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It’s needed in Battleground, but not necessarily in this.

Revan, Locky, and other card game enthusiasts, have you tried playing in the LoR? What do you think?

As I mentioned somewhere before, I installed the game shortly after its release, completed the tutorials, and that's where it ended. I can't say anything bad, but it didn't really grab my attention. And now, it seems like they've released some patches and events, and I just don't feel like getting into it anymore.

dead HS and SW

Well, if HS is already dead, then there's no point in talking about Gwent. Nevertheless, it's still managing to hold my interest.
As for HS itself, the auto-battler mode turned out to be very successful, preventing me from completely abandoning the game. I also occasionally check in on the ladder – just for 5 wins a month to get the chest.

a Riot game

No.

Persona 5 with the addon



Everyone in the world, and especially everyone in this thread, knows that two trails stretch across the floor behind Atlus: a brown one from Katherina and a yellow one from P4G. Fortunately, not even ten years have passed before he finally came to his senses — took a bath and thoroughly washed his pants.

The city locations are not some dead-end street in a random middle-of-nowhere town with a couple of static autistic invalids, barely supported by PS2 hardware and looking more like a purgatory afterlife, but a "full-fledged" Tokyo. Shibuya, Akiba, Kabukicho — these nostalgic places are painfully familiar to us; we've been there on school excursions, sneaked out at night from our parents and got scolded in the morning, jumped over garage roofs, scraped our knees on the asphalt of Public Park №3, and grew up alongside them since the nineties. The streets — detailed as much as the PS3 allows — with signs, storefronts, shops of various shapes, with dozens of bodiless silhouettes of pedestrians endlessly scurrying back and forth, with subway stations, maid cafes, arcades, burger joints, ramen shops, host clubs, and other recognizable spots of our childhood and daily lives, really help you feel a living city and happily immerse yourself in it.

The visual style... Let's just say it's closely tied to the general game style. I had to get used for a very long time to how deliberately gaudy and crude the menus are plastered in every direction, how the fonts are skewed, how the button animations and transitions between elements twitch, and so on — at first glance, it all looks like the work of someone in a very serious stage of mental illness, and is almost unreadable. In short, it took me quite a while to get used to this.
But if you put that aside, overall, the general game style — which didn't attract me much at first (the "we're cool, stylish, bright, brash thief-robbers, screw everyone, no one can catch us" vibe, etc. etc.) — turned out to be maintained from start to finish. Both stylistically and narratively, it is thoroughly developed and ultimately reached that benchmark of engagement where even some cheese moments aren't perceived as excessive or overplayed, but as pleasant and organic.

But none of this would matter if it weren't for the main point — not even ten years have passed before the next-gen PlayStation allowed the devs to create a normal, sane, hand-crafted dungeon instead of the endless procedurally generated crap with a couple of dead ends from the fourth game. It would seem like a simple and obvious thing, completely standard for the RPG genre. What stopped them from doing this earlier? As a result, we have a dedicated dungeon for each stage that adheres to the theme of the chapter from start to finish, fully revealing the backstory of the "target" (basically all dungeons are made with quality, but about half of them seemed genius to me within the context of the game), with detailed full maps, with simple dungeon-styled puzzles, with carefully directed floors, having structure and meaning, and playing into the aforementioned "heist" style.
What's funny is that parallel to the story dungeons, the devs added another, not strictly mandatory "classic" procedurally generated one. And despite a few features that diversify it compared to the procedural dungeon of the previous part and add convenience, it becomes more obvious than ever how stupid and sloppy a format this is. I hope this was a sufficient lesson for Atlus — never again to put procedural garbage in as main content in the future.

With this approach, the combat also stops seeming like a meaningless, unliftable piece of chthonic machinery — the player now has an incentive to play properly and enjoy the dungeon stages instead of skipping procedural floors on Very Easy, which is why the hardcore Persona system isn't as stressful; it stops seeming like complexity for the sake of complexity and is perceived on par with systems in other games. Although, of course, both in combat and in the optional procedural dungeon, you can really feel the echoes of how reluctantly Atlus bends to mentally healthy people, grudgingly bringing their heap of mechanics into a digestible form and slowly moving it away from the "classics."
And besides the mentioned, new features were added to the combat that diversify it, which is absolutely correct.

