What are you playing right now?

Post Reply New Topic

I started playing a free game for the Android platform named "Modern Strike Online"......it's a FPS with touch based controls. I was skeptical at first because of the touch screen controls but much to my surprise, it's very enjoyable!

I finally killed the post game Extra boss in Touhou Fantastic Danmaku Festival 2. I really just scraped through, and thought the run was over after through an attack I lost several lives on. The boss is really neat, a little bit of a throwback to the original and some new things, like her summoning Lovecraftian beings from her gap.

Have been playing Hollow Knight for the last week or two, finally decided to do so after all the buzz, which probably has me a bit late, but I think it was a Game Theory that got me going. Pretty sure I have almost everything unlocked, and mostly have left to fight to do the thing to take down the last two seals for the final boss, and a few secret or hard bosses. Specifically right now I am trying beat a character who was one of those super difficult DLC characters, Nightmare King Grimm. The guy is brutal, doing double damage, almost no time to heal during the fight, he is super fast and can leave almost no time to improvise. It is a good thing rechallenging is so quick, but really looks like the only way to beat this guy will be to memorise the tells as to know how to move, and some of these are split second requirements of reaction, along with paying attention to where exactly you are. Made more difficult that the four common attacks can be split up into two types of tells. If he is in the air, you have to jump, and on the ground it is dashing that will be best, although the success can greatly depend on how else you move depending on how close and seeing exactly what move as to have the only chances to deal damage.

At this point it feels like this is the first fight that feels like it has pushed me to the edge of what my reflexes can handle, like no time for me to identify the tell, consider where my character is, and then do the best move. Maybe if the similar tells were not there so I did not have to mentally cycle through four possibilities, in addition to a 5th move that entirely requires your location and the environment. I am reminded of the final boss in Sekiro, where I found a single boss having to get me to reprogram how I even play the game. Which reminds me that I have been meaning to replay that one for the alternate endings.

Also got Fire Emblem: Three Houses, which I want to play, but the similarities to Persona 5 have also nagged me that I really needed to have made progress with that game too, such a weird game that the last two time I played it I did not even do any combat. Need to do better to make progress in narrative games that I otherwise like. But who knows if I might finally get around to also doing the Borderlands 2 DLC missions that I never got around to doing, yet still did a main game run a little while ago, all in preparation for Borderlands 3.

Anyways, back to me being killed by bug Dracula. At least the introduction to the fight is really cool every time.

I loved Nightmare Grimm in Hollow Knight, it was my favourite fight in the game. You're right in that there's no room for error. It took me many, many failed attempts but my last one was a perfect run. It's one of those fights that once you know the way to deal with each move it becomes easy to an extent, but the other half is reacting in time. Each move he does is pretty simple but it's just so much faster than in the normal version of the fight. The music is also really great, it's one of the reasons I didn't mind doing the fight so many times. I think the charms I went with were the damage increasing ones and the ones that increase your maximum health. There's very little room for healing so I found it better to have more health and not even try to heal if you take damage.

Touhou 17 - Wily Beast and Wicked Creature released today, so I've been playing that. There's no English translation yet, so I don't really fully understand the mechanics. I'm liking it so far, though it seems a bit unbalanced from what little I've played. Youmu seems really powerful, but I'm not a fan of charge shot mechanics and the complexity it adds to the controls, and her style of gameplay is all around that. I'll play around with the characters a bit more before settling on one to try and do a 1cc; it will probably be Reimu or Youmu.

One of the thoughts I had while playing, the topic of a video I was listening to at the same time, was that gothic horror levels, especially with vampire aesthetics, are probably my favourites, so if there was a boss to be stuck with, this would probably be one I would not mind. He and his music is just so cool. At least better than having trouble with the dream versions of Zote and Failed Champion. I do now I think have the moves down, better than before I can do the right reactions to them, where I can practically see the actual tell for specific moves, practically is a dance where I could theoretically avoid all damage, almost funny in how some moves I can practically wait a second doing nothing. as to jump through the fire bats. Only problem, which is why I stopped last night, is that I was getting exhausted that I would do the wrong reaction despite that I should know better.

I was using Mark of Pride a longer nail reach, quicker attack speed, and the one for four health which really meant two more hits that I could not heal. But I tried swapping out for the fragile increased damage as to finish faster being more useful than just two hits, and it doesn't break from this fight, although I did notice that he does his pufferfish move now in his first faze, when he would only do it in his second before. Which I am guessing that he is taking enough damage to be in the second one despite not getting stagger yet, maybe better, as I otherwise managed to hurt him enough to stagger him four times once and got several more hits before getting killed. Gamechanger for me was recognising his ground dash to uppercut, and knowing a the simple strategy of dashing through him and then quickly moving to the location he uppercut from would be safe from fireballs, which made the move that felt dangerous actually being one of the easier to avoid.

