Topic: What PS5 Games Are You Currently Playing?

On a whim I gave the Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree demo a try and am pretty impressed. The art style is striking. I chose a sword/shield (Vanguard) build. It’s kind of an rpg/metroidvania/souls game. Anyone else given this a try?

Edit: Played around with the mage as well. The demo ends after unlocking the heavy attack, so it’s still very early but there’s a lot of potential here. Hopefully it realizes it. I’ll for sure be keeping an eye on this and heartily recommend anyone who likes this sort of thing to give it a whirl.

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN Grats they aren't easy at all especially if you are coming from a Souls game. I had to unlearn how I played other From games to even finish that game. And unlike most From games it went on the shelf and there it sits to this very day. It might be the lack of build variety compared to Souls games or it might be the combat flow, whatever it was it prevented me from ever playing through it again.

I'm finally playing through Robocop and kicking myself for not starting sooner. The Devs did such an amazing job capturing the world of the first two movies and there are references to each all over the game world. It's weird just playing a game that's all bang bang shooty shooty violent for the sake of it, I thought they stopped making games like that. There's no real message or lesson buried under it all, just pure unadulterated fun and craziness. You can throw motorbikes at guys on motorbikes, it's very refreshing.

@GirlVersusGame Thanks for your long and detailed reply with regard to your experiences with the Souls games and Sekiro. Yeah, I totally loved Dark Souls 3, primarily for the reasons you outlined, hopefully they will make another non-multiplayer Souls game soon, but Idk if I will play it, if I can beat Sekiro. Toying with the idea of going out on a high, with regard to their output potentially waning somewhat and potential life changes occurring before 2026/7 ,which is when I reckon Miyazaki's next possible masterpiece should be out. On reddit ,they say, "if you've played one, you've played them all" plus Idk why but I didn't feel I enjoyed Elden Ring as much as their previous games,I didn't enable online play, except towards the end, but, the boss design towards the end, particularly due to bosses like Godfrey and Radagon having the ability to one-shot you regardless of how high your vigor was, was something I found that spoiled the game for me up to a point. This was because I found you couldn't get one-shot, even by very powerful bosses if you're HP was high enough, in the previous Souls games.

Anyway, Good luck with Robocop! Sounds like you're enjoying it a lot, and it sounds like a great game.

I feel like I have a viable strategy for Guardian Ape now. Now it's just a case of executing it and mastering the second phase. I'm trying to savour the experience, potentially my last FromSoft game for a while, I don't want it to end too early, whilst simultaneously not wanting it to drag on too long, either, hope that makes sense. I want it to take the perfect amount of time, for me, to complete, anyway.

@Jimmer-jammer The Mandragora game looks quite good, from what I've seen YouTube. Added it to my list. Have you ever played any of those other Soulsvanias ,like Salt and Sanctuary or the legendary Hollow Knight?

I am quite interested in playing the, for want of a better description, 'Sekirovania' , Nine Sols, at some point, myself.

Also, have you seen this? (Game called 'Post Trauma' , Survival Horror game for PS5) Apologies if I have already drawn your attention to it. Looks awesome for SH2 Fans, though!

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN Yeah, I love side scrollers. Salt and Sanctuary is fantastic and I enjoyed Hollow Knight but perhaps not as much as most. Nine Sols is on deck but I somehow ended up butting up three massive RPG’s back to back to back which has, of course, completely upended any kind of prolific gaming schedule I may have been trying to keep.

Yeah, Post Trauma looks very interesting! The next game I plan on diving into is Indiana Jones but at the rate I’m currently going, it may be next year before I get to it! 😂

Good luck with Guardian Ape. Try not lose your head.

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN Salt & Sanctuary is ace, I was surprised how deep the rpg systems were. Ender Lillies and Blasphemous I can also recommend. They are not as deep as Salt & Sanctuary, but still have decent combat. I think Blasphemous has the better designed enemies and Ender Lillies has a cracking musical score behind it.

@JohnnyShoulder Thanks for the recommendations, man. I may add Salt & Sanctuary to my Backloggery and Most Wanted Games List then!