I don't always give numerical ratings to games that I've enjoyed from start to finish, so let it be 9.5/10, and in some places even 9 — some flaws are still felt in the pacing, gameplay, plus the tediousness of frequent running to the Velvet Room. However, then I remember that this is a game from Atlus that fundamentally corrected the main mistakes for which I trashed the recently ported fourth game — and did so not haphazardly, but quite with quality — and therefore I give it a honest Atlus-style 10/10.

ps: fishing is fine. Grindy and repetitive, rewards are so-so, but the process itself is pleasant, and the coolest fish can make you sweat a bit. As a connoisseur of JRPG fishing, I give it a solid average with potential for growth.

^ November.
Nice, you're playing games on the gaming forum...

Write your top 10 games/series or something, it would be interesting to read.

There was a thread about favorite games, I think...
Otherwise, it's hard to remember, or maybe I just haven't played the games that could make it to the top, because I'm playing all sorts of roguelikes and online games.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker

I wanted to finish it before writing a review, but I doubt I will. I'll explain the reason a little later.
In short.
We start playing as a nobody who won a tender for a barony in some backwater. I decided to immediately start experimenting, creating a human inquisitor with a wolf as a companion. And with a large hat. I must say, I didn't regret the choice: the character isn't top-tier as a pure combatant, but he's very versatile; you can customize his spell slots to compensate for any shortcomings of the party. And an extra wolf isn't a bad thing, although towards the end of the game, the beast seemed a bit weak. Not to mention that I had good non-combat rolls for him, charisma, intelligence, everything – how can a ruler do without it?
So, we're given a little bit of time to run around freely, kill some deer bandits, and then we suddenly become strategists, thinking about what to do with our barony, mainly solving a bunch of problems. And I really enjoyed this part of the game; it's not too complicated compared to real strategy games, but it sets a good direction – some of the problems with your lands will be solved automatically, but you'll have to deal with others personally. And your advisors will try to do something automatically, but they'll fail due to dice rolls. And there just won't be enough time for some things.
The companions have personal quests. I can't say that there were any real revelations or pearls in the style of forum expeditions, but some of them are quite good. Perhaps the Amiri storyline is well done (but mostly because it's woven into the main plot), the inseparable couple Regongar-Octavia's quests were also good in their own way because you could see some progress in these characters, some kind of reevaluation and so on. Valerie's quests can be called instructive in their own way, it's really fun with Jubilost (unlike most of the other humor), with Tristian they overdid it, but who knows, maybe fans of this world's lore will appreciate the mythology that is present in him.
In general, everything is good; the strategy is interspersed with running around on the real-time map with your squad, running around with the squad is interspersed with strategy; I found this scheme to be balanced, just like our Expeditions are a balanced series of shopping trips and all sorts of horrors in palaces, mansions, deserts, and military campaigns.
But there's one "but" – these are the super-long dungeons with overnight stays. And this is the reason for my dropout, because I really couldn't handle the last such dungeon (in Pitax). When you have a continuous series of battles, in each of which you have to give it your all and spend almost all of your spell slots, it's unpleasant and tedious. One battle – you go and set up camp and sleep, great... But if you don't sleep, be prepared for either Lyndsey to go to the capital to be resurrected, lamenting how miserable she is, or the wolf will end up under a permanent debuff that causes berserk, or... Oh, I'm not even going to say, because I didn't even manage to get through a third of the dungeon, and both of those things happened.
And that's exhausting. If you play cautiously, you spend a lot of time and effort; if you play recklessly, you get your ass kicked and can't even pass. This doesn't happen on regular locations.
Fairly, in the DLC "Beneath the Stolen Lands," the authors managed to create an even larger dungeon with a huge number of levels, but it doesn't feel as unpleasant. Perhaps thanks to the portals, with which, after completing each level, you can go out to the surface and do other things, but probably not only because of them.
I also can't help but note that I enjoyed running around on large combat maps that aren't dungeons. For example, on the "Old Platan" location, especially in its surface part.

