9mo ago

What are you playing this weekend? 2024-06-07

After last weekly thread, I officially dropped Octopath Traveler. The game, which beautiful, isn't just for me.

I ended up starting couple of different games. Got The Last Campfire by Hello Games. It's a nice, little puzzle game, with really good production values. Puzzles aren't too difficult in general, but couple of them had me scratching my head for a while. Love the narrator and narration. Highly recommended for anyone who like puzzle games.

Also started Dragon Age: Inquisition on PS5. I have been holding out on it cause I wanted to play Dragon Age: 2 first, (already played Origins during PS3 days), but finally gave up on it since there is no way to play it on modern consoles, and wasn't in mood to go back to PS3. Loving the game. The combat is satisfying, you gaining influence and slowly gaining foothold in the world feels nice. Though I have just played it for a few hours yet.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is still going good. I think I am halfway through the main story. Have been doing most, but not all, of the side quests, mainly skipping out on the ones that require me to do any thieving or such.

What about all of you? What have you been playing?

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I just started with Deep Rock Galactic after sleeping on it for a while. I’m just a few hours in, but it’s safe to say that it’s probably going to be my new obsession.
- Deep Rock Galactic is a very loved game. Have fun!
  
  I dismissed it before because it’s a coop multiplayer game. I was concerned it wouldn’t be too much fun playing with strangers.
  To my pleasant surprise the game is incredibly well designed to ensure the entire team cooperates - even without the need of using chat. It far exceeded my expectations!

Persona 5 Royal on Switch and No Man's Sky. Looking forward to Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance and Darkstar One coming very soon! I finished vanilla SMT V some time ago, and my daughter has been playing it, so we're both excited to see what Vengeance has in store.
- Ah cool. I have heard SMT V is pretty tough. What do you think about that?
  I started P5 on PS5, but didn't play much. Plan to get P5R on Switch to play it completely. One question though, how many in-game days did it take you to finish the first dungeon?
  I somehow messed up something in P4G, and wasn't able to get true ending, from what I read, I had to go back at least a semester and play again to get that. So, when I started P5, I wanted to finish the dungeon in one in-game day, so that I don't miss any time and mess up it again, but that made me die multiple times and not enjoy it much. So, just left the game with plan to start Royale sometime later.
  
  SMT V's main story is pretty average difficulty, almost too easy if you know the combat system and do any real prep with fusions. The optional content can be very challenging, though.
  P5R does have similar requirements to get the true ending, but they're pretty easy to meet if you make any real effort with keeping Confidants leveled. There are three Confidant requirements you need to meet to have access to the true ending and Royal's extra content.

Finished 1000xRESIST!
This game was really good and one of my best surprises in recent years.
As I mentioned last week, this is a "walking simulator" taking place in a world where human race almost went extinct due to a plague and a new society was created from clones of the last survivor, a girl called Iris. The game has you play as "Watcher", one of the clone sisters who goes through Iris's memories and learns about the past and the history of this world.
The writing in this game is excellent, in particular for the main characters. The sci-fi backdrop works well, and I found the connections to the real-world very interesting - the developers describe themselves as a "group of majority Asian-Canadian diaspora creators", and without going into spoilers it's very clear they drew from their personal experiences when setting the tone and themes for this game.
Now, the bad parts: While the visual design is interesting, performance and resolution are underwhelming on the Switch, plus I got a couple crashes during gameplay. Also, navigating the main "hub" is horrible and you will get lost often (developers, please add a map or better waypoint system!), but despite those problems I still highly recommend this one to people who enjoy strong narratives.
Edit: The newest patch adds a map of the main hub. Definitely a good improvement.
Playing Senren * Banka!
First time playing a VN from Yuzusoft, a developer famous for lighthearted games leaning more on the slice-of-life/romance genre.
Still very early in the game (Chapter 1-3), but so far this has been quite fun. MC goes visit family who lives in a small montain village, and while there decides to try pulling a legendary sword stuck in a boulder.
Except when he tries it... the sword breaks in half. 😄 But that apparently still counts as becoming the "master" of the legendary blade, so he ends up tangled in a mess involving an arranged married, a priestess cursed with cat ears (?!), the spirit of the sword, ninjas, and even some creepy monsters. Quite curious to see where the story goes from here.
The production values and polish are great. Great art and voice work, clean interface including an excellent flowchart showing the choices you took and potential branches.
- They both sound great. Added 1000xRESIST to my wishlist. Will wait for you to finish Senren * Banka before adding it.

