What are you playing right now?

[Ginkasa]

Originally Posted by Ginkasa

I enjoyed Ace Combat back in the day, so I was excited for Ace Combat 7. In lead up, I played through 4, 5, and 0 again which was the first time I had played them in probably over a decade. I got 7 on the Xbox One which came with a download code for 6. I had 6 previously, but I never beat it and I didn't repurchase it when it was stolen with a lot of my stuff in '09, so I saw this as an opportunity to get through that one before playing 7.

However, after redeeming the code for 6 and downloading and installing it it would not allow me to play the game. It said I didn't own it even though I could still download it. I contacted Microsoft and finally convinced them that I should be able to play this, but then basically sat around for three weeks with no real assurances this was being worked on.

Finally, after three weeks, Ace Combat 6 started working and I finally played through it so now, finally, I can play Ace Combat 7.

Ace Combat 7 was fun. Felt like a classic PS2 game with updated graphics - so basically exactly what I wanted. Feels weird that it was nearly the entire year ago that I played it. Time doesn't work like it used to, man.

At some point in the same I kept hearing how great the Shadowbringers expansion for Final Fantasy XIV was. I'd played FFXIV before and complete the 2.0 content, but never made it past that, so most of the rest of year has been spent working my way through that. Finally finished the Stormblood content yesterday and am working my way to finally finally playing the Shadowbringer stuff.

Of course there have been some small breaks to play some other games as well. I played Shenmue III which was super surreal. Don't know how much I talked about it (I was a bit of an idiot back then), but I was a huge fan of the Shenmue I and II. Of course, I played the recent HD re-releases as well. I had a lot of fun with III, but am disappointed that it didn't really move the story forward hardly at all. I don't have a lot of hope of Shenmue IV coming out at all, much less anytime soon.

Also played Jedi: Fallen Order. I thought it was fun. It was very nice to play a single player focused Star Wars game on current gen stuff.

[Ginkasa]

Got my way through FFXIV Shadowbringers. Definitely the best piece of FFXIV so far, although I enjoyed my entire journey through it. I hope to remain current with the game going forward, but we'll see how it goes. There's already been one small update that I haven't gotten around to playing yet.

Playing FFXIV got me itching to go back to SWTOR. I have a lot of fond memories of that game as it released just after my son was born. I went through the Jedi Knight, Jedi Consuler, and Trooper storylines. My goal is to ideally finally get through all of the storylines and then carry my Jedi Knight through all of the expansions I never played, but we'll see. I'm currently kind of paused on it right now as..

Playing FFXIV also got me itching to go back and play through the FF series again, so I've kind of gotten pulled into that. The whole apocalypse situation has provided a lot of free time to play some games, but of course an MMO (or two) and a 30+ year old jRPG series takes a lot of time.

And of course I have a bunch of other games I've bought over the years that I haven't played or only sort of played I could go through, but, nah, let's go through games I've already played through once or twice or thrice.

[Vampyr]

I'm playing FFXIV right now actually... currently in the post-Heavensward patches so I have a while to go.

I did some swtor recently and it's not bad it just failed to really hold my attention.

I too have felt the desire to play some older FF. I have a vita laying around so I was thinking about playing FFIV.

[Ginkasa]

Yeah! I thought about digging out my Vita and buying the digital release of FFIV on it to play it there, but I already own it on UMD for the PSP, but my PSP broke. I also really wanted play it on the TV, so went for emulation on my PC hooked up to my TV. It looks nice!

I really wish Square would release this version on Steam even just upscaled or something. They just have the 3D version everywhere now; this very nice 2D version is only available on the PSP/Vita and that's getting to be a difficult solution if you don't want to go for emulation. I think the Complete Collection version looks amazing and would especially be so in true HD and it is truer to the original game than the remake.

[Vampyr]

Slight update on the Vita front... evidently my 16GB Vita memory card is corrupted and can't be reformatted or fixed in any way.

