I think Nier: Automata was probably my favorite out of this year’s batch, which is saying a lot. Final Fantasy was short enough, but not that type of game that I would want to play without a guide these days.
I took advantage of a Black Friday sale to finally sign up to Playstation Plus (extra), and it looks like Disco Elysium is next up.
I played 500+ hours of two Last of Us games, a bunch of Cyperpunk and Fallout New Vegas. Not sure if I played anything that was actually released in 2024 besides the Last of Us Part 2 remaster.
I got a game over less then 5 minutes into my first run of Disco Elysium because my character had a heart attack when he tried to grab his necktie from a slowly spinning ceiling fan.
people tried to tell me this half a decade ago or longer but divinity 2 original sin by larian (same dev as bg3) is stupidly good, def better than bg3, at least in terms of the RPG elements and character building. I also find the story much more interesting, and story is usually a thing I struggle to pay attention to in crpg’s. I find myself reading every little note and trinket because i’m genuinely rewarded for it and interested, rather than the tedious chore it often is in other games or bg3. The combat system is vastly superior than the modified dnd 5e ruleset they slapped on to this identical engine in bg3. There’s much more flexibility in character design and the story does an extremely good job of walking that tightrope of making you feel “powerful” without being completely broken. I’m about to enter the last act and honestly never felt this way even once in bg3 which at times often felt like a chore. The item collection is amazing - there are very few items you can pick up in the game that dont have some utility, and even if they dont, the item will usually say in its description “worthless” or “meant to be sold.” inventory space is practically inexhaustible which is super nice QoL wise in a game like this, which often tries to constrain you for absolutely no reason and it just comes off as annoying busywork to manage correctly.
also dos2 is noticeably more difficult, perhaps unfairly so. I’m not even playing on the hardest difficulty and I’ve already broken one controller. also very little rng compared to the dnd 5e dice rolling mechanics - most actions are pretty much guaranteed to happen if you are able to do them.
Yeah it’s my GF and mine favorite split screen game. Unfortunately there is not that much replay value, also if you’re not that deep yet or can change during the campaign, I def recommend the hardest difficulty.
The start is the hardest by far, any other difficulty will become trivial, soon.
On hardest, you might have to genocide the first place / island in order to get to a level you can beat it, at the very least find and kill all hostiles.
ETA: just read you’re almost at the last act, so disregard the above. If you want a very easy time, just build for action economy / turn / action point resets, I don’t know the name of the skills anymore but it’s kinda obvious.
The combat suffers from the same thing BG3 and imo most RPGs do: fights hardly get harder during a fight, so if you manage to take one enemy out of the group, it will only get easier, so to me a fight is often “over” once one or two enemies get killed.
Also, the teleporting pyramids are my favorite feature in any co-op game and we wish we had them in any co-op game we have played ever since, haha.
I’m on classic which is what dos2 reddit suggests bg3 tactitian players should start with. I had 2 other 15 hourish starts in the last 5 years, one which stalled out at the end of fort joy and the other one in the marshes - this time I just built duo summoner + 1 archer and my tank main guy and combat isnt terribly hard as long as I position right. I can think of a few fights where it gets harder - notably the controller break I experienced where when fighting the high priest guy (forget his name) before you get on the boat at end of act 2, you’re already way likely to be underleveled for that fight and then a level 15 voidwoken spawns at the end of it right on top of you and you’re expected to just somehow deal with it. that was one of the fights i ended up just straight up “cheating” with stupid cheese, which seems necessary far more often than it should be, which would be my only real complaint. The other fight that comes to mind is mordus - he can transform into a 3,000 HP ridiculousness in the late stages of that fight if you do not cc him.
a big breakthrough on this run was discovering (on my own, i dont see many guides online saying to do this) how ridiculous torturer is + worm tremor. you get worm tremor stupid early, aoe guaranteed root for 3 turns and 3 AP makes a lot of otherwise difficult fights very trivial early on.
For me the hardest fight is in the desert, fighting all those exploding blobs while trying to keep that NPC friend alive. Last playthrough (which was years ago, getting old…) we teleported him away to safety but he still ran back into the inferno, then I teleported him into one of the little huts (maybe even paralyed him for good measure?) so he wouldn’t be able to leave and kill himself - but that bugged him out and he became catatonic.
lol, I’m not quite there but have seen enough whining on reddit to know the exact fight you’re talking about. 3/4 of my guys are necros with the death resist buff skill so I imagine I’ll just keep him permanently buffed with that.
That said, it’s a cool and memorable fight, I just told my GF I’m writing with one of my poker friends (sorry for the oversimplification haha) about DOS2 and she said “the fucking blobs” first and then “maybe it’s time for another playthrough”. FTR we’re actually currently playing BG3 again…
