Here we are again (again): the thread where we discuss the games we are playing in 2025

[MovingCastles]

The year is 2025 and videogames roam the streets causing panic and mayhem. Some people are afraid of these games, others try and understand them, and a scant few actually enjoy them. These are the stories of those scant few.

Goofy intro aside I hope everyone had a lovely new year and hope it’s a smooth 2025.

In terms of playing videogames in 2025 I was playing Star Wars Outlaws. Over the holidays I was in the mood to really switch off my brain and play something ‘AAA’. Honestly I’m not really enjoying it at all and I really feel really bored traversing the open world. It’s such a shame that a lot of talent and creativity goes into making these games but the end product is just some assembly line feeling product. Especially after playing some indie games that achieve a whole lot more with a whole lot less.

I’ll likely drop it for something else! Unfortunately Xenoblade Chronicles X comes out in March. Also waiting patiently for Monster Hunter Wilds and I think Death Stranding 2 comes out this year?

[Magnanimous]

I picked up all of the Batman Arkham games for like 90% off recently, and I’m about halfway through Asylum. This is some serious gourmet shit.

I’m not even a Batman guy but I’m really enjoying how this game uses the villains, plus it’s fun to read the lore stuff about minor characters.

[Garrett.exe]

Thanks for making the new thread! This is effectively my tag post as I don’t really have anything new to say since the last one.

The first game I played in 2025 was the same as the last one I played in 2024 - Persona 3 Reload. It still completely owns this year

[Death_Strandicoot]

I’m chooglin’ along through Baldur’s Gate 3 on PC. It turns out the kbm controls are so much better than controller that I enjoy the game a lot more now than when I was playing on Xbox.

Because I only want to play BG3 with kbm, I needed something else to play on Steam Deck when I’m away from my desk. I’m about to start Cloudpunk, and when I’m done with it, on to GOD HAND!

[Karasu]

I’ve just played my first game of 2025, the demo for Blade Chimera, the upcoming game by Team Ladybug. It’s about what I expected! Very pretty, but a little simple in terms of gameplay. That could change by the finished product I suppose.

[Mnemogenic]

I had intended Lufia II to be my last game of 2024, and I very nearly made it. I got stuck in the last dungeon and was too tired to get myself unstuck, so I finished up the game today.

I enjoyed it; the puzzles were never too tough (I definitely cheated The Hardest Challenge or whatever) and what ended up being a bigger hindrance was the labyrinthine nature of the dungeons themselves. I ended up way overleveled just because I kept getting lost and fighting enemies over and over.

The story fizzles out a bit in the last third. Guy and Artea never really feel like full characters, and other than Gades, all the Sinistral character development happens in the last thirty minutes. The story of Maxim and Selan was nicely told, though.

I don’t find myself feeling the urge to go play other Lufia games, but I’m glad I took this little end-of-beginning-of-year detour to check this out.

[yeso]

asked and asnwered

[MovingCastles]

Are you planning on playing the entire trilogy? I would be curious about your thoughts as someone playing them in 2025.

People say the quality drops off in City, and even more in Knight but I still enjoyed those games the same.

[Kthpwrth]

As expected, Misericorde vol. 2 is a banger so far approximately halfway though. Stellar work as per vol. 1, except it’s even more gay ((complimentary)). A cracking good narrative in these VNs.

[Synchronise]

Effectively doing a repeat of my daily Boku no Natsuyasumi this January, except it’s with Boku 2 this time. My partner and I covet the house that Genta and Mitsuko have; it’s absolutely stunning.

[穴]

I have never liked the souls games and my logic to that for a long time was “if im gonna play a hard repetitive game I want pretty graphics and fast movement, not this janky depressing stuff”

Randomnly I decided that Dark Souls was my next play before bed switch game. It feels appropiate to play this game in a bad looking 30 fps tbh.

I made it through the tutorial and whatever was geeting accostumed, I reached the first bonfire died a ton got a hold of the place but was getting frustrated cause I couldn’t advance. Picked it up the next day, immediatky eas much better beat the first hallway taurus boss thing but at his point I was just tired and was learning routes to avoid fighting at all and just kept running. Was able to get myself a strat and a route to get pretty far without fighting at all until I reached a new boss and I thouht to myself "nah, im doing something wrong, two bosses without checkpoint feels wrong, watched a playthrough and turns out I missed one fucking doorway cause everything looks the samw which let me activate a ladder and be back to the previous bonfire but with my new progress. In conclusion: lmao this game sucks in a funny way.

