I want to go home, and then edge

Played the first on release, then again when DA dropped, and played this one on release. Let me preface this by acknowledging I have a ton of bias, I loved the first game, and ny tastes have changed in the 12 years it took for DD2 to be released.

Honestly, it’s fun, but it is as shallow as the first one. Don’t get me wrong, combat is very, very fun. Movement in general is weighty but not clunky, the weapons all feel great, and pretty much all skills are useful. But enemy variety suffers, I haven’t the data but it sort of feels like it has less enemy variety than the first one. Wolves and goblins are as ubiquitous as in the first one, and they don’t require much tactics to beat, trolls feel somewhat boring to fight for some reason, griffins are easily worn down, and dragons quickly become a bit of a joke. Undead enemies seem somewhat rare, and you’ll very rarely encounter anything not a zombie or spirit. So, combat is a mixed bag, the tools you have are great, but the problems are repetitive.

The biggest downside are the quests and the story. Completely forgettable. I thought I’d get embroiled in some deadly political cloak and dagger but it was all tedium.

Also, mastery in a vocation means very little when you can use any weapon and nearly any skill with the wayfarer vocation.

The post-game is really interesting though. Not sure if I like it better than the first game, but it was a very interesting approach.

All in all, if you want cool gameplay, go for it. If you want a deeper experience, wait for a sale, you won’t find it in DD2 (or DD1 for that matter). If a 5 is average, DD2 is a solid 6.5 for me. I enjoyed my first playthrough, but there wasn’t much meat on those bones to go for seconds. I probably won’t touch the game again until an expansion like BBI drops. Plus, performance was terrible.

I might be playing too much elden ring… “Remembrance of stalin” brought to mind a paired hammer and sickle, preferably scaling with strength. Damnit I wish there were more paired strength weapons.

Elden Ring atm, haven’t gotten to a level where I can deal good damage to bosses in the DLC.

Apart from that, Rimworld (as usual) and Squad. Really enjoying squad atm.

Edif: DnD as well. Well, that is if my table can ever agree on a time and date. I’m not even sure they want to play DnD tbh, it might be too slow for some of them.

Nah. Went over to Liverpool and London, there’s good food. Just avoid low-end british cuisine, high end is fine, but expensive. Lebanese places in particular seemed to be all-around great, with good prices, tasty food, and friendly people.

One caveat to this: make sure it isn’t a game you know inside and out. You’ll go by memory instead of actively trying to interact with the language. At least that’s the way it goes for me.

Oh, music theory? How intro is it? I’ve wanted to learn some for some time, enough to maybe understand why my favourite songs work.

I took classes when I was a kid but wasn’t interested, several years later I was really into classical and jazz and I was able to play by ear but it literally takes me a minute to recognize notes on a sheet, nevermind recall notes. Some of the inside baseball stuff might as well be binary, too. Just incomprehensible.

They don’t have a controlling share on Larian, but they don’t own an insignificant amount of it. I wouldn’t say it is noticeable. Doesn’t have MTX, which I’m sure they would’ve loved.

Hm, Lenovo? Cus you just described my experience with them.

Family problems, health problems, carreer problems, and just GAD piling up on me. Someone took my pulse and it was running a sprint while I was sitting. Hands were absolutely numb and my fingers were twisting by themselves into weird poses, I couldn’t hear a thing and I couldn’t breathe.

That was the worst one I’ve ever had, and thankfully, the last one. Over a year ago. Every now and then I can feel one coming up but I’ve learned how to calm myself down in therapy.

I’ve played a quite a bit of bg3 (and DM’d some DnD) and can offer some thought. Please excuse the wall of text. I wouldn’t go pure rogue, and get eldritch knight, for Weapon Bond. You will lose Reliable Talent, but pushing people isn’t as useful in the third act, where you’d get the feature anyway. Going 3 fighter 9 rogue gets you the weapon bond, weapon and armour proficiencies, and the 5d6 sneak attack bonus on finesse weapons. Your weapon progression won’t be limited to Returning Pike > Nyrulnea & Dwarven thrower plus the stuff you pick up from the ground and instead you’ll get a progression that looks more like Ritual Dagger > Phalar Aluve > Dancing Breeze. All finesse weapons you will be able to bond with. Take thief and you’ll pop out of the shadows with a throw, dash to reposition, and hide again. Great single target damage, and you’ll have plenty of skills to boot.

On the other hand, you could go EK 7 / Thief 3 / Abjuration 3. EK gets spells from the abjuration school natively, weapon bond, and an attack as a bonus action (I think the Throw action counts, but could be wrong), thief gets the extra bonus action, and abjuration wizard lets you learn new spells (up to level 2 spells) and a shield that increases each time you cast an abjuration spell. You’ll get the option to either throw the same weapons mentioned above, protect/heal someone or yourself, or do magic damage. Probably will be harder to manage, and each long rest you’ll want to keep an eye on trader inventories to see if there are any Abjuration spells on sale, but could be more interesting/less monotonous. Stat spread will also be a bit MAD, being Strength, followed by Intelligence and then Constitution. You can get the headband of intellect, however, which will give you a +3 to any Spell Save DC or modifiers.

