November 2025 General Games Discussion Thread

[Johnway]

I had a week's holiday so got to start playing Path of Exile on the first sunday. I've stopped now that I've done all tier 1-16 maps. Just have a few uniques to get map completion done. Once they do the next patch this week and fix the new drops from breach I'll go back. Need about 7 divine for weapon upgrade though so I will pray to the tree and sell yellow lifeforce.

nice. i'm still plodding along only managed 20 or so maps and getting my first tree sorted. i should be much faster, but now that i've got to the main meat and bones of the content i'm taking it slowly. Unlike in the main story i tried to finish it a chapter a day. No r eal loot to be had i'm itching to replace the boots and gloves at some point but nothing is dropping that is matching my requirements.


Yakuza 5, so far in act 2 of the story its been a rather dull affair as we've spent much of the time in prison and there are glimpses of a new city in snow hokkiado, plus some snow best activities but nothing exciting. The only real high light was fighting a giant bear in the woods, i had hoped we would suplex it or powerbomb the beast but alas nothing. maybe later.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Steam Machine looks neat, Id consider one potentially for my kid. The thing better be really cheap though, considering the specs within a couple of years there will be stuff it cant run and people buying a console expect it to just play everything out there.

 

[neogunhero]

Steam Machine looks neat, Id consider one potentially for my kid. The thing better be really cheap though, considering the specs within a couple of years there will be stuff it cant run and people buying a console expect it to just play everything out there.

My thoughts exactly, if the price is competitive enough then it could really disrupt the console market, and I'm always happy to see some more competition. If it's under $600, I'm sure it will be a hit. SteamOS has already proven to be very intuitive to use (at least if Big Picture Mode on Windows is anything to go by, that's all I've used in terms of SteamOS), so I'm sure there won't be a hard transition for a console player to move to a Steam Machine.

 

[Pifanjr]

I played a bit more of the Barotrauma campaign I have going on with my friends. We finally made it to an outpost where they sell tier 3 subs, but they only sold transport ones and none of them looked particularly good, so we'll have to keep going.

I also played a bit more of Heat Signature. I got a new character to play as who started with a slipstream, which allows you to slow down everyone else. It turns out this is a fantastic way to get past large amounts of shielded enemies, as you can just run through an entire group of guards while pickpocketing the access key and get to the next section of the ship before they even register you were there.

 

[Frindis]

Enjoying Arc Raiders a lot as a hamster. Been stuffing my cheeks with so much loot that I am turning blue soon. Also had some fun shooting robots with the heavy pistol and 3-4 random people joined in on the fun. We basically started doing practice shooting at every robot we saw flying in the air. Just stood on a hilltop destroying stuff, it was beautiful

 

[neogunhero]

Just got Arc Raiders last night. I was hesitant on it, I don't play extraction shooters or PVP games much, but everything I've seen on it makes it seem like it's not full of sweaty players and has a friendly community.

Happy to say that after two hours that seems to be the case. I’ve ran into people in the middle of the levels and we just emote and go our separate ways. One guy helped me fight off some Arcs near the elevator and got in with me, he even gave me a blue tier gun.

One person I saw near the electrical station on the dam level, we emoted and waved. Immediately a drone Arc came behind them and I quickly shot them down, it was like a movie scene where he probably thought I was about to shoot him but instead saved his life.

This game is awesome. Runs at full ultra settings at a rock solid 60fps 1080p for me without FSR, GPU barely went above 55c but it was a bit warmer than usual in the house yesterday. So refreshing seeing a AAA game come out without bugs or performance issues, BF6 seemed to do the same as well.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I finally managed to finish a run in Hades.

I think ive been playing it too safe early on, I started picking the harder rooms when I had a lot more health. Harder rooms mean stronger boons, which means damage scales much better as time goes on. Got all the way to Hades with all 3 Death defiance revivals left, had an upgraded dodge which caused hangover damage over time, but also had a lot of Artemis boons increasing criticals, extra Doom damage on my attack and massive damage bonuses on my special attack. Finally had the Ares blade storm call which procced twice during the fight and did good work.

However turns out the end is not the end and theres a lot more stuff to unlock, so Ill probably go back to it now and again before I get the second game.

