What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[vol.2]

I was gifted a copy of King's Quest Collection, and I'm very surprised at how good KQ 6 and 7 are, even to this day. I've never played these kind of adventure games as a kid, but I feel like a kid again playing these games... Something about the innocent MIDI music and artwork. Feels good.

My parents bought KQ2 when they bought our first 8086 XT from the Heath Zenith store in 1985. I subsequently played the crap out of the whole series except for 7. I never could get past the uber-cartoon graphics which made it look like a kiddie game. I was in high school in 1994 and not really feeling it. Maybe I should play it though. I have a CD rom copy of that collection I bought a Babbage's way back when.

[XoPachi]

I bought a PS4 last week for Final Fantasy 7 (and to a lesser degree Kingdom Hearts 3) but...god, I cannot stop playing Ratchet and Clank. Every time I boot up the console to play Final Fantasy, Ratchet is suddenly on screen. I'm like 1 hour in FF and haven't touched it in a week because I either just immediately start playing Crack in Time on PS Now or Ratchet '15. I missed these games soooo much.

Oh I wish 3 and 4 were on PSN somehow. :c

[BulletMagnet]

I bought a PS4 last week for Final Fantasy 7 (and to a lesser degree Kingdom Hearts 3) but...god, I cannot stop playing Ratchet and Clank.

R+C is indeed hard to resist as "comfort food" gaming, and I've enjoyed most every "main" installment, including the reboot (too bad about the movie...), except for one major caveat; in the latter I found enemy fire much less distinct and easier to lose in the admittedly nice-looking explosions and sparks and such. This especially frustrated me on "Challenge" mode; there'd be this huge cacophony of destruction in front of me (as there should be), but all of a sudden out of nowhere Ratchet goes "oof!", takes damage, and my killstreak is toast, and I have no idea why. It happened to me way too often for me not to notice, but I don't know if I've ever heard anyone else complain about it...maybe it's just me, which would be a shame, since the reboot is otherwise one of my personal favorites.

[Blinge]

That's pretty awesome. Sounds like a really interesting version of coop. Almost like when I was a kid and I would play adventure games with my best friend.

I speak japanese a bit (lived over there for some years) but my reading/writing isn't very good. I've been hitting the kanji practice for hours a day since covid kept me home, so hopefully It'll pay off.

Cheers man. I've started memorizing a couple in this process, like ningen, i think. And the option for inventory has kanji that looks kinda like a box so it helps me this way too.

Best of luck.. maybe playing JP games can be a form of practice for you too

[vol.2]

Best of luck.. maybe playing JP games can be a form of practice for you too

I've certainly given it some thought. At the moment, it's still too hard to read smoothly for it to be fun. I'm currently reading kid's books with an online book club, and that's about all I can muster. lol

[BulletMagnet]

More Zodiac Brain Farts:

- The farther in I get, the more impressed I am with how the game makes it worthwhile to keep an eye on what's going on in places you've already been; some of the new dialogue after a major event alone is worth a trip (or teleport, at least), but frequently there's also a new sidequest or the like to check out, often connected to a previous one you'd almost forgotten about. Moreover, it doesn't have the "you'd better talk to everyone again right now or else you might permanently miss something important" vibe that annoyed me in Trails of Cold Steel; here I'm stumbling onto vignettes with rewards I've long outgrown, but I'm still glad they're around for me to find.

- I'm also finding myself more and more taken with the game's overall tone; all the talk goes to the "politically charged" larger storyline, but personally I'm having the most fun discovering the silly little asides that are all over the place if you take your time; there's not a lot of "overt" comedy here (apart from the regular "Vaan says something stupid and Penelo takes him down a peg"), but there are lots of little humorous touches in item descriptions, handbook entries, random townie dialogue and such that I can't help but appreciate. In that way it kinda reminds me of the Yakuza games, though obviously a lot less downright loony.

- On a related note,

Spoiler

it took me WAY too long to get the joke behind giving the cockatrices a Cockney accent. I'm just suddenly like "...wait a sec" and now I feel jes' bloomin' daft, I tells yer!

