Discussion What are you currently playing? (Week 14 of 2024)

[Cacher]

New week, new thread! What are you playing?

I finished my Ace Attorney 5 replay. Great character development, good pacing, and I really enjoyed the confession from Apollo and the final showdown against the main villain. Retrospectively, Athena's Mood Matrix mechanic in the court always sound ridiculous to me even in the world of Ace Attorney where body procession and channeling exists, but I really like how the developers implemented it in the final case where (huge spoiler) the phantom tried to hide their emotion by making the Matrix go complete haywire. That was a really cool and frightening moment.

Started replaying Ace Attorney 6 right away as I love the game. Already finished the first case and it was as good as I remember. Defending in Khura'in is basically Phoenix Wright entering legal isekai where everything is completely different from the rest of the world, and this premise is a great shakeup to the usual formula. I also love the mechanic Divination Séance. It is much more convincing due to the premise, and I remember the developers managed to pull off some really clever stuff in later chapters through it. Look forward to continuing the playthrough this week.

 

[Li Kao]

I'm near the end of Fantasy Tavern Sextet vol.2: Adventurer's Days. As the name implies, it's a (short) Isekai VN with porn. And it's... there. I couldn't recommend it, but on the other hand it's not horrible. The mood is gentle, the writing is super limited, the porn is rare and vanillla. You could make a case against the harem aspect and the protagonist being a chick magnet, but really, other than that, it's not bad (or particularly good).
The worst part is the editing, between typos and weird comma placement, the game desperately needed one more pass.

Still one episode to play.

 

[curi0usBystander]

Touhou: luna nights: finished the post game area and got an S rank in the boss rush. Neat game really.
Tekken 8: Been doing a bit more of online. The more I play the more I think I'm a 2D fighter kind of guy.

 

[Durante]

I'm still playing Dragon's Dogma 2 primarily. It has some warts, but it's in the rare category of open world games I really enjoy my time with.

One thing I love is the (unintentional) sass that is inherent to the pawn comments in some situations.
Earlier today I got hit in a really dumb way and seconds later a pawn said "This path to victory never would have occurred to me!". Gee thanks.

 

[Ascheroth]

Star Rail dropped a chunky new patch and I went through the main story already, and I really really liked it. Can't wait to see the continuation.
Sat down and finished the latest Genshin area from last update which I "saved" for later and it too was fantastic stuff.
Will probably do more Star Rail side and event stuff this week and possibly also start Cold Steel 4 properly.

 

[Panda Pedinte]

I resumed my Elden Ring run today and I'm currently at Giants' Mountaintop, there are some side content to do but I dont plan to rush it as there are quite some time until the DLC releases.

I also started a new save to experiment everything new in Stardew Valley 1.6, though I'm using some mods this time.

Lasly but not less important, I started Call of Duty (2003) and it still fun after all these yers. I'm right at the start of the British campaign but if I'm not mistaken the game isn't super long or anything.

 

[Li Kao]

Finished the EA of Wizordum and this was the blandest level design I saw in years. Incredibly boring. A rare case of ‘what are you smoking’ for the steam reviews.

Started Night Cascades, a yuri VN. Now, I like to be open minded about my grievances, so maybe there is some unconscious misogyny at play, but yeah, the protag is not really likable and her lover not that much better.
And for a game that plays over 5 days, the first one was a big nothing burger. No dubb either, and the prose is of dubious quality.
That being said, I don’t hate it, I will continue reading it, it’s just not doing anything special to me.

 

[Parsnip]

Vampyr.
It has some jank, but I'm digging it overall.

 

[LEANIJA]

Same as last week, mostly Horizon Forbidden West.

 

[Cacher]

Discovered a fan song dedicated to Athena. Great performance and the lyrics are so on point after completing the final case of Ace Attorney 5. Bravo.

 

[Stevey]

RA2: Yuri's Revenge and Samurai Warriors 5

 

[Li Kao]

Played through Episode 1 of Incision (early access boomer shooter) in one sitting of broadly 4 hours.
Aesthetic is good, game feels good to play, but… the dev didn’t implement a save system other than with each new level, and opted for a 1-up mechanic.
Wouldn’t be that bad if a major difficulty spike didn’t happen at the tail end of a 20+ minutes level.

And, while it’s not as problematic, it wouldn’t hurt if the dev could create a good boss to save his life. But to be honest, it's a common flaw in the genre. Even great games like Dust, Amud Evil or Cultic have pretty shit bosses.

Unfortunate. It’s solid, but I probably won’t come back for 1.0