Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?

Sands of Aura. Action rpg in a Souls vein, kinda like No rest for the Wicked or Path of Exile 2? Anyway, everything kills you fast if you're not careful.

Maps are islands in a sea of sand. Apocalyptic world, corruption, divinity, yada yada.

After cleaning up the first island, I'd suggest doing the main quest first because it unlocks stuff you're going to need, however upgrade resources are kinda scarce and the bosses are annoying without the much needed upgrades so exploration might still be preferred first. Unless you're good enough even with the default stuff.

The campfires are replaced with bells. Each island has one and they can be used to fast travel from place to place when opening the map right next to them. A second bell might be placed closer to a boss area, but it's hit or miss with them.

You can jump and will likely jump to your death often enough to make you sigh with emotion. And the game makes use of the architecture. Jumping, climbing, secret areas found by randomly manhandling the walls, it's part of the loop.

Bell locations are annoying. Bosses are annoying. The environment can be exploited and is annoying because it usually works against you, such as boss skills flowing through obstacles (unlockable). There's a dark, foggy map part of the main quest that's annoying. And the lack of a minimap or a local map is also very annoying.

You can see and feel the cuts to the game, but the idea is there. The Souls ARPG idea that is.

Anyway, frustrating parts aside, I'm liking it so far. Might give up on it later.

Ratopia

I can't stop playing it since the release. I love to manage my underground town, full of mice and save them from the zombie attacks.

I started playing Baba is You. Simple looking game but very challenging. A lot of times I feel completely stuck before eventually finding a solution.

Started a new fort in Dwarf Fortress. I'm trying to make all decisions based on the preferences of whatever dwarf is in charge.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

I was a good patient gamer and only bought it after the release discount was gone.

After getting emulation station desktop edition installed on my phone, I've been playing my definitely legally ripped versions of Wario Land 4, Advance Wars, and Zelda the Minish Cap. I'm on a real Game Boy Advance binge at the moment, as I didn't get to play much of it as a kid, whilst also feeling that it's like the Super Nintendo generation but with more modern game design choices.

I am currently playing Project Zero 2 (fatal frame in america) and having a blast. I really love fixed camera horror games. I have so many memories of playing it with my father.

I use RetroAchievements for it too which is pretty challenging.

Been playing my way through Journey to the Savage Planet lately. I meant to get to it quite awhile back but eh. Life happens. It’s pretty fun and doesn’t take itself very seriously at all, lots of humor and some very charming creature and environment design. Best way I can think to summarize it is like “what if Subnautica was really, really stupid (in a good way)?”, only it seems to lack similar base building mechanics as far as I’ve seen so far. Also funnily enough the sequel is coming out like this week or something really soon.

I‘m playing GOD EATER 3 with a friend and TemTem with my gf.

First of all, I have to use a VPN to see people move in TemTem, I googled it and this is the solution, in decades of gaming and hundreds of games played, this is the first time I have to do something like this and somehow the devs think it‘s not their but my ISP‘s problem.

„Hello, is this ISP? I‘d like to file a complaint: This one game isn‘t working as it should, can you change how your network runs for it? No, it’s just this one game, everything else is fine. …Hey, you can’t call me that!“

I honestly can‘t believe it lol. It‘s still fun although the monster designs seem a bit basic/shallow and I can rarely tell what type something is and even less what type would be effective. It catches the Pokemon flair quite well otherwise. Especially the part where I gotta bend over backwards to find a monster that has IVs I can live with.

GE3 I started playing with a friend thinking we might drop it cause it‘s from 2018 kinda looking like a PS Vita port, but it‘s actually kinda solid fun. It‘s clunky af, we don‘t really know what we‘re doing and ignore half of the poorly-explained systems, still it‘s easy enough for that and the combat flow’s fun. Any Monster Hunter is probably a better use of your time though.

Hatris just when I feel like killing some time.

I started my first Terraria game since the covid lockdowns. Just wanted to show off something fun to my daughter, but then I got lost in it for a few hours.

Drop Duchy - Roguelike Tetris/card/city builder. 13 hours in and it's solid./L Description from the Steam page does a good job of explaining an unconventional roguelike.

Drop Duchy - Build your duchy piece by piece in this refreshing hybrid rogue-lite game. Use block-dropping mechanics to collect resources, recruit troops to fight against belligerent armies, and let every block shape your realm, leading your path to victory!

Webbed - This deceptively simple metroidvania is based around using spiderwebs as the main mechanic for puzzle solving. You have two web modes: swinging or pulling yourself to a surface or creating persistent webs. The webs stay when you leave the current screen/room so when you spend time making yourself a ramp to get somewhere you don't need to redo it again when you return to an area.

I also thought it was a cool touch that they made it accurate to nature in that the male spider is a riot of color and the female is grey/browns. I think they're based on peacock spiders and the protagonist is the female.

I've started playing Final Fantasy XIV again. I was planning to do some fashion fun but then I remembered that as a free player my options are a bit limited (though not non-existent). Because of that I mostly focus on finishing the base story and grinding tailoring instead.

Not sure what I'll do when I'm done with that but I'm having fun with that I have for now.

fire emblem warriors on my 2ds xl and dynasty warriors: gundam 3 for the ps3.

once again I dont know where the line between "retro" and patient is..

also a little psyvaria delta and under defeat on steam.

Four operations away from finishing my The Wonderful 101 playthrough on hard!

I'm getting better juggling kaiju, but still not good enough to stylishly kill in one knockout. Sometimes I accidentally end up drawing a weapon too large and it throws off my timing… I'm trying to get more consistent at getting the size right.

I may stop and go back to get Platinums on all stages on normal before moving on to Hard 101%, but I haven't decided yet. I love this game!

I’m playing The Outer Worlds. Pretty cool so far!

Lots of dialog options for stuff, as I’d expect from Obsidian, interesting lore, hard choices. I wish the slow motion mode also highlighted enemies with V.A.T.S. That would make it much easier for me to play.