Having finished a run on Hades I gave my self permission to try something new and started up Tails of Iron. Its neat, the art seems unique and I like the way the combat controls so far. Its deliberate, with a parry and dodge but no stamina bar. Its also surprisingly violent considering the way it looks, which is fun in itself. Going to play a bit more and see if it sticks. Hopefully I can get it to work on Steam Deck, it would be really good there but it wouldnt go a few weeks ago for some reason.

 

[Johnway]

Having finished a run on Hades I gave my self permission to try something new and started up Tails of Iron. Its neat, the art seems unique and I like the way the combat controls so far. Its deliberate, with a parry and dodge but no stamina bar. Its also surprisingly violent considering the way it looks, which is fun in itself. Going to play a bit more and see if it sticks. Hopefully I can get it to work on Steam Deck, it would be really good there but it wouldnt go a few weeks ago for some reason.

Tails of iron has been on my wish list and its so cheap that its worth pulling the trigger (not before checking my epic account to see its not in there first).

yakuza 5 not much to report really, progress has come to a screeching halt as i'm going through the side activity: hunting.

You're forced to play the side stuff to understand the clunky mechanics and how to set traps etc. As you play and complete missions you get better guns, improved perks to make you an even better hunter. best of all its very lucrative; the bigger the animal, the more bits you can sell. There is an over arching story involving hunting a mythical bear and side missions fulfilling requests.

So ultimately even when the option was offered to leave for the city, i promptly stayed. i got hooked on trapping, stalking and killing my prey to make serious money as i clean the hunting grounds of prey.

 

[Johnway]

I've had some CRPG demos installed on my pc for a while now and i've only gotten around to playing one of them. in this case the Secret of weepstone:

The Secret of Weepstone on Steam

In a hand-drawn black and white dungeon crawler RPG inspired by classic D&D of the 80’s - Roll Dice, Fight Monsters, Loot Dungeons, Embrace Death, and unravel The Secret of Weepstone.

store.steampowered.com

After playing the demo i was very impressed. it looked good, played good and its got me excited to see more of this game. The demo is the castle overlooking the village of weepstone. With the local lord fallen ill, the brother of the Lord of weepstone calls everyone to the tavern. he asks for 6 volunteers to venture into the castle and find out some answers. Pick your towns people and get exploring for some pen and paper action. Complete with nostalgia inducing pen and paper maps, dice and even a (decent) DM to complete the narration.

i wasn't sure what to pick as i didn't know the stats of each person there nor what their class was. So i opted for a selection of characters that sounded good. What amused me the most was the descriptions of the people. Effectively i was picking normal people like the village idiot, the old maid and her butcher husband, a blacksmith etc for work.

But its all jolly entertaining. Finished it in about 30 mins. Since its dice based, it can be BS with the dice rolls. One encounter we almost lost party members to some unlucky stats. One thing i didn't do was perhaps try jumping down the laterines to see what happened; one was filled with faeces presumably and the other water. No idea how deep or far so i chickened out.

So the TLDR: i recommend a play.

 

[BeardyHat]

Having finished a run on Hades I gave my self permission to try something new and started up Tails of Iron. Its neat, the art seems unique and I like the way the combat controls so far. Its deliberate, with a parry and dodge but no stamina bar. Its also surprisingly violent considering the way it looks, which is fun in itself. Going to play a bit more and see if it sticks. Hopefully I can get it to work on Steam Deck, it would be really good there but it wouldnt go a few weeks ago for some reason.

Did you try different versions of Proton? Also worth downloading Proton-GE if you don't have it, it often has a higher level of compatibility; though Tails of Iron is Verified, so it should work without that.