[sapphicvalkyrja]

I’m currently juggling three games: Dragon Age: Origins, Rise of the Ronin, and Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna – The Golden Country

When it comes to Origins, I’m mostly picking at this one when my plus-one is otherwise occupied, since it doesn’t play well with a dual monitor set-up which makes swapping to our normal Discord window a pain. I’m still having a blast with it though, and it’s a welcome reminder after the just-okay Veilguard of just how I fell in love with Dragon Age in the first place so many years ago

I elected to start Rise of the Ronin over Elden Ring (these two were the first game gifts I received over teh holidays) because I figured it’d be a much easier game to play in bits and pieces when the mood strikes. I’m having a good time with it, but it’s also making me realize that I wish these open world games with optional stealth approaches would just dispense with the RPG mechanics entirely. I just want to run around doing stealth kills and occasionally fumbling parries in melee combat—I don’t actually need to collect loot or puzzle through massive skill trees all of the time!

Basically, what I’m saying is that the original Assassin’s Creed still did this kind of thing best in some ways. All the cruft the genre has picked up over the years hasn’t really done it many favors (even if Horizon Zero Dawn is on my list of all-timers). When I’m in the mood for an RPG, I like to play one that’s full-on, and all these half-measures we’re seeing in the AAA space are starting to wear a little thin for me

I’m not super far into The Golden Country yet, but I can see myself finishing this one. I’m enjoying the characters, and the combat is novel in some interesting ways as someone who has no real experience with the series outside of an old friend trying unsuccessfully to get me to play them for years on end. Jumping into a prequel of the second game in the Chronicles games has been somewhat jarring with a number of concepts being presented with the assumption that I already understand them, but not to any degree that it’s turned me off of the game just yet

Unlike my experience with Fire Emblem: Three Houses last year, I’m finding that the UI for this one also works well with the Switch in portable mode, which is where I’ve been doing all my playing. This has made it a nice sort of side activity, where I can pick it up for 30 minutes or so while not having to switch HDMI streams or anything of that sort

If I have one complaint, though, it’s that the tutorializing seems far too thorough for relatively basic JRPG concepts—I feel as though I’m spending a lot of time advancing long scrawls of tutorial dialogues for concepts that could have been explained in one dialogue box while world-building concepts are often left unremarked upon. I assume once I get further this sort of thing will calm down, but it does at present feel like it’s a point of friction keeping me from properly getting into the game

[Taliesin_Merlin]

I have started Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake.

It is my first time playing DQ3. I have done 1 and 5, so I’m somewhat familiar with the older style. I have also played 7 and 9, so I am familiar with other job systems in the series. My first impression: I’m surprised there is so much here for a game that came out before Phantasy Star 2.

I approached the start-of-game questions earnestly and got Lone Wolf. Then I did my other characters pretty much by feel:

• Maeve, a Mage
• Lelia, a Thief
• Remi, a Merchant

Since then, I have been roaming. Most of the stuff is what I expect from Dragon Quest: lots of NPCs to talk to, discoverable little items in pots and drawers, lots of monarchs (I think I’m up to 4 monarchies so far), a puff-puff switcheroo, solid auto-battling options. But even compared to other Dragon Quests, the game’s overworld feels tantalyzingly open. I can go from Romaria in three directions, one of which had the immediate story objective, another of which had an interesting side story, and the third of which had a less immediate destination with full towns to interact with. Along each way are optional places to talk to NPCs and get further clues.

That structure is strong. The game neither has nor needs a stronger narrative hook than going to the next objective and figuring out what happened to Ortega. Dishing up more world - including, in an upcoming town, an opportunity to switch character jobs - is enough.

PS: Some of the interactions are fantastic. One I’ll mention:

Summary

In one town, a couple of NPCs mention the meteorite bracer being hidden in the town. I eventually stumble into an underground area with a chest. I open it and find the meteorite bracer. Great! Then a spirit comes out and I think something bad is going to happen. It asks me a couple of questions - basically, did I take the bracer from the chest? I see no reason to deny it. Then it says this in response:

[Gemstonez]

I’ve fallen into a Luck Be a Landlord hole. Send help.

At least as good as Balatro, if not a little better because it lets the imagination take over a little more.

