What game are you wasting time on?

[PulsatingBrain]

The Wild Hunt pose a high threat to Ciri throughout the story, she manages to stand her ground and fight them off at the battle of Kaer Morhen because she has gathered many of her powerful friends, and even then some of them are killed. Regardless of this fact, your main issue throughout this discussion has been your inability to follow a very simple story.

 

[Average Manatee]

The Wild Hunt pose a high threat to Ciri throughout the story, she manages to stand her ground and fight them off at the battle of Kaer Morhen because she has gathered many of her powerful friends, and even then some of them are killed. Regardless of this fact, your main issue throughout this discussion has been your inability to follow a very simple story.

No, the main issue is that the story is badly written. Geralt's motives aren't complex, they are just stupid.

 

[PulsatingBrain]

You are the one who was struggling to understand it a few posts ago. Not me.

 

[Average Manatee]

Let's pretend for a second that Geralt actually caught up to Ciri in Velen. What would happen? Geralt's job is to take her back to her father. But she's a strong independent woman, vastly stronger than Geralt. Would she go? Of course not, if she wanted to return to him she would have done so on her own, and nothing Geralt can do affects this. We can see that Geralt is a useless, ineffectual cuck strung along for the whole length of the game. Literally nothing Geralt does matters and Ciri is fully capable of beating the final boss by herself. The only impact the player has is some retarded C&C where Geralt being nice or not to Ciri makes her power up with the power of love or whatever. Not because Geralt actually accomplishes anything important to the plot throughout the entire game.

 

[PulsatingBrain]

That's not even remotely the fucking point you retard.

 

[Average Manatee]

The point is that Geralts motives make no sense and you haven't even presented an argument against that

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Recruited Raven, gave her Ellumyn's Bow and it's basically a machine gun. Its fire rate is just obscene. I don't know why guns exist in the setting when bows can loose like 10 arrows a second.
Does the UAP prevent that silly follower auto switch gear mechanic? I'm finding it to be more of a hindrance than a help. If you try to give a follower a gun to craft into a better gun they'll equip it and you can't use it as an ingredient, followers with high tech skill will equip magical weapons and vice versa and gun users will equip melee weapons instead of keeping it as a backup.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

The point is that Geralts motives make no sense and you haven't even presented an argument against that

It's his foster daughter.

 

[Gibson]

Underrail again - Spear/psi sombo to impale those bitches with some wizard fuckery.

S 9 / D 6 / A 6 / C 5 / P 3 / W 4 / I 7

playing on normal so i think it should be fine.

 

[Necrensha]

I give up on replaying Bioshock.
As soon as I get to the twist reveal the entire game falls apart: splicers that took 1-2 shots of the shotgun now take 5+, elite versions of the big daddys just walk through mine fields without taking a single point of damage, Fontaine won't stop talking for even 5 minutes, flashing lights and screaming on my ear constantly...
But you can just buy electric fuel and left click everything to death because it can permanently stun everything in the game. Or abuse cameras to get infinite drones. Or ragdoll everything with the wind trap. Or just enrage splicers and wait behind the corner till they are all dead.
Nah, this is way more cheesy than I remember, terrible game design.

 

[jackofshadows]

Titan Outpost. Just started and so far I'm impressed. May not have the time to sink in properly today but I'll certainly come back later.

 

[kites]

Been playing Symphony of the Night during my downtime at work. I mostly grew up on the GB/A titles but for some reason I had never picked SotN up. It’s a lot more similar to the handheld titles than I thought it would be. I beat Richter at 70% completion and realized I must have skipped tons.. now doing the inverted castle and just want to drop it. That Richter end was the perfect length. Super beautiful game, but if you try to pick apart everything like I do the difficulty is busted. I’m excited to check out randomizer mods, I think any health adjustment mods would just make the tougher enemies a slog. The only rooms I recall that gave me any real difficulty were the horrible gear rooms next to Richter with medusa head spam and their horrible switch-hitting puzzle. The gear rooms in Aria of Sorrow before Death were not good but not that bad.

Just picked up the new DS collection so it will be interesting to play through those, some of the last Castlevania games I have left to play for the first time. I will still say IV was the goat just for having the ability to control directional attacks, which this series seems to ignore.

Also playing Armored Core 3 PSP on my Retroid with the “true analogs” mod. After fiddling with the controls the game still feels clunky, and a lot of the environments are dreary so far. I haven’t found a way to speed up the sensitivity of the slow camera yet. But it has the sort of gameplay “loop” that ends up gripping me, at least for some time. Sort of reminds me of playing MH Freedom Unite.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I don't understand the blessing of Velorian. Apparently he's supposed to give you +12/20 to firearms which combined with the initial rank I put into it would put me above the halfway point for that skill, but it still seems pretty low?
I really like the Vendigroth ruins. I think it's a cool area. For a late game area the enemies seem pretty low leveled though.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I beat Arcanum for the first time. I actually found Kerghan by accident, failed to Talk-no-jitsu him into surrendering even though I had max charisma and persuasion and let my party beat him to death.
Overall, really good game and I can see why it's a classic. Balance wise it is a bit odd though. Like, the Void is end game content and the enemies there are like level 25, which is pretty low.
I think I won't go high charisma next time. Party members make the game way too easy, especially if you have the dog. Most of them are pretty meh anyway.

