What Are You Playing Right Now, Part 2: Daggerfall

[Rynjin]

I think the only one I liked was the one you needed to bump off the programmer guy hanging out in his hot tub.

[Silverraptor]

Finished my first Stellaris run (base game only). Fun but it felt like it fizzled out a bit halfway through, when you aren't doing much more exploring (and so no more anomalies, so fewer little stories) and when all of your tech becomes a choice between +5% damage or +5% rate of fire. Got one end-game crisis (The Contingency) but by then a friendly Fallen empire had Awakened and did a pretty good job of killing the Contingency fleets even without me.

It was on pretty easy (no AI advantages), so I was super-dominate by the end -- that didn't help. The expansion packs look like they add some more end-game stuff (like more megastructures), so I picked those up on sale and will try another run (with higher difficulty) some day. Not for a while though.

Yeah Stellaris gets a lot better with the DLCs. They add a bunch of content.

[Eldan]

They add a lot of stories, too. But be selective with which you get, not all of them are worth it, or at least not at once. Get Utopia (Megastructures), Distant Stars (more anomalies and general "weird stuff happening"), then maybe Synthetic Dawn or Apocalypse, depending on what interests you. Leviathans can be interesting, but "giant space monsters" wasn't really what I wanted in that game.

[Razade]

Unfortunately, Animal Crossing might not be your thing. It's a well-made time-waster. Like Harvest Moon or The Sims, with no real goal, challenge, or growth.

Sure, things do get upgraded, but they don't usually provide you with some benefit that makes other tasks easier. "Upgrades" unlock more content, more storage, more people to talk to, but not much more beyond that.

I don't know if I'd call Harvest Moon a time waster, not like the Sims though. There's a goal in Harvest Moon, upgrades that matter and all manner of story bells and whistles with the towns in respective games. Same goes for Stardew Valley, a game I quite enjoy. They're not action packed romps but they have a point and things to do beyond grind money/crops

It does sound like Animal Crossing isn't for me though, having talked to others in meatspace. I'll save my money and pre-order Trials of Mana like I intended however.

[Brookshw]

Finally picked up Ori and the Blind Forest. Absolutely beautiful and challenging on great ways. I'm looking forward to picking up the sequel.

[PraetorDragoon]

Booted up Dragon's Dogma again. While I consider it a mediocre game with sketchy mechanics, it does have some charm. Need to figure out which class I like the most and stick to that for a while. I'm thinking either Mystic Knight, Assassin or Ranger.

[Dienekes]

Trying NG+ in Bloodborne and so far it's a lot easier than NG. Later bosses might get harder, but right now I feel overpowered.

Unfortunately (or fortunately I suppose depending on your perspective) it’s going to be easier pretty much throughout NG+ until maybe the dlc section. That’s just how FromSoft set their difficulty curve in every game of theirs I’ve played. NG+ is basically a celebration after you were able to beat NG and lets you wander around looking for multiplayer opportunities with ease.

However, each rank of NG+ after that makes it difficult again. Ng+7 being the hardest.

[Rodin]

That's not really an entirely different style, but TBF that would be the impression you would get if you tried to start with Agent 47 (the original game).

IMO, Agent 47 and Silent Assassin (I'm really glad the first two games had subtitles, so the new Hitman and Hitman 2 aren't AS confusing to talk about as similar reboots) are...not good games. Contracts is the first I'd say is even a passably fun game.

The series hit its original peak with Blood Money though, which builds off what Contracts did, moving it toward a much more methodical, environmental/observation driven assassination style. In the first two games you could quite viably run through the levels (many of which are QUITE linear) just run and gunning; that's how I beat them when I did my big binge of the series up through Blood Money about 7-8 years ago, because the stealth mechanics in Agent 47 and Silent Assassin are straight trash.

If you like new Hitman, I'd say give Blood Money and maaaaaybe Contracts a shot, along with of course new Hitman 2. Absolution is...kind of an odd duck, in that it's a story driven hybrid experience between Agent 47 and Silent Assassin's fairly linear gameplay and Contracts and Blood Money's more mission based "just kill the guy however you want" gameplay. Blood Money SORT of had a plot in the last couple of missions, but Absolution takes that setup and runs with it to some ****ing bizarre places. It's worth experiencing though, IMO.

