September 2025 General Game Discussion Thread

[neogunhero]

Monday, so very soon!

Thank goodness I kept the $18 sitting in my Steam wallet for about a month now. It doesn't count as your personal money anymore once it's sitting in the Steam wallet

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Played a ton of STALKER SoC Enhanced Edition this weekend. Finally reached the Bar after getting myself into too many bloody battles, most times needlessly. I downloaded a couple mods on the Workshop, one that makes a ton of small immersive additions like extra weather patterns, restoring cut content, lighting changes, equipment repair guys and more, and another mod that makes the shooting more deadly and accurate for both you and the enemies. These two little mods together are making for a nice Vanilla+ experience.

Sticking true to the STALKER name, I've been exploring each zone a bunch looking for all the anomalies I can find. I've racked up a small fortune already, enough to buy a STALKER suit, but I held off because I knew I would get one for free once I reached the Bar. With so much money burning a hole in my pocket, I picked up a "Fast Shooting" AKM 74 from Sidorovich which had a slight accuracy boost compared to all other rifles I've found so far. Accuracy was greatly improved already with that mod I installed, now I can actually kill enemies further than 20 feet now without my bullets curving around them, but I'll still take any improvement I can get.

In order to get to the city settlement Rostok where a meeting place called The Bar is at, you have to go through a pretty bloody mission to steal military documents which is used as your ticket to the city. You enter a zone called Agroprom which has two major areas, the Factory and the Research Institute. Both locations have tons of enemies fighting, and on harder difficulties the battles are tough, but now with this mod I have, enemies are more accurate and deadlier than ever. So am I, but I'm also not invincible.

I first worked my way through the Factory since a fellow Loner asks for help repealing off a wave of bandits once you enter the area, and I nearly got wiped out the moment I entered the battle. 6 or 7 bandits were holed up in the large factory building while we were outside, hiding behind a medical van. I threw a very lucky grenade which took out 3 of the bandits but soon found out there were even more bandits on the other side of the building.

After we won the fight, I made my way to the Research Institute. Here, there are about the same number of enemies, but I don't have a group of Stalkers helping me fight. It's just me, my rifle, and about 10 enemies. I died a few times there but eventually got the last of them and made my way up the building to grab the military documents. I should have known as soon as I picked them up, a group of reinforcements would be waiting for me outside.

After countless rounds and multiple medpacks, I cleared out the last of them and looted their bodies. I finally made my way to the Duty checkpoint, reached the Bar, dropped off the documents, got my STALKER suit, then logged off for the night. This game is really intense and makes me need to take a break every so often lol.

 

[Rolfil]

I'm researching PoE 1 builds for the new season at the end of October and also some farming and crafting strategies. I've not really done much of either before. I definetly play a build that is different from anything I've done before.

Whilst waiting I've started to replay AC:Odyssey. I never got more than half way through it when it was first released. Then I had a 1080p monitor and a 1060 6GB GTX card. I had to turn a lot of the settings down then and that was nearly 7 years ago!

Playing on a 1440p monitor with all the settings maxed out it looks gorgeous and it's probably my most favourite Assasins Creed game. Perhaps I should not buy anything new next year* and go and play some of the older games or see what's in my Epic library.

(* half of which would have just been remasters anyway)

 

[neogunhero]

Whilst waiting I've started to replay AC:Odyssey. I never got more than half way through it when it was first released. Then I had a 1080p monitor and a 1060 6GB GTX card. I had to turn a lot of the settings down then and that was nearly 7 years ago!

Playing on a 1440p monitor with all the settings maxed out it looks gorgeous and it's probably my most favourite Assasins Creed game. Perhaps I should not buy anything new next year* and go and play some of the older games or see what's in my Epic library.

I've been wanting to get into one of the recent AC games recently. I've played a good bit of Odyssey, maybe 20 hours total, but for some reason dropped off it. I've tried to play Origins and Valhalla before and put a good few hours into each but Odyssey seems to have nailed down that action RPG formula better than the other two. Valhalla was very bloated from the beginning, forcing so many systems in the early hours of the game. Odyssey is still gargantuan but more manageable and not as overwhelming to start. I even bought the Odyssey ultimate edition one year when it was dirt cheap of Ubisoft Connect, so I really should go through that game again. It's quite relaxing to play on easier difficulties.

 

[dxchase]

Nothing that the PC Gamer Show Tokyo Direct showed yesterday peaked my interest unfortunately. Some of the souls likes looked ok but...soulslike.

Diablo 4 is a blast this season. I dont really have a "best" one but the last 2 seasons have seen positive changes. Its not all there yet but we are also 10 seasons in. Hopefully after this season there's an expansion so i can be duped again lol. I find D4 to be more fun than POE/POE 2, is that heresy?

Been blasting through Borderlands 4 too, though this is more reserved right now as a coop game with my wife so its going at a steady pace.

