newtmonkey wrote on 2026-01-09, 14:25:

Who thinks this is fun or interesting?

Yeah not me. I loved 'Divinity II Ego Draconis' but haven't been able to get into a Larian game since. BG3 had me hooked initially but lost me at some point, I need to try that one again.

Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition
I finally got through that annoying desert area, and now I'm back to curb stomping every single encounter. It's unbelievable how powerful summons are, as even low-level summons seem to upgrade based on your level. You can have one summon on the field per character, and it's very easy to get a summon skill on each character (one skill point in almost any magic school is enough). Enemies will generally ignore you to focus on your summons, and they are resilient enough that you can simply re-summon them once they get killed.

That sounds like I'm complaining, but I'm not. I like when an RPG has a bunch of options available to you, even broken ones. It can be fun to slowly figure out what works and slowly master a game; indeed, that's one of the greatest things about RPGs.

I've sort of warmed on this one. It increasingly provides you tools to take on battles that are above your level and, after the first 10 hours or so anyway, you can often just skip tough encounters if you don't want to figure them out, and come back later. It's kind of addictive running around trying to find encounters around your level, and marking down tough battles for later on your map. Having said that, this is definitely not what I look for in an RPG. I'd rather have an actual open world containing areas of fixed difficulty with random encounters like the classics (the better Ultima and Might & Magic games, for instance), than this weird metagame stuff of fixed encounters of enemies just sitting around for eternity waiting for you to hoover up their XPs so you can find the next group of enemies to kill.

The story is also boring, and the writing is some of the worst I've yet encountered; maybe even worse than the ironic hipster trash of The Outer Worlds or the total nonsense of Torment: Tides of Numenera. Even skimming this garbage is a pain in the ass.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
Legacy of the Forge DLC

This DLC has been a pleasant surprise. Only once so far have I need to forge something. Restoring the forge requires money, prestige, and happens instantly. You basically make your choices from dialog boxes. For example, a roof that is beyond your current prestige is greyed out. Choose from the available options. As you progress in the DLC, your prestige grows and more options become available.

I have recently joined the blacksmith guild and to gain prestige, you take quests from the various guild masters. Right now I am retrieving stolen documents from some bandits. You could sneak in their camp at night and steal them; you could sneak in and poison their wine and wait for them to die; you could charge in with sword drawn; or you could try to pick them off with a bow from a distance.

I chose to start with a surprise bow attack and try to take as many out as I could before they attacked. I was quickly surrounded and killed. I tried variations of this attack over the course of an hour or so. I'm so terrible at real-time combat that I will often accidentally hit the Windows key while going for CTRL, which gets my screen into a state where the enemies are beating me to a pulp while I'm helplessly trying to gain back focus of the game screen. Anyway, I noticed that if they see which direction the arrow came from, all five bandits tend to run towards me. If they *don't* see where the arrow came from, they tend to split up and search. So I'd fire and try to hit a sitting bandit, then immediately turn and run in a random direction that had lots of foliage between me and them. Eventually, I worked it out that only two bandits ended up in my direction and spotting me. I was able to fire an arrow into each before they got into melee range, which made the two-on-one combat easier. Plus, Mutt helps by distracting them. I took these two down and immediately saved the game. Then, it wasn't much harder to come across the other three searching for me and sneak another arrow or two their way. It still was tough defeating them in melee once they closed the distance, but I finally managed.

After retrieving the documents from their chest, I noticed their horse was very high level. I'd never tried stealing and selling a horse before in KCD I or II, so I thought why not. I searched the map for a horse trader, rode the horse there, but it was night by the time I got there. So I left the horse near a trough and found a place to sleep. Before I could even get to my bed, I saw the horse run off, gone, gone, gone. 😐

So, I abandoned that idea and am now about to return to the guild master to give him the stolen documents back.

