What are you playing?

I'm saving it to play with my brother and best friend. Order pizza, play the game, probably watch the second movie because my brother is too young to care about the far superior first.

Looking forward to that evening,
 
Graveyard Keeper

Like Stardew Valley, but with a kind of dark humor horror twist. I've played it before, but I got into it again recently. And...played it a lot during a few depressive days, wasting the last of my vacation days doing nothing but playing it.

I've reached a point where I can start embalming bodies, which give you extra points to spruce up your graveyard if done right. The problem I'm finding with this game is so much of is fucking tedious. For one, the only place to see what ingredients you need to build things is at the station you build it at. Which is annoying when you need only needed ONE more plank of wood to build a thing and have to go all the way back to another station to make it or grab it from another chest.

Same goes for all the difference ingredients you need to make this mixture or this stuff to eventually make the embalming liquids. You need, say, three different ingredients, but to do so, you need to break this into a powder, this into another state, etc. Except the game doesn't give you any in-game guide to keep track of ALL of that. So I have keep checking the wiki on my phone for the recipes. Which is not only tedious, but also annoying because said wiki has endless popups for ads and shit so more than a third of the screen is filled up with ads.

And it's all just a great big recipe for tedium and frustration that I really don't know if I have the patience to bother with anymore.
 
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There are. I just looked into what mods are out there. There's none available I can see that would solve or alleviate this specific problem.
After some more digging, I found this. It's not a mod, but it's simple, visual flow charts. So I can download those to my phone and use them as reference.

It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing.
 
Graveyard Keeper

Like Stardew Valley, but with a kind of dark humor horror twist. I've played it before, but I got into it again recently. And...played it a lot during a few depressive days, wasting the last of my vacation days doing nothing but playing it.

I've reached a point where I can start embalming bodies, which give you extra points to spruce up your graveyard if done right. The problem I'm finding with this game is so much of is fucking tedious. For one, the only place to see what ingredients you need to build things is at the station you build it at. Which is annoying when you need only needed ONE more plank of wood to build a thing and have to go all the way back to another station to make it or grab it from another chest.

Same goes for all the difference ingredients you need to make this mixture or this stuff to eventually make the embalming liquids. You need, say, three different ingredients, but to do so, you need to break this into a powder, this into another state, etc. Except the game doesn't give you any in-game guide to keep track of ALL of that. So I have keep checking the wiki on my phone for the recipes. Which is not only tedious, but also annoying because said wiki has endless popups for ads and shit so more than a third of the screen is filled up with ads.

And it's all just a great big recipe for tedium and frustration that I really don't know if I have the patience to bother with anymore.
Depending on your phone and browser, ublock might work on it! It's not perfect but it has seriously cut down on the ads I get.
 
Graveyard Keeper

So I beat the main part of the game. And the ending included...two characters shilling the DLC.

Fuck. Off.

Uninstalling just for that shit.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Graveyard Keeper

So I beat the main part of the game. And the ending included...two characters shilling the DLC.

Fuck. Off.

Uninstalling just for that shit.
Hmm, thanks for saving me the time. I had started playing it a while back but fell out due to the same grind complaints you had... often considered going back. But not going to put up with it for a Ovaltine Decoder Ring ending.
 
Hmm, thanks for saving me the time. I had started playing it a while back but fell out due to the same grind complaints you had... often considered going back. But not going to put up with it for a Ovaltine Decoder Ring ending.
Here's the ending, in case you're interested. Spoilers for the characters that give you quests, mind you. You have to max out all their relationships to get the items you need to build the final contraption. The bullshit starts around the 2:35 mark.

 

GasBandit

Staff member
Here's the ending, in case you're interested. Spoilers for the characters that give you quests, mind you. You have to max out all their relationships to get the items you need to build the final contraption. The bullshit starts around the 2:35 mark.

Yeah, that's a pretty unsatisfying ending, even if it didn't have DLC teases in it.
 
I finished around 3 playthroughs of Dishonored 2, doing both high and low chaos, and playing as both Emily and Corvo. All in all, I like this game very much.

One thing I particularly liked about this game is how the New Game+ mode unabashedly allows you to become supremely overpowered. Every time you start an NG+, you get to keep the runes, bone charm traits, upgrades etc you picked up in the previous playthrough. You also get to pick up both Emily and Corvo's powers. Furthermore, you can chain NG+'s. This means that by my third playthrough I pretty much had enough runes to buy and fully upgrade all the power I ever wanted to use. This allows for some delightful combinations and creativity, such as using Emily's Domino power to link together three guards, and then using Corvo's Wind Blast power to send one of them off a cliff, and then watching as all three of them go tumbling together.
 
