Quote from: Simlasa;864495I've been playing my way through the Final Fantasy games for the first time, starting with I (the GBA version). Now I'm starting IV but I'm not sure how far I'm going to make it... I've liked each one progressively less than the one before it. III just felt like a whole bunch of grinding with no story to it.

II and III are infamously tough and experimental, so I don't blame you. I have played all the mainline FFs though, and they do get much better. V is my personal favorite because it gives you so many customization options and such a sense of freedom - it's the only one I've finished twice.

If story is what you need to get you through and the one in IV isn't good enough for you, I suggest skipping ahead to VI, because that's where story really starts to take a front seat. Wait for the VII remake before playing that, the visuals in the original playstation version have not aged well.

Two of my favorite computer games launched on Steam yesterday (or the day before):

Conquest of Elysium 4 is a fun not-too-complex fantasy strategy game in a very chaotic world. This edition of the series I like far better than the previous, as the battles are resolved using a proper map (all under AI control, so it goes quickly) - in CoE 3, it was an abstract map which had some unrealistic effects that bothered me (mainly, ganging up on guys in front more than should happen). It also adds a bunch more stuff, including several planes you could actually go to, conquer, or be invaded by, but which are usually disconnected. Banishing and slaying things may send them to other planes (e.g. there are actual ghosts of generated in Hades when people get slain in Elysium). Anyway, lots of fun interesting stuff.

Ancient Domains of Mystery , the classic great wonderful weird Roguelike, had a crowdfunded development with a graphical UI, and now is released on Steam. I like many Roguelikes, and this is one of my favorites - it was, even with ASCII and no graphics.

Eador: Genesis, a fun little fantasy strategy game in the vein of Heroes of Might and Magic.

I'm also starting up Avernum: Escape from the Pit again. I got about 10 hours in last time before life got in the way. I'd like to finish it this time.

Finished Legend of Zelda: Link Between Worlds on my DS. If you liked Link to the Past, you will very likely enjoy this homage to it. Great dungeon designs and it's fun finding all the various bonus items.

Started Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D. Struggling to keep playing it. Just feels inferior to the original (SNES) in most ways, especially its bad difficulty curve.

So I played Slender: The Arrival on my WiiU a little while back.

I played the beta (The Eight Pages) back in the day with some friends, and all but one of us found it very atmospheric and frightening. This hasn't changed between then and now.

The game does a very good job of creating an atmosphere that leaves you worrying about what's not there, rather than what is. I also thought that the game's length was about right, since if it had been a full-length game with dozens of hours of gameplay, the whole "you can only explore/run away" dynamic would have become very old.

I just finished Divinity: Original Sin on the PC.  I was playing it co-op with my brother.  It was good, but not as good as all the hype lead us to believe.  We were constantly running into bugs.  The biggest one being that I would often log into the game, or load into a new zone and my character couldn't access any of her abilities because the game said I didn't have my weapon equipped.  Also I would often see PC characters with less than full HP when they actually had full HP.

I also finished Dishonored on my PS3.  I did a clean hands run and had a really good time sneaking around trying to choke people out instead of killing them.  The ending was a bit lack-luster, no final fight, but that was because I had low chaos.  Overall though, I enjoyed it.

I'm working on Mad Max on my PS4 right now and quite enjoying tearing though the landscape taking down convoys.  The game looks good and is pretty solid from a game play PoV.  If you like Mad Max and you enjoy "open world" games it's a pretty easy recommendation.  I can see how people would come to the conclusion that it's padded with side missions, but really, you don't have to do them and the game still feels complete.

I'm going to dive back into X-COM Enemy Within.  I think I'm just going to turn the diff down to easy and enjoy running a team though from start to finish.  I've already beat Enemy Unknown multiple times on classic so a nice enjoyable romp with a team of my choice as opposed to umpteen hours of cursing seems like a nice time atm.

Mucking about with Dishonored though I'm not very good at the game since I'm not patient enough for it. Its a good game, yes just not great

Playing some rather heavily modded  Skyrim, avoiding the Civil War arc though since neither side is worth a septim.

was playing Fallout New Vegas also modded but I'm on hiatus from that.

I can finally announce a major update for Europa Barbarorum II (a total conversion mod for Medieval 2: Total War), a complete overhaul that is barely recognisable when contrasted with what shipped last summer.

Full disclosure, I'm one of the developers, but it's something I'm proud to be part of.

Hey nice to hear that, Kiero! You guys did an awesome work with EU. Im a big fan of it. :hatsoff:

Got an Xbone for Christmas with Rise of the Tomb Raider. Looking forward to getting ori and and blind forest too.

Anything for else I should watch for?

Right now my Xbone queue looks like:
1) Fallout 4. After 100+ hours of dorking around post-apoc Massachusetts, I may have finally reached both the back half of the main plot, and my first quest ruining bug. I'd call that pretty successful.

2) FIFA 16. It's my first sports game in literally decades, so I've been playing the career player mode on beginner. Scoring between 3-5 goals a game is a little ludicrous, but it's fun, and I know I don't quite have the touch to up the difficulty just yet.

3) The Witcher 3. Going to hit it hard once Fallout is done. The previous game was kickass, and the reviews, to the degree they can be trusted, have been hinting at more of the same. A tough but fair, and exciting combat system, a tense dark fantasy style plot, and HBO levels of nudity and sex.

Still doing World of Warcraft and Hearthstone most of the time, but I got a lot of games for Christmas so I'll be rotating those in over the year to come. (Most of them PC via Steam, but I also got the Sly Cooper series for PS3.)

I haven't even gotten a look-in on my Xbox360; my wife and eldest daughter have been playing the Lego Movie game.

About 4 weeks ago or so, I started playing Diablo 3 again. I hadn't played in most of two years. (maybe longer) There have been a lot of changes and I'm having a good time with it.  I have a Demon Hunter character who can do solo Torment6 Greater Rifts now.  I have almost all the gear for a decent build (missing one stupid ring) but need to learn a lot more about improving it before I can really go harder than T6.

I think my kin/guild is burned out for good, most of us are totally burned out on Lord of the Rings Online, and we cant agree on a new game. lol
D3 has been a good filler.  What I "should" do is get back into actually playing/running TTRPG's instead of just read rule books and lurking forums about them.

I got Far Cry 4 and Warhammer: The End Times: Vermintide for Christmas and have been enjoying them both.

FC4 is Sandbox Lite (compared to, say, a Skyrim or FO4) and Vermintide scratches the Left4Dead2 itch but in a Warhammer FRP setting.