Thanks for the recommendations! Hitman as a series was always kind of impenetrable for me because I wanted to start from the beginning and not miss out on story. It sounds like there isn't a ton of plot to be worried about.

The stealth sucking in the first game is definitely what turned me off that one. Checking my Steam library, I appear to have Blood Money with a total amount of 23 minutes played. I recall there being something in the first mission that made me ragequit, but I don't remember what it was now.

The current game just disappointed me in a really nitpicky and trivial fashion. It won't let you pull out a silenced pistol while seated. This bothers me far more than it should, as my visions of re-enacting that scene from Dr. No go up in smoke.

Still, what other game lets you shoot someone while dressed as a golf coach?

[Man_Over_Game]

I don't know if I'd call Harvest Moon a time waster, not like the Sims though. There's a goal in Harvest Moon, upgrades that matter and all manner of story bells and whistles with the towns in respective games. Same goes for Stardew Valley, a game I quite enjoy. They're not action packed romps but they have a point and things to do beyond grind money/crops

It does sound like Animal Crossing isn't for me though, having talked to others in meatspace. I'll save my money and pre-order Trials of Mana like I intended however.

Sorry, I guess I said that wrong:

"Like Harvest Moon or The Sims, BUT with no real goal, challenge, or growth."

I'd consider Harvest Moon to be exceptionally challenging; it just so happens to be challenging because of the clock the player decides. The Sims is similar.

Animal Crossing has no such "tension", artificial or otherwise, and so it just feels like the Sandbox mode of an Atari game with decent graphics.

Finally picked up Ori and the Blind Forest. Absolutely beautiful and challenging on great ways. I'm looking forward to picking up the sequel.

Agreed. If you have the Definitive Edition, make sure you look into getting the Dash. You can get it within your first hour of gameplay (although it's friggin' hard to get at any level, regardless of what powers you've picked up). It's completely optional, but some upgrades only work if you have the Dash (and the ones that use it are awesome).

Booted up Dragon's Dogma again. While I consider it a mediocre game with sketchy mechanics, it does have some charm. Need to figure out which class I like the most and stick to that for a while. I'm thinking either Mystic Knight, Assassin or Ranger.

Definitely one of my favorite games. You can find some secrets later as the Assassin, since you get access to a double jump, followed by a ground-slam that propels you forward. Personally, I had a lot of fun as Mystic Knight, but I'm more of a strategy gamer than an action gamer.

I heard that the new version made the ferrystones incredibly common, and upgraded Arcane Archers. It might be worth your while to be an AA. Nothing like setting fire to a group of Undead with a light spell.

[Lord Raziere]

Came back after taking a short break from Hades, beat Lord Hades on the first run of the day in 27 minutes with the fists, and mostly aphrodite boons and dionysus and ares. feeling real good about myself. the run wasn't even that hard, so I guess I got lucky or somehow the "fresh ease after a break" skill I get whenever I come back to something after a while worked again. I don't know why, but I get better at things by playing them, then leaving them alone for a while and coming back to play them again. its like some weird anti-practice, it doesn't make sense to me.

[Rynjin]

Thanks for the recommendations! Hitman as a series was always kind of impenetrable for me because I wanted to start from the beginning and not miss out on story. It sounds like there isn't a ton of plot to be worried about.

The stealth sucking in the first game is definitely what turned me off that one. Checking my Steam library, I appear to have Blood Money with a total amount of 23 minutes played. I recall there being something in the first mission that made me ragequit, but I don't remember what it was now.

The current game just disappointed me in a really nitpicky and trivial fashion. It won't let you pull out a silenced pistol while seated. This bothers me far more than it should, as my visions of re-enacting that scene from Dr. No go up in smoke.

Still, what other game lets you shoot someone while dressed as a golf coach?

Blood Money has some of the best moments in the game, hands down. If you want a quick rundown of the plot of the first two games I can sum it up for you from memory easily enough: Agent 47 is the 47th in a line of genetically engineered super-assassins, and one of the few that's not a failure. You do some hits and end up killing your creator along with most of the other clones in the first game.

