What games are you playing atm? V2

again, no full png with game review.
for past 2 months, it was a struggle for me.

my pc causing a random restart issue, that i couldnt troubleshoot
at the end i just buy pc parts hope for the best. partial future proofing to prepare for mh wilds as well.
in meantime, i watched alot of anime while cleaning my room (got smart tv as monitor afterall)

several games that im completed / played :
1. Hi-FI Rush : couldnt push myself to clear stage 2. level are extremely long with its boring corridor -> arena -> corridor -> arena design. ppl said it is easy game but i just didnt like non-arena area much (somehow it remind me of doom eternal gameplay loop) minus secret / puzzles
2. Gal*Gun : Double Peace : the game where turn anime girl esctasy with your angel gun. I already played the VR version, so this is kinda no brainer. It was fun for a while but then i noticed it required alot of short playthrough to 100% it. Havent touch after 2 playthroughs, got alot of completionist stuff as well like getting all girl's 3 body sizes
3. Zoeti : Poker meet slaythespire, except it have some visual novel storytelling. There isnt much to say about it above mediocre game. You can customize "your hand" like 2pair, full house, flush where you need to balance between defensive or dealing damage. 3 Different characters with different playstyle.
4. Just Cause 3 : went back to 100% the game except i just learn that it doesnt have cloud save. I tried to find post-game savefile online only to learn that it already 100% most of the annoying part. So i just find achievement specific savefile and cleared everything.
5. Dying Light : Just like JC3, i reinstall with hope i could explore all game modes and get 100% achievement. The game is still annoying as heck to complete so i just focus on the achievements. But alas, several of them are required full coop team and I leave that for later.
6. Grow Home : small ubisoft game that I pretty restart from beginning. Climbing hundred meter to sky while clearing several small objectives for achievement. Got 100% of it pretty quickly
7. Astrea : Six-sided Oracles : One of hella tricky roguelike dice-deckbuilder. Unique mechanic where it is ok to take some damage with purify vs corrupt. Hard to grasp at beginning, but become much easier as the game is kinda more generous than slaythespire (you can make thin deck easily)
8. Coral Island : My biggest time sink for past 2 months. Simply said it is 3d version of stardew valley with more hot looking NPCs and new underwater trash clearance activity. Game is abit buggy at current form, although they streamlined the progression now. Sank like 200 hours of it (my sdv only 120 hours)

Couple of games installed atm:
1. Steamworld Quest : RPG meet deckbuilder. Should be short game but i have been chipping at game slowly with 1 level per day. Hate it at first and it become more complex toward mid of the game
2. DRG Survivor : Reinstall this game again for 2nd time this year for steam award. Still getting decent updates albeit abit slower than i wanted.
3. Shadow warrior 3 : game that i bought because it was on sale, then i noticed my cpu couldnt handle it stutter & long loading time. Now with my new pc it become more bearable. Still dont like the game for some reason, will just focus on completing the story
4. GTA 5 : finding a game that i think bottlenecked my cpu last time (i couldnt install poe when no new league), so decided on this. still doesnt push me forward to play, i think i been brainwashed with ubisoft formula with its map marker
5. Genshin : alot of new stuff now. First time i think i fall behind alot since fontaine / sumeru. Mostly because i was saving up for pyro archon and i need to hold my gambling addiction for another 1 month at least (many new characters are more flavourful playstyle wise)

*long rant felt like have been become my staple. I still alive, but it just feeling burnt out everyday that I dont even want to write full review for video game and anime. I still do review on steam itself or updating my MAL though.

Cant believe its finally here in Early Access.

I'd rather had another average POE league right now over this steaming pile of shit.

GET BACK TO WORK!

The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria™ follows the Dwarves as they embark on a new adventure to reclaim their legendary home of Moria beneath the Misty Mountains. Players will join forces to survive, craft, build and explore the iconic, sprawling mines. Courageous expeditioners will need to be vigilant as mysterious dangers await.

I really need get back to writing reviews just keep my sanity. I did complete alot of games and anime, but it have been dull back to back for past 2 weeks. Mostly i just wrote review on steam or add entry to myanimelist. Itching for crafting survival, i install this free game i got from epic.

To be honest, Im not excited to play as another dwarf game that focus solely on digging through tunnels. I really want to drop the game at beginning because how it was. The game is pretty challenging, despite i choose normal difficulty. Mostly because if you die, you have to do the corpse walking back to retrieve your gears back. Considering how reckless I always be, backtracking is become very tedious until about 1/3 of the progress. Then I took my time to learn all the system and build a decent size base.

Unlike other open world games, this is more toward corridor exploration. Your base generally have to be small and you have to keep making forward base. Thankfully, the deconstruction system will return every materials back 100%. The teleport system also quite generous, but generally i refrain to teleport back to my big base since it load quite slow (even on my fast new pc). Personally, I wish the game have more things to do, specifically the amount of thing you can craft. Game solely relied on tier system, and generally you will fall behind 1 tier, until you slowly built up material for said region.

