What are you playing right now?

[Briar King]

Hmm that is proving way more difficult than I thought. I’m starting to think I got extremely lucky finding my 75 8K in early 2021. All I can find in stores right now is plain ole 4Ks LG has an 86in which right on that is perfect size for my den but I’d be essentially down grading if I got it. Yeah there ain’t much in 8K right now anyway but my PS5 and XB are capable of it now so when it’s the norm I want to not worry about it. May take a drive to TX tomorrow to see if anyone has any even though I’m going to my dr there this Wednesday. I need to get this done if it’s going to happen asap so the cable company can do their thing. Ugh I so want to load up on a 10-11 inch bigger screen now that it’s in my head.

[Eluvianii he/him]

I guess now all the Ace Attorney games have been localized huh. And even the older ones are available on modern platforms. Please let this be a sign that new games are coming.

[Use the Falchion]

Last month I finally completed a long-standing goal of mine for Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes - teaching Dimitri Bolting. Did I need to do this? Not at all. Are there better characters for Bolting? Absolutely! (Basically any natural magic-wielding character is a better choice, and even Felix is a better choice due to his comparatively higher Magic growths. And any character with Witstrike is a better choice!) But it was a fun idea and BOB SAGET I FINISHED IT. As such, Dark Knight Dimitri is complete. This took a year of grinding on-and-off, but it was worth it. As a slight aside, Annettel learned both Bolting and Agnea's Arrow in roughly a week of playing, a mere fraction of the time! Gotta love how Supports play a role, don't you...

I've done that, beaten Unicorn Overlord again (way back in April I think), tried out Dynasty Warriors 8, booted up my old copy of Fallout 4 for a quick moment, and just finished the main storyline for Nexomon last week. I'd love to play Mass Effect: Legendary Edition again, but I need to find my copy. ...I also know that I'll get VERY bored with ME 1 and skip to ME 2 and 3, which is exactly what happened last time...sigh...

Anyways, I now have to decided between Moonstone Island and Another Crab's Treasure. I'll probably do Moonstone Island first, although I'm excited for both games and really want to enjoy both of them. I'm trying to find a new Farming/Dating Sim game to enjoy after liking Rune Factory 4 nearly 10 years ago and not liking anything since, and I want Another Crab's Treasure to bring me into the Soulsborne fold, a genre I've never really enjoyed. 

Other games I want to play during the summer:

Final Fantasy 16 - I've heard good things about it from my friend and from social media, so I guess it's time

Assassin's Creed Origins - The only AC I've actually played was AC 4: Black Flag, and that was the perfect AC game to me. But I got Origins because I've heard so many good things about it. 

Elden Ring - This is a big MAYBE. Again, I want to like the genre, but I'm not a fan of it, so I don't want to dive right into the deep end. 

Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn - I've been keeping an eye on this game for a number of years due to it being a game in the Flintlock Fantasy subgenre. I thought it'd be more akin to God of War than a Soulsborne game, but hearing it's the latter gave me a moment of pause. Overall, I decided that if the reviews are good and I like Another Crab's Treasure, I'll check this one out. 

 

Other games for later in the year:

Sun Haven - I just want to try the game out on the Switch. Like Moonstone Island, this game is part of the search to find new Farming/Dating Sim games that I like. 

Symphany of War: Nephilim Saga - I'm hoping this game makes me feel like I'm playing Fire Emblem, since we're not getting a new FE game this year other than Unicorn Overlord. 

Metaphor Re:Fantazio - I'm VERY excited for this game. I'm now holding myself back from too much information so I don't know everything before the game's release. The only thing missing was romance. (The creators said that romance was missing because it's more or less an integral part of the high school experience, and since this doesn't take place in high school like Persona, it's not needed. I fundamentally disagree with this, but I'm an American man, not a Japanese man...that being said, I have a few Japanese friends and they are/were looking for love in their thirties, so I wouldn't call romance a "high school" thing only. Not to mention the interplay of romance and marriage in politics is a well-documented - and oft-scandalized - thing.) 

Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven - The gameplay looks fun and the story looks interesting. I wish there was a romance mechanic to the game, but alas...

Assassin's Creed Shadows - I've heard quite a few controversial things about this game, which really makes me want to play it out of spite if the gameplay's good and the characters are good. It's always fun seeing Yasuke appear. 

Dark Deity 2 - I helped the first one on Kickstarter, and while I never beat it, I had fun with it. (Fun fact, the creators are Sanderson fans! I caught several of their early-game Easter Eggs early on, such as the Windrunner class and Cosmere University.) I'm looking forward to the second game and hopefully that will release by November/December. (I also hope that Dark Deity 3 has a romance system.) 

