What games are you playing now?

Well, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords was just released for iOS and Android, and for once … rather than buying one of those versions, I just installed it on my M1 MacBook Air and have been replaying for the first time in a while (ok, I started immediately after finishing KotOR last year but quickly fizzled and started Gothic 2). Thoroughly enjoying all the differences from the first game … just not looking forward to where it all goes to crap …

Originally Posted by danutz_plusplus
Ok, I finished the first level with both Not Detected and Killed No One. The only issue is the game only gives you a status on these two efforts at the end of the mission. I had to redo the first mission, being a lot more careful, because apparently I was detected once, but I've no idea where. So I have to, while playing, be aware of the ingame chime that signals I've been detected.

@Philistine: Do you know if I can do this differently? Any way to find out if I've already been detected mid mission? I'd hate to a long mission and only find out at the end that I was detected, and failed the achievement.

Unfortunately, this is true. Also if you accidently kill someone, say by triggering an environmental effect, this will count against you and beware rats!

Originally Posted by Philistine
Unfortunately, this is true. Also if you accidently kill someone, say by triggering an environmental effect, this will count against you.

Yeah, and if I choke a guard and he's right on a ledge and I fail to grab him as I finish choking him and he falls into the water. That also seems to count.

It's really annoying because you have to be paranoid, and everything I think I hear a voice out of the ordinary speech that NPCs have.

Also, do civilians also count as being detected if they see me?

Ok, I started a new playthrough of Dishonored, meaning to not kill or be detected, but it's weird. I'm playing almost like before, but instead of killing guards I'm choking them and hiding their bodies. Except for situations where I can't pick the off one by one, I'm doing the same thing. And I imagine for scenarios where there's multiple enemies group together I'll be able to stop time with the upgrade time manipulation power, and then just sleep dart them all. It's starting to get repetitive. Or maybe I'm just tired and I should call it a night.

Originally Posted by danutz_plusplus
Ok, I started a new playthrough of Dishonored, meaning to not kill or be detected, but it's weird. I'm playing almost like before, but instead of killing guards I'm choking them and hiding their bodies. Except for situations where I can't pick the off one by one, I'm doing the same thing. And I imagine for scenarios where there's multiple enemies group together I'll be able to stop time with the upgrade time manipulation power, and then just sleep dart them all. It's starting to get repetitive. Or maybe I'm just tired and I should call it a night.

That's how I remember it when I tried, but that was long ago.
After a while, I just wanted to use all those dark abilities, or whatever they called them, and only limited the number of kills. Nobody is perfect

I really enjoyed Dishonored, and finished it without killing anyone, but getting the Ghost achievement on every level was more trouble than it was worth to me and I stopped trying after awhile.

My advice is to not agonize over the achievements and just enjoy the game.

Originally Posted by JDR13
My advice is to not agonize over the achievements and just enjoy the game.

Yeah, that's my issue with these types of free-form games. They leave too much to me. I ask myself why I'm playing, and it seems to me that it's mostly a sandbox with some cool abilities. The story sounds decent, but I imagine nothing to write home about.

So it being a sandbox, I don't know how to have fun. Too much freedom. Who should I kill, and who shoudn't I? Theoretically I can kill everyone, or no-one. What's my objective? Should I just choose the most efficient way to reach the end? Won't I rob myself of things by doing that? I realize I may be overcomplicating this, but this is honestly an issue with me. I wonder if I'm the only one like this.

Usually I like to explore everything, and doing as much as possible, but having done that for one mission, and killing most, I found it boring since the AI wasn't challenging. So I felt I was exploiting the AI. It kind of felt like busywork for no real purpose.

Maybe I'm just not enjoying the game as much as I wanted.

EDIT: Is the story/world/characters any significant reason to go through this? Or is the sandbox the main attraction by far? I've been reading some of the various lore entries, and some were decent.

But that is more respectable achievement IMO than any "finished the game on whatnot difficulty" or "grind some chore a number of times".

Why? Because you should kill Granny Rags. Honestly. Even if you spare everyone else, she must not escape.
If she survives, you get that achievement, but don't get something of a huge value later in the game.

Dishonored is a prime example of a perfect game that doesn't clone anyone nor anything.
It gives players a freedom to be played any way you find fun - but there are consequences not from the dialogue but from your actions and that includes reviewers' fastrun skipping side content.
The most important thing however is that without K+M it's not possible to go batshit crazy in it. I have no idea why this game was never shown as a proof K+M pwns. And it's not a shooter!

I think my issue with these types of games is that they're freeform and they make you overpowered. And they hope you can find your own fun in the sandbox they created and made you all powerful. If story were a main point, I'd probably do that just for the story. But since I get the feeling that it's not (or is it?) gameplay is all that remains. And I much prefer a tighter design in what it expects from me. By giving me a lot of powerful abilities, I either not use most of them or I feel they're all watered down. I've only been using blink and time stop so far. And I have a feeling I can just use these for the rest of the game. Heck, there's even an achievement for only using Blink.

