Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition by Beamdog. Tired of the pozzed new DnD rules? Well this gem is a recent release still getting updates that is core 3E rules.
Don't like that? It has a whole toolset to make WHATEVER you want, and many people host servers (also free to do with the base game) of different content in different languages.
Are they? I haven't seen any real political statements out of them, but at any rate, the best point about the game is it doesn't matter as you can make anything you want from it.
For the the enhanced edition of Baldur's Gate, they added a trans NPC who exists purely to tell you they're trans.
They then called everyone who turned their noses up at this bigots.
The funniest goddamned part of that saga was that you can only be a tranny in D&D if you are the laziest piece of shit imaginable.
If you're doing Rules as Written ^TM, you can get a cursed Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity that forcibly changes your sex when equipped. As a cursed item, it's sale value is 0, so you can technically get it from any mage store using the standard sales tables for free.
If you're intent on actually playing the game like some sort of nerd incel, you can just get a Wizard to Polymorph you into the other sex.
Anything else is just "look at me! I'm TRAAAAAAAANNNNSSSSS" virtue signaling.
Preach on, m'man - I've been saying this ever since they started that shit with the trans insert NPC. DMs have been using the Girdle as a player trap (no pun intended) for years, so it's painfully obvious that anyone in a D&D world that would potentially want to be the opposite sex could be the opposite sex with relative ease once one of those was located. Anything else that is presented as "trans" in a D&D-based fantasy world is just a player with a fetish that they don't want to admit to, virtue signaling it up for oppression points.
I've noticed that with many other games. Where it's fantasy or so futuristic that they could roleplay as someone who actually changed sex, but it's clear they don't want that. They just to virtue signal. They want to play as non-passing queer freaks who flaunt their mental illnesses and fetishes and get praised for it.
At least, that's what woke, pandering corporations would have us believe.
Beamdog also had Minsc (probably the most popular character from Baldur's Gates 1+2) with a new #GamerGate!!!@!# voice line "Actually, it's about ethics in heroic adventuring."
Trent Oster is a huge lefty feminist type, and their new characters are kind of all SJW tropes (Bisexual male orc, quirky magic elf girl, etc). Their one original creation, a game that comes between BG1 and BG2, was pretty widely panned for shitty writing. I haven't played it.
See breathless headlines like "Vitriol and harassment hit developers of new Baldur's Gate expansion" (Polygon). "Its writer, Amber Scott, is the latest woman working in gaming to face online harassment and insults. Her Twitter feed today features multiple insults and threats, as well as some messages of support"
Beamdog has also been pretty widely panned for introducing bugs, taking forever to patch known and game-breaking bugs, and rolling out patches months apart for Mac, PC, iOS, Android, etc.
Having said that, I wrote in about how I felt Minsc's line was not true to the character and was unnecessary politicization of the game. Trent Oster personally wrote me back and said they goofed, and were planning to remove the voice line...and they did. Their patches and games are all in a good place now. [I bought Siege of Dragonspear after that, but I have yet to play it.]
The two people who I personally think were responsibly for some of the shittiest of the new characters and the weakest of the weak writing -- Dee Pennyway and Amber Scott -- both left Beamdog in 2016 and neither seem to be working in the industry anymore, if that tells you anything.
So, despite some rough spots, I think Beamdog is a pretty OK company.
That's a really great synopsis, thanks. Yeah I never really checked out their stuff with the BG games but can definitely remember some of those rumblings now that you mention it.
I decided to welcome 2022 by exploring eroges. And by that, I mean full length visual novels that aren't strictly nukige.
Partly through a version of Baldr Sky that has Drives 1+2 combined (nyaa~), and taking some rest after finishing the 1st route. I can strongly recommend it. Note: unlike most VNs there's actual decent mecha gameplay in this title. From what I've seen, you also don't really need the adult patch because the ero scenes aren't the best, though I applied it for the original full uncensored experience.
Have a few other games lined up including Umineko, which is not an eroge, but there's not enough recreational time so who knows when I get to them.
Mainly trying to slog my way through Muv-Luv on the side so I can play Muv-Luv Alternate, but the base game is really not good. I remember trying it about a decade ago before abandoning it for similar reasons, but Alternate is supposed to be great, so it must be done.
As for other mediums, nothing of interest (e.g. reading some technical books).
I gave up on M-L and skipped to Alternate for the same reason. As long as you have the basic jist of the story and characters, you'll be fine. The actual "plot" and conclusion of sub-plots isn't really important since it all get's kinda thrown out anyway.
Knowing who the characters are, is the important part. I never felt like I should go back an finish Muv-Love to get the full story.
Alternate is good, but also fucked up and disturbing. I'm about 60/40 on whether it was worth reading or would rather I hadn't read it at all.
Thanks, in that case I'll do Sumika + Meiya's routes in Extra -- maybe skimming -- and read the summaries for the rest. I forgot to mention Unlimited (for external readers: the base game is Extra + Unlimited), but if I also don't like that then I'll do the same there.
Alternate is good, but also fucked up and disturbing. I'm about 60/40 on whether it was worth reading or would rather I hadn't read it at all.
Hah! My favorite stories are generally either bittersweet in nature or outright tragedies, so I'm guessing it'll fit in well for me.
I did! It's actually in my top 10 list. I played it around a decade ago, though I never did 100% it. That's a time after college where I got into VNs and am only returning to it now....big gap in time.
