What Are You Playing: 9 Years since the Last Dragon Age

[Eldan]

The reviews I'm seeing don't look so bad? One mentioned a lot of bugs, but with Owlcat, I expect those to get ironed out. Several mention that the menus and character advancement are messy and complicated, but that's not the worst thing. And they mostly say that the game is big and deep and the world interesting, so that looks pretty good overall?

[GloatingSwine]

Yeah, the reviews look pretty good to me. That said it's also a big game so I'm more looking for slightly delayed reviews when people have had time with it.

[warty goblin]

The Rogue Trader reviews I've seen are pretty mid. Does the setting well, combat is good to ok, but there's a lot of it and takes a long time. Which, yeah, sounds like an Owlcat game, because they sure do love their combat encounters. Next time I attempt Wrath of the Righteous, I'm gonna turn the difficulty to Easy and never take it out of real time mode so I maybe get somewhere inside of one human lifetime.

[Anonymouswizard]

The Rogue Trader reviews I've seen are pretty mid. Does the setting well, combat is good to ok, but there's a lot of it and takes a long time. Which, yeah, sounds like an Owlcat game, because they sure do love their combat encounters. Next time I attempt Wrath of the Righteous, I'm gonna turn the difficulty to Easy and never take it out of real time mode so I maybe get somewhere inside of one human lifetime.

The biggest issue with WotR isn't the combat, it's the endless restarts.

[warty goblin]

The biggest issue with WotR isn't the combat, it's the endless restarts.

No, no, it's definitely the combat for me. I've worked out pretty much exactly what character I want to run (Instinctive Warrior or whatever the Wisdom barbarian option is, plus the mod that lets you customize your avatar so I can permanently rock the Red Sonja look) but most attempts fizzle out because I can't take five bloody steps to do a side quest without having to pulverize the same 2 idiot no challenge scrub mooks the game keeps mistaking for interesting encounter design. Takes too damn long and is hideously boring. So next time the difficulty is going down to where I can auto-murder everything short of an actual boss or something.

The trick to avoiding Restartitis is to remember two key facts about RPGs: the perfect playthrough is a lie, and there's much less actual variety than apparent variety. Ever notice how on the nth restart with the Ultimate Perfect Character it still feels pretty much like restart n-1 with the terrible flawed character? It's the same game, restarting ain't gonna fix that, and most of the options don't make that much difference. It's like a frozen yogurt bar, there's a lot of options but fundamentally only three actual choices: fruit, chocolate or a hybrid like orange and chocolate. Pick something that basically works, add whatever kinda sprinkles you prefer, and eat the thing.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

I've never found the combat in either of the Pathfinder games that terrible. The combat is the game part, after all. If I didn't enjoy it, I may as well go watch a movie or pick up a visual novel instead. Real-time mode lets you stomp all over any encounter that isn't a tactical challenge, so I switch to that any time a few mooks show up and need to be dealt with.

I understand why people wouldn't like how combat heavy they can get, but I feel it adds a ton to the game. There are parts where you're literally fighting on a battlefield and it feels like it due to enemies being around every corner. Games that hew to the idea of only including intricate, puzzle-like combat end up feeling artificial in my eyes. Like no matter how dangerous a place is said to be, you know you'll fight only one or two battles there.

I also find the worst part of CRPGs is the walking when nothing else is happening, so frequent combat helps break that up. I think my BG3 multiplayer group quit in large part because so many of our sessions were just walking, looting the environment, and waiting for someone to talk to an unimportant NPC. No surprise that there's a certain chapter of WOTR that's sunk my replay attempts every time.

[warty goblin]

I've never found the combat in either of the Pathfinder games that terrible. The combat is the game part, after all. If I didn't enjoy it, I may as well go watch a movie or pick up a visual novel instead. Real-time mode lets you stomp all over any encounter that isn't a tactical challenge, so I switch to that any time a few mooks show up and need to be dealt with.

