The developers literally spent YEARS adding to the game, completely for free, but they don’t “respect their players”?

They ever apologized for lying for years to the players, who they respect so much?

I'm nearing the end of Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII- Reunion. It's still really mediocre, but I got into that mindless grind of those 300 side missions. The main story is pretty lame, the only interesting bits are those directly connected to FF7, basically when you're in Nibelheim, although even that is a bit of a let-down.

I also played more on my Steam Deck than expected, mainly because I got sick a few days ago and would just dabble a bit here and there while lying down. I did a some Vampire Survivors runs, but it's basically always the same, so I need to look into those unlocks I'm missing. Then I tried Boneraiser Minions, but I'm not sure about this one. It's a Vampire Survivors-like, but here you summon different skeletons to fight for you. The first few runs felt really slow and boring, but some of the unlocks improved it somewhat. I'm still not sure about the minions fighting for you thing though, since it feels a bit too RNG, but I'll give it a bit more time.

Taking it a bit slow this week after more than 200h of Pathfinder Kingmaker the last month.

More Risk of Rain Returns. I finished all the Providence Trials, that I have available, the only ones missing are for the two characters I haven't unlocked yet. I gotta say, those trials are a nice way to unlock and get to know most of the alternative abilities.

Next I started Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII- Reunion. I'm in chapter 3 currently, and so far it's not that interesting. You can pretty easily tell that it's based on a 16y/o PSP game, even if it's a remake. The cinematics look alright, but are full of upscaling artifacts. The animations are pretty stiff at times, which is a bit disappointing, since I thought FF7R did that really well. As for the combat, it's kinda one-note. You only have one attack button, along with four materia slots, so you can do some super basic chains. Although, since those four slots also include pure stat increases, like HP Up, you might just run around with one or two offensive abilities, so it can feel really samey. The main missions are really annoying, since you get a short cutscene every few steps, it feels like. Outside the main missions, you have tons of tiny side missions (300 apparently). So far these have been super short, like less than five minutes most of the time, four or five environments, and almost all in linear corridors. To be honest though, I like a mindless grind like this from time to time, I just wish the rest was a bit better. I will keep playing though, since the game is on the shorter side, so it shouldn't be too bad.

Then, I also got me one of those new Steam Deck OLEDs, and sold my old one for cheap to a friend. I haven't played a lot on it yet, tried Crisis Core and Risk of Rain Returns, and did like two runs in Peglin, but I quite like it. I barely used my old one (I found the fan to be super annoying), and this OLED model might end up the same, but the improvements are really great. Even during Crisis Core, which had the GPU at 90%+ and the chip at 20W TDP, it was pretty quiet and a more pleasant frequency, same with Nioh 2. Maybe I should replay Ori and the Will of the Wisps on it, since everyone's always saying how great the HDR is in the game and how beautiful it can look on an OLED screen.

I'm currently going through Pathfinder: Kingmaker, which is my first experience with the Pathfinder system.

While I do enjoy it right now, the beginning was kinda rough (super long rant incoming). Right after the short tutorial, I went to pick up some berries in a spider-infested cave, which wasn't too bad, just that the spiders have poison that reduce your stats. In hindsight, this wasn't that bad, just some missing information on my part and maybe bad tooltips, because the poison was supposed to go away after resting, but it didn't. What the tooltip fails to mention, the stat penalty can stack and every 8 hours of rest removes one stack, so you might have to wait around for a day or so, before you're back to normal.

Then, while I was still recovering from that (mentally and in-game) I stumbled on a text-only event, where you're going through some marshes and find a seemingly evil idol. Me, being the Lawful Good monk that I am, of course decide to destroy it, but get cursed in return (-2 constitution). Curses are of course permanent, until you can start to remove them at level 5. I was level 2 at the time. Consumable items to remove them exist, but for some reason, drinking a potion can fail. I guess your character just spills everything over the floor. These potions are also super expensive and the vendor had just two of them, while I had four or five people in my party. Thank god my character is also a time wizard, so I cast Quick Load, and was good as new.

