What are you playing right now?

[Briar King]

Hmm that is proving way more difficult than I thought. I’m starting to think I got extremely lucky finding my 75 8K in early 2021. All I can find in stores right now is plain ole 4Ks LG has an 86in which right on that is perfect size for my den but I’d be essentially down grading if I got it. Yeah there ain’t much in 8K right now anyway but my PS5 and XB are capable of it now so when it’s the norm I want to not worry about it. May take a drive to TX tomorrow to see if anyone has any even though I’m going to my dr there this Wednesday. I need to get this done if it’s going to happen asap so the cable company can do their thing. Ugh I so want to load up on a 10-11 inch bigger screen now that it’s in my head.

[Eluvianii he/him]

I guess now all the Ace Attorney games have been localized huh. And even the older ones are available on modern platforms. Please let this be a sign that new games are coming.

[Use the Falchion]

Last month I finally completed a long-standing goal of mine for Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes - teaching Dimitri Bolting. Did I need to do this? Not at all. Are there better characters for Bolting? Absolutely! (Basically any natural magic-wielding character is a better choice, and even Felix is a better choice due to his comparatively higher Magic growths. And any character with Witstrike is a better choice!) But it was a fun idea and BOB SAGET I FINISHED IT. As such, Dark Knight Dimitri is complete. This took a year of grinding on-and-off, but it was worth it. As a slight aside, Annettel learned both Bolting and Agnea's Arrow in roughly a week of playing, a mere fraction of the time! Gotta love how Supports play a role, don't you...

I've done that, beaten Unicorn Overlord again (way back in April I think), tried out Dynasty Warriors 8, booted up my old copy of Fallout 4 for a quick moment, and just finished the main storyline for Nexomon last week. I'd love to play Mass Effect: Legendary Edition again, but I need to find my copy. ...I also know that I'll get VERY bored with ME 1 and skip to ME 2 and 3, which is exactly what happened last time...sigh...

Anyways, I now have to decided between Moonstone Island and Another Crab's Treasure. I'll probably do Moonstone Island first, although I'm excited for both games and really want to enjoy both of them. I'm trying to find a new Farming/Dating Sim game to enjoy after liking Rune Factory 4 nearly 10 years ago and not liking anything since, and I want Another Crab's Treasure to bring me into the Soulsborne fold, a genre I've never really enjoyed. 

Other games I want to play during the summer:

Final Fantasy 16 - I've heard good things about it from my friend and from social media, so I guess it's time

Assassin's Creed Origins - The only AC I've actually played was AC 4: Black Flag, and that was the perfect AC game to me. But I got Origins because I've heard so many good things about it. 

Elden Ring - This is a big MAYBE. Again, I want to like the genre, but I'm not a fan of it, so I don't want to dive right into the deep end. 

Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn - I've been keeping an eye on this game for a number of years due to it being a game in the Flintlock Fantasy subgenre. I thought it'd be more akin to God of War than a Soulsborne game, but hearing it's the latter gave me a moment of pause. Overall, I decided that if the reviews are good and I like Another Crab's Treasure, I'll check this one out. 

 

Other games for later in the year:

Sun Haven - I just want to try the game out on the Switch. Like Moonstone Island, this game is part of the search to find new Farming/Dating Sim games that I like. 

Symphany of War: Nephilim Saga - I'm hoping this game makes me feel like I'm playing Fire Emblem, since we're not getting a new FE game this year other than Unicorn Overlord. 

Metaphor Re:Fantazio - I'm VERY excited for this game. I'm now holding myself back from too much information so I don't know everything before the game's release. The only thing missing was romance. (The creators said that romance was missing because it's more or less an integral part of the high school experience, and since this doesn't take place in high school like Persona, it's not needed. I fundamentally disagree with this, but I'm an American man, not a Japanese man...that being said, I have a few Japanese friends and they are/were looking for love in their thirties, so I wouldn't call romance a "high school" thing only. Not to mention the interplay of romance and marriage in politics is a well-documented - and oft-scandalized - thing.) 

Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven - The gameplay looks fun and the story looks interesting. I wish there was a romance mechanic to the game, but alas...

Assassin's Creed Shadows - I've heard quite a few controversial things about this game, which really makes me want to play it out of spite if the gameplay's good and the characters are good. It's always fun seeing Yasuke appear. 

Dark Deity 2 - I helped the first one on Kickstarter, and while I never beat it, I had fun with it. (Fun fact, the creators are Sanderson fans! I caught several of their early-game Easter Eggs early on, such as the Windrunner class and Cosmere University.) I'm looking forward to the second game and hopefully that will release by November/December. (I also hope that Dark Deity 3 has a romance system.) 

Coromon - I like Pokemon, enjoyed Nexomon, and am looking forward to whenever I get around to it. 

Fire Emblem Genealogy Remake - It's not coming this year and I'M UPSET.

[aneonfoxtribute]

Tsukihime just got an official English translation, so I'm gonna start on that soon

[clowncarcrash]

I've recently beaten Life is Strange 1, Earthbound and I'm wrapping up the last case on Phoenix Wright 1.

I think the next game I'm going to beat is Omori.

[Use the Falchion]

I finally found my copy of Three Houses! I spent a few days playing a copy where I had started with the Black Eagles house, a first for me! I plan on going the Silver Snow route and romancing Rhea though. I knew there was something weird going on with this save file when I realized that Lysithea had no ranks with fists or flying, because I was POSITIVE I had done Fly-Sithea and Fist-Sithea before, on the same playthrough even! And I was positive I had started Marianne on the War Cleric route! As it happens, this was a different file than my normal one. 

On my normal NG+ save profile, which I found a few days later, I had rediscovered that Past-Falchion made the weird choice of playing through Azure Moon with M!Byleth. Since I refused to start over, I decided that I'll just role with it and romance Manuela for this playthrough. I was alternating between Hilda (due to all of the amazing HIldaleth art) and Manuela, and I'm going with Manuela because I adore the whole "babies ever after" ending, and only Byleth and Ferdinand give Manuela offspring. For maximum shipping chaos, I'm also having Dimitri romance Annette, instead of Felix/Annette like 90% of my previous playthroughs, because why not? Their supports are cute, and their ending card is ADORABLE. (It's also hilarious that both Annette and Ingrid can marry a king, in the form of Dimitri (Azure Moon), Claude (Verdant Wind), or Byleth (Verdant Wind/Silver Snow).)

I'll probably continue to switch it up and have Dedue x Mercedes, Sylvain x Ingrid, Felix x Dorothea, and Seteth x Bernadetta as well. (Or Bernadetta x Yuri. Yuri and Raphael give Bernie her best endings, but I always go with Raph so I want to switch it up.)  

(Off the top of my head, I can only remember children being talked about in three of M!Byleth's supports - Manuela, Shamir, and Flayn. I'm sure there are more, but those are the only ones I know right now.)

[Eluvianii he/him]

Finished Monster Hunter Rise, the base game. I will admit, I didn't expect the upgrade in the combat system to be so much fun. Thoroughly enjoying the experience, in particular the moves they give some of the new monsters to keep up with the player's increased mobility have some, frenetic results. Gotta love when they throw in some bullet hell in your Monster Hunter game.

I had heard the story to the game wasn't great and, that might be true. By other games' standards. By MH standards this is lotr. Loved every second. Kamura is also a great village to be in, having the hunter be born there was a great choice imo. There's a lot of emotional weight in knowing that these people have been with your hunter since they were born. The rampages also increase that feeling, funnily enough, having this small army of villagers gunning down monsters to protect their home is a sight to behold. 

I will admit, I was a tad worried after getting that first credits roll like 10 hours in, but I didn't need to. 78 hours clocked in after final boss. 

On to Sunbreak. Expecting great things from it. 