So, I managed to beat Nightmare King Grimm, by the end the getting used to the fight was enjoyable enough that the whole fight was actually fun. Funny how something that could seem impossible can end up being a lot of fun when you get the hang of it. Really managed to tie up most of the final things to do in the game, like find enemies I missed and such, although a couple attempts of the third colosseum made me decide that I could put off worrying about that, which kind of means that apparently the journal trophy will be out of reach for a bit, and also decided to put off the super hard boss rush DLC. But otherwise up to actually time to beat Hollow Knight. Decided to try the final boss, managed to beat the titular boss and go for the true final boss for the true ending, but that was tough enough that he would be left for the next day. Especially since I tried again and it seemed that I had to fight the first one again and actually died, but hey I can say I beat him the first time I tried.

Keep at it, Nightmare King Grimm is much harder than Radiance, there's a lot more room for error.

I didn't finish the colosseum either, it felt a bit like padding - one thing I didn't like about Hollow Knight is that a lot of the content feels a bit padded and extraneous. A few too many quests that weren't a step far from MMO style collect 10 bear pelts that just had you backtrack through old sections, like the leadup to Nightmare King Grimm and the essence collecting.

I managed to finish Touhou 17 with a 1cc on normal difficulty, and now I'm onto the extra stage. Having now finished it, it's definitely on the easier side, especially with the right shot types and powerups available. Since I was having trouble with the bosses more than the stages, I went with Marisa with a powerup that increased her front facing damage. I haven't played with Marisa much before, but she really is a powerhouse in this game, mowing down boss health quickly. The final boss was fairly easy in comparison to other final bosses in the series when using all the resources that were at my disposal, particularly the last attack which was made completely trivial through spamming bombs and powerups.

Managed to beat The Radiance, even went back and got the other ending with just the titular boss, who kind of felt like a joke afterwards. Kind of odd that after not getting a lot of luck with a mostly offensive build early on for the fights, I switched to more defensive builds for healing, and yet after getting more used to everything it was switching back to the first loadout I had (mostly offensive) that pushed me to victory. Felt really good about beating Hollow Knight, the game makers even had a message after the credits to congratulate the player on victory and that it is a good feat accomplished. Which is great because I have been finding kind of down, and it was completing this that I thought would be a pick me up for my mental health.

Not sure what game I might focus on yet, I could go back to Fire Emblem Three Houses or Persona 5, but right now don't really feel like the big restrictions those games put on for their calendar. Could play some Bloodborne or Sekiro since I am a bit on a high of these similar games, the Souls Like games. Or goof around in some Skyrim or Minecraft.

Although, I also got Shadow of the Colossus a little while back, and have never played it. I think that will be my next journey.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Skyrim, and it looks so much better on the Xbox one X than it looked on the PS3.

I finished the Touhou 17 Extra boss in an attempt that shocked me because I wasn't trying seriously at the beginning, and I may have been a little inebriated. When I started doing well during the stage I started getting serious, then by three quarters through the boss fight my heart must've been racing. I even managed to not lose any lives until this one difficult attack near the end, after which I lost three in total. So it's far from a perfect attempt, but it was pretty good. It was more challenging that Touhou 16's Extra boss, particularly because the season release system in that game could trivialise some attacks, and more fun.

I am currently playing Farming Simulator. It's surprisingly addicting.

How many esports fans are on this forum? I like watching the major CS:GO and Dota 2 tournaments. There are two largest championships are coming in August, I'll be watching. If you like esports too, highly recommend this source

Last edited by B19 on 13 Nov 2019, 6:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.: spammer

Ah, very happy too see Hollow Knight get some love. One of my favorite games I've played in a long time. As of right now I've been playing No Man's Sky newest update in VR which has been fantastic. I hadn't played since a little after launch and was curious too see the QoL improvements they've made, and they've come quite a far way. The core gameplay is still pretty much the same, but I never had too much of an issue with that.

Well, I know what I will be playing when it is released.

I played and finished Salt and Sanctuary. It was OK, I just didn't see the point of it. It was basically a 2D version of Dark Souls, with so many elements lifted from that game that it seemed to have no identity of its own. Like watching a Hollywood remake of a successful foreign film, it felt superfluous and as I played it I kept thinking I could be playing the superior version of it instead.

I also played Momoora 3 in anticipation of the upcoming release of Minoria, made by the developer of the Momodora series, which I loved the most recent iteration of. The game was fun and charming, and a good challenge. It's really obviously influenced by Cave Story, but unlike Salt and Sanctuary's aping of Dark Souls Momodora 3 felt it had new things to offer, even if it was a very short and linear experience. There were little nods to Cave Story, like an NPC character that dies unless you reach her in time by speedrunning the game, and a three phase final boss who resembles Misery. Not as good as its sequel, but entertaining in its own right and worth its meagre cost.

After many attempts I also managed to finish the Extra stages in Touhou 7 - Perfect Cherry Blossom and Touhou 8 - Imperishable Night. The Touhou 7 clear was particularly crazy because I died twice on the midboss, getting me down to my last life and then somehow managed to make a comeback. And I really just scraped through at the end, with zero resources by the last attack. Both were really fun bosses and challenging for me.