I’m shelving Baldur’s Gate 3 for now after a full run plus more. Had a great time with it, but I think I’d rather wait for more polish first before I tinker with it any more or check out the story branches/side quests in Act 3 I didn’t see.
I started playing Hardspace: Shipbreaker and I was surprised at how quickly it grabbed me. The story has a very similar vibe to Papers, Please and something about the UI and the artistic design is reminding me a lot of old space sims. Surprisingly cozy game, though I might look into seeing if I can swap out the music. Don’t know if I like what it says about me that I really like games that are work simulators, though.
I have Hard space Shipbreaker on my list. I’m hoping it’s the type of game you can pick up and play I short, relaxed bursts. Is that how you’d describe it?
It's incredible so far. I just made it out of Act 1. For the most part, you can come up with plans and ideas on your own, and they'll usually work, which makes you feel like a genius, but I have to call out two times that this specifically did not work the way I thought they would.
some light spoilers ahead
Early on, there's a target that you have to either eliminate or side with, and I choose to side with them, with the express purpose of getting them to let their guard down so that I can separate them from the group and eliminate them. The dialogue options even allude to the fact that this is a strategy they want you to use. This target wants you to sneak into another (good) faction and open a gate for a bloodbath of an assault on that faction, but the target also leaves their battle plans out in the open. So I figure I'd steal the battle plans, give them to the other faction, and just not open the gate, and then that target dies. Well, it doesn't work that way, and progressing that far along with the target invalidates the other quest entirely. Bummer.
The second is a fight right near the end of Act 1 where you've got to eliminate or side with a target again, in a room with a lot of lava, some slaves you can try to rescue, and a lot of enemies. Depending on how the dialogue goes right before the encounter, you either side with the target against the room full of enemies (but the slaves die), or you fight everyone. There are about 15 enemies in the room, which means they get a lot more turns than you, and since they're all grouped in that room, there's no real way to isolate them and take them out stealthily ahead of the encounter. I tried using a bard Performance to get them to all clump up so that I could push large groups of them into the lava, which was fairly effective, but then the slaves would join that group too, and it was very easy to aggro them. Worse still is that the slaves will happily fight you if you aggro them, but they won't join you to fight the other enemies in the room that enslaved them, let alone the target you're trying to eliminate. The only way I found through it was to reload an earlier save and to make different dialogue choices with a particular NPC so that some of those 15 enemies end up on my side in that fight when the time comes.
end of spoilers
The game usually lets me get away with whatever crazy plan I come up with, but I just wish these two points so far were a bit more flexible.
For your second fight, you can actually get above all the enemies (there’s a platform, to access some other parts of the map) and just completely break the AI, because they can’t get to you. I don’t remember if the slaves even joined the fight, but they all survived.
You can use this “tactic” in multiple locations, if you’re not above cheesing fights. If the enemy doesn’t have a ranged attack, or have no easy way to get to you, they just run in circles.
spoileryou can either jump to a small outcropping down below, near the “entrance” of the big room, where the slaves are, or on the other side of the map, are a bunch of dwarves trying to go through yet another wall (these have like two goats with them), and go from there.
For the fight in Grymforge you’re talking about, there’s also an opportunity to get some of the duergar on your side, which makes the fight a lot more manageable.
Also, the game never explains this, but you know the buttons in the bottom left of the screen during cutscenes? You can use these to trade with characters that don’t normally have an option for it, to switch party members to sneak around while the one in conversation distracts an NPC, or to attack before a cutscene finishes playing out. Doing these things can affect the outcome of game events!
Trading specifically I’m not sure if it changes anything, but you can buy things from NPCs that normally you can’t trade with. I do know that stealing from NPCs and attacking before a cutscene plays out can change the survival of some NPCs.
One thing I learned about the game fairly early on (actually in that same area, with a certain imprisoned bear) is that once you do something that makes NPCs hostile, they are going to stay hostile for good. That’s not to say there aren’t opportunities to flip allegiances a bit, but going fully subversive isn’t well-supported. And to a degree, that makes sense; a good DM’s going to make it difficult on you, because once you’re seen with the enemy, it’s going to take a lot of convincing.
For the Grymforge event, you can also just…
spoilernot excavate and let Nere die in the poison trap.
But again, my expectation is that I had other ways to go hostile against these folks, especially after the goblin camp. But that scenario is basically set up to make that combat encounter next to impossible, but I didn't know that ahead of time, because after you clear the obstruction, the state of the map changes.
Yes, there are a couple of situations in the game where one can end up in a dead end situation, and that’s probably the easiest of the bunch to stumble into. The player pretty much has to either make a deal with the chief ahead of time or just not do the battle. It’s not ideal, especially since it’s likely easy for a player to go into it when needing a rest, too.
I think your just playing games that don’t have a grid. I still play a lot of games with a grid. If you want a strategy game that has a grid, my dad has been playing a lot of jagged alliance 3 and has been saying very positive things about it.
I find grids helpful when I’m the game master, because they simplify the job of fairly resolving distance and AoE mechanics, and speed the game along. Also in big strategy games, because they allow me to plan ahead on a map with many (often stacked) units without unfair surprises.