I've had some CRPG demos installed on my pc for a while now and i've only gotten around to playing one of them. in this case the Secret of weepstone:

The Secret of Weepstone on Steam

In a hand-drawn black and white dungeon crawler RPG inspired by classic D&D of the 80’s - Roll Dice, Fight Monsters, Loot Dungeons, Embrace Death, and unravel The Secret of Weepstone.

store.steampowered.com

After playing the demo i was very impressed. it looked good, played good and its got me excited to see more of this game. The demo is the castle overlooking the village of weepstone. With the local lord fallen ill, the brother of the Lord of weepstone calls everyone to the tavern. he asks for 6 volunteers to venture into the castle and find out some answers. Pick your towns people and get exploring for some pen and paper action. Complete with nostalgia inducing pen and paper maps, dice and even a (decent) DM to complete the narration.

i wasn't sure what to pick as i didn't know the stats of each person there nor what their class was. So i opted for a selection of characters that sounded good. What amused me the most was the descriptions of the people. Effectively i was picking normal people like the village idiot, the old maid and her butcher husband, a blacksmith etc for work.

But its all jolly entertaining. Finished it in about 30 mins. Since its dice based, it can be BS with the dice rolls. One encounter we almost lost party members to some unlucky stats. One thing i didn't do was perhaps try jumping down the laterines to see what happened; one was filled with faeces presumably and the other water. No idea how deep or far so i chickened out.

So the TLDR: i recommend a play.

Boy that looks neat! When you said CRPG, my mind immediately went, "Oh, I already have too many to play", thinking it another isometric game. But first person dungeon crawling? Yeah, I'm definitely all over that. Assuming I can find the time today, I think I'll download this and give it a try.

I'm muddling my way through Darkest Dungeon 2, finally feel like I'm making headway and only just beginning to understand how the game works, as well as unlock some stuff that is helpful.

Previously, my team is usually in tatters by the time I reach the second inn and I end-up pushing just a little bit further into the next area to get a few more candles (used for unlocks) before my team rapidly collapses and I have to start over. This has been pretty much the story for the roughly 9-hours I've been playing and honestly, I don't expect to go too much further with my current setup.

That said, I finally got some solid unlocks, mostly skills, by focusing on the Hero memories (reflections?) or whatever they're called. Each time you hit one of these you get to pick a Hero and see part of their story and it unlocks a skill, so I ended-up focusing on the Vestal, since she's a decent healer and I'm finally getting to a similar point with the three other Heroes I'm currently focusing on.

So with all the skill unlocks, I finally am able to do some interesting tings with my team and ended-up building the Vestal purely for healing and buffing, completely ignoring her damaging skills. Similarly with the Man-At-Arms, I've kind of focused him on tanking and really only left him with one damaging skill and then my middle row, the Bandit and Grave Digger are totally focused on straight damage and I must say, this team comp has worked quite well for me. Vestal constantly throwing out buffs on the first two rows to mitigate damage and also grant crit and it's just...working.

I've also been trying to figure out how to avoid Loathing, which I seem to have had some success with this run, though I can't say I've fully got it yet. Loathing sucks, because it'll cause your Heroes to develop negative relationships, which can really doom a run. I also haven't tackled any bosses yet, because I just find they tend to completely end a run for me at this point.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Did you try different versions of Proton? Also worth downloading Proton-GE if you don't have it, it often has a higher level of compatibility; though Tails of Iron is Verified, so it should work without that.

I need to play with it a bit more, it wasnt working initially and I found a thread recommending to use a certain version of Proton which seemed to boot into the game but I didnt have time right then to play much. By the time a few days later I got a chance to sit down with it there was a game update in Steam, and it wouldnt boot into the menu again. It just hangs on a black screen and I have to close the game down.

 

[Zloth]

COVID shot knocked me out for a day and a half. I ended up playing The Gunk a little last night, because Elden Ring would have destroyed me if I had tried it. MUCH better now.

...i had hoped we would suplex it or powerbomb the beast but alas nothing. maybe later.

I've seen belly-to-back suplexes and belly-to-belly supplexes, but I've never seen a belly-to-leg suplex before!

 

[Johnway]

I've seen belly-to-back suplexes and belly-to-belly supplexes, but I've never seen a belly-to-leg suplex before!

