Still on that World of Warcraft Remix: Mists of Pandaria grind. I just finished upgrading all my gear, so now I’ll focus on unlocking all the cosmetics and stuff. I also started a second character, a Priest, but I don’t really enjoy it right now. So, I’ll probably just use this mode to speedlevel a few characters, that I’ll never touch again.

I’ve been playing the World of Warcraft Remix: Mists of Pandaria mode since it came out. It’s fun, but extremely grindy at max level. I really hope Blizzard improves the balancing, since right now it feels like you gotta decide between spending the special currency on cosmetics and mounts or upgrading your gear. I chose a druid, just for the flexibility of potentially playing every role, but am currently Balance, which I never really played before.

I’m really waiting for Rebirth on Steam. I’ve been thinking about replaying FF7R, but am putting it off until Rebirth comes out.

Still World of Warcraft and won’t be stopping for a while. I’m mostly finished with the gazillion different campaigns of the Dragonflight expansion, although as I said before, I’ve skipped all quest text and cutscenes, so I have no idea what the story is. Then, I’ve run through a few dungeons, some with friends, but it’s kinda meh right now. Lastly, I’ve spent a lot of time doing Pet Battle related stuff. I’m doing the different dailies, so I can get the currency to buy more pets, or went back to old expansions to unlock some zones I’ve never been to, to capture missing pets. There are a couple of hundreds I’m missing, although I’ll have to look up how to get many of them, since it’s not just finding them in the wild or going to a vendor.

In preparation of the Mists of Pandaria Turbo Mode in like 10 days, I’m playing World of Warcraft, and catching up on all the stuff I missed in the last three years. So far, I’ve leveled two characters to 70, although I skipped all dialogue and cutscenes. I just don’t care at all about this stuff in this game.

I gotta be honest though, while the quest progression while leveling is fine, once you’re done and max level it becomes a complete clusterfuck. Since this is the tail end of the expansion, all the story content that has been released in the last 18 months, just gets dumped on you. You just get tons of new story quests. One third of which you can’t start, because you need some reputation level with a faction or something. Another third needs a previous story to be done first, and the last third you can actually do. Your quest log is full of all that useless bloat, and it becomes a nightmare to sort through. Then there are tons of quests that are supposed to introduce you to the various new mechanics that were added, but those basically drown in the sea of all the other shit. I’m not the biggest fan of the forced story and gating of everything behind it in FF14, but at least I never needed a guide to find out which campaign quest I should do next. Also, important quests that unlock stuff are usually marked with a different color indicator, so they aren’t hard to miss. That’s something Blizzard should definitely copy. Luckily I have a bunch of friends, who play the game continuously, who I can ask about the most important stuff, otherwise I’d be lost.

I’m really into collecting pets and pet battles in the game, so I’ve been spending a lot of time flying around, catching everything new, etc. I wonder why Blizzard never added pet battles to the companion app or released it separately for mobile. Back in the day, I’d definitely spent a bunch of time just doing random battles (and would probably still now). I might have to look into setting up the game on my Steam Deck and try out just exploring, catching all the pets, or do the simple quests.

Finally finished Horizon Forbidden West, only the base game though, not the DLC, which will have to wait. I definitely enjoyed my time with the game, but I gotta say, the story is complete trash and the antagonists are garbage as well. I liked the companions that hang around in your base, as well as a few of the smaller NPCs scattered around the world though.

Then, I started playing World of Warcraft again. I read about the Mists of Pandaria Turbo mode, that’s coming next month and really want to try it (since that is my favorite expansion), so I’m taking a few weeks before to play through the current expansion, Dragonflight. It’s been about three years since I played the game, so there are a ton of things I have to learn, but for leveling those don’t matter, so I’ll just go through the main campaign for now.

Still playing Horizon Forbidden West. I’m close to exploring everything of the base game map. Once I’m done with that, I’ll focus on the rest of the side quests and finally the main story.

More Horizon Forbidden West, just exploring, killing, looting. While I think it’s the best looking game I’ve played (on a technical level), it does have some super ugly effects, mainly the water reflections and the steam that comes out of the big doors, when you open them for the first time. Those look like ass. Also, climbing is pretty much brainless like the latest Assassin’s Creed games, but has a few too many bugs to match it. Regularly you’ll get “stuck” on a cliff, because Aloy doesn’t want to get to one of the dozens of handholds in arm’s reach. Same with climbing up on top of a rock or cliff, sometimes Aloy just refuses to do so, unless you move slightly to the side. Those are pretty minor issues, but are still annoying.

