Sins of a Solar Empire 2 Loved the original, and when they announced a sequel i wondered how they were going to ruin it with microtransactions and lootboxes, but thankfully there isnt any of that yet, which for a game in 2020 onwards, should instantly make it a game worth looking at
Still this, now about 55hrs in... out of apparently about 80-100 hours. And I can already see myself wanting to do an NG+ run as well... Although I have just come up against the first absolute bar-steward of a boss. Apparently combat was never overly challenging in the original version and was made even easier with the 'Royal' version. It shows - I think I had maybe one game over so far, and that was really early on while I was still getting my head around the mechanics. Until this utter arse biscuit... And it seems I'm not alone in that assessment, as plenty of others around teh interwebs have also made similar comments. He is a floating turd that just will not flush; he has about 7 different stages with some incredibly mean mechanics thrown in and there's a time limit of 30 minutes counted in real-time. There are some devastating attacks in the mix that can one-shot your main character and end the game there and then. One of the suggested tactics I see quite frequently is to change the game difficulty... to the highest setting. Ironically it makes this fight easier: you to do more damage with critical hits and elemental weaknesses, meaning you get through early waves faster and have more time to deal with the later harder waves...
… Still P5R… And that is exactly what I did: finished the game and then 2-3 days later started NG+. About 95hrs for the original playthrough and I’m now about 45hrs in to NG+ - ironically I’m almost back at the point I was at when I last posted… Absolutely cheesing it this time around, since weapons, “personas” (a bit like Final Fantasy summons), and money all carry over to NG+. I’m intentionally handicapping myself by avoiding personas that are super OP, but rarely does a fight prove to be challenging. That bar-steward of a boss will be a cakewalk. Almost hit all the achievements too, which is pretty rare for me. I’ve two more to do and they’ll both be completed at the same time. Not gonna be everyone’s cup of tea since it’s a story-rich JRPG/almost-visual-novel where the principal characters are Japanese high-school teenagers, but it clearly floats my boat. The visual style is great, the soundtrack is fantastic, and it runs on a potato - flawless 60FPS on Steam Deck and the GPU fans don’t spin even at 4K 120Hz. Got a bit of a backlog building up in the wings though… I do want to finish Hellblade II, I’ve not touched Forbidden West, got both God of War: Dad of Boy games to get through… and I suppose I’ll probably at least try whatever mess Bethesda dribbled out for Starfield…
I've just started Warhammer 40k Space Marine 2. I've never played any of the Warhammer games, be that video games or the table top, and had long dismissed them as "not my thing". I was wrong, so very wrong. It's fantastic. The graphics are good, but I love the lore and storyline. I'm not far into it, but you can really feel the heft of everything. I feel I'm on a slippery slope which ends with buying mini-figures