I don't dislike the combat. I dislike the encounter design, it's a mechanically fine to good basis that the game generally gives me no reason to utilize or engage with because so often I'm fighting literally two guys who might get one attack off if they get lucky with initiative.

I understand why people wouldn't like how combat heavy they can get, but I feel it adds a ton to the game. There are parts where you're literally fighting on a battlefield and it feels like it due to enemies being around every corner. Games that hew to the idea of only including intricate, puzzle-like combat end up feeling artificial in my eyes. Like no matter how dangerous a place is said to be, you know you'll fight only one or two battles there.

Combat heavy is fine, I'm not complaining about the quantity of combat in the game.
My complaint is solely that far, far too much of it is complete throwaway encounters. These don't make the game feel dangerous or like I'm in the middle of a battle, they turn it into a loading screen simulator so I can kill like 2 guys in a random encounter. This is boring.

I also find the worst part of CRPGs is the walking when nothing else is happening, so frequent combat helps break that up. I think my BG3 multiplayer group quit in large part because so many of our sessions were just walking, looting the environment, and waiting for someone to talk to an unimportant NPC. No surprise that there's a certain chapter of WOTR tat's sunk my replay attempts every time.

Crpgs have frequently struggled to have stuff that isn't either combat (cheap content) or character interaction (expensive content). The Pathfinder games, with their apparent disinterest in any form of environmental interaction, and 3rd tier puzzle design when they bother to have them, are particularly afflicted with this limited scope. If you make the setting make a difference and be meaningfully interactive, this is less of a problem. One can also of course just make areas smaller, a great benefit of the top down perspective is that the player can only see like 40 feet ahead of the parry, so you can absolutely pack stuff in.

One thing I hope the massive success of BG3 does is get the genre to actually have the environment matter. I had a fight in Pathfinder on a cursed island in hell where the sky rained blood. This was less important - in the sense it literally did not matter and could have been in a field of primroses or a sheet of graph paper - than the muddy floor in a dungeon in BG3. That is a wasted opportunity.

[Spacewolf]

I absolutely hate the quantity of combat in the Pathfinder games. The quality is Ok but the amount is way off and kills the flow of the game for me.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

I don't dislike the combat. I dislike the encounter design, it's a mechanically fine to good basis that the game generally gives me no reason to utilize or engage with because so often I'm fighting literally two guys who might get one attack off if they get lucky with initiative.

Combat heavy is fine, I'm not complaining about the quantity of combat in the game.
My complaint is solely that far, far too much of it is complete throwaway encounters. These don't make the game feel dangerous or like I'm in the middle of a battle, they turn it into a loading screen simulator so I can kill like 2 guys in a random encounter. This is boring.

You can't have a lot of meaningful encounters. I know that sounds needlessly reductive, but if every encounter required considerable thought and there were a dozen of them in every area, it would be exhausting. It'd take days to clear a dungeon with no guarantee it'd be much more engaging. There are only so many ways to build an encounter, after all, so they'd bleed together eventually. Especially if you tried to keep the theme intact and didn't start pulling in random monsters just to spice it up.

I don't understand the loading complaint, though. You don't have to load into battles in Pathfinder like it's a Final Fantasy game. Certainly, some side areas in the game are just a small field with a few enemies, but that's not even a throwaway fight by design. You may have just overleveled before finding that location. I remember a certain area near your city in Kingmaker that had some lycanthropes in it which dropped a decent weapon. On a repeat playthrough, I rushed there to get it only to find that a low level party gets completely eviscerated by that encounter.

Crpgs have frequently struggled to have stuff that isn't either combat (cheap content) or character interaction (expensive content). The Pathfinder games, with their apparent disinterest in any form of environmental interaction, and 3rd tier puzzle design when they bother to have them, are particularly afflicted with this limited scope. If you make the setting make a difference and be meaningfully interactive, this is less of a problem. One can also of course just make areas smaller, a great benefit of the top down perspective is that the player can only see like 40 feet ahead of the parry, so you can absolutely pack stuff in.

