drahkon

For those who have finished God of War and wanna know why the story and how its told is very well done, take a look at the following video. For all the others, be aware! It spoils pretty much every single thing of this game and a few aspects of the series.

God of War NG+ been conquered. There wasn't much of the story left after my previous update, but I did go ahead and get 100% completion. Some of the side quests and battles were quite challenging but with the right gear and a few lucky breaks I managed to emerge victorious from them all I made the right choice with the second highest difficulty for my NG+ run. The final battles and side quests pushed my God of War skills to the limit. I think Give Me God of War would've been a matter of "you die in one hit" for the majority of the playthrough. Not a fan of that Anyways, as always: Screenshots and a spoiler warning! And there it is: What a game. Still can't believe it's a PS4 game. Its single-take presentation is a technical achievement that I haven't seen in any other video game. I don't know if there's another game out there that does the same thing. If there isn't, God of War is, in my opinion, revolutionary. Taking aside the game's technical marvel, it shines in almost every other aspect, too. The story and how its told...emotional from start to finish. There's an odd bit about Atreus but I think it had to be done this way due to the nature of the game: Fights are always intense, brutal and absolutely satisfying. You can kind of feel each attack and hit. It's a joy. A little more boss variety would've been nice, though. Exploring the world is great, too. The PS4's technical limitations come through, though, once you have to (fast) travel a lot (only happens when you want to 100% the game) but it's made enjoyable by Mimir, Kratos and Atreus sharing stories and lore. God of War is a masterpiece. My personal game of the generation and the best reboot I've ever played. It's new but still keeps what made the entire series so great.

You must've missed the weeks after the game's release...there were a million "BOI" memes When I first played the game I had to upgrade regularly. There was no other way to dish out enough damage to even stand a chance. I don't know which difficulty you chose but I'd say that you could wait until you have to fight a battle that takes a lot longer/is more difficult than the ones before and then spend some resources on new gear/skills. Eventually, you will have enough XP/Hacksilver/material to get equipment that'll get you through the story. Certain side activities are made a lot more "accessible" by getting some high-end gear. If you want to do some/all of those and don't improve your equipment, you're going to have a bad time

My NG+ playthrough is coming to its end. Well, I'm nearing the end of the story, at least. Also did some exploring and finished a few sidequests that I didn't on my Give Me God of War playthrough. Lots of fun fights and puzzles to solve. Managed to get 100% completion in Alfheim and Muspelheim (the latter had some very difficult challenges). A few more realms to go It's been great to revisit some areas with Mimir giving more insight to the lore. Speaking of, I went ahead and got myself the audiobook and a digital copy of Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman. It's supposed to be a good read/listen. Gonna be great to get to know the mythology that started in my country. As always, more screenshots. Proceed with caution, end-game spoilers ahead:

Yesterday a mate and I finished our For the King two player run. We played on the easiest difficulty as we figured that the lack of a third character would make the game much harder. That was the case only for a few certain moments, though: The start of the run an the final two dungeons. In between we usually were decked out with great gear and had lots of money to spend on healing items. The problem with the final dungeons was a pretty big difficulty spike. Lucky for us, we were equipped with armor and accessories that granted us immunity against the final bosses' status effects In the end we didn't lose a life (my mate did die once, but he resurrected thanks to a blessing) thanks to the myriad of healing items we were able to acquire. The game suffers from a few issues: A clunky inventory system, some occasional bugs that prevent you from doing anything when it's not your turn (sometimes you like to check your gear and all that) and a few disconnects annoyed us a bit. Other than that we had a lot of fun. Our run took as about 7 hours and it was marvelous. A mix of joy, rage, despair and vindication. Sadly our other mate is gone for a while so the three character run on normal difficulty will have to wait. It's gonna be very tough to complete it, even with knowledge about the final stretches of the game. Can't wait, though

Still selling like hot cakes. Seems like supply is slowly but surely increasing. Edit: Also not bad.

