One day late, didn’t know where the week go.

Played some Trails in the Sky: SC. Got stuck at the boss of Chapter 2. It’s pretty tough. Though I have couple of ideas that can help, but sudden difficulty spikes like this annoy me a lot, so taking a small break from it.

Started Spider-man 2 on PS5. After playing and dropping Batman: Arkham Knight, I needed play something similar but not as slow, so got Spider-man 2. Have played a few hours and loving every minute of it. From combat to traversal to story. Great game!

Also started WWE 2K24. Haven’t played a wrestling game in a very long time, but since I got it for “free” as PS+ monthly game, gave it a try. Having tons of fun with it.

On Switch, most of the time was spent with the NSO Playtest thingy, and some Picross S4 in-between. I was stuck at one Picross puzzle (P-133) from a long time (and same puzzle in Mega-Picross), so wasn’t playing it much. Finally looked up a video online (watched a video instead of turning on assists, to figure out how to solve it, instead of just getting the solution), basically just had to do a wee bit of brute force thingy to check possible values 3-4 moves ahead to get couple of invalid positions, after that it was simple enough. Just have last page of Picross and MegaPicross remaining now, and then 4/5 extra-big Extra puzzles. So, should be finishing it soon.

That’s all from me, what about all of you? What have you been playing

  • dinckel@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    19 days ago

    Somehow like 95% of my friends have Hollow Knight brain rot right now, so we’re all blasting through that and watching it on each others stream lol

    • devfuuu@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      19 days ago

      I’m stuck very close to the end after playing for a long time more than a year ago. Never again got the motivation to finish the last badge and the last boss and the stupid mission to go from one corner of the map to another without being touched. But I loved the game. I still hope that the second game will really happen.

  • picandocodigo@lemmy.worldMEnglish
    3·
    19 days ago

    I was off work sick for a few days, so I decided to catch up with Super Mario RPG on Switch. I finished it and did a bit of the aftergame stuff, and it was quite fun. The style is amazing, I really enjoyed how pretty everything looks in this remake. The easter eggs and the humour in general are really good.

    The negatives are the battles get a bit repetitive at times. And:

    spoiler

    Whoever designed the 3D maze seems to have a personal vendetta against gamers and hates us with a passion. It did some damage… 😆

    I also played some stuff on Steam. Titan Attacks (a modern Space Invaders with a cool style) and Syder Arcade when in a mood for pew pew games and Brütal Legend which I’ve had for years and only just now can play with a decent set up.

    • slimerancher@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
      2·
      18 days ago

      Sick enough to not work, but not sick enough to enjoy games, that’s a fun time 😀

      I played a bit of Titan Attacks, and it’s a good game, but don’t care about arcade games too much these days.

      Did you get Brütal Legend from Humble Bundle? Cause I have it in my library for a long time too, and have never played it. Let me know if the game still holds up, my current system can run it well, so can give it a try.

      • picandocodigo@lemmy.worldMEnglish
        2·
        18 days ago

        Yeah, the worst day was when I was too sick to even look at a screen 😅

        I did get Brütal Legend in a Humble Bundle yes. Looks like it was Humble Indie Bundle 9 in September 2013, back when they were cool!

        The game is still quite fun. Other than the humor (if you don’t like Jack Black, it might not be the game for you), the gameplay is good and has lots of different mechanics.

        • slimerancher@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
          2·
          18 days ago

          Glad you are better now.

          Ah, 2013! When we were still young!

          Jack Black is generally fun. Will give it a try some day soon.

  • Phelpssan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    18 days ago

    Slow week. A lot of drama on another of my hobbies (Magic the Gathering), and I spent quite a bit of time putting in action a plan I had in my mind for a while to change how I interact with that game.

    Busy weekend too so it’s unlikely I’ll be able to play a lot, but I really want to finish my current VN ASAP so I can start Ys X.

    Playing My Girlfriend is a Mermaid!?!

    Very minor progress this week.

    Playing Vampire Survivors!

    Played this during the NSO Trial and loved it, it’s stupidly addictive and a great game to play in short bursts. Focused on unlocking more characters and items right now.

    • slimerancher@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
      3·
      19 days ago

      Oooh, what happened with Magic the Gathering? I love the idea of these card collecting games, but can’t justify the amount you have to spend on them. Disney’s Lorcana looked interesting, since you could just get one starter pack and play without worrying about anything, but with so much stuff coming out for it, I am not sure how feasible it is anymore.

      I played a bit of Vampire Survivors trial too. After playing Brotato and couple of mobile games like that, I know it’s not something I’ll play long term, so I played a few hours to see what I was missing, and I am happy with the amount I have played. Don’t have an urge to buy it. So, that’s one game off my loooooong wishlist.

      • Phelpssan@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        18 days ago

        Oooh, what happened with Magic the Gathering?

        Wizards of the Coast (the game manufacturer) announced they are going hard into “Universes Beyond” sets, which are based on 3rd party IP like LOTR, Final Fantasy or Marvel. They have been releasing a few of these in recent years, but next year that’ll be half of their product line.

