/int/ - certified time wasters

Here's your coin.

I'm playing the recently-ish updated version of Witcher 3 after playing the original way back in the beginning of 2017.

>>18309
Also, I picked the screenshots so my post represents the four colours of the (European) SNES controller buttons. The Japanese/Murrican scheme sucks ass.

>>18311
You go from yellow to blue to red to green.
*autistic screeching*

>>18313
Happy to help.

lmao all pictures in the OP are screenshots I made, and I am not even OP.
Feels important.

Some more Brigador.
Done with all the original campaign missions with all loadouts. Now I am at the later added community maps which are hard as balls. Slowly grinding my way through.

Picture related is from the "easter egg" settings - it unlocks a bunch of suicide units that instantly explode, among other things. Those other things are an unarmed civilian that can never finish a mission because they can't kill or destroy anything AND, and this is where I was going with this, a regular infantry unit. Just a dude with a gun that can wield two small weapons - same as the small powersuits, or the tuktuk. Just that this dude has even less shield and only 1 HP.
It was a bit of a challenge, and this was only the very first proper campaign mission. It's fun though, feels like Solid Snake, but with more boom.
This guy was wielding two Carlos guns, btw, which are based on the real life swedish Carl Gustav recoilless anti-tank rifles.

Playing Avernum 1: Escape from the Pits.

It's nice little roleplaying game that is a 2011 remaster from it's original 2000 version, which is an expanded adaptation of the 1995 Exile: Escape from the Pits, so the guy behind Spiderweb Software put quite some SOVL into his creations, most notably the said Avernum and Geneforge trilogies.

By far flawless, you really notice the charm and creativity of games over all those eras.
Nice exploration in over- and regular world with lots of dead ends and areas that serve no reason other then a minor encounter, loot or nothing at all.
Controls are a bit finicky and combat can be repetitive at times, but hardly comes without overall progress.
Imagine Gothic meets Baldurs Gate.

By the authority of the all-engulfing empire and without given reason, our group of up to 4 is thrown into Avernum by portal, giant underground caverns without known exit back into the sunlight.
Here they find, that while life is tough, civilization established again and has carved out a rough, but secure survival across multiple cities, forts and a castle known as the Avernites.
Slowly gaining experience in combat and overall knowledge about their new home, the group earns itself a name by their deeds and meets factions like snake people, ex-rebels running literal underground insurgent cells, empire agents, criminal scum and a newly declared city-state.

On the last 2 pictures we can witness the temporary downfall of our group by an undead lord, despite managing to get favorable postions via a hidden route.
Fucker was down to the last bit of health when he slowed down and started to hit really hard.
Prolly time to stop hoarding consumables :3

I LIVE... AGAIN!
PLAY BLOOD

Ernst played a lot of Touhou: Blooming Chaos 2 recently, a roguelike / roguelite with Touhou characters. It's a dungeon crawler with lots of different gameplay modes. It has a story mode, which would be the roguelite part, which is pretty tame in difficulty for a Touhou game, and most of the modes alternate between normal dungeon floors and boss battles (other Touhou characters). Both are in the classic Touhou bullet-hell-style. You can choose between three different characters, who have a distinct playstyle, and you can unlock quite a few more just by playing and getting stuff from the dungeon, though that may take a while. Objective is basically gather good armor/powerups, get experience, upgrade your abilities in a way that suits your playstyle/character, and then go get 'em. The gameplay modes range from piss easy to insanity difficulty-wise, but the common modes are nowhere near the crazy stuff known from other Touhou games. There's also the "classic roguelike" mode, which is probably closest of what you had in your mind when reading "roguelike".

It's a little rough around the edges, sometimes the game does not behave the way it suggests it will. Also the english translations from Japanese is clunky at times, but to be fair that makes it more entertaining, the gameplay itself is flawless. It's 5.80€ or so on Steam, good investment so far.

Ernst doesn't want to say aliums, but... we are factually the subterranean foreigners in their land and they are damn PISSED at us.
Also it's 5 years after the deeds of the old posse and the empire is invading Avernum.
Yet due to fighting down-under in their home-turf, the Avernites managed to hold their ground with Ernst and another, eerily-similar Gang signing up for duty.

Ernst likes the second part.
As the games were all redone in one go 2 times over, the second part kinda misses large changes to the first one, it's more of the same with just minor improvements.
Up until now it plays rather linearly too, with just a small part of the slightly evolved overmap traversable, while the first game limited more by enemy difficulty instead.
But, there seems to be a second overmap this time and Ernst is not too far in, things only just get set up.

>>18443
Ernst remembers some kind of 1HP mode that was best to grind for coins, but at times infuriating when hit by a stray shot that you walked into all by yourself.
Double so as you already had to pay a coin entry.

