Discussion What are you currently playing? (Week 52 of 2024)

[Cacher]

Final week! What are you playing / planning to play during the lovely Christmas?

Girls' Frontline 2: Just reached Lv.40. Going to finish chapter 6 of the main story before the big update on Dec 26th. Very excited.

The Witness: This game is really good but it is breaking my brain. Stuck at the last puzzle at the fort for hours and decided to give up on it for now.

Progressing Ar Tonelico on the side. I also sometimes pick up the steam deck and play a round of Grindstone.

 

[Li Kao]

Finishing the last few areas of POE2 normal, then if the urge keeps working me it will be Hitman 2.

edit
Short term but not now, I have Yakuza Kiwami and AC Oddyssey that scream my name.

 

[curi0usBystander]

Finished The post game on DQ3, I'm a bit conflicted, I ended up having to lower the difficulty to complete certain sections of it it felt like it was balanced in a total different way as the main story.

 

[edin]

Mostly trying to enjoy the break so not gonna play as much as I normally do (lol). I am on Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana for review + 3 other games I can't talk about yet. Beyond that, still playing Nine Sols, Space Marine 2, LOK Digital, and some Warcraft. I put Indiana Jones on hold until it gets patches. Quite buggy in cut-scenes and some AI stuff with checkpoints. Unrelated to games, I found a new coffee place with good medium roast beans. Mega time.

 

[Stevey]

Ive been playing Aliens Dark Descent, which is great, even if it is pretty tough.

Also, Lords Of The Fallen which is also great.

 

[Acidote]

Overwatch as usual

Slowly progressing through Dragon Quest XI S

 

[Ascheroth]

Mostly Zenless Zone Zero and Infinity Nikki, dropped Girls Frontline 2.
Zenless had it's big 1.4 update which is the "season 1" story finale and basically a soft-relaunch with lots of new stuff and reworks, and... it really delivered. Very happy with the current state of the game and the future is promising.
Infinity Nikki was a bit annoying to have to defeat all the Sovereigns to craft the Miracle Outfit to see the end of the story, but I finally did it so it's back to casually exploring, questing, crafting and such. And I have a loooooot left, game's huge. And its super relaxing.

 

[Li Kao]

That’s POE2 done in normal. Now to decide if I really want to replay it in Cruel to unlock the seemingly crazy difficult Endgame.
Anddd, my answer is surprisingly, maybe ? I really liked the game overall. It has its issues, chiefly bad loot, and a couple of bosses in Act III that are absolutely not designed for melee.
But yeah, smoke time, Thanks for the sex, GGG.

Or maybe it’s a shit game, because it was so good it is tempting me to buy the Diablo IV xpac and be bored out of my mind within minutes.

 

[Mivey]

Finishing of Dragon Age Veilguard. Currently having the funniest bug: when you finish a characters quests, they get the status of "hero of the veilguard" (whatever that means, exactly). Problem is, for some reason, the game is triggering the wrong characters pop-up. So I finished Bellara's quests, and the game shows Davrin's name. Then it gets stuck, I need to restart, and then it goes away. Nothing too annoying since the game auto-saves everything, but just goes to show how easily games can break. Veilguard is otherwise pretty stable for a big RPG, though.


Also making my way through an odd one: the 2013 PC version of Star Trek: this one: Steam Community :: Star Trek. Couldn't buy it anymore, so got it by sailing the seven seas of the internet. Game itself is pretty basic, linear third person shooter, with the trappings of the JJ Abrams-verse Star Trek universe,

Been strangely fun to play this off and on, I guess because games like this don't get made anymore.

 

[Parsnip]

I just finished Ghost Song.
It's fine. I dig the lonely vibes of it in general, but it's definitely not in the upper echelon of metroidvanias overall. Map kind of sucks. What little music there is alright. Story is whatever, I get that writing a compelling story and characters is tough, but I actually think that sometimes simpler is better. Trying to shoot for the moon with weird metaphysical shit is just going to make it all the more difficult to make it good.

I think I'll start Spirit of the North next.

