whatchu playing now

Thanks whoever flagged Tinykin a while back! It’s great.

I also spent £17 on classic bubble bobble in a switch sale yesterday. No regrets.

playing A Monster's Expedition, which is a chill open-world sokoban puzzle game. good difficulty curve so far & lots of cool little surprise moments

disco elysium. so good

Far Cry 5...total zone-out game and I am glad there is less emphasis on killing animals in this one

xps - played, completed and v much enjoyed 'A Monster's Expedition' last year

Chained Echoes — it has surprised me so far. Very good game.

The duck level is impossible

I dropped Signalis a while back, haven't been in the mood for horror, but I do intend to finish that beautiful game one day. Played and enjoyed the hell out of the spooky-but-not-scary Strange Horticulture. Highly recommend that one if you want a Papers Please with cozy witch vibes. My anxiety is acting up lately, and I've found Dragon Quest Builders 2 to be a delightful distraction.

I played a bit of Signalis with (which is to say, for) my nephew, seemed cool. I'll wait for a sale before I pick it up myself, though. King of pixel-gamed out, however well done.

chained echoes looks pretty great. it does what it looks like it does?

think its just your standard one-man-project retro jrpg except its got kickstarter dev money behind it instead of being made in rpgmaker

my main question for all gmaes like that is whether they've absorbed some of the newer genre developments that make the turn-based combat more clever and fun or are they still running out a 2001 FFX-era combat system. havent played this one so i dont know yet

from the reviews this sounds like the former tbh, good

and I've found Dragon Quest Builders 2 to be a delightful distraction.

I love this game so much but it does tip into obsessive territory for me, like thinking up plans for new buildings would keep me awake at night

Strange Horticulture was a nice few hours but I played it on Switch, which it isn't well formatted for at all, so I couldn't be bothered doing repeat play throughs even though I wanted to see where the cultist storyline branch ended up

That's good to know, as I've been considering getting that one.

I finally shelled out for Scarlet Hollow, though I'm not a fan of buying unfinished works - the first four chapters are fairly hefty in themselves though, and the illustrations and story are really good.

Is anyone running a games poll this year?

DQB2 is a freebie on the ps+ so i may need to try that

would love to see a games poll but don't think i can balance it

Get dqb2!! I want to see screengrabs of other people's cool buildings

salsa shark, how long does it take to get into the more open-ended, sandboxy elements of DQB2? I feel like I've just been stuck doing favors/quests for NPCs for hours, which is getting a little tiresome

It’s about 100 more hours of that

lmao oh no

I mean, I'd just play Minecraft if Minecraft weren't so butt-ugly

yeah, you're not selling me on it here

xp if you're on pc dip a toe into the pool of minecraft shaders and make it a lot less ugly pretty quickly & painlessly

Umm it's been a while since I played story mode but iirc after the first chapter you can build stuff open world style on your isle of awakening, albeit with a limited item database. You unlock more crafting options with each chapter. When you finish the story you'll have access to everything.

The way I played was to do a chapter, then a bit of building on the Isle, then another chapter and so on. I was definitely impatient for full database open world though tbh. It takes... some commitment to get there.

If you haven't finished the first chapter yet I'd say stick it out til you're back on Isle of Awakening in sandbox mode to see if that refreshes you, but pretty much the whole story mode is going to be like 40h of quests and favours

chained echoes looks pretty great. it does what it looks like it does?

