What videogames have you been playing? version 1.22: What's with that plural?

[Farm Boy]

Only the Tzeench one looked cool. The Slaneesh, in particular, was way too underwhelming and ugly.

Slaneesh is fun to play, though(better like pink and purple. All the monogod factions are a bit monochromatic). Khorne is strong, but a bit single note. Nurgle is amusing and that's the important bit, but they suck. Tzeench is a putz. I don't have that latest DLC, gonna need to wait a year or two for them to bundle, probably. Will never get through all the playable legendary lord starts in my lifetime as it is. Major problem with Total Warhammer III is that the siege battles are a straight up downgrade from II, which sucks. They're a slog. Sort of have to roleplay them to make them fun, but it's not like that's a particular fault with a game! Either way, the fantasy universe is still more fun than the constant Grimderp of 40k. Talk about one note over and over and over.

Was thinking of Bird as I slowly grind through Elden Ring. Took a picture, and remembered Viva La Dirt League exists.

Spoiler watch your feet :

Spoiler too :

Spoiler true :

 

[Kyriakos]

Never easy to get access to a copy of the Necronomicon.
Anyway, a very good indie adaptation of Lovecraft's "Dreams in the Witch House".

 

[Akka]

Finally finished and completed Elden Ring.
No invocation of any sort (I really despises the whole system). I really was close to breaking on Malenia and Mogh, but I guess I'm stubborn enough when it comes to irrelevant things like video games

I stand by my criticism that boss design, especially toward the end, is really, really bad. Full of fake difficulty for the sake of difficulty, absurdly bloated damage and HP, and designed for tricking and frustrating the player (gawd those ubiquitous delays and the AoE spam...) rather than providing an organic challenge, they are a chore to be done with rather than the meat to be looking forward. The game has the potential to be the best Souls of the serie, but sadly the desire to constantly one-up previous entries has ended up making the serie a caricature of its former self.
For the first time, I'm not looking forward to the DLC. My curiosity will probably get the best of me, but my expectations are low.

 

[FredLC]

I can definitely relate to trophy hunting. I used to be big into it.

Eh; When the Mass Effect Legendary Edition came out, I gave myself the meta-challenge of 100% it in one playthrough; what was frustrated by a single trophy that demands maxing out one weapon - what can only be achieved in NG+, as there is a level cap in 50% in the first go.

I was kinda doing the same thing in Witcher 3 too, and all was going acording to plan, until I noticed, after finishing the main quest in max difficulty, that the "bombadier" trophy demands that you get 6 bomb recipes; and as I started a NG+, i got precisely none, because all were already i my inventory. Damn it! Didn't realize it because when you start the game it instantly awards you the "mutant" trophy, that is also about achieving new combat options.

Still running another meta challenge - getting legendary grandmaster of all witcher gear - that is going well. Let's see if I'll run into other hurdles...

Anyways, its gonna be a pain to run another pleythrough, even if for a few hours, just to do the busy work of hunting recipies...

Regards .

 

[Arakhor]

Eh; When the Mass Effect Legendary Edition came out, I gave myself the meta-challenge of 100% it in one playthrough; what was frustrated by a single trophy that demands maxing out one weapon - what can only be achieved in NG+, as there is a level cap in 50% in the first go.

That was the same in the original games, with an achievement for 60th-level, which was only possible on NG+.

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

Finally finished and completed Elden Ring.
No invocation of any sort (I really despises the whole system). I really was close to breaking on Malenia and Mogh, but I guess I'm stubborn enough when it comes to irrelevant things like video games

I stand by my criticism that boss design, especially toward the end, is really, really bad. Full of fake difficulty for the sake of difficulty, absurdly bloated damage and HP, and designed for tricking and frustrating the player (gawd those ubiquitous delays and the AoE spam...) rather than providing an organic challenge, they are a chore to be done with rather than the meat to be looking forward. The game has the potential to be the best Souls of the serie, but sadly the desire to constantly one-up previous entries has ended up making the serie a caricature of its former self.
For the first time, I'm not looking forward to the DLC. My curiosity will probably get the best of me, but my expectations are low.