Excluding active plays, e.g. Baldr Sky will be here:
Saya no Uta
G-senjou no Maou | Kara no Shoujo | Steins;Gate
Fate Stay/Night | Sengoku Rance | Sharin no Kuni | Tsukihime
Clannad | Little Busters
No idea if the list rankings are consistent and actually make sense, since I didn't 100% some of them and have scattered memories, but it's not intended to be formal and good enough for personal use.
VNs are a really underrated medium. Looking back, I wish I had been less obsessed with work over the years and spent more personal time on leisure. Dropping sports completely about half a decade ago really helped open things up, slowly.
While silly I've been playing Myth the fallen lords and planning to try the sequels next. Is a very old RTS where you handle a small group of troops with no unit generation for you or the enemy.
I've played this game way way back so I'm enjoying it do to nostalgia. Patch 1.5 makes the graphics bearable but the camera is atrocious. However I've been enjoying it despite all that.
The new Tomb Raider games actually surprised me with how decent they were. Not mind blowing or anything, but worth playing if you can find them on sale and like stealthy 3rd person action adventure.
Minecraft Java edition and emulating retro games, both on PC and actual old systems. Just found a copy of Bully as well. I have a potato computer with a really old graphics card, I tried to buy a 1050 (Gigabyte) and it threw a fit, but I'm just using the 710 that was inside it already. Can run games up to the sixth generation of consoles. The GBA, DS and 3DS have a decent catalog of games like Dementium the Ward (DS), which I'd recommend, it was meant to be part of the Silent Hill franchise but got reworked into a standalone game unrelated to S.H.. I re play the GBA Metroids from time to time.
Gears Tactics isn't bad for a single playthrough if you like turned based strategy (the story is a lore breaking mess just like the franchise, but it is decent. I'd recommend actually playing XCOM over it though, the Coalition should have just had Splash Damage develop a traditional Gears of War shooter for PC from the ground up. Could have netted MS a killer app on PC, the game runs pretty smooth, the cover gameplay is still there, and the graphics are decent even on my potato).
I used to say Gears was my Star Wars so to speak - I wouldn't fail a trivia challenge and can answer the most obscure questions on the franchise's lore - but after TC woke-d it up, I gave up. Fuck em.
For Books:
Tolkien has quite a large selection obviously, and I follow Christopher Lee's example of reading it once a year. The audiobook of LotR is great, but I recently got my hands on the 1981 BBC Radio adaptation, which is a thing of beauty. Really wish New Line had let Brian Sibley help Jackson adapt the novel for the films instead of Fran Walsh. Recently picked up A Rumor of War, Based On A True Story (God rest your soul Norm MacDonald), and Tonke Dragt's Letter For The King (haven't started yet).
I have been playing Fate Extella Link recently which I bought on a whim during the Steam Christmas sale.
As a huge fan of the Fate series I have been craving a Fate game.
I went into Extella Link with limited expectations since it appears to be a basic musou type game.
However the game has satisfied me to an unexpected level.
The game has so many of the very popular mainstream characters playable like Artoria, Gilgamesh, Cu Chulainn, Iskandar, Lancelot, Medusa, Unlimited Bladeworks Archer,
Astolfo, Jeanne D'Arc, Scathach, Nero Claudius
but it also has cool underated characters such as Karna, Arjuna, Charlemagne and Lu Bu.
Playing as Gilgamesh, UBW Archer and Artoria destroying hordes of enemies and hearing the original seiyuu yelling Gate of Babylon, Unlimited Bladeworks and Excalibur is just what I wanted.
I am also playing Troubleshooter which is a fun X-COM like game.
Does Extella Link do anything special compared to other musous (e.g. Dynasty Warriors) in terms of gameplay or is it strictly the characters / nostalgia factor?
Extella Link is a very polished musuo game with decent ally ai since your cpu allies can actually capture objective points which is a nice difference from useless ai characters in other musuos. Enemy ai is ok on highest difficulty.
The game also has a system where you can use ingame currency which you get a lot of per mission to level up the new characters you unlock and get them to the same level as your highest level character. This means you don't have to grind with new characters to be able to use them on the latest missions. I like this feature a lot since I can switch characters essentially every level.
Overall Fate Extella Link is a very polished musuo game that is accessible to anyone who enjoys the Fate franchise and they made the game accessible even to people who have complaints about the average musuo game.
Currently watching the Ace Attorney anime adaptation.
My thoughts on each:
Faraway Paladin: really neat concept, but the plot and character development felt rushed and not 100% "there" if that makes sense. Series is incomplete and still being produced though, so I'll continue to give it a chance.
Dominion Tank Police: Amusing, with a unique setting, endearing characters, and an interesting plot. Downside is there are only 4 episodes. Not particularly "deep" but very fun to watch. It's definitely one of those shows that was cut short too soon.
New Dominion Tank Police: a continuation of the above, with a different plot and several characters being redesigned/dropped entirely. Also it is more "self-censored" than the original, with a lot of the edgier humor being toned down. Imo it is inferior to the original for these reasons, but it does have better animation and is still worth watching.
Saga of Tanya the Evil: Arguably the best of these six. Its the only one of these animes that made me want to read the manga. It is a rare combination of well written characters + well written plot + well designed battles. Plenty of shows have one or two of these, but very few ime have all three. If you are a history or military nerd (as I am) this is the anime for you.
Girls Und Panzer: watched it for the tanks. The plot is meh, and by itself borderline not worth watching, but the tank battles make up for it good enough. Like Tanya the Evil, this show is historically accurate with the equipment used and references to battles.
