as always, nice to see him back, he is like this series Joker or something. you know your getting quality evil when he is involved.

we finally get to see Shiki's real form! yay! she is cute just the way she is, no need for her friend's looks.

the way the final boss is gotten to was a bit strange but fits: the final boss was not Shiba.....nor was it Tanzo Kubo- he technically wasn't even fought- it was the noise made of Rindo's time traveling that was the final one. his final boss was literally facing the manifestation his own decisions or lack of them and having to redo everything, rather than directly facing an angel or whatnot.

I'mma be honest, I did not see Shoka being swallow coming. I thought it was Tsugumi or Rhyme.

and most interestingly the game sheds some light on a few interesting things about this world:
-Angels can be tasked to cleanse places and have jobs "Executor" or "Purifier"
-exorcism removes a person from the world across all of time, effectively retconning them out of existence. the fact that Kubo wasn't fought ourselves but had be removed from time itself by a higher being we have no real way to comprehend speaks volumes about the gap of power between a player and the angels.
-Josh apparently has a Father and Mother. this is terrifying on many levels
-Angels can apparently gift powers to players and reapers beyond what they are normally allowed as shown with Kubo empowering both Shiba and Rindo.
-Haz is apparently Shinjuku's composer. apparently Composers are just all jerks in some form or other.
-and the Angels.....are unhappy with how all this turned out and thinks Shibuya should be destroyed, so they turned a blind eye to Kubo's actions, because Shibuya is impure in their eyes. hm. seems like there might a TWEWY three coming someday....

So yeah, its great. Next I'll play.....monster hunter rise I think, now that I have it on Switch.

[Zevox]

Finished NEO TWEWY:

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-Josh apparently has a Father and Mother. this is terrifying on many levels

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Not necessarily. Remember that Reapers are recruited from Players who win the game, then promoted up the ranks if they do well enough. And Joshua did explicitly suggest that Neku could aim to become the next Composer if he wanted to. Most likely Joshua himself was once a normal human, and his parents are (or were, depending on how long ago that was) just normal people.

But yeah, Neo TWEWY was great. Honestly, if I had to pick a personal "game of the year" for last year, that'd probably be it.

For myself, I decided I was in the mood for a more strategy style of game, so instead of moving to SMT5 like I'd planned, I started a new Fire Emblem: Three Houses file (Black Eagles, since I haven't done Crimson Flower since my first time through). But I don't think I want to go into the craziness that is Maddening difficulty right now, so I'm going to do a hard mode run with some restrictions instead. For one, I did a straight New Game, so no New Game+ bonuses. For another, I'm making myself use only only Bow and Gauntlet classes (with the sole exception of Dancer, and I still won't let that use swords). If it doesn't have one of those two as one of its main weapons (i.e. it's required to enter the class), it's out. So I'll have much more limited magic - only Byleth's special class, my one Dancer (who I think will be Edelgard, so that I don't exploit it too much with a strong mage like Dorothea), and War Monk qualify - and my melee damage capability will be naturally lower, making armored enemies a bigger obstacle. Should be interesting, forcing some characters into classes I wouldn't normally give them, and making healing items more important.

[Zombimode]

Spellforce 2 is much more RPG-ish than 1, with much greater focus on quests and characters and stuff. It does the Standard Fantasy RPG Plot where you unite all the races to fight the evil dudes quite well, in no small part because you actually get to fight a big battle. I seem to remember it having a reasonable number of decisions that at least sort of matter. Also the voice acting is less likely to cause your brain to shut down via sheer awfulness.

Spellforce 3 is just flat out an RPG, except with RTS battles. They ditched the close in Neverwinter Nights style character controls, which I kinda miss. But honestly they're clunky and antiquated enough at this point, just having the game be a top down RPG works well enough, even if you do lose the fun of jogging around those huge RTS maps and watching the sun rise.

Ok, I'm looking foreward to them, then
The close camera is not a big loss for me. I used it for about 5 minutes in the prologue. After that my impression was that it didn't really work well (to static, and the selection logic for objects on the map seemed to assume the north-facing isometric view - as such selection and movement orders would often "hit" the wrong target).

Halo Infinite is really fun if you decide to check it out. The story is probably even worse, but the gameplay is fun!

