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[n9103]

I haven’t seen a Legends of Runeterra thread yet, but god this game is good. A completely, actually free to play CCG

So no Premium or MTX at all?

[Uristides]

Farthest Frontier is a new Early Access title by Crate entertainment, of Grim Dawn fame. I haven't been able to put too many hours on it yet, but I'm really liking what I've seen so far. Really feels like it had everything that made Banished feel so cozy, and yet rather brutal, but with extra polish and features that it lacked, like the need to actually care for your fields, avoiding monocultures that drain the soil of nutrients or make the whole field susceptible to disease.

And then there's Grim Dawn itself. I've been really itching for an ARPG to fill the Path of Exile-shaped hole in my heart lately, and while it's not a perfect match, I find it good enough to keep me entertained.

[Robsoie]

Toyed a bit with Dex , the currently freebie from gog.

So far :
- for a 2D side scroller+platformer visuals are good , it really delivers very well the atmosphere.

- animations are very "janky", making the fist fighting really clunky and not really engaging in term of gameplay, later you'll get your hands on ranged weaponry but your character is stuck with fist fighting for a while from the start.

- there's some stealth, but it's unfortunately extremely basic as stealth is only possible if there's a special crate that allow you to hide behind, if that specific crate isn't there, there's no way (all the other crates are just eye candies) you can hide anywhere if there's not an upper or lower platform around (as it seems enemies can't see  you on an upper or lower platform than where they are). You can insta kill someone from behind as long as you aren't seen, unless they're bigger/taller people or armored.

- performance is very odd, it's a 2D game with very few effects and very few enemy onscreen at the same time, and while most of the time it's running smoothly, there are many situations in which there's a very noticable performance problem, from what i see on changelogs that is fixed in patch v7 but sadly it has never be made available for the gog version.

- the story seems to be very good up to where i currently am, very cyberpunk and shadowrun-like, things you learn about your character and the surrounding people and situation make sense within this setting.

- there are some side quests and for some situation you are left with a few different way to solve them (at the very start to get out of the sewers by example)

- the game has excellent voice acting, that really build the characters as they sound like you would imagine them to do so, with correct voice tone at the correct time. 

All in all , despite the jank it has potential , hopefully the unfixed bugs of the gog version will not strike too hard (as some have reported some "blockers" in some quests). That made me want to reinstall Shadowrun Dragonfall

[Aoi]

And then there's Grim Dawn itself. I've been really itching for an ARPG to fill the Path of Exile-shaped hole in my heart lately, and while it's not a perfect match, I find it good enough to keep me entertained.

Have you looked at Last Epoch? It's a B2P ARPG (multiplayer is slated for later this year) that I turned a few PoE players onto. It's still in EA, but it's got the most potential of any competitor I've seen.

[Uristides]

And then there's Grim Dawn itself. I've been really itching for an ARPG to fill the Path of Exile-shaped hole in my heart lately, and while it's not a perfect match, I find it good enough to keep me entertained.

Have you looked at Last Epoch? It's a B2P ARPG (multiplayer is slated for later this year) that I turned a few PoE players onto. It's still in EA, but it's got the most potential of any competitor I've seen.

Yes, I've been hearing good things about it in the ex-PoE community, I'm just wary of jumping into it now because I'd seen Wolcen get propped up as the PoE killer before and that got nowhere really fast. Any thoughts on how early access is going for it and how competent the devs seem to be at managing and delivering expectations?

[Jopax]

As someone who loves both PoE and GD to death (even tho I'm on a fairly long break from both atm) I bounced super hard off of Last Epoch.

This might be me, but the systems, while interesting on paper just didn't do it for me in terms of engaging gameplay. The skill stuff is neat and interesting, and the way they play with time skips is neat. But one of the most important aspects of an ARPG, the items, just felt so damn flat and unsatisfying. This could've just been an early game syndrome and it gets more involved and interesting later on, but none of the stuff I picked up felt particularly impactful or neat in terms of stats or power gain. Most of that seemingly came from the cool skill tree while the items themselves boiled down to "Oh, this has a slightly higher x number, guess I'll take it" and then you don't feel at all different from before.


Again, only put in some 10 or so hours into it so it might get vastly better later on, but when the competition nails that shit from the very start it's kinda hard to justify sinking in more of my fairly limited time budget on the hopes that it gets better eventually.

[Aoi]

And then there's Grim Dawn itself. I've been really itching for an ARPG to fill the Path of Exile-shaped hole in my heart lately, and while it's not a perfect match, I find it good enough to keep me entertained.

Have you looked at Last Epoch? It's a B2P ARPG (multiplayer is slated for later this year) that I turned a few PoE players onto. It's still in EA, but it's got the most potential of any competitor I've seen.

