I came back to this, as it’s something I can play while kid wrangling.
I romped through the game once I unlocked rivers and forests. They seem to be key to winning, so don’t worry about your brain handling Roguelites, it’s just a matter of grinding and unlocking.
Went back to my memories the other day on a chat with a friend from Spain, and we remembered a game we both adored, Ascendancy. Turns out, you can download it and play it for free.
I think more than one 4X aficionado here might enjoy it…
Oooh, I used to love Ascendancy… and the recommended games at the bottom include one of my all-time-favourite games, “Dune II”! Man, that game was spectacular at the time…
Tragic that you can never go back. RTS has come so far since that original Dune 2 game (like, the ability to select more than one unit at a time!). But holy hell if it wasn’t atmospheric and just pitch-perfect… except for probably the Harkonen Super Weapon (the Hand of… something?) which was unforgivably powerful coupled with randomly inaccurate (the inaccuracy was supposed to be a balancing factor, but it just ended up being a huge RNG element that was uncontrollable).
Dune 2 was probably my favourite game RTS back then, but I preferred turn based Ascendancy or Civilization because it wasn’t so stressful. And I am playing Ascendancy now, and with the new upgrade on the AI, it is not a walk in the park any more. They can kick your ass now if you’re not careful (!)
I’m warming to the FFVII remake now. It has its quirks, but the system feels a lot smoother than XIII or XV. Each boss battle feels a lot more epic now, and I love how the details give a lot more weight to the terrorist activity. I’ve been surprised how difficult the game is too. Some quite early bosses I was necking ethers and phoenix downs like there was no tomorrow, whereas I barely used ethers at all in the original. Some bosses I had no idea how I would beat with such tiny incremental damage, but somehow you scrape through. It all feels really tense.
But there are a bunch of things I really don’t like. Mashing square to fill up the ATB bar is frustrating. I’d rather have a passively filling ATB bar regardless of your actions, especially as there are bosses later that have very limited windows to hit them. And I hate how enemy attacks interrupt characters mid-action. It allows enemies to swarm you far too easily to the point where some small enemies with annoying attacks can almost stop you getting any actions out at all. I’ve waited ages for this ATB bar and now I’ve lost it all? It’s frustrating! Also magic seems inconsistent. Fire appears to hunt enemies down, but it looks like ice and aero miss if the enemy is running around? I can’t quite understand what is happening when I unleash a powerful attack and it shows no damage.
The materia assignment is so limited you only have room for 1 or 2 elements, which means a lot of swapping in and out, and every time you meet a boss you better hope you have the right materia equipped. Otherwise you may as well Assess, then quit and reload with the right load out.
I’m kinda bummed about the Summons now. I’m still not even sure what gets them triggered to work, and then you get your summoned being fighting with you with their own abilities, which are pretty damaging to enemies, admittedly, but I kind of miss the simple use Summon → Effect happens → Continue battle formula.
Yeah, it’s awkward managing your actions to the summons versus your party. It feels quite messy compared to a single event or short automated run. If you summon then get a big knock back, then you need to spend all your actions in healing!!! Frustrating. When it works, it works really well though. Had a few boss battles where I felt like a king bringing in a summon
I’ve been successful in restricting myself from buying new games since I got the Itch bundle back in july, and only playing game. This lead to a lot of downloading, playing for a few minutes, and uninstalling games. The last one that stuck was Stranded deep, a survival game that was free on the Epic Store some times ago. But it won’t let you quit before sleeping or going back to your shelter.
Come on ! I have too many things to do, and try to squeeze some playing time in my day, but when I need to quit, I need to quit right away! It is so frustrating, and I’m amazed how many games still do that!
By the way, there is a good discount on Steam for Root right now, for those who may be interested
I picked up returnal a couple of days ago.
It is extremely good (really solid and fun 3rd person shooting mechanics with a alien/lovecrafty story vibe) but the save system or lack there of is frustrating. I was just about to clear the first level for the first time (I think) when the game crashed so I’m back to the start.
Seems crazy to me that the runs in that game are so long but there’s no way to pause and save your progress.
I’ve been playing a few games recently. Mostly multiplayer, with Deep Rock Galactic (fun dwarf diggy/shooty action), Warhammer: End Times: Vermintide (which has too many titles), Resident Evil: Operation Racoon City (terrible game, a must-play if you’re a fan of Resi 5/6), and weirdly I’ve been getting into Heroes of the Storm, all with a couple different groups of friends where we’ve been playing consistently together online since we’re still not meeting up in person. I do feel like once a game is not-terrible then playing it in multiplayer tends to make it at least a good experience, or in the case of Racoon City, the terrible game is just a different way for us to have fun and bond over laughing at it.
