What are you playing?

[The Grimace]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2118420/Stories_from_Sol_The_GunDog/

This is really good. Tonally reminiscent to Snatcher.

[Random Encounter]

Oh man, that looks vaguely reminiscent of those old PC98 text adventures. Throwing that on my wishlist, thanks, Grimace!

[Selbaek]

I picked up Avowed, and I am enjoying it so far! It's like an Elder Scrolls game, but more of a lighter version of it. There's no weight to your inventory items, so no worries about getting weighed down. There isn't a stamina gauge for running around or swimming, so you can continuously just roam around at your leisure. Vendors don't have limited gold, so you can just sell your junk to the same NPC. It caters to a guy like me, who is intrigued by exploration and world-immersing games like this but would rather play an action game that streamlines the combat and story experiences.

EDIT: I forgot to mention the part that relieved me the most: Not everything is interactable. You see highlights or icons on things that are, so I don't feel compelled to home in on each individual thing trying to do something with it. That being said, there are plenty of things that are hidden throughout the environment that you can miss easily, so there's still quite an exploration reward factor involved.

Plus... a revealable map! I'm a sucker for it.

[Selbaek]

I stand corrected on the inventory item weight in Avowed. I found out last night that there is a limit, and ways to enhance that limit. Materials have no weight, only equipment does. That being said, it was quite some time before I ever became encumbered, and the storage at my party camp seems to be endless so I can just dump things in that and go about my merry way.

[Selbaek]

If you'd said this was made by Obsidian to begin with, I would have run off to try it without hesitation lol.

Oh, yeah! It's made by Obsidian!

[The Grimace]

I've got Avowed on my radar. I'll definitely check it out at some point. It looks a lot more interesting to me than Outer Worlds did.

[Selbaek]

I'm in the second region now, and I have to say.. maybe wait for a sale. Avowed is fine, but really it's juuuust interesting enough to keep me plugging along. I'm not immersed, the revealable map is a bit superficial, and while the dialogue and environments are interesting, none of it really feels captivating. Worth playing, but not worth rushing to play imo.

[The Grimace]

I'm near the end of Assassin's Creed Shadows right now.

It's another AC: "RPG" title. Like the others of this type, it starts out strong and then the bottom falls out the middle when the open world aspect is foisted on the player. I love Assassin's Creed and I'm glad the game is doing well, but I really miss the days of Ezio when the story felt more fully realized. Naoe and Yasuke are cool characters that aren't allowed to shine outside of the disjointed main plot.

It deserves an 8/10 because there's plenty to do and most of it is fun, but the open world is too big again. The seasonal transitions the game offers are beautiful and make the game worth playing alone! Seriously, I cannot downplay how cool they are. But the wide areas have very little of substance to actually do.

I can only invade and sneak through Castles so many times before I begin longing for something else to do. I wasn't a fan of hunting animals in Origins or Odyssey, but it did give more for the player to do outside of taking down targets. Once you've seen what the first two provinces of Shadows has to offer, that's it- the rest of the game plays out the exact same. That can be fine for people like me who like to just vibe with a game's 'feel,' but for most others it'll get boring real fast.

Definitely worth a look when it eventually goes on sale.

[Althena]

The Ezio trilogy were close to perfect games.

[The Grimace]

The biggest issue with the RPG series for Assassin's Creed is that the plot loses all of its momentum in their middle acts due to the Open World aspect.

Each of the games has a mysterious cabal of evil-doers that the player is meant to gradually sus out. Finding out who the real leader is can be a fun mystery, but being able to approach any of the Enemy Organization's Members in any order removes any flow from the overarching plot. Worse yet, Shadows does not provide any hints to the Enemy Leader after killing any of the underlings. And ultimately, I felt like it didn't even matter by the time I found out who it was.

I still stand by saying it's an 8/10 game, but it's still an RPG Assassin's Creed, with all of the troubles these variations face. I prefer the structure of older AC titles. Hopefully they will listen to the fans and adjust their ways in future titles.

Shadows has a lot of really cool aspects to it, and they have been listening to players as to how to make the experience better.

[Althena]

Would folks be interested in watching me play the Ezio tril on stream?

[Selbaek]

I'm a little over 30 hours into Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and I have to say I think this might be in my top 5 best RPGs of all time! Holy crap they hit this one out of the ballpark on basically every facet.

The story is dramatic but in a believable and "adult" way (not a lot of overdramatization that we tend to see heavily in RPGs lately). The story has gone places. The relationships between the characters are really well done. The game doesn't overexplain things and instead respects your intelligence to allow the context clues to give you answers to questions you have along the way. The gameplay is a mixture of all the finer points of Final Fantasy, Legend of Dragoon, Lost Odyssey, Super Mario RPG, among some others. The world map is very charming. The price is only $50 in a sea of $70 to $80 now, as well as available at no extra cost for Game Pass subscribers. It's on all the major platforms (aside from Switch, but I bet it comes to Switch 2 eventually). It stays both graphically and contextually consistent. This is a realized world that feels like it's had decades of development history.

It's just everything a turn-based RPG fan has been yearning for in every way. I can't sing its praises enough right now. I can't speak to its ending just yet, but the writing has been pretty great and there have been some really pivotal events throughout so far that even if the ending fizzles, the journey has been so amazing that I doubt it would take much away from the game. But I expect a grand finale.

[The Grimace]

I'm just before the end of Act II and have been for two weeks. I had to put Expedition 33 down because it was making my emotions go absolutely haywire. Clair Obscur is my Game of the Year. The battle system, music, plot, and aesthetic are all top notch. When I have the time and energy, I'll finish the game.

I do have issues with the game lacking a mini-map during exploration. It makes finding hidden treasure really confusing, and finding Pictos to equip can be an exercise in frustration. The game rewards you for looking into as many nooks and crannies you can, but the items are REALLY useful and are necessary to maximize productivity in battles. Now if only the game made it easier to actually understand all of the places I have already checked! It gets very easy to be turned around.

Disclaimer: I've never cried this much during an RPG. It hits heavy out the gate and I would not recommend the game to anyone suffering from depression or anxiety.

[Mr Croft]

Finished up split fiction and expedition 33 recently. Expedition 33 is my goty right now. Currently playing The Forever Winter and doom the dark ages. The two best games I've played this year were both $50

[Sarthis]

Update for likely the next month-ish: As always I dip into Total War:Warhammer 3 every now and then, working my way through Oblivion: Remastered and having a blast with my nostalgia doing side quests I completely forgot about. I'm waiting on some updates for Avowed before I get back on that one. I finished the first act and looked at the free update roadmap and they're going to release some QoL that will make me enjoy it a lot more, so just going to let that play out. I've started Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, but I'm not quite sure how I feel about it yet. I love the story, the world is fantastic, but I'm not digging the combat myself. Was thinking I might take it down to the bottom difficulty and see how it is. Wondering if it's just a more JRPG style experience that still has a bit of difficulty to it, or if it just turns it into a walk in the park without the reactive combat dodge/parry stuffs.

However, my after work game right now is Monster Train 2. I typically don't have the bandwidth after work to do anything that requires me to pay too close attention, and the first game was definitely one of my go-to titles for when I'm tired but not ready to go to bed quite yet. I think it'll probably stick around for quite a bit, if its replayability is like the first one.