Videogames 2023 pt. II: Can We patreon This Man an Alienware Already?

[Rhom]

14 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Currently doing a replay of Star Wars: Jedi - Fallen Order, in anticipation of the sequel releasing in...eight days! 

It has some rough spots, some optimisation issues, and some odd design choices, but it's still a very strong, solid, single-player Star Wars game. 

I’m playing it for the first time… maybe it’s my 45 year old eyes, but the font in the database entries is impossible for me to read.

[A True Kaniggit]

On 4/20/2023 at 8:31 PM, RumHam said:

I saw Stellaris added cloaking, weird that it took them so long to think of that! So I started a new game. I really admire how it's kept evolving and is so different than when it launched.

I really lucked out with my spawn. I'm down in the bottom right corner with only like four hyperlanes in. Two are connected to my peacful friendly neighboor, and the others go to a mean fallen empire that I'm going to have to deal with before they awaken. But they should keep anyone else away for the early game. So basically I don't have to worry about defense or fleets for a while. 

Me as well. I just started a new one and I’m playing as Earth where we were invaded by an alien species but drove them off. (Payback start)

Just so happens there is a 12 size continental world one system away at spawn. (I never play with guaranteed habitable worlds). 

[A True Kaniggit]

Of course humanity in this scenario is highly militaristic and somewhat xenophobic. 

[mcbigski]

On 4/20/2023 at 7:37 AM, IlyaP said:

Currently doing a replay of Star Wars: Jedi - Fallen Order, in anticipation of the sequel releasing in...eight days! 

Thanks for the heads up.  Fallen Order was my covid lock down game.  Bought an Xbox one w that as the attached game.  Really enjoyed it.

Got back into Elden Ring recently.   Still haven't finished it.  Got Malenia down to about half health in her second phase but ended up starting a new game with a faith/strength build instead of sorcery. 

Using the golden halbard or whatever that first tree knight dude drops.  Finished all three dark souls but now I finally understand the jump and charge attacks.  More fun than moonviel imo.

 

[IlyaP]

On 4/21/2023 at 11:40 AM, Rhom said:

I’m playing it for the first time… maybe it’s my 45 year old eyes, but the font in the database entries is impossible for me to read.

Peculiar. The font size looks ok on my PC's monitor at 1920x1080...

[Rhom]

5 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Peculiar. The font size looks ok on my PC's monitor at 1920x1080...

It’s not all the font, it’s when you scan a new enemy.  The first couple of lines that talk combat are good.  Then there’s a different font for the paragraph that is general bio information for the entry where the font is different and harder for me to read.  

[Jace, Extat]

I liked the Fallen Order game, but Dark Sister was my favorite.   

Anyways, I'll be getting this new one. My first preorder since like Cyberpunk, which is taking me eons to grind through. Hits me in certain ways I find hard to express. 

Anyways. 

Trying to play CK2 now. Or maybe do a rerun of the Mass Effects. 

What's the word on that Tevinter game I've been waiting fifteen fucking years for? 

[RumHam]

17 hours ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Me as well. I just started a new one and I’m playing as Earth where we were invaded by an alien species but drove them off. (Payback start)

Just so happens there is a 12 size continental world one system away at spawn. (I never play with guaranteed habitable worlds). 

Don't sleep on building the detection arrays. I built my first one and found my empire was lousy with cloaked ships. None of them seem to be attacking, but I'm not nearly as secure as I thought I was.

[Ran]

Battle Brothers is on sale on Steam, and considering it. Anyone here play it? A search on the board showed @Corvinus85 got it on a previous sale -- what'd you think? The reviews and articles about it on Rock, Paper, Shotgun made it seem brutally difficult but very flavorful.

[Werthead]

I tried Gloomhaven but found it fiddly beyond belief. After failing to complete the first mission about five times, I bounced off it. Disappointing, and has left more even less enamoured to try out the board game now (fuck, maybe I need to sell that as well as Frosthaven).

I fired up Pathfinder: Kingmaker and must admit that it's very good. I'm a hardcore fan of Baldur's Gate and its sequel and the other Infinity Engine, but the mid-2010s revival of the genre was mostly a failure: Pillars of Eternity was meh, Torment: Tides of Numenera was boring and Divinity: Original Sini had fantastic gameplay and awful writing and plot (out of that revival, only really Tyranny was a great game). But this has landed a lot better and a lot closer to the actual BG style.

