What game are you currently playing?

[Antimatter]

Use this thread to post snippets about games you're currently playing. You might add your impressions on the fly and any other commentary if you want (and if this doesn't fit into another thread, e.g. a big RP-focused or no-reload thread) so that others could ask questions or share their own opinions on that game.

 

[Antimatter]

I downloaded and launched Metal: Hellsinger. It's fun to play a game at its release once in a while. Played through Part 1, still learning. Time spent at 16x Fury was only 7%.

Here is how it plays for those wondering:

My (a bit embarrassing) stats from Part 1:

Now, to master that score and continue! (What wasn't shown in that video is me headbanging all the time )

 

[Antimatter]

One hour later, after more experience with the mechanics, the same Part 1--time spent at 16x Fury tripled to 21%. Kills on beat went from 65 to 92.

This is basically the core of the game: as you get better at shooting to the rhythm, all your results improve, gradually increasing the time you're hearing those amazing vocals.

 

[Chronicler]

I'm having a lot of fun with Etrian Odyssey 5 right now.

The Etrian Odyssey games are one of those series where like, I like them, I keep buying them, but truthfully they've always been kind of advanced for me, if that makes sense? I always start them and have some fun and then barely scratch the surface of them because they're kind of tough. Newer entries of the series have an easy mode but that almost feels like it would ruin the fun?

Anyway, this time I'm reading up a lot of guides and stuff, realizing how little I'd ever grasped the mechanics. Like there's a whole thing with binds, debuffs, and ailments. You'd think they were all the same idea, but the game treats them separately. You can have 3 debuffs at a time, and if you inflict a fourth it erases the oldest one. You can have one ailment, and there's a whole priority scaling for them, so the nastier ailments will overwrite the milder ones but the milder ones won't overwrite the nastier ones. But every time you inflict an enemy with an ailment, their resistance to that ailment raises, and then lowers back down once you inflict them with a separate ailment, but not quite down to what it was before you hit them with the first ailment, so it helps to have a few to alternate between. And then binds are like a whole other mechanic on top of that with their own rules.

I'm getting pretty excited about it.

 

[Xzarloxara]

Well, I am obviously playing Mass Effect right now, as I started a thread here about it.

 

[Skatan]

Paradox's Europa Universalis 4. Bought all of the DLCs in humble bundle for 20 bucks and got hooked. Had maybe 100-200 hours on a free vanilla version on Epic before that. I almost wish I could go back in time and not buy the game since it's quite addictive.

I also am running an Arcanum "bard" run. I wanted to finish that game many times and I bought a new GoG version recently for 1,5 bucks that works perfectly without stutter and using the unofficial arcanum patch with high-res and it's other mods makes me think that maybe, just maybe, this time I will actually finish the game. But let's see, I haven't finished a story-oriented game since CP2077 IIRC.

 

[Antimatter]

View attachment 3050

Paradox's Europa Universalis 4. Bought all of the DLCs in humble bundle for 20 bucks and got hooked. Had maybe 100-200 hours on a free vanilla version on Epic before that. I almost wish I could go back in time and not buy the game since it's quite addictive.

I first got into Paradox games when Crusader Kings III was released and took gaming by storm. I tried it because of the high scores for the game and liked it immediately. But it is not an easy game to play, and after every attempt, I usually feel intellectually exhausted because of all the decisions I have to take there. I have that small dream inside of how I finally get the courage and moral resources to play it non-stop.

I also want to try Stellaris because space attracts me, but with all the DLC the game costs ~100 bucks (~60 bucks on sale)...

 

[Urdnot_Wrex]

I practiced a bit more with Metal: Hellsinger. It was especially embarrassing to find out about dashing and soaring yesterday... something I hadn't known about (I only ran normally and jumped) because shooters are totally unfamiliar to me and I kept wondering how other people avoid taking so much damage.
So after a lot of frustrating attempts to practice it, here is the result of the very first time I got through Voke, the first Hell, without resurrecting the Unknown (something you can do twice before it's game over, but sacrifice some of your score for it. And I had to resurrect her once in the last room before the boss and once during the boss fight the first time I finished that level)

Time spent at max fury wasn't too great compared to what I had before, but the goal here was to practice survivability, so I often went for evasive manoeuvres instead of taking that next shot. And especially with soaring and turning around in the air to shoot at enemies from the other side I still lose my sense of direction a bit and miss a shot

But if I look at "Damage Taken" 429,000 instead of 785,000, I'm quite happy with my progress, because that was the whole point of this exercise and it's a very rewarding feeling to get better at something I still totally sucked at yesterday.

 

[Chronicler]

So, fun thing I just learned about Etrian Odyssey 5.

The first big boss is called the Amalgolem. Basically it's about five golems, and a main body. The golems one by one fuse with the main body to become a big golem. One becomes the hands, another the legs, another the head. When the big golem is fully assembled, it explodes back into its component parts, doing massive damage.

