What are you currently playing? V4

[Ullion]

Recently I've been mostly splitting my time between Guild Wars 2, Path of Exile (although spending less time in it as this league continues on), Zelda: Oracle of Seasons for the monthly game-along and partway through my 2nd path of Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

 

[gimmepie]

2nd path of Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

How are you finding it?
Also, never played Path of Exile but I've used its music for stuff before cause it has a great soundtrack.

 

[Ullion]

How are you finding it?

I definitely enjoyed being able to play a new fire emblem game for the first time since I played SoV! Overall the experience was great for the first play through, and am looking forward to additional runs when I get some more time! If I were to be more critical and honest, there were some parts that bothered/disappointed me, such as fewer chapters but significantly more time spent per run (thanks to the sheer amount of time spent in the monastery) and what feels like a strange limit on the roster (which is sort of made up by the freedom of class diversity/choice for each character). I can expand my thoughts on these if you'd like, as these are mostly just quickly jotted down mental notes.

Also, never played Path of Exile but I've used its music for stuff before cause it has a great soundtrack.

I've been playing it on and off since it was in closed beta (2012 or 2013 I think?), and as a Diablo 2 lover as a kid, is my go-to ARPG. The soundtrack for it is really good although I've played the game so often then I typically just have other music blasting in the background when playing now lmao.

 

[gimmepie]

I definitely enjoyed being able to play a new fire emblem game for the first time since I played SoV! Overall the experience was great for the first play through, and am looking forward to additional runs when I get some more time! If I were to be more critical and honest, there were some parts that bothered/disappointed me, such as fewer chapters but significantly more time spent per run (thanks to the sheer amount of time spent in the monastery) and what feels like a strange limit on the roster (which is sort of made up by the freedom of class diversity/choice for each character). I can expand my thoughts on these if you'd like, as these are mostly just quickly jotted down mental notes.

Feel free to expand on that a little. OR hmu and I can rant about how much I love this game for a few hours. I'm currently playing through it again for the fourth time for the monthly challenge lol.

 

[.hack]

Decided Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 would be my next PS game, I already played quite extensively on my switch, but as it's in the PS plus mid tier library now decided to give it a go on PS too and see if I can get the plat trophy on that too! However before delving in XV2 I decided to go back to Xenoverse 1 and play a bit of that first that I always played on PS and never got 100% on XV1 there. Some of the trophies for XV1 are super long, been enjoying playing it again tho so hopefully I play enough to get that 100% before moving onto XV2.

As XV1 wasn't on switch I never got to see the XV1 save data import feature where there's a statue of your xenoverse 1 character in Xenoverse 2 so at least my first ever Xenoverse Create-a-character will live on through both these playthroughs now! I anticipate XV1 taking quite long to finish up, but I might just go ahead and move over onto XV2 if I find the platinum trophy too long to get.

For the next while tho, I'm grinding out all my missing trophies on Dragon Ball Xenoverse (1) on PS4!

 

[DrWho42]

disco elysium (2019)

 

[Ullion]

Feel free to expand on that a little. OR hmu and I can rant about how much I love this game for a few hours. I'm currently playing through it again for the fourth time for the monthly challenge lol.

So as a preface, the only Fire Emblem games I have played (so far) have been Awakening, Fates (all 3 routes), Echoes, and Three Houses (full Golden Deer route, and halfway through true Black Eagle route). There's quite a bit I both enjoyed and did not enjoy so far in all of these games. Also for the record, before playing three houses I had considered Fates to be my favourite in the series. I know it gets a lot of hate for it's garbage story, garbage writing and garbage characters - but mechanically it was Awakening 2.0. Awakening was a great introduction into the series for me, but had a lot of serious holes mechanically speaking such as pair-ups being broken (and heavily RNG), stat growths being inflated, and ambushes on lots of map. I felt like Fates fixed a lot of these: making pair-ups less strong and more predictable, reducing overall growth rates, and ambushes only being reinforcements. (I hope I am using the terms "ambush" and "reinforcements" correctly here for this series)

As I had mentioned earlier, the sheer amount of game time spent in the monastery and doing the more macro-oriented content of the game was significantly higher in Three Houses than it was in any of the previous games. As a comparison; Awakening (26 chapters long) and Fates (27 chapters per path) each took me about 40 hours on my first playthrough, and about 25-35 hours on consecutive/repeat playthroughs on the harder difficulties. Three Houses only has 20 chapters and took me a little over 80 hours to complete. This has both downsides and upsides as a consequence; the characters get seriously WAY more fleshed out and appear less one-dimensional/gimmicky compared to the characters in Fates/Awakening which is a breath of fresh air. The downside is that I have to play for roughly twice the amount of time, for 6-7 less maps of the main story (as I'm disregarding the side missions that are available in any and all of those games) which is mildly frustrating. For Awakening, the army management portions outside of maps was very minimal and did leave something to be desired, as all the player could do was tinker with equipment & abilities, storage, read support conversations and visit the shop for gear.

