What Video Games Are You Playing Right Now?

[Funyarinpa]

Decided to play Final Fantasy VI Advance during commute. It's pretty great about 10 hours in. 

[Vokoca]

Finally got holidays, so I'm going back and finishing up the games I started before. Got around to finishing Uncharted 4 first, since I was just a couple of chapters away from the end - and I have to say I'm impressed. They managed to make the last boss really fucking cool, partly by having the decency of building a surprisingly fun minigame around well hidden QTEs. Everyone can do big dumb buttons on the screen, but building a small new fraction of combat gameplay around that, that's not something I've seen since MGS4. The epilogue itself was equally awesome, what a way to finish the series. Overall the game had a great end, which is something I often appreciate the most.

[mitchhamilton]

been playing some dishonored: game of the year edition. picked this up for only ten dollars at my store, it also has a nice little removable cover for it. ^ ^

 

right now im just going through getting like 4-5 achievements in one run. its like, dont be detected throughout the game, dont kill anyone, dont purchase or upgrade any powers, pickpocket 200 worth of gold and something else. kind of hard to play but, meh. next run ill raise hell.

[Flutterz]

Tyranny is pretty great so far, one of the best changes they made from Pillars is that you now gain exp for killing shit, whereas in Pillars you just needed to do quests or encounter monsters to add them to the bestiary, and once you did you wouldn't get any more exp for that type of monster. So now a run where you just go around killing everyone should be viable.

[Funyarinpa]

Also, I find it really overwhelming (going by walkthroughs, forum posts, etc.) when I think about just how much there is to miss in FFVI. Apparently the auction house can be used, people spend hundreds of hours on a barren-ass patch of land called the Veldt, Small storylines everywhere. And I am not even at the part where  

Spoiler

you get to the World of Ruin which I've heard of before. I'm currently in the Caves to the Sealed Gate.

I love the character themes the most. Terra's and Shadow's are the best easily. The art is nice. I really like the character designs and personalities but it feels like they skip over a lot of potential introductions (celes, for example, first seemed somewhat no-nonsense and cold but later in the opera house she says "am I just a substitute for her?" to Locke which made me feel like I'd missed a metric shitton of character development.

[Fred the Barber]

16 hours ago, Funyarinpa said:

Also, I find it really overwhelming (going by walkthroughs, forum posts, etc.) when I think about just how much there is to miss in FFVI. Apparently the auction house can be used, people spend hundreds of hours on a barren-ass patch of land called the Veldt, Small storylines everywhere. And I am not even at the part where  

  Reveal hidden contents

you get to the World of Ruin which I've heard of before. I'm currently in the Caves to the Sealed Gate.

I love the character themes the most. Terra's and Shadow's are the best easily. The art is nice. I really like the character designs and personalities but it feels like they skip over a lot of potential introductions (celes, for example, first seemed somewhat no-nonsense and cold but later in the opera house she says "am I just a substitute for her?" to Locke which made me feel like I'd missed a metric shitton of character development.

FFVI is one of my favorites. I'm really glad to hear you're enjoying it as a newcomer to the game, since I sometimes worry that I just think it's great because of nostalgia, until I think about it more and say "nah, it really is that good". What did you think of the opera? What do you think of this version of the opera?

Be sure to wait for Shadow, and I hope you have fun with the rest. Aside from the opera (probably the single best scene in the game for me), the best is all yet to come, from where you are.

[Funyarinpa]

12 hours ago, Fred the Barber said:

FFVI is one of my favorites. I'm really glad to hear you're enjoying it as a newcomer to the game, since I sometimes worry that I just think it's great because of nostalgia, until I think about it more and say "nah, it really is that good". What did you think of the opera? What do you think of this version of the opera?

Be sure to wait for Shadow, and I hope you have fun with the rest. Aside from the opera (probably the single best scene in the game for me), the best is all yet to come, from where you are.

Spoilers for the first 10 hrs of FFVI 

I quite liked the opera! The remix is pretty good too. My favorite moment so far, though, is probably the beginning of the intro video, those first few chords before Terra's Theme kicks in. The most annoyingly aged stuff is probably the random encounter mechanic and the UI. The battles were pretty boring until the esper mechanic kicked in. Quite fun to manage espers!

