What games are you currently playing?

[Clement Rage]

Dark Souls. Got down to the Tomb of the Giants at level 31, got to a yellow fog sealed by a power that I couldn't get through. Couldn't teleport out yet, was a hell of an ordeal to climb all the way back up.

 

[Sen Jenko]

I've been playing Dragon Quest VIII. I have played and beaten it before.

I will do it again.

 

[Deleted member 13557]

About 28 hours into God of War: Ragnarok.

Will give my full opinions on this game (with a spoiler tag) once I complete it but I’m thoroughly impressed already. Unless if it takes a major U-turn it’s already better than the original.

 

[Sutsivoiran]

I've been showing my new uni friend Silent Hill 2. He's a big fan of odd horror so he's been enjoying it so far.

 

[cold_spirit]

Here's the 12 games I completed in 2022. Will testify that each one is a certified banger.

 

[ph14basicbitch]

Hmm what did I play this year

- 1100 hours of Lost Ark
- 200?? hours of FFXIV
- Unpacking
- Needy Streamer Overload
- Wild ARMs 2: Replayed in Japanese after 20+ years lol
- Stranger of Paradise: Or rather, I watched 3 streamers beat the game while waiting for my CE to ship and then when my copy actually arrived I felt like I had already played it and my desire to play it myself was like -100
- The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story
- Live A Live HD-2D Remake
- Valkyrie Elysium
- Star Ocean 6
- Great Ace Attorney 2
- Scarlet Nexus
- Chicken Police: Paint it Red

Of the games actually released this year, my favorite was definitely the Live A Live remake. I was fucking shocked when this was announced in February on the Nintendo Direct and am in disbelief that it's a real thing even though I ordered the CE, played it, and went to the collab for it at Artnia in Tokyo after Japan re-opened. The battle system is kinda eh and the game's difficulty is definitely on the easy side, but holy shit the way they pull off the plot twist and letting the player do the "reverse boss gauntlet" still slaps even after 28 years.

 

[Ite]

wow that bot is not subtle

I binged Jedi: Fallen Order for two days, got a few planets in, fun game so far but I put it down after that first rush and haven’t picked it up again.

 

[Maidenofwar]

Dead Rising 4 I don't know who this not Frank is but I am coming to enjoy this game anyway. I have not Frank in a spa robe, thermal underwear, bare feet and a knitted beanie. I has ice swords, boom hammer, slicy spinners, I can find god armours and weapons, vehicles of destruction, just run and drive around causing mayhem. Not to mention all the cosplaying stuff and Capcom mode you can do if you want, this game is wild.

 

[null]

Playing GoldenEye. Badly. Most of the Switch's N64 games have awkward controls, but GoldenEye is giving me thumb cancer.

 

[Deleted member 13557]

Dragons Crown. Another one of those “why didn’t I play this sooner?” moments for me

 

[ph14basicbitch]

After having not touched it since the vanilla version some 13 years ago, and my memories of it being confused w/the voice acted hiimdaisy comics, I replayed Persona 4 with the Golden version and slowly lost my fucking mind for 65 hours. I trucked onwards towards the "Golden" ending being fueled purely by memories of 2010 era Persona 4 memes. There are so many parts of this game that do not feel like they aged well at all (see: everything that comes out of Yosuke and Teddie's mouths regarding women). It feels triple bad w/Yosuke because he's the first guy you befriend and he's always calling you his bro and he's all over the plot and I'm just thinking to myself, "wew this guy needs to shut up". Some of the stuff added for Golden feels extremely pointless (why did they add an onsen peeping scene). But damn, the OST still slaps. And the culprit's uh... late 90s / early 2000s "South Park Nihilism" (for better lack of terminology) and their feelings of negativity & isolation makes them extremely punchable, while also being bleakly relatable. We truly do live in a society.

I think Crisis Core is next.

