The Weekly 'What are you playing?' Discussion

Quinten@lemmy.worldmod to Games@lemmy.world – 53 points –

Have you been spending hours trying to pass a level? Or maybe you are completely addicted to a newly bought game. Do you have a question about a game or would like to share something else? In the Weekly Discussion Thread, you can do it all!

Please don’t forget to use the spoiler tag as soon as you start talking about a storyline.

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Dark Souls 3. Well I say Dark Souls 3. Reality is its Sister Friede. Over and over and over again. Stage 3 is easy to get to. But she kicks my ass in stage 3.

My friends have been getting back into Monster Hunter World recently, so I decided to pick it up as well. I stopped in High Rank when I first played it, and hit Master Rank over the weekend. I'm looking forward to smacking bigger monsters with bagpipes.

I‘m actually gonna pick it up again with a friend soon! We wanna try and platinum the thing, we‘ll see how that goes. I‘ve no idea where I am, I‘m in the DLC, that‘s all I remember.

Escape From Tarkov and souls games

I may have a self hate issue

Tell us you hate yourself without telling us you hate yourself.

That being said, EFT always sucks me in every couple wipes or so. I want to play arena.

Shining Force II for the Sega Genesis! I'm not very far into it yet, but it's a good old classic JRPG.

after the wife and I put ~350hrs into BG3, we were hungering for more. We went back and played Divinity Original Sin 1/2. 1 was tough to play by modern standards but 2 definitely holds up. There seem to be a few easter eggs here and there but I don't see any reason you'd have to play 1 to understand 2. The combat and skill system is a little different but still very intuitive once you get the hang of it and is definitely a solid recommend for anyone who wants more baulder's gate but has already done every playthrough under the sun.

I’m soooo thankful BG3 went with the skill wheel rather than the skill bars like in DoS 1/2. The bars were a pain to try to keep organized (at least on console or playing with a controller), and I’d always forget to use skills that were on bars 3 or higher.

I guess I should have specified PC, the interfaces on PC are very similar and most of the hotkeys are the same across all 3 games which is a big plus

Ah ok I’ve only really played on Xbox, since that’s where my CRPG buddy is. Still trying to convince him to build a gaming PC. Or at least get a steam deck haha

Yeah, I think D:OS2 is still a good call for people wanting more. Trying to talk my gaming partner into picking it up.

I think the first D:OS is too much of a quality-of-life nightmare at this point to recommend.

I'm actively trying not to start up my 4th run. I beat it three times back to back. And I have a multiplayer game going. I also have a slew of partially started games. But I have to give it a break because there's a point where it's a hobby and there's a point where it's an addiction for me

I tried Last Epoch. 10 hours in and it's the most boring thing.

Been having fun in PalWorld though

I've been playing Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name and I'm in love. This feels like a perfect bridge between Yakuza 6 and Like a Dragon. The play styles for fighting feel really clean and are actually fun, compared to some of the fight styles in earlier games.

Caught up on all the Vampire Survivors content that got released since I last played, now I’m finishing up GRID (2019) and Spiral Knights, with a race or two of Mario Kart.

Shattered Pixel Dungeon.

It's like the only phone game that's got integrity, can be put down at a moment's notice, doesn't rely on good controls, and is good.

  • Yakuza 0 -- doing the real estate thing as Kiryu; already beat two Kings
  • Lunacid -- the atmosphere is amazing, but this game desperately needs a pause button

Also about to try Factorio once again

Last time I tried it I found it nice, but overwhelming and without much incentive to continue playing it. Maybe this time this changes

Fancy that.

I’m going through Yakuza Kiwami at the moment, hoping to maybe finish it over the weekend and then start number 2.

Hoping to have Granblue Fantasy Relink next week. Wasn’t able to secure a copy due to low stock.

I've been replaying Loop Hero on the Deck. I never finished it the first time but now I can do a few loops before bed.

Other than that I've also been playing a heavily modded Project Zomboid. Working on building a base to fend off enemy bandit NPCs and zombies. Having to fight something that can shoot back at you has given the game new life.

I had a good time with Loop Hero for a while, a few months after it came out. Ultimately stopped running it because it felt like I was never able to pivot mid-run if I found a great drop. Had a "what's the point of the randomness then?" thought after that and it broke the spell for me. Don't know if they ever made any changes along those lines.

Post some screenshots of your base over on the zomboid Lemmy community!

