Coelacanth

Glad to hear you’re liking Chrono Ark! I think it’s an absolute banger and a must play for roguelike deckbuilder fans. I still need to finish it up by getting to 100% and getting the true ending.

Rise of the Ronin has really hooked me. I don’t know what it is about it or if it is just that I was craving some open world slop, but it’s hitting all the right spots in my brain currently. I think the Team Ninja special sauce in the combat helps keep me interested - there is quite a lot of depth and opportunity to optimise and style on your enemies and it also feels very rewarding doing so. Getting into a fast flow where you’re constantly swapping styles and weapons to use martial art techniques while weaving in parries gets really frenetic and fun.

Overall for my tastes it feels like a better version of Ghost or Tsushima. Now don’t get me wrong: I’m not arguing objectivity here. Tsushima looks better, has better presentation and is way better optimised. I’m just having more fun with Ronin than I did with Ghost.

It also helps to have some more charm and levity among the characters and writing instead of every single thing being delivered in a dour and serious monotone like in GoT.

!communitypromo@lemmy.ca might be what you’re looking for.

I think the BP parallels came from the combination of the art style, it being set in a vast mansion and a “daily energy” mechanic. I can definitely see it from the outside even though it seems like they play nothing alike.

I’m trying to keep myself unspoiled on Titanium Court as it’s getting such buzz about its writing and world building, but definitely curious. I liked the reveal trailer video though.

I don’t own a headset but my brother-in-law does and I’ve played some Pacific Drive VR at his place. It’s amazing, the game was meant for VR in my opinion. Would be even better with full native support of course so you could use your hands on the steering wheel and handbrake etc instead of driving with controller.

How is Seance of Blake Manor? I heard some people facetiously call it the first Blue Prince-like. But despite that I’ve heard nothing but good things.

Also heard some mumbles raving about how good Titanium Court is, so definitely keeping an eye on it.

If you have a headset for it then Pacific Drive is amazing with the UEVR mod. God how I wish it had native VR support.

Rise of the Ronin

Open world slop brainrot hit me just right (been over a year since my last game in the genre) and I’ve been thoroughly absorbed. After some stressful months I guess I really needed the free dopamine of collecting cats and clearing out the map.

That being said, the combat in this game is actually fantastic and just as good as people have been saying. I’m only at the very start of it and haven’t even begun to master the intricacies, but I love that there is a dojo you can train in and I will probably spend some time there practicing stance- and weapon switching. While the movelist seems restrictive at first, it expands quite significantly once you unlock the skills that let you seamlessly flow between stances and weapons and I need to sit down and memorize all the moves I actually have available in my loadout. Add to that stuff like jump-parrying to vault over the enemy, using the grappling rope or shurikens or the handgun…

It’s only been a couple of fights so far where I managed to get into some kind of flow, but those felt absolutely phenomenal. Great, satisfying parry in this game, too.

Damn you, I am a Team Ninja fan and had already heard good things about the combat, but had put off RoR because of the mixed reception it got. Now you’re making me rethink myself. In fact, I just installed the game (though curtesy it Fitgirl for now until I know how I feel about it). It’s been a while since I played some open world slop, I might be in the mood for that…

I am never getting through my backlog am I?

How difficult is the platforming, and how much do the assist modes help with that? I was very curious about MIO because it looks so damn gorgeous, but I suck at and hate precision platforming.

Oh really? That’s interesting, the combat is the only thing I’ve heard praises about that game (which makes sense as it’s a Team Ninja game).

Are you playing on PC? What’s the state of the port these days? I remember when it launched it was struggling with performance issues.

Yeah, especially with age I find myself less interested in those 150+ hour games. One of the reasons I haven’t considered dipping into the Persona series.

For me, I haven’t played that much this week so I’m still on the same games as last week. Chrono Ark continues to be excellent, and a wholehearted recommend if you’re into roguelike deckbuilders. Ninja Gaiden 4 is the best new action game in ages, and Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is even more fun than before with some mods - most recently the Modified Moveset Mod.

I think this is prime for a Netflix animated show. Would definitely watch that.

Okay, good to know. Thanks for the writeup! I am also one of those players that like to keep resting to a minimum in order to maintain immersion, which punished me hard in BG3 as I missed out on like half the campfire scenes in Act 1. Silly me for actually taking the game seriously when it said things were urgent.

I’ve heard a lot of good things about Rogue Trader so maybe I will check it out one day, but the 40k setting never really did it for me personally. I was actually into painting minis for a while in my youth, but it was always the fantasy setting that appealed to me. There were some guys who were into 40k around me back then, but those were all assholes who were incredibly demeaning towards fantasy and constantly denigrated the Warhammer Fantasy group for using a silly and “uncool” version of the game. I think that period has tainted my perception of 40k subconsciously.

Anyway I got wildly offtopic there, sorry 😅

Last third of Kingmaker really soured me on Owlcat and has made me postpone WotR indefinitely. Shame to hear some of the same issues appearing again in it. How does it compare otherwise? I am also somewhat hesitant about the epic setting and godslaying type of story compared to the more grounded Kingmaker. Is the writing good?

I’ve started playing Chrono Ark, a roguelike deckbuilder I’ve heard a lot of good things about. So far I’ve played something like 3 runs, so only just begun. It’s fun so far, it’s not completely reinventing the genre or anything but each run has been fun and the upgrades seem varied enough.

I’ve also heard good things about the story, and it does involve time travel to play into the looping roguelike nature in a seamless way, but that’s about all I’ve been able to glean from it so far. I’m looking forward to finding out more.

Come on GOG, I like you, don’t make me dislike you.

Is the Mastodon algorithm new? I could have sworn they used to pride themselves on the chronological-only feed.

But how many will actually do that, though? That doesn’t really sound like how regular people would react. Like, if regular people were capable of reading up and looking into things on their own accord as part of the sign-up process we wouldn’t need to have this conversation about a snappy and succinct summary sentence about Lemmy in the first place.

I get your point, but I agree with RobotToaster. We’re still at a point where the Fediverse is a very niche thing and a very niche term. For most regular people “Fediverse” is a nonsense word that tells them absolutely nothing, while “decentralised” (albeit a technical term) is at least a concept most people can grasp.