- One annoyance has been figuring out which skills are "smart" and which are "dumb" as far as Gambits are concerned: for example, if you tell someone to cast "Haste" on "Any" ally, they'll only do it when the effect is absent and thus needed, but if you tell them to "Steal" from "Any" enemy, they'll do nothing but steal even when the target has nothing left, and you're forced to either devise an imperfect workaround or just do everything manually. I imagine it would have automated the game even more, and opened it up to additional criticism on that front, to ensure that everything was "smart", but it is irritating to try to work a skill into your strategy without micromanagement and find it doesn't behave the way you assume/hope it would.

- I also find my "fart around a lot and end up overleveled", uh, "strategy" continuing to pay dividends, as certain major enemies seem to require you to bully them to stand much of a chance; one recent encounter was with a guy who completely disabled your magic for the entire battle (not his, though ), and as such I had to use around 60 of my stockpiled potions, not to mention a healthy supply of Phoenix Downs, to last long enough to bring him down. I guess it sort of counts as "game flow?" I wonder if people have attempted to finish the game without doing any side quests or the like, to see what would happen...

[guigui]

Ys VIII Lacrimosa of Dana.

Been playing this in an effort to enjoy a typical modern jrpg, pretty glad for now. But I’ve been playing in the hope to get Dana and the island team reunited, and play with Dana alongside Adol and others. Seeing how the story develops (currently Dana in a hidden room under the stupa temple), I fear this will not happen and it will just be Dana on her time, and Adol cruising the island.
Anyone can confirm ?

[BulletMagnet]

The only thing I'll say is that the story of that game is so stupid that anything is possible.

[guigui]

Oh great, so I’ll push on.

[Mischief Maker]

Well I can't find the off-topic "I did it!" thread, so I'll just post it here.

I finally after more than a year of playing pretty regularly (great podcast game) beat the TLB in Slay the Spire. I mean I got to it over and over again but could never survive the constant 60 dmg poundings from the heart.

The hell of it is, my deck wasn't even well-planned or anything. Silent build. I happened to pick up the Necronomicon (first two-point card used in a round is played twice) and the Dash card that gives you 13 dmg and 13 shield for two points. That combo plus the kunai artifact that constantly boosts your dexterity made me practically indestructible while still dishing out the damage. A little poison damage from noxious fumes and it was done. And I did it all while half-attentive to the game and listening to the news.

Whew!

[BIL]

Well I can't find the off-topic "I did it!" thread, so I'll just post it here.

Best alternative

Congrats btw, no experience with Slay the Spire but hard-fought victories are always great to read.

[Steamflogger Boss]

Finished Judgment tonight.

Some random thoughts

Best combat in the "series" which really makes it even more of a shame what is happening with Y7 imo. One of the better standalone stories as well.

Spoiler

I was hoping Saori would be a romantic interest but that doesn't happen. I get why, but meh.

New Mini-game grades

Dice and Cube (VR board game) 4/10 Boring but the best way in the game to get money so you pretty much have to do it.
Drone Racing 7/10 gets kinda tough on the last circuit even with great parts, the rest is extremely easy though I guess you could gate yourself on parts for more of a challenge
Kamuro of the Dead 9/10 no real complaints, fun arcade rail shooter
Pinball 1/10 vomit

Overall a fine entry into the series, highly recommended for Yakuza fans.

[BrianC]

I picked up Yakuza 0 when it was on sale. I might give it a go sometime. I'm a sucker for stuff that takes place in the 80s.

Lately I have been playing Animal Crossing Switch, Ninja Gaiden NES, and Streets of Rage 4.

[Blinge]

Steemflog you ever tried to 100% or get all chevs for those games?

[Steamflogger Boss]

Steemflog you ever tried to 100% or get all chevs for those games?

Yeah, I'm close in Judgment. I like doing everything anyway. I got a weird bug where it wasn't letting me do a couple side stories but I was almost at 100% when I hear the game. I'll wrap it up in a few days probably.

