3d ago

The first weekly What Are You Playing? thread!

Hey everyone! I have no power in here, have not checked if anyone has started one of these but I feel like being the change I want to see in the world.

So! What are you playing this week?

I just started off Claire Obscure Expedition 33, and at the same time, have been getting my girlfriend to slowly wean off of Guilty Gear Strive and try out older fighter games like Guilty Gear XX and a more recent one, BlazBlueCrossTag (both to great success)

Also still haven't beat the first major boss of Nightreign, not looking forward to the trashtalk from friends after the nerf because they did it first

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Been playing a heavily-modded playthrough of Minecraft. Am enjoying building up my world to look alive.

I am playing Drove and really loving it. Most likely done with the first chapter. The Gothic inspiration is clear, but it plays entirely differently. Gonna join the Remnants as they were more playfully written.

BLUE PRINCE! IT IS SO GOOD!
It's a puzzle game like Myst, and a puzzle game like a board game sort of. So it has short term and long term puzzles. It's so good! I'm obsessed.
- Blue Prince was incredible. Any game where you need to keep a physical notepad next to you gets points in my book. If you've not played Return of the Obra Dinn I'd rec that for that same experience.
  
  I did play Obra Dinn! I loved it.

I've been wrapping up endgame dungeons in Clair Obscur this week, having played through the story last week. I was a big PS1 final fantasy fan as a kid that later got into dark souls/Sekiro, so this game hit so hard for me. I can't recommend it strongly enough if you've been a fan of these genres.

I'm playing Oblivion Remaster. I never played it before, so I don't have any nostalgia for it. But, its the first Bethesda game I've tried that has actually grabbed me. It's just super charming and immersive to me. All I have left for my current character is the main quest and the Shivering Isles. I didn't do all the guilds or explore everything - I'm saving some stuff to do on my next character that I'm already planning.

Working my way through act 2 of Baldur's Gate 3. I feel like I've done just about everything in the Temple of Shar except the ::: spoiler spoiler fight against Balthazar. :::I tried it a couple times but got whooped a little too easily. Shadowheart is a beast though. She's usually the last one alive when I try it. She can take out all the mobs by herself. It's gonna take the whole squad to win the fight. I need to get my party up a level or two. Me being a defenseless bard is pretty tough. In all my attempts I've been sniped turn one with little recourse to get revived.
Then on top of that I've put time in AI Wars 2 and fighting games. AI Wars 2 is so cool. Complete information overload and a wonky UI but it's got the addicting qualities I like in video games.
Tekken has been calling me as like a stress reliever. Then the Marvel announcement yesterday made me fire up Strive and SF6. I might put real effort into Strive this time. I've always wanted to but it's never quite clicked like SF, and Tekken. And yes I installed DBFZ out of sheer joy yesterday. That rollback better be good.
- Strive is so good. Any top 8 of that game is just full of people using the RC system in really clever ways.

I have been playing a lot of Vintage Story. It's been drawing me away from "finishing" Blue Prince and really digging into Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. They're all so good, I just don't have enough hours in the day to actually play everything. Stupid having a job and adult responsibilities.

I've been trapped in a Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time addiction ever since that came out. I'm a huge fan of the original 3DS game, but it was kinda forgotten by gaming history. And now we have a much bigger and more polished game for more platforms! For those who haven't heard of it: it's a bastard child of singleplayer Final Fantasy XIV and Animal Crossing. Very cute and cozy, mercilessly addicting, simulates the experience of having ADHD incredibly well.
This is how it typically goes: you want new furniture for your house. You're out of a specific kind of wood that's needed, so you go to a place that has it. On the way there you see an NPC with a quest - some poor farmer is besieged by overgrown carrots, and wants you to kill 10 of them. Might as well, it's only a slight detour. You kill the carrots, and then help yourself to some more crops on the farm, and get a rare carrot that you need to cook a dish to advance your Chef Life! Better get to that immediately, before you forget. You go back to town and cook the dish. You still don't have that new furniture you set out to get.
About the only thing I don't like is that the story quests are less weird than the original game, everything else is a straight upgrade.
- I loved the first fantasy life. It was such a fantastic game for class mechanic junkies.
  Never ended up finishing it though.
- Fuck me once I start playing it, I can see I'll get addicted

Finally started playing Baldur’s Gate 3. Based in impressions from the first 15ish hours, this may be a strong GOAT contender for me.
- 15 hours, huh? Have you finished creating your first character yet?
  
  Surely thats enough time to finish one character, get through the Nautilus, and immediately make another character

Restarting Dredge for the umpteenth time. I keep getting just so far and give up. So here's to hoping I play through all the way this time.