Maybe at some point in the future. But for now I will probably stay away from 343 Studios Halo content.
The next Halo game that I could see myself playing is Halo Wars 2. But that is from Creative Assembly


On topic: finished Siege of Avalon on the weekend. That was fun! Nice classic RPG from 20 years ago. Nothing to ambitous but it succeeded at its goal of being a game that feels like a written story.
Your character's personality was mostly set (as is your gender - despite the misleading choice you can make at character creation ) but it fitted the narrative.
I liked that the NPCs reacted in a more believable manner to your exploits: pretty much from the second chapter and onward everybody is pretty much like "Wow, this guy is dope!"

Sadly, the ending was anticlimatic. Not just the final boss fight (who died from a single arrow while trying to hide in the top-left corner of the screen...), but there was also very little in terms of epilogue.

[Anteros]

Monster Hunter Rise is out for PC. It's not as good as World...but it's still a Monster Hunter game, so it's still damn good. The world feels smaller and less alive, which is definitely a consequence of the game originally being designed for the Switch, but the monsters and the hunts themselves are still great. It feels a little easier than World also, but that may just be because I'm still in low rank.

[DigoDragon]

I opened up my game of Animal Crossing New Leaf and I find myself wishing Isabelle could use her Smash moves on some of these residents, because I got one neighbor who could really use a stop sign to the face. :P

[MCerberus]

With the leaks about the last Total Warhammer 3 faction I was going to attempt to finally do a Warriors of Chaos run on TW2

Then I remember how much I hate horde factions and how they're so bad CA even un-horded a faction during an update.

[Lord Raziere]

Me: Beats Chaos Witch Quelagg in two tries after not playing dark souls in like a long time

Also me: repeatedly fails to get out of the swamp and dies trying to get off that stupid water wheel elevator by falling off it.

Just another day in Dark Souls!

[factotum]

Also me: repeatedly fails to get out of the swamp and dies trying to get off that stupid water wheel elevator by falling off it.

Gravity is truly the end boss of almost all video games...

[Eldan]

Still playing Sunless Skies. Increasingly impressed with just how much stuff there is in this game. I feel like in Sunless Sea, one could conceivably run out of new quests to try in a reasonable timeframe. Most ports had, like, one to three. This game just keeps throwing more and more and more quests at me, and all of it is fascinating and requires sailing around, gathering resources, talking to people, making decisions, joining groups. That's without thinking of all the stuff I'm missing out on because I only play one captain, with one set of affiliations and stats. Or anything in the Blue Kingdom, which I've barely seen so far.

This game is deceptively huge.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Gravity is truly the end boss of almost all video games...

Elevator and arena edge bosses concur.

Looking at you, FFXIV (especially RDM, DRG, and now RPRs with their "lunge/flip backward a long way" abilities). Lots of abilities don't kill by themselves, but do knock you off if they hit you. The landslides!

[Lord Raziere]

Yeah I defeated the iron golem boss and got to Anor Londo, and iron golem wasn't that hard in its movements, it was the fact that if you made a single mistake its attacks would send you flying off its arena to the ground below, killing you in one hit. so its less that the boss was hard and more that it was a hard location to fight the boss IN. because I guarantee you I'd have far less deaths if the boss was fought on even ground.

also the bandit knife is doing work with its bleed, especially against bigger enemies with big defenses. just knowing that I can pepper an enemy with enough hits that they will suddenly take a chunk of damage just because really feels good.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yeah I defeated the iron golem boss and got to Anor Londo, and iron golem wasn't that hard in its movements, it was the fact that if you made a single mistake its attacks would send you flying off its arena to the ground below, killing you in one hit. so its less that the boss was hard and more that it was a hard location to fight the boss IN. because I guarantee you I'd have far less deaths if the boss was fought on even ground.

The Titan fight in FFXIV (Inb4 "which titan fight, there are 4") is difficult entirely for this reason. None of the mechanics actually hit that hard or particularly hard to avoid, but most of them have big knockbacks. And he progressively breaks the platform, so you have less and less room for error. On the harder versions, the landslide maneuver hits all but a few tiny areas of the platform and if you fail you'll be yeeted. At least most of them are telegraphed, but you don't have tons of time to respond.

And unlike most of the later fights (where if you're yeeted your body comes back to the top to be able to be rezzed), the early Titan fights don't. You fail and you're out. They're not exactly fun when you have larger amounts of latency.

[MCerberus]

The Titan fight in FFXIV (Inb4 "which titan fight, there are 4") is difficult entirely for this reason. None of the mechanics actually hit that hard or particularly hard to avoid, but most of them have big knockbacks. And he progressively breaks the platform, so you have less and less room for error. On the harder versions, the landslide maneuver hits all but a few tiny areas of the platform and if you fail you'll be yeeted. At least most of them are telegraphed, but you don't have tons of time to respond.

