the "Currently Playing" thread.

[JagdPanther]

Finished Star Ocean: First Departure R this afternoon. Really, really glad that I decided to play this. Turned out to be a really fun experience. Not as good as Star Ocean: Second Evolution, but pretty darn good. I am so glad that this had multiple options for audio and visuals. Vastly preferred the newest character images (even if their apparel didn't match their sprites) while vastly preferred the PSP Japanese audio over the PS4 Japanese voice cast. I didn't expect that I'd love Millie as much as I did. She was a great character. Pericci was probably my second favorite character. And the Ilia/Ronyx canon ending was worth it when factoring in the PAs you needed to get it.

I was going to start Star Ocean: Till the End of Time undub right away, but I decided I am going to go back and deal with not being able to play Final Fantasy V on my PS3 because of that game-breaking save bug I hadn't known about when starting it a few months back. I downloaded Final Fantasy V: Pixel Remaster on Steam tonight, so that should close out my planned PSX games of my Games of my Childhood Marathon. Once I'm done with that, I'll pop back to SO3 and then probably go onto SO4, which I'd never played before.

[JagdPanther]

Really glad that I played Final Fantasy V: Pixel Remaster. Ended up liking it a lot more than I expected. Still prefer FFVI, but this was darn close. The jobs system was a lot to deal with, but it was fun to play a bit with Freelancer and Mime characters at the end just laying waste to stuff.

Anyway, started up Star Ocean: Till the End of Time (undub) on my jailbroken PS3 today. Forgot how clunky early 3D environment games were. Also taking forever so far because I want to make sure I get the Nel ending of the game, and figuring out which PAs help/hurt Nel's affection toward Fayt has been a pain in the butt so far.

Also, "How Long to Beat" says "Main + Extras" takes 85 hours to do... which I'd like to know what that entails, because it says a completionist run takes 240 hours. YOWZERS. That's insane. I mean, I think I did close to completionist runs on SO1 and SO2, but there's no way I am going to sink anything approaching 270 hours into SO3. I really want to know what takes like 190 hours extra to do beyond "Main + Extras."

[Mahou]

Xenoblade Chronicles 2: At the end of Chapter 7.Some may remember that I'm allergic to many drama variations, so you can guess how I felt about the aspects in Chapter 6 End and Chapter 7 XD. Anyways, I'm taking it slow now and do sidequests in order to not burn out during the final couple of chapters.

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance: A slow and casual playthrough. Currently in the chapter where Rolf and Mist become playable. I'm actually emulating it because I don't want to lose the few good stat gains I have after a screw-up and losing a unit a few turns later Unit-wise, Boyd is my strongest so far (outside of Titania). Oscar could be better with his stat gains, but he's not terrible at least.

[barcode120x]

Been awhile since my last post and even on my last post, I never mentioned that I've been hooked on Lost Ark since release back in Feb. Still madly addicted to the MMO right now. I have a solid group of friends to run daily and weekly content as well as part of a decent sized LA community that does sign up sheets for weekly raids. My main roster is a 1492 arty, 1504 destroyer, and an 1480 gunlancer. I run clown on all 3 and intend to bring them all through the next raid, brel. I also have a 1462 sharpshooter and scouter and a 1472 paladin. I'm currently bringing up a 1415 zerker and I'm loving the class (despite stereotyping against playing with that class in my groups lol). I'm so hooked that I even made a 2nd account. I've been off work for almost 3 months but I start my new job tomorrow and it's a M-F job so juggling all these characters and just the game in general is going to be tough.

On a side note, I hopped back on BFV and the game is amazing. BF 2042 is just complete trash compared to how BFV plays. I actually don't know why I have so few hours in BFV. I also officially dump Black Desert Online.I recouped most of my gearscore back in April after getting a pen blackstar offhand which I sold to buy all my gear. I haven't really did much in the game except for free login rewards and stuff until last week when I rouletted my gear. I managed to enhance a pen distortion earring, but still missing about half a set of gear/accessories lol. I'll be coming back to the game next year assuming there are some good new classes (crossing fingers for a samurai-like class or another mage class).

I'm super hyped for WH:40k Dark Tides end of this month!

[JagdPanther]

I'm onto Star Ocean: The Last Hope now. About 40-ish hours in. I'm only up to the return to Aeos because I've been taking my time and grinding battle trophies for the last several hours. It's driving me nuts that you need the BTs to unlock the level cap to 255. But, I'm making it work. Meracle is the closest to 50 with 38 BTs. I want to get at least her, Reimi, Myuria, and Edge to 50+ BTs as I want them to be my post-game party that gets to 255.

