What game are you playing?

[wndrbr]

The OG Resident Evil 3 is relatively hard to find, set up and boot these days, they don't deserve this kind of treatment or being forgotten like some sort of inferior versions.

all three OG RE games are available on GOG.com

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Honkai Star Rail

I am continuing to slowly go through the game, though I am currently being distracted by other things so I haven't been able to jam it out fast. I am currently midway through Space China (part 1 of 2).

► Long post

I did the other Chimera event, Seal Slammers, which was pretty neat. Again, timeskipping to the latest city. It is a fantasy sport about throwing cute little critters onto lifebuoys and then having them do bumper cars in a swimming pool. It is pretty imaginative, and the presentation with seals being rocketing really fast and bouncing around multiple times and blasting out of the arena is pretty neat.

I liked that you got a neat Chimera pet out of it that can run around with you in the overworld. It is always cool when a MMO or an RPG allows you to acquire a neat pet early on to accompany you throughout your long adventure. It's just too bad that they are almost never acknowledged in the story or appear in cutscenes.

Back to the main story. The rest of Jarlio VI's story was whatever. It was not a skip like the level uncap questline I will talk about later, but it was not okay either.

The only thing I will give it a plus for is that the secondary antagonist, the guard "captain" Gepard (he seems to be more like the general of Belobog's army, as he is the highest ranking officer that we know of) is portrayed as just playing with the information he has at his disposal. The higher ups have deemed the protagonist a threat to be captured/eliminated. Meanwhile, Gepard's men all around the city are dying while defending against the oncoming monsters. The chain of command exists for any social group that becomes large enough because there is not enough time to thoroughly investigate, debate, and explain every decision to everyone. So even if Gepard accepts the possibility that the protagonist is not evil, Gepard is on a time table here managing a greater war effort and a declining situation that he needs to get back to ASAP, and he can't halt/abandon the war effort to careful comb over this one guy's case. So he's an incidental antagonist due to the limited realities of the physical world. (In retrospect, he could have easily called up some judge or another trusted officer and delegated the case to them).




Cocolia, the main antagonist and the leader of the last city on Jarlio VI, is telepathically bonded with a supposedly hostile magical artifact called a Stellaron, and wants her adoptive daughter Bronya to also bond with the Stellaron as a prelude to having Bronya eventually succeed Cocolia as leader of the planet. The game does not make it clear what exactly the Stellaron does after it bonds with someone and how that benefits Jarlio VI. Does the Stellaron give the leader superpowers? They must not be very useful if Cocolia spends most of her time behind her desk rather than out on the field fighting against the oncoming monsters. How else does the Stellaron aid Jarlio VI? I don't think there was any explanation.




Cocolia stabs the MC. Strangely, no blood appears.








There is a neat sequence where you walk through a solar system like at the end of Xenoblade 1, and then see ghostly flashbacks. However, this feels unearned, and doesn't have really anything to do with the MC who is not from this planet and didn't meet these people until a few days ago.






The MC then pulls the sword from the stone, made by the former human turned earth god/aeon Qlipoth the Preserver (who traditionally wields a hammer), unlocking a new sword wielding tank class for the MC. The class is fire elementally aspected. Shouldn't a class given by Qlipoth wield a hammer and/or be earth elementally aspected? This might be a casualty of HSR copying Genshin's elemental system, but eschewing earth (geo) and life/plantmatter (dendro) for Quantum (time/space/reality manipulation) and Imaginary (fairies and dragons). HSR also introduces physical as a formalized element type. I think Qlipoth would have been more appropriate for that than being shoehorned into fire. The MC already started out as a physically aspected class with the baseball bat starter class, and it seems like HSR is following the Genshin format of having the MC tour through all of the element categories with no repeats yet.










Story wise, the new class here feels strange. Apparently this sword was wielded by Cocolia, but Qlipoth just took it from her and gave it to me for... reasons? There is some hollow blah blah blah about she wasn't really a believer in preservation anymore... the Paths thing about people receiving powers because they just believe in their convictions hard enough feels really hollow. I was Destruction earlier, but I wasn't going around blowing up cities. I just woke up, got attacked by killer robots, and got handed a baseball bat to defend myself. And I am not some great guardian either. I am a tourist on a train, and we just stopped by because our ship's warp drive was being jammed so we had to land to go shut down the interference. Saving the planet was incidental. Qlipoth's fire sword doesn't seem particularly themed after Jarlio VI either. So it feels like I just got a random class at the end of this storyline.




A vocal song begins playing for the Cocolia final boss battle, but it feels unearned.

