What game are you playing?

[rusty_shackleford]

Doing another playthrough of Red Dead Redemption 2.

The Ultimate Edition, a $100 game, is on sale for $20, an 80% discount, until September 8.

The Ultimate Edition is on sale for $0 and has been for years

Not going to endorse giving your munnies to people that hate you

[WaterMage]

Playing DDO. I am loving Alchemist in that game. Best homebrew class ever; so much cool stuff. You can transform enemies into gold statues Balthasar Gelt style, and you can turn them into frogs. Your vials hit like an automatic grenade launcher, and you have so many cool, thematic, and iconic spells. I'm honestly liking it much more than SOR/WIZ/WLK, my previously played classes.

[rusty_shackleford]

Playing DDO. I am loving Alchemist in that game. Best homebrew class ever; so much cool stuff. You can transform enemies into gold statues Balthasar Gelt style, and you can turn them into frogs. Your vials hit like an automatic grenade launcher, and you have so many cool, thematic, and iconic spells. I'm honestly liking it much more than SOR/WIZ/WLK, my previously played classes.

IIRC I told you to try out alchemist way back, it was my favorite class when I played. Very well designed.

[Nemesis]

Doing another playthrough of Red Dead Redemption 2.

The Ultimate Edition, a $100 game, is on sale for $20, an 80% discount, until September 8.

The Ultimate Edition is on sale for $0 and has been for years

Not going to endorse giving your munnies to people that hate you

Pirating is always an option, yes.

[WaterMage]

IIRC I told you to try out alchemist way back, it was my favorite class when I played. Very well designed.

Yep. But I sadly didn't tested earlier because I was assuming that would be like PFKM Alchemist. My unique critique is that. Do I really need 3 past lives as cleric to maximize my conjuration DC?

[WaterMage]

Decided to play again Warsword Conquest. As a Golden Wizard, it's the first time not being a Celestial Wizard in the mod. So, I enlisted in Karl Franz's army while I was getting money to buy spells. I couldn't even buy the cheapest spell with my early game money. And while I don't have magic, I would be using firearms. 7 in-game days of nothing; he stayed in Altdorf doing nothing. He finally moves. Starts to run around Altdorf while chaos is besieging our northern cities. He finally, after two in-game weeks, starts to besiege another town. Gives up to go to a feast in Altdorf. Finally, after nearly 20 in-game days... he attacks a town in Sylvannia. No ladder or siege equipment spawned. And my save is before the siege.

Try again. The game crashes in character creation. Try again, this time Karz Franz just launched a siege on a Sylvannia castle. I'm in my 5th kill with the starting pistol. Picked a powerful Nuln rifle from the ground and more cartridges. Finally will level up and get money for my metal spells and ... The game crashes on my 20th kill.

I like Warhammer, but I will be playing DDO the rest of this weekend. Maybe Azyr is punishing me for using Chamon in this run. Who knows.

[Brother Michael]

Decided to play again Warsword Conquest. As a Golden Wizard, it's the first time not being a Celestial Wizard in the mod. So, I enlisted in Karl Franz's army while I was getting money to buy spells. I couldn't even buy the cheapest spell with my early game money. And while I don't have magic, I would be using firearms. 7 in-game days of nothing; he stayed in Altdorf doing nothing. He finally moves. Starts to run around Altdorf while chaos is besieging our northern cities. He finally, after two in-game weeks, starts to besiege another town. Gives up to go to a feast in Altdorf. Finally, after nearly 20 in-game days... he attacks a town in Sylvannia. No ladder or siege equipment spawned. And my save is before the siege.

Try again. The game crashes in character creation. Try again, this time Karz Franz just launched a siege on a Sylvannia castle. I'm in my 5th kill with the starting pistol. Picked a powerful Nuln rifle from the ground and more cartridges. Finally will level up and get money for my metal spells and ... The game crashes on my 20th kill.