[Use the Falchion]

I played the demo of Samurai Warriors 5, and I like it a LOT more than Dynasty Warriors 8, at least the little I've played of the latter. Samurai Warriors 5 feels more like Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, which to me, has been the best and smoothest Warriors experience I've played. (Granted, my experience consists of five games as of this week, but still!) I've been chasing the Three Hopes high ever since, wanting to get into the Hack'N'Slash genre more than the occasional crossover and Kingdom Hearts, but I'm still not sure it's for me. 

I'm excited about Dynasty Warriors Origins next year, but we'll see how much I like the rest of Samurai Warriors 5 first.

Back to Samurai Warriors, the similarities between this game and Three Hopes come in the form of level-ups, equipping different weapons, and equipable skills. Since what I played is just a demo, I'm not sure if I'll be able to control NPCs or switch to different units on the fly. This may be an FE Warriors-exclusive thing, as I couldn't switch in Dynasty Warriors 8 either. This is also one of the big sticking points, as I LOVE switching units. It makes playing the levels so much fun while also increasing the replay value, at least for me. It also makes longer maps more like various sprints rather than marathons. Think of them more like a 4x 100 relay, since you're switching characters for micro-objectives and smaller tactical choices rather than a 400m race where it's just one person doing everything.  

All of that said, I really want a Samurai Warriors game set in Fire Emblem. I'm not talking Fire Emblem Warriors, but literally taking the major historical characters, transporting them and most of their history to a magical world, giving them classes, magic, and all of the things, and calling it a day. IntSys and KT can change the characters' names if that makes them feel better, but they better keep the designs and characterizations! I want my anime-styled. shonen-protagonist-attitude, Odachi-wielding Oda Nobunaga to change classes from Lord to Warlord to Demon Lord after being taken over by the Demon Dragon of the game in a Faustian deal to unite his war-torn country. Thematically compare and contrast Nobunaga and Sigurd, two charismatic leaders who unite their countries in some ways but also do great harm. Give me a partial second generation where the children of these leaders have to deal with the semi-unified country their parents left behind. All with Warriors combat. I WANT IT.

[The cheeseman Don't you dare go Hollow!]

I've been playing MC Java 1.19.3 with my brother. We just got our cow crusher working, finally found a village (and thus, potatoes), and I finished the first floor of our base, sans decorations. We're playing on Normal mode with a couple of data packs from Vanilla Tweaks.

My Master-difficulty playthrough of Jedi: Fallen Order has also been coming along swimmingly. On this run, I'm planning to collect all the chests and secrets and maybe platinum the game. Currently I've completed Bogano, Zeffo, Dathomir, and Ilum. I've just got Kashyyyk left. I also finally beat all four surprise bosses. Ogdo Bogdo was the hardest of them, imo.

My playthrough of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is on hold for now. I plan to come back to it sometime probably in the next month.

[Use the Falchion]

Thanks to Samurai Warriors 5, Samurai Warriors 4 Empires, and Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate, I FINALLY get the appeal of Warriors games! They also make me question what on earth IntSys and KT were thinking with the OG Fire Emblem Warriors game. There are several popular FE Lords that don't use Swords, and any or all of them could have been brought in. There are several royal and noble characters who are adjacent to Lords that don't use swords (Tana, Innes, L'Archel, Lilina, Quan, Lewyn, etc.) that could have been brought in. They could have just given several of the sword-users alternative builds also. The problems with the sword users is one that felt entirely self-created, and one that wasn't helped by the OCs Rowan and Liana. 

Currently alternating between Samurai Warriors 5, Samurai Warriors 4 Empires, and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 again. I got a hankering to play it again and booted up the game for a NG+ playthrough. 

[aneonfoxtribute]

4 hours ago, Use the Falchion said:

Thanks to Samurai Warriors 5, Samurai Warriors 4 Empires, and Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate, I FINALLY get the appeal of Warriors games! They also make me question what on earth IntSys and KT were thinking with the OG Fire Emblem Warriors game. There are several popular FE Lords that don't use Swords, and any or all of them could have been brought in. There are several royal and noble characters who are adjacent to Lords that don't use swords (Tana, Innes, L'Archel, Lilina, Quan, Lewyn, etc.) that could have been brought in. They could have just given several of the sword-users alternative builds also. The problems with the sword users is one that felt entirely self-created, and one that wasn't helped by the OCs Rowan and Liana. 