But mainly I’ve been playing Monster Hunter: Rise both in multiplayer and singleplayer and have sunk an embarrassing number of hours into it since it launched. It’s my current comfort game, and I feel very similarly to Errant Signal’s video on his experience with Fortnite:
I’ve been playing a huge amount of Magic: The Gathering Arena which is the best implementation of Magic that I’ve played. Despite my love of tabletop gaming, Magic is one of the very few games that I’m actually good at, and I may have a streak of masochism with my constant playing of it because, like many things we’re good at (or at least think we are), I find repeated plays end up becoming frustrating. At the start of each month I rapidly graviate through the leagues until I’m at a level where I am roughly winning and losing in equal measure (which for me is high Platinum/ low Diamond level) because, well that’s how the matchmaking system works, and the curse of Magic is that when everyone is very good, many games come down to luck. Did I draw that perfect hand where my deck performs exactly as I want it to, while my opponent just gets land or is slightly behind, or is it me that’s mana screwed/ flooded this time? The longer epic games that could go either way are few and far between (although when they happen, they’re great). Fortunately I’m shallow enough to still thoroughly enjoy drubbing my opponent even if it’s because they had to mulligan down to 5 cards and still got a crap draw. I am a deeply flawed human.
As mentioned here, I’ve also got myself an Oculus Quest 2 recently and been trying a few games on it. Subnautica is astonishing but very nausea-inducing if I’m not careful. Superhot VR and The Room VR are both wonderful and immersive in very different ways, but the VR game I’ve mostly sunk into is Elite: Dangerous. It turns out the least disorientating VR games are ones where you’re sitting in a cockpit, and E:D brings back my childhood memories of pretending I actually owned a Cobra Mk III, and the cockpit was my bedroom. VR is a much much higher fidelity version of the same fantasy, and I’m having immense fun trucking pretend space shipments to other worlds and accidentaly falling into stars. I also fully intend to get Half Life: Alyx the next time it’s on sale.
Outside of my virtual worlds and Magic addiction, I’ve been playing Pathfinder: Kingmaker and have also been greatly enjoying it. I don’t especially enjoy the fiddliness of Pathfinder at the tabletop (although I don’t hate it) but the crunchiness is just perfect for a cRPG and I’ve also been having a really fun time with it. It’s tough and unforgiving but only in the way that cRPGs were when I grew up - the difficulty is actually hitting me right in my nostalgia nugget (my nugget seems to get bigger every year, but it’s possible I should see a doctor about that rather than posting on a forum about it).
I really, really want to get into The Outer Wilds because everyone tells me how wonderful it is, but every time I try I bounce off the fiddly control system. I promise I’ll try harder soon. Also I bought Dyson Sphere Program in a recent Steam sale because it looks ace and @yashima recommended it too me. Now it sits in my library, gazing at me hopefully every time I turn on my computer. Soon, I promise, little megastructure simulator! Soon!
Your character is a new pilot and you as the player are in the same position and you both have to learn how to fly together. There is also always some gravity pulling at you which makes the ship behaving differently depending on the situation. The other astronauts are mostly crashing too 
It is just a question of practice and getting used to it. You can fly pretty precise, but it takes a while to learn it. I enjoyed flying around a lot in the end. It is fast and fun.
I’m so jealous… I picked up ME:A again because it was on sale for a song (and, for those of you out there who haven’t played it, there is a reason that it is on sale… but it’s still Mass Effect and it’s pretty good-ish).
I’m waiting for the Legendary to go on sale, and then I will happily (JOYOUSLY) romp my way through the galaxy again.
Yep, cannot wait for Legendary to be on sale!
Just to show you how nuts for Mass Effect I am, it went live for me at midnight on Friday (pre-ordered on PS4 Pro) and I embarked on a Mass Effect Weekend ending with my unlocking the Ilos mission late last night. I’ve completed nearly all of the side-quests (including Bring Down The Sky) and it has been running flawlessly so far. The ME1 inventory system is a lot easier to manage now, and being able to skip most of the elevator rides is a welcome addition (even though they are noticeably shorter even if you don’t skip them). Even more importantly, you can also choose the Legendary Mode leveling system that cuts the available levels from 60 to 30, which means you can max out your character on a single run-through and move on to the next installment. 
NB: The Mako is…still the Mako. It’s a bit better in this incarnation, but still not that great. 
Yeah. Andromeda is pretty “meh”, but I will say this: I think it has the best combat system of all the games.
I agree with that, the combat is really good in Andromeda, and I like the bosses. And, tbh, I enjoyed the story. It is not the trilogy, but I don’t dismiss it so badly as everybody else did.
Weirdly, that’s what everyone I know says about Andromeda… it makes me wonder why it got the terrible reputation in the first place. I think it just became its own story…