[TransatlanticFoe]

DOOM Eternal

Finished the campaign. Will give it a solid 8/10 because there's a few things that really detract from the experience. Just silly little balance things that are odd because the rest of the campaign is so superbly put together - a sandbox of destruction that makes you feel unstoppable and vulnerable at the same time

Mauraders: easy on their own, pain in the arse when other enemies are around. The trouble is they're so opposite to how the rest of the game plays that fighting them feels stilted rather than tense and fluid
Khan Makyr: Like the maurader this boss fight feels out of place with the rest of the game. As it goes on, the floor is on fire, restricting your movement and sucking away any fun. Not helped by....
Spotty melee/traversal detection: Enjoy air punching at a cyber mancubus or worst, Khan Makyr. The meat hook refusing to hold a lock. Grab a ledge only for the animation to half play and drop you down. Just miss that swing pole or fall short of a long jump. Sometimes you'll make something you're so sure you'd fucked up - but conversely dead certs fail at the most crucial times
Icon of Sin: no I do not want to fight multiple barons of hell alongside a final boss who can annihilate you. You can't keep an eye on him winding up for attacks at the same time as dealing with the random array of big bads that spawn. The first stage of this fight is a bit too much, in too small an arena - the second part is much better balanced

That said, the rest of the game is a sheer delight. Scrambling to a glory kill to recover health when on the brink of death is exhilarating. Multiple viable ways to handle each type of demon let you work out your own playstyle. Snooping around for secrets is a much needed respite. Upgrade paths for weapons and abilities only further cater to whatever play style you've carved out for yourself. Even on a base xbone it looks incredible and stays smooth throughout utter carnage - to the point where I had to manually nerf turning speed because it was giving me motion sickness from being too fast. Adding in lore/story was a nice touch, because it's almost entirely optional so you can ignore it and get a similar middle-finger-to-the-plot experience as DOOM 2016 if you so wish

If they do another one (which they surely will), boss design needs another look and the non-shooting needs tightening up a bit. This one came so close.

[third_strike]

Toke a little motivation these days to play Fatal Fury 3 and Just finished it defeating Jin Chonrei. You need play this game strategically or will lose fast mainly in some enemies. I YouTube there is a lot of vídeos where players plays careless.some seems tas while another seems on very easy. you can't play this game this safe way. Could not record because it was on real on MVS. I will try record a inp in emulator, but don't known if I can beat Chonrei again. I am happy!

[CIT]

Toke a little motivation these days to play Fatal Fury 3 and Just finished it defeating Jin Chonrei. You need play this game strategically or will lose fast mainly in some enemies. I YouTube there is a lot of vídeos where players plays careless.some seems tas while another seems on very easy. you can't play this game this safe way. Could not record because it was on real on MVS. I will try record a inp in emulator, but don't known if I can beat Chonrei again. I am happy!

Whoa, congrats! I haven't spent much time with FF3, but Real Bout Fatal Fury is one of my favorite SNK fighting games. I always feel the two games are two sides of the same coin. As far as I know they were even developed in parallel.

[lilmanjs]

Eufloria HD
Beat the story levels and have been playing the harder Dark Matter mode versions you unlock after beating the story mode. That Milieu music is just so sublime and really makes it hard to get angry at losing like a lot of other RTS games.

[Blinge]

Steemflog you ever tried to 100% or get all chevs for those games?

Yeah, I'm close in Judgment. I like doing everything anyway. I got a weird bug where it wasn't letting me do a couple side stories but I was almost at 100% when I hear the game. I'll wrap it up in a few days probably.

Niioce. I do respect a completionist.

I gave up on Kiwami, one of those karaoke high percent requirements to please Haruka was just too hard.

[To Far Away Times]

DOOM Eternal

Finished the campaign. Will give it a solid 8/10 because there's a few things that really detract from the experience. Just silly little balance things that are odd because the rest of the campaign is so superbly put together - a sandbox of destruction that makes you feel unstoppable and vulnerable at the same time