 

[Fred the Barber]

1 hour ago, Funyarinpa said:

Spoilers for the first 10 hrs of FFVI 

 

  Hide contents

I quite liked the opera! The remix is pretty good too. My favorite moment so far, though, is probably the beginning of the intro video, those first few chords before Terra's Theme kicks in. The most annoyingly aged stuff is probably the random encounter mechanic and the UI. The battles were pretty boring until the esper mechanic kicked in. Quite fun to manage espers!

 

Yeah, the combat is a little dated, for sure; I like FFVII's mechanics a lot better, since they start you off with that same optimization problem right from the beginning, with Materia. One thing that helped keep me entertained in FFVI was always taking Sabin with me, since he has one of the few unique abilities that's both useful and entertaining - it's like a minigame unto itself to see how quickly and reliably you can enter a blitz.

[Vokoca]

Played the Nier: Automata demo, cried tears of joy and then 10k yen disappeared from my bank account.

[Funyarinpa]

Just now, Vokoca said:

Played the Nier: Automata demo, cried tears of joy and then 10k yen disappeared from my bank account.

Didn't play the Nier: Automata demo, cries tears of salt and then I realized I didn't have 10k yen that could disappear from my bank account (probably because I don't have one).

[Jun Inoue]

Got Chroma Squad during Steam sales. Had checked it out some time ago, so let's see if it really is as entertaining as it looks~

[Mr Poltroon]

I am currently considering purchasing more Neptunia games.

Would anyone be so kind as to inform me what's what?
Because there's a bunch of them and I heard some were remakes and others were not and then there's also DLC that's more expensive than the main game.

 

The only one I've played was Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1, no DLC. I'm considering replaying it so as to unlock the 2 CPU candidates I don't yet have.
Does it have a sequel? Where do I go from here? Halp?

Thank ye kindly.

[Funyarinpa]

Bought Hyper Light Drifter and I love its art.

edit: And I'm now really salty because I don't have enough change left to buy LISA and/or Transistor.

SALTYYYY

Edited December 24, 2016 by Funyarinpa

[Jun Inoue]

3 hours ago, Mr Poltroon said:

I am currently considering purchasing more Neptunia games.

Would anyone be so kind as to inform me what's what?
Because there's a bunch of them and I heard some were remakes and others were not and then there's also DLC that's more expensive than the main game.

 

The only one I've played was Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1, no DLC. I'm considering replaying it so as to unlock the 2 CPU candidates I don't yet have.
Does it have a sequel? Where do I go from here? Halp?

Thank ye kindly.

The Re;Birth games are the remakes. Re;Birth 1, 2 and 3. From there you play Hyperdimension Neptunia VII, if I remember properly

[Mr Poltroon]

12 minutes ago, Jun Inoue said:

The Re;Birth games are the remakes. Re;Birth 1, 2 and 3. From there you play Hyperdimension Neptunia VII, if I remember properly

I am now clarified. You have my gratitude.

[Roulette]

Been playing paradox grand strategies for the last few months.

The recent things I did -

Played as England in EU4. Allied Spain and together half conquered Franco land meanwhile completely forgetting about Franco-Otto alliance and the Scots. Got kicked out of the continent, returned to the isles only to find it pillaged by the Scots, Spain surrendered, got salty and declared me as rival, then I surrendered, got salty and declared Ottomans as rival, attacked the Scots after few decades in an attempt to retake london, Spain intervened, France intervened, the Ottos, well, they didn't bothered (I got pitied upon basically), Alt+F4 before the bullies got to my isles so jokes on them.

