Discussion What are you currently playing? (Week 52 of 2025)

Inazuma, Cast n chill, rogue trader, (redacted), (redacted), deep rock galactic survivor, and wrapping up kcd2 this week.

Dragon Quest II HD-2D: Finished the game, did the post game and got the True ending. Honestly I liked it.

After all these years I've finally started Kingdom Hearts III, finished the first world. So far I'm gonna say that the pacing of cutscenes has gotten worse.

Played through the new Star Rail story. Unfortunately wasn't the biggest fan of it.

Played more Another Crab's Treasure and while fun I also think I've kinda gotten my fill?
So I've been browsing through my library.
Booted up Steelrising again now that I have a new graphics card, unfortunately it still runs like ass while not looking particularly good. Dropped again.
Played a bit of Monster Hunter Stories again. Still really like it. Just super charming and fun. Definitely need to properly get back to it.
But Hi-Fi Rush jumped out at me and I think I wanna prioritize that.

Been playing Farthest Frontier and Blood: Refreshed Supply.

In the Final Chapter of Trails in the Sky 1st. Feels quite a bit longer than I recall from the original, You get a better sense for Grancel as a location, which ironically mostly just highlights how absolutely tiny it is. Of course Liberl is supposed to be a small country, but like, there are some villages in later games that aren't far off in terms of real estate to Grancel. The location is super beautiful, though.


Also nearing the end of Metroid Prime 2, which I'm playing to get caught up on the games in preparation for Beyond. MP2 is mostly a re-run of the first game, but still surprisingly fun despite that. A few bad boss fights aside (Spider Guardian), it's way more entertaining than it has a right to, given how much of a copy of the first game it often is.

I’ve been playing Banishers Ghosts of New Eden, and it’s one of the first times where I’m interested in a game’s dialogue.

DrShrapnel said:

I’ve been playing Banishers Ghosts of New Eden, and it’s one of the first times where I’m interested in a game’s dialogue.

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DONTNOD are pretty good with that, yes

I wanted to play some western ARPG over the holidays. Originally I was planning on Avowed, but since the update for that was delayed I decided on Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon.

I'm having a great time with it so far, honestly. Walk around, take everything not nailed down, cheese enemies far too high level for you with magic, perform silly side quests for silly characters, you know the drill.
Perhaps paradoxically, it feels good to be back to playing an action RPG that is not focused on providing the most balanced and visceral combat experience.

The beginning is super grimdark and I was afraid it would stay that way consistently, but once you get to the main game it gets more varied. Still trying really hard to be grim, but not overwhelmingly so IMHO.

Durante said:

I wanted to play some western ARPG over the holidays. Originally I was planning on Avowed, but since the update for that was delayed I decided on Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon.

I'm having a great time with it so far, honestly. Walk around, take everything not nailed down, cheese enemies far too high level for you with magic, perform silly side quests for silly characters, you know the drill.
Perhaps paradoxically, it feels good to be back to playing an action RPG that is not focused on providing the most balanced and visceral combat experience.

The beginning is super grimdark and I was afraid it would stay that way consistently, but once you get to the main game it gets more varied. Still trying really hard to be grim, but not overwhelmingly so IMHO.

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Did you run into many progression issues or other bugs? I heard the latest major update/DLC was a bit unstable so I've been holding off on playing. I got it a few months ago.

I finished Powerwash Simulator 2! Like its predecessor the sequel is a fun game that put me in some kind of zen state, it's perfect to play while listening to music or a podcast.

edin said:

Did you run into many progression issues or other bugs? I heard the latest major update/DLC was a bit unstable so I've been holding off on playing. I got it a few months ago.

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I didn't get the DLC yet, but in my 19 hours or so so far I thought it was remarkably stable for a Bethesdalike

I had one crash to desktop, one time my horse phased through the floor after dismounting (which was more hilarious than an issue), and 0 other bugs.

Durante said:

I didn't get the DLC yet, but in my 19 hours or so so far I thought it was remarkably stable for a Bethesdalike

I had one crash to desktop, one time my horse phased through the floor after dismounting (which was more hilarious than an issue), and 0 other bugs.

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Nice. Thanks. Downloading it now.

This week I started Final Fantasy I (Pixel Remaster). In some way or the other I already played most FF games so I never tried the Pixel Remasters so far, but I wanted something more relaxed during these holidays and that one felt perfect

I wanted to try Freedom Wars Remastered a bit feeling the hunting action itch but not wanting to play Wilds or go back to Sunbreak but it kept crashing after the name input. I had to switch to Japanese (not exactly how most info online said it should work either, it took some additional fiddling) to get past that and then revert back to English after getting past the intro bits (so no clue what the story said but oh well, it's a small bit) and then after getting in the game proper the controls are all fucked up. It's picking up my DS4 but Start is set on RT, confirm on Square, cancel on X etc., plus the camera instantly looks down with no inputs so it's unplayable. Probably picking up random input from my hotas or other connected controllers but I cba to unplug them from the PC just for this game (and it may not fix it either, I did try moving various axis on my hotas and it made no difference to the camera input). Steam input default/enable/disable made no difference. Kinda weird since most other semi recent Bamco stuff seem to get these basics right with no issues with any controller. Sucks.