Ace Attorney: Only two episodes in so I can't fairly form an opinion but I like what I see so far.
I'm reading The Faithful and The Fallen by John Gwynne. I have heard the first book a few years ago, then I didn't go on with the series and forgot all the story, so I'm rereading this and then the rest of the series.
Also, Chainsaw Man, the manga.
Classic movies: Casablanca (1941), Maltese Falcon (1940) and To Catch a Thief (1952ish).
Casablanca is probably my favourite movie ever, or thereabouts. It is excellent, to the point where, if you haven’t seen it, you absolutely must.
Maltese Falcon… Didn’t do so much for me, but it’s iconic, and pretty much the first noir, so… Worth a watch.
To Catch a Thief is great. Funny, iconic and Grace Kelly is amazing. More Hitchcock/Grant: North by Northwest. More Grant: Bringing Up Baby (original) and Father Goose. More Kelly: honestly, anything you can find, at this point.
Golden Age/Silver Age Hollywood in general is pretty dope. While we’re at it, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (silent), and Aelita, Queen of Mars, which is also silent, and pretty much the first ever sci fi film, are seriously bizarre, but also good, in their own weird way!
I got gifted COD vanguard for christmas. It's super woke but the gameplay is alright. Warzone freezes my ps4 every few days now and the amount of bugs in the game are getting absurd even for actiblizzard. I'm pretty lenient when it comes to buggy games, but if it keeps going like this, it will be my last COD game ever.
Reading: Little bit of this, little bit of that. Currently working my way through the latest book in a guilty pleasure LitRPG series I read called Awaken Online by Travis Bagwell. Yeah, it's effectively isekai trash done by an American author, but it's actually a fun read.
Watching: Since we moved my wife's cell phone back over to Verizon, the bill includes a free Disney+ subscription. As such, I've been working my way through the MCU TV shows I missed out on last year and couldn't be bothered to bootleg. WandaVision is actually pretty decent, but I'm just waiting for how bad Falcon & Winter Soldier is supposed to be. Other than that, it's been mainly nature documentaries or old stuff like Psych, Burn Notice, Leverage, Warehouse 13, and Monk
Playing: My one woke-dev game I allow myself is Warframe, so I've been playing that as my primary. Beyond that I'm going to be looking at some newer stuff I picked up on the Steam sale, like Outriders, God Eater 3, and Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark.
Same here. As much as I hate DE's personal politics leeching over into their professional side of things, I've been playing the game since 2017 and I keep coming back for more. Now if I could just get the damn Necramech gun parts I need to drop, I could quit farming Deimos for the rest of eternity and be happy with it.
I have played through TNW, and I really wish they would have given us the option to replay it out of the gate rather than making us wait for it, because I'd like to be able to re-run through it and draw a few conclusions on my own rather than rewatching content creators' captures of it.
Part of me feels like it opened a lot more doors to questions than it answered, and part of me feels like it was just a way for them to weave in an easy out for future plot inconsistency. They've basically introduced a way to handwave it as "lol multiverse" whenever something doesn't match up in-continuity.
I feel like they've made Wally a much larger threat that we ever realized, and at the same time tied him to being the source of all Void-based stuff, so it'll be interesting to see where they take it.
I do like the introduction of The Drifter, but I'm still annoyed by them not taking the time to update Operator outfits to work with the Drifter body. Same annoyance goes for them not paying much attention to Male Operator hair and face options, but that's been a beef of mine for forever.
It's going to be interesting to see how the whole Multiverse thing is going to work in with Duviri being the next open-world section.
All in all, it was a fun diversion for the holidays, but once again it's back to farming those 4% drop chances, so all in all I guess I'm getting what I'm (not) paying for. :D
I think I needed a stock, but I'd have to log on and check my inventory. Shoot me a friend request next time you're online, I'm [REDACTED - PM me for info] over there, too. Maybe we can meet up, swap, and run a couple missions.
Drifter without Void powers was a mixed bag for me. It would have been nice if they'd told us the smoke bomb could obscure the Deacons' line of sight. It took me more attempts than I care to admit to get through Nu-Fortuna because of that - my dumb ass figured "They're special enemies, they'll be able to see through it". Other than that, I liked his power set. It was a nice change from stumbling around as the kid.
They definitely did our boy Teshin dirty. I may not have liked him, but he didn't deserve to go out like a bitch. Plus, now who the hell is Varzia going to lust over with him gone?
I figure they're probably weighing the options on how many man-hours it's going to take to re-rig all of the Kiddo outfits to fit Drifter versus the community outcry if they either 1) don't do it or 2) try to make us re-buy all of it. You know the shit's going to hit the fan if they don't do it, but it's really going to hit the fan if they try to make us do a re-buy or split Tennogen accessories off so they're either for one or the other, but not both.
I really want that grapple glaive mechanic for our existing frames. It would open up so many more movement options it wouldn't even be funny. I hate to admit it, but it took me longer than it should have to figure out how to match Teshin's energy abilities against the attacking Sentient. I figured we'd have to go round robin and switch out like we do with the Frames, rather than just playing "match the colors". While I found the character of Kahl the most intriguing, I wasn't really that engrossed by his gameplay - it felt a bit more Gears of War than Warframe, and we've all played that before. Veso-R had an interesting gimmick, but it would have been nice to have had more combat with his pets than what we were able to mix up. I'd like to see them do more multi-faction stuff in the future. I think it'd be a nice change from the usual frantic "mow down the horde and leap through the level" gameplay.