One thing I hope the massive success of BG3 does is get the genre to actually have the environment matter. I had a fight in Pathfinder on a cursed island in hell where the sky rained blood. This was less important - in the sense it literally did not matter and could have been in a field of primroses or a sheet of graph paper - than the muddy floor in a dungeon in BG3. That is a wasted opportunity.

I suppose we won't see eye to eye. I think Pathfinder has decent-to-good puzzle design. Their UI for the puzzles is atrocious, though. The tile puzzles in WOTR are fairly clever, but using the in-game looting interface to place and move them about turns the whole thing into frustrating tedium.

More environment interaction would be nice, though I can understand why it isn't done. It's the kind of thing that can really irritate players who get set in a strategy and rankle when a wildcard is introduced that shuts it down. It also has a balancing issue in that environmental effects are often either too weak as to be ignorable or too strong and they overwhelm the rest of the combat design (and I tend to think Larian falls on the latter here. D:OS2 is infamous for its environment interactions taking over whole battles.)

[LibraryOgre]

My biggest complaint with the Pathfinder games was stat creep; it was particularly bad in WotR, where monster have simply ludicrous stats to keep them challenging.

[warty goblin]

You can't have a lot of meaningful encounters. I know that sounds needlessly reductive, but if every encounter required considerable thought and there were a dozen of them in every area, it would be exhausting. It'd take days to clear a dungeon with no guarantee it'd be much more engaging. There are only so many ways to build an encounter, after all, so they'd bleed together eventually. Especially if you tried to keep the theme intact and didn't start pulling in random monsters just to spice it up.

Yes, there's a limit on how many substantively different encounters you can build with a given set of combat mechanics, enemies, locations, etc. There's also virtue in having some encounters be easy and some hard, that's good pacing. My preference is that when a game has more or less exhausted that repertoire of encounters, it stops. From what I've played of WoTR, it really likes to have lots and lots of easy encounters with the same enemies where you use the same mechanics in the same (irrelevant) environments. I think this is boring design, a position bolstered by the fact that the proc gen dungeons in Midnight Isles feel at worst identical to, and often better paced than, the hand designed ones.

I don't understand the loading complaint, though. You don't have to load into battles in Pathfinder like it's a Final Fantasy game.

Random encounters, a still terrible idea that games with overland maps insist on including for some reason. WoTR doubles down by making lots of them very easy. I do not enjoy sitting through two loading screens to kill two dudes.

More environment interaction would be nice, though I can understand why it isn't done. It's the kind of thing that can really irritate players who get set in a strategy and rankle when a wildcard is introduced that shuts it down. It also has a balancing issue in that environmental effects are often either too weak as to be ignorable or too strong and they overwhelm the rest of the combat design (and I tend to think Larian falls on the latter here. D:OS2 is infamous for its environment interactions taking over whole battles.)

This is to me one of the things that generally inhibits my enjoyment of RPGs. They're so oriented around character builds that environmental tactics have to fall by the wayside, because otherwise they'd invalidate somebody's character design. But this in turn means that encounters tend towards the bland because any reasonable character has to be able to do them, and the gameplay ends up less diverse because a character build is generally one or maybe two ways of winning an encounter. Play a charge character, you charge everything. Every map has to be open enough to allow for charging. Now charge at every encounter for 100 hours of playtime. I don't even really end up caring about the possible diversity of characters because I'm stuck playing this character for this playthrough, and this character is a very specific kind of hammer that can only pound nails just so. It's optimizing between-playthrough variety at the expense of the experience within a single playthrough, which ironically makes the game less replayable for me because I'm less likely to finish it in the first place.

