Very late to this party, but Beat Saber is a barrel of fun. Maybe a peck? A face cord?
Anyone get into Darkest Dungeon 2 at all?
I liked the original but felt like I was always one bad move away from losing all my party and progress. This one with the wagon looks more like a Slay The Spire-esque process, shorter runs, meta progression⌠feels less like a loss will wipe you out.
Which I think i like? Not sureâŚ
Thouhgts?
The game released with the Confessions mode only, which I think is what youâre describing. I say think, because a second mode called Kingdoms (and its first module of three, I believe?) was just added this past week for free. Both modes differ from Darkest Dungeon.
Confessions Mode
- More RPGish, as youâre unlocking the stories behind the individual heroes
- Stagecoach runs contain a lot more nodes than Kingdoms, so theyâre more harrowing
- Heroes, combat and inn items, trinkets, and stagecoach items are unlocked as you level up your profile from completing runs
- Candles are awarded for accomplishments during runs and used to unlock additional meta stuff
Kingdoms Mode
- More roguelike/lite (whatever the correct term is!), as stagecoach runs contain only three nodes
- Has a boardgame feel, as you have to defend the kingdom from invaders (in module 1, theyâre Beastmen), moving strategic assets (i.e., all of the other heroes, which all start unlocked) around to defend against Beastmen sieges and upgrading the multiple trees at each inn
- Your goal is to defend the kingdom for 60 days from the Beastmen as they siege the multiple inns on the map. If X inns are destroyed, you lose
- On the 15th and 33rd days, escalation surges occur, amping up the difficulty
- A stagecoach run is traveling from an inn/camp to another inn/camp through a region (The Tangle, The Shroud, etc.) and takes one day. The region defines the type of enemies you can expect to encounter
- The heroes not in your party (i.e., on your stagecoach) rest at inns and camps each day healing HP and reducing Fatigue
- Fatigue is unique to this mode and serves to reduce a heroâs maximum HP after each run (so youâre forced to sub in other heroes)
I love the Confessions mode, but Iâm enjoying the Kingdoms mode much more. It really has that one-more-day feel for me that I never felt in the original mode.
I hope these cents were helpful!
Thats very interesting about kingdoms mode. Ill have to check it out.
DD2 took a while to grow on me. I got it very early in early access and decided to come back to it later. Im glad I did, even getting as far as some of the end run nodes. However I didnt enjoy those fights as much as they felt like you needed to know what they were before hand to prepare. Sure, I could google it, but thats not as fun for me.
War thunder is one of the most egregious pay to win games Ive ever played. Theres a maxim in pay to win games where if youre not paying for the product - you are the product, and thats true here too. New players level up through World War 2 vehicles before earning more advanced weapons, yet the dev keeps selling new overpowered world war 2 vehicles, encouraging advanced players to come and seal club at lower levels.
But its also incredibly good fun, specially the dogfighting. Flying all your favourite world war 2 planes is great, theres so many vehicles theres something for everyone, the damage modelling is suberb so youll get ripped to shreds in dozens of different ways, and when you pull of your first immelman to take someones six, youll feel like a pro.
Ive been using quite the frankenstein combo of a controller in my left hand for throttle and roll, and a mouse in my right for precision aiming (as the controller aiming is terrible). I even poke a cheeky finger out to hit a key on the keyboard as needed for less urgent keys like the map. I doubt this would be fun just with a controller, but I manage in arcade mode just fine without a flightstick.
The games great but also very frustrating. Its pay to win is awful, and its grind is designed to take your life or your wallet. Youâll never complete this game, theres just too much content. But Id say if you like dogfighting, give the biplanes a go, earn a couple of WW2 planes, then walk away knowing youve seen the best bits the game has to offer
Been playing a fair bit of XCOM 2: Long War of the Chosen and I think Iâve had enough. The pod system is bad, and always was. In XCOM it was fucking awful, in XCOM 2 itâs merely dire, and Iâm utterly fed up with it. Battles shouldnât be ramping up or down depending upon how Iâm doing, and a pod shouldnât be ignoring me because Iâm one square away from spotting it. Itâs a shame because thereâs very obviously a lot of good tactical battling to be had here, but Iâm sick of ignoring the flaws. The original XCom in fucking 1994 had a better system, FFS.
Imagine two forces being on a battlefield and just fighting it out, without one side constantly being shoved in one direction or another, at the whims of an algorithm that has no idea how the other side is performing. Imagine it.
I think you bring up something I had not thought about, that I realize now after reading your post why I have gravitated toward Turn Based Roguelikes/lites. Somewhere game design for long games became more about maintaining a challenge level so the game scales both by design, but also to keep pace with you. Every game I played in the 90s and early 2000s was playing to outpace the game and get into âgod-likeâ mode for the most part. I played a bunch of X-Com2 when it came out, but I maybe after like 60 or so hours I was done, and never had any desire to go back.
I think the thrill I got from X-Com and Terror from the Deep just became about chasing broken builds in roguelite/like games instead.
At least Warhammer 40k: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters has moving âpodsâ patrolling in the fog of war. Havent finished it yet tough, cannot say about the longevity of it.
Speaking of XCOM 2 has anyone played the Phoenix Point game? It is from the Creator of UFO- enemy unknown and shares many similarities to the newer XCOM games? Havent checked it out yet.
