The Weekly Free Talk Tuesday! Discussion - 01-08-2023

Playing Nier Automata for the first time, and just got to the third run…if it sticks the landing it might end up being one of the best games I’ve ever played.

I am trying out the beta to coral island. It's cozy, it doesn't crash much. I really love the art style. The diverse cast is what makes me want to play that game.

I hope the time will fly by till the marriage update is there! I am looking forward to the romance plotlines 😊

I'm still on my first playthrough of Jedi Survivor after a month. I find the grand master difficulty not so fair compared to Sekiron. There were many moves that can one shot you on the difficulty. Some how, I don't remember it being this hard on Fallen Order.

Guess I will put GM for later and enjoy it at Master difficulty.

I've been getting back into Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on Switch. It's amazing how well that game holds up and it's what, 5 years old at least on the Switch alone?

In my quest to play all the mainline Final Fantasy games, I’m now down to 3: FF3, FF5, and FF11.

Last night, after many trials, I’ve installed FF11 and am in the process of setting up some mods to make it a bit more palatable. I’ve read that the main story here takes about 100 hours, so my goal is to just blast through it as fast as possible (then get back to leveled up all my jobs in FF14 to 90).

But boy did they make the process of installing FF11 difficult. I would totally get it if someone tried to play this game and gave up literally on the trial checkout page because you have to first set up an address and payment method and they do not tell you this. For as much as SquareEnix has the ability to make good games, their online interfaces are some of the worst in the…world maybe at this point.

And then there was a 5 hour update download/install once I finally figured out how to make PlayOnline work. And I’m on a 1Gb/s fiber line. Just woof.

But I’ve heard the game is fun after you finally get through…all that.

I've started playing The Pale Beyond, and I really love it so far. It's basically a mix of VN and a resource management game where you're put in command of a polar expedition in a 19th century-ish fictional world, and have to get your crew through the challenges of resource scarcity, extreme cold and interpersonal drama.

My only nitpick is that it's a bit too linear so I have to fight against my urge to savescum.

I just started Shadows of Doubt. Some very cool procedural detective stuff, though I feel like my gripes aren't so much with the programming.

Having to pick up miniscule items doesn't feel very reliable on a 1080p screen. The vents are illogically designed, quite often not connecting to certain rooms at all. People's doors require the key even from the inside, leading to likely fire hazards. The "stolen item" action of having to place the item in question back in their mailbox does not work reliably, often leading to other passersby grabbing the item or it breaking in the process of putting it down.

This is just what I've found in two days, and it's the type of game you're meant to stick persistently with for a long time. Not sure how it's going to go.

This past weekend I reinstalled killing floor 2 and remembered what great mindless fun it is. Nothing too complicated, just queue in and kill zombie-esque creatures for a while. Community has always been mostly nice as well