Mauraders: easy on their own, pain in the arse when other enemies are around. The trouble is they're so opposite to how the rest of the game plays that fighting them feels stilted rather than tense and fluid
Khan Makyr: Like the maurader this boss fight feels out of place with the rest of the game. As it goes on, the floor is on fire, restricting your movement and sucking away any fun. Not helped by....
Spotty melee/traversal detection: Enjoy air punching at a cyber mancubus or worst, Khan Makyr. The meat hook refusing to hold a lock. Grab a ledge only for the animation to half play and drop you down. Just miss that swing pole or fall short of a long jump. Sometimes you'll make something you're so sure you'd fucked up - but conversely dead certs fail at the most crucial times
Icon of Sin: no I do not want to fight multiple barons of hell alongside a final boss who can annihilate you. You can't keep an eye on him winding up for attacks at the same time as dealing with the random array of big bads that spawn. The first stage of this fight is a bit too much, in too small an arena - the second part is much better balanced

That said, the rest of the game is a sheer delight. Scrambling to a glory kill to recover health when on the brink of death is exhilarating. Multiple viable ways to handle each type of demon let you work out your own playstyle. Snooping around for secrets is a much needed respite. Upgrade paths for weapons and abilities only further cater to whatever play style you've carved out for yourself. Even on a base xbone it looks incredible and stays smooth throughout utter carnage - to the point where I had to manually nerf turning speed because it was giving me motion sickness from being too fast. Adding in lore/story was a nice touch, because it's almost entirely optional so you can ignore it and get a similar middle-finger-to-the-plot experience as DOOM 2016 if you so wish

If they do another one (which they surely will), boss design needs another look and the non-shooting needs tightening up a bit. This one came so close.

Doom Eternal was so close.

I suppose the way to reiterate on Doom 2016 was to add more mechanics to it and to make it more complicated. But the game play loop (I hate that term) in Doom Eternal is just a little too rigid and a little too based on managing cool downs than I would have liked. Doom 2016 was more forgiving with what approach you took, and you could use different weapons to get the job done. Doom Eternal punishes you if you try to play other than how it was intended. And dammit, let me use the chainsaw on something other than just the basic demons.

The Maurader just isn't than fun to fight. He's far from game breaking but I think he would have worked better as a one time boss. Like you were saying, fighting him feels stilted and once you've isolated him, fighting him and waiting for the opening just isn't that fun.

And on the subject of bosses, I think the bosses in 2016 were better. That one boss in Doom Eternal where you have to use the meat hook and glory kill the enemy in the air should have been scrapped or reworked.

I did enjoy the platforming, it doesn't really add much to combat but it's a nice diversion. Doom Eternal probably also has better level design, in particular that level with the infested city where you needed to grab the key cards was great.

That being said Doom Eternal still smokes 99% of AAA games, I just think I prefer Doom 2016's looser approach to Doom Eternal's much more rigid rule set.

[Leandro]

Just "finished" Nioh, and by finished I mean the end credits played, but a lot of additional missions unlocked.

Now I'm thinking about starting Okami HD, which I bought alongside Yakuza 0 on a recent Steam sale. And I still need to finish Mass Effect 3.

[Ed Oscuro]

In case ya missed it: Grand Theft Auto V is free on Epic Store until the 21st!

No, I'm not playing it...I'm in the middle of quitting an awful free-to-play addiction and working on getting back to studies, lol

[Blinge]

Minecraft with the boys last night..
I generated a Desert only world for a survival challenge but left structures on, so villages and dungeons would spawn.

We rolled into the first town and started fortifying it to protect against the monsters.. and I said "oh we're like the Magnificent Seven.."

Until my buddy started stripping out every building of anything that could be useful at all. The villagers kinda wander around outside town now, all sullen and purposeless.. they're unemployed now too

We battered their Iron Golem protector for scrap; the bit or iron that would let us make tools..
*

On a similar note, perhaps.. I've been playing Metal Max Returns on SNES - this one got an English patch.
I really like zoning out to these 16bit JRPG battles. The simplicity of it. Also, bounty hunting instead of going out to save the world is a nice change.

[Kiken]

Started playing Top Hunter: Roddy & Cathy again as I'm determined to get somewhere in this game. I really like the dual-plain mechanic and I feel it works really well in stage but becomes nothing more than a gimmick during the boss encounters. Right now, I'm going with Forest-Wind-Fire-Ice as my stage order. Last night I managed to break 300k and got pretty far into the third stage (I think I was just shy of the stage 3 boss). I think the biggest wall I'm running into in terms of progression is just how damaging enemies are (everything hits your character like a brick wall). I'd love to do a replay of this at some point, but man, this game is looooooooong. I'm guessing that most reviewers online just played through the game at Normal difficulty, because they constantly mention that each level is broken into two parts, but at MVS difficulty the game has three parts per stage.