And unlike most of the later fights (where if you're yeeted your body comes back to the top to be able to be rezzed), the early Titan fights don't. You fail and you're out. They're not exactly fun when you have larger amounts of latency.

speaking of terrain, there's a beard boy whose extreme version would like you to know water conducts electricity
Oh and it's level 50 so as a white mage you don't have your core mechanic yet.

[Cygnia]

Taking a break from grinding in FF7 for a little Kittens & Yarn.

[Wookieetank]

Finally finished out SMT 5 over the weekend, and was very pleased over all. Managed to get the secret ending; thanks to SMT 4, bit compulsive about completing side quests these days in SMT games. While I did miss the dungeon crawling aspect, the open world exploration setup was fun and overall an enjoyable change of pace. Biggest complaint is that they managed to make certain assistant NPCs just as annoying as Navi ("Hey Hey", "Hey Hey", ad naseum).

Started back on Xenoblade Chronicles 2 now, and am thoroughly sidetracked by exploring. The art direction is just fantastic for this game, and I love getting to see what new and wild things are around the next corner. I feel XC 1 has a better combat system, a lot of sitting around waiting in XC2 for skills to charge, but at least its flashy.

[Sermil]

⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜
⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

[Anonymouswizard]

Picked up XVOM Enemy Unknown and Enemy Within on Steam, and I've been playing the latter. I'd forgotten how difficult the early game can be, it's not even the combat difficulty causing me to lose several Sergeant.ranked agents. It's more the sheer number of hoops I have to jump through to get new satellites up, which is both causing more panic and causing me to get fewer materials. But everything's progressing smoothly, except for the game giving me yet another Heavy instead of an Assault or Support.

Not installed Long War yet, I want to complete a vanilla playthrough first.

[Cygnia]

Finished Kittens & Yarn. It's an adorable time waster. Now I need to get back to level/materia grinding on FF7 before I try facing Emerald & Ruby Weapons (and, oh yeah, Sephiroth too, I guess )

[Kantaki]

Started playing Pokemon Legends.
It's really fun so far.
Certainly does the open world part better that Sword/Shield.
Can we keep that part for future games please?

More involved Dex is neat too, even if it comes down to busy work.
Makes it feel more like actually helping those guys researching.

Same with the crafting. Having to craft your own stuff drives home that this is a different era.
Hillariously the medicine was actually better in the past.
(Basic potion about thrice as effective... Explains how Nurse Joy heals you for free, I guess.
Or it's because the berries are more potent. That would work too.)


Funniest part so far was the "what are Pokémon? dialogue option.
Having more to say than yes and no should stay too.

Less sure how I feel about all those familiar faces and names in my Poké-past isekai adventure.
My literal first reaction to the research team's boss lady was "punch him her in the face before its to late!"
On the other hand, this might be the closest I'll ever get to joining the villains.

[Cespenar]

Trying my hand at Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, and so far I'm impressed. After Kingmaker, they apparently learned how to write in a "if not great, then acceptable from a normal CRPG" tier of writing. Also, the balance seems to be closer to BG2 levels of slightly enjoyable imbalance, rather than the Kingmaker levels of, "oh, we just slapped 10 levels on this monster for no reason" kind. Though I haven't seen Act 3 yet, where there are apparently such cases.

The Heroes-like crusade parts seem to be a little unnecessary IMO, and so are like 70% of all battles in the game, but eh, it scratches the D&D itch, so whatchugonnado?

[warty goblin]

The drip feed of unneccessary encounters makes it really, really hard for me to get into Wrath of the Righteous. I love the look and feel of the game, I dig that it's just gonzo high fantasy nonsense, but getting anywhere takes forever because every thirty feet I have to kill another couple irrelevant dudes. Which is either very slow in RTP mode, or agonizingly slow in turn based mode, thanks to a walking speed just this side of partially paralyzed land snail.

Either of these would annoy me in a game paced around fewer, more complex fights, but WotR seemed like it was built around lots of pretty easy, disposable encounters. And I just don't have the time or patience for that sort of encounter design anymore.

[Anteros]

The drip feed of unneccessary encounters makes it really, really hard for me to get into Wrath of the Righteous. I love the look and feel of the game, I dig that it's just gonzo high fantasy nonsense, but getting anywhere takes forever because every thirty feet I have to kill another couple irrelevant dudes. Which is either very slow in RTP mode, or agonizingly slow in turn based mode, thanks to a walking speed just this side of partially paralyzed land snail.