I like Warhammer, but I will be playing DDO the rest of this weekend. Maybe Azyr is punishing me for using Chamon in this run. Who knows.

If you’re going to freelance, you should never do it in the ruler’s army. They all behave like this. Joining someone with border territories works better in my experience.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

A few days ago on a whim I reinstalled Warframe (last played when The Sacrifice and the Venus open world map came out, I think in 2018). I love the space fantasy and the baroque aesthetics. Ornate gilded robosamurai and robowizards fight against clone armies, corpo cults, zerg, god robots, and evil immortal humans who look like alien greek or roman gods. Very unique.

It has occurred to me that Warframe is I think the only high production value RPG in which you do not play as any human or human-esque looking character. You play as organic robots with no mouths or eyes or "face". And the monetization model is partly based off of selling people these inhuman looking characters. When the conventional wisdom that League of Legends and gacha games found was that if you are making your money off of selling individual characters, you want to make them as conventionally attractive as possible (which was why Riot stopped making monster heroes after a while).

► Lots of images

I think part of the reason why it works is because the rest of the characters in this game look uglier. Ugly Grinner clones, corpos in ridiculous tacky outfits, zerg with models that are generally not very cool compared to StarCraft Zerg models or tabletop Tyrannid models. Even the regular human characters have unattractive faces and uncool outfits. So in comparison, the Warframes are probably the most visually appealing "characters" in the game.

I had to do a lot of research to figure out how to build my favorite Warframe "correctly". The game is not easy to understand at a glance. You have crit chance and crit damage, but then you also have six different elemental types of damage (corrosion, magnetic, radiation, blast, gas, and viral)... and then you have a status chance for these effects to be applied. Oh and then there are three types of melee weapon damage (slash, puncture, impact). And it is not easy to tell if you are supposed to be trying to stack all of this, or focus on one, and what is the correct balance of the ratios/numbers because you have limited mods slots. Etc. And then there are a lot of subtleties to the mod interactions that requires extensive online research to understand if this mod that gives you a bonus if you lose HP procs with this other mod that causes you to lose HP... etc.




I am reminded of a conversation I had with a coworker last week about how these modern RPGs after Diablo 2 have lost the plot and have become so ludicrously overcomplicated that you need a PHD to understand them. And it doesn't add that much fun to the experience when most of these customization options are illusory, and really you are going to go for the mandatory build points each time (highest damage multipliers, etc). Makes me appreciate Sakurai's philosophy that a game should be able to be played with just one or two buttons and no outside research.

And then once you finish building your Warframe... you then get hit with the sobering realization that all of this effort was pretty much pointless. Once you have progressed through all of the planets on normal difficulty, and then progress through the main storyline, you are pretty much done with the game. The only thing left is to grind older missions and tilesets and boss fights you have already done, but on arbitrarily higher difficulty to get gear with arbitrarily higher numbers, to do... what? You had already beat the game. It is rather frustrating that the Helminth segment which allows you to mix and match Warframe abilities can only be unlocked once you have pretty much finished the solar system and have beaten most of the main storyline, so by that point you only have a few hours left of plot anyway. Why not let people have more fun for most of the duration of the game?

I am surprised that this game is not actually Unreal engine. Apparently it is some inhouse engine made by DE.

The human faces look very ugly.

Looking at DE's next game, Soulframe, (also made by the same guy Steve Sinclair), it is disappointing that it looks relatively generic and uninspired compared to Warframe.

[rusty_shackleford]

but on arbitrarily higher difficulty to get gear with arbitrarily higher numbers, to do... what? You had already beat the game.

True. I'd prefer content that is intended to be beaten rather than farmed just to be able to go farm other content.

The idea of releasing regular story content seems daunting to western devs because they move so slowly now. There really is no alternative between "5 years for 30 minutes of content" and "repetitive boring grind ****". Can't expect developers to actually work anymore

[rusty_shackleford]

That said, I enjoyed the warframe mod customization stuff and the game would be a lot worse without it.

