I absolutely love this type of post! If there is interest I would definitely be down to make this another weekly stickied thing alongside the other thread. Anyone feel free to chime in if they want to see that
I was hoping to get some conversation going and it seems to have worked out well! I would love to help out / keep posting these kinds of things regularly. People could dm possible candidates for the next post or put them at the end of their comments. I’m also interested to do this for games that I know are popular but that I don’t play, always fun to hear people being passionate about stuff :).
I prefer more casual games, but I do like Slay the Spire. I don’t think I’ve tried to get past A4. I got bored with it a while back and downloaded expansions. I LOVE Downfall and kinda like PackMaster, too. If I am feeling lazy, I will do a custom run and pick my starting cards, and choose ‘slow’ and ‘big game hunter’ options as well. It makes me overpowered, but – again – is enjoyably casual for a change.
My last game was exhausting. Years of cryptic lore, mediocre tie-in properties we pretended were good, pvp you could opt out of midstream by switching off your router, a sandbox that one player characterized as "as wide as the universe and one inch deep."
So, I thought I'd try something completely different, and that different thing, god help me, is Evony.
I beat Final Fantasy 2. It's good, definitely one of the better JRPG stories for me, although some parts could definitely be improved if they were a bit more fleshed out. The main characters are really lame, but the supporting cast makes up for it somewhat. The magic system is pretty bad, since there are a gazillion different spells, most of them useless, but even if you wanted to use them, you'd have to level up each one separately for every character. Even the auto battle can't really save that.
Then Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor made it to Early Access, but right now it's pretty disappointing. I've done a dozen or so runs, but all four classes feel just really weak, even on the lowest difficulty. There is some meta progression, but they improve your character so little, and get really expensive, really quickly, that I don't think it'll make that much of a difference. I'll give it some a bit more time, maybe unlock a few more things, since I like the DRG Theme, but will probably shelve it soon and go back to Soulstone Survivors, Vampire Survivors or the dozen other games like this I haven't played yet.
Next, after like a 10-month break, I'm back to Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin. Playing through FF1 really made me play this again. Back when it was released on Steam, I made it through the base game and started on the first DLC, but the then new Bahamut difficulty was a bit too much for me at the time. By that point you can't just overpower everything with better gear anymore, but need to pay attention to your build and stats. I still need to wrap my head around things more, although it kinda sucks, since there are very little guides on the internet to help with that. Most information is for the endgame on the highest difficulty, which doesn't help me that much. There is a kind of "easy mode" called Extra Mode, which (in combination with certain gear that you get) will make you basically permanently invincible, and everyone and their mom recommends to just use that to get to the endgame (where the real game begins hurr durr). I don't want to do that, so I have to crawl through Discord channels, which really sucks, so I can get the basics.
I also tried Helldivers 2, but it's kinda unplayable on Steam, unless you have a group of friends to make a private lobby with, or are willing to manually add random people to your friends list, both of which is a no for me dawg. Matchmaking in this game is broken and doesn't work, if you can even make it into the game. I have no idea how this isn't talked about more, considering other games get clowned on for far less. I'll give it a more few days, but I'm not very hopeful, since it's already been over a week, and will probably refund it.
I’ve only had issues connecting in Helldivers once so far, aside from the quick matching. On the other hand, some of the friends I’ve played with have been having constant problems. Not sure what’s up with that.
I could deal with server queues, I've played WoW. Broken matchmaking is definitely a dealbreaker for me though, since none of my friends play the game.
I've refunded the game now and might check it out later, since I just don't really see it working properly anytime soon.
It’s good to see those who are willing to vote with their wallets. I’m still very much playing helldivers 2. The matchmaking was recently broken and will likely be fixed before the mid week, though it certainly hurt those who just tried it out.
Matchmaking being down means I have to coordinate with the folks I know who are also playing. Thankfully for me, I have plenty of options.
Helldivers 2 was the only game I played this past week.
It clearly has a few major issues, but I’m having a ball, even when the defense mission types are completely busted and the game seemingly isn’t satisfied until it hits the cap for enemies and maintains it.
Alan Wake 2 is an amazing game, I'm glad you're enjoying it. There's nothing that I've played from Remedy that hasn't been great.
I finally finished Vampyr, and I actually managed to get an ending that I hadn't before, so that was pretty nice.
