Still playing Octopath Traveler, it’s alright, although with some really rough spots. I should hopefully be done soon though.

It has some neat mechanics, like hitting enemies with their weakness to eventually stun them and cause them to take more damage, but it also leads to a lot of fights (mostly against trash mobs) that take far too long, because you might not be able to exploit that weakness well or at all (unless you like constantly changing your party for the current area).

Also, as the name of the game suggests, there are eight playable characters, with a party size of four. You might think you could easily have an A and B squad, but for some reason, one character is fixed and can’t be changed. This leads to this one character being massively higher level than the other party members at times, and because there’s no exp for inactive party members, makes keeping everyone else roughly the same level a real pain. I just had a main party and would occasionally swap in one of the lower level guys to do their story.

Speaking of story, it’s pretty boring. Every character has four chapters (dunno if there’s more for the whole group afterward) and almost all of them play out the same. Start a story with some exposition, gather intel by speaking with a few NPCs, a bit more exposition, go to a short dungeon, fight a boss, exposition, done. By the way, your whole party never shows up in the “cutscenes,” it’s always just the single character, whose story you’re doing.

I played a few games that were just really mediocre.

• Warhammer 40k: Inquisitor was a super boring ARPG and I couldn’t put in more than a few hours. The levels were super short and just corridors.
• Pathfinder: Kingmaker started out ok, but was just far too long, terribly paced, and the last third was a complete slog. This was probably the one I’d call a “stinker” the most.
• Crisis Core Remake (FF7 spin off) had a boring story and lame characters. The bulk of the “content” were 300 side missions that were usually less than five minutes long in one of like six stages. I picked it up after I enjoyed the FF7 Remake far more than I thought, but this game adds nothing to the overall story. To be fair to the game though, I did complete all 300 side stories, because from time to time I like a mindless grind.
• I’m continuing my four-year-old save of Octopath Traveler, where I got a third or so in. I dunno if it’s the Steam Deck, but there’s just tons of aliasing, shifting sprites and flickering, it just looks bad, and the detailed enemy sprites were the only thing I really liked about the game in the first place. Combat is also a slog at times, so I don’t know if I have it in me to finish the game.

They had expectations like Square Enix for their western titles. Anything below 10 million sales or something is a flop.

I finished Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII- Reunion and even 100% it. I still think the game is mostly a waste of time, that adds very little to the overall FF7 story. The characters (that aren’t from FF7) are super boring, and the main antagonist is probably one of the lamest in any game. If I wasn’t sick that one weekend, I’d probably not have bothered to go through those side quests, but at that point it was an alright, mindless grind. Asking 50€ for this seems completely insane to me.

Also, finally unlocked all characters in Risk of Rain Returns. Starting with so few items is always a pain in games like this, but once things get going and there’s more variety, it just gets much more fun.

So I’m between games once again, and don’t have anything specific lined up right now. I was holding out for Rogue Trader, but Owlcat being themselves, it seems like it’d be best to wait a few months for patches.

I did a bunch of runs of Peglin on my Deck, and finally managed to clear a Cruciball 10 run (small difficulty increases, that you can unlock after you finish the game, like the Heat system in Hades, just that you can’t choose the modifiers).

Then I decided to give the first Octopath Traveller another shot, also on the Deck. I loaded up my four year old save, where I made it like a third through the game. Of course, I have no idea what’s going on, and I was directly before a boss fight, but managed. I’ll try to go through a few chapters and then decide if I want to keep playing.

yes, he lied to players about that, and he’s apologized many times for that

And I’d like to see one of those apologies. With my surface level searches, I’ve found nothing.

Although I’m pretty sure there never was and never will be a direct apology, since that probably opens them up to litigation, but that’s just baseless speculation on my part.

Saying they’ll create (fantasy) earth seems like a lot, to me that’s not just some random rock in space, but who knows.

Are you pretending they didn’t lie? Sean Murray didn’t say the game had multiplayer even after it was released?

The developers literally spent YEARS adding to the game, completely for free, but they don’t “respect their players”?

They ever apologized for lying for years to the players, who they respect so much?

Since Sean Murray went right back to promising everything, it doesn’t look like it. Although from the reception it looks like gamers haven’t either.

I’m nearing the end of Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII- Reunion. It’s still really mediocre, but I got into that mindless grind of those 300 side missions. The main story is pretty lame, the only interesting bits are those directly connected to FF7, basically when you’re in Nibelheim, although even that is a bit of a let-down.

