Discussion What are you currently playing? (Week 9 of 2025)

I've mostly been rotating between the gachas I play as far as gaming goes and spending more time on reading instead.
But! I've put a couple hours into Birth by Sleep and Judgment. I've somehow come around on BBS (put it on easy tho) and have been having fun. Judgment is neat too.
New Genshin update was good stuff and Zenless just doesn't stop having new stuff. I'm also having way too much fun doing the optional challenge fights with optional "don't get hit" flex rewards.


Working on it!
 
City of the Wolves beta.

Attempted KoFXIII GM, but the more I play it? The more trash I find out the port is. When I have to use a command line argument to lock it to 60 and there's no native steam deck support? Ya fucked up. Its reason for existing also sucks.

I might play pirate yakuza, but I'm not in the mood for an SP game.
 
Ikulinati: I finished the game but it seems it's telling me to replay the campaign to see new stuff. But I don't feel like it so I'm done with it.

Holocure: played a bit more since I had some time to kill.

The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles: Finished the 4th case of the second game, now on the finale. I feel that some investigation segments are too long and they could be trimmed a bit. Waiting to see how it ends before i have a full opinion but so far the fact that both games are a continuous story rather than disjointed cases

Fatal Fury: The City of Wolves: Tried the beta. But between the fact that I have nearly 0 experience with SNK fighters and there's no way to train to test some stuff I'm not sure if it's for me. That said at least the online felt nice.
 
Guardians of the Galaxy.
It's alright so far. I don't really love the combat that much but I guess it's passable.
Kind of surprising how much conversational dialogue they wrote for when you are roaming the areas. The downside is that they did a pretty poor job at how they are triggered and when, I've had multiple conversation get cut off because some other "priority" bark interrupted it and it doesn't seem like they have a system where a character would go like "anyway as I was saying" and then continue the interrupted conversation.
So now I just end up standing around a bit every now and then to wait and see if more conversations happen so that I get to hear it all. It's really poor for pacing let me tell you. :grinning-face:

Also the save system is kind of shit, you have 3 slots and whichever slot you last saved on becomes the next autosave slot as well.
So if you want to take a manual save that is separate from an autosave, you kind of have to make a manual save on slot 2 (which moves the autosave to slot 2 as well) and then take another manual save on slot 1 again to move the autosave back to it.
And if you then decide to load the manual save from slot 2, that also moves the autosave to slot 2 again. So after loading the slot 2 manual save, you probably want to save again on slot 1 right away so the autosave moves there again. Otherwise the slot 2 manual save gets overridden by an autosave and you can no longer go back to the manual save.

I guess they want people to stick their choices, but I kind of hate that I can very easily accidentally progress in a direction on a level and trigger a cutscene or something and miss some other thing over in another direction with no way to go back to a previous save.

It's kind of made me want to watch some MCU again. I guess it's not that surprising if you think about it, but it's kind of an interesting side effect I wasn't expecting.
 
Finished MGS.

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Think I'll play the Metal Gear games next (which I've never played) before I replay MGS2 and MGS3
 
Steam Next Fest, List of "Meh..."
I may not have given my full attention or due consideration to many of these :P
My list of demos I enjoyed most is in the other thread


Aethermancer - rogue-lite monster catcher with turn-based combat. Seems like it would be extremely repetitive. Seems like you'd just do your moves in the optimal order over and over again because of the mana system. Nice art though.

Ail
- stealth game as a boy with telekinetic powers. It was too frustrating because it plays like an early Alpha. Could be something in several years.

Axyz - a mind-bending platformer in the sense its awkward to navigate. Brain-straining 3D navigation is the name of the game. I was disappointed it was grid-based and not a free movement 3D marble game. But wait! There is jumping and gravity switching. It play more like a casual puzzle game. It's really not a platformer. Not what I expected or wanted. Fun for 15 minutes, then I ceased to care.

Bambas - very slow and boring. Manually "walk" as shoes about an enclosed garden with nothing obvious to do or see. I would rather eat a paper towel.

Claire a la Mode - cute arcade platformer with multiple characters. A bit dull, but it has potential. Undecided.

Coin Push RPG
- Seemed like a clicker with unsatisfying coin physics. They seem plastic, not metal. No idea what I was doing. Was I winning? Was this an infinite battle? Still not sure if it's a clicker or an actual game and didn't care to find out.

Descenders Next - I knew how to carve from the tutorial. But I didn't carve in the exact pixel precise way the tutorial demanded--at least not for every skiing gate in succession. It kept resetting me to the beginning. I alt-F4'd.