Evidently this is extremely common with Vita memory cards, which is frustrating because they're expensive and proprietary.

So I did some research and bought some stuff and now I'm going to hack my Vita which will allow me to use an SD card with an adapter in the game card slot, and then load everything digitally.

Will update on how it goes.

[Ginkasa]

Nice. Yeah, those memory cards are ridiculous. And you'd think its only going to get worse as the system fades further into memory.

Hope this hack works out alright for you.

[Vampyr]

Well it took some effort but the hack worked out. Currently have FFIV redownloading to my new 256GB SD card.

[Ginkasa]

Nice!

[BreakABone]

Lots and lots of Animal Crossing

When not that Xenoblade 2 Torna - The Golden Country

With friends, I'm rotating between Diablo 3, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, Nine Parchments, Overcooked 2, Gears 5, Path of Exile, Streets of Rage 4, Dead by Daylight, Borderlands 3

I'm really trying not to not have some games going on during this...

[Teuthida]

So tempted to get a Switch just for Animal Crossing. That was my absolute favorite game for Gamecube which was the last console I've owned.

I don't play much these days. Last game was Skul: The Hero Slayer. Was pretty fun but ended up getting very repetitive. Still in early access though so that might improve. Before that I played A Short Hike. Kind of Animal Crossing-esque but not quite. And very very short.

Had a hankering to play Tetris on my Game Boy Pocket yesterday but I had left batteries in it and they exploded and fused to the coil. Same for my Game Boy Advance. Luckily my Game Boy Color is still in working order. Just no batteries period for that. Short story shorter: my hankering has not been satisfied.

[BlueFire]

playing persona 5 royal. almost done with it. i think persona 4 was a better game. or maybe i have less patience of jrpgs lol

[Ginkasa]

Basically all of the new videos games I wanted this year came out in the last month.

Spider-Man: Miles Morales started us off. I enjoyed it. I appreciated how Miles was differentiated from Pete in his use of venom blasts over gadgets, but overall it did feel like more Spider-Man. My current prediction is that "Spider-Man 2" will be called "Spider-Men" and will focus on the two teaming up like in the beginning and what happened with Miles and a couple of other characters.

A couple of years ago I got on a Yakuza kick and played through the whole series. I remember trying to get into it early on in the series, I still have a copy of the PS2 original, but I couldn't get into it back then. I think I was sold on the idea of the series as kind of a Shenmue successor and while it does have some similarities, it was too different for to enjoy it at that angle at the time.

But when Yakuza 0 made some waves and then remakes were announced for the first two games, I decided to give it another try and ended up going all in. I marathoned the series in 2018 and have been current since. I played Yazkua 6 and the spin-off, Judgment when they were new and this year we have Yakuza: Like a Dragon.

If you haven't played them, the series is like a bonkers open-world action, beat-em-up RPG. One thing that's really interesting about it is that features the same city in each game with the same overall design. The Video Game Handbook will call this lazy design, but I think its great. You get to really know this city in a way you don't other video game locales and see it change over time. I was always disappointed that I couldn't return to old areas in sequels to my favorite games, so this series scratches that itch.

The newest game is a good jumping on point as it features a new cast of characters and also largely takes place in a new location (although Kamurocho does make an appearance). It also switches the fighting gameplay from a beat-em-up to a turn based RPG which absolutely works. I really enjoyed it.

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity shortly after Yakuza. I think musou games are some nice mindless fun although I don't really go for them overall. I enjoyed the first Hyrule Warriors for its Zelda fanservice and was excited for AoC to provide a look at a pre-Calamity BotW Hyrule. I thought it was fun. A nice snack to hold me over until BotW 2 comes out (which hopefully we'll get some kind of news for it soon).

I was actually a little relieved that Cyberpunk 2077 received its latest delay. Without it, it would have come smack in the middle of the previous three games. As it was, I was able to enjoy and play the other three games without worries leaving me plenty of time when Cyberpunk unlocks in about 5 hours.