Fates I found was a great in between when it comes to this aspect of the game. On top of the basics you did in Awakening, you would have your own castle with shops that differed based on which path you took. Additionally you get a different type of food and precious stone for each run that would allow you to invest more into a certain stat (food) and forge higher tier weapons of a certain type (precious stones). Initially that may sound long/complicated, but it was a fairly simple system that changed the game up even if you were to run the same route. Most importantly - it did not take up much of the player's time in achieving this extra layer of army management. There is a downside of Fates system here, which is the awful character writing where they were (and quite fairly) criticized for probably being the worst in the franchise. That being said, I've enjoyed the FE series as a whole more for it's combat and game mechanics than I have for it's characters (that being said, I do love some characters from all the games).

For the class customization in each of the games: they're all at least somewhat different. Fates and Awakening were very similar, with the main difference being that characters in Fates had the option to change classes to what their partners or A+ tier friends were at the cost of having less base variety in classes on a single character. As a reference: in Awakening each character came as a base class and could second seal into any of two other classes but were stuck with that. In Fates, characters came with their base class and could second seal into one other class in addition to partner seals (changing to the base class of their partner) or friendship seal (same as partner but with high tier friends). In Three Houses, all characters could become any (non-gender nor lord locked) class if I am remembering correctly. In the surface, Three Houses seems like the best bet (more choices = better) but that feels less fulfilling when the majority of the classes all just eventually promote into their same version but with a mount. Early game, most characters start the same (noble or commoner) and experience a good divergence in classes when they promote to intermediate... only to converge again at the end game and mostly all hop on a (sometimes winged) horse. That being said, I don't dislike this class system so much as I am just... undecided still?

To quickly go back to Fates quickly as I failed to mention something: but the two core routes (Nohr/Hoshido) have two different cultures, and as such they have different classes based on those cultures. As an example, Nohr (more european inspired) would have their typically sword fighting class be the Mercenary -> Hero or Bow Knight and Hosido (more asian inspired) would have their respective sword fighting class be Samurai -> Swordmaster or Master of Arms. Having these differences, with different abilities and stat growths also helped to make the different routes play differently. As a final quick aside, this led to my favourite promotion class tree in the entire series, being the Spear fighter/master which has not made a return in the series since.

It is still a great game, and may very well takeover Fates as my favourite in the series after I play some more times through, as these are just my more initial feelings as I am still exploring the game as a whole. :) Also super sorry it took me a couple days to replay, I wasn't entirely sure what to cover/say and wanted to sit and think about it after you had confirmed wanting me to explain myself. ^^;; If there is anything I missed that you wanted my thoughts on, feel free to ask me more! I also just want to clarify, as much harping on the games as I may have did, I loved all of them a lot, and none of any of their deficiencies tore me away from playing them multiple times through.

 

[gimmepie]

Snip

These opinions seem pretty fair to me. Three Houses is my first and only Fire Emblem game so far but I love how well it handles its lore and characters while still being mechanically interesting. Funnily enough, I actually really like how they handled stat growth, classes, supports and all that by tying it all back into the concept of Byleth giving lessons. It could sometimes feel a little tedious being as long as it was to get through the first day of each month, but once you fall into a routine of sorts it goes by quick enough to not be an issue and the benefits of the experience taking that shape are well worth it.

 

[Ullion]

These opinions seem pretty fair to me. Three Houses is my first and only Fire Emblem game so far but I love how well it handles its lore and characters while still being mechanically interesting. Funnily enough, I actually really like how they handled stat growth, classes, supports and all that by tying it all back into the concept of Byleth giving lessons. It could sometimes feel a little tedious being as long as it was to get through the first day of each month, but once you fall into a routine of sorts it goes by quick enough to not be an issue and the benefits of the experience taking that shape are well worth it.

