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[Jopax]

Continuing my trawl trough old RTS games that I've gotten trough the GOG sale, Heroes of Annihilated Empires. Came out in 2006, didn't seem to be very successful back then. A mostly standard fantasy RTS except you get to pick wether or not you go full RPG with a single hero or the more traditional build a base and spam shit route. It's not particularly well balanced between the two modes, mostly because heroes start out too weak but if you don't hunt them down soon enough they can become one-man murder machines. The campaign mostly focuses on the hero part, with occasional ventures into base building, tho the base building becomes kinda superfluous after a certain point since you become capable of murdering entire armies (and the unit count can go fairly high in this one) on your own. The story is farily standard, everything is fine, then the undead appear and everything becomes fucky so you gotta fix it. Voicework is wonderfully hammy tho the main char can get somewhat irritating after a while. Not without it's flaws tho, apart from some bugs, the biggest issue I have with it is that it poorly explains a lot of things, or in some cases not at all. Part of it is the poor translation at times and part is that the game probably expects you to have a manual or something? Also fairly wierd design choices, like the fog of war which doesn't really hide anything but the textures of units, you can still see (and target) shit you technically shouldn't be able to (this leads to the hillarious tactic of massively beefing up your rangers attack range and just murdering mobs trough mountains before they're able to reach you). It does mean that the AI can never really take you by suprise since you can see all their movements pretty much all the time :V

Still, a fun timewaster if you're looking to play an RTS and you've played most others over the years.

[Kagus]

Yeah, HoAA had some interesting ideas slapped into it, but then it was all bundled up in poor execution and worse explanation... A shame. Parts of it had a lot of potential.

I'm still playing with BoI, and still utterly breaking the game. Shop items are busted, yo. I've managed to have one challenge win that didn't involve completely ruining all semblance of functionality in the game's internal economy, and that run mainly worked because of extreme luck with item rooms and boss drops.

...and then I went straight back to breaking everything again, with a run where I needed to run away from every room I cleared out before a flood of consumables just started appearing and filling the place up. After that, a different run where I managed to fill a room so full of hearts due to rune fuckery that they all started vibrating aggressively and I had difficulty pushing my way through to the exit.


And then I got obscenely lucky with a non-challenge run, and went from successfully unlocking The Forgotten straight into a five-time victory lap thanks to some excellent synergies.

[CABL]

Going through Serious Sam: The First Encounter (completed it: enjoyed it, but I've liked the third one more) and The Second Encounter (the game has a flamethrower, so it's automatically a 10/10 for me). Hoping to snatch Kenshi this sale, as I've played the demo and enjoyed it immensely.

[Iduno]

Going through Serious Sam: The First Encounter (completed it: enjoyed it, but I've liked the third one more) and The Second Encounter (the game has a flamethrower, so it's automatically a 10/10 for me). Hoping to snatch Kenshi this sale, as I've played the demo and enjoyed it immensely.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

[wierd]

Recently been revisiting my old and forgotten PS2.

Re-jiggerized it for free HDBoot, and been playing some golden oldies.

Earlier in the month I blasted Bully, and am now revisiting Dark Cloud 2.

I think I will revisit Destroy All Humans 2 after that.

[x2yzh9]

Recently acquired a VR headset for my birthday- and have been playing related games. Pavlov, skyrim, and fallout VR are all running nicely. Not to mention From Other Suns and Onward...

[wierd]

Sadly, my astigmatism makes it nearly impossible to use VR headseats without inducing brain-melting migraines. 

I learned that the hard way way back in the 90s, when I obtained a VFX-1. I kinda wish I still had it. I suspect it's collectable now.

[MCreeper]

Tried out Paladins. God, what an adfest. It looks like a damned browser game by mail.ru. On (almost?) literally every screen except game itself: Buy skins, buy skin lootboxes, buy premium for x5(!) gold, buy seizure-inducing frames for loading screen... But no pay to win there, nooo. 
On game itself... 3 minutes long matches? With 3 minutes stuff between them? Nah, nope. Although Seris is sure fun.
Apparently both things were not in game few years ago, but my attempts at playing it back then were thwarted by retarded EAC.