Well sadly there was no super duper mega finish against the mythical beast. i've gotten to the end of the Hunting story missions and it was a real disappointment. We do get to fist fight the bear, but its fairly anticlimatic. We don't even get to kill it because, you know, we're hunters and we only hunt for food. To kill an animal for anything else is murder. Well, too bad, now that i've unlocked the hunting mountain and become immune to the cold, i'm going to spend long periods of time shooting as much as i can to make big money.


path of exile wise, still plodding around slowly unlocking maps. I really should be going faster trying to clear each map in 10min or less, but those fortress missions take longer to complete and are highly lucrative. I could jump into a community game and jump start progress but dragging my heels tbh. Gear is still a problem, i did get a sweet axe with huge amounts of physical dmg, but my current axe did the job of clearing the monsters quite nicely especially how each kill gave me health in return. Considering how quickly the monsters mob you, it might mean i last longer. But hey, if i can hit them before they hit me, who needs it. My offensive capabilities are my defenses.

 

[dxchase]

Had to take a 3 day break from gaming, was going through a little withdrawal...lol

Came home last night and put in a good amount of hours in Arc Raiders. They opened up a new map with new enemies and its been a fun time.

I have also enjoyed over this break watching Call Of Duty Black Ops 7 flop like it is. Im not one of those people to say its a "dead game" or anything but the numbers dont lie and after seeing how they did the campaign, using AI for MP and the price they are charging, it all makes perfect sense. That series needs to end.

I tried Where Winds Meet because it said it was an ARPG but the first 10 minutes is like every other dark souls game, kill 1 regular guy then immediately fight a boss with 2 health bars while juggling all the new powers and weapons and stances you have to use to dodge along with the "unavoidable" attacks every DS boss has. Gotta play it a little more before full judgement, but its FREE and looks pretty polished and runs well.

 

[Zloth]

Well sadly there was no super duper mega finish against the mythical beast. i've gotten to the end of the Hunting story missions and it was a real disappointment. We do get to fist fight the bear, but its fairly anticlimatic.

Well, Elden Ring has plenty of bears, big and BIG, for you to fight. There are even fist weapons you can use to do it. And there's no worries about murdering them as they all come back to life as soon as you rest or fast travel!

My own journey seems to be nearing an end. NPC quests are <ahem> wrapping up. The last area I was in had multiple boss fights, so it's feeling like a grand finale.

I'm not sure what I'm doing trying to become Elden Lord, given that all but maybe a half dozen individuals in the area have not just expressed disfavor toward me but outright tried to kill me. There's been no sign of any actual governance anyway, so I expect I'll just be seen as a nut case sitting on a very uncomfortable chair, shouting at a big empty room. I've proven I respawn whenever killed, so I expect they'll just ignore me. If I'm lucky, they might humor me. (NO GRAPES PLEASE!!)

 

[BeardyHat]

I've had some CRPG demos installed on my pc for a while now and i've only gotten around to playing one of them. in this case the Secret of weepstone:

The Secret of Weepstone on Steam

In a hand-drawn black and white dungeon crawler RPG inspired by classic D&D of the 80’s - Roll Dice, Fight Monsters, Loot Dungeons, Embrace Death, and unravel The Secret of Weepstone.

store.steampowered.com

After playing the demo i was very impressed. it looked good, played good and its got me excited to see more of this game. The demo is the castle overlooking the village of weepstone. With the local lord fallen ill, the brother of the Lord of weepstone calls everyone to the tavern. he asks for 6 volunteers to venture into the castle and find out some answers. Pick your towns people and get exploring for some pen and paper action. Complete with nostalgia inducing pen and paper maps, dice and even a (decent) DM to complete the narration.

i wasn't sure what to pick as i didn't know the stats of each person there nor what their class was. So i opted for a selection of characters that sounded good. What amused me the most was the descriptions of the people. Effectively i was picking normal people like the village idiot, the old maid and her butcher husband, a blacksmith etc for work.

But its all jolly entertaining. Finished it in about 30 mins. Since its dice based, it can be BS with the dice rolls. One encounter we almost lost party members to some unlucky stats. One thing i didn't do was perhaps try jumping down the laterines to see what happened; one was filled with faeces presumably and the other water. No idea how deep or far so i chickened out.

So the TLDR: i recommend a play.

Gave Weepstone a try last night and it's great. I absolutely can't wait for this to release now.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Well, Elden Ring has plenty of bears, big and BIG, for you to fight. There are even fist weapons you can use to do it. And there's no worries about murdering them as they all come back to life as soon as you rest or fast travel!

