What video games are you playing now?

[Beth Pavell]

Space Empires V: The planetstrike on Lyrae II went off without a hitch, so for now my expansion, and therefore the war, is over. I've offered peace terms to the Sithrak, which they probably won't accept. I've decided to retire HMS Thorias, Arachneon and Lazar after completing one last mission to move colonists to Lyrae I, to be replaced with the new I-Series MkII. The design of the Gyrfalcon Type 2 is still one engine too heavy, but given that it was always intended as a stop-gap I've ordered three to be constructed at Gloriana and three at Fortuna.

The Eee have agreed to hand over their technology in return for safe passage through the Commonwealth. I'm choosing to regard this as the price of doing business for now

 

[Kharixi]

Kingdom Hearts - HD I.5 ReMIX -:
I made it all the way through Wonderland and Deep Jungle, and then hopped over to Olympus Coliseum.

 

[Username19]

Xenoblade Chronicle 2 - Recruited Tora and Poppi. Rescued Nia and her big tiger buddy. Now the story wants me to find a way off this Titan. Finishing up all the quests I have available first and hoarding a bit more money.

 

[Dolce]

Was playing Okami before I left the house. Currently in Tstua ruins.

 

[Kharixi]

Kingdom Hearts - HD I.5 ReMIX -:
Went through Olympus Coliseum (took longer than I would've preferred because I was battling Cerberus very recklessly), then went back to Traverse Town. After I did stuff there (finally Riku!), I headed to Agrabah, and finished that. Then I went through the Monstro scenario and flew to Atlantica. The original plan was to skip it and head straight to Halloweentown (since, you know, you can), but I decided to go along with Atlantica anyway. I stopped playing right before the Ursula fight.

Kind of conflicted on Riku. On one hand, he's incredibly selfish and idiotic because he seems to think that Sora's completely wrong for not trying to help Kairi immediately. That is understandable, but it just seems like he's asking the right questions but not giving Sora a chance to respond. On the other hand, though, he's awesome. He lets the villains do what they want and even uses the Heartless so he can help Kairi.

...Maybe I'm just taking this too seriously.

 

[Stratelier]

Skyrim Switch. What can I say other than "well, it's Skyrim" ? The visuals are certainly a lot more colorful than on the PS3 version. But if you look closely enough you can find some great quality-of-life improvements:

- Loading sequences are WAY faster on the Switch (not having a disc drive really helps it out)
- Save files are split by character (even the save file made right before the character editor) when saving/loading
- "Quicksave" drops an autosave on command (distinct from the regular autosaves)

Quicksave is probably the most useful improvement - I've disabled basically all other autosave options (except "save on travel").

 

[Dolce]

Pokemon Moon: Cleaning boxes atm.

 

[Fatima Shadow Frost Witch]

Pokemon Ultra Moon

did some wonder trading and visited some ultra space holes

 

[MegaPod]

Pokémon Ultra Sun

I beat Hala and got my Fightinium Z.

 

[Lone_Garurumon]

Sonic Forces: So, I started and finished the whole storyline in two days, no big feat, since it's not terribly hard, and Sonic games aren't really known for being long slogs anyway. So, made a wolf avatar, and really just blew through the game. The story is fun enough to watch on the surface, but really starts to fall apart the second you start asking questions about anything at all. Classic Sonic handles like an utter brick, I mean seriously, he's even worse to play as than in Generations, and he wasn't overly fun there. The levels overall were too short, but otherwise reasonably well constructed. Personally I had the most fun with the Avatar stages, and by extension the teamwork stages controlling Modern Sonic and the Avatar at once. The Wispons give you a few different options for how they play and they're really just fun to use. The avatar creation system's fun to play around with as well, I had some fun designing and dressing my original wolf avatar, and I made a hedgehog that I haven't really had a chance to mess around with just yet. There's a few more specific gripes I have, but that's spoilers for a relatively new game so...
Basically, the game is fun (besides Classic levels), but the story leaves quite a bit to be desired.

 

[TeaWest]

Taking a break from Breath of Fire. This game is really interesting, both good and bad. Basically the game is designed in a way that it forces you to start over and take a New Game plus before you've beaten the game, forcing you to replay everything over again in order to get further than where you were before. It's a fascinating gameplay mechanic, and while I don't like it at all, it toys with how you as a play view a game over, which is interesting and unlike anything I've experienced before.

So I had to restart the entire game and replay the 18 hours I've already put into the game. I'm thinking I'll just set it aside for now and come back to it later since I'm basically at the beginning now

 

[Beth Pavell]

Space Empires V: I do like to see lots of freighters bumbling back and forth, taking people out to the colonies. Production in those border systems is going up. Pretty soon Radnor will start pulling its weight, and elsewhere the last of the Oxygen planets will be settled soon.

