Games you are currently playing: ROUND SIX

[Commander Clueless]

Playing Sea of Thieves again because Game Pass was a buck and it's a stupid game to have stupid fun doing stupid things in.

 

[SeidoN]

Playing Sea of Thieves again because Game Pass was a buck and it's a stupid game to have stupid fun doing stupid things in.

this is me and my crew so much haha

 

[RempireStateBuilding]

I absolutely love SoT, but it gets a little boring when you don't have a group/another person to consistently play with.

 

[Commander Clueless]

I absolutely love SoT, but it gets a little boring when you don't have a group/another person to consistently play with.

While I have a lot of fun with it, I'm amazed it's still so empty a year later.

The Tales are a nice addition and they've added in a slightly wider variety of skeletons, but it's still so far from what I'd consider complete.

To your point, it remains a "build your own fun" type of game.

Those water graphics, though....damn!

 

[LightningStrikes]

Dusted off my Cities Skylines game from years ago, installed a couple DLCs and mods and am having a blast. But oh my, time flies by when playing.

 

[Shareefruck]

I've been playing Downwell from 2015, and so far, it's fantastic (I've gotten as far as beginning of the 3rd world). It has simplistic, beautifully conceived mechanics that unfold into something rich, original/fresh yet familiar, and inherently satisfying. Every creative decision made in the design of this game seems to cleverly streamline multiple ideas into a single cohesive thing. It's a break-neck, 3-button, platforming, downward shooter that feels like Tetris in the way that you're constantly reacting, surviving by the skin of your teeth, managing what you have/the enemies on the screen, and pulling off as many chains and combos that you can. It's definitely lacking in production value, but has a nice extreme low-fi look to it that's very simple but works (albeit looks the same as some other things). The only notable weak-point so far is probably the music, which is nothing to write home about. The feedback from stomping, shooting, and combo-ing feels great.

Really underrated, mechanically beautiful game that should have gotten more attention, IMO. I think I should start looking more into Devolver.



Oh, and it's $3! What the hell?

 

[KeithIsActuallyBad]

I put a few hundred hours into Hyrule Warriors but I'm done with it... for now.

I moved onto the Ace Attorney Trilogy. I've always loved courtroom stuff and it's so satisfying to see the assholes in the game break down and cry like bitches.

 

[SniperHF]

Haven't played it in 16 years, let's see if it holds up.

Got EAX working via Alchemy for dank sound effects, wide screen mod installed looks pretty good at 1680x720. Not too zoomed out.


The manual's intro is pretty cool:

INTRODUCTION
We started work on the original Baldur's Gate back in January 1996.
Back then we didn't know a heck of a lot about how to develop a role-
playing game - we had to largely rely on our memories of what made
playing the great games of the past fun - games like Wizardry, the
Ultima series, Ultima Underworld, System Shock, the Gold Box series,
Bard's Tale, Betrayal at Krondor, and Wasteland, to name a few of our
favorites.

We released Baldur's Gate to great commercial success and critical
acclaim in December 1998. Baldur's Gate was truly a game that we
poured our hearts and souls into; the development team of designers,
QA Testers, artists and programmers at BioWare, and the QA testers,
marketing, audio, sales and PR staff at our publisher, Black Isle Studios
really put everything they had into making Baldur's Gate as good as it
possibly could be. We were very proud of the result and as the pro-
ducer of Baldur's Gate at BioWare I personally am thrilled and honored
to know that more than a million fans have played and enjoyed the orig-
inal BG.

But Baldur's Gate was the first roleplaying game that BioWare had ever
developed, and frankly we learned a lot in the process. We have applied
those lessons assiduously in developing the game that is now in your
hands - Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn. Throughout the develop-
ment of Baldur's Gate II our focus has been on ensuring that Baldur's
Gate II is significantly better than Baldur's Gate in every way possible,
and to make it appeal not only to fans of the original game but also to
make it accessible to new fans who never played the original game. I
am even more proud of what the Baldur's Gate II team has accom-
plished this time around. We felt we owed it to you - our fans - to
make BGII not only a good game, but a significant improvement on the
original game.

