New thread!
What y’all playing! I’m almost done with blasphemous 2. And will be starting starfield soon! Very excited
I’m on Starfield this week. About 12 hours in.
Have to admit, I’m struggling to have fun, which I really didn’t see coming. I have hundreds of hours in Fallout 4, probably over a thousand each in Fallout 3 and Skyrim, and I adore space settings, so this was my most anticipated game for years. Seemed like it would be a slam dunk.
Another huge surprise is that it might be the main story that’s keeping me going. I’ve never come close to being this invested in one of Beth’s stories.
I feel you. I just hit 20 hours and I probably didn’t start to fully realize how to find different kinds of content deliberately until about hour 15 after I’d got some of the faction stuff started and explored enough planets to understand how to find certain side quests.
For the first while my natural instinct just had me exploring all of the cities and stations, just talking with people and picking up masses of side quests, then I hit a point where I started actually doing them, because I was burning myself out on walking and talking.
The non-scaling level of systems is interesting, figuring that out helped me to be able to do quests that I was leveled for and weren’t super spongey, I figured out the structure of the random quest board quests so I could partake in FPS shooting, ship shooting, cargo running, or more narrative driven side quests depending on my mood.
Figuring out that the trade authority (only the manned shops, not the kiosks) is your stolen goods fence meant I could really start stealing in earnest, and the decrease in environmental items that are lootable, along with the decrease in lootable homes and apartments means stealing opportunities are harder to come by.
Even still, after being pretty cheap at level 20 I’m at about 120,000 credits, which seems close to enough to fully build my own ship, which I’m about to eagerly do in my next session. Once I’ve got a ship built I’ll want to start and get into landing on less colonized planets and figure out the outposts and such, where I can pivot to hiring people from the taverns and getting into that whole side of the game.
I think because of the amount of things you could do, the amount of them that are basically impossible to do from the outset due to money (ship and outpost building), and the way the game doesn’t guide or explain things well, it was really easy for me to create my own boring rut where I just walked and talked and ran away from tough enemies because I didn’t realize I picked up a quest that was in or lead to a high level system.
For instance, I knew you could board ships, I had no idea that I needed the systems targeting skill to target engines to even do that at all, the skill description didn’t mention it, and the early game mission that forces you to board doesn’t require you to have the skill, you just board when the ship is supposed to “die”. I was also initially upset random items couldn’t be broken down into materials, but then I realized some materials can just be found as lootables, same for some craftable components.
All told, as I play more I’m coming around to it all more, but it’ll probably take another ten or 20 hours before I fully understand all the systems and can make a judgment on if I like it more, less, or the same as Fallout 4, which I also loved.
Yeah, the hope is that once I become familiar with what systems are available, what I should avoid, and what needs modding, I’ll be able to settle into the same cozy game loop as I have with the previous games.
What concerns me is I’m struggling with some of the core systems like bad companion AI (can’t reposition them in combat anymore for some reason), the main quests being so unpolished that I’m not exactly looking to jump into the side content, and especially the nested prereqs in the crafting system.
Playing starfield, having fun with it, it’s basically like an extended fallout 4 with spaceships. I just wish I had more time to play
I’m still going with Baldur’s Gate 3, and it continues to impress me at every turn. Steam says I’ve played for 43.5 hours now, and I’ll bet I still have at least 20 hours ahead of me on this first playthrough. After primarily playing fighting games for the past few years, this game has reminded me of what I love so much in RPGs and created a backlog of games for me to play through in the next couple of years to follow it up, especially since a tabletop group of 5e probably doesn’t fit into my life right now.
Command and Conquer 3. I’m not very familiar with the series but I’m enjoying it, at least now that I figured out why the campaign was so hard. Apparently they patched the game balance after release with multi-player in mind and didn’t consider the consequences for single-player. So after a small mod to restore the original resource gather rates, the game is a great time.
Wow, that is a name I have not heard in a very long time. I got suckered into buying it on 360. It played OK on a console all things considered. 
It was fine, didn’t love it. What are your impressions so far?
As a super casual player, I’m mostly enjoying the spectacle of the campaign. Coming from rts like age of Empires 2, which has a sometimes pretty strict population cap in it’s missions (and also medieval technology), being able to build up an unlimited army of giant tanks and mecha is pretty fun. Maybe that loses its novelty at some point. Speaking of novelties, the fmv cutscenes are an interesting choice. I realize they were a fad when the original game was released, but I respect that they decided to preserve that portion of the series’ identity.
The use of only one resource is strange. It feels like there are only a couple places on the map (the tiberium fields) that actually matter, and the rest is just empty space. I haven’t seen what the multi-player maps look like, maybe they add neutral buildings or something to give the players something to fight over. They’ve been a couple of those so far.
My opinion is also heavily influenced by the fact that the game is from the time before all the modern bullshit with microtransactions and stuff. Like, I paid for a game, and I received an actually complete game that doesn’t try to sell me a bunch more stuff. Wild. Having just moved on from Immortals: Fenyx Rising, which really suffered from being a Ubisoft game despite its charming setting and characters really drives that point home.
Playing Sea of Stars. It’s so fun and beautiful to look at