Currently alternating between Samurai Warriors 5, Samurai Warriors 4 Empires, and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 again. I got a hankering to play it again and booted up the game for a NG+ playthrough. 

FE Warriors is, like. Insanely baffling as a game. It's a fine enough game, but it's easily the worst Warriors game I've played. If you asked people back when you were playing it what the opinion was, they'd probably say it's definitely not the norm for Warriors games. The fact that the only unique gameplay styles are ties to the classes (meaning that so few of the characters are actually unique) is the single most baffling choice that game made. Even Three Hopes, which has the same idea of "gameplay is tied to class", fixed that by both making reclassing a thing, AND by giving each character a unique ability that changes how they play, so everyone feels unique even when they have the same combo strings.

Definitely Hyrule Warriors would have been the best recommendation for someone who was disappointed with FE Warriors, since every character in that game is ACTUALLY unique (plus that game has an insane amount of content). 

[Use the Falchion]

On 8/19/2024 at 12:03 AM, aneonfoxtribute said:

Definitely Hyrule Warriors would have been the best recommendation for someone who was disappointed with FE Warriors, since every character in that game is ACTUALLY unique (plus that game has an insane amount of content). 

Noted! I probably won't check it out, to be honest, because I'm not a Zelda fan, and SW4E and SW5 (and XB3) are giving me all that I need right now, but I'll keep it in mind!

[Texside he/him/his]

I'm waiting on Visions of Mana to release; I'm between games right now. I'm excited for that, though, the demo was quite fun!

[Eluvianii he/him]

I just got a ps4 which has distracted me from other games I was supposed to be playing. But whatever I'll get over it, I'll just enjoy that initial high for now.

Meanwhile, I'm two and a half chapters into Shin Sakura Wars atm. Really loving this game and regretting playing it at the same time. There's so much weight put into how amazing the original cast was that I feel bad not having played their games. Then again, only the fifth game was officially localized to my knowledge, and only the first one has been fan translated. Frustrating. 

Well, I'm in too deep and enjoying it too much to stop now. I'll just finish and then go back to the first game. I did hear that 2 and 3 have ongoing fan projects so hopefully that goes well.

While that happens I'll continue to have the opening stuck in my brain because, it's good. It's really good. The kind of song that motivates you to fix your life when it randomly plays while riding the bus. 

 

Also playing Control. Love the vibe of this game, it's the entire opposite angle from Alan Wake and I just love discovering more about the world. It's also one of the games I've played that succeeds the most at being cinematic. It doesn't rely on its graphics for it, there's some really cool style going on here and I love it. Combat is fast and fun, health pools are low on all sides. Either you die in 5 seconds or the enemy does, but the combat will be over in 5 seconds regardless. Just wish the loading screens when I'm the one dying weren't quite so long. 

Edited September 18, 2024 by Eluvianii

[Eluvianii he/him]

Finished the first main dungeon in Metaphor: ReFantazio after that excellent demo. So far it's been really fun and honestly kinda challenging. At least if you try to finish the dungeon in a single day.

It uses the same structure as Persona so I'm not particularly thrilled to come back to that "two activities each day" kind of schedule, but other than that it looks like a great experience. 

The music and the art are so good that it makes me think Meguro and Soejima are being held back by having to stick to the expectations with Persona's style. If this is what it looks like when they let loose, they should do it more often. 

Looking forward to the rest of the game.

[Zelly]

Just finished BG3 and jumped into Hogwarts Legacy.

After than I really need to dive into my Steam Library.....buy more stuff in sales than I can ever play. T_T   I think after Hogwarts maybe Dynasty Warriors 7 or a try out a bunch of indie games.

[Zurvanight he/him]

Been playing a lot. Started Alan Wake 2's Lake House expansion. Control is one of my favorite games ever so I was super excited to return to the FBC. Really creepy (and funny at some parts) so far. 

