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The Experience Inc. DRPGs are okay to great. They have varying degrees of ANIME depending on your tolerance. They're all Wizardry based because still carries the torch for Sir-Tech https://store.steampowered.com/app/1363840/Saviors_of_Sapphire_Wings__Stranger_of_Sword_City_Revisited/ This is a bundle of 2 games - Saviors of Sapphire Wings: an older title that's missing some more modern QOL. - Stranger of Sword City Revisited: Standalone expansion of the original Stranger of Sword City on the PS Vita. It's the one with the more grimdark setting of the two in the bundle. There's multiclassing and a branching story depending on which faction you align with. This is one of my favorite games of theirs. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1570510/Undernauts_Labyrinth_of_Yomi/ Undernauts is solid throughout and their latest release. I found it to be the easiest game they've released. https://store.steampowered.com/search/?developer=Experience%20Inc. the Operation Abyss/Babel games are remakes of their Generation Xth games and aren't as good as their more recent games. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1308700/Wizardry_The_Five_Ordeals/
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 08:10 |
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# ? Jun 4, 2024 01:28 |
Triarii posted:I tried a couple hours of Cruelty Squad and I'm pretty sure this is a bad game that people "recommend" as a joke. This is videogame Malort. To be serious, it's an interesting game that deliberately gussies itself up as an abomination of bad design and in doing so becomes at least partly a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's hard for me to criticize properly because I haven't managed to push past the early phase of having my cash balance perpetually in the red and being unable to unlock anything to make the core loop more feasible, varied, or engaging, while the game presents an organ harvesting stock market as the potential means to dig yourself out of this hole but no, there's actually a bunch of hidden systems it's just not telling you about. There is a visceral and deliberate unpleasantness to both the aesthetic and mechanics in a vein somewhat reminiscent of LISA. I bounced off of LISA pretty hard too.
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 08:13 |
Oh man I loved LISA, I'd completely forgotten about that game.
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 08:17 |
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But yeah I've talked about this before but blobbers do exist in this day and age but 99% of them seek to emulate the classic wizardry games while what M&M 6-8 (open world, real-time with option to pause for turn based combat) has been completely ignored except for the game I recommended earlier. I don't like dungeon crawlers much at all but I loved M&M VI-VIII so naturally this is a pretty massive bummer for me. Also: Bards Tale IV has TOO MANY GODDAMN PUZZLES HOLY loving poo poo!
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 08:56 |
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Blobbers, more like boomer looters I say.
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 09:18 |
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kazil posted:there's nothing Super about these Mario Bros Now these Giana Sisters though, they are loving Great.
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 09:43 |
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Vasler posted:I think it was somewhere in this thread that someone had recommended a chill city building game. I forgot to bookmark the game and now I can't find the recommendation again. Anyone remember/have any idea what it could be? Probably me here with Aven Colony, which you probably don't want to buy at full price, but is sold for a fiver right now. Relatively standard builder stuff, but lovely colourful graphics and soundscape as you expand colonies on an exoplanet through a small campaign storyline that gives a little additional flavour. FishMcCool fucked around with this message at 09:51 on Dec 29, 2022 |
# ? Dec 29, 2022 09:47 |
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Triarii posted:I tried a couple hours of Cruelty Squad and I'm pretty sure this is a bad game that people "recommend" as a joke. This is videogame Malort. correct, but it's the best joke ever
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 09:55 |
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explosivo posted:It's impressive that they set out to intentionally make a game as off-putting as Cruelty Squad and hit their target and you have to commend them for that but no I wouldn't recommend buying or playing it unless you like saying "You just don't get it" smugly to strangers about bad games RPATDO_LAMD posted:but u dont understand pwoerful boomer energy. . .
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 09:56 |
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Out of all "blobber" party rpg's Wizardry 8 is the only one I've seen that has the foresight of making your custom made party members actual characters. There are something like 24*2 voice options for each other the 6 party members and they all act like unique characters and constantly comment on things that are happening, despite being custom characters. It really elevates the experience.
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 10:05 |
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Bad Palettes
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 10:24 |
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Okay this is probably a lost cause. But any advice on getting Gratuitous Space Battles 1's campaign working? The same fleet with a billion cruisers armed with bitsy lasers are in every system. Instead of the game dynamically taking successful fleets from everyone else's campaigns for battles. The system sounds really cool, but support has probably long since ended.
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 11:44 |
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GSB1 had a campaign?
