Been playing these games since DeS on the PS3 when it first came in 2009.
Overall, I’m enjoying it. Multiplayer that doesn’t require consumables and rituals like placing signs or ringing bells is such a QOL improvement. After 14 years of putting down summon signs and ringing bells and gaining insight, I just want to get to it these days. A few thoughts:
Bosses initially seem challenging until you get a grip on their movesets and then realize you can defeat them with just a few moves. I beat one boss using nothing more than a running R2 attack over and over again.
Perfect parry windows seem huge.
A few control decisions and whatnot are bizarre. Someone else mentioned filling the quick items with apparently random items when you deplete another for instance. Most of the time I don’t even equip any other quick use items, just my estus/healing plants/flasks/whatever.
visuals generally are good on PS5. Am playing in performance mode for the FPS.
umbral mechanics are pretty neat.
short cuts and area connections feel good and natural, DS1-like.
only been invaded once and haven’t tried an invasion yet. Battle went back and forth until my invader went in for the coup de grace and I dodged while they went sailing over the edge of a cliff. They probably would’ve had me had it not been for that cliff.
dodging feels like a mix of Souls and Bloodborne. Stamina meter might be a bit too forgiving, as it feels like you can dodge over and over through pretty much anything.
weapons feel like they have weight to them. Movement is a tiny bit floaty but generally the weapon movesets and decent and feel like they have impact
inexplicable missing sound in some instances. Sliding down ladders for instance happens in dead silence.
being able to watch the host continue playing while you’re dead is nice. Nothing worse than helping someone almost defeat a boss and then not being able to watch the end result if you happen to bag it near the end.
Anyways, a few thoughts. Hope they continue to support the game with patches for a while to come and fix up a few odds and ends. I’m not all that far into it, but this feels like it has legs.
One thing I haven’t figured out is if perfect parry wither damage is variable.
Sometimes it feels like I take a lot of wither, othertimes not. I’m using a shield and 2hing a lot so I wonder if it’s a shield vs weapon parry thing? Or if it’s timing based like partial parry damage mitigation in ds3.
I was too engrossed to do testing so far, have you tried at all?
What weapons are you using btw? my wife uses a giant axe and seems to yeet herself a lot. Are the certain weapons with lots of lungy movements that might be tripping people up?
I haven’t been 2hing much and haven’t tested much on those sorts of things yet. I did notice that I don’t think you can die on a perfect parry even if you have no health left, though, as I seemed to be in that position during a boss earlier today.
Started with a ranger who starts with an axe, went to a spear, then a halberd, most recently using a hammer. The spear was quite lungy which caused some issues around open air vertical areas with a lot of narrow paths, while the halberd was just too slow. Hammer is feeling good, and has a good set of running attacks.
I just wanted to comment to say that I find the game just as buggy as you say. I do think that some people are more sensitive than others. I’m playing couch coop and my gaming partner doesn’t notice any of the bugs until I call them out for him. Unless they are game breaking. Within 11 hours of play I have encountered 3 bugs that warranted a game restarts and countless other bugs that ranged from minor to frustrating.
This is typical larian though. Divinity 1 + 2 were the same for me. If anything this game is even buggier.
One thing you might need to pay attention to is your daughter would want to play the same game as their friends do.
You may want to reject games base on your criteria, but if your daughter feels isolated because she can’t play with her friends, that could be a bigger problem.
I’m not too worried about that tbh. It’s the same thing that when she gets a mobile phone it will be very limited, only call, text and messaging. No social media until she’s 18. Thanks though for checking.
Good luck. We tried that rule too, it has led to so much stress and fighting. I’m certainly not suggesting to not try and hold the line. I’m just wishing you luck with it.
After watching The Social Dilemma and seeing that people who worked high up at eg Facebook also didn’t want their kids on there, I’m going to try to do the same.
That… seems a bit too extreme, I honestly don’t think you can achieve that… unless you get her a dumb phone and assuming she never gets her own by her own means.
Working with your kids to have a decent social media experience? That I can see!
Yes it may sound extreme but based on The Social Dilemma and presentations at our school from people who did a lot of research into this topic, I’m going to go with their recommendation to keep them off social media until 18. Probably won’t be easy indeed.
IMO, just ignore the grading system and have fun. Once you’re hooked enough and actually want to improve, that’s when you will want to start paying attention to it.
The WoW raiding experience, but without the MMO, and possibly the addition of rogue lite elements (each raid is a run with its own progression, but wiping would be allowed and embraced).
The format of DRG or Gunfire Reborn is pretty close, but 1) I prefer the high fantasy setting of warcraft to the gunplay, 2) I’m not interested in procedural levels, and 3) I want the focus to be on polished boss mechanics.
Dungeon Defenders is also close, but 1) you’re defending instead of delving, and 2) it is also focused on killing waves of trash mobs rather than boss mechanics.
Destiny bosses are sometimes well designed, but 1) don’t care for the gunplay, 2) classes hardly matter, 3) it’s a max of 6 people, and I think closer to 10 is the sweet spot.
Gauntlet from a few years back was probably the closest, but still far from the mark. It could have used more mechanic heavy bosses, more meaningful gear, and a larger party size.
I just wanna drive around the world and see shit I can’t otherwise see, but in real time drives. I got the inspiration from those Trucker Simulator games.
We’re almost there with Street View and satellite images, and the developer could do hand-modeling for certain cities and landmarks like MS FS does.
Yesssss, hard agree with this. I’ve been playing a lot of Euro Truck Simulator and I keep finding myself wishing it was 1:1 like MS Flight Sim. A woman can dream…
It’s not what really you’re looking for, but there are some really good open world map mods for Assetto Corsa that probably make it the closest feeling thing right now. They’re based on real places, so while it doesn’t give the touristy sense, it does a good job of capturing the vibe of just cruising around some beautiful scenery.
