Discussion What are you currently playing? (Week 11 of 2023)

[Cacher]

Spring sale week! Is your wallet ready? Have you been playing the games that you got during winter sale? Nope. What are you playing this week?

I am continuing Enkaku Sousa on the PSP. Started act 2 of the story. Looks like act 1 is the first half of the game where players are introduced to the characters and figure out the key trick behind the murder, while act 2 is the latter half where players understand the motivation behind the case and find out who is the real murderer. Gameplay loop is very addictive and characters are written nicely. It definitely has the quality of a first-party game developed by SCE Japan Studio, and the more I play, the more I am frustrated by the fact that Sony closed down the studio. Idiotic move.

 

[hersheyfan]

Bunch of clears this weekend: Saints Row 2022 (aggressively mediocre, sunk cost fallacy at work), The Gallery (FMV game, repetitive and full of pretentious artsy bullshit), and Crash Bandicoot 4 (made me unearth some long forgotten swear words, raised my blood pressure to unreasonably high levels). All those clears were on Series X.

Now I'm going to get to playing some actual better games (hopefully), this time on Steam - Paranormasight (extremely sharp writing thus far, very promising), Dead Cells CV, and the last few chapters of Yakuza Ishin.

All of that of course is just biding my time until this month's real main event - Resident Evil 4. Playing the recent (excellent) demo assuaged all the fears I had about Capcom's remake of Shinji Mikami's seminal magnum opus - this new thing is very much still RE4, with all the roundhouse kicks, German suplexes and atrocious one liners that entails. My body is ready!

 

[Alexandros]

I recently played and reviewed two very good games, Returnal and Octopath Traveler II. Highly recommended if you enjoy roguelites and jRPGs respectively.

 

[curi0usBystander]

Got a few more endings in Catherine.
Then I tried to in another playthrough to get gold ranks in hard mode, but some levels even with a guide were HARD. So i gave up and continue (I have a save before those levels, maybe I'll retry some other day since your results are shared between saves).
So today I'm gonna get the endings that I'm missing and be done with the game.

 

[Avern]

Cleared Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, which was underwhelming. It had too many RPG systems, and not enough enemy variety to get me to care about them.

I also restarted Bonfire Peaks. I burned out on it ~50 puzzles in last time I played, so I'm hoping to clear it this time.

Still going through Pizza Tower (P-ranks in first 3 floors and half of the 4th), Yggdra Union (close to finishing Chapter 4), and kind of stalling out on Labyrinth of Refrain.

 

[fantomena]

Im playing Returnal (Steam) and Prodeus (Steam). When those are done, it's time to play some classics like A Link to the Past, Eartbound, Super Metroid etc. as I just added them to Steam.

Yeah. never played most of the all-time classic GBA, SNES, NES etc. games. So it's time to do that.

 

[Ascheroth]

Finished up Digimon World: Next Order (loved it) and Eiyuuden Chronicles: Rising (had a good time).
I've just started up Praey for the Gods, which is quite janky but I'm also really digging it. I'll be playing that until I jump on Trails to Azure next week

 

[Arc]

I dropped Octopath Traveler 2 for the time being and picked up Metroid Prime Remastered. (Re)playing through it makes me wish for more focused games that are in the 10-20 hour range and aren't bloated with open worlds and/or RPG elements. It's probably the main reason I adored HiFi Rush so much.

 

[Parsnip]

Still washing the dogs over here. I'm at the beginning of act 4 out of 5 and I've done all the side stuff I'm gonna do so I'm pretty sure I don't have that much left with just mainlining the story.
Also solitaire.

Few weeks ago I was thinking about maybe playing Ryza next, but now I think I need to take a break from longer games for a bit, play something bite sized. Not entirely sure what that's going to be yet though.

 

[Li Kao]

Still washing the dogs over here. I'm at the beginning of act 4 out of 5 and I've done all the side stuff I'm gonna do so I'm pretty sure I don't have that much left with just mainlining the story.
Also solitaire.