 

[Rydeen]

Over a year ago I had posted all about my saga on trying to retrieve a disappeared cloud save.. That game was My Time at Portia. I was about half way through the game. This week, I finally accepted the loss of this file and started over. I put several hundred hours into My Time at Sandrock since it came out, but we're about 2 months away from new content. As someone who grew up playing lots of classic Harvest Moon games, My Time is the only thing that has taken me to that happy place the way those games did, while being a completely original/unique series in its own right. I'm super invested in the lore.

 

[Fangu]

So, Like a Dragon: Ishin! launched and I am SO in love. It really is Yakuza 0's predecessor and it's quickly working its way up my "favourite yakuza games" list. There are a few graphics bugs and yanks but no functional/ annoying bugs yet, so overall it feels pretty solid.

Tip: If you don't want story spoilers, don't google "characters comparisons Ishin PS4 and PS5" because yikes. Playing the game completely in the dark now. x)

 

[Dawnbreaker]

Dragon Quest XI. I barely play any video games (or any games, for that matter) any more, what with being busy AF with the job and the kid, but I wanted to play something that was easy to get into and a pick-and-play, ala NOT mmorpg. So far I am enjoying it. It's early to tell (3 hours in) but so far it's exactly what I'm looking for.

 

[Mayo Master]

I've been playing Baldur's Gate 3 on the PS5 (about 30 hrs) and unfortunately my own experience with this game has been far from stellar, while all the PC gaming community had been raving about this game since its release.
My spouse and I were particularly appealed by the opportunity to do split-screen co-op, and the early stage of the game was really promising, exciting and fun, despite a few glitches. The problem is: the split-screen co-op mode is actually broken. The best equivalent I can think of is the unpatched PS4-release version of Cyberpunk 2077. In the first few hours of playing, there's the occasional bug here and there, but it's not very significant and is not really spoiling the fun. However, as time goes on, new bugs crop up and they become more and more frequent. After roughly 30 hrs, the game has become practically unplayable. It's not just lagging and freezing, you get bugs such as 'the left stick of the controller is no longer working' at a rate of every 5-10 minutes.
I suppose I'll resign myself to playing the game solo eventually, unless Larian miraculously decides to patch this absolute glitch-fest. It's been very disappointing - this mode should not have been released and advertised.

 

[Dawnbreaker]

oh, man, I'm sorry for you. Yes, the PC version is a lot better.

My experience with the PC BG3 is amazing. It's truly something spectacular. It's a lot of fun having this much control over everything my character does. The story is pretty amazing too. Graphics are great. Music is good. The whole experience is just super fun.

 

[ForceStealer]

Have the definitely overambitious 3 simultaneously games thing going.

Baldur's Gate 3
Armored Core VI
Sea of Stars

And they're all really good, almost unfortunately, lol!

 

[Rydeen]

Have the definitely overambitious 3 simultaneously games thing going.

Baldur's Gate 3
Armored Core VI
Sea of Stars

And they're all really good, almost unfortunately, lol!

My brother recommended Sea of Stars! I plan on getting it when it goes on sale.

I picked up Sun Haven a few days ago for 20$. Haven't had time to play yet.

 

[ForceStealer]

My brother recommended Sea of Stars! I plan on getting it when it goes on sale.

Yeah I've been very impressed. The level design and traversal in particular is excellent. The dungeons involve some light but still satisfying puzzles. Like in the process of solving it, you can piece together other ways the puzzle can be aligned to get to treasure and stuff after you solve it. The characters so far are little unremarkable, but the gameplay and world carries it, I think. Combat's fun, as well.

 

[Deleted member 13557]

Sea of Stars is my GOTY. Easily.

Haven’t played BG3 since it isn’t really my thing, but I’ll probably give it a chance at some point.

