What game are you wasting time on?

[Valestein]

This horror themed ARPG. It manages to create a real unsettling atmosphere between the visuals and the music.

 

[NecroLord]

Kotor is done.
The Star Forge is swarming with enemies, so I recommend a strong party setup, a caster (Jolee in my case) and two other melee beatsticks (Canderous and myself). You will do A LOT of fighting, try to conserve some of your force points.
Bastila can be redeemed if you are persuasive (easier to do if you romanced her), just do not bring up the Jedi Council.
Malak himself is a monster, hits like a truck and has very high saving throws. Being a Scout/Guardian melee beatstick I kicked his ass rather easily.
Hurray for Revan, savior of the Republic.



Kotor 2 is a lot darker in tone, more nuanced, deconstructing both the philosophies and code of the Jedi and the Sith.
Peragus is a chore, but does have a sense of dread as you discover how the facility was sabotaged.
I did Nar Shaddaa as my first planet. Atton has now become a Jedi Sentinel (and has quite a backstory himself as a killer of Jedi), I levelled him up to 11 Scoundrel, mostly for Sneak Attack and he is an excellent companion. Handmaiden has also become a Jedi Guardian and melee monster (you have to train with her three times in order to teach her the ways of the Jedi and must be level 18). Bao-Dur is also a Jedi Guardian. Mira is a Jedi Sentinel, only levelled her up to 9 Scout (force powers are way more powerful and useful than her scout feats).
I am a Jedi Consular/Jedi Weaponmaster - 15/4. It's insane how well these two classes mesh together.
Space Jesus is heading out to Dantooine next.

 

[Kabas]

Still going thru Dungeon Lords steam ver., this game is going to take awhile.
Further impressions

 

[Hag]

After reading enthusiast reviews of Hollow Knight, I decided to give it a try. Two hours in, I find it mostly underwhelming. Level design is ok, visuals are good, soundscape is disappointing. It is not bad but not very fun either, in a what-the-point way. I basically have no incentive to play further, no objective, no punchy music, no exhilarating fights. I guess I'll play a couple sessions more now I've reached a new area but I may not even.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

After reading enthusiast reviews of Hollow Knight, I decided to give it a try. Two hours in, I find it mostly underwhelming. Level design is ok, visuals are good, soundscape is disappointing. It is not bad but not very fun either, in a what-the-point way. I basically have no incentive to play further, no objective, no punchy music, no exhilarating fights. I guess I'll play a couple sessions more now I've reached a new area but I may not even.

I feel the same. Sometimes I feel this game has been blown out of proportion.

 

[Gromlintroid]

Rolled a Sorcerer for Season 1 of Diablo 4, alright so far, only like level 25 though, seems like a lot of complaints are about the end game, which I'm nowhere near yet.

 

[Frank Capicoli]

Trying Remnant 2. Another game with dogshit scaling systems that remove any sense of character progression.

I've complained in Team Ninja game threads like Nioh or Stranger of Paradise that those games have a loot system that is fatiguing to sift through all the garbage drops for something useable, Remnant 2 is on the opposite side of the problem where 90% of what you'll find are rings that boost 5% of this or that.

When you actually do find a weapon, or material to craft a weapon enjoy grinding souls scrap for hours just to find out it probably sucks compared to the literal starting weapons. You can't upgrade armor so as the level scaling increases enjoy it being more and more useless.

2023 really has been a great year for releases.

 

[Abu Antar]

I beat the first Ace Attorney game. I have the AC Collection, which includes the first three games. The games are silly af, but amusing. There's some thinking to do, but you will probably succeed in all cases if you pay attention.

INSMNIA: The Ark is an interesting game. Very janky, with performance issues on my PC, but the setting is cool, and so far combat is serviceable. I think the perspective change is holding it back, though. I will play it for as long as I can avoid any game stopping bugs. I just had a quick look at YouTube, and there are many lets plays that got abandoned due to some bug or another. I'm not that far in. Just got a package to deliver somewhere, but first, I must explore places that have nothing to do with my objective.

Did I write that I am done with Devil Survivor 2? I don't remember, but it is done at 59h. I found the game to be more challenging at the start, but from mid-game, I had demon setups that could obliterate encounters very quickly, and in some cases, even win within one round. But the final boss was whole new level of crazy. I did beat it on my first try, but I barely scraped by, and would not had the slightest chance to win if I didn't have such an OP party. Even that party barely won it. The story was merely okay, but the characters were not good, imo. I didn't really feel that any of them were really well written. Their designs weren't much better. On the other hand, there were many cool demon designs. Music was mostly top notch, so no complaints there.