― “Cheeky cheeky!” she trills, nearly demolishing a roadside post (forksclovetofu), Friday, January 13, 2023 1:43 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

think its just your standard one-man-project retro jrpg except its got kickstarter dev money behind it instead of being made in rpgmaker

― ciderpress, Friday, January 13, 2023 2:08 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

my main question for all gmaes like that is whether they've absorbed some of the newer genre developments that make the turn-based combat more clever and fun or are they still running out a 2001 FFX-era combat system. havent played this one so i dont know yet

My usual assumption is that these sorts of indie JRPGs will be cringey, insular, and tropey, but Chained Echoes isn't. There are mechanics thrown into the combat that make choices way more interesting and consequential than yr standard FF / DQ. I enjoyed it way more than something like Octopath Traveler tbh

octopath combat system was really good for bosses but not for repeated regular enemy encounters

A JRPG where you don't grind for levels per se just periodically unlock more options would be good, like if Bravely Default II didn't have grinding for job levels…and then you wouldn't have to have trash mobs, you could just have a whole game of boss fights, which are the good part.

that's kind of how it works in CE tbh - most of the leveling up is through quests / boss battles. there is some level of skill growth and collecting items through enemy encounters but it's not necessary at all to grind out battles

the trails games scale exp up or down if you're below or above the correct level for your point in the game so you can't overlevel and it only takes a couple fights to catch up if you're underlevel, always liked that

i like having the trash mobs around but they should be mostly optional

Anybody else getting into Hi-Fi Rush? I've played through the first "track" and so far it's a blast. I'm normally not super into rhythm games. I could never get into Guitar Hero and the like, but this is a bit more accessible as it rewards you for being on beat but doesn't penalize you for imperfect timing.

Also, this is maybe the best use of cel shading I've ever seen in a game; "it looks like you're playing a cartoon" has been a cliche for a while, but this game really does look like you're playing a cartoon.

i can't play it because it's on the radical left gaming system, xbox

It's also on Steam, though it might be unplayable depending on your specs

it looks really good but dropping without warning means i dont have time for it yet

finding DQ Builders to be nice stress free stuff.

finally finished trails of cold steel 3 and 4. definitely done with that series for a good long while lmao

what's your take on Trails

are the games, like, good to play

i love 'em but they are looooooooooooooong. the only reason i played 3 and 4 back to back is because i wanted to strike while the iron was hot. the cold steel arc has a particularly convoluted story and i'd have forgotten everything if i took a break between

funnily enough i just finished Trails in the Sky!
found it a bit slow at times but I loved the world building and the battle system got really good in the last half
the sprite work & music gorgeous tho, a pleasure to look at/listen to for the 40+ hours I spent on it

i'm currently 2 years deep in a break between cold steel 3 chapters whoops. i think i remember what was happening pretty well though, i hadn't gotten to the real escalation yet

diamonddave85 how was Cold Steel 4 compared to the others?
I played 1-3 and really liked 1 but felt 2 & 3 were diminishing returns

if I ever dip into this I will probably try the first of the "Crossbell Arc" games, which is on Switch now

that ones less of a clean entry point than sky or cold steel, as the sky protagonists show up and complete the final bit of their character arc that was left hanging

the sprite work & music gorgeous tho, a pleasure to look at/listen to for the 40+ hours I spent on it

TITS 1&2 are my favorites, 3 seems to be a fan favorite but it didn't do too much for me

how was Cold Steel 4 compared to the others

hard to say since i played 3/4 back to back and got pretty exhausted about halfway through 4. it brings together all of the arcs and certain things were really special and others were not so successful. i also found altina (thors branch uniform + circle shades for lyf) discovering her humanity to be very touching.

i'd say if you've already played 1-3 might as well play 4

also lol at kurt still being a boring dork while altina and juna figure out how to be cool

i basically love the first game of every arc and think the 2nd is okay. they're consistently good at writing the rising tension parts of the stories but clumsy about raising the stakes imo

that ones less of a clean entry point than sky or cold steel, as the sky protagonists show up and complete the final bit of their character arc that was left hanging

― ciderpress, Friday, January 27, 2023 10:15 AM (six minutes ago)

trouble is I don't think I am gonna start with TitS unless it all comes to Switch (or conceivably, eventually, PS5?), I read at least one review that was like "you can start with this and the TitS connections will not completely throw off your experience" so it seems somewhat reasonable