Abiotic Factor, Nightreign a little, Outlast Trials, Monster Train 2, Across the Obelisk

Final Fantasy VIII, almost at the end of the third disc. Hot take: this is my favorite PS1 entry in the series (and IX is my second favorite). I'm not going to pretend it's a perfect game but it takes a lot of chances and I think most of the them pay off.

Oblivion remake, finished thieves guild and dark brotherhood and the crusader questline. Now I am starting the mages guild. Nostalgia hitting hard.

Brotato 🥔

I recently finished Horizon Forbidden West and immediately started Oblivion Remastered. It’s just as good as I remember it and I’m enjoying exploring Cyrodiil all over again.

I am close to finishing my latest Skyrim mod list, so hopefully I can start playing Skyrim soon.
Until then I play Lunar Silver Star Remake on my Switch.

Just gave Stellaris a try tonight. I'm hooked. I sunk 9 Hours in already
- Aww. they're always so cute when they're young! 🤣

Juggling a lot at once right now.
Been working on platinums/100% for every single RGG game since Feb last year. Currently on Yakuza 2 (HD PS3 port since it actually has trophies but is entirely in Japanese lmao) and Kurohyou 1. Kurohyou 2 and Kenzan are the last games left after these.
Deltarune Ch 3 and 4 are gonna eat up a LOT of time this week and next
Sunk 20 hours into Nightreign, still haven't beaten the first big boss because matchmaking is a nightmare. Might revisit this when some friends actually want to run it for once idk. Fun game but one bad teammate can fuck the whole run.

Suicide Squad. Completed the main story. In order to 100% you only need to grind the original post-game, but I'm playing each season now for the tiny droplet of story each has.

Patient gamer here. Playing Skyrim for the first time and having a blast.
- I've sunk nearly 800 hours on it.
  Good luck.
- Oh nice. Just remember to hydrate and get some sleep. It’s so easy to lose hours to that game!
  
  https://youtu.be/XOHs183SaWQ

I just finished Dark Souls 1/2/3 100%, so as a pallet cleanser, I'm back to metroidvanias with Dust.

I'm playing Death Stranding. I've been waiting some years and I'm finally giving it a go.
It have many similarities with MGSV which is good. It feels like a well made game.
- It's very particular in its style and pacing. I liked it at first, but wasn't able to stick to it. I'll have to give it another go at some point.

Picked up Star of Providence this past weekend and I'm hooked, the pause menu music has been looping in my head nonstop since

Finished playing through Atomic Heart, and because of that wanted to play a game that was, you know, actually fun instead of a miserable slog, so I've been playing Crab Champions and playing the original BioShock again for the millionth time. Sometimes Sea of Thieves.

I've primarily been playing Celeste and been enjoying it. I made it to the summit and now I'm going back through and trying to find all the strawberries, cassettes, and crystals without a guide and beat the B-Side levels. It's kind of a slog though, so I'll probably resort to using a guide eventually. Other than that I've been dabbling a bit with Elden Ring and GTA V and playing stuff like Pizza Possum and Plate Up with my fiancé.

Been playing Ori and the Will of the Wisps. Just completed Blind Forest and this seems like a great sequel so far. :)

Shotgun Cop Man. Short sweet and simple from the people that made My Friend Pedro. The movement system and level design feels pretty sublime when you get in a good flow. And I just discovered there's Steam Workshop levels!
THERE'S SO MUCH GAMES!!

I've played some old Silver Box Dungeons and Dragons games (Heroes of the Lance, Dragons of Flame and Shadow Sorcerer) I got from a GOG promotion who knows how long ago. Stuff from 1988-1990. My god, those games suck HARD. Granted, PCs didn't have much in terms of "good real time action games", but those just feel awful from start to finish. The fact that increasing cycles or adding frameskips in DOSBox doesn't speed up the games doesn't help, either.
Shadow Sorcerer isn't as bad as the previous 2, no longer being a side scroller and being real time tactics, but it doesn't quite cut it.

Monster Hunter Wilds, and my friend and I play the Outlast Trials together. I haven't gotten far in MH, but I'm really enjoying it.

First Witcher, pretty good so far
- How far are you? I found chapter 2 to be a slog, in particular, but then it picks up right after that.
  
  Lol literally sloging through a swamp in Chapter2

Abiotic Factor - I'm close to reaching the end
I'm still looking for a game for the weekend. I'm thinking of something with exploration, management and maybe first-person.
- Sounds like Satisfactory might be what you're looking for.

Claire Obscure Expedition 33
Great story, characters, gameplay and music. Easy GOTY. ::: spoiler spoiler After 5 tries I finally beat Clea. Also why do we have to fight Lampmaster four times? :::

Tainted Grail Fall of Avalon
Tried the demo and it hooked me. Great game so far.
- It certainly looks like it would fill the Skyrim void my brain sometimes has! But also new story that I might finish because I hated skyrims one mostly.
  
