What games are you playing now?

I just hit lv37 in AC: Odyssey, and the difficulty spike has been pretty abrupt, and humbling. It's a good thing tho, the game started to feel a bit easy at times.

Up until this point, I've been able to take on any mercenary, oftentimes multiple at the same time, and be hurt, but survive. Satisfying fights that leave me saying aloud "Damn, that was a great fight!"

My credo up until this point has been "Life begins with a nice bounty on my head"

Now, I'm starting to feel seriously challenged by the mercs. If they attack when I'm taking on other enemies, it can become a critical situation. I cant just run around with old equipment several levels behind, i need to stay updated. Blocking isnt so much an option anymore w/ mercs, as just about every attack is unblockable, and they are throwing around status effects like crazy. BAM a couple solid hits and I'm gasping, oh shit I'm on fire!! De-sync'd :/

Part of my problem is that I'm behind the Cultist thing, which means i'm behind on the Leonidas spear upgrade, which means Lv3 of all my key abilities are gated at lv2. I need to start racking up some more cultist kills, and soon. Got at least 5 ability points laying around, waiting to be spent.

So it's a cultist-hunting we are going… that's my focus for the next few play sessions

Just felt like sharing this

okay, that was pretty funny

Yea I don't think so.
Minsc great (5:38-6:02), fails the rhythm as would in reality, mouth does not look completely artificial as with others and the score is perfect for him.

The rest of it is plain bs, could and should have been better.
I thumbed it down.

I kept waiting, hoping that Sony would announce either a PS5 patch for Bloodborne or a PC version, and it seems I'm waiting for nothing. So, I've started another playthrough of it, hoping that maybe this time I'll have the will and patience to see it to the end.

It's got fantastic atmosphere, a cryptic and obtuse story featuring cosmic horror that really matches with the emotions the gameplay takes out of you. And the combat is fantastic. I only need to constantly deprogram myself from the way modern games have made me play. No patience and thinking I can spam-attack myself out of emergencies. Nope, that only gets you killed.

Getting a little Drakensang time in by playing Blackguards. Seems I stopped playing back in 2018 while stuck in the arena, so I started back up and am now finished with the arena and continuing on with Chap. 3.

I tried getting the MM6-7-8 merge going but it just loads MM8 only no matter what I do. So, I went back to MM7 which has moved to 2nd place in my all time favorites list; behind Skyrim. However, I've played MM7 many more hours due to it being 12 years older than the best rpg of all time

Gave my strategy games a rest for a while. Decided to replay a few recent Assassin Creed games. I'll start with Origins and might finally play Assassin's Creed Valhalla.

Still playing Wizardry 6 with the automap mod. What a masterpiece of level design, story, character development, monster variety, size and even graphics for an old game. The monster animations are amazing even by today's standards.

One thing that makes it short of a true masterpiece is the obscurity in knowing weapon and item parameters (such as weapon damage levels), and in some puzzles. Maybe this game was designed to be played with the master guide due to its complexity and technology limitations.

If anything deserves a remaster/remake, this must be it. No other Wizardries match (in my old opinion) 6 and 7.

6 is my favorite too, @SpoonFULL

Originally Posted by crpgnut
6 is my favorite too, @SpoonFULL

You have a great taste in crpgs.

Playing to Divinity Original Sin 2 for the first time. I'm now exploring the first island and I'm a bit puzzled. I've got a party of 4 adventurers level 2 in rags (or almost) and I keep being sent to die against level 4 (or more) fully armored opponents. There is something I must not understand. And those area effects (poison and fire, in particular) are really overdone and truly annoying.

Perhaps it gets more interesting and fun later on, I keep hearing from some people how it's the best rpg they ever played and all… but so far, I'm not impressed.

All those Wizardry games are awesome. I've a fondness for both the fourth and fifth, and yet six, seven and eight make quite the trilogy as well. You just cannot go wrong with any of those fine games!

Did anyone ever do a high resolution patch for pre-7 wizardry? I haven't played any of the older games in a long, long time. Blurry screens kill my eyes.

Played some more of Bloodborne. Defeated Father Gascoigne on my 3rd attempt. And I was shocked that I actually managed to do it in so few tries. Previous sessions had me at an average of 10 tries.

Even though I know most of these areas by heart, since I replayed the beginning sections so many times I still find things I forgot. And it's just fantastic exploring. Current wandering around Cathedral Ward, and was about to open the gates to Old Yharnam (with the Bloodstarved Beast on my mind as an awful boss fight I really dread doing), but then I remembered that apparently there should be another way inside Old Yharnam. So I want to consult some youtube guides, as to what I can do differently (and not break a quest in Old Yharnam).

That's one thing I kind of regret about this game. It's amazing to explore and figure out all the different ways things can be accessed. But the high difficulty is a real downer on the exploration. You constantly risk everything just to explore. You might put your world state in a bad place if you don't do the right thing, and make a game that's already hard, even harder. But that's also part of the charm. Good thing youtubers have hundreds of hours to spend exploring every possible nook and crany.

@danutz_plusplus what happened to your Doom playthough? Did you put it off for now?

I've started playing Divinity: Original Sin again. I picked up where I left off last year, and I was surprised to see that my last save game was dated almost a year ago. I didn't realize it had been that long since I stopped playing.

I'm in the northern part Luculla Forest, and I have like 15 open quests of which half I barely remember. I hate trying to continue from where I left off in an RPG I haven't played in awhile, but there's no way I'm starting this one from the beginning again.

Originally Posted by JDR13
@danutz_plusplus what happened to your Doom playthough? Did you put it off for now?

Yeah, I noticed I tend to do this quite a bit frequently in the last few years. Jump from one title to another, and can't seem to commit. It's either that there's too many good games to play. Or I'm experiencing burnout again, and can't seem to stick to one game.

Originally Posted by danutz_plusplus
Yeah, I noticed I tend to do this quite a bit frequently in the last few years. Jump from one title to another, and can't seem to commit. It's either that there's too many good games to play. Or I'm experiencing burnout again, and can't seem to stick to one game.

I have a hard time playing similar games back to back. I had planned on either Doom Eternal or Black Mesa followed by Half-Life 2 next, but I'm momentarily burned out on shooters after Zombie Army 4. I'm going to try to finish D:OS and then return to one of those.

Originally Posted by Pladio
@Nereida, have a look at Lords of Xulima. It's a very good game with combat which is similar in a way to MMX, but exploration is very different.

It's a very long game and I never finished it, but I had many hours of fun.

I think @TheRealFluent played through it and is now an expert.

i played and finished it. Very good game. Wish there was a sequel or something!

Originally Posted by henriquejr
i played and finished it. Very good game. Wish there was a sequel or something!

Same here.

Their next game was…

A real time strategy (RTS) game about Zombies that was mildly popular in BTEA but released to the sound of mostly wet farts. I can't even remember what it was called now, and I followed it for a long time during development.

But yeah, LoX was a good fun game, suitably addictive, but I can see why someone might quit in the last phase of the game, it probably has one too many zones for perfect comfort, but I still enjoyed finishing it and that's only a minor quibble in the grand scheme of the whole game.