The Drifter taking fall damage really threw me off the first time it happened on the Earth level, because I damn near died from it. I ended up spending the next couple minutes hiding behind something and dropping stimpacks until my health was back up to snuff. It wasn't a problem for me after that barring a couple of glitches - in two separate instances I was trying to jump up on something, he got stuck in mid-air, hung there for a couple seconds like it couldn't figure out what animation to process, and then I took fatal fall damage and he'd ragdoll. It would have been pretty funny if I hadn't been so annoyed.
I've heard that about the Tennogen stuff, so maybe there's nothing to worry about there. I know the saying is that the endgame is FashionFrame but I generally don't go in for Tennogen on Operator accessories since you're not going to be seeing them 95% of the time - any suits I have for the kiddo have been bonuses in the packs, so I look at them as nifty freebies more than "I want that look".
As far as more Drifter sans powers goes, I could see them doing more with him if they go into flashback missions for what happened with him prior to the convergence at New War, but as far as content going forward goes I foresee them keeping him powered up.
Reading: Everything I can get my hands on by Bernard Cornwell. I cannot recommend his books enough.
Watching: various anime/cartoons with the fiance.
Playing: DnD, Hunt Showdown, and starting a Skyrim playthrough over again because the addiction is real. I recommend Hunt Showdown to anyone who is up for a more hardcore shooter, because the sound design is one of the best of any videogame, ever. I actually play Hunt partially as therapy for a hearing injury.
Finished Kingdom Come not that long ago and it was 👌. If anything the main quest was too long, but I loved everything about the game so it didn't overstay its welcome. There's very little I can criticize about it. It has a few bugs here and there but nothing game breaking. Things other people complained about (like "annoying, unintuitive combat") are features I actually enjoyed.
For now I'm taking a break from media to work on my business and self-improvement.
Endwalker. Level capped a couple of weeks ago but god damn leveling alt jobs is fun. And i started lost judgment during queues. God damn was endwalker good though.
Currently reading Joe Hill's "20th Century Ghosts" collection and watching a bit of everything medieval related on YT as research for a middle grade book I'll be writing. Looking forward to Deep Rock Galactic on PS4 as I don't have a PC.
Playing Breath of the Wild because I got a Switch. Reading House of Leaves. Listening to Beren and Luthien. Watching Doctor Who till the end of Capaldi.
I'm going through my game backlog. Mainly playing Elex at the moment. It's a RPG set in an interesting world that mixes sci-fi and fantasy. Unfortunately the balance and combat are atrocious. You have to slog through at least 10 hours of running away from everything and doing fetch quests to get anywhere where the game gets fun. Wouldn't recommend it for new players but I'm so far into it that I can already taste the light at the end of the tunnel.
I've also been branching out hobby-wise and doing Gundam model kits. Some random build video for those who've never seen one of those: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=217Lu0usTgw
Been playing some Sid Meier's Pirates (the 2004 one, not Gold, but it's good too) lately! Tried running EU4 but I'm getting some sort of error where the screen freezes. It's a common bug a lot of people've had but I just haven't felt compelled enough to go through the hassle of fixing it yet.
As for reading, I started reading a series on the Orthodox Church (in general), just started the first volume which is a very brief account of its history. Pretty interesting stuff. Who knows when I'll ever finish it though. I really only get time to read for fun when classes are out at law school and that starts back up in a bit.
Playing: Ys II and Grandia HD at the moment. I've tried to get into and out of other stuff but these have stuck mostly. Weird games to list but last couple weeks have not been a normal routine for me along with the fact that I've just not been into newer games pretty much all year.
Watching: Attack on Titan. Really about it. TV is a very small amount of my time.
Reading: nothing in the past few weeks, lots of Christmas travel and such. I'll probably wait and read the book club thing since it seems like Brave New World was going to read and that was on my list to read anyway. Last I read was Moon is a Harsh Mistress but I finished that in early Dec.
I said I wouldn't get it due to epic but the steam sale was on.
With 2 years of patches and mods it's actually pretty good, still not on par with 2, 3 or 4 but it scratches the mech itch. But mods are a must imo especially the ones that address spawning.
Deep Rock Galactic is the best co-op game I've ever played. Cave recommend it enough.
Other than that? Not much. Bought a few more games from the steam winter sale to toss on the backlog. Waiting on Elden Ring.
Rock and Stone!
Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition by Beamdog. Tired of the pozzed new DnD rules? Well this gem is a recent release still getting updates that is core 3E rules.
Don't like that? It has a whole toolset to make WHATEVER you want, and many people host servers (also free to do with the base game) of different content in different languages.
A shame beamdog themselves are a bunch of pozzed faggots, but at this point, the whole community has or is moving over to EE.
Are they? I haven't seen any real political statements out of them, but at any rate, the best point about the game is it doesn't matter as you can make anything you want from it.
Absolutely. For the the enhanced edition of Baldur's Gate, they added a trans NPC who exists purely to tell you they're trans.
They then called everyone who turned their noses up at this bigots.
I don't think they pulled similar horseshit with NWN, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did.
The funniest goddamned part of that saga was that you can only be a tranny in D&D if you are the laziest piece of shit imaginable.
If you're doing Rules as Written ^TM, you can get a cursed Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity that forcibly changes your sex when equipped. As a cursed item, it's sale value is 0, so you can technically get it from any mage store using the standard sales tables for free.
