Justin258

I played a decent chunk of it with a controller, but also ultimately settled down with the mouse and keyboard controls. The gamepad controls are, I think, pretty good for the most part, but some little things bugged me. Like how if you're looking at something interactable and you just flick the stick, instead of moving the character it flicks to the next interactable over. If you get used to it I imagine that's very good, but eh. I think the game would have greatly benefited from a Dragon Age Origins-ish behind-the-back camera for everything except combat. You can almost get there, but you cannot look up. I bet that will get modded in at some point.

The camera and inventory management are my only complaints thus far. Like Divinity Original Sin 2, there's an incredible amount of loot and interactable objects in this game, but really that just serves to make me wonder if I should lug around this massive inventory of junk or if I should stop looting anything that isn't a chest or a dead high-level character. There's alchemy, there's crafting, is this unique locket that doesn't do anything but has a description just flavor or is it part of a quest? That sort of thing.

But I expected both of these things going in. DOS2 had the exact same inventory problems and I played some of the Early Access and Larian never seemed interested in making a truly third person game, instead just leaving the camera 90% of the way there for whatever reason, and I'm getting better at just not clicking "take all" every time I open something. Everything in this game thus far has been, for me anyway, golden. Exploration, combat, characters, story, I'm pretty damn wrapped up in all of it.

I flip-flopped between playing a half-Drow Rogue and a human Fighter and went with the Rogue, as I usually don't play sneaky-stabby classes, and it's been a lot of fun thus far. I stumbled across a circlet that sets my Intelligence to 17 - like, sets, in the same way the original game's Crom Faeyr set your Strength to 25. I pretty much immediately respec'd out of the Thief subclass and into the Arcane Trickster one so I can cast spells and that's been working out pretty well for me so far. This seems like one of those things where, a year from now, someone will be writing a build guide for a Fighter-Mage where they tell you to dump Intelligence for Strength/Dexterity/Constitution and go straight for this circlet and just wear it the entire game so you can get that stat back (which I will probably be doing, honestly).

I finished Throne of Bhaal about a month ago for the first time so I feel like my memory's pretty fresh on all of the original games, but thus far I haven't come across anything where knowledge of what happens in the original games is all that important. That could absolutely change and I'm very curious to know how those stories link to this one.

When I first played DOS2, I picked one of the origin characters. I think it was Ifan? I didn't finish the game back then, but I got like halfway through Act 2. When I went back and tried it again, I made a custom character and I remember feeling like I might have robbed myself of something that first time. Ifan is a character, and playing as him and making all his choices and determining all his reactions basically feels like Mass Effect 2, but Shepherd doesn't exist and you're playing the entire game as Garrus instead.

That's roughly what I want to get across, anyway.

I'm not personally interested in steering Gale's or Shadowheart's story my way, I'm interested in making my own character and playing that character and seeing how Gale and Shadowheart and whoever else reacts to that character. For me, designing and playing a character I came up with is much more interesting, both in story and gameplay.

EDIT: Also, The Dark Urge seems to be a response to people who want a character that feels more "GM-guided" but who don't necessarily want to play an origin character. If you're on the fence about this whole thing, that seems to be the way to go.

I have played a bunch of CRPGs over the past few years, BG1 and 2 among them, and if this one lives up to expectations, it will probably see at least one replay from me, so I'll do the Dark Urge thing later.

OK but I would hardly call Mass Effect "underrated". Perhaps the third game, sometimes, but as a whole? Nah.

For my answer, I would say that Legend of Grimrock 2 didn't get anywhere near the attention it deserved. Yeah, I know, you move along a grid, but if you can get past that you'll find one of the best exploration focused games I've ever played. There's brain-bending puzzles, there's combat, there's loot, there's leveling up and making characters, etc. The genre seemed like it was getting a CRPG-ish comeback when the first Legend of Grimrock came out and sold pretty well, but then poof, interest sorta just vanished, and Legend of Grimrock 2 came and went with little fanfare outside of the places you'd expect to care about it. Vaporum and its sequel appear to have done OK, though.

Seems like he just missed the "m" in the middle of "ramping", as in, action "ramping up" as a story goes on. In general, this post does need another pass on spelling and general writing, but I didn't really have much trouble understanding it.

It's been a long time since I played Kingdom Hearts 1. Last time was the PS3 HD version and I got it and played it obsessively for about a week sometime in... 2016? I think? I certainly remember being most irritated at the Tarzan world. Its level design and objectives don't really follow in a logical manner. Anyway, I finished it, had a blast, and then went on to play Kingdom Hearts 2. KH2 is a better game in pretty much every way, but for some reason I have always dropped off of that game halfway through it. Probably because I keep trying to do both 1 and 2 back-to-back and that's not a good way for me to play games. Still, it's worth firing up 2 right after playing 1 just to feel the difference in controls. KH2 feels so much better to just run around in.