It's pretty good but I have consulted a few guides, as, to put it mildly, the PF1 ruleset has a shit-ton of broken builds and exploits, and the game's brutally unforgiving nature means you need to get a heads-up on what builds and classes to employ to get the best out of it.

1 hour ago, Ran said:

Battle Brothers is on sale on Steam, and considering it. Anyone here play it? A search on the board showed @Corvinus85 got it on a previous sale -- what'd you think? The reviews and articles about it on Rock, Paper, Shotgun made it seem brutally difficult but very flavorful.

I've looked at it for a while because I wanted a good follow-up to Myth and Myth II: Soulblighter, but I don't think this is quite it. It's a lot more low-fi in presentation and goes much more hardcore into unforgiving territory.

There was a very recent mercenary game which I think was more approachable and certainly looks a lot better, but less in-depth, Wartales. I am intrigued that neither, apparently, has a main storyline.

[Corvinus85]

3 hours ago, Ran said:

Battle Brothers is on sale on Steam, and considering it. Anyone here play it? A search on the board showed @Corvinus85 got it on a previous sale -- what'd you think? The reviews and articles about it on Rock, Paper, Shotgun made it seem brutally difficult but very flavorful.

 

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

I've looked at it for a while because I wanted a good follow-up to Myth and Myth II: Soulblighter, but I don't think this is quite it. It's a lot more low-fi in presentation and goes much more hardcore into unforgiving territory.

There was a very recent mercenary game which I think was more approachable and certainly looks a lot better, but less in-depth, Wartales. I am intrigued that neither, apparently, has a main storyline.

I returned Battle Brothers not long after trying it out. Like Wert said, it's pretty brutal and the presentation doesn't have a lot of pay off. I totally recommend Wartales, though, which is more forgiving as you're trying to learn the game and has better visuals. It's a low fantasy setting, no wizards and spells, just a few supernatural elements.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

@Ran, following up with something I asked last month, you mentioned there being a possible issue with the USB port. What if the wireless mouse/keyboard was the issue? Is that also plausible? Because the new comp also seems to be getting slowed by something while the old one is working fine, and the only thing I can thing of is the mouse because it dies randomly from time to time. The only other time I charge on my comp is my phone and that's never seemed to be an issue (also charge the pods, but same deal). 

Also, what's a good price point for a new wireless set up? I haven't had to buy one in ages. Since I bought a gaming laptop I might as well use it. 

[Fez]

5 hours ago, Ran said:

Battle Brothers is on sale on Steam, and considering it. Anyone here play it? A search on the board showed @Corvinus85 got it on a previous sale -- what'd you think? The reviews and articles about it on Rock, Paper, Shotgun made it seem brutally difficult but very flavorful.

I played it. It's not bad. The problem is the game snowballs hard, in either direction. If you survive the first 20-ish days without major injuries (which requires both a bit of luck and an understanding of the game systems) you become unstoppable pretty quickly. If you don't, it's a long, slow (or fast) spiral into failure. Also, the game doesn't really change over time; there's very few active abilities to learn so to me the combat got stale kinda quick. Also, while the world building is good, there's no plot, so that got old kinda quickly too. I had about 10 fun hours overall out of it and then was done. Some people swear by it though.

 

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

I tried Gloomhaven but found it fiddly beyond belief. After failing to complete the first mission about five times, I bounced off it. Disappointing, and has left more even less enamoured to try out the board game now (fuck, maybe I need to sell that as well as Frosthaven).

I fired up Pathfinder: Kingmaker and must admit that it's very good. I'm a hardcore fan of Baldur's Gate and its sequel and the other Infinity Engine, but the mid-2010s revival of the genre was mostly a failure: Pillars of Eternity was meh, Torment: Tides of Numenera was boring and Divinity: Original Sini had fantastic gameplay and awful writing and plot (out of that revival, only really Tyranny was a great game). But this has landed a lot better and a lot closer to the actual BG style.

