What are you currently playing?

Right now, I'm finishing up Doom Eternal.

I've also started Persona 5 Royal. I'm glad it only has minor differences so far because I'm not gonna lie, I've been baked off my ass while playing most of it and I don't remember a whole lot.

I've also been replaying Pokemon Crystal since I got my old cartridge's battery fixed. I'm up to the Elite Four now!

Besides the ever present Friday the 13th The Game, I finally started Melty Blood after being interested in over a decade. Now I just need to get a feel for the characters and try and fight some people and hopefully not get wrecked!

Also, I'm still going back to MetalStorm on NES, but I think that forth stage has been my wall! Only made it to the second half once! I should probably just keep using the password to go right back to that stage, but being that it's a short NES game anyway, I'd rather be playing through normally until I just can't advance. Never was a brute force gamer anyway.

I just recently finished my 100% playthrough of Megadimension Neptunia VII which with a heavy heart means I'm out of mainline Neptunia games to 100%.

As for currently playing, a small group of friends have been playing Minecraft together as a sort of hype up to 1.16 coming out in which they changed the heck out of the Nether making it super interesting and featuring some really nice music from Celeste's soundtrack composer, Lena Raine -- slightly got back into modding too with us using a custom datapack I've been making. I've also been playing The Talos Principle, a neat philosophical puzzle game made by the Serious Sam devs that my favourite Twitch streamer speedruns a lot, and slowly but surely reaching 100% in my Disgaea 2 PC playthrough that I started back in 2017.

Replay wise I've been kiiiinda? replaying Celeste since last time I played it I rage quit because I was bad at Chapter 9 and I want to get my 100% for it back.

Finished up my Metal Gear Solid Franchise replay a few weeks back, and started my Halo one. First game is Reach, and it's aged quite well IMO. I've got some issues with the story telling since that's showing it's age but the actual direction of it makes up for it. Not to mention like, a ton of gameplay variety from level to level.

A random assortment of stuff here; I do need to play through Nier Automata, though. I've also been playing my Super Nintendo, and managed to get a converter that allows me to play Famicom games.

Still need to get me a Famicom converter. Had my eye on one, but that Corona hit and made it so shipping would have taken a month at the time, and I don't have patience for that.

Did get a Gameshark for my N64 to play imports, even though all I have so far is Trouble Makers/Mischief Makers. Which I suck at by the way because I don't know what I'm doing!

Nier Autotomatos is good games. Although I do find it slightly overrated.

I got stuck at a Shump section relatively early on. I guess I could have set difficulty to Easy, but that felt wrong.

Oh well, just like everything else it would have been dropped once Friday the 13th hit anyway!

The Shump part is the worst part of that game anyways.

And it makes you spend like, half of the game dealing with that bullshit.

Yeah, I appreciate the idea of keeping things fresh, but maybe went too far, especially since I liked the core hack and slash gameplay.

Seri wrote:Still need to get me a Famicom converter. Had my eye on one, but that Corona hit and made it so shipping would have taken a month at the time, and I don't have patience for that.

Did get a Gameshark for my N64 to play imports, even though all I have so far is Trouble Makers/Mischief Makers. Which I suck at by the way because I don't know what I'm doing!

Mine was roughly $6, and attaches to the cartridge; it works well, thankfully! I'm waiting for a Seiken Densetsu 3 cartridge to arrive so I can test it on that.

Been playing a fair amount of Animal Crossing these days, also have a Minecraft server with some irl friends to pass the time, though between the combo of those two games, been meaning to get back to something with more of a storyline again soon, probably try to finally finish Persona 5.

Oh right, I've also been playing Thief 2 since I don't have a whole lot else to do on my graveyard shifts.

It's level design is honestly unmatched even 20 years later.

All this mentioning of Persona reminding me I'm begrudgingly trying to continue my playthrough of Persona 3 Portable to get to do more of the social stuff/continue the so far really interesting plot.

Ohmygodiamonfire wrote:Oh right, I've also been playing Thief 2 since I don't have a whole lot else to do on my graveyard shifts.

It's level design is honestly unmatched even 20 years later.

good man

we need more first person stealth-em-ups along those lines

at least Dishonored scratches the same itch

dorothyoka wrote:All this mentioning of Persona reminding me I'm begrudgingly trying to continue my playthrough of Persona 3 Portable to get to do more of the social stuff/continue the so far really interesting plot.

I've heard that Persona 3 Portable is a pretty mediocre port, dunno if playing the original would fix the quibbles you are having with the game though

Wahmphi wrote:

Ohmygodiamonfire wrote:Oh right, I've also been playing Thief 2 since I don't have a whole lot else to do on my graveyard shifts.

It's level design is honestly unmatched even 20 years later.

good man

we need more first person stealth-em-ups along those lines

at least Dishonored scratches the same itch

I like the first Dishonored, but I think I've mentioned before how it feels like the game intentionally limits you by punishing you for using a majority of your abilities. Also it's more...linear? I guess? Level design does kinda take away a bit of that feeling. Still a great game though, probably should get around to the second one of these days.

Ohmygodiamonfire wrote:

Wahmphi wrote:

Ohmygodiamonfire wrote:Oh right, I've also been playing Thief 2 since I don't have a whole lot else to do on my graveyard shifts.

It's level design is honestly unmatched even 20 years later.

good man

we need more first person stealth-em-ups along those lines

at least Dishonored scratches the same itch

I like the first Dishonored, but I think I've mentioned before how it feels like the game intentionally limits you by punishing you for using a majority of your abilities. Also it's more...linear? I guess? Level design does kinda take away a bit of that feeling. Still a great game though, probably should get around to the second one of these days.