If you're intent on actually playing the game like some sort of nerd incel, you can just get a Wizard to Polymorph you into the other sex.
Anything else is just "look at me! I'm TRAAAAAAAANNNNSSSSS" virtue signaling.
Preach on, m'man - I've been saying this ever since they started that shit with the trans insert NPC. DMs have been using the Girdle as a player trap (no pun intended) for years, so it's painfully obvious that anyone in a D&D world that would potentially want to be the opposite sex could be the opposite sex with relative ease once one of those was located. Anything else that is presented as "trans" in a D&D-based fantasy world is just a player with a fetish that they don't want to admit to, virtue signaling it up for oppression points.
I've noticed that with many other games. Where it's fantasy or so futuristic that they could roleplay as someone who actually changed sex, but it's clear they don't want that. They just to virtue signal. They want to play as non-passing queer freaks who flaunt their mental illnesses and fetishes and get praised for it.
At least, that's what woke, pandering corporations would have us believe.
I own BG:EE, BG2:EE, Planescape: EE, and NWN:EE.
Beamdog also had Minsc (probably the most popular character from Baldur's Gates 1+2) with a new #GamerGate!!!@!# voice line "Actually, it's about ethics in heroic adventuring."
Trent Oster is a huge lefty feminist type, and their new characters are kind of all SJW tropes (Bisexual male orc, quirky magic elf girl, etc). Their one original creation, a game that comes between BG1 and BG2, was pretty widely panned for shitty writing. I haven't played it.
See breathless headlines like "Vitriol and harassment hit developers of new Baldur's Gate expansion" (Polygon). "Its writer, Amber Scott, is the latest woman working in gaming to face online harassment and insults. Her Twitter feed today features multiple insults and threats, as well as some messages of support"
Beamdog has also been pretty widely panned for introducing bugs, taking forever to patch known and game-breaking bugs, and rolling out patches months apart for Mac, PC, iOS, Android, etc.
Having said that, I wrote in about how I felt Minsc's line was not true to the character and was unnecessary politicization of the game. Trent Oster personally wrote me back and said they goofed, and were planning to remove the voice line...and they did. Their patches and games are all in a good place now. [I bought Siege of Dragonspear after that, but I have yet to play it.]
The two people who I personally think were responsibly for some of the shittiest of the new characters and the weakest of the weak writing -- Dee Pennyway and Amber Scott -- both left Beamdog in 2016 and neither seem to be working in the industry anymore, if that tells you anything.
So, despite some rough spots, I think Beamdog is a pretty OK company.
That's a really great synopsis, thanks. Yeah I never really checked out their stuff with the BG games but can definitely remember some of those rumblings now that you mention it.
Here are a couple of annual annotations from several notable authors,
Collum's annual reviews are always a rave not to miss.
Another installment on the trail of the long emergency by James Howard Kunstler,
For some light reading ,,)
On this theme, here's a large infographic from The Epoch Times earlier in the year on the CCP Flu timeline - https://cdn.epoch.cloud/assets/static_assets/EPOCH_TIMES_VIRUS_TIMELINE.jpg
Really nice recap on the scamdemic.
Been playing Into the Radius VR. IMO it's the best VR game. It's like STALKER in VR.
Just finished watching Cobra Kai season 4. I enjoyed it, I thought they would lean into the feminism BS but they only played it out for a joke.
Book wise, I started Terry Pratchet's The light fantastic. Gotta read some Dune afterwards.
I decided to welcome 2022 by exploring eroges. And by that, I mean full length visual novels that aren't strictly nukige.
Partly through a version of Baldr Sky that has Drives 1+2 combined (nyaa~), and taking some rest after finishing the 1st route. I can strongly recommend it. Note: unlike most VNs there's actual decent mecha gameplay in this title. From what I've seen, you also don't really need the adult patch because the ero scenes aren't the best, though I applied it for the original full uncensored experience.
Have a few other games lined up including Umineko, which is not an eroge, but there's not enough recreational time so who knows when I get to them.
Mainly trying to slog my way through Muv-Luv on the side so I can play Muv-Luv Alternate, but the base game is really not good. I remember trying it about a decade ago before abandoning it for similar reasons, but Alternate is supposed to be great, so it must be done.
As for other mediums, nothing of interest (e.g. reading some technical books).
I gave up on M-L and skipped to Alternate for the same reason. As long as you have the basic jist of the story and characters, you'll be fine. The actual "plot" and conclusion of sub-plots isn't really important since it all get's kinda thrown out anyway.
Knowing who the characters are, is the important part. I never felt like I should go back an finish Muv-Love to get the full story.
Alternate is good, but also fucked up and disturbing. I'm about 60/40 on whether it was worth reading or would rather I hadn't read it at all.
Thanks, in that case I'll do Sumika + Meiya's routes in Extra -- maybe skimming -- and read the summaries for the rest. I forgot to mention Unlimited (for external readers: the base game is Extra + Unlimited), but if I also don't like that then I'll do the same there.
Hah! My favorite stories are generally either bittersweet in nature or outright tragedies, so I'm guessing it'll fit in well for me.
Not exactly what I mean by fucked up, but would be too much spoiler to explain it. You may fit it better though.
You should play Sengoku Rance!
I did! It's actually in my top 10 list. I played it around a decade ago, though I never did 100% it. That's a time after college where I got into VNs and am only returning to it now....big gap in time.
Excluding active plays, e.g. Baldr Sky will be here:
No idea if the list rankings are consistent and actually make sense, since I didn't 100% some of them and have scattered memories, but it's not intended to be formal and good enough for personal use.
