What are you playing right now?

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I was playing Skyrim today, but not at the moment...I've probably played long enough for today. But yeah I ended up going a direction I decided I didn't want to with my character so I went back to an old autosave to change that, so now I will have to re-do some of the main missions.

Payday 2. Great game that just released a few days ago for VR.

Thimbleweed Park

I am now on leave from work, and I've finished my uni final exams! So I can finally finish a huge backlog of games I am partially through.

I finished Rise of the Tomb Raider earlier this week. Not as fun for me as the previous game. Bit too safe and cliche. Also, like too many games it has too way much filler content, stupid objectives like go rescue bunnies in the forest for or burn down posters for... reasons. Looks decent, though overall I thought it was a fairly average game.

Clannad I finished today. It has taken me over a year to finish this game as I generally have had to play it across multiple brief play sessions, but this week I was able to power through Nagisa's route and After Story. Wow, it is now one of my top few favorite visual novels. I still think it has a slow start and too many concessions to the visual novel format in the school life section, but the payoff was worth it. Now I will probably get the Side Stories and Tomoyo centric sequel.

I've also returned to Bloodborne; I'm not sure why I stopped playing it so close to the end last year. I can do the last boss at any point now but I want to finish off the Old Hunters content first. I'm banging my head against a wall that is Lady Maria at the moment. I love this game so much but it still pains me how they've tied health recovery and parrying to consumables that need to be farmed now. Maybe that's why I stopped, I don't think it's fun farming for stuff to prepare for boss attempts like I'm playing some MMO. At least with the Souls games if I hit a wall with a boss I can just keep bashing my head against it till it breaks, instead of periodically having to stop to do my preparatory chores. Oh and the Chalice dungeons are absolute garbage. But the meat of the game, the combat remains fantastic.

More Dragon Quest IX.

More Dragon Quest IX. I actually managed to beat Atlas. Sure, two of my party members were KOed, but we still won!

Finished Bloodborne. I like the combat more than Dark Souls, it's a bit less obtuse. There's some holdovers from the Souls series that don't really fit well IMO, like the 'magic' system, which was never that great to begin with. There's only a few abilities and it's overall not as versatile, ignoring the fact magic's never been a fun way to play in the series compared to pure weapon based combat.

Favorite encounters were Lady Maria and the penultimate/ultimate boss. Having played Dark Souls 3 to completion prior to completing this I can see how Dark Souls 3 took some inspiration from Bloodborne's fights.

Almajo88: You didn't like the New Order? That game was phenomenal, although I had some problems with it on a technical level. Don't really like the idTech 5 engine and its limitations.

Bloodborne is probably my favourite game ever, it's practically the only reason I bought a PS4 (that, and the marginally superior version of Persona 5). The magic system is nonsense though, yeah. I feel like they wanted to retain some of the range of a Dark Souls game in terms of builds, stats, lots of non-random loot to find that may or may not be useful to you, because those are things that lend the world in a Souls game some credence. They minimised the magic system to the point where they're less like builds and more like an extra you can have if you invest. I'm not totally sure what they should have done though. I just want to hear more about Miyazaki's next game.

How did you find Lady Maria? I've seen a lot of people have trouble with her, but I've never found that fight anything but trivial, I don't think I've died against her even once in my several times of playing the game whereas the Failures have at least once or twice, and the final boss of that DLC killed me many times on each playthrough. Ludwig killed me quite a lot, too, although his second phase is way easier.

Dark Souls 3 pales in comparison despite being a game which, in isolation and in a world in which the rest of the series didn't exist, would be considered a masterpiece. The most Bloodborne boss fight in that game was the fight at the end of the first DLC, and frankly, I thought that didn't work out very well because it's VERY dependent on build and favours light weapons. It would actually have made an incredible fight in Bloodborne, though.

Oh, and The New Order was okay. I can't remember the post you're referencing exactly but I think I said that I liked it more than the new game? The shooting and production values were fine, the gameplay loop was obviously very basic but it was enjoyable when it wasn't making me do chores or watch lengthy cutscenes that, despite the best will of the writers and director, weren't terribly interesting.

idTech 5 is a mess yeah, every single game that came out on it was plagued with some sort of issue. New Colossus runs better for me than New Order does. Dishonored 2 performs awfully even after the patches, whereas Prey running on Cryengine(!?) somehow is perfect. There's a great game though, and next to nobody has played Prey despite it being one of the best games of the year.