Then, some Dave the Diver, although that’s been on the back burner this week, since I got really into Horizon.

I could see the writing on the wall last week, but after about 20 hours I’ve dropped Dragon’s Dogma 2. Exploration felt just like a chore to me, and combat was super boring. This is definitely one of those games, where I absolutely don’t see what reviewers saw in it to give out such high scores and maybe even call it GotY. From what I’ve read, the online discourse has shifted a little as well, and not just because of the bad performance or microtransactions.

I tried switching over to Horizon Forbidden West, and was going through the first small zone, when the game started crashing constantly with no error or hint on what the problem could be. It was weird, because it ran smoothly for almost 10 hours, and then it became basically unplayable. Crashes every 1–5 minutes. I tried a lot of things, but nothing helped, and was close to giving up. Then one or two days ago I had a breakthrough and I think I found the cause, something with the textures or my GPU memory. First, I reduced the memory OC of my GPU, which I haven’t changed in almost 2 years, although it still crashed after an hour, which was definitely an improvement. Then I turned down the Texture Quality setting from Very High to High, I was finally able to play with no issues again. Today I’ll check with my normal overclock again, if it’s just the in-game setting or both.

As for the game itself, I like it, it’s basically Assassin’s Creed Valhalla or something, just that controlling Aloy doesn’t feel like you’re moving through molasses. I don’t play these open world RPGs where you’re basically checking off markers on the map too often, but I do enjoy them from time to time. Because of all the problems I had with the game, I just made it out of the prologue / introduction or whatever (before you get to the titular Forbidden West), so I can’t say too much about it yet, however I gotta say it does look fantastic, probably the best looking game (on a technical level) that I’ve played.

I also played the new stuff, that was released in the first big patch of Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor. The new zone is really neat and I had a good time.

Then I tried Halls of Torment, another Vampire Survivors-type game. I love the look and vibe while playing, but it feels like you have to grind the early levels somewhat for upgrades and stuff until you’re ready for the later stages, which I’m not really a fan of. For now, I’ve shelved it, but will definitely check it out again later.

I gave Pathfinder: Gallowspire Survivors another chance as well, this time on my desktop PC, since I didn’t have a great time on my Steam Deck before. The game just loves throwing ranged enemies at you, so your screen is constantly filled with projectiles, which is just not fun, and the bigger screen only helps a tiny bit. It also seems super grindy, since there is sooooo much stuff to unlock and upgrade, although basically everything are just tiny passive improvements. Not really sure how I feel about it yet, but it’s another game, which I’ll check out again at a later time.

As far as I’ve heard, previous Capcom games already feature these types of mostly meaningless DLC. So it’s not a first test, and so far the older games haven’t been adjusted to make the microtransactions more appealing.

I agree, Capcom aren’t dumb, it’s probably just a minimal amount of work, and if they can get even a few buyers they make money. Although, who knows if the hit to their reputations negates all of this.

I played it a year ago, and it was fun (playing as the male MC), but the side quests are complete ass, so I definitely recommend skipping them.

I was “done” with Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, but a day later the first patch dropped, so I gotta go back to it.

Death Must Die was my replacement for DRG, but the game is a bit boring, so I’ll wait for more patches. It’s basically Hades but Vampire Survivors. So far there are five characters in the game, but four are very similar. The different spells or upgrades are also not really too interesting and barely change the gameplay, so most runs feel the same. I hope further updates can improve the game.

Then, I started both Horizon: Forbidden West and Dragons Dogma 2 on PC, but right now I’ll stick with DD2. The game is basically what I remember DD1 being, but with a fresh coat of paint, for better or worse. Back when I played the first game, I had a great time for like 70 hours, but by the end, I never wanted to see the game again (and never played the DLC). Even though it’s been eight years since then, I still feel a bit burned out, so seemingly so few changes don’t really help. I started out as the mage and just recently switched to the sorcerer, but imma be honest, it’s pretty boring. I’ll give it a bit longer, since I barely got any spells right now. The archer and thief look more fun, so I might give these a shot, if the giga wizard doesn’t improve things. I also gotta say, the Pawns are some of the most annoying NPCs in any video game ever. They spew one of their dozen different voice lines every 20 seconds, which is just awesome. You can mute their audio, but then you might also miss useful callouts like when they find a chest or info about enemies. The subtitles for their lines would of course still clutter the screen though.