Diablo 4: Season 3 - Nightmare dungeons/vaults for days. But I'm on the verge of getting sick of it, so I'm going to take a little step back and switch my focus back to D3 (which I've been neglecting) for a few days.
My next game outside of Diablo is going to be the Dead Space remake. I've put it off long enough, and I'm ready to visit the Ishimura again.
I love Slay the Spire. It’s been a while since I played it on PC but nowadays I play it on my phone or tablet every now and then. I backed the Slay the Spire boardgame on Kickstarter that will be shipped some time soon and I can’t wait to try it out.
I think the max I got was Ascension 6, I’m not that good at deck builders I think. The Silent and Ironclad are my favourites and I play whatever fits my mood. Getting insane high block together body slam is just as much fun as getting insanely high poison stacks. I never once made it through act 4 sadly.
The music is also something I really enjoy, it fits the game so well! Sometimes I listen to it while driving or working.
You can totally do act 4, I believe in you! Just make sure to remove weak cards (strikes) whenever you can. And try to get enough card draw (an upgraded Pommel Strike does damage and draws 2 cards for example).
I have played it a decent amount, but I probably wouldn't still play it if it wasn't also on my iPhone (there's a "plus" on Apple Arcade that looks identical, too).
I like Monster Train better mechanically for the reason that it does feel like there's a lot more variety, though I dislike how short the runs are to build a deck with. (I'd like Slay the Spire to go longer on a good run, too).
I haven't been too far on ascensions. I don't think they're really more entertaining. I mostly do the daily runs because at least there's variety there.
Sure there aren’t that many cards but those cards are so well balanced. Every single card has its uses so you’re constantly presented with interesting decisions. It feels like almost every other roguelike has dead time where you’re just going through the motions whereas in slay the spire you’re making decisions from floor 1.
I find there’s a lot less variety in my monster train runs. Most classes have a distinctly best strategy and the artifacts generally also funnel you towards that strategy. For example, I can’t remember the last time I played an Umbra run that didn’t set up a morsel engine behind a warden or alloyed construct - as far as I’m concerned, those are the same strategy, it doesn’t feel different. The only other build I think is viable is just “play Shadowsiege,” which rarely happens early enough to build for it.
Every class in STS has at least three viable archetypes and almost every run within those archetypes still feels different to me.
More RDR2 this week, still haven’t finished Chapter 2 as there is just an unbelievable amount of stuff to be distracted by. Apart from further fiddling with some mods I’ve just been enjoying my time hunting and fishing and completing challenges, events and side missions.
I might need to lay off the pursuit of the challenges as they seem extremely grindy and I don’t want to burn out before I finish the story, but so far it’s not started to wear me down and I’ve been enjoying just playing poker with the boys and whatnot.
I almost exclusively play for A20 heart kills. I play all 4 classes but in a “whichever I feel like today” way. I tried rotating between the characters for a while and really didn’t enjoy playing silent or watcher while in the wrong mood for those classes.
My favorite deck in recent memory was probably a silent discard combo with Grand Finale as the only damage-dealing card in the deck. My favorite archetype in general is probably ice defect. A good all-you-can-eat ironclad run is great too.
I don’t think I agree that STS is especially well balanced - some regular hallway combats do irrationally more damage on average even to players much better than me (for example, floor one jaw worms or any act 3 darklings). In general, the game could be quite a bit harder on A20 and still be fun for players who want a challenge. It’s also weird to me that A1 makes the game easier compared to A0. Between the classes, there is a class which is clearly stronger than the others. However I also don’t think this is a bad thing. Imbalances create more opportunities for new experiences, and for different kinds of players to have different kinds of fun. And that certainly agrees with “infinite replayability.” I’m sure in 5 years’ time I will still be seeing interactions I’ve never seen before.
Ironclad is my first and still my favorite class, strength scaling is just so satisfying when even your strikes start to do insane damage. I also love entrench to get very high block and then body slam to turn that into damage :).
Ironclad is so good to rely back on for consistent builds, I feel like. I think I have the most fun with The Silent and The Defect, personally, but Ironclad runs are just so straightforward and there’s so many good builds.
I mostly play it as a kind of chill casual game. I like to do endless more on ascension 1 and slowly build up the most broken deck imaginable (there’s many options). I just stop when I get bored of it, I usually don’t die ever on endless if I made it past the initial run.