I get what you mean. It definitely feels a lot more narrow and straightforward. But hey, its as close as we're gonna get now, right?

I played a little of 2, was pretty much more of the same with slightly shinier graphics. Enjoyable enough though.

Arkane are one of the few devs keeping the immersive sim genre alive these days. I already know how you feel about Prey (2017) but its genuinely a fantastic game, name aside. Very strong System Shock and Alien: Isolation vibes. I hope their next project is in the same vein.

Playing a little more Melty Blood, and Len and White Len seem a little closer to my playstyle. Miyako honestly was perfect, but her damage output and/or defense seem really low, so of course she's the only character I keep losing against the CPU with!

Reminds me of BlazBlue and Tsubaki. I feel "modern" fighters forget that a fast character still needs to have a decent damage output!

Seri wrote:Playing a little more Melty Blood, and Len and White Len seem a little closer to my playstyle. Miyako honestly was perfect, but her damage output and/or defense seem really low, so of course she's the only character I keep losing against the CPU with!

Reminds me of BlazBlue and Tsubaki. I feel "modern" fighters forget that a fast character still needs to have a decent damage output!

Melty Blood last got a content update in 2011, wouldn't call that modern at this point (as painful as that is to think about)

What moon are you using for Miyako? You might have better luck with Full Moon, those generally have better damage output and frame advantage on moves at the cost of technical options.

Wahmphi wrote:

Ohmygodiamonfire wrote:

Wahmphi wrote:

Ohmygodiamonfire wrote:Oh right, I've also been playing Thief 2 since I don't have a whole lot else to do on my graveyard shifts.

It's level design is honestly unmatched even 20 years later.

good man

we need more first person stealth-em-ups along those lines

at least Dishonored scratches the same itch

I like the first Dishonored, but I think I've mentioned before how it feels like the game intentionally limits you by punishing you for using a majority of your abilities. Also it's more...linear? I guess? Level design does kinda take away a bit of that feeling. Still a great game though, probably should get around to the second one of these days.

I get what you mean. It definitely feels a lot more narrow and straightforward. But hey, its as close as we're gonna get now, right?

I played a little of 2, was pretty much more of the same with slightly shinier graphics. Enjoyable enough though.

Arkane are one of the few devs keeping the immersive sim genre alive these days. I already know how you feel about Prey (2017) but its genuinely a fantastic game, name aside. Very strong System Shock and Alien: Isolation vibes. I hope their next project is in the same vein.

Honestly once I get though Deadly Shadows I'm probably gonna go dive headfirst into The Dark Mod fanproject. Because boy, does it look like the Thief community has carried on it's legacy real well.

Wahmphi wrote:

Seri wrote:Playing a little more Melty Blood, and Len and White Len seem a little closer to my playstyle. Miyako honestly was perfect, but her damage output and/or defense seem really low, so of course she's the only character I keep losing against the CPU with!

Reminds me of BlazBlue and Tsubaki. I feel "modern" fighters forget that a fast character still needs to have a decent damage output!

Melty Blood last got a content update in 2011, wouldn't call that modern at this point (as painful as that is to think about)

Truth be told, anything past 2000 is a "modern" fighter in my eyes.

Wahmphi wrote:What moon are you using for Miyako? You might have better luck with Full Moon, those generally have better damage output and frame advantage on moves at the cost of technical options.

Speed, so yeah, guess with her Full might be a good idea! specially since the only character I managed to pull off good combos with was Len, and the 10 hit was an accident!

Lately been wasting time on animal crossing and pokémon mystery dungeon,
but I want to get back to Earthbound and Mother 3. Just really dislike the grinding.

Dungeon crawlers have been the mood as of late, so if anyone has any suggestions
for those or other RPGs, I'm all ears.

Wahmphi wrote:I've heard that Persona 3 Portable is a pretty mediocre port, dunno if playing the original would fix the quibbles you are having with the game though

It certainly is a bit raw lol. The game's NPCs lie to you about mechanics frequently since after changing them, Atlus never bothered to go back and change the dialogue so Yukari will warn me about something and then it'll end up just not working at all like her warning. That said, most of my issues come from Tartarus not being very fun for me since they didn't really populate it with things to do aside from saving people from floors and eventually Elizabeth requests (haven't gotten far enough to have any to do with Tartarus yet), and a lot of the bosses feeling unfair at best.

I could ramble on for a while so I'll stop here but I do genuinely really like the social link stuff, the plot, and the full moon bosses, everything to do with Tartarus is just kinda bleh.

sky_and_sea wrote:Lately been wasting time on animal crossing and pokémon mystery dungeon,
but I want to get back to Earthbound and Mother 3. Just really dislike the grinding.

Dungeon crawlers have been the mood as of late, so if anyone has any suggestions
for those or other RPGs, I'm all ears.

Dunno if classic roguelikes would be your bag, but those are always an option, they're about as pure dungeon crawling as it gets. Nethack and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup are the big names that are still relevant (as is Dwarf Fortress, but that one is its own bag of worms). The first Diablo also retains a lot of its roguelike roots and is an iconic computer action rpg.

As far as the jrpgs go, I've been playing Ys and Ys II and really enjoying them. They come with my full recommendation. I'd be remiss to not also bring up Chrono Trigger and the Paper Mario games, they distill the essence of the genre to an accessible simplicity. CT is iconic and endlessly praised for very good reason.

sky_and_sea wrote:
Dungeon crawlers have been the mood as of late, so if anyone has any suggestions
for those or other RPGs, I'm all ears.

I hear Darkest Dungeon is good for that, if you can handle the roguelike nature of it.