Silent Assassin picks up with 47 having committed himself to a life of peace and solitude in a monastery...which goes to **** when a dude slaughters the priesthood and then 47 joins back up with the Agency as payment for them helping him track down the guy that did it. Not super story related, but you bump off the last remaining clones during a few misisons in this and Contracts.

Contracts is a collection of missions in non-chronological order; one of the missions in Contracts actually takes place immediately AFTER a mission in Blood Money, which wouldn't be released for another 2 years.

Blood Money has a very vague plot until the end, which I won't spoil. Absolution is a whole...thing, it's very story driven.

New Hitman 1 and I believe 2 all take place in some nebulous time between 2 and Blood Money, as I recall, save the tutorial mission of 1 which is the earliest chronologically shown on screen moment in the series IIRC.

Definitely one of my favorite games. You can find some secrets later as the Assassin, since you get access to a double jump, followed by a ground-slam that propels you forward. Personally, I had a lot of fun as Mystic Knight, but I'm more of a strategy gamer than an action gamer.

I heard that the new version made the ferrystones incredibly common, and upgraded Arcane Archers. It might be worth your while to be an AA. Nothing like setting fire to a group of Undead with a light spell.

Strider and Arcane Archer also get double jump, and Arcane Archer gets a better height boost from Sunflare.

Strider (yes, the starter class) is also lowkey OP because it has a hidden 66% damage boost while climbing monsters.

This guy's channel is really good for learning the game, from the basics to some of the more esoteric game mechanics.

Came back after taking a short break from Hades, beat Lord Hades on the first run of the day in 27 minutes with the fists, and mostly aphrodite boons and dionysus and ares. feeling real good about myself. the run wasn't even that hard, so I guess I got lucky or somehow the "fresh ease after a break" skill I get whenever I come back to something after a while worked again. I don't know why, but I get better at things by playing them, then leaving them alone for a while and coming back to play them again. its like some weird anti-practice, it doesn't make sense to me.

I also picked up Hades again. I ran a couple of runs when I got it in December, but got sidetracked by other games. SO far I've only made it as far as Elysium, but I'm getting further with each run. I got to Asphodel for the first time with the bow (the 300% charge damage on your special upgrade is pretty nuts), then ran through again with the Aegis and got stalled by the Minotaur. Looking forward to seeing more of what the game has to offer.

[Man_Over_Game]

Came back after taking a short break from Hades, beat Lord Hades on the first run of the day in 27 minutes with the fists, and mostly aphrodite boons and dionysus and ares. feeling real good about myself. the run wasn't even that hard, so I guess I got lucky or somehow the "fresh ease after a break" skill I get whenever I come back to something after a while worked again. I don't know why, but I get better at things by playing them, then leaving them alone for a while and coming back to play them again. its like some weird anti-practice, it doesn't make sense to me.

Basically, you don't get better at something when you practice, you get better after you sleep after the practice. Which is why you should study before you go to sleep, not before the test.

So if you played for 5 hours straight before having that lull, you are now playing with 5 more hours of experience than you did when you stopped playing.

Also, when you jump back in the game, you jump in with the expectation that it'll be like the first time you played. Rather, it's the 30th time you've played, and you're just comparing it to your first.

------------

Wife's been playing Control, since we found out it was on Playstation Now. Holy crap is that game freaky.

The thing that I love about it is how freaking fluid it feels. You can rip off a chunk of a wall with your mind and launch it at an enemy you're looking at with a tap of a button. That is, the same button. That is, the wall-ripping to eat-brick-zombie happens in the same frickin' second with the same button press. You can eventually fly, make a shield out of debris, make a debris shield while flying, or use telekinesis while flying. If you like guns, they have those too. You can shoot while flying, too.

There was this moment where my wife used her Telekinesis on an exploding enemy, and the new upgrade she picked up allowed her to grab enemies who were low on HP. That's right: Corpse Explosion, Yeet-style.

