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Fired up Wartales after clearing it shortly after it released, they didn't even had helmet back, bought the Invasion DLC but I haven't reached that content yet, lot of fun, the progression seems a lot quicker than way back then, too, as I've basically finished four regions out of the six ones pre-DLC, and my band is almost the same level as I was in the previous run where I had finished most of the game.

I've been playing Terra Invicta again because i suppose i hate myself. Gonna try to unite humanity under Humanity First's faction and then purge the aliens! The interesting thing is even though Humanity First is in many ways a baddie faction i find them more interesting than the Resistance's leader. Honestly a couple of the factions could've been rolled into one.

Anyway so far i've gotten a bunch of colony habitats on mars and some asteroids. I also have quite a few research campuses/universities around Earth. The latest update makes it so the only way you can have a research building is over a planet with 10,000 population or within the earth and moon's orbits which honestly neuters research a ton. My research rate is 2nd best of the human factions now though.

For whatever absurd reason the Protectorate are doing really well and actually have a significant amount of ships for semi early game. I should probably go kill off their councilors now that they're doing so well again (but not before getting a bunch of ships myself). I did it before but then they managed to become like the top human faction in the game annoyingly.

There isn't much left to talk about besides i have like half of the usa, iran, australia and most of south east asia including indonesia. I'm planning to invade japan since they got all aggressive with me and they have no friends now so why not.

I completed the original Dawn of War campaign today and began playing Winter Assault. Man, oh man, it's just such a great game, been a while since I've been so addicted to a game. No wonder so many people got into 40k because of it. Also, the voice acting is too perfect.

Umamusume
loving it, and enjoying it.

 Adrassil wrote:
I completed the original Dawn of War campaign today and began playing Winter Assault. Man, oh man, it's just such a great game, been a while since I've been so addicted to a game. No wonder so many people got into 40k because of it. Also, the voice acting is too perfect.

Yeah i got into 40k because of it as well. I loved the crap out of that game esp. in winter assault. Soulstorm was kinda bad though but dark eldar and sisters of battle needed their time in the sun (something they rarely got at the time).

------

I've been playing terra invicta as humanity first and was doing well enough but now i'm struggling to even match the aliens. At least the aliens are only really retaliating against me somewhat and haven't just gone all out to destroy me. Even so they were stomping me into the ground in some instances and now i'm just trying to protect Mars and having very limited success. I'm currently having a noble metals shortage however which has not been getting alleviated. Suppose colony mining complexes will somewhat solve the issue but we'll see. It'll definitely take time to build them all.

On Earth however i've finally been getting the upper hand in military engagements but the next alien landing party for armies will be coming eventually and that'll definitely suck. I'll likely have to use nukes to fight them off.

I've done the first two bosses in Silksong.
The platforming elements are easy so far.
The bosses are harder than anything from FromSoftware (add in Nioh 2, Wo Long, Lies of P, etc), if only because of how unforgiving they are in terms of damage. It's really stupid. Bell Beast's moveset is simple, but there's a good chance any mistake means death at 4 masks or less.

Been bouncing around games lately.
I have been playing Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. Enjoyable game if you are a fan of Castlevania: Symphony of the night. The main character of the game is Mariam and she can collect the souls of enemies she has killed to boost her abilities. Your brother in the game can do the same but opposes you because he has sided with the demons of the castle you are tasked to explore and destroy. It's a fun, casual, game if you are just looking for a hack'n'slash side scroller with RPG elements.

Also just recently picked up Blood Bowl 3. Still figuring my way around the mechanics and game play with this one. Playing as Shambling Undead because I read they are good for beginners and I would have to agree. Liking the game so far once I started to get a hang of all the little elements beyond the tutorial. Been playing friendly AI games for the most part to help me get my bearings. Waiting on some friends to play some casual games online. Love that it is cross-platform.

Ok well i lost the game i was playing a couple or so days ago. So i started a new game of Terra Invicta as humanity first (it's the 2nd hardest faction just behind the academy). The game starts in october 2022 or so and i'm somewhere in early 2026.

I have all of the usa under my control as well as egypt and israel. I actually had so much territory under my thumb i had to abandon multiple nations which have since been mostly grabbed. I'm trying to re-grab spain.

I was actually likely to have more than one part of the EU but another faction combined france, italy and germany into the EU and have since gotten half of the usa's economy by doing so. This made it really hard to grab more territory from the EU regardless of stats i had on my councilors.

Realistically i could use the usa as a cudgel and take some nations' territories through conquest but i'd have to be careful not to attack a nuke using nation. The A.I. enemy tends to love using allies nukes when you attempt to go after their main capital with military force.

Besides that i have a decent space presence on mars now. I'm really behind in research though for some reason. That should change within a year or so of in-game time when i can just build stuff in space on purely space based resources instead of boost (space resources from earth) and my mission control (space units cap) is ok for now.