I’m kind of in a gaming slump right now and nothing has really grabbed me for a couple of weeks.

I’m still doing runs in Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, which is fun for the most part.

Then I think I finished the campaign in Kingdom Rush, a Tower-Defense game, which unlocked a bunch of super hard bonus levels, but I guess you’re supposed to clear all the challenge modes for the regular levels before that, for upgrades, but I’m not really interested in that at all.

I also tried getting back into Dyson Sphere Program, Last Epoch, and Satisfactory, but nothing really stuck.

A few days ago I started Solasta: Crown of the Magister, and played through the tutorial, but still need to start it properly, but who knows if I’ll do it.

No? I really hope this isn’t a serious question, because I can’t imagine how you’d come to this conclusion, if you read the full sentence.

I’ve been playing more Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor. Last week I said I found all the characters to be pretty weak and would probably not play it for much longer, but apparently I was missing some very crucial information. There are a bunch of weapons for you to unlock, but I found most of them to be kinda bad. However, you need to upgrade them to level 12 in one run, afterward you’ll unlock the ability to overclock them, which can drastically increase their power. In my opinion, this process is far too tedious, and I’m not a fan, but at least it helps with the difficulty somewhat. For now, I’ll just keep unlocking stuff, slowly progressing through the game.

Then, Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin. I found a build, that I replicated, but in hindsight I might as well just used the Extra Mode for infinite invulnerability. It’s all about one or two shotting most enemies, so they can’t even fight back, although bosses require a bunch of tries sometimes. I’m now in the second DLC, but I’ll probably look for some other build, so I’ll actually play the game.

I wanted to give Last Epoch a try after the 1.0 release, but then I decided to upgrade my PC, so I’ve been dealing with that the last few days. Installing everything again, settings things up, etc. Since I also like to tune everything a bit, I’ve also spent some time benchmarking and stress testing, but I definitely need to do some longer tests (12-24 hours), to make sure everything is stable.

I hope the gameplay is a bit more fluid and polished from Early Access. I had a good time, shortly after multiplayer was added, but it wasn’t as smooth as I’d like. Abilities getting eaten, inconsistent movement skills, things like that.

Burning yourself out on the game, right before the 1.0 launch. I like your style.

I could deal with server queues, I’ve played WoW. Broken matchmaking is definitely a dealbreaker for me though, since none of my friends play the game.

I’ve refunded the game now and might check it out later, since I just don’t really see it working properly anytime soon.

I beat Final Fantasy 2. It’s good, definitely one of the better JRPG stories for me, although some parts could definitely be improved if they were a bit more fleshed out. The main characters are really lame, but the supporting cast makes up for it somewhat. The magic system is pretty bad, since there are a gazillion different spells, most of them useless, but even if you wanted to use them, you’d have to level up each one separately for every character. Even the auto battle can’t really save that.

Then Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor made it to Early Access, but right now it’s pretty disappointing. I’ve done a dozen or so runs, but all four classes feel just really weak, even on the lowest difficulty. There is some meta progression, but they improve your character so little, and get really expensive, really quickly, that I don’t think it’ll make that much of a difference. I’ll give it some a bit more time, maybe unlock a few more things, since I like the DRG Theme, but will probably shelve it soon and go back to Soulstone Survivors, Vampire Survivors or the dozen other games like this I haven’t played yet.

Next, after like a 10-month break, I’m back to Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin. Playing through FF1 really made me play this again. Back when it was released on Steam, I made it through the base game and started on the first DLC, but the then new Bahamut difficulty was a bit too much for me at the time. By that point you can’t just overpower everything with better gear anymore, but need to pay attention to your build and stats. I still need to wrap my head around things more, although it kinda sucks, since there are very little guides on the internet to help with that. Most information is for the endgame on the highest difficulty, which doesn’t help me that much. There is a kind of “easy mode” called Extra Mode, which (in combination with certain gear that you get) will make you basically permanently invincible, and everyone and their mom recommends to just use that to get to the endgame (where the real game begins hurr durr). I don’t want to do that, so I have to crawl through Discord channels, which really sucks, so I can get the basics.