 

Played as a catholic king somewhere around Spain(I don't remember the exact name) in CKII. Married a neighbour princess to get alliance, then assassinated my brother to get his kingdom, found out how much of a rotten apple my kid was(basically not fit for ruling), made him a general when he came to age, declared war on some of the sunni neighbours, deliberately lost a battle where my son was the general and got him killed, won the war and took their lands, had a peaceful decade or so where my kingdom prospered, then pope declared crusade war against the sunnis, then France had a nice long civil war basically weakening the catholic's military in the iberian peninsula, got ganged up upon by the sunnis, survived somehow and tried to make a counter-assault strategy but got murdered by my wife, later realised that she killed me for having an affair with my mother-in-law, my kingdom got divided amongst my sisters who were equally bad at ruling like my dear departed son, eldest sister was homosexual so no chance of a blood related heir, the other one married outside the dynasty so the other half of the kingdom got diplo owned by that dynasty, delete save and quit game as I could no longer watch the fate of my poor legacy.

 

Started as fascist Germany in HoI4. Remilitarised Rhineland, switched to democratic as soon as possible, allied Russia, thrashed Poland together, offended Italy and Japan, annexed Austria, tried to research nuclear as soon as possible despite the advance research penalties, waited for world tension to raise, then Italy and Japan formed their own fascist faction and declared war upon the Allied faction, then I declared on the fascists with my Berlin-Muscow faction and dragged the Soviets into the war, The Allied provided me some volunteers and I threw all my tank divisions towards Italy, Italy surrendered after a year or so but not before I nuked Rome, then I send my paratroopers to India to fight a now fascist China, Nuked three of their military provinces, China surrendered, sent my tanks to help France fight communist Spain while my infantry fought with Japan on the Soviet frontline, Spain surrendered, needless to say not before I got to bless Madrid with my atomic showers, with the help of the red army and the allied forces the Japs got kicked out of the mainland Korea and parts of China, oh and I bombed Beijing on the way, then with whatever nukes I could gather I rained down on all of the major areas from Nagasaki to Tokyo basically killing half of their population and destroying all of their ports and military factories which was more than enough to bring a Civ Gandhi to tears(he would've been proud I know) and I also accidentally killed those UK marines who were doing a naval invasion on Nagasaki(whoops), won world war 2 and I was considered the biggest contributor for winning for both the factions(allied and berlin-muscow factions) instead of the US because they didn't even joined the war, they remained isolationist throughout the whole period because I didn't gave the Emperor a chance to attack Pearl harbour by keeping them busy with the Russians. Made my Prussian ancestors proud.

 

Next I hope they release a Cold War grand strategy game so that I could do middle east oil wars, puppet dictatorship and all

[Eclipsed]

This big ol' backlog of Atelier games shall be conquered over the next couple of months, or maybe year, idk but its fking alot

[Funyarinpa]

Final Fantasy VI. Spoilers for the first half of the game.

Spoiler

Just got to the World of Ruin, and it's fucking me up in several ways. One, the enemies are really fucking hard now. Two, the tone in villages is far worse now. Three, the whole Celes-Cid sequence was feels. (Ended up letting him die. The suicide attempt was.... Jesus, Celes is probably my favorite character now.) Also read about how Terra's hiding in Mobliz and unwilling to fight. It messes me up, man ;_;

 

[Eclipsed]

Now that the holidays are temp. over pending for New Years, I've started my Atelier marathon

The only one i finished years ago was Ayesha, which is the start of the 2nd Dusk trilogy, and so now I've previewed Rorona which is the start of the 1st Arland trilogy

So my initial comments:

• Omg they actually used VN-like dialogue scenes with artwork sprites and whatnot in Arland, they totally canned that in Dusk in favor of their 3D models, hax
• Dialogue is ALOT more comfortable to read (font size) in Arland series in terms of Vita, for some reason they made it so much more tiny in Ayesha in dramatic two steps back fashion

Spoiler

Arland

I'd like to have seen some in game art sprites of Ayesha below outside of CGs... why'd they stawp ;-;

Dusk

BTW YO IK THIS LOOKS READABLE BUT WE'RE ON PC AND I SWEAR THE VITA IS LIKE THEY EXPECT YOU TO HAVE 10/10 VISION

• I previewed the beginnings of all Arland games cuz I can, and I gotta say the Arland heroines are all pansies save for Meruru cuz I guess the devs realized they had to close out the trio with someone outgoing vs. the first two Rorona and Totori being total shy stuttering wrecks complete with the typical JP shy girl voices, so they got nuttin' on airheaded Ayesha. Also, It took me waaay too long (several decades) to finally deduce but Rorona is voiced by same VA as Fate/Stay's Illyasviel. Mhmmm
• Spoiler

