What game are you wasting time on?

[Krivol]

Ok, I just finished BG3 (with anti-SJW mods from this thread). It's a good game.

So, while I think it's not as bad as most codexers believe, it's nothing close to the rebirth of the RPG genre and definitely is not saving the AAA segment XD.
What is good?
- battles are just great. Amount of things you can do, throwing enemies, barrels (yeah, I know, still it's quite fun if you do not abuse it), combining spells etc.
- battles are great cos you can build your characters in a fun way - yep, my bardadin killed the Emperor and his dragon in 1 turn...
- reactivity - even if not even close to what I was told - is good, one of the best actually (you know, you can fail here and see consequences of failure somewhere else etc)
- some companions are likeable when they are not trying to put their peepees into your poopoo (Gale, for example, I also liked Karlach).
- Act 3, even if it's a sloppy, dragging piece of shit is actually a boss fight after a boss fight which is great! I already mentioned that fights are cool.
- Rafael's final fight!

What is bad?
- is this a sequel? It has nothing to do with BG1 & 2. And don't start with "BUT JAHEIRA IS HEERE! AND SAREVOK!" So what? They have nothing to do with the main plot and are just a fan service (ok, there is something about Bhaalspawns, but it's not that important and doesn't feel related to previous games in any way)
- UI... for fucks sake, UI and inventory system are outrageous! (you can get used to it, so it's just a grain of salt...)
- some SJWs even with mods are annoying
- this is linear as fuck - yeah, you can explore maps however you like, but those are not even that big and leads you to fixed plot points. It feels like 5-6 maps from BG 1 in a linear progression (with one split), even if I spent 79 hours to finish it. I am not sure if this is a con, as usually open world is a shit idea, but you know, it plays more like JRPG than BG.
- some dungeons are a struggle and boring
- Act 3 - I know I said it's full of cool boss fights, but that's it... Exploring the City was a mind-killing experience.
- the identity of the Emperor is... oh boy... why, Larian? Why?
- I don't know if this is a problem with 5E or Larian, but there are SO MANY broken builds it's just crazy.
- Resting mechanics doesn't help - you can literally sleep after almost every fight... I stopped gathering food somewhere in Act 2 and still ended the game with 2000 supplies! (I tried to not abuse resting, but you only need just 80 food to sleep! FFS!!!!)
- the game is too easy and lacks challenges - when I found the undead dragon I was like - oh my, I will finally put in some sweat! Yeah, he was dead in 1 round! ONE! ROUND!

Hit or miss:
- music... I mean I know 99% of people on the internet would kill me for not saying IT'S THE BEST SOUNDTRACK EVER! but honestly... I don't remember any track, except for two songs with actual singers (Rafael's song, which is overrated and the song of Balduran which is annoying and plays when you are in your hotel room sorting your fucking inventory!) and I can hum 5-6 song from both BG1 and 2

Overall I don't feel I wasted my time with BG3. I am not sure if I want to replay soon, even if I know there are gazillions of undiscovered things. It's a good game, just don't expect anything on par with Fallout. It's much better than anything Ubisoft, EA, Blizzard or Bethpizda gave us in the last few years. That's it, perfect 7.5/10 for me. Totally not worth 250PLN...

 

[Spukrian]

To me the free Trials of the Luremaster-addon just comes in there like an unwanted stepchild that immediately overstays its welcome.

I know that I've finished Trials once but the only thing I remember is that a I felt immense frustration.

 

[Sigourn]

Trials was a pain in the ass because of the Beholders, I remember.
I also thought the final battle was impossible, all while playing on Core rules. Then I put 2 and 2 together, optimized my buffs based on duration, and beat the shit out of the Luremaster.

 

[Hagashager]

Trials of the Luremaster had good loot, that's all the good I can remember. I remember being infuriated by that maze with the mosters that teleport you.

The Beholder wasn't a big deal to me. I do remember having issues with the Rakshasas though.