[Sapphire Guard]

Sounds rough. Do you play with some self-imposed iron-man challenge or so? I wonder how you'd get in such a situation in the first place

Nah, I reload the save every time I can't immediately revive characters, because sorting through the inventory and who is supposed to have what is too much effort. I do play for the narrative experience rather than optimising and don't grind, so I pick my characters for narrative reasons rather than effect. Late in Shadows of Amn I used Slayer Mode too many times so my Paladin fell, he can take some hits but I keep him out of he frontline because if the Bhaalspawn goes down that's instant game over. I had a party of about level 7 against Sarevok in BG1,and couldn't beat him with that so had to switch to easy mode for that fight.

My party is mage heavy which is good against crowds but suffers when you have a single enemy that hits hard. Typically I would summon a bunch of monsters to take the hits, but now the enemies hit hard enough to get rid of those pretty quickly. There are ways I could keep going, but for now it has surpassed the amount of effort and attention I'm willing to put in. I'll get back to it eventually.

Spoiler: Disco: Elysium, Day 2, 13:43pm

Show

I knew they weren't actually going to have me freeze to death, but that was a particularly sweet way of doing it. Kim sold something precious to him for the sake of some lunatic alcoholic he's just met. Awwww. Good writing.

[Zevox]

So, aside from continuing my third run through BG3, I'm at least for the moment playing a bit of a game that I haven't touched in much too long: BlazBlue: Central Fiction. Took the risk of grabbing the steam version - the only one they updated with rollback netcode for some reason, even though ArcSys put it on the console version of most every other game they retrofitted with it - and at least so far, it seems to run fine on my PC, some screen tearing issues notwithstanding. Though thus far I've only been playing in Challenge Mode, I haven't gone online just yet.

Still, I really need to make a point to revisit my old favorite fighting games like this from time to time, because goddamn does it feel good even just doing Challenge Mode in this again. The gameplay and how it controls just feel right in a way few fighting games do to me, the characters are fun, the combos are still some of the coolest in the genre IMO, and the music. Goddamn, I know SF6's music being mostly lame has made me extra sensitive to this lately, but BlazBlue's music is just so damn good. Not every track of course, and there were some I still had fairly fresh in my mind from using them as training mode music when play BBTag not that long ago, but then I put on random songs like Imperial Code, Childish Killer, or Reppuu that I haven't heard in ages and remember how great they are on top of the ones I remember, and.... damn. Revisiting it like this just makes me remember why I fell in love with the game, and through it the genre, all over again.

I'll definitely need to hop online over the weekend and see how it feels. Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising is coming next week, and I'll probably want to play that as my fighting game for a while, but I want to know if actually playing the steam version of BBCF online is feasible for me. I sure hope it is.

[Anonymouswizard]

Rogue Trader is downloading so there's only one question left: do I spec into chainswords or lasguns? I could do both, but Rogue Traders are also supposed to spec heavily into social abilities.

I know if I go the former I'll probably end up with either a power sword or eviserator, whereas if I go the latter I'm hoping the Rogue Trader armoury let's me skip past bolters and straight into hot-shot volley gun territory. I'll still carry a twin linked lasgun of course, but only to see in dark areas.

At least there's not twenty different classes to prompt me to endlessly restart.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

Rogue Trader is downloading so there's only one question left: do I spec into chainswords or lasguns? I could do both, but Rogue Traders are also supposed to spec heavily into social abilities.

I know if I go the former I'll probably end up with either a power sword or eviserator, whereas if I go the latter I'm hoping the Rogue Trader armoury let's me skip past bolters and straight into hot-shot volley gun territory. I'll still carry a twin linked lasgun of course, but only to see in dark areas.

At least there's not twenty different classes to prompt me to endlessly restart.

So far the game has been pretty limited on initial equipment. Lots of standard ballistics in different forms (pistols, autoguns, carbines) and a decent amount of lasguns. One character starts with a personalized bolter you can't remove, but you can find others later. I've just now started finding hand flamers. Heavy weapons continue to elude me.

Somewhat interesting, there's no currency. You get loot in the form of various sundries and cargo you pick up that I've been told will eventually be used to curry favor with the various factions. At 10 hours in, though, I haven't seen that part.