I also played more on my Steam Deck than expected, mainly because I got sick a few days ago and would just dabble a bit here and there while lying down. I did a some Vampire Survivors runs, but it’s basically always the same, so I need to look into those unlocks I’m missing. Then I tried Boneraiser Minions, but I’m not sure about this one. It’s a Vampire Survivors-like, but here you summon different skeletons to fight for you. The first few runs felt really slow and boring, but some of the unlocks improved it somewhat. I’m still not sure about the minions fighting for you thing though, since it feels a bit too RNG, but I’ll give it a bit more time.

The dialogue, a lot of useless fluff dialogues that takes extra 2 seconds for the characters to animate. If there’s 10 people in the scene, then those 10 feel the need to chime in to say something frivolous.

I haven’t played the game, so I don’t know how that’s handled exactly, but I played a bunch of CRPGs these last few months and I wish the companions in those games were more like this. 99% of the time it’s just the MC talking with one or two other people, and it’s just so boring.

The constant interruption of the flow. You gained control of your character, moved to main/side quest point, cutscene, walked forward 10 steps, another cutscene. And the problem is, most cutscenes are just insubstantial.

This is just super annoying. I’m going through the same thing in Crisis Core right now, where you’re interrupted by a tiny cutscene every few steps in the main missions. Just make one longer cutscene, or tell me whatever useless thing you wanted to say, while I’m playing.

Taking it a bit slow this week after more than 200h of Pathfinder Kingmaker the last month.

More Risk of Rain Returns. I finished all the Providence Trials, that I have available, the only ones missing are for the two characters I haven’t unlocked yet. I gotta say, those trials are a nice way to unlock and get to know most of the alternative abilities.

Next I started Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII- Reunion. I’m in chapter 3 currently, and so far it’s not that interesting. You can pretty easily tell that it’s based on a 16y/o PSP game, even if it’s a remake. The cinematics look alright, but are full of upscaling artifacts. The animations are pretty stiff at times, which is a bit disappointing, since I thought FF7R did that really well. As for the combat, it’s kinda one-note. You only have one attack button, along with four materia slots, so you can do some super basic chains. Although, since those four slots also include pure stat increases, like HP Up, you might just run around with one or two offensive abilities, so it can feel really samey. The main missions are really annoying, since you get a short cutscene every few steps, it feels like. Outside the main missions, you have tons of tiny side missions (300 apparently). So far these have been super short, like less than five minutes most of the time, four or five environments, and almost all in linear corridors. To be honest though, I like a mindless grind like this from time to time, I just wish the rest was a bit better. I will keep playing though, since the game is on the shorter side, so it shouldn’t be too bad.

Then, I also got me one of those new Steam Deck OLEDs, and sold my old one for cheap to a friend. I haven’t played a lot on it yet, tried Crisis Core and Risk of Rain Returns, and did like two runs in Peglin, but I quite like it. I barely used my old one (I found the fan to be super annoying), and this OLED model might end up the same, but the improvements are really great. Even during Crisis Core, which had the GPU at 90%+ and the chip at 20W TDP, it was pretty quiet and a more pleasant frequency, same with Nioh 2. Maybe I should replay Ori and the Will of the Wisps on it, since everyone’s always saying how great the HDR is in the game and how beautiful it can look on an OLED screen.

I got one of those new Steam Deck OLEDs today and am thinking about getting some casual games for that (even though I got a ton of stuff in my backlog).

Dave the Diver is currently the forerunner, and maybe Mega Man Battle Network. I might just wait until the Steam Winter Sale though, since the prices won’t be worse, and maybe even a tiny bit better.

Finally done with Pathfinder: Kingmaker. This is a bad game, that nobody should play. The last third was a complete slog and not fun at all. Far too many fights and just full of enemies with bloated health. The post-game epilogue cards, where you get told what happened with your kingdom and companions, was pretty nice though.

I will give the developer, Owlcat, another chance with Rogue Trader, that’s getting released soon, although I’ll wait for some early reports of the game first, since buggy / broken launches seem to be par for the course for them.

Other than that, I also played more Risk of Rain Returns. I managed to beat the game a second time, but I’m just far too inconsistent. I think I’ll do some of the Providence Trials next week and unlock more skills and try some more characters.

Since I don’t agree with your initial premise, that review scores are faked or kept high to please the publishers, I also don’t agree that people are being lied to or swindled by them.