I would probably consider playing Persona 3 [PSP] if it wasn't so dark. I might buy the manga, though...

I loved Lady Maria, found her a real challenge. Especially in the third phase where finding an opening to attack or heal becomes difficult due to her aggression and delayed blood/fire attacks which give her enormous range. Even though I beat her after tons of attempts I never quite got the timing down on dodging her standing still then charging attack - I assume that's just a timing thing as I can't see any visual tell to say when she's about to charge. Honestly the only annoying thing about her fight wasn't the fight itself but went back to the design of the game and had to do with the fact I had to leave to farm blood vials and bullets several times between attempts.

I didn't have as much trouble with Ludwig or Laurence as I found the timing to dodge them not as difficult and they were both more predictable in their moveset than Maria. As larger mobs they're a great deal slower, but like most large mobs in the series I found it best to use a mix between having camera lock on or off, but mostly off since with it on the camera doesn't always show the parts of their body that show their tells. Also it's much easier to get away from them both than Maria to get healing in. When I died to these guys it was usually from having run out of healing; when I died to Maria I often had lots of vials left, but failed to find an opening to use them. I think I killed the Failures on my second attempt, but those sort multiple mob fights often have a bit of RNG involved. I spent about 70% of the fight running and dodging away rather than fighting, taking a few swings here and there.

I also bought a PS4 to play Bloodborne. Overall I thought it was a more original and fun game than Dark Souls 3, the latter which suffered from its familiarity to players of its predecessors. But I think for every two steps forward (consistently great level design in the core game, better combat, less obtuse and more streamlined gameplay mechanics, it took a step back (consumable health potions and bullets, fast travelling only from a hub, dull Chalice dungeons, requiring an expensive subscription service to play online, 30fps lock with slowdowns even though it's the fastest paced out of the series). But unlike Dark Souls 3 I don't feel as compelled to return to it now that I've finished it, because I don't feel like builds other than the quality build I played as would give a compelling and different experience. Also the games are better online, so Dark Souls 3 wins that for me too since it doesn't try and nickel and dime me for that functionality.

I have resumed my play of Persona 5 now, having dropped it when I had to get stuck into my studies. I'm so glad it has a story recap feature, I think that should be on all games like this. I'm 85 hours in now but I'm not so sure that that's actually that far in. Somehow I so far have miraculously managed to avoid spoilers. Still loving the stylish turn based combat despite the uneven difficulty.

More Dragon Quest IX. I got two sidequests done, and explored three grottos.

Just been playing Nex Machina. Very good if you like gloriously retro style gameplay with explosions everywhere.

If you have played Super Stardust (their version of Asteroids), or Resogun (their version of Defender) you will want to pick up this one, which is basically a next gen reimagining of Robotron 2084.

Decided to get back into the Ultima games...I had been letting my Aspieness get the better of me when trying to decide which version of IV to play, decided to give up and just go with the Sega Master System, which I can easily emulate on the DS and play at work.

Sure, the graphics aren't nostalgic at all, but I don't have to swap any disks, or buy a Mockingboard, or deal with a touch-screen keyboard, or try to get the game to run at a decent speed... @_@

I think they might've gotten rid of the first-person dungeons, though?

I just need to find all my notes and print myself a map and bring them with me now =P

1.Killing Floor
2.NoMoreRoomInHell
3.Fistful of Frags
4.Codename:Cure

no internet until the ISP folks come out on Wednesday so I've been replaying Chrono Cross

“battleborn” in between packing and cleaning to move. trying to unlock ernest as thorn, but only have about 1/5 the required points. the campaign is getting rather tedious solo though... got to the fifth episode, just barely.

do like the pick up and play element of it. each episode only lasts about an hour or less, you can set levels to hardcore so you only have one life, and the rpg elements are rather instantaneous... like, you’re just building your character to level ten during that one episode. after gaining character ranks, there are mutations that open up other skills for that character during the level up process as well, so there is reasoning in sticking with favorite characters.

“nuclear throne” has also gotten some playtime lately... but it’s hard to get into if playing to win considering the sheer amount of times it has spawned the character into an instant death scenario at the end of the third area. it’s still fun to see how far can be gotten, and the gameplay, in the moment, is quite enjoyable.