whatchu playing now

there are at least 30 to 50 different subsystems within monster hunter

I also got rise and am suuuuper overwhelmed. Supposed to play w some friends soon who will hopefully help me understand wtf I'm doing

about 12 hours in now, and i think i generally get most of it. it helped to read a couple guides for noobs, too. i still need to try out about 2/3 of the weapons

I have only tried 2 weapons. I am favoring the dual swords bc the game plan is easy to understand. (Hit monster with swords)

I am planning on finishing the single player part first before tackling multiplayer, but it would be fun to monster hunt with you all sometime

Yeah let’s hun some mons

I love when two giant monsters start to tango and it’s possible to ride them both

what monkey playing now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsCul1sp4hQ

I don't think it's the answer I'd give if asked, but given the number of times I've cycled back around to it and the obscene number of hours I've poured into it, it's possible that Disgaea is my favorite game. I could play ten quick rounds leveling up a weapon in the Item World literally anytime, apparently without ever getting sick of it. It's like this platonic ideal hybrid of a SRPG and a procedurally-generated board game that I never knew that I wanted.

flonne has maybe the worst voice acting of any character in any video game. the plot and story stuff was bad and the character design made me want to bleach my eyes and put nails through my ps4 memory card.

i put 100+ hours into disgaea on the ps2 and never played any of the sequels. the strategy guide published by double jump books was also marvelous.

I've been thinking about trying Disgaea, are they all pretty much good or is one of them worth starting with?

have heard positive things about 5 if you want one on current platforms. i see it on sale fairly often

It's 2021 and I'm playing Dark Souls 3

that's nothing, it's 2021 and I've been playing Magic The Gathering Arena!
it's always been there in the background as a "nerd thing" that I knew nothing about, so I played through the free tutorial stuff to see how it works
can see why people get obsessed with it, it's not really for me though

(still getting better! Although I've also developed a lot of bad habits by playing at lower levels and getting used to people reacting the way newer players react, and so I'm less prepared when I run into an actually good player)

(also a la Fezzik, I'm so used to fighting groups that I'm also worse at fighting just one person)

xp

Ooh I've been meaning to finally try MTG Arena. My partner & I still play with cards, I miss the deck-building aspect though.

i've been playing mtg arena a lot too rather than making progress on my rpg backlog. though i'm a veteran mtg player i guess

ciderpress you need to make progress on the rpg backlog so that you can work on your comprehensive monograph about JRPGs

if i can count monster hunter as a jrpg then we're good

What DO you classify a monster hunter game as? What is the Pokémon/horizon/monster hunter genre?

those are 3 different types of game imo

they're all Zeldas

well no actually

Monster Hunter is a Mario

monster hunter is simply an action rpg. i haven't seen an acceptable more specific term for it and stuff like it

it's a roguelike

it's a boss rush in slow motion

Oh right, MTG Arena crashes when I try to install it on my ancient PC, is blocked on my work computer, and all tablets in the house are too old to be supported. :(

it's a roguelike

permadeath monster hunter would be excruciatingly intense

now that's what the doctor ordered

i think it would cause irl suicides

havent really been gaming of late except for hearthstone and mtg: arena on my phone.

my friend gave me a loan of his stadia controller and chromecast. started playing PUBG. i am fucking terrible, hoping it's just a steep learning curve.

I finally got around to Space Channel 5: Part 2 and it is INCREDIBLE except that the lag is so bad that it makes the game unnecessarily difficult to play, prob a combination of LCD TV + Bluetooth controller, but sheesh

i remember the lag being pretty terrible even on the original Dreamcast. you're playing the PC port i assume?

i fuckin love space channel 5, dunno if i ever played the sequel

playing majora's mask 3ds. i'm about as far as i've ever gotten in MM -- just past the opening section.

... maybe MTG Arena is for me after all lol

Cloudpunk DLC was released this week, even tho I know these are only short and not really substance heavy I really enjoyed the base game so I'm looking forward to starting it this weekend.

Then the devs drop this on us
Nivalis!

guilty gear strive seems good, the ways in which they've simplified the series's mechanics are really smart. just gotta hope they fix the broken-ass lobby system

Just got hold of Legend Bowl, I hear good things and it looks really nice, trying tonight.

I bought La-Mulana 2 on sale and decided to go back and finish the first game -- I had gotten to the midgame before, then quit after looking up the solution to the 'birth' puzzle. I'll be using hints even more liberally this time.

Downloaded Chivalry 2 last night and it is FUN.

Picked up River City Girls a few weeks ago for some dumb beat 'em up fun, and it is exactly as advertised, with the added bonus of genuinely funny dialogue. The main theme song is awesome, too.

Case in point:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2vCuLGJtEc

Played Frostpunk last night -- of ever you wanted to play a Civ-like but with more environmental catastrophe, it's very good!

60 hours into La-Mulana 2, the 2018 sequel to the 2005 game (and its improved 2012 remake). I love the brutally hard puzzles, but I don't like the brutally hard late-game enemies and stages. There's a stage called Ancient Chaos which delights in throwing you into lava and hitting you with lasers. I'm currently stuck in the Underworld, trying to figure out these gates of hell.

I do recommend the game to anyone who likes hard puzzles. Most puzzles get a vague clue, then you get to the room where you see the puzzle, then somewhere later there are more explicit clues. A lot of the puzzles have more than one way you could figure them out, which is a definite improvement over the first game, which was at times impossibly cryptic (like finding the big brother's shop, which requires you to buy items from the little brother's shop -- huh?).

Some noteworthy puzzles:
- The Brahma's Trials puzzle. This is a game-spanning, associative, Riven-like puzzle. Love it!
- the "colossal dragon" puzzle, which I had to look at hints to solve, but is very clever. From looking at the steam forums, everyone gets stuck on this one, although I believe it is fairly clued.
- Something that seems like a useless extra turns out to be required. It's regrettable that the clues to this are so obvious. Could have been a real stumper, like the sleep puzzle in the original.
- the "footprints" puzzle was a bit of a let-down. Seemed like it'd be really complicated, but then I found the main room and it became obvious.

Not exactly a puzzle, but a nice troll: after beating an early boss you find 3 tablets that each describe an item from the original game. Two of the items can be found soon afterwards. The other item is one of the last items you get in the game. It had me going, "am I missing something???" until I looked at the wiki and saw that I was a lengthy fetch quest away from getting it.

Finally got around to playing early '00s-set AOL Instant Messenger simulator Emily is Away (released 2015). The nostalgia is deep. The character dynamics and writing are... a little concerning. Played through a second time to see how things would change and it still felt a little weird. Emily Short's take was pretty much how I felt. (Spoilers, obviously)

I have tried to get into the La Malana games but something puts me off, maybe the annoying flying enemies that constantly kill me.

Something similar, Sydney Hunter Curse of the Mayan, a bit slower paced but a very well made adventure platformer imo.

would love a metroid type game with inscrutable puzzles like la mulana but without the difficult enemies. i'm sure there's a bunch out there but almost every 'metroidvania' that gets press these days is 10% metroid and 90% vania

my problem with metroidvanias is if I put them down for a week or two there's no way I can remember where in the hell anything is

Microsoft Flight Simulator is out on Series X/S Game Pass. I found the controller setup for PC a little half-baked, but it seems like they ironed it out for the console release. I played through the first two sets of tutorials and am ready to start really getting into it.

Yakuza Like a Dragon: I'm up to Chapter 5 and loving this game so far.

I spent a little bit of time with Monster Sanctuary and Crosscode, which both made a good first impression.

Pretty deep into Outriders, which is my group's co-op game this summer. It's basically a Borderlands-like, including the bad writing.