Back to my beloved Titan Quest - Anniversary Edition. Still going with The Incredible Adventures Of Van Helsing - Final Cut. Back to Tropico 5 after not so long break.

*EDIT:* Warhammer - Chaosbane as well.

Dawn Of Man and Grim Dawn suffer from serious issues. Dawn Of Man has poor AI, while after all the balance changes, patches and updates, Grim Dawn persists to be an unbalanced game.

Nevermind.

When it comes to the music, yes, i agree with you, the music in this game is unreal. true this composition is not in the main menu now, and i wish they have implemented the option to select the main menu music, just like wee can choose between different backgrounds. All acts in the game have incredible music. It adds so much to the game. The fact that all dialogues are voice acted, that the NPCs have their native accents, models, graphics, UI, gameplay, story... this is the only ARPG with an excellent story line which I have played. So far, The incredible Adventures Of Van Helsing - FInal Cut and Warhammer - Chaosbane have an interesting story, but I have not beaten those games yet, so I can't tell what their stories are like as a whole.

My list:
- Wasteland 3 (again).
- Brigador.
- Stardew Valley.
- STALKER Clear Sky (again).
- Soul Reaver (for the first tume since the PS1).
- Divine Divinity (again).
- HuniePop.
- Heroes Chronicles Chapter 1 Warlords of the Wasteland.
- Eviternity.
- Downwell.
- Another World 20th Anniversary Edition.

Nevermind.

Which one the third boss? An actual Bat?
I tried it 3 times until i beat him and i was full silver armor and weapons with protective shield ring or something.
Also i was level 10 at that point.

I'm getting back into Pillars of Eternity. I love big RPGs like this... but relatively long pauses can make it hard to pick it back up.
Anyway, I just looked up the deal with these "soul-reaching NPCs". It has no purpose; is not related to the/a story; doesn't tie into the lore. Apparently, it's some kickstarter thing. IMO, the game would be better without this filler stuff.

Yes, that is probably the one I am talking about. (Worth noting that rings don't work during boss fights.) I also note that you were at max level, for a boss that's around the halfway point in the game, and it still took you multiple tries. (Yes, the game does expect you to reach max level that early, and even the speedrun route levels up to level 10 before this boss.)

As for why it's poorly designed:
* When the boss is in the form of a lot of little bats, it can't be hurt.
* The boss will remain in this form for seemingly unbounded amounts of time, during which you can only dodge and can't attack.
* Eventually, after an arbitrary amount of time, the bats will coalese into one bigger one, which you can then attack.
* The window of time where you can attack is very short (less than a second); if you miss it, then you need to wait for the next opportunity to attack.
* Sometimes the bats will act like they're coalesing, unly to expand again without getting vulnerable.

Given all of this, it's easy to see how this boss can be infuriating, with the player having to dodge and hope that the RNG allows them to briefly attack.

It's worth noting that, in a TAS of the game's boss rush mode, the player deliberately took a bit longer on the previous boss fight just to get better RNG on this one.

It's a good thing Falcom learned to make better boss fights in later games; this particular fight was just horrible. Fortunately, as I mentioned, the Ys Origin version of this boss is much better; the time the boss is in the "cloud of bats" form feels bounded, the boss stays in its vulnerable form long enough to attack (so you have more of a window to attack it), and the boss has new tricks to keep things interesting.

Decided to replay Final Fantasy Mystic Quest.

First party wipe: Bone Dungeon, Tristam was killed, main character confused. While confused, he cast Quake on himself, and it did more than his maximum HP in damage. (At least, this death wasn't the tutorial battle! I *have* died there, and that even happened on my first ever playthrough, around when the game was first released.)

(Fortunately, the game is rather forgiving; if your party wipes, you're given a "Give up?" prompt, and if you say "No", you can retry the battle from the beginning (though I think items used up might remain used). Furthermore, you can save anywhere outside of battle.)

Finished Horizon Zero Dawn. Kind of meh overall... really cool world and really fun bow combat, but also really dull dialog, no real choices or deeper RPG elements and very monotonous follow the marker quest design. All open world games have some of these issues but compared to Witcher 3's excellent writing and Assassin's Creed Origins' excellent stealth I just found Horizon at the bottom of the pile, personally. That world and bow combat though... great stuff.