  I'm only in the second zone of the game but there's a lot to see and do just in the starter dungeon and the game's first zone. I'm really enjoying it so far.
- I want this game so bad. I've been itching for a Oblivion-style RPG for ages.

Deliver At All Costs - fun game, but I swear the plot is just an excuse to feature those wonderful destruction mechanics.
Robocop - Actually not bad! I haven"t seen or played anything Robocop related in 30ish years, but I'll be damned if this game doesn't make you feel exactly like him ( for better or worse )
Pacific Drive - finally managed to finish this one after starting and abandoning it twice because it's just terrifying to me. ( I just had to start it again after reading Roadside Picnic and thinking "hey, this reads familiar" ). It's still terrifying, but absolutely great game.
Now I'm playing Kingdoms&Castles and Starbound again to calm the fuck down.
- Deliver at all costs is pretty hilarious all round, really. I'm enjoying it on the Deck.
  Robocop was a cool game, as a fan of the first film (AND ONLY THE FIRST FILM). I played that earlier in the year. I need to try it again in VR now I've upgraded my hardware. It choked hard on my old graphics card.
- RoboCop: Rogue City took me by surprise. I was expecting a linear shooting gallery type thing but the game gives you some surprising levels of freedom to explore around. Much more immersive than I thought it would be.
  Pacific Drive is so fantastic. I love the new endless mode they added. One of the best soundtracks in gaming.

Warframe never betrays me
Still waiting on that Terraria update tho
Replaying Dark Souls for the millionth time aswell
Some osu! on the side
- Warframe is my go-to whenever I don't know what to play. Can always find a mission to jump into or a relic to crack.
- Good ol Warframe.
  Should be the gold standard of free-to-play yet it is still one of its kind.
  The story of its development is truly a fantastic "fuck you" to the gaming industry that told them their business model that actually respects the players wouldn't be successful.
  
  my favourite success story. finding devs that care about its players in an industry that only cares about profit is truly special. rock and stone brother

Planet side 2
Still a decent number of people at peak hours.
- you should try foxhole if you don't mind it not being first person

Just finished playing Morrowind for the first time in decades. Half-tempted to go back and do it all again as a pure mage.
Failing that, I have so many games in my catalogs that I'm not sure where to start. Maybe Portal Revolution, maybe Brütal Legend, or maybe I finally get into the Witcher III. I keep trying to like Ride, but racing games never feel remotely like actually riding or driving a vehicle and I always spend my time in the weeds.

I just got my favorite game (Sekiro) to run on Linux! It wasn't hard or anything, just the first time I've gotten a Windows game to run.
- Sword Saint is the single most satisfying boss victory I've ever experienced, no action game NPC has ever made me feel more like I was being outskilled by an actual person
- I'm playing Sekiro too! Such a fun game, so satisfying. And also kinda terrifying.
  It was the first game I'd set up on Proton in Steam as well. What a world.

I just started Shin Megami Tensei Digital Devil Saga. It's a weird one and I love it! The atmosphere is incredible and the systems are really fun right out of the gate.
I also have a playthrough of Trails in the Sky SC going on and it's so charming. Great turn based combat too.
Aaaand I also tried out Slay the Spire for the first time to kill some time here and there and I have to say this thing should be regulated. So adictive!

• Tainted Grail - Fall of Avalon • The Headliners • The Division 2 • Sea of Thieves • Tinykin
- I don’t see people playing Sea of Thieves much anymore. I never liked the top level pro PVP aspect but I do enjoy joining people for simple treasure hunts.
  DM me if you’re looking for more players.

Halls of Torment is nice

I just finished playing Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster and have started Final Fantasy VI Pixel Remaster. I keep checking wikis and forum posts for information, since I hate missing things (especially things that you can't get back to). I think from here on out (I'm in one of the 3 Scenario Selects) I'll keep it as blind as I can.
I finally downloaded Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights, and think it's pretty cool. But maybe it's just because I haven't played a Metroidvania in 2 years.
Last but not least, I tried the demo for Big Hops after seeing Giant Bomb's Unfinished video on it. 3D Platformer that feels very good to move around in. Not sure how deep the story will go, or what mechanics they'll be adding as the game progresses, but it's been a delight so far.
- If you ever get the urge to replay FF6, the best version (by far) is the fan hack called Brave New World. It removes countless glitches and bugs while also enhancing the level-up, combat, and magic systems, as well as provides a far deeper and more thoughtful quasi-class system (each character has branching 'classes' based on which equips/magicites you allow them, providing much better thought out synergies than the original).
  As someone who has loved this game for 20+ years now, BNW is very easily the greatest version out there. Def give it a try if you want to see this game re-raised to its fullest potential!
  