@JohnnyShoulder Also, Blasphemous 2 is already on my list, and I've heard that that's the superior game of the two. With the Mea Culpa DLC. How is Lords of the Fallen treating you?

Accidentally played a bit of Crusader Kings 3 last night.

Long story short-ish (edit. Or long): I set up a created character, a measly Count in Bohemia, Plzen to be precise, nothing special just a regular Jan, with the intention of playing tall, not trying to expand much at all, focusing on stewardship and diplomacy. No offensive wars of my own making, just building and investing, cosying up to the Dukes, and King of Bohemia...

But within a few years of minding his own business, and creating jobs for the people, poor Jan was hit on the head with a pot whilst riding through Plzen and got brain damage 😅 he thus could no longer administer his affairs so his wife became regent, thankfully he'd had a couple of kids already. After a few years of struggling to deal with his infirmity, Jan died at age 30, sad and confused, barely recognising his children who he had been trying to teach the lessons of humility and good rule.

I read a lot of people restart when they get the infirm trait, as it is basically a game over. But I wanted to see what happened. Jan's son, Janosh (naming pattern detected) who was only about 7 when he became the new Count of a reduced Plzen as his brother inherited the neighboring county, is now raking in more money than King's Prague and the mines of Kutna Hora. And has since taken over his devious neighbors county, whilst ignoring his brother for now, and moved his capital to a lovely new defensible castle where he can continue to ignore real expansion and focus on making Bohemia rich more effectively than the King himself.

Will the line of Jan eventually become the biggest counts in the land? 😛 Perhaps even Kings of Bohemia, making it the richest kingdom in the Holy Roman Empire? We shall have to see. There are no plans to offensively overthrow any kings, just to gather money and improve our own home and build a focused defensive force in case anyone comes a-knocking. Who knows if Janosh's children or grandchildren will see it that way, though.

Power is a fickle mistress.

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN I've heard some people rate the first Blasphemous game higher than the sequel, but I've yet to play it. I also hear it is recommended to play the first game as the sequel directly carries on from the end of the first game.

Yeah I'm still playing Lords of The Fallen, its all good.

@JohnnyShoulder Thanks, man. I'll add the first Blasphemous as well.

So I've been playing Hogwarts Legacy the past few days. Sorted into Hufflepuff (The yellow house that everyone forgets) and mostly been exploring with some dips into the actual questline. (Seriously I'm level 20 and yet the main quest is only level 9!)

It's been enjoyable walking around Hogwarts and the surrounding Scottish Highlands in the late 1800's.

I would say that the ip and the setting does a lot of heavy lifting for what would otherwise be a pretty bog-standard open world RPG but I'm having fun with it.

Also helps I'm only... 10 hours in and it shouldn't be that long if I really wanted to mainline it compared to my last forray into open worlds with Elden Ring well over a month ago (I still don't know how I should tackle getting back to that... I may even restart it).

Anyway learning and casting spells has been rather fun.

If I did have to say 1 negative thing about the game so far it's the rather small voice cast.

Usually I don't mind actors taking on multiple roles in a piece of work but... They reuse them a LOT. Especially J.B.Blanc I've noticed.

He's a fantastic voice actor and has a good range (The default Narrator in Dragon's Crown, Ryotaro Dojima in Persona 4, Zinyak in Saints Row IV to name a few) but they make him use the same/slightly varied Scottish accent for like 6 npcs (Including the potions seller in Hogsmeade) and a lot of enemies too and he barely gets to change it up at all.

Also I would say some of the voice acting is a bit rough in general... Both the Male and Female protagonist (I tried both) are a bit... Lacklustre.

Hopefully with a sequel they can actually get some more voice talent.

But other then that... It's good fun!

@HallowMoonshadow I’m glad to see the enjoyment persisting. It sounds like you’re approaching the game much like I did - that is, soaking up the setting and exploring a lot before moving the main story along. I agree with all your comments, including the VA work.

