I genuinely wonder how well AC2 holds up. I remember it extremely fondly, but then again back then I didn’t have several decades of the same formula being used as a frame of reference. So I wonder how it stands on its own merits, were I to play it now.

But yeah, the whole Ezio saga was amazing at the time, and I can’t imagine they have aged too poorly.

I honestly can’t remember. I bought a couple of physical 3DS games semi-recently, but those were ordered online. I bought Rayman Legends on the PS4 for my sister from a physical game store like 12 years ago? Might genuinely be that.

Oh damn, we’ve been over this already have we not? I really suck at remembering usernames 😔

Yeah you probably need one evil lady to fill out the roster. I guess Hexxat vs Viconia is personal preference, I’m personally not a huge fan of the Beamdog companions.

It can be a bit like that, for sure! It’s one of the spots where it shows its age I think, it was really the first western CRPG with these types of companion missions and I don’t think they had all the scripting and timings nailed down just yet.

Are you using any mods? And what’s your party composition?

How are you liking BG2? It’s still one of my favourite games, even though I recognise nostalgia is a big part of it. Was one of my comfort game for years.

It’s a game where you have a grid of tiles, and if you slide one tile so that you line up 3 (or more) of the same symbol, they disappear - and you get some points, typically. Think Candy Crush, although there is multitude of other variations too.

Now, Titanium Court is a lot more than just that. It just uses the match-3 framework to riff on a sort of autobattler/tower defense roguelike gameplay loop, which works surprisingly well on a mechanical level.

That is also just the basic gameplay loop of it, however. There is a lot more to the game than that, but again all of that is best discovered first hand.

I’ve not been particularly patient this week, because I’ve been playing Titanium Court. But I will claim to get away with it because they have a 20% launch sale, so I am at least adhering to part of the patient gaming ethos: don’t buy games at full price.

I will now attempt to talk about Titanium Court without actually telling you anything about it, because this is one of those games you should go into completely blind, if possible. And also because, well… this game is not particularly easy to describe. Here goes: Titanium Court answers the question “what if David Foster Wallace made a modern interpretation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a match-3 game?”. Okay, that was a little vague maybe. How about this (and knowing I’m likely to antagonise half the internet here): Titanium Court is like Undertale for adults.

It’s a game that delights in surprising you, and I recommend giving it the chance of doing so. Whether it’s a clever joke, a surprising emotional moment, a genuinely thought provoking piece of writing or a brilliant mechanical twist, the game has a lot of them in store for you. This is in my opinion a great use of the 2-hour Steam refund window policy. You will not have seen nearly everything of the game in that time, but you will almost certainly know if you vibe with it or not.

For me, this is a frontrunner for GOTY.

The first death of the story and lore of MtG was the Gatewatch. Magic moved from localised and discrete stories with characters rooted in the specific worlds of the recent formats towards something more akin to Marvel movies or a Sunday morning cartoon. Instead it was Jace and the gang turning up every week and beating the enemy with the power of friendship. Maybe there was also some turnover in the staff around this time, because it felt like the quality of the writing declined as well.

This current era of Fortnite style IP mixing and complete sell out is just embarrassing though.

God, I love Disco Elysium so much. For me it’s the best game of all time. It’s funny you single out what you call DM railroading, because it was one thing that was talked about a lot around the release, but they called it a “fail-forward” design philosophy. And it’s so important to the game because failure is such a major theme of the game, and trying and failing checks is a big part of that. That’s why there are several red checks right at the start of the game that actually have advantageous outcomes on failure - to teach you that trying and failing is okay. A lot of my favourite moments in the game comes from failed checks.

And the same goes for all those “wacky” dialogue options. A lot of people miss out on so much because they are afraid to “sound crazy”, because we have been conditioned by every other RPG that picking stupid options leads to being punished. Buy Disco doesn’t really work like that, it’s one of the least punishing games ever in that sense. You’re more often than not rewarded for picking those dialogues. There is even a loading screen tooltip encouraging them.

Anyway sorry my latent hyperfixation got awakened and I’m ranting…

That’s very fair, well explained! I think I may be underestimating the areas of DS1 simply because I know them so well. Some of them are treacherous and it definitely has more opportunities to get stuck for example, like accidentally touching the bottom bonfire in Great Hollow before the Lordvessel or whatnot. At the same time the bosses are so so simple.

