Been playing absolum with my buddy, as well as playing Tainted Grail since it was on sale. Absolum is an incredible co-op game, and tainted grail surprised me with how much I’ve enjoyed it. Really happy with them both all around.

Facts. I had a 12 hour day yesterday. I wish I was full of cheese, only full of sadness.

You really gotta be willing to slam your head against the game for a while in the first one. I say this as a person who loves KCD, I rage quit/uninstalled the first one multiple times.

The second one is far more accessible and smooth than the first while still remaining as wildly ambitious and satisfying (or more) than the first. Sadly, to get the best experience you have to suffer through the first…which is a great game but yeah, tons of friction and I don’t blame you.

Flaming giant guy being so early in Sekiro is actually a totally fair reason to drop it. I STILL cheese him years later because his grab hitboxes are so shit, he is one of the only enemies in the game I feel are indefensible garbage.

The Friede fight was also my first biggest souls like fatigue moment. Such a long boss fight and I didn’t really enjoy…any of it. I know she is probably a good boss by from soft standards but damn if I don’t find her 3-phases exhausting. She made me take a month break til I came back and beat her.

I feel like Gael, the final boss of The Ringed City, is absolutely NOT exhausting because he isn’t visually phased into 3 healthbars. He just has 1 fucking huge one and awesome in combat phase changes and settings. They are a good comparison cause I still hate Friede to this day, but like Gael.

It’s probably my second favorite fromsoft after bloodborne and it’s a shame, but I totally see how some people can experience the game this way. In the end the game is just pattern recognition of bosses and how well you can parry, once you learn that the game is practically “solved” but I like that style.

Totally understand your perspective, because it is def the only souls game where you are forced to play a certain way, if you don’t it will be suffering.

I used to play every souls like, I started with dark souls in my teens and played every single one, even went back for demon souls. My favorites (and the only from soft I still play) are bloodborne and Sekiro.

I got to Elden Ring and I was honestly already burnt out on the style. I managed to force myself through 99% of the game, got probably 90% of the way through the final boss’s health bar (terrible boss IMO) after a couple fights and my desire to play souls games just…died. I don’t think I ever went back and beat it.

Seems like eventually the “excitement” on beating bosses just…went away for me in souls games. It is still there for games more actiony, where it feels like there is more to learn on the player side than the boss side. Nioh has never gotten old to me, because the weapons are complex and the game is begging you to break it. Games like DMC5 and Ninja Gaiden 4 (which I beat last night, so much fun) have so much more for the player to learn of their own skillset than a souls game and they remain infinitely more interesting to me.

He made a pretty solid argument (I say this as someone with no interest in CoD so that’s my perspective) that the entire game was the first CoD built with AI “assistance” from the ground up. Probably by force by management.

If I wasn’t already totally uninterested in CoD that video certainly killed any interest I had in it. Kinda refreshing to see someone so vehemently against a shitty product that they feel it is a “moral good” just to tell OTHER PEOPLE not to buy it.

Really love the moonman talking to you on every boot up. I always find myself looking forward to seeing what he says.

Damn and I was going to post in this thread that my friend BOUGHT this game for me even though I said I wouldn’t enjoy it, and lo and behold, my girlfriend and I have barely enjoyed outside the prologue of Expedition 33. I’m most of the way through act 2 I think? And I just dropped it. I’ll finish it someday to finalize my feelings but they are pretty negative, and everything i’ve heard from other people is not improving my opinion. Just not my type of game I guess

Yeah I tried Haste last next fest before it’s release too…just judging off the demo, it’s a good idea but not my kind of game. The roguelike mechanics don’t really add that much to the whole game, you’re still going to be doing practically the same thing.

But it was fun enough, just not enough to get me to buy it.

Yeah Kotor 1 is a very classic Star wars hero story, which is fun in its own way. Kotor 2 With TSLRCM patch will likely hit a lot better for you after disco Elysium.

