I finally had some time for games again this past week so I’ve been playing Hitman: World of Assassination. I’ve played it a lot before but mostly on Xbox (around 1500 hours I think? Something like that anyway). Now I’m going for all the steam achievements. I’ve still got all the Mastery Level 20 and Sniper Assassin ones to get, but otherwise there’s just a couple random weird assassination ones and I’m done. A lot of them have been pretty easy to get if you know Hitman well. The ones I’m missing though (aside from the random niche assassination ones) are all time sinks so it may be a while before I get 100%, but I’m determined now. Hopefully I get them all before I’m burnt out or get busy again.
I used the recent Steam sale to grab Civ 5 from recommendations here!
You all were right. It’s great! I definitely like it more than Civ 6.
So I have been into chill games lately. I found this Stardew Valley upgrade called Fields of Mistral, so now am I playing that.
It’s Stardew Valley, but better. Most of the QoL mods (maybe 95%) that I usually add for Stardew are already part of Mistral.
In Stardew, there was a lot of waiting. Example upgrading your tools took days, and you could only do one at a time. The combat was also not fun, just annoying. It was mostly spam-clicking, and you had to make sure your aiming was right and I felt forced to do the museum to be able to progress.
In Mistral, you actually fight monsters in a specific way depending on monster and version of that monster (if you want to be effective). You can also craft all your stuff yourself (or buy it if you don’t want to) as long as you have the level and the materials. There is also character progression that makes your life easier for example for crafting can you unlock to remove x min from time cost. And for fighting you can unlock crit hits, as two examples there are a loooot more to unlock.
You can jump and swim, so shortcuts are a thing.
I also like the main quests more. It feels more involving with the people and the world. I don’t feel the constant stress of when and how I need to do things to optimize my time or even unsure what to spend my time on. There is no waiting and the museum is not forced progression that has to be done to actually unlock parts of the game instead there is a main quest and it isn’t locking you away in the same way. But time will tell. Side quest is a fun way to get some easy money and some lore.
I haven’t played enough to say anything of the main story yet. So far, it seems good, and it might be better from a game perspective than stardew because it gives you an actual purpose and a clear goal that you can ignore for as long as you want. Plus the magic part of the story doesn’t feel so out of place as it did in stardew. The ppl seems happier, unsure as of yet but noone seem depressed (many were pretty unhappy in stardew) so the mood is a bit different, it isn’t a bad or good thing, just different way to tell a story, there are hints of deeper character progression tho, I just haven’t focused on leveling up their affection for me, stardew showed pretty quickly how unhappy ppl were and how they cope with life.
The characters feel very integrated. Everyone has their quirky side (in a good way). They hang out with each other, but some more than others. It feels like they like being together, and there are a lot of get-togethers, which makes it fun to get to know them through how they interact.
Their conversations with you feel contextual. If you first talk to them in town (and there isn’t an ongoing event), they can mention things you’ve done, like filling the museum with something they like. If you talk to them again in the inn, they can talk about the upcoming game night, or even do group conversation with others there about how fun last night was.
So if you like Stardew, try Fields of Mistral. So far will I be picking Mistral over Stardew (I have 200+ hours in that game). Main reasons are that the gameplay is more fun and the character interactions are much better. But maybe also because it is new.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
TLDR: I am playing Fields of Mistral which is a Stardew Valley upgrade (in my opinion)
After a brief pause from gaming, I’ve been playing a lot Hollow Knight recently, though I also want to jump back into Persona 3 Reloaded (as I progressed most in that before being tempted to HK by my partner). Both run super well on the steam deck, and it’s fun to hook up to the tv and use the steam controller; the pick up and pause nature of the steam deck is awesome.
still BOTW. slowly working through it when I have time to play.
I’ve been playing through the spyro remakes. I’m half way through the first game and honestly it’s fun just running around collecting things, but man the platforming is excruciating at times. It can feel really shitty when the only way to see if you can reach a platform is to die trying
Modded Starbound. It has been ported to mobile by fans. It works suprisingly well.
I finally got around to Animal Well. I went in blind, and I’d highly recommend anyone else interested do the same. Don’t read anymore if you don’t want gameplay spoilers.
spoiler
I thought it was a fantastic puzzle platformer up to a point. It does a very good job of hinting at what you need to do rather than outright telling you. I thought it was perfectly balanced right up to the first time you see the credits roll.
I probably should have stopped at that point because much of the post-game content (of which there is a lot) just got too obtuse. We’re taking La Mulana levels of insanity. I ended up using a guide to get all the eggs, and I decided to not even bother with a whole bunch of other stuff.
There is an abyssal depth of content here for anyone who wants to make a 2D puzzle platformer their lifestyle for a significant duration. Keep in mind I guess there are some puzzles that are even unsolvable on your own and were only deciphered by a community effort.
Whatever your thoughts, there is no denying this game is an achievement.
With my busted processor finally replaced, I’m back to Dragon Age Origins. My first playthrough - somehow I’d completely missed it back in the day. Damn, they got a lot of actors with geek cred doing the voice work in this one. So far Aeryn Sun is my witch waifu, Captain Janeway is her mom, and Tuvok is leading an enclave of wood elves.
I modded my gamecube for various reasons related to SGDQ last week, so I’ve been on a gamecube kick. Just finished FromSoft’s action deckbuilder: Lost Kingdoms (1) and thinking about moving on to it’s sequel. Unfortunately, I got the corruption issues common in the official 1019 block memory card and lost pretty much all my saves, including the Lost Kingdoms save immediately after beating it, so I guess I’m not going back for any card collecting or postgame content.
It was a fun little novelty. Ran around 6 hours and was decently mixed in its card attack options. A number of quality of life complaints common to the era, plus some specific to the core game design, but worth playing for its short run time
Still enjoying the new build options provided by Minecraft’s latest update.
Lords of the fallen . had to start over again since I got lost on where I was supposed to go Lol.