 

[NecroLord]

I beat Arcanum for the first time. I actually found Kerghan by accident, failed to Talk-no-jitsu him into surrendering even though I had max charisma and persuasion and let my party beat him to death.
Overall, really good game and I can see why it's a classic. Balance wise it is a bit odd though. Like, the Void is end game content and the enemies there are like level 25, which is pretty low.
I think I won't go high charisma next time. Party members make the game way too easy, especially if you have the dog. Most of them are pretty meh anyway.

Spoiler

You need both Virgil and Arronax in your party, a Charisma of 20, Max Persuasion skill and Master level in it, and, of course, the right dialogue choices in order to convince Kerghan to abandon his apocalyptic plan.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I beat Arcanum for the first time. I actually found Kerghan by accident, failed to Talk-no-jitsu him into surrendering even though I had max charisma and persuasion and let my party beat him to death.
Overall, really good game and I can see why it's a classic. Balance wise it is a bit odd though. Like, the Void is end game content and the enemies there are like level 25, which is pretty low.
I think I won't go high charisma next time. Party members make the game way too easy, especially if you have the dog. Most of them are pretty meh anyway.

Spoiler

You need both Virgil and Arronax in your party, a Charisma of 20, Max Persuasion skill and Master level in it, and, of course, the right dialogue choices in order to convince Kerghan to abandon his apocalyptic plan.

Ah, I was missing

Spoiler

Arronax.

.
Well, maybe if I go Gnome or another background I'll have another go at Talk-No-Jitsu. They get bonuses to charisma and persuasion, iirc. It probably won't be for a while though because charisma in Arcanum is OP.
The character I was using had Born under a Sign as a background, which wasn't quite as spectacular as I hoped.

How many automatons can you have in your party? The idea of a charisma 20 technologist just zerg rushing Kerghan with a full party + dog + a small army of robots is kind of funny.

 

[NecroLord]

I beat Arcanum for the first time. I actually found Kerghan by accident, failed to Talk-no-jitsu him into surrendering even though I had max charisma and persuasion and let my party beat him to death.
Overall, really good game and I can see why it's a classic. Balance wise it is a bit odd though. Like, the Void is end game content and the enemies there are like level 25, which is pretty low.
I think I won't go high charisma next time. Party members make the game way too easy, especially if you have the dog. Most of them are pretty meh anyway.

Spoiler

You need both Virgil and Arronax in your party, a Charisma of 20, Max Persuasion skill and Master level in it, and, of course, the right dialogue choices in order to convince Kerghan to abandon his apocalyptic plan.

Ah, I was missing

Spoiler

Arronax.

.
Well, maybe if I go Gnome or another background I'll have another go at Talk-No-Jitsu. They get bonuses to charisma and persuasion, iirc. It probably won't be for a while though because charisma in Arcanum is OP.
The character I was using had Born under a Sign as a background, which wasn't quite as spectacular as I hoped.

Is that the one background which gives you more critical successes but also failures?

 

[Morgoth]

After having recently finished Horizon ZD, I got Forbidden West during a Steam sale, but refunded it right before the 2 hour limit. Holy shit. The sharp fall in writing quality is brutal.

Otherwise, been playing Diablo 2 Resurrected and a little Max Payne 3. The latter didn't age well.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I beat Arcanum for the first time. I actually found Kerghan by accident, failed to Talk-no-jitsu him into surrendering even though I had max charisma and persuasion and let my party beat him to death.
Overall, really good game and I can see why it's a classic. Balance wise it is a bit odd though. Like, the Void is end game content and the enemies there are like level 25, which is pretty low.
I think I won't go high charisma next time. Party members make the game way too easy, especially if you have the dog. Most of them are pretty meh anyway.

Spoiler

You need both Virgil and Arronax in your party, a Charisma of 20, Max Persuasion skill and Master level in it, and, of course, the right dialogue choices in order to convince Kerghan to abandon his apocalyptic plan.

Ah, I was missing

Spoiler

Arronax.

.
Well, maybe if I go Gnome or another background I'll have another go at Talk-No-Jitsu. They get bonuses to charisma and persuasion, iirc. It probably won't be for a while though because charisma in Arcanum is OP.
The character I was using had Born under a Sign as a background, which wasn't quite as spectacular as I hoped.

Is that the one background which gives you more critical successes but also failures?