Anyway, after beating Cocolia, she commits suicide (looking back through my screenshots, apparently she tried blowing up taking us down with her when someone raised a shield around her, but this happened so fast in the game I didn't realize that was what happened). The Stellaron gets sealed away offscreen (disappointing!), and Bronya succeeds Cocolia. Story over, time to move on to the next planet. Mediocre arc.

They are now pulling the "people being vague and pretending to be more important" mystery box thing.




==================

Next we have a mini selfcontained story where the ship jumps to a space carwash but instead rematerializes in weird unknown space, and there are now bugs onboard the ship. It's okay. Better than Jarlio VI's story.

Now here is where we get some weird Paths stuff. In HSR, there are 7 playable role/classes categories, called Paths. Paths describes part of what a character does in battle (ie AoE damage), but lorewise a Path is about how people who follow a certain philosophy and/or worship a certain god attain the powers of that god (called an Aeon). The playable 7 paths are:

• Destruction (basic DPS) - follows the Aeon called Nanook
• Hunt (singletarget DPS) - follows Lan
• Erudition (AoE dps) - Nous
• Harmony (buffers) - Xipe
• Nihility (debuffer) - IX
• Preservation (damage mitigation and shields) - Qlipoth
• Abundance (Healer) - Yaoshi
• Remembrance (pet class, looks like summoners/beastmasters get shoehorned in here) - Fuli

Apparently in the lore, there are people who walk other Paths besides the playable 7. This new guy Argenti follows the Path of Beauty, which means he worships the Aeon Idrila. Unfortunately, when I looked him up on the fan wiki, he is apparently playable and classed as the Path of Erudition. So he is another victim of shoehorning into inappropriate categories.

This seems to be an issue with games where the playable classes are hyperspecific lorewise, but the devs are unwilling to create new classes for lore that falls outside of that shoebox, so they shoehorn everyone into the preexisting classes whether it makes sense or not. Ie, High Elven Blood Knights and Tauren Sunwalkers in WoW who a sun worshipping druids getting shoehorned into the Light worshipping Silver Hand Paladin class and wielding Light spells when Blood Knights and Sunwalkers are completely different things. Or the playable Black Mage job in FF14 being exceptionally rare in the lore, but your average magician or generic sorcerer gets shoehorned into this job and uses those forbidden Black Magicks because there is no playable generic magician class.




The "your convictions/philosophy determines your Path" thing doesn't makes much sense. What exactly makes March 7th a "Preserver"? Dan Heng and Yanqing seem to be "The Hunt", but they don't seem to be all about hunting game or hunting people down or being wrathful. Welt is not a nihilist at all. Clara is "Destruction" but she doesn't actually do anything. She's just a barefoot little girl who wants to be nice to everyone. It is the robot following her around that fights, and even then he doesn't seem to be hellbent on destroying everything. Arlan is labeled as "destruction" and yet he doesn't seem to be some mad bomber either. And so on.

Argenti is the first story boss in the game I have gotten walled on. He is already very damage spongey, and almost immedietely resummons an add that gives him a shield. So you are spending most of the fight targeting the add and only ocassionally dealing some minor chip damage to him, so it takes a long while. Then he has a second phase where he heals to full and you have to whittle him down again, but this time he summons more damaging adds too, which outdps you. Each attempt is a 5 to 10+ minute long fight. After three tries and half an hour wasted, I wound up having to abandon the instance to replace my second DPS Yanqing with Luocha as a healer, and then having to go through the cutscenes and doing all of the fights leading up to his boss battle again. And then, because I had swapped out Yanqing my second DPS with a healer, the boss fight now takes even longer!






The space car wash is visited offscreen. I wanted to see that.


======================


ARC 2 - Luofo Fleet/Xianxzhou worldship


We are back to that immersion breaking gacha the story is now introducing a guy my party hasn't met yet... who has been fighting with me in my party for many hours now.






I like the aesthetics of Xianzhou, one of the six worldships of the Luofu fleet. One of the cities inside reminds me of a bit of the new Kamigawa from MTG, or even a much larger scale New Kaineng from GW2. I also think that the concept of Luofu is pretty cool, with it being humongous worldships that are each the size of Earth-like planets, but it actually has way more room inside because they are using space-folding technology to create/enlargen the pocket dimensions and they have taken oceans and landscape with them from their homeworld, and that there are 6 of these worldships flying together as a fleet. There might be 12x the population of Earth living in this fleet, a mobile superpower flying through the cosmos.
















