What are you playing right now?

Last epoch. It's a good arpg that's stuck in early access Hell.
Planning to play naraka: blade point this weekend since it's free through Monday.
 
Feeling thankful I finally forced myself to start Outer Wilds after hearing about it being the best game ever for a while. It mostly lives up to the hype. Equal parts cosmic horror and cosmic comfy.
 
Bought all the DLC's for binding of Isaac a while back and made a return to the game, been focusing on challenges since my curse of getting mostly HP up items hasn't gone away at all despite a broader more liberally weighted item pool. Will get a neat synergy once in a blue moon and that tiny hit keeps me coming back like a coke fiend.

Lazarus can still eat shit, though. Negative starting luck hurts so bad no matter what buffs he got.
 
Bounty Train

It's shitty, but it's really interesting, the concept is great. Imagine Sid Meier's Pirates! mixed with FTL: Faster Than Light set in an American Civil War railroads setting. You are the owner of a train. You can buy more than one train engine, but you don't really run a train corporation, you only control one train at a time. With that train you:
1) Trade from city to city
2) Get into shootouts (with Union, Confederate, outlaws, Indians)
3) ? That's it

The comparison to Sid Meier's is in that you buy assets - employees (who are one time purchases, stupidly enough, instead of getting wages), cars for the train, weapons and equipment -and can shuffle around from city to city peddling wares (steel, alcohol, weapons, cotton, etc.), and the whole idea of managing reputation among different factions in a world where your train can come under attack, necessitating a chase sequence or a static shootout. Additionally, there's lots of missions (carry some shit somewhere, carry some shit back to here, passengers appear as missions to carry them).

The comparison to FTL is in how combat actually plays out, being real time with pause where the crew has to deal with fires and breaks in the train (actually, exactly like FTL).

Unfortunately, the combat is garbage and completely unbalanced, and the rest of the game lacking, which sucks because I can see a wonderful, amazing game that's there, just half-finished, half-baked. In combat, the idea is that based on the angle you have a certain accuracy, and you're confined to the train (even when it would make sense to be able to advance to make use of cover outside the train), so the combat is basically positioning the troops properly. Certain wares are more likely to be damaged or catch fire, and fires basically result in immediate death, which is a huge problem. It's all incredibly clunky in a way that FTL wasn't. In chases, you have a gimmick of being able to set the speed, but not wanting of course to derail around curves, and using the whistle to scare off horses attempting to board. However, it will always throw so many attackers at you that you can't man the coal and HAVE to end up crawling to a stop and fight it out.

Other bullshit in the game is that there's just no way, besides clicking through several screens, to see what the travel time will be to get somewhere (so you can know whether or not you can fulfill the missions), you can't remotely have train cars redistributed and that especially makes a pain in the ass since passenger cars wind up just being dead weight most of the time, and missions do not reflect what cities you have to unlock, keeping in mind there's steep fixed costs to unlock ANY city, so it's mostly just a grind of unlocking new cities that are largely useless. It also has this retarded contraband system that has no basis in reality where two of the three most valuable goods, alcohol and weapons, are legal in some cities and illegal in others, but at any time you can get stopped by troops without warning and have them confiscated, even though they're legal in some cities. There's a mechanic where you subscribe to newspapers to get current prices, but the subscription fee is so low that it doesn't matter, which is a shame because the idea of imperfect information in games is always great.

I think it could be a great game if it did take more ideas out of Pirates! playbook and FTL. In fact, just ripoff the former. What would you have? Well, the most important thing about Pirates! was how it had a living, responsive world where specific kinds of shipping would have specific effects on their destinations, so while in practice the game consisted of sinking everything, in theory it was strategic. I would have included this in the game: have other trains on the roads, and have your own shipments have effects. Currently you just buy low and sell high, but there could have been stuff like importing Food into Chicago makes the population grow more, or Steel into Nashville builds up the industry there, or Weapons into St. Louis increases soldier counts. It could have played with invasions and such, like who you're doing business with . Instead of just two types of encounter (ambush and chase), there could have been races and duels with enemy trains (parallel tracks, or one reversing while the other advances) and siege things or even battles where you can provide artillery support to armies (like a bombardment minigame). Minigames for crossing frontlines and sneaking contraband into town, the dancing minigame for romantic subplot in Pirates! would have fit perfectly with Civil War era balls. Things like treasure hunting could fit in well too, and duels and/or saloon fistfights/camp knife fights/etc. Passenger management could have been more interesting by having bigger cars, lower payments, and guaranteed passengers to ride to each neighboring city (so you can always ferry people around), but also have VIP passengers that are more demanding and worth a lot more, and then stuff like dining cars, private cars, etc. to sell to those, and the ability to buy up infrastructure like Harvey Houses and vertical integration to make the railroad run better, and have other trains off doing missions while you pilot your main train.

The studio did go on to make anotehr train game, Railroad Corporation, but near as I can tell it's just a tycoon game with no combat or adventure aspect.

