What games are you playing now?

I also tried a couple of games from the Steam Next Fest today:

Dread Delusion
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1574240/Dread_Delusion/
Think early Elder Scrolls RPGs on acid. The visuals will make your eyes bleed, but I find something intriguing about the setting. The writing's not bad either.
I wishlisted it, because I'm kinda nuts.

Tunic
https://store.steampowered.com/app/553420/TUNIC/
Aesthetically beautiful Zelda-like which I've had my eye on for years. In practice, yeah, it's pretty, but it feels a bit… hollow? I'll keep an eye on it, but not as interested as I was before.

Mainly ESO with a bit of PF:KM because of the hype around the WotR release

A couple more demos.

Forgive me Father - A first-person shooter in a Lovecraft type setting. It has a weird comic book art style that I didn't like at first. The game sort of grew on me though, and I was enjoying it by the end of the demo which is 3 decent sized levels.

Astlibra - A 2D action RPG. Nice art style and music. It reminds me of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. It's rare for me to get into a side-scroller anymore, but I'm enjoying this one. Wishlisted.

Time to scratch that single player first person shooter itch.

I don't play multiplayer games, so one of the only series that let me do that is Far Cry. Far Cry 6 drops tomorrow and the reviews are all variations of "this is not much different than but also probably the best version yet of the Far Cry formula", which is absolutely fine with me.

pibbuR said:

PS. What I like about LOTRO? The setting. And all the really dreary places: Angmar, parts of Moria, Mirkwood and above all: Mordor. What I'm not so happy about: the monetization, but I'm very good at not paying attention to things like that. (And also, if the game is to survive, and new content being made, they need some kind of money). DS.

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I have a Founder subscription still. And probably around 60,000 Turbine Lotro? points because of it. I still haven't played at all in at least 6 years. The game was absolutely magical during Angmar and Moria releases. Later expansions (that I played) just didn't feel the same however - plus the pigeonholing of monetization into previously immersive UIs didn't help matters.

playing a VR tabletop RPG called Demeo on an Oculus Quest 2 headset

It's pretty great, I'm having a good time with it.
I thought VR would be gimmicky, but so far I'm pretty blown away with it

JDR13 said:

Skullstone - A Grimrock style dungeon crawler. One of the best real-time blobbers I've played since LoG 2. Nice old-school RPG feel and atmosphere. Wishlisted.

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Just tried this one. Yep, pretty good. I also wishlisted it.

Not much time for games these days sadly, end of year crunch is approaching together with tons of social responsibilities. But I'm managing to put some time into Subnautica Below Zero now and then, just do a dive or two when I get some free time, and I'm having quite some fun.

It's a game I can recommend even if it's not really a RPG, it's just such a beautiful and chill way to spend some personal time (desperate scrambles back to the surface when you run out of oxygen aside!).

JDR13 said:

Talk about a slow burn.

That's a lot of hours for a single playthrough of TW3 though. I had around 160 without the expansions, and I was pretty OCD about it.

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Pretty slow, yeah. I like to explore every nook and cranny - I have all the map markers disabled in order to get at least a little bit of satisfaction out of exploration. Though those 300h are not all actual play time, I sometimes leave the game running while doing chores.
And then I sometimes get bored and drop the game for a while, only to pick it up later. At this point it's a bit of a chore, but I would like to finish it if only for the story.

Yey, they finally released Blade of Darkness on Steam/GOG. It works just as good as I remembered it, but at an ultrawide resolution. They even put in achievements. Other than that it's pretty much the same game. So it's perfect.

It's also only 10 euros so it's more than fair enough. I even got it on GoG just to have a good working drm-less version.

I'm on hiatus. Nothing is grabbing my attention at the moment. I'm sure Starfield will fix that if something doesn't pop up sooner.

The Dragoness: Command of the Flame - It's a HoMM-like game that doesn't currently have a release date, but you can play the demo on Steam. To say it was inspired by HoMM is an understatement. It pretty much rips it off in every way, but I suppose that's not a bad thing if you like HoMM. It doesn't bring anything new to the table though.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1413580/The_Dragoness_Command_of_the_Flame/

I also finally got around to trying the demo for Disciples: Liberation. I wasn't impressed. It doesn't seem terrible, but it just feels very generic to me.

Still enjoying myself in Blade of Darkness. I constantly have to keep in mind that I need to have patience and not just spam attacks, trying to finish encounters as fast as possible. I tried a different character to what I usually play, knight. And I really don't see why Zoe the Ranger is labelled as the easiest to play with. Tukaram the barbarian is also fairly hard, but he's known to be that way. Knight is still the easiest all around, for me.