Valheim and Talos Principle 2, alternating

Grounded. Awful xbl sign in experience that turned out to require turning off the pihole type AdBlock or whitelisting like 70 weird m$ domains. No dedicated server so can't self host on a desktop and playing with friends requires the save owner to be available or use a janky save sharing thing that probably can't solve the case of co-op team accidentally hosting it separately and progressing because steam notifications are annoying and turned off. Game is decent enough otherwise and most of the things I didn't like in gameplay turned out to be upgradeables that would eventually become less irritating. It's a buildcraft survival with bugs and spiders and the player characters are small enough that a blade of grass is more like a tree trunk.

My friends and I had a blast in grounded. Really good times

Hegemony: Wars of Ancient Greece

I played it years ago when it came out and it's still really good. It's an indie grand strategy game with low production values but a game play loop I find very satisfying. The fact that it's played on a realistic map of ancient Greece adds a lot of flavor and I love how the geography actually has important implications for strategy.

Enshrouded.

So far it's as addicting as Valheim. Maybe more, since it has more guiding.

Any interest in playing with another player? I'm looking for a server currently, and would be interested in playing with some fellow Lemmings.

I've just renewed my WoW subscription after many years away, wish me luck.

Classic or retail? Or SOD? To be honest right now is great time to get back into WoW. Multiple ways to play the game and the new xpac is actually pretty fun!

I did play a bit of classic during the break, I'm giving retail an honest go now. I did hear good things about the current X-Pac but also saw the blizzcon extracts and seems they are starting to cater more to folks like me who might not be able to play all the time. I'm also harbouring some hope they bring a port to Xbox after the Microsoft acquisition which would be great for me to be able to put more time in.

First impressions are good, I'm SHOCKED by all the quality of life stuff, and the levelling is soooo fast! Feels great but definitely a bit confusing, I quit in warlords so a lot has changed.

The leveling is a lot of fun. And running dungeons with the scaling. You can play some seriously OP classes that scale really well. I also really enjoy the new dragon mounts. They feel like guild wars flying if youve ever used those before. But yes taking away from the need to play every single day and you can hop in and out of some decent content without a crazy time sink is really nice. Im impressed! Since the last few xpacs have been pretty meh in my opinion.

I literally only played this afternoon and got my main from 35 to 59, for an old player like me that's insane, on classic I played countless hours and never managed to catch up to max level. Not gonna lie, it's working, I'm excited for end game and it feels like this might be an actual return. Haven't tried the new dragon mounts I guess that's something for when I hit 70. I'm definitely buying the war within now with the included dragon flight X-Pac (so far I only restarted the sub). I don't know if it would work since I'm on EU servers but if you want to play soon, I'm down!

Im on NA servers but with the ease of leveling im sure i could level a character fast haha. Also cross realm is a thing too but im also not sure how that works. I agree though i feel like they really have been able to grab me with the gameplay. Its refreshing compared to how the dailies and stuff used to work. Classic too.

I was a teenage exocolonist. I hadn't even heard of it, but it's one of the best games I've played in the last 5 years.

Kind of a visual novel, card puzzler, and social sim. Like if persona had poker instead of turn based battles.

Prepare to do lots of crying. I cried a lot with this game. It's wonderful.

I finished it yesterday. Played through the ending twice, and was planning to do it more but the second ending was so perfect and imperfect at the same time, that it just felt like it was the ending I wanted.

Amazing game, now I'm looking for similar ones!

Pokémon Scarlett and a mobile game called Ragnarok online. Used to play it on PC back in that day on a Korean server with my brother

I finished up Guardians of the Galaxy this past weekend, which I enjoyed. Nothing world shattering but a solid title. I'm on a sports game kick right now, so I decided to start a franchise in Madden 23. I would have gone with 24, but it doesn't seem to work on Linux.

Suicide Squad.

I started last night after work and had to force myself to go to bed. The movement and combat in the game are a ton of fun and giving me Doom Eternal vibes. Dancing around the battlefield, using the right attack on the right npc, and just making things explode.

It’s damn fun.

Assassin's Mirage. It's not good but not bad as well. Better to wait for a sale and complete it ASAP before Ubisoft shuts down the servers in a few years.

I'm a die-hard AC fan, but typically only play through the game/story once and then put it on the shelf. This year, I picked up the UbiWhatever subscription at $15/mo, played through AC Mirage in a couple of weeks, and dropped the subscription. It's even better than waiting for a sale!