Disco Elysium

Hi-Fi Rush

…third is hard. Maybe Mass Effect Trilogy. Maybe Rogue Trader/Pathfinder WOTR.

Love these posts so much. Thank you for sharing these every single time, it is such a lemmy staple. You make this space way more awesome with your contribution :)

Having previously lived in Philly…I remember when my work forbid us from using public transit during the pandemic. Driving in there was awful as sin and it’s going to get twice as bad at least because of this. This is insanity.

Thanks for the clarification. I remember the gyroscopic weight stuff somewhat, but always sorta dismissed it since it felt like it was selectively used by authors and many of my favorites made little to no mention of it.

I haven’t had much desire to watch any of the new stuff since Force Awakens so I’m not up to snuff on the new stuff. Keep on enjoying it though! Makes me want to go back and read some of the best of legends.

Maybe I’m just old, but I can’t stand how magic the " kyber" crystals are in the rewritten sequel canon. In older legends canon, there was no “the crystal chooses the Jedi blah blah blah” which really makes it seem incredibly religious. You could use nearly any focusing crystal in a lightsaber, and Jedi would often choose a crystal that is sentimental or meaningful to them. There was little to no magic, and lightsabers were cheap and simple to construct. It was more that no one but a force-user could bring a laser-sword to a laser-gun fight and not die immediately.

I know I’m just not up with the times but I really loved old Star wars legends and how much emphasis it put on how these people who could use the force were normal people with exceptional abilities trying to interpret something much stranger and bigger than them (the force), and I feel like “kyber” crystals are a symptom of the very binary, new light vs. dark sequel canon which I find insanely reductive.

So uh yeah, I know I’m just old but it really bothers me.

P.S. Also isn’t the word “Kyber” just them bastardizing “Kaiburr” crystals (which were supposed to be rare lightsaber crystals)? I was pretty sure this was always the case.

Agreed, Owlcat has always earned my money and then some, I think. Especially with the new rogue trader DLCs, which are all connected to the main story somehow and playable in a new playthrough.

It’s hard to extoll the virtues of my chosen system (Pathfinder2e) without comparing it to the issues of where I find 5e lacking.

That said, what I love about 2e is the great encounter balance, almost every single “build” for a class is viable, and when you say “I’m playing a rogue” there are like 4 major types of rogues that all feel like they play differently instead of just some tacked on homebrew class. Adding free archetype rules (supported by the system creators themselves in their books) adds even more customizability.

One of my favorite things is that PF2e makes it feel like it makes encounter design fun again; martials actually have more options than just walk up and attack repeatedly, spacing matters, defenses matter. Most classes have some sort of gimmick that makes them play differently. Been working with my girlfriend to make a swashbuckler for the game I am DMing, and the panache/bravado/finisher mechanics really excite us from a roleplay and gameplay standpoint.

The three action system is way more flexible than the action/bonus action system. You can spend all 3 actions on a huge spell and burn your entire turn. You can move away from enemies to force them to burn an action or flank them to gain bonuses to attack for yourself and allies. You can apply debuffs using your main stats with actions like Demoralize, and still attack or move on your turn.

You constantly gain feats, and they are what defines your character so much. No longer do you get a “choice” of an ASI or feat. You get ones every level. There are ancestry tests from your race, class feats, skill feats, archetype feats. They don’t just make you stronger, they instead give you more possible actions, give you unique traits, like being able to fight while climbing or use deception to detect when someone is lying instead of perception.

Also, you can find every rule for free online @ Archives of Nethys. No more being gated by purchases outside of adventure paths.

I could keep going, and I really want to extoll how awesome Golarion is, and the pantheon of gods, and everything. But I will stop here. Would happily answer anyone’s questions about the system, I love it. It gave me true passion for tabletop RPGs while DnD5e made me feel really mildly about it.

Yeah I have seen at least a couple similar videos that were so shocking that I had to share with friends. How is that safe, or even possible? Insane.