Man, Dana. Let me tell you a funny story:
I’m actually friends with the Woodle Tree developer and I’ve cursed at him a few times telling him that some of the mechanics are just borked but I swear to hell and back the dude’s adamant I just need to “try harder” or something.
Given up on it entirely. Too buggy, too infuriating.
Funny someone else fell into that trap 
I read off one of the reviews to one of the people in my discord chat I talk in. They asked what game. When I said “Woodle Tree Adventures,” they said “Oh that one, yeah, it’s bad.”
So i’ve been playing a little bit of Observer lately ( won it here in a giveaway, thanks @Elocin30 again! ) and it’s mostly okay. It’s comprised of let’s call it ‘real life’ sequences and ‘dream’ ( you are inside of brains of other people ) sequences ( though they start to merge later in game) and while i really enjoy ‘real life’ ones , they are mix of dark cyberpunk and detective noir , i must say dream ones are really…painful actually. I do not have any issues with flashing lights or have no tendency for seizures but they do actually hurt my eyes and head and after a while and really ain’t that creative, just annoying mostly.
I guess once i finish it i will throw some sort of review/opinion about it on steam.
Oh yeah, I remembered the cute little mini tree, then I saw the Grandpa tree and yeah, I got suckered in. The platforms are tiny! It’s hard to tell how far away some are, since you can zoom but you not spin the camera. Try harder. Ha ha. I did, believe me.
@Pylinaer Uh huh. That must be why I put it not only in the Platformers category in Steam Library, but also in the “For Giggles” category too. That’s where I put games which are likely to be ‘bad’ or at least hard to play. I did not however, expect to have an aversion therapy session confronting my fear of falling. 
Decided it was time to move on to Pokemon Let’s Go.
It is in the same vein as Pokemon Go in terms of catching Pokemon.
Also there are a few mechanics missing… And honestly, I’m kinda liking not having to worry about them.
Those mechanics are Breeding, Abilities, and held items.
@coralinecastell I just beat Woodle Tree Adventures 1. Favourite level is the one that’s partly underwater. It’s pretty and a breeze to “grind” for berries.
Still the jump mechanic isn’t fun. Every jump I wonder if I’ll make it to the next platform because I don’t quite trust it. Easiest way to do it well is to keep moving and tap the jump at the right time. I see why your friend is proud of it. He did a lot of work on the game, creditied for design, animation and music. It’s not impossible, but the hit and miss bit, I’m sure is not all me, lol. If the not the wonky mechanics, I’d have really enjoyed it. Even the monsters designs are cute, especially the ‘charging bulls’.
So i’ve sat down and played Detroit: Become Human for a few hours this morning. It came free with this month’s PS plus . What can i say so far? I’m liking it more than i was expecting.
I’ve not a huge fan of Quantic Dreams games,barely finished Beyond Two Souls with my GF ( she was more into it than i was , i was just doing the controls ) and uninstalled Heavy Rain after 10 minutes because of how boring it was .
Detroit: Become Human seems to break this mold somehow and i’m actually quite interested in what’s happening and feel invested in all main characters and their stories.
So i think i might finish this one and actually enjoy it to a extent.
I am starting to play Stardew Valley. Not sure when I shall ever return.
I bought Wizard of Legend at the start of the steam sale and just 100% it today (25hrs). I enjoyed the combat a lot as it’s one of the best things about the game. I do think that the level design and progression is kinda the weakest aspects of it. I wish it was more like ETG where u find tiered chests that give different items. I mean u can buy different skills at the vendor for that run only but I never really needed to. I just used my gems to perm unlock skills and took 4 skills that synergize well together and never switched loadouts. I think it would have been cool if they started you with just a random basic attack magic and u had to find the rest on your journey instead of making a loadout to begin with. Now I need to decide if i want to buy another game before the sale ends or not.
-Quick PoE Update-
My current Cyclone CwC Blade Vortex Trickster character is going really strong for being a build i just slapped together at league start. Ive made more exalt orbs this league than all other leagues combined. Funny how my own build turned out to be my best toon ever. Maybe it’s a sign i shouldn’t be lazy and make my own shit from now on.
My last few games have been The Forest and Dark Souls 2 Scholar of the First Sin with a few friends. Insanely fun when with friends, and also really creepy. Especially The Forest. Nothing is creepier than being caught out in the dark and than chased down by a creepy, multi armed cannibal freak.
Skill vendors are useful if you are going for a Neve run, where you need 7 skills of the same element. They also sell upgrades for cheaper which is nice. Other than that they are kinda useless.
The random layout is kinda there if you talk to the card guy before starting a run. You start with a random cloak, a random artifact, and 4 random skills.
I am playing System Crash, a fantastic Cyberpunk card game, i really like it!
I played through Donut County. and well… it’s okay. The dialog uses a similar idea to Animal Crossing, speeding up the words until it’s incomprehensible. But it feels like a different take on the Katamari games… just not quite as fleshed out.
I finally, after almost a year, managed to finish Tokyo Xanadu eX+ and this is not going to be a very positive post so I’ll come out ahead of all the gripe that is to follow and say I did like the game, I really do think it’s a pretty decent JRPG.
This game has taken inspirations from an awful lot of sources and while the developer has a lot of experience making JRPGS I think this game was a first for them in many ways, and it shows.