VNs are a really underrated medium. Looking back, I wish I had been less obsessed with work over the years and spent more personal time on leisure. Dropping sports completely about half a decade ago really helped open things up, slowly.
While silly I've been playing Myth the fallen lords and planning to try the sequels next. Is a very old RTS where you handle a small group of troops with no unit generation for you or the enemy.
I've played this game way way back so I'm enjoying it do to nostalgia. Patch 1.5 makes the graphics bearable but the camera is atrocious. However I've been enjoying it despite all that.
Ooo, once you're done that, try Pierre Berton's two-part take on it.
And Vox Populi helps a lot with Civ 5, if you don't care about achievements, when vanilla gets dull.
Yes, that's true of all Civ games, right back to the first one.
The "AI" is basically just a bunch of behaviours with different "weights", like Rimworld.
I've been playing Loop Hero (was free on the epic store a few days back), it's really good!, It's a short chill game.
Inscryption is another good one you should try out
Ah, I always forget to check their free games.
They have the 3 latest Tomb Raider games for free right now BTW: https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/free-games
The new Tomb Raider games actually surprised me with how decent they were. Not mind blowing or anything, but worth playing if you can find them on sale and like stealthy 3rd person action adventure.
Only played the 2013 one so far, but yea, it's a pretty good game.
Actual tomb raiding was a bit neglected but gameplay was decent enough.
Mostly?
Minecraft Java edition and emulating retro games, both on PC and actual old systems. Just found a copy of Bully as well. I have a potato computer with a really old graphics card, I tried to buy a 1050 (Gigabyte) and it threw a fit, but I'm just using the 710 that was inside it already. Can run games up to the sixth generation of consoles. The GBA, DS and 3DS have a decent catalog of games like Dementium the Ward (DS), which I'd recommend, it was meant to be part of the Silent Hill franchise but got reworked into a standalone game unrelated to S.H.. I re play the GBA Metroids from time to time.
Gears Tactics isn't bad for a single playthrough if you like turned based strategy (the story is a lore breaking mess just like the franchise, but it is decent. I'd recommend actually playing XCOM over it though, the Coalition should have just had Splash Damage develop a traditional Gears of War shooter for PC from the ground up. Could have netted MS a killer app on PC, the game runs pretty smooth, the cover gameplay is still there, and the graphics are decent even on my potato).
I used to say Gears was my Star Wars so to speak - I wouldn't fail a trivia challenge and can answer the most obscure questions on the franchise's lore - but after TC woke-d it up, I gave up. Fuck em.
For Books:
Tolkien has quite a large selection obviously, and I follow Christopher Lee's example of reading it once a year. The audiobook of LotR is great, but I recently got my hands on the 1981 BBC Radio adaptation, which is a thing of beauty. Really wish New Line had let Brian Sibley help Jackson adapt the novel for the films instead of Fran Walsh. Recently picked up A Rumor of War, Based On A True Story (God rest your soul Norm MacDonald), and Tonke Dragt's Letter For The King (haven't started yet).
I don't watch shows or movies anymore.
Got Inscyption on the recommendation of a friend. Game is brilliant so far.
I have been playing Fate Extella Link recently which I bought on a whim during the Steam Christmas sale.
As a huge fan of the Fate series I have been craving a Fate game.
I went into Extella Link with limited expectations since it appears to be a basic musou type game.
However the game has satisfied me to an unexpected level.
The game has so many of the very popular mainstream characters playable like Artoria, Gilgamesh, Cu Chulainn, Iskandar, Lancelot, Medusa, Unlimited Bladeworks Archer, Astolfo, Jeanne D'Arc, Scathach, Nero Claudius but it also has cool underated characters such as Karna, Arjuna, Charlemagne and Lu Bu.
Playing as Gilgamesh, UBW Archer and Artoria destroying hordes of enemies and hearing the original seiyuu yelling Gate of Babylon, Unlimited Bladeworks and Excalibur is just what I wanted.
I am also playing Troubleshooter which is a fun X-COM like game.
Does Extella Link do anything special compared to other musous (e.g. Dynasty Warriors) in terms of gameplay or is it strictly the characters / nostalgia factor?
Extella Link is a very polished musuo game with decent ally ai since your cpu allies can actually capture objective points which is a nice difference from useless ai characters in other musuos. Enemy ai is ok on highest difficulty.
The game also has a system where you can use ingame currency which you get a lot of per mission to level up the new characters you unlock and get them to the same level as your highest level character. This means you don't have to grind with new characters to be able to use them on the latest missions. I like this feature a lot since I can switch characters essentially every level.
Overall Fate Extella Link is a very polished musuo game that is accessible to anyone who enjoys the Fate franchise and they made the game accessible even to people who have complaints about the average musuo game.
Been on an anime binge as of late. Watched:
Faraway Paladin
Dominion Tank Police
New Dominion Tank Police
Saga of Tanya the Evil (series +movie)
Girls Und Panzer
Currently watching the Ace Attorney anime adaptation.
My thoughts on each:
Faraway Paladin: really neat concept, but the plot and character development felt rushed and not 100% "there" if that makes sense. Series is incomplete and still being produced though, so I'll continue to give it a chance.
Dominion Tank Police: Amusing, with a unique setting, endearing characters, and an interesting plot. Downside is there are only 4 episodes. Not particularly "deep" but very fun to watch. It's definitely one of those shows that was cut short too soon.