 

[Parsnip]

Started and finished Spirit of the North. It's a walking simulator, basically, but you are fox. Foxing simulator, with some extremely light environmental puzzles. Perfectly cromulent.

 

[spiel]

The world is full of surprise all the time~
Make a wish and your dream will come to life~
Soaring high~

My life is Infinity Nikki now. The last quest is a grind, but I'm getting there. The pacing got messed up after rushing the main story quests. Gacha part feels like a horrible trap, I'm really not fond of this sort of monetization and will avoid other gacha games in the future. Momo for #1 mascot character of the year!

 

[Durante]

I completed Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade INTERmission (and will not miss this final opportunity to write out it's stupid name). That was actually quite good. Focused, with a much refined and more interesting spin on the FF7R combat mechanics. Not overstaying it's welcome - it's actually the only game in recent memory where I finished it and thought it could be a bit longer.
I fear that a lot of what I found good about it are things that only happened due to its status as a focused side chapter, and that SE will throw all that out the window with Rebirth. But I am curious. Oh, and the PC port is still extremely barebones.

I then finally found Octopath Traveller at a price I was willing to pay. 12 hours in:

The good

• The individual stories are mostly pretty decent.
• Interesting out-of-combat skill use mechanics (especially for a JRPG), which also tie into some side quests.
• Pacing is to my liking so far - the relative time spent exploring, on story, on combat and on other stuff is quite balanced.
• Great music.

The Meh

• I know some people find value in it, but random combat just isn't for me any more. If I hadn't (by luck) chosen the protagonist who very early on gets a passive skill to greatly reduce encounter frequency I might've dropped the game already.
• Some of the randomness-based skills really encourage degenerate gameplay / save scumming. When you introduce something like that with clear inspiration from CRPGs, then maybe also look at the decades of design development to deal with that.

The Ugly

• There is absolutely zero reason for the party mechanics being what they are. I can almost always freely switch party members, and making me go through a drawn out process to do this whenever I need a specific skill is not gameplay. It's just meaningless make-work with no player agency or value.
• The fact that the characters don't interact on a story level at all is a massive detriment to the game, and completely prevents it from reaching it's full potential. Sure, it would need a bit more writing that not everyone might see, but the payoff would be more than worth it.

 

[QFNS]

I completed Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade INTERmission (and will not miss this final opportunity to write out it's stupid name). That was actually quite good. Focused, with a much refined and more interesting spin on the FF7R combat mechanics. Not overstaying it's welcome - it's actually the only game in recent memory where I finished it and thought it could be a bit longer.
I fear that a lot of what I found good about it are things that only happened due to its status as a focused side chapter, and that SE will throw all that out the window with Rebirth. But I am curious. Oh, and the PC port is still extremely barebones.

I then finally found Octopath Traveller at a price I was willing to pay. 12 hours in:

The good

• The individual stories are mostly pretty decent.
• Interesting out-of-combat skill use mechanics (especially for a JRPG), which also tie into some side quests.
• Pacing is to my liking so far - the relative time spent exploring, on story, on combat and on other stuff is quite balanced.
• Great music.

The Meh

• I know some people find value in it, but random combat just isn't for me any more. If I hadn't (by luck) chosen the protagonist who very early on gets a passive skill to greatly reduce encounter frequency I might've dropped the game already.
• Some of the randomness-based skills really encourage degenerate gameplay / save scumming. When you introduce something like that with clear inspiration from CRPGs, then maybe also look at the decades of design development to deal with that.

The Ugly

• There is absolutely zero reason for the party mechanics being what they are. I can almost always freely switch party members, and making me go through a drawn out process to do this whenever I need a specific skill is not gameplay. It's just meaningless make-work with no player agency or value.
• The fact that the characters don't interact on a story level at all is a massive detriment to the game, and completely prevents it from reaching it's full potential. Sure, it would need a bit more writing that not everyone might see, but the payoff would be more than worth it.

From what I understand, Octopath 2 improves in some of these areas. Definitely worth looking for if you can find it for a good price.