        This is rather controversial for several reasons:

        • A lot of players dislike this mish-mash of franchises, and see it a loss of identity of the game. This comic from 2020 has been reposted non-stop during the week as a prediction of the future of MTG.
        • So far these sets have been more expensive, likely due to the IP licensing costs.
        • They also announced a change where all competitive formats will include those sets, removing the option to play without them.

        There’s a lot of discussion going on if this is just the cynical attempt at short-term cash grab sacrificing the long-term health of the game, or if this new focus will help increasing the playerbase.

        And that adds to a few other problems that are already plaguing the game.

        • Product and wallet burnout: They doubled the amount of new cards being released in the last ~4 years making it very hard to keep up. And they announced even more sets in 2025 so this will probably continue keep getting worse.
        • Power creep: This is something that always existed in the game, but also sped up a lot recently. There’s also concerns that they’ll push cards too hard to ensure these “Universes Beyond” sets sell - as an example we had a LOTR set last year and “The One Ring” was an game-warping card. Even worse, 18 months later it hasn’t been banned and lot of people are questioning if this is going to be the trend with these sets.

        For a lot of people this was the breaking point to drop out of the game, or change the way they interact with it. I’m moving away from competitive play for good, and will only play unnoficial “nostalgia” formats based on the game’s past like Premodern (1995-2003) or 2015 Modern (2003-2015) where I can just stick to old decks and ignore all new releases.

        TL;DR: “Magic the Gathering” is now “Fortnite the Gathering”, and a lot of people are pissed.

        • slimerancher@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
          1·
          17 days ago

          Wow, that sounds bad.

          I knew that people aren’t happy with Wizards of the Coast because of their decisions with D&D, but didn’t know MTG people weren’t happy with them either.

  • B0NK3RS@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    19 days ago

    I’ve been watching and helping my daughter play through Kingdom Two Crowns (on peaceful mode) and once she feels ready we will try co-op on normal difficulty.

    I’ve been playing through Gears of War 2 on the Xbox and it’s been great fun. Haven’t played it since original release and didn’t go any further so after I’m done it’s on to GoW3 and maybe more.

    • slimerancher@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
      1·
      19 days ago

      I played a bit of Kingdom Two Crowns but something got messed up in my world, and everything was broken when I started next time. Didn’t want to bother with doing it again.

      How’s Gears of War? It’s on my wishlist, planning to start Halo MC collection soon, but want to play Gears of Wars games after that.

      • B0NK3RS@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        19 days ago

        How’s Gears of War? It’s on my wishlist, planning to start Halo MC collection soon, but want to play Gears of Wars games after that.

        It holds up very well and GoW2 is one of the games that gets a fps & resolution boost for backwards compatibility so actually looks really good to.

  • De_Narm@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    19 days ago

    Eiyuden Chronicles

    Despite playing on the highest difficulty with all extra challanges, it’s quite chill right now. Due to some quirks in how EXP works, one of my characters shot up 35 levels in a single fight. While he is lvl 55, everyone else - including my enemies - are around lvl 28.

      • De_Narm@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        18 days ago

        Performance problems aside (menus take ages to load in), I like the game quite a bit. There is just so much stuff: 120 characters, two additional fighting systems for special events, a card game, a bayblade minigame, a castle/town upgrade system and probably much more - I’m not even halfway done. The combat is quite auto-attack heavy and therefore simple, but keep in mind I’m olaying with double MP cost for all abilities (one of the additional challanges to tweak your own difficulty, like the ones in Dragon Quest XI).

        As for the EXP thing, there are a few things that happened to align for me. EXP works like this:

        • Each level requires 1000 EXP.
        • You get EXP based on level difference between you and your enemies. There is a maximum value of EXP a single enemy can give to usually prevent what happened to me - I think it’s about 1000 for most enemies.
        • If you get say 3000 EXP, that’s 3 level ups. Remaining EXP does not get adjusted upon each level up. That’s great since you can recruit 120 characters and if you miss someone at first, it does not take long to catch up if you want to use them.
        • You fight with 6 charaters. EXP is split between them, meaning you get more EXP per character if only e.g. 2 of them survive.

        Now, what actually happened to me is: I fought a unique mini-boss encounter with 5 enemies. I was overall underleveled and got wiped twice. The third time however, I won with only my weakest character still standing - he was 8 level below my team average. He got about 1200 EXP for the level difference * 5 enemies * 6, since only he survived, resulting in about 35 level ups.

        • slimerancher@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
          2·
          18 days ago

          lol, the weakest character becoming the strongest 😀

          It’s sad to see menus are still slow, it has gotten multiple patches and have improved things a lot from initial launch. Hope they fix the remaining stuff too.

  • devfuuu@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    19 days ago

    Fucking finished Bloodstained after the last patch made it playable finally after more than 6 months. Had been grinding a lot and passed the last boss very easily in less than 5 minutes :D. Loved the game. Excellent story and great stuff to do and collect.