After those two experiences, like an hour into the prologue or act 1, I was ready to get fucked at every turn, but that was basically it. No idea why the devs chose to put these quests and events super close to your starting base.

My only other gripe with the game is the Kingdom Management. After you become a baron, you have to start managing your lands, which is fine in general, but I don't think the devs have found a good balance, because there are just so many events that are constantly popping up, and I felt like I was making no progress with the actual CRPG part of the game. Regularly I'd leave my capital, just to get a notification that something happened, after like five seconds. So I go back to check it out, and it's always some unimportant stuff. Experienced players might know that you can ignore these things for a bit, but as a new player, this was just super annoying. Then you also have some projects that force you to skip 14 days of in-game time, while your character is busy, and a few times, when I did that, I got notifications for like eight new things that happened. That's when I called it, pulled out the mods and basically nerfed the shit out of that mechanic. Events now take only a fraction of their normal time, I can't fail, and most importantly, I can manage most things, while out on the road. I'll probably have to skip a ton more days manually, but I take that over the default implementation. FYI, you can turn down the difficulty of the management stuff in-game or even completely automate it (that way you lose some throne room events and interactions I think), I just had the mod installed already, because of a different reason, so I just used that.

Anyway, I still enjoy the CRPG part of the game. The combat is fun, although for a complete beginner to Pathfinder (and little experience with DnD) some tooltips are really lacking information. There are tons of keywords and mechanics getting thrown around, that I have no idea what they do. On your character sheet you're presented with tons of different scores, and for half of them I don't know how they got there (the others list a neat breakdown for each bonus you get). I think there are also some bonuses that only apply in certain cases, but aren't reflected on your character sheet, but I wouldn't know, because it's not explained. I'm playing on normal or whatever is the recommended difficulty for newcomers to Pathfinder, and it's not that difficult, so you can get by.

Other than that, I did "finish" Wolfenstein 3D and killed Hitler. There are more episodes and an expansion, but I'll skip them. Like I said last week, I found the game kinda boring, it's just too basic for me nowadays. Just a handful of different enemies, just three weapons, and the levels look all the same.

Now I'm deciding on the next retro shooter, that I want to tackle. Right now I'm thinking either Ion Fury or Doom 64, but something else might catch my eye.

Finished Divinity: Original Sin 2. Beast became a god and everyone loved him. Some of the fights in the final act were kind of bad, and I wasn't a fan of the "twists" at the end. Still good overall, and I'm glad I finally beat it after over six years.

Quake 2 got patched and the game-breaking bug I had got fixed (constant CTD in a specific room in a level), so I can finally play it again. I mopped up the rest of the levels for the second expansion, Ground Zero, which had a disappointing final boss. The levels also got a bit more confusing for me, but the remaster added a compass, which shows you where to go next, so it wasn't a big deal. Now only the new campaign, that was made for the remaster, is left, and I'll try to finish that this week.

Now I'm debating whether to start Pathfinder: Kingmaker or go through the Pillars of Eternity expansions. I kinda want to play Pathfinder more, but I just put 150h into D:OS2, so going straight into another one of these massive RPGs might just lead to some burnout (I did want Divinity to be over by the end, but that was also because parts at the end weren't that fun for me). The White March expansions for Pillars 1 might just be different enough to serve as a pallet cleanser (even though it's still a CRPG).

My guess is that 7800X3D is a mistake, and they mean a 7700 or 7700X. I've seen an image of one of the devs, who initially made the post to check your CPU cooler, where it was edited to an 7800 (which doesn't exist).

This is still pretty beefy, but not like "you need the best gaming CPU" beefy. A comparable, Ryzen 5000 8+ core CPU is probably going to work too, so something like a 5800X, 5900X, etc. Ryzen 3000 might be too old already, but I'm just speculating here.

