Final Fantasy IX on my little Miyoo Flip. I’ve never played a FF game before and it’s my wife’s favourite so I thought why not. So far I’ve helped steal a ladder, had a concert ticket turn out to be a fake :( and stole gil from a few houses and I’ll play some more this evening. It’s also a beautiful looking game.
Project Hospital, X4: Foundations, and Elite Dangerous.
I haven’t played Project Hospital for a long time, but all of the updates made me want to play again. I’m enjoying it a lot so far.
I’ve also just came back after years away from X4 and ED. I’m just relearning the basic systems again, but can see myself putting in a lot of hours back into Elite Dangerous. X4 is a tough cookie for me, but I think it’s definitely worth trying to invest a bit more of my time into.
Cosmoteer
It’s a 2D space sim where you build spaceships, manage subsystems, break up pirate ships to add parts to yours (even mid battle), with absolute freedom to do whatever and mechanics that encourage experimentation. Man, I don’t remember when a game pulled me in so bad.Links Awakening - all time favourite and is fun on switch or gameboy
I just played through Oceanhorn, and now I’m playing Oceanhorn 2. Cute little games with an interesting story and some kind of basic puzzles. But the gameplay is fun.
CP2077, nearing the end of the phantom liberty expansion
This week is more Enderal for me. A free total conversion of Skyrim (you need Skyrim obviously). It’s a complete new game with new mechanics, story, skills, etc. It’s fully voiced and waaaay better than Skyrim IMHO.
I’ll definitely check that out. Looks very promising.
Best thing: no level scaling. Yes you will die a lot in the beginning. But becoming more powerful is now actually worth it!
I stopped playing because it is a bit too hard for me. I keep getting killed by spiders. Maybe I’ll give it another go.
I switched from melee to spellcaster in heavy armor. That made it a lot easier. Also spending all your learning points (buy books) and memory points (press Z, that took me far too long to figure out)
I just started Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, as I make my way through the collection. I’m only about an hour in, but it seems like it might be a nice change of pace from the previous games. I am also getting huge Star Wars vibes off this one. Ven is a padawan, Terra is not yet granted the rank of Master. Eraqus reminds me of Qui-Gon a little, and Xehanort was clearly a Sith-y motherfucker even before what went down with Ansem.
CP2077. Love the looks. Gameplay is fine. City is mostly backdrop yes, most of the focus seems to have been at crafting a bombastic main quest line. So far so good, just wish there were more depth to the city and its systems.
It feels like a great linear game somehow constrained by being an open world sprawlfest.
I’d genuinely recommend skipping all the fixer missions because they take ages and add very little to the experience, while also reducing the urgency of the storyline.
Make sure to play Phantom Liberty because that’s honestly better than the main game.
Yeah early on at least it seems like one is encouraged to do side missions to get eddies. That seems to be the main motivation to me at the stage I’m in.
I can’t say I was ever hurting for money.
I think it just tonally doesn’t fit the game at all after act 1.
“Here is a very urgent thing. We can’t stress enough how urgent this is. Also would you like to do a load of pointless shit for these random people that have no bearing on anything?”
They give such a minor amount of money, that I’d just sell the guns that drop and they drop by the dozen. The only real thing to buy is new chrome, and it’s something I basically did twice during my playthrough. Once when things were getting rough in combat, which made things far too easy tbh, and again when I hit max level and there wasn’t anything better to have. I think originally there were stats on clothes as well, but that’s all gone since the 2.0 update.
I still did them, but that’s mostly because I’d bought the game and didn’t want to leave gameplay on the table as it were. This is really the first game that made me question why I do that, and if I should. I’ll often skip the boring collectibles in games, and these quests really felt bordering on collecting 100 feathers in Assassin’s Creed or something.
I think CDPR have has this issue since the Witcher 3 tbh. They know how to make amazing story based games, with nice enough writing and characters, and some lovely grey area decisions where there’s no real right and wrong, and then mar it with boring open world design.
“Here is a very urgent thing. We can’t stress enough how urgent this is. Also would you like to do a load of pointless shit for these random people that have no bearing on anything?”
Lol every RPG ever. Though some pull it off better than others by somehow connecting more pieces back to the main quest.
I think CDPR have has this issue since the Witcher 3 tbh. They know how to make amazing story based games, with nice enough writing and characters, and some lovely grey area decisions where there’s no real right and wrong, and then mar it with boring open world design.
Yes absolutely, although I don’t recall this being quite so egregious in the Witcher. But that was a long time ago, I may not remember it well.
My main takeaway from The Witcher 3 was “must find Ciri, the world is in danger!” followed by quite a lot of Gwent.
The Bloody Baron questline was probably the highlight, along with the Hearts of Stone storyline. The rest of it was going to question marks on the map, hoping to find something more interesting than a box to open or a surprise enemy attack. This got especially bad once you reached Skellige and had to faff about with a boat to reach half of them.
I’m playing - but not recommending - Blasphemous this week. It is quite possibly the least fun I’ve had playing a video game. It’s a game that is specifically designed to infuriate you and waste your time, and I guess in that respect they really nailed it. If the bosses weren’t so easy I’d say playing Blasphemous feels like what people who have never played a Soulslike thinks playing Dark Souls feels like.
It’s a shame too because I want to like this game. I want to love it. The art direction is great. The music is good. The lore and world building is interesting. The level design on a macro level - the interconnected world and the way shortcuts link areas together - remind me of Dark Souls 1 in the best possible way.
It’s just an absolute chore to play. The mixture of deliberate but awful game design combined with absolutely terrible execution makes for quite the mix. You can’t make what is essentially 80% a platformer filled with instant death hazards when the controls are this clunky, movement feels this bad and hitboxes and ledge/ladder grabs are this atrocious.