Also trying to get through Cronos: The New Dawn on NG+ Hard (highest difficulty). Its definitely harder even if i know whats coming, they have also made sure to add more to sections where you get swarmed but ive also noticed that if you managed your upgrades well for your guns and equipment in the first run, it can help make this feel less tough than it is. One thing i dont like is, while playing the game you collect abilities from people during your playthrough and when you start a new playthrough, you lose them. You keep your guns and your upgrades but i wish i could have those too

 

[Johnway]

I've been wanting to get into one of the recent AC games recently. I've played a good bit of Odyssey, maybe 20 hours total, but for some reason dropped off it. I've tried to play Origins and Valhalla before and put a good few hours into each but Odyssey seems to have nailed down that action RPG formula better than the other two. Valhalla was very bloated from the beginning, forcing so many systems in the early hours of the game. Odyssey is still gargantuan but more manageable and not as overwhelming to start. I even bought the Odyssey ultimate edition one year when it was dirt cheap of Ubisoft Connect, so I really should go through that game again. It's quite relaxing to play on easier difficulties.

Whilst i preferred greece over england, combat wise i preferred valhalla's over odyssey's. The problem with Odyssey the enemies were damage sponges and it took a while to chip away at their health. bosses especially took extra long to beat them. its almost MMo levels as they have ever increasing amounts of health. Valhalla's enemies were more varied and was more technical imo. oh and you can assassinate HVTs, whereas in odyessy, you just do a chunk of damage and alerts everyone.

The other highlight is that unlike in odyessy, valhalla's exploration of areas was far more refined. You would visit majority of them in either main missions or in side quests. Also to complete exploration of bases you only need to find a select few items compared to odyssey where you had to look for absolutely every chest and item etc. So less tedious.

 

[Frindis]

In case anyone wants some free Steam stickers:

Grab 9 FREE Steam Autumn Sale 2025 stickers by going through your Discovery Queue!

Steam is offering 9 free Autumn Sale 2025 stickers for all players who'll go through their Discovery Queues three times.

gg.deals

 

[Zloth]

Stickers: blah! You can only use them when chatting with friends. Emotes are nice every now and again in the forums or when commented, but I have never used a sticker.

I'll echo Odyssey's damage sponges. The game was quite good overall, but that was an annoyance. (Though health bars aren't REALLY bad unless there are lots of them. See Dragon's Dogma!)

 

[Pifanjr]

My friends and I finally continued our Barotrauma campaign. The third biome is definitely a lot more hostile than the first two, but we managed pretty well so far.

I tried to avoid some enemies by not using the active sonar too much, but that wasn't particularly effective, probably because I was still using the engine at max speed which makes a lot of noise by itself. We hired some security officers to man the turrets though and while we had a couple of deaths we managed to kill most of the hostile wildlife pretty easily. Even the infected wreck I accidentally bumped into was hardly a problem, nor was the enemy submarine we had to take out.

The only thing we really struggled with was an alien ruin. It was located in a cave so we couldn't get close with our sub to blast it open and most of the walls are nearly impenetrable with handheld tools. There are a couple of weaker spots you can open to get in, but once you're in you're stuck in a maze with a whole bunch of doors controlled by terminals in different parts of the maze. Each of these terminals needs an alien box to power it, which are found in chests in other parts of the maze, or they're opened by buttons or motion sensors that require one person to stay behind to keep the door open while someone else continues. You can break open the doors inside as well, but they're pretty sturdy too and the inside of the ruins are patrolled by guardians who use hit and run tactics and heal themselves if you fail to kill them.

We probably spend an hour or more in that one ruin, with two player deaths, a couple of near deaths and a lot of time just cutting through walls just so we didn't have to deal with the maze or the guardians. At one point my friends took the shuttle from our sub so we would have a place to store loot, but it ran out of power before we could bring it back. We got some cool loot and the cash reward should be enough to buy a new shuttle, so I feel like it was worth it, but my friends might veto the next alien ruin mission we get...

 

[Johnway]

I'm researching PoE 1 builds for the new season at the end of October and also some farming and crafting strategies. I've not really done much of either before. I definetly play a build that is different from anything I've done before.

Any particular classes? i suspect that slam skills are going to get a nerf, being that it was the metabuild of the league. In fact i joined the league late and took the bersersker Volcanic Fissure of snaking build and its worked wonders. Although i suspect it was the 6 linked armor that did most of the work.

Not sure if i will be playing next league, it will really need to be compelling with rewards to match. I'm absolutely burned out playing it and its messed with my gaming schedule massively.

other news, i've finally finished trails of cold steel on the vita. Something like 110 hours clocked. Will put my thoughts on the game at another time.

Gaming wise, this year is looking to be the most games added to my gaming collection. the highest was 76 and this year so far its been 77... Although to be fair that number is inflated because the tales of monkey island collection each chapter was its own game. But damn it, i feel like a junkie as i can't stop adding games to my collection. A good chunk of them free (the pathologic 3 link was a nice tip off) and i bought viewfinder for less then a fiver from fanatical. I suspect i'll buy more before the year is out.

What will the damage be by the end of 2025?