As for assassin, it works great on characters that can nova. For example, an Oath of Vengeance Paladin with Assassin 3 can blow up single enemies really, really easily (plus, fits thematically, like an inquisitor or something). Give them a finesse weapon (for example, the Shadow Blade), stack some extra damage (with the ring that gives extra psychic damage while concentrating, which the Shadow Blade does), two level 2 Divine Smites, and one off-hand crossbow with the Ne’er Misser, guarantees you will be able to one-turn beefy enemies (especially with the Shadow Blade combo, psychic resistance isn’t common). On a throw build, I can see the appeal, but you’d need to have your rogue start fights, which means they’d be up-front, without much in the way of AC or HP. Thief allows you to stand back a bit. Assassin also falls short later in the game, as some enemies have the Alert feat, which means they cannot be surprised. That, coupled with the low dexterity, means they’d probably go ahead of your character in initiative. Plus, returning weapons (as in, weapons that have the Returning trait) are somewhat bugged. If you start a fight by surprising someone, weapons don’t always return. You could end up wasting the second turn by picking up that weapon and equipping it. I haven’t gotten my EK far enough to test whether Weapon Bond weapons also behave like this, however.

Hard work does not always lead to success. Most of the time, it just leads to more work.

What about John Ultrakill?

Goes further than that, imo. Toxic masculinity can also be subtle. It doesn’t need to be a chest-beating guy. Besides trying to hold a death-grip on your emotions, sinking yourself into whatever society holds to be manly, I can’t really think of an example rn, I’ve just woken up.

On my solo honour run, which is just starting Act 3, my Tav is a dex Vengeance Pally / Assassin rogue. 23 AC with psychic damage sneak attack smites makes for a great frontline character. Gale is a Wiz 1 / Stormsorc X (his damage potential would be higher as a tempest sorc but Gale has to be a wizard), Karlach is a Thief 3 / Zerker X, and Wyll is a Fiend Lore Bardlock. The only fight that gave me trouble was Grym, because I had terrible luck with his pathing. Every other boss, including W’wargaz, has been a breeze. Locking down enemies with my pally and Wyll, letting Karlach get picks and Gale blow up and debuff enemies has been extremely useful, to the point that it kinda feels like cheating. I’m kinda dreading getting my due against Raphael though, that dude scares me.

I have some MP characters, including a Mephistopheles Ice Draconic Lorebard. Will come online at level 7, so, kinda late. But is already fun. Another one is a Tempest cleric with the Light of Creation glaive and Sentinel. Stay back, blast people with Call Lightning recasts, heal with bonus action, and anyone who gets too close gets pushed back by Light of Creation and the level 6 Tempest feature. Will probably fall off later though, since Light isn’t even the best glaive, nevermind weapon for the class.

Haven’t finished it, so I don’t know how the overall message and characters land, but Another Crab’s Treasure has some class consciousness and some critique on landlordism and capitalism on the first half (I say this because the main character has a very specific goal that I haven’t seen challenged ideologically yet, which is against the greater good).

It is not introspective, you cannot expect the writers to wax on about the system. Commentary is made by the characters along the way, but mostly in a caricaturistic (?) manner, about the failures of capitalism, and the mental gymnastics those who defend it must do.

However, it is fun as hell. Like if Rare from the old days of Conker’s wanted to make a souls like, with an overarching theme of anticrabitalism.

Just rock or is metal allowed? Cus if so:

1. Ghost (Ghost B.C. in the UK) is very silly. Guys dressed in corpsepaint clergy, sounding like a hodgepodge of 70’s/80’s hits you missed. They got lore too, which is appropriately silly.

2. Electric Callboy is silly. They are… Like, deathcore mixed with whatever they feel like for that song. We Got the Moves is deathcore with a bit of hard bass, for example. And it’s a song about partying. Pump It is about going to the gym. Spaceman is about a guy going to space and rapping in german. Honestly one of my favourite bands.

3. Wind Rose is silly as hell. Bearded guys, singing about dwarf stuff. They covered Diggy Diggy Hole and blew up, and props to them because their version is a banger, but they got good original stuff too which is sadly overlooked because Diggy Diggy Hole was just that good.

4. Powerwolf is another one, similar to Ghost. They’re vampiric werewolves? And their songs are all in-keeping with that theme. Power metal though, unlike Ghost.

5. Austrian Death Machine is also silly. Voice actors emulating Arnold while the vocalist growls about lifting weights, the cookie monster, jingle bells, getting to the choppah, etc. The vocalist’s history has kind of soured the band for me though.

6. Gnome is underrated. Their songs are simplistic as hell, and none of them are virtuosos. But their songs go hard. Wenceslas is great, Ambrosius as well. Edit: writing this gave me an earworm and went down Gnome’s songs. Their bassist is a goddamn genius. Simple licks that sound great, and they got weird time sig changes here and there that tickle my brain in the best ways. I can’t figure out if they are actual time sig changes or just weird changes, and I love that.

Those folks are really good, just wish their songs didn’t sound so samey.

This, honestly. When I read it was Ex-Dice devs I got really excited after seeing how 2042 landed and developed. I’ve played it a bit but it sort of feels like it has an identity issue. The destruction of Battlefield without the expansive maps, with the movement of COD without its plethora of weapons or weapon costumization, marketed towards both. It’s got pizzazz and all, but that wears off quick.

Playing The Finals makes me wish Bad Company was still alive, or that 2042 wasn’t so shit.

Guaras, or Guacamayas, I suppose. Think they’re called Macaws in english. They’re neat, pretty feathers and all. Shame they’re hardly ever visible outside of a zoo, unless you’re in the right spot at the right time and you’re really paying attention.