Finally finished Planescape: Torment.

Life feels a little emptier now. How do I possibly follow it up?

I finished Halo 2. Brutes kicking my ass still feels more fair than the Flood. One brute punched me so hard off the map it triggered a cutscene before killing me and resetting the checkpoint. I like the duel-wield mechanic as it lets you (with limits) carry more than the standard two weapons, but they just don’t pack enough punch compared to the two-handed weapons. Energy swords on the other hand still are lethal with one swing. The Beam rifle is also still deadly if you can get the timing right, even the brutes go down in three well placed shots.

Also in the mother of all coincidences, I was kicking the tires of the StarFox 64 PC port Starship earlier this week before the Nintendo announcement. It is from the same crew that did the Ship of Harkinian Ocarina of Time PC port. Just out of the box it runs buttery smooth. It is probably one of the best showcases of the Nintendo 64 decompilations. Multiplayer is what drove me to explore in the first place, so I’m hoping to test it out with some buddies soon.

I thought I would start Halo 3, but all the Stellarisposting last week has me wanting to reinstall it. I haven’t played it since COVID, so there’s a ton of rework I’ll need to figure out.

Crimson Desert added a bird feeder in an update a few weeks ago. You can now feed beans to birds. I have yet to confirm if the game has owls.

Im playing Mixtape. So far it feels like a less fun Life is Strange.

Yesterday I played and completed The Dark Queen of Mortholme. Pretty cool, a bit yuribait tbh and getting the final ending was annoying

Today I’ve been doing Hidden Cats in Rome, I’ve got a soft spot for hidden object games, especially with animals!

As much as I was complaining on earlier posts and still think Baldur’s Gate 3 is better mechanically, I’ve gotten pretty far in Pathfinder: Kingmaker. My barony has now schools, a people’s militia has been established on a strictly volunteer basis, the professional guard has been doubled especially along the borders to deter monster attacks, taxes have been lowered, and we now have 3 cities in the barony. We’ve also established friendly relations with the other new baron to the east and have repaired some roads that were left unkempt from the former bandit king.

I really like the “running your own society” gimmick and I don’t think it gets done enough in a roleplaying fashion like this. I have a dormant game of Dragon Age: Inquisition that I start up every once in a while because I like having that same feeling there of building up my own rebel society that is making alliances with different people across the world. Throwing our weight around when it matters like “you know we have our own holy army, right? do you really want to do that?”

Finished Vagrant Story some time ago. A really incredible game, especially visually for the PS1. The writing was also really, really good for a 90s Square game. Not that the others are badly written (though some are poorly translated) but it had a remarkable lack of anime melodrama and silliness and I think it was targeting a slightly older demo than Square’s typical output. The setting and characters were so interesting I was a bit sad the events were mostly confined to a ruined city with a very limited cast of characters. Would’ve loved running around towns and talking to people.

Started doing a new game plus run while I figure out what I wanna play next, at the same time I’ve also continued chipping away at Valkyria Chronicles 2 on my phone.

I’m still on Stellaris, this game is truly addicting. I have now 110 hours into the game and the empire I posted before on the previous Sunday thread was too fucked up by the war with the Awakened Empire I was forced to fight and my economy never recovered because I didn’t have enough pops to generate resources. I ended up in third place (below 2 Awakened Empires and above 1 Fallen Empire) and the game ended while I was in the middle of a war with The Chosen. I could continue, but I wanted to start over with a different empire anyway. I can’t wait for the Nomad DLC, cause I want to do a Space Pirate empire with it.

For now I’m doing a Worker Cooperative empire of cute gecko people that is sort of inspired by China.

Here’s what the empire is looking like right now:

So far in this run I have tried to expand quickly but I’ll kind of have to build tall instead of wide, and have managed to expand quite a bit, but there is a bunch of empires really close, so unfortunately I couldn’t expand as much as I wanted. I have already started having good relations with two of the four empires I’m bordering and have already set up two branch offices, one in each. I have also found out another MegaCorp empire, but they are capitalists so I worsened our relations to declare rivalry against them and got a bit more Influence that was crucial to expand.

Outside Stellaris I have started playing Pokérogue again, I forgot how good this game is, and I have been wanting to play Warhammer 40K: Mechanicus (obligatory Children of the Omnissiah), I tried to play it twice before, but both times something else happened and I had to stop playing so I hope this time I actually get to play more than a couple hours of it because I remember liking the game.

Just recently started playing Esoteric Ebb and it is so much fun. So far it’s Disco Elysium only in the sense of “the people who made it loved disco” but it’s still political, it is thus far a lot more direct at calling out when you’re being racist, and I’m having the giggles of death every time you get to ask who people will for in the election.

Planescape: Torment and also bought Arcanum because it was on sale for $3. Playing them on an old circa 2005 dell laptop running q4os

I’ve been playing modded Morrowind, Doing quests in Cyrodiil mostly. There’s a modathon happening this month and they’re dropping good stuff almost daily.

Total war Pharaoh still. I played Tausret for a bit just to try out a faction with good troops. They make a whole thing out of her being a woman, have loading screen blurbs about her relating to Hatshepsut, recommend you pick the Hatshepsut tradition, and lets you dress her as Isis.
And it annoys me because she’s “Beloved by Amun” and has no synergy with Hatshepsut, all her stuff synergises with Khufu and she starts next to the ruins of Akenhaten! She is just given the Isis relation because she’s a woman! She’s just recommended to go Hatshepsut because she’s a lady! But she doesn’t need trade routes because she literally gets the most resources! That’s her whole thing!

Women get to be Amun too! Or at least Amunet!

Too busy to play many games at the moment, but I have enjoyed pirating Tomodachi life. It is very, very silly. I made a photorealistic weevil and it fell in love with a goblin I made

Also on the topic of that Star Fox remake I can’t stop giggling at this side profile

I have played no games this week

I’m the grass toucher they warned you about

Playing through the first Thief game. I started it years ago and stopped after some medical problems. I watched a video about it being an anti brainrot game and that made me decide to pick it up again.

Deadly Shadows was my first Thief game. People say it’s not as good as the first two. I’m sure it’s not but it was great for its time. I’m starting with the first game and then I’ll do The Metal Age. I’m excited to see what all the hype is about with 2