I definitely don’t care about doing well, but I like letting my mind wander and imagine as I play. I do a lot of relational thinking so it’s cool to think about all of the symbols and how they interact and build a little narrative in a run.

Just thankful to be enchanted by a slot machine that doesn’t extract real money.

[freakscene]

Inbetween travelling from my parents to a work gig, so I am stuck at my parents with a PS4 Pro my sister never uses.

Booted up Neva since it’s like four hours, which it ended up being.

Neva was very broadly pretty, I think most people would agree with that, I think in story it winds up feeling like a cross between Princess Mononoke, Monument Valley and Lost Highway in a weird way.

I think in telling an environmental story like this you have to really get invested in the world, and that hangoutitude therein, something I really like with shadow of the colossus, but I’m not entirely sure this world got past the kind of - “yeah it’s like princess mononoke get over it”. Big doggies and big deers and big pigs, if you’ve seen it you’ve got the mental image.

I know we go a variety of ways on Shadow of the Colossus here, I’m a lover, and I kept waiting for something that made me think for a bit like the garden at the top of the tower in SOTC, but there is not much to be found here.

In terms of actually playing it, this game feels much better than Gris and the addition of combat distracts from the kind of quaint puzzle platforming. I think the issue is, I’m not entirely sure if the combat was meant to be hard or not? I had a few deaths, but it seems to be based around the kind of dark souls-y slow attack and dodge thing. The final boss was quite easy. Not that I really mind it, other than that I was a bit confused what they were going for with how weighty the platforming is, and how relatively limited the combat was.

As a sweet little game about pets, I thought it was just pretty enough to hold my interest as I beat it, but I think in trying to keep a distance from telling a story with words, or doing something more interesting with the environments, I’m not sure I left it feeling very connected to the ethos of the piece. But it was fun and a perfect five hour game to play on my sister’s playstation.

Now i’m playing a real game called fortnite, you might’ve heard of it. My review of fortnite is millions of ten year olds cant be wrong.

[Psinuxi]

While kbm are the faster and easier control method, I’m a freak and I’m not sure I’d even have gotten in BG3 if I didn’t switch to my controller. Kbm feels so disconnected from the world. I really don’t like scrolling around and clicking where to go like it’s an RTS.

It took some getting used to for sure, and there are problems with controller support.

[Psinuxi]

I slowed down a little on The House in Fata Morgana because I suspected I’m very close to the end and did not want to cry on the ferry in public.

Partner and I picked Palworld back up this week. It still has a loooong way to go and is packed with questionable choices, but it’s a fun mix of borrowed ideas that work well together. I can’t wait to jump back in after work.

But I swear, man. Let me cancel the glider animation and drop. And you gotta add a dedicated jump to climbing instead of reusing the on-ground jump. And the curve ball throw just doesn’t work.

[tomjonjon]

So far I’ve played DOOM II and Picross - which are games I am constantly playing. I also started Prototype 2 on PS3 last night. Never played this series and I had this disc on hand for some reason. It’s really dumb and as I was skipping all the dumb cut scenes I was yelling at the tv to give me my damn super powers already. Then the game lets you run all over, up the sides of buildings, and gliding all over, absorbing people and I was was having some dumb fun. I will probably only play a bit of it.

[Death_Strandicoot]

I find navigating the menus especially to be better on kbm. I disliked the radial menus and especially the inventory system. Being able to ctrl+click or shift+click selections is a godsend.

Besides, while moving with a joystick was nice, the world was clearly not designed for it. Finding how to get to somewhere was sometimes a complete mystery on controller, where on kbm I can just click and let the pathfinding do it’s thing. Of course, you can do this on controller too, but it’s far more cumbersome.

Also, I find it’s much more cohesive between exploration and combat this way.

It just feels better for me, anyway.

[Psinuxi]

Inventory is rough for sure. There’s a bug you still get where tooltips get stuck and block the rest of the UI. I actually liked the radials better once I got used to it and had everything where I needed it.

Holding the button to show all interactables and the one that spreads an aoe selection help a lot. I kinda like navigating without pathfinding, but I bet I missed some things because of it.

The holy grail would be using both, but there’s a long delay as the UI reloads when you switch, and I have an issue where it’ll keep changing back to kbm anyway so I have to lock the input to gamepad in the settings.

Different strokes for different folks. I tried playing Final Fantasy XIV with gamepad controls. If you think BG3 is tough, boy howdy.