Coromon - I like Pokemon, enjoyed Nexomon, and am looking forward to whenever I get around to it. 

Fire Emblem Genealogy Remake - It's not coming this year and I'M UPSET.

[aneonfoxtribute]

Tsukihime just got an official English translation, so I'm gonna start on that soon

[clowncarcrash]

I've recently beaten Life is Strange 1, Earthbound and I'm wrapping up the last case on Phoenix Wright 1.

I think the next game I'm going to beat is Omori.

[Use the Falchion]

I finally found my copy of Three Houses! I spent a few days playing a copy where I had started with the Black Eagles house, a first for me! I plan on going the Silver Snow route and romancing Rhea though. I knew there was something weird going on with this save file when I realized that Lysithea had no ranks with fists or flying, because I was POSITIVE I had done Fly-Sithea and Fist-Sithea before, on the same playthrough even! And I was positive I had started Marianne on the War Cleric route! As it happens, this was a different file than my normal one. 

On my normal NG+ save profile, which I found a few days later, I had rediscovered that Past-Falchion made the weird choice of playing through Azure Moon with M!Byleth. Since I refused to start over, I decided that I'll just role with it and romance Manuela for this playthrough. I was alternating between Hilda (due to all of the amazing HIldaleth art) and Manuela, and I'm going with Manuela because I adore the whole "babies ever after" ending, and only Byleth and Ferdinand give Manuela offspring. For maximum shipping chaos, I'm also having Dimitri romance Annette, instead of Felix/Annette like 90% of my previous playthroughs, because why not? Their supports are cute, and their ending card is ADORABLE. (It's also hilarious that both Annette and Ingrid can marry a king, in the form of Dimitri (Azure Moon), Claude (Verdant Wind), or Byleth (Verdant Wind/Silver Snow).)

I'll probably continue to switch it up and have Dedue x Mercedes, Sylvain x Ingrid, Felix x Dorothea, and Seteth x Bernadetta as well. (Or Bernadetta x Yuri. Yuri and Raphael give Bernie her best endings, but I always go with Raph so I want to switch it up.)  

(Off the top of my head, I can only remember children being talked about in three of M!Byleth's supports - Manuela, Shamir, and Flayn. I'm sure there are more, but those are the only ones I know right now.)

[Eluvianii he/him]

Finished Monster Hunter Rise, the base game. I will admit, I didn't expect the upgrade in the combat system to be so much fun. Thoroughly enjoying the experience, in particular the moves they give some of the new monsters to keep up with the player's increased mobility have some, frenetic results. Gotta love when they throw in some bullet hell in your Monster Hunter game.

I had heard the story to the game wasn't great and, that might be true. By other games' standards. By MH standards this is lotr. Loved every second. Kamura is also a great village to be in, having the hunter be born there was a great choice imo. There's a lot of emotional weight in knowing that these people have been with your hunter since they were born. The rampages also increase that feeling, funnily enough, having this small army of villagers gunning down monsters to protect their home is a sight to behold. 

I will admit, I was a tad worried after getting that first credits roll like 10 hours in, but I didn't need to. 78 hours clocked in after final boss. 

On to Sunbreak. Expecting great things from it. 

[Use the Falchion]

I played the demo of Samurai Warriors 5, and I like it a LOT more than Dynasty Warriors 8, at least the little I've played of the latter. Samurai Warriors 5 feels more like Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, which to me, has been the best and smoothest Warriors experience I've played. (Granted, my experience consists of five games as of this week, but still!) I've been chasing the Three Hopes high ever since, wanting to get into the Hack'N'Slash genre more than the occasional crossover and Kingdom Hearts, but I'm still not sure it's for me. 

I'm excited about Dynasty Warriors Origins next year, but we'll see how much I like the rest of Samurai Warriors 5 first.

Back to Samurai Warriors, the similarities between this game and Three Hopes come in the form of level-ups, equipping different weapons, and equipable skills. Since what I played is just a demo, I'm not sure if I'll be able to control NPCs or switch to different units on the fly. This may be an FE Warriors-exclusive thing, as I couldn't switch in Dynasty Warriors 8 either. This is also one of the big sticking points, as I LOVE switching units. It makes playing the levels so much fun while also increasing the replay value, at least for me. It also makes longer maps more like various sprints rather than marathons. Think of them more like a 4x 100 relay, since you're switching characters for micro-objectives and smaller tactical choices rather than a 400m race where it's just one person doing everything.  