[Immryr]

I'm still playing Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark. I'm about 40 hours in and it feels like there is only going to be one or two more battles to come. I've really enjoyed playing through this, leveling up my team, finding cool job / passive ability combos etc. It doesn't really bring anything new or revolutionary to the genre, but it's well made and feels really cosy.

Their take on a blue mage type thing is a lot less fiddly than in the FFT games, for sure. I've got mine set up like some kind of hilarious suicide bomber. He's got several pairs of boots to increase his movement range, gains mp for distance travelled, has a counter which does AoE damage on death, auto rebirth plus a suicidemove which damages all enemies with higher damage for close proximity.

I've also been messing about with Subnautica a bit. quite enjoying this one, although I've never played any of these kind of survival/crafting games before. It's very easy to spend huge chunks of time just messing around, starting to do one thing, getting distracted, starting something else, then realising that you've done absolutely nothing.

I've made a decent start on my underwater base, got some food production going, and made a little submersible. I have no idea what I'm really supposed to be doing, I'm just following clues and looking for new things to make my base better. My next plan is to look for a way to upgrade my sub so I can explore deeper areas.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Now I'm thinking about starting Okami HD, which I bought alongside Yakuza 0 on a recent Steam sale.

Ōkami is one LONG a game, just so you know. If it's really on PC these days, that's all the more kudos for Capcom for pushing it as far as this. It was never much of a seller, was it? But there you have it. Third (!) generation of consoles and counting.
Take note how Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter has NEVER been rare, for as long as I remember, as if the original print was massive enough for anyone interested in to get it. One of those pretty cool peculiarities of Capcom, alongside their 2012 Japanese GameCube re-print of Gotcha Force.

[Leandro]

Now I'm thinking about starting Okami HD, which I bought alongside Yakuza 0 on a recent Steam sale.

Ōkami is one LONG a game, just so you know. If it's really on PC these days, that's all the more kudos for Capcom for pushing it as far as this. It was never much of a seller, was it? But there you have it. Third (!) generation of consoles and counting.
Take note how Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter has NEVER been rare, for as long as I remember, as if the original print was massive enough for anyone interested in to get it. One of those pretty cool peculiarities of Capcom, alongside their 2012 Japanese GameCube re-print of Gotcha Force.

Yeah I remember being really interested in this game at the time of it's release (2006 I think?) due to everyone raving about it, but I didn't have a PS2 back then.

Playing it for the first time nowadays, locked to 30 fps, with a super slow paced start... Perhaps I got too old for this one now. All things have a moment in time.
I will endure a bit more though.

[drauch]

Now I'm thinking about starting Okami HD, which I bought alongside Yakuza 0 on a recent Steam sale.

Ōkami is one LONG a game, just so you know. If it's really on PC these days, that's all the more kudos for Capcom for pushing it as far as this. It was never much of a seller, was it? But there you have it. Third (!) generation of consoles and counting.
Take note how Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter has NEVER been rare, for as long as I remember, as if the original print was massive enough for anyone interested in to get it. One of those pretty cool peculiarities of Capcom, alongside their 2012 Japanese GameCube re-print of Gotcha Force.

Yeah I remember being really interested in this game at the time of it's release (2006 I think?) due to everyone raving about it, but I didn't have a PS2 back then.

Playing it for the first time nowadays, locked to 30 fps, with a super slow paced start... Perhaps I got too old for this one now. All things have a moment in time.
I will endure a bit more though.

That was my experience as well. Curious to see what you think, as I haven't been back since the start.

[vol.2]

Okami's draw was the unique gameplay. I don't know that it's your age, but perhaps the age of the game.

Personally, I still adore Okami, but I suspect that has to do with my experience playing it at the time and the way that it stuck out from other games of it's day. If I had to sit down and play it for the first time today, I might be bored.
Kudos to the development team for pushing the boundaries though.