K-D Lab was a Russian Kaliningrad (aka Königsberg) gamedev studio that released some very good games. Their first game I can remember was Vangers released in late 90s (97? 98?). Vangers was something like one of those 2D space trader games where you fly between planets, except instead of space its an alien desert and you're a bug of sorts driving a vehicle. Vangers had an interesting overengineered 3D engine with terrain that allowed terrain modification that they used for things like collision impacts, craters or leaving tire imprints instead of just plastering decals like every game did. It was on an intersection of two themes that K-D Lab will continue to develop further - the alien bug stuff and the dynamic terrain stuff. In 2001 they released Samogonki (literally self-racers or moonshiners, depending on where you put the stress) that was basically Mario Kart but for alien bugs.

In 2004 they started the Perimeter RTS series. It was essentially a 3D RTS with alien creatures (not just worms as on the screenshot, actually it was mostly flying creatures) serving as a background threat (and one "corrupt" alien-aligned faction that used them as a weapon), but the modifiable terrain was put front and center as an important mechanic - your buildings needed flat terrain to stand on and any dents or protrusions created after they were built caused buildings to get damaged and collapse. While you could play it like in Red Alert, spamming units and shooting shit, you and your enemies were supposed to also use terrain to your advantage, to maintain flat expanse at your base, to dig holes under the enemy buildings that they'd collapse into, to block enemy turrets from shooting by raising mountains in their line of sight, to use terrain destroying weaponry among other things to make enemy energy transmitters collapse at the right moment and take over their energy network for yourself and the like. In 2006 it got a bugfix and campaign expansion update but afterwards K-D Lab ran into financial troubles.

In 2007 they made a Tiberium Wars-like game Maelstrom in an unrelated universe but also revolving around terrain modification where 2 human factions built over and expanded the land while the 3rd alien one built and better fought over the water. In 2008 they made a Perimeter 2 that was only lore-related to the first game but otherwise was basically like Maelstrom except with only two factions, water and land based one. Perimeter 2 was all around a failure since it was worse in every way than first one, the addition of fluids to terrain made all the complex terrain shenanigans of the first Perimeter unnecessary, and terrain shenanigans was the only gimmick that differentiated their games from the rest. That was around the time K-D Labs had run into financial difficulties so the release was hurried, very buggy, and shortly after K-D Lab and was split and after that nothing remained of it.

There is still some movement from the K-D Lab corpse, like their ex-devs sometimes regroup and rerelease games on Steam for a quick buck, they even have a moderately active forum where nostalgic boomers keep making maps and mods but they havent made anything new or interesting ever since. And that gimmick became less unique in time as more and more games added dynamic terrain features. Faction has its unique terrain gimmick is also now pretty common to see nowadays.

Anyway, the point is, the original Perimeter and its expansion is a pretty cool game with some pretty unique mechanics even to this day. You should try it.

>>18468
I think Mandalore Gaming has a good video about Vaginers I mean Vangers.
Seems breddy interesting tbh.

>>18447
>Double so as you already had to pay a coin entry.
Yeah, that's OHKO mode, never tried that, sounds way too hardcore for me. I'm just happy that in the meantime I managed to clear Classic Roguelike. Though since I now already beat the mode I was most interested in, the replay value dropped off a little. Not a lot more to do despite go for the crazy modes or the remaining characters. Don't give a fuck about all the skins available ingame.
>that you walked into all by yourself.
Happens, unfortunately. So many shit on the screen, and especially the characters with emphasis on quick movement are prone to end up on a bullet when dashing around.

Played some Sudden Strike for the first time in a year or so.

Fifth soviet mission: Cleanse a village from a bunch of nazi armor. Easy enough, huh?
Well, in the end I didn't even have any tanks left. And only a handful of men, but frankly, they weren't really necessary.
You see, there is also a small village in the northeast corner of the map, but I forgot that while in the isometric perspective, north is "up", on the actual map, north is the upper left edge, so I was assaulting the wrong village and lost at least half of my men in the process.
However, they gave me a million howitzers, so had I failed this mission and had to retry it, I would just take the howitzers, bomb everything to rubble and then clean up, just like in real life.
And for the actual village I did, by Lenin, I did. I send in a platoon who then shot a bunch of leftover fascists that were left in the one house that was not leveled.
Picture is the field between the northeast village and the north village where there were some attempts made by the fascists, but those were just acts of desperation.

Communism in its tracks cannot be stopped by either ox or ass.

Will Bernd save video games?

>>18848
Sure, if you weren't such an imbecile who can't post the relevant link.
Or is this not actually about saving games but some lame e-celeb gossip?

>>18852
stopkillinggames.com/eci

>>18848
i failed two times mentioning this this evening, where it would have been relevant.

>>18882
The initiative is still running for 11 months. You have plenty of time to raise awareness for it.

Longplay tip of the week

Samorost 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bpm8oDst5Fo

Gemini Rue
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXh3OAoCXo0

Will be streaming the Demo level of Desperados at around 7:30 UTC.

After finishing Turok 1 recently I also finished my playthrough of Turok 2.
I still like it better, although I think 1's bosses are better, and level 4 and 5 are infuriatingly convoluted, and the map is almost useless.
However, Turok 2 has better weapons and almost no platforming, of which 1 had A LOT. I HATE PLATFORMING.
Playing the remasters is a given, of course. Recently dusted off my old N64 and tried Turok 2, but the framerate, the framerate. One wonders how we could put up with this back then (or Playstation players today).
With that and Desperados out of the way, I am currently playing through Commandos 1 and will see if I can continue with Dino Crisis.