Desperate Place - it's a turret defense. Everything rebuilds between waves which makes it too easy I think. I have several amazing TDs, don't really need another standard one.

Dirtbag Mahjong - I partially learned how to play Mahjong. I swear multiple times I had a complete hand, but a button to declare Tsumo never revealed itself. So, I guess I did not learn Mahjong. The CPU players kept poisoning each other and "messing with" each others' decks. I could cast "Lightning Strikes" which reduced their health bars. None of this seemed to change a thing. I think I recommend checking this out if you want to learn Mahjong??

Fellowship - jeez, I could tell the dungeon group I had played MMOs. They behaved exactly as I remember people behaving when I last did 5-man dungeons in FFXIV. Being able to do 5-Mans without the monthly membership and grinding is tempting. But it's still less polished WoW. With abilities you've seen many times before. I remain unconvinced, but may keep an eye on this. I tanked on the not-WoW-Monk. It was fine. I enjoyed the 10 minutes I spent figuring out my rotation on a target dummy.

Gothic 1 Remake - I'm stupid and didn't know TSR meant Temporal Super Resolution. I thought the optimization was poor. But I uninstalled before I realized my mistake. Oh well.

Haste: Broken Worlds - a rogue-lite runner that may have too few mechanics for my taste. Also has items like "6% extra something on Wednesdays". Why have items then? The demo run was pretty brainless, I felt like I didn't need to pay attention nor perform to win. The demo completely dissuaded me, but its store page has given me hope. It has GIFs on it with levels packed densely with obstacles, so that gives me hope that the full version is more challenging.

Hypogea - kind of interesting platformer with a moveset based off utilizing a shepherd's crook looking walking cane you carry. Could be pretty good, but I'm wary that it's too barebones. I liked GearGrit's platforming a lot better.

Isopod - Rolly Polly bug takes down environmentally destructive corporation. Vaguely like 3D Sonic but with semi-open area adventure platforming. It was alright. I dunno.

Level Devil - wouldn't recognize my controller. Had to map the keyboard to my controller with Steam Input. The game kept crashing. Seems to be designed around being annoying with its hidden trap design. Meaning the obstacles are impossible to see coming. So, it's like watching a bad Looney Tunes cartoon, and then you play the level once you've memorized all of its BS. Not a fan.

Monaco 2 - Like the original, I played the demo and didn't care for it. I don't think Monaco is meant to be played solo. Sleep inducing.

Monster Train 2 - I love Monster Train, but this seems to be extremelely similar to the first game except it looks slightly different. I'll just play more of the original, thanks.

Reign Breaker - it's Hades but with stuttering performance issues. I'm waiting on Hades II. Don't want to burn out on it, so I won't play this game.

Scaravan 66 - The game's overlay says Pre-Alpha. It feels like it. It's gonna take some time to find the fun here. It's a vehicle combat rogue-lite. I couldn't tell why I took damage or if I was doing anything well or correctly at all. Cool aesthetic though.

Shadowveil: Legend of the Five Rings - An auto-battler rogue-lite. You assign abilities, equipment and starting positions, but everything else you simply watch play out. Progression is Slay the Spire multi-path node lattice style. It's cool, but the "difficulty" increased 10 fold only a few battles in. There's very few decisions to make, so I feel like I was missing something huge. Quit out after being decimated and seemingly having no counter actions to take.

Shield Strike - I forgot what this even is... Oh, okay. It's Towerfall, but not as good. Pass.

Streetdog BMX - This felt better than I expected it to. But it still feels a bit too indie. Tragically this genre needs a large budget, but it's no longer profitable enough for AAA devs to undertake :(

Tides of Tethys - I resent having to learn a strategy game I don't own. I put zero effort into playing this. You shouldn't have read these last few sentences.

Tom the Postgirl - The demo is simply too short to get an accurate read. Not a clue what the full game is going to be. It's wild. You'll enjoy it if you like things similar to the movie Poor Things etc.

Twilight Monk - not bad at all. But not nearly enough to grab my attention. The indie metroidvania genre is oversaturated. This game makes Nine Sols feel AAA. (Nine Sols is amazing, I'm just bringing it up for illustrative purposes)

Unyeilder - its high fidelity PS1 graphics are sick. Love that part. Ummm. I can't tell what's happening. There's so many particles. You can run out of ammo with no way to get more other than to melee counter an enemy. Some enemies are very easy to counter, you'll do it accidentally. Some have microscopic counter windows, which is why I ran out of ammo. That disparity is very frustrating. Was almost a fan of this, but that drastic difference in enemy design put me off it.