Last game you finished, tell us about it

I can easily understand why, Pladio. I quite enjoyed the first Original Sin game, yet the second was....just offensive to me, in many ways. I'll likely never replay that one. One can only hope that the studio's best games aren't years in the past.
 
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I somewhat stopped in the middle ? of the first game, because it became too hard for me. Maybe I should have switched even from "normal" difficulty to something lower ? ;)

I never bought the second one, because it was never physically released for the PC platform.
 
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I have not been able to get into either of the Divinity OS games even though on paper they should definitely be my thing.

I don't know what it is exactly, but something just doesn't captivate me.

What about Larian's older stuff? Did you ever play Divine Divinity or The Dragon Knight Saga? They might be more your style.

DKS is still my favorite Larian game, and I've played them all except for D:OS 2. I can understand why the OS games don't appeal to everyone though. I think they went a little overboard with the humor and exaggerated characters.
 
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What about Larian's older stuff? Did you ever play Divine Divinity or The Dragon Knight Saga? They might be more your style.

DKS is still my favorite Larian game, and I've played them all except for D:OS 2. I can understand why the OS games don't appeal to everyone though. I think they went a little overboard with the humor and exaggerated characters.
No I didn't but not sure if too old now?

Have they aged well in your opinion?
 
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No I didn't but not sure if too old now?

Have they aged well in your opinion?

I think they've aged fairly well, yes. The first game is pretty old at this point but still perfectly playable if you don't mind the older graphics. DKS is still fairly modern. Both games are real-time with DD being isometric and DKS being third-person.
 
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Divine Divinity and Dragon Knight Saga are both well worth playing, and are better than either Original Sin games, at least for me. Two solid games that have barely aged at all, solid mechanics and decent exploration with fun characters, and will give you days/weeks of entertainment.
 
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I have fond memories of Divine Divinity. ;)
 
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I finished two Divine Divinity games. Something I never managed to do with the Original Sin games.
 
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I finished two Divine Divinity games. Something I never managed to do with the Original Sin games.
If I remember correctly I finished all Divinity games at least once, most of them several times.
 
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Finally finished my run through Sekiro. It was a blast overall, but hard as nails for most of it.
It's my second FromSoft game that I've managed to finish, the other being Bloodborne. And both are fantastic, but for slightly different reasons. But as far as Sekiro is concerned:

+ a very nice feudal Japan setting mixed with Japan-inspired fantasy mythology
+ the game has a very nice aesthetic, and while not the most high-end graphical game, the art is just gorgeous. Most areas are beautiful to look at. Characters are also very nicely designed and animated. It all builds to very a cohesive experience.
+ the exploration and level design is again great, as was expected from FromSoft, but it does fall below Bloodborne. I think the absurdist and nightmarish setting also gave them a lot more freedom with Blooborne, than Sekiro. But it's still great to explore. One thing where it excels over Bloodborne is in the verticality of the world and the traversal of the areas. The addition of the grapple-hook is fantastic for traversal, and also has some nice places where it's useful in combat
+ speaking about combat, Sekiro might have the most solid, tightly designed and fantastic combat system in any game. It's brutal, it's visceral. It sounds amazing. It's also hard as hell to get right. And you need to love the combat system in order to have the patience of repeating fights over and over until you get them right, mostly the timings. For me at least.
+ difficulty is up there with other FromSoft games, but whereas in other games you could theoretically farm for player power, and ease the difficulty a little, in Sekiro that is not the case. The amount of damage you deal and can sustain is very tightly controlled by the game designers. So each encounter has a very intentional difficulty level. And it's brutal sometimes. Especially if you don't take the time to learn the mechanics and practice, practice, practice them. After a certain point in the game, you do unlock a way to farm for damage, but that's very late in the game. And you can only do it for damage. Not for how resistant your character is to damage.
+ the music was nice, but nothing out of the ordinary. Plus, there's one particular track that i swear is identical to one in the Witcher 3. Otherwise, the music is decent. But personally, I almost never heard it due to the intensity of the fights you engage in.
+ story is also fairly ok, but again, nothing to write home about. Which is completely different to how I felt about the story in Bloodborne. Weird that they also went with a much more straightforward and less obtuse method of telling the story. Most of it is just told to you, whereas in other FromSoft games you have to actively seek it out