I also tried Helldivers 2, but it’s kinda unplayable on Steam, unless you have a group of friends to make a private lobby with, or are willing to manually add random people to your friends list, both of which is a no for me dawg. Matchmaking in this game is broken and doesn’t work, if you can even make it into the game. I have no idea how this isn’t talked about more, considering other games get clowned on for far less. I’ll give it a more few days, but I’m not very hopeful, since it’s already been over a week, and will probably refund it.

I’ve also played a bunch of demos from the Steam Next Fest, that’s currently going on, but because it’s a lot I’ll split it into a separate comment. The Next Fest is only running for another day, so if you want to check out some demos, you don’t have too much time at this point.

Summerhouse is a builder in the same vein as Townscaper, The Block or Dorfromantik without the scores. You just build a house with whatever parts you want, until you’re satisfied. Not really my type of game, so I’ll pass on this.

Gatekeeper is an isometric rogue-like, similar to Risk of Rain. You do the typical stuff like killing enemies and upgrading your character, nothing you haven’t seen yet. It could be alright, but the demo was a bit samey. I only did one run, but the different levels were all pretty small and looked the same. Maybe things change a bit if you make it further, but I don’t know. I’ll have to look a bit into it, once it’s released.

Mullet Mad Jack is a retro shooter with extremely flashy visuals (I think I heard it described as maximalist). Because of a dystopian cyberpunk setting, where social media controls everything, you only live for 10s unless you kill enemies, so the viewers give you likes for extra time. Then you just run through levels, kick or shoot robots and try to save the girl. I found it extremely unappealing and will not be back for the full release.

Kingsgrave is a top-down, light survival or metroidvania type game, where you control the recently resurrected king and try to rebuild your kingdom. You collect materials, which let you unlock more abilities, so you can get to more parts of the world. This one didn’t really grip me, but if I stumble over it again once it’s release I might check it out again.

Hexarium is like Mini Metro or similar games, where you connect buildings of the same colors to get points. I might have just been dumb, but it seemed like the game didn’t really work properly yet, because I had some seemingly impossible combinations. Like I get a starting point, that’s on the very edge of the map, so I can’t really build anything or points straight into water, where you’re severely limited with what you can build.

Copy Cat is a play-as-a-cat game. In the beginning you’re only inside a house and I don’t know if it’ll open up later. The cat comments on everything (with floating text in the world) as if it’s a human and can understand English. The gameplay was also a bit clunky and I don’t think I’ll be back for more.

Black Dragon Mage is a Survivors-like (dunno what else to call it). It has manual skills and aiming, and as you level up you get more abilities and upgrade existing ones. It was kinda boring, so I’ll stick with the games I already have.

Artifact Seeker: Legend of Aurorium is another Survivors-like, better than Black Dragon Mage. It has the typical Chinese Mobile game look to it (don’t really know how to describe it). One interesting feature is, after each stage you go to a world map and choose where to go next, à la Slay the Spire. You can choose between combat stages or text events where you can get upgrades. This one is a maybe, but I have a bunch of other games like this already bought, that I have to try at least. before I’ll buy more.

Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is a point-and-click adventure game, with isometric 3D environments and 2D cut-out characters, like Paper Mario. In the demo, which is really short, you find clues in single rooms, to solve Mad Libs style puzzles to solve them. So far it’s a tiny step up from something like Frog Detective, but I don’t know if it gets more complex later. Another one I’ll keep an eye on for me.

Pepper Grinder is a 2D platformer, where you play as a girl with a drill arm. You can destroy some parts of the environment, but I guess it’s mainly about burrowing through sand, which is like swimming through water in other games, collecting coins, finding secrets, the normal stuff. It’s level based, which caught me a bit by surprise, because seemingly all 2D platformers these days are metroidvanias. Not sure about this one yet, maybe later down the line, when I’m more in the mood for a game like this.

Finally, News Tower, a building and management game about a newspaper publisher in the 1930s. You slowly build your tower, get more workers for you, either reporters, typesetters, and whatever else you need, send them to work on stories, so you can print something on Sundays. Could be neat, but not something I’m especially interested in.