I've been poking at Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark from Prime this month and...it's actually pretty good? I'm a couple of hours in and more than anything it feels like a competent homage to Final Fantasy Tactics. It's not really breaking any new ground, but it has interesting takes on difficulty scaling (you get control of a pretty decent number of factors including number of enemies per map, enemy stat bonuses, negative effects for units dying, enemy item usage...), character and class growth (each character gets to equip skills from two classes, and mastering a class gives a permanent stat boost to the character giving a reason to stay in each class for a bit instead of dipping in for a targeted skill and moving on), and item usage (you get a set quantity of all items you've unlocked on a per-map basis, making it a matter of using the items you have effectively rather than hoarding and stockpiling for perfect moments).

If you like turn-based strat/RPGs, this one's worth checking out.
 
I finished around 3 playthroughs of Dishonored 2, doing both high and low chaos, and playing as both Emily and Corvo. All in all, I like this game very much.

One thing I particularly liked about this game is how the New Game+ mode unabashedly allows you to become supremely overpowered. Every time you start an NG+, you get to keep the runes, bone charm traits, upgrades etc you picked up in the previous playthrough. You also get to pick up both Emily and Corvo's powers. Furthermore, you can chain NG+'s. This means that by my third playthrough I pretty much had enough runes to buy and fully upgrade all the power I ever wanted to use. This allows for some delightful combinations and creativity, such as using Emily's Domino power to link together three guards, and then using Corvo's Wind Blast power to send one of them off a cliff, and then watching as all three of them go tumbling together.
I love when developers let people do this in games. Get as broken as possible, open up all possibilities, etc. The Dishonored games rule ass, so does Prey. I still need to get around to trying their newish game.
 
Finally bit the bullet and got a new pc - playing Stellaris right now. After creating multiple different empires finally started a game with all of them and have stuck to it (I really enjoy the early game...) past mid-game.
Latent Psionic talents started to develop in my main species population and migration treaties have added other species to the empire as I expanded out and settled probably 1/4 of the small galaxy.
A few early negative encounters with a mega-corporation empire has led to an ongoing cold war scenario, no real hostilities but building up defences along connecting hyper lanes and keeping my eyes on their fleets.
Quick mini-war with a belligerent hivemind plantoid species that I had trapped in a small cluster of stars earlier in the game (due to me claiming a system that was their only hyperlane connection point out of their star cluster). Subjugated and vassalized them quickly as they couldn't counter the speed and first strike range of my Missile-Boat Corvettes.
Another empire empire pledged fealty to me as well, which was surprising as they had quite a bit of territory - but later made more sense when I saw they had two very aggressive empires on their boarders as well. Migration treaties with them allowed me to colonize ocean worlds which their species thrive on and get massive bonuses for food and energy production as well as trade. My economy was happy. They recently had a faction split off and declare war, so I've been pulled into the conflict.
Almost done backfilling/claiming territory behind my lines - one thing I don't enjoy is waiting to gain enough influence to construct a star base... even with bonuses I need about 45 influence to claim - and only gain about 3/month. There are some nice planets awaiting colonization, just doing the waiting game.
Routinely been up to 2 am playing lately... thank goodness I'm on summer break!
 
Finally bit the bullet and got a new pc - playing Stellaris right now. After creating multiple different empires finally started a game with all of them and have stuck to it (I really enjoy the early game...) past mid-game.
Latent Psionic talents started to develop in my main species population and migration treaties have added other species to the empire as I expanded out and settled probably 1/4 of the small galaxy.
A few early negative encounters with a mega-corporation empire has led to an ongoing cold war scenario, no real hostilities but building up defences along connecting hyper lanes and keeping my eyes on their fleets.
Quick mini-war with a belligerent hivemind plantoid species that I had trapped in a small cluster of stars earlier in the game (due to me claiming a system that was their only hyperlane connection point out of their star cluster). Subjugated and vassalized them quickly as they couldn't counter the speed and first strike range of my Missile-Boat Corvettes.
Another empire empire pledged fealty to me as well, which was surprising as they had quite a bit of territory - but later made more sense when I saw they had two very aggressive empires on their boarders as well. Migration treaties with them allowed me to colonize ocean worlds which their species thrive on and get massive bonuses for food and energy production as well as trade. My economy was happy. They recently had a faction split off and declare war, so I've been pulled into the conflict.
Almost done backfilling/claiming territory behind my lines - one thing I don't enjoy is waiting to gain enough influence to construct a star base... even with bonuses I need about 45 influence to claim - and only gain about 3/month. There are some nice planets awaiting colonization, just doing the waiting game.
Routinely been up to 2 am playing lately... thank goodness I'm on summer break!
One of these days I'm gonna learn how to play Stellaris. I have it installed but I've never gotten past the startup screen. It's always been like, "I'll come back when I have the time to learn how this game works" and then it just never happened.
 