Yes, I've been hearing good things about it in the ex-PoE community, I'm just wary of jumping into it now because I'd seen Wolcen get propped up as the PoE killer before and that got nowhere really fast. Any thoughts on how early access is going for it and how competent the devs seem to be at managing and delivering expectations?

Well, the roadmap got really delayed in 2020, but I think everybody was pretty understanding about that one. They're pretty communicative, and have actually revamped the endgame multiple times in response to feedback; the current version is basically... a set of alternate-narrative questlines with their own set of randomized maps and stacking debuffs (and rewards), with global buffs available to pick from each time you finish the questline. It actually works out quite well, unless you actually like the finickiness of dealing with PoE atlas management.

Admittedly, the people who actually play it are going to be the ones who enjoy it, so it's a bit of a soundbox from the inside though.

This might be me, but the systems, while interesting on paper just didn't do it for me in terms of engaging gameplay. The skill stuff is neat and interesting, and the way they play with time skips is neat. But one of the most important aspects of an ARPG, the items, just felt so damn flat and unsatisfying. This could've just been an early game syndrome and it gets more involved and interesting later on, but none of the stuff I picked up felt particularly impactful or neat in terms of stats or power gain. Most of that seemingly came from the cool skill tree while the items themselves boiled down to "Oh, this has a slightly higher x number, guess I'll take it" and then you don't feel at all different from before.

That's pretty much how PoE loot works too though, outside of uniques though; there's a spread of funky uniques available and, much like PoE, some are super common (got a junk unique as literally my first drop in the intro zone once), and others are less so (though the 'rare' ones are more Inpulsa than HH, so not that bad). Most uniques have some kind of effect not available as a regular mod, though how useful that is can vary.

Item crafting is a bit easier than PoE too-- generally speaking, every item can have up to 4 mods, up to T5, and you can salvage it to get shards representing said mods. The shards can then be shoved into other items, with an increased chance of damaging the item each time, which either locks it into its current form (most likely) or reducing the mods before locking it. Except: Lategame items can drop with mods up to T7.

Adding to the late game gear chase is that Uniques can drop with 1-4 Legendary Potential, which lets you cram 1-4 mods from a normal item into the Unique, which now means you can have an item with 8 mods. Good luck finding a 4LP item though; I've never even seen a 3LP, and all my 2LPs are junk uniques.

Edit: I keep forgetting they changed the crafting system; it's actually simpler than that now. Each item has a fixed amount of 'potential', and each mod you shove onto it decreases potential by a range. Once it hits hero, you're locked it. Chance of critical success, etc. are a thing too.

[Robsoie]

Toyed a bit with the current gog freebie "Lovecraft Untold Stories" after reading some negative reviews and found out it's quite nice.

I felt nearly in a real time version of good old Infra Arcana (of course with graphics), the atmosphere is very well done and the pixel graphics and animations are actually very good.
Plenty of stuff to explore , new items to find and various unlocks in randomly generated environment, and fight various type of enemies. The controls are easy once you bind your keys to your liking and the default character (the Detective) shotgun isn't a pea shooter.
There is a story unfolding too despite the randomly generated stuff, you'll find many things in which you'll be able to make a choice with results that could be good, bad, nothing happens or even make you lose a bit of sanity.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Once you clear the first environment, the strange cultists mansion , and manage to beat the first boss (that is a Star Spawn) you will reach a "Strange Place" , it's the location that serves as the hub for further exploring and it features some kind of storage system that will save the stuff you want.
Everything in the storage will be available even if you play with a new character you unlocked or replay with the Detective when they'll reach that "Strange Place" again.

There's a skeleton covered in web in a corner of the Strange Place, examining it destroyed my character sanity and he kill himself with his shotgun, fortunately you can choose to continue playing and replay from your arrival in the Strange Place.
I have no idea what is the purpose of that skeleton other than forcing your character to suicide himself, but fortunately it does not screw up your character progression.

So far it's rather enjoyable , just be carefull when checking your inventory, it does not pause time so be sure you're not in place with enemies around or they'll kill you.
NOTE : apparently you can't go back to a previously completed level with your current character, so make sure to explore everything before going to a boss and then to the Strange Place, don't be like me and

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

miss the Professor unlock in the hospital by killing the boss and exiting before exploring it fully, something annoying considering the Professor is who will unlock the next character ...
Detective can unlock Professor
Professor can unlock Witch
Witch can unlock Thief
Thief can unlock Ghoul

edit : the Professor while having a fun theme (the "mad scientist" gimmick) is actually the most unfun character to play : the roll ability is replaced by him shooting some exploding blue fireball thing that will kill yourself in the explosion if you use it too close (good luck in cemetary with tons of monsters sprinting to gang on you and being close all the time), his weapon is a weak pea shooter that also has 4 shots before having to reload, he can deploy a kind of force field but i have yet to see how it helps in any ways, and he's slower + much more weak to insanity. Basically there's no quality to that character that will make it fun or interesting.