This. I remember playing Test Drive 3 as a kid, and being memorized with the choose your own route thing (which was huge for a game back then), and thinking how cool this sort of thing could be, if we could make the graphics realistic and basically make it like driving in the real world but it isn’t the real world.
Well now we can make the graphics realistic. And we certainly have the data, the imagery and the technology.
Uplink - A hacking sim game that’s actually quite addictive in a playthrough. Will make you feel like you’re in the movie Hackers.
Spycraft: The Great Game - An adventure game that had as consultants CIA director William Colby and KGB Major-General Oleg Kalugin.
I don’t know a lot of people that have played these, but they definitely rank up there for me as some of the more interesting and unique games I’ve played over the decades.
Played Uplink as a kid, later learned about fragmentation for computer memory. Was cool to find out the inventory system wasn’t just a cool game mechanic but was based off how actual memory works.
Hylics 1 & 2. There’s actually a sorta sleeper cult around the games where it seems like a lot of people know of them or have played them, but no one ever talks about them. Pretty standard action-rpg but everything’s claymation. Oh, and the second game changes genre multiple times.
Cruelty Squad. Amazing immersive sim. Looks like trash, best gameplay I’ve encountered in a while. That game goes hard.
Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. I thought this was more popular, however considering how many people give me a “what’s that” when I mention it, it makes me think it wasn’t as popular as I thought. It’s a very well made spiritual successor to Jet Set Radio Future. Even has JSRF’s composer on a few tracks.
QT deserves more eyes on it for being an incredibly cute and wholesome parody of PT. There’s a free “demo” version on Itch.io, and if you like that then I’d highly recommend buying the full version on Steam.
E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy. This game is… hm. Basically it started off life as a Warhammer 40k game, but got released as something else due to the studio failing to secure the licenses they needed for WH40K. It’s a much older indie game from back when Valve had standards regarding what made it onto steam. It’s also kinda special because it’s one of the few times the Source engine was used commercially outside Valve. It’s also pretty jank, but overall pretty fun. It’s got some pretty decent RPG mechanics on top of a first person shooter, complete with classes. You can hack basically anything but also anything can hack back. A door can hack you.
Wildermyth is a lovely combination of storytelling and tactical combat. My only significant gripe is that I want more of it: More tales, more character customization… just more. (Although I now see that a cosmetic pack is available; I’ll have to check it out.)
Gigantic caught my attention when I was looking for an Overwatch alternative, because of the art and the praise from fans. I wish development hadn’t shut down before I had a chance to play it. (I hear there’s an unofficial client and server out there somewhere, though, so maybe I’ll get to at least try the work-in-progress that was never finished.)
Wildermyth is just so endearing I loved my time with it.
Taking the same character through each campaign was pretty fun like I was making a serialised demi-god: Doofus and the mountain horde, Doofus and the ancient threat etc. Because characters age though the campaign, it has interesting implications in the world lore. Like we’re an archivist document the various legends of Doofus, acknowledging where they contradict and maybe speculating on how the differences in each culture’s legend of Doofus reflects back.
Downside is I optimised the fun out of the combat in always having Doofus at the center of the strategy, each encounter then played out the same.
First, you want to play on high/60fps but at what resolution? Paying over 1700$CAD for a RTX4090 GPU seems overkill while a RX6800 or a RX7700/7800 would let you play at 1080p/1440p at high settings at a fraction of the price.
SSD is fine.
PSU could be reduced to 850W.
64GB RAM is overkill for gaming right now but potentially useful in the upcoming years.
Bottom line, you could save here and there and still have a capable AM5 machine.
If you want value for your buck, build yourself an AM4 machine. Yes, AM5 is out now but your rig could still last you many many years with the right AM4 components.
Yeah that changes things a bit. What type of games do you plan on playing? 4K or not, if you’re playing eSports or strategy games, it still will be overkill. My wife’s rig is a 5800X (not 3D), and a GTX 1070, and she plays SIMS 4 and Diablo IV at 4K 60+ FPS.
Another data point: I have a Ryzen 5900x and an RTX 3080. In BG3 I average 80-90 fps with 1% lows over 60fps on a 4k screen with ultra settings and DLSS quality setting.
Agreed with the above, especially need to pay attention to your resolution to figure out GPU needs. To add to this, you would probably be fine with a 7800X3D, unless you really need the extra CPU cores for non-gaming related tasks.
For reference, I have a 5800X3D, 32GB RAM, 970 1TB SSD, and a 6700XT, and I’m playing 60+ FPS on high on most games at 3840x1600. Nowhere near the budget you’re looking at. That being said, AM4 socket is EOL’d, so stick with the Ryzen 7000 series if you want AMD.
The samsung 990 is fine, but a bit overpriced. Something like this sabernt is also a high quailty gen 4 drive, and running under $100 for 2TB with a heatsink.
Id actually recommend going for the 4TB of that same model for $210. By far the most bang for your buck.
It sounds like you're a little bit into it. If at this point you are not curious about the Nomai or why you keep dying and finding answers to those questions, then you should stop playing. The game might not be for you. Because it tells a non-linear story and if you don't care about the story then there's nothing there for you.
That being said, my experience with the game was heavily influenced by recent loss in my life and playing it helped me process my grief. Naturally that is a highly personal experience. But there was one point in particular where I read one bit of text and the realization of the implications just made me sit there and cry until I died.
But I was fully invested in the story. If that isn't important to you the gameplay alone isn't going to carry it.
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