Few weeks ago I was thinking about maybe playing Ryza next, but now I think I need to take a break from longer games for a bit, play something bite sized. Not entirely sure what that's going to be yet though.

Curious, as the game is old, did you get invaded by another player ?

 

[Mivey]

Making progress on Dead Space (2023), still haven't reached the point in the original where I quit, currently in Chapter 6. I like the addition of the side missions, really help flesh out the lore and the back story on the Ishimura.

Also started Trails of Cold Steel IV. Really liking it so far, it continues right where CS III left off.

 

[Parsnip]

Curious, as the game is old, did you get invaded by another player ?

I turned all the online stuff off before starting so I only got their tutorial bot invasion, but I doubt the real online is active these days.
Tbh with Ubisoft shutting down online stuff on bunch of their games recently, wouldn't surprise me if Watch_Dogs was on the chopping block soon too.

 

[bobnowhere]

 

[Joe Spangle]

I've been playing a lot of Kerbal Space Program recently. Modded it up and really enjoy the game.

I also fired up BloodBowl 2 the other day as I was back at my parents house clearing out my old cupboards from 30+ years ago (they are moving) and found Bloodbowl board game which im going to get my wife to play with me so i thought i would refresh my memory of how it plays.

 

[sk2k]

Hotel Renovator


It's a fun but flawed game. There are many bugs that need to be fixed.

 

[Kvik]

Trails of Azure NG+, of course! With Tokyo Necro in between .

Banger BGM btw.

 

[Li Kao]

Nothing set in stone anymore, everything is in flux. I can’t find the game that really stick and it weirdly also depress me.
The only one that is a keeper is P5R because it’s extremely good.

Dropped Blood Bowl 2 because the animations are a slog.
Dropped Darkest Dungeon because, why yes it’s hard, but above all there are ‘unfair’ difficulty spikes and, let’s face it, it’s a tad too repetitive.

Have to finish Ys 8, but it’s somehow the first Ys I nearly hate. Writing is horrendous, well dialogs to be precise.
I could and surely will continue Fire Emblem Valentia because as I said multiple time, it is fire. But while the ‘random’ encounters are cool to earn xp, or have the illusion you can (not a lot of enemies in them usually), they bog down the rhythm something fierce.

And yesterday I started a short pervy VN, Fantasy Tavern Sextet vol.1 and meh. While the cast grows on you, the translation is bad, typos abound, sex scenes are not that interesting (as expected) and the lack of plot makes continuing to play a big question mark.
Turns out it isn’t as fascinating as a big mystery VN, who would have thought, but the problem with those is that they are ungodly long.

NOTHING STICKS, I’M DEPRESSED

 

[Cacher]

Finished Enkaku Sousa after 20 hours. Restarted the game twice because I ran out of time during investigation. Managed to get the happy ending without a guide (and watched the best ending on youtube). Enjoyed the story and the characters a lot. They leave one unfinished business at the end for a possible sequel, but we all now know the sequel would never have been realized. Anyway, good detective game with a nice and emotional story. Love it.

 

[Cacher]

Started playing Jeanne d'Arc (PSP). It looks amazing for a PSP game. The graphics of Level 5's old games are probably some of the most beautiful games on their respective platform. Music is also very good.

And watch this Japanese trailer. Uploaded 16 years ago jesus christ

 

[Parsnip]

Started playing Jeanne d'Arc (PSP). It looks amazing for a PSP game. The graphics of Level 5's old games are probably some of the most beautiful games on there respective platform. Music is also very good.

And watch this Japanese trailer. Uploaded 16 years ago jesus christ

My brother played a bunch of that when we were living under the same roof and boy the Plains music is burned in my brain. I don't know how much it actually plays during the game, but it sure seemed like a lot.

 

[Paul]

Having finished Gotham Knights: Batgirl, I started another female protag-driven game, Syberia: World Before. I liked the screenshots and it is in the latest heroine humble bundle. I watched the recap and read synopses of the previous games on wiki, so hopefully it will be fine. The musical intro was gorgeous.

I would like to finish it before Resi 4 comes out in five days.

 

[Stevey]

Scorn and Dark Souls 3