Germany made it. Now France and Spain must get their shit together.

>>19206
Made what? Club of the biggest cuck nations on earth? That can't be,because of Poland

>>19207
Germany collected the required amount of support for the Citizen's Initiative. Of course it still needs more support because you have to get seven countries over their own boundary and further you have to collect support of a million citizen overall.

Continuing in Commandos.
This mission had me scratch my head in the beginning. In Fig. 1 you can see them at the very southern edge of the map.

Basically I had to take out a village full of nazis to kill a general (all while not raising any alarm) and I don't even have the Green Beret and the Spy started without a uniform, so in half an hour I manged to take out exactly three guards, and from the last one I actually got shaky hands because I had to crawl behind a patrol, ice him the second before he turned around, and while hiding the body I had to drop him once to go down in order to not be seen by another guard.
That's peak commando'ing and now I will watch a speedrun to see how someone actually skilled will demolish this.

As expected the Marine was basically useless. I don't think I used him a single time, and the walkthroughs I read to see how other people did it also only use him just to have used him, basically.
The problem is that while he can kill silently, he can't carry bodies, so anything I want to do I might as well let the spy do.
Anyway, after cleaning up a bit in the southwestern part of the village, the Spy managed to grab a uniform, which enabled him to thin out the herd a bit before actually conducting the hit.
The sniper then crawled up a rooftop that coincidentally overlooked the garden where the general did his morning walk.
In Fig. 2 you can see the aftermath. Took a few tries because the soldiers have x-ray vision and perfect audiospatial detection so the moment the Sniper took the shot, he was in turn shot at, but with a bunch of smart positioning and luck he managed to pull it off without getting hit.
With the general dead, alarms are not a problem anymore, so the only thing left was to blow up the HQ and gtfo.

Blowing up the HQ wasn't that hard, but it warranted a bit of clean-up first.
I tried a few times to run over both patrols in the courtyard, but the last guy wasn't dead quick enough to NOT ring the alarm.
So the Driver parked the tanker right in front of the guardhouse and bailed.
A quirk this game has is that a car that has been in the possession of the Commandos is considered hostile by enemies and they will shoot it on sight, so those dumbfuck nazis blew themselves when they started shooting at a fuel truck in their courtyard. Gladly that was enough to consider the HQ "destroyed". Everyone boarded a truck and left.

Next time I would probably try to clean out the courtyard first, then park the truck there and trigger the alarm - the general will be evacuated through the courtyard, so the moment he steps out and starts shooting at the truck he will blow himself up.

>>18995
Nice, I've pitched it to my French friends when Ross released the video in early August. That's at least two signatures.

>>19241
Who cares about some crappy gay vidya game not working anymore? Oh, I know. Balding long-haired ugly friendless perma-virgins with mickey-mouse voices do!

>>19242
>Oh, I know. Balding long-haired ugly friendless perma-virgins with mickey-mouse voices do!
To quote Ross:
>"Hell yeah!"

>>19242
It’s about your rights as a consumer, dude.

>>19252
Video Games are for children. Once you grow up, you are too old for them. If you want to play, anyway (why? because you are a pedophile or something, probably.)

>>19253
Just play current games, maybe.

Pic related is what grown up video gamers look like. Do not be like this "man"

>>19241
Nicely done. I got my mother to sign.

>>19252
Think less about consumer's rights and more about producer's rights.
Neoliberal system poisons you with consumerism.

>>18854
What's their takes on the Concord game?

>>19511
Bad game, still should've been preserved. But since they've refunded everyone it will not be covered by the initiative, there's no consumer rights angle.

>>19511
Off but I was honestly fascinated how this disaster happened.
You'd assume that in a corporate structure at one point someone would stop the train before it becomes a trainwreck but no.
I think while doing a post-mortem of Concord, even without falling back into the chudgument that "It had ugly brown people in it" (Of course the designs being unappealing was one part of it), what you still see is that a game was in development for 8 years and then was thrown onto the market for 40 dollars in an environment where most games like it are free to play.

The competition has been in the game for almost a decade, so the market is saturated, of course nobody is going to pay 40 dollars to play a game that essentially brings nothing new to the table. It's just not worth the investment to jump over into it.

So like even just from a market analysis standpoint I'm surprised nobody said that "Guys we might be in trouble".

>>19594
As anyone who works in software development or an adjacent industry can confirm, it's always an out of touch C-suite who are either idiots falling for buzzwords or idiots scamming other idiots who fall for buzzwords, plus the "number go up NOW" mentality that plagues all publicly traded companies and, obviously, all of that being led by americans (yes, Sony is barely a japanese company anymore). All of this, while taken by itself, can be alleviated elsewhere, but combined it's the perfect storm of le infinite growth meme and greedy assholes.

In fact, the only two video game industry companies that are currently making any sane decisions are Nintendo (japanese and largely unaffected by american sensitivities) and Valve (privately owned).

