[Mentalist]

3 days off for Old New Year, w00t!

Alternating between 2 custom campaigns, "Tomislav" is about the titular duke who becomes the first Croatian king. Croats aren't an AoK civ, but this modder did a total conversion, replacing Portuguese with a brand spanking new Croat civ, including unique voice lines for units, a cool campaign and a civ bonus of dealing extra damage when hitting enemy uphill, which basically turns the game's tactics on its head.

The other one is "Ottokar" , about the last great Czech monarch. This one is a bit less fancy with the modding, but still impressive, and i'm a fan of the author's previous stuff, so this is totally my jam.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 12 January 2021 - 10:25 PM

[Serenity]

Briar King, on 12 January 2021 - 04:05 PM, said:

Serenity, on 11 January 2021 - 10:51 AM, said:

I've been playing a lot of Trails of Cold Steel II. I'm in Act 1 Pt 3. Just left Bareahard and returned to Ymir.

You have so much epicness in store. I'm nearing the final stages and will jump straight to Cold Steel 3 when done. This game has been incredible.

I'm going to play the Crossbell games (Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure) before playing CS3. Everything to do with Crossbell that gets mentioned in Cold Steel happens in Zero and Azure, and then the characters from those games and the Sky trilogy cross over to CS3 and it all ties together, so I want to do it in that order to avoid spoilers.

[Mentalist]

Making my way through that Croatian campaign... it's a doozy, that's for sure. Made it to Scenario 5, which is a major "Defend The Spot" mission where I gotta use 40 in-game minutes to get an economy going from scratch, which is.. Not easy for someone this used to turtling.

Beat the Bohemian one, "Ottokar" earlier in the week, and it was also very well-made with some interesting gameplay twists in a few of the scenarios. The last one was was pretty anticlimactic, but it was a build-up to the tragic concluding cutscenes, so that made sense.

Once again, really impressive how much modders are capable of with the editor already; hoping the next expansion goes back to South Asia, there's a lot of cool stuff that can be done with more Indian civs.

[champ]

Man, I'm developing such a love/hate relationship with Dead Cells...

Starting off, maybe 15 - 20 runs in it's bloody hard. Especially once you're beyond the first boss, it's tough but also fair, I feel like when I die it is more my fault than the game acting BS. I'll die to something stupid and it's like ARGH I'm done and yet a couple minutes later I am trying another run... certainly fun in a twisted way...

This game may be the death of me...

[Serenity]

champ, on 18 January 2021 - 05:19 PM, said:

Man, I'm developing such a love/hate relationship with Dead Cells...

Starting off, maybe 15 - 20 runs in it's bloody hard. Especially once you're beyond the first boss, it's tough but also fair, I feel like when I die it is more my fault than the game acting BS. I'll die to something stupid and it's like ARGH I'm done and yet a couple minutes later I am trying another run... certainly fun in a twisted way...

This game may be the death of me...

I normally hate rogue-lites but Dead Cells is the rare exception. It just plays so well, and it looks and sounds fantastic. Perfect for handheld on Switch.


I'm through Act 1 of Cold Steel II, and the subsequent 'intermission', which was awesome. Also up to Chapter 9 of Banner of the Maid.

[Serenity]

Briar King, on 19 January 2021 - 09:22 PM, said:

Serenity, on 19 January 2021 - 09:37 AM, said:

I'm through Act 1 of Cold Steel II, and the subsequent 'intermission', which was awesome.

Pretty goddamn cool wasn't it?

I'm feeling antsy to hurry up and get to CS3. I think I ll get there before end of month.

The good news (for me) is that the Geofront translation of Trails to Azure has nearly finished its second editing pass. Once that's done there's just play testing left to do, so I'm pretty optimistic that - once I've finished Cold Steel 2 and then played Trails from Zero - Azure should be good to go. Even if it isn't, I'm happy to have a break and wait for it to be done. Then on to CS3 and 4 and maybe some news of when Trails of Creation (Hajimari no Kiseki) will be released in the West.

https://geofront.est...rails-to-azure/

[Mentalist]

Huh, Forgotten Empires tweaked Yodit Scenario 1 for DE to actually be playable.

I still spent like 20 tries to take down Gidajan's central fort and Castle with my Feudal Age Army for the funsies, but the AI attack rate has been significantly brought down. It's actually possible to build up without being wsarmed non-stop by enemy units, which is pretty great.

Also, Khmer campaign is super-fun now that they have turbo-farmers (they don't need to drop off their gathered resources as a civ bonus, so you literally just see your food count ticking up all the time). There's no strategy needed when you can just mass 60 elephants and task them to crush things. It's pretty great.

Just playing random scens now here and there, waiting for the new expansion + hopefully a patch to address custom campaign progress bug on Tuesday.

[Maark Abbott]

Man, Iceborne master rank quests are... kind of a pain. The HP value on everything is jacked up hugely so single player Insect Glaive is not as straightforward. Much more manageable when a group comes together for it though - took me a good 45 minutes to kill the Banbaro whereas a grouped up quest was half that.

[Malankazooie]

I think that is Dracula's Castle, but I'm not 100% sure. Do any of you guys know? DM me with any proof that substantiates my theory.

[Mentalist]

Ugh, the update patch before the DLC unlocks tomorrow is.. not great.