I grabbed Cursed to Golf on sale and I'm a little addicted. I'm not usually into golf games but I am into roguelikes. Took me three attempts to get my first win and now I'm going back for better scores.
Totally recommended, especially at the current price of like $6.
Still playing Balatro, though I'm feeling stuck on the 6th (purple) stakes. I like the variety that stems from the Erratic deck and that might be holding me back.
- I am not much into golf game or roguelikes, but the trailer for Cursed to Golf looked really nice, so have it on my wishlist. Good to see someone else enjoying it so much.

The new Picross Namco Edition. I’m addicted to those, I should get some help.
- I love Picross games, but they take me ages to finish. I am still on S4.
  Have you tried their Picross X one?
  
  I tried the Picross X demo but didn’t like it. IIRC it was too stressful because of the timer or something.
  I may try it again in the future though.

I had plans for what my next game on Switch was going to be, but I spontaneously decided to play Paper Mario instead. I didn't expect to finish both of my games at once, so I'd rather have one of the replacements be something I don't have to think about too much. I've beaten the original game half a dozen times, so this will be a rather chill playthrough. As chill as it can be without any HP upgrades, I guess. I want those badges, baby!
I had plans for what my next game on PC was going to be, but I spontaneously decided to play Yakuza Kiwami 2 instead. I wish I'd had the chance to get into the series earlier, I have so much catching up to do! I think there's 10 games by now? I have yet to find the Mahjong parlor, gotta get through more of this silly side story involving Yakuza to get to the real game!
I'll try not to make plans anymore.
- Yakuza games are awesome. And the side stories are really fun, I would highly recommend to not to skip them. I have played some 3-4 of the games, but that have been long time ago. Was planning to them all, starting from 0, but after playing Yakuza 0 recently, I have realised I'll never be able to catch up, so going to watch the recap of the games I have played previously and skip those. I think I need to play 4th or 5th one next.
  Spontaneously deciding FTW!
  
  I was just making a joke that the entire main story of a Yakuza game is a side dish to Mahjong. I just always spend way too much time in the parlor ever since Yakuza 0 taught me how to play.

I’m working my way through Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. I never played it back in the day even though we opened a GameCube. I’ve just completed the prologue and I’m wondering if it’ll live up to the hype.
- Good luck, would love to hear how you find the game when you have played it a little more?
  
  I'm in chapter 2 and I'm a bit mixed on the experience. The game definitely has some good humor, but I haven't really been blown away by anything. Maybe it's just where I'm at in life because I have a young kid and limited time to play anything. My main complaints so far are that:
  The game takes a bit too long to give the player freedom and let them explore, just like other games by Nintendo.
  Some battles are slow/tedious. Action commands have a nice payoff and are fun to accomplish, but I might've actually preferred a standard turn-based attack style.
  I miss quality of life features from later Paper Mario games like how lower level enemies in The Origami King automatically flee from you.
  I'm still gonna keep playing, but finishing up Paranormasight and Ace Attorney are more appealing at the moment.

Interesting that you dropped Octopath Traveler. Maybe it's the better choice.
I for myself have still been playing Super Mario 3D World. Got to the last world, finally. And yeah, the last level, Champion's Road, is indeed very hard. I've already heard of it multiple times and yep, a real challenge. Not sure if I even want to continue. I guess it would be a great achievement to have beaten that level, but it's not really that much fun to play a hard level over and over again. So maybe I'm just gonna stop here, with everything else at 100% exept that level.
--
I have also been playing Okami. The start wasn't really that great, but I feel like it's getting better the more I play. I'm still not really that far though, so I'll have to see what else that game has to offer. I do like the paintbrush mechanic, it's an interesting way to give the player more abilities the further you progress, and I'm looking forward to see what other ideas the devs have.
The artstyle is obviously pretty great, Okami's visuals have hold up very well. It literally looks like you're playing a painting.
Overall, I'm looking forward to playing it some more.
- Yeah, nothing wrong with dropping a game if you aren't enjoying. I did that recently. wink

Lies of P when alone, Disco Elysium with my SO when we have the time, and Wild Rift most of the times when we don't feel like playing DE :)
- Nice! Lies of P is high on my wishlist. But I still have quite a few other soulslike that I want to play before that.
  Disco Elysium has co-op? Or does just one of you play, but you sit together and decide what to do together?
  
  Lies of P surprised me quite a bit actually. I played the demo when it dropped and didn't vibe with the game at all, so I lost interest. Recently I got my buddy's PS4 which I jailbroke and installed a couple games on it among which was Lies of P. I'm enjoying the game quite a lot now and even though I haven't finished the game yet, it feels like a good Bloodborne sequel in spirit.
  Yea, exactly. We make the decisions together, discuss what to do next etc. I'm wondering, though, what co-op would look like if it existed

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