Either of these would annoy me in a game paced around fewer, more complex fights, but WotR seemed like it was vuilt around d lots of pretty easy, disposable encounters. And I just don't have the time or patience for that sort of encounter design anymore.

Plus the loading screens. Want to do anything on the world map? Move for 10 seconds, face a 30 second loading screen, kill 3 mobs, 30 second loading screen to leave. Repeat.

Same as in a city. Move 10 feet. Enter building. 30 second loading screen. Spend 5 seconds in building and leave. 30 second loading screen. It's unbearable. Especially in later acts as the screens get longer. Even on a SSD I felt like I was spending at least half of my play time staring at loading screens.

There's an absolutely fantastic game in there somewhere...but the amount of bugs, tedium, and bizarre design choices you have to slog through to get to it are completely ridiculous.

[MCerberus]

Started playing Pokemon Legends.
It's really fun so far.
Certainly does the open world part better that Sword/Shield.
Can we keep that part for future games please?

More involved Dex is neat too, even if it comes down to busy work.
Makes it feel more like actually helping those guys researching.

Same with the crafting. Having to craft your own stuff drives home that this is a different era.
Hillariously the medicine was actually better in the past.
(Basic potion about thrice as effective... Explains how Nurse Joy heals you for free, I guess.
Or it's because the berries are more potent. That would work too.)


Funniest part so far was the "what are Pokémon? dialogue option.
Having more to say than yes and no should stay too.

Less sure how I feel about all those familiar faces and names in my Poké-past isekai adventure.
My literal first reaction to the research team's boss lady was "punch him her in the face before its to late!"
On the other hand, this might be the closest I'll ever get to joining the villains.

"We're making pokemon feel like an adventure again, here's your adorable starter and best friend from Gold and you can pet him"
Is pretty much pumping the happy chemicals through my brain

[Cespenar]

The drip feed of unneccessary encounters makes it really, really hard for me to get into Wrath of the Righteous. I love the look and feel of the game, I dig that it's just gonzo high fantasy nonsense, but getting anywhere takes forever because every thirty feet I have to kill another couple irrelevant dudes. Which is either very slow in RTP mode, or agonizingly slow in turn based mode, thanks to a walking speed just this side of partially paralyzed land snail.

Either of these would annoy me in a game paced around fewer, more complex fights, but WotR seemed like it was built around lots of pretty easy, disposable encounters. And I just don't have the time or patience for that sort of encounter design anymore.

That's why I liked Solasta so much at first -- their encounter designs were virtually unmatched by its competitors. But then the lack of effort in everything else kind of wore me out eventually.

Plus the loading screens. Want to do anything on the world map? Move for 10 seconds, face a 30 second loading screen, kill 3 mobs, 30 second loading screen to leave. Repeat.

Same as in a city. Move 10 feet. Enter building. 30 second loading screen. Spend 5 seconds in building and leave. 30 second loading screen. It's unbearable. Especially in later acts as the screens get longer. Even on a SSD I felt like I was spending at least half of my play time staring at loading screens.

There's an absolutely fantastic game in there somewhere...but the amount of bugs, tedium, and bizarre design choices you have to slog through to get to it are completely ridiculous.

Yep, more or less my experience as well. I came pretty close to alt-f4'ing after a "crusade fight" which lasted 30-something turns of mindless left-clicking, mostly consisting of my troops failing to damage a unit of gargoyles(?) or whatever and vice versa.

I'm at peace with probably not finishing the game at any rate, but I'm trying to squeeze out all the fun juices out of the game's very, very fibrous flesh.

[warty goblin]

Plus the loading screens. Want to do anything on the world map? Move for 10 seconds, face a 30 second loading screen, kill 3 mobs, 30 second loading screen to leave. Repeat.

Same as in a city. Move 10 feet. Enter building. 30 second loading screen. Spend 5 seconds in building and leave. 30 second loading screen. It's unbearable. Especially in later acts as the screens get longer. Even on a SSD I felt like I was spending at least half of my play time staring at loading screens.

There's an absolutely fantastic game in there somewhere...but the amount of bugs, tedium, and bizarre design choices you have to slog through to get to it are completely ridiculous.

That gave me Neverwinter Nights 2 flashbacks; I swear that game's loading screens had loading screens.

That's why I liked Solasta so much at first -- their encounter designs were virtually unmatched by its competitors. But then the lack of effort in everything else kind of wore me out eventually.