My own journey seems to be nearing an end. NPC quests are <ahem> wrapping up. The last area I was in had multiple boss fights, so it's feeling like a grand finale.

I'm not sure what I'm doing trying to become Elden Lord, given that all but maybe a half dozen individuals in the area have not just expressed disfavor toward me but outright tried to kill me. There's been no sign of any actual governance anyway, so I expect I'll just be seen as a nut case sitting on a very uncomfortable chair, shouting at a big empty room. I've proven I respawn whenever killed, so I expect they'll just ignore me. If I'm lucky, they might humor me. (NO GRAPES PLEASE!!)

I ended up accidentally turning the world to chaos, mostly because I was curious what was behind a door at the bottom of a very long drop down I found.

I guess youve just got through Farum Azula? The Godskin Duo are a pig but I really liked the Malekith fight.

Spoiler: Quest spoiler.

Was a bit gutted when I had to kill Alexander, but he seemed happy about it anyway.

Theres still a bit to do I think, depending on exactly where you are.

 

[Zloth]

Yep. Against the Godskins, I was able to summon Dung Eater and recusant Bernahl, so the brothers took on the boss pair, which worked out great after two or three tries.

Spoiler: same quest spoiler

Alexander put a scare into me! I always use black flame on pots but, when I tried it on him, it barely scratched him! I guess that's why he was hanging out in the lava pools earlier in the game. After he left me hanging against the Fire Giant, though, I didn't feel quite so bad for him. And then that crock pot went and blew his guts all over my outfit!!

Malekith's fight (big spoiler at the end) was... ugh. It didn't take long to get good enough to win, but there was a sequence of attacks he would do that I could only partially dodge - and that wasn't enough to survive all the attacks, even from full health. If I only did a few attacks and let Dung Eater tank, he wouldn't survive long enough to whittle that monster down, so I had to draw some agro. It just became a matter of whether I could get a pillar between me and the rest of the attack, which took quite a few tries before it happened to work out. (I think Dung Eater might have gotten some fancy dodges done, too - he should have be destroyed while I was behind that pillar, chugging down potions.)

 

[Johnway]

Gave Weepstone a try last night and it's great. I absolutely can't wait for this to release now.

Glad you liked it. I'm not sure why it slipped through the net tbh. maybe because it wasn't on nextfest or something. One thing i did find slightly annoying was the dice physics sometimes, for instance when i rolled for initiative, my dice bumps into the enemies and i land a one and they landed a 5. The next fight was just painful as they landed 2 critical hits nearly killing 2 members of my team. if they focused on them they would have killed them and i would have been down to 5 of my team.

i hope in the future there is a way to add your own custom hero into the game or perhaps see stats before picking them. I guess it makes for more interesting/natural gameplay. but on the flip side, i would like to know how one thief might be better then the other.

 

[Johnway]

Well, Elden Ring has plenty of bears, big and BIG, for you to fight. There are even fist weapons you can use to do it. And there's no worries about murdering them as they all come back to life as soon as you rest or fast travel!

i just have to be content with just murdering the regular bears. I'm still in the mountains hunting animals, just got 3 more side missions to finish off and we'll be all sorted. The sell 1million items task is pretty much in the bag with all the spare meat, fur etc in my inventory. The challenge to perform 3 headshots with 4 shells is a more challenging one. Especially with a joypad. Time to switch to the mouse methinks.

 

[BeardyHat]

Glad you liked it. I'm not sure why it slipped through the net tbh. maybe because it wasn't on nextfest or something. One thing i did find slightly annoying was the dice physics sometimes, for instance when i rolled for initiative, my dice bumps into the enemies and i land a one and they landed a 5. The next fight was just painful as they landed 2 critical hits nearly killing 2 members of my team. if they focused on them they would have killed them and i would have been down to 5 of my team.

i hope in the future there is a way to add your own custom hero into the game or perhaps see stats before picking them. I guess it makes for more interesting/natural gameplay. but on the flip side, i would like to know how one thief might be better then the other.