>>19594
> Off
It was a bait for discussing the game anyway.

> even without falling back into the chudgument that "It had ugly brown people in it"
I think that it's a ideology-centered situation and to understand it chuddery is necessary. Investors (including government) were driven not by profit motives but by ethical investment ESG stuff. It were mostly big funds where people operate with someone else's money. So it surprises me when >>19595 writes about "greed", "infinite growth" and other leftspeak. For him "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail".
And even when people do market analysis... Who is ready to say what he actually thinks and lose his H1B visa or chance to repay loan for McMansion? It's better to say something socially acceptable like "there are millions of obese sheboons willing to play shooters but discouraged by objectification (=half-naked asses) in Overwatch, they'll pay 40$ for a chance to feel represented".

>>19595
Idiot weaboo go eat some raw tuna.

>>19603
Man I love raw tuna. You should try it, it's great.

>>19604
> NIHON GOOD BAKA
said the 35yo fat manchild with yellow and brown stains in his underwear

After building my new PC, I finally decided to play Elden Ring. I've been avoiding any information about this game so the experience is pretty fresh to me. So far, more or less as expected, it's an open world Dark Souls game. Cryptic dialogue means fuck all to me before some reveals probably closer to the end of the game, and I'll probably miss out on a lot of content because, well, it's DS-style hidden in an open world, duh.

I also found the game quite a bit harder than the DS series, maybe I'm just rusty, because I haven't played them since like 2018, but I think they did in fact turned the difficulty up a bit, mostly for the bosses. The movesets seem quite a bit more unpredictable, and I can never guess the delay on the strikes right. The first boss in Stormveil took me like 15 tries before I gave up and summoned an NPC. On the other hand, that dragon in the lake was a walk in the park. Or, rather, a ride, because I spend the entire fight on horse(?)back. I used to be a very good Warband player, maybe it showed.

So far, I like the visuals and the gameplay, but I guess I'll need more practice to enjoy the boss fights more, and a second playthrough to see all the stuff that I'll inevitably miss.

Anybody played Songs of Conquest (HoMM 3 inspired turn-based strategy) or Mouthwashing (edgy indie horror)?
Haven't played single player games in a while but these looked interesting.

>>20811
SoC screenshots are always so nice to look at, but HoMM never clicked with me, so I never bought it.
Always stopping at it on Steam until I'm reminded what it's based on.

Listening to too much Eurobeat again and getting an urge to drive though.

Currently getting back into flight sims.
Dusted off the old IL-2 1946, but this time not Vanilla, but with the COMMUNITY UNIVERSAL PATCH.
Across what is probably a hundred download links (because I don't have a Torrent client set up) it will later amount to about 40 GB of content. Remember, this is a game from 2003.
At least it's not like with the Steel Fury Kharkov 1942 supermod that is a japanese one only hosted on a japanese site or a very shady russian one.

Did some Stuka flying... An airfield attack with the B-2 went pretty well.
Then I wanted to try my hand at a G-2 with its double 3.7cm cannons to bust some armor. Turns out the ground approaches faster than you think. In my defense I must say that I flew here with keyboard only. When I find my old flightstick, things will hopefully go a bit better.
Also, I had to convert this from tga and now I feel a bit nostalgic for a time when tga was an actual format that was actually used.

Also also, I have been downloading a good 60GB all day for nothing because as it turned out that mod is obsolete and there is a newer one that is still being developed. I don't mind the bandwidth, my connection is fast, but since it was all some 7 year old links it was a bunch of Mediafire downloads or archives not larger than 2GB, so yeah, it was about a hundred single downloads I had to start and then extract the archives one by one according to the instructions. All for nothing. That was my evening.

>>20956
Obviously you missed the red cross truck because you respect basic rules of engangement... right? RIGHT?
t. flight officer

>>20958
Frankly, I didn't even see it until I smashed into the ground.

Ok, so I now downloaded all the BAT stuff and installed it.
My IL-2 Sturmovik 1946 folder is now Ninetythree and a Half GB large.
For comparison: The two biggest games I have on my disk are Tekken 7 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance with both at about 80GB. Then again, I now can fly basically every single plane of the 20th century across maps like "Berlin to London" (1:2 scale).
I don't have any pictures yet, because trying to fly with just the keyboard is basically impossible and I have to try again with a proper stick, my trusty Logitech Extreme 3D Pro. I am not autistic enough to get a HOTAS setup, which would also be supported.

>>20959
Text-book fighter pro issues :3
Luckily we have more then one try in our modern times.
Don't stukas in those games feature that automatic pull-up feature?
Or did you forget to pass out and cancelled it's input?

>>20981
That was iirc after already dropping everything and strafing them. I think the auto-pull-out only engages at a certain angle and with the bomb still attached.

But I have found my stick again and now things are going a lot better. I even managed to land without flipping or dying.