[GhostCow]

I started playing Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark. It's a pretty decent game that's heavily inspired by Final Fantasy Tactics. The portraits are kind of ugly, the animations are boring, and I don't like that it has a female protagonist, but the gameplay is pretty solid. It will probably keep me entertained for a few days until the Mechwarrior 5 Clan DLC comes out

[Tinky Winky]

Replayed Fish Tycoon & Plant Tycoon. I do have a nostalgic feeling towards them but they are honestly just plain terrible. Both are neither tycoon nor real game, they are more of wait timers with a very rudimentary economical mechanic, literally the only gameplay element in them is calculating for the targeted magic breeds and make sure you have enough upgrades to keep them from dying. They are actually pretty easy to beat if you consult the breeding chart, but are otherwise impossible to finish unless you are extremely autistic. Pretty much the worst "games" I've played in recent years next to Eternal Senia, which, despite being an absolutely janky, **** MMO-tier designed pile of ****, can be at least still considered as a game.

[Acrux]

Replayed Fish Tycoon & Plant Tycoon.

Now you're just making things up.

[KnightoftheWind]

Finished 9 Fire Emblem games over the past month or so.

Finished:
FE7 - Blazing Blade - GBA
FE8 - Sacred Stones - GBA
FE11 - Shadow Dragon - DS
FE13 - Awakening - 3DS
FE14 - Fates: Birthright - 3DS
FE14 - Fates: Conquest - 3DS
FE15 - Echoes - 3DS
FE16 - Three Houses - Switch (emulated)
FE17 - Engage - Switch (emulated)

Currently Playing:
FE9 - Path of Radiance - Gamecube - I'm about 80% done
FE12 - New Mystery of the Emblem - DS - Literally just started it

Upcoming (in order)
FE10 - Radiant Dawn - Wii
FE4 - Genealogy of the Holy War - SNES
FE5 - Thracia 776 - SNES

I'm skipping 1-3 since 11, 12, and 15 are their remakes. I'd rather replay the better games on higher difficulties than suffer through NES jank after already being used to the modern entries.

Overall extremely fun series with very addicting gameplay. It's at it's best with minimal story like Blazing Blade, Sacred Stones, and Shadow Dragon. Three Houses is my least favorite game in the series so far, I enjoyed it a lot still but it was such a drag towards the end and I haven't felt that way from any of the other games

It's funny, I often start but never finish the Blazing Blade. Maybe because it starts to get a lil' difficult for me and I hate losing my characters. I ought to finish one of these tactical JRPGs, but I always end up getting bored around the halfway point as well. Even with some of the leaner games like Shining Force.

[Tinky Winky]

Replayed Fish Tycoon & Plant Tycoon.

Now you're just making things up.

I don't really know what that supposed to mean, but both pt and zt are short games that can be beaten in a day or two if you metagaming the **** out of them, which is basically the only way to play those **** for anyone who still value their time.

[methoxetamine]

It's funny, I often start but never finish the Blazing Blade. Maybe because it starts to get a lil' difficult for me and I hate losing my characters. I ought to finish one of these tactical JRPGs, but I always end up getting bored around the halfway point as well. Even with some of the leaner games like Shining Force.

I'll be honest I used save states so I'm probably not qualified to comment on the real difficulty. Funnily enough it's the only game in the series I played prior to getting into it recently, I got it on GBA as a kid but definitely never came close to beating it. Sacred Stones was quite a bit easier but I haven't played the 3rd GBA game. FE's aesthetics definitely peak on GBA imo

[methoxetamine]

I ought to finish one of these tactical JRPGs, but I always end up getting bored around the halfway point as well. Even with some of the leaner games like Shining Force.