Then I considered one of the Toukiden games but I doubt I'd like them any better than the last attempt (I think I finished Kiwami at least but didn't stick with 2 for long), same for God Eater stuff, so I just went back to Monster Hunter Freedom Unite on PPSSPP. Rad game even after all this time, the only really jarring thing is how you have to be 100% immobile to heal and it takes quite long, where in later games you can heal while running/riding/whatever, lol, bit of an extreme change there, could have made it more like Souls where you can move but not as crazy as in World onwards. Other than that it's great as ever, just put down some Giadromes, Velocidromes, Bulldromes and captured a Yian Kut-Ku with the starting gear and using the bow for the first time, it's quite fun. I like how simple and effective everything is (including the side stuff like the cooking and farm, useful without needing tons of investment/time). Items/crafting play a major role too since you don't get so much stuff handed to you as supply items etc. I'll probably have to switch to my usual greatsword or some other melee weapon once I reach the crab type bosses and piercing arrows do too little dps to make it through (I recall having trouble with sword and shield on them back in the day, getting time overs because I couldn't deal enough damage while progressing normally) but so far so good.

/rant

Also (re)started Monster Hunter Tri alongside Freedom Unite.

Just got Shakalaka, have only really beat the Great Jaggi, I think next is Royal Ludroth. Unlocked sandy plains and flooded forest. The game's nicer to play and progress, except the farm starts pitiful, in FU you get it more useful very early on with insects, shrooms, herbs, fishing, ore, everything farmed every day, here you start with one felyne worker and even using a dung for soil you get like one herb or shroom a day and maybe a worm or something, very lame.

But with the free hunt stuff in moga forest you can just spend a bit of time there and use it like a farm instead, lol, already got like 99 mega potions to not worry about crafting it between hunts by just maxing my inventory every time there, herbs + blue shrooms maxed then combined to pots, then combined with honey for mega pots, then maxed inventory again for honey, herbs, shrooms and pots so I guess that's (up to) 30 per run, it didn't take long.

Well, all of village low rank stuff shouldn't take too long to do, will see if I really feel like playing more and look into that mod that enables loc-lac city stuff again. Probably not gonna bother though and if I really need more hunting just keep playing Freedom Unite, however tough and slow it can be to progress in.

Anyway this game felt like true next gen Monster Hunter at the time even though it was on the lowly Wii after the PS2/PSP games. The improved playability, visual quality and addition of swimming (I hate folks made Capcom take it back rather than improve it, it was so good) were epic stuff alongside all new areas and monsters outside a couple of fan favorites (which to me excused the lower amount of content pre-expansion but with the negative response they instead made a half assed PSP 3rd game inbetween instead of give us the expansion in a timely fashion for which we had to wait for the 3DS.

It's so weird there's no more monster hunting clones, in the PSP/Vita era you got loads, God Eater, Soul Sacrifice, Final Fantasy Explorers, Freedom Wars, Phantasy Star Nova, Toukiden, Lord of Apocalypse, etc., now there's (almost, there was Wild Hearts I guess) nothing, not even indies, just Soulslikes.

Not that any got it right (though several were popular enough for sequels, I guess God Eater the most) but I'd think some indies at least would try to make some pre-World style hunting games, keeping the story as minimal so no production values needed there, and easier to stretch little content to lots of meaty gameplay with making it tough and keeping the LR/HR/G type reuse, certainly easier than making huge Soulslike worlds to keep progressing through rather than going back to technically the same areas and bosses over and over again.

I suppose the core gameplay's tough enough to get right. Though even some d-tier random Chinese rip off clone I tried aeons ago got the basics quite decently (and everything else so very very wrong so I wasn't about to play that for long, lol, it was still interesting to see the attempt though).

I'm playing Outer Worlds 2. I think it's the only series that I don't care about not being an asshole or choosing dumb dialogue options.

Banishers of New Eden: My main game, and it’s been quite good. Story and dialogue are the high points for me. Combat is serviceable, and the environments look great.

Trench Tales: So I picked this up last night and it’s just incredible that it’s being developed by one guy. Environmental detail is superb. It’s very much early access as I fell into the environment a few times (all rocky areas), aiming takes a little too long to focus your sights, and overall controls need tightening. I mean there’s a lot that needs to be done. But the game just starts you off in a trench and you make your way out to this wide open area, and you check your map and there’s two question marks set in the distance. As I make my way in their direction I’m constantly getting sidetracked by cool looking structures or run down encampments that I want to investigate. Gunplay needs work as well, but man this thing has great potential.

Streets of Rage 4: Playing this on Steamdeck and loving it.