Discussion What are you currently playing? (Week 46 of 2025)

[Cacher]

New week, new thread! What are you playing?

In preparation for the upcoming 1st anniversary of Girls' Frontline 2, I have been putting a lot of time into it. After reading through the great event story, I turn my focus onto the roguelike mode. This is my favorite gameplay mode in the game despite the fact that it takes nearly an hour to complete 1 run. Like most roguelike games out there, players need to go through a map to collect modifiers in order to beat the final boss. The mode is easy but satisfying to play through, and some relatively "useless" characters can still shine thanks to the modifiers. For example, some mobility-based characters have niche usages in normal endgame, but in this roguelike mode, there's a upgrade path which allows characters to deal damage by just running and stopping near the enemies. It's very amusing to watch these high mobility characters just wandering around the map and everything near the pathway explodes to death.

Apart from GFL2, I have also returned to Reverse Collapse and completed a few stages in NG+. Very satisfying to obliterate everything thanks to the continued progression from the first playthrough. Also played Harvestella a bit. Just started Chapter 3B.

 

[Blizniak]

I started the Onimusha 1 remaster which is pretty nice, despite playing like Resident Evil with swords it doesn't feel oppressive or scary which I appreciate and it's very clear it's an early PS2 game.
I also started Clair Obscur Expedition 33 which after a very serious and sombre prologue quickly turned into a typical lighthearted and quirky JRPG despite still being about inevitable death, horrors of the past and all that. I really like it.
Earlier in the week I played through Xanadu Next which was a huge surprise for me despite being on my wishlist for ages. It's so good.

 

[Stevey]

Been playing some more Farthest Frontier and Red Dead Redemption 2 (when I can actually connect to Rockstar Game Service)

 

[curi0usBystander]

Dragon quest I & II HD-2D Remake: Nearing the end of the first game, just got the Ultimate key, so there's no much left to do (i think).

 

[Durante]

Now that I've finished Silksong I put some more time into Silent Hill f. I'm actually enjoying the gameplay much more now (11 hours in) than I did earlier. I'm just not that much of a survival horror guy, and now that I have enough resources so that I can think "I hope there are more enemies so I can use up my current weapon and get the one back there before moving on" rather than "Oh no another enemy I have to run from" I'm enjoying myself much more. Sue me

I also started playing Last Command on the Steam Deck. Very unique game, quite challenging at the default difficulty.

 

[Kvik]

On the weekend I've reached the point of no return in Cyberpunk 2077, and cleared my first ending of the game: The Tower

It is also the ending of the Phantom Liberty expansion, and what an ending it was.

Having played a lot of VNs over the years, I suppose you can categorically call it a "bad ending", but after thinking about it a bit more overnight, I'm beginning to think that it is actually closer to the "true ending". The decisions V has made throughout the expansion ultimately lead up to the one of the most bittersweet, yet also poignant, ending I've had the pleasure to play.

As the player, it may be difficult to accept such an ending, especially considering the experiences and the connections V has made, but based on the dialogue choices alone, I think they have come to terms with their decisions and made peace with it. The writing here is powerful, too, and I feel the VAs has done an excellent job conveying the emotions during the finale.

 

[Parsnip]

I started Othercide. Digging it so far but only a few hours in.
It's visually quite striking in the Sin City kind of way, works very well.

Earlier in the week I played through Xanadu Next which was a huge surprise for me despite being on my wishlist for ages. It's so good.

 

[LEANIJA]

On the weekend I've reached the point of no return in Cyberpunk 2077, and cleared my first ending of the game: The Tower

It is also the ending of the Phantom Liberty expansion, and what an ending it was.

Having played a lot of VNs over the years, I suppose you can categorically call it a "bad ending", but after thinking about it a bit more overnight, I'm beginning to think that it is actually closer to the "true ending". The decisions V has made throughout the expansion ultimately lead up to the one of the most bittersweet, yet also poignant, ending I've had the pleasure to play.

As the player, it may be difficult to accept such an ending, especially considering the experiences and the connections V has made, but based on the dialogue choices alone, I think they have come to terms with their decisions and made peace with it. The writing here is powerful, too, and I feel the VAs has done an excellent job conveying the emotions during the finale.

I thought that ending was presented more negative than it was; and I figured it was the best of them all, in the end.
Some more thoughts in spoilers:
Something the game is unlikely to acknowledge, but my V was a multimillionaire by the end (I assume most people ended their games with tons of money in the bank), so I dont think she would really need cyberware for a good life (although its a bit unclear how much worth a million even has in that world, the prices were all over the place).
She wasnt a struggling nobody anymore. She lost people, but we also only saw shock reactions ... most of these relations could be repaired in some way over time, especially when telling them "hey, I was in a coma for 2 years" (and, crucially, V couldve just let people know beforehand what she's about to do...).
But I'm sure CDPR did it this way to balance out the endings, so its not all positive - "hey, we found a solution, V will live without consequences". I think they deliberately didnt want good/bad/whatever ending categories.