Contact damage on every single enemy (with all damage in the game having knockback on you) is a lazy and unfun design choice. Enemy placement - especially projectile launching enemies - is done to maximise impact so you can’t quickly skip through areas on subsequent visits but have to slowly clear them out lest you’ll get knocked into some instant death spikes. And there is a lot of backtracking required, both for the quests (that are unsolvable without a Wiki by the way) and for retrieving your body after dying.
I’m in the final non-DLC area now but I’m very close to just calling it a day instead of succumbing to the sunk cost fallacy. I’m really not having fun and it’s taking every ounce of willpower to not just do what I want to do, which is fire up NG+ of Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree.
I agree with all of your points about Blasphemous, good and bad. I knew the games (both Blasphemous 1 and 2) received mediocre reviews, but I still purchased both together during a sale because I really liked its art and setting.
However, when I played Blasphemous early last year, I had just got back into the platformers genre after around a long break. I had just finished Hollow Knight (just the first ending or two, I didn’t have the time or the patience to finish the other endings).
The wonderful art and interesting story did not alleviate the pains of the gameplay. Its contrast with Hollow Knight only made it worse. It was clunky, and the game seemed to (unintentionally) work against the player.
I did complete the first ending, as well as the first ending for the sequel. The mechanics of the sequel are a bit more forgiving, thankfully.
I still would not recommend the games, unless one really likes the art and setting of the games.
Also, thank you for introducing me to Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree. I have bookmarked it, and hope to play it soon.
Yeah I got it on the summer sale because it was 90% off and I was on a Metroidvania/Soulslike-kick after Mandragora. Honestly, had I known how much platforming it had I wouldn’t have bought it even for a dollar. I’m not really a platformer guy, I’ve avoided Hollow Knight for a reason (also I’m not a god gamer and from what I understand HK is impossibly difficult).
Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree on the other hand I had an absolute blast with. I love character progression and customisation and creating a build from the PoE-esque skill tree tickled my brain just right. I’m honestly torn between NG+ and doing a second playthrough with a different playstyle/build.
It also had a better balance of gameplay for my tastes than Blasphemous: the bosses were more fun and the platforming was much less frustrating. Being able to teleport to any “bonfire” from anywhere through the map was also so nice. I like when a game isn’t deliberately wasting your time.
I like when a game isn’t deliberately wasting your time.
Well said.
Also, PoE is a game that I have not visited in almost a decade. How is it now? When I played it last, it felt like Diablo 2 but with very little explicit story to experience (it had lore that one could discover). I gave up on the game after a few days since without a proper story, the grind got boring very quickly.
Oh, I haven’t played PoE in about that long too, I think. I used to play the temporary Hardcore leagues back when it was new, but eventually the feature creep started to get to me. Which also meant that getting back into it later felt like such a daunting task I never did. And then by the time PoE2 came out last year I was kind of over the Diablo-style ARPGs
I gave up on the game after a few days since without a proper story, the grind got boring very quickly.
Yeah, I couldn’t tell you what the story was either beyond being exiled on an island. I also have felt that in my older age I’m gravitating more towards medium-length games with a proper story that you can finish and put away, as opposed to the endless MMOs and grindy ARPGs I enjoyed in my youth.
I also have felt that in my older age I’m gravitating more towards medium-length games with a proper story that you can finish and put away, as opposed to the endless MMOs and grindy ARPGs I enjoyed in my youth.
You could not have captured it better.
I am glad we had this conversation. Please do recommend me some more games. if you do not mind.
I was on a long break from gaming (almost a year) due to life, and plan to resume weekend gaming soon. For the same reason, I have been scouting these communities and threads for recommendations.
As of now, I zeroed down on the Mass Effect trilogy on the Steam Deck but I am also considering a second play through of Ghosts of Tsushima. I would prefer a light(er) game which is easy to get into and allow me to take breaks as I don’t think I will be able to pull off hour long sessions initially.
For another indie game you might not have heard about Skald: Against the Black Priory was a surprise hit with me when I played it earlier this year. Cool story and world building, very concise and conscious of its budget limits so smaller in scope, probably a 16-20h game with no filler and no grinding. I liked it a lot, and it should play great on the Steam Deck too. Sort of a tribute to retro CRPGs but without the clunk of those old games. Combat was simple but fun, not overly complex. Beautiful pixel art, especially the splash screens.
I am way less high on Ghost of Tsushima than most people. I would never even consider a second playthrough. The game is way too long for what it is, which is essentially just a more polished garden variety Ubisoft open world game. There is not enough variety in it to sustain a what - 60h playthrough? The quest design isn’t interesting or varied enough and most importantly: the writing isn’t varied enough. You can’t have 60 hours of dialogue delivered in only a stoic, dour monotone. 15 minutes of Kenji spread over a handful of moments isn’t enough to break it up. Anyway, rant over.
Okay what else… Well, Blue Prince came out this year and is a contender for Indie of the Year - maybe even a potential Game of the Year nomination. I liked it a lot, a puzzle roguelite is an interesting concept and if you like note taking and screenshotting and escape room type puzzles you’ll have a good time with I think.
Otherwise I won’t be the first you see of this if you’ve been scouring these threads, but Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is almost a shoe-in for game of the year and the hype is most certainly deserved. Any gamer should do themselves a favour and experience it, not least to be able to participate in the zeitgeist.
Thanks again for the recommendations. Blue Prince looks refreshingly good and different. I did hear quite a bit about Clair Obscur, but turn based gameplay never appealed to me. I did not play Baldur’s Gate 3 for the same reasons, in spite of it being so well received.
I agree with your criticisms about Ghosts of Tsushima, and have made similar observations as well. However, Ghost of Tsushima and Spider-Man are my comfort games where I just soak in their music and atmosphere while I do something else like talk with someone.
