What are you playing? v.11 (Knee-Deep Edition)

Your PTSD dispenser of choice?

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Rogue Legacy 2

Couldn't ignore it anymore, and got it with some MS fun bucks on the big sale they're currently having. Loved the original...the first time I played it way back on the PS3. Never could get back into it, for whatever reason. Always felt a bit dated and quite frankly, difficult to make much progress.

This game irons out all the kinks, and pretty much stole a whole lot of shit from "Dead Cells" to bring it forward, while still improving on it's roots. It's great, albeit still rather difficult. It's old school in it's action platforming design, as there aren't many tricks to get you through. Even with all the different upgrades and runes n' shit, it always stays a bit intimidating. I never really feel a natural flow with this game, because you're always changing character types, and this game has a whole bunch more than the original, and they all have vastly different playstyles. Not a bad thing though, as I'm sure I'll eventually start to get a feel for some builds, and variety is always good with games like these. As is, I'm still in the early goings, just scraping by to make it to the first boss.

Where it really improves upon the original, is in the overall level design and secrets. It took a lot of stuff from "Dead Cells" and it's all the better for it. You always feel rewarded while playing, and rarely get stuck in a grind(although I hear the end game has some issues in that regard). So far so good, and it's been a while since I really sunk my teeth into one of these games, so here's hoping it can maintain the momentum I've felt so far.
 
Strychnine said:
Picked up Surroundead during the Steam sale. I've been having a BLAST with it. The zombies murked me six ways to Sunday, until I found I was playing on nightmare mode straight out of the gate.




This game was made by one developer, and I think that it's a sleeper hit. Been having loads of fun with it.
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I picked it up too but it had some strange bug where I'd be constantly be clipping and falling under the map. It's early days though and was promising otherwise, so I'll check in again after some patches
 
I managed to beat Returnal quicker than I did on my first playthrough. I do admit, respawning into biome 1/3 every death and making your way back to the boss/objective does become laborious. But I had a great time. It is slow and a little confusing to start, but the moment gadgets open up and allow you to explore 100% of a biome to prepare you for the next (unless you die) is a nice challenge. It slowly prepares you for what's to come. I didn't enjoy starting with the pistol every time - fortunately, a new weapon was 2-3 rooms away from Helios. Luckily the new biomes have items to boost your weapon proficiency to the required level, which saved a lot of time. Biome 5 sucked, it was the only one that ruined good runs I had.

I give Returnal a 9/10. If Saros is anything like Returnal, I hope they do away with the start from scratch concept, and having to make your way from the start of biome 1, to 2 and then to 3 etc.

Time to see what Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is about.
 
Started up Black Myth Wukong. Honestly, it's not really grabbing me. It looks great, but the idea of using a single weapon type that I'm not a huge fan of in the first place is a bit discouraging. The invisible walls are already annoying me as well. I'm only on the fourth boss so I'll keep going for now, but I"m kind of wishing I grabbed WuChan instead.
 
I recently beat Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree, a metroidvania most similar in style to the Salt series. There was a cool easter egg I stumbled upon in the post game which featured a nod to that series in particular. Although there were some issues at launch, with persistent updates it's now in a great state, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. Nothing ground breaking but the game looks & feels good to play, with a lot of replayability in terms of using different classes/abilities. They also recently added NG+, but I'm not sure if there's any changes aside from scaling up enemy HP.

The main criticism I have is the inclusion of a trophy/achievement which involves dispatching 10K enemies. After 100%ing the map and bestiary I'm only at ~3000ish kills, which either means a lot of grinding or multiple playthroughs to get the remaining kills. At this point I'll be moving on, but if the required amount was 5K I probably would have started another playthrough on NG+.

I do love that the developers included a stats page that tracks your deaths etc, of which I had a hair over a hundred, with a third of those being environmental. Games like BG3 are sorely missing stats like this, even though BG1/2 both included them to a degree.

With Nightreign adding a duos mode on July 30 they've earned my purchase so I'll be jumping into that next!
 
hsz said:
I recently beat Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree, a metroidvania most similar in style to the Salt series. There was a cool easter egg I stumbled upon in the post game which featured a nod to that series in particular. Although there were some issues at launch, with persistent updates it's now in a great state, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. Nothing ground breaking but the game looks & feels good to play, with a lot of replayability in terms of using different classes/abilities. They also recently added NG+, but I'm not sure if there's any changes aside from scaling up enemy HP.

The main criticism I have is the inclusion of a trophy/achievement which involves dispatching 10K enemies. After 100%ing the map and bestiary I'm only at ~3000ish kills, which either means a lot of grinding or multiple playthroughs to get the remaining kills. At this point I'll be moving on, but if the required amount was 5K I probably would have started another playthrough on NG+.

I do love that the developers included a stats page that tracks your deaths etc, of which I had a hair over a hundred, with a third of those being environmental. Games like BG3 are sorely missing stats like this, even though BG1/2 both included them to a degree.