So far, SO4 isn't bad, but my goodness is the huge number of cut scenes driving me nuts. It seems like 40+ hours of logged time in the game I've played for less than 30 with all the cut-scenes.

[Mad Pierrot]

Latest game I played was Lost Judgment. It was fun but the price for Kaito Files DLC is insane (half of the original game) so I might jump to another game. Maybe I'll try the Last of Us 1 since the remaster is on sale as a result of the remake.

[Dextro]

Originally Posted by Mad Pierrot

Latest game I played was Lost Judgment. It was fun but the price for Kaito Files DLC is insane (half of the original game) so I might jump to another game. Maybe I'll try the Last of Us 1 since the remaster is on sale as a result of the remake.

Wait for a sale on the Kaito Files since they are actually pretty good. Might even be a tighter story than the main game (much shorter though, as expected).

[daraff]

Went on a gaming binge since October last year:
Streets of Rage 4
Darksiders Genesis
Maneater
Remnant From the Ashes
Spider-Man Miles Morales
Persona 4 Arena Ultimax
BlazBlue Centralfiction
Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2
KOF XIV UE
Dragon Ball FighterZ
Ghost of Tsushima: Iki Island
Ghost Recon Breakpoint
Sniper Elite 5
Ace Combat 7
Cat Quest
Cat Quest II
Granblue Fantasy Versus
Tales of Arise
Horizon Forbidden West
Capcom Fighting Collection
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure ASBR
Gleylancer
Gynoug
COD Modern Warfare II

Currently playing River City Girls, Capcom Arcade Stadium, Capcom 2nd Arcade Stadium, Capcom Beat Em Up Bundle, and Cybarian.

[Liddo-kun]

here are the four games I currently play.

created a video yesterday.

0:00 - CPU-Z to show Q9500, GPU-Z to show the GTX 1650 GDDR6, and HWMonitor to show that temps are normal.
1:50 - Need for Speed
9:58 - King of Fighters XV
14:55 - Attacker-chan!
21:12 - DNF Duel

[JagdPanther]

Well, after nearly 160 hours, I am finished with Star Ocean: The Last Hope. Finally beat Ethereal Queen tonight. Disappointed I didn't get Lymle's Battle Trophy for defeating EQ in 10 minutes, but... I'll get over it. I was doing well against EQ and then just got behind the curve with deaths and resurrections. Lymle's DPS is so, so bad against EQ. I played it pretty conservatively, I'm sure, and could've still made it in 10 minutes had I stuck with having Armut spam Dragon Roar after I got EQ locked onto Reimi and popped a Fainting Potion on her to tank the low-on-health-but-super-deadly EQ, but... I'm just happy to beat EQ. I made a separate save so if I ever want to blow the 3 hours to try again I can.

Now onto buying a PS5 this weekend. Not sure if I'll start with Valkyrie Elysium or Star Ocean: The Divine Force.

EDIT: PlayStation 5 experienced initiated. Valkyrie Elysium it is. Liking it so far (just about 45 minutes in). But, are you f-ing kidding me that you cannot backup your PS5 saves to USB? That is beyond ridiculous. It's not sustainable to do the whole System Backup to USB thing every time. I cannot believe I need to pony up for a PS Plus subscription to backup saves to the cloud. I am a serial back-upper, with saves on my consoles themselves, my jump drive, my desktop's hard drive, DropBox, AND OneDrive. Having my PS5 saves just on the PS5 and PS Plus while occasionally doing a System Backup to USB will be... unsettling... for me.

[thor23]

Currently playing.
Fifa 23: cuz a big fan of football. i used to play with my brother and also online sometimes.
CSGO: another good game for my choice.

[JagdPanther]

I bit the bullet and decided to play Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness before I move onto SO6. I figured if I was going to play 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 I might as well play 5 no matter how much I've heard is sucks.

Even 10 minutes into it I could see various things I'd read about that are insanely annoying, and they haven't gotten better. But, I admit the game overall isn't awful. I'm enjoying the combat so far, and the difficulty curve is slight enough that I haven't been frustrated by any enemies yet.

But, I still can't wait to be done with this so I can get onto Star Ocean: The Divine Force.