>>20982
AFAIK the bomb detaching is what activates it combined with the altimeter, but you can't be unrealisticly steep in your approach.
It's just Kraut space magick, not actual space magick :3

Finally managed to take some pictures. Not really eventful, but when you're trying to not crash into the ground, I think it's acceptable.
I made a small single mission just to practice divebombing.
From Graz you fly a bit south towards Murfeld, kill a radio station and some AA cannons there (smoke visible in last picture) and return north across Stubenberg to land again.

I must admit that most of the flight I let the autopilot do because for some reason I can't get the plane to keep calm and climbing doesn't work well. Might be the stick because I noticed that I have bad deadzone problems, but I still have to learn a lot, of course. Only for the actual diving I switched to manual. And I landed by myself, which worked way better than anticipated, considering that over the past few days I usually crash-landed, often fatally.

Still practicing divebombing.
First one looks cool, but missed one AA.
Second and third are from a run where I thought I missed, but as it turned out, the bombs still had some way to fall, as evidenced by the third one, with total annihilation.
Last one is total annihilation of my own plane after AA killed my ailerons and I started banking to death.

Also, this stick isn't really usable anymore for this kind of fine-tuned work.
I'll have to get a new one.

There is games

https://ernstchan.top/b/res/36801.html

* = Number 0-9

Sulfur was quite a ride, but for now the content is exhausted after 30 or so hours.
May do another run every now and then to craft some more weapons, but my highly tuned SMG with multiple exploding boolets and the assault rifle gone shotgun with mass stun does the job mighty fine, creating a mess wherever they are aimed at.
They claim that they'll add multiplayer once 200k copies are sold, but until then at least 3 more levels and plenty of guns and customization shall be added as well.
The evil witch remains still unslain by the ripping and tearing father of the lord.

Next up a action RPG with a pretty sus artstyle and banger low-quality OST.

I'm around 10 hours in Stalker 2 and i like it a lot.
Russian purists can hate and cheeki breeki me as much as they want but it's a very good game.

I played the first games 10 years ago or so so it is hard for me to compare, but i feel like the art style was converted well.

>>21598
From what I heard it's "still the same game as the first Stalker, and there are no new features despite long development" but imo that's a good thing. I liked the first Stalker and wouldn't want it to be "enhanced" like Fallout 4. While same old Stalker with new plot and locations sounds cool.

Maybe I'll play it if I have time. But I'd never buy it because developers sponsor forced mobilization ("busification") of Ukrainians while themselves sitting in Prague.

>>20811
Update:
>SoC
Played for half an hour and uninstalled. Maybe I just like HoMM 3 more for nostalgia than the gameplay.

>Mouthwashing
Finished it in one sitting. It's mostly just story with a few light gameplay elements. Cool aesthetics, but the story wasn't as sophisticated as I expected. Fine for what it is.

I tried giving Danganronpa 3 a shot but couldn't get into it, like so many VNs it's just too verbose. Baffles me that I managed to finish the first two games.

After finally getting Mythic rank in MtG Arena draft, I got kinda burned out. Started playing some Balatro instead. Got hooked for a few hours but it didn't catch on. Now with the catgirl mahjong game I think I found something reasonably challenging to scratch my competitive itch.

Doing another run on Card Survival Tropical Island.

I hardly ever praise anything Chinese, but those devs really got something relaxing, immersing and still tense with this gameplay loop.
Soon their fantasy forest themed successor should release ...into early access, so I'll take it with a grain of salt.

Already far into comfy survival.
Early need for water was quenched with the tried and tested rain basin in the wetlands, followed by a cistern in the main jungle area.
Even managed to dig out a cellar as early home there, which will be useful later on as food store once I got my stone hut.

Right now just making life more comfortable.
Crafting some scented candles, braising some island chicken, boiling nippa sap into sugar, talking to my BBS-tier friend Weston and playing the lonely flute for fun.
Even trapped myself another boar sow, that will feed me a few days!

Soon the first dry season should be over now, so the next focus shall be some farming once water is plentiful.

>>21598
>>21605

It's not "the same game" at all.

I played the original Stalker a lot, it had a certain magic about it that dragged you into it.
It actually sold the immersion and atmosphere despite much more primitive graphics, thanks to fantastic artistic direction.
Stalker 1 wasn't actually all that open world and pretty linear, but not in your face linear.
Stalker 2 feels like any random "modern" game with tube levels for dumb console plebs to follow the yellow paint, not like actually stalking the zone.
It is a bad copy that didn't capture the magic whatsoever.
I tried to like it but it was incredibly offputting.

Lost it's soul entirely.

After successfully escaping this beautiful island once, dying once while trying to weather the open sea, this time I embraced the secluded blissfulness and called the island my home.
250 hours into this game is enough... GIVE ME THE FOREST SURVIVAL!

Anyway, next survival to be done is Elin, Elonas unofficial successor.
Streamlined basically every aspect, hunting monsters, dungeon diving, farming, crafting, settlement management, whatever you want, it's in.
As is tradition, the chosen pet is of course the little girl, quite a fighter indeed :3
5 hours in and I have to settle my first tax bill in the capital, hopefully I'll find some weapons and gear here as well, still rather naked.

Started a new char because I disliked the squishiness and lack of utility of my Yerle thief.

