Gamers Thread

Finished the main parts of Hollow Knight and beat the hardest optional boss. Fantastic fight - but the music for that fight even better!



The game gets compared to Dark Souls a lot, which isn't really accurate, but I can see people who are fans of the Souls games liking it. Basically, just you guys play it. If you like Metroidvanias at all you will love it.


It’s in the Steam sale. Can you give an overview of the game? I’ve never played a Castlevsnia game (shocking I know) but I do have experience with Super Metroid and Metroid Prime.

Sry, started Pillars of Eternity instead. I'll get back to Dark Souls when I finish that in a month or two.

Is that a side scrolling RPG like Baldur’s Gate/Icewind Dale?

I own Icewind Dale on Steam and I tried to play it recently and it seems quite inaccessible. Probably because of how dated it is now.
 
Is that a side scrolling RPG like Baldur’s Gate/Icewind Dale?

I own Icewind Dale on Steam and I tried to play it recently and it seems quite inaccessible. Probably because of how dated it is now.

"Side-scrolling" lol. I think the word you're looking for is isometric. But yeah, it is a spiritual successor to the Infinity Engine games (Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale/Planescape: Torment). Those games are quite inaccessible largely because they use the AD&D ruleset and presume familiarity with it. They are great if you put in the effort to figure them out, though I far prefer Baldur's Gate over Icewind Dale.

Pillars of Eternity is its own kind of inaccessible, too. It's kind of beautiful to see a 2015 game so devoted to being inaccessible. The combat mechanics are stupidly convoluted, but this time the ruleset is original and all the information you need to know is in the game.
 
Yeah, I have no idea why I said side scrolling! Obviously not what I meant. Perhaps Pillars of Eternity would be a place to start to familiarise myself with these types of games since it’s more modern. Maybe I’ll give it a shot.
 
Pillars is fantastic. Everyone who likes tight narrative driven games should play the first one at least (PoE2 is really good too, but more 'open' which I didn't care for as much.)


It’s in the Steam sale. Can you give an overview of the game? I’ve never played a Castlevsnia game (shocking I know) but I do have experience with Super Metroid and Metroid Prime.

It is in ways more similar to Super Metroid than it is any Castlevania game (mostly because it doesn't have the leveling system that the Castlevania side of Metroidvanias often have.) It has a heavy focus on exploration as do all games of the genre, but what sets HK apart from most other games is the combat.

You are armed only with a single blade and eventually some skills (both movement and offensive), but the core of the game's combat system is using your weapon to defeat enemies. You also unlock charms that do things like enhance your reach, allow you to heal faster, recover from hits faster, etc.

Boss fights are almost all about pattern recognition and adapting to them. This means not only adapting to the bosses movements, but also finding which set of charms will help you out the best.
 
So I bought the following in the Steam sale:

Bayonetta
Planescape: Torment
Divinity: Original Sin
Vampire Masquerade: Bloodlines
Genital Jousting (don’t even ask)

Currently playing Bayonetta and it’s pretty good. Combat is fluid and intense and it’s quite challenging at points so far as well. There are a ridiculous amount of cut scenes though which I don’t really have the patience for in this type of game. Not sure which one to play after I finish this. I also have Mass Effect 1 and 2 from an earlier sale that I need to play as a friend raves about them.
 
Divinity Original Sin is fantastic as is Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines (but do seek out a fan patch for this, because unless something has changed since I played it the game has a number of bugs.)
 
Planescape and VtMB are excellent. Never played the other two though I did play Beyond Divinity and thought it was clunky and boring.
 
Played through about half of Bayonetta, and played some Divinity with a friend. Haven't got around to the others yet, but it's summer holidays so I have plenty of time.

Currently addicted to Diablo 3 again. Tried other ARPGs but none have combat as smooth and satisfying as D3 plus I love pushing Greater Rifts to see how far I can get. It's doing my hands no good though, I'm getting carpal tunnel in Greater Rift 95.
 
Diablo 3 is pretty bad. It does have smooth combat (no other ARPG I've played has a beam skill that feels as good as Disintegrate) but it's pointless since which skills you can build around is totally dictated by which skills have uniques explicitly designed for them.
 
Actually there seems to be quite a bit of variety in builds these days with most classes having 3-4 high end specs. Back when I last played (2-3 years ago) I was playing Firebird Wizard. But I got tired of it so now I’m playing the DMO set Frozen Orb build which is s lot of fun and almost as good. I do wish for even more variety though. As you said, Disintegrate is a great skill but sadly underused. Also been trying out the Necromancer but I’m not max level on it yet.

When did you last play? They’ve steadily made significant improvements to the game over the years. Although I’m not sure how to feel about these primal ancient items.

A big part of the appeal is it’s easy to pick up and play with 3 of my friends whenever for some dungeon crawling fun.
 
Path of Exile is my action RPG of choice. Gets grindy and it's more of a "Kill a few hours and feel a sense of artificial accomplishment" thing, but still fun. Helps that it's free to play and free of Blizzard's post-WC3 bullshit.
 
Path of Exile is amazing but it's also clearly made for people with no reservations about throwing away thousands of hours. If I have any sense I'll never reinstall it again.
 
Played through about half of Bayonetta, and played some Divinity with a friend. Haven't got around to the others yet, but it's summer holidays so I have plenty of time.

Currently addicted to Diablo 3 again. Tried other ARPGs but none have combat as smooth and satisfying as D3 plus I love pushing Greater Rifts to see how far I can get. It's doing my hands no good though, I'm getting carpal tunnel in Greater Rift 95.

I couldn’t get into it the way I’ve gotten into Diablo II but it’s a good game for what it is.
 
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Bought this game several weeks ago and I'm playing multiplayer at least 3 hours a day. Completely entrenched (see what I did there?)

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I used to play Diablo II online for many years and I eventually sold my account for a good sum of actual money because I had three level 99 characters and a bunch of prepatch items. Path of Exile looks great, but I have no real desire to go down that road of timesink addiction again.

Diablo III is better than it was when it was new, but it's still a fairly unsatisfying experience for me.
 
I actually never played Diablo 2 so perhaps that’s why I enjoy D3 a lot - I don’t have that to compare it to.

God damnit, it’s the summer holidays so I’m off for 6 weeks and it turns out the new WoW expansion will be released in that time. I just know I’m going to end up playing it :(.
 
I hadn’t played Diablo II in years but once I went back to it, I mostly lost interest in returning to III. It’s a lot for most games to live up to.