We have been careful to not break what was not broken, but we have
worked on many areas in the game. Some highlights include:
• we improved the story in Baldur's Gate II to make it much more
immersive; characters interact with their worlds and other characters
to make the roleplaying aspects very compelling, and very satisfying.
• combat is more exciting than ever with the realtime strategy inter-

face improved from the original game and the incorporation of
dozens of new character classes, over a hundred new spells (to a
total of more than 300 in Shadows of Amn), an experience point
cap of 2.95 million XP (resulting in maximum AD&D character lev-
els of 17-23 level), new weapon proficiencies such as dual-wielding,
and hundreds of new powerful monsters and villains.
• turn-based fans can play the game in turn-based mode with new
autopause settings
• the scripting and design in Shadows of Amn represents the very
best of what we learned in developing Baldur's Gate and its expan-
sion pack, Tales of the Sword Coast.
• the art in Baldur's Gate II is uniformly beautiful and represents
everything we learned during the development of Baldur's Gate and
Tales of the Sword Coast.
• the graphic user interface has been improved in many ways such as
adding in 800x600 resolution, 3D support for spells and back-
ground effects, dropaway side and bottom panels, a new color
scheme, improved journal functionality, and map notes.
• the multiplayer experience is very solid in Baldur's Gate II, with non-
pausing dialog in stores and non-critical dialog.
• you can start a brand new character or import your characters from
Baldur's Gate or Tales of the Sword Coast; the tutorial included with
the game shows new players how to get started.

We at BioWare and our publisher, Black Isle Studios, very much appre-
ciate your support in purchasing Shadows of Amn, and hope that
Baldur's Gate II brings you many, many hours of solid entertainment.

I've been a huge fan of roleplaying games since the first time I booted
my Apple II way back in 1980, so it gives me great pleasure to say that
I truly believe that Baldur's Gate II is a great roleplaying game - one of
the best that I personally have ever played.
Thank you very much for your support,

Dr. Ray Muzyka
Joint CEO, BioWare Corp.

Co-Executive Producer, Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn

The influences list could still be learned from.

 

[Commander Clueless]

Oh, and it's $3! What the hell?

Oooh, I dunno...I think I'll wait for a sale.

 

[NyQuil]

The influences list could still be learned from.

I still play it from time to time.

Sometimes I'll create a multiplayer NPC party with five characters and then copy the save game file into the single player directory.

Then you can add one NPC to do their quests but still fiddle around with all of the class/race combinations, once you've played with most of the companions and know their interactions with each other.

Also, finally did a solo playthrough with a cleric/mage. Pretty fun stuff. It was really challenging for awhile until it wasn't when her level reached the point where she just obliterated everything.

 

[Shareefruck]

Oooh, I dunno...I think I'll wait for a sale.

I don't remember where but while Googling it, I actually did come across something that said it was on sale at one point for like... more than half off.

I think it's because they decided to keep the mobile app store price even after porting it.

 

[Pilky01]

Stardew Valley shouldn't be legal.

 

[RandV]

It passed through my Steam recommended list and I'm now 20 hours into Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark. It's an indy SRPG inspired by Final Fantasy Tactics that does a very good job at being Final Fantasy Tactics.

It's not that big a deal but only real complaint is the art direction. In game characters design looks inspired by older Korean isometric/pixel MMO, while for some reason the character portraits seem more of an old CRPG design.

 

[Shareefruck]

"Final Fantasy Tactics" piqued my interest. Even portraits aside, those in-game characters look really bad compared to FFT. Just no personality or visual flair. Stiff as hell and barely even animated. Nice backgrounds, though.

 

[RandV]

"Final Fantasy Tactics" piqued my interest. Even portraits aside, those in-game characters look really bad compared to FFT. Just no personality or visual flair. Stiff as hell and barely even animated. Nice backgrounds, though.

Yeah a bit disappointing but where it really shines is in the mechanics. You have the typical 30-something classes that unlock as you earn class exp and level up specific classes, and each class has a class ability set of 5+ special attacks/ skills/spells/etc to unlock plus two passive abilities and one counter. Then in addition to the class ability/passive/counter you're using you can pick from any of the classes you've already levelled another ability set, two passive abilities, and a counter.