 

[rubinstein]

I finished Deus Ex: Invisible War a while back and I must say that it is nowhere near as bad as some might think.
Actually had a good time, but the game is undoubtedly inferior to the original and monumental Deus Ex, but you probably already knew that.
I use the John P texture pack mod that makes the textures look a lot more sharp and clean, this notably corrects the Oblivion-like faces of the characters in the game (remember that Invisible War runs on a inferior version of the Unreal Engine 2) and actually makes the female Alex Denton hot.
The nano augs have been streamlined, unfortunately, and replaced with biomods. I like that black market biomod which adds EMP damage to your melee attacks, very useful against bots, turrets and even laser tripwires (you can hit the emitters to disable the lasers and allow you to proceed further).

i have always been curious about this game, but ive heard its turbopoop, so i avoided it. but these are some encouraging words. i have nothing else to play really and it is not that long too, so i will check it out with this texture pack and maybe some fixes from "visible upgrade" applied.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

I finished Deus Ex: Invisible War a while back and I must say that it is nowhere near as bad as some might think.
Actually had a good time, but the game is undoubtedly inferior to the original and monumental Deus Ex, but you probably already knew that.
I use the John P texture pack mod that makes the textures look a lot more sharp and clean, this notably corrects the Oblivion-like faces of the characters in the game (remember that Invisible War runs on a inferior version of the Unreal Engine 2) and actually makes the female Alex Denton hot.
The nano augs have been streamlined, unfortunately, and replaced with biomods. I like that black market biomod which adds EMP damage to your melee attacks, very useful against bots, turrets and even laser tripwires (you can hit the emitters to disable the lasers and allow you to proceed further).

i have always been curious about this game, but ive heard its turbopoop, so i avoided it. but these are some encouraging words. i have nothing else to play really and it is not that long too, so i will check it out with this texture pack and maybe some fixes from "visible upgrade" applied.

It's only 9 hours long, so you'd only lose one or two afternoons during a weekend on it. It's very consolized in the worst way, but it's a decent game if you keep your expectations low. I didn't hate it, but I wasn't really seeing it as a DE game. At the evry least, it tried new things.

 

[NecroLord]

I finished Deus Ex: Invisible War a while back and I must say that it is nowhere near as bad as some might think.
Actually had a good time, but the game is undoubtedly inferior to the original and monumental Deus Ex, but you probably already knew that.
I use the John P texture pack mod that makes the textures look a lot more sharp and clean, this notably corrects the Oblivion-like faces of the characters in the game (remember that Invisible War runs on a inferior version of the Unreal Engine 2) and actually makes the female Alex Denton hot.
The nano augs have been streamlined, unfortunately, and replaced with biomods. I like that black market biomod which adds EMP damage to your melee attacks, very useful against bots, turrets and even laser tripwires (you can hit the emitters to disable the lasers and allow you to proceed further).

i have always been curious about this game, but ive heard its turbopoop, so i avoided it. but these are some encouraging words. i have nothing else to play really and it is not that long too, so i will check it out with this texture pack and maybe some fixes from "visible upgrade" applied.

It's only 9 hours long, so you'd only lose one or two afternoons during a weekend on it. It's very consolized in the worst way, but it's a decent game if you keep your expectations low. I didn't hate it, but I wasn't really seeing it as a DE game. At the evry least, it tried new things.

Yeah, might as well try it out.
Trust me, it's way better than any modern shit.
Of course, your probably already knew that you simply cannot beat the original Deus Ex in its genius...
Go ahead and play it.

 

[Average Manatee]

Been playing King's Bounty games recently. I've actually not finished any of them before and this time I decided to go on a binge.