That ain't a bad idea and will definitely work out for games that don't need grinding like Valhalla

I recently got Demon's Souls up and running on my Steam Deck, it ran so well and I got totally absorbed in it playing it once through with the Blueblood sword.

This got me in the mood for more Souls-likes, so I just finished off The Surge 2.

It's a better game than the first, more interesting combat, but suffers from similar issues to the first in long travel times, sometimes confusing level design and sometimes the combat can be frustrating.

Finished Lost Odyssey over the weekend, and I've moved on to Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Torna.

The menus still drive me nuts like they did with the base game, but it's still fun to wander around. The characters are already growing on me a bit too.

Does it have different characters than XBC2? I have it lying around but I feel like I‘m not ready to see them without Rex since the trio grew on me so much over the course of the game

Some, yes. The flashbacks in XBC2 give a general idea of who's around, plus some new characters.

Finally jumped back into Octopath Traveller 2. Time to finish those quests.

I'm playing Skyrim. Kind of. 5 days in to rebuilding my mod list since playing last year.

what do you mean, "Kind of?" Rebuilding modlists is the point of Skyrim!

Rebuilding mod list: already pro tourney gamer level but single player.

I can't really check my overall playtime but once again I'm being sucked in by Minecraft.

As a teenager it was my default game and if I could see my playtime I recon it's 5 times higher than my next biggest game which was Skyrim at about 500 hours across both editions. When I was a teen, I'd adored how I could just get lost in this peaceful, lonely world.

For the last 6 years, I've been trying to play more innovative indie games that I can broaden my love for the medium, but every now and again I yearn for the mines. It's basically the only game I can enjoy after day of work too.

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. Awesome, awesome game that I can't put down. I started the series in 2020 and played through the whole thing that year, so all the references to the past games make it that much better.

Galactic Civilizations III. I'm about 10 turns away from filling up the Ascension Crystals with a custom civilization focused on research.
The research tree seems endless with many 1-turn tech still left to unlock and I have no idea what to focus on in order to build the Ascension Portal/Gate thing.
But I unlocked the Huge design for ships, so I'm going to try and make one before the time is up.

I spent around 8 hours total on this match, most of it Sunday. I'll probably finish it tomorrow if I have time to play.

Picked up Sonic All Stars Racing on the Deck, and it's super fun. Never heard about the game when it came out. It's basically Mario Kart with Sega characters, but thats... really fun.

I'm still on Nioh, but I'm almost done having only a few main missions left. I still think it's great, but it does suffer from its blocking mechanic being so strong. While bosses are usually the best thing about soulslikes, I often find myself having only one or two fights against a boss to succeed. Once you know their entire moveset it's really easy to execute the fight, mostly blocking and poking the boss. Dodging as a mechanic is harder to execute due to the timing required instead of just holding the block button, but it's hardly ever required.

Playing the waiting game to see if Helldivers 2 manages not to fumble the bag and becomes my no-life addiction again

I've been playing Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew and have been having a blast so far. It's a little like a cross between a MOBA style game and Metal Gear set in the Caribbean and you basically play as the undead Barbarossa pirates as they quietly murder their way through a mission.

I've been trying to get into the Borderlands games, since surprisingly I've never played them (though I've played games that my friends have told me are "spiritual successors" to the BL games, such as Destiny). Though, I am getting stuck at the first bosses for BL1 and 2 haha.

TEKKEN 8!

If you like competitive fighting games, play them early on release. Its when ranked mode really does feel wild. It balances out as the game ages but those early rank battles are an absolute blast. Plus the game looks incredible and always has an absolute banger of a soundtrack.

Elden ring (had to stop playing on release due to arthritis, hands working better atm). It's pretty good. I got up to volcano manor on release, doing liurnia atm so still on the easy/familiar stuff although finding a few things I didn't get last time.

Dual Scythes are fun but garbage slow in pve so I might respect after the fight with empty nester. Trying a dragon communion build but there aren't many dragons early game so mostly I just have no useful stats so far haha.

Palworld. It's also pretty good.

Infinifactory. I always get the free Epic games and take them for a little spin, but this game is way more interesting than I expected! It's a level-based puzzle game where you make automated factory lines.

I was blown away when I beat the campaign and the second campaign unlocked. 10/10