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 12:44 |
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Gonna pitch two not-for-everyone games, since I've rarely seen them talked about First, Biomass: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1138960/Biomass/ The easy shorthand would be 2d soulslike It also has a really neat newgame+, where entirely new branches to the story will open up, and you can plow through the game very quickly using what you learned on your first playthrough (and if you get that far, you're likely to keep going, just to see more weird poo poo). I will warn however, it is opaque to the point of you'll probably get stuck because you didn't intuit some weird rear end sorta-puzzle mechanic. There's a friendly discord, and you can find the info you need on the steam page, just beware of spoilers. The closest analog I can think of in other media would probably be the manga Biomega. (the least weird image from Biomega) Second, The Final Station: https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/1330/The_Final_Station_Collectors_Edition/ It has a train. Any game or movie is better with a train. The entire game revolves around traveling from station to station as a conductor in a doomed (pre? post? present?) apocalyptic world, as strange zombie like creatures infest the towns and more momentous events in the background propel the story to its conclusion. Gameplay wise, it's a borderline walking sim in some regards, the gameplay really isn't the draw here, it's all about the atmosphere and the story unfolding. -- Neither of these games are going to be for everyone, but both are fairly short, and if you dig the vibes, you'll probably come away satisfied. Weird atmospheric poo poo is my jam, even if the gameplay isn't top notch (cf. Rainworld)
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 13:33 |
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i played biomass a year and a half ago and it was cool for a bit but i gave up at some point, probably because it got too obtuse. felt like i needed a guide to point me in the right direction but one didn't exist at the time would be excellent if it was just a little less inscrutable, it has so much going for it lih fucked around with this message at 14:05 on Dec 29, 2022 |
# ? Dec 29, 2022 14:00 |
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MonkeyforaHead posted:To be serious, it's an interesting game that deliberately gussies itself up as an abomination of bad design and in doing so becomes at least partly a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's hard for me to criticize properly because I haven't managed to push past the early phase of having my cash balance perpetually in the red and being unable to unlock anything to make the core loop more feasible, varied, or engaging, while the game presents an organ harvesting stock market as the potential means to dig yourself out of this hole but no, there's actually a bunch of hidden systems it's just not telling you about. There is a visceral and deliberate unpleasantness to both the aesthetic and mechanics in a vein somewhat reminiscent of LISA. How does your cash balance go negative? Respawning is free.
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 14:11 |
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AfricanBootyShine posted:There's a mod that automatically upgrades your gear to your current level. I'd highly recommend it, especially as the vanilla loot system makes unique items useless after a level or two. Thanks. At the time I'd found mods that tried to make the leveling curve closer to linear but they had pretty mixed reviews and didn't seem like a great idea when you were already halfway through the game. Maybe scaling the equipment would be a gentler and more balanced fix. I have enough other stuff to play that I doubt I'll come back to DOS2, but I'm glad people have options.
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 14:24 |
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How is Elder Scrolls Online as a co op game?
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 14:29 |
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https://twitter.com/Arestame_Arkeid/status/1608139878436605952?s=20
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 14:36 |
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MonkeyforaHead posted:To be serious, it's an interesting game that deliberately gussies itself up as an abomination of bad design and in doing so becomes at least partly a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's hard for me to criticize properly because I haven't managed to push past the early phase of having my cash balance perpetually in the red and being unable to unlock anything to make the core loop more feasible, varied, or engaging, while the game presents an organ harvesting stock market as the potential means to dig yourself out of this hole but no, there's actually a bunch of hidden systems it's just not telling you about. There is a visceral and deliberate unpleasantness to both the aesthetic and mechanics in a vein somewhat reminiscent of LISA.
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 14:49 |
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Infinite Adventures is a great blobber if we need more recommendations for those. The VA and art style are a bit "unpolished" but there's a lot of content and the game mechanics are top notch. Lots of classes, races, talent trees, etc. The game is a little on the easy side but it has enough bite to not get too boring. The structure of the game is pretty reminiscent of Etrian Odyssey which is a plus for me. https://store.steampowered.com/app/607820/Infinite_Adventures/ Edited to add a second recommendation: Operencia is another good one with a dash of Eastern European flavor. You only pick the MC's class and everyone else is a story NPC, but you build all of them with talents, perks, skills, etc, and the combat is pretty fun. Some tough bosses here. Compared to Infinite Adventures, there are a lot of environmental puzzles, including some light pixel hunting; there are times when it almost feels like a point-and-click adventure game fused with a dungeon crawler. The story has some charm to it too. If that sounds more fun than terrible I would recommend this one over Infinite. https://store.steampowered.com/app/985950/Operencia_The_Stolen_Sun/ Xalidur fucked around with this message at 15:13 on Dec 29, 2022 |
# ? Dec 29, 2022 15:08 |
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Any else got issues with achievements not showing up in game details in the game library?
