Currently Playing

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Mantis
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Mantis » Sun Mar 07, 2021 10:43 pm

Currently working my way through Slay the Spire and Wargroove on Switch. Spire is great but Wargroove is proving to be a bit of a slog, there's something inherently dissatisfying about it that I can't quite put my finger on.

And Hero Loop on PC, which has got to be one of the most creative little things I've played in a long time. Really great atmosphere and vibe for a rougelike dungeon crawler with way more depth than I originally expected and a great plot to wrap the theme together. Really easy to play too and not overly punishing like so many in the genre are.

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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Rossell » Mon Mar 08, 2021 8:01 am

Assassins creed odyssey.

Got back into this so I could finish and it finally clicked and was having fun for a bit. Now I wish it was over. Thankfully there's nine chapters and I'm halfway through seven. A lesson in how to make a game too big.

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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Sly Boots » Mon Mar 08, 2021 8:28 am

Mantis wrote:
Sun Mar 07, 2021 10:43 pm
And Hero Loop on PC, which has got to be one of the most creative little things I've played in a long time. Really great atmosphere and vibe for a rougelike dungeon crawler with way more depth than I originally expected and a great plot to wrap the theme together. Really easy to play too and not overly punishing like so many in the genre are.
Loop Hero is excellent, I've already put in 38 hours since release last week and have a serious case of just-one-more-go-itis. Although probably half a dozen hours of that is leaving it playing on resource farming runs.

I've never played anything quite like it - I guess it falls at least partway into the roguelike category, which I'm not usually that into, but the persistent progress you make between runs works well for me.

As for difficulty, I found I hit a wall in each chapter initially, before refining my decks for particular heroes (the necro is the most fun, I found, but also the squishiest), and some bosses seem designed to hard-counter particular heroes. For example, in chapter 1 I found a good rogue build destroyed everything in its path, but the chapter 2 boss in particular seems to be a rogue-killer. The necro, on the other hand, melted its face in under a minute.

The chapter 3 boss is where the difficulty ramps up quite a lot again and whatever build you have he seems to either kill you or you just squeak over the line in beating him.

And then chapter 4 :shock:. No spoilers, but I was not prepared for that, either the nature of the chapter or the final boss. I've made it to him twice now, most recently with a lean, mean deck and a super-powered rogue, using everything I'd learned until that point, and I still could only get him to about 10% hp before he killed me. The slightly random nature of the encounter, though, makes me think on another day I could have beaten him, and of course I'll be trying again.

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Re: Currently Playing

Post by DjchunKfunK » Mon Mar 08, 2021 9:36 am

I have Loop Hero sitting waiting to be played, really liked the demo when I played it earlier this year. Looking forward to getting stuck into it. I'm trying to be better about finishing games this year so I have a few other games to finish off first before I start Loop Hero.

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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Mantis » Mon Mar 08, 2021 10:41 am

I haven't got that far with it yet as I tend to just dip in, do a couple of loops and then log out to get on with something else. I'm about to unlock the rogue and have a bash at the first boss, after he kicked the crap out of me the first time round I've retreated from all my loops just before placing the last tile to spawn him since then.

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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Sly Boots » Mon Mar 08, 2021 12:11 pm

Sly Boots wrote:
Mon Mar 08, 2021 8:28 am
And then chapter 4 :shock:. No spoilers, but I was not prepared for that, either the nature of the chapter or the final boss. I've made it to him twice now, most recently with a lean, mean deck and a super-powered rogue, using everything I'd learned until that point, and I still could only get him to about 10% hp before he killed me. The slightly random nature of the encounter, though, makes me think on another day I could have beaten him, and of course I'll be trying again.
I did it! :D

Did it with my first try as a warrior, who I'd not played for ages as he had seemed like the weakest of the three classes, but in fact with the right build he's quite suited to the final chapter due to his innate ability of increasing in strength the longer fights go on. I was still at max hp after beating the final boss, despite going into the fight without any potions :shock:

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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Sly Boots » Mon Mar 08, 2021 1:49 pm

Mantis wrote:
Mon Mar 08, 2021 10:41 am
I haven't got that far with it yet as I tend to just dip in, do a couple of loops and then log out to get on with something else. I'm about to unlock the rogue and have a bash at the first boss, after he kicked the crap out of me the first time round I've retreated from all my loops just before placing the last tile to spawn him since then.
The best general advice I can give, which applies to each class, is to be very particular about which cards you lay. You're actually better off facing the bosses later on as a lot of the more useful abilities (evasion, vampirism etc) scale, so while with early gear you will struggle to top say 15% evasion, but loop 15 you can easily hit 40% evasion plus good amounts of other abilities. Trying to avoid damage altogether is always the best tactic.

