We’ve been in an indie game boom for a while, so you should have a pretty huge variety of amazing titles to choose from. I’ve been mixing in indies with Patient Gaming of older AAA/big name titles and having a blast.
It’s been fun to follow this past year! You’ve been through some bangers, I have an equal love for the Alan Wake games and the New Vegas DLCs are some of the best in gaming imo.
It’s been a very pleasant and cozy daily routine to read, even though I admit I am more interested whenever you’re playing something new and giving your insights and first impressions.
Regardless though these posts have been a fixture of Lemmy I appreciate, so thank you for your persistence!
Any game that allows for a significant amount of visual customisation should have some sort of transmog system. Having to look like a clown for optimal stats is never a fun or enjoyable gameplay experience, while on the other hand feeling like you look awesome adds so much.
If you want to be optimal you should be looking out for the Green Gear (Witcher Sets). They are all obscenely broken compared to other gear, to the point where they invalidate almost every unique item in the game. It’s one of the things I hate about the game. For the most part, gear is just a matter of picking the Witcher set that matches your build and play style.
There is a unique Steel Sword you can get at the end of Hearts of Stone depending on your choices that is actually quite good due to its unique ability. Definitely good enough to use for all of Blood and Wine. You can also get a unique Silver Sword in B&W that is very good, though it’s a quest reward that can take a while.
New Moon trousers are not bad, and the Nilfgaardian Guardsman Gauntlets are actually insane gloves, so look out for those. You should still use Witcher gear for the other two armour pieces though, for the set bonus.
Isn’t Celeste supposed to be rather difficult? Or is that the Ori games? Or both? Regardless, I don’t think I’ll ever play these games sadly as I’m not a god gamer, and I especially suck at platforming. Same reason I don’t think I’ll ever attempt Hollow Knight either.
Both look really cool, but I am really not a big platformer guy so I’m unsure. Inside is 90% off on GOG though so might pick it up for a dollar and a half. Limbo is full price and even though it’s just $10 I don’t know that I’d like it enough. How hard is the platforming and the puzzles?
I just finished Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree today, after having to go to bed last night in the midst of fighting the last boss and coming back fresh today. That second phase definitely took me for a spin, or at least it did my particular build. Maybe a ranged build would have had an easier time. It was still a cool fight though, and that first phase was pretty much perfect.
I had a really good time with this game. The Soulslike Metroidvania with a PoE style skill tree ended up tickling me juuust right. I love theorycrafting and making builds, and it ended up being amazingly fun in this game. There is some interesting synergy you can setup by mixing and matching various classes’ skill trees, and I’m already thinking about a potential second playthrough. Though I’m actually equally tempted by going straight into NG+, as my Chaos daggers build with two teleport skills ended up being super fun to play.
I definitely recommend it, especially if you like these kinds of games. My playtime ended up at just over 40h, though that was with me exploring basically 100% and finding all the optional bosses. Not bad for a €40 game, and if you can get it on sale I’d call it a bargain.
I have very mixed feelings about it. I also adored the art and setting, and I really appreciate the historical research that has gone into making it. And there were some well written characters in there.
But man, the game is sloooooow. The last act in particular was like pulling teeth. Reading is fine when what you’re reading about is interesting. There were so many banal, shallow and uninteresting conversations in there that really tested my patience.
I just played through Pentiment and even on the fastest speed dialogues were painfully slow. It wouldn’t fix all the other pacing issues, but the text popping up instantly would be a huge improvement.