What games are you playing now?

I'm currently relishing DDO again.

Why ?

Because SWTOR feels too restricted to me at one point.

As a more or less pure story player - and I do know that I'm the minority or even niche for that - I don't play for

- loot
- experience points
- raids
- gear in general

I just want to have good stories.

That said, it's a problem for me that if I want to go to the newest area within SWTOR, I have - as a story player - to play though the two expansions before that.

But's even worse - read : more restricting - for me :

To put it a bit cynically, it's for me like this :

- According to the community, there is only 1 and only ONE rotation of combat skills to be persofmed. Who doesn't do that might get kicked from groups. At least in end game
- According to community, there is only 1 and only ONE way to gear : to the maximum of stats (which is a bit different for each class).
- According to the community, there is not much variation between what you should take as points in skill trees.

To me, this game feels very simplified compared to DDO now. DDO is more intellectually challenging (at least for me with my slight dyscalculia) that SWTOR, which is why I like DDO more. Plus, it is not such a one-way thing. The gear is completely different in DDO.

It's just this feeling of being restricted to one skill rotation, one way to gear plus one way to skill (more or less), that makes be feel … shoehorned into things in SWTOR.

DDO doesn't feel to me like that at all. One has, for example to carry weapons with bonuses/boni against certain monsters, in order to be effective. I, for example, thus carry a variety of weapons for that for each quest. Plus, gear also has different bonuses/boni depending on class, and some not class dependent.

Plus, there are far more skill checks.

Philistine said:

VTM:Bloodlines with plus patch, Ventrue. I was having a hard time feeding until I realized you don't need to sneak to do it… just walk up and chomp!

Click to expand...

I'm going to have to replay this before #2 release. Although probably not as a Ventrue.

I want to "finish" Skyrim first though.

Worms United.

I played a lot of Worms around the turn of the century, but I never did play the first game in the series, AKA the one with the ancient pixel graphics from 1995. My first PC was just a couple of years after that and even now there's not any real reason to play the first one anymore other than curiosity, literally every aspect was improved greatly from worms 2 to Worms World Party.

It's definitely got a nice nostalgia vibe though and it's always interesting to see how a legendary series began its life, in that sort of historian/archaeologist way. I guess it would be comparable to a veteran Elder Scrolls player checking out Arena for the first time, in that it's not the one anyone recommend you start the series with but has an interest factor for the dedicated fan.

I had a great many genuine laugh out loud moments while playing it for just a few hours and while I was able to win most of the basic four teams of four league matches the campaign is completely destroying me at just the 7th out of 25 missions. While most campaigns in the series rely on good Bazooka and Grenade skills, this first one seems to be on a completely different level and it's no surprise they toned it down for later entries.

It would be possible to train yourself to be as good perfect as the AI with its 100% pin-point verging-on-cheating, can-it-really-do-that?, ability, its just that it would require more game-time than the content really provides. Aside from the initial day or two of enthusiasm it's not really a game you should or could play day-in-day-out before getting bored of the repetition before you got gud in that regard. A weekend's worth of quality entertainment that becomes a cool back-up desktop game for moments when you need to game for half an hour. Though even here I'd probably be more likely to load up one of it's more immediate sequels before this one.

I don't think I've ever played a game with quite the same degree of joyous mayhem as Worms provides, even in it's most roughest form.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

I'm currently relishing DDO again.

Why ?

Because …

Click to expand...

Because you refuse to play singleplayer games.
What's next year? Destiny?

Well I'm singleplayers games fanatic so... Just got stuck in Grimshade on a boss battle bug - if I'm right it's the final boss in the game.
I killed it and the combat screne froze. Ah well… Wait for the patch, right?
Reported it on Steam already.

Yes, but with the Anthem DLC

Started Arkham asylum again. Good game, a very tight story experience, just as i like them. About halfway in I think but so far it has been way too easy. Now it is starting to be ok, they should ramp up difficulty much faster.

Bulletstorm. Was hoping to have some quick fps fun but it is more boring than I thought. The fun attitude wears off quickly after the start. maybe I should persevere a bit more.

ilm said:

Started Arkham asylum again. Good game, a very tight story experience, just as i like them. About halfway in I think but so far it has been way too easy. Now it is starting to be ok, they should ramp up difficulty much faster.

