Topic: What (Non-PS4) game are you playing??

I picked up The Thaumaturge. This seemed like my jam when it was first announced, but I did not enjoy the demo at all and I figured I might hold off on this, as this year is already stacked and my backlog grows by the day.

However, to my surprise, it released to pretty good reviews, and given it was a budget title, I bought it anyway. I figured I could use it as a side game, it is turn based, so I would chip away at it on Steam Deck, an hour here or there.

The problem? It runs horribly on Steam Deck. Not only is this the first game I've ever had a hard crash with on my Deck, I've actually now had three hard crashes with this game in like six hours. You also have to bypass the games restrictions so you can set your own graphics options too, which is weird and annoying. Especially as the options you get locked into makes the game run worse than if you adjust it yourself.

This might be all okay if I enjoyed the game more, but I actually think it is... kinda bad, honestly?

In terms of the good, being set in early 1900s Warsaw gives it a bit of a different flavour. I actually think the Persona inspired turn based combat actually generally works very well. And erm...

The main focus really in the game is not combat or collecting your Salutors (which are the demons you use for battle), but just sorta using your Detective Vision to click on objects in rooms until you can click the next set of objects in the rooms, so then you can have a conversation to move the story along. I dunno, it is just kinda boring, and you aren't like naturally discovering things and putting the pieces together yourself, you are just clicking on things in the order the game lets you click on them. Just not well designed.

Worse of all though is the voice acting. Like genuinely, this might be the worst voice acting I've ever experienced in a game? Which is wild as so much of this game is people just having conversations and you trying to navigate through them with dialogue choices which open up depending on your Salutor's and the stuff you discover with your Detective Mode.

It is apparently not AI voice acting but you'd never know this was acted by real people. The entire voice cast speak with weird accents, at really odd cadences, they seem to inflect on syllables at complete random but doing so alters the words they are saying turning sentences into nonsense, words are often slurred or stumbled upon, too. I often just cannot pay attention to what is being said because of how weirdly it is all being said.

Plus, even if the acting was better, oftentimes the dialogue itself is just as odd as well. A lot of it is really disjointed so it feels less like a naturally flowing conversation, and rather a series of individual sentences flung together into a vague sequence, even if it doesn't make a lot of sense.

@Pizzamorg I really appreciated your Thaumaturge impressions. Honestly I didn’t know much of anything about the game, but your post made me interested in it, ironically. I just watched the trailer and it looks great. It seems to have a really cool art design and the graphics are nice.

And like you felt beforehand, it seems like gameplay that I would enjoy, with the story driven rpg aspects. I did notice the acting even in the trailer was suspect.

I’ll be curious to see if it improves any for you, should you stay with it. Perhaps the forthcoming PS5 port will function better technically speaking.

Have you played Banishers? I'm playing these games side by side, and while Banishers has plenty of differences to Thaumaturge, for sure, it is also a game focused on supernatural investigations set in the past, where you need to make choices, and I think it is done so much better in Banishers. Banishers has some wonky lip sync, but it also has proper voice acting and dialogue too, rather than whatever is going on over in Thaumaturge. Banishers is made by Dont Nod, which should give you some idea as to how strong the writing is and how difficult (in the good way) and well designed the choices are. The Banishers is currently my frontrunner for GOTY, whereas I'm sorta contemplating dropping The Thaumaturge tbh.

Started Scenario B with Claire in Resident Evil 2 on the N64.

@Pizzamorg I haven’t played Banishers yet, but that’s a good shout. I had it on my watchlist and it seems to be fairly favorably received. It’s a victim of a busy release schedule and an enormous backlog, so I haven’t bought it yet, but good to hear it’s worthwhile. I like the Dontnod games I’ve played (LiS 1&2, Remember Me). I have Vampyr in my library from PS+ but most of the feedback was mediocre for that so I’d planned to skip it.

Too bad that Thaumaturge is a missed opportunity, alas. The idea of a Persona type rpg that is not anime based and more westernized and photo realistic aesthetic is a good one.