EDIT. I hope I won't have to say this is not a game for me. Because I love the aesthetics and the world.

It sounds like you're making it more complicated than it needs to be. Just do the missions with set goals, i.e. no kills or whatever. If a particular goal ends up with you reloading too much, just skip it and move on. I found no kills a decent challenge, but I didn't have the patience for Ghost.

I stuck with mostly stealthy non-lethal type abilities, and I didn't feel overpowered. The game isn't super challenging, but the mission and level design are quite good for the most part, and I enjoyed exploring the world.

I second that.

Unless it unlocks an interesting part of the story, or unless you have already replayed it many times and are looking for a new motivation (which doesn't seem to be there), I usually find that it's more interesting to explore the game mechanics and the different features it offers (abilities, paths to solve a problem) than to stick to an artificial goal that significantly reduces the freedom of choice.

It's the freedom to play it how you want that makes it so good: High chaos combat, Low chaos stealth, and/or powers. I played the no powers/no death route because it fits my personality/ideology and I want to get as many achievements in a single play as I can (not enough time/too many games for multiple playthroughs).

I finished the Overseer Campbell mission again, and apparently I killed someone. I have no idea who. Damn, I hate this system where I'm can't be sure of what I did. And indeed you get all the hints you need to know how else you can take out your target without killing him.

But even with killing one person by accident, I felt overpowered as hell. Towards the end I started taking out groups of 3-4 guards by slowing time and shooting everyone with sleeping darts. I hope this gets more difficult in future missions.

Anyways, I very much enjoy how it all ties together. It almost feels like Dishonored is an rpg in the way it builds its levels.

Back to Stardew Valley with the big recent update - trying out the new beach farm

Still in Dishonored. Just finished the second mission, and I'm off to kidnap Sokolov. Indeed, giving up trying to ghost it made it a lot better. And I really like exploring the world. It's very nicely designed and encourages you to use blink a lot.

But I still find it seriously easy. I'm playing on Very Hard, and have no issues. The most significant issue so far was disabling the first Watchtower. Otherwise I make heavy use of Stop Time and Sleep Darts.

Also, it's hilarious where and how they kept the kidnapped Emily. She was alone in that section of the brothel. And I easily took the key off Prudence while she was in her room. Talk about amateur kidnappers.

Also I easily sneaked into the Art Dealer's room and tortured him for the combination. So then I didn't even have to take out the Pendleton brothers. Easy street. Though I imagine I could have also easily taken them out, considering how lax security was at the brothel.

I started Tyranny again for the third time.

I'm back to the farthest point I reached which is after capturing two spires.

I don't enjoy the combat but really like the story.
It makes it hard to play for long stretches as there's a lot of combat.

I find the story very refreshing and the amount of cnc is amazing. Everything seems to affect everything else.

I'm not sure if it's real or an illusion but either way, it's probably one of the games with the most consequential cnc I've seen.

I think that's quite an achievement.

If the combat was less tedious I'd probably call this one of the best rpgs for me.

As it stands its quite mediocre.

I'll see how it goes but not sure I'll finish the game. Having more fun than last time. But still…

Sent from my SM-G975F using Tapatalk

i started playing "The Realm" for FRUA. It's a campaign world with set campaign paths u can take a party of 6 from level 1 to epic with. I chose the southlands (there's also west and east, seperate campaigns but they all converge at the north eventually) as it has classic adventures like secret of saltmarsh and temple of elemental evil. currently with a low level party in toee and loving it. the amount of attention to detail is off the charts, i feel as if i'm really there! very immersive. lots of fun and truly rpg heaven (along with my nwn modules i'm playing, i'm in heaaavennnn… )

As I commented elsewhere, reading about all the Cyberpunk 2077 bugs made me nostalgic for eurojank, so I pulled Risen 3 out of my backlog and fired it up. I'd forgotten how good Piranha Bytes is at making worlds that reward exploration. It's too bad they're so awful at things like characterization, voice direction and user interface design.

Originally Posted by khaight
As I commented elsewhere, reading about all the Cyberpunk 2077 bugs made me nostalgic for eurojank, so I pulled Risen 3 out of my backlog and fired it up. I'd forgotten how good Piranha Bytes is at making worlds that reward exploration. It's too bad they're so awful at things like characterization, voice direction and user interface design.

I don't think PB is bad at characterization except when it comes to their protagonists. However, I also think the vagueness of those characters is intentional. Not sure what's wrong with their user interface design, and I have no idea what you mean by voice direction.

I thought Risen 3 was just "ok" by PB standards. It might be my least favorite of the Risen games, but it's still better than a lot of other open-world RPGs out there. It drags on too long near the end imo.

I've just started Immortals: Fenyx rising.