Discussion What are you currently playing? (Week 37 of 2024)

[Cacher]

New week, new thread! What are you playing?

I watched the ending of Little Town Hero today. I want to talk about the final boss. The fight spanned over 2 hours and had 4 phrase. It is the ultimate test in this already difficult game: the fight had all the mechanics appeared in previous boss fights, and staying calm (and blessing from RNG goddess) is absolutely needed to tackle them. Due to the nature of the battle mechanics, all resources and tactics on hand must be properly calculated, and reaching the final phrase does not mean shit if there was a messy phrase early into the fight. The saving grace is that there are chances to save after the first and second phrase. I originally thought there was only three phrases and literally said "fuck you" to the screen when the fourth phrase appeared (although the final phrase theme change was godlike). At the end I needed to restart from the second phrase because I did not plan it out.

All in all, it is a low budget game but full of heart. Some people may call it trash because of RNG, but at the same time I love the battle mechanics. Many often a properly calculated strategy can be pulled off even in unlucky times. Story is also surprisingly good with twists and turns. Overall I enjoyed the game a lot. Still need to replay the last two boss fights with a fixed deck for the remaining achievements, but I can take my time on those in the future.

Now that I am free again, I started Ace Attorney Investigations. Already finished three mainline AA games this year but it seems that I can play more lol. Please give us AA7 asap Capcom.

 

[Mivey]

Been playing Ys IX: Monstrum Nox for a while, and currently nearing the end of Chapter 5. I think I like this game a bit better than Ys VIII so far. The added verticality is really nice, the pacing of the game is pretty breezy, and it doesn't feel quite as annoying as Ys VIII did with its constant raids and tower defense mini games. That stuff is still here, and it's still pretty important, but it happens fairly rarely, like twice in a chapter, and each chapter is like 6 hours long. So where Ys 8 bombarded you with it, in Ys 9 it is more like a palette cleanser. The world building is neat, if on simple side. Falcom pulls pretty liberally from European history, with the Roman empire and then mixes in some medievial European history for good measure. Not sure how understandable this is to a Japanese audience that presumably never learns about any of this in school, though I suppose it might perhaps be easier to follow without actual historical knowledge since Falcom mixes things up in such weird fashion. The 100 year war between France and England is mentioned next to events that mimick ancient roman history. While the game mentions Norse mythological elements, it serves mostly as a name-drop, we don't get any details on their specific beliefs (yet), but I suppose this might just serve to set the stage or Ys X: Nordics, where the Norse stuff willl presumably be front and center.

I'm also looking forward to Space Marine 2. Will be nice to return to that franchise so long after the first one.

 

[bobnowhere]

Started Person 3 Reload on gamepass. Quite enjoying it. My JRPG experience is super limited, I've only even finished FF13 part 1, Like a Dragon and a Star Ocean on 360

Though Satisfactory 1.0 drops tuesday, that will be the rest of the week.

 

[curi0usBystander]

Bravely Default II: close to ending chapter 4 by the looks of it.

 

[PhaZZe]

monster hunter rise with my brother, in a good slow pace, im enjoying it, rank 3 i think.
i realy want to play more fallout 4 vr but i dont like to play vr at night

 

[Panda Pedinte]

I'm playing Lunacid and it's exactly what I was needing for this moment.

 

[Parsnip]

Partly a crosspost from the blitz thread, but anyways...

I finished the base game in Unheard - Voices of Crime. It's a pretty neat concept. If you played TACOMA, it's similar in some ways. You follow a timeline of events in a closed space and in order to catch every piece of information you need to rewind the timeline and follow the conversations of bunch of different people as they move around the space and figure out who is who and also some level specific stuff at the end. It's presented in a building blueprint style view and you can go anywhere in the space immediately and don't need keys or anything like that to access different areas (unlike TACOMA).
It's not super long and some of the English acting is a bit rough, but it's neat.

It has 3 DLCs too which I haven't done yet, but sadly only one of them is available in English. It's free DLC though, so I'll definitely do it.

I finished the Lethal Script DLC as well, it's the longest and the most complicated of the scenes, lot to keep track of. Very neat.

 

[Ascheroth]

I played a lot of Kingdom Hearts. Actually finished the first game already .
It held up pretty decently overall I'd say, though it's definitely a bit clunky, obtuse and also surprisingly challenging (the final boss section kicked my teeth in and I went leveling some more and doing some more side content before coming back ). The story is also really basic, but the draw a that point was still the disney vignettes with some Final Fantasy characters mixed in for good measure.
Not going to do all of the side stuff though, the game shows its age a bit too much for me to do that. Still, had a good time overall.

Moving on the Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories next

 

[Cacher]

100% Little Town Hero and got all achievements. The two re-fights against the last two bosses are bs and too RNG-heavy imo. Need to take a few tries to have the good cards for the beginning turns. Anyway, fun game!

 

[Nabs]

I think I've reached the final boss of Nine Sols. I'm a little worried about what's to come, but so far the game hasn't been as difficult as I was expecting. I'm going to try to clean up the map a bit before I give it a go.

 

[Parsnip]

I started and finished Escape From Mystwood Mansion.
It's a pretty neat escape room game. Not particularly difficult.

I've also been playing Doors: Paradox as my last blitz game. It's one of those puzzle box games like The Room series. Also not particularly difficult so far, though occasionally finding the right thing to poke in the environment to move the puzzle forward can take a little time, at least for me.