I think I’ll take a break from Final Fantasy 14 for a while. The story was just so uninteresting for so long, that I just don’t want to continue right now. Everything else was good enough, the different jobs I tried were fun, but I just need to do something else.
Other than that, I started Baldurs Gate 3 with a friend, we are still relatively early, exploring the first region.
If you can get past the UI, I recommend at least trying FFXI. The stories are so good, the XIV writers spent half of SHB and EW adapting them. Kato did the scenario for the vanilla game and the first expansion, Rise of the Zilart, and his world building brilliance is at its best there. The world is so real and immersive, and there are all kinds of connections between world events and characters both big and small.
I’m good for a while, but I’ll probably go back to WoW eventually. It’s the only other MMO I’ve played (far more than FF14) and it’s basically comfort food for me. A bunch of friends also still play it, so that’s a plus as well.
Replaying Witcher 3 for the xth time. So far only ever played the base game, now I look forward to the dlcs. So far I am mostly rushing through the main quest and am now facing the wild hunt at kaer morhen. Never before reached this state with so few side quests completed 😅.
I agree. I also think 2 of the 3 endings to B&W are sort of terrible, which soured me on it a little. And the one ending I liked is kind of hidden and obnoxious to get.
B&W was like a nice vacation as Geralt headed into retirement. Pretty landscapes and some fun new skills to play with (loved that you could finally make a crossbow build work).
HoS was just pure, spooky, tragic Witcher goodness. And like you say, the fact that it’s shorter and more focused lead to the writing being tighter and the storytelling working much better.
I’ve tried the original Life Is Strange twice, and both times I >!failed to save Kate!< because I don’t have an infallible memory and quit out of anger.
Admittedly, it’s not ideal for inline spoilers, but if you really want to hide for the benefit of others, that’s they way you’re supposed to do it on Lemmy, I guess.
Looks like sync doesn’t implement lemmy spoilers correctly, and still uses reddit spoilers. But the lemmy web-ui doesn’t honour those spoilers and does them the way I showed in my comment. That’s unfortunate, because people using Sync won’t be able to effectively hide spoilers, and will potentially be spoiled on things when Lemmy users use spoilers the way the web-ui tells them to in the editor.
Thanks for the tip! Looking into it, I don’t see the game files anywhere, just mods. Do you have to pirate it? I owned it 20 years ago, but I don’t exactly have the CD’s sitting around anymore.
Nice, this is definitely going on my list. Have not found a space combat game that got close to the level of freelancer. Everspace 2 comes close, but did not have the same spark so far.
I’ve been hoping Everspace 2 turns out to be a worthy successor. The first one was fun but didn’t scratch the Freelancer itch. I haven’t played the second yet.
I think it is still worth checking out. I did not have spent much time in the finished game, but played the early access version for a while. Might be more polished an better now. And also back then it came close to the freelancer feeling, just was not quite there yet. Or maybe my memories are just better than the actual game was, they are about 20 years old now 😅
Planning on playing through Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 for the first time this week. Know almost nothing about the game, nothing about DnD rulesets, just diving directly in because a partner very highly recommended them.
Edit: Ended up buying Baldur’s Gate 3 and getting into it instead, looks like I’m gonna be playing it in 3 > 1 > 2 order. As a side note, performance was way better on Vulkan than Directx11 for me, despite common advice being to use Directx11 on Linux for the game.
They are absolutely lovely, though undeniably very old school. BG1 is more action-adventurey with a bigger emphasis on exploration, BG2 is very story-heavy. They have aged remarkably well, considering they’re over 20 years old. The handpainted backgrounds still look pretty.
With potential increased interest due to BG3, I wonder if it would be an idea to create a community for the classic Baldur’s Gates 🤔
I’d like that, or a classic CRPG community with a certain timeframe. Two of my favourite games now are the original Fallouts after playing them for the first time only a few years ago. I’d love to see more of the games from that era.
I have actually pondered a “classic gaming” or “old school games” type community for these types of (primarily) PC games from the era up to maybe 2010.
Retro Gaming communities typically focus more on old console and/or arcade type stuff.
Haha yeah same here. I guess we sit back and hope someone else takes up the mantle.
As for names, I’m not sure. There’s already some retro/vintage PC communities on SDF but they are more hardware focused. Old PC Games? Retro PC Games? The Beforetime? No idea.
Also, what would be the appropriate cutoff for the timeframe? I just threw 2010 out there, but maybe even slightly later? What is a good milestone to cut off at? I was thinking starting at 1993 with the release of Doom.
Doom seems like a solid start, it was revolutionary. You could also push it to 1990. As for an end date I’d have to think about that. 2000 or 2003 gives a 10 year range with a lot of influential releases, but might be a bit limited. If you did 2013 that’s a 20 year range, but it could also be a shifting time frame where it is for games of a certain age. If it was 10 years or older games then it would start with an end date of 2013 and the range would expand every year. The issue with that is it would lose focus on older games eventually.