Unfortunately, the visual introduction of Luofu is very wanting. The heroes look at the window and the Xianzhou ship is just there, but you don't get a visual size comparison. It would have been very cool if you saw this ship appear behind a planet and then its shadow completely shrouds the planet, or you could see very many ships coming and leaving its spaceport. That would have conveyed its scale. And the only way I know what the exterior of the ship looks like is from this one small image on the star map. The spacefolding technology/pocket dimensions inside are also not visually demonstrated, but only told to you in paragraphs of codex lore.














The rubik cube puzzles are neat.




I like how the story here is a little more complex than what you see in Genshin, where you are always an honest errand boy who tells everything to everybody. Here we are not telling the authorities the full truth because we have been secretly been offered an alliance with intergalactic criminals, and we have not outright rejected that because we are keeping our options open. Also, there is no Paimon here to dictate how I am supposed to feel, and I have some dialogue options to speak for myself.








The facial animations at times show promise of being more emotive/having personality and subtlety, but it is rare, and still not as good as PS2 games made on a lesser budget.


I found and opened a chest in Xianzhou, but I did not get anything. The chest disappeared, and I got a prompt telling me that I need to raise my equilibrium level to 2. Apparently I am account/Trailblade level capped at 30. So I go over to Herta space station to do the trial fight... only to then have to have to click through a three hour long questline, with unskippable dialogues and several "walk with me" segments. Worse, the questline is about a bunch of boring academics standing around and talking. It is incredibly dull and I tuned out very quickly, trying to watch Youtube while clicking through. I just want to get back to the main story featuring characters I do care about happening in Xianzhou. GBF never pulled a fast one on me like this with its account level uncaps and class challenges. It was just quick 2 minute duels against super sayian granny, and then I was right back to the main story.

After an hour and a half of clicking through boring stuff, we got a fight against a cool space bug. Oddly, my character got reverted back into being the starter Destruction class wielding the baseball bat rather than being the sword wielding Preserver tank I had been maining him as.






There was then an Ace Attorney adventure game segment where I am on trial and have to click "recall" and pick one of three options to progress the cutscene. What was a slap in the face is that there are several screens where you can click recall, but none of the three options will progress the cutscene and you are just wasting time and should have instead just clicked the "next question" button. There is no way to know this beforehand.




Duke Inferno looks neat.




The questline then ends with these two rando scientists standing around in a hallway fellating each other's egos. The writers are clumsily trying too hard to make these characters look cool and mysterious and "sophisticated".








After three hours, I was released from the hell and allowed to raise my equilibrium level, though it was too late and I had to go to bed, so I did not get to progress the main story as I had wanted to that day. Overall it was an aggravating experience.


The robot scientist did look neat, though. I am not sure if he is actually a robot or a human cyborg.




I then had to farm materials to ascend/raise the level cap of my characters and their equipment, and to improve their traits. The MC, Dan Heng, and Luocha were upgraded just fine, but March 7th and Yanqing require mats farmed from Antimatter Legion mobs, and you can't just open a menu and immedietely autobattle them 6x in a row while alt+tabbed out like with the other mats. So I had to spend an hour running around Herta Space station looking for mobs, and the drops are quite rare. I have only managed to level uncap Yanqing from 40 to 50, and not upgrade March or any of their gear or traits.

Still haven't heard any vaguely memorable tracks besides the flute in that one plaza of Okhema.

[Orvas Dren]

Minecraft

[Element]

I've been playing Beyond Citadel, an excellent indie FPS from a jap, with elements that I would describe as "immersive sim"-esque. Weapons are more involved, with each weapon having different reload/cocking mechanics, and the game being more tactical in nature. At least on the Hard difficulty. Firefights are intense as a result, and I've died quite a few times. You also play as a hot animu chick with boobies!.

Is it worth if you've already beaten TC? Gunplay was alright, but not sure I want to sink another 3 hours into running along green corridors splattered with anime girl gore.

[KnightoftheWind]

I've been playing Beyond Citadel, an excellent indie FPS from a jap, with elements that I would describe as "immersive sim"-esque. Weapons are more involved, with each weapon having different reload/cocking mechanics, and the game being more tactical in nature. At least on the Hard difficulty. Firefights are intense as a result, and I've died quite a few times. You also play as a hot animu chick with boobies!.

Is it worth if you've already beaten TC? Gunplay was alright, but not sure I want to sink another 3 hours into running along green corridors splattered with anime girl gore.