Basically the trick to the battle as I've always done it isn't terrible complicated. You defend when the golem is fully assembled, you attack the main body until it dies, then you kill the rest. You'd think you'd want to kill the other golems so they can't become his arms and legs, but he keeps calling more golems throughout the fight, so you're basically not getting anywhere until you take out that main body.

What I never realized, because I've mentioned in another thread Etrian Odyssey is all built around mapmaking. If you watch the map while you fight this guy, you can actually see where the golems he's calling are coming from. And if you make certain preparations before you fight him, you can in fact block off some of those paths. So instead of calling 6 golems to his aid at a time, he will only call 2.

That's such a clever way to play on the map gimmick! And they even kind of teach you it a little bit before hand. On the floor where you find this boss, one of the FOE's is patrolling a route that gives you no room to get past him, and the only way to proceed is to clear his path, so that he'll patrol much father while you sneak on by. So, like, they taught you the mechanic, kind of, but I was always too busy watching the boss battle to pay much attention to what was going on on the map while I was fighting.

 

[Chronicler]

Just had a really smooth run of Amalgolem.

Now that I know a bit more about how buffs and debuffs stack, I can protect myself from his explosion much more effectively, without interrupting my attacks.

But probably the most important thing I learned here is that the game doesn't tell you what kind of damage you're receiving, and it's not always the kind of damage you think it is, so you need to experiment with different kinds of defence. I assumed the explosion was Bashing Damage, because the big golem is exploding into a bunch of little golems, so I assumed the damage was from the golems flying at you really fast. Like a grenade launching golem-sized shrapnel at you.

It turns out in fact it's Fire Damage, because, you know, explosion. And I have a different set of tools for defending against fire.

This party is really growing on me. Initially I just randomly generated it but it works really well and I'm a pretty big fan of it. It's literally the same class composition as the party I did this with before, but I just started over, because I didn't like the art I'd picked for them, but it's super neat to see the difference now that I have a better understanding of how to use them.

 

[Cahir]

Currently, playing Divinity: Original Sin 2 on Tactician. I have played this game twice in the past, but never finished. It's really hard to say why, but probably the reason was another game that hooked me up much more. The first time I have played, Red Dead Redemption 2 was released and when I started to play it, DOS2 got shelved immediately. I couldn't get back to it after that.

Anyway, this time I was persuaded to play it on Tactician. I was hesitant, I'm not an expert tactician, and I'm easily frustrated when combat is too difficult for me (surprisingly, in WoTR it was challenging as hell, but not frustrating). Turns out I was rightfully concerned, the beginning of the game was the time when my but was kicked numerous times and I considered starting over on lower difficulty or ditching the game once again. But with some help from the experts () I managed to adapt to the gameplay, diverse my tactics, gather as much gold to buy necessary skillboks (or steal them on several occasions) and suddenly those fights, while still challenging and not at all less difficult, starting to be fun, instead of a never-ending stream of frustration. I'm currently in the later parts of Act 2 (as understand there are 4 acts in total) and while I admit, the story is not among the best I've seen (it doesn't have the "wow" element so far), it is very solid and consistent all the time.

The next game I'm gonna play, after I finish DOS2, will be Death's Stranding: Director's Cut. I have already booted it up for a couple of hours, and I'm already had a ton of fun. This is going to be a great experience, can't wait.

Then, I'll have several options, like Wasteland 3, Expeditions: Vikings, Total War: Warhammer or loads of Epic Store games they gave for free. We'll see, it depends on the mood, probably.

 

[Xzarloxara]

Thanks mostly to @Cahir, I have decided to play DOS2 on tactician as well. I have beaten the game once already, but not on tactician. So far, tactician has proven to be quite a bit harder than classic, which I played previously. I had a lot of trouble with a few of the fights that were not as bad previously, especially the final fight of act 1 against Alexandar and the Voidwoken Drillworm, which I barely survived with just my main character, Red Prince, left alive.

I am also playing some Pokémon Sword version occasionally.

 

[O_Bruce]

My and my gf were up to play some Monster Hunter World yesterday... Unfortunately, her save files got corrupted (likely at the fault of her hard drive, which had some problems recently) and we couldn't play together... So at the very least, we could talk via discord, while she was starting new save file and going through way too many tutorials, while I was hunting monsters that were usually giving me problems (though "problems" is speaking lightly). And I turned out I have gotten better somehow.

Average "fight" against Brute Tigrex:

My personal nemesis I'm glad I've gotten better fighting against:

 

[shmity72]

playing single player video games I rarely do anymore. some are like a really great fiction book.
I just prefer autobiographies and the synapse stimulus of people in MMO and making my own adventures.
I feel devs would do well to going back to the basics of 'choose your own adventure'.