  Rorona
  ^YO THIS GIRL'S ILLYASIVELLLL !@$#%$
  
   Totori
  
  Totori's cute. But her very typical shy voice makes my ears bleed
  
  No SS's of Meruru cuz I'm too lazy sorzz

  
  This sounds like alotta bashing l0l but dw i luv des gaems <3 they're very pleasant

[kyrt]

I am currently in the post game for Final Fantasy XV and while a lot of people will probably not care for it I actually really enjoyed it. The biggest problem with the game comes from the fact that some of the story comes from either books or notes in game or through other forms of media (brotherhood anime and kingsglaive). The game also has a ton of plotholes but that's to be expected of FF. I really liked the villain and would actually consider the villain among the great final fantasy villains. Hell 15 is probably in my top 10 now and that's with it still being a somewhat rushed product although I feel until it gets all the updates and dlc I can't say where in the top 10 it actually belongs just that at the moment it will be there. I have to say after playing 15 the franchise itself has been redeemed from the mess that was the 13 trilogy.

I'm in the post game but I'm going to probably give both WoFF and Type-0 a try in the near future. I've also had an urge to replay essentially the entire series so I'll probably be stuck in Final Fantasy for a while.

I am also still trying to decide whether or not Fate/Extella will be worth purchasing. Haven't heard a whole lot of opinions on it.

[Eclipsed]

SAO's Sinon is one of my favorite characters from the anime and so I was always interested in how they would develop her in the PS games, and boy was the end result very anti-climatic LOL

The games' timeline is a bit different than the anime's; you actually have to go to the 100th floor, Leafa & Sinon exist during Aincrad arc, new awesome characters Strea, Philia, Seven are introduced..., Yuuki actually (spoilers!) 

Spoiler

lives

etc etc..

Overall I like the game's universe better than the anime's in terms of 'Kirito & Friends' level of enjoyment which the anime sadly regressed to after the famous Aincrad arc.

But anyways back to Sinon.

Gun Gale Online doesn't exist / isn't relevant to the game's timeline, so Sinon never became the badass Hecate but they were still able to emphasize her natural marksman prowess by making her the only Bow user in Aincrad, similar to Kirito being the only Dual Wielder

Throughout the games Sinon was her always her usual calm, cool and collected self who was slowly but surely warming up to Kirito n' Friends, but her 1-on-1s with Kirito would always be alluding to her having a dark past haunting her

 Hollow Fragment (2014)

Spoiler

Every now and then Sinon would just be by herself, looking distressed and contemplating something deeply. It is only around the presence of nice guy Kirito that she is able to feel at peace and nod off like dis. How cute.

 

Lost Song (2015)

Spoiler

Yo we're in the second game now and we're still beating around the bush?! SAO II came out in 2014, you tellin' me the gamers have to wait 2 years for the third game to come out to finally dive into Sinon's backstory?!@#

Hollow Realization (2016)

Spoiler

^Dat translation doe. But yeah, the truth finally comes out after three games, and unfortunately it wasn't from Sinon finally mustering up the courage to tell Kirito n' Friends, but instead from nice guy fkface Richter who we all know had that super creepy scene in SAO II:

 
 

But alas, after the truth is revealed all it takes for her to get over it is 3 minutes worth of exposition and dialogue where she just logs off for an unknown amount of time before Kirito n' Friends rally and do a quick pep talk and then everything is okay.

Naturally the anime SAO II had all the time it wanted to develop Sinon's background, her guilt, and her accepting her past and moving on;;; overall though I'm just surprised that, after two games of stalling this is how quickly they decide to wrap up Sinon's story >.>

But hey, Yuuki lives in this universe, so that's all that matters 

 

[Jun Inoue]

On ‎27‎/‎12‎/‎2016 at 9:20 PM, kyrt said:

I am currently in the post game for Final Fantasy XV and while a lot of people will probably not care for it I actually really enjoyed it. The biggest problem with the game comes from the fact that some of the story comes from either books or notes in game or through other forms of media (brotherhood anime and kingsglaive). The game also has a ton of plotholes but that's to be expected of FF. I really liked the villain and would actually consider the villain among the great final fantasy villains. Hell 15 is probably in my top 10 now and that's with it still being a somewhat rushed product although I feel until it gets all the updates and dlc I can't say where in the top 10 it actually belongs just that at the moment it will be there. I have to say after playing 15 the franchise itself has been redeemed from the mess that was the 13 trilogy.