It's an enjoyable time, but if you're looking for good visuals this isn't the game for you. You 'will' be running through a lot of bland environments, some of which don't even have basic skyboxes. I also ended up putting the game down in favor of playing through the StarCraft II campaign.

[Finarfin]

Started playing Atomic Heart since I got the complete edition in a sale.
Switched to german dub because I didn't want to read subtitles all the time.
English dub is cringe and the main character keeps saying "Crispy Critters" which is annoying as ****.

[Tinky Winky]

Replaying Far Cry 1 on the highest (realistic) difficulty, which is something that I used to do years ago, **** is so ******* hard that it makes Dark Souls child's play. I gave up my attempt to beat it legitimately at 3/4 of the game (the river level) and decided to just enable quicksaving whenever I want. I've actually done it without cheating multiple times before, but now it doesn't really feel worth the pain due to how unfair the challenge is.
The game isn't even good anyway; you basically have to exploit the enemy AI by tree hugging (since they rarely ever shoot when they can't see you, even when you are shooting) and memorize virtually every part of the game to even stand a chance, then pray to the RNG god because the amount of damage enemies can do to you is completely RNG, you can get one-shot killed at full health and armor if you are unlucky. Both Far Cry 2 and Crysis are much better game than Far Cry 1, don't think I'll ever touch this one again after I finish it.

[rusty_shackleford]

Replaying Far Cry 1 on the highest (realistic) difficulty, which is something that I used to do years ago, **** is so ******* hard that it makes Dark Souls child's play. I gave up my attempt to beat it legitimately at 3/4 of the game (the river level) and decided to just enable quicksaving whenever I want. I've actually done it without cheating multiple times before, but now it doesn't really feel worth the pain due to how unfair the challenge is.
The game isn't even good anyway; you basically have to exploit the enemy AI by tree hugging (since they rarely ever shoot when they can't see you, even when you are shooting) and memorize virtually every part of the game to even stand a chance, then pray to the RNG god because the amount of damage enemies can do to you is completely RNG, you can get one-shot killed at full health and armor if you are unlucky. Both Far Cry 2 and Crysis are much better game than Far Cry 1, don't think I'll ever touch this one again after I finish it.

You're getting slow, old man

[Tinky Winky]

Replaying Far Cry 1 on the highest (realistic) difficulty, which is something that I used to do years ago, **** is so ******* hard that it makes Dark Souls child's play. I gave up my attempt to beat it legitimately at 3/4 of the game (the river level) and decided to just enable quicksaving whenever I want. I've actually done it without cheating multiple times before, but now it doesn't really feel worth the pain due to how unfair the challenge is.
The game isn't even good anyway; you basically have to exploit the enemy AI by tree hugging (since they rarely ever shoot when they can't see you, even when you are shooting) and memorize virtually every part of the game to even stand a chance, then pray to the RNG god because the amount of damage enemies can do to you is completely RNG, you can get one-shot killed at full health and armor if you are unlucky. Both Far Cry 2 and Crysis are much better game than Far Cry 1, don't think I'll ever touch this one again after I finish it.

You're getting slow, old man

Source : You have never played Far Cry 1, let alone the highest difficulty of it, you just feel like trash talking.

[wndrbr]

Replaying Far Cry 1

which is something that I used to do years ago

I've actually done it without cheating multiple times before

...

The game isn't even good anyway

so why are you doing this?

[Tinky Winky]

Replaying Far Cry 1

which is something that I used to do years ago

I've actually done it without cheating multiple times before

...

The game isn't even good anyway

so why are you doing this?

I used to be a masochistic gamer a years ago so I decided to replay a super masochistic game I used to play, a lot. Turned out to be a bad idea but whatsoever.

[wndrbr]

but whatsoever.

[KOS-MOS]

Honkai Star Rail

I am continuing to slowly go through the game, though I am currently being distracted by other things so I haven't been able to jam it out fast. I am currently midway through Space China (part 1 of 2).

► Long post

I did the other Chimera event, Seal Slammers, which was pretty neat. Again, timeskipping to the latest city. It is a fantasy sport about throwing cute little critters onto lifebuoys and then having them do bumper cars in a swimming pool. It is pretty imaginative, and the presentation with seals being rocketing really fast and bouncing around multiple times and blasting out of the arena is pretty neat.

I liked that you got a neat Chimera pet out of it that can run around with you in the overworld. It is always cool when a MMO or an RPG allows you to acquire a neat pet early on to accompany you throughout your long adventure. It's just too bad that they are almost never acknowledged in the story or appear in cutscenes.