Man, the combat is still as challenging as I remember it. You really have to take your time and only attack when it's clear to do so. Also, the AI really has a way of turning the advantage. I especially love it when they manage to block my attack, and then I take some time to recover from the stun caused by the block. It's sad so few games take this care of their combat systems.

And even though it's only at the start, I'm glad people are enjoying it.

Man, I'm really plowing through Blade of Darkness. I'm around halfway through the game, just cleared Shalatuwar. Man what fantastic level design some of the levels have. They really wind on themselves, plenty of hidden locations that I completely forgot about. Really fun and mind bending to keep track of. I especially loved Isle of Karum.

But there still are moments that are infuriating. I can't remeber if this bug was in the original, but I sometimes find myself clipping through the enemy that I spam with slashes. And then the lockon gets screwed up.



Nice to see that the nr of players keeps increasing, and the positive % is still at around 95. I'd love it if this game found new life, with a new audience. But I'm afraid the clunkyness really won't help it. And most players are too superficial to stick with it. But I hope it does manage to do at least decently financially. I hope it's not a bust for the publisher. Since it's a really small one. That's basically why I keep posting about it. And also got copies for both Steam and GOG. And gifted another copy.

danutz_plusplus said:

Man, I'm really plowing through Blade of Darkness.

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Ooh - you've really got me excited to reinstall this! Apparently having bought it whenever on GoG & Steam gave me the updated version as well. Always loved this game - felt like the original Rune got more love, but I preferred this one.

txa1265 said:

Ooh - you've really got me excited to reinstall this! Apparently having bought it whenever on GoG & Steam gave me the updated version as well. Always loved this game - felt like the original Rune got more love, but I preferred this one.

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Nice. I think I also had the previous version on GOG, but I never noticed it giving it to me for free. Anyway, I'd rather just get it again.

It's running really well. It does have some visual glitches, but they're fairly rare. And it runs beautifully at 3440x1440. That's reason enough to get it, for me.
I never managed to get into Rune, though I heard plenty about it. Severance: Blade of Darkness (I think this was the title in the EU?) was it for me. I never managed to advance very much when I played it as a kid, since it was pretty horrifying and the music especially unnerved the hell out of me. That always left a mark. And the first fights against the Orcs. Holy shit were they scary.

I'm getting deeper into Forever Home, it's a fairly robust game, especially for one in the rpg maker style. One issue I've had, and it caused me to pause for a bit until I found a solution, is that there is no way to decrease or eliminate the audio in the game. So I had to resort to other chicanery, yet in the end, sheer will prevailed. On with the gaming!

danutz_plusplus said:

I never managed to get into Rune, though I heard plenty about it. Severance: Blade of Darkness (I think this was the title in the EU?) was it for me. I never managed to advance very much when I played it as a kid, since it was pretty horrifying and the music especially unnerved the hell out of me. That always left a mark. And the first fights against the Orcs. Holy shit were they scary.

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I thought Rune was pretty good for its time, though I'm not sure how well it's aged. You can get it on GOG.

It's probably similar to BoD in that, if you didn't play it back then, it might be kind of hard to get into now.

Rune was much more accessible and the combat was easy to execute. BoD required patience, dedication and skill to pull-off the attack moves especially as you progress and the moves get more complicated. This was also necessary since even a simple orc or group of them can easily throw you off and kill you - spamming attacks does not work here.

About spamming in BoD, I actually found a way to spam with the knight. Not sure if it's an exploit, but if you spam attack and keep the forward key pressed you cut the animation short and are able to spam while you have stamina. Of course, this only works on enemies that you can keep in a stunlock, and as I said, only as much as you have stamina. Enemies with shields, i.e. most of them, can break your stunlock. So I only used to be able to do it against the goblins. And now that I'm of a higher level can consistently do it to orcs and sometimes to the dark knights. But they usually break out using their shields. Still, loads of fun. I use the overpowere and long animation attacks only against enemies with 10k health. Spamming them just doens't do it, since they can also whittle down your health.

I've reached the Forge of Xshathra, so I think I only have about 3 more levels to go, if I remember correctly. I just cleared the Temple of Al Farum. I also got almost all sword runes. Having a blast. But this level, the forge, is gonna be a pain in the ass. I remember it having quite a few segments that are hard. And the depressing and gloomy lighting doesn't help either. You're basically in a fortress inside a vulcano, so think darkness and lava.