Went with kinda meta Wraith executioner instead.
Strong start in melee, some magic and once your HP run out your mana starts taking half damage before dying, excellent!

While venturing out to Nefu Village to convert to fox mommy goddess Horome, I found a silk panty that can be thrown as a weapon or played as an instrument, so now we're trying to level some music skill as well to earn some cash in cities.
And should your audience dislike your whimsical performance, the thrown stones train armor and evasion skills, thanks a lot!

Even found the den of scum of Pattaya Derphy were I picked up the skills to disarm trap, locate hidden and lockpick, essential for dungeon diving.
Also slept with a hooker, feeling right at home :3

Started to train fishing and stumbled upon some kind of seasonal festival held in Port Kapul in which religious followers are tied to gallows and straw puppets are burned under loud cheering.
Incidentally, fishing is also a nice money maker, as I can use my table saw to turn fish into bonito flakes and then ferment them into bonito wine, which ships for a nice sum.
Also sold off my fame to reduce my tax burden, if it would just be so easy IRL...

Also found the casino in Palmia, many high-level customers are packed tightly into different gambling areas, bars and the... snail torturing show.
A great place to rock my extreme bard skills and be showered in money!
Just don't try to loose it at the Blackjack tables...

Then I used some furniture tickets of Olvina to get some steam geyser sources to winter proof the pond in my home settlement for a constant stream of fishing. Although I still tend to it rather pragmatically, tourism already gives a nice small source of income and I can proudly say that my meadow now takes the 135th place of all 136 locations around the map, I beat a deserted swimming beach in value!
Also dabbled a little in automatic farming with the produce going into the fermenting barrels to make regular wine while I'm away.
Should really clean it up and make myself a nice home some day.

And finally we welcome our second constant party member, a carbuncle cat!
With the small accrued wealth enough high quality food can be bought to keep us all well fed and the 12k that the carbuncle cost weren't much of an issue.
In return this great feline offers healing spells and even a daily cast of resurrection, should our eager little girl once again run head first into a dungeon boss and his followers.
Also there seems to be some kind of mushroom festivity going on, no other idea for those succulent headdresses.

Played AoE2 again, for the first time after like 20 years.
And while I find it engaging in principle - especially after learning basic strats - there is still something unsatisfying about it.
Maybe because I am compstomping still on Standard or because I would need to play against a human, but I constantly click and zoom around and keep building and upgrading and harassing and bleed the enemy dry and after an hour (because it was an island map and I am slowwww) it was over because I destroyed his town center.
And I don't even know why it feels so unsatisfying. Like having sex and being really into it and suddenly she comes and pushes me off. I will slowly up the difficulty to see if it changes anything, but after that... no idea, I'll probably go back to RTT and TBS.

Won a match against a "medium" AI.
Now this was better. Granted, it took me pretty long because I'm a scrub AND also played Teutons, but in the end I managed to wear him down with my endless food supplies and forward castles. He was going through the ages way faster than me though, except for Imperial. Fucking Azteks man, I tell you.
But in the end I was victorious, despite him being able to snag all relics and making mad money, but that didn't help him when he ran out of stone and wood (I also started running out of wood tbh).
A thing that I really underestimated and which had me in a bunch of tough spots was just how slowwww the Teutonic knights are and how fucked I am without ranged units. Then again, a teutonic castle with a bunch of knights garrisoned is like an Atlantic Wall, and any infantry approaching will get hedgehogged pretty quickly.
Eventually I felt like he was running out of artillery to produce, so I produced my own.
A handful of triboks, some onagers for the "short" range and like 50 knights to protect them and I was just moving forward, like a steamroller.
And by god, I rolled.
I think I will stay on Medium for now, just to improve my building and idling time, and until then, DEUS VULT.

Finally finished Persona 3 Reload. Took about 115 hours.
The basegame anyway, I still have the story expansion to go through with my save file.

I really wanted to play the remake after finishing P5 and after a lot of waiting I got my hands on it while it was on sale.
I immensely enjoyed it in the end. It starts off a bit rough because half the mechanics remind you of Persona 5 and the entire thing feels a bit like an elaborate mod at times but it eventually really comes into its own.

The supporting cast is considerably weaker imho, though some I really liked because they showcased interesting aspects of Japanese society and I actually got questions I could bother my Japanese studies/Buddhologist friend with.
The side-stories essentially oftentimes feel a bit abrupt which I ascribe mostly to how this stuff was on PS2 so having a lot of voiceacting must have taken up considerable disk-space and with the original chibi character designs didn't lend themselves to more "dynamic" scene compositions.
But there are really good stories hidden there. The Buddhist monk's was one of my favourite.

The gameplay is really good. A lot more in-depth and complex than 5's, you can really calculate around with the special attacks and everything. It opens up gradually but by the end of the game it really feels like you're unstoppable.
I really liked how you have a lot more control over how you run your team. For example in 5 there were "showtime" attacks that did massive damage and were a synergy of two team members in battle. These happened seemingly randomly and you couldn't "stock" them so you would often end up wasting them on meaningless shit.
Here your characters have a "theurgy gauge" which you can just fill up and then let go whenever you actually need it. A lot of control in the hands of the player.

