I’ve been playing the World of Warcraft Remix: Mists of Pandaria mode since it came out. It’s fun, but extremely grindy at max level. I really hope Blizzard improves the balancing, since right now it feels like you gotta decide between spending the special currency on cosmetics and mounts or upgrading your gear. I chose a druid, just for the flexibility of potentially playing every role, but am currently Balance, which I never really played before.
In preparation of the Mists of Pandaria Turbo Mode in like 10 days, I’m playing World of Warcraft, and catching up on all the stuff I missed in the last three years. So far, I’ve leveled two characters to 70, although I skipped all dialogue and cutscenes. I just don’t care at all about this stuff in this game.
I gotta be honest though, while the quest progression while leveling is fine, once you’re done and max level it becomes a complete clusterfuck. Since this is the tail end of the expansion, all the story content that has been released in the last 18 months, just gets dumped on you. You just get tons of new story quests. One third of which you can’t start, because you need some reputation level with a faction or something. Another third needs a previous story to be done first, and the last third you can actually do. Your quest log is full of all that useless bloat, and it becomes a nightmare to sort through. Then there are tons of quests that are supposed to introduce you to the various new mechanics that were added, but those basically drown in the sea of all the other shit. I’m not the biggest fan of the forced story and gating of everything behind it in FF14, but at least I never needed a guide to find out which campaign quest I should do next. Also, important quests that unlock stuff are usually marked with a different color indicator, so they aren’t hard to miss. That’s something Blizzard should definitely copy. Luckily I have a bunch of friends, who play the game continuously, who I can ask about the most important stuff, otherwise I’d be lost.
I’m really into collecting pets and pet battles in the game, so I’ve been spending a lot of time flying around, catching everything new, etc. I wonder why Blizzard never added pet battles to the companion app or released it separately for mobile. Back in the day, I’d definitely spent a bunch of time just doing random battles (and would probably still now). I might have to look into setting up the game on my Steam Deck and try out just exploring, catching all the pets, or do the simple quests.
Finally finished Horizon Forbidden West, only the base game though, not the DLC, which will have to wait. I definitely enjoyed my time with the game, but I gotta say, the story is complete trash and the antagonists are garbage as well. I liked the companions that hang around in your base, as well as a few of the smaller NPCs scattered around the world though.
Then, I started playing World of Warcraft again. I read about the Mists of Pandaria Turbo mode, that’s coming next month and really want to try it (since that is my favorite expansion), so I’m taking a few weeks before to play through the current expansion, Dragonflight. It’s been about three years since I played the game, so there are a ton of things I have to learn, but for leveling those don’t matter, so I’ll just go through the main campaign for now.
I could see the writing on the wall last week, but after about 20 hours I’ve dropped Dragon’s Dogma 2. Exploration felt just like a chore to me, and combat was super boring. This is definitely one of those games, where I absolutely don’t see what reviewers saw in it to give out such high scores and maybe even call it GotY. From what I’ve read, the online discourse has shifted a little as well, and not just because of the bad performance or microtransactions.
I tried switching over to Horizon Forbidden West, and was going through the first small zone, when the game started crashing constantly with no error or hint on what the problem could be. It was weird, because it ran smoothly for almost 10 hours, and then it became basically unplayable. Crashes every 1–5 minutes. I tried a lot of things, but nothing helped, and was close to giving up. Then one or two days ago I had a breakthrough and I think I found the cause, something with the textures or my GPU memory. First, I reduced the memory OC of my GPU, which I haven’t changed in almost 2 years, although it still crashed after an hour, which was definitely an improvement. Then I turned down the Texture Quality setting from Very High to High, I was finally able to play with no issues again. Today I’ll check with my normal overclock again, if it’s just the in-game setting or both.
As for the game itself, I like it, it’s basically Assassin’s Creed Valhalla or something, just that controlling Aloy doesn’t feel like you’re moving through molasses. I don’t play these open world RPGs where you’re basically checking off markers on the map too often, but I do enjoy them from time to time. Because of all the problems I had with the game, I just made it out of the prologue / introduction or whatever (before you get to the titular Forbidden West), so I can’t say too much about it yet, however I gotta say it does look fantastic, probably the best looking game (on a technical level) that I’ve played.
I also played the new stuff, that was released in the first big patch of Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor. The new zone is really neat and I had a good time.
Then I tried Halls of Torment, another Vampire Survivors-type game. I love the look and vibe while playing, but it feels like you have to grind the early levels somewhat for upgrades and stuff until you’re ready for the later stages, which I’m not really a fan of. For now, I’ve shelved it, but will definitely check it out again later.
I gave Pathfinder: Gallowspire Survivors another chance as well, this time on my desktop PC, since I didn’t have a great time on my Steam Deck before. The game just loves throwing ranged enemies at you, so your screen is constantly filled with projectiles, which is just not fun, and the bigger screen only helps a tiny bit. It also seems super grindy, since there is sooooo much stuff to unlock and upgrade, although basically everything are just tiny passive improvements. Not really sure how I feel about it yet, but it’s another game, which I’ll check out again at a later time.
As far as I’ve heard, previous Capcom games already feature these types of mostly meaningless DLC. So it’s not a first test, and so far the older games haven’t been adjusted to make the microtransactions more appealing.
I agree, Capcom aren’t dumb, it’s probably just a minimal amount of work, and if they can get even a few buyers they make money. Although, who knows if the hit to their reputations negates all of this.
I played it a year ago, and it was fun (playing as the male MC), but the side quests are complete ass, so I definitely recommend skipping them.
I was “done” with Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, but a day later the first patch dropped, so I gotta go back to it.
Death Must Die was my replacement for DRG, but the game is a bit boring, so I’ll wait for more patches. It’s basically Hades but Vampire Survivors. So far there are five characters in the game, but four are very similar. The different spells or upgrades are also not really too interesting and barely change the gameplay, so most runs feel the same. I hope further updates can improve the game.
Then, I started both Horizon: Forbidden West and Dragons Dogma 2 on PC, but right now I’ll stick with DD2. The game is basically what I remember DD1 being, but with a fresh coat of paint, for better or worse. Back when I played the first game, I had a great time for like 70 hours, but by the end, I never wanted to see the game again (and never played the DLC). Even though it’s been eight years since then, I still feel a bit burned out, so seemingly so few changes don’t really help. I started out as the mage and just recently switched to the sorcerer, but imma be honest, it’s pretty boring. I’ll give it a bit longer, since I barely got any spells right now. The archer and thief look more fun, so I might give these a shot, if the giga wizard doesn’t improve things. I also gotta say, the Pawns are some of the most annoying NPCs in any video game ever. They spew one of their dozen different voice lines every 20 seconds, which is just awesome. You can mute their audio, but then you might also miss useful callouts like when they find a chest or info about enemies. The subtitles for their lines would of course still clutter the screen though.
Still on that World of Warcraft Remix: Mists of Pandaria grind. I just finished upgrading all my gear, so now I’ll focus on unlocking all the cosmetics and stuff. I also started a second character, a Priest, but I don’t really enjoy it right now. So, I’ll probably just use this mode to speedlevel a few characters, that I’ll never touch again.