Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of October 1st

Almost finished with Portal 2, first time

I remember it being awesome. Does it still hold up or is it showing it's age?
- I played it again a few months ago. IMO it's still awesome. I should probably play the first part again too.

The original Yoshi's Island is so much fun! How far along are you now?

I've been replaying Stardew Valley lately. My first run was in 2018 when it was still version 1.3, so there's loads of new content to play through.

Yeah it's great! I've started it a few times but recently got an analogue pocket and am trying to finish a lot of those older games I've never finished. I think I'm about half way through world 4 now. Still deciding if I want to try and 100% every level to get the bonus levels haha

Finally finished Inscryption.
Holly shit what a game.

Nice!!! One of my faves for sure. Really want to try the roguelite update that came out for it

I was playing a ton of Baldur's Gate 3, but I decided I needed a break on it after getting to Act 3. I'm currently playing Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire for the first time and enjoying it.

Lol I like how you took a break from the sprawling modern CRPG by playing a different sprawling modern CRPG.

I do love the pillars of eternity series though. I think the first game got a little exposition text heavy and could have done with some more character animations during cutscenes, but I loved the story and the setting and I enjoyed the tropical island hopping of the 2nd(though I do wish the ship to ship combat was better they were so close to what could have been a paired down FTL).
- Haha yeah I was slightly confused why I wanted to play a different massive sprawling rpg but 🤷🏻‍♂️

Lies of p - absolutely fantastic. The first game I rate 10/10 since Mass effect 2 I think.

They took what is good in soulslikes and removed stupid fromsoftwareisms. The story is great and actually told, there are some indicators for npcs who have something for you, when an npc moves somewhere they leave a note etc.

The bosses are tough but fair, they don't randomly recover from stagger into a one shot ability or heal off of hitting a shield, there's no fake, game breaking, lazy difficulty like fromsoftware would do, you are not punished for doing something well.

The combat is great, no "rhythmic" parry spam, no dodge spam, you need to think about what to use, when you do the game can be rather easy for this genre.

There are 2 or 3 eldenringy bosses towards the end with ludicrous mobility and combo spam but most of the rest are really great.

If this is this devs first game I really want to see the next. First time in ages I'm doing ng+

Have you played Bloodborne? If so, why do you prefer Lies of P over it?
- Yes and yes. BB is a flawed masterpiece, some great things ruined by some of the worst fromsoftwareisms, a bit dated at this point too.
  
  LoP has a better and more varied combat, 60fps, better bosses, better weapon system, many QoL improvements, better story(in part because it's actually told :D), way better graphics, no grind, no long runbacks(the longest has like 3 enemies you need to fight, BB was made at a time FS still thought runbacks somehow add to the experience or maybe it was a cynical attempt at padding the game length).
  
  In LoP, once you "git gut" it's just so satisfying to get a few perfect blocks on a boss combo and break his weapon, never gets old.
  
  In my utterly subjective opinion BB is 7.5/10, LoP 10/10 in 2023.

I've been getting back into Cyberpunk 2077 since the major update! I've really enjoyed the overhauled perk/leveling system.

Worth giving it a go if you've been on the fence or haven't touched it in awhile.

I think I'm hoping to play it next month 😊

Been playing witcher 3 and hollow knight. Just beat final boss of hollow knight and now i'm going around clearing the rest of the bosses i missed

Nice! I love hollow knight 😍

How'd you like it?
- I loved it! Easily a 10/10 imo. The soundtrack, art design, controls, atmosphere all perfect

Getting familiar with Team Fight Tactics... I loved Dota Underlords. CS2 for nostalgic memories. Magic Arena, new season just began.

Mainly AI Dungeon because I've been hella tired and it requires minimal input compared to other games, but I loaded up my three year old Cyberpunk 2077 save and started playing again with 2.0, and Counter-Strike 2 just dropped so I've been giving that some of my time.

I love AI dungeon!

New Trackmania season came out an hour ago. Learning all the new tracks.

just cause 3

The last good one.
- It's been a while since I read something about that game. Is it actually a bad game, or just a bad Just Cause game?