 

[Antimatter]

That's totally ok though! What non single-player games do you play?

 

[mlnevese]

Now that my life is a little calmer, I'm back to my Fallout 4 playthrough. The Raiders didn't like the news

 

[Chronicler]

Since we've opened up the forum to MMO type stuff. I've got a big thing I'm looking forward to in Granblue Fantasy.

Granblue Fantasy operates through the gacha mechanics. For those unaware, basically you spend your currency and get a randomized grab bag of stuff that may be what you wanted or may not. It's not technically considered gambling because there's not strictly any win or lose state, it's entirely on the user's end to decide which of these baubles was the one they wanted, but it operates on a lot of the same principles.

But, in Granblue Fantasy, if you can save up enough of your currency to roll 300 times in a single session, then after the 300th roll you can get a unit of your choice. This is not randomized at all. Just pick one of these guys you were rolling for and it's yours.

It takes about 3 or 4 months to save up enough to do this, so it's a bit of an occasion.

Currently I've got my 300 saved up, and we're expecting the halloween units to come out on the 17th. So on the 17th I get to spend all my savings, get whatever I get along the way, and pick one of the cool new halloween units to keep. I'm hoping they release a halloween version of one of my favorite characters but I just kind of love halloween stuff in general. I've bought an edible from the dispensary which I'm going to enjoy after I'm done rolling, either as a celebration if it goes well or a consolation if it goes poorly.

 

[BelgarathMTH]

Lately I've been really into MMO's. I took a break from Elder Scrolls: Online and gave Final Fantasy XIV another shot. Right now I'm still into that. I finally finished "A Realm Reborn" and was amazed at the quality of the story presented. It's not going to win any literary awards of course, but for a game story, I thought it was really great. I was also impressed that the ending of the post-patch had something close to 90 minutes of voice-acted cinematic. It was like watching a movie. There were so many twists, turns, and dramatic betrayals! Plots within plots. If you like politics and elaborate evil schemes in your games, FFXIV may be something you'd enjoy.

There's very little player agency, though. As a JRPG, FFXIV has your character's role in the story fairly pre-defined. The story mostly happens around the main character. The NPC's form a cast of characters much like a movie cast, each with their own stories and agendas. Still, I've had no trouble self-inserting as the main character. There's a lot of variety of customization available as far as appearance, and the writing for the silent protagonist is just vague enough to be interesting while allowing the player to roleplay from the imagination.

There are some interesting things currently going on in World of Warcraft, too. I'm interested in experiencing the "new" classic Wrath of the Lich King, and there's a new expansion coming out for the main retail version soon.

I already have a hankering to make an ESO character modeled after my FFXIV character, too, so I'm highly likely to return to that eventually.

My dance card feels very full these days.

 

[Chronicler]

Silly little thing I sometimes think about. In Granblue Fantasy gold bars are like crazy valuable. You can do a lot of important stuff with them, and they're super rare.

And like, every time I get a gold brick, what really stands out to me is the visual design. Like, it just kind of immediately stands out as more important than any of the surrounding loot, doesn't it? It totally grabs the eye.

Maybe that's just my bias because I already know how important it is though.

 

[Chronicler]

Since we've opened up the forum to MMO type stuff. I've got a big thing I'm looking forward to in Granblue Fantasy.

Granblue Fantasy operates through the gacha mechanics. For those unaware, basically you spend your currency and get a randomized grab bag of stuff that may be what you wanted or may not. It's not technically considered gambling because there's not strictly any win or lose state, it's entirely on the user's end to decide which of these baubles was the one they wanted, but it operates on a lot of the same principles.

But, in Granblue Fantasy, if you can save up enough of your currency to roll 300 times in a single session, then after the 300th roll you can get a unit of your choice. This is not randomized at all. Just pick one of these guys you were rolling for and it's yours.

It takes about 3 or 4 months to save up enough to do this, so it's a bit of an occasion.

Currently I've got my 300 saved up, and we're expecting the halloween units to come out on the 17th. So on the 17th I get to spend all my savings, get whatever I get along the way, and pick one of the cool new halloween units to keep. I'm hoping they release a halloween version of one of my favorite characters but I just kind of love halloween stuff in general. I've bought an edible from the dispensary which I'm going to enjoy after I'm done rolling, either as a celebration if it goes well or a consolation if it goes poorly.

The anticipated halloween banner came about an hour ago.

Didn't get a whole lot of crazy stuff while rolling but I managed to get all 3 of the new halloween units, as well as one of the old halloween units that I've been wanting for a while.

Of particular note was Halloween Lich, which is a character I'm pretty fond of. They gave her a really nice costume and a skill set that complements one of my favorite characters, so I'm excited about using them together.

These are officially celebratory edibles.