What games are you playing now?

[Darth Tagnan]

Wow, Darth. Your words about Gothic and KCD are making me even more excited about the game!

I had KCD on my list ever since I read about the plans of making this game. I had not had the time to play any game though - till today.
I installed Stardew Valley and Ghost of a tale earlier today and while I was waiting for the download of KCD to finish I was getting bored and started reading this thread. What a coincidence you lot are discussing this game here!

I am now off to bed, and will start tomorrow playing. I can’t wait!

Here's hoping it's as good a match for your preferences as it is for mine.

It's not the sort of game I would assume is for everyone, far from it.

It has a lot of features that I suspect some people will dislike - or even hate.

Now, I've only played it for 15-20 hours (the game tells me it's 8 - but it's my third time playing it) - and things can easily change.

I suppose the best way I can describe it is that it's the least "gamey" Skyrim I've ever played.

Interestingly enough - Chris Roberts (Star Citizen lead) went out of his way to publically support KCD, and now I understand why. It's more or less a singleplayer version of what Star Citizen is going for - only in a single area on a single planet instead of an entire universe.

Both games are emphasizing immersion pretty much above all else, and they're going out of their way to make you feel like you're in the world, as opposed to some game where you can just teleport or magically accomplish things without effort.

On the other hand, they're also going out of their way not to hamper your effort - and what you can do, you can do. What you can see, you can take or get to. They're not putting in arbitrary barriers of entry - like is the norm with so many "grindy" game designs.

They just create a world with rules that make sense - and then it's up to you to do with them as you please.

So, if you're not entertained by that notion - it might well bore you to tears.

 

[you]

Yea but there is always the game of life for that. Pity they don't have more variety in scenario or a real campaign. There are a lot of campaigns they could write using the basic engine; from political rivalry forcing you to choose side to invasion of some sort (whether it be orcs or political or undead). Anyway the actual missions become repetitious very quickly so I'm not sure i get the love... esp with the lack of an arching objective.

No there's no story. Other than the one you create for yourself…

Sent from my SM-A520F using Tapatalk

 

[JDR13]

I purchased KCD a little while ago and I'm downloading it now.

Out of curiosity, why have you restarted twice? Was it because of your character build?

 

[Darth Tagnan]

I purchased KCD a little while ago and I'm downloading it now.

Out of curiosity, why have you restarted twice? Was it because of your character build?

No, I played it at release for a few hours - but found it a little too buggy and performance was a problem. I decided I would wait until it was in a better state.

Then I played it again for a decent amount of time a month or so back, and I liked it - but I had many other games going on, and it didn't really grab me.

Then I watched the making-of documentary - and found out it was the lead developer from Mafia and that he was also involved with Hidden and Dangerous. Hearing him talk about his approach to game design was like hearing my own thoughts about how I would want games to be, at least within that genre - so I kinda knew it would be a good fit.

But it's most definitely not a mainstream game - or something I would recommend to everyone.

It really comes down to personal preferences - and it's hard to say whether someone will like it or not.

One thing I will recommend, though, is that you have enough time available - and that you're in a position where you can really delve into it. As in, it's not a good game if you're being interrupted or you have to take a break too often.

It's sort of a slow burn and I think it will be more annoying than fun if you're not able to commit properly.

I would also say you should wait until at least the proper opening credits appear, which will be a few hours after starting. Before that happens, the game hasn't really introduced what it's about yet, I found.

Also, about performance, I can run it in a combination of Very High and Ultra High - but certain visual features are very taxing. Most definitely, reduce Shadows to Medium (or High at the most) - because they absolutely destroy the game during night-time where you have to use a torch to see anything.

 

[Pladio]

Yea but there is always the game of life for that. Pity they don't have more variety in scenario or a real campaign. There are a lot of campaigns they could write using the basic engine; from political rivalry forcing you to choose side to invasion of some sort (whether it be orcs or political or undead). Anyway the actual missions become repetitious very quickly so I'm not sure i get the love… esp with the lack of an arching objective.

In that sense, there are the late-game crises. They have three of them and they spawn randomly after around 80-120 days of gameplay (depending on difficulty).
There are three:
- Undead Invasion
- Greenskin Invasion
- Noble House War

However, the game will still be about missions mostly.

The game is tactically interesting for me. It's about building up your troop (without too many of them dying) - i.e. rename them to be family members or someone you know who has similar attributes, so John the athlete from high school is the Iron Lungs guy and Joe is the Dumb guy.
The battles are quite interesting if you try to actually take on the equipment and not just try and kill everything (higher risk, but higher reward) and it's about finding which battles you can do these kinds of things on.
I only recently (after 100 hours) figured out how to use nets semi-effectively. You also need to adjust your weapons before fights start as some units have high resistances against some types of weapons.
For example Orc Warriors are so heavily armoured you should bring a couple of hammers with you. When fighting necromancers, make sure to have a few archers to kill him early on. Bring spears when fighting Nachzehrers.

