Essence_of_Meh
@Essence_of_Meh@lemmy.world
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 1 hour ago:
I’m not exactly an expert on Daggerfall but I’ll try.
First things first, Daggerfall is less of a structured game (in modern sense) and more of a life sandbox compared to later games. Some basic tips:
- Save often.
- There are no map markers, ask locals about where to find stuff/people to make things easier.
- Fast travel takes (in-game) time and has various options which will affect the cost, travel speed and whether you’ll reach your destination well rested or not.
- Quests are timed (yes, all of them).
- Most of your adventuring will be focused on randomised quests.
- Locations open and close at specific hours, you can break in if you want but don’t expect a warm welcome.
- Dungeons are HUGE, nonsensical and, sometimes, impossible - there’s an option called “Smaller Dungeons” in the settings menu on the initial launch screen, it’s a good idea to use it.
- You can train your skills in guilds for a fee (you need to join them first, I believe). This type of training costs time, money and fatigue, and has a global cooldown so you can’t do a tour through all the guilds in a city and train everything in one day.
- Item repairs have to be done at blacksmiths and take multiple days (depending on item state, if I recall correctly). This can be toggled off in the settings menu on the initial launch screen if you want.
- Diseases are a serious matter - they won’t pop up instantly but show up some time after contracted and will kill you if left untreated. They will also progressing during fast travel as moving between places does take appropriate amount of time.
- Diseases like Vampirism or Lycanthropy can be contracted at random when fighting respective enemies and have pretty significant effects on gameplay (both positive and negative).
- Buying a wagon gives you additional storage for loot, just keep in mind that personal inventory and wagon inventory are separate and the latter can’t be accessed in dungeons unless you’re near the exit.
- Some equipment has various states it can be toggled between - using a cloak for example will switch between having your hood up or down (it doesn’t affect gameplay in any way).
Unlike newer games, most of the action happens at POIs, with travel taking place via world map - moving between locations manually isn’t particularly interesting due to lack of random (or any, really) encounters, simple terrain and huge landmass the game is set in. If you want to travel by yourself then check out some mods to make it a bit more worthwhile.
If you’re interested in a vanilla experience then the base package is fine as is. If you want more (better graphics, random encounters outside of towns, new quests or gameplay additions) then Nexus Mods has you covered. Here are some neat ones that don’t affect the gameplay much:
- World Tooltips - adds basic tool tips when aiming at objects (item or character names, level transition destination, location opening hours etc).
- Quest Offer Locations - quests can take you to various parts of the world but don’t inform you about where you’re suppose to go until after you agree - this mod changes that.
- Convenient Quest Log - makes quest log more readable, adds quick actions to cancel non-story quests and travel to the required location.
- Lively Cities - adds various NPCs to dwellings to make them feel more lively, like the name suggest.
- Basic Roads - adds roads between towns and cities. Useful for navigation if you’re interested in manual travel.
- Wilderness NPCs - adds random NPCs (friendly and hostile) outside cities, also useful when travelling manually.
- No Rush Main Quest - removes timers from main quests. Dunno how useful it is since I haven’t used it (nor did much of MQ) but adding it just in case.
That’s all I have for now, I’ll update the post if anything else comes to mind.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 4 hours ago:
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
Tried playing it on my Steam Deck but it doesn’t want to cooperate unfortunately. Despite multiple attempts over various versions of PPSSPP (emulator) and playing around with settings, game always crashes after 15-30 minutes of play. I might try setting it up on my desktop as a last ditch effort but that will have to wait as I don’t care enough to bother with it at the moment. I’ll finish it one day.
Daggerfall Unity
After my failure with GTA:LCS I wasn’t really sure what to play and decided to go back do Daggerfall instead. Not much new to say about it for now as I only updated the mods and did a few quests. Still haven’t touched the main story outside of reporting to Castle Wayrest since my character is not a fighter and was sent away to train before proceeding (not that I expected anything else, it’s just where I stopped with that for now).
It’s time to play the game properly for a bit, I guess.Sam and Max Hit the Road
I finished the game two or so weeks ago but I’ve been thinking about it again over the last few days so I might as well mention it here. Despite my initial reaction (I liked it well enough, just not to a huge degree) I’ve been slowly warming up to it, especially the writing. I think the main reason behind my previous opinion had to do with the fact I’m not having a good time in general at the moment so everything I do is tainted by my foul mood. I needed some time to let my brain catch up and understand what I just played. The more I think about it the more satisfied with the game I become - it’s an interesting reversal since I usually tend to lean towards being more critical as time goes one and I have the chance to look at things from a distance. I also started watching someone else’s playthrough which allowed me to look at things from a different perspective as well. All in all, it’s a lovely (and rare) surprise.