[barcode120x]

Still hooked on Lost Ark. Got my destroyer brel weapon to +22 on 54% artisan. He's already 1580 and set for Akkan release in August. Just a matter of just saving gold and not having the urge to click my alts. I have been very unimpressed with Slayer. I guess I'm so used to my BT zerker that her with such a short burst buff (Punisher spec) and having to be entropy is a huge turnoff. I'm glad I just tested her out and didn't fully commit day one or that woulda been a huge loss in gold.

Aside from LA, I've been hella hooked on Diablo 4. Blizzard-Activision finally did it right to some extend and wasn't a dump on release. Currently lvl 51 Penetrating Shot Rogue and I'm loving the game. There's so much to do! Highly recommended for anyone that's been of the fence. I disliked D3 and never got far, but they finally did this game right. It's got your D2 playstyle with a mixture of PoE-like class building and some hints at D3, but it's stayed true to Diablo. Visuals are really good and the story is pretty good; albeit some corny moments here and there.

[JagdPanther]

The Star Ocean marathon continues.

I beat 6-winged Ethereal Queen in Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness this evening. I didn't dislike the game entirely. I'm glad I played it. There were some things about it that I actually rather liked, but quite a few I didn't.

After taking a short break, I popped Star Ocean: The Divine Force into my PS5 and played about 30-40 minutes of it. Definitely going to take some getting used to the combat. The AP system is tripping me up something fierce, as is what appears to basically be freestyle combat more akin to an action game than an RPG. I definitely rely on auto targeting a lot, and this doesn't seem to really have that; you can just flail about whether you're near an enemy or not. But, it does look pretty, and I already love Laeticia. Plus, you can tell Motoi Sakuraba composed the soundtrack for this game and Valkyrie: Elysium at the same time; some tracks already sound similar.

[Jaden]

Like many, I went on a tear with Baldur's Gate 3 and just finished a 78 hour playthrough.

It's just a well polished CRPG, but having a game come out that ACTUALLY "just works" is so mind-blowing to people in 2023 that it quickly became a bestseller and one of the highest rated games of all time, even before the console release.

Forgotten Realms is perhaps my favourite fantasy setting, so I'm really happy whenever it gets used. My only gripe with the game is how quickly the stakes escalate in the story. This is supposedly a level 1-12 D&D campaign, yet you're dealing with gods, archdevils, the illithid empire, etc. In Divinity:Original Sin, that's fine, and they definitely have the setpieces and production quality to match the ambitious and epic story, but I still wish they'd held back. I feel like the game has cannibalized the setting, to the point where some things don't settle well with other Forgotten Realms media.

[JagdPanther]

Been playing Star Ocean: The Second Story R for several weeks after I finished Star Ocean: The Divine Force. This game coming out totally blindsided me. I felt like there was no way I could put off playing this for another year, so I jumped right into it. Love what they've done with the updates and extras. Really fun resurfacing of the game. For the first time ever, I recruited Opera and Ernest as optional party members. Really liking Opera. I'm running a girl team, as usual (Rena, Opera, Chisato, and Precis).

Just got to the part of finding out about Rena's past tonight. I've always played as Rena in SO2 because I love her character so much. I guess I can look at Claude's scenes on YouTube. But, anyway: I came to the conclusion tonight that finding out about Rena's past may be in second place for me on the all-time most emotional scene list for JRPGs behind Aerith's death in FFVII.

[CIRQUAN]

Playing GTA Online and God of War (2018).
Love GTA Online. Found a friend with whom I have been playing with for the last couple of days, doing mostly Casino heists and some small side missions. Started experiencing annoying lagging recently, didn`t happen before... Not sure if it`s my internet or his...
Not playing in public lobbies, because... <.<

And bought God of War on Steam sale few days ago and I am loving it. Always wanted to play God of War game and couldn`t because I didn`t have PS till this game came out for PC.
Just started so I didn`t get far, got to the fight with the "Stranger". I know it`s Baldur...

[Twi]

Played Palworld for a bit and enjoyed what I could, but my computer couldn't handle it due to being more than a decade old. Moving back to Digimon Cyber Sleuth to get my capturing/monster taming fix instead.

[barcode120x]

Been over 6 months since my last game update. Diablo 4 died out quick as the nostalgia faded quickly. Aside from D4, I've basically have still been on the Lost Ark grind and with two accounts to generate in-game currency. The end of 2023 was a great time to get back into non-mmo gaming and turn on the breaks on Lost Ark. I no longer play my second account and I only do a handful of raids now on my main account. Normally I would be doing 18 raids per week plus the dailies, but since the start of this year, I've probably done less than 10 each week, a lot less recently because of other games. I have been long, hard grind with Lost Ark since release in February 2022 so when I started to actually try others games, I got hooked immediately and my mind/body was eager to try other games.