KB: The Legend:
- Mage is probably the strongest here of any game (so far). 2 spells regularly deletes armies outright, especially if using Armageddon (which hurts you, but you can work around that...). This is mostly because intellect scales better here than in later games while enemy stack sizes remain fairly close to yours in power.
- Paladin and Warrior are literally joke classes. Half their shit is retarded utility crap that should be automatically available (and is in most later games). Additionally while they are supposed to be advantaged by 50% and 100% over mage in leadership respectively, in reality like 50%+ of your leadership comes from flat bonuses from exploration and plot, so they really barely get ahead at all. Warrior's better rage is barely notable since everyone gets lots of rage anyway and the moves kind of cap out at a fairly weak lethality compared to spells.
- Progression feels very constrained and natural. Slowly getting access to better units with all areas plot-locked. Could be good or bad depending on what you like. Levels are a lot lower (end of 29) and far between, stats aren't through the roof and items aren't absurdly strong. Though if you are a Mage relying on fire nuking you're gonna have a fun time finding a way around demons with 50% fire resistance around the midgame.
- Overall a bit long. It does that late game RPG thing of "lets make an area near the end of the game that really wastes players time". I ended with 477 fights, but I basically cleaned out everything so I don't think there's any more you could get (despite the end game scoreboard having a character who did 570).

KB: Armored Princess
- Mage is still vastly overpowered compared to other classes, but at least leadership being more level and class based rather than exploration/plot based means other classes can shine a little, and their abilities aren't complete crap. But still mostly crap. Rage abilities are actually pretty good now though, but again its kind of like anyone can use them just fine since the rage abilities are pretty early in the warrior tree. But you can't just nuke everything this time around, spell scaling is nerfed and damage isn't enough.
- Lots of wild and wacky units. A good number of them extremely overpowered and ripe for abuse.
- Summons (yours and your units) are just generally OP, and just shitting up the battlefield with half a dozen summons makes most battles easy. There's a mage skill that gives all summons +50% size and rushing it makes most fights trivial as you just summon stuff faster than it can die.
- Difficulty is otherwise really high though. Enemy stack sizes can have 4x the leadership you command easily. Difficulty is especially absurd for Orc groups, which are completely fucking broken with OP abilities that should take turns to charge for you but they can use immediately. You do kind of have to abuse some of the strongest stuff to win on impossible here.
- Progression is very fast, end up at level 60 or so. Game is also relatively pretty short, I ended with 311 battles and I cleaned up everything. But battles do tend to be longer just because enemy armies are so strong. I also liked how islands were small and themed around a specific race, lots of variety without feeling like you are forced to fight the same thing for hours on end. Except the dwarven area.

KB: Warriors of the North
- What do you know, mage is still better than everyone else again. This time the Mind/Green character class is the highest leadership while might is for rage, in practice there's still only about a third of the might tree that is useful, 1/5th of the mind tree, but like 80% of the magic tree is amazing for everyone.
- This game is LONG. I ended with 652 battles, and I kind of skimmed over 3 end game areas and completely ignored a 4th. A full game clear is probably 750 battles or higher, which is like TL and AP put together. There's also just way too many annoying endgame fetch quests, so I ignored like 20 of them. You end up massively overleveled and can come close to maxing out the skill trees for other heroes with all the runes you get.
- Even more new units, but they seem far more... constrained. Nothing as earthshatteringly broken as AP adds, though AP units return (a few are nerfed).
- Unfortunately the enemy is like 2/3rds undead everywhere. Get ready to deal with their annoying mechanics and immunities all game.
- Game absolutely showers you in permanent stat boosts. My end game mage has 28/23/67 with no equipment on. By comparison I ended AP with 11/14/33 and TL with 8/9/20. I think the devs really went overboard here, you just get way too overpowered with time and exploration in a way that you never did in previous games. The fact that late game enemy heroes have pathetic stats also makes me think the devs weren't really playtesting this.
- While stats are bloated, and you find vastly more equipment in this game than previous ones due to the length (and much of it more powerful), you can actually use less of it because where TL/AP has 4 equipment slots for your wife/follower here its taken up by valkyries which offer bleh bonuses. Kind of sucks and makes all of the item sets feel useless.
- There's a massive roadblock in the form of the spider boss which SUCKS ASS and prevents you from progressing past the first 4 isles. It will probably take you hours of practice and planning to beat on Impossible. Past that is when the game difficulty begins the drop off a cliff.
- There's a unit XP system added which is... superfluous and annoying. Superfluous because for most units its just generic stat boosts, while the enemy ALSO gets XP based on progression, so your stat boosts just cancel each other out. Unless your stat boost was to the already-overpowered summoning stat on summoning units, which makes more units which becomes more OP because summons are consistently OP in these games. Annoying because leveling units takes a long time and you're just hoping RNG gives you the stats you want. It really disincentivizes changing units because going through the whole leveling up process is painful, even if there's plenty of fights in the game to get it done many times over.

