Discussion What are you currently playing? (Week 8 of 2023)

[Cacher]

New week, new thread! What are you playing?

I started Ar Tonelico 1. I knew nothing about the game other than the songs were sung in a fictional language. Very pleasantly surprised by the amount of world-building in the game. The developers put efforts into creating an interesting world and they obviously succeeded. Music is also top-notch with some great pieces. Gameplay-wise, I am still in early game (~6 hours) so I don't want to comment too much on this aspect. So far there are potentials with interesting combat mechanics in place: the main girls being the attackers through singing spells while the people on the front role are responsible for building up the damage as well as offering protection to the singer. Difficulty is pretty low so far but still enjoyable. I am liking this game so definitely continue playing.

Enjoy the opening theme:


Meanwhile, I am also continuing Breath of the Wild. Didn't have much to say. This masterpiece speaks for itself.

 

[Mivey]

Continuing to chip away at Chaos;Head Noah. Currently in Chapter 8 of the main path. The main path makes up for most of the writing, and I understand it only has 10 chapters, so nearing the end there. Of course, that only opens up the way to explore the "side branches" which then open up the way to the "true end", in typical VN fashion, though hopefully the game's skip features will allow to quickly get to the new bits.

Overall, I'd say this game is probably the weakest Science Adventure game I have played, though still very enjoyable once the pace picks up. It's telling it's the first game in this franchise, and kinda rough around the edges. Steins;Gate has much tighter writing, far less "fat", though to be fair, I haven't finished the game yet, so maybe too early to judge.

The CoZ patch is a must, though. The official release is literally broken and just full of bad ideas, like removing quotes when people are speaking.

 

[curi0usBystander]

Still going through FE Fates (revelation), I thought I'd be done this week. I'm tempted to lower the difficulty so I can finish it faster (I ended up doing the same with the other 2 paths).

 

[xinek]

Yakuza 3. I've been meaning to play through the entire Yakuza series, and playing it on the Deck has really helped it seem less intimidating. I'm on chapter 7 or so, and it's just ok. The charm of Kamurocho is still there, but I haven't run into any worthy sidequests yet. The combat is absolute trash. But it's fun to see familiar characters again. That's the best I can say so far.

Also playing Slay the Spire (double dip) and Brotato when I'm in the mood for something less involved. Thanks, Steam Deck!

 

[Panda Pedinte]

I'm currently playing Mass Effect 3 LE and I think I might finish it this week.

 

[Lashley]

Yakuza Ishin

 

[Ascheroth]

Ended up focusing mainly on Honkai Impact last week and I will continue this week.
Went through the Elysian Realm "side" chapters (good story, but a slog to go through since I guess it was supposed to drip feed over a longer time on the side while going through the earlier main story instead of doing it all at once on its own like I did). After that things went back to regular story progression and it got really good again. Finished the Elysian Realm arc (Chapters 29-31) and am currently in Chapter 33 of the next arc, which is currently at Chapter 34 so I'm almost caught up! I think Chapter 35 is going to be the end of (Part 1 of) the main story.

 

[Li Kao]

I should be done with Ys VIII soon. A miserable game, Falcom honestly lowered in my esteem. You need... 55 hours before it unfolds its plot.
The writing is abysmal. The cinematography is not any better. Most surprisingly of all, mob AI is shit, homing missile like, and there is little pleasure in combat (for an Ys, ffs).
Again, yeah, the last chapter is not absolutely horrible. You just need 55 hours to get to it.

Still playing P5R. Just a tad underwhelmed that a social issue I know all too well is very quickly handled with the subtlety of 'yeah, let's use our magical eraser to make the soul booboo leave'. I'm not expecting some major incredible life advice on that front, just maybe an uplifting story.
Not the end of the world. Game is still pretty incredible.

Started Fire Emblem Shadow of Valentia and it's pretty fire. The emulation upscale is glorious, I even prefer the game pixel with some light fx to the dumb HD2D from Square. It's more subtle, more elegant. Quality of life is good. Only downside is the line delivery, very flat.

 

[fearthedawn]

Returnal is quickly becoming one of my favorite games and i'm not even that fond of roguelite and bullet hell mechanics. I'll probably play that all week with a short break to play the Wo Long demo.

 

[Avern]

I was juggling 6 games last week, but I managed to beat 2 of them, so hopefully things will be a bit more reasonable now. The release schedule this year has been wild so far.