 

[ph14basicbitch]

Shit I've played since finishing P4 Golden:

• Chained Echoes: I tried to play this but uhh I tapped out early cause the combat / battle length felt like it was being "artificially extended" by the overheat mechanic.
• P4 Arena Ultimax: I don't know shit about fighting games, but I played it as a visual novel that happened to have a fighting game attached to it. It had Adachi, so thumbs up.
• LAD Ishin: I started playing this and felt like I should go read up about the Bakumatsu period beyond "Sakamoto Ryoma was a west-a-boo who wore chelsea boots in the 1800s" and never returned to it. Oops.
• Fuga 1: You play as a group of children who have a magic tank in the middle of fantasy Europe and have to fight your way to survival. Sounds like Valkyria on paper, but it's a turn based system rather than the tactical field / X-Com / whatever like Valkyria. I liked the turn based combat - lots of turn manipulation with how you can delay enemies, or manipulate your own turns with the tank guns and how you can swap the kids out. The game's guilt trip mechanic is that you can kill 1 of the children / your party members by sacrificing them to power your tank's Soul Cannon to auto-win during boss battles. You know shit is going down when the somber music starts playing during a boss battle. I sacrificed one kid cause he pissed me off, and the game shamed me for it. C'mon he was annoying cut me some slack.
• Soul Hackers 2: Tried to play this as well and gave the fuck up. "Adult cast and non-silent protag" sound appealing. Too bad the dungeon crawling segments in the Soul Matrix (how you actually level and recruit demons since the story dungeons are kinda shorter) made me want to die. The dungeons even all look the exact same. Combat also feels kinda "??" compared to their other games. Rather than One More / Down -> AoA (Persona) or Press Turn (SMT), Soul Hackers 2's "congrats for hitting an enemy weakness" mechanic was that you'd build stacks each round for hitting weakness, then there'd be like an automatic aoe attack at the end of each turn from your demons and its strength was based on how many stacks you had. I think this is significantly less flexible than how Persona and SMT do it.
• Ghost Trick: It's MISSILE.
• P3P (FeMC): FeMC is hilarious. Don't forget what they took from us when Reload comes out.
• Fuga 2: Direct continuation to the 1st game. Combat system was the same but they made some changes to skills and whatnot. Boron can still become a demi-god, though.
• P5R: The third semester was so not worth playing this 90 hour game over again holy shit. But I do like P5R's combat compared to 3/4.
• Coffee Talk: Pretty chill game about making fantasy creatures coffee in 2020 Seattle.
• AI the Somnium Files: The only other Chunsoft ADV game I've played is 428 Shibuya Scramble; it seems I fell backwards into this line of games from the Canaan anime to 428 lol. Somnium Files was pretty enjoyable as I found the mystery parts engaging. Moma and Mizuki are pretty great.
• Paranormasight: The ADV game equivalent of playing the World of Ruin first. No I will not elaborate.

After playing the Somnium Files (a game developed by Chunsoft) and Paranormasight (a game published by Square-Enix), I've decided that the next game I should play is Portopia - a 1980s ADV game developed by Chunsoft and published by Enix.

(I still haven't played Crisis Core Reunion. Oh well.)

 

[Leafonthebreeze]

Shit I've played since finishing P4 Golden:

