What game are you playing?

[TedEH]

That's not Rad of him at all, which is why I want him a-gone.

 

[TheBlackBard]

That's not Rad of him at all, which is why I want him a-gone.

Take your like and get the fuck out of here.

 

[KnightBrolaire]

Been playing Prey for a few hours. I really like the game, especially just fucking around with recycler charges and the gloo cannon.

 

[Ralyks]

Persona 3 has its hardcore fans, who still insist it's better than 4 or 5, largely on story alone. It does have a dark tone with nihilistic elements, hell, you summon your persona by pointing a gun to your head and pulling the trigger. Those fans are insane.

Honestly, I kinda dig the gun to the head thing I would like a darker Persona game, as much as I really like what I played of P4G and I've made it know how much I fucking love P5R, but I almost feel like it would be more like a straight Shin Megami Tensai game (which to me, P3P feels like it walks the line between being a Persona game and a mainline SMT game).

Again though, I'm thinking I should just play P3 FES, I'm pretty sure I have it on my PS3. But I'm already 25 hours into P3P, and if I'm not restarting so I can play as the female protagonist, I'm probably not starting again in FES. Plus I heard The Answer isn't that good anyway, I'll probably just YouTube the story there.

 

[TedEH]

Made it to the credits. Frenzied Flame ending, 'cause I never managed to get past Malenia. I'm ok with it. I'm reasonably certain I saw the majority of the major things the game had to offer. Got the rest of the Great Runes other than that one. I've got some criticisms for sure, but overall it would be hard to argue that it wasn't deserving of its GOTY status. If I didn't have a backlog of stuff to play, I'd be tempted to start over with a character build that goes entirely the opposite direction - but that'll be some other time. Not today.

 

[CTID]

miyazaki could come to my house and tell me to my face that you're not supposed to have torrent in the elden beast fight and i straight up would not believe him

 

[Choop]

Made it to the credits. Frenzied Flame ending, 'cause I never managed to get past Malenia. I'm ok with it. I'm reasonably certain I saw the majority of the major things the game had to offer. Got the rest of the Great Runes other than that one. I've got some criticisms for sure, but overall it would be hard to argue that it wasn't deserving of its GOTY status. If I didn't have a backlog of stuff to play, I'd be tempted to start over with a character build that goes entirely the opposite direction - but that'll be some other time. Not today.

That's the ending that I got, too, and just watched the rest of the endings on Youtube. The only other one that's interesting is the Ranni ending. All this talk is making me want to play ER again -- I haven't since I completed it not long after it launched.

 

[KnightBrolaire]

yo fuck the Arboretum and Deep storage parts in Prey. There are some massive difficulty spikes there, especially considering I never got a chance to restock my ammo,nades, meds or gloo, and I'm locked in the deep storage area with no way to get more stuff.

 

[wankerness]

I’ve heard people sing the praises of Prey for years now, I started it once and just didn’t get into it in the first hour or two.

Now on chapter 10 (of 12 or 13?) in Lost Judgment, finally focusing on the “school stories” which are various clubs with associated mini games. The dance club is about the same as karaoke or dance in all the previous games. Robot club is like a combo of an RTS and the various grindy mini games in Yakuza games where you had to collect parts to upgrade your car or whatever. I’m not very good at it but at least it’s engaging. Then finally is the skateboarding club, which so far is just a matter of riding around halfpipes at full speed and doing little QTEs at the end of each. So, not on the level of Yakuza 5 or especially the hostess clubs in 0 or Kiwami 2, but still pretty good.

 

[TedEH]

I think Prey is a game with a pretty targeted audience. It was definitely my kind o' game.

 

[Mathemagician]

The thing with Elden Ring's plot is that those endings DO tie up threads and give a definite conclusion, but only if you've been paying attention to the plot through item descriptions and whatnot. It isn't something like a Mass Effect where the ending is a huge exposition/action dump that's satisfying the way a movie climax is satisfying, it's just sort of the logical conclusion of what's been going on in your game and whatever decision you make at the end.

I mean, I would wager that probably the large majority of people that finish the game don't even register what the Elden Ring is and thus don't have a clue what's going on with the last few bosses or what happened at the end in any of the endings. I only sort of get it.

I never have done the "read item descriptions" thing in any souls game but I've absorbed a bunch of it through a combination of Zullie the Witch videos and just having played the games enough times that I started to connect the scattered dialogue and limited current plot events. I'm mainly just interested in the gameplay. But ER does have a complex setup and all of the endings are thematically interesting even if they're all like 30 second cutscenes that are going to be totally inexplicable if you don't know what's going on.

The Frenzied Flame ending is the best one IMO. I like the Dung Eater and Goldmask ones too.