The Cue Cappa Commonwealth are the third empire to agree to hand over technology. It's not an ideal situation allowing safe passage to three empires, but hopefully in the long run I'll reap the benefits. Realistically the Eee are too far away to matter much at the moment, the Abiddon is just the price of keeping one flank quiet, and the Cue Cappa aren't worth a war yet

 

[Username19]

Okami (PS4) - Just got the emperor out of his funk. Now I'm running around and reviving everything in the city before going to Sasa Sanctuary to meet with Kaguya.

VA-11 HALLA (Vita) - Actually pretty disappointed in this one. Thought it was going to be a lot cooler then it is. Apparently I'm only in chapter 2 and I've got about 20 in game days left?

Xenoblade Chronicle 2 - Not much progress since my last update. I was just trying to upgrade all my blades a bit when I got stuck on Poppi. Is that stupid mini game really the only way to get her parts?

 

[MegaPod]

Pokémon Ultra Sun

I explored Ten Carat Hill, and nabbed some new Pokémon plus the Flyinium Z.

 

[Stratelier]

Taking a break from Breath of Fire. This game is really interesting, both good and bad. Basically the game is designed in a way that it forces you to start over and take a New Game plus before you've beaten the game, forcing you to replay everything over again in order to get further than where you were before. It's a fascinating gameplay mechanic, and while I don't like it at all, it toys with how you as a play view a game over, which is interesting and unlike anything I've experienced before.

You mean Dragon Quarter? It is nothing like previous Breath of Fire games, but it was certainly an interesting battle system. It's technically possible to beat it on your first run if you have a good strategy out of the gate, but ... otherwise, SOL Restart is your friend (despite having to restart the story) because at least the things in storage transfer over. (Never use SOL Restore, as restarting from the last save point without your items in hand leaves you worse off than the first attempt.) I remember (on a subsequent run) even beating the first boss in the game without taking a hit (seriously, that early 1-on-1 monster duel and I never took a hit).

I did eventually beat it and with a good enough ranking to get ... I think it was 1/512 ratio or something which was enough to unlock all of the sealed optional areas (the one near the end game was not to be missed).

 

[TeaWest]

Yeah I forgot to type Dragon Quarter in there, whoops. This was the first time I did a restart, I was just doing restore up until that point that point and it sucked to lose all your items. I'll pick it up again in due time I bet. I enjoyed what I played of it!

 

[Kharixi]

Kingdom Hearts - HD I.5 ReMIX -:
Didn't play as long today, but I did finish Atlantica (Ursula was tough, not surprisingly) as well as Halloween Town. I really enjoyed that. Anyway, I headed back to Traverse Town to save and that's about all that happened.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Space Empires V: The Sithrak are still refusing to admit defeat. I think I'm going to have to go through the tedious business of annihilating them after all.

It seems that Contra-Terrene Engines aren't powerful enough for my Gyrfalcons - at some point I'll need to tech up to Jacketed-Photon Engines, but for now I'm putting my focus onto Torpedo Weapons, which is coming along nicely. In any case the Enterprise-class Armed Colony Ship was in need of an upgrade - new engines, X-Ray Laser replaced with an Anti-Proton Beam, Master Computer and Combat Sensors instead of Bridge, etc ... and as something of an experiment, a Plasma Missile mounted on the bow. It doesn't come out as much more expensive with these upgrades, so we'll see what happens

 

[Lone_Garurumon]

Crash Bandicoot: Playing the N-Sane Trilogy version, and I'm up to the fight with Ripper Roo, haven't fought him yet, but this is honestly further than I've ever gotten before. I will admit that I had help from the Pity Masks, but this is Crash 1, the hardest game I have ever played, there is no shame in that.

Sonic Forces: Downloaded Episode Shadow and the Super Sonic option (yes, the power-up that should have been in the game from the start has to be downloaded by choice, and will actually start costing money sometime January). Anyway, I finished Episode Shadow (not hard, it's 3 stages), and collected all Red Star Rings, Countdown Rings, and Silver Moon Rings, and cleared 2 of the 3 levels with an S rank. I don't think I'm gonna score an S Rank on the last one, since even going through as fast as I can I'm still on a B tops. Especially since I don't think the Daily Mission bonuses can help your rank in Episode Shadow.
I've been playing around with the avatar creator in the main game, I've got the Wolf from the main playthrough, the hedgehog I made last post, and I've also made a bird and a bunny girl. I was considering going full Bunnie Rabbot and giving the rabbit robot parts, but eventually I just gave her regular clothes. Basically I've just been going through and clearing bonus stages as they popped up, grabbing the assorted collectable rings, and just going for PSN trophies and in-game mission clears as I play through random levels.
Super Sonic's fun though. I'm just glad they actually made the form worth it this time, instead of taking the terrible route Generations did. I think it's kinda cool how Modern Super Sonic uses a proper instrumental version of Fist Bump, but Classic Super Sonic uses a retro sounding chiptune version.

 

[TeaWest]

Playing some Xenoblade Chronicles X now. It's been pretty fun, not super invested in it because there's a lot of stuff to take in at first, but I enjoy the story and setting so I think with time I'll get used to it more.