She asked for my help with this plant boss thing that was giving her a hard time. It had 3 heads, centered in a circular room, with a few boulders scattered about. It'd alternate between shooting homing missile spores at you (blocked by your Shield), and launching its heads at you (blocked by taking cover behind a boulder, but each hit makes the boulder smaller). If you hid too long behind a boulder, it'd drop explosive spores from the ceiling that you could Yeet at the boss, but there's too many to throw them all AND the boss initiates its spore-barrage immediately after (and you can't Shield and Yeet at the same time). This meant I had to fly into the air while pulling up a Shield until the spores exploded underneath me and try to avoid enough homing shots for my Shield to hold out before needing to hide behind a boulder and recast it.

It was both brutal, and easy. One of the best boss fights I've ever experienced as a gamer, since every single one of its mechanics were enough to gib you if you made a mistake, yet they're all easily managed as long as you take action against each one that occurs. When I failed, it was my fault, not some dumb clipping issue like you'd expect from Dark Souls or something. It felt rewarding to kill that thing, despite the fact that I managed to beat it on the last try while taking no damage.

A damn good game, if you can get past the weird universe stuff it throws you into at the start.

----------------------

New piece of information:

Wife just got a magical cassette tape that provides the means of traversing an impossible astral-labyrinth while you listen to it, given to her by something that may be a Norse God.

The Maze looks like various hotel lounges and hallways, with furniture and lamps and stuff that just kinda morphs in random directions. Without the Cassette, it always morphs you into a route that takes you back to the entrance.

The Cassette plays some pretty killer Death Metal music. "TAKE CONTROL", by 'Old Gods of Asgard'.

So my wife is basically flying through an endlessly large hotel, listening to Death Metal, as she launches loveseats at psychic zombies with machine guns. It's a hell of a ride.

[PraetorDragoon]

Strider and Arcane Archer also get double jump, and Arcane Archer gets a better height boost from Sunflare.

Strider (yes, the starter class) is also lowkey OP because it has a hidden 66% damage boost while climbing monsters.

This guy's channel is really good for learning the game, from the basics to some of the more esoteric game mechanics.

That is quite the damage buff the game didn't bother to tell about!

Thanks for the channel link.

[Rynjin]

New piece of information:

Wife just got a magical cassette tape that provides the means of traversing an impossible astral-labyrinth while you listen to it, given to her by something that may be a Norse God.

The Maze looks like various hotel lounges and hallways, with furniture and lamps and stuff that just kinda morphs in random directions. Without the Cassette, it always morphs you into a route that takes you back to the entrance.

The Cassette plays some pretty killer Death Metal music. "TAKE CONTROL", by 'Old Gods of Asgard'.

So my wife is basically flying through an endlessly large hotel, listening to Death Metal, as she launches loveseats at psychic zombies with machine guns. It's a hell of a ride.

The Ashtray Maze bit is the real climax of the game IMO.

I had a lot of fun with Control, but it really drops the ball in the finale. Much of the game is well balanced and fluid, but the two big encounters at the endgame have a lot of frustrating arbitrary difficulty about it. Lots of instant death pits and enemies spawning behind you for cheap shots that eat about 80% of your health. It made me really not want to do much of the side content, especially after my experience with Former having a lot of the same problem; the entire difficulty is reliant on making you look UP at an enemy while instant death pits continuously open up out of sight.

[Cespenar]

Continuing on Divinity: Original Sin 2, and honestly, exploration seems to be the game's real forte. It's pretty enjoyable when your thief spots an explosive trap, and instead of trying to disarm it (which you can do as well), you can get as well just get back, have your mage telekinetically drop a barrel on the trap from afar, and after watching the whole area explode in flames, have your other mage dunk some rain on it to make it totally safe to pass.

Though that was a pretty tame example in that game's terms, I guess it's refreshing to both have different solutions to a problem, and also have (some of) those solutions not linearly hardcoded into the system as well.

[Man_Over_Game]

The Ashtray Maze bit is the real climax of the game IMO.