Thank you for your summary of Elden Ring. I've been avoiding getting it, despite my being a great Souls fan since DS1. Now that you bring up those key concerns of mine wrt hard for the sake of being hard I choose not to get the game.

 

[Farm Boy]

It's less punishing/easier than DS1 from my experience thus far. I can't speak for 2 or 3. The multiplayer is better than 1, 2, or 3. It puts the uphill slog on the initiator, rather than the initiated, and there are multiple dueling avenues.

Edit: "Leveling up" seems to matter more. The stats seem to go higher. Like I'm already at what I think would have been well past diminishing returns in one stat in DS1, and it's still giving increasing returns where I'm at. I guess it sorta feels like there is a bonfire around every corner, and plenty of usable souls around to top your level off before entering a boss fight. Though, now that I thought about it and went back and compared the movesets on enemies, they are more varied and mean in ER. Less hit windows. I switch my gear a lot. Like a lot a lot, depending on what I'm fighting.

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

^Interesting. Sounds tempting.

 

[Akka]

Thank you for your summary of Elden Ring. I've been avoiding getting it, despite my being a great Souls fan since DS1. Now that you bring up those key concerns of mine wrt hard for the sake of being hard I choose not to get the game.

A significant point is that Elden Ring has been designed with summons in mind. If you aren't bothered by them, it can massively drops the difficulty, and I suspect that they are at the source of the inclusion of such amount of "fake difficulty". It's to the point that ER can be considered on the easier side of Souls-like if you play with them, and by a clear margin the hardest (save for Sekiro) without them.
I never used summon in my playthrough because I feel they just despoil the game (what's the point of hammering on a boss that is just turning his back on you ? You don't have to actually engage with it or deal with his moveset), but conversely if there isn't anything to busy their attention, it becomes apparent just how annoying their design is.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I've taken up my Total War: Three Kingdoms where I left off months back and its starting to get much harder. The game has asked me twice now if I want to increase the difficulty level (from normal), but I kep refusing because I find the game plenty challenging.

I will say that the game was refreshingly easy to pick up where I left off, about 70 turns in (I was actually forced to because an update invalidated all my earlier saves, so I can't use any scumsaves ). I'm playing as Lu Bu and my empire is large enough now, that I rarely get to even fight as Lu Bu anymore. This has forced me to actually start paying attention to the quality of my armies, unit balances/composition, tactics, strength/type of generals, ammo, etc... whereas before now, Lu Bu was a pretty insane, nearly invincible crutch that could almost singlehandedly win any battle.

I'm finding money/economy to be a huge obstacle in the game and i always seem to be tottering on the verge on bankruptcy, forced to keep warring in order to get the cash to keep my army paid. I never have any money left for infrastructure, city improvements or upgrading my troops.

I'm not sure which leader I will try next after Lu Bu though once I finfish this campaign... Lu Bu is so crazy OP in battle that I can't imagine surviving the game without him.

A strange bug that I seem to have encountered in the game, is that the AI attacked one of my "mountain pass" fortress/city locations with a huge force that outnumbered my defenders 3 to 1, and after the initial wave of attackers were defeated trying to scall the city walls and I mopped up the few who actually made it into the city, the rest of their army simply stood outside the walls, letting my towers pick them off one by one, until the battle timer just ran out. This was pretty strange and also frustrating, because the timer can only be fast forwarded to about 2x speed... so the 1 hour timer took a half hour of just sitting there to run out. I think in my next campaign I will lower the timer to 20 mins. Most battles are over within 5 to 10 mins anyway. In any case, I hope his bug was a one time anomaly, because it was pretty anticlimactic.

 

[Akka]

It's less punishing/easier than DS1 from my experience thus far. I can't speak for 2 or 3. The multiplayer is better than 1, 2, or 3. It puts the uphill slog on the initiator, rather than the initiated, and there are multiple dueling avenues.