- Submitted 1 day ago to manga@ani.social | 0 comments
- Comment on Manga Questions, Recommendations, and Discussion Thread [2025, Week 49] 2 days ago:
I finally caught up with Kowloon Generic Romance. After leisurely paced early parts of the story and mysterious middle chapters things are really picking up. We have some pretty big personal changes, more details about the core secrets and another good look at the past of Kujirai B. We also got hints about potential end game the story might be going for.
It’s been a while since we had an update for the series but I can safely say it was worth the wait. I just hope it won’t take as long for the next one.
- Submitted 3 days ago to manga@ani.social | 0 comments
- Submitted 4 days ago to manga@ani.social | 0 comments
- Comment on Yōjo Senki II (The Saga of Tanya the Evil II) Teaser PV 5 days ago:
It’s a completely understandable question, especially since its been 6 years since the movie released and 4 since season 2 was announced. But yeah, this should be after the movie.
- Comment on Yōjo Senki II (The Saga of Tanya the Evil II) Teaser PV 5 days ago:
It should be set after since movie was a direct continuation of the first season. It’s difficult to say based on the teaser alone as it doesn’t seem to have any new scenes (most look like they’re from the first season but I don’t remember the movie enough to say whether parts of it were present as well).
It also wouldn’t make sense to reanimate parts of the story already released in the movie.
- Comment on Settings you believe ANY game should have? (This is me advocating for a restart/reboot button on ALL games) 5 days ago:
Yup, something like this or simple sliders would be an ideal solution for what I’m talking about - preferably both, depending on whether the setting is a numerical one or not. It doesn’t have to be a completely granular access to every value, I just want enough control to adjust the experience when things are close but not exactly right.
- Comment on Timesplitters Remake 6 days ago:
Jose Pavli, composer for Project Wingman, (re)created music for this project. It’s available on his Bandcamp page.
- Comment on Settings you believe ANY game should have? (This is me advocating for a restart/reboot button on ALL games) 6 days ago:
I’d be down with that. Or at the very least give us modifiers like skulls in Halo games - dunno if that’s just Master Chief Collection addition or if they became a thing after 1 but it’s better than nothing.
- Comment on Settings you believe ANY game should have? (This is me advocating for a restart/reboot button on ALL games) 6 days ago:
I completely agree that accessibility/assist modes are more important and if I had to choose I’d go with that. Since we’re in a fantasy land however I’m still going to advocate for customisation because, let’s be honest, most of the difficulties (besides “the main one”) are usually not that great.
I’m speaking from a perspective of someone who tends to go for the higher difficulty options which extremely often go with the laziest possible decisions like turning enemies into damage sponge and increasing their attack power. That’s it. Stuff like improved enemy awareness, faster reaction times, smarter tactics aren’t exactly common and that’s my main pain point when selecting difficulty. There are also other things like ammo/loot scarcity, need drain in survival games etc.
Having an option to tweak at least some of these things could help folks like me who often end up in a situation when one difficulty is piss easy and the other feels like a drag. Peoples skills and expectations vary way too and there’s simply no way few basic difficulty settings will be right for everyone. And if someone damages their experience? Oh well, let people make mistakes and take responsibility for their choices. Inform them that changing this stuff will affect their experience and leave them to their decisions. We can’t (and shouldn’t) baby-proof everything, in my opinion.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 6 days ago:
It’s a quick and simple loop that’s easy to get into - just show up, do some super basic tasks and move on to other thing. Definitely a good fit since most of the quests take a few minutes to clear.
These 2 hours would be enough to make some decent progress, especially after unlocking Wayshrines to teleport to.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 1 week ago:
I’m not sure what I want to play at the moment so I thought I’d jump into Elder Scrolls Online for a bit. After spending a lot of time trying to play as a pacifist character I decided to make a new “normal” one instead - that took a while.
I ended up remaking my character 3 times as I couldn’t decide on who exactly I’d like to play as. Started with my usual choice, Warden, but I wasn’t really feeling the beast master skills and eventually settled down on Nightblade - the class of choice for my very first character, I believe.