Really enjoying the game, though. There's a decent mystery in the background with an upfront crisis to solve that's got me hooked. The characters are fairly interesting, though I'm cooling on Idira the Psyker due to some bugs with Veil Degradation.

[Anonymouswizard]

So far the game has been pretty limited on initial equipment. Lots of standard ballistics in different forms (pistols, autoguns, carbines) and a decent amount of lasguns. One character starts with a personalized bolter you can't remove, but you can find others later. I've just now started finding hand flamers. Heavy weapons continue to elude me.

I mean, I went for an ex-Imperial Guard (they do not have any other names) Officer, so I'm perfectly happy with a decent lasgun until the game starts dropping the serious stuff. I'm guessing heavy weapons will be at least mid game content, do probably something like 30 hours in, even if the tabletop game let you start with them.

I'm going to be avoiding bolters because A) I like lasguns and B) it'll help distinguish the Sister of Battle companion.

I might do a second run as a Crime Lord/Warrior instead of Guard Officer/Soldier.

Somewhat interesting, there's no currency. You get loot in the form of various sundries and cargo you pick up that I've been told will eventually be used to curry favor with the various factions. At 10 hours in, though, I haven't seen that part.

That's pretty accurate to the RPG, where 'a finite but arbitrarily large number of high quality clocks' was a valid starting pick. Rogue Traders have moved to the point where anything priced in thrones isn't worth their time.

Really enjoying the game, though. There's a decent mystery in the background with an upfront crisis to solve that's got me hooked. The characters are fairly interesting, though I'm cooling on Idira the Psyker due to some bugs with Veil Degradation.

I'm enjoying it as well, especially the fact that combat is now designed around it being turn based. But then I've basically wanted this game for a decade and a half, my bosses are strong.

I'm going to be avoiding bringing psykers with me as much as possible this run, being a conservative general who trusts in the power of a hundred guns and a hundred corpses. If I do do a Crime Lord run though they'll be borderline heretical.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

I'm going to be avoiding bringing psykers with me as much as possible this run, being a conservative general who trusts in the power of a hundred guns and a hundred corpses. If I do do a Crime Lord run though they'll be borderline heretical.

Yeah, I don't know why I expected the game to hard lock you to the Imperium ethos. It's a Rogue Trader and Owlcat game, so I shouldn't have been surprised that there seems to be a valid Chaos Heretic path. There's even a Heretic voicepack for your character!

Funny enough, I also don't find the Psykers that amazing. They have some useful powers, but compared to my dream team of an ex-Commissar MC feeding Argenta multiple turns to explode enemies, some lightning has felt underwhelming. It became even more underwhelming when her skin peeled off and a daemoness erupted from the corpse (despite the UI saying she was at 0 degradation and no peril buildup), which promptly stabbed another character for 40 damage.

It might also just be Idira's build. Operative-Diviner seems like a weird combination. Feels like Officer-Diviner or Operative-Pyromancy/Telepath would be a better setup, though Officer would step on some toes.

[Anonymouswizard]

Yeah, I don't know why I expected the game to hard lock you to the Imperium ethos. It's a Rogue Trader and Owlcat game, so I shouldn't have been surprised that there seems to be a valid Chaos Heretic path. There's even a Heretic voicepack for your character!

Funny enough, I also don't find the Psykers that amazing. They have some useful powers, but compared to my dream team of an ex-Commissar MC feeding Argenta multiple turns to explode enemies, some lightning has felt underwhelming. It became even more underwhelming when her skin peeled off and a daemoness erupted from the corpse (despite the UI saying she was at 0 degradation and no peril buildup), which promptly stabbed another character for 40 damage.