So, while being particular means putting off facing the boss for longer, it also means thinking carefully about the types of tile you're laying. Most of the land cards have two variants - a lesser one and a greater one with twice as strong effects. The strategy here is to avoid laying the lesser cards altogether, maximising the effects you're getting from them while delaying the boss. Meadows are decent early on, but by the time your hp is in four figures the effects are negligible, so I'd give up laying those down fairly early on.

Also, while it's tempting to combine the rock/mountain cards into a 3x3 peak for a decent hp boost, don't. It spawns harpies, which are the absolute devil. In fact, also nuke any goblin or bandit camps you see - the former will wreck you while the the latter have a 5% chance to destroy a piece of your equipment.

The above advice is all good, but it's worth noting that just now I tried starting a new game to see if I could beat the lich on my first run... I delayed until loop 16, had a strong build with plenty of hp, and still couldn't do it. Realistically it's very, very tough to beat the bosses until you've unlocked xp levels in particular.

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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Alan » Mon Mar 08, 2021 2:41 pm

Oh god, its progress quest rogue! Kind of wish there was a faster speed mode because I’m very impatient. Quite neat.
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by DjchunKfunK » Tue Mar 09, 2021 9:37 am

Alan wrote:
Mon Mar 08, 2021 2:41 pm
Oh god, its progress quest rogue! Kind of wish there was a faster speed mode because I’m very impatient. Quite neat.
I know someone who has managed to alter the speed by going into the ini file so you could look at doing that.

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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Sly Boots » Tue Mar 09, 2021 9:57 am

DjchunKfunK wrote:
Tue Mar 09, 2021 9:37 am
Alan wrote:
Mon Mar 08, 2021 2:41 pm
Oh god, its progress quest rogue! Kind of wish there was a faster speed mode because I’m very impatient. Quite neat.
I know someone who has managed to alter the speed by going into the ini file so you could look at doing that.
Yeah, I've not done it but it's apparently quite simple.

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Re: Currently Playing

Post by DjchunKfunK » Tue Mar 09, 2021 12:00 pm

I had a quick run just now and I thought I was pretty ready for the boss but nope, I barely had one third of his life down before he killed me. :D

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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Mantis » Tue Mar 09, 2021 12:11 pm

I haven't managed to take down the first boss yet either. I had a warrior build that was mincing everything right up to loop 15. I stacked as much attack speed and evasion as possible so most things died way before I took any real damage, but it just didn't work in the attrition war against the lich without any meaningful vampirism to top up my health.

I've heard that the Rogue makes quick work of the first world but honestly I don't get his appeal, he seems very dependent on getting the perfect combination of drops and cards. Without being able to stack one particular stat on your gear you have no meaningful way to buff your self heals. There's no real way around the fact that unless you can keep yourself topped up with health, no amount of evasion is going to counter the fact that the longer the loops go on due to more enemies spawning, the more they chip your health away with each circle.

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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Wrathbone » Tue Mar 09, 2021 2:31 pm

Since I’m laid up with my knee at the moment, I’ve caved and bought Witcher 3 for the Switch so I can play it in bed and continue from my PC playthrough via cloud saves. It really is an incredible technological accomplishment. The graphics are of course dialled down, but it still looks fantastic, especially in close-up cutscenes, and it performs well too. I have no clue how they managed to get it to look and run like this on a Switch.

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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Raid » Sun Mar 21, 2021 8:48 pm

I've slowly been working my way through Control. I'm not particularly far into it, I'm currently trying to fix the reactor. I love the presentation of this, and the visuals are quite striking with ray tracing enabled (it's my first RTX game). I'm particularly fond of the silhouetted characters you occasionally communicate with, which is just a very cool visual effect. I seem to recall this wasn't particularly well loved by critics when it was released, but looking at metacritic I wonder if I just read one negative review at launch and didn't think I'd ever get around to it, as it seems it scored quite highly.

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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Rusty » Mon Mar 22, 2021 9:33 am

Yup, I heard nothing but good things about it. I played it but hated the end when it turned into a crappy (hard) boss fight. It's was really good up to that point.
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