In conclusion, I want to say that, despite the described drawback and the final dropout, I can't say anything particularly bad about the game. There were some minor annoyances, perhaps a few bugs or something that seemed not very logical to me (like the imbalance of weapons and the uselessness of many of its classes), but in the end, I spent a decent amount of time in the game (87 hours) and got a lot of enjoyment. More than from both Divinity:OS, strangely enough, although I can't compare it to anything else in the genre due to lack of experience. Well, and I dropped it at a much later stage of the game than the original sins (in which I played about 30 hours): basically, here the very end is already, and the plot is probably clear... Probably?
I can only describe the attitude towards the game on the Internet as underrated.

I stopped playing in the first month after the release, and then I tried again when they supposedly fixed the bugs, but I still didn't feel like playing again.

I started playing it a couple of times, but I also dropped it without finishing. I wasn't very lucky in getting into a dungeon that was too high-level for me (even though the game is already quite hardcore), and there are no proper save points, and the game has a very inconvenient and unfriendly system with travel and time limits. I thought about trying it again some time ago, when they added the turn-based combat mode, but I never got around to it. What I didn't like:

1) This whole thing with limits, travel, and so on. It doesn't add any positive aspects to the experience.

2) Skill checks, where you need to level up a skill to a certain level and you have to save-scum to succeed in something. At least, this didn't need to be directly transferred from the tabletop system, as the game format is different from live modules. Some checks are also hidden, meaning they happen at the beginning of a conversation and, if successful, simply add additional dialogue options. I'm not a fan of this approach and I don't think that to access certain content that is locked behind character skill requirements, you also need to rely on randomness.

3) Alignments. While in the prologue, they show a pretty good approach to them (although it's worse than the approach where there is no such thing as alignment at all), where any of the protagonist's actions can be justified from various perspectives, this is not the case in the rest of the game. In addition, many of the choices are locked behind the character's alignment and do not move him in a given direction. Moreover, they are locked in a rather strange way, such as the need to take one of two sides in some conflict at the very beginning of the game if the character does not have a neutral alignment. Because, of course, a non-neutral character always cares about the squabbles of two barbaric tribes.

4) The quality of the dialogues and descriptions leaves much to be desired, and many characters are either poorly written (like Valerie), or complete idiots (like Lady Jamandi), or have a rather repulsive character, like the half-orc and half-elf duo or the halfling bard. The latter is especially bad because she can't be kicked out of the party, and the story is told from her perspective. The developers clearly wanted to create their own Varric, Dicken, or, at worst, Grobnar, but the final result left much to be desired.

5) There are problems with both the balance of battles and the options available to the characters.

That's what I remember right now.

Did I understand correctly that you can’t choose the lowest difficulty level there (like in Divinity), and just play casually with one hand while swiping right on righteous Christian girls in Tinder with the other?

I don't remember anymore. I think there is such a difficulty level, but it still won't affect the moments with traveling around the map.

but it still won't affect the moments involving traveling around the map.

That's very disappointing. I was thinking about trying to play it. I'll think about it some more.

Skill checks where you need to level up a specific skill to a certain level and absolutely have to save-scum to succeed in a particular task. This is something that didn't need to be directly transferred from the tabletop system, as the game format differs from live modules. Some checks are also hidden, meaning they occur at the beginning of a conversation and, if successful, simply add additional dialogue options. I'm not a fan of this approach and believe that to access certain content that is locked behind character development requirements, there should also be an element of randomness.

I maxed out something for someone, plus used a bard's song for a bonus to checks, and after that, I automatically passed pretty much everything I remember. These are attention or diplomacy checks in dialogues, so there were no problems. But yes, without songs or other buffs, it's not that easy.

This whole thing with limits, travel, and other stuff. It doesn't add any positive aspects regarding experience.

Hmm. Well, the time limits seemed like a good idea to me (except for a couple of bugs, like sometimes failing a time limit event even though you actually made it to the destination and arrived on time), but maybe it takes too long to physically move the party around the map. Possibly...