Back to the main story. The rest of Jarlio VI's story was whatever. It was not a skip like the level uncap questline I will talk about later, but it was not okay either.

The only thing I will give it a plus for is that the secondary antagonist, the guard "captain" Gepard (he seems to be more like the general of Belobog's army, as he is the highest ranking officer that we know of) is portrayed as just playing with the information he has at his disposal. The higher ups have deemed the protagonist a threat to be captured/eliminated. Meanwhile, Gepard's men all around the city are dying while defending against the oncoming monsters. The chain of command exists for any social group that becomes large enough because there is not enough time to thoroughly investigate, debate, and explain every decision to everyone. So even if Gepard accepts the possibility that the protagonist is not evil, Gepard is on a time table here managing a greater war effort and a declining situation that he needs to get back to ASAP, and he can't halt/abandon the war effort to careful comb over this one guy's case. So he's an incidental antagonist due to the limited realities of the physical world. (In retrospect, he could have easily called up some judge or another trusted officer and delegated the case to them).




Cocolia, the main antagonist and the leader of the last city on Jarlio VI, is telepathically bonded with a supposedly hostile magical artifact called a Stellaron, and wants her adoptive daughter Bronya to also bond with the Stellaron as a prelude to having Bronya eventually succeed Cocolia as leader of the planet. The game does not make it clear what exactly the Stellaron does after it bonds with someone and how that benefits Jarlio VI. Does the Stellaron give the leader superpowers? They must not be very useful if Cocolia spends most of her time behind her desk rather than out on the field fighting against the oncoming monsters. How else does the Stellaron aid Jarlio VI? I don't think there was any explanation.




Cocolia stabs the MC. Strangely, no blood appears.








There is a neat sequence where you walk through a solar system like at the end of Xenoblade 1, and then see ghostly flashbacks. However, this feels unearned, and doesn't have really anything to do with the MC who is not from this planet and didn't meet these people until a few days ago.






The MC then pulls the sword from the stone, made by the former human turned earth god/aeon Qlipoth the Preserver (who traditionally wields a hammer), unlocking a new sword wielding tank class for the MC. The class is fire elementally aspected. Shouldn't a class given by Qlipoth wield a hammer and/or be earth elementally aspected? This might be a casualty of HSR copying Genshin's elemental system, but eschewing earth (geo) and life/plantmatter (dendro) for Quantum (time/space/reality manipulation) and Imaginary (fairies and dragons). HSR also introduces physical as a formalized element type. I think Qlipoth would have been more appropriate for that than being shoehorned into fire. The MC already started out as a physically aspected class with the baseball bat starter class, and it seems like HSR is following the Genshin format of having the MC tour through all of the element categories with no repeats yet.










Story wise, the new class here feels strange. Apparently this sword was wielded by Cocolia, but Qlipoth just took it from her and gave it to me for... reasons? There is some hollow blah blah blah about she wasn't really a believer in preservation anymore... the Paths thing about people receiving powers because they just believe in their convictions hard enough feels really hollow. I was Destruction earlier, but I wasn't going around blowing up cities. I just woke up, got attacked by killer robots, and got handed a baseball bat to defend myself. And I am not some great guardian either. I am a tourist on a train, and we just stopped by because our ship's warp drive was being jammed so we had to land to go shut down the interference. Saving the planet was incidental. Qlipoth's fire sword doesn't seem particularly themed after Jarlio VI either. So it feels like I just got a random class at the end of this storyline.




A vocal song begins playing for the Cocolia final boss battle, but it feels unearned.

Anyway, after beating Cocolia, she commits suicide (looking back through my screenshots, apparently she tried blowing up taking us down with her when someone raised a shield around her, but this happened so fast in the game I didn't realize that was what happened). The Stellaron gets sealed away offscreen (disappointing!), and Bronya succeeds Cocolia. Story over, time to move on to the next planet. Mediocre arc.

They are now pulling the "people being vague and pretending to be more important" mystery box thing.




==================

Next we have a mini selfcontained story where the ship jumps to a space carwash but instead rematerializes in weird unknown space, and there are now bugs onboard the ship. It's okay. Better than Jarlio VI's story.

