Against my better judgement, i decided to look into Genshin Impact.

I’ve resolved to not spend any money on it, and I’m fairly happy with my experience so far. I’m currently in act 2 in Inazuma, and I’ve really been enjoying the Archon quests. Despite the fact that I spent 0 dollars on it, this part of the game really does feel like a full retail game experience.

The world quests are alright, though I’m honestly having trouble fitting them into my adventures; too much adventure experience is coming in, which is causing me to hit world level increases, which is causing me to need to grind ascension mats for my roster, which is causing too much adventure xp. It’s a lot! Dragonspine was a fun detour, though.

Story quests are probably my favorite feature in this game. Low stakes hang outs with the weirdos in your party is a fun and important part of RPGs. And Genshin really gets that. The only problem is… A lot of these weirdos aren’t in my party! If Story quests unlocked the characters at their conclusion, I’d have had no qualms with putting $60 down on this game, but they’re pretty much all locked behind the gacha mechanic which suuuucks. Shenhe and Diluc should be in my gang right now, but the funny gacha rocks disagree. Not a fan of that.

The resin and primogem stuff I feel really negatively about. I don’t want that stuff getting in the way of the fun parts, but I’m constantly scraping up against both. It’s not intrusive enough to dampen my experience while actually playing through the quests or exploring though, so I think I’ll put up with it until I’m satisfied with exploring Teyvat.

Still playing Dark Souls 2 - almost 100 hours in and there’s just Darklurker and Aldia left. This game just keeps going and going, really well worth the cost. Since I’m almost through, I can see why it seems to be the black sheep of the series. But, despite some problems (like needing to refer to a guide constantly) I like it a lot, and will definitely do a NG+ eventually.

Also started Yooka-Laylee and I love it already. It’s very true to the Banjo Kazooie style.

Yep, shadow of the erdtree :) I’ve been big on invading since Dark Souls 1 and I found that the fog catacombs are a delight to invade in.

• Long zone with few checkpoints
• Lots of traps
• Elevators :D
• Imps that do bleed so moghs great rune is decent
• Marika’s stakes so I don’t feel toooooo bad murdering people right before they reach the boss lol.

Love those cannon imps. Such a goofy enemy, and such a good enemy for invaders. Anything that does aoe and knockback is my bff in invasions.

Terraria. An old friend popped up to ask me if I’d like to play and it’s been many updates ago and at least a decade since I last played. We are playing both calamity and Fargo souls mods mashed together and having a hell of a time with the extreme difficulty as we work through the boss fights.

Not to mention our life schedules work out to 2 hours a day.

The Talos Principle 2 dropped an expansion out of nowhere. It hasn’t even been a year since the game released! The puzzles so far are really creative and cool, and of course it wouldn’t be The Talos Principle without a healthy dose of philosophizing about the human condition!

Once again, I played far too much World of Warcraft Remix this week. I do have three more maxed characters now though and all achievements for the mode. I found Frost Mage to be surprisingly fun, after I totally hated it (my old main) and completely abandoned magic DPS altogether at the beginning of Shadowlands. This time I’ll definitely take it slower and will try to only play my Druid. It went so well the last two weeks.

Depending on how much I get into the new expansion, The War Within, Balance Druid and Frost Mage are definitely some I’ll consider taking a look, although my Windwalker Monk will most likely stay my main.

Then, more Diablo 4. I’m almost level 90 with my Necromancer, Minion build is still boring, but I’ll keep it at least until level 100, and I’ve checked out more endgame stuff.

ayyy new thread new game!

well kind of. I’m actually playing Caves of Qud a bit, now that I understand it more (I did end up installing the tutorial mod, thank you for that! and I did watch a small non-spoilery tutorial series as well) and I’m having a really good time. I started out with a character the tutorial recommended and have been fighting fish to level up. planning on taking on the first big quest tho!

sadly I’m stuck on an old gaming laptop that doesn’t really like to play games, so I can’t jump into all the games I want to. even my gacha game I play is pushing it, although I still login every day and do my required stuff. the laptop just gets extraordinarily hot. it handles Caves of Qud, because ascii, but I was wanting to jump in to Elden Ring at some point (I don’t have the DLC, does it make new runs more exciting at the beginning or is it a later thing?) and realized it’s not an option I think due to my laptop’s specs and general grumpiness.

so I’ve been wrestling with Borderlands 3 to get it to work, and my partner and I have been playing that for a bit. I love the BL series, although 2 was imho the best for writing. the humor still annoys me sometimes but I started playing the series with the first one when it came out, as a kid, so it has a special place in my heart. my partner hasn’t really ever played first person shooter games, so Destiny 2 (when we played) and Borderlands was their introduction.

I played Daniel Linssen’s Leap Year, and I highly recommend it! $5 for a delightful single sitting. Goofy mechanics whose depth you slowly discover by exploring and experimenting. Some of the most brilliant level design I’ve seen.

I picked Baldur’s Gate 3 back up two weeks ago.

Last summer I played Act 1 of the game and found myself thoroughly satisfied, and decided to wait to play the rest.

Act 2, like Act 1, is just as awesome. We’ll see if I decide to take another break before the third act, haha! This game is nothing short of a masterpiece.

Other than that I’ve been taking a lot of 10-15 minute breaks while working from home and enjoying the minigames on Meta Horizons.

At the end of this week, I will be getting a new game PC. So, I will play:

1. The last of us part 1 remake
2. High On Life
3. Cyberpunk 2077
4. Alan Wake 2 (half replaying it, already played 4 hours on the PS5)

Was getting all set up for another playthrough of New Vegas, mods and all (even made my own, though I ditched it last minute), and then I realised, “Wait, why am I doing this? I don’t actually feel like playing this at all right now, even with the new mods.”

So, now I’ve downloaded some stuff in my backlog, but don’t know if I’ll play any of it at the moment because I’m kind of burned out a little.

Still working on Diablo 4: Season 4 and Mad Max

I’ve been playing Soulmask and enjoying it, but I need a break as the building in that game leaves a lot to be desired. So I’m returning to Baldur’s Gate 3. I can never bring myself to play Durge or evil aligned characters, but I’m going to try a class and character I’ve never considered and see how it goes.

Fallout 4 with Sim settlement 2 mod, i played F4 years ago but now i want to try with SS2. In a corner i have System Shock remake waiting for me

sleeping dogs. They sure did curse a lot.