Oh BTW consider trying FE Shadow Dragon (DS). It's very simple by FE standards since it's a remake of FE1, took me only about 13 or 14 hours to beat it (no fast forward or save states since I played it on a 3DS). Nice and gameplay focused with the least amount of story I've seen in the series so far

[Tweed]

I started playing Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark. It's a pretty decent game that's heavily inspired by Final Fantasy Tactics. The portraits are kind of ugly, the animations are boring, and I don't like that it has a female protagonist, but the gameplay is pretty solid. It will probably keep me entertained for a few days until the Mechwarrior 5 Clan DLC comes out

I played that for awhile and then I realized I'd done it wrong because I've never played a Final Faggotry Tactics game before, so I stopped.

[methoxetamine]

Was getting burned out on Fire Emblem so I started Disgaea 1. Really fun so far, awesome change of pace from FE

[SpellSword]

Been playing Metro Quester: Osaka. It's a stand-alone expansion pack/sequel for the original game, the best way to describe it is the same as the first game with a new world map and and some minor quality of life improvements.

The series are party based RPGs where you explore a large single floor tile based dungeon looking for boss enemies to kill. Starts off a little light on options, but becomes a more interesting once you've got better equipment to outfit your party with.

On Steam the Metro Quester games are just called Quester and there is another developer that also has a game with the same name.

► The one I'm talking about is this one:

[W1llus]

Ive been playing silksong like half the planet currently. Definitely has issues. Also for the woke detected people yes there's woke **** in game. There's a boss that represents a gay couple and you can meet the npc who the boss is modeled on who tells this to you.
Edit: spoilers obviously

► Show Spoiler

cogwork dancers in the citadel is modeled off an npc called the green prince and his lover who sacrificed himself (burned alive and used as the mold for the 2 robots) in Green prince's stead after he ****** off the citadel. The boss is meant to be a mockery of them.

[DDC]

I ran through WuChang: Fallen Feathers and hated it at first due to a lot of sloppy design, but came to like it by the end due to some cool bosses and solid difficulty.

Then someone had given me a key for Quantum Break, which I remembered being pretty cool on the Xbox. I was a bit tired of it by the end but it's still fun and held up pretty well. In fact, it's a nine year old release that still looks better than a lot of new games.

Right now there's no big game that I'm working through. I just play Virtua Fighter 5 REVO and Outrun 2006: Coast 2 Coast every night before bed. VF5 was a really pleasant surprise just to have a game from the Virtua Fighter series on PC running at 4k 120fps. I hadn't played any of the VF games in a long time, but VF2 on the Saturn was always my favorite because I was the only kid in my neighborhood with the console and I ran **** on that game. I never played VF5 much on its original release, but it's a lot better than all of the modern fighting games in my opinion. Just the way the moves flow together in terms of variety of range, speed/delay, directions of strikes ... it makes a lot of games feel sluggish and unrealistic in comparison.

Then Outrun ... somehow I've become convinced over the years that this is The Game when it comes to arcade racers. It's the one that for some reason, I keep going back to and always have installed. Surprisingly despite being two decades old, it's a really nice port. Runs on modern systems at 4k 120fps with no issues (usually these old games need hacks and workarounds to make them look right). Only the blurry menus really show their age. It still looks great in the races and the graphics have a timeless quality to them despite being dated from a technical perspective. The game is just fun as hell. Libs would flip their **** were it released today because it centers around driving Ferraris fast to please the pretty blonde woman in the passenger seat next to you. It has tons of tracks and modes. I went back and looked at reviews and was shocked to see that it got a lot of 6's and 7's when it released. That's pretty scandalous for a game that stood the test of time and has cemented itself among the all-time greats. Sadly it's not available to buy on steam anymore and physical copies are expensive.

My next project is probably going to be getting NBA Jam: On Fire Edition (2011) running on PC with mods. And looking at emulators for some of the Sega Model 3 and Chihiro arcade games that I never got to play because they didn't get ports, like Super GT and Virtua Cop 3.

[reygar]

cyperpunk 77

[dagal]

Replaying both kotors, halfway with 1. Man, I forgot how boring the first one is, especially for a replay. Main villain is just a boring disney villain, game mechanics are bland once you ignore all the player traps, jokes are even blander. Jolee is the only interesting NPC imo.