The Detective was just much more fun, the Professor will just make you want to stop playing because it's simply not fun in any ways and make every of the game design decision much worse as the gameplay of that character is just terribly bad.

Basically, just use the Professor until you manage to unlock the Witch in the ancient cemetary if you can keep your will to play intact (good luck with that) then move on to the next character as quickly as you can.

[Robsoie]

I noticed there"s a "Lovecraft Untold Stories 2" that is coming soon , looks like they changed completely the graphic style from 2D pixels to more modern high res 2D, i guess the gog freebie is going to help as a promo.

Anyways, finally found the trick to not have the Professor being completely unfun and horribly weak : find the King in Yellow merchant and sell everything you can sell to reach 20000 money, because that's the price his upgraded gun is on that merchant list.
It's a -very- lot of money for only chapter 1, so make sure to find plenty of items (get rid of the lots of bones to make some place, they sell for peanuts and are only good for the witch as it's her version of grenades) in his introduction level (the hospital) before trying to survive in that chapter 1.
Too bad there's no book to be found in both the hospital and cemetery for the Professor campaign, it lower a lot the interest of the Lovecraft merchant (that buy books at a high price), the devs probably screwed up a bit on the loot distribution considering how important it is to make money for that weapon to have a chance.

This gun will make a huge difference, helped me to save and so unlock the witch and finally complete the Professor chapter 1 so i could save some nice items i found in storage.

The witch is nice to play with, she has a teleport to mouse pointer ability so she can escape like the Detective roll , something that was horribly lacking from the Professor that the escape ability replaced by that exploding blue thing that could hurt himself too .

Her attacks are very strong (a good change from playing with Professor) but her noticable weakness is that her attacks have a small range and for some reason the developers decided to add many ranged attackers (gunners and turrets + enemies that explode on death ... difficulty progression is definitively something the devs forgot after the 1st player character that actually had one) in her introduction level to make this weakness a real pain. But in short range she's a monster and she does not have much problem with sanity.
Though she's not very resilient, and if you find an elder gods altar in a secret room, there's the risk that one of the curse you get for the altar item may be that all damage on you are increased, and with the witch that's going to be hard to survive

[Aoi]

Warriors of the Nile 2 just... sort of launched? It's feature complete, as far as I can tell, but there's a lot of room on the mostly-hidden roadmap. Anyhow-- it's a fantastic little bite-sized tactical game with metaprogression (base unit upgrades, unit perk unlocks, in-run shop enhancements, etc.) with an Egyptian theme, if the name didn't give it away.

Edit: Okay, stability leaves something to be desired. Just hardcrashed (may not be related, been having undiagnosed overheating lately), but it blew out my metasave and can't start a new game now.

If you've played the first, it's really more of the same, with all the good and bad that entails: It's snappy, vibrant, quick, easy to read the battle, and battles generally feel fair. The downside is that, as far as the normal, non-challenge modes go, battles tend to be fairly simple, and the unit perk design strongly encourages tacking all of them onto a single person... and not all classes are created equal. (The starting archer, for instance-- on my second run, with the first being a failure in chapter 1, she was able to solo the first boss, and didn't get a chance to solo the next two because she killed the adds before they had a chance to whittle down the tank.) Long-term longevity is questionable, as it's built more like a mobile game (and, indeed, I'd absolutely jump on it if it were).

[Laterigrade]

I haven’t seen a Legends of Runeterra thread yet, but god this game is good. A completely, actually free to play CCG

So no Premium or MTX at all?

There’s a premium currency that you can buy cards and cosmetics with, but it’s basically never worth it to buy cards; you earn about an entirely new and viable deck archetype in about a week of playing, more if you’re new. The cosmetics are good, although a little pricey, as is Riot’s standard, but completely unnecessary to enjoy the game’s art or the game for itself. I’ve been playing for a couple of months, probably on average half an hour a day, and haven’t bought anything or felt the need to.

[Iduno]

Tower of Fantasy the new gacha game like Genshin has some decisions in it.

Some of it makes sense when you're making a game like bosses all have 1 annoying design element (one spawns in an area full of other monsters including several elites, one is in an arena that is too big so it keeps getting far enough away from the center that it restarts the fight with full hp, one is underground half the fight and comes up for massive damage, etc.), which I assume is testing to see what people hate the most. The best decisions though, are just absolute hilarious stupid stuff. There's a large tower you need to go to the top of at one point early in the story, and it's an annoying jumping puzzle, and it's painted like an angry teddy bear for no good reason. You're given a motorcycle early in the game, but can also unlock a mechanical unicorn, a regular car's front sitting on some sort of hover unicycle, a pole sticking out of a roomba, and an electronic cube made up of 5^3 smaller floating cubes. Also, the game has a pretty reasonable chat filter, but kill is censored in a game about fighting, so people keep trying to find someone to "help them **** this boss."