I’m enjoying the gridless approach here, though. The computer handles the geometry crunching, there aren’t too many actors for me to keep track of, and the freedom of movement lets me play with tactics that would be impossible on a grid.
Worth noting: I don’t think D&D has ever required a grid, so it might be inaccurate to say this game has gotten rid of it.
Fair enough. I started with 3.5 and the PHB does have a section on the battle grid, though of course it’s never listed as a requirement, only an aid. I think there are certain times the grid really helps the strategy, both in tabletop and video game scenarios. Something as simple as ‘I want to block this doorway’. With the grid, it’s very obvious which squares need to be occupied. With a GM at the table I suppose you could just say ‘I block the doorway’. But, at least so far, every time I’ve tried to block a doorway in BG3 (limited play time, granted), they’ve just moved right past me, making me look rather foolish, and usually leading to my early demise.
I’ve played more BG3 now, and maybe I’m an idiot, but I can’t figure out how to block anything. E.g. I’ll stand at the top of a ladder to block enemies from climbing up, but they’ll happily climb up and walk right through me. Or standing on a narrow beam, and somehow they go to stand next to me on the narrow side to push me off? What am I missing? How are you able to block any space?
Tried the demo for System Shock remastered and finally started Jet Set Radio with the release of the spiritual successor. They did not age well for me, but I could see why they were popular back in the day
I believe I had this working once but unfortunately I don’t recall having to troubleshoot anything.
Right now I just use a stack and put all my apps the need VPN in that docker stack and use kasm Firefox with ipleak to double check the VPN.
The reason I use the VPN container (gluetun) is I think I can specifically connect it to the nord p2p servers… Is that possible with the proxy settings?
I started playing Children of Morta with my son yesterday and I’m pretty impressed with it. I e tried playing Diablo 3 a couple times and found it really boring, so I assumed dungeon crawlers just weren’t really my thing. But I started to find some depth in the combat after a couple runs in CoM, and I quite like the roguelite cycle and progress. We’re making pretty slow progress because my son is young and kinda sucks at it, but I’m enjoying it more with him than many other games we’ve tried.
I also started Baldur’s Gate 3 with my partner with it yesterday and am pretty much in love so far. I had similar experiences with both Divinity games but they both were just a liiiitle too long and we would lose steam around the end. Hoping that’s not the case with this one.
ok, i tried that (109.202.99.45) and it still does not work. The “retrieving metadata” progress animation keeps animating, and no info in the magnet link on the ipleak.net website shows up.
Diablo 4. I've been trying to push to get the season objectives done. Right now it's basically sitting around and waiting for the world bosses to show up every six or so hours.
In the meantime I've been running around in the remastered version of Quake. I'm kinda bummed id Software didn't also remaster Scourge of Armagon or Dissolution of Eternity. Still gotta use GZDoom to properly play those.
Same here. IMHO Diablo 4 is like a return to the art style of Diablos 1 & 2. And the sound design is top notch.
My biggest disappointment so far is that they kept the Diablo 3 generic necromancer corpses, instead of using actual (but lower quality) corpses like in Diablo 2.
Wait, I just played the Quake Remaster in the last 12 months, and all the expansions/addons/DLC/whatever are included.
If I remember correctly, if you launch (through Steam), you either choose the remaster or the old versions, each being a different “game,” but in the remaster you can just start the expansion episodes inside the game, no need to launch anything else.
Quake 64 is also included I think, as well as the newer episodes by Machine Games.
Inscryption is not close to StS in gameplay style. It’s more narrative and the card gaming strategy takes a back seat, it’s also very breakable with certain strategies. Not to say it is a bad game, just it doesn’t sound like it’s what you’re looking for.
Monster Train is a solid game, you’ll get more replayability if you get the DLC later since it impacts core gameplay.
I would actually recommend you check out Griftlands, it feels closer to StS playstyle to me than Monster Train. In Monster Train it’s a lot about supporting the units with your deck, whereas StS and Griftlands are more about using your deck for the combat.
My take echoes this. If one puts any stock in streamer recommendations, Baalorlord who has at various times held spire world record winstreaks, has recently cited Monster Train as his current favorite spirelike (other than spire itself), and also cited Griftlands as a playthrough a highlight.
Baalor probably doesn’t have an opinion on Inscryption as he tends to avoid things with even a slight horror theme. I enjoyed what I played of Inscryption a lot, but very little about playing it evoked the vibe of playing spire. Monster Train is quite adjacent though, the mechanics are different enough to feel fresh but it slots into the same gameplay mood for me whereas Inscryption is just a different (and still very good) thing.
Neither has the tight balance of Spire or feels quite as deep strategically to me (though in all honesty I’m probably not a strong enough player to be trusted in this regard), but both are fun.
I picked up Slay the Spire after kinda recently learning about deck building games and how much I apparently love them. Been having a bunch of fun and beat the game for the first time just recently. Now I have to do it with the other characters :3
bin.pol.social
Aktywne