  Thanks! Would you recommend it for someone's first playthrough, or only for subsequent replays?

I am still working my way through Expedition 33. I’m in Act 2 and I’d estimate about half way into that. I’m still absolutely loving it.

Swapping between "Flintlock: Siege of Dawn" and "Cathedral" right now.
Just finished 100% Ghostsong, Mummy Demastered, and Remnant 2 recently.

I've been playing this 'medieval' mod(s) for RimWorld which basically limits you to medieval tech and has a lot more crafting spaces to make materials for things, like a loom to make cloth or drying racks to make straw or dried meat. Its neat but a little quirky and doesn't seem well tuned in parts.
I've also been convincing people to try out PULSAR: The Lost Colony, which is like a first person Star Trek adventure co-op game. The game gets pretty close to doing cool stuff, and has great moments, but doesn't quite nail it overall. That's almost more frustrating to be honest.

Clair Obscur whenever I actually feel like playing anything. Though I can only take so much of it at once. The story and music? Amazing. The old-school turn based JRPG combat? Even with the dodge and parry mechanics it's just as thrilling as an older FF game; and I hated the combat in those, too, because it's kinda boring. It's a bit more tolerable here, given that I have some skill-based things involved; but it's still fairly boring. I just wanna know what the fuck is up with the everything about this messed up world.
- I feel the same. It kind of drags on with the combat and there are sooo many battles between story sequences. And you have no choice but to pay attention to the combat because of the parry and dodge mechanic. I'm playing on easy mode because I can't be bothered to learn the perfect timing for it. It's difficult enough on easy mode.
  
  You can skip some fights by running past enemies, but if you're struggling with combat the best solution is to take some time to optimize your builds. The game incentivizes glass cannon builds where you generally kill mobs before they can even attack. If they can't attack you don't have to worry about dodging/partying. I won't give any actual builds, those take too much effort and IMO it's more fun to figure them out yourself. But I will give some tips to make combat easier.
  If you have defensive pictos/lumina equipped swap them for damage or AP.
  Don't be scared to use color of lumina (for more lumina points) as you can get hundreds of them throughout the game. Trust me, having more lumina equipped will absolutely make the game easier
  Also don't be scared to use recoats to respec your characters, you can get plenty of recoats. Try out different skills as some of them are more useful than others.
  If you're struggling to strike first in combat equip first strike lumina on all characters. That lumina pretty much becomes mandatory in late game as even with all the speed modifiers stacked you still might not start first.
  Also invest points into agility. Agility is the main stat for speed and speed dictates how often you can attack.
  
  It took me a while to figure out how important higher level pictos are for their stat boost. Your base stats become basically irrelevant at one point when you can give a character 500 defense with one picto.

Final Fantasy Tactics on my RG34XX and Repo almost nightly with the buds
- Have you bard-monked your way to high levels yet?
  
  I'm still in the early stages in my current playthrough. I've not yet caught up to the intro

Moonstone Island at the moment. And Baldurs Gate 3 because cross-play finally lets me party up with my husband.

I've been playing Blue Prince. It's fun.
- Mixed bag for me. Love the puzzle aspects. Hate the roguelike elements. A lot of the puzzles relying on lucky draws makes testing theories for the more complex things a PitA.
  
  Oh look, another day where I barely ever even got rooms that had more than one door, and now that my winding path has hit a dead end all my resources are useless. Next day I guess.
- I loved Blue Prince. It's still putting up a good fight for my personal GOTY despite having just finished and loved Clair Obscur.
  Play it, take notes, enjoy it. Games like it don't come along often.
- Blue prince is a DEEP HOLE. Just solved my fourth sigil. It is really relaxing to go in play one day, put it down for a couple of days ruminating on what you learned, then pick it back up and play 2 more days.
  
  Oh god, what sigils? I don't think I've even gotten to that yet. I've opened up the side yard and the mine, and got 3 of the 4 torches lit. There are so many puzzles! I think it's better to know nothing, though, and discover it along the way.

I'm playing through Black Mesa lately!
Picked it up on the recent discount and now I'm going through it, gonna do all of HL2 next, time to check out the 20th anniversary update.
Also Lumines Remastered just went on sale so you bet I'm gonna be playing the hell out of that

Just getting into FF7 Rebirth. Was a huge fan of the original, but these remakes are just so silly it’s kind of hard. And I really don’t like the active combat system in modern FF games, but I’ll get through it.
Always playing a little Rust here and there, can’t help myself.
Was about to resub to RuneScape after a yearlong break but then I saw Mod Jack got canned. Jagex getting darker every year…

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