I mean, I suspect the power of psykers is going to be stuff like telepathy or biomancy, although if I really wanted buffs I'd have picked Officer over Soldier. I also suspect the game might actually be following the lore whereas most 40k media only really shows you the top tiers of psykers, it's possible that a psyker RT and your companions are actually Delta or Epsilon level (which would be closer to a member of a Sanctioned Psyker squad than a Primaris or SM Librarian).

I also wouldn't be surprised if PotW gets patched to be less punishing in a couple of weeks.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

I mean, I suspect the power of psykers is going to be stuff like telepathy or biomancy, although if I really wanted buffs I'd have picked Officer over Soldier. I also suspect the game might actually be following the lore whereas most 40k media only really shows you the top tiers of psykers, it's possible that a psyker RT and your companions are actually Delta or Epsilon level (which would be closer to a member of a Sanctioned Psyker squad than a Primaris or SM Librarian).

I also wouldn't be surprised if PotW gets patched to be less punishing in a couple of weeks.

I don't think the PotW needs to be adjusted. What I think is happening is Psykers can take a talent that reduces Degradation buildup by 2 on their first power per turn and it's triggering an underflow error. Idira had 0 degradation, but three powers in a row caused PotW kickbacks which never happened until she took the talent. It's either that or the Degradation meter is bugged and she's been in more danger than it shows. I know some encounters, especially in warp-sensitive areas, start the meter at 10 or higher instead of 0.

Diviner has a few solid powers. There's a buff that gives about +15% dodge and parry to a target for the rest of combat and a talent that further gives them +10 WS/BS for being affected by a Diviner ability. It has some offense, but it's definitely not as focused there as other psyker disciplines. It does have a wild debuff that blinds and pretty much neuters a single target which has yet to be resisted. Agreed that Officer feels like a better pair for the skillset, though.

Psykers in the game are rated from 0 to 4 on the psy-level scale. In the books a Farseer is rated around 8, so the player psykers definitely don't hit world-shattering power levels even at their strongest. By my cursory looks, you may be able to push Gamma at the absolute endgame levels, but you're probably Epsilon for the majority of the game. I don't have a whole lot of experience with Rogue Trader or how crazy Owlcat went with it, though. I did find it fun that when you reach Exemplar tier, you can actually take options to become an Unsanctioned Psyker and bolt powers onto a previously non-psyker.

[Batcathat]

Because of this other thread, I decided to check out Song of Farca and so far it's pretty good. Reminds me a little of Orwell (the game, not the author) but less... I don't know, clinical?

[Anonymouswizard]

I don't think the PotW needs to be adjusted. What I think is happening is Psykers can take a talent that reduces Degradation buildup by 2 on their first power per turn and it's triggering an underflow error. Idira had 0 degradation, but three powers in a row caused PotW kickbacks which never happened until she took the talent. It's either that or the Degradation meter is bugged and she's been in more danger than it shows. I know some encounters, especially in warp-sensitive areas, start the meter at 10 or higher instead of 0.

Diviner has a few solid powers. There's a buff that gives about +15% dodge and parry to a target for the rest of combat and a talent that further gives them +10 WS/BS for being affected by a Diviner ability. It has some offense, but it's definitely not as focused there as other psyker disciplines. It does have a wild debuff that blinds and pretty much neuters a single target which has yet to be resisted. Agreed that Officer feels like a better pair for the skillset, though.

Psykers in the game are rated from 0 to 4 on the psy-level scale. In the books a Farseer is rated around 8, so the player psykers definitely don't hit world-shattering power levels even at their strongest. By my cursory looks, you may be able to push Gamma at the absolute endgame levels, but you're probably Epsilon for the majority of the game. I don't have a whole lot of experience with Rogue Trader or how crazy Owlcat went with it, though. I did find it fun that when you reach Exemplar tier, you can actually take options to become an Unsanctioned Psyker and bolt powers onto a previously non-psyker.

Ah, a bug, that makes sense. And yeah, I suspect Diviner is solid but not the real powerhouse, it seems decent from what I've seen so far.