Not perfect game, but not exactly bad either. I truly enjoyed the set pieces / world of the game. I didnt go crazy making super huge base, instead just focusing on preparing enough stuff to venture deeper. I think, maybe another 6 or 12 months, game would be much better once they get couple of new patches. They already announced new QoL update that will be release next week (their big patch seem every 4 months)

tl;dr play only if you have friend, albeit slow for solo (just like valheim)

Death lurks deep below

Captain your fishing trawler to explore a collection of remote isles, and their surrounding depths, to see what lies below. Sell your catch to the locals and complete quests to learn more about each area’s troubled past. Outfit your boat with better equipment to trawl deep-sea trenches and navigate to far-off lands, but keep an eye on the time. You might not like what finds you in the dark...

One of the "youtuber famous" games that i saw several times for past couple of years. So when I saw the game is given away for free from epic, I immediately install to see what so special about it.

Just like other mysterious games, you will thrown into a world where you as fisherman must work to catch some fishes as daily routines. Atmosphere of the game is pretty creepy, enhanced if you playing with game controller. You also need to keep check on your sanity meter, else there will be alot of abnormality that can damage your boats, making you lose some precious cargo. Throughout the game, you will exploring multiples island in each corners of the map that have own set of mystery that you need to solve.

As fan of crafting survival games, this game is really right my alley. You pretty much just need to monitor the time of the day, while trying to make profit by selling fishes. Then you sell and upgrades so you can capture even more fishes. Although there arent much you can do in this games. Despite there are many of the side quests, it is pretty much all related to fetch quests or deliver specific fishes. The horror part become nothing, once you upgrade alot your ship as you can simply outrun them.

At first, I was intriguing by the plot. Then i noticed the loop is kinda abit slow with fetch quest. But the nail in the coffin is definitely the ending. Which pretty much just slap on your balls.

tl;dr I dont recommend to play. But if you want to, use controller since vibration bring intensity of horror alot

I’ve had my share of PC troubles, too. Random crashes drove me insane until I ended up replacing half my build. I get the burnout feeling, though. I’ve been diving into CS2 lately since it’s such a good escape, especially tweaking my skins collection. Learning about skins wear levels helped me make better trades and find some nice deals.

Bought Age of Empires 2 definitive edition - man, what a blast from a past.

Somebody built this GODDANG WALL

Welcome to the Wall World, a mining rogue-lite with tower defense elements. Explore procedurally generated mines and discover fantastical biomes. Find resources and technologies for purchasing valuable upgrades. Fight off hordes of aggressive monsters using your mobile base. Roam the Wall freely day and night, in various weather conditions. Find traces of "the others" and boldly mine where no man has mined before.

I feel irritated so much because I installed bunch of games I got from humble bundles & epic games store, and none sticky enough for me to keep playing. Almost reaching last day of steam sale, I just picked up bunch of games that included this dome keeper inspired game.

Not to delve much, Dome Keeper bored at beginning because how slow the game was. This game however is opposite. It is super fast from the get go. Sure, you will die couple of first times as you learning the game. Then the game gave you powerful meta-progression upgrades that can vastly improve your mining and combat ability. Also, as opposed to static base, your spider mech can move around which you can explore and find new minerals to fuel your upgrades. And when the time ran out, you had to prepare for horde fights.

With dopamine rush when playing this game, definitely you have urgency to go fast. However the game do suffered alot from quirky minor things that annoyed me alot. Vacuum physic is wonky, where stuff will overshoot your character. Upgrade UI is horrible, especially when you have like 20 different gadgets (imagine flipping book 20 times to get to right page) and overall difficulty progression is weird. Base game is so easy while DLC is right difficulty for me. But i think worst part is thing that you catch you offguard with location specific event trigger)

On discount, this game is super cheap and i think it worth for the time spent. Obviously you can find better deal for time : price ratio with older cheap AAA game, but i think i had fun finishing this game in just 2 days. The experience is vastly different than dome keeper and I really wish the developer could improve or add more contents to the game, but I doubt it (last update was 1 year ago)

tl;dr get the game if you ok with short game, set hard difficulty for base game and normal difficulty for DLC

I should stop rushing crafting survival games.

Conan Exiles is an online multiplayer survival game, now with sorcery, set in the lands of Conan the Barbarian. Enter a vast, open-world sandbox and play together with friends and strangers as you build your own home or even a shared city. Survive freezing cold temperatures, explore loot-filled dungeons, develop your character from scavenging survivor to mighty barbarian and powerful sorcerer, and fight to dominate your enemies in epic siege wars.

After finishng Ark Survival Evolved with my friend long time ago, I asked my game discord channel either this game is better than ark or not. They said it is good and I should give it a try.