I’m having fun so far though I do have some serious issues with the game. Both story and levelling feel WAY to fast, like they were made for someone with neither time nor interest in playing an MMO. Another big problem has to do with movement speed - my character feels like she’s constantly sprinting (even walking and sneaking are sped up) and the worst part is, this only affects my new, dark elf character. Jumping in as an old wood elf Nightblade has her moving like a normal person instead of an arena shooter protagonist. I don’t know why that is but I’m not a fan.
Main content is extremely easy and the writing is… not great for the most part. It’s not like I require some high art from the game but if it could be a little less generic and basic, that would be great.
While of the voice acting is pretty solid there are some real stinkers in there as well - you could tell me few of the characters are voiced by a decade old text-to-speech software and I would believe you.I don’t know if the game changed so much since my last proper stint or if I didn’t really notice it back then (it’s been years since I played as a combat character). Either way, I might be going back to playing other stuff faster than anticipated. Oh well.
On a slightly different note… I like to listen to game soundtracks - old or new, action packed or mellow, there is something about many of them that just makes me want to put them on as a background for whatever I’m doing at the moment.
I decided to go back to albums from old Maxis games: SimCity 3000 and 4, The Sims and its expansions etc. They all have this atmosphere that makes them stand out and keep you feeling chill and happy. Well, after putting them on I noticed a serious problem - I can’t really listen to them any more, not as a whole anyway. Despite not having such problems in the past, nowadays some of the songs with higher tones sound extremely grating and unpleasant to listen to. I can do it for a bit but but things get painful rather quickly and it makes me sad. I love these soundtracks and not being able to enjoy them really sucks.
I have no idea why that happens but it’s not only limited to these old title. There are some newer games where I end up turning the music off completely since they end up being more annoying than atmospheric. I hate it.
- Submitted 1 week ago to manga@ani.social | 0 comments
- Submitted 1 week ago to manga@ani.social | 0 comments
- Comment on Settings you believe ANY game should have? (This is me advocating for a restart/reboot button on ALL games) 1 week ago:
I agree to an extent but there’s a difference between “we made a specific design choice because it fits with what we want the game to convey” and “well, normal mode works like X and feels super easy to anyone experienced with gaming but on hard all the enemies are bullet sponges with 5x HP and player dies in one hit”. The latter approach brings nothing to the table and that’s what I’m against. Plus already mentioned accessibility options for those who need them.
Besides, many games ALREADY HAVE easy modes - giving me ability to adjust things manually (which in my case is usually up, not down) wouldn’t affect their vision any more than it’s already possible.
- Comment on Settings you believe ANY game should have? (This is me advocating for a restart/reboot button on ALL games) 1 week ago:
Oh totally, I’m mostly focusing on solo and co-op titles like Terraria/Minecraft/Raft or whatever is popular for multiplayer these days. That said, it’s not like Souls games have to by played with online functionality even now - it’s already off when not in human form after all.
It’s not a perfect choice for every single title but a good chunk of games could support it without worrying about matchmaking and the like.
- Comment on Settings you believe ANY game should have? (This is me advocating for a restart/reboot button on ALL games) 1 week ago:
Customisable difficulty. Have a single or multiple presets balanced to what you’d like your players to experience but give me an option to adjust some of the stuff to my liking. There are SO MANY games I’d love to play way more than I do but none of the difficulty options feel “right”, bringing the whole experience down.
It’s also a great feature from an accessibility standpoint - pretty important thing for those who literally can’t play your game for reasons that could be easily worked around if such customisation was there.“But my artistic integrity and vision!”
No, shut up. Your vision doesn’t mean squat if my experience with the game is annoying to the point where I don’t even care about the lore implication of an enemy placement or how gameplay systems intertwine with themes and story of the game. It’s important, sure, but it shouldn’t be more important than player’s enjoyment of your product.
Balance your game how you imagine it but let me play with the sliders to make it feel how I want it to. Just drop a scary message about it not being the intended way to play and it’ll be fine.
- Comment on What game is a guilty pleasure of yours? 1 week ago:
It was also an unfortunate victim of the time when IOI struggled with figuring out how to transition from “classic” way of making games to the modern, high budget approach. I’m glad they managed to get back into the rhythm with new Hitman games but it’s still a little disappointing K&L had to serve as a stepping stone towards better times.
- Comment on What game is a guilty pleasure of yours? 1 week ago:
The worst part is there’s no “full” version since each beta added new features and removed other ones. I’d give a lot for a build which combines all of the lost mechanics into a single package.