With Nightreign adding a duos mode on July 30 they've earned my purchase so I'll be jumping into that next!
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Great write-up, bud. Been watching Mandragora too and have previously asked who's jumped in. Art style looks cool.

Doesn't sound like a Plat game, unfortunately. I've mentioned this in the past but Darksiders III is a game that did me dirty just the same. I'm one trophy shy of the Plat because someone decided you need reap something something million+ souls and after two playthroughs, I said no to the grind. There's likely a cheese for it now (this was years ago) but I baulked at the ask on principle.
 
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Valhoven said:
Great write-up, bud. Been watching Mandragora too and have previously asked who's jumped in. Art style looks cool.

Doesn't sound like a Plat game, unfortunately. I've mentioned this in the past but Darksiders III is a game that did me dirty just the same. I'm one trophy shy of the Plat because someone decided you need reap something something million+ souls and after two playthroughs, I said no to the grind. There's likely a cheese for it now (this was years ago) but I baulked at the ask on principle.
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I don't understand why they add those types of trophies. Square Enix titles are notorious for bullshit like that. As soon as a game becomes more work than fun I'm out. They probably lose a bunch of sales from trophy hunters who would have otherwise bought the games.
 
Still playing Wrath of the Righteous. That game is kind of long. The Black cleric is creepy as hell. He keeps trying to hit on me after every rest. I am not bringing him to any quests anymore.
 
Robocop: Rogue City

I've heard good things, and it's...okay. My enjoyment is kind of hampered by how much I absolutely SUCK at FPS's. My God, I even manage to embarrass myself when nobody is around. If there was a trophy for continuously missing shots by a millimeter, I'd be the Grand Champion. I am so very bad at these games. The hardest mission for me so far, was scoring 50 points at the firing range. That took me a way too long for a throwaway tutorial mission.

That said, it's at least still manageable for incomprehensibly horrible players like myself, considering it's very forgiving and wants you to feel like a walking tank. It's very good at giving you the authentic Robocop experience. You gotta clean up the city 500 bullets at a time. The violence on display here is awesome. Limbs and heads be a flying, with a healthy amount of gore. What I didn't expect, was that it's a pretty decent story driven RPG of sorts. You get an abundance of side missions on top of the main one, with a lot of dialogue options and investigative moments, and it's all on point with the franchise, and all flows very well. You are encouraged to do the side stuff, as it gives you experience and upgrade items for your gear that just gives you more options for destruction. Every upgrade here really matters, and aren't little incremental things. That being said, it hands out experience very slowly, and I expect it to be a very short game that wants you replay it a bunch.

It's got some jank of course, being a AA budget title and all, but it hits in the right spots. It's just Robocop, and for what it is, they nailed it. Albeit, I am already very sick of the slow walk. I get that it's authentic to Robocop, but just getting around the city becomes a bit of a chore very quickly.

Just getting started really, so I won't rate it right now. I think I will get better with time, so my enjoyment may go up a bit, but as is, if you want a good Robocop game, this is it.
 
HereticBD said:
Robocop: Rogue City

I've heard good things, and it's...okay. My enjoyment is kind of hampered by how much I absolutely SUCK at FPS's. My God, I even manage to embarrass myself when nobody is around. If there was a trophy for continuously missing shots by a millimeter, I'd be the Grand Champion. I am so very bad at these games. The hardest mission for me so far, was scoring 50 points at the firing range. That took me a way too long for a throwaway tutorial mission.

That said, it's at least still manageable for incomprehensibly horrible players like myself, considering it's very forgiving and wants you to feel like a walking tank. It's very good at giving you the authentic Robocop experience. You gotta clean up the city 500 bullets at a time. The violence on display here is awesome. Limbs and heads be a flying, with a healthy amount of gore. What I didn't expect, was that it's a pretty decent story driven RPG of sorts. You get an abundance of side missions on top of the main one, with a lot of dialogue options and investigative moments, and it's all on point with the franchise, and all flows very well. You are encouraged to do the side stuff, as it gives you experience and upgrade items for your gear that just gives you more options for destruction. Every upgrade here really matters, and aren't little incremental things. That being said, it hands out experience very slowly, and I expect it to be a very short game that wants you replay it a bunch.

It's got some jank of course, being a AA budget title and all, but it hits in the right spots. It's just Robocop, and for what it is, they nailed it. Albeit, I am already very sick of the slow walk. I get that it's authentic to Robocop, but just getting around the city becomes a bit of a chore very quickly.

Just getting started really, so I won't rate it right now. I think I will get better with time, so my enjoyment may go up a bit, but as is, if you want a good Robocop game, this is it.
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I had a good time with it. It's basic, but I thought it captured some of the charm of the movie, and made Robocop was a likeable character that had some good lines causing smiles

Main reason I replied is the other day I bought and completed the new DLC, Unfinished Business. It was more of the same gameplay wise so I didn't have a terrible time, but I thought the writing and plot had taken quite a dive and overall I wouldn't really recommend unless it's dirt cheap on sale.
 