Click to expand...

I started AA but never finished it, and I felt the same way about the difficulty.

I hate the little icon that pops up over enemies when they're about to strike at you. They really should have made that an option the player could toggle off or on.

I tried the harder difficulty mode, but that just turns the enemies into damage sponges and made combat feel more tedious to me.

You might give it a second chance. It's not that long (just finished it). As a game Arkham City is definitely better, but AA is fun to romp through with all the gadgets and story, despite the absence of any challenge (well, there were 2 more challenging fights near the end).

It was fun enough that I'm probably going to play Origins next (already played City).

I'm not a big fan of the Arkham games' combat system. It looks fancy, but it's essentially like a series of QTEs strung together - you can just mash the button, and it executes a string of animation set-pieces. I didn't find it very satisfying. I find a lot of AAA combat has become like that.

After finishing risen 2, started the 3rd…OMG the voice of the main char is just , seriously you want to beat him everytime he speaks.

Waiting for "final" boss battle to be patched in Grimshade so I played Pathfinder's DLC called Varnhold's Lot.

And finished it?! One afternoon material where most of it is a biggish dungeon (8 hours to inspect every nook and cranny), linear, mediocre story and nothing to talk about with your friends.

The final battle is a bit hard, the rest of the game isn't really, so those searching for challenging games on normal difficulty should probably go for whatever "iron modes" the game offers. JDR should definetly.
And why is it hard? Bacause just like ancient RPGs, your party loses first a sword then a spellcaster just to artificially pump up the game difficulty. Betrayal at Antara's poor design copycat where the game "steals" your party member just because of developer's lazyness.

The final choice that's supposed to have consequences in the main game was supposed to be a tragedy whatever you pick, but honestly, I find it ridiculous and cringeworthy.

Varnhold's Lot IMO is a mediocre filler that's closer to NWN retardness than to BG/PST/DAO and it's release after vanilla but messing the vanilla game is a design crime. No potential new RPG audience would continue playing RPGs seeing stuff like this.
Ah well… I'm not sorry for playing through it, seen worse games and besides this isn't a game but DLC.

The final DLC with randomly generated dungeons I'll happily skip. I mean thanks, but no thanks.

Started playing a fantastic little indie game called FAR: Lone Sails (it's got a steam sale right now btw).
It's a very cool mix of resource management, puzzle solving, environmental storytelling in a post-apocalyptic setting. It's such a wonderful game. You really develop quite a relationship with the vehicle you're driving across the plains. Highly recommended!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/609320/FAR_Lone_Sails/

@joxer; had convinced me to try Ass-Creed Odyssey when it went on sale, so I just picked it up and I'm glad he talked me into it. Even though I kinda suck at parkour stuff, it's fairly forgiving in this game; at least on the first island. I'm playing the gal, Kassandra?, and I'm doing everything I can find on the first island. I'm level 6 and I've stolen some eyeware. I typically forget to switch weapons and armor but the combat gets impossible if you do that, so it reminds me often. I don't really ever upgrade since it seems you find new gear every level or two.

Still playing Sekiro, every time I think I've got the hang of it they throw me a curveball.

Once I stopped comparing it to dark souls and lamenting the changes I've started to enjoy it.

joxer said:

Waiting for "final" boss battle to be patched in Grimshade so I played Pathfinder's DLC called Varnhold's Lot.

And finished it?! One afternoon material where most of it is a biggish dungeon (8 hours to inspect every nook and cranny), linear, mediocre story and nothing to talk about with your friends.

The final battle is a bit hard, the rest of the game isn't really, so those searching for challenging games on normal difficulty should probably go for whatever "iron modes" the game offers. JDR should definetly.
And why is it hard? Bacause just like ancient RPGs, your party loses first a sword then a spellcaster just to artificially pump up the game difficulty. Betrayal at Antara's poor design copycat where the game "steals" your party member just because of developer's lazyness.

The final choice that's supposed to have consequences in the main game was supposed to be a tragedy whatever you pick, but honestly, I find it ridiculous and cringeworthy.

