What videogames are you playing in 2025?

[Reynard]

The lair bosses particularly are just a horrible mismatch with the rest of the game. The vast bulk of the game is basically a headlong rampage across the land and through dungeons with some tougher enemies now and then, and then suddenly the lair bosses are all fights about carefully dodging telegraphed attacks and dancing around dodging one-shot mechanics within tiny, constrained rooms like some sort of bloody WoW raid for one! They're obnoxious, and I say that have defeated all of them on Torment 4 (the max difficult) countless times.

Andariel, Harbinger and to a lesser extent Duriel are particularly annoying, because they're extremely lengthy fights were the actual boss is attackable for maybe 10-20% of the fight at most, and the rest of the time you're just "doing mechanics". With Harbinger your build/gear is barely even relevant, you're just there to pick up orbs that Akarat drops and then shoot them. With Andariel you barely get to attack her before another immunity phase starts and you have to blow up three statues which have like between them like 2x as much HP as she does! And you have to do that up to four times! Just dodging annoying instant-death beams the whole time. At least with the basic bosses you can potentially just overwhelm them.

It doesn't help that a fair number of builds that are pretty effectively generally just don't work well on bosses either (but the same doesn't generally apply in reverse).

D4 has great visual and sound design, and some good ideas, but it's basically got the mechanics of a slightly confused game that's deep in Early Access. Literally PoE2, which is genuinely deep in Early Access has a more consistent and together visions of what its doing, mechanically (which includes boss design).

What I really want is an entire ARPG that plays like the first 4 hours of Grim Dawn, before it gets ridiculous.

 

[Gradine]

Gearing up for my favorite video game event of the year: The Final Fantasy V Four Job Fiesta

This is my fifteenth year doing it, and I know it was around for a bit before I discovered it, and it is always a treat every year. Play Final Fantasy V but only with getting four jobs assigned to you, unlocked at each crystal (how your jobs are assigned is based on any number of options you select when you signup).

It's a huge amount of fun, and they always end up raising a good chunk of money for some very great charities. If any of you like classic Final Fantasy games at all I'd highly recommend giving it a try!

Now I just need to fully complete Blue Prince before I get too distracted...

 

[Pedantic]

Now I just need to fully complete Blue Prince before I get too distracted...

I keep learning just how much there is left for me to do, right when I feel close. Loving the puzzles, but at this point I could really do with more control over the roguelike generation. It's frustrating to feel like I'm unable to try a solution simply because of the day is unspooling. There's mitigation, but it's still just a lot of work to deploy.

 

[Gradine]

I keep learning just how much there is left for me to do, right when I feel close. Loving the puzzles, but at this point I could really do with more control over the roguelike generation. It's frustrating to feel like I'm unable to try a solution simply because of the day is unspooling. There's mitigation, but it's still just a lot of work to deploy.

One of the best things you can do is use the laboratory as much as you can to supercharge your allowance. Once you're able to start out with enough scratch to buy out the Commissary early on you're setting yourself up for success so much that by around the late 30's filling out the manor every day became relatively trivial for me. The other really underrated resource is stars. Finding ways to increase these (which I think you eventually can do through the lab also) can be extremely helpful. Hitting 50 stars is an absolute game-changer.

 

[Pedantic]

One of the best things you can do is use the laboratory as much as you can to supercharge your allowance. Once you're able to start out with enough scratch to buy out the Commissary early on you're setting yourself up for success so much that by around the late 30's filling out the manor every day became relatively trivial for me. The other really underrated resource is stars. Finding ways to increase these (which I think you eventually can do through the lab also) can be extremely helpful. Hitting 50 stars is an absolute game-changer.

Yeah, I'm at 80 allowance, and I'm hovering between 40-50 stars, though maybe I should just spend some runs simply pushing those, and there's trucks with the moon pendant and trading post. I still wish they'd just go a step further and give me more deterministic control outright.

 

[Gradine]

Yeah, I'm at 80 allowance, and I'm hovering between 40-50 stars, though maybe I should just spend some runs simply pushing those, and there's trucks with the moon pendant and trading post. I still wish they'd just go a step further and give me more deterministic control outright.

Do you have the Conservatory yet? That will also be helpful, though it does take quite a bit of time to for it to fully payoff.