Bad thing is the dungeon design. Or the lack of it rather. Persona 5 had a randomly generated dungeon called "Mementos" which would change every time you went to it. It was the collective unconsciousness mapped to the city's metro, going deeper and deeper into the heart of the Earth. But it wasn't the only thing and it was sort of a side-story in a sense.

Now here, your only dungeon is "Tartarus", a tower which changes every night save for the checkpoint floors so essentially the meat and potatoes of the game is just a series of randomly generated hallways which change aesthetics a few times. The early game feels unbearable and it scares the shit out of you that you will not be able to keep up with the enemies at all but by the second area I was only ever engaging with rare enemies (massive money rewards) or hard enemies (massive XP rewards) because the normal ones would run away instead of engaging with me.
The combat really has a powercreep thing going on where you are really low on resources and have a bad team to transforming you into an actual "Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad" like the game calls you.

>>22271
It's really intuitive. If you do the little side missions and everything you get really strong personas you can use in combat, tons of XP, etc.
The game essentially railroads you through the missions to build a competent team.
The downside of this is that you have this sunken-cost-fallacy feeling to completing the side-quests and I wasn't really able to complete the final side quest because you would actually need to micromanage things for that and I wasn't willing to follow a guide, I just wanted to play and see the story for myself.

Gameplaywise you get the dungeon and you also have the "social link system" that 3 introduced into the series (which makes the entire thing infamous in a sense I guess). You organise little hangouts with friends, classmates and acquintances or go out to better your skills. These all take up time, which is the hidden resource of the game. You have a limited number of activity slots you can spend on all this stuff, and the game constantly hammers this point that "Time is running out" to you so you are really conscious that every day is a hard decision to who to not spend time with or what not to do.

The social link part of the game flies by really fast I feel like, a lot of my playtime was spent in the dungeon either climbing the new section or grinding resources or XP, though as the game progresses, grinding becomes way less of an issue with you being able to expend some resources to get the lagging party members who are not actively engaging in combat up to the protagonist's level instantly.
So every time something becomes a problem a bit later the game will introduce a new mechanic to solve that problem which shows the insane thought and care the devs put into the game.

The music is insane. I expected the rap parts to really get on my nerves but I ended up loving it anyway, probably just as much as I loved 5's OST, which is probably way too much.

I know I'm comparing it a lot with 5 but I basically never thought about Persona 5 while playing it past the initial few hours.
The game uses a lot of the same elements. Same character archetypes, similar structures, similar references (like the Tarot), but when it's all put together you get a completely different story and message.
Though in general I feel like Persona 5 was a lot more elegant with its handling of the Major Arcana of the Tarot than 3 is.
I was a bit shocked that for example your male team members don't get a social link the same way your female team members get. The girls all have an arcana tied to them and you get a measure of how you're progressing, but the males just get a couple of hangout events and you just become best bros after like 3-4 times. I guess it's realistic in this regard. Still, it felt a bit unbalanced because you're not as motivated to finish their (just as good) stories as with the team members and friends who have arcanas. But otherwise they are also handled like "social links" and are recounted as "fully built up friendships" and the like when you finish the game.

>>22272
Also it's a lot more open about its influences. One of the characters at school regularly gives lectures on occultism and mysticism. Telling you about mystic traditions and the like, mentioning names and books. This is integrated to the point where you can meet up with him as an extracurricular activity where the game literally teaches you basic Tarot-divination. (It's not bullshit, I have a Tarot handbook and it's actually teaching you proper divination techniques and the reasoning behind them and everything, it's insanely cool, at least to me. I've actually started reading more stuff because of it.)
Basically it gives you the key to decode the story as it entirely unfolds, you just have to put it in the lock and open it.
It's not "deep" or "subtle" in my opinion, but it's very well executed and it really takes you in with how much they cared about everything in this game, be it the background research, the music, the gameplay and the design. (Yeah, the menus are really fucking cool, very dynamic and so on. Everyone jerks off over them for a good reason.)

Haven't played OG Elona+ in at least 10 years now, just now understanding how far development of this game already went.
If Elin one day can build farther with its much more comfortable UI, it shall become one of the greatest RPGs of our time, together with its parent Elona.
With it's townbuilding it already successfully branched into something Elona doesn't even offer, but there's yet a lot of old stuff to add as well.
Also nice to see how the overworld and towns are related between both games.

Playing a lich magi-gunner... buuuuut to get around some grind, the comfy community patch lets you enable save-scumming, which is used in moderation. 0 deaths so far, yay!
Nice experience oyakodoning both games tho :3

>>22272
Does it suffer from the JRPG overleveling by sidemissions if your somewhat of a completionist?
Had that happen hard with Nier:Automata which took a lot of challenge out of the latter part of the game, despite still being an eyewatering experience.
Feels like as a player you're better of with at least minor JRPG grind instead.

The whole Persona series does look interesting, often looked at those games on Steam.
But in the end I always shrug them off due to that time limit and seemingly too character/story driven gameplay, gimme a juicy blank slate to work with anytime.