Zer said:
I had a good time with it. It's basic, but I thought it captured some of the charm of the movie, and made Robocop was a likeable character that had some good lines causing smiles

Main reason I replied is the other day I bought and completed the new DLC, Unfinished Business. It was more of the same gameplay wise so I didn't have a terrible time, but I thought the writing and plot had taken quite a dive and overall I wouldn't really recommend unless it's dirt cheap on sale.
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From what I’ve seen/read it seems like the DLC is basically the setting and plot of the 2012 Karl Urban Dredd movie. To bad they couldn’t have gotten the IP license and just made that game instead of using it as a Robocop DLC.

Almost makes me wonder if that was the plan, they designed it, started developing it, then couldn’t secure the Judge Dredd license so they just slapped it into Robocop and released it as DLC nearly two years after the base game dropped.
 
Law Talkin’ Guy said:
From what I’ve seen/read it seems like the DLC is basically the setting and plot of the 2012 Karl Urban Dredd movie. To bad they couldn’t have gotten the IP license and just made that game instead of using it as a Robocop DLC.

Almost makes me wonder if that was the plan, they designed it, started developing it, then couldn’t secure the Judge Dredd license so they just slapped it into Robocop and released it as DLC nearly two years after the base game dropped.
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It's a similar concept where it all takes place in one giant mega-city style skyscraper (Well, there are two minor sections where you play at street level, once as a different character and once in an Alex Murphy flashback) and the Judge Dredd connection did occur to me while playing, but it's rather bland and doesn't really bear much resemblance to Judge Dredd outside of that gimmick
 
TeTe said:
They were all bad but thankfully they righted the ship.

I've got like 1,000 hours into 76 now lol.
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Yeah, I have a level 280ish character on 76, but I got sick of the endgame content.

It's alright, but should stay on GamePass for good. It's a fun, if ragged round the edges multiplayer...
 
Going through each characters' full quest in Nightreign.

Some pretty interesting lore such as the
Executor being a failed Crucible Knight who didn't save his lord
 
Well, I am done with Lies of P, picked it up during summer sale with discount. I liked Bloodborne a lot and finished it on PS, also have Sekiro but I don't know, I feel a bit older and get frustrated with difficulty my reflexes not the greatest and my spare time not so huge so I played Sekior just a bit; so when I heard Lies of P introduced difficulty setting I was happy. I feel lot of times I die very "cheap" deaths in Bloodborne game like having camera go wonky or fiddling with inventory to try to heal etc which takes some of my joy away for sure.

Anyhow, I really loved the game!

+ the setting of Puppets and Pinocchio when I originally heard it made me wonder --- but no, it was great! Story was fun!
+ difficulty felt just right for me; I could eventually beat most bosses without specters but when low on patience I would use them
+ combat is overwhelmingly satisfying with good assortment of weapons
+ not having to farm the health vials is a HUGE positive changes versus Bloodborne

- the heavy weapons were too slow, and getting caught by little pokes when charging to swing was soooo annoying
- the elemental legion arms felt all way underpowered even when fully upgraded (the electricity, fire, and acid ones), the shield and puppet string were by far the most useful. Should have been given two arms to be able to use in inventory at all times right from the beginning
- some of the level designs where you are walking on planks feel really lame given the whole character controls evolve around combat, not precision moving. For instance, having to click the analog stick downwards to jump doesn't make for a good experience in parts
- it's a bit short, you gotta do NG+ to get a lot of fun and good upgrades, would have preferred it if could get more upgrades sooner and maybe make the base game 20% longer

All in all, 9/10. I really liked the intangibles of the design and characters. I am looking forward to getting the DLC when it's on sale. And the ending hinted at an Alice In Wonderland setting for a possible sequel which I think could be dope.
 
Rogue Legacy 2

Now that I'm pretty deep into it, I'll say that it's good, but needlessly cruel and punishing, to the point where it hurts the overall flow of the game. So many moments in this game, where I'm just like "why?". Why are all the "challenges" in levels damn near impossible to beat unless you're some kind of action platforming savant? Why does the "safe" that keeps a paltry amount of gold, go down if you aren't constantly donating to it? Why is there an HP punishment for utilizing runes in a level(I know the reason, but it's dumb). Why does everything cost so much after a certain point, that leads to insane grinding? Why are all the unlockables so rare to find? Why do certain traits have no purpose at all, other than to fuck up your run?

In general, why the fuck does it take so much glee in pissing the player off? This is NOT good difficulty. It's cheesy bullshit. I really liked it for the first half, but now it's just stupid. Once you get to the third biome, it becomes an absolute chore to play and it seems to just get worse and worse. It ain't no "Dead Cells", that's for damn sure. It's a shame, because there is a really good game here, but it's hampered by some rather, quite frankly, stupid design choices that really kills any incentive to continue on with it. It just needles you constantly with it's bullshit, until you're just like "You know what? Fuck this.".

6/10
 
Downloading Crusader Kings 3 to play for the first time. No experience with this series. Anyone have tips to give?

I remember loading up CK2 one time, and it looked extremely overwhelming. But I've heard this series is amazing so I'm going to give it another shot.
 
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