I also tend to decide on my goal early on (a bit like with games like Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis).
For example, I tell myself, for this game I will play on easy mode but Ironman and the goal is to beat the first late-game crisis. Or I could say, I want to have cultists and try and get the unique cultist armour (I have never done this, but it is a unique quest ingame).

Sandbox games are a bit like that. Did you ever play Mount & Blade?

 

[you]

Never played Mount & Blade because thought it would be boring without an objective. The new one is suppose to have a real campaign with real objectives and if that turns out to be true when released I will likely play it. I prefer games with a bit of story or objective - and end point per sey (like space rangers 2/hd); the forever sandbox is only interesting in the beginning if it has a lot of unique scenario (mini stories if you will). I'm starting to find battle brothers boring because it lacks both unique scenario and a campaign with a story - i understand your take that you find it interesting to figure out exactly what combo of brothers and weapons will defeat which enemy - but (a) the variance in enemies is also rather small and (b) I'll do a little of that but I prefer a bit more on the story side (read above) rather than that being the sole focus.

 

[Pladio]

Never played Mount & Blade because thought it would be boring without an objective. The new one is suppose to have a real campaign with real objectives and if that turns out to be true when released I will likely play it. I prefer games with a bit of story or objective - and end point per sey (like space rangers 2/hd); the forever sandbox is only interesting in the beginning if it has a lot of unique scenario (mini stories if you will). I'm starting to find battle brothers boring because it lacks both unique scenario and a campaign with a story - i understand your take that you find it interesting to figure out exactly what combo of brothers and weapons will defeat which enemy - but (a) the variance in enemies is also rather small and (b) I'll do a little of that but I prefer a bit more on the story side (read above) rather than that being the sole focus.

I understand. I tend to prefer some story too, but for some reason I have still enjoyed BB for over 100 hours, which is a lot for me. There aren't many games I played for such long times.

I think Mount & Blade now has some mods with stories by the way, in case you're interested.

I do enjoy tactical TB combat a lot, so I think that helps with BB, but I do actually prefer the Banner Saga for example. The problem is that the story then is linear and I do not find it compelling to play again

I can't win...

 

[Darth Tagnan]

Since I'm so fond of KCD, I've decided to give it a go in Hardcore mode - because I was finding a few things a little too easy - and I've made a few bad choices. Which will mean starting over once again - but for whatever reason, I don't mind it.

That said, the game is pretty huge - and I should probably wait until my upcoming vacation. I'm going to need at least one full week with nothing else to do, to give this the attention it truly deserves.

A little fanatical, I suppose - but it's so rare for me to find a game that I like so much and grabs my attention on this level.

 

[joxer]

I'm playing cuddle the Poogie.

You're all jelly of my Poogie.

Whatever that game is, I don't want to see it on my PC.
The ugliest screenshot I've seen in my life and it's not even real.

 

[joxer]

Separate post as I'm playing currently Yakuza 0.

Chapter 1 storywise is an absolute gem. Perfect intro for a brawler!

Ought to say initially it has dumb outdated checkpoints although it's openworld, but that's not true, you can turn on save anywhere in ini file. Yea, don't ask me why is an option not in menus but in ini file. And it's not the only one option that isn't present in menus.

Overall the port is an utter disappointment. Main game - you'll have no issues. Side activities? SEGA decided to torture PC audience.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/638970/discussions/0/1739964766311398253/
I've already thumbed it down on steam.

 

[Zogar Sag]

Since I'm so fond of KCD, I've decided to give it a go in Hardcore mode - because I was finding a few things a little too easy - and I've made a few bad choices. Which will mean starting over once again - but for whatever reason, I don't mind it.

That said, the game is pretty huge - and I should probably wait until my upcoming vacation. I'm going to need at least one full week with nothing else to do, to give this the attention it truly deserves.

A little fanatical, I suppose - but it's so rare for me to find a game that I like so much and grabs my attention on this level.

I guess i will never have a chance to play this game due to my poor old comp, but when I watched youtube lets plays, it worried me how easy some fights was early in the game, when you just backpedal and 1shot heavy armored cumans with arrows. Hope that Hardcore mode changes it for good.

 

[Darth Tagnan]

I guess i will never have a chance to play this game due to my poor old comp, but when I watched youtube lets plays, it worried me how easy some fights was early in the game, when you just backpedal and 1shot heavy armored cumans with arrows. Hope that Hardcore mode changes it for good.