I was thinking Doom as a sort of watershed moment in gaming, and going earlier than that and you could argue those titles belong on the already-existing retro gaming communities.1993 actually had both Doom and the first FIFA, it’s got a lot going for it as a start year.
Looking at releases for 2013 though we have things like GTA V, BioShock: Infinite and The Last of Us. I definitely would hesitate to call those “old school games”. 2011 has Skyrim. Does that qualify? Otherwise I’m starting to feel more drawn to the 1990-2010 timeframe; nice round numbers and should sort of capture the era of classic gaming. 2010 has Red Dead Redemption 1, Mass Effect 2 and Civilization 5. Is it fair to say those are some of the last old school games or do we need to go older? A two decade window seems good.
I agree that an open ended timeframe would lead to lost focus over time. If it’s 10+ years old as the criteria, it would mean we’re just 2 years away from The Witcher 3 qualifying for a community meant for stuff like Fallout 1&2. That just feels… wrong.
Yeah good points on open ended timeframe and the 2013 end date. 2010 seems pretty good, the only odd one out for that list would be civ 5 because it’s so widely played.
I’m in my 30s now so I have to remember that someone who was 5 in 2010 would be 18 now, and red dead redemption 1 would definitely be considered old. I think that’s a solid timeframe, 1990 to 2010. If Lemmy ever gets big enough to warrant it there could eventually be games by decades communities as well.
If you don’t care about round numbers and it being exactly two decades you could also do 1993-2009, starting with Doom and ending with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. There is a different kind of symmetry to that, and I honestly kind of like it.
The only issue I would have with a 93 start date is it excludes games like Dune, Wolfenstein 3D, and the original Civilisation, which were earlier in the 90s.
Having said that, every cut off point has its flaws, and a more focused range could lead to a more focused and spirited community. Very weird that COD:MW2 is 14 years old btw.
Very fair points as well about those games. I think maybe a looser guideline would be more appropriate than strict dates. I really like the Doom - CoD: MW2 bookending to encapsulate that golden era of gaming, but I wouldn’t delete any post about Civ 1, if I was actually running the community.
And yeah, time flies. It was equally scary earlier when I realized Witcher 3 is almost ten years old.
I just started Baldur's Gate recently and beat it minutes ago. It's not the first D&D game I've played before, but I'm far from well-versed in it. I had to Google "THAC0" a couple of times to understand what the game was trying to tell me, as well as understanding certain status effects. There's a presupposition of knowledge that the game has with its players, but it's still fairly okay at initiating people to D&D.
THAC0 is… yeah. I guess the systems take some getting used to. And it gets a little more complicated at higher levels with different layers of protective spells and counter-spells.
I already started it and bought BG3 as well. I had played Planescape: Torment about 10 years ago, so some of this was familiar, but it and Baldur's Gate have some different philosophies around things like combat and party size. One thing I'm fairly confident will be a thing of the past when I get to BG3 is trash mobs. BG1 at times feels like it's being run by an asshole DM who's out to kill the party with tons of trash mobs between rests rather than providing a good time.
Imagine you're at the table with your friends, and the DM says, "Then, from the darkness of the dungeon emerges...6 Kobolds!" You beat them, the party is pumped about it, and then the DM says, "As you press further on across the bridge, you come across...7 more Kobolds!" I'm not exactly sure what the thinking was, but between the aforementioned trash mobs and the magic casters who attack you with debilitating adverse affects that do tons of damage and take you out of the fight for like 20 straight turns, BG1 can be cheap as hell, even on easy difficulty. I get the sense that BG3 will still be difficult, but from my brief time with Divinity: Original Sin and what I've seen of BG3 footage, I'm expecting them to have more consideration for each combat encounter.
And oh yeah, BG1 also had a few areas with really narrow passageways that the AI pathfinding was not really able to adequately handle, as friendly characters would bump into each other and not be able to figure out how to move.
Yeah, these old games were kind of a wild west when it comes to design. I also love Fallout 2 to bits for example, but god damn can it feel cheap and frustrating at times. On the other hand there are loads of ways to cheese encounters, too, if you’re interested in making things easier. Backstabs, Snares, Cloudkill (and similar effects), abusing Fog of War. Almost all of BG1 can be cheesed with Skull Trap. And almost all of BG2 can be cheesed with Set Snare.
I’ve only started playing BG3, but so far it’s been a lot easier and simpler than both the old games and Divinity, which maybe is to be expected with it being based on D&D 5E rules. Compared to D:OS 2 combat has been a lot less complex and challenging. Granted I’m playing on medium difficulty. I didn’t want to start off on Tactician after the Divinity games, but maybe I need to here.