I finished Quake 2: The Reckoning, the first expansion pack for Quake 2, and started with the second one, Ground Zero. Just like the expansions for Quake 1, it's pretty much just more Quake. A few new or changed enemies, some new weapons, and I was blasting my way through the Strogg. Just like the base game, I played on Hard, and it's not really that difficult, much easier than Quake 1. The biggest difference is that you get tons of ammo in Quake 2, so you're never completely running out.

In Pillars of Eternity, I'm almost done with the second Act, so hopefully I can finish the game in the next couple of days. I don't think I'll immediately go into the White March expansion. I got about 100h combined with this and Baldurs Gate 1, these last few weeks, so I want a break from RTwP games. Like I mentioned last week, everything feels much smoother here than Baldurs Gate was, so I'm enjoying it a lot more. The AI pathing is still complete trash though.

Finished Baldur's Gate 3, Act 3 was much buggier than I thought. Still had a great time and want to do another playthrough in a year or two, once most of the bugs are fixed.

Started Quake 2, the recently released Enhanced version. It's fun, I like the weapons more than in Quake 1, the Super Shotgun can actually kill stuff now. I also prefer the sci-fi environments more than the medieval ones in the first game.

Lastly, I randomly decided to give Baldur's Gate 1 a shot, after I finished the third one. I never really played it or any of the other old Infinity Engine games before, although I got all the Steam releases years ago. I'm playing as a Half-Orc Fighter, named Big Stick, who goes around whacking stuff with a big stick (a quarterstaff). The game is ok so far, nothing spectacular. I'm still really early, only chapter 2, and I'm just travelling around everywhere I can, bonking stuff until it explodes, and helping people in need.

Still Final Fantasy 14. I'm done with Heavensward, except some optional trials, which I'll do before starting the next expansion.

I thought most of the post-patch story was either trash or extremely tedious. The conclusion to the Dragonsong War was generally alright, just everything leading up to it was a chore. The Warriors of Darkness story felt like complete filler and a waste of time. After that is the stuff that leads into the next expansion, so I'll have to see how that plays out.

Imma be honest, I'm really close to just starting to skip most of the story, it's such a drag sometimes.

More Final Fantasy 14. I've started the Heavensward post-game content (I guess you can call it that?).

I'm done with all the optional dungeons and raids you unlock after the base story, and now I'm continuing with the story quests that were added in later patches. There's just so much time-wasting, back and forth bullshit, that it's just a chore, though. Start quest in town A, go to town B for a short cutscene, go to town C for another short cutscene, go back to town A for yet another cutscene. Since you can teleport everywhere by this point, it doesn't take long, but is just so boring. That's why I'm constantly queuing for random dungeons and hang out in the Gold Saucer, basically avoiding the story.

As for classes, I've mainly played Reaper, which is fun, and today started trying out Dancer, and had a good time as well.

Most story games I play once, however long they take. Only a few get the "privilege" of a re-play.

Multiplayer games or games that don't really have an ending I might put in more, like 200h in PUBG, 420h in Satisfactory (so far), 400h+ in Monster Hunter World, different roguelikes with 100h+, etc.

On Steam, the two games I've put in more time than almost all others are Nioh 1 and 2, with a combined 1200h. That's not even multiple characters.

Only looking at Steam, it's probably pretty even between story games and these "forever games."

Then there are Blizzard games, which I've played more than basically anything else. I have probably over 25k hours in WoW, thousands in Diablo 2 and 3, hundreds in Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch. Their games pretty much always do it for me, which is a shame, since it was revealed how much of a shitshow the company is, so I currently don't play their games.

Defintely not glitchless, but still legitimate (in a way).

The rules on the speedrun.com page for Noita mention the exploit, but for any% you need to count any runs to acquire the wand as well, making it pretty pointless. I also don't think that you need a mod for the wand, just that doing it normally takes too long.

Apparently they are creating a category specifically for this exploit, so that it doesn't matter how you got the wand, and the 2s run would count.