I heard about it before release… albeit I heard from a friend that I play XIV with, so that’s certainly a selection bias.

That was a fun watch, thanks! Now what about TotK… 🤔

In FFXIV, I’m in the post-Shadowbringers DLC content. I’ve taken a bit of a break from the MSQ to get the Nier-themed alliance raids

Are you me? I’m just a bit into the post-ShB patches, and I just finished unlocking all three Nier raids. They’re really fun (although I agree: challenging). If you happen to be on Crystal DC and want to party up for some raids or something, lmk!

Think I might try a healer class next, just not sure which one

As someone who is very much a non-healer main, I quite like Sage. My first healer to 90 was actually Scholar, but a lot of that had to do with the fact that I was really into Summoner for a while: when I’m going to heal I usually hop on Sage.

I’ve put a few hours in and I agree, it’s just a fun little game that slowly pushes you bit by bit into slightly more challenging stuff. I really like how well the game meshes the diving and sushi restaurant aspects, too. (Plus, I’m a scuba diver – still pretty new to it – and I’m a bit on the larger side, so it’s a nice bit of representation.)

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood! It’s a really good visual-novel-style game, but with the added element that you craft your own tarot-style divination deck and then draw cards from it during some conversations, and which cards you draw influence what kinds of readings you can give for people. It is established early on that since you were a kid your readings have never been wrong, and fittingly the game warns you early and repeatedly that your answers will affect your fate, dramatically. Well, no kidding! When I was playing yesterday I had a choice that I’d made hours earlier come back and bite me in the ass, hard. Almost made me want to quit and start over, but I’ve decided to see this play-through through and if by the end I still feel like I need to fix my mistakes I’ll maybe play it a second time.

tl;dr if you like beautiful pixel art, enigmatic beings from outside of space and time, witches, tarot, and/or choices that actually matter in your games, do give this one a go! I’m not done with it yet but I’d already love to chat with someone else who’s played it!

I’m personally not so much worried about it being buggy or broken, that stuff gets patched. I’m more worried that it’ll be fundamentally disappointing in some way, which is something that I probably wouldn’t discover until long past the refund window. To be clear, I’m cautiously optimistic, but that caution leads me to wait until a week or so after release to hear what folks are saying about it.

If you have a USB stick you’re not using you can install Mint on it and boot directly from the USB drive without modifying your actual OS, and see how you like it! The same is true of many other linux distributions if you’d like to explore, but Mint was my own first foray into linux and I think it’s a comfy distro to start off with. I think you’ll be shocked by how snappy it can be on a lower spec machine like that, even running from a USB stick.

Exciting stuff. I’ve long since vowed never to pre-order anything from Bethesda ever again though, so I’ll be waiting to hear what the vibe is once other folks start playing it. Right now it very much seems like it could either be great or disappointing. We’ll see in a couple weeks’ time I s’pose

I wonder how many hundreds of hours I have in that game now… I’ll /playtime next time I log in. I’m still in the patches after Shadowbringers, but I’ve also been known to focus more on roulettes and such than actually making progress in the main story

I don’t have hundreds of hours

Don’t start with XIV then!

So what is the most recent game in the series that I can start with that is worth it to play and wouldn’t confuse a newcomer?

All of the FF games – baring the ones that are explicitly sequels, like X2 – are totally separate from each other, you can jump in anywhere. At most you might miss some references or easter eggs.

If you want the most recent then, that’d be XVI, although I’d personally recommend looking up what the gameplay is like in the different games and starting wherever you feel you’ll have the most fun! There are some weirder ones out there, like crystal chronicles (my own first final fantasy game) and tactics, so you have a lot of options!

Flash games will work again? Moving away from NFTs? Well dang, I might just make a new neopets account! Lots of nostalgia there, it’d be cool to mess around with again after all these years.

Not really relevant to the overall thread, but I just learned Nimona exists earlier today while I was checking to see if K.Flay had any new songs out since I last checked! (She does, and it’s one she did for Nimona.) That plus this comment has officially got it on my to-watch list!

Yeah that certainly took a little getting used to! I think can pretty much read the heights of everything now, but there was definitely a little while when I was accidentally jumping into the sides of ledges that were actually higher up than me!

I’ve been working my way through Cross Code in the evenings after I get back home, and it’s as excellent as everyone says it is! I keep trying to decide what other games it reminds me of the most, and surprisingly I think I’m starting to settle on Legend of Zelda (the older ones, not BotW/TotK).

The way it gates progress, the level & dungeon design, etc just really seems to be a part of that tradition. The moment to moment gameplay is pretty different though, and pretty unique at that!

Really though it’s just been a nice escape in the evenings. It’s challenging enough that sometimes I decide to leave a tough fight or puzzle to pick up the next night, but it’s not punishingly hard and I feel like it respects my time.

#notallgames

Seriously though, I know you said “for the most part,” but I just want to emphasize that there are absolutely story-focused games out there. Games I’d even describe as downright literary, where the entire point is to tell a compelling story and explore some heady themes. One recent one I played like this was Pentiment, which explores some really interesting history and has a lot to say about religion, community, fallibility, family, etc…

And, I mean, lots of other people have already mentioned Disco Elysium and I could write an essay about it but anyone who hasn’t played it should just watch this Jacob Geller video instead.

Oh yeah, exploring different tones, settings, systems, etc can be really interesting! I usually listen to more lighthearted things, so I don’t have a ton of recommendations, but you might like Dungeons and Randomness.

It’s changed a lot since it started. In the beginning it was a pretty standard fantasy themed actual play between some friends, but has evolved into a pretty big living-world style campaign with several different groups of players. The tone starts out a little silly –e.g. there’s a magic item called the “gravy boat of pestilence” – but over time becomes much more serious. They start to deal with some fairly portentous themes, and some might even describe the tone as “dark” at times.

If you check it out, I recommend skipping the first two episodes entirely (they’re almost irrelevant to the larger story and they feel a lot less polished). From episode 3 there’s some plot relevant stuff, but you could safely skip up to episode 16 or 17 (at which point there are already two adventuring groups) and you won’t miss too much. If you want to get straight into the higher production value stuff, there’s a recap after episode 200 (the first “arc”), at which point there are four different adventuring groups. I wouldn’t super recommend that personally, I think there’s a lot of good stuff in the first arc, but I’m pretty sure they do recommend doing that. Up to you, of course.

There are a lot of really good actual plays in a lot of different genres and systems! I feel like the most straightforward answer would be Dimension 20 – professional quality and Brennan Lee Mulligan is a frankly incredible GM. He’s also involved in a new show, Worlds Beyond Number. I haven’t checked it out yet but I’m expecting it to be really very good.

But if you have a preferred genre or system I might have more specific recommendations!