Yeah, the bow seems a little overpowered. Not because you can one-shot people, as that’s appropriate for a headshot in a realistic game, but it’s too easy to evade and survive a guy coming for you.

That was one reason I wanted to go Hardcore.

 

[joxer]

my poor old comp

Start saving $ for GPU. The rumor is next nvidia generation will be cca 50% stronger than the current one and the current one is more than enough for everything - thus will get cheaper and even more affordable. No you don't need 1080, you don't even need 1070 - I have it and it's overpowered, 1060 is at least 100€ cheaper and still runs everything. Not on 4K, but then again, it's PC, not phone.
You can still play anything with only 8 Gb of RAM and it's wild price should go down soon.
SSD prices are lower and lower every day.
CPU doesn't have to be i9 or threadripper, those are ment for hotel owners and whales that spend thousands in phonegames. You should get any i5 or R5 and that's it.

I watched youtube lets plays

Don't do that. 99.99% of those are from beta where nothing was balanced and halberds/spears were still a thing.

 

[JDR13]

I took KCD for a quick spin. It's definitely a pretty game, and that's even without the HD texture pack which I haven't installed yet. They also did a great job with the background music and ambient sounds. Makes me feel like I'm at a renaissance festival.

I think the HUD could be better, and I'll probably grab a mod for that.

Needing to drink a bottle of schnapps to save your game is a curious design decision. Seems redundant to me, but I'm guessing it never becomes a big factor.

I ran into my first bug almost immediately. The opening-closing animations of certain containers seem to be reversed. They're closing when they should be opening and then they don't re-open. It doesn't prevent me from accessing their contents, but it's kind of weird looking.

 

[Darth Tagnan]

I think the HUD could be better, and I'll probably grab a mod for that.

I'm using two console commands bound to keys for that. I disable the entire HUD and the compass separately - on-the-fly. I don't understand why they didn't add these things to the options menu. At the very least, they should have added scaling or transparency options for the HUD.

But it works ok with the keybinds using a custom user.cfg file. You can easily Google this.

Needing to drink a bottle of schnapps to save your game is a curious design decision. Seems redundant to me, but I'm guessing it never becomes a big factor.

This is pretty key. It's sort of like Fallout 4 Survival. The intention is to make you careful and considerate when you go exploring or fighting.

In my opinion, it's a little too forgiving - because you can buy and craft these potions - and I think it's too easy to have enough potions to make it relatively trivial to use.

But, still, it does mean you're not save scumming to the extent you'd be doing in most other games.

It creates more tension, I find.

I ran into my first bug almost immediately. The opening-closing animations of certain containers seem to be reversed. They're closing when they should be opening and then they don't re-open. It doesn't prevent me from accessing their contents, but it's kind of weird looking.

Oh, how unfortunate. I haven't actually encountered a significant bug like that yet.

I've seen some quirky stuff, like NPCs getting stuck or some armor clipping - but I think most of the serious problems have been taken care of at this point.

From what I gather, the game was pretty rough at launch - which is why I decided to wait so long to really dive in.

 

[joxer]

When it comes to bugs, the game was Skyrim 2 at launch. Most are dealt with though and not by the community but by developers. Also, patch money didn't go into any kind of KCD Online. Such thing is not planned. Yet.

 

[JDR13]

Already ran into another bug. When tasked to get the money Kuresh owes to your father, I chose to just choke him out and loot him. He doesn't have any money on him so I took his chest key. But when I opened his chest with the key, I still got the quest to get a lockpick to open it.

Nothing major, but I'm suprised it's still there at this point.

 

[ilm]

Dragon age inquisition. I was killed (slaughtered!) by three bears. Sounds familiar.

 

[you]

Bears are great we should have more bears ! Don't you agree Joker ?

 

[vurt]

25h of GalCiv3, having a lot of fun. It's quite a bit better than the previous game in the series, really like the improvements, the game is less of a "hassle" to play, but not dumbed down. However the game is doing a terrible job of explaining things, things which could be fixed by just adding 1 or two more words and things would make 100% perfect sense. Watching a lot of tutorial videos and reading/googling did help to some extent, but its a shitty thing to ask of everyone who's gonna play the game instead of just providing proper information inside the game.

It's also buggy which is disappointing, e.g did a shipyard, I notice many turns later that it never spawned, choosed to get a ship in a certain event, it never spawned.

It came out in 2015, i waited 3 years before i bought it (since i know how buggy strategy games are at release, i always wait years before touching them), seems like it wasn't enough.