Basically just expanding the customization options from FFT. Then finally it has very customizable difficulty settings letting you control a number of different parameters to fine tune the challenge. So like I said doesn't have the visual charm of FFT and I'm on the fence for how the story compares but it certainly improves on the gameplay mechanics.

 

[blue425]

It's not out yet, but damn the hype is real:



Natsume does another amazing job updating one of their classics.

 

[Shareefruck]

It's not out yet, but damn the hype is real:



Natsume does another amazing job updating one of their classics.

Visually, their games hold up so well, especially when you considering that SNES resolution is being ported to modern resolutions and it perfectly translates. Wild Guns Reloaded was the same.

 

[PepperKeenan]

Witcher 3; Wild Hunt

After years of hearing it's one of the best games ever, I finally bought it. Aaaaaaaaand it's true, it's one of the best games ever. So far I've played around 55 hours reached level 20-21. I've done all I can (I think, at least around my levels) in Velen/Novigrad and the next thing to do is sail to Skellige. It's one of those games that I already see myself replay after I've finished it. However, I've never actually gotten around to replay a game so we'll see. Or maybe I'll hate Skellige/expansions but I think that's super unlikely. Magnificent game, as you all already know of course.

 

[SniperHF]

I've never actually gotten around to replay a game

NEVER?

I don't replay a lot of games myself (despite currently replaying one....) but never is a long time

I'm blessed (and cursed) with trash memory so replaying my favorites is great

 

[NyQuil]

Witcher 3; Wild Hunt

After years of hearing it's one of the best games ever, I finally bought it. Aaaaaaaaand it's true, it's one of the best games ever. So far I've played around 55 hours reached level 20-21. I've done all I can (I think, at least around my levels) in Velen/Novigrad and the next thing to do is sail to Skellige. It's one of those games that I already see myself replay after I've finished it. However, I've never actually gotten around to replay a game so we'll see. Or maybe I'll hate Skellige/expansions but I think that's super unlikely. Magnificent game, as you all already know of course.

Skellige is great.

My only issue with the game is that the combat gets a bit repetitive and once you get Witcher Gear in the teens to 20s, gearing is sort of pointless.

 

[God King Fudge]

I'm usually dipping into 5-6 games at a time and not giving any of them much attention. I've tried to keep myself to one game per platform lately and I'm not feeling so stressed about trying to play everything at once.

Been replaying Prey on X1 since it's on GamePass now. FFXIV on PC and I'll be dipping into Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 on the Switch tonight.

Picked up The Division II for cheap last week, so that's up next after Prey.

 

[PepperKeenan]

NEVER?

I don't replay a lot of games myself (despite currently replaying one....) but never is a long time

I'm blessed (and cursed) with trash memory so replaying my favorites is great

Bad wording from my side, I've replayed a couple of games but never actually finished them a second time, so to me it doesn't count as replaying them.

 

[RandV]

Witcher 3; Wild Hunt

After years of hearing it's one of the best games ever, I finally bought it. Aaaaaaaaand it's true, it's one of the best games ever. So far I've played around 55 hours reached level 20-21. I've done all I can (I think, at least around my levels) in Velen/Novigrad and the next thing to do is sail to Skellige. It's one of those games that I already see myself replay after I've finished it. However, I've never actually gotten around to replay a game so we'll see. Or maybe I'll hate Skellige/expansions but I think that's super unlikely. Magnificent game, as you all already know of course.

I just went through this a couple months ago, playing Witcher 3 for the first time, giving Velen/Novigrad a thorough play through, then hitting Skellige for the first time. Velen was too big to do this but if you like exploring in these open world games I'd suggest turning off the minimap for a while and try wandering around the first area blindly. It's a big enough island to explore and being surrounded by ocean keeps it contained.

Siren's are damn annoying though. And when you get on a boat there's so many ? smugglers cache's that I eventually just added a 9999 weight limit mod. Especially since like Nyqill said you're not going to be equipping any of the loot as it's better to just craft and use Witcher gear.

 

[K Fleur]

I bought Tetris Effect a couple weeks ago and it’s amazing. I’m thinking about getting the PSVR just for this game.

 

[Frankie Spankie]

Someone's thinking of getting VR just for Tetris, what a time to be alive.

If you do get PSVR, Beat Saber is a must have.