Completed Tomb Raider. What a fantastic game, holds up really well. I kinda had forgotten what a sweaty palm inducer it can be, somehow this 30-year old (jesus christ) game still makes my stomach turn a bit with some of the riskier things you need to pull off! Also had forgotten what a damn gauntlet the last level is thanks to the save system, trial and error has never been something I've particularly enjoyed and the whole atlantis portion of the game starts leaning toward that a tad too much to my liking.

But I can easily forgive the game for its few shortcomings, as a whole it's in many ways an ideal game for me. Slower pace, exploration, atmosphere, great music, some combat while not being the main focus of the game, it's like it was made for me. An evergreen permaclassic for sure. Also you know how games often tend to have nightmarishly long end credits roll? This one has end credits SCREEN with six names on it, I sure as hell know which I prefer!

Meanwhile Half-Life 2 didn't end up as well, much to my surprise I started to get annoyed by it more and more until I no longer didn't find it much fun at all and quit. I don't know, a lot of different things started bugging me. Headcrabs started annoying me, Gordon's somewhat slidy movement started annoying me, those fast leapy zombies started annoying me and the whole game started feeling like one big gimmick city.

I really hope I'm just not in the mood for it, my personal preferences have changed somewhat during the years and I have ran into games I used to enjoy back in the day but for a reason or another don't anymore, but I sure as hell didn't think that could happen to HL2. Better push it to the side for now and see how it goes another time, I really did like it in the past so it deserves another chance.

Sombrero wrote on 2026-01-16, 10:21:

Meanwhile Half-Life 2 didn't end up as well, much to my surprise I started to get annoyed by it more and more until I no longer didn't find it much fun at all and quit. I don't know, a lot of different things started bugging me. Headcrabs started annoying me, Gordon's somewhat slidy movement started annoying me, those fast leapy zombies started annoying me and the whole game started feeling like one big gimmick city.

I really hope I'm just not in the mood for it, my personal preferences have changed somewhat during the years and I have ran into games I used to enjoy back in the day but for a reason or another don't anymore, but I sure as hell didn't think that could happen to HL2. Better push it to the side for now and see how it goes another time, I really did like it in the past so it deserves another chance.

I can understand, HL2 is at its best earlier in the game. the first 5 chapters were largely good for me. "We Don't Go To Ravenholm..." is where the game dips, sure its imaginative but it starts feeling a bit more gimmicky and forced. the next part with the buggy was enjoyable for me but beyond that its all felt like being funnelled into a final showdown too much. I guess that's inevitable, what else could happen, and is similar to many other games (HL, Deus Ex, Far Cry)

Maybe you're used to modern games with more freedom and less narrative funneling and puzzle orientation?

gerry wrote on 2026-01-16, 10:41:

Maybe you're used to modern games with more freedom and less narrative funneling and puzzle orientation?

I don't think so, I don't play modern games all that much (the newest game I own is from 2016), freedom tends to equal shallowness all too often and I've always liked puzzles and the like in FPS games to break the continous monotony of just shooting bad guys. HL2 is in many ways like it was designed specifically for me and that's why I've enjoyed it so much.

You know how there's been a bit of a renaissance of old school shooters, maybe I'm now too hankering for the good old days of here's a shotgun and there's a level full of people to shoot, go have fun design. At least currently.

Persona 3 Reload

Finished! There's a lot of content here, and I think first time players could potentially sink 100+ hours into this game. I played through the original PS2 version a few times in the past, so it didn't take me that long to complete this run, since I was already familiar with the story and gameplay. If you know what you're doing, standard combat encounters take far less time here, because you now control the entire party. And there is a "fast forward" button for quickly skipping through dialog, if you've already seen it before.

I don't really want to talk about the plot, since pretty much everything would be a spoiler. So I'll just say that it's well written, very memorable, and that it can make you think about some important things. The pacing is kinda weird though, especially in the beginning, and it takes a while to get things going. Also, the social links of most characters are quite interesting and well worth exploring. Getting to know these people better, especially the ones outside of your party, is one of the highlights of this game. And all of them being fully voiced makes that even more satisfying now.