I don't know that it's a good game, but it is entertaining.

[Folly]

I was looking forward to Saints Row(2022), as a big fan of SR3 and SR4. I was then somewhat dismayed at the negative reviews at launch, but decided to give it a try anyway. After finishing the main story in around 30 hours, I can say that the criticisms are well deserved, but there's still an enjoyable game here for those willing to put up with some hurdles.

Bugs and balance issues abound. I literally hit a game-stopper during the opening, when I was customizing my Boss and the interface got stuck, not allowing me to navigate through menus, forcing me to alt-F4 and start over. Since then I've only hit two other game-stoppers, both where quests failed to update; in both instances I was able to easily reset to the last checkpoint with minimal lost time. Beyond that, I found a couple of skills which simply do not work at all, a few vehicles which spawn too far back in the garage so they are impossible to pull out, and had several instances where my wardrobe would change without my input. All quite manageable, though some of these seem like they should have been easy to catch and fix before launch.

I was disappointed with the main story. Story spoilers ahead.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I spent most of the story recruiting a super sketchy rogue to join my crew. Then, surprising nobody and for absolutely no reason other than he's super sketchy, one day he decides to murder me(which inexplicably does not take), tie up my friends and force them to play house, and pulls his own gang out of nowhere to serve as fodder for me to murder during my rescue. My expectations were low, but it's still just really lazy storytelling.

Aside from the main story, the side-missions are generally entertaining. I do feel like the stylish action scenes are a step down from the last couple of games, but that still leaves them ahead of most other games out there.

Gunplay feels good, though it is very much a built-for-consoles game where the auto-aim pulls a lot of weight; but that is effectively countered by large groups of aggressive enemies, so you need that auto-aim to keep apace.
The city is vast and full of art and lore to explore, as well as various minigames and combat opportunities that can be cleared to increase income which allows unlocking and upgrading more weapons and vehicles.

And of course the most important thing(to me) which sets this game apart, I can run around the city bashing heads and looting cash, completely topless the entire time. Priorities.

Overall, due to bugs and disappointing story, I still can't really recommend this game even to fans of the series, at full price. With the bad reviews you probably won't have to wait long for this one to go on sale.


An acquaintance recently convinced me to let him buy me a package for Star Citizen. I've only played a couple of days, but already regret the decision.

It's a space sandbox, where you take missions to deliver packages, assassinate criminals, harvest resources, and other various spacey busywork. The key thing they seem to be trying to set themselves apart with is the immersion. Everything is super detailed and realistic. Some people are really into that, and that's fine I guess; to each their own. But to me, all of this fluff just kills fps, creates needless delays, and adds tedious busywork. I have to navigate a labyrinthian city using only street signs, because maps would break the immersion. I have to wait for every elevator, airlock, and public transport system. I have to search for tiny consoles hidden in every shop, so that I can purchase a variety of food, clothing and medical syringes to counter whatever medley of environmental conditions I'll face on my next delivery quest.
It's honestly a really great example of a game developer who has an interesting idea, but no concept of how to integrate it into an enjoyable gameplay experience.

[Aoi]

An acquaintance recently convinced me to let him buy me a package for Star Citizen. I've only played a couple of days, but already regret the decision.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's a space sandbox, where you take missions to deliver packages, assassinate criminals, harvest resources, and other various spacey busywork. The key thing they seem to be trying to set themselves apart with is the immersion. Everything is super detailed and realistic. Some people are really into that, and that's fine I guess; to each their own. But to me, all of this fluff just kills fps, creates needless delays, and adds tedious busywork. I have to navigate a labyrinthian city using only street signs, because maps would break the immersion. I have to wait for every elevator, airlock, and public transport system. I have to search for tiny consoles hidden in every shop, so that I can purchase a variety of food, clothing and medical syringes to counter whatever medley of environmental conditions I'll face on my next delivery quest.
It's honestly a really great example of a game developer who has an interesting idea, but no concept of how to integrate it into an enjoyable gameplay experience.

That sounds like the kind of thing that'd be much more interesting or engaging in VR. Is that a thing with them?

[n9103]

I'd be shocked to the core if there wasn't VR for Star Citizen. Either natively or modded/hacked in by the community. What level of VR though, I'm not sure.
It's not really my thing, for all the reasons Folly mentioned, but I definitely see the appeal, and would be much more interested if you only had to do the menial stuff once or twice to unlock an automated startup or quick travel.