August 2025 General Game Discussion

[Johnway]

More blasphemous action, the good news is that new method of lantern jumping has worked a charm so one of the most annoying aspects has been addressed. So my opinion of the game remains highly positive.

Progress wise we're nearly done. i've completed all 8 dungeons, defeated pretty much all the bosses (even if i didn't need to because i messed up the golden ending) and 4 of 5 challenge maps done. Just to finish off the last map any missing items and finally defeat the boss to complete my first run of the game.

 

[Zloth]

BREAKTHROUGH!!

1. Yeah, I was too far when doing my backstabs. You have to get close enough to make the animation weird, with your nose almost touching the enemy.

2. When using a spear, you can attack while still holding up your shield! (Or you can equip a second spear and flail away. Or two flails and really flail away.) They can still break my poise pretty easily, but not as easily as when my shield is just hanging at my side.

3. Ash summons are not one-use-only. What's more, they last a pretty long time and are quite tough! I was pretty sure I would be able to use those wolves multiple times, but I assumed they would just be wolves, which I can very nearly one-shot with my little starting spear.

Knowing these, I was able to backspear most of the enemies in that initial outpost and only needed one heal spell before the elite knight. I summoned the dogs on him, and they almost took the guy out alone!

Then I went to that starting dungeon with the wolves and wasted that boss easily. Then sliced through that costal cave for Boc without much trouble... yeah, it's clicking now. (Also, being less scared means less panicky clicking the attack button, which means less getting hit because I can't dodge while attacking.)

There are definitely things to UNlearn in this game. First, levelling isn't as big a deal as it is in most RPGs. It's important for sure, but it isn't like "forget attacking anything 3 levels above you, sleep through attacking things 3 levels below you" important. Improving your weapons is at least as important.

And, as I had hoped, while there's a lot of focus on how hard the fights are, this game also has highly challenging and rewarding exploration. I've seen many games with good exploration (far more without), but games with challenging exploration? Exploration where you've got to be smart about it or you'll end up dead? That's seriously rare.

Of course, it will kill you sometimes even when you are smart about it. Smart ain't always good enough for From.

 

[Pifanjr]

I started a new Rimworld game. I wanted to try out raiding, so I made a new scenario where I start with a single pawn that starts with only a awful revolver, thinking I would be able to steal better equipment from hostile camps.

However, it turns out camps are quite a but more well protected than I anticipated and a single, unarmoured pawn with mediocre shooting skill and a bad weapon isn't going to be able to do anything.

So instead I've pivoted to a nomadic life. The pawn I chose has the Ascetic trait, which means he doesn't need a fancy bedroom to be happy and he's fine with eating raw food, which is really convenient. Especially since he got gut worms after only a few in-game days and now has to eat twice as often. Too bad he has a terrible medicine skill, so it's going to take a while before he gets rid of them.

I did get a pawn that wanted to join me, but they were being chased by Empire troops and I had to use them as bait while my first pawn escaped.

 

[BeardyHat]

BREAKTHROUGH!!

1. Yeah, I was too far when doing my backstabs. You have to get close enough to make the animation weird, with your nose almost touching the enemy.

2. When using a spear, you can attack while still holding up your shield! (Or you can equip a second spear and flail away. Or two flails and really flail away.) They can still break my poise pretty easily, but not as easily as when my shield is just hanging at my side.

3. Ash summons are not one-use-only. What's more, they last a pretty long time and are quite tough! I was pretty sure I would be able to use those wolves multiple times, but I assumed they would just be wolves, which I can very nearly one-shot with my little starting spear.

Knowing these, I was able to backspear most of the enemies in that initial outpost and only needed one heal spell before the elite knight. I summoned the dogs on him, and they almost took the guy out alone!

Then I went to that starting dungeon with the wolves and wasted that boss easily. Then sliced through that costal cave for Boc without much trouble... yeah, it's clicking now. (Also, being less scared means less panicky clicking the attack button, which means less getting hit because I can't dodge while attacking.)