Figure I'll start Dark Side soon. Of the 4, it's the only one I haven't even tried before. Was super buggy on release and apparently still is pretty buggy. But from what it looks like its actually done the incredible task of making non-mage characters potentially good, with awesome unique skills. So I'm gonna have to decide between the other two classes for once...

 

[DeepOcean]

Half an hour ago I finished Homeworld (Classic) campaign for the first time.

Play Cataclysm, great gameplay and the story, at first I tought was a cheesy horror story ( Homeworld 1 still has a better story) but it grown on me because while the premise isnt that original, it turned out all those atmosphere tricks Homeworld 1 pulls off can work pretty well for horror too.

 

[DeepOcean]

Been playing King's Bounty games recently. I've actually not finished any of them before and this time I decided to go on a binge.

Those games are like cocaine for nerds.

 

[MaxPaint]

How do you do, fellow grognards.
I finally got time to try all the games I missed in the last 15 years or so.


Currently playing Project Warlock 1.
I have a very mixed feelings about this one. On one hand, I like the simplicity of wolf 3d-like level design. On the other, sometimes I think there is no level design. Egypt levels are pretty bad, with lots of visual clutter. Some weapons are clearly better than the others also and you can't respec or try them before upgrading the base gun.

 

[flyingjohn]

Beat Agent under Fire for the Gamecube. It is a James Bond fps. Big meh.

Level Design:
Level are small and short with some attempts to provide "alternative" solutions. This mostly implies either a vent/grappling hook location to bypass a guard or environmental interaction to beat enemies in the form of barrels or using a remote to activate stuff in the environment. But the majority of the environments are small arena like fps engagements. The level design also barely works with the gadgets. The gadget activation places feel like sprinkled around the map instead of being designed with the map. Oh, you are climbing something and bam, a locked y door you have to use the laser, why?
If the levels were bigger maybe they could make something work. But the final level is something else, four silo like rooms copy pasted with 2-3 goos to kill, it is pretty much a perfect description of the game. Hell the actual walk to the silos takes more time than the room.
Weapons and feel
Not very good unfortunately. Only the Shotgun and Sniper feel hefty and you don't get them for the most of the game. Pistols are peashooters unless you are aiming for the head. Anything automatic has such a huge spread that the majority of the bullets will hit the wall behind the enemy.
Gadgets
Very gimmicky. The grappling hook can be only used in specific places and there is less than 10 of these places in the campaign.The remote is used the most because you can use it it with environmental objects to kill stuff. Everything else is just boring. Jetpack is just a slightly larger jump and there is a digital lockpick and laser lockpick that should have been fused with the remote.
Campaign Quality
It is just a short(sub 3 hour) fps game that only has one stealth section and 2 driving sections to diversify gameplay. There is also multiple on rail sections that are boring. But, the majority of the game is the short, boring fps. It is also weird how they just abandon the car after the second driving mission.Also the game is piss easy because there is too much body armor sprinkled around. The only replay value is getting the most points to unlock stuff for multi.
Emulation
Pcsx2 has graphical issues, xemu has random issues with everything including heavy slowdowns(they were present on the original console) and Dolphin runs the game practically perfectly minus some fmv's being distorted.
If you are interested in playing the game, xbox and gamecube versions have bots for multiplayer making them the best version.Gamecube also has a romhack that changes stuff mostly for the multi.