Although I ultimately still loved the game, it does reach a point where the open world exploration and side activities get tedious. It’s much like most open worlders in that sense, so just fair warning that many people seem to get bogged down and then fall off the game or begin to dislike and criticize the experience based on the repetitive nature of the open world. So I guess what I’m saying is that if I were to do it again I might pace myself a little better, where I do the mainline quests intermittently and then spend a little time in the open world, and then do some of companion quests (Sebastian’s is probably the best, but all are worth doing) then back to some main story, and so on. I’m sure that’s what you’re already planning on, but it’s easy to spend many hours flying around finding treasure, doing puzzles and astronomy challenges amd races and Merlin trials and popping balloons, and then before you know it you’re burned out. I never totally burned out but at the end the number of open world activities seemed endless so I didn’t end up finishing the last 15-20% of them or so. But I did all the main companion quests and the significant side quests and a lot of those superfluous activities too though.

The best side quest imo is the PlayStation exclusive one (which subsequently now was rolled out onto all platforms I think) called “Minding Your Own Business”. It won’t open up as an option until mid to late game though, but just keep that in mind if you are skipping quests by that point in the game to consider not skipping that one.

The main story is decent enough, and some people weren’t all that impressed but I thought it was quite good. Some of the latter story quests are really interesting (one in particular comes to mind that is extremely unique) so again, players who fall off early unfortunately miss out.

Here’s hoping the sequel does tighten things up a bit. I like that they have the large open world to explore but probably should work on making the side exploration content more varied and rewarding, getting the pacing better, and then getting the VA work improved as you say, and maybe some of the character development more consistent. Because they already nailed the setting, and that’s what really shines.

@HallowMoonshadow Hufflepuff was always my guilty-pleasure of a Hogwarts house tbh… if guilty-pleasure is the right term 🤔.

I’ve been looking forward to playing this for a while (pretty much since release) but finding a window for it has been tricky. I think I’ll feel quite similarly to yourself though… just the overall Potter-ness of it all will probably ensure my overall enjoyment, even if there are some shortcomings here and there.

It’ll be interesting to see how you feel as you get to the 20-30 hour playtime… who knows, some surprising hidden-depth might emerge over the next 10-20 hours to maintain the positive trajectory 🤞

Hogwarts is my next game after I finish up Last of Us Pt1.
I’m not a pothead (is that the correct term?) so I’m not sure what school I will be joining.
Shame it doesn’t support PSVR2 and normally I would wait a bit to see if it is on the horizon but at this point it would seem highly unlikely.

Having just finished Atomfall, I'm unlikely to start a new playthrough of anything until Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 releases. I'll maybe dip back into Monster Hunter Wilds or I'll visit Reddit and help some folks with bosses in Elden Ring.

Plenty of gaming downtime for me until the 24th.

@Kairuuu Although I don’t have plans to play it at launch, I’m really curious about Clair Obscur. It looks like Persona and The Order 1886 had a baby. It also stylistically looks has a dash of dark fantasy, a la Dark Souls etc., but with selective colorful flashiness in its design. For some reason it reminds me of that old PS3 game Folklore, as far as style. Has an 1800’s European vibe that is picturesque and also dark thematically and artistically.

I just tried Blue Prince. I had high expectations, but I'm a little bit disappointed. The puzzles aren't really interesting so far and, while I like tile laying, the drafting is just a little bit too random for me. It feels like I have to invest a lot of time mostly instead of just trying to solve puzzles. I'll give it some more time some day, but now I'm back to Prince of Persia and Crisis Core.

@CaptD Right there with you, I downloaded Harry Potter earlier. I'll probably try it later tonight, it says 80+ friends have played it already. Better late than never.

Edit: I'm a couple of hours in and it's really enjoyable so far. I thought I'd miss out on a lot by not reading the books or watching the movies but it doesn't feel like that at all. If anything it's probably benefited me. Hogwart's is really fun to explore when you don't know what to expect in the next room or area. I'm really impressed by the environments and overall presentation. I don't know how much of the side activities and collectibles I'll go for, there seems to be a lot.