- the difficulty is both a plus and a minus. I just wanted to mention it again, since it will be a turnoff for some people. It's a plus in that "nothing earned easily is truly appreciated". This game, even more so than with Bloodborne, had me almost having a nervous breakdown in some of the fights. But it was mostly my fault, at least 95% of the time. But you can only take so much punishment, and come back for more. At one moment or another you do snap. But I've had an experience with this game that I've not had with any other. The game itself personified a great adversary which you love, hate but ultimately respect for what it asks of you in order to share in its victory. But even so, I'm not sure I'm strong enough to do another playthrough. Just the thought of some of the enemies has me going "nope. not on your life". We'll see.
- oh, forgot to mention I did use a guide throughout my playthrough. Generally I explored as much as I could, knocked my head against the wall as much as I had patience for, on my own. And then I would resort to a guide to see what I missed while exploring but especially for fights, what ways had the community found in beating these tough adversaries. But even with this information, almost none of the fights were made significantly easier. Because the execution itself is pretty much 80% of the fight. You watch a guide do a fight and it almost never goes that way for you. Plus it's highly discouraging seeing someone else pretty much defeat enemies seemingly without breaking a sweat, and then you come in and go 20+ tries and still haven't got it. The way I see it is with the guide I only skipped the part where you try random things, and find out what works. But sometimes even that didn't help, since, for ex, there were situations where I would not manage my resources properly to be able to pull off what the guide instructed you to. It's one thing to watch a guide in video form, and a whole other thing while you're there in the fight. Panicking all over. Feeling like your character is moving through mud, whereas the guide seems to just flash around, doing perfect deflects, using the various prosthetics at the right time.

As a conclusion, I think Sekiro is a fantastic game, with great exploration and level design, likely the best combat system I've ever seen. But with a level of punishment that many will not accept. But it's something you should at least try. If you do manage to pull it through, you'll feel like a god. Unless you lose your sanity.
 
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Well done danutz_plusplus. I guess after completing Sekiro, any Dark Souls game would be a cake walk for you!

Not so sure about that. I played a little bit of Dark Souls 1 a long time ago, and I think I reached the cathedral with the priest that summons loads of those skinny guys. And after a few tries, I gave up. Then I picked it up again, and reached the Knight dude in the forest, the guy that jumps at you from across the room. Holy shit. I remember quitting again at that point.

I keep hearing people saying Sekiro is harder than Dark Souls, but I don't know about that. The bosses I've seen in Dark Souls really give me pause. For ex, those two guys Ornstein or whoever. Plus Dark Souls seems like it has a clunkier movement system, and dodging seems pretty hard, compared to Bloodborne, for ex.

Also, I remember seeing some pretty gnarly bosses in Dark Souls 3. That Boreal Dance seems like a real pain in the ass. And the Abyss Knights.

But regarding Sekiro, seems I couldn't stay away and made some significant progress into NG+ for Sekiro. And man, I'm wiping the floor with everybody. Killed pretty much everything up to the gates of Ashina Castle. Killed the first Headless, something I avoided till late in the game in the previous playthrough. Killed the Sichimin Warrior also. Killed the fiery Bull, and the horse-back samurai pretty easily. Killed the spear mini-boss in Ashina Reservoir. And the Purple Ninja near where you start the game. All with pretty much no issue at all. I'm seriously overpowered, and I also make sure to apply plenty of Divine Confetti, since I ended the previous playthrough with 600+ units. :D

It's a pleasure wiping the floor with everything, when they've wiped the floor with me during the first playthrough.
 
