Finally “done” with World of Warcraft: Legion Remix. The final phase is a complete joke and let down. Blizzard in their generosity added two quests and one new world boss. The speed with which your character gains power is also increased, but there is still no account-wide power-sharing, so you’d still have to grind for dozens of hours on each character if you want to get to the part where you’re completely overpowered.
My sub still runs for three weeks or something, so I might check in here and there, like for the Christmas event, but otherwise no WoW for me for a while.
Now that I’m free, I finally continued with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, after a two-month break. I stopped near the end of Act 1, just after getting a fourth party member. Now I’m in Act 2, the world has opened up a bit more, so of course I gotta explore everywhere you’re not supposed to go yet, so main story progress has been slow.
The game has some small annoyances, that make you question what the devs where thinking, like the newly added option to give up in combat (so you can restart the fight), but it’s not a straight reset, you go through a jingle and animation, and then the game asks you if you want to retry. Why not just retry immediately. Selecting no boots you to the main menu, but there’s already a separate button for that, so the only reason to give up in a fight is to try again.
Then the save situation is kinda ass. The game only has autosaves, no manual saving, but it’s kinda random at times and even straight up lies to you if it says it’s saving the game. Sometimes when you change something in your inventory the game saves, but not every time. I think the game has some internal timer, so it only creates a new save every X seconds. After a fight the game saves, but it creates two save slots that are the same. Usually not a big deal, but I suspect it overwrites your most recent save in the process (because if you do a bunch of fights back-to-back you don’t have a bunch of double saves). What I’m trying to say is, just let me save manually whenever I want, and let me manage my save slots.
I also wish there were some custom map markers available, so I could mark merchants or secrets I can’t get to (or add a stat counter to the area or something that tells you if you’ve “completed” it).
All the Game Awards chatter and the current sale made me take the plunge on Clair Obscur" Expedition 33 and I’m so glad I did. Only ~8h in or so but it is such a vibrant, wild world to explore and it makes me think of the classic JRPGs I played growing up. The introduction of more active battling mechanics like parrying and dodging adds a level of complexity to the combat that I enjoy, even if I cannot for the life of me get the parry timing right.
Steam Deck took a couple minor tweaks to make it look good and the hair effects still are a bit janky (eg. Gustave’s hair will light up from a light source making it look grey). The soundtrack is phenomenal and was the first time in a long time that I’ve wanted to buy a game soundtrack (this battle track in one of the early areas cemented this as something special to me).
Super worth it and excited to dive in deep on this one.
I did see a tip about turning up the volume for sound cues when I was digging around trying to find if there was some kind of setting I could enable for a more visual cue (like you get for a Jump attack). I don’t usually play games with headphones on but I find myself doing that with this one!
The Steam Deck experience is pretty good. The issues I’ve had with the characters’ hairstyles catching the light weird seems to be more an issue of the lighting in general. I was in the Stone Wave Cliffs which has a lot of caves to explore and a lot of instances where there’s a “light at the end of a tunnel”. What I noticed was the light at the end was almost too bright/overpowering and it made it impossible to see the cave around me which, while maybe accurate to what you’d experience in real life with losing night vision and whatnot, makes it really hard to see/navigate. Similarly some of the menus are noticably darker as if I would need to turn the brightness up but not every menu is like that either. Just some weirdness there and I haven’t tried that section on my PC to see if it’s just how the game is or how the Steam Deck is handling it. Otherwise though, the Deck experience is pretty good and I’m getting into it for a couple hours a night without much issue. Definitely not the cleanest/fanciest graphics but in the “good enough” camp for me that aside from the lighting woes, I don’t notice much of a problem.
No, I’m not a No Man’s Sky fan. I’m a recovering No Man’s Sky addict. If retirement exists in the future, I hope this game still exists, cuz I’m gonna ruin whatever remains of my life with it.
I also decided to give Final Fantasy VII Rebirth another chance, this time going only for the story. It’s a much better game this way even if it still feels a bit bloated. It does feel wrong tho to just ignore most of the map, even if I know it’s empty.
I was trying to finish the post Endwalker quests in Final Fantasy XIV to get to Dawntrail, but I’m not really feeling it. I’m probably burnt out on the game due to playing it for 500 hours last year.
It was alright but it felt like the flight mechanics was on rails compared to like Elite or x4. I got my money’s worth and may come back in the future but it never really got it’s hooks in me.
I restarted “Edna and Harvey: The Breakout”. Partly because I wanted to play it for a long time and partly because my pc is too weak for bigger stuff. Already started it some years ago, but took a break from the game which was a bit too long to get into it again. So now I finally restarted and am verry happy with it. The dialogues and the design is just fun. Also it is quite relaxing.
ialways come back to it when i want something chill. i am building a corvette to be a flying greenhouse, and spend too much time fishing and cooking lol
It’s enjoyable, but I’ve never been really engaged with it. There’s no progression, I don’t feel like my character, equipment, or ships are getting better even though I’m upgrading things. No planet is special, even though they’re all unique.
I think it would be better if you started out in a “settled” region with interesting factions, hand-designed planets, optional quest lines, etc. The infinite procedurally generated stuff would come into play if you push beyond the edges of known space.
Yeah and having an expansive universe with like three languages and three races of intelligent creatures, none of which seem to have any personalities just left it feeling shallow.
There’s no storyline in even the main story. It feels like a vast and lonely universe. I think procedural world generation has largely the same problem as generative AI: infinite slight varieties of responses, all of which are as bland as a HR seminar.
I’ve come to realize over time that I would prefer a completely linear story to games on the other extreme end.
What you’re suggesting sounds very interesting though, linear and more handcrafted content paired with procedural content to pad in the margins. Keep playing forever if you want to, but feel a sense of story and accomplishment in the main storyline.
Edit: that’s probably why the expeditions feel more worth playing… You bump into people because you’re all playing on the same planets, and the star systems you’re playing through are at least somewhat curated.
Yep! 1000+ hours across PC, Steamdeck and Switch 1.
I just enjoy wandering and discovering, and looking for the perfect planet. I’ll occasionally try variant survival saves, like freighterless (using exocraft for additional summonable storage).
I don’t mind the corvette ship designing feature, but I enjoy discovering and acquiring the procedurally generated ships more, or journeying to a location from NMSCE which has a particular ship or multitool.
I like that the game mechanics aren’t wholly intuitive - it occasionally adds surprise, like finding the settlement towers have a once-a-day scan function or that a particular foodstuff in the nutrient ingestor can increase mining yields.
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