I had a lot of fun with Control, but it really drops the ball in the finale. Much of the game is well balanced and fluid, but the two big encounters at the endgame have a lot of frustrating arbitrary difficulty about it. Lots of instant death pits and enemies spawning behind you for cheap shots that eat about 80% of your health. It made me really not want to do much of the side content, especially after my experience with Former having a lot of the same problem; the entire difficulty is reliant on making you look UP at an enemy while instant death pits continuously open up out of sight.

I think it's intended as a new layer of fear. Similar to how Dark Souls does it, where you kinda have to edge around corners to look for threats.

By that point of the game, you've encountered most of the enemy types, know how to use the physics and mechanics of each gun and power to the best of their abilities. You're becoming a god.

But they still want to implement that level of fear that you felt when you first started the game. Sometimes, that means calling for cheap shots.

Put another way, all of the encounters for the first half are pretty straight-forward and based around learning the enemies.

So what do the enemies do once they encounter something they can't beat? Same thing a player does: Cheat.

[Rynjin]

It might make logical sense, but it's not fun to play, when it means replaying the same tedious 15 minute slog of enemy wave after enemy wave multiple times over.

[Yora]

Bloodborne on NG+ is very easy. Except for Mikolash. I think I died a total of three or four times before I got to Mikolash. I died more than ten times to Mikolash now, because A Call Beyond is now basically undodgable instant death. Shoting him with a pistol can interrupt him casting it, but it's not always guaranteed. This makes the fight basically just pure luck.

[Anteros]

All of the souls games have this problem on new game plus. The extra difficulty doesn't catch up to the increased strength of your character until ultra late game. I remember blowing through the entirety of ng+ sekiro and dying like 5 times. For context I died well over 100 times on my first play through using the demon bell.

[Anteros]

Well, back into Hades since I'm quarantined after being exposed by a patient and I have literally nothing to do except game and drive my girlfriend crazy until my test results come back. I really wish you were guaranteed to get a hammer early in each run. They're such huge run defining items that you have to plan around them, and if you don't get one until Elysium it really ruins the experience.

Also, apparently the Rail fires two shots after every dash. Combining this with the shotgun upgrade and the legendary boon from Hermes that allows you to dash 6 times in a row leads to some truly absurd dps. Plus the boom from Athena to be invulnerable during dashing made this the most broken run yet by far.

Edit: Does anyone know if there's a way to search steam by reviews? I'd like to search for games with only overwhelmingly positive reviews but I'm not seeing a way to do so.

[Man_Over_Game]

Edit: Does anyone know if there's a way to search steam by reviews? I'd like to search for games with only overwhelmingly positive reviews but I'm not seeing a way to do so.

Go to the Steam Search page (you can do this by just going to search for a game, but leaving the search criteria blank). This will pull up a list of all of the games.

Just above the list table, on the right edge, is a "Sort By" dropdown that has a User Reviews option. That sorts all games by their review score.

On a related note, it pleases me deeply to see that One Finger Death Punch is on the front page of results, just below Hades and Half Life: Alyx. $5 game, two buttons, and one of the best games I've ever played.

[Anteros]

Go to the Steam Search page (you can do this by just going to search for a game, but leaving the search criteria blank). This will pull up a list of all of the games.

Just above the list table, on the right edge, is a "Sort By" dropdown that has a User Reviews option. That sorts all games by their review score.

On a related note, it pleases me deeply to see that One Finger Death Punch is on the front page of results, just below Hades and Half Life: Alyx. $5 game, two buttons, and one of the best games I've ever played.

That did it. Thanks. Hopefully I can find something new to keep me occupied during what is probably the most boring and frustrating period of my life so far.

[warty goblin]

Decided to waste some more time with XCOM 2 this weekend. As happens whenever I pick up XCOM again, it makes an overwhelmingly positive first impression. Everything looks super cool, the game feel legible, and kicking E.T.s ass has seldom been so much fun.