From the get go, everything feel smooth. I dunno if it was because of my recent pc upgrade or the developer just did big performance updates to the game. Regardless, I will try to compare first time player experience between 2 mentioned game. As new player, learning the game is pretty straightforward. The game provided you with tons of "mini objectives" that cover various aspect such as crafting, harvest, building and combat. Speaking of combat, that definite the good aspect of this game which required to stamina management when fighting tougher enemy.

But as usual with many crafting survival games, there are just too many system that is overwhelming for solo player. As harsh realistic world, the game allow you to capture enemy and turn them pretty much to your slave. The thrall system, are pretty much essential since it boost your crafting as well as help you fight through the game "abit clunky" combat. My biggest issue is definitely the gearing. Everything seem like boiled to just couple of tier and you have to go pretty far to obtain them.

To help me with solo playthrough, I pretty much just crank up the server settings so it will be more comfortable. As traveling get more tedious since it is so freaking huge, i ended up using alot admin teleport to from one dungeon to another. That explained why I blazed through the content pretty much, despite ppl estimate you might need to grind like hundred of hours to reach the end.

tl;dr I think I can only recommend this if you at least have small group of people. The scale is not intended for solo player, even with many speed up setting. While the dungeon is nice, I dont think that is main selling point of the game

Cycle of deaths & suffering.

Hades is a god-like rogue-like dungeon crawler that combines the best aspects of Supergiant's critically acclaimed titles, including the fast-paced action of Bastion, the rich atmosphere and depth of Transistor, and the character-driven storytelling of Pyre.

I will be honest that Im still in shock state after finishing this game. This review will be long than usual because I need to say everything that I felt when playing this game from start to finish, so it wouldnt be the usual "the good, the bad, the summary & tldr" format as usual. I got this game from recent steam sale after wishlisted it for YEARS.

You probably know, I played video games. While generally I considered my decent, there are still many skill based game that I couldnt conquer like Risk of Rain 2 or Dead Cells (only won base difficulty), so I was kinda expected this game that got 98% positive reviews to be somehow accessible for many players. Thus Im suffering like the protagonist. Your character is pretty weak at start, which required you to farm some meta progression materials while talking to many NPCs that help in your journey. At this point, I was having so many issues with the graphic visual clutter that I have to resort to reshade just to reduce the flashy lights the game have.

After failing in many attempt, I just decided that I need help so I turned on the god mode which reduced the damage taken (20% at beginning, +2% for every death) since I just couldnt be patience enough to beat the final boss. Regardless, the first kill was a nice victory and then you finally learnt more about the story on why you need to keep reaching for the surface (i wont spoil it here). Along the way, you will give options to use multiple weapons that have some variety of gameplay, especially when you combined with several god powers. After about 10 wins, then you finally "win the game" and see the credit. I would say that, this credit removed all my previous pains.

At this point, I already noticed that the game is VERY REPETITIVE. It is failed as roguelite since the variance inbetween runs is too small especially map layout you pretty much will breeze through easily. The game kinda stretching what couldve been 20 hours to 50++ hours (I have no freaking idea how ppl said the game have content for 1000++ hours) So i just install several mods that made the game more bareable, such as more meta-progression upgrades & community balances (kinda made the game easier), more QoL, some annoying poison mod and several RNG mitigation (since getting specific god powers combination is really painfully RNG). While it made the game easier, I still try to grind game manually, instead of making everything free.

Now come my biggest issues. The game sold that narratives will be given as you keep playing the game. The problem is, instead of some sort meaningful discussion between 2 characters, you only get many many short 1 liner that feel either edgy or quirky. Especially when protagonist will say random line regarding what action you are doing. If lets say you need to talk to NPC 50 times (exagerated, but sometimes NPC doesnt appear at your house), imagine if you do a short 15 minute runs, that alone is like 12.5 hours only 1 NPC. One of the endgame achievements, is pretty much required you to be talk to every NPCs many many times, easily wasted hours (suicide runs is recommended apparently).

The game is not bad per say, but the criteria of people who enjoy this are : either ok with punishing gameplay, can keep track story that only given small bites with edgy family issues, never played any ARPG or DMC-like game, heck even survivor-like game have more fun gameplay. To make matter worse, I just played open world greek mythology game that I adored last year (Immortal Fenyx Rising), so visual novel style story telling bored me.

tl;dr dont get hyped by its super positive score, research carefully if you want to buy it. I really hate the whole time i played the game

EDITED AFTER MY PURE HATRED MIND CLEARANCE :
Game that feel similar with topdown ARPG that i think i have more fun with
Curse of dead gods (methodical roguelite), Darksiders Genesis (more epic adventure), Full Metal Furies (witty, funny, fun loadout), Victor Vran (casual controller ARPG)
That not counting many games i played like : any souls like, any metroidvania, any other game with better roguelite system