For a week or two in December, I was hooked on this country/settlement management game called Knights of Honor 2 (basically a simplified version of the Crusader Kings series). I also dove back into This War of Mine which I highly recommend.

January was also an exciting month to get into gaming outside of Lost Ark. I was on a 2 week travel trip so I had to cut my Lost Ark time and it ended up taking a toll on me, a good one. When I came back, my friends and I got HOOKED on Palworld for the first week straight. The nostalgia of the game and what not was SO Fun. Unfortunately, going very hard on the game made me realize the bugs and faults of an early access game and the "grind" of leveling can capturing pals started to bore me quick.

After that week of Pokémon-like shenanigans, I picked up another survival-builder-RPG early access game called Enshrouded which had been on my radar for some time. To my surprise, the game is nearly flawless for an early access game. I have put in 50 hours into the game and I haven't even beaten or explored half the game. The best way to describe it outside of its genres is that it's primarily took Valheim's ideas and mixed with an RPG aspect a bit similar to and very old RPG called Fable. What's crazy is that it's got building, great graphics, exploration, almost sand box, coop or single player, dungeons, combat, skills, crafting, RPG-questing all in one. What's also crazy is that it actually works well and has been created well. Of the many, many early access games I have tried over the many years, Enshrouded is my number 1 and fully recommend to anyone interested.

I also picked up Last Epoch, another ARPG that combines Diablo 4 and Path of Exile but has carved a spot on its own in the ARPG world. And, it's fantastic. I am having a blast. I could not get into POE because of complicated and complex the skill, gem, and gear system was. As a new player in POE, it was not fun to be so heavily reliant on websites for guides and even applications to build your build for you. What fun is there in a game where there is too much information that it's nearly impossible to make your own build. Last Epoch on the other hand does that well. It's not nearly as complex as POE when it comes to your class build, but not nearly as simplified and easy as Diablo 4. I just hit lvl 58 as a Forge Guard and started the Monolith grind which is the end game grind and it is very unique and fun.

This month is also looking good for a few others games I'm looking to pick up or get back into. I seem to be back into the survival-builder genre after playing Palworld and still hooked on Enshrouded. Nightingale is another early access game that comes out and I too am excited for. I am also looking to start The Forest 2 from scratch as it had major, major updates since I initially touched it when it dropped in early access February of last year. Last but not least, I'm wanting to get back in Cyberpunk as well now that I have a really good computer and I hear the DLC Phantom Liberty is top notch. I honestly don't remember too much of the game because I sped ran it when it first dropped years ago but didn't pay much attention to the story and just exploring the game.

On a very small side note, I had spontaneously logging in Black Desert Online, grinding here, tried the new scholar classes, and been doing a bit of enhancing. I somehow got lucky and manage to make some silver from enhancing. Got some gear back, I bought myself the infinite HP potion. The best part is, I 1-tapped enhanced a mythical Pegasus (arguably one of the rarest things in the game). I can't get myself to ever fully come back to the game...at least not yet. What my seal the deal is that they revealed a swordsman/gunslinger like male class for this coming spring. The last several class releases over the years had been mediocre at best (my opinion of course) and none of them made me come back. Scholar almost did initially, but then her movement tech and grind was just too slow and clunky for me. I also felt she was rushed she came out as only an awakened class (no succession alternative class/build like how archer and shai are).

I had been a very long break from work the last 4 months which has allowed me to game so much and so hard but unfortunately, I started my new M-F job end of this month. Just not enough time to play all these games and any new future ones

[Jaden]

Black Desert Online gives me insane luck whenever I return to the game after several months away. I logged in to check out the new content, cashed in all the freebies and immediately tapped a PEN Blackstar. Now I feel like I have to continue. I bet this is some kind of hidden mechanic in the game.

Other than that, I finished Persona 5 Strikers. The PC version is kinda crashy, so I gave up on it before and that kinda soured the experience, but now I found a patch that works. Great game. Never been too hype about this series, so I'm holding out on Persona 3 Reload until later when it's in the bargain bin.

If you have 90 minutes to kill, this video was a really good thesis on why JRPG stories are the way they are.