 

[Denim Destroyer]

Labyrinth: The Wizards Cat
A low budget, short, real time, grid based dungeon crawler which has you play as a wizard's apprentice who is tasked with retrieving a lost cat as the final task before graduating into a full time wizard. What good things do I have to say about this game? I did not encounter any bugs. With that exhausting description of Labyrinth: The Wizard's Cat redeeming qualities out of the way let us now discuss what this game needs to improve at. Combat is a mindless dance around the slow enemy while waiting for your attack cooldowns to end. Enemy placement is never clever or numerous enough to reduce the monotony of endless circling around your opponent while chipping away at its health bar. The level design worsens this problem by having eight of the ten levels consist mostly of long narrow hallways with easy to spot traps and encounters. Unlike in Legends of Grimrock, a game where traversing the levels can be just as dangerous as the monsters within Labyrinth lacks any puzzles or hidden traps. In fact the only time I ever died was while running past enemies in an attempt to end the game faster. Lets focus on the ending itself. This game features no final boss or puzzle, simply walk through a nondescript teleporter on level ten to be transported back to the surface and greeted by your wizard master who was the cat all along. This game fails to do anything right. It is a mindless trek through bland levels populated with non threatening monsters.

 

[Gandalf]

Just about to start Ashes 2063, I'm so exctited for this.

 

[Lagole Gon]

I have finished Franko 2, now I'm just doing some achievements for challange.
The last secret boss defeated. She has an unique specific weapon throw death animation. That's a nice touch!

 

[Ezekiel]

Cool, I finished one of the motion shrines in Breath of the Wild with my phone's gyro. Replaying the game. Wish I still had all the money I spent on Switch.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I've been playing Powerslave, and the game is a lot more meh than I remembered it - although given that I'd started it multiple times back in the day but never finished, perhaps it was always like that.

Everything about it is just kinda unimpressive - the levels, the guns, the enemies. For the most part you're just shooping anubis dudes with the M60 and das it, and the maps don't feature anything particularly creative either.

I was also pretty surprised that Set in map 10 was not the final boss... but in fact the halfway boss. So far this game's been mildly entertaining if meh, but I don't see how it can hold up for another 10 levels unless it suddenly starts introducing a lot of new shit, which I doubt.

 

[gabel]

Play the Playstation version, not that awful ND remaster.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I'm not playing the remaster, but the BuildGDX port.

 

[gabel]

Play the Playstation version. :p

 

[Hoodoo]

Downloaded The Powder Toy for the iPad. Falling sand pixel physics game with alot of features including switches and power/power generation. So relaxing.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

We should be like this Chinese dude.

Grab Atari Game Station Pro consoles for $50: Play 'Asteroids,' 'Centipede,' and 'Pong' limited tine $49​

PONG! OMG!!!

FUCKING PONG!!!

 

[KafkaBot]

I'm not playing the remaster, but the BuildGDX port.

That's the worst version of the game. I'd recommend the remaster/remake, but even purists should just stick to the console versions. The Build Engine version is just a mediocre Duke Nukem 3D fangame with poor level design.

It does have some cool animations, truth be told.

On-topic: I've been playing Lamentum. It's a cozy little survival horror game with nice pixel art.

I'm also playing Hedon: Bloodrite. I'm still in the Crystal Heart portion; I've been told the game becomes MUCH better once one actually reaches Bloodrite, but I'm having quite a bit of fun already.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

survival horror

cozy

It don't add up, Cap'n.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

Been playing some older asymmetrical PvPvE multiplayer games before they get shut down. Friday the 13th is supposedly getting shut down in December which is a damn shame. That game is a blast. There's no date for Evil Dead's shutdown but the developer stopped supporting it so it's on its way out as well. Both really fun games. Meanwhile that piece of shit DBD gets to live forever. It's easily the worst of these types of games.

survival horror

cozy

It don't add up, Cap'n.

Sure it does. Horror games are like comfort food for me.