There is no way that ER is less punishing/easier than DS1 in any shape or form. It's hugely faster, has comparatively bloated stat, is filled with tricks and traps and bait in the moveset of bosses and many mob, and has an agression going through the roof when DS1 allowed for a very purposeful and observation-based gameplay.
Can't speak for MP as I never ever play online.

Edit: "Leveling up" seems to matter more. The stats seem to go higher. Like I'm already at what I think would have been well past diminishing returns in one stat in DS1, and it's still giving increasing returns where I'm at. I guess it sorta feels like there is a bonfire around every corner, and plenty of usable souls around to top your level off before entering a boss fight. Though, now that I thought about it and went back and compared the movesets on enemies, they are more varied and mean in ER. Less hit windows. I switch my gear a lot. Like a lot a lot, depending on what I'm fighting.

That's just because ER is much longer than DS1 and stat go much higher (the softcaps simply tend to be at 40 and 60, rather than 20 and 40). You can find ER pretty manageable by overleveling, where as you say stat gives a lot of power for a long while. But as you go farther in the game, enemy power keep increasing and by the endgame it becomes hard to overlevel, as reaching the soft-cap simply means you get three or four-shot by the bosses rather than just being two or three-shot (and that's with regular hits, most bosses can still makes you go 100 to 0 with a single combo regardless of your health).

 

[Farm Boy]

True, but the game builds in dozens of little NPC buddies to use and farm and upgrade(that don't even open you up to pvp). I like the floaty spitty one that you get really early because it doesn't do much damage and Solaire the fight, but beating the game without them seems like a challenge mode. I didn't love the horse or jumping mechanics for a long time, but I've come to peace with it.

I think you're right, it's more mechanically difficult. Like the black knights in DS1 could simply be circle strafed to death, and they were a miniboss tier enemy. Basic wolves have harder move sets in ER.

I guess by punishing, I mean penalty for dying. If that gets significantly worse as it goes along, that's something, but I rarely feel like I'm pushing ahead lost in the wild with the fire miles away.

 

[Senethro]

Yeah, I don't see the need to play honourably on a Souls game first run. Plenty of time for a Covenant of Champions/Charmless/No Summons playthrough later.

 

[Kyriakos]

More from the Lovecraft game
There's even a printed translation of mine, of this very story.

 

[FredLC]

That was the same in the original games, with an achievement for 60th-level, which was only possible on NG+.

Humm. If memory servers, you could get to 60 in the first playthrough if you imported a save from ME2. Nevertheless, the weapon leveling issue was already there.

I hoped they would streamline everything. They did that for ME1 that in the OT took in the very minimal 3 playthroughs because you have 6 mates and you have to bring each to at least 75% of the quests!

Regards .

 

[Akka]

I guess by punishing, I mean penalty for dying. If that gets significantly worse as it goes along, that's something, but I rarely feel like I'm pushing ahead lost in the wild with the fire miles away.

This part doesn't change, there is nearly always a symbol of Marika or a site of Grace close by (the longest run is probably Placidusax, which is rather close to a regular DS1 death run).
But when I hear "punishing", I rather understand the amount of leeway we have to commit mistakes. And ER is exceptionnally strict when it comes to that. Without summon, you have pretty long fights (several minutes) where you have to chip health bit by bit (usually several dozens of strike) while not taking more than maybe two or three regular hit, and no full combo at all.

 

[Farm Boy]

Well, if the runs back are shorter, I need more deaths to make up for it!

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I just got up to five games with 100% achievements.Nice!

 

[Arakhor]

Well done! Of the thousand plus games I own, over twenty years of playing them, I think I only ever 100% achieved less than ten of them.

 

[PhroX]

I don't think I've ever 100%ed a game. Even the ones I have hundreds (or even thousands) of hours in - either getting some of the achievements involve playing in ways I don't enjoy, or I mod the games to hell and that turns off achievements....