Giefcookie

@fear_the_booboo: Got both (unless there are more than 2?) endings over the weekend and I was very done with the combat and traversal at that point. Even though you get some tools later on it still feels pretty tedious to study your notes, travel to the other end of the map only to realize the thing you wanted to try was actually on the opposite side of the world.

The visuals and atmosphere are amazing, finding new pages for the manual was always a cool moment but I agree with some of the critique about the combat, especially stamina management. Granted you could turn that off in the settings but I feel like if the stamina cost for your roll was just a bit more lenient, I would not have an issue with it. Especially with one of the later upgrades you get.

Haven't finished the game yet but that fight was definitely the hardest so far, took me a solid 90 minutes to get it down. I also happened to be playing one of the "recommended" builds for the fight with my katana power-stance frostbite / bleed build and bloodhound step. Frostbite seems pretty wild in this game since it staggers like 90% of the enemies on proc.

At about 65hours played now with a dex/int Cold katana dual wield build and I've blocked probably fewer than 10 total attacks during that time. Played most of the game 2-handing a katana, then found another decent one and went full dual wield madness.

The delayed attacks especially mid combo are a pain, but summoning some spirits to create an opening or just completely backing off when you realize what the boss is doing has worked pretty well. The Quickstep and the improved version of that (Hounds something?) are also pretty clutch if you want to be melee without a shield. Being able to dodge quickly away to observe those crazy long attack strings also gives you way more time to actually figure out where the opening is.

Compared to Sekiro I'm having way more fun with it just because of the lower difficulty overall. Could do with less action queueing though, getting hit while trying to dodge and then that dodge coming out good second after the input is still weird.

Finished it last night after about 13 hours on PC Gamepass. I luckily didn't run into a lot of issues beyond some really rough performance stuff on very specific visual effects (Dropping to about 5FPS on some explosion particle effects etc.).

Overall I think I enjoyed the gameplay, world and visual design, but in terms of the story I felt like I was waiting for the story to really kick off all the way to the credits. All the characters just felt very generic and formulaic and because there aren't any choices to speak of, I felt like my character was just being swept along the whole way.

There is some pretty rough damage type modifiers in play also that make certain sections pretty rough if you don't happen to have a decent weapon for it (about 3/4 through the game I definitely had to dump most of my upgrade mats into an energy weapon for robits).

As a tip for later parts, when in doubt spawn more spiderbots.

None of these seem all that interesting to me at first glance, but I'll check out the first episode of that Power Rangers thing. Jan has shown he can carry a show so I'll give it a chance.

Tried a few demos and the only game that led me to wish list it so far was Unsighted. Isometric 2D action game with some real Hyperlight Drifter vibes and some extra RPGish systems thrown in. It might not have the "elegance" of Hyperlight but I really dug the feel of the combat and movement at least.

Didn't get a chance to try out the new My Time at Sandrock (Portia) game yet, but I think it will be in early access for a while anyway.

A very important thing in both Nioh 1 and 2 is the fact that you gain skill points for ninjutsu and onmyo by using them. Doesn't seem like a huge deal but I've seen people fall into the trap of hoarding that stuff instead of using it, leaving their early development in those areas very lacking.

Early on you should definitely take the time to use bombs, shuriken, talismans and other tools even if you don't absolutely need them. That will allow you to unlock more of the freely replenished options for each. Just having some options for elemental talismans and a buff or 2 later on will make things much more manageable.

I've definitely looked at some videos of it and will probably pick it up at some point. It seems less punishing and more solo-friendly than some of it's genre counterparts, which is appealing.

But being someone who will be playing it alone I don't really have any friend-group pressure to get to it right away so I might just wait for it to be further along.

Hitsmas 2017 just started playing in the background on youtube autoplay while I was working. Divine providence or just google reading my mind.

MHW is the PC release of Iceborne, which took up a lot of my time in the first half of the year. Nioh 2 for me was a surprisingly amazing sequel and I'm absolutely looking forward to the PC version coming out in a few months. Might sink another 100+ hours into that game this year because of it.
My #10 spot was between FF7R and Genshin Impact, and even though I've probably spent a good 250+ hours on Genshin this year, I don't necessarily think its a great game.