I played quite a bit at release and enjoyed it. I came back to it when they changed the entire interface around how you interact with planets.. and that that threw me, could not figure it out. I hadn't been back to the game since then as I just didn't have the drive to learn how it all worked. Still learning for the most part though - I figure it's all training to someday learn how to play Aurora4x (since we're talking about games that hurt brains).
 
You can have some pretty insane runs with the new secret character in Vampire Survivors.
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And with that I've unlocked literally everything you can currently unlock, including all the super duper secret characters there's no mention of in any of the ingame lists or achievements.
 
One of these days I'm gonna learn how to play Stellaris. I have it installed but I've never gotten past the startup screen. It's always been like, "I'll come back when I have the time to learn how this game works" and then it just never happened.
Same! My cousin loves this game and I have tried it and clearly seem to be missing something.
 
Well, I've decided that I think that one Yakuza game is enough for me probably forever. I'm going to replay Souls games! It's been so long for most of these that I'm actually getting lost in the original Dark Souls (I'd start with Demon's Souls, but go fuck yourself PS5 exclusivity). What a good game.

I'd forgotten how slow the original game was compared to Bloodborne and beyond. Which is good, because my reflexes aren't getting younger. Still got a good parry game.
 
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Well, I've decided that I think that one Yakuza game is enough for me probably forever. I'm going to replay Souls games! It's been so long for most of these that I'm actually getting lost in the original Dark Souls (I'd start with Demon's Souls, but go fuck yourself PS5 exclusivity). What a good game.

I'd forgotten how slow the original game was compared to Bloodborne and beyond. Which is good, because my reflexes aren't getting younger. Still got a good parry game.
If you ever wanna give them another shot, Yakuza 7 (Like a Dragon) is a completely different genre (turn-based RPG) and is a beginner friendly entry into the series. It's actually probably my favorite of the bunch.
 
After absolutely destroying Dark Souls 1 and a new game + victory lap, it's amazing how much trouble I'm having adapting to Dark Souls 2's weird mechanical clunkiness. The whole game feels like I'm walking through mud and the adaptability stat is the dumbest shit ever and I'm glad they did away with that nonsense. Dodge roll usability being tied to a stat really messes with everything.

It still sucks ass not having multiplayer in any of these games. I wish they would fucking fix it already.

Also, I can't believe how easy (once you get used to it) Dark Souls 1 is in comparison to later games. I one shotted Manus without much issue and only took two tries on the dragon (to get his tail of course) and I'm old and slow.
 
Dark Souls 2 is exhausting, it's all sprints through hordes of hyper aggressive enemies. The most annoying bosses all have annoying boss runs through 20+ enemies that will chase you eternally. No wonder they put in the 10 kill limit on this shit, boss runs get to the point where instead of carrying on I just get tired of dealing with the area between bonfires and bosses. The best part is you're not immune from damage during fog wall transitions so you HAVE to kill the shit between the boss and the bonfire often.

The consensus might have been on to something Dark Souls 2 defenders, it's not a great game.
 
I honestly enjoy DS2: Scholar of the First Sin more than DS3, but I say that while admitting that it's just plain harder than DS1 and DS3 because of the Adaptability stat and their mistake in not accounting for it in the "math" they use to calculate how many souls it takes to level. Yes, you read that right: they forgot to account for the new stat entirely, which is why it ether feels like your character isn't doing what it should (because you're not taking Adaptability) or your character is weaker than it should be (because you HAVE been taking adaptability, so your other stats are lower).

That said, if you're going to play around with magic at all? Attunement gives adaptability and fixes most of these problems.
 
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