Sad, it kind of reminds me of Sunless Sea because that game had an amazing concept too but it just sucked to play.
 
Been playing the Mafia games. Finished 1 (remaster) the other day, and I'm about halfway through 2 (original).
2 is pretty based with some of its dialogue, the dangerhairs would have a fit if it came out today
 
Trying out Pathfinder: Kingmaker. I played a little Pathfinder before, but I never actually played too many CRPGs. For the most part, I find the difficulty to be all over the place, even on normal. I saw one of the notes in the enhanced edition was their rebalancing of the difficulty of the first and final acts, so either balance is something the devs have a problem with consistently, or I really suck.

First sidequest has you go fight spiders in a cave? Well the swarm enemies are immune to normal attacks, so throw all the vials of alchemist's fire and watch as your heroes miss every toss. The poison drains your strength, so now you're too weak to even move. Swap your swords for the torches you hopefully found and pray.
Heading to the ruined temple to clear out corrupted animals? Well, two packs of enemies are total jokes. But the pack of wolves has concealment, knocks you prone on every landed hit, and standing up means you eat two or three attacks of opportunity. Also, the boss is a bear treant, resistant to normal attacks, can full round bite-swipe-swipe you, and can outright kill the cleric there before you even get a move.

Really I suspect that its due to (besides my obvious inexperience) the open world component. As soon as I finished those parts and started finally exploring, rather than rushing to do the story due to the time limit, I ended up with a full party and most places I visit are total pushovers. Chimeras, boggards, whatever. They give you time after the temple to go exploring, but it feels like they should have had it reversed, so you had time to level up before getting your ass kicked. Maybe it's just the usual 1st/2nd levels woes of everyone flailing around missing every round like lots of campaigns. Hopefully it evens out as it goes along.
 
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Bought Wrath of the Righteous (mythic edition) a few days ago and have been trying that out. Going through as an Aasimar paladin (warrior of the holy light kit)

I like it better than Kingmaker so far. I don’t feel stressed and hard pressed to rush through the game and miss out on a ton of side stuff because of a retarded time limit. I like to explore and take my time in rpgs so that’s a plus. I heard there’s a bunch of woke stuff in it but haven’t seen much of that yet. Enjoying myself
 
Silent Hill 4, the room. About halfway through, and while I like it, it's not as good as 2 or 3. I respect them trying new things, but I can see why people say the series went downhill around this point.
The unkillable enemies need to be nerfed if they remaster it, then it'd be pretty solid.
 
Silent Hill 4, the room. About halfway through, and while I like it, it's not as good as 2 or 3. I respect them trying new things, but I can see why people say the series went downhill around this point.
I was playing SH4 on an emulator and I encountered a glitch with one of the puzzle rooms in the Water Prison so I have to wipe that savepoint to a new one... but I've been too lazy to play it. SH4, although it's not like 2 or 3 I think it's different and likable in its own way. I think I'll start playing it tomorrow again.
 
Amazing Cultivation Simulator (just starting out).

For anyone who doesn't know it, "cultivation (of chi)" is the process of becoming and improving as a Chinese wizard. You don't need to be special, you don't need to be born a wizard, just put a comfy cushion under a pretty tree and sit on it.
This is a game about managing the mundane, political, and spiritual affairs of a sect of aspiring Chinese wizards (or megachurch pastors, or gym bros).

Apparently, animals on the base map used to aggro easily in early versions. They're less so now, but they still attack from time to time.

There's a cultivator NPC guide on the map, kind of like in Terraria. It's a completely inorganic character with a midgame rank but garbage stats and a "helper" behavior script which helps the player but would cripple the character for advancement. As an example, if any of my guys runs into an enraged bull or boar or wolf, he whacks it with a combat spell all the way across the map. Cultivators accrue bad karma when they kill normies, including animals, (which results in quadratic penalties on game progress further on) and so does this guy but he's programmed to not care. (I expect the NPC to eventually disappear, because the community guide gave tips on dealing with normal enemies, which would be completely unnecessary with this guy on the map.)

This gives me enough beef, pork, and wolf meat to feed my guys, so I don't need to kill animals for food. Small animals (and, for whatever reason, tigers) are peaceful. I have three pieces of rabbit meat still left over from my starting supplies that haven't rotted yet.

Also in my starting supplies, I have a pill to get my own cultivator anytime, but the game is hugely complicated so I've decided to learn the mundane stuff for now. If I do, I will not be able to use her (my strongest character is a chick) for hunting (bad karma) and for mundane tasks (they don't show up on the job schedule anymore); also, getting my first cultivator automatically creates a sect, and that's when invasions can start. And the helper might vanish.

So before I promote a cultivator and start a sect, I need to be done with the initial heavy lifting and equip my normies with iron bows, supposedly good enough against mundane attackers. There are also "hunting bows" which cost the same and cause "less-lethal" wounds: knocking an animal unconscious and feeding it food is how you domesticate animals. I don't have either type of bow: my guys carry close-combat weapons that happened to lie around on the map. For now we're making picks, axes, hoes and industrial machinery with what little iron we have (it's far away on the map, heavy and hard to haul).