Now here is where we get some weird Paths stuff. In HSR, there are 7 playable role/classes categories, called Paths. Paths describes part of what a character does in battle (ie AoE damage), but lorewise a Path is about how people who follow a certain philosophy and/or worship a certain god attain the powers of that god (called an Aeon). The playable 7 paths are:

• Destruction (basic DPS) - follows the Aeon called Nanook
• Hunt (singletarget DPS) - follows Lan
• Erudition (AoE dps) - Nous
• Harmony (buffers) - Xipe
• Nihility (debuffer) - IX
• Preservation (damage mitigation and shields) - Qlipoth
• Abundance (Healer) - Yaoshi
• Remembrance (pet class, looks like summoners/beastmasters get shoehorned in here) - Fuli

Apparently in the lore, there are people who walk other Paths besides the playable 7. This new guy Argenti follows the Path of Beauty, which means he worships the Aeon Idrila. Unfortunately, when I looked him up on the fan wiki, he is apparently playable and classed as the Path of Erudition. So he is another victim of shoehorning into inappropriate categories.

This seems to be an issue with games where the playable classes are hyperspecific lorewise, but the devs are unwilling to create new classes for lore that falls outside of that shoebox, so they shoehorn everyone into the preexisting classes whether it makes sense or not. Ie, High Elven Blood Knights and Tauren Sunwalkers in WoW who a sun worshipping druids getting shoehorned into the Light worshipping Silver Hand Paladin class and wielding Light spells when Blood Knights and Sunwalkers are completely different things. Or the playable Black Mage job in FF14 being exceptionally rare in the lore, but your average magician or generic sorcerer gets shoehorned into this job and uses those forbidden Black Magicks because there is no playable generic magician class.




The "your convictions/philosophy determines your Path" thing doesn't makes much sense. What exactly makes March 7th a "Preserver"? Dan Heng and Yanqing seem to be "The Hunt", but they don't seem to be all about hunting game or hunting people down or being wrathful. Welt is not a nihilist at all. Clara is "Destruction" but she doesn't actually do anything. She's just a barefoot little girl who wants to be nice to everyone. It is the robot following her around that fights, and even then he doesn't seem to be hellbent on destroying everything. Arlan is labeled as "destruction" and yet he doesn't seem to be some mad bomber either. And so on.

Argenti is the first story boss in the game I have gotten walled on. He is already very damage spongey, and almost immedietely resummons an add that gives him a shield. So you are spending most of the fight targeting the add and only ocassionally dealing some minor chip damage to him, so it takes a long while. Then he has a second phase where he heals to full and you have to whittle him down again, but this time he summons more damaging adds too, which outdps you. Each attempt is a 5 to 10+ minute long fight. After three tries and half an hour wasted, I wound up having to abandon the instance to replace my second DPS Yanqing with Luocha as a healer, and then having to go through the cutscenes and doing all of the fights leading up to his boss battle again. And then, because I had swapped out Yanqing my second DPS with a healer, the boss fight now takes even longer!






The space car wash is visited offscreen. I wanted to see that.


======================


ARC 2 - Luofo Fleet/Xianxzhou worldship


We are back to that immersion breaking gacha the story is now introducing a guy my party hasn't met yet... who has been fighting with me in my party for many hours now.






I like the aesthetics of Xianzhou, one of the six worldships of the Luofu fleet. One of the cities inside reminds me of a bit of the new Kamigawa from MTG, or even a much larger scale New Kaineng from GW2. I also think that the concept of Luofu is pretty cool, with it being humongous worldships that are each the size of Earth-like planets, but it actually has way more room inside because they are using space-folding technology to create/enlargen the pocket dimensions and they have taken oceans and landscape with them from their homeworld, and that there are 6 of these worldships flying together as a fleet. There might be 12x the population of Earth living in this fleet, a mobile superpower flying through the cosmos.
















Unfortunately, the visual introduction of Luofu is very wanting. The heroes look at the window and the Xianzhou ship is just there, but you don't get a visual size comparison. It would have been very cool if you saw this ship appear behind a planet and then its shadow completely shrouds the planet, or you could see very many ships coming and leaving its spaceport. That would have conveyed its scale. And the only way I know what the exterior of the ship looks like is from this one small image on the star map. The spacefolding technology/pocket dimensions inside are also not visually demonstrated, but only told to you in paragraphs of codex lore.














The rubik cube puzzles are neat.




I like how the story here is a little more complex than what you see in Genshin, where you are always an honest errand boy who tells everything to everybody. Here we are not telling the authorities the full truth because we have been secretly been offered an alliance with intergalactic criminals, and we have not outright rejected that because we are keeping our options open. Also, there is no Paimon here to dictate how I am supposed to feel, and I have some dialogue options to speak for myself.








The facial animations at times show promise of being more emotive/having personality and subtlety, but it is rare, and still not as good as PS2 games made on a lesser budget.