And sometimes the original Lords of the Fallen is exactly what you want to play, even if everyone else says it’s bad. That’s entirely my point. General consensus of “good” and “bad” means nothing. Equating popularity and quality is dumb

In a perfect world, where everyone has infinite time and money, sure, just do whatever. However, this world doesn’t exist, so most people probably want to avoid wasting their time or money. That’s why reviews exist.

I also think, most of the time you can equate popularity and quality to some extent. Not that the most popular are the best, but they’re usually at a decently high level. There are always going to be exceptions, of course, and not everyone will like everything.

Once a generation you might get a Death Stranding 2 or something, and really enjoy it, but other times you’re stuck with the original Lords of the Fallen, because you like Souls-likes, and that’s your only game this month or quarter.

And yes, of course, just because a game is rated highly doesn’t mean you’ll enjoy it. Still, unless you have really specific tastes, the chance that you’re going to enjoy a highly rated game, compared to a mediocre one, is much higher, in my opinion, doesn’t matter if something looks interesting.

I’m also talking about a hypothetical, mainstream consumer here, because those are the ones that a review score is for.

What I mean is even if a game looks interesting, but then I see it’s mixed on Steam or has a bunch of 5/10 reviews, I’d probably give that a pass. There might be a chance it’s some hidden gem or totally up my alley, but why risk it? I’d rather play it safe, and give the 9/10 game a chance, even if the premise isn’t that compelling.

Once you are able to just not care about the money, this can definitely shift. If it turns out that interesting game sucks to play, doesn’t matter, just buy something else.

Risk of Rain Returns was released last week, and I’m having fun with that. It looks fantastic and plays well, for the most part. Some parts feel a bit clunky, since you can only shoot forwards and have to wait for the animation to finish before you can turn around. However, the developers said in the first hotfix patch logs, that they’ll implement controls to specifically shoot left or right, so that will be less of an issue, once that’s implemented. The current behavior definitely made me avoid some characters, just because it’s kind of a pain in frantic fights, where you’re getting swarmed by enemies.

So far I beat the game once, on the default difficulty, with the Loader, but I’m still unlocking stuff, learning, getting used to everything, but mostly just sucking.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker just doesn’t want to end, and it’s starting to get really tedious. After three story chapters back-to-back, and me thinking it might finally pick up the pace, the game throws you a curveball and has like 1–2 years of in-game downtime. Nothing happens, except for the occasional side quest, that takes like five minutes to complete. Who thought that’s a good idea? Yesterday, I finally made it to the next chapter, so I might be able to finish it this week (for real this time).

So many weird design choices, along with a lot of bugs, make it really hard to recommend this game to anyone. I still want to play the sequel, eventually (I wanna be a swarm that eats everything, even though it’s supposed to suck), but some of the things I’ve read don’t really sound appealing.

Scores are just too engrained in this whole review thing at this point, not even just in video games. There was a small movement a few years ago to get away from scores, but not enough big publications joined in, so it didn’t catch on.

just go play the games that interest you, stop caring about scores

Sometimes it’s not that easy, mainly if you can’t just afford every game that catches your eye.

Still Pathfinder: Kingmaker, but I should be able to finish it this coming week.

It feels like I’m always complaining about the game, but it just does have a lot of issues. The gameplay (meaning combat and exploring) is still good enough for me to put up with it though.

The story kinda picks up now, a shame it only happens after I’m already 100h into the game. Even then, there are a bunch of things that don’t make sense. Some parts that your character should know about, but you can ask about it again and again at different points, as if you’re hearing it for the first time. The DLC I did after the third act was ok. The pacing for the quests continues to baffle me. After a cool 200-day gap between Act 3 and 4, now you don’t get any downtime at all. Everything is happening at once, with new notifications for events popping up constantly.

So, the game was originally just RTwP, and turn-based combat was added later via a mod, which was then officially implemented by the devs (I think). Because of this, I’ve been giving the game a pass for minor issues in combat, but this week was just bad at times. The game loves to eat parts of your turn constantly. I think it happens when you’re right at the limit between a normal move action and a double move. The game shows you’ll be able to attack, but then you’re just one pixel too far away and your attack just gets skipped. You can’t even use it for something else, like cast a spell. There are also some other small things, that wouldn’t matter by themselves, but when something small happens all the time, it starts to get annoying.