This week I have discovered the joys of Slime Rancher. There is something about an adorable slime with a face bouncing past me going “whee!” that makes life worth living. They’re just so happy. Except when they’re scared of something. I don’t like it when they’re scared, and this must be prevented at all costs.
I played a bit more Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice ahead of the sequel in a few months. There are a few major components to the game's core loop, and the one I'm not thrilled with is its hidden object puzzles, but the rest of it is working for me.
When I've got some podcasts to get through, Palworld has proven to be a great second screen game. There are some things I'd like to see them tweak about the progression, but they're very small complaints thus far. Ultimately, this game is working for me in a way that Pokemon hasn't in about 20 years.
I thought I would take a break from Pillars of Eternity after finishing the first game, because it did become quite exhausting late in the game, but after a discussion with some friends, I ended up excited to jump right into Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, and so far, it's answering nearly all of my issues with the first game. For one, more quests can be resolved by being clever and avoiding combat, plus when the combat does happen, it's far more readable. As a blessing from the gods themselves, the quest log also lets you know if a quest is too high level for you, so you know which content is intended for your current level without checking it out early and dying to an enemy mob in a few seconds.
Ahead of Combo Breaker, I'm also back on the Skullgirls grind. My Black Dahlia mix and setplay are weak, and I'm giving my opponents too many opportunities to take their turn back, so I need to tighten that up.
I played through Hellblade recently and mostly loved it. I do however, agree that the quality of the hidden object puzzles vary a lot and there are a few too many of them. Sometimes it feels more like padding than enjoyable content.
I also wish the combat was slightly more demanding and involved. They have an amazing foundation with fantastic animations and a surprisingly robust combo system that just never actually demands you to explore its depths and nuances. The focus mechanic is also a little too powerful, which again doesn’t encourage you to utilise the combo system. More enemy/boss variety and more refined enemy movements would also be preferable, but they were working on a small budget so it’s understandable. It feels like they were so close to something amazing, and that makes me very hopeful for the sequel.
Yeah, I haven't seen any combo system. Following up a light with another hit is always that same jumping spin slash. If there's more depth there, the game didn't want to tell me about it. Likewise, when they had that developer direct, they said they were improving the combat system but with no description of how they were doing so; just a lot of fluff talk that was kind of about nothing. As for the puzzles, I like the ones that aren't just finding the symbols in the environment. Those puzzles can actually be reasoned out, as opposed to the symbols where plenty of things look like those shapes and they just picked one that they felt was the best fit for it, so I mostly just end up waiting for the game to inform me whether I'm hotter or colder as I get close to the magic spot.
This game also does something that I haven't seen many games do that always seemed like a natural evolution of story-driven games. The industry, operating at this level of production value, for the most part ended up going open world, even and especially for games that were better off being smaller and linear, and that's a real bummer. If you keep things small and linear, you can start loading the next scene while the current one is still playing, and then you can seamlessly cut to the next scene much like a movie would, but you get all the benefits of rendering the game in real time. This shouldn't be so rare, but the industry's obsession with being "bigger" made it rare.
Yeah the game never even hints at any combo system, though to be fair they never explain any mechanics (I guess in pursuit of immersion).
This video is not completely exhaustive, but goes through a fair amount of combos. In general, you can always interrupt a combo after the 1st, 2nd or 3rd attack with the melee button to punch/kick and follow up with a different two-attack combo. The finisher where Senua impales the enemy and pushes off with her foot can also be interrupted and extended by pressing light attack three times (which I don’t think the video covers).
I didn’t completely hate the find-the-symbol puzzles but they were definitely not particularly interesting. I think moments like the >!blind trial!< were where the game really shone. >!Navigating purely off of sound and controller vibration and avoiding the monsters in the dark!< is an experience that will stay with me for a while.
Completely agreed about the linear structure, I always thought it was the success of Witcher 3 that started an open-world craze, but regardless of where it came from it definitely ended up negatively impacting some games.
In general I think Ninja Theory did an amazing job at hiding the budget constraints. Another great example is the use of superimposed footage of live action instead of attempting to render characters and doing it poorly. The overall length of the game is also a part of this; they didn’t attempt to stretch too far and spread too thin but instead just made something brief but with the best quality they could. The game is short, but it didn’t feel too short. It felt perfectly measured for the story they were trying to tell.
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