What I will talk about is the game's music, which is very good. It remains largely unchanged from the original release, other than being re-recorded in higher quality. There are a few bangers on that OST that I wouldn't mind listening to outside of the game, such as Battle Hymn of the Soul for example. Additionally, I like how the songs that play in the city areas become less cheerful and more somber as you approach the final stretch. This makes sense from a narrative standpoint, given what's happening in the gameworld at that time. I also a have to praise Reload's art style. Specifically, altering the characters' 3D models from the cutesy childish look to a somewhat realistic portrayal, which more closely matches their hand drawn portraits. Might be a matter of personal preference, but I really like this change.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with Persona 3 Reload. It's a fine remake which upgrades the graphics and introduces some quality of life improvements, while keeping most other things the same. If I really had to nitpick, I didn't like that a few FMVs were replaced with in-engine cutscenes. Those look a bit goofy, and sometimes don't properly convey the emotions of the characters. Otherwise, I don't have any major complaints about this remake. That said, due to its grind heavy gameplay, I wouldn't recommend Persona 3 (any version) as a starting point to someone who wants to try these games for the first time. Instead, I'd suggest they play the far superior Persona 5, and if they end up liking that one, maybe give the other ones a shot afterwards.

Gave a spin of Tomb Raider: Unfinished Business but had to bail out. Since the expansion was released only for the PC version it therefore inherited free manual saving and it seems to me it was balanced with that in mind. And I tried the unofficial PS1 version someone had hacked into PS1 version of TR1, which in turn means it has save points in places the hacker thought appropriate.

The expansion pretty clearly follows the old "expansions are supposed to be difficult" mindset, even the very first level was full of traps. Doesn't gel terribly well with fixed savepoints. Also while it otherwise seemed to work well I did notice at one place two crocodiles got somehow stuck while swimming, so it doesn't seem to be 100% perfect conversion. Unless that can happen on the PC version too I guess.

I decided to forget the PS1 hack and maybe check out official PC version in the future if I ever feel like experiencing the PC versions, which is something that has crossed my mind once or twice in the past.

Demon's Souls

I visited the Tower of Latria, specifically its first level with all the prisoners. The Mind Flayer and Horde enemies here had some nasty melee attacks, which did kill me a few times. Fortunately, I've been upgrading the longbow that I previously used to farm the Reaper, and it allowed me to take them out from a safe distance on subsequent attempts. It seems like this game puts a bit more emphasis on ranged combat than its successors.

Navigating the cramped, labyrinthine corridors of this place was kinda tedious. And that bridge with the arrow trap caught me off guard, so looked up how to bypass it. Not sure if it's just me, but I'm not really digging the level design in Demon's Souls, especially when compared to DS1 and even DS2. In fact, I'd rather replay the "worst" levels of DS2 (e.g. The Gutter and Shrine of Amana) than stumble through this maze of a prison one more time. Same goes for those confusing caves beneath Stonefang Tunnel. Give me DS2 any day of the week, at least it has bonfires.

Anyway, I finally got to the area boss, that being the False Idol. Gotta admit, her intro sequence was pretty cool. I already killed the servant who wanted to revive her, so I had little trouble with this fight. Her stun attacks were annoying, but aside from those, she didn't pose too much of a threat. The upgraded Dragon Long Sword made short work of this floating lady, and I went back to the Nexus for some well deserved rest. Yeah, this level took way too long.

And I'm officially dropping Demon's Souls. Sorry guys, this game just isn't fun for me, and I feel like I'm forcing myself to play it. My biggest issues were with the level design, lack of bonfires and gimmicky bosses. I just reached the Maneater and got knocked off the platform twice in a row, by an off screen attack that I had no chance of seeing. That's a bit too much for my taste, so I'm going to peace out.