IIRC the tabletop game was like 1-6, with Dark Heresy Ascension Psykers reaching 10+. So I'm guessing the game tops out at mid gamma to very low beta. Anybody potentially becoming a Psyker was technically RAW but required explicit GM approval until at least Black Crusade (which dropped the careers for thematic reasons).

Progression is also much, much more linear than in the tabletop RPG, but that's not exactly a bad thing. In fact the actual rules haven't been followed particularly closely and it's no bad thing.

[MCerberus]

I've been playing some Monster Hunter: Rise for reasons and maybe I shouldn't jump right back into bowgun before I have the rust shaken off.

[Zevox]

Played BlazBlue: Central Fiction online this evening. It works, and quite well. I mean, the one time I played someone from Japan was a connection I wouldn't want to to stick with for more than the one match, but even that was more playable than a lot of matches in delay-based netcode back in the day. But the framerate held steady, and I'm pretty confident that when I experienced connection issues, it was actual connection issues, not my PC not handling the game well enough.

Damn, I need to come back to this regularly now. There's not a ton of people playing, but there's enough that I can get matches without much waiting, and that's all I need. I might lose more than I win for a long time as I readjust to the game - and learn new characters potentially, I was playing Es today rather than my traditional main Platinum, or the other character I spent a lot of time with when CF came out, Nine - but that's fine. I love playing this, so losses don't frustrate me, they just make me want to learn more and get better.

Surprisingly, most of the people that I fought weren't amazing players either. The one from Japan seemed very strong, and there was one Hakumen playing I played quite a few matches with that was also quite good, but several others seemed more like me, intermediate players with an idea of what they were doing, but not fully in practice. Most of them more in practice than I am, but still, clearly not exceptionally polished. Which is an unexpected plus, people around my skill level still play the game, and not as a tiny proportion of the player base.

[AlanBruce]

Just finished the DLC for Final Fantasy XVI: Echoes of the Fallen.

It’s a short campaign- about three hours long. And it takes place right before the final main mission in the game. You take on the role of Clive once more and have Joshua, Jill and Torgal along for the ride.

I enjoyed the new area. The encounters were slightly more difficult than before (I realized at the very end thst I was playing on FF Mode, so that may have spiked the difficulty). The last encounter was surprisingly difficult and took me a few tries to learn its moves and counter accordingly.

They will be releasing a longer DLC come Spring which deals with Leviathan, as clearly shown in the trailer. It was fun going back to Valisthea for a few hours and wreck things up. You evfn get Cloud’s Buster Sword for purchasing the DLC, which may or may not fit the setting.

[Ignimortis]

Yeah, I don't know why I expected the game to hard lock you to the Imperium ethos. It's a Rogue Trader and Owlcat game, so I shouldn't have been surprised that there seems to be a valid Chaos Heretic path. There's even a Heretic voicepack for your character!

Funny enough, I also don't find the Psykers that amazing. They have some useful powers, but compared to my dream team of an ex-Commissar MC feeding Argenta multiple turns to explode enemies, some lightning has felt underwhelming. It became even more underwhelming when her skin peeled off and a daemoness erupted from the corpse (despite the UI saying she was at 0 degradation and no peril buildup), which promptly stabbed another character for 40 damage.

It might also just be Idira's build. Operative-Diviner seems like a weird combination. Feels like Officer-Diviner or Operative-Pyromancy/Telepath would be a better setup, though Officer would step on some toes.

That's not a bug. As an unsanctioned Psyker, Idira has a 5% to trigger phenomena/perils at any point she uses her powers, even if the veil is totally stable. It's perfectly possible for her to explode into a daemon at 0 veil with no warning, and it seems to be the intended behaviour. Heinrix never does this, being actually sanctioned, and neither does your PC, also being sanctioned.

[Rynjin]

I've been enjoying Operative-Pyromancer on my own PC. Despite the fact that Ignite says the damage takes place at the END of the target's turn, it seems to actually trigger at the START of their turn, making it significantly better than it appears. It does around the same damage as a shot from the sniper rifle the Operative starts with, and doesn't require an attack roll.