Aye, I can't think of another year really quite like this one, where I am already drowning in all the new releases I want to play (in addition to my massive pre-existing backlog). Although I suppose that is what happens when you play two 70+ hour JRPGs as your starting two games for the year like I did, in Reload and Infinite Wealth.

Also, don't let me put you off The Thaumaturge. I'd feel horrible if I did. It has reviewed well, so people clearly enjoy it, but if you had the time to only play one, I would implore you to choose Banishers instead.

And yes, I too would like more Persona style games that aren't just anime high school simulators. And The Thaumaturge certainly scratches that itch, as you instead play as a crusty aging wizard in a filthy early 1900s Warsaw, flip flopping between the seedy underbelly and the high society. But I just think the execution isn't nearly as strong as it reads when described on paper.

Enjoyed Crash Bandicoot 2 enough that I decided to just pull the trigger and play through Warped. My current plan is to complete it to the point where I get the best ending. So 100%, but not going crazy on the time trial relics.

I'm in a platformer-y mood as of late, so I'm heavily considering moving over from Warped to Spyro 2 once I'm done. We'll see.

@Pizzamorg Oh, don’t worry. I won’t hold it against you if I skip Thaumaturge and then years from now on my deathbed utter a raspy “Thaum-a…turge…” as I stare into the darkness clenching my fists like Citizen Kane, taking my last breaths in painful remorse for what could have been…

😜 I will keep my eyes on the PS5 release as I’m sure it will get a new series of reviews for me to ponder. I usually take the advice of trusted players like yourself into account, but sometimes I just go try a game against better judgment. Perhaps my future will hold sufficient time to play both Banishers and Thaumaturge. By the way, shout-out to both games’ titles. I always respect a game that at least has a cool name.

And I empathize with the notion about longer games that make managing a backlog even harder. It’s one reason I’m skipping P3 Reload for now. I’ve played the original and the length is a bit much for a game that would essentially be a replay for me.

And kudos to you for being able to juggle (at least temporarily) Banishers and Thaumaturge concurrently. I’ll often do 2 or 3 games in parallel, but usually they’ll need to be drastically different genres, and even then I find that one of them suffers neglect.

Honestly it is why the Steam Deck has been such a revelation for me @Th3solution. Being able to game for an hour here or there in bed is how I was able to finish BG3, Persona 5 Royal and Persona 3 Reload in the span of like four months, while also beating games like Infinite Wealth and playing other games like Last Epoch AND working full time and trying to hold other interests. I probably game more on the Deck than I do anywhere else at this point, and I'd have probably beaten significantly less games over the last two years without it. And this is from someone who didn't see the point of the Deck when it was first released.

@Pizzamorg I’ve been interested in a portable device, and I’m leaning toward the PS Portal, simply for cost savings and the DualSense feature set. I don’t have any PC gaming experience and don’t even have a Steam account. So I’d hate to split my library into two ecosystems. I know the Deck can stream from the PS5 also, a la the Portal, but it apparently takes a few steps and even then it’s a couple hundred dollars more for the experience. I think $200 is a fair investment and if I find I liked the Portal then maybe I could jump into the Steam Deck community later.

The problem is, trying to get a Portal is proving difficult. They are supposed to drop some today, according to PS Direct, but I won’t have the time to stalk the store, so we’ll see if they sell out in a couple hours like they did last month.

But yeah, I have Baldur’s Gate 3 in the backlog which I feel would be ideal for a portable device. Currently playing Inscryption which would also work perfectly on portable. And people are saying it works fine for action games too, so I have several of those in the catalogue and it’d be great to play in bed or while watching sports on TV.

The lack of a restart button in these Crash Bandicoot games for levels that involve timed elements was annoying in the originals, but it's borderline criminal in a modern remake. WHY can't I restart these race levels in Warped?! It's so stupid that I have to either die, finish the race, or tediously exit out of the level and jump back in. Even if you skip their stupid dancing animations, it still takes way too long to go out and jump back in to a level.