I'm in the post game but I'm going to probably give both WoFF and Type-0 a try in the near future. I've also had an urge to replay essentially the entire series so I'll probably be stuck in Final Fantasy for a while.

I am also still trying to decide whether or not Fate/Extella will be worth purchasing. Haven't heard a whole lot of opinions on it.

For me it's both the story (the lack of context and how sometimes it just doesn't make sense or rushes it) and that it has the most inane and boring side-quests I've seen in a long time in an RPG. Very much enjoy the rest of the game, though, especially the characters. Very glad they learned even if a little from FF XIII.

[Turnip Sensei]

Spent the last week playing through Metal Gear Solid 1, 2, and 3, something I've been meaning to do ever since I played Metal Gear Rising and took a liking to the crazy world and story telling.

If I had played MGS1 when I was smaller I'm pretty sure that would have been a mind blowing experience. Sure, the graphics are really rough, but man. Frosty breath effects, lighting, the atmosphere... I can't even imagine what people thought when playing that in 1998. Too bad the gameplay hasn't aged that well. It's clunky and more often than not Snake gets stuck in the surroundings rather than doing what you want him to do, but luckily the game is paced really well with segments of different gameplay. The boss battles especially are pretty cool.
But the best part of the game is the story. I love how it manages to create such cohesive narrative combining serious and silliness, conspiracy theories and real nuclear politics, gene manipulation and super soldiers. Not to mention the titular Metal Gear. Codec conversations and numerous cut scenes present the story really well. All the twists and intrigue kept hooked till the end.  

MGS2 made some much needed improvements to the gameplay. Now it actually felt like a proper sneaking game, but at the same time these improvements made the already annoying fixed camera even more unbearable. There's nothing more annoying than failing a perfect infiltration because an enemy shows up from a place you can't even see or when camera transition fucks up your movement. 
But luckily the story is once again really interesting, so the little frustrations weren't that much of a problem.

First thing I noticed in MGS3 was that it's actually fun to just play. 3D camera makes moving around much less of hassle and now it feels you like you are actually in control; getting caught is only a result of your own mistakes. I personally found the jungle more interesting location as well, the methods of approaching objectives are more varied and that's only a good thing. The Sniper duel boss battle demonstrates this especially well and was one of my favorite moments of the game as a result.
The story was as good as in the others and the Cold War setting was nice change of pace. And Paramedic is the best Codec contact ever!

In conclusion: MGS games are cool, why didn't I play them earlier?   

[Akimoto Masato]

Started playing Watch_Dogs a little while ago....

[Vokoca]

On 01/01/2017 at 2:03 PM, Turnip Sensei said:

MGS2 made some much needed improvements to the gameplay. Now it actually felt like a proper sneaking game, but at the same time these improvements made the already annoying fixed camera even more unbearable. There's nothing more annoying than failing a perfect infiltration because an enemy shows up from a place you can't even see or when camera transition fucks up your movement. 
But luckily the story is once again really interesting, so the little frustrations weren't that much of a problem.

Spoiler

MGS2 gets spookier and more mindblowing with each passing year, god I love that game.

 

As for me, I'm making my way through Yakuza 6 - from a girl who migt've leaped through time to real life pseudo-porn, it proves that this is the end to the series we all wanted.  But on a more serious note, Yakuza 6 is amazing, and I'm enjoying it a whole lot. So much in fact that I've decided to do my best to finish as much of the side content as possible before finishing the story - I've never managed it with any previous Yakuza game, but let's see how it goes this time, haha. One thing is for sure, I'll be skipping the mahjong tournaments... I feel like I will never be able to comprehend that damn game.