whatchu playing now

Just finished Venba, the Tamil cooking visual novel. It's amazing and I recommend it to anyone who wants a good story, but for the children of first generation immigrants it's incredibly powerful, I'm kind of a teary mess right now.

Sounds great, love a good VN, putting it on my wishlist

I think I'm almost done with Bioshock 2, might have liked it more than the first one? It's really well designed, imo, especially when it comes to resource consumption. There are some fights I've gone into that left me low on absolutely everything, from cash to ammo to health, but it doesn't take that long afterward to build the stores back up again.

I was out with covid all week and only yesterday did I think to finally buy myself Shin Megami Tensei V. So much wasted downtime

Yeah, Bioshock 2 was great, loved it. Now I need to play the Minerva's Den DLC.

Maybe I'll try Resident Evil 2 next?

RE 2 remake is excellent. Recommend it.

Yeah re2make is really something. If you’re emunshre (and own 3), you could start with that one as it’s a much shorter game (like people complained it should have been dlc, which is unfair). Slightly more action oriented, with 2 being more survival/puzzle oriented. Both great games!

*unsure

Restarted The Messenger ahead of Sea of Stars arriving on PS Plus today - still fun.

Very excited for Saints Row to drop on Plus next week too.

oh Sea of Stars is today? might as well give that a try.
have heard that the dialog in English can be clunky, although that could give it more of an authentic 16bit JRPG feeling

Just finished Venba, the Tamil cooking visual novel. It's amazing and I recommend it to anyone who wants a good story, but for the children of first generation immigrants it's incredibly powerful, I'm kind of a teary mess right now.

One quibble that might be specific to me: while I really like the art style, the cartoonish quality keeps me from really getting a sense of what the dishes actually look like, and so I haven't been hit with the same "I would eat all the foods" reactions that others seem to have -- and maybe that's partly because I'm quite unfamiliar with the cuisine!

I am too hungry a person to play that game

Started Resident Evil 2. Was convinced I was going to die during the tutorial, this is going to be a total trip, and probably would be too stressful if it wasn't often b-movie silly.

after feasting on baldurs gate 3 i wanted something a little more manageable so i flew thru DUNGEON ENCOUNTERS and i gotta say that's a good lil game, highly worth it if it's on sale and you wanna spend a couple dozen hours on a head scratcher that you'll walk out of saying, "ah you know what, dungeon RPGs, I get it now."

my biggest complaint is that the puzzles in the game (which are optional, btw - you'll get a clue for a coordinate, and if you go there and press A, you get an item) start approachable and fun and end completely ungettable without a FAQ or a doctorate in mathematics. (also the last "math puzzle" is a reference to the movie close encounters, so if you've never seen that, or even if you haven't watched it like a week before playing, GOOD LUCK!). it really feels like those later puzzles are designed with the intent of "let's get the internet to work together to solve these" more like an ARG than an individual test of wits

I would totally play that Tamil cooking game, but yeah the cartoony graphics definitely don't tell you what the food is like

the decision-making process for 2/3 of the game is more 'what is the least awful choice I can make' than 'what is the best choice I can make'.

Revisiting this comment as I try to finish Pentiment myself (months long layoffs between plays), which has been a struggle because I think of all my failed checks (spoiler alert: being a medieval peasant sucks!). Also I hadn't been paying enough attention to the game's map, meaning that I missed a lot of side quests and attic probably also made the checks harder. But now that I'm in act 3, and have figured out the game mechanics, and am taking the time talk to more of the townsfolk, I'm feeling a lot more invested in the story.

Still mad about Bert

the original Q

And I just finished it. Very well told story, and Eco unsurprisingly gets a shout out in the end credits (Name of the Rose of course, and Baudolino too). I also got a pretty grim ending, having inadvertently maneuvered things that lead to the death of an NPC who really doesn't deserve it.

Biscuits, remind me which one is Bert?

Claus Drucker's adorable scamp son who doesn't make it

I will be playing Saints Row (2022) for my sins

Given Dark Souls DLC a little break to get on with some premium gaming.
So now I'm switching between Armored Core VI and Baldur's Gate 3.
Slightly annoying that they've been released at almost the same time really.

I haven't had much time to play either, although what's quite nice about ACVI is that I can play it in bite-sized chunks. I can take 20 minutes to do a mission, then go do something else. I was expecting ACVI to resemble Sekiro before playing it. There are definitely some hints of the Soulsborne games in there; but perhaps strangely the industrial aesthetic and mercenerial missions most remind me of Death Stranding.

Similarly, Baldur's Gate is giving me Red Dead Redemption 2 vibes in many places, especially the campsite section with the various characters you can speak to.