New Dominion Tank Police: a continuation of the above, with a different plot and several characters being redesigned/dropped entirely. Also it is more "self-censored" than the original, with a lot of the edgier humor being toned down. Imo it is inferior to the original for these reasons, but it does have better animation and is still worth watching.
Saga of Tanya the Evil: Arguably the best of these six. Its the only one of these animes that made me want to read the manga. It is a rare combination of well written characters + well written plot + well designed battles. Plenty of shows have one or two of these, but very few ime have all three. If you are a history or military nerd (as I am) this is the anime for you.
Girls Und Panzer: watched it for the tanks. The plot is meh, and by itself borderline not worth watching, but the tank battles make up for it good enough. Like Tanya the Evil, this show is historically accurate with the equipment used and references to battles.
Ace Attorney: Only two episodes in so I can't fairly form an opinion but I like what I see so far.
A buddy of mine got me into Valheim a few days ago. It's a very nice way to chill out when you aren't being chased by thirty foot trolls.
I'm reading The Faithful and The Fallen by John Gwynne. I have heard the first book a few years ago, then I didn't go on with the series and forgot all the story, so I'm rereading this and then the rest of the series.
Also, Chainsaw Man, the manga.
sword of truth series
macgyver and animu
runescape and force unleashed 2
Classic movies: Casablanca (1941), Maltese Falcon (1940) and To Catch a Thief (1952ish).
Casablanca is probably my favourite movie ever, or thereabouts. It is excellent, to the point where, if you haven’t seen it, you absolutely must.
Maltese Falcon… Didn’t do so much for me, but it’s iconic, and pretty much the first noir, so… Worth a watch.
To Catch a Thief is great. Funny, iconic and Grace Kelly is amazing. More Hitchcock/Grant: North by Northwest. More Grant: Bringing Up Baby (original) and Father Goose. More Kelly: honestly, anything you can find, at this point.
Golden Age/Silver Age Hollywood in general is pretty dope. While we’re at it, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (silent), and Aelita, Queen of Mars, which is also silent, and pretty much the first ever sci fi film, are seriously bizarre, but also good, in their own weird way!
Ooh, and if you get into the silent stuff/want a different genre: “M, the City Hunts a Murderer”.
The original is better, of course, but there’s also a modern miniseries remake which is obviously much more… Current, so take your pick!!
Rift Wizard
Final Fantasy XIV Online (the MMO), all day every day, baby.
I got gifted COD vanguard for christmas. It's super woke but the gameplay is alright. Warzone freezes my ps4 every few days now and the amount of bugs in the game are getting absurd even for actiblizzard. I'm pretty lenient when it comes to buggy games, but if it keeps going like this, it will be my last COD game ever.
Reading: Little bit of this, little bit of that. Currently working my way through the latest book in a guilty pleasure LitRPG series I read called Awaken Online by Travis Bagwell. Yeah, it's effectively isekai trash done by an American author, but it's actually a fun read.
Watching: Since we moved my wife's cell phone back over to Verizon, the bill includes a free Disney+ subscription. As such, I've been working my way through the MCU TV shows I missed out on last year and couldn't be bothered to bootleg. WandaVision is actually pretty decent, but I'm just waiting for how bad Falcon & Winter Soldier is supposed to be. Other than that, it's been mainly nature documentaries or old stuff like Psych, Burn Notice, Leverage, Warehouse 13, and Monk
Playing: My one woke-dev game I allow myself is Warframe, so I've been playing that as my primary. Beyond that I'm going to be looking at some newer stuff I picked up on the Steam sale, like Outriders, God Eater 3, and Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark.
Same here. As much as I hate DE's personal politics leeching over into their professional side of things, I've been playing the game since 2017 and I keep coming back for more. Now if I could just get the damn Necramech gun parts I need to drop, I could quit farming Deimos for the rest of eternity and be happy with it.
I have played through TNW, and I really wish they would have given us the option to replay it out of the gate rather than making us wait for it, because I'd like to be able to re-run through it and draw a few conclusions on my own rather than rewatching content creators' captures of it.
Part of me feels like it opened a lot more doors to questions than it answered, and part of me feels like it was just a way for them to weave in an easy out for future plot inconsistency. They've basically introduced a way to handwave it as "lol multiverse" whenever something doesn't match up in-continuity.
I feel like they've made Wally a much larger threat that we ever realized, and at the same time tied him to being the source of all Void-based stuff, so it'll be interesting to see where they take it.
I do like the introduction of The Drifter, but I'm still annoyed by them not taking the time to update Operator outfits to work with the Drifter body. Same annoyance goes for them not paying much attention to Male Operator hair and face options, but that's been a beef of mine for forever.
It's going to be interesting to see how the whole Multiverse thing is going to work in with Duviri being the next open-world section.
All in all, it was a fun diversion for the holidays, but once again it's back to farming those 4% drop chances, so all in all I guess I'm getting what I'm (not) paying for. :D
I think I needed a stock, but I'd have to log on and check my inventory. Shoot me a friend request next time you're online, I'm [REDACTED - PM me for info] over there, too. Maybe we can meet up, swap, and run a couple missions.
Drifter without Void powers was a mixed bag for me. It would have been nice if they'd told us the smoke bomb could obscure the Deacons' line of sight. It took me more attempts than I care to admit to get through Nu-Fortuna because of that - my dumb ass figured "They're special enemies, they'll be able to see through it". Other than that, I liked his power set. It was a nice change from stumbling around as the kid.