[KnightoftheWind]

Attempting to cross off my retro gaming bucket list. Recently beat Castlevania Bloodlines, the first Castlevania I've ever fully played and beaten. It's a quality game with some addictive combat, but it's often annoying and difficult (at least for me). I had to max out the life count to 9 and lower the difficulty to "Japanese normal", via a fan-made rom hack. Eric is the best character since he has the most moves, and his spear has longer reach than John's whip. Solid 7/10 I think.

Tried playing through Rondo of Blood however, and that game ****** me off to no end. Not only is it difficult, it's 'abrasively' so. It's almost as if the developers knew precisely where to place enemies and obstacles to maximize player misery, and your controls are woeful. It's straight-up NES-style controls, you can't whip in any direction but horizontally, and the flying enemies like crows are nightmares to beat. You also have very few I-frames, so you will frequently take multiple hits from a single enemy. I think the players that praise Rondo are either talking completely out of their *** ("World's biggest Earthbound fan plays game for the first time etc etc"), or are gaming legends. Either way, **** this game. 3/10.

After moving on from that disaster, I'm now playing Rocket Knight Adventures. It's a very charming game, nice graphics, good music, and a unique jetpack mechanic. But it's also quite frustrating and not all that fun to play, honestly. This seems to be yet another game where Genesis/Konami fans blow way out of proportion just because of it's visuals, or because of some nostalgic attachment. I've played WAY better platformers than this. My tentative score is a 5/10, but I'll stick to it for now and see if that changes.

[rusty_shackleford]

Attempting to cross off my retro gaming bucket list. Recently beat Castlevania Bloodlines, the first Castlevania I've ever fully played and beaten. It's a quality game with some addictive combat, but it's often annoying and difficult (at least for me). I had to max out the life count to 9 and lower the difficulty to "Japanese normal", via a fan-made rom hack. Eric is the best character since he has the most moves, and his spear has longer reach than John's whip. Solid 7/10 I think.

Tried playing through Rondo of Blood however, and that game ****** me off to no end. Not only is it difficult, it's 'abrasively' so. It's almost as if the developers knew precisely where to place enemies and obstacles to maximize player misery, and your controls are woeful. It's straight-up NES-style controls, you can't whip in any direction by horizontally, and the flying enemies like crows are nightmares to beat. You also have very few I-frames, so you will frequently take multiple hits from a single attack. I think the players that praise Rondo are either talking completely out of their *** ("World's biggest Earthbound fan plays game for the first time etc etc"), or are gaming legends. Either way, **** this game. 3/10.

After moving on from that disaster, I'm now playing Rocket Knight Adventures. It's a very charming game, nice graphics, good music, and a unique jetpack mechanic. But it's also quite frustrating and not all that fun to play, honestly. This seems to be yet another game where Genesis/Konami fans blow way out of proportion just because of it's visuals, or because of some nostalgic attachment. I've played WAY better platformers than this, honestly. My tentative score is a 5/10, but I'll stick to it for now and see if that changes.

This is the only Castlevania I owned.
I just wanted to share.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castlevan ... ideo_game)

[KnightoftheWind]

Attempting to cross off my retro gaming bucket list. Recently beat Castlevania Bloodlines, the first Castlevania I've ever fully played and beaten. It's a quality game with some addictive combat, but it's often annoying and difficult (at least for me). I had to max out the life count to 9 and lower the difficulty to "Japanese normal", via a fan-made rom hack. Eric is the best character since he has the most moves, and his spear has longer reach than John's whip. Solid 7/10 I think.

Tried playing through Rondo of Blood however, and that game ****** me off to no end. Not only is it difficult, it's 'abrasively' so. It's almost as if the developers knew precisely where to place enemies and obstacles to maximize player misery, and your controls are woeful. It's straight-up NES-style controls, you can't whip in any direction by horizontally, and the flying enemies like crows are nightmares to beat. You also have very few I-frames, so you will frequently take multiple hits from a single attack. I think the players that praise Rondo are either talking completely out of their *** ("World's biggest Earthbound fan plays game for the first time etc etc"), or are gaming legends. Either way, **** this game. 3/10.