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 15:27 |
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I quite liked The Final Station but hoo boy did it ever advertise itself wrong. It's, as described, a walking sim. Perfectly good, nice atmosphere, vaguely intriguing at times, quite heavily inspired by Roadside Picnic. But the Steam page makes it seem like some kind of train-based survival and scavenging game, which it really isn't.
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 15:34 |
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ymgve posted:Any else got issues with achievements not showing up in game details in the game library? Yeah, not working.
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 15:37 |
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My big problem with the Japanese blobber genre isn't the anime, it's that the entire genre is built upon Wizardry 1-6. Even 7 would be an improvement. Some of the combat systems are nice, but they're pretty much always extremely grindy. And the level design has been consistently awful in every single one I've tried. Just the same identical-looking hallways of invisible traps, invisible walls and teleporter mazes as in games from 40 years ago. It is a lot more puzzle centric, but I think Grimrock 2 is overall my favorite blobber, despite its weak rpg systems. Or more precisely, the Guardians and Final Adventure custom campaigns for it: https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=1712363347. They're probably more polished than base Grimrock 2 and have very interesting dungeon design, though stretching the Grimrock asset set. They're by the creator of the cool-but-terrible indie HoMM style game, Eador, but so much better than that.
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 15:50 |
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Triarii posted:I tried a couple hours of Cruelty Squad and I'm pretty sure this is a bad game that people "recommend" as a joke. This is videogame Malort. nope
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 15:54 |
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When you spend your entire art budget on 2 backgrounds 😬 I don't know why but I've just never been able to get into platformers of any flavor. Those two screenshots do look great and made me go watch the trailers on Steam, but I put 5 hours into Ori and the Blind Forest and that's probably the time I've put into a platformer since logging 4 hours on VVVVVV god knows how many years ago. Heroic Yoshimitsu posted:How is Elder Scrolls Online as a co op game? I enjoyed it a lot as an online-only singleplayer RPG. Some of the quests were really fun and well written, and I'm saying that as someone who puts Plot/Story/Writting as the least important thing about a game (by a significant margin). So I mean if you like MMOs, I'd say they're always better with a friend. The only thing I didn't like about the game was that I actually wanted to take my time during dungeons but everyone else playing the game is running it for the hundredth time and just wants to zerg rush everything so I felt like I was "missing out" in that regard -- and that's a fault of the community, not the game itself. I think I was playing just before the Elsweyr expansion dropped in 2019, not sure if it's changed since then. Sab669 fucked around with this message at 16:03 on Dec 29, 2022 |
# ? Dec 29, 2022 15:59 |
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FishMcCool posted:Probably me here with Aven Colony, which you probably don't want to buy at full price, but is sold for a fiver right now. Relatively standard builder stuff, but lovely colourful graphics and soundscape as you expand colonies on an exoplanet through a small campaign storyline that gives a little additional flavour. This was it, thank you!!
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 16:30 |
KNR posted:My big problem with the Japanese blobber genre isn't the anime, it's that the entire genre is built upon Wizardry 1-6. Even 7 would be an improvement. Some of the combat systems are nice, but they're pretty much always extremely grindy. And the level design has been consistently awful in every single one I've tried. Just the same identical-looking hallways of invisible traps, invisible walls and teleporter mazes as in games from 40 years ago. I'd push back on this a bit and say it's the Wizardry-likes that tend to get localized. Every Japanese computer & console platform from about 1983/1984 on had a bunch of first-person dungeon RPGs that tried different things from the early Wiz formula. What's localized tends to be stuff like Experience or Zero Div games explicitly trying to make something Wiz-style, though I'd argue that even descendants like Etrian Odyssey do enough to separate themselves out. Nancy fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Dec 29, 2022 |
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 16:46 |
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Sab669 posted:I enjoyed it a lot as an online-only singleplayer RPG. Some of the quests were really fun and well written, and I'm saying that as someone who puts Plot/Story/Writting as the least important thing about a game (by a significant margin). So I mean if you like MMOs, I'd say they're always better with a friend. The only thing I didn't like about the game was that I actually wanted to take my time during dungeons but everyone else playing the game is running it for the hundredth time and just wants to zerg rush everything so I felt like I was "missing out" in that regard -- and that's a fault of the community, not the game itself. I think I was playing just before the Elsweyr expansion dropped in 2019, not sure if it's changed since then. I think it's a fault of the game itself, because people similarly want to rush through dungeons in other games just as badly, but FFXIV at least does a good job of signaling to other players that someone new is there and they'll get a bonus in the currency they're probably farming the dungeon to get for the inconvenience of having to sit through the new player watching cut scenes or whatever. ESO's dungeons are just kind of a mess in comparison imo. The community in FFXIV similarly rushed when they had the opportunity to do so in Praetorium, and it sucked for new players since it was the culmination of the main story of the base game, but they've fixed that now too.