I began a new game of Vampire: The Masquerade; Bloodlines. This time as a manipulative, selfish, ruthless, but pretend nice Ventrue. The exact opposite of my usual "Friendly Neighbourhood Vampire", character, mostly as a Toreador or a Malkavian (Toreador is my favourite clan) I swear, I started a Ventrue play through a while back, but can't find the saves anywhere. Oh well.

Picked up Jump Space to play with my son. It plays really nicely, but doesn’t yet do cross platform play, so no family time :(

Ok it's 2030 in my current game of Terra Invicta and i've taken the EU nation and combined it with spain. It has spain, portugal, france, germany, italy and some small european countries in it. I also have the usa, egypt and israel.

I'm starting to build some ships but it's gonna be tricky. I don't really have any super great drives yet or good weapons. My resources are ok and my research feels really good.

I'm the top human faction and killed my first alien operative but now it's getting tricky because the aliens weren't too happy about me killing the alien operative.

I've been addicted to Vampire: The Masquerade; Bloodlines. I'm almost at the end of the game now. This playthrough as a Ventrue is allowing me to do all the endings, including the two I haven't done yet. The Lacroix ending and the Kuei-Jin ending. I'm not sure which to do yet.

While the patch added some buffs to classes in Darktide, and a new enemy in the Plasma Gunner, it also made my experience very crash-prone. A hotfix patch dropped today, so hopefully gets fixed, but it usually takes a few more fixes to iron out the wrinkles.

Also finished a playthrough of Rogue Trader, almost completely Dogmatic in alignment aside from where it would cut content, with a few Iconoclastic options and no Heretic options chosen. Overall, a good amount of ending montages that aligned with my choices, but now I'm 100% convinced that planetary building choices do have affects on some of the montage slides, as there were some jarring endings to some of my colonies. Not in a rush to replay, but I'll remember that when the promised new content drops.

I don't remember who it was in this thread, as I'd have to go search a few pages, but turning in Marazai to the Inquisition after completing his content was an inspired choice and made a few endings more satisfying.

The playthrough was on Unfair, and I followed a guide from Steam discussions mostly to the letter. It was still challenging at times, but a properly specced and equipped Psyker/Bladedancer is broken.

What will I be playing when I get off work :

Dropped more money than I should have on a Crusader Kings 3 bundle this morning. Never played anything in the franchise, but the youtube shorts that have been hitting me make it look somewhat fun. I'll find out in about 9 hours!

Ok so a lot has happened since my last post in Terra Invicta. The game is currently at december 1st 2034 if i recall correctly. I'm also easily the strongest of the human factions in terms of most things except population percentage. I still own the usa, the super EU (which is much bigger), ireland, denmark, egypt and israel.

I have made the EU into a super country with a larger economy, research rate, more armies (but less navies) and a lot more mission control (space objects population cap basically) and boost income (the resource to get into space but it isn't a space resource).

I basically mostly just need to put ireland and denmark into the Super EU nation and but i own all of them. Greece is also not owned by me in this game yet and a bunch of eastern european countries that are mostly garbage individually in most cases. It's honestly probably more important at this point to egypt into a super nation with its surrounding nations and the caliphate research is even more insane than that.

Besides all that i'm being careful in space at the moment. Too much space activity will invite more hostile responses from the aliens which i will need a bunch of better drives and power plants for my space ships in order to fight them. I need them for both combat based and outpost/space station based ships.

I'm about halfway through Silksong and don't buy it unless you're a platformer or Metroidvania fan.
This is my first foray into the genre, and it's unironically considerably harder than Sekiro and Elden Ring.

Jagged Alliance 2, as suggested by a friend. Had to restart a couple times due to not picking the right stats for my custom merc.

Also doing a second playthrough of Fallout 1 and the nostalgia is hitting me like a bag of bricks. I only played it back in 2022 (after getting it for free off the Epic store) but seeing everything as I remember it is really something.

I'm currently playing Elden Ring; I've played about 16 hours... and I'm not entirely sure where the enthusiasm comes from. I finished DS2, DS3 (both with add-ons), and Bloodborne. I enjoyed them all, and when ER came out, I heard how the gameplay was refreshed and varied. And I don't see that at all. I feel like I'm playing the same game, like one of those people who buy a new Call of Duty or FIFA every year. It's not that the gameplay is particularly bad, but it's just that I've already seen it, even animations are the same. Nothing particularly captivates me or tempts me to continue playing.

For now, I have nothing else to play, so I sit down every now and then and play a little more, but I'm not as drawn to further exploration as I was in the studio's previous games.

Picked up No Man’s Sky over the weekend, having fun with that.

Slowly working though the original DoW campaign.

Picked up the Rouge Trader expansions, but got distracted by NMS before I could do a playthough with them. First and only time I played though was just the base game.