The Ranni ending was my favorite and as far as I’m concerned the correct ending.

 

[Ralyks]

Ok, in Persona 3 Portable, I now have a waifu robot and a doggo with a kunai as party members now.
I'm back on board.

 

[TedEH]

I started up the new Mario + Rabbids to be something of a palate cleanser from the souls games. Man, going from big games on a PS5 back to the Switch feels like this awful whiplash. First impressions are alright, if maybe a bit strange. There's some changes from the last title that I don't quite understand. The combat itself seems to be a little more loose, which maybe is ok. The visuals aren't so much an upgrade as a side-grade - they're just different and I'm not sure why. I remember the actual combat arenas in the first game being a part of the overworld you're already in, but in this one you're taken out of the world and brought to a bespoke combat arena map, then thrown back into the other map when the combat is done. That feels like a downgrade from before. Integrating the combat maps and the traversal maps into one singular map made sense to me, but this new setup feels arbitrary.

I guess that's my first impression: not bad, but mostly arbitrary.

 

[MFB]

Going through Altus Plateau clearing up some bosses, took down Godskin Apostle in the windmill areas, Black Knife in front of Sainted Hero's Grave, Wormface from the woods, and Dual Tree Sentinels at the bridge; forgot how much I absolutely hate those deathblight guys. Need to go back and kill the Bloody Finger Blaidd in the river well basin, he has much more reach than I remember and because MVK requires two handing for weapon art, that means no shield to block. I did bolt past him to the Lake of Rot and killed the other Dragonkin down there, and unlocked the Grand Cloister, not looking forward to all the bug dudes and their BS ranged attacks either.

So kind of stagnant with where I'm at at the moment, know where I NEED to go, just not looking forward to it.

 

[wankerness]

Going through Altus Plateau clearing up some bosses, took down Godskin Apostle in the windmill areas, Black Knife in front of Sainted Hero's Grave, Wormface from the woods, and Dual Tree Sentinels at the bridge; forgot how much I absolutely hate those deathblight guys. Need to go back and kill the Bloody Finger Blaidd in the river well basin, he has much more reach than I remember and because MVK requires two handing for weapon art, that means no shield to block. I did bolt past him to the Lake of Rot and killed the other Dragonkin down there, and unlocked the Grand Cloister, not looking forward to all the bug dudes and their BS ranged attacks either.

So kind of stagnant with where I'm at at the moment, know where I NEED to go, just not looking forward to it.

If you use a shield with "no skill" as its weapon art you don't need to 2H to do weapon arts. That's part of why I always used Brass Shield. Though you can buy the "no skill" weapon art from the guy in Volcano Manor and apply it to a shield that has parry or whatever on it. And get to 18 dex so you don't have to 'waste" a talisman!!

You can summon an ash in that corridor in lake of rot with all the bug dudes, I always just summon the mimic tear to kill the bug guys and the putrid tree guy that's behind the waterfall. Of course you'll probably want to reset after getting all the loot and just run straight to the astel teleporter without taking damage or using a summon after that.

In deeproot depths there's a runebear that drops a talisman called prince of death's cyst which greatly increases resistance to deathblight, I used that when clearing around those deathblight guys in altus and Farum Azula. That bear can easily be cheese via ranged attacks if you approach him from above (that big crater up on the ledge after climbing the tree in the main area of deeproot).

 

[TedEH]

If you use a shield with "no skill" as its weapon art you don't need to 2H to do weapon arts. That's part of why I always used Brass Shield.

100% this. I did it a lot. Kept two shields around - the brass shield for most of the time, and one of the heater shields for when I reaaaaally wanted the parry move.

I had a thought at one point.... is there any real point in ever upgrading shields? 'Cause they seem to improve in attack, but not so much in defense.

 

[MFB]

If you use a shield with "no skill" as its weapon art you don't need to 2H to do weapon arts. That's part of why I always used Brass Shield. Though you can buy the "no skill" weapon art from the guy in Volcano Manor and apply it to a shield that has parry or whatever on it. And get to 18 dex so you don't have to 'waste" a talisman!!

You can summon an ash in that corridor in lake of rot with all the bug dudes, I always just summon the mimic tear to kill the bug guys and the putrid tree guy that's behind the waterfall. Of course you'll probably want to reset after getting all the loot and just run straight to the astel teleporter without taking damage or using a summon after that.

In deeproot depths there's a runebear that drops a talisman called prince of death's cyst which greatly increases resistance to deathblight, I used that when clearing around those deathblight guys in altus and Farum Azula. That bear can easily be cheese via ranged attacks if you approach him from above (that big crater up on the ledge after climbing the tree in the main area of deeproot).