I found and opened a chest in Xianzhou, but I did not get anything. The chest disappeared, and I got a prompt telling me that I need to raise my equilibrium level to 2. Apparently I am account/Trailblade level capped at 30. So I go over to Herta space station to do the trial fight... only to then have to have to click through a three hour long questline, with unskippable dialogues and several "walk with me" segments. Worse, the questline is about a bunch of boring academics standing around and talking. It is incredibly dull and I tuned out very quickly, trying to watch Youtube while clicking through. I just want to get back to the main story featuring characters I do care about happening in Xianzhou. GBF never pulled a fast one on me like this with its account level uncaps and class challenges. It was just quick 2 minute duels against super sayian granny, and then I was right back to the main story.

After an hour and a half of clicking through boring stuff, we got a fight against a cool space bug. Oddly, my character got reverted back into being the starter Destruction class wielding the baseball bat rather than being the sword wielding Preserver tank I had been maining him as.






There was then an Ace Attorney adventure game segment where I am on trial and have to click "recall" and pick one of three options to progress the cutscene. What was a slap in the face is that there are several screens where you can click recall, but none of the three options will progress the cutscene and you are just wasting time and should have instead just clicked the "next question" button. There is no way to know this beforehand.




Duke Inferno looks neat.




The questline then ends with these two rando scientists standing around in a hallway fellating each other's egos. The writers are clumsily trying too hard to make these characters look cool and mysterious and "sophisticated".








After three hours, I was released from the hell and allowed to raise my equilibrium level, though it was too late and I had to go to bed, so I did not get to progress the main story as I had wanted to that day. Overall it was an aggravating experience.


The robot scientist did look neat, though. I am not sure if he is actually a robot or a human cyborg.




I then had to farm materials to ascend/raise the level cap of my characters and their equipment, and to improve their traits. The MC, Dan Heng, and Luocha were upgraded just fine, but March 7th and Yanqing require mats farmed from Antimatter Legion mobs, and you can't just open a menu and immedietely autobattle them 6x in a row while alt+tabbed out like with the other mats. So I had to spend an hour running around Herta Space station looking for mobs, and the drops are quite rare. I have only managed to level uncap Yanqing from 40 to 50, and not upgrade March or any of their gear or traits.

Still haven't heard any vaguely memorable tracks besides the flute in that one plaza of Okhema.

I’ve been playing HSR since launch, and it’s the only gacha game I actually enjoy. The gameplay is great, and there’s a lot of stuffs to do. The story is solid too, and the dialogues aren’t painfully long or ******** like in Genshin. I’m also really glad there’s no Paimon constantly ruining the fun during interactions.

The quests are genuinely interesting, and the events are fun and varied. Not all characters are equally well-written or designed, but I do have a few favorites I really enjoy playing with. The music and visuals are also pretty nice.

Honestly, for a free mobile game, it’s more than fair.

But what I enjoy the most is definitely the turn-based gameplay. It’s perfect for playing on the bus or while waiting for an appointment.

[methoxetamine]

Finished Radiant Historia, it was really good. The combat got tiring during the back half of the game but overall I still really enjoyed the game

Started Bravely Default on 3DS and it seems really great so far too. The 3DS is amazing for JRPGfags, I neglected it for way too long.

I will be called brown by rusty but I'm ready to play Stellar Blade in t minus 2 days. You may not like it, but Stellar Blade is the epitome of a masculine game. Sexy girls and parrying? It quite literally doesn't get more heterosexual and based than that

[Tangerine]

Finished Radiant Historia, it was really good. The combat got tiring during the back half of the game but overall I still really enjoyed the game

Started Bravely Default on 3DS and it seems really great so far too. The 3DS is amazing for JRPGfags, I neglected it for way too long.

I will be called brown by rusty but I'm ready to play Stellar Blade in t minus 2 days. You may not like it, but Stellar Blade is the epitome of a masculine game. Sexy girls and parrying? It quite literally doesn't get more heterosexual and based than that

You play as a woman, which is ***** behavior. The game also has a Beta Gauge to remind you of how much of a **** you are.

[Pizza]

I'm playing Lunar Legend, the story is not a deep as one of those old Final Fantasy games but i like the combat mechanics.

[Tweed]

I'm still playing Realms of Antiquity though I took a breather to mess with that weird EQ shard and for some reason I started playing Ultima 7, mostly to see if the writing was as bad as I remember it being (it is).

[Norfleet]

You play as a woman, which is ***** behavior. The game also has a Beta Gauge to remind you of how much of a **** you are.