Cyel wrote:
I'm currently playing Elden Ring; I've played about 16 hours... and I'm not entirely sure where the enthusiasm comes from. I finished DS2, DS3 (both with add-ons), and Bloodborne. I enjoyed them all, and when ER came out, I heard how the gameplay was refreshed and varied. And I don't see that at all. I feel like I'm playing the same game, like one of those people who buy a new Call of Duty or FIFA every year. It's not that the gameplay is particularly bad, but it's just that I've already seen it, even animations are the same. Nothing particularly captivates me or tempts me to continue playing.

For now, I have nothing else to play, so I sit down every now and then and play a little more, but I'm not as drawn to further exploration as I was in the studio's previous games.

I feel like its got a very slow start. It kind of intentionally points you in the wrong direction to encourage you to explore but doesn't really give you a good idea of which boundaries are worth testing. Eventually it all clicked into place for me and I really got it. The game really wants you to comb the map and discover caves and mini dungeons early on. In particular finding the churches and saplings that upgrade your flasks, but there's not a lot of distinction early on between challenges meant to help you and the ones meant to dissuade you so it took me a while for everything to click into place.

 Nevelon wrote:
Picked up No Man’s Sky over the weekend, having fun with that.

Slowly working though the original DoW campaign.

Picked up the Rouge Trader expansions, but got distracted by NMS before I could do a playthough with them. First and only time I played though was just the base game.

I do love No man’s sky, and now it’s so full of stuff it’s easy to put lots of time into it.

I have been playing Digimon, it’s just cool. I’m enjoying it, it’s very easy to play. It’s great, and I like how it heals why I take a sip of my drink. Really just feels great to play.

 nels1031 wrote:
Dropped more money than I should have on a Crusader Kings 3 bundle this morning. Never played anything in the franchise, but the youtube shorts that have been hitting me make it look somewhat fun. I'll find out in about 9 hours!

After a few tries, I'm 90% confident that I gambled and lost on this. Might be a great game, but its not for me I think.

Going to watch a few tutorials at lunch and see if I can get in a groove and start to enjoy it.

Scraping through the bottom of my hardrive to see what old games are in there that I forgot about and never played. Just finished Tron Evolution which was ok. Now playing Vanquish which is totally insane and awesome.

I played Vanquish on PS3 years ago, it is indeed an excellent game!

Vanquish is so much fun. Such a funny little time capsule of that era of gaming too and my go to example of Japan trying to figure out what Amercians actually want alongside Bionic Commando.

Indeed. I knew it was zany but didn't know it was a Russian Invasion with Space Lasers and Giant Mecha Robots!

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Indeed. I knew it was zany but didn't know it was a Russian Invasion with Space Lasers and Giant Mecha Robots!

I love that this is a legitimate plot twist in the game:

My name isn’t really Mad Doc Grotsnik. I am really 45 years old.

And I’ve never, ever played a Final Fantasy Game. Just never got round to it.

Until now, as I’ve FF7 Remake awaiting me at the end of work.

Well, I say the end of work. I mean “when I get bored and wander off”.

I'm enjoying the Remake more than I expected. I'm not sure its where I would start with the franchise, but kind of the joy of it is that the games are all different enough that there's probably not really a wrong answer as long as its one of the good ones in general.

Is pretty cool so far. Cloud needs to cheer up though.

Cyel wrote:
I'm currently playing Elden Ring; I've played about 16 hours... and I'm not entirely sure where the enthusiasm comes from. I finished DS2, DS3 (both with add-ons), and Bloodborne. I enjoyed them all, and when ER came out, I heard how the gameplay was refreshed and varied. And I don't see that at all. I feel like I'm playing the same game, like one of those people who buy a new Call of Duty or FIFA every year. It's not that the gameplay is particularly bad, but it's just that I've already seen it, even animations are the same. Nothing particularly captivates me or tempts me to continue playing.

For now, I have nothing else to play, so I sit down every now and then and play a little more, but I'm not as drawn to further exploration as I was in the studio's previous games.

Limgrave and Weeping Peninsula are not good zones.

Go read about stance damage, jump attacks, weapon arts, charged attacks, guard counters, and status effects. Elden Ring's melee options are more varied and far stronger than DS3. A great mace build in ER is literally idiot proof and can brute-force the entire game. I've done a couple of UGS runs in DS3, and it doesn't compare. Elden Ring's melee combat is significantly better, but the game does a terrible job of explaining it.

Simple builds - Any straight sword with Square Off weapon art. You can literally start with this weapon. The strong attack variant will stance break bosses for critical strikes in 2-3 hits. You can get a heal off a critical hit talisman in Limgrave. Another option is a katana with Unsheathe, but that is slightly weaker (3-4 hits to stance break).
You can get Lion's Claw Ash of War (weapon art in Caelid), and congrats, you've won the game if you have the sense to put it on a great mace or colossal weapon. It does even more stance damage than Square Off and hyperarmors through just about everything.