Started playing Balatro on the Steam Deck the other day, yeah it was quite hard to put down as people have been saying. It's the only game I've bought this year, too much of a backlog really to justify paying full price for the latest releases. Balatro was pretty cheap though.

I ended up dropping The Thaumaturge for now, and focusing fully on the Banishers. I am now over the 25 hour mark with that game and have to admit, I am struggling a bit. Around hour 15, I was in love, around hour 20 some tedium was creeping in, at hour 25 I've kinda had my fill and my understanding is the game is around 40ish hours long in total.

Like I get it, the land is cursed, but literally everyone you meet being haunted and every haunting story following the exact same structure, with the exact same selection of twists layered in in exactly the same places has gotten really old. As has facing like the three enemy types in this game and their two or three variants (which all endlessly respawn if you fast travel). Navigating the open world is also absolutely horrible and is actively putting me off pushing out and doing map objectives, which are usually my jam.

Steamworld Dig 2 on my Steam Deck. I'm in the latter half of the game well. It expands pretty nicely on the presentation and concepts from the original.

Got through more than half of Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising (via the Re-Boot Camp collection) in about two days. Was just cruising along. Then I hit Mission 24, and I've been stuck on that one for more than two days now. And it's not for lack of trying.

Never felt so tempted to throw my Switch at the wall, UGH.

Started playing Life is Strange: Before the Storm on Series X. After wrapping up The Last of Us Part II today, I'm now in the mood for more story-driven games and so I figured this would be a fitting game to play. I can't remember when I played the first Life is Strange, it must've been like 8 years or so ago. I don't remember a thing about the first game's story, so I'm sure this is going to go well lol.

But I'm enjoying it so far. It's nice to play a simple and relaxing game every now and then.

@LtSarge I played the spin-off as well never having actually finished the original game and remember having a good time with it, so I'm sure you won't go wrong with that if you're into the general vibe of it. I do think it's overall one of the more forgettable games within that specific genre that I've played, but it's completely inoffensive. Like you said, a nice and simple game to just pick up and play a bit off until you get to the end (which if I remember correctly... doesn't take that long here). I definitely recommend picking up Life Is Strange 2 afterwards if you haven't played it already, because I think it's by far the strongest of that series and personally one of my favourites of the whole genre.

@Tjuz I'm definitely liking the characters so far, so that's good. The "challenge conversation" mechanic is also really cool as it adds more tension to your choices.

That's a lot of praise for Life is Strange 2 as I've heard that people don't like it as much as the first game. I'll definitely check it out eventually, if it's anything like the previous games then I'll enjoy it as well.

With the show being out I thought I would finally try Fallout 76 - the only Fallout game (even including the old original PC ones) I haven't played except Shelter. I am playing solo and... first impressions are... okay. I guess. I think the game looks nicer in person than how it shows up on a lot of video content. But I dunno, so far... it just feels like a Fallout game only with a minimal amount of narrative dressing. Like I've done a lot of walking through mostly empty space, and a lot of shooting random enemies and that is kinda it so far? I only have some vague narrative push to find the Overseer or whatever, and I get that is how all Fallout games start, but usually you wander straight from the vault into a place with NPCs and start picking up quests, this world is mostly empty so far except for enemies and even those seem to come in clumps and are far spread.

Started up Trails from Zero on Switch yesterday. I haven't used my Switch in a long time and it's been a while since I played a JRPG so I felt now would be a good time to start up a new one.

I've played it for about an hour but it's worth mentioning that I also played it for a bit back when it came out on Switch. Back then I played it on Normal and didn't like how regular battles dragged on or were too challenging when I'm still in the beginning of the game. You also can't change the difficulty during a playthrough. So I decided to start a new game on Easy and just enjoy the story. Not to mention that I don't need to worry for any potential difficulty spikes later on. It would suck if I was 40 hours into the game and couldn't progress because of a boss fight á la Final Fantasy.

But yeah, I'm liking the game so far. It's been a long time since I played an entry from this series so I'm looking forward to delving into it.