It reduces crit chance for both successes and failure but when it does happen the effects are stronger.
Like, my character hits for 200% extra damage when it goes off. On the flip side, when I used to use the filament sword before getting mastery I would often drop it, scar myself and one time I got bisected because it critically failed and inflicted like 50% damage on me when I was on low health.
It's probably better for back stab / rogue builds because I think they get guaranteed crits on their backstabs.

 

[NecroLord]

I like the "Barbarian" background.
"Miracle Operation" is also really good, but the penalties will hamper you in the early game, especially that Dex penalty.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Magic allergy sounds fun for a techno character.
Reject magic, embrace the certainty of steel.

I was tempted to go for that on my first run but I wanted to see what magical items were like. It was ok I guess, but I think I would have had more fun with tech overall. It seems that with magic you really have to invest in WP so you can start getting higher level spells, because that's the only way to increase MA and that's where most of the build variety in a magic build comes from. With TA you have both skills and disciplines to play with, but magic only gets spells. Which is a pity, because being able to make magical equipment and scrolls would have been fun.

 

[Cael]

Magic allergy sounds fun for a techno character.
Reject magic, embrace the certainty of steel.

I was tempted to go for that on my first run but I wanted to see what magical items were like. It was ok I guess, but I think I would have had more fun with tech overall. It seems that with magic you really have to invest in WP so you can start getting higher level spells, because that's the only way to increase MA and that's where most of the build variety in a magic build comes from. With TA you have both skills and disciplines to play with, but magic only gets spells. Which is a pity, because being able to make magical equipment and scrolls would have been fun.

Tech has more permanent +stat boosts in the game, IIRC. And there are a few spells that works independently of the magic rating (like the sustains), so you can always have a couple of those floating around.

However, if you are going for a talking Charisma/Beauty run, magic has boosts for those via items that tech doesn't, and the boosts are pretty substantial.

 

[NecroLord]

Magic allergy sounds fun for a techno character.
Reject magic, embrace the certainty of steel.

I was tempted to go for that on my first run but I wanted to see what magical items were like. It was ok I guess, but I think I would have had more fun with tech overall. It seems that with magic you really have to invest in WP so you can start getting higher level spells, because that's the only way to increase MA and that's where most of the build variety in a magic build comes from. With TA you have both skills and disciplines to play with, but magic only gets spells. Which is a pity, because being able to make magical equipment and scrolls would have been fun.

Tech has more permanent +stat boosts in the game, IIRC. And there are a few spells that works independently of the magic rating (like the sustains), so you can always have a couple of those floating around.

However, if you are going for a talking Charisma/Beauty run, magic has boosts for those via items that tech doesn't, and the boosts are pretty substantial.

Therapeutics has some really good pharmaceuticals which you can make and give you sizeable bonuses to all attributes.

 

[Cael]

Magic allergy sounds fun for a techno character.
Reject magic, embrace the certainty of steel.

I was tempted to go for that on my first run but I wanted to see what magical items were like. It was ok I guess, but I think I would have had more fun with tech overall. It seems that with magic you really have to invest in WP so you can start getting higher level spells, because that's the only way to increase MA and that's where most of the build variety in a magic build comes from. With TA you have both skills and disciplines to play with, but magic only gets spells. Which is a pity, because being able to make magical equipment and scrolls would have been fun.

Tech has more permanent +stat boosts in the game, IIRC. And there are a few spells that works independently of the magic rating (like the sustains), so you can always have a couple of those floating around.

However, if you are going for a talking Charisma/Beauty run, magic has boosts for those via items that tech doesn't, and the boosts are pretty substantial.

Therapeutics has some really good pharmaceuticals which you can make and give you sizeable bonuses to all attributes.

Permanent or temporary?

 

[NecroLord]

Magic allergy sounds fun for a techno character.
Reject magic, embrace the certainty of steel.

I was tempted to go for that on my first run but I wanted to see what magical items were like. It was ok I guess, but I think I would have had more fun with tech overall. It seems that with magic you really have to invest in WP so you can start getting higher level spells, because that's the only way to increase MA and that's where most of the build variety in a magic build comes from. With TA you have both skills and disciplines to play with, but magic only gets spells. Which is a pity, because being able to make magical equipment and scrolls would have been fun.

Tech has more permanent +stat boosts in the game, IIRC. And there are a few spells that works independently of the magic rating (like the sustains), so you can always have a couple of those floating around.

However, if you are going for a talking Charisma/Beauty run, magic has boosts for those via items that tech doesn't, and the boosts are pretty substantial.

Therapeutics has some really good pharmaceuticals which you can make and give you sizeable bonuses to all attributes.

Permanent or temporary?

Temporary (only two or three ingame hours, I think).
However, there's the Muscle Maker (permanent +1 to all physical stats, permanent -1 to mental stats) and the Brain Builder (the inverse of Muscle Maker).