>>22292
>Does it suffer from the JRPG overleveling by sidemissions if your somewhat of a completionist?
Absolutely.

It has 101 side-missions, some of which include fighting specific enemies or creating specific personas with specific skillsets, and the personas it asks you to create are, while often hard to actually create, incredibly powerful by the late game. If you give a shit it absolutely railroads you into being overpowered.

But it also motivates you. The dungeon has a "Reaper" that comes and hunts you down if you spend too much time on a given floor loitering around. Actually fighting the Reaper and killing it is one of the final side-missions and when you get it you are at around level 70 or so (which is already overlevelled mind you, because as I said, I never had to fight normal enemies after the initial two sections) I instantly jumped up to level 80 and then to 90 the second time I killed it.
And there's no avoiding it, because when you've done 90 quests in the game you are going to keep doing it because you're invested in this shit so yeah, I absolutely was a beast by the end.

(Not that it really matters, initially elemental attacks are the focus and finding weaknesses of enemies to knock them down, the late game is all about abusing the physical attacks and the critical hit system because enemies just straight up stop having weaknesses, so your best bet is to just crit as often and as hard as you can. Even the bosses. I was literally wheezing because the average elemental attack did lik 500 damage unboosted, but for the boss the stars aligned and one of my physical attacks was both normal attack boosted and charged up, landing a critical hit, ending in 5k damage on round one, and this was a semi-normal occurrence.)

It's definitely story heavy.
I sometimes liken it to Asian plays. A JRPG is about fulfilling the role of the ideal protagonist. You're meant to fill in the mold/shoes of what the writers wanted and if you don't like being an actor in a 100 hour long Noh play then it's probably not your cup of tea.

But I personally (no pun intended) am really into it because I like how it has an insane cohesion of gameplay, art direction, music and themes. Every single detail is working towards fulfilling its role in the telling of an amazing tale.

Also the time limit thing is important but the games are also not very punishing when it comes to spending your time wisely. You can easily get the best ending on your first run if you just pay attention to themes of the story and make the right choices, doesn't matter if you have minmaxed following a guide or just "did your best" and spent time however you wanted/thought it was best.
I got the good ending and I wasn't following any guide or planning ahead while spending the time I have.

As my god-awful starting charisma slowly develops, I'm accumulating quite a posse of steel-chewing and bullet-spitting girls or are they?.
Obviously those are quite far from being the min-maxxers choice of pet, but it's not fun to travel around a stinking minotaur, unfriendly T-Rex and whatever else is considered top-tier.

First there's the starting Little Girl, quite a pure melee fighter and tank without consenting to it.
Then the trusty nurse, lifesaver with her healing spells and throwing about her magical fragrant panty.
Third of the gang was the Little Cat Sister, thief by profession and dual wielding an artifact mace & axe at high speed & low drag, squishy tho.
And finally I was finally gifted my Goddesses Lulwy's pet, the Black Angel, support gunner and speed buffer getting blessed by my own direct hand-me-downs.
Still looking to catch a Xeren Auto Tank or even better, a Yerles Combat Plane as my personal mount, for the latter I'm still lacking a lvl.50 Pokemonster ball.
Time to finally conquer the deepest parts of Leminas and end act 1 of the game, South Tyris awaits with bigger challenges!

Also I somehow went from 600k gold to being broke again.
Damn all those shopping opportunities and expensive slaves to gene splice my girls into shape.

Also also Card Survival Fantasy Forest finally has a release date end of month, but it rather seems like a heavy reskin of Tropical Survival while 3 big content patches are but a promise for the distant future. This will maybe need another year to slowly stew in the pot.

>>22294
>I got the good ending and I wasn't following any guide or planning ahead while spending the time I have.
Well, that's at least something, still I'm rather turned off by such time limits.
Fallout 1 suffers the same issue, no matter that you may actually only need half of the given 6 months until the vault runs dry.

Seeing how all those console titles slowly drizzle onto Steam is still great though.
Got myself Rune Factory 4 some time ago and liked it a lot.

FINALLY found a dungeon filled with Yerles Combat Planes and had to abandon it due to only carrying a lvl.49 monster ball while those are lvl.50.
Shamelessly save-scummed at a shop for a lvl.50 monster ball, returned and caught one of those sleek fuckers.
It's even a "female" plane, stringently continuing my harem!
And riding "her" increases my speed tremendously, while she acts as a gun turret under my buttocks.
In party quests I can now pull off 2 consequent ensemble actions, giving my pets a steady stream of income to improve their potentials.

In the end, the Little Cat Sister was still far too squishy, so she was appointed shopkeeper for my first general goods store, while also opening a food, gear and magic store with freshly caught thief guild members for their high charisma/negotiation.
Rotated into the smackdown posse was the unique fairy archer that I found some time ago, some time later I even got my goddesses gift weapon, a strong ether bow that fits her perfectly.


Also doing pet arena battles from time to time and the act 1 story dungeon is conquered to lvl 35 of 45.
Soon South Tyris should open up.