For me, the first Dark Souls is a quantum leap over this game in terms of quality. I know tastes vary and all that, but that's how I honestly see it. To me, Demon's Souls feels like an unpolished beta version of DS1, and I'm just not having fun with it. I gave it a fair shot, but it's time to move on.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-01-19, 18:01:

And I'm officially dropping Demon's Souls. Sorry guys, this game just isn't fun for me, and I feel like I'm forcing myself to play it. My biggest issues were with the level design, lack of bonfires and gimmicky bosses. I just reached the Maneater and got knocked off the platform twice in a row, by an off screen attack that I had no chance of seeing. That's a bit too much for my taste, so I'm going to peace out.

For me, the first Dark Souls is a quantum leap over this game in terms of quality. I know tastes vary and all that, but that's how I honestly see it. To me, Demon's Souls feels like an unpolished beta version of DS1, and I'm just not having fun with it. I gave it a fair shot, but it's time to move on.

All the souls games feel like unpolished beta versions of a better action game to me.

Shagittarius wrote on 2026-01-19, 18:19:

All the souls games feel like unpolished beta versions of a better action game to me.

Thing is, I really like Dark Souls 1. There were only two years between it and Demon's Souls, so I figured I'd probably enjoy that too. And while there are indeed many similarities, the execution is just so much better in DS1, at least for me.

To put it in retro PC terms, the improvements are like going from an S3 Virge (Demon's Souls) to a 3DFX Voodoo (Dark Souls 1).

Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition
I finally completed this monster of a game just now. The in-game timer read just under 94 hours at the end, but I ended up using Cheat Engine halfway through to play the game at 2x speed, so it actually took me around 70 hours to play through the entire game (after many, many false starts).

I have mixed feelings about this one. The story is so dull that I had trouble maintaining interest anytime I wasn't exploring or slaying monsters. The writing (all of it is dialog) is unbelievably bad, perhaps even worse than the hipster trash of Torment: Tides of Numenera, which until now was my low bar for writing in games. With this game, you either get jokey characters written by people with no sense of humor, or ridiculously flowery language that feels like reading a parody.

So you do not play this game for its story or writing, but instead for its exploration and combat. The game has fixed encounters only, with each encounter consisting of a certain group of enemies of a certain level. At first, this really gates your progress. Fighting an encounter of enemies even a single level above you can be anywhere from unbelievably difficult to impossible during the first 5 or 10 hours, so the game ends up feeling very linear, with you running around trying to find that last encounter at your level so you can beat it and level up.

This thankfully doesn't last the entire game. It really opens up around 10-15 hours in, and as you gain more abilities and spells, you start to become powerful enough where you can somewhat easily defeat encounters one or two levels above you. Even better, although the game does have a lot of "boss" encounters, you're never forced to beat one of these simply to progress in the game (after the first 10 hours or so). If you're having a lot of trouble with some boss, you can just head off to the next area, do some exploring and leveling, and then return to wipe the floor with it.

I really liked how the skill/spell system works. The game uses a classless system, where you gain skill points each time you level up. Simply spending a single skill point is enough to open up any skill category, so you can easily add some basic spell schools to your fighter or some basic archery skills to your wizard. Once you realize this, the game just opens right up, because a lot of the skills and spells have uses even outside of combat. It felt really satisfying to figure out how the game works and conquer it.

Although I ended up with mixed feeling on this one, I am looking forward to playing its sequel to see if it improves anything, and I'll eventually play through Baldur's Gate III (aka Divinity: Original Sin III).

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-01-19, 18:01:

And I'm officially dropping Demon's Souls. Sorry guys, this game just isn't fun for me, and I feel like I'm forcing myself to play it. My biggest issues were with the level design, lack of bonfires and gimmicky bosses. I just reached the Maneater and got knocked off the platform twice in a row, by an off screen attack that I had no chance of seeing. That's a bit too much for my taste, so I'm going to peace out.

For me, the first Dark Souls is a quantum leap over this game in terms of quality. I know tastes vary and all that, but that's how I honestly see it. To me, Demon's Souls feels like an unpolished beta version of DS1, and I'm just not having fun with it. I gave it a fair shot, but it's time to move on.