Starfield. I'm only a few hours in, but enjoying it so far.

Just started Dragon Age: Origins and I'm having a blast!

Recently beat Lies of P.

I am a huge souls fan, and Elden Ring is probably my favorite game of all time.

I was expecting Lies of P to be a competent souls knockoff, but it’s so much more than that.

It has some issues, sure. But I really think the game is superb. I am beyond excited to see what they do next in the genre. They got so many things right.

I run a ttrpg Delta Green campaign between Cyberpunk 2077 on pc.

I finally got the time to sit and play on my car sim ( Assetto Corsa / competezione) after more than a year. For the first fewsessions, I forgot how to take corners but now I'm back into it and it is an amazing feeling when you nail a race from start to finish.

Outer Wilds, I am still struggling a bit with its time pressure component and am a bit overwhelmed by the choice of what to explore but it is still very intriguing.

Still deep in Baldur's Gate 3. I did relatively little content in Acts 1 and 2, and they still took me about 20 and 30 hours respectively. I wasn't sure if the game would run out of steam for me if I tried to do every quest that sounded interesting. Now that I'm in Act 3, I know I can end the game whenever I want, but I don't want to yet. I've spent 40 hours in Act 3 already and haven't even gone to the two major quests that I need to do yet to start wrapping things up. After I finish the quest line I'm on (hints for those who know, that will hopefully dodge spoilers: I'm about to go underwater to rescue some folks, and then I have to sabotage a thing after that), I may start wrapping things up, but we'll see.

I've been playing heaps of Alpha Sapphire on the 3DS, on and off, and really delighted to find that the online mmo-lite elements are still working. So I'm mostly wandering around finding other people's secret bases, trading and then spending way too much time using Pokemon Amie. This game is lovely, and I'm still finding new things in it. I think it might be my favourite Pokemon game.

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The nice thing with Path of Exile is that you can always play next league and try out other content and systems.

I’d suggest picking one or two systems and just really learning those each league instead of attempting everything all at once.
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I jumped back into Diablo 3 for its season 29, and holy shit, it seems so ridiculously easy in comparison to Diablo 4, at least in regards to leveling up. It's taken me less than a fourth of the time in D3 to get to level 100 plus 15 paragon levels, compared to me getting to only level 85 in D4 (which I'm also still working on). I don't know if it's because I've played so much of D3 that I'm just that efficient and I haven't quite got the hang of D4 yet, or if it's something else, but man, going back and forth between the two is kind of a trip. It also makes me really miss having a pet to run around and pick up gold for me lol.

I also finally finished The Sinking City again last night. I was kinda procrastinating by leaving a lot of the side quests for end, especially since I knew which ending I was going with. Got some pretty great screenshots out of it! It's one of those games that I wish came with a capture mode.

That's me as well. It's night and day.

I think at this point I still prefer D3 to D4 (maybe also nostalgia?). I do think that D4 will improve given enough time, I'm hoping. But it's sad that I paid full price for a game that, not only is expensive and has battle passes but will have yearly expansions on top of it.

I'm not made of money blizzard...
- I have no doubt it will improve, it just needs some tweaking, but I do think it will evolve into it's own thing too. I still have the original Diablo 3 on Xbox 360, before they added Reaper of Souls and started doing seasons, and even playing that is vastly different than playing D3 in it's current state. Having that perspective, it will be interesting to see where D4 is in a couple years.

Playing Path of Exile for the first time! I'm trying a Witch Elemental... Mischief build? I don't really understand it at ALL and that feeling of being a newb is the most fun thing about it.

I really like this kind of discussion, I wanna see more discussion where community members are the voice as opposed to news where a journalist is the voice.

Almost done with Act 2 in Divinity: Original Sin 2.

I went (semi on purpose) in the wrong direction in the beginning, so I was level 10-11, fighting against level 14+ enemies, while still mostly wearing my Act 1 gear (level 8 max). Some fights were a huge pain and I abused those quicksave and load buttons. Now that I'm almost done, I'm completely destroying those weak enemies, while I'm like five levels above them.