Also yeah I know what you mean. I think the lack of rough edges is part of why some people don’t like DS3 so much and others like it the most out of the trilogy. It’s definitely the most “smooth sailing”. And I really don’t like how the game is just one long corridor.

You think it’s even easier than DS1? Those bosses have like three moves and punish windows for aeons, plus you have broken poise that lets you just facetank whatever you want if you feel like it. And pyro without mana costs. Anyway in typical Fromsoft fashion the challenge level is stepped up in the DLCs, so maybe those will satiate your appetite.

Also… Farron Greatsword my beloved <3

I finished Death Howl over the weekend. In the end I enjoyed it quite a bit, it’s probably a solid 8/10 for me. If you can pick it up on sale especially I think you’ll definitely get your money’s worth, at least provided you like both grid-based strategy and deckbuilding since it’s pretty much equal bits of both. I was a little dismayed at first that your freedom in deckbuilding is stifled by having the cards of one area cost an additional mana if you attempt to use them in another area, but that concern was alleviated a bit by the final zone of the game where - in the run up to and including the final boss - you can use all your cards from all your zones without extra costs. So you do even get a little bit of creative freedom at the end.

The story was so-so for me, but mostly because it was so predictable. It even tries to include a little twist, but unfortunately that twist has no impact on the overall story or moral of the conclusion, so it didn’t end up moving the needle much for me. I could see where the story was going pretty much from the get go, and that was exactly how it unfolded. That being said the message is good, the story isn’t offensively bad or anything and it’s not a story heavy game. 90% of it is gameplay, which is good. And the art is fantastic - some really great pixel art that I liked a whole lot.

For me Alan Wake 2 was the best game of 2023.

BG3 can be fun to play and all, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. BG3 wasn’t even the best game of 2023.

Ah I see! Yeah from my experience most builds are viable but you definitely need to specialise instead of being Jack of All Trades. The only exception being some spells like armour and Harvest Field that are great even without spell investment.

I actually went the Luck build initially and thought it was very powerful, but I went kind of all in on luck. I think I went 5 each in Vitality, Warding and Violence and then put the rest into luck, I think I had like 37 by the end or so? Enough so that with two rings with +% Luck from the labyrinth the crit and saviour ring had about 93% chance to proc. Then i put the rest of the points into Fortitude for the poise late game.

What build were you doing that wasn’t working?

And yeah the game just continues to surprise you, chapter 3 really blew me away too. Actually just finding the cable car in itself was a big wtf moment for me and then everything thereafter kept on being surprising. There is just so much game in this game, if you know what I mean? You think it’s this neat little mansion roguelike but oh no, it’s way more than that.

It also has two separate ways to make sure you don’t get stuck. I’m sure you found the Puzzle Oracles already, which is a great mechanic, and then on its webpage there are great two-stage hints for every puzzle/side quest in the game: first a smaller nudge in the right direction and then under a second spoiler tag the full explanation.This dev is so thoughtful it blows my mind.

I also like how all the game mechanics fit into the lore so naturally. The curse mechanic is one of my favourite game mechanics ever.

Ah, still so much to come! I loved that bit, you can really spend some time to perfect your build down there. The game just keeps getting cooler, doesn’t it. Whenever you think you have it figured out you discover some new surprise it throws at you.

Honestly for me, while I don’t like the UI and agree that it’s not good I could definitely get used to it. What irks me is feature removal. I miss getting more detailed stats during and after matches so much. Heatmaps, pass maps, touch maps, dribble visualisations, average positions, shot maps… All gone.

Also being unable to do much with your reserve and U18 teams. I don’t think you can even see their position in their respective leagues anymore? You used to be able to micromanage them, select specific players for specific positions (useful for retraining which I do a lot) etc.

It’s not really a point and click adventure, there are no puzzles in Pentiment and no item-based interactions or anything like that. It’s purely a visual novel.

Also I had such a hard time with Pentiment. There are parts I adored, like the art and the characters and writing (mostly), but man is it slow and boring at times. Maybe I’ve just been brainrotted by modern pace of information but the commitment to authentic portrayal of the world and times sometimes led to sitting through absolutely mind numbing conversations with uninteresting farmers. The pacing is also a bit rough, it felt like a slog at times, especially in the third act. I was very close to being unable to push through the third act.

At the same time I think the payoff was great, the journey Andreas goes through is great, and some of the moments related to his personal struggles and doubts were very impactful and moving. In the end I am glad I played it and I think it’s an objectively good piece of art, despite my gripes with it.