Topic: What Game(s) are You Currently Playing?

Among a few other games, I am currently playing Stray on PC. I am a huge fan of cats. I have two of my own and I just absolutely love them. So naturally, I knew I was going to like this game. I'm about 2 hours in, and while I wouldn't call it a masterpiece or anything, it's still a really fun game. It's super atmospheric, with beautiful graphics and amazing music. I'm not a huge fan of the platforming, though. I understand why they went the way we did to curb annoyances that players may have had, but to me, it just feels a bit restrictive. I've also run into a few performance issues. Mostly, entering new areas will make the FPS spike like crazy for like 5 seconds. It's pretty annoying but isn't super game-breaking.

Overall I'm enjoying my time with the game and look forward to playing more. It's a super impressive debut title for the developers, and I'm interested to see what they'll work on next.

@StarPoint I always loved how each of the team members who had cats brought them into the studio in order to fully capture the movement and mannerisms. It's both incredibly thorough and a brilliant attention to detail....while also being absolutely hilarious since I like to imagine it basically went something like this:

Definitely interested in Stray myself (even if I'm more of a dog person than a cat person myself. Still love those little guys though), I'll probably get it if I ever get around to picking up a PC.

Currently hopscotching between No Man's Sky, Trails from Zero, Potion Permit, Warframe, Radiant Silvergun, Super Pixel Racers, and The Letter. I'm all over place.

@Fizza There’s a YouTube channel called ThatGuyGlen that does little documentaries on the development of certain games. Stray was the most recent one. It’s a really interesting video, I actually watched it before I even bought the game

The legend of Zelda majoras mask and ocarina of time. It’s my first time playing these particular games and I don’t see why everyone says there janky. I think they are really good and have aged pretty well.
My only real complaints are that the text is too slow and you can’t play songs automatically. But other than that I’d say they are amazing!

@Fizza I started playing Pokemon Snap and I'm in LOVE with it.

I'm in the volcano area now and GAHZGAH the moltres egg and then when trying to take a photo of Charmeleon I hit him with an apple and he turned into Charizard!!! Just WOW!!!

Been playing Wario Land 3 on the 3DS Virtual Console, after finishing 2. It's surprisingly non-linear, and it kind of reminds me of Metroid in that regard. A few parts were kind of frustrating, like one of the boss fights and that golf minigame, but other than that I think it's pretty good.

Race With Ryan PS4
Surprisingly, this game is as good as Mario Kart games in term of control mapping, almost exactly same as Mario Kart from using drifting by holding R2, using item by pressing L2 and accelerate by press X button.

Trying to finish my first genocide run in undertale where I'm trying to beat sans. I found undyne hard enough, how the hell do people beat sans?!

Klonoa: Door to Phantomile in Phantasy Reverie (Steam) - Just started this up today & have most recently completed level 3-2 (the one with the plant boss).

Big Kirby vibes in terms of tone & aesthetic. With how strong a following the pink puff has, hopefully this remaster will give Klonoa another chance to break out. Simple graphically, but it has a strong aesthetic and I don't think I've ever seen a 2.5 platformer make such good use of the fact that it exists in a 3D world (maybe the modern DKC games come close in this regard).

Live A Live (Switch) - Just started this a few days ago. A turn-based JRPG divided into different chapters, this relies on positioning along with a move bar. Sort of reminiscent of the ATB system in the Final Fantasy series. The game is divided into seven starting chapters that can be tackled in any order; one doesn't need to be completed before moving onto another. I'm currently in the middle of the Prehistory chapter and have already completed The Wild West and Near Future chapters.

Crimson Shroud (3DS) - Just made it to chapter 4 earlier; going by the HowLongToBeat page, I think I'm close to the end. This game is...unique. Weapons entirely control your stats and combat prowess to an extent, and melding (and grinding) is apparently key to move forward. I expected dice rolls to be more akin to D&D, but that isn't quite the case. The plot is intriguing, so that's what's keeping me going right now.