Further entries in the franchise feel like they move away from the Disney influence and just use those places as backdrops for an ever-expanding but never-ending story (insert joke about 80's fantasy movie here). And the story they're trying to tell doesn't really do much for me so I never really got into the later entries in the franchise.

So I first heard this album years ago. Somewhere or another, Reimagined popped up as a recommended video or song or something and I listened to it and I thought it was pretty cool. I listened the entire album and ever since I’ve found myself coming back to it for a few listens every few months or so.

It’s great for a certain mood. One of those things you might not be able to put your finger on, exactly, but there’s a melancholic, contemplative vibe to the whole thing that almost always draws me in and keeps my attention. It takes that vibe and it kinda goes all over the place with it, both lyrically and musically, but it never really loses that vaguely “navel gaze-y” sense.

As time marches on and I get older and older, I find this stuff to be more of a happy spot for me than proggy death metal. Don’t mistake that for me saying I like that stuff less, but when I just need some tunes these days I don’t find myself reaching for Amon Amarth or Death or whatever quite as often as I used to. I think some of that’s “broadening my horizons”, so to speak, and listening to other things, but also I think I’m generally a less angry, irritated person on the other side of thirty, and sometimes that warrants something a little calmer.

I don’t often focus on lyrics much and that’s mostly true here, but what lyrics I do pick up on in this album mostly come across as self-reflection to me. Some parts of this album seem to have a much more concrete story going on (Monochrome (Pensive) seems to be the singer trying to process the suicide of someone close), but I still find myself thinking about where I want to go when listening to this album. Sometimes, anyway. Sometimes I just don’t think about anything and kinda soak it all in.

Anyway, I’m glad @unclejam23 enjoyed it and I hope someone else picks up on this album after seeing this post.

Towards the end of the Xbox 360's lifespan, they made a similarly obnoxious UI change. I personally wanted the Blades back, but I wasn't going to get those. I would have been happy with the mid-era 360 design, but nope. They changed it to something like that - the game you wanted to play was one small square in the top left corner and the rest of the screen was ads. Ads, ads, ads, all the way, every screen except settings was asking you to buy something. This was one of several things that pushed me even more towards finally just dumping a bunch of money in a gaming PC. Windows 7, at the time, was pretty ad-free, or could be easily made so.

Back then, I would have told you that I would never be back, but I have a Series X underneath my TV so I'm not so foolish anymore as to say "well, fuck that then!" It's still a very handy device to have and sometimes I just don't want to fuck with computers. Still, the PS5 and Switch already see a lot more use and my PC, regardless of its quirks, still sees the most use out of any gaming device. I just don't see a good reason for this thing to be anything more than a box to try out Game Pass games and easily play some 360 or original Xbox games.

But really the actual answer is that the PSP/PS3 XMB is the best console UI ever implemented. Clean, nice, neatly organized, it had plenty of room for customization and personalization without also losing functionality, and getting ads to fit in was difficult. Wish everything would just use that.

The habit of "blasting with an assault rifle while rushing forward and then doing a melee finish" comes from Halo 3 for me. I don't know how many people playing Infinite now grew up playing Halo 3, but I did and in that game I recall this being a lot more viable. Partially because the maps were smaller and more tunnel-y, I suppose, but also partially because harsh language was more effective at damaging enemy players than the Halo 3 assault rifle. This doesn't seem true in Infinite, from what I remember of its multiplayer.

Speaking of, how is Infinite's multiplayer doing these days? I haven't really played it much since very early 2022.

I enjoyed Parasyte a lot back in the day! It's great!

I feel like a lot of the anime I hear talked about these days is a sports thing, or some kind slice of life thing, or an isekai, or a snarky deconstruction of Shounen or harems or whatever that really just looks like the thing it's making fun of, but self-aware, and... I dunno. From the outside looking in it nothing I've seen people mention or heard people talk about looks at all interesting or cool or fun, so you're not alone in thinking "maybe it's just not for me anymore".

I wouldn't say that I feel "listless", no. But over the past few years I've noticed that when I finish a game, especially one of significant (20+ hours) length, I do feel some selection anxiety over what to play next if I try to start something within the next several days afterwards. It's usually best for me to do something else for a bit before really trying to get into another game.

If you really want to just keep playing games after finishing something big and important to you, then dabble in some old favorites or play something where you don't need to attach yourself to a playthrough. A roguelite you've finished, a multiplayer game you play casually, something you can finish in less than five hours. But really the best thing is to find something else to do in your free time for a week or so - read a book, watch a movie every night, get way into a TV show, do a puzzle, listen to some music. It's good to step away from games occasionally. I never do for long, usually a few days or a week at most, but trying to play something immediately after finishing a bad game has become bad for me.

Fair enough.

Just throwing this out there, it might also be worth asking your doctor how to get checked for diabetes, as that can affect eyesight. Yes, your eyes get worse with age, but it can't hurt to consider it.