They definitely did our boy Teshin dirty. I may not have liked him, but he didn't deserve to go out like a bitch. Plus, now who the hell is Varzia going to lust over with him gone?
I figure they're probably weighing the options on how many man-hours it's going to take to re-rig all of the Kiddo outfits to fit Drifter versus the community outcry if they either 1) don't do it or 2) try to make us re-buy all of it. You know the shit's going to hit the fan if they don't do it, but it's really going to hit the fan if they try to make us do a re-buy or split Tennogen accessories off so they're either for one or the other, but not both.
I really want that grapple glaive mechanic for our existing frames. It would open up so many more movement options it wouldn't even be funny. I hate to admit it, but it took me longer than it should have to figure out how to match Teshin's energy abilities against the attacking Sentient. I figured we'd have to go round robin and switch out like we do with the Frames, rather than just playing "match the colors". While I found the character of Kahl the most intriguing, I wasn't really that engrossed by his gameplay - it felt a bit more Gears of War than Warframe, and we've all played that before. Veso-R had an interesting gimmick, but it would have been nice to have had more combat with his pets than what we were able to mix up. I'd like to see them do more multi-faction stuff in the future. I think it'd be a nice change from the usual frantic "mow down the horde and leap through the level" gameplay.
The Drifter taking fall damage really threw me off the first time it happened on the Earth level, because I damn near died from it. I ended up spending the next couple minutes hiding behind something and dropping stimpacks until my health was back up to snuff. It wasn't a problem for me after that barring a couple of glitches - in two separate instances I was trying to jump up on something, he got stuck in mid-air, hung there for a couple seconds like it couldn't figure out what animation to process, and then I took fatal fall damage and he'd ragdoll. It would have been pretty funny if I hadn't been so annoyed.
I've heard that about the Tennogen stuff, so maybe there's nothing to worry about there. I know the saying is that the endgame is FashionFrame but I generally don't go in for Tennogen on Operator accessories since you're not going to be seeing them 95% of the time - any suits I have for the kiddo have been bonuses in the packs, so I look at them as nifty freebies more than "I want that look".
As far as more Drifter sans powers goes, I could see them doing more with him if they go into flashback missions for what happened with him prior to the convergence at New War, but as far as content going forward goes I foresee them keeping him powered up.
Reading: Everything I can get my hands on by Bernard Cornwell. I cannot recommend his books enough.
Watching: various anime/cartoons with the fiance.
Playing: DnD, Hunt Showdown, and starting a Skyrim playthrough over again because the addiction is real. I recommend Hunt Showdown to anyone who is up for a more hardcore shooter, because the sound design is one of the best of any videogame, ever. I actually play Hunt partially as therapy for a hearing injury.
Finished Kingdom Come not that long ago and it was 👌. If anything the main quest was too long, but I loved everything about the game so it didn't overstay its welcome. There's very little I can criticize about it. It has a few bugs here and there but nothing game breaking. Things other people complained about (like "annoying, unintuitive combat") are features I actually enjoyed.
For now I'm taking a break from media to work on my business and self-improvement.
Endwalker. Level capped a couple of weeks ago but god damn leveling alt jobs is fun. And i started lost judgment during queues. God damn was endwalker good though.
I just started playing Ys IX: Monstrum Nox. Also been playing Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne.
Currently reading Joe Hill's "20th Century Ghosts" collection and watching a bit of everything medieval related on YT as research for a middle grade book I'll be writing. Looking forward to Deep Rock Galactic on PS4 as I don't have a PC.
Playing Breath of the Wild because I got a Switch. Reading House of Leaves. Listening to Beren and Luthien. Watching Doctor Who till the end of Capaldi.
I'm going through my game backlog. Mainly playing Elex at the moment. It's a RPG set in an interesting world that mixes sci-fi and fantasy. Unfortunately the balance and combat are atrocious. You have to slog through at least 10 hours of running away from everything and doing fetch quests to get anywhere where the game gets fun. Wouldn't recommend it for new players but I'm so far into it that I can already taste the light at the end of the tunnel.
I've also been branching out hobby-wise and doing Gundam model kits. Some random build video for those who've never seen one of those: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=217Lu0usTgw
Been playing some Sid Meier's Pirates (the 2004 one, not Gold, but it's good too) lately! Tried running EU4 but I'm getting some sort of error where the screen freezes. It's a common bug a lot of people've had but I just haven't felt compelled enough to go through the hassle of fixing it yet.
As for reading, I started reading a series on the Orthodox Church (in general), just started the first volume which is a very brief account of its history. Pretty interesting stuff. Who knows when I'll ever finish it though. I really only get time to read for fun when classes are out at law school and that starts back up in a bit.
Playing: Ys II and Grandia HD at the moment. I've tried to get into and out of other stuff but these have stuck mostly. Weird games to list but last couple weeks have not been a normal routine for me along with the fact that I've just not been into newer games pretty much all year.
Watching: Attack on Titan. Really about it. TV is a very small amount of my time.
Reading: nothing in the past few weeks, lots of Christmas travel and such. I'll probably wait and read the book club thing since it seems like Brave New World was going to read and that was on my list to read anyway. Last I read was Moon is a Harsh Mistress but I finished that in early Dec.
Mech warrior 5.
I said I wouldn't get it due to epic but the steam sale was on.
With 2 years of patches and mods it's actually pretty good, still not on par with 2, 3 or 4 but it scratches the mech itch. But mods are a must imo especially the ones that address spawning.