...And then the usual school of irritations start gnawing, piranha-like, at the edges of my enjoyment. Why does Bradford never, ever, ever just shut up? Why are there these frequent random pauses after an action where nothing happens for several seconds? Why are there two entirely different systems for advancing soldiers, using two (or three) kinds of XP, in two entirely different screens? How is it that with the large piles of money thrown at this, it has one of the least easy to navigate UIs of any move-n-shoot TBS game I've played? Did their UI designer just give up, drink a quart of gin, and move to Tahiti to become a spear fisherman? Why won't Bradford stop yammering at me about the campaign missions, when the campaign missions are total traps that must be engaged with extreme caution? Why is the campaign designed to stomp you so hard for actually taking your advisers' advice? Is it actually beneficial to have to manage my solders' bromances and various psychiatric problems? If Bradford tells me that the aliens continue to make progress on the Avatar project, is it physically possible for me to chew my own ears off?

I like XCOM, I just fine myself wishing there was a bit less of it. They've packed so much into them that you can just about feel the game starting to burst at the seams, like a boardgame with one too many expansions packed recklessly into the box. The tactical battles are great, but there's just so many of them that one starts to lose motivation for a random battle to stop a random bad thing from happening. Same with the Geoscape, the game throws options at you like condoms during move-in week at college. Which is weird, because the only gameplay on the Geoscape is go there and wait for a timer, which will inevitably be interrupted by Bradford blathering at me about another time somewhere else. I need XCOM 2: But 3/4 as Much version.

[Gnoman]

I have triumphed over crashes, bugs, and demons to complete the 2016 DooM at last. I already purchased and downloaded DooM Eternal, so I will soon be fighting exciting new bugs, crashes, and demons.

[Zevox]

Finished up Darksiders 3 tonight, and I'm pretty happy with it. Definitely like it a lot more than Darksiders 2. How I'd rate it compared to the first is tougher to say - it's been a while, so I kind of feel like I'd need to replay the first to really decide that - but the fact that it's a definite possibility that it beats it is very good in my mind. Kind of more than I was expecting right there, honestly.

Though granted, it has some definite problems. Points where the game seems lag to up because it's loading the next areas, or sometimes for no apparent reason at all. Texture pop-in issues at times. Occasional clunky bits of mechanics or puzzles which require excessively strict timing or which have very unintuitive solutions.

Still, on the whole, it's pretty satisfying. I'm damn glad I didn't play it before they added the Classic control scheme though - I'd hate to have to deal with Dark Souls style controls. It was tough enough with the ability to cancel attacks into dodges, needing to go without would suck. Plus you'd lose the satisfying feeling of getting into a good rhythm of relentless offense punctuated only by precisely-timed dodges, which was one of the best parts. Granted, it'd be nice if there were more variety to what you can do - most attacking does just come down to spamming your basic attack sequence with whichever weapon you're using at that moment, and only the whip even has a single delay attack sequence to mix in. Devil May Cry with a crapton of options of how to string your attacks together and do things that just look and feel cool, this ain't. Still, the deadliness of enemies and the need to properly time dodges (plus the occasional enemy that can actually block) keeps it from being just a mindless button-masher. Aside from when you enter Wrath Form, anyway - that thing being invincible means that it really is just a "mash buttons for massive damage" mode, which is kind of a shame.

And while I don't like the idea of Dark Souls style controls for the game, the Dark Souls style world design works considerably better for it. Especially compared to the oversized open-world design of Darksiders 2. I just wish it had a damn map so I could keep my bearings better.

Story-wise, nothing to write home about, but I was pleasantly surprised by Fury getting a legitimate character arc throughout it. I feel like the previous games were more about the lore of the setting than any development of the main characters, so that was kind of nice, even if it wasn't anything amazing.

[Lord Raziere]

I have finally beaten Lone shadow Vilehand in Sekiro.

lone shadows are seriously some of the most frustrating foes to fight, I'm glad I finally made progress in this game after getting back into it, the other dog lone shadow I'm close to beating but I felt like one lone shadow was success enough in Sekiro given that its freaking Sekiro. I'm don't even want to do any horror fights, those just generally end with me dying in like two seconds, they just aren't worth it.

[Yora]

You mean the Headless? I left those until the very end, when I had lots of upgrades and a really good grasp of how everything in the game works. With the purple bottle and a lot of divine confetti I actually found them really fun to fight. On my second playthrough they were not even really that hard.
The Shichimen Warriors are a lot less difficult beacause they still let you move normally.
As endgame content, I think they are really quite good.