Installing The Outer Worlds again now for the second expansion.

No backlog. Waiting for TMNT: SR to drop on GOG as far as any game I'm looking forward to.

Jupiter Hell - GOG

Loving the latest update. My current load out has a AV1 9MM with Vampiric + Sustain, .44 Long Revolver with Stablized, Zombiebane and Speed-Loader. They've taken me very far. Crowbar also for good measure.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light - Stadia

Doing a run with my sister-in-law as she just picked up this one and Temple of Osiris. I love these top down shooters/puzzlers. Setting up a weekend match with the family to check out ToO this coming weekend. I don't mind doing these again they were a lot of fun. This is her first new game since UT99.

Tonight We Riot - itch.io

My wife and I are going back and getting perfect runs on all the maps where we did not get 3 gold coins. This game is great with lots of fun moments.

PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS - Stadia/Android

I'm still doing training and trying to get my hands use to the controller properly for it. Two of my kids and one of my grand kids play it and I watch them play it from time to time but they convinced me to give it a shot. I've yet to leave the training area as I'm having trouble playing with a gamepad. Despite only gaming on computers, I try to play every game on a gamepad except for FPS/3rdPS and RTS so this is going to be a struggle but they seem to like it so let's see how far this old man can go.

As I've mentioned in a couple other topics, I've been playing Final Fantasy Mystic Quest lately, and noticed some things it does right that so many games mess up on. (For instance, it has visible encounters without turning into an action game or allowing the player to simply skip all normal encounters.)

Of course, it still has its warts, though at least even an "enemies win first" situation (which I documented in the screenshot topic) isn't so bad when you can just restart the battle after a game over.

Currently at that one tower dungeon that's notorious in the speedrunning community because its length is random.

(By the way, did you know that Quake is typically stronger than Fire, if there's no weakness or resistance involved, even though you get Quake earlier?)

Waiting for Stranger of Sword City Revisited to appear here.

I have been playing Wasteland 3

No knowledge of the game you're playing really, but always amusing when an early spell is better than a later one and useful throughout the game.

Sadly, that early spell isn't useful throughout the game, though at least it has a chance of being occasionally useful during the part of the game that Fire would be dominant.

The main issues are this:
* Quake always targets all enemies. Normally, this would be a good thing, except that multi-target spells have their damage divided between the targets, and you can't choose to target just one of them. Fire, on the other hand, can target either one or all enemies, so it doesn't have that issue. (Interestingly enough, Fire is situationally useful in the final dungeon, as your companion can use it to one hit kill a certain enemy type that's weak against it and is particularly nasty (I belive it may use both Stone Gaze and Death Dance).)
* In this part of the game, everything's frozen, so a lot of enemies are weak against fire, including the boss at the end of the ice pyramid, making it often the better choice. (With that said, I think Quake may still be the best option for the other two bosses of this part of the game.)
* None of your companions have Quake, so it misses out there, while Phoebe has Fire both times.
* In the fire area, you have Blizzard (significantly stronger than Fire, and many enemies here are weak against it), and then you get the Wizard spell White, which is considerably more powerful than Quake (though also has the mandatory multi-target rule).
* Nail in the coffin: Meteor is much stronger than Quake, and it has the same element. Also, even in the absense of any resistances or weaknesses, Aero is going to out-damage Quake, and Aero has flexible targeting like Fire and Blizzard.

On the other hand, the very first spell you get, Cure, *is* useful throughout the game:
* You can easily get it really early, without fighting anything other than the tuturial battle. In fact, it is very likely that a player will get this spell at that point.
* It is the *only* spell that heals both characters. While there is a better spell for healing just one character, Life (which, interestingly enough, every companion knows), it is incapable of multi-target healing.
* Cure scales well, and the multi-target healing it provides continues to increase, as it's a percentage of max HP that increases with the Magic stat. (The final companion can restore something like 99% of both character's HP with a single casting, thanks to her 99 magic power, for example.)
* (Worth noting that Life has one advantage over Cure; if cast during battle, it also cures status ailments (including "fatal"). Also, Life is a very powerful attack spell when used on enemies (instant death if it works), while Cure is only good offensively against 2 bosses, and one of them it only works well on because of a well-known glitch.)