I just beat Pizza Tower. Game's amazing, but the postgame content mostly seems ridiculously hard (in difficulty, and on my hands), so I don't think I'll be doing too much more of it.

I also got a win in Alina of the Arena and will be shelving that. It's Slay the Spire meets Into the Breach, and while the enemies are all well-designed, its weapon system is a mess. You get pushed towards the most basic, boring weapons, because the more unique ones have ridiculously large drawbacks for how little benefit they give you.

I'm still making progress in Returnal. I just beat the third area's boss and I'm now completely unsure on exactly how much is left. Game's amazing.

I'm about halfway through Wanted: Dead and I'm having a blast with it despite how utterly trash it is.

Still going through Yggdra Union, which is getting ridiculously hard. I've had to redo the last 3 battles to avoid hemorrhaging tons of resources. It's fun, and incredibly tense when you wait out a close battle.

And the last game currently in my rotation is Labyrinth of Refrain. I think I've nearly gotten back to where I got the first time I played, so hopefully I can stick with it this time. So far combat isn't very compelling, but dungeon crawling and party configuration elements have been fairly enjoyable so far.

 

[Parsnip]

Chasm is my main game right now, playing it for the blitz.

Dreamland Solitaire: Dragon's Fury is my casual game.

Lately I've been thinking about playing Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword again for some reason. Maybe the new Zelda trailer made that happen.
But after I finish Chasm I'll probably continue with the blitz games, maybe .

 

[C-Dub]

Finished Dead Space last night. Going to do the Next Exit DLC for Highway Blossoms next and if I’ve finished that before Octopath Traveler II releases this week, I’ll play A Space for the Unbound.

 

[fantomena]

Focusing on playing a lot of stuff on Yuzu and Ryu that I've wanted to play on my Switch, but not feeling the price of them, even on sale, is worth it.

Actually, it shows the weakness of the Nintendo ecosystem. If it was more mature and feature-filled like the Steam ecosystem I wouldn't do this. Like I only go to the high seas on PC if it's Epic exclusive and if Im interested, but there's no demo (Wanted: Dead).

 

[tetel]

Steins;Gate has much tighter writing, far less "fat"

Does it really? My memory is what it is but I remember first ~10 hours of S;G being 80% nonsense and 20% actual plot. That aside, I agree with your take on C;H - finished common route yesterday.

Almost done with Lost Judgment - cleaning up remaining minigames (Paradise VR substory locks me out of Amon fight for now) and then I'll move to Kaito DLC. There's a lot of good stuff here (combat, plenty of side content) but also plenty of spots where it just drags - I really enjoyed the finale of School Stories but getting there was definitely not that fun as some clubs just go on and on, most notably boxing gym and bikers gang. Neither of them is interesting to play and quite sure they also happen to be the longest arcs here.

 

[Mivey]

Does it really? My memory is what it is but I remember first ~10 hours of S;G being 80% nonsense and 20% actual plot. That aside, I agree with your take on C;H - finished common route yesterday.

What I mean is that it draws you in a lot quicker. Pretty much with the first scene it introduces the idea of time travel (albeit as something a crazy person is talking about in a presentation) and then we get presented that gruesome murder scene, plus see that somehow no one remembers that previous scene except our hero.
Compare that with Chaos Head where it's not until Chapter 2 that we get to witness the first murder (maybe it was just before the end of Chapter 1, not sure). Either way, it takes a couple hours.

 

[MomoVideo]

Recently I started Horizon Forbidden West. First minutes - wow, the graphics are probably the best I've seen. I ran it at a balanced preset, which runs at 40 Hz. The game looks absolutely stunning, although I have to nitpick that despite having very detailed character models, the facial animations and overall character animations during conversations are very mediocre. Like, Aloy's body language often doesn't match what she is saying or what she feels. The game itself... ehh, I liked the first Horizon game, but I liked it in 2017. Forbidden West did not improve the gameplay like at all. Behind all those fancy graphics it was just a mid game, structurally stuck in the last decade. I did not finish it, I played it for about 15 hours and I realized that I loathed launching this game, and thats why I deleted it completely from my PS5 so I don't have to look at it again. I'm very disappointed that even the story could not keep me moving.

 

[Spamlynguist]

Still playing FF14 almost daily. Picked up Island Sanctuary again after abandoning it and just taking it slow. Levelling my Samurai and Ninja on the side as well.

I did also start Wild Arms today and finished Rudy's prologue.