[Anonymouswizard]

I've honestly been very happy not being a psyker, and plan to seek out a Black Ship as soon as the game lets me. My biggest regret is going Soldier instead of Officer, but that's a minor issue and I'm sure it'll matter less once I hit level 16.

[Cespenar]

I'm kinda with warty on this one.

I'll probably get and play it regardless, since it's a tactics game and the genre is the superior genre :P, but if past Owlcat games are a sign, I'll probably drop it at the 60%-ish mark on a good day, because they tend to make games with the vision that theirs is the only tactics game people are going to play for the next 30 years or something.

Because of this other thread, I decided to check out Song of Farca and so far it's pretty good. Reminds me a little of Orwell (the game, not the author) but less... I don't know, clinical?

Yeah, the plot and narrative was easier to get into in Song of Farca than the other hacker/detective games IMHO too. Solid little game.

[Wookieetank]

So far my biggest complaint with Tides of Numenera is that the party size is too small. I've found 6 (7 if you count the mutually exclusive party member) so far, and you only get to take 3 with you at a time. Current party is Tybir Aligern and Rhin, and I really want to add in Oom, Erritis and Matkina, but I'm attached to the first three already. Callistege is also intriguing, but can't bring her along without ditching Aligern, and that's not happening anytime soon. *grumble grumble*


Otherwise enjoying the game, and think I'm getting close to leaving Sagus Cliffs for parts unknown (or at least only known through brief reference).

[Zevox]

So last night I played BlazBlue: Central Fiction's ranked online for a couple of hours. Now, I don't know if anyone else has ever tried to play ranked in an ArcSys game not named Dragon Ball FighterZ more than a month or two after release, but if you have, you know how astonishing that is. Normally ranked mode in those is a wasteland after the initial release window, and everybody just plays in the lobbies/player matches. I didn't even go into ranked expecting to find anyone, I just figured I might as well turn on ranked matchmaking while I was in training mode practicing a little bit before going to player matches, see if I got lucky and there was someone else doing the same. And it's not like I'm playing the game because some event's happening that brought me back to it, rollback was added to it almost two years ago now, and the devs are otherwise long since done with it. There's just enough people playing it that I could get a decent variety of foes in ranked, seven years after its release. That's amazing and I love it. This needs to be something I come back to regularly, holy crap.

Just finished the DLC for Final Fantasy XVI: Echoes of the Fallen.

It’s a short campaign- about three hours long. And it takes place right before the final main mission in the game. You take on the role of Clive once more and have Joshua, Jill and Torgal along for the ride.

I enjoyed the new area. The encounters were slightly more difficult than before (I realized at the very end thst I was playing on FF Mode, so that may have spiked the difficulty). The last encounter was surprisingly difficult and took me a few tries to learn its moves and counter accordingly.

They will be releasing a longer DLC come Spring which deals with Leviathan, as clearly shown in the trailer. It was fun going back to Valisthea for a few hours and wreck things up. You evfn get Cloud’s Buster Sword for purchasing the DLC, which may or may not fit the setting.

Good to hear. I'm personally waiting on the Leviathan DLC to drop and then I'll play them together - doing the Leviathan one first so I have Echoes of the Fallen left over to actually use Leviathan's abilities during. Though I have to say, missed opportunity on their part that the DLC doesn't involve making Jill and Joshua playable. Even more so than the Leviathan moveset, getting to play as other characters would've been a big draw for me there.

Meanwile, I am currently getting ready to (read: reinstalling the game) play God of War: Ranarok's new DLC, Valhalla, which just dropped. I'd be more excited if it weren't a roguelike mode, but eh, it's free, and if Hades' combat and writing can carry that gameplay style for me, I'm sure God of War's can.

Edit: And I misunderstood the release date, it's tomorrow, not today. Oh well, at least I'm all set up for it.