• Chained Echoes: I tried to play this but uhh I tapped out early cause the combat / battle length felt like it was being "artificially extended" by the overheat mechanic.
• P4 Arena Ultimax: I don't know shit about fighting games, but I played it as a visual novel that happened to have a fighting game attached to it. It had Adachi, so thumbs up.
• LAD Ishin: I started playing this and felt like I should go read up about the Bakumatsu period beyond "Sakamoto Ryoma was a west-a-boo who wore chelsea boots in the 1800s" and never returned to it. Oops.
• Fuga 1: You play as a group of children who have a magic tank in the middle of fantasy Europe and have to fight your way to survival. Sounds like Valkyria on paper, but it's a turn based system rather than the tactical field / X-Com / whatever like Valkyria. I liked the turn based combat - lots of turn manipulation with how you can delay enemies, or manipulate your own turns with the tank guns and how you can swap the kids out. The game's guilt trip mechanic is that you can kill 1 of the children / your party members by sacrificing them to power your tank's Soul Cannon to auto-win during boss battles. You know shit is going down when the somber music starts playing during a boss battle. I sacrificed one kid cause he pissed me off, and the game shamed me for it. C'mon he was annoying cut me some slack.
• Soul Hackers 2: Tried to play this as well and gave the fuck up. "Adult cast and non-silent protag" sound appealing. Too bad the dungeon crawling segments in the Soul Matrix (how you actually level and recruit demons since the story dungeons are kinda shorter) made me want to die. The dungeons even all look the exact same. Combat also feels kinda "??" compared to their other games. Rather than One More / Down -> AoA (Persona) or Press Turn (SMT), Soul Hackers 2's "congrats for hitting an enemy weakness" mechanic was that you'd build stacks each round for hitting weakness, then there'd be like an automatic aoe attack at the end of each turn from your demons and its strength was based on how many stacks you had. I think this is significantly less flexible than how Persona and SMT do it.
• Ghost Trick: It's MISSILE.
• P3P (FeMC): FeMC is hilarious. Don't forget what they took from us when Reload comes out.
• Fuga 2: Direct continuation to the 1st game. Combat system was the same but they made some changes to skills and whatnot. Boron can still become a demi-god, though.
• P5R: The third semester was so not worth playing this 90 hour game over again holy shit. But I do like P5R's combat compared to 3/4.
• Coffee Talk: Pretty chill game about making fantasy creatures coffee in 2020 Seattle.
• AI the Somnium Files: The only other Chunsoft ADV game I've played is 428 Shibuya Scramble; it seems I fell backwards into this line of games from the Canaan anime to 428 lol. Somnium Files was pretty enjoyable as I found the mystery parts engaging. Moma and Mizuki are pretty great.
• Paranormasight: The ADV game equivalent of playing the World of Ruin first. No I will not elaborate.

After playing the Somnium Files (a game developed by Chunsoft) and Paranormasight (a game published by Square-Enix), I've decided that the next game I should play is Portopia - a 1980s ADV game developed by Chunsoft and published by Enix.

(I still haven't played Crisis Core Reunion. Oh well.)

I played coffee talk while off work the other day, it was cute!

I'm here to talk about somnium files though. I played it, I enjoyed it well enough, heard there was a sequel and was like ...well I didn't like this enough to pay for more so I guess I'll skip it, Mizuki was the best part of the game anyway.

Then I saw a trailer for the sequel.

You play as Mizuki.

I bought the sequel.

Which is fun! Characters are better but mystery is worse imo, so ymmv.

 

[ph14basicbitch]

A couple friends told me to wait for the sequel to go on sale. Someone explained the spoiler toggle to me and the mask bit and I'm kinda like "uhhhhhhh" about that bit.

 

[Leafonthebreeze]

A couple friends told me to wait for the sequel to go on sale. Someone explained the spoiler toggle to me and the mask bit and I'm kinda like "uhhhhhhh" about that bit.

That's probably fair yeah. The twists and timeline shenanigans are quite a bit more annoying/less satisfying, and yeah the mask thing for Dante is duuuuumb. I imprinted hard on Ryuki though (other protagonist with Mizuki), so that made up for it.

 

[Rydeen]

Coffee Talk is a cute one: I have enjoyed it. Which reminds me that I should pick it up again, as I haven't finished it. Last year it'd inspired me to start making tea lattes. Namely London Fogs and floral lattes like rose and lavender. No coffee for me tho.

Another "9pm" game (which is honestly the only time/games I can do right now) - Sun Haven. Bought it a few weeks ago on sale. It's not My Time, but it's smooth, pretty, fantastical, and cozy. I tried playing an old favorite recently, Harvest Moon: Back to Nature, and I just can't deal with the gameplay and load times of these old games anymore. That includes anything with random encounters, like FFVII.