Ya Annapurna is responsible for publishing a bunch of the indie-darling storytelling games over the last five years. I’ve played a few of them and found them all to be of high quality, even if they weren’t exactly my cup of tea. Recently played through If Found which was…fine, but at least it explored some interesting themes, had a decent aesthetic, and took place in a unique setting (a small island that’s part of Ireland with a presumably insular community).
Sniper Elite 5 basically the exact same game as all the other sniper elite games, A+, this somehow never gets old for me.
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Is the league as bad as Reddit says it is? Chris Wilson’s post was pretty tone def on the matter. League starts Wednesday for console.
It’s definitely not as bad as Reddit says it is. For one, build diversity is really high. There are 17 non-redundant skills and 16 ascendancies above 2% usage on the ladder, and no one skill is above 9% right now. As much shit as GGG rightly deserves for the +2 range Cleave buff, they really did buff some underperforming skills to viability while tamping down the leaders enough so that there doesn’t appear to be a dominant skill. Righteous fire is still going strong, but that’s on the strength of smooth mechanics and one dedicated guide who put out an A+ guide on it to make it smooth to both get started and to progress. I don’t think anyone would say that it’s broken. The new skill, lightning conduit, looks like it’s really strong, so that’s another hit.
But there is something off with the loot. The Lake is especially bad, as you get reward chests (from the generic tiles, fire, cold, lightning, chaos, and physical) that don’t put out as much as the small chests in Heist, let alone the big ones. Grimro put out a video where he got literally nothing from one of them. And then for the tiles associated with league content, a lot are pretty underwhelming. Delirium? You get a mirror, on a circular rather than extended layout that may not even be at the start of the lake. Not horrible, but not great, and there’s nothing special about it. Domination? You literally get 3 shrines and the monsters. No chest, nothing else. The 3 essences you get are a at least decent as their own reward, but essence monsters seem even tougher this league than at the start of last league, which is an absurd thing to type, because they were nuts at the start of last league. Metamorph gives you a rogue metamorph of randomly assembled organs, not the reward organs you chose, so you very likely will get fuck-all. The harbingers feel okish, but mainly because I’m starved for alchs due to the unique drop rate nerf (and the following). It’s a far cry from Chris’s advertisement that the rewards on the lake would feel not like ordinary rewards of the past league content but comparable to an atlas-passive-juiced version of that.
It’s not just the lake, though. Empyrean put out a video of what super juiced maps looked like in past leagues vs. this one in his 6-man magic find groups, and it’s just sad. Like, it’s enough to catch the eye of some loot-starved players, but it’s obviously way, way down, not just in the valuable drops but in just bulk trash for the chaos recipe or whatever.
Harvest got a worse fate than deletion. I figured you’d get fewer crafts per plot in order to make them itemizable, but you’re now getting less than one basic craft per plot, and sometimes you get literally zero life force from a plot. How much does that make you want to come back? It’s not clear that high end crafters will pay enough of a premium for life force from the few people who bother with harvest now to make it worth doing at all.
So yeah, the only thing that really feels like it’s worth doing right now is Heist, and even it got got a little bit. The unique reward chests from brute strength contracts and the like seemed like they may be actually worth something, since uniques would be rarer. They now drop only 1-2 items instead of 5+ like before.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/wui7bs/wheel_of_leagues/
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Heh. Thanks for the write up. I’m still planning on playing quite a bit since I have nothing else to sink my teeth into. It’s pretty astonishing how a developer can have such a different vision of their game from the players. I assume they will come back with more fixes but who knows at this point.
Really enjoying Across the Obelisk so far, its basically slay the spire + darkest dungeon with roguelite elements. You control 4 heroes instead of 1 ala spire, and fight in classic darkest dungeon style but each hero has a buildable deck as in spire. Have only played two runs solo but its also supposed to be geared towards up to 4 player co-op with each person presumably controlling 1 hero and deciding on their builds and decks etc.
Look, I’m just trying to complete all the Dragonball Z quests in Fortnite so I can get a cool glider.
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Applying the GGG triple-tap nerf to all loot is an interesting business decision. I wasn’t planning on playing much, but that turned into probably not at all when I leveled and ran my first ~20 maps, resulting in a currency stash with 8c and 3 alchs. I’ve played this game a lot over the years and doing it again, but massively slower doesn’t sound like a good use of my time.
I would drop everything I’m doing to play this game.
Sounds cool but also maybe a bit heavy on the fiddling and management? The older I get the more aversion I have to those things in my games.
destiny 2 and all its expansions free to play til the 29th
I didnt even know a new expansion was out. heard they added a grappling hook. dunno how I feel about it yet.
this is one of my favorite games for obsessively playing for 2 weeks and then forgetting about it for a year, coming back and being able to pick it up again. not many games, especially mmo-ish type games like this can pull that off.
The Fiend div card popped up in a ritual on my 3rd map. Let’s see how long it takes to get.
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Finally making my way through dark souls 3 and its astonishing how much better a game elden ring is than it.
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People are MAD about the PoE changes. I’m too new to know how different this is from the old
There is some of this but it is mostly in between runs. There is no inventory management or hundreds of items to pick up or anything. Basically if you like slay the spire or monster train, you will like this.
destiny 2: witch queen delivers. 5/5 mt dews. lfm for my fireteam, already have my own clan
all dlc is free all weekend
Disagree, I enjoyed DS3 a million times more than Elden Ring. I ended up quitting Elden Ring basically three separate times due to frustration with various aspects of the design and frankly did not enjoy cavorting around the open world at all. The only moments I genuinely enjoyed from my 12 or so hours of playing was dueling with Magrit and finally defeating him. Everyone said to just try Stormveil Castle before quitting but after dying to some stupid mobs for the tenth time outside the castle I finally gave up for good.
OTOH I basically enjoyed every second of DS3, which I just played and completed for the first time a few weeks ago, except for the occasional frustration on the later bosses. Give me the sweet sweet focused linearity of a Dark Souls game over trying to figure out where to go in an open world any day of the week.
I keep seeing stuff about PS5s being available now and I’m thinking I’m still good with my old ass PS4. Are there any big or promising games coming out that are only PS5? I played Horizon Forbidden West on PS4, about to order Elden Ring for it, and have no idea if I’m missing much of anything.
I think the FF VII Remake sequel is what will get me to break down assuming it doesnt come to PC or PS4