Yeah, Solasta's good encounters, where the enemies have cool abilities and the terrain is complex, are just fantastic. Probably the best turn based tactics fights I've had in a game. Unfortunately the game also has a lot of phoned in fights against the same enemies in the same uninteresting environments, again leading to fatigue and boredom.

I suppose the problem is that in a tactics game, the only interesting/interactive thing the designers can put in a space is a fight. And unless you want a reputation for genuine savagery, most of them can't be that difficult for the average player. So we get lots of rooms with lots of boring fights in them.

Unfortunately I think the only cure for this is to just design games to last like 20 hours, tops, with an absolute minimum of repetition in that time. Since that's obviously not what rpg players as a whole want, I suspect I'm gonna continue to not get on very well with the genre.

[Anonymouswizard]

Unfortunately I think the only cure for this is to just design games to last like 20 hours, tops, with an absolute minimum of repetition in that time. Since that's obviously not what rpg players as a whole want, I suspect I'm gonna continue to not get on very well with the genre.

On the other hand I think there is a market for the short, linear RPG experience relying on a mixture of illusionism and pacing. I think we need 20 hour RPGs in addition to 40, 80, and 100 hour RPGs.

Like I'm sorry TES and Fallout fans, your open world's bore me and I tend to engage with the linear plot and maybe a couple of questlines. I don't think I've finished a single TES game and I've only completed the main (non-expansion) campaign of Fallout 3, not even NV or 4 (although that's because NV is the one I like to mess around with and restart occasionally with new mods).

But then again the entire industry has moved against my tastes, with massive games boasting hundreds of hours of play. Maybe it'll swing back around to smaller experiences across the board in thirty years, who knows?

[Lord Raziere]

I mean the pure open world stuff isn't really there either?

Skyrim is 10 years old. Fallout 4 came out in 2015 and is seven years old. NV is older than both.

Sure you can point to something like the Witcher 3 or Breath of the Wild being more recent, but they lack the character customization that really makes it worth it. they act open world, but are really about this specific character with a specific plot but with a looooooooooot of sidequests. the pure open world gaming your talking about is last gen. whats going on is this weird hybrid where they take open world traits and apply it to various franchises that don't need it/shouldn't have it in my opinion. if I want an open world, let me play a blank slate I can fill in darn it.

[LibraryOgre]

Sure you can point to something like the Witcher 3 or Breath of the Wild being more recent, but they lack the character customization that really makes it worth it. they act open world, but are really about this specific character with a specific plot but with a looooooooooot of sidequests. the pure open world gaming your talking about is last gen. whats going on is this weird hybrid where they take open world traits and apply it to various franchises that don't need it/shouldn't have it in my opinion. if I want an open world, let me play a blank slate I can fill in darn it.

TBH, that's always been my line between an "RPG" and an "adventure game". In an RPG, you are playing a unique character that you created, even if they have certain mandatory background information (q.v. Fallouts, Elder Scrolls, Baldur's Gate, Pathfinder). This would even include Mass Effect because, while you are always playing "Commander Shepard", you're playing YOUR Commander Shepard, not the same Commander Shepard everyone else gets.

In an adventure game, you're playing a set character created by the game designer... Witcher and many Zelda games. Both will include player-chosen interaction with NPCs (which makes Borderlands NOT an RPG, since your interaction is pretty much "Walk up and have them talk at you.") Most will have some level of inventory management and character advancement.

[Anonymouswizard]

I mean the pure open world stuff isn't really there either?

Skyrim is 10 years old. Fallout 4 came out in 2015 and is seven years old. NV is older than both.

Sure you can point to something like the Witcher 3 or Breath of the Wild being more recent, but they lack the character customization that really makes it worth it. they act open world, but are really about this specific character with a specific plot but with a looooooooooot of sidequests. the pure open world gaming your talking about is last gen. whats going on is this weird hybrid where they take open world traits and apply it to various franchises that don't need it/shouldn't have it in my opinion. if I want an open world, let me play a blank slate I can fill in darn it.

You're not really getting my point. I haven't played any modern AAA games to any significant degree because I discovered open world's bore me years ago. The change has been to go from 'snoozrfest' to 'snoozefest for different reasons'.

Like yes, a generation or two ago Open World meant something different. It was either something with a lot of character customisation and built 'questlines' like TES or it was focused on having a lot of varied challenges like Saint's Row (and I guess GTA? Never got past early missions in the GTA games I've played because of the difficulty). But that doesn't mean the open world's of today and yesterday weren't boring.

I mean, if you're going to do an open world, at least design missions that let you interact with it. Setpieces that cut it off, like a castle defence or bank heist, but not every mission.