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 16:55 |
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That's a fair point; I did binge FF had for a month earlier this year and forgot it had a way to let us noobs still watch cutscenes in dungeons and poo poo.
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 17:23 |
ymgve posted:How does your cash balance go negative? Respawning is free. Eventually it is: Volte posted:If you die enough, respawning becomes free at least. which is one of the many undisclosed mechanics, which I had not yet encountered despite dying enough to put myself a few grand in the red. Although even this isn't fully accurate; dying enough times automatically lowers the difficulty level which includes waiving the reconstruction fee but then there are certain parts of the game that require you to be playing on a higher difficulty level which IIRC can only be done by accessing the secret level that you can only enter while playing the game with the resolution set to 640x480 and it's when you get into that sort of depth of insanity that I have to admit, this game is doing some amazingly unique things, which are at times unique because they fly directly in the face of established intuitive design principles. It's like someone managed to tap into the mindset of a late 80's / early 90's game developer and specifically isolate their foreknowledge of the next four decades to what unintuitive mechanics have already been used so they could create entirely original ways to screw with the player.
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 20:12 |
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MonkeyforaHead posted:certain parts of the game that require you to be playing on a higher difficulty level which IIRC can only be done by accessing the secret level that you can only enter while playing the game with the resolution set to 640x480 that's *a* way to change the difficulty, but there are difficulty orbs elsewhere in the game you can use instead the 640x480 secret is never actually required for anything
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 20:19 |
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there's multiple ways to activate the special difficulty level and once you do it doesn't go away by dying, you have to manually reactivate the not-special difficulty levels, of which there's also multiple ways to do so, one of which takes all of 10 seconds at the end of the game. for 95% of intents and purposes the non-special difficulty levels all count the same as each other, barring a couple doors that need you to be on a specific difficulty to open (which is the thing you can do at will at the end of the game so kind of moot). worrying about the difficulty level is something that seems like it's a big deal only at the start of the game and becomes practically irrelevant by the end. i think that's oblique enough not to count as spoilers so i won't spoiler it unless another cruelty squad fan yells at me Cowcaster fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Dec 29, 2022 |
# ? Dec 29, 2022 20:25 |
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New on fanatical: BYOB: Mythic bundle Undundgeon Mists of Noyah Stix shadows of darkness Heroes of the kingdom:lost tales two Pendula Swing - the complete journey Squids odyssey Peach leaf pirates Tangledeep Hero of the kingdom: the lost tales Undead hoard Mana Spark: Forgotten crypts edition Styx:master of shadows Jotun Chicken assassin reloaded Aurion legacy of the kori odan Zombie party Epistory: typing chronicles Diaries of a spaceport janitor Kings bounty crosswords Space ranger hd: a world apart Beat cop Red Bow The deed 2 The hex Paw Paw Paw Flashback Kings bounty:armored princess $1 for one game/$2.99 for five games/ $4.99 for 10 games If you bought something on fanatical in the past month, don't forget to use your 5% coupon. ($2 minimum) https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/build-your-own-mythic-bundle
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 20:27 |
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MonkeyforaHead posted:Eventually it is: something weird must have happened with my game because I never saw it subtract for dying, and after FINALLY clearing the first mission I had enough money to buy a $1000 upgrade
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 20:29 |
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once you die enough for the game to start waiving the respawn fee it also clears your debts
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 20:32 |
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lol, winning by being bad at games and not noticing my bank balance
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 20:34 |
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fit em all up in there posted:New on fanatical: Hero of the Kingdom: The Lost Tales 1 + 2 are both really good and chill adventure-lite/hidden object type of games, that were released after HotK 3 was a grindy mess. Epistory: Typing Chronicles is also a fun typing game. Getting these three along with 2 others is a real bargain for $2.99 Styx: Shard of Darkness is the second Styx game and should be a more polished stealth experience (but still janky). Jotun: Valhalla Ed. and Space Rangers HD I have also heard good things about in this thread.
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 20:42 |
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# ? Jun 4, 2024 01:28 |
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So I've got Grounded and Vermintide 2 in my cart. Any thoughts on Grounded? Just watched some videos and it looks pretty entertaining.
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# ? Dec 29, 2022 20:43 |