I started up the new patch for Honkai Star Rail last night. The amount of hilarious unhinged dialogue the Trailblazer can make this patch is great. Also probably going to roll for Reca if and when he becomes available. 

Started Octopath Traveler for the first time a few days ago and it's so much fun I'm having a hard time putting it down. The music is so good too.

[The cheeseman Don't you dare go Hollow!]

Dark Souls: Remastered on PC. It is for sure the hardest game I have ever played. There have been nights where I have quit the game after miserably failing a dozen times in a row, only to come back and try again the next day. This is a game where you have to put in effort to succeed; there's no handholding, no easy answers, no right way to play. Only ways that work or don't work. However, it's definitely not a game for everyone. If you want a game to play casually, don't play Dark Souls. There's a reason that "git gud" is genuine advice. You can't be bad at this game and beat it.

That said, this game is genuinely so much fun. Learning what does and what doesn't work to take on mobs and bosses has been a great experience. I was only able to pull off a parry chain on a Black Knight because I had spent so much time parrying the crap out of Hollows.

Praise the sun! \[T]/

[The Stormfather He/Him]

I've been playing pokerogue a lot, a pokemon roguelike that is stupidly difficult. 

 

[Through the Living Shadow he/him]

3 hours ago, The Stormfather said:

I've been playing pokerogue a lot, a pokemon roguelike that is stupidly difficult. 

 

Soulslikes are the ones that are stupidly difficult.

When I have time and motivation, I play sSatisfactory or Factorio.

[The Stormfather He/Him]

23 hours ago, SpiritOfWrath said:

Soulslikes are the ones that are stupidly difficult.

When I have time and motivation, I play sSatisfactory or Factorio.

I assume Soulslikes is a soullink roguelike?

(Also that does sound stupidly difficult.)

(Pokerogue is hard enough, tbh.)

[The cheeseman Don't you dare go Hollow!]

37 minutes ago, The Stormfather said:

I assume Soulslikes is a soullink roguelike?

(Also that does sound stupidly difficult.)

(Pokerogue is hard enough, tbh.)

Soulslikes are a genre of games drawing inspiration and mechanics from FromSoftware's Dark Souls games. Usually, a Soulslike is very difficult, has an easy-to-learn but hard to master combat system, relies on environmental storytelling, and a checkpoint system where you respawn, level up, repair equipment, and other things depending on the game.

[The Stormfather He/Him]

29 minutes ago, The cheeseman said:

Soulslikes are a genre of games drawing inspiration and mechanics from FromSoftware's Dark Souls games. Usually, a Soulslike is very difficult, has an easy-to-learn but hard to master combat system, relies on environmental storytelling, and a checkpoint system where you respawn, level up, repair equipment, and other things depending on the game.

Oh, that makes sense.

Yeah that sounds hard.

[The Bookwyrm he/him]

...Well, not right now, and not for two years because I'm going to leave on my mission soon, but first thing I'm playing when I get back is this...

https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/xenoblade-chronicles-x-definitive-edition-121320/

[Eluvianii he/him]

Finished Resident Evil 2 Remake. Proud Assisted run. Leon A in 8:44 and Claire B in 6:46.

That was a really good game. Good B-movie fun, in certain aspects it's a downgrade from the original but in others it's an upgrade. The extra story they gave the side characters was great.

By far the worst part of the game was roaming Mr X, sounded good in concept, but found out fast I didn't like it. Scripted was better.

Unlocking the station door by door is still a dopamine rush, and cheating some things in second run with the knowledge from the first one feels good, must be intended.

Anette best character.

I still love the Leon/Claire duo. Both here and in every game and movie after they're a strange pair that is nothing alike, they sit on opposite sides of the personality scale, their priorities are different, and their routes reflect that. The game doesn't even go for the unlikely couple trope. They're just two friends living their separate lives apart from the other, but on the rare occasion they do meet, they're extremely in tune. Especially if there's some emergency to solve (the only times they seem to meet). Love that.

Route b ending is cathartic, even if Sherry's behavior seems out of place, but I'll chalk that up to coping, and the ending theme is amazing. Great game.