None of my characters are any good with mundane stuff, because these five pregen characters ("reincarnators") are the only ones I can more or less control (normally, 1-5 characters are rolled at the start of the game as a set, but you can also roll up and save any amount one by one and assemble the starting party from them), and I worked hard to reroll and optimize them so they'd all make fine cultivators someday. I tried to create characters who'd be good at different cultivator skills and at different Laws (magic schools). E.g. Building is a skill, but it's a mundane skill that a cultivator loses on promotion. This is why none of my characters are any good at building, and they have an increased chance to get injured (maybe work slower, too, but the bottleneck is really mining and mundane crafting, not actual construction). Meanwhile, menial jobs (carrying stuff around) isn't even a skill but it appears to work off the same stats as combat, so my future first cultivator works harder than the other four taken together.

So I send my scout to look for another iron deposit, and in the far corner of the map it runs into an aggressive tomcat. The cat attacks her, and even though she's in no danger whatsoever and can just walk away, a FUCKING HUMONGOUS SUPERNATURAL HAMMER flies out from the center of the map and brutalizes the poor cat. He's in horrific 385% pain (or would be if he weren't unconscious), several ribs PULVERIZED, paw and foreleg almost completely destroyed, and critical generic damage to the whole body. He's also starving (which is probably why the AI made him attack), and will die from hunger before he dies from injuries. This is some zoosadist shit. Poor kitty.

First thing, I send a guy with rabbit meat all the way across the map. On the way there, two things happen: 1. he gets gored by a boar. 2. a fucking snowstorm starts! I can't see shit, we don't have winter clothing, and most importantly the cat will freeze! (But I fed him.) Then I realize I can move bodies. I tell the guy to pick up the cat and move him to a spare storeroom. (We don't have heating yet, so it's cold inside, but at least it's shelter.) Awww, the guy's character model actually shows him with a cat in his arms! But wait, I can try putting him on a bed instead. (We just furnished 3 rooms for our 5 guys and a separate room for the npc cultivator - if he's not assigned a room, he just squats in one, and a normie living in the same room can die from chi imbalance, I learned it the hard way). Yes! It works! (not on the first try though, a glitch placed the cat inside a wall).

Meanwhile, my other characters are busy 1. hunting rabbits, 2. collecting herbs, 3. the diplomat chick is now erecting a medicine building, and 4. the main healer, having made some simple medicine, went to help with the building and is now sleeping off a brick which fell on her, on the same bed as the cat. All in the middle of a snowstorm.

Finally the medical building is ready and the cat is given medicine and painkillers while I look at setting up heating (and find nothing immediately useful).

owner-giving-cat-liquid-medicine.jpg

The storm eventually ends, and the cat regains consciousness and goes outside! The pain is negligible and the general injuries have healed up nicely. I couldn't do anything about the pulverized ribs (which is a permanent injury: 100% pulverized but stable) or treat the leg (which was getting worse), but now that he's outside and getting exercise, the leg started slowly healing up, too! He's walking around in the safe area which my workers constantly go through on the way to/from the ice crystal deposit I discovered on the herb collecting trip, they say "here kitty kitty" and he purrs, and they're getting mood boosts from it! Awesome! (I still probably need to come up with a way to prevent the cat from wandering off and getting attacked by wild animals.)

Looking for ways to further cure the cat's (and eventually my characters') permanent injuries, I find there's a "miracle" (cultivator spell) which looks like it'd be easy to get. So I think, eh, whatever, let's do it. I promote my honest, hardworking, brave, humble primary warrior / secondary healer and whoa a real miracle she immediately turns into a Disney exec bitch whore and whines about how working class people smell and she doesn't want to live in the same room with one. The other four scramble to build a house and a cultivation array for her (well not much of an array, just a cushion under a pretty tree for now) while she waits around like Yoko Ono. Finally preparations are done aaaaaand

the game crashed. Well not crashed crashed, but the saving process failed in a specific known way which means the game session is unrecoverable and I need to reload from an earlier save. The last save was before the hammer hit the cat (when it happened, I wanted to reload but decided to try helping the cat first, and forgot to save when I succeeded).

Verdict: it's janky and Chinese but huge fun, 10 Lost Treasures out of 10, would pet all the cats again.
 
I played and enjoyed Yakuza 7 and Judgment in the past 3 years and had already played Yakuza on PS2 and Yakuza 3 before, so I got Zero, Kiwami 1&2, and Yakuza 4&5 for about 40 bucks altogether this last month since I missed out on those in one way or another.

Love just wasting time and ripping street thug ass. It's comfy. Up until the headache inducing end game shit but by then, I'm already satisfied with my experience.
 
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I’m playing both sequels of The Legend Of Zelda and The Adventures of Link for the NES
They both are the Gold Cartirdge Editions. Not that that means much these days.
 
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