What are you currently playing?

[Gold Ergo Sum]

I just finished Control, which I absolutely adored. It seems underrated despite winning oodles of GOTY awards. I never really hear anyone talk about it.

The setting is unique and atmospheric. The story is fascinating nonsense. And gameplay wise, it's basically the greatest superhero game ever made. I'm not sure any game ever made a main character so fluidly powerful.

Also, on my new 3080Ti, I think it's pretty comfortably the best looking game I've ever seen. With DLSS 2.0, you can max all the settings, including the raytracing, even at 4K on my TV, and I would regularly just stop for 90 seconds and wander around looking at the lighting and shadows.

Considering you can often pick this up for very cheap despite being a AAA game, I highly recommend.

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Besides Gnosia, I'm playing through Ys Origin as Hugo.  Yunica is the main melee character in that game, while Hugo uses his "Eyes of Fact" to shoot lasers at enemies.  The problem is that you can't hold down the Y button to autofire:  you have to tap Y for each shot.  One reason I picked Normal for him rather than Hard was that I wanted to avoid carpal tunnel!  (That, and all Hard means is that you have to level up more.)


Hugo has different special moves from Yunica.  Most players seem to prefer laying mines all the time, but for many fights I tend to use the force field to block attacks.  The "fire laser" special doesn't seem as effective.


Wonder how well the secret character Claw plays compared to Yunica and Hugo.

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

When I'm not typing up Gnosia reports for Realms Beyond, I'm playing One Step from Eden or Iris and the Giant.


One Step from Eden:  Essentially Mega Man Battle Network with Slay the Spire mechanics.  It's a fast action RPG on a grid, and you acquire random spells from shops and battles.  The player can pick their route on a map with battles, treasure, campsites, shops, minibosses, etc.  It's so difficult I don't expect to beat it, but there are new spells, fighting styles, and characters to unlock at least.


Iris and the Giant:  This is a turn-based card game with a distinctive art style.  If you've played Slay the Spire, imagine that all cards are Exhausted after use.  But you often get replacement cards via level up, chests, or crystals.  Different enemies require different tactics.  For example, some reflect spells, and others add useless cards that drain HP to your deck.  You don't have to kill every enemy to climb the stairs to the next floor, unlike in Slay the Spire.  Doing well unlocks bonuses for your next attempt, and performing specific challenges gives you "imaginary friends" that have special effects.  Finding "memories" lets you equip more advantages.  Iris and the Giant is challenging, but in a more reasonable way than One Step from Eden.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

I had never heard of either, but they both look pretty interesting. One Step from Eden seems a touch weebie for me, but the mechanics look fun.

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

I had never heard of either, but they both look pretty interesting.  One Step from Eden seems a touch weebie for me, but the mechanics look fun.

One Step from Eden is mild anime at most.  No shouting names of attacks, inane cutscenes, friendship speeches, or anything that you'll see in the typical modern Japanese RPG.  As for the mechanics, Poison decks seem to work well.  Poison stacks like the Silent's attacks in Slay the Spire, and can do more damage than most attacks. 


(Then again, the original Zelda was too anime for the CRPG Addict, so tastes can vary.)

[Gold Ergo Sum]

I started playing Eldest Souls yesterday. It is a pixel art, boss rush game. It kind of reminds me if Shadow of Colossus was some hybrid Nintendo-esque PS1 game. The game also was very clearly modeled on Dark Souls in terms of vibe and lore. There are literally no mobs at all, but exploration does pay, as there are hidden things to find which unlock useful items and skills as you venture between bosses.

The base game had 10 bosses, and a recent free DLC added three more. That might not sound like much, but I think it is well worth the $9.99 I paid for it. I am about six hours in and have only beaten the first six bosses. The game is brutally hard and unforgiving. I think I'm up to 178 deaths already. That said, as someone prone to frustration with this type of repetitive dying, I think this game really does a lot of smart things to eliminate the frustration.

For starters, there is no loading screen at all and no loading time. When you die, you immediately click RETRY and the fight starts again. No lengthy death screen or boss restart screen. No walking back into an arena. It just starts up in the boss fight. I don't know why more games cannot get that right. Additionally, most of the fights are only 2-3 minutes long if you win, and much shorter if you die--so you are not grinding some 10-12 minute fight and then starting all over again because you made a mistake. One of the main mechanics is taking damage and then using an active ability to trigger life steal--so you are constantly edging towards death and then coming back from it with well-timed aggression. This makes the fights knife-edge without having to take forever. I also really appreciate how fair most of the fights have felt. The patterns can be learned and you are given time to react, even if those windows can be somewhat small and the patterns complex.

If you have any interest in this type of game, I think it is incredibly well done and rewarding every time you manage to slay a boss. There is a progression system that is very flexible. You can respec into three radically different skill trees at any time, and each boss gives you a shard that can be equipped to each of your abilities to modify how it works, giving you a ton of variety in how to play through the game (or replay on NG). But this is not a rogue-like, so you have to progress by getting better, not leveling up your character. That said, everything about the game is user-friendly except the difficulty, which has made the experience way less frustrating than I imagined possible for a game I have died 178 times in six hours.

[Banzailizard]

Last few months I have been playing a ton of 18xx games. One positive byproduct of the pandemic is that 18xx.games has really built out what is playable online, and I think that 18xx style games are well suited to online play.  Much of the finicky bits, calculating stock dividends, tracking routes to ensure no overlap, etc just work better online.  Mostly I have been playing 1846, 1822, and 18c2c for those familiar with the titles.  A little 1862 as well.

[SevenSpirits]

I am playing the board game Dune: Imperium. It's on tabletop simulator and there's a pretty active community on the "TTS Club" discord server (https://discord.gg/8hKWWbE3Cm). If you want to learn it, let me know.

[naufragar]

My brother got me Disco Elysium for Christmas. Game is a riot if you have a dark sense of humor and don't mind text-heavy games

I just finished Disco Elysium a few minutes ago, and to say it moved me would be a massive understatement.

Please play it. It's art.

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Besides Dragon Quest 11, I've been playing the Switch port of No Man's Sky.  If you happen to encounter any stars or planets discovered by HERMANG, that's me.