I think Unity is super underrated to be honest. Revolutionary Paris is the best AC city they’ve ever done, and they had such a good idea going with the free run up/down system. It has some of the most stylish parkour in any game of the series and some phenomenal animations. Some of the missions are absolutely amazing too.

On PC it’s apparently even better with the ACUfixes mod, but I haven’t played it personally.

It’s a shame, the music is great and I do love the freshness of the unusual setting. But having seen both some gameplay and some of the writing I just can’t see myself playing it.

I’m deep into Mandragora Whispers of the Witch Tree this week and having a blast. Played about 19 hours and it feels like I’m about half way. The story so far has been serviceable, but I do enjoy the world quite a bit and I also think some of the characters are pretty funny and well written.

Gameplay has been excellent, combat has the right sort of depth to it without being crazy complex and the bosses have been very enjoyable. Good patterns and fun movesets. I’m just now at the second really big story boss and he’s a doozy. As someone who isn’t huge on platforming I am also happy to say the platforming segments aren’t really a big part of the game and have been very easy.

Character customization has been another highlight and making builds is super fun between both the PoE inspired passive tree and choosing which active skills to use and choosing which active skills to upgrade. I’m doing a dual dagger build that dipped almost immediately into the adjacent Chaos Magic tree and while probably not a power gaming choice it is great how flexible the game is in what it allows you to do. Having a lot of fun so far with Chaos Echo and Shadowstep both giving teleports to the range-deficient daggers.

Heavily recommended if you like Souls-likes and/or Metroidvanias!

EDIT: Forgot to mention one thing. I really appreciate this game having difficulty sliders for both Enemy Health and Enemy Damage ranging between 40-160% (default 100). I haven’t used them yet, but knowing you won’t be hard stuck on a boss and worst case can just turn down the difficulty is actually quite nice. Helps my mental.

Bill Hicks evergreen marketing bit is as relevant now as it was in the 80s.

I’d watch it.

“Coming this fall: ten billionaires are locked in a house with a murderous psychopath. Who will be the first victim, and who make it to the end? Use your phone to vote each week on what weapons the murderer will have access to! Introducing: Bigger Brother! Only on cable!”

On a related note I wish we had a c/madlads around these parts.

“Mildly interesting” or “greatly depressing”?

In many ways billionaires are worse than the other disasters listed.

I’ll see if I can hold out for a sale. I’m interested in the Mask of the Betrayer expansion but not as much in the main game.

Love your work as always! I hope your health improves soon ♥️

Pure, unadulterated capitalism and greed finding new and horrifying ways of bleeding the people dry. Colour me unsurprised.

Nice! I gravitate to DEX builds too as it’s just so nice to have bow access. My favourite stylish build is probably dual wielding the Tracers, but that’s basically NG+ only.

Finishing up Pentiment probably later today, and it will be nice to have it over and done with. I will appreciate having played it, but I can’t say actually playing it was all that fun. It’s beautiful, it’s well-researched and it has some interesting plots and characters in it but… god damn is it ever slow. Between the laboriously slow and often banal and uninteresting conversations and the lack of fast travel leading to half your playing time being watching your character slowly waddling across Tassing the game feels like an absolute slog to play.

I’ve been breaking up the tedium with Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree. I’ve had my eye on it as it’s written by Bloodlines-writer Brian Mitsoda, and at 25% off on the summer sale I thought why not.

It’s a Metroidvania Soulslike with a skill tree inspired by Path of Exile, and I’m really liking what I’m seeing so far. The combat has been solid, the build diversity seems great and the bosses have been good. The game is beautiful with a lovely art style and the level design is really good too.

From what I’ve seen so far I recommend checking it out if you like these types of games!

What’s your favourite build?

Sure did. I think it was some sort of cryptobro group focused on “growth and monetisation” if I remember right. Named “Chosen” I believe?

I’m not sure I trust Nexus with a picture of my ID, you know. What a fucking mess.

That’s fair. As far as I know the same was true for Chris Roberts. Well, it wasn’t so much that he had a publisher that would edit him as it was that he was fired and Microsoft came in and cobbled together what was there into an actual game (Freelancer).

Great list. I think I will replay about half your list at some point over the coming years. And might first time play Love For Sail as well.

There are a lot of great mods for BG2 as well to keep the game feeling fresh. Even moreso if you don’t mind adding some fanfiction material, though I typically don’t.