 

[Shuruga]

After reading enthusiast reviews of Hollow Knight, I decided to give it a try. Two hours in, I find it mostly underwhelming. Level design is ok, visuals are good, soundscape is disappointing. It is not bad but not very fun either, in a what-the-point way. I basically have no incentive to play further, no objective, no punchy music, no exhilarating fights. I guess I'll play a couple sessions more now I've reached a new area but I may not even.

It picks up a bit if you stick with it -- you'll learn more advanced attacks, moves, and power-ups. The bosses get more involved, too.

I'm not much of a 2D/metroidvania person but I picked this up for the Switch for my kids, and I've ended up playing some myself and watching quite a bit of them playing it. You might not end up liking it at any stage but it definitely is more underwhelming in the beginning than it is in the middle.

Since I'm posting in this thread I'll mention that I just beat Dark Souls 2 and have started Wasteland 3. Dark Souls 2 was a lot of fun; I rolled a pure caster (sorcery + pyro) to contrast with the pure melee build I ran with Dark Souls. I like switching around genres a bit so I shifted over to Wasteland 3, which is fun, if tonally "interesting" a few hours in. After that it'll probably be Jade Empire, which I picked up during the summer sale and is one of the last old school Bioware games I haven't played yet.

 

[flyingjohn]

Daemon x Machina, a mech action game.
Do you like Zone of the Enders? Well, you ain't getting anything resembling said fast mecha action here unfortunately.
Do you like Armored Core? Well, you ain't getting any decent customization or interesting bosses here unfortunately.
Do you like extremely cringy anime tropes and characters constantly yapping? The game delivers in spades, unfortunately.

There is s a ice cream shop that gives you boosts, that is nice. But I prefer Deep Rock Galactic's beer.

 

[BruceVC]

I finished Gothic 2 after about 100 hours and as I mentioned in a previous post its a highly recommended, classic PB design game which includes all the things we love about PB games which are

• no level scaling and no map hand holding
• an open world and multiple ways to advance skills and lots of side quests

I played as a Paladin and I also used scrolls in certain combat strategies. I adopted a good approach to defeat the dragons which included a Summon Demon spell and then I attacked while the dragons were distracted

G2 gets a well deserved 70/100 on the globally respected " BruceVC game rating system "

Now the next exciting question, what next to play? I have several options which I will post later

 

[tred]

After reading enthusiast reviews of Hollow Knight, I decided to give it a try. Two hours in, I find it mostly underwhelming. Level design is ok, visuals are good, soundscape is disappointing. It is not bad but not very fun either, in a what-the-point way. I basically have no incentive to play further, no objective, no punchy music, no exhilarating fights. I guess I'll play a couple sessions more now I've reached a new area but I may not even.

The same happened to me the first time I tried Hollow Knight. However, years after the first attempt I gave it another chance and was absolutely blown away.
Give it real a chance and some good hours. The map is gigantic, exploration is top notch, the combat gets *much* better in time.
It is absolutely the best of the best in the metroidvania genre. Very few games even come close to it.

 

[Krivol]

The same happened to me the first time I tried Hollow Knight. However, years after the first attempt I gave it another chance and was absolutely blown away.

Same here. At first, I thought it will be a fun, colourful game with bugs (I mean protagonist etc, not code errors) but found it quite depressing. But after a few months, I tried again and it clicked (I haven't finished it, as the game is hard as fuck sometimes).

 

[Abu Antar]

I thought it was merely okay, with a poor map.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I liked Hollow Knight well enough, but it felt very tiresome to play.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

>play SWOS in career mode
>my team does so so, lacks goal scoring power
>train against the b team
>they beat my a team 2-0 with ease, and the sub goalie, which i wanted to sell, blocks every single shot

this is me right now

 

[Krivol]

Don't give up, mate!

 

[PulsatingBrain]

Nearly attacked this lovely gal again!

Dark Souls 2 is certainly more enjoyable once you become a rolling death machine. Still the stinker of the series for me, but it's not the slog I was bracing for.

Getting screenshots off the PS4 is much more convenient when you realise that you can send it as a message, then access it on the phone app. Still ridiculous, but better than the USB method.

 

[flyingjohn]

Trying to get ff vii pc versions to work.
Newest one is the windoes store one, yeah nope.
Second newest is the 2013 steam version. It requires you to login to your square account to play. And when you "bypass " that, it crashes.
Tried the oldest one( the original 98 version) , it works when you use everything from the pcgamingwiki wiki. I was shocked it was able to be installed, especially on windows 10.