Am I right in understanding that you can't choose the lowest difficulty level (like in Divinity) and play with one hand while swiping right on righteous Christian girls on Tinder with the other?

I haven't tried. Maybe you can.

Moral alignments. While in the prologue, they show a pretty good approach to them (although it's worse than the approach where there isn't such a thing as moral alignment at all), where any of the protagonist's actions can be justified from various perspectives, this is not the case in the rest of the game. In addition, many of the choices are locked behind the character's moral alignment and don't move it in a specific direction. Moreover, they are locked in a rather strange way, like the need to take one of two sides in a conflict at the very beginning of the game if the character does not have a neutral alignment. Because a non-neutral character, of course, always cares about the squabbles of two barbaric tribes.

It's good that I played as neutral (good) and didn't care about the negative consequences, but overall, yes, it's quite reasonable.

4) The quality of dialogues and descriptions leaves much to be desired, and many characters are either poorly written (like Valerie), or complete idiots (like Lady Jamandi), or have a rather repulsive character, like the half-orc and half-elf duo or the halfling bard. The latter is especially bad because she can't be kicked out of the party, and the story is told from her perspective. The developers clearly wanted to create their own Varric, Dignan, or, at worst, Grobnar, but the final result left much to be desired.

5) There are problems with both the balance of battles and the options available to the characters.

Well... Yes. Perhaps these aspects were better in D:OS2. But still, there's Tristan, Jubilost, Magaern Varn, and a few others, so I can't say that it's completely hopeless.

I maxed out something for someone, plus I used the bard's song for a bonus to checks, after which I automatically passed approximately everything I remember. And this includes attentiveness or diplomacy checks in dialogues, so there were no problems. But yes, without songs or other buffs, it's not that easy.

I also maxed out almost all the important skills for the protagonist, which is good because the Kensei class allows it. And Linzi also took a perk for a bonus to attentiveness, so that she definitely wouldn't miss any secrets.

Hmm. Well, the time limits seemed like a good idea to me (with the exception of a couple of bugs, like the fact that sometimes you can fail a time limit event even though you actually made it to where you needed to go and were on time), but overall, it might be too time-consuming to physically move the party around the map. Maybe...

There are also plenty of hidden limits. And limited quests (like the personal storylines of companions) that can be triggered during camping. And in general, it prevents you from playing at your own pace, thoroughly exploring the game world.

It's good that I played as a neutral (good) character and didn't care about this penalty, but overall, yes, it's quite reasonable.

I also played with that kind of worldview, and therefore I couldn't choose some other options later, even though I would have liked to. I couldn't recruit the kobolds, for example, because it required a chaotic worldview.

But still, there's Tristan, Jubilost, Magaern Varn, and a few other minor characters, so I can't say that it's completely barren.

Yes, Jubilost is good. Tristan is also good. He seems to have a well-written romance, unlike the others (yes, the tiefling from the expansion also has a very bad one), although this doesn't really matter to me personally. I found the dwarf-havarian quite amusing. And Jaethal, in principle, was not the worst character, although the follower of Urgathoa could have been implemented much more interestingly.

Couldn't recruit the same kobolds because it required a chaotic alignment.

Hmm. In what sense couldn't you? As far as I remember, I had kobold population, and kobold quarters could be built.

I found the dwarf Havest interesting enough.

Yes, thank you for reminding me. Nebka is worth trying the game just for the dwarf.

And Jaetal, in principle, wasn't the worst character, although the follower of Urgathoa could have been implemented in a much more interesting way.

Well, I saw that there was something very complex in her quest, but I still don't like her, she's too unambiguously evil. Her decisions as an advisor were a source of quite furious frustration for me; I removed her from all positions as soon as I could reorganize the council with more or less normal people.

Here's what else I wanted to say regarding the difficulty level. After all, a significant part of the game's atmosphere was precisely this feeling of the seven plagues of Egypt, and no matter how successful you were in the past, and no matter how well you developed your barony, one serious mistake – and that's it, goodbye. The consequences will range from simply unpleasant to fatal. This blended very well with the storyline, and if this aspect is weakened, I'm not sure the game won't lose a significant part of its charm.