[CABL]

Alternating between Space Rangers 2 HD: A War Apart (crack-cocaine of a game), Stardew Valley (didn't finish it the first time and got bored during the 1st year winter, but currently retrying it with cannabis mod), and Mount & Blade Warband (another crack-cocaine of a game that I play on my laptop, since Steam doesn't allow you to play on both computers at the same time, when my mom plays).

[nenjin]

Finally installed and started to play Pillars of Eternity.

I'm liking it...mostly. It's almost managing to suck me in with old timey adventurin'

But the character system and gear in the game is giving me a serious case of "do I even give a shit." When you've found nothing but the same ~20 items for the last 10 hours, and everything worth wearing is literally the same thing except "+5 Will" or "Fine"......it's not lighting a fire under me to see what comes next. It shouldn't take this many hours to find more than 2 things that don't scream "we're lame ass magic items as a token reward."

That and the story. Yeesh. It's like the Witcher in terms of the world setting and "intrigue", and Dragon Age in terms of the nonsense new fantasy IP alphabetical garbage. I feel like I had more weird nonsense words thrown at me in the first 10 minutes than the most Elder Scrolls-y game I've ever played. There's a slightly macabre vibe to some of the story and that's kept me engaged, but by and large I don't care for the world.

Also many of the areas, while painterly, are boring and barren, and full of the same repeated groups of enemies standing around doing nothing as per usual. I dunno what I expected, and I can't say I'm having a terrible time. But there are definitely some real flat spots to this game. If gear doesn't get more interesting soon I'll probably shelve it.

[Dunamisdeos]

Currently playing FFXIV: Shadowbringers. Just finished the main story. I'm utterly floored.
 
It is one of the best RPG I've played in at least a decade. I say RPG's because I think we have an understandably lower standard of quality for MMO's in comparison. We expect a thinner story, some fancy vistas here and there, light on character development without too many difficult themes or questions to resolve, all in the name of a fun multiplayer meta.
 
The story is incredibly, emotionally impactful. The visuals are just as impressive as expected, if not more so. The music is stuff that I'm still humming a week after I've heard it. The overarching antagonist(s) are complex and difficult not to relate to, something that the original release was somewhat lacking in. The twists in this story were impossible to fully predict, and I've been playing since 2.0 with a deep knowledge of the lore. I teared up during at least a dozen moments. I laughed at more. I flinched at a few others.
 
In short I enjoyed playing this even more than I enjoyed recent top-tier single/small multiplayer experiences such as Divinity 2. The only problem: It relies very heavily on previous story content. You'd have to start in Realm Reborn (2.0) to properly experience this, or it'll be nonsensical.

[nenjin]

To add on to my previous post.....

What's getting me about Pillars of Eternity is the EXACT same thing that got me with Wasteland 2.

It starts really strong. There's voice acting, world building. Combat is inviting with the promise of more depth. You look at the character options and go "Yeah cool, I can see specializing this guy for this, and this guy for this....."

But about 10 hours later, you start to get the sense that very little truly matters. In PoE for example, there's the Survival Skill, which according to most places that are visible to you, only increases the variety of bonuses you can get from camping. Guess which one seems the most useful so far? Yep. The very first one, damage reduction. Which makes me go "Ok, so....no one actually needs points in survival then?" I'm sure there's some other benefits, provides bonuses to this stat or that stat, blah blah blah, so technically you can say it's good for more than one thing. But if it's not clear to me in the first few hours, is it actually that important? Sort of like how NWN 2 gave you the same, what, 6 skills all characters could buy? In that game I quickly identified that most of the skills provide corner-case bonuses to corner-case mechanics, and weren't worth the points I was putting in to them.

PoE is giving me the same vibes. And it's giving me the same vibes as Wasteland 2 where I don't see characters with advantages or disadvantages. I see blank templates where you can just throw on some skill points and whatever armor or weapon suits your fancy and there you go, have some adventurers. Am I just older and more jaded? Wait, don't answer that. I AM older and jaded, but plenty of games that I've played recently have given me that child-like delight and wonderment. Why have all these revivals failed to do so in the same way? Shit, Dragon Age felt like it had more going on than half the real time dungeon crawlers like PoE, Wasteland 2 and to a lesser extent, NWN. And I don't even really like Dragon Age or Bioware games in general anymore, but somehow their systems and mechanics managed to keep me engaged for longer until I eventually went "Oh wait, half this shit doesn't matter and is a waste of progression."