That's sad to hear! I was hoping you'd get more enjoyment out of this one. Having said that, I think the only areas I really like are Boleteria Castle and Tower of Latria (it's basically a survival horror level), with the rest being either fun gimmicks or somewhat frustrating gauntlets (and the Maneater battle is really awful). It might be worth taking a break and revisiting the game someday, because it really has an interesting, sad story, with the true final battle being a real punch to the gut.

Are you thinking of starting up Dark Souls III, or are you going to take a break from the series?

newtmonkey wrote on 2026-01-19, 19:03:

That's sad to hear! I was hoping you'd get more enjoyment out of this one. Having said that, I think the only areas I really like are Boleteria Castle and Tower of Latria (it's basically a survival horror level), with the rest being either fun gimmicks or somewhat frustrating gauntlets (and the Maneater battle is really awful). It might be worth taking a break and revisiting the game someday, because it really has an interesting, sad story, with the true final battle being a real punch to the gut.

I kept my saves, but I'll be honest, it's hard for me to imagine ever revisiting Demon's Souls. Never say never and all that, but it didn't really grab me at the start, and it only got worse from there.

newtmonkey wrote on 2026-01-19, 19:03:

Are you thinking of starting up Dark Souls III, or are you going to take a break from the series?

Next is Dark Souls 3, followed by Bloodborne and then Elden Ring. I'm not sure about Sekiro yet, since it's supposedly different from the more traditional Soulsborne games.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-01-19, 19:08:

Next is Dark Souls 3, followed by Bloodborne and then Elden Ring. I'm not sure about Sekiro yet, since it's supposedly different from the more traditional Soulsborne games.

I'm looking forward to reading your thoughts on DS3 😀. I really didn't care for Bloodborne or Sekiro, because of the lack of character builds. It'll be interesting to see your reaction. Elden Ring is basically Dark Souls in a giant open world, which sounds awesome, but I lost interest 20 hours in. I really need to get back into that one!

playing minecraft because im stuck indoors due to lake snow... god i used to feel awesome being in my room but now i dont have the motivation

Dark Souls 3

Currently playing this, and the similarities to Dark Souls 1 are very evident (and very welcome). In fact, it kinda feels like a direct follow up to that game. I mean, you start off near Firelink Shrine, and even Andre the blacksmith is there. And that's just what happens at the very beginning, so I imagine we'll get more DS1 references later on. The controls are very responsive, and movement/dodging feels smooth right out of the box. One notable change is that fast travel now works from the start, which is much appreciated. The graphical upgrades are neat as well, especially those water reflections.

I chose Warrior as my starting class, just like in DS1 and DS2. Probably going to try a strength build once again, and see how that goes. The combat does seem faster paced here, which became evident even with the tutorial boss. This began as a pretty straightforward battle against a huge knight, but then he got taken over by Venom from Marvel Comics or something, and started spazzing out randomly. I didn't have too many problems here, but I definitively felt the increased speed. And it's not just bosses, regular enemies seem to attack faster too.

Anyway, the first area after Firelink Shrine reminded me of DS1's Undead Burg. Heck, there's even a dragon torching up the place, with a Claymore right next to it. This was the weapon that I used to beat DS1, and I'm liking it here as well. With the shiny new sword in hand, I made my way to the first proper boss, that metal dog thing with the frosty mace. I did have a summoned NPC for help, so this wasn't too hard, but the faster combat pace was once again very noticeable. So far I'm doing ok, but I wonder if the speed will keep increasing even further. Not sure what to make of that yet.

Dark Souls 3

So far, this game seems a bit more linear than its predecessors. There's a limited number of locations that you can visit at the start, so you can't wander around the world as you please like in DS1. It's not that bad though, since the area I just completed (Undead Settlement) was huge. It consisted of several mini-locales, all of which had some interesting things to see, and there were plenty of bonfires all around.