After moving on from that disaster, I'm now playing Rocket Knight Adventures. It's a very charming game, nice graphics, good music, and a unique jetpack mechanic. But it's also quite frustrating and not all that fun to play, honestly. This seems to be yet another game where Genesis/Konami fans blow way out of proportion just because of it's visuals, or because of some nostalgic attachment. I've played WAY better platformers than this, honestly. My tentative score is a 5/10, but I'll stick to it for now and see if that changes.

This is the only Castlevania I owned.
I just wanted to share.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castlevan ... ideo_game)

I'll give that a try if they ever recomp it. There was a time when I tolerated 20FPS N64 games, and that time has passed.

[Roguey]

Tried playing through Rondo of Blood however, and that game ****** me off to no end. Not only is it difficult, it's 'abrasively' so. It's almost as if the developers knew precisely where to place enemies and obstacles to maximize player misery, and your controls are woeful. It's straight-up NES-style controls, you can't whip in any direction but horizontally, and the flying enemies like crows are nightmares to beat. You also have very few I-frames, so you will frequently take multiple hits from a single enemy. I think the players that praise Rondo are either talking completely out of their *** ("World's biggest Earthbound fan plays game for the first time etc etc"), or are gaming legends. Either way, **** this game. 3/10.

Gaming hipsters praise it because it's ~obscure~ (Japanese PC Engine-only release)

After moving on from that disaster, I'm now playing Rocket Knight Adventures. It's a very charming game, nice graphics, good music, and a unique jetpack mechanic. But it's also quite frustrating and not all that fun to play, honestly. This seems to be yet another game where Genesis/Konami fans blow way out of proportion just because of it's visuals, or because of some nostalgic attachment. I've played WAY better platformers than this. My tentative score is a 5/10, but I'll stick to it for now and see if that changes.

I recommend getting good. This is one of the few Genesis games I managed to complete as a child. Really fun and funny bosses, neat gimmicks, great soundtrack and animations.

[KnightoftheWind]

Tried playing through Rondo of Blood however, and that game ****** me off to no end. Not only is it difficult, it's 'abrasively' so. It's almost as if the developers knew precisely where to place enemies and obstacles to maximize player misery, and your controls are woeful. It's straight-up NES-style controls, you can't whip in any direction but horizontally, and the flying enemies like crows are nightmares to beat. You also have very few I-frames, so you will frequently take multiple hits from a single enemy. I think the players that praise Rondo are either talking completely out of their *** ("World's biggest Earthbound fan plays game for the first time etc etc"), or are gaming legends. Either way, **** this game. 3/10.

Gaming hipsters praise it because it's ~obscure~ (Japanese PC Engine-only release)

After moving on from that disaster, I'm now playing Rocket Knight Adventures. It's a very charming game, nice graphics, good music, and a unique jetpack mechanic. But it's also quite frustrating and not all that fun to play, honestly. This seems to be yet another game where Genesis/Konami fans blow way out of proportion just because of it's visuals, or because of some nostalgic attachment. I've played WAY better platformers than this. My tentative score is a 5/10, but I'll stick to it for now and see if that changes.

I recommend getting good. This is one of the few Genesis games I managed to complete as a child. Really fun and funny bosses, neat gimmicks, great soundtrack and animations.

So it's a nostalgic attachment for you. I bet if you replayed the game now, you'd feel differently. My earliest childhood gaming memory was playing games like Spyro 2, Mario World, and Donkey Kong Country. I replayed Spyro 2 and disliked it compared to the original, while Mario World and DKC are merely 'okay' these days. Your views and tastes are ever-changing.

[rusty_shackleford]

Your views and tastes are ever-changing.

everything I liked when I was 12 was actually really cool