And a final takeaway, I dont know if it was from this ending/Phantom Liberty specifically, but V had really grown on my as a character, more than most video game characters I remember; in a way that I cared about her fate, and didnt want the game to be over.

 

[Ibuki]

I'm trying something new where I make a big list of games I started but never finished and try to tackle those to distract me from the FOMO for new releases. I finished Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster over the weekend which was a great time. I'm now playing Dynasty Warriors Origins (I was only on Chapter 2) and reading Muv-Luv (still very early on).

 

[STHX]

The past week I fully finished the first Class of Heroes. It's a remaster of an old psp game so I'll just write a few lines in the reviews thread, but I'll say here the game runs flawlessly on deck

 

[Kvik]

Some more thoughts in spoilers:

At the point of no return, my V has two million+ in the bank and about 300 grand in the pocket. I chuckled a bit thinking how much interest it will accumulate after two years (yes, the mod makes the eddies in the bank account generate interest)

But more to the point: I think what gets me the most about this ending, it's not how V's relationship with Judy ended, or River selling away his principles so he can afford rehab for his nephew, or getting ghosted by Panam. But rather something about meeting Viktor in his clinic, he's clearly looking unhappy but putting a brave face for an old friend, while wearing a uniform as a corpo-slave. It doesn't sit well with me. Here's a man who knows V the longest, and practically an institution, an anchor V can always return to in times of hardship. V said, "You're now all I've got, Vik". Yet, the man has changed, beaten by the system, along with everything else that V had known.

And the penultimate blow, of course, getting unceremoniously booted off the chair by a pressing Zetatech runner. I stayed a bit to listen to their conversation and tried to imagine how V must've felt. She is once a merc, just like this runner. Sitting in Vik's chair, getting chromed up before a gig, talking about a past gig going sideways. That life is over now.

The attack from street thugs and the subsequent conversation with Misty is what turned things around for me. In the beginning of the game, V is still human and unchromed, yet she was able to fend off mere street thugs. Now she is human again, but none of her choices carries any weight (not even Streetkid life path dialogue option, that used to open so many doors in my playthrough). Practically at the lowest point of her life, Misty appears. I always feel that Misty feel underused in the main game, apart from a few side quests, which is admittedly very good, but I feel V should talk to her more regarding gigs or whatever.

In this ending, though, CDPR utilises her to a great effect. Misty is practically the same person. She's a smoker now and doesn't dye her hair anymore, but she still offers V a positive outlook on life, something that V at that point in time desperately needed. I'd like to think that if Misty never appears, and V woke up alone and bleeding in the stairwell, she would not pop a smile while fading into the crowd in the ending cutscene.

That final bit is why I think this is such a brilliant ending.

And a final takeaway, I dont know if it was from this ending/Phantom Liberty specifically, but V had really grown on my as a character, more than most video game characters I remember; in a way that I cared about her fate, and didnt want the game to be over.

The immersion I felt in the character I've created and how I agonise over the choices during the conversation with Johnny on the rooftop is a feeling I rarely get from an RPG. I don't know if The Witcher series does this too, but I'm now looking forward to playing more games from CDPR.

 

[FunnyJay]

I've been playing some of the original Surviving Mars. I've put maybe 12 hours into a new colony and everything has been progressing quite fine.

Had a small mishap with the first colonists that made them almost all leave with the first available shuttle, but everything went well afterwards.


Made some great progress with the terraforming, but I've been having trouble becoming self-sufficient on machine parts, polymers and electronics, since my colonists are very fickle.

So I've spent the last couple of hours juggling cargo rockets with extra material and a strained economy.


Boom! Suddenly, my water production is almost entirely shutting down, without any prior warning, since the colony has used up the entire water deposit.


Everything becomes a juggle to landscape my way down from a platform to the closest water deposit, but things just keep going wrong.


In the last minute, due too a cash infusion from a planetary project, I manage to buy a cargo rocket full of moisture vaporators and get them delivered on time.

And I still haven't managed to solve my initial supply issues with electronics, polymers and machine parts.

The colony is no longer dying, but my motivation to continue is almost gone. To go from making steady process to almost getting a complete game hour after so many hours really soured me.

 

[d00d3n]

I started playing The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. The Switch 1 edition had some issues with the constant frame rate issues, but the Switch 2 edition seems to have fixed most performance issues and looks better as well. It is a classic Zelda game experience in many ways. Summoning objects and enemies for puzzle solving and combat is a lot of fun, and the game mechanics are more complex than they initially appear. The story setup is pretty good for a Zelda game. I am looking forward to playing more.

I am also planning to continue my playthrough of Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, that I sidelined for a long time due to Silksong and other things. The game has many things going for it with the excellent production values, good graphics, support for many different play styles including ranged mage builds and a larger scope beyond most other titles in the soulslike genre. The game reminds me quite a bit of Afterimage, the Chinese produced metroidvania game that had a larger scope and better production values than most other metroidvania games when it was released, where this Chinese produced game does the same for non-open world soulslikes.