I suspect death will be a regular occurrence in this one. My Dwarf died in the very first fight, but I just proceeded on and eventually picked up the other guy and things just continued on. You actually get buffs when your characters die, so I'm guessing regularly people will kick it and you'll get the buff and gradually pick-up more people throughout the castle.

Funny thing was, immediately after the Dwarf died, we encountered a blocked door. We used his corpse as a battering ram and got access.

 

[JCgames]

Steam Machine looks neat, Id consider one potentially for my kid. The thing better be really cheap though, considering the specs within a couple of years there will be stuff it cant run and people buying a console expect it to just play everything out there.

They seam to be decent IF you play more popular games that are from bigger companies. Id be leary if your a gamer like me that plays lots of smaller indy games as they most likely wouldnt even support proton, or more likely tested for it. But if anything thing they want to play is more mainstream and has steam deck support, it could be a good thing. We will have to wait to find out more info though. I wouldnt buy early, but it couldbe good.

For me though, how many games dont have steam deck support. though sometimes people can get them working worh limited issues or just deal with sub par look/feel/play.

But building a buget system is really the way to go for me. With the ability to upgrade and build over time i just have always found that as the way to go.

 

[BeardyHat]

They seam to be decent IF you play more popular games that are from bigger companies. Id be leary if your a gamer like me that plays lots of smaller indy games as they most likely wouldnt even support proton, or more likely tested for it. But if anything thing they want to play is more mainstream and has steam deck support, it could be a good thing. We will have to wait to find out more info though. I wouldnt buy early, but it couldbe good.

For me though, how many games dont have steam deck support. though sometimes people can get them working worh limited issues or just deal with sub par look/feel/play.

But building a buget system is really the way to go for me. With the ability to upgrade and build over time i just have always found that as the way to go.

Gonna have to call you out there. SteamOS is just Linux and pretty much any game that works on Windows will work on Linux, the big exceptions being AAA games that require Anticheat stuff.

Steam Deck support and being Verified is kind of an effusive thing that developers are supposed to participate in or not and actually isn't indicative of a game running acceptably or not. There have been numerous instances of a game being "Verified" that runs awful, because Verified is only supposed to check that the game starts, text is viewable on the small screen and a few other parameters, not including performance.

If I'm honest as someone that's owned a Deck for 3 and a half years now, I never look at if a game is verified or not, because again, it's not super relevant. I play everything from Verified to Unsupported just fine on my Deck, weird Indies or not. Just as example a few things I have installed on my Deck which are listed as Unsupported:

Broodstar
Carmageddon: Max Damage
Cyclopean: Great Abyss Demo (full game is listed as partially supported)
Desert Golfing
Dragon Quest Builders 2
Gothic
GTA V
The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante
Panzer Corps 2
Second Front
Strife: Veteran Edition

I'll stop here, because it continues and this is also not including all the GoG, Battle.net (Diablo 2: Resurrection) and random things I have installed (Daggerfall Unity, Devolution X)

Anyway, my point is, the Deck and the Steam Machine are just PCs running Linux. You can install whatever you want on them and it'll most likely work fine, occasionally it might need tweaks. Proton is simply a compatibility layer, like Wine, which you can apply to any piece of software you like.

If your curious to have more information, you can check ProtonDB. It is specifically Linux oriented, but you can sort by Steam Deck and see peoples experiences with various games and software.

 

[JCgames]

I dont have one, but many games i play i see people posting that they cant get the game working on their decks and devs confiming they dont work on the deck. A few have said they wanted too get them working on it.

i have a lot of games that dont have linux support, though these days it does seam like less. Thats why i suggested make sure what you want to play works on it. I play lots of games that are made by a couple people or very small teams.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I got Tails of Iron working there and it plays great. For some reason when I was messing about in desktop mode I saw there was an OS update waiting to download. I applied it and a lot more Proton versions appeared in the compatibility list, I tried the experimental one and it works.

I havent had the deck long and Ive only played a few games on it but its been good so far for me. Even if a game wont run natively on it you can stream it from the computer although you'll need a good connection. I played a bit of Hell Is Us like that because its quite demanding, had to change a network setting I dont remember the name of but it did work pretty well after that.