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I definitely found Sekiro to be harder than the Dark Souls games, but that's largely a playstyle thing. Dark Souls is more about approach and patience, Sekiro relies more on reaction time and quick thinking. Not that I cheesed enemies much, but Dark Souls is also more permissive of that (sniping with a bow, for example).

I'm curious to see how Elden Ring is handled. I agree with a comment that I think JDR13 made a while ago that Elden Ring has to be a bit easier overall to work as an open world, larger scale game. I would bet that it will be a bit easier for rank and file enemies, but that there will be bosses that gate some areas that are as difficult as anything in the prior games. Also, there will probably be more avenues of progression, so less chance of frusttration at being bottlenecked by a tough fight.
 
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Last finished Age Of Fear 3: The Legend - Dryad Campaign. Really enjoyed it. The two protagonists were great, played off each other very well and were real fun to lead through the story. The gameplay was top notch, very addictive and great turn-based combat with excellent character and loot progression systems. Made finding new units a real treat to uncover their capabilities and synergies with other party members. Overall these games are just a real treat for me, so I am working on AOF4: The Iron Killer - Vampire Hunter campaign now, and will try the other games' campaigns in the future. Having a very good time, hope u guys are too! Cheers! :party: <3
 
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Today I polished off Geneforge: Mutagen. This was the third time for me playing this game, twice before in the prior iteration. I'd never played the shaper class before, so I went that route, and had a good time. Initially I started off slowly, the whole concept of using a pet to do most of my dirty work took some getting used to, yet eventually I caught on. I think overall I prefer playing as the Agent class, but I did want a new experience for this trip, and that I got. Really, if you've enjoyed the other Spiderweb games, get this and have a blast!
 
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I managed to 100% Sekiro. Got all achivements, so technically I think I'm done with the game. In my NG+2 I was surprised I managed to kill Owl and the True Monk on my first tries. Of course, overpowered as I was. And I still had big problems. I almost didn't make it. The Knight on the bridge to Senpou on the other hand killed me once. He and Emma/Isshin were the only ones that managed to kill me in this playthrough.

The last achievement, which requires an insane amount of grinding to unlock all skills in every skill tree I did want to endure. So I just skipped it, and used CheatEngine to give myself a lot of skill points to unlock the abilities. No way am I wasting my life grinding for xp, just for an achievement.

The only things left in Sekiro are the recent post-game challenges that they added, which are serious as hell. They're separate from the main campaign. You basically have to fight a series of bosses you fought during the campaign. But you're not allowed to die from one to the other. Some require a streak of 3-4 bosses without dying. And there's one insane one that pretty much lists all 15+ bosses? Holy shit. Not sure if that's for me. It probably isn't.
 
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Mass Effect 1 Legendary Edition.

Enjoyable, but showing its age - even with the upgrades.
 
I uninstalled TOME this week.

For those who don't know, it's a fantasy roguelike or roguelite, whatever you want to call them.

This one has pixel graphics and lots and lots of loot, character builds, monsters, player actions and lots and lots of maps to explore. The overworld maps never change, but inside a map is a procedurally generated environment which will be different every time you start a new game.

I'm not really a roguelike fan, so I'm going to be a bit biased here, but after three runs with a rogue I'd lost interest in restarting with a new character, even though none of my characters had made it to the end (?) of the game, though the third one did make it to about level 20 (?) or was it 40 (?) I can't even remember, which was quite a lot of game already.

It was initially fun and exciting. I was really addicted for a while. But after that while it just seemed too repetitive a process, levelling up to kill harder monsters to level up to kill harder monsters. And within this structure all the levels inside the maps are level-scaled anyway, often with the same monsters but now blue instead of red with more abilities, rather than new unique encounters.

There's not much challenge involved once you get the hang of what everything does and what all the stats mean & so the only really interesting parts tend to be the Warning Doors, which offer you the option to potentially fight enemies vastly over your level, to which, inevitably, if you open them all then at some point something will one-shot you or be generally to much for you. Hence the no completed runs.

6.5/10 from someone who doesn't like roguelikes anyway, so consider that quite a strong score from me.
 
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