I think part of it is all these games promise by dint of the format to be more like an RPG, where all stats are supposed to matter or can matter in a given moment. Yet none of them really deliver on that. "Eh, put some traps in there so the rogue feels like its tabletop counterpart instead of its MMO counter part. Uh, give them some dialog options locked behind stat lines. We don't need an interesting magic system, just give them the +1, +2, +3 shit they're used to from tabletop, and give them their garden variety fire, ice, lightning and poison enchants and call it a day."

It's not that I think PoE is a bad game, and I'm still trying to give it a chance. But man, just like Wasteland, the amount of time it took me to see THROUGH the mechanics was disappointingly low. I keep hoping that after some point in the story shit is going to open up. But after....

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

getting my castle and seeing that 80% of the upgrades amount to "gives you an additional bonus when resting at the inn"

My faith is running out. If I don't like the story enough to care to see it through to the end, and there's no pull mechanically for me to see what the rest of the game offers.....*plop*

[Aoi]

Finally installed and started to play Pillars of Eternity.

Spoiler: Post Body (click to show/hide)

I'm liking it...mostly. It's almost managing to suck me in with old timey adventurin'

But the character system and gear in the game is giving me a serious case of "do I even give a shit." When you've found nothing but the same ~20 items for the last 10 hours, and everything worth wearing is literally the same thing except "+5 Will" or "Fine"......it's not lighting a fire under me to see what comes next. It shouldn't take this many hours to find more than 2 things that don't scream "we're lame ass magic items as a token reward."

That and the story. Yeesh. It's like the Witcher in terms of the world setting and "intrigue", and Dragon Age in terms of the nonsense new fantasy IP alphabetical garbage. I feel like I had more weird nonsense words thrown at me in the first 10 minutes than the most Elder Scrolls-y game I've ever played. There's a slightly macabre vibe to some of the story and that's kept me engaged, but by and large I don't care for the world.

Also many of the areas, while painterly, are boring and barren, and full of the same repeated groups of enemies standing around doing nothing as per usual. I dunno what I expected, and I can't say I'm having a terrible time. But there are definitely some real flat spots to this game. If gear doesn't get more interesting soon I'll probably shelve it.

I grabbed Torment: Tides of Numenera and Pillars of Eternity, both of which, as I recall, considered as spiritual successors of Planescape: Torment, and totally agree... except for Torment, not Pillars.

Pillars I actually managed to get through (though I mostly glossed over the last quest hub after 100%ing the first few). Torment, on the other hand, had me glazing over in the middle of character creation, there was so much random world-specific lingo being tossed around.

Which kind of reminds me of Shadowrun. I remember, years ago, effectively raising an eyebrow at the utilization of traditional stock fantasy races. Now, I'm looking at it and thinking, 'That's remarkably practical.'. Generally speaking, we get the general features of elves, dwarves, trolls, etc. Please don't reinvent the wheel and call 1:1 copies of dwarves something like terraburgers.

[nenjin]

Yeah, I don't even know with Pillars. There's the standard elves and dwarves, which haven't been explained, then like 3 other new races. And there's like, cross-factional groups I guess? The Glarnflarnblarneyblarn whatever they're called? And the whole "Yeah we have different races but they live together and work alongside each other" thing just kind of waters it down further. I'm sure there's some variety of racial and/or political conflict coming down the line in Pillars, but I already don't care. I still try and follow the story but I gave up reading their books. I was never big on Elder Scrolls book reading either but......man some of the stuff is dry and eventually I gave up on learning anything beyond what the story demanded I need to know. Which is generally unlike me, but Pillars has kind of made me not care despite its best efforts. Simpler stories, fewer moving parts done better, that's what hooks me these days. Brand new try-hard Fantasy IPs, not at all.

[Persus13]

Putting points into survival eventually improves the Damage Reduction, so if that's the only ability you care about from the camping bonuses, putting points into survival will eventually make it better. And the game definitely tells you that.

Being able to detect and disable traps is also important once you get out of Act 1's wilderness exploration and get into more cities and towns.

But I have a soft spot for Pillars because there's not a lot of games that have aquatic races that are playable, and running around punching things as an Aumaua monk was a lot of fun.