This game tries to be a social management RPG inspired by the likes of Persona but doesn’t manage to capture the time and relationship management aspect of it. Instead of every day being split up into time segments where you chose what to do and who, if anyone, to engage with you instead get an allotment of currency items that you spend in order to trigger friendship scenarios with the available cast members. The game doles those items out so that you can’t engage with everyone but you can ‘max’ out about half the cast, if you largely ignore everyone else.
They’ve opted for creating a 3rd person brawler type combat system instead of going with the standard JRPG fair of ATB or turn based combat which I largely found enjoyable. But again it shows that this is not their usual territory, the controls are just slightly on the wrong side of clunky and you’re given maybe a few too many options.
Your characters have a melee attack, a ranged attack, a charged power melee attack and if you use your ranged attack in the air it will become a flying charge but your only defensive option is a dodge. Each of the character’s have their own variations on all these attacks some are faster some are stronger, some favour ranged over melee and so on. Your team is made up out of 3 characters you pick from the start of the dungeon, you control one at a time and can switch in any of the other two at any time. This gives you 12 different standard attacks to keep in mind.
In addition to all this you’re also given a special powerful attack which is charged up as you fight and a second even more special super attack as well as a third team attack. There is almost nothing in any level that requires or even encourages using these special attacks except the final boss monster. If you save all these attacks up for the final boss you’ll beat it near instantly every time.
The primary issue I’ve had with the game however is that the pacing is kind of off. The game generally runs in a cycle that gives you free time to run around town, talk to everyone, do your shopping, engage in friendship episodes and do all the side story bits and mini games. Then when you want to progress the main story something usually bad happens and a, or a series of, dungeons opens up and you’ll be spending the next hour or so fighting. More story happens and now you’re back in the social sim part of the game.
Some times the combat parts really drag out though and there were a good number of times I didn’t want to get back into the game because I had already exhausted all the social sim stuff for now but I didn’t feel like doing the fighting parts.
Much like this review, the game also just keeps going and really overstays it’s welcome. The original story is probably already 50h if you’re quick, 70 if you’re me and this part of the game already has at least 2 fake out big final boss battles. Then there’s an epilogue added to that which I rather liked. They do something few stories does and try to show life after the heroes prevents the end of the world and try to deal with fitting back into their daily lives. But it also throws in yet another big final boss battle for … spoilery reasons.
Then they made the eX+ version, PC port, which has YET another added afterstory and this one is longer and also has another great combat slog ending in yet another big bad super duper uber epic games evil boss fight. Although the story reasons does manage to not be awfully contrived I was kind of done with this game at 60h mark and now I’ve finally finished it at 101h.
You could of course replay it in NG+, see all the friendship events you missed out on first time around and each character has it’s own ending scene.
Safe to say I wont be bothering with that.
Finally I’d like to say that I did really rather enjoy all the little side stories going on everywhere in this game. There’s a huge number of NPCs in the city to talk to and most of them have things going on. As you keep talking to them day after day you get more information about them and their life. You start seeing the relationships between NPCs and how their stories intersect. None of this is masterfully written or anything, but I always enjoyed getting to run around and see what new developments had happened since last time.
If you made it all the way through this then thanks for reading. If you’re looking for a bit of a weird JRPG then I would actually recommend this game.
This thread has been really dormant lately. So.
I’ve sat down for a few hours this morning and tried Darksiders III on PS4 and what can i say? It’s pretty good!
General consent was that this is below average game but after a few hours i can say i must disagree.
Game admittedly borrows from all the corners. This time mostly from soulsborne games and while i’m not entirely happy on how some of the soul’sy mechanics were implemented i cant say that anything really stands out as just ‘bad’ in this game. Everything more or less works together to deliver pretty simple though enjoyable action game.
If you have a chance to try it out i’d say go for it despite not glowing reviews , i think they do game injustice.
Just started playing Blackguards 2 but currently am nit feeling it. Blackguards 1 was great even though there were several frustrating bits. The game was engaging enough that it gave me that “push” to finish it and replay it several more times. But Blackguards 2? I’m kinda not feeling it. Also having far too many units in combat wasn’t even interesting. Also I can’t connect with the main protagonist Cassia as well as my Avatar in BG1.
Anyone want to weigh in on the free weekend for ‘Deep Rock Galactic’
I had been watching this game for a while, then with the free weekend I gave it a shot.
The overall gameplay loop is kinda fun (a bit wonky, where sometimes it feels way too hard but other times it feels so easy). Characters play interesting and I like the progression system.
However, the mining (unless you are the driller) is some of the WORST, it feels clunky and I have issues making tunnels that actually do what I want (ceiling clipping preventing me from climbing up, narrow outcropping preventing me from falling down), and it is incredibly easy to loose all sense of direction when you are digging.
I’ve tried to make a post about the games I’ve played since the beginning of the year, but then again procrastination and the thought no one would read anyway.
I’ve been hit by the nostalgia train these past months.
A lot of the hate for the game was, in fact, Souls clone bashing. There were also some awful performance problems in the prerelease builds, but DS3 easily stands up to the second game, maybe even the first.
I’m also pretty sure the game @DontBeSilly played recently is not the same game that was released and most of the complaints are based upon. As far as I’ve been told at least they did change the game a fair bit since release.