Still need to finish me rerun through XCOM:EW / XCOM 2 and finally play Chaos Gate and Mechanicus for âREALâ before considering buying Phoenix Point.
I have Phoenix Point, it was a buggy mess at first and I never went back to it. I guess it had promise if they fixed the bugs.
Iâve played a good chunk of Phoenix Point, and it has a lot more in common with the likes of the older X-Com games than the modern ones, thankfully. It does have its own issues though, which are largely niggles rather than vast glaring problems. I like the inventory system and the variety of weapons and armour, as well as there being drawbacks and limitations to most loadouts, instead of most kit just getting progressively better. I also think the overall gameworld and setting is much better realised; whereas XCOM 2 just lurched around rather nonsensically. PP is a little bit too restrictive overall, whereas XCOM 2 is too free.
Loving Dawnfolk so far. Sorta 4x-ish but minimalist. Great on desktop or steamdeck.
Iâve been playing some Dragon Age: Veilgard on PS5 and this far it is decidedly mediocre. Theyâve removed any semblance of tactics at all, they donât let you control your party, and it plays like a straight action game, meaning youâll find yourself mashing weak attack over and over until you have enough resources to activate a skill. The world is full of breakable barrels, even where it makes no sense, so youâll be swinging your weapon at everything you see. Also, I canât stand the glowing green urns that seem to litter the world that give you a potion for breaking them; nonsensical. The story is mediocre, the graphics are clean but not incredibly detailed, voice acting seems fine. I feel a bit like Iâm playing a game like Kingdoms of Amalur rather than a DA game. In fact, if you took out names/lore/locations, there is no way to tell this is a Dragon Age game. On top of that, Iâve recently played FFXVI and FF7 Rebirth, which do much of what Veilgard is doing, only much better.
In short, itâs fine at best and doesnât seem to resemble Dragon Age in any significant way.
Itâs free on PS+ this month if anyone wants to try it out.
There is an achievement in Through the Ages called âreverse successionâ that says âwin a game in which you replace a leader with one from a lower age. Twice.â
How do you do that?
I guess drawing a leader card only prevents you from drawing other leaders from the same era? In which case you could hold it in hand and play it to replace a leader from the next era. I donât think iconoclasm would work here? I am of course going to try this nowâŚ
Dang I never realized how much I was starved for some Anime/BS-Mecha-PseudoMMOGameplay-Bowl of Borscht in my life. Who needs Monsterhunter anyways?
AutobotsâŚahemâŚXenoblades ROLL OUT!
PS:
Not only the mechs are MASSIVE, all the gifs about them are tooâŚfirst time that Stately Play noped out hard of my gif-posting-fetish 
Iâm torn over the whole Xeno- franchise. I adored Xenogears when it released in spite of the last disc being a graphic novel instead of a game. I havenât had a chance to play it in a couple of decades, though.
I didnât get very far into the Xenosaga games as they didnât scratch my itch for Xenogears 2, but it has been a while on those as well.
I really enjoyed Xenoblade 1, though some of the open areas were almost too big. Xenoblade 2 lost me with too many game systems.
Chronicles looks good and is on my buy list.
I finished XB2 recently and am doing the Prequel/DLC (Torna the Golden Country). One helpful tip I got was to turn the difficulty down to the limit in the maingame. Sure I wasnât really engaged anymore with the combat but at least I could go on with the story now without snapping my controller in half.
I am considering going for XB1: DE (definite edition) on Switch next. The improvements in XBCX:DE are so massive so that got me down a rabbit hole what they did revamp for XBC1:DE. It seems they redid many of my pain points there (also the XBC1:DE on switch has a massive DLC which wasnât in the Wii Version (Future Connected)) Since many stated that DLC ties heavily into XBC3 I am intrigued.
XBC1:DE got a massive post-credits DLC with a story relevant to XBC3, XBC2 got a prequel that fleshes out XBC2 lore/worldbuilding (and is waaaaaay more fun to play than the main game), XBC X:DE got an ending (lol original X on Wii U hat a dlc/bait/rushed ending which seems to be fixed now, some sources state up to 20 hours of additional content, and XBC3 got a post credits DLC which seem to tie everything together. Still I missed 2 rare blades (unfortunately the one everyone wants which ties back to Xenosaga) and about 25% worth of side content but it was ok, I did the side-content which interested me plotwise.
All I can say is, I was getting burned out on XBC2 as well but thatâs the stupidly convoluted gameplay mechanicsâ fault. The ending ties XBC2 finally back to what happened in XB1 and was a huge payoff which made the pain until then worth it (for me at least).
Thank god I am team story/plotâŚif I were team gameplay I would have had multiple massive head trauma ages ago (head->desk)
Edit:
XBCX:DE makes me question again why I did get a Wii U at all, the Wii at least got good playtime out of me for two Fire Emblem games (one from the Gamecube one from the Wii), oh well hindsight is 20/20. At least I like my Switch enoughâŚwayy too much sideeyes backlog-pile of shame
Edit2:
The Xenosaga games are pretty much the only reason I did not get rid of my PS2 alreadyâŚthat and the dothack quadrology. Everyting else is pretty much ported/remastered already