Varnhold's Lot IMO is a mediocre filler that's closer to NWN retardness than to BG/PST/DAO and it's release after vanilla but messing the vanilla game is a design crime. No potential new RPG audience would continue playing RPGs seeing stuff like this.
Ah well… I'm not sorry for playing through it, seen worse games and besides this isn't a game but DLC.

The final DLC with randomly generated dungeons I'll happily skip. I mean thanks, but no thanks.

Click to expand...

I found the whole of the last dungeon quite challenging, not just the final boss fight on normal difficulty. Overall, I found it very fun dungeon crawling experience with good amount of puzzles and secrets - the boogie man fight was particulaly fun (only available if you pass a series of perception checks). I enjoyed it so much, I did my 2nd playthrough straight after I finished my first one.

The thing I wasn't happy with are:
1. As joxer said, they take away 2 of the party members.
2. I was hoping we will explore the story of Maegar Vahn with "V" but that wasn't the case.

Still, it was very interesting seeing some of the "end game characters" from the main game and speculating what motives they have for my "new" character in the DLC.

Sorry but I still have to be harsh.

The DLC is designed to be played *before* the main game thus it's not interesting to see characters a player who just bought the game never saw because it's logical to do the DLC first.

The dungeon hidden doors and caches are meh, sure there is some nice loot to get there but what's the point if you've buffed partymembers who'll be gone soon?

Teleports puzzle is simplified King's Bounty lategame - while it was tedious there, here it's just silly. Sure, it is a reason to take pen and paper which is positive, but there are no hints where you'll end up next like in the movie Cube and there is no death room or more to instakill the party. In other words, there is no excitment!

Choices/consequences are either irrelevant or abyssmal. The pot stirring NPC won't give you the invisibility belt regardless of your solution. Loot from killing the dragon or healing it has no later impact in the DLC. The persuasion check on kids held hostage ends with nothing, alive or dead in the end, noone cares. Siding with either cultists or acolytes has no consequences as Cvetislava (IIRC) dies anyway - you may as well kill both sides and nothing will change. Getting centaurs to help you in the dungeon sounds awsome - till you discover they'll help you in only one room where you don't even need their help. Etc.

The best part of the DLC is the Inn mystery which is sadly, short. It's the only point where a mandatory partymember covers for MC - you need to unequip, well, someone to discover the whole truth (unless MC is an athletic junkie, but I don't think anyone will use such MC except for trolling).

In previous post I mentioned linearity. I have nothing against linear games really, but P:K is trying hard to be NWN in this DLC - once gone from an area, you can't return to it ever again. NWN is an utter garbage of a product and not just because of locking areas away thanks to Aurora engine patheticness. BG/PST/DAO allowed you to return pretty much anywhere even if there was nothing to do there. Did Owlcat play only NWN before making this DLC?

If this thing was not DLC but a part of Kingmaker 2, it'd feel much better than it is. If it was used as a freebie demo released at the same time as the game it would be a top notch marketing move which I'd only praise.

Sadly, developers thought it's a good idea to imitate Mass Effect's Arrival or Prothean DLC - a paid content that changes the main game (and perhaps even sequels) in such way a player should replay Kingmaker once again not because the game is fun but because the main game is now different. Or should I say "complete"?

Someone might think I hate everything in this DLC. Not really, I just find it mediocre. Trashmobs not respawning endlessly saved this disappointing DLC from being an utter trash.

@joxer; I think the DLC should be played after you finished the main game at least once.

*shrug* your expectation towards this DLC seem to be quite different to mine

Of course my expectation was different. Got spoiled with TW3 expansions.

Yes, both expansions for TW3 were excellent but Kingmaker and TW3 are completely different beasts.

Not really, no.
Both are top tier games one needs to finish before dying. Sure, they don't look alike and they don't play the same way, but both are fun.

It's the DLC however that turned out to be a completely different beast.

So, found the first part of AC:O that I don't care for much: the ship battles are really dull and there are a ton of them. Combat just lasts too long to suit me. Row, circle, fire, row circle ram, row circle fire, etc. Tedious to the max.

So, found a nice little cheat that makes my hull invincible and that has let me basically skip the battles by just ramming them constantly and then boarding. Anyone know how to drop anchor in the ocean so you can explore wrecks? My gal doesn't seem to want to leave the command area. There must be a way to do this.