I agree pretty much with what you say here, too. The big benefit of spending so much time in the monastery with all of the additional activities does lend to much better world-building and lore, and making the characters you work with feel more like actual people instead of blah gimmicky characters. The lesson aspect of the game may be one of my favourite parts of Three Houses, as it lets you work on each of your character's skills when they're not even able to use or work on them in actual combat (for example working on a character's heavy armour skill before they can become an armoured knight) and can also use any abilities you learn from this even if they're not of a class that uses that skill (to continue the example; using "Weight -x" on a non-heavy armour class). The support growths here match what I am accustomed to in Fates and Echoes, where it's fair and workable without being over-inflated like Awakening. On my second playthrough, I have gotten in a better routine (and have just focused a LOT less on returning lost items) and it's helped make the Monastery segments fell less like constant busywork.

 

[Latios]

For me, i'm torn between playing Splatoon 3 and Pokémon Heart Gold. I have been playing through each generation of Pokémon this year in the run-up to Scarlet & Violet, and I need to start and complete Shield before that happens.

 

[.hack]

Still playing Dragon Ball Xenoverse (1) atm, at about 80% on trophies but the last chunk are super long, I might just give up on them and move over to Xenoverse 2 soonish, I checked the trophies for that game too and the plat seems equally long to get. Don't see myself realistically grinding that out so instead just play both until I naturally feel like I've had my fill and move on.

Also been playing a bit of Dokkan Battle again as I've been on this DB kick, and also back on Yugioh Duel Links a bit to check out the Link stuff and Vrains world they recently added.

 

[Pyrax]

Finally picked up Yakuza Like a Dragon. I've only reached Chapter 4 so far but I'm loving it. The turn-based combat works much better than I thought, it's very fun and I can't wait to unlock job class switching later. Huge shame I can't drag enemies into convenience stores or fast-food shops anymore though lol.

 

[.hack]

I'm at 90%ish on Xenoverse 1 now but two of the last trophies are probably way too long (collect every super attack and ultimate attack) so not far off being done and moving over to Xenoverse 2 on PS.

I've also been back on Fortnite a lil since they showed Ash from Evil Dead was added, had to get on and check that out at least, pretty cool stuff!

 

[Louise90]

Pokémon and more Pokémon

 

[Amore]

Debating either getting my first FIFA in 9 years with FIFA23 for my Switch (getting the pro controller so it won't be too awful), or perhaps getting Football Manager again - although its sooo addictive.

But in terms of actually playing? Pokémon Sword / trawling GTS on HOME. Gotta enjoy those mythicals in competitive whilst I can! (Says the guy using 0 mythicals in competitive haha)

 

[The Spectre]

It's been a while since a played a proper console/pc game since I really haven't had a lot of time these past few months so I occasionally play a bit of Blasphemous if I'm bored, I'm pretty much waiting for Blasphemous 2 and The Last Faith, I generally just play Pokemon Unite and a Modded PvZ 2 when I have a little bit of spare time.

 

[.hack]

Still playing a bit of Dragon Ball Xenoverse 1 but I have also started on Xenoverse 2. I wanted to play a bit more of this fortnite season but my connection is abysmal and at times can be completely unplayable.

Also still playing Yugioh Duel Links (Just unlocked Blue Angel in time!) & Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle (waiting for the heroes collab and that new Bardock unit looks so sick!!). I tried to check out the PoGo Halloween event stuff but seemed a bit underwhelming.

 

[Pyrax]

Progress in Yakuza LAD slowed down a bit after reaching Chapter 12. Levelling Sotenbori Battle Arena turned out to be less of a grind than I thought - up to floor 26 and my party's already between lv.40-42. Might go to the Yokohama Underground later after for job grinding (2-3 jobs at lv.20 for each character), maybe when everyone reaches lv.45.

 

[The Mega Champion]

I finished Trails of Cold Steel 3 last night. I don't have much to say. Fine, I guess. I had less of a ridiculous time than the first two games I can say that much at least. But there were probably multiple reasons for that. The most obvious one being that I played it on Easy because I refused to go through anymore BS after the prior two games in the series. It's probably how I'm going to play the Trails franchise because it's a little too over-the-top ridiculous in terms of difficulty at times. It was also probably because of changed mechanics and some new things I learned from a Discord friend from the prior two games as well. Either way I'm finishing this for good with Cold Steel 4 next. Yes I'm still playing it on Easy 😐

 

[Sweet Serenity]

I am currently still playing Pokémon Sword, but am also trying to finish Pokémon Shield. Pokémon Legends" Arceus is next on my to-do list to finish too. Other than Pokémon games, I'm playing Animal Crossing as well.