I can't express just how little I care to get my dex the additional 4 pts higher, when it would mean farming legitimately 200K worth of runes to do so, I'm level 90 at this point, its not like points come cheap to me; and I already killed the dragon so that option is out too.

Guess i'll have to make the push for Volcano Manor then to buy the "no skill" since I never use the parry option at all, the timing is just off to me for DS parrying compared to Sekiro. I'm trying to remember if I've ever summoned mimic in the Cloister to just let him run wild, but you are right, I'd most definitely just make a dash for Astel's teleporter after resetting. I'll have to look up getting to Deeproot Depths, the first time I played I stumbled upon it and was like "woah, sick!" and I know it's tied to Fia who I didn't hug because I'm keeping my HP where it is (I know you can undo it but).

 

[TedEH]

it would mean farming legitimately 200K worth of runes to do so

I ended up cheaping out near the end and google'd some decent farming spots. 200k wouldn't take too long to build up if you cheese the right areas. I can't remember if someone already mentioned the underground area where you can hit one bird that's visible from the grace spot with an arrow, it immediately runs off a cliff - boom 11k runes in one shot. Reload at grace, repeat forever. Inifite levels forever if you have time that you don't value very much.

 

[wankerness]

100% this. I did it a lot. Kept two shields around - the brass shield for most of the time, and one of the heater shields for when I reaaaaally wanted the parry move.

I had a thought at one point.... is there any real point in ever upgrading shields? 'Cause they seem to improve in attack, but not so much in defense.

Shield stability upgrades every several levels. Stability makes a noticeable difference if you go up a few stability levels but it's pretty subtle (higher stability = less stamina used when you block an attack). I'd just use spare stones on shields so they'd always be wayyyy behind weapons.

I tended to use a small round shield (they have a slightly higher parry window than the bigger shields like the heater shields) if I wanted to use parries, and brass shield the rest of the time.

My first playthrough I was using the jellyfish shield and it was REALLY annoying having to switch to 2H every time I wanted to use a weapon art. If PC had a way to hotkey switching between 1h/2H I could see it being much less annoying, but on console it was very easy to fat finger the button sequence and accidentally 2H your shield or something if you were in the midst of a boss fight.

I can't express just how little I care to get my dex the additional 4 pts higher, when it would mean farming legitimately 200K worth of runes to do so, I'm level 90 at this point, its not like points come cheap to me; and I already killed the dragon so that option is out too.

Guess i'll have to make the push for Volcano Manor then to buy the "no skill" since I never use the parry option at all, the timing is just off to me for DS parrying compared to Sekiro. I'm trying to remember if I've ever summoned mimic in the Cloister to just let him run wild, but you are right, I'd most definitely just make a dash for Astel's teleporter after resetting. I'll have to look up getting to Deeproot Depths, the first time I played I stumbled upon it and was like "woah, sick!" and I know it's tied to Fia who I didn't hug because I'm keeping my HP where it is (I know you can undo it but).

Deeproot depths is not tied to fia, she just is there if you did her quest in Rountable hold (if you haven't, definitely do it asap). Deeproot depths is accessed early in the game if you take the coffin down the waterfall after the gargoyles boss. If you beat them and missed it, just go back to their grace point and run around till you find it in their arena. Or you can get to it much later if you go through the subterranean shunning grounds, kill that Mogh, and then do the jumps all the way down, but that's much later in the game and also a pain in the ass.

You'll probably be level 160+ by the time you're at the last few bosses, runes come very easily in the later areas. If you did the whitemask guy's quest you can farm that bird from the starting point of moghwyn palace at no risk to yourself with a bow for like 50k runes a minute too if you're just trying to quickly knock out a few levels at a low level. I try not to do that unless I really need to grind out something and don't feel like spending the time that would be necessary with a less cheap farm.

The parry timing in elden ring is the same as in DS3 pretty much. Small shields like the small round one have different, much more responsive timing than the medium ones like beast crest heater shield. I can parry consistently with "bucklers" but can't at all with medium shields, you have to be more preemptive with them cause there's a "wind-up." Again though it's really only super useful on the sword/shield crucible knights IMO.

You can farm a brass shield off any enemy that has them. The drop rate is pretty high off the guys in Altus. Any of the basic soldier mobs that are holding a brass shield can drop it.

EDIT: Oh, I didn't realize you hadn't gotten to Volcano Manor yet. That guy is in limgrave for the early part of the game, in some shack that IIRC is between the starting location and the entrance to the main castle. Requiescant Bernahl. At some point he leaves and goes to volcano manor, so if you're in altus he might be gone already.

 

[ImNotAhab]

This isn't games you will be playing but reviews for Hogwarts Legacy are pretty good so I will definitely be picking that up. I haven't had a good open world game in a while so hopefully it will scratch that itch.