Saint's Row really is as bad as everyone said it was lol

Have spent a good 50+ hours into Dave the Diver. Surprisingly great game

dave the daver

I'm loving Baldur's Gate PS5 so far. Really cool game

People have been loving that. How is the gameplay? I tried to get with the old Infinity Engine games back in the day but they felt so stodgy and cumbersome compared to Fallout and even Planescape: Torment, worried that the D&D-ness might be off-putting again.

Very different to old school infinity engines. By far the most polished CRPG on the market, so if anything would win you back..... it's definitely not stodgy or cumbersome

There's definitely a lot to get your head around with BG3, but I'd say it's as accessible as a super-dense CRPG can be. It is *hard* though. You're usually outnumbered in fights and have to strategize carefully.

The most important thing is to remember to save often. I lost a lot of progress last night on a party wipe.

It actually reminds me of Fromsoft in the way that it does not sugarcoat its difficulty, yet there are exploits you can cheese if you can figure out they're there.

planescape torment is an infinity engine game and a d&d adaptation, tho the combat mechanics barely matter so i get why yr separating it.

bg3 is a v detailed d&d5 adaptation that probably tries harder to implement more parts of the system than anything since temple of elemental evil? but is also taking pains to make them as accessible as possible. i disliked the original sin games because found their character+item systems worthless and their lore+vibe extremely lame, but did think the environmental interactivity was on to something; decided i was pro-bg3 when i shoved a goblin off a cliff and fired a magic missile at him while he lay prone at the base. opening+plot a lil AAA-grand for me, would have preferred meeting in a tavern, but what are you gonna do.

love fallout but would prob call its interface stodgier than IE-- it's a lil older after all and that inventory scrolling is absurd.

probably tries harder to implement more parts of the system than anything since temple of elemental evil

should note that in the case of TOEE (and the recent pathfinder games) "the system" is a derivation of the famously stuffed-to-bursting d&d3 with its Modifiers For Everything and that BG3 being based on d&d5 right away makes it a lil less of a spreadsheet game.

Yeah the D&D 5e license is the best thing that could have happened to Larian's style of RPG, I would find it extremely difficult to get excited about Divinity Original Sin 3 at this point

What do you mean about finding D:OS character+item systems worthless?

If you do a liiiiitttle bit of research into party management, I don't think BG3 is that difficult. I'm playing tactician and my rogue/warlock/cleric/barbarian class is cruising through most battles. I am also trying to do every bit of content which helps. If you're not a completetionist, being underleveled and not having the top equipment might hurt you plenty. Best to play on a lower difficulty.

(Not bragging, I am on record here a week ago stating Zelda TOTK was too hard for me, so...... ya know)

I’m loving BG3, it’s a superior product to Larian’s prior work in a lot of ways, but y’all mad with the Divinity dismissals. Only just thru Act I of Baldur’s but I still haven’t seen anything to convince me that it’s combat system and scenarios are as engaging as D:OS2’s.

To HP’s point, D:OS2 had some battles that would genuinely make you sweat and consider every action point, piece of environment, and placement of character. As fun as BG3’s combat is, you can just punch through most situations once you have a handle on it.

Yeah it cannot be overestimated the extra dimension environmental/elemental combat gives to D:OS. That + your movement taking actions, every combat decision has a bit of added weight to it. I am liking the simplicity of bg3 combat though, sometimes all the fire and cursed water and what not in divinity was just too much to enjoy

"all your attributes start the same and every couple levels you pump the relevant one" + "everything is interlocking cooldowns" reminded me of dragon age, the classic "we don't have the license anymore but that's okay right?" game (reverse bg3)

itemization felt v diablo: an infinite number of randomly generated magic swords of +1.344% DPS i am constantly checking against my current randomly generated magic sword of +1.342% DPS. not as grim as witcher 3 but pretty grim iirc

but yes as i said the exploding barrels were interesting

you might be right about encounter design / challenge; certainly i've gotten further in bg3 than in either d:os lol

an infinite number of randomly generated magic swords of +1.344% DPS i am constantly checking against my current randomly generated magic sword of +1.342% DPS

uuuugh, yes, this "mechanic" or part of a gameplay "loop" - it tickles the fancy of so many people and yet it heavily irritates my fancy

sorry, that came off as heavily negative. i love diablo (still haven't played 4 because i know what it will do to my life)

it's okay that diablo is like that because diablo is supposed to be a treadmill you hop on and off with your friends, but it depresses me in single-player "be caught up in our sweeping otherworld" experiences-- it is also outrageously bad in cyberpunk, a game i mostly think is underrated

There seem to be a lot of these top-down RPGs that just seem like a jumble of random number explosions to me. Are these all MMORPGs? What confuses me is that I read that Baldur's Gate 3 is designed as a single-player game, but any footage I've seen is a crew out doing battles and stuff.

they're single-party games, they have co-op but there aren't other players running around out there outside your party so not an MMO

you control the whole crew.

(tho for some fucking reason you can't group-select them.)