Gave me the achievements for finishing the 3 DLC campaigns for winning a scenario that featured a DLC civ, lol.

I'm not obcessed with achievement hunting (though I do find them to be neat challenges a lot of the times), and i'm gonna play the campaigns through regardless (eventually. I have a list of stuff I'm playing in its "internal chronological order".

But the patch doing these things.. It's not a great look.

Edit: not into new campaigns yet, going through the re-formed Bari campaign. Bari 2 was one of the most difficult scenarios in The Forgotten, and now it's... fine? There's some serious pressure you need to survive early on, but once you do, there's a lot of leeway to turtle, tech up and then crush Melus' rebellion at your leisure.

Gonna be alternating the remaining Bari scenarios with the Suryavarman I campaign, as they are kind of contemporary; then gonna get into the Sicilian campaign, I guess.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 27 January 2021 - 04:42 PM

[Tiste Simeon]

My brother got me AC Rogue for my birthday so I'll be starting that hopefully this week.

[Mentalist]

The re-done Bari campaign is quite good; keeps the overall concept of the last scenario, while scrapping the RPG-y bits, but keeping the core "use a small band to raid the camps of besiegers" intact, while adding 2 more scenarios to showcase the progress of the actual Byzantine restoration during the period in-between the original Melus' rebellion (when the Norman mercenaries first showed up in Italy) and the Fall of Bari (when they basically drove the Byzantines out forever).

It also dovetails nicely with the new Sicilian campaign, and the a few custom scenarios from the designer of the Sicilian campaign- "Seljuk- Birth of a Dynasty" (involving, among other events, the Battle of Manzikert) and "Komemnos-Byzantine Restoration (having Alexios Komemnos struggle to drive back both the Normans and the Turks as well as bringing breakaway provinces into the fold in the aftermath of Manzikert). Both of these play more like Grand Strategy scenarios, since new mechanics are introduced to limit traditional base-building and resource gathering for the most part; the Sicilian campaign runs parallel to these, as the Norman Hauteville family sets up shop in Southern Italy, conquers Sicily, raids the Byzantine holdings in the Balkans, before joining in the First Crusade and running the Siege, and later the Defense of Antioch. Really cool stuff.
Up to the last scenario now- a bit past this whole timeline, in 1127, where the future King Roger II of Sicily is trying to establish the Kingdom of Sicily against pressure from the HRE, the Pope, the Byzantines and the Berber pirates. Should be another good one. Thematically, Sicily feels quite similar to the El Cid campaign (that's pretty contemporary), in the whole " attempts of a fusion between Christian and Muslim influences under enlightened rulers being opposed by orthodox religious fanatics covetous of their lands". Altogether, this body of content (new Bari scenarios, the custom stuff and the Sicilian campaign) are a pretty awesome addition to the the game and really bring the 11th century to life.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 29 October 2021 - 07:33 AM

[Riot]

Playing control on ps4, free with psn this month. Knew nothing about the game going into it but loving the weirdness of it and the lore. Best of all its ties in to Alan wake games, sharing the same universe.

[Aptorian]

Playing Super Mario 3D World.

It's fun so far. Very colorful. Very diverse in the type of stages and challenges.

One thing that's a bit frustrating is the 3D aspect coupled with a Locked camera perspective. Your depth perception some times makes you completely miss the mark. It helps keeping an eye on Mario's shadow but that's hard when you're in a hurry.

[Serenity]

I'm playing 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim. Fantastic game.

I also gave the demo of Project Triangle Strategy a go, and it's brilliant. I liked Octopath Traveler but this is even more my kind of thing, being in the vein of Tactics Ogre/Final Fantasy Tactics. Long wait for the release (2022) but it's going to be good, I think.

[Obdigore]

Diving into Stardew Valley 1.5 on console. Rekindled my enjoyment of this game a lot.

[Mentalist]

The second scenario in this Renoquista campaign has been owning me for the past 2 nights. strong enemy waves across several points on the map, and they`re attacking with garrisoned rams, so if I miss a moment to ungarrison my troops to destroy those, my castles melt.

Managed to wipe one of the enemies last night with a quick raid- once I sniped their Town Center and villagers, the Goth player resigned, ending the infantry spam and allowing me to shift to another side of the map. But I made the mistake of getting stuck in a siege before destroying all the outlying supporting bases of the city of Leon, and trying to fight my way to the central Castle to swipe the Relic cart turned the fight into a meatgrinder where I lost the war of attrition. Didn`t help that I didn`t have the economy to maintain unit production, because I didn;`t have nearly enough farmers.

It`s a high pressure slugfest, but it`s possible to make progress, so I`m frustrated, but not hating it.

[Morgoth]

Running through the souls games. Finished DS1 enhanced edition and am now deep into DS2. I had forgotten how much weaker and unfocused that game is compared to the others. Still, it's fun, and soon I'll move onto Bloodborne, and then DS3.

The best part is that, after so many hours playing all these games in the past, it now feels quite easy. I rarely die on a boss more than once, and the majority I get on my first try. That was very much not how the game went back when I played them the first time.

[Aptorian]

Masochist!

[Maark Abbott]

Killed Kirin. Teabagged the corpse.

By comparison Rajang is much more fun. Hits like a truck but never felt unfair at any stage. Plus that parpy trumpet theme is great.