The lone shadows are absolutely brutal when envountered in the middle of the first run, but much less featrsome later on when you have good health and blocking stamina.

I think of all the games in the series, Sekiro felt like the one where knowledge of enemy behavior makes the biggest difference. It makes a huge difference in all the games, with sections that took hours on the first playthrough being doable in a few minutes once you know how to hit the enemies withour getting hit. But in Sekiro I found it to be the most pronounced. Possibly because I was really terrible the first time and took 90 hours, with spending three or four hours on most bosses each.

[Cespenar]

Decided to waste some more time with XCOM 2 this weekend. As happens whenever I pick up XCOM again, it makes an overwhelmingly positive first impression. Everything looks super cool, the game feel legible, and kicking E.T.s ass has seldom been so much fun.

...And then the usual school of irritations start gnawing, piranha-like, at the edges of my enjoyment. Why does Bradford never, ever, ever just shut up? Why are there these frequent random pauses after an action where nothing happens for several seconds? Why are there two entirely different systems for advancing soldiers, using two (or three) kinds of XP, in two entirely different screens? How is it that with the large piles of money thrown at this, it has one of the least easy to navigate UIs of any move-n-shoot TBS game I've played? Did their UI designer just give up, drink a quart of gin, and move to Tahiti to become a spear fisherman? Why won't Bradford stop yammering at me about the campaign missions, when the campaign missions are total traps that must be engaged with extreme caution? Why is the campaign designed to stomp you so hard for actually taking your advisers' advice? Is it actually beneficial to have to manage my solders' bromances and various psychiatric problems? If Bradford tells me that the aliens continue to make progress on the Avatar project, is it physically possible for me to chew my own ears off?

I like XCOM, I just fine myself wishing there was a bit less of it. They've packed so much into them that you can just about feel the game starting to burst at the seams, like a boardgame with one too many expansions packed recklessly into the box. The tactical battles are great, but there's just so many of them that one starts to lose motivation for a random battle to stop a random bad thing from happening. Same with the Geoscape, the game throws options at you like condoms during move-in week at college. Which is weird, because the only gameplay on the Geoscape is go there and wait for a timer, which will inevitably be interrupted by Bradford blathering at me about another time somewhere else. I need XCOM 2: But 3/4 as Much version.

Didn't have any problems myself with Bradford. Weird. He's not even up there with the most tutorial-y of advisors, I think, with most games nowadays having them just repeat whatever text appears on your journal/quest tracker, because we're all supposed to have attention issues and whatnot.

I do agree about the "muchness" aspect of the game, though. It's what I call the Total War Syndrome, where the tactical gameplay is deep and engaging, but there's so much of it you need to go through in a normal length campaign that at least I eventually end up autoresolving something like 90% of the fights. And there's no autoresolve in XCOM, to boot.

I have finally beaten Lone shadow Vilehand in Sekiro.

lone shadows are seriously some of the most frustrating foes to fight, I'm glad I finally made progress in this game after getting back into it, the other dog lone shadow I'm close to beating but I felt like one lone shadow was success enough in Sekiro given that its freaking Sekiro. I'm don't even want to do any horror fights, those just generally end with me dying in like two seconds, they just aren't worth it.

About horror fights, like Yora said above, I'd wait until getting stacked with divine confetti and other upgrades. The "purple shield" upgrade (which I forgot the name of) was pretty useful, for example, for blocking their beamlike attacks.

[Dienekes]

For XCOM I’m pretty sure there are a few mods Warty might like if he is a position to mod the game.
-Narrative Control mod
-Stop Wasting My Time mod
-Instant Avengers Menu mod
-Instant Loot mod

I have not personally tried any of them. But maybe give them a look.

For Sekiro, I personally would suggest not dealing with the horror minibosses until after you can buy Divine Confetti. I forget what triggers that shop, but being able to restock confetti changes everything.

[LibraryOgre]

I have been playing a lot of LOTRO. My niece said she picked it up, so I logged in to send her a lot of money, and decided to play a bit while some areas I'd skipped are free. Mostly sticking to my Lore-master, since I like being able to send my pet off to do damage while I take care of other business.