There are definitely things to UNlearn in this game. First, levelling isn't as big a deal as it is in most RPGs. It's important for sure, but it isn't like "forget attacking anything 3 levels above you, sleep through attacking things 3 levels below you" important. Improving your weapons is at least as important.

And, as I had hoped, while there's a lot of focus on how hard the fights are, this game also has highly challenging and rewarding exploration. I've seen many games with good exploration (far more without), but games with challenging exploration? Exploration where you've got to be smart about it or you'll end up dead? That's seriously rare.

Of course, it will kill you sometimes even when you are smart about it. Smart ain't always good enough for From.

Is this your first From game? It's always exciting to see it click for another person, takes you back to when that happened for yourself.

 

[Colif]

I never realised there were so many versions of Monopoly.

I liked the original, I feel its gone off the road there somewhere as there are now about 4000 versions, many of them cross promoting another product.
Its almost as bad as Lego

List of Monopoly Games (Board)

List of variations of the board game Monopoly. This list attempts to be as accurate as possible; dead links serve as guides for future articles. See also: Fictional Monopoly Editions List of Monopoly Games (PC) List of Monopoly Video Games - Includes hand-held electronic versions Other games...

monopoly.fandom.com

Its the fortnightification of everything... lets shove as many franchises together and produce a product... reminds me of metaverses as well. Everyone will buy it if its for everyone... nope. That repulses people... look at main character in Ubisoft's Star Wars game last year, she was meant to look like everyone but instead didn't attract anyone. You can try too hard to include everyone.

 

[Zloth]

Is this your first From game? It's always exciting to see it click for another person, takes you back to when that happened for yourself.

Yep! Though really, it was half joy of figuring it out and half frustration of "why would you make THAT tricky!?"

The inventory is pretty weird, too. You can equip 3 weapons and switch between them. Weapons you are not carrying that way are all weightless, though. Armor worn is heavy, armor in your bag is weightless. It's not hard to understand once you know it, it's just another one of those things you've got to realize is different without any hint.

Ah, and I got a new spell! Fire sling is actually useful for attacking. An elite knight on a horse became easy pickings with it. I got up on a ruined building, shot a couple of arrows at him to make him mad, and then threw fire at him as he scrambled up the building. He did get to me, but with hardly any health so I could just wail away with my spear without caring if he hit me or not. Easy win.

 

[Pifanjr]

My Rimworld game was going quite well. I decided to check out some abandoned ruins, a feature added by the latest DLC, and got a bunch of stuff to sell. I made it to a neutral settlement and traded my old revolver in for a sniper rifle and bought some better clothing and basic armour as well.

However, the last abandoned ruin I explored was better protected than the ones before and I didn't notice the hunter drones until they'd already swarmed my pawn, at which point it was too late to escape.

I tried starting a new colony afterwards, but I didn't feel like playing any more.


So I decided to start a new Terraria game. It's been years since I last played it and it has had a ton of updates since then, though so far the beginning still feels very familiar. The major difference so far for me is that I'd only ever seen the Corruption, so when I made my world I chose to have it generate the alternative Crimson instead. It's fairly similar, except that it's red instead of purple and the purple orbs you have to destroy have been replaced with anatomically correct(ish) hearts.

Now, with the Corruption you get a floating purple orb as loot that follows you around and provides light. Since the Crimson exchanged the orbs for hearts I suppose I could've seen it coming, but I was still very surprised when I instead got a glowing heart that spurted blood while flopping after me.


The reason I decided to play Terraria again was because I was recently recommended a video series recently on YouTube from someone who introduced a friend to Terraria and used the opportunity to see how well Terraria does at explaining the game to new players.

It's very interesting to see how developers can nudge players in the right direction with subtle game mechanics, but also how easy it can be to get stuck because the player missed something.

View: https://youtu.be/3fHgO1a_tOI