I find Gloomhaven to be a game that you have to overanalyze every move. Because its extremely easy to fuck up everything. It's not hard exactly, it just requires paying attention to a lot of stuff. It's not my favorite of those legacy-style board games though, I find that the character progression isn't that satisfying.

But yeah, Owlcat's Pathfinder games are fantastic. They're extremely long though, even if you play real-time instead of turn-based. And they do have some real bullshit difficulty spikes that require simply restarting areas to apply the correct buffs in advance. Wrath of the Righteous has so many QoL improvements (and additional classes) over Kingmaker that it's very hard for me to go back though.

[RumHam]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

@Ran, following up with something I asked last month, you mentioned there being a possible issue with the USB port. What if the wireless mouse/keyboard was the issue? Is that also plausible? Because the new comp also seems to be getting slowed by something while the old one is working fine, and the only thing I can thing of is the mouse because it dies randomly from time to time. The only other time I charge on my comp is my phone and that's never seemed to be an issue (also charge the pods, but same deal). 

Also, what's a good price point for a new wireless set up? I haven't had to buy one in ages. Since I bought a gaming laptop I might as well use it. 

Is it a dongle mouse? If there's a short in the mouse's usb dongle then maaaybe that could explain it. 

I also wouldn't put it past some shady company to sell cheap mice and the dongle loads malware. I've never heard of that though. 

Do you suffer mouse issues? I think you'd notice mouse problems before general slowdown. 

[IlyaP]

32 minutes ago, Fez said:

Wrath of the Righteous has so many QoL improvements (and additional classes) over Kingmaker that it's very hard for me to go back though.

Including an inbuilt 360 camera like in NWN! I had to get a mod for that, because it annoyed me so much that I couldn't rotate the camera around! 

[IlyaP]

14 hours ago, Rhom said:

It’s not all the font, it’s when you scan a new enemy.  The first couple of lines that talk combat are good.  Then there’s a different font for the paragraph that is general bio information for the entry where the font is different and harder for me to read.  

You mean when you go into the screen that has, like, four or five rectangular blocks of text, that you can click through? 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, RumHam said:

Is it a dongle mouse? If there's a short in the mouse's usb dongle then maaaybe that could explain it. 

I also wouldn't put it past some shady company to sell cheap mice and the dongle loads malware. I've never heard of that though. 

Do you suffer mouse issues? I think you'd notice mouse problems before general slowdown. 

Had to look up what that was. Yeah, it's a logitech set and not a special one. The mouse would freeze every now and then, but would be fine a moment later.

ETA: I'd rule malware out. I've used this one for a while before any issues arose. 

Edited April 23, 2023 by Tywin et al.

[RumHam]

4 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Had to look up what that was.

The word "dongle?" I'd be curious to read it's definition.

Mine would be "functional USB gadet with a low profile and no other inputs" 

[Ran]

8 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

I totally recommend Wartales, though, which is more forgiving as you're trying to learn the game and has better visuals. It's a low fantasy setting, no wizards and spells, just a few supernatural elements.

Thanks for the suggestion, looked at some Youtube videos and that looks like it's more to my taste. 

6 hours ago, Fez said:

Also, while the world building is good, there's no plot, so that got old kinda quickly too. I had about 10 fun hours overall out of it and then was done. Some people swear by it though.

Yeah, over at RPS they had some people who were clearly quite in love with it, but I think what you and Corvinus say makes it seem like I wouldn't care for it.

Odd that these games are trying to create some sort of overarching plot line for you to follow. 

Wonder how moddable a game like Wartales is? Feels like it'd adapt really nicely to Abercombie's First Law setting...

[Werthead]

9 hours ago, Fez said:

But yeah, Owlcat's Pathfinder games are fantastic. They're extremely long though, even if you play real-time instead of turn-based. And they do have some real bullshit difficulty spikes that require simply restarting areas to apply the correct buffs in advance. Wrath of the Righteous has so many QoL improvements (and additional classes) over Kingmaker that it's very hard for me to go back though.

Yup, that's why I wanted to play Kingmaker first because I assumed the sequel would invalidate it. Also, Kingmaker is apparently half or less the length of the sequel, and I wanted something more containable first rather than the 100+ hour second game.