I’m playing Crosscode on my PC right now, and so far, I think this is one of the coolest games I’ve played in quite a while. I just beat the first dungeon and I was really, really impressed. The puzzles are very intuitive and require a good amount of brain usage, but without feeling absolutely impossible. They strike a nice difficulty balance, at least so far.

I really like the combat and skill tree as well. Both feel very open-ended, and even though there’s really only two ways to fight, you can choose to focus on one or the other through the skill tree. This game also solves a ton of issues I have with older JRPGs, the main one being the combat. Some older games have combat that feels interrupting and invasive to overworld traversal, so I really like how this game handles that issue.

The music and graphics are super nice as well. Nothing incredibly mind blowing but it all works perfectly together.

So yeah, I’m very impressed with the game so far, and the fact that it manages to merge Zelda with JRPGs and ARPGs. I’m really enjoying it and I hope it keeps its momentum throughout its runtime.

Yeah I wanna support Klonoa more than most things but I haven't bought it yet partially because there's no good reason why a basic remake that looks like it does shouldn't run perfectly on a Switch.

Now that I've got access to online leaderboards on the Wii again., I've been playing Ghost Squad and Sin and Punishment 2.

Started playing Splatoon 3, which does in fact make it the first 2022 game I've played I'm pretty sure. Not played enough to have much of an opinion but 1. What I heard about disconnects already seems true, I hope I just had bad luck and/or its resolved soon and 2. It feels like the story mode so far mostly added Pikmin throwing and combined BOTW malice with feeding lumas in Mario Galaxy. (since these are all Nintendo games, I wonder if its deliberate)

Back to Yokai Watch 1 3DS.

I have two games I'm playing on GamePass and hoping to finish before they leave.

First is Octopath Traveler. I've finished the first chapter of every character. Pretty fun game so far. I like the characters and their stories, they are all pretty interesting and I like the different dynamics of all of them really make you have to choose the right party based on the enemies you are facing. It seems like it might be a real grind, though. I've gone through all eight Chapter 1s, and my first character still isn't up to the recommended level for his Chapter 2. I thought I'd try it anyway and got completely destroyed in the first battle. If I have to grind this much for levels for every character before every chapter, I might not want to stick it out. Do you have to grind that much in this game?

The second game is the first Danganronpa. I just finished up the first trial. It's a bit different than I was expecting. I heard it was like a mix of 999 and Ace Attorney. I guess for the story it is, but in gameplay practice it's really just a darker Ace Attorney, with even less gameplay (unless more stuff happens in later chapters). There was really no gameplay until you get to the trial, just walking and talking. Also the trial was remarkably easy and obvious. I will assume it was just like a tutorial trial and they will get more difficult, at least I hope so. I'm going to stick both games out for now (as long as they stay on GamePass) as I'm enjoying them so far. They just both seem a little light on diversity and gameplay so far.

@Xyphon22

Octopath Traveler is grindy. The first two chapters are actually pretty tame compared to some of the others if I remember correctly. Someone mentioned it would be wise to decide early on a party to minimise the grind. I do not know if it works though.

@Jhena Well everyone has their own storyline, so it doesn't seem like you can ignore anyone and have to level them all up. But I decided to look it up and a lot of people online say that equipment is more important than levels in this game. I also saw about Sub-Job shrines which I didn't know about. So that's a couple of different ways I can get stronger, and I can probably grind levels while doing it.

@Xyphon22

As far as I understood the person leveled only four people and only did their storylines first. When they were done the person did the rest of the storylines. There is propably still a lot of grinding but thanks to the four high leveled people the grinding is a lot easier and faster for the other four.

When I played the game I did it the normal way. First chapter one with every character, then chapter two and so on. There were some optional dungeons in the game I did not even try because I thought they might be too hard. Maybe there is good equipment in them. It is propably wise to use a guide for this game. For example for stuff like the subjob shrines you mentioned.