Playing "as" is female behavior. Men play WITH. The character is not an avatar representing you, but a tool or piece you control.

[A Chinese opium den]

You play as a woman, which is ***** behavior. The game also has a Beta Gauge to remind you of how much of a **** you are.

Playing "as" is female behavior. Men play WITH. The character is not an avatar representing you, but a tool or piece you control.

Norfleet roleplays as a woman...

[Norfleet]

Norfleet roleplays as a woman...

I do not. The only female character I own is Kim Cardassian, and that is a meme chararacter and not a roleplay.

[methoxetamine]

Stellar Blade. It's actually really good, thanks for finally coughing up the good ****, sonycucks

[Dorigami]

Tyranny

[Finarfin]

Stellar Blade. It's actually really good, thanks for finally coughing up the good ****, sonycucks

Yeah, runs smooth, no bugs, no performance issues. Gameplay is nice too.

[methoxetamine]

Stellar Blade. It's actually really good, thanks for finally coughing up the good ****, sonycucks

Yeah, runs smooth, no bugs, no performance issues. Gameplay is nice too.

It's crazy how much of a blessing UE4 feels like after the nightmare that is UE5, the performance has been perfect for me. The gameplay is really underrated though IMO, it's not groundbreaking or anything but I'm having a lot of fun and it's the devs first real game. I'm praying the sequel isn't a timed exclusive again but I'm not holding my breath on that one

[KnightoftheWind]

I think those "Suckless" guys are onto something, software is getting more and more bloated every year and that includes game engines. The entire fate of the AAA industry relies on Unreal Engine, and that means Tim Sweeney/Epic calls the shots. IF Unreal Engine 6 fixes the myriad of issues 5 has, I'm sure it'll be at the cost of something else.

[Roguey]

Finished Gradius: The Interstellar Assault for Game Boy. All right, though awfully short, took about 20 minutes. I like how it trolls you after the first level by taking all your power-ups away, but it doesn't pull that trick again for good or ill.

[rusty_shackleford]

Tyranny

I liked the magic system, it's a shame they didn't use it for deadfire

[Dorigami]

Tyranny

I liked the magic system, it's a shame they didn't use it for deadfire

Couldn't finish deadfire way too brown and feminist. I loved poe1 though

[wndrbr]

Finished Dead Rising 1.

It's an open-world third person action game set in a huge shopping mall that consists of a bunch of different parts (department stores, food court, entertainment center, leisure park, etc etc). Unlike other open-world games, DR has the real flow of time - NPCs don't wait for you to rescue them while you do side quests - they may actually die and disappear, events happening on timer so if you **** around for too long you may miss them. The main character has to spend three days (plus one in a bonus chapter) in the mall, and throughout these three days he has to rescue as many survivors as possible, while also untangling the mystery of the ongoing zombie outbreak.

Awesome game with a unique gameplay formula. Feels like a holdover experimental title from the PS2 era that bled into Xbox 360 by accident.

[wndrbr]

Currently playing Dead Rising 2.

Unlike the first game, the sequel was made by a different studio (this time from Vancouver, not Japan). It's kinda mid, feels like those formulaic horror movie sequels that repeat the same beats as the original, but with different actors and in a different setting.

Again you're in a small open-world area filled with crowds of zombies, again you must survive for three in-game days (plus one in a bonus chapter) while rescuing survivors. The survivors are repeated (there's one guy who refuses to follow you until you give him some food, an old lady that requires you to carry her, etc), the plot beats are repeated (there's an intrepid reported that says "fantastic" upon snapping photos, you get to visit the underground tunnels, at the end of the last day the military arrives and starts shooting at you, etc etc), the map is different but the overall structure is very similar (multiple areas interconnected with each other via an open-air park area and a shortcut in a bathroom), character progression is the same.

The only new features are co-op (didn't play it) and craftable combo-weapons. Combo weapons are lame, because they make other non-combo weapons obsolete, and because it's hassle to craft them (they get broken after a few hits, so you must re-craft them again). I ended up playing through the whole game only using a baseball bat with nails and a pair of bladed gloves because the infinitely respawning crafting components were located next to the safe room.

Another problem the game has is that the new devs had to use a different engine due to the first game's engine being documented in Japanese. For some reason they couldn't re-create the same game feel, so DR2 feels sluggish and weightless in comparison to DR1. Main character moves like in slow motion, guns feel lame now, zombies fly around like they're made out of cardboard instead of flesh, hit detection is worse. The mocaped animations also have less oompth to them (DR1's animations were keyframed by hand, and felt very good and energetic).