While some quests don't really account for the "sequence breaks," it was mostly fine, except I should have at least done a little bit more of the main quest. Because of that, I didn't have some basic spells you'd get and lacked a way to recharge my Source (a resource, to power your strongest spells and abilites). If I just spent five mintues, going into a house and talking with an NPC, I probably would have had a much easier time with some fights.

I have no idea how long Act 3 is going to be, and I read there's an Act 4, so finishing the game in the coming week is probably not realistic, but I still enjoy it, so I'm in no rush.

Brawlhalla

DM'ing my first DnD campaign ever with some of my friends, all of us are new. Besides that, Cyberpunk for the second time, and Baldur's Gate for a fourth time with a friend who just got the game.

I'm trying to make D&D happen since playing Baldur's Gate. Scheduling will be hard. I GMed one tabletop game of Cyberpunk 2020 about ten years ago, and I played in a short campaign of Star Wars: Edge of the Empire, so I'm not totally new to tabletop RPGs, but I'm new to D&D. I'm going to make it happen one way or another though. I'm too deep into D&D Beyond looking up spells and level up guides at this point.
- I was looking into Cyberpunk! Reading through my files I realized I got the sourcebook with the game. Ended up getting Carbon 2185 and already looking into making some homebrew systems to take it into a shadowrun esque bent. Will have to talk my guys into that one though, some of them aren't interested in a cyberpunk run, maybe once I pitch those HBs they'll get into it.
  
  I had to take up DM duties for this run and assure everyone I'd take it easy on them, so they can learn systems and all. Turns out I really like world building and planning sessions, but RPing characters is really hard for me. I got a very monotone voice and my range of accents is very limited. Making up for it with a ton of planning though. I'll make sure to pass on my workflow to whomever ends up DMing after me.
Do Worlds Without Number instead of DnD. Trust me.
I also started with DnD and slowly realized it's not a very good ttrpg.
You'll see when your players start sighing deeply everytime combat starts because everyone knows that this will take the whole evening.
- Hm, gonna look into it. Combat has been fun with my PCs honestly. I'll ask for feedback once the campaign is over.

Finished all achievements for Armored Core 6.

Picked up Unrailed on Steam for $5. Great purchase.

Stsrted a fresh file in Stardew Valley, cause why not?

Been a mix of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Crab Champions on PC. The latter is surprisingly good for a game I thought was just a meme

I'm on the last level of Dishonored 2 (low chaos playthrough). It's taken me a year to get here because I don't have much free time and I get bored playinr the same game every time I get free time.

I'm kinda playing too many games in parallel at the moment. I bought Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty and did prepare to start, but I have yet to start the first mission. I played a lot of Barony, which has been great fun. And in between I also played some Whisker Squadron: Survivor, which is a funny little game imo. Cities Skylines 2 is also close to release, so it's gonna get even busier then

Armored Core 6, first time I'm playing a game of the series and it's kicking my ass! But it's fun and has a really great atmosphere and setting.

I started playing Horizon Forbidden West, while this game is still okay, it seems like it's taking some steps backwards:

it's becoming more AssAssIn's Creed like, with lots of stuff on the map
they should retire the focus / investigative / detective vision, because it's really hard to see now
the movement is still janky, Aloy feels slow even on a mount. While the climbing doesn't feel good
too many button inputs, sometimes they also feel inconsistent, and sometimes it feels like they are running out of buttons on the controller
way too many weapons / armors that I probably won't use. Why not discard the rarity type, and let user level up the weapons instead?
it also has the trap of games with HDR, aka it's too dark to see
foliage sometimes obscures the whole thing that you can't see what's happening
while side quests are unique, many of the characters are kinda boring and forgettable. Often I need to sit thru a long and boring / predictable conversation just to get a quest started.

Besides those complaints, I am still enjoying the game. It has an unique setting, and gameplay that prioritizes bow and arrows. However it feels like they are moving into AssAssIn's Creed bloat.

Dodgeball Academia. It's an awesome little indie action RPG. I love the art, combat, and character designs. It reminds me a bit of Pokemon (though you don't catch anything... besides dodgeballs). It's a 9/10 so far!