All of that said, I really want a Samurai Warriors game set in Fire Emblem. I'm not talking Fire Emblem Warriors, but literally taking the major historical characters, transporting them and most of their history to a magical world, giving them classes, magic, and all of the things, and calling it a day. IntSys and KT can change the characters' names if that makes them feel better, but they better keep the designs and characterizations! I want my anime-styled. shonen-protagonist-attitude, Odachi-wielding Oda Nobunaga to change classes from Lord to Warlord to Demon Lord after being taken over by the Demon Dragon of the game in a Faustian deal to unite his war-torn country. Thematically compare and contrast Nobunaga and Sigurd, two charismatic leaders who unite their countries in some ways but also do great harm. Give me a partial second generation where the children of these leaders have to deal with the semi-unified country their parents left behind. All with Warriors combat. I WANT IT.

[The cheeseman Sola Scriptora. Eddie's a nerd]

I've been playing MC Java 1.19.3 with my brother. We just got our cow crusher working, finally found a village (and thus, potatoes), and I finished the first floor of our base, sans decorations. We're playing on Normal mode with a couple of data packs from Vanilla Tweaks.

My Master-difficulty playthrough of Jedi: Fallen Order has also been coming along swimmingly. On this run, I'm planning to collect all the chests and secrets and maybe platinum the game. Currently I've completed Bogano, Zeffo, Dathomir, and Ilum. I've just got Kashyyyk left. I also finally beat all four surprise bosses. Ogdo Bogdo was the hardest of them, imo.

My playthrough of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is on hold for now. I plan to come back to it sometime probably in the next month.

[Use the Falchion]

Thanks to Samurai Warriors 5, Samurai Warriors 4 Empires, and Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate, I FINALLY get the appeal of Warriors games! They also make me question what on earth IntSys and KT were thinking with the OG Fire Emblem Warriors game. There are several popular FE Lords that don't use Swords, and any or all of them could have been brought in. There are several royal and noble characters who are adjacent to Lords that don't use swords (Tana, Innes, L'Archel, Lilina, Quan, Lewyn, etc.) that could have been brought in. They could have just given several of the sword-users alternative builds also. The problems with the sword users is one that felt entirely self-created, and one that wasn't helped by the OCs Rowan and Liana. 

Currently alternating between Samurai Warriors 5, Samurai Warriors 4 Empires, and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 again. I got a hankering to play it again and booted up the game for a NG+ playthrough. 

[aneonfoxtribute]

4 hours ago, Use the Falchion said:

Thanks to Samurai Warriors 5, Samurai Warriors 4 Empires, and Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate, I FINALLY get the appeal of Warriors games! They also make me question what on earth IntSys and KT were thinking with the OG Fire Emblem Warriors game. There are several popular FE Lords that don't use Swords, and any or all of them could have been brought in. There are several royal and noble characters who are adjacent to Lords that don't use swords (Tana, Innes, L'Archel, Lilina, Quan, Lewyn, etc.) that could have been brought in. They could have just given several of the sword-users alternative builds also. The problems with the sword users is one that felt entirely self-created, and one that wasn't helped by the OCs Rowan and Liana. 

Currently alternating between Samurai Warriors 5, Samurai Warriors 4 Empires, and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 again. I got a hankering to play it again and booted up the game for a NG+ playthrough. 

FE Warriors is, like. Insanely baffling as a game. It's a fine enough game, but it's easily the worst Warriors game I've played. If you asked people back when you were playing it what the opinion was, they'd probably say it's definitely not the norm for Warriors games. The fact that the only unique gameplay styles are ties to the classes (meaning that so few of the characters are actually unique) is the single most baffling choice that game made. Even Three Hopes, which has the same idea of "gameplay is tied to class", fixed that by both making reclassing a thing, AND by giving each character a unique ability that changes how they play, so everyone feels unique even when they have the same combo strings.

Definitely Hyrule Warriors would have been the best recommendation for someone who was disappointed with FE Warriors, since every character in that game is ACTUALLY unique (plus that game has an insane amount of content). 

[Use the Falchion]

On 8/19/2024 at 12:03 AM, aneonfoxtribute said:

Definitely Hyrule Warriors would have been the best recommendation for someone who was disappointed with FE Warriors, since every character in that game is ACTUALLY unique (plus that game has an insane amount of content). 

Noted! I probably won't check it out, to be honest, because I'm not a Zelda fan, and SW4E and SW5 (and XB3) are giving me all that I need right now, but I'll keep it in mind!

[Texside he/him/his]

I'm waiting on Visions of Mana to release; I'm between games right now. I'm excited for that, though, the demo was quite fun!