Now why would i bother with the pc version? The newthreat mod is a hardmode exclusive to pc.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

View attachment 39489

Nearly attacked this lovely gal again!

Dark Souls 2 is certainly more enjoyable once you become a rolling death machine. Still the stinker of the series for me, but it's not the slog I was bracing for.

Getting screenshots off the PS4 is much more convenient when you realise that you can send it as a message, then access it on the phone app. Still ridiculous, but better than the USB method.

that bird has such a big ass though

 

[Derringer]

After reading enthusiast reviews of Hollow Knight, I decided to give it a try. Two hours in, I find it mostly underwhelming. Level design is ok, visuals are good, soundscape is disappointing. It is not bad but not very fun either, in a what-the-point way. I basically have no incentive to play further, no objective, no punchy music, no exhilarating fights. I guess I'll play a couple sessions more now I've reached a new area but I may not even.

I feel the same. Sometimes I feel this game has been blown out of proportion.

That's what I felt years ago when someone I knew irl shilled it, it's obvious the people that made it did a lot of 'grassroots marketing' moreso than Notch ever did.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

But the first Rachet and Clank game for PC (Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart) has finally hit Steam, I noticed.

While I love this game enough that I can somewhat overlook the technical issues, I don't think this should be your first Ratchet & Clank game at all. This builds way too much on the previous entries in the series, and half the conflict will go right over your head if this is your starting point. I'd advice that you first play, at the absolute least, Up Your Arsenal and the Future trilogy (Tools of Destruction, Quest For Booty and A Crack in Time), with QFB being a shorter inbetween for ToD and ACiT).

Well, I'm determined to play an R&C game for some reason but I'll take your advice to start with a much earlier installment in the series so I don't get too confused. Did play a few minutes of Rift Apart, however, and was so overstimulated by just the visual style let alone plot concept that I decided to start earlier to sort of ease myself into it. Found a torrent with every R&C 32-bit console game released including emulators so I'll begin there.

 

[Caim]

But the first Rachet and Clank game for PC (Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart) has finally hit Steam, I noticed.

While I love this game enough that I can somewhat overlook the technical issues, I don't think this should be your first Ratchet & Clank game at all. This builds way too much on the previous entries in the series, and half the conflict will go right over your head if this is your starting point. I'd advice that you first play, at the absolute least, Up Your Arsenal and the Future trilogy (Tools of Destruction, Quest For Booty and A Crack in Time), with QFB being a shorter inbetween for ToD and ACiT).

Well, I'm determined to play an R&C game for some reason but I'll take your advice to start with a much earlier installment in the series so I don't get too confused. Did play a few minutes of Rift Apart, however, and was so overstimulated by just the visual style let alone plot concept that I decided to start earlier to sort of ease myself into it. Found a torrent with every R&C 32-bit console game released including emulators so I'll begin there.

Yeah, the opening sequence of Rift Apart is a powerwashing of audiovisual stimulation, it really takes the foot off the brakes afterwards. The first ones have a much more relaxed pace and are a lot closer to the platformers of the PS1/PS2 era. The visual spectacle builds up over time in a pace you can grasp. Compare Metropolis from the PS2 games to that of Tools of Destruction, for example. If you're going to play all the PS2 games first do start with the first one: the gameplay's a bit odd here and there but it's good fun and has an interesting dynamic between the heroes.

Of course, if you're going to play you don't necessarily need to play all of them. Deadlocked/Gladiator for example is an all-combat game whose story has little impact, the PSP games (Size Matters and Secret Agent Clank) are spinoffs as well and All 4 One and Full Frontal Assault are meant as local co-op games. The PS4 "remake" of the original game is its own beast in its own timeline, so while it might be fun it doesn't really tie into the rest of the series. It also radically changes how Ratchet and Clank originally interact, which was better in the first game.

And there's the movie, which I have not actually seen.

 

[NecroLord]

Kotor 2 is going smoothly.
Went to Onderon/Dxun where a whole civil war is brewing between Queen Talia's loyalists and General Vaklu (who is her cousin) and his supporters.
My Consular/Weapon Master is a fucking monstrosity, high Strength and high Wisdom ensure I can both cast and deal high amounts of damage.

 

[BruceVC]

So I have decided to try something different and play King Arthur Wargame as my next game. I never play RTS games because the last time I played one about 13 years ago the AI kept cheating and I always ended up losing key battles and I raged quit. I think it was one of the Kings Bounties games?

But this time hopefully the AI doesnt cheat, I have read some tips and I looking forward to this RTS experience