- Comment on What game is a guilty pleasure of yours? 1 week ago:
I knew I forgot something! Fantastic style and soundtrack, engaging gameplay and a bit rough in execution - it was great.
- Comment on What game is a guilty pleasure of yours? 1 week ago:
Can’t say I feel guilty about liking these but if we’re talking about mediocre games I love that would be:
- Drakengard 3 - simple, repetitive gameplay, huge amount of asset reuse and terrible performance if you’re crazy enough to play it on PS3. It also has a really engaging and tragic story, full of weirdness unique to the series (well, the first game anyway, haven’t played D2 yet).
- Oni - 2001 action game by Bungie. Really cool hand-to-hand combat system, huge empty levels, simple story with wannabe Ghost in the Shell elements.
- Starbound - lots of hype about Terraria in space, lots of wasted potential and cool features that didn’t make to the final release. I tend to prefer beta versions (mainly “Glad Giraffe” beta) but the final one also seemed alright based on what little I played of it. Definitely not as good as it had chance to be during development.
- Scarface: The World is Yours - budget GTA clone based on the 1983 movie with Al Pacino (it’s actually a sequel). It looks bad even for the time but it plays well enough and has some neat mechanics which made it stand out, if only a little.
- Tresspasser - the infamous Jurassic Park game with full control of your arm and focus on physical interactions with the environment. It’s a bit clunky and far from polished but it’s an interesting experience nonetheless.
That’s all that comes to mind for now, I might update the post if I remember anything else.
- Comment on In wake of Windows 10 retirement, over 780,000 Windows users skip Win 11 for Linux, says Zorin OS developers — distro hits unprecedented 1 million downloads in five weeks 1 week ago:
In case you weren’t aware there’s an ongoing project adding Surface hardware support to Linux kernel. It’s in a pretty mature state, with most of the features already implemented and working (here is a full breakdown per device). I’ve been using it on my SP6 for a few years with zero issues.
It might be worth a look until you get to buying new hardware.
- Comment on [DISC] The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn't a Guy at All - Ch. 150 1 week ago:
No idea. It feels like author struggles to come up with an idea for what’s next, leaving the series in a bit of an unfocused state and unable to hit its stride pretty much since the confession. Maybe it’s leading somewhere but it doesn’t really feel like it so far.
- Submitted 1 week ago to manga@ani.social | 3 comments
- Comment on Cyberpunk 2077: A Beautiful Night City but oh what it could have been. 1 week ago:
Access to Phantom Liberty is tied to finishing their quests, that would be why they did it this way.
- Comment on Cyberpunk 2077: A Beautiful Night City but oh what it could have been. 1 week ago:
Phantom Liberty has an option for an accelerated start, dropping you right after the Voodoo Boys quest line. It might not be an ideal solution since it makes certain choices for you but it does skip some of the early stuff.
- Comment on Cyberpunk 2077: A Beautiful Night City but oh what it could have been. 1 week ago:
It’s understandable - they came out swinging with three great games, each better received than the previous one. Combine it with other companies flailing and failing or not doing much to grab the attention away from CDPR and we have a perfect environment to get swept into the frenzy. Heck, I loved all their previous titles and was ready to break my usual stance on pre-orders until the delays started to make me question the state of things.
Even then, I feel like I was one of the lucky ones as my post 2.0 time with the game feels more buggy than my legacy experience - not to a game breaking degree mind you but it’s definitely noticeable.
I’m curious if they’ll try to make the next Cyberpunk into what they hoped to achieve with this one or if they’ll decide on a more reasonable scope instead. My heart hopes for the former but my mind expects the latter. Either way, I’ll be ready and waiting with way too many expectations (half of which will probably have no basis in reality anyway).
- Comment on Cyberpunk 2077: A Beautiful Night City but oh what it could have been. 1 week ago:
Cyberpunk’s wasted potential is one of my biggest disappointments since I started playing games. I love it, way more than I ever expected in fact, but the “what could’ve been” is a real downer even now. It doesn’t stop me from enjoying the game though - I spent over 200 hours in Night City already and will most likely go way over 300 with my current playthrough.
If you like the base game I’m pretty sure you’ll like Phantom Liberty. It has a bit of a different vibe in its story but it’s a really excellent expansion with tons of content. Some of the boss fights might’ve been a little over tuned and I’m not a fan of a single event but other than that I don’t have much negative to say about it. It’s well worth the asking price.