The boss of this area was a weird looking tree, which almost gave me Bed of Chaos flashbacks. Fortunately, it was nowhere near as bad, though you do need to target specific weak points on its body to take it down. I applied some pine resin to my Claymore for extra fire damage, and this rotten pile of wood went down without a hitch. The item that it dropped allows one of the NPCs to forge boss souls into powerful weapons. So I made an icy mace from the metal doggo's soul, but it's too slow for my liking, and I can only wield it two handed at this time. Think I'll keep it as a backup option.

The Claymore remains my primary weapon, and I've been steadily upgrading it with titanite shards, so it does some pretty decent damage now. I really like how this sword handles, and its moveset is almost the same as in DS1, so it feels very familiar to me. I also got a nice shield with high physical damage resistance from one of those knights with red capes. While leveling up, I've mostly been assigning points to strength, vigor, endurance and vitality, and that has served me well so far.

My tanky strongman build was coming along nicely, when I noticed something odd: poise seems to work differently here compared to DS1 and DS2. It's somehow less effective, and I often get stunned even by low level enemies. Not exactly a fan of this change, as I usually go for heavy armor so that I can fight without getting disrupted. On the plus side, I think my Claymore can stagger enemies more easily now as well, especially when wielded with both hands. Maybe I just need to get used to this new system.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on Today, 09:21:

Dark Souls 3

So far, this game seems a bit more linear than its predecessors. There's a limited number of locations that you can visit at the start, so you can't wander around the world as you please like in DS1. It's not that bad though, since the area I just completed (Undead Settlement) was huge. It consisted of several mini-locales, all of which had some interesting things to see, and there were plenty of bonfires all around.

Out of curiosity, how does the exploration work in these games? Are the areas gated by high level or otherwise difficult enemies giving you an "open world" but with a clear intended path or can you more or less choose a direction freely?

-

Going through my pile of games to see what sticks.

Gave a shot of Mass Effect 2 after noticing it's now been over ten years since the last time I've played it, but no go. Too much talking, looks like I could use something more hi-octane after coming from slow paced Tomb Raider. But I did notice there's now a fantastic mod that makes you win all the minigames immediately after starting one while also increasing the planet scanning probes to cover the entire planet, so it scans everything with a single probe! Those damn minigames are such a huge pain in the ass, I used to modify my save to give myself enough minerals to last the entire game just to avoid having to suffer the stupid planet scanning, but there was no escaping from the other minigames. That mod fixes both issues and it works great, became a must have for me immediately.

Next I grabbed Shadow Warrior 2013, the reboot of the old Build engine game. I've played it through once before years ago and remembered having a good time with it, but looks like things have changed. At first it was really fun, I'm clearly prone to like melee "FPS" games and there's not exactly an abundance of games like that out there, but didn't take long for me to start noticing the cracks.

First of all there's a woeful shortage of special katana attacks, just three and one of those three is a ranged attack which I used way less than the other two. So I ended up using just two attacks, one single target and one surround attack for 95% of the time. Gets very repetitive and boring. There are guns too, but they are mostly for support, like taking out targets from a distance or against flying enemies. They aren't terribly fun to use nor particularly effective, though the double barrel shotgun that can be upgraded to have four barrels might be better. Didn't get far enough to get it and I don't remember how good it was.

It has other issues too, the level design is not amazing, visually the game is incredibly busy unless you disable a ton of post-processing crap and the character of Lo Wang isn't great in this game, There's arcade machines here and there that spew out onliners from the original game and they have been much funnier than anything he says in this reboot. The humor just isn't that great. Well, one chinese cracker did give me a smile; "You are never too old to learn something stupid". I don't know, that somehow resonates with me.

But it's not all bad, cutting down high amounts of enemies with a katana can be fun as long you don't mind the limited attack set, there a lot to upgrade and skills to unlock and you know those parts of classic Doom levels you can find in Doom 2016? Shadow Warrior 2013 did that first.

I'd recommend people to give it a try if it sounds like something you'd like, but you should pick it up from a big sale and having a budget game mindset wouldn't hurt. Looks like I no longer find it as fun as I used to, but I did enjoy it when I played it the first time.