[Ginkasa]

As stated in the newly minted Dragon Quest Megathread I'm working my through that series. Like I said there, the bug has been hitting me for a bit ever since playing XI a few years ago. Was playing some SSBU with my daughter and it had some DQ music and that really made me want to jump into DQI and that was that. I'm currently playing II.

I've also been replaying the Yazkua series. When I last played the series it was kind of out of order and last year they released the HD upgrades for 4-6 that I want to play through. Yakuza 7 last year obviously served as the impetus for this. I started working my way through 0 again before Cyberpunk came out. I got sidetracked into CP2077 and that took me a little longer than expected due to some medical issues and also its not that great. Finished 0 and then Kiwami after I beat DQI. I think I might alternate between Yazkua and Dragon Quest pending any new releases coming out.

Speaking of new releases, I did get the kids Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury on the Switch. We had the original game on the Wii U, but the kids have their own Switch Lites and I thought they might enjoy it. I did work through Bowser's Fury with my son and daughter taking turns as Bowser Jr. I thought it was pretty fun; kind of a bite size Mario adventure. I got the 50 sprites needed to watch the credits in just a couple of sessions with the kids although there are 100 total.

[Ginkasa]

Eternally playing FFXIV. Last I mentioned it in here a few years ago I had just beaten Shadowbringers. Of course since then Endwalker came out and I was there for launch and it was great. I marathoned through the story. That launch week you had to log in early or you weren't getting in and if you logged out that was it for the day. So I just logged in early and played all day lol. Fortunately I had some time off which honestly was not the plan, but it worked out! I actually was on a bit of a rush because the latter half of my time off was going out of town, so I was also hoping to get through the story before then. Got done the night before, lol. Eventually I took about a year break last summer after the first post expansion patch came out. That was right after I moved and I just found myself not playing much so nixed the subscription and stayed away for a bit. But now I'm back at it. I caught up again story wise, excited for Dawntrail next year. My wife has been watching my go through the story again via New Game + which is fun and I'm also levelling some of the jobs I haven't played before.

I mentioned in the anime thread my wife and I watched the Nier Automata anime. I also started going through the mobile game Nier Reincarnation which has a cute story. Trying to ignore the gatcha bits as much as I can; definitely not paying for anything. But I'm enjoying the overall vibes. I attempted to go through Drakengard. If you're unaware, the Nier series spun off of the final ending to Drakengard and I wanted to go back and see if that scratched the itch as well.

It. Did. Not. That game is so unpleasant. Perhaps intentionally so which I can dig the artistic vision behind it, but I wasn't able to get through it. Got far enough that I became naturally familiar with the character and world, saw endings A and B, but did not want to do the grind for the rest. Ending up looking them up online which was enough for me. It actually does help put some context to Nier. I'm actually replaying through Nier Replicant, the recent remake of the first Nier game, which is nice. That game is pleasant (at least the remake is; I understand the OG is a bit clunky) although I think ultimately it and Drakengard were shooting for similar themes.

I was intending to replay through Final Fantasy VII Remake, and might still, in preparation for the second one coming out next year. I started, but kind of bounced off of it. I've got a surround sound system since I last played it at release and the mixing is garbage. Cutscenes are fine, but conversations during gameplay are quiet, like far away even when I'm standing next to them. That kind of annoyed me and also I just wasn't feeling it. Maybe because it feels more like I have to rather than want to. I'm sort of ambivalent on some of the story changes they've done and are hinting at, bordering on disliking them, and I don't really like the real time action gameplay. I like seeing the characters and environments all done up and voiced and modern looking and I'm looking forward to see more of that in the new one, but the rest of it is not my favorite. We'll see.

My wife is playing the Super Mario RPG remake for the Switch. That was her favorite game growing up so she's been looking for to it. I might give it a go when she's done.

[~VIN~]

Zelda