Anyway, I hope you’ll enjoy BG2. It’s one of my all-time favorite games still, and I replay it every now and again. There are so many ways to set up fun parties with loads of interactions, especially if you use the Tweak that prevents companions from killing each other even if they hate each other. Some of the best interactions are from mixed-alignment parties.
narrow passageways that the AI pathfinding was not really able to adequately handle
I must confess that these days I always play with DebugMode=1 and one of the primary reasons is to be able to use Ctrl+J to teleport the whole squad when pathfinding acts up.
I definitely organically discovered the cheese you can do with fog of war, but most of the strategies you mentioned were things that I just did not come across organically. I would love to have more of the debilitating spells that the enemy NPCs were using on me, and I did come across things like Sleep that would rarely work against an opponent challenging enough to deem it worthwhile, especially considering how many enemies you're likely to run into until your next rest compared to how many spell slots you'll have.
Summons are a really powerful way to deplete enemy spells, just send them in one by one. Summon Skeletons is good for this.
As you move onto BG2, using spells to counter enemy protections becomes more important, like using Breach to deal with Stoneskin etc. Though as a caveat, I’ve been using Sword Coast Stratagems so long I barely remember what combat is like without it.
I’m playing through Baldur’s gate 1 atm as well. I tried it and didn’t enjoy it back in the early 2000s but now I’m digging it. I still don’t like real time with pauses combat, but I can forgive it with the party size. I do wish there were other ways around things than combat most of the time though, but early DnD was primarily a dungeon crawler so that’s fine.
I have been busy this week so I have played mostly Slay the Spire. Being able to get up and walk away at any time let’s me play in my limited down time at work, or while I am working on dinner.
I’ve also been dabbling in a mobile game called To Arms.
The simplest and most likely reason is just because they don't have to. Playstation is leading Xbox by a lot this generation (so far, things can change) and PlayStation just has no incentive to add value to something they're already selling record numbers of. Xbox is trying to attract customers, customer playstation has left on the cutting room floor, and backwards compatibility is a way to do that.
Not to mention the closer you get to modern day, the more games rely on company servers to remain running. Long gone are the days of simple platformers like Super Mario Bros. Many games made in the last 15 years are multi-player games with a basic ass single player added on for ‘compliance’ reasons. It’d still be great for those that want it, but I don’t feel like I’m missing out on much that I can’t replicate myself with ROMs and emulators should the need arise.
I’m playing Sekiro for the first time and am loving it! It’s my first FromSoftware game. Mechanically it’s quite similar to Jedi Survivor, the other game I’ve been playing lately, but is a lot less friendly and more straightforward (as far as plot and other stuff going on). However, it works really well and is very enjoyable to get good at.
Xbox’s Backwards Compatibility is definitely a big deal; but as someone who loves old games as a concept and has never thrown out a console, it’s not as big a selling point as you would think/ hope.
I personally wanted to try some of the PS2/PS3 only games and didn’t have a PS3, so I bought one used a while back. I probably only logged maybe 10 hours in it before getting completely side tracked by my backlog of modern games. And while I know that’s anecdotal evidence, it really seems like the allure of classic games might not be enough of a selling point.
This is something I think Xbox had the right idea about. While BC is very useful in concept, there aren’t so many classic games that would draw people away from modern games; so you only have to support those few games.
With that in mind, I think Sony could offer BC for their relevant PS2/ PS3 exclusives since they would only need to guarantee emulator performance for a much smaller number of games. I don’t think it’s likely for Sony to do this until they are no longer the dominant console, though, as they can make more money selling their PS3 subscription service.
From a game presentation standpoint, BC is a huge issue and I would personally love to see it happen for the PS5 (and I’d like to see it expanded to all games for the Xbox as well); but I doubt there would be much return on investment for developing the BC features, and that’s the only motivation for corporations.
You’re absolutely right. However I will add to your initial point. If I could have paid an extra $100 - $150 (for the hardware) in order to have PS1-PS3 games play on my PS5, I would have just so I could have it as an option. Bonus points if the entire PS3 digital library (especially the PS1 classics) were still available.
Not the original commenter, but I did pay the extra $100-150 for the PS3 for backwards compatibility. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have. I played maybe like 3 PS2 games on it. I was far more interested in then current-gen games. I sorta got swept up in the hype of BC back in the day, especially when Sony stopped production of BC PS3s. I literally ran out and got one before they all disappeared; I still have it.
Looking back, the option wasn’t worth it. But we’re different people, different consumers. Our needs and wants differ.
Bottles as flatpak is an amazing way to run windows dependent software isolated from your main system. Flatpak will automatically bundle Wine and 32 bit library runtimes and bottles packages in DXVK (no need to enable multilib). If you use ProtonUPQT you can even get the bleeding edge GE wine as a runner for your programs in bottles.
I pirate because Steam is a garbage program for playing games and Valve is an evil company. So I pay for games in Steam but will just pirate a Non DRM-Non steam affiliated copy of the game to backup on my own local storage.
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