Absolutely. However, Microsoft has a lot of spending power (I assume). Wouldn't be surprised if they bought more and more games/devs...I dread the day we get another announcement like the Bethesda acquisition...

My NG+ journey continues. I've neglected upgrading/purchasing new gear because it was a little easy from the get-go, but man...it sure did become a lot more difficult pretty quickly Purchased my first NG+ armor piece and it made quite a difference. And the obligatory screenshots and the obligatory spoiler warning:

While I will miss whatever will happen to Prey and Dishonored (I will be able to play Deathloop so that's awesome) the rest I can really live without.

It's a shame the game doesn't seem to run that well. Apex Legends is one of the better Battle Royales out there, definitely worth a go.

I played Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami so I at least knew some of the characters. (Edit: I completely missed your last sentence ) But yeah, maybe if I played the more recent installments I would've gotten more out of it. That doesn't mean I wasn't fucking hyped, though

Not yet, but I have it bookmarked. Indeed. A few days ago a friend told me that he wants to give God of War a try and he meant this one. He hasn't played any other games of the series and I immediately urged him to not play the most recent installment first. Without the history that moment would be lost to him.

Just played through that moment. Took a few more screenshots, of course:

I’m Your GPU – Crafting the digitally-infused pop of Astro’s Playroom GPU Tell me what to do and I'll do it for you

Gonna post some more screenshots. I'm spending way too much time with Photo Mode My two favourites, so far:

Well, Battle Chasers: Nightware had me hooked so much that I didn't need another game Now that I'm done with the JRPG, I've decided to devote all my time to God of War (and the occasional co-op gaming session with my mates). Made quite a bit of progress and reached Alfheim. Took a few more screenshots along the way: And this one is now my desktop wallpaper: This is a PS4 game...I can't wait to see how beautiful the sequel will be.

Finished Battle Chasers: Nightwar just now. Man, that final boss almost ruined everything. I was at max-level, had legendary weapons for my team, was decked out with awesome gear, put on every buff I could find and I still got wrecked a few times. And not because I made mistakes or chose my moves poorly, nooooo...just because the boss switched from "cut receiving physical damage in half" to "cut receiving magical damage in half" every few turns. It can also put a non-removable curse on one of the party members that kills in 5 turns. Couple that with the fact that the boss couldn't be stunned at all, that it can dish out a ridiculous amount of instant damage and damage over time and its stupidly high HP and there you have it: A dumb boss fight. I like difficult games, I live for them. But this wasn't difficult, this was borderline unfair. I did some reading around the web and it seems that only with one specific party setup (stats, perks, gear, etc.) the boss is pretty easy to beat, but that's not good game design. You shouldn't be forced to follow one particular route to have a chance while the others rely on a lot of luck. Oh well, this took off at least one point on my "How much does drahkon love this game?"-scale. I still love the battle-system because for 99% of the game it works. Lots of things about the game are a little archaic, for example exploration and story, but overall I enjoyed Battle Chasers: Nightwar quite a bit. I won't go for the Platinum, though, 'cause of NG+, the final boss and some other stuff.

Klopp as Germany's Head Coach? Sign me up.

I don't know if it's been posted already but I stumbled upon this wonderful itch.io user. Most of the pdfs work on a "Name your own price" basis. The PS2 Encyclopedia is free to get right now, but it's usually priced at $1 (with the option to give more, if you want). I don't know how accurate these collections are but the PS2 one seems to be put together with a lot of care. Worth a look (you need an itch.io account, as far as I know)

Battle Chasers: Nightwar progress: I broke the game. The cardinal sin of (J)RPGs: scale down exp you get from lower level enemies. I hate it, it's dumb and fuck you for implementing that system. I came across an enemy: King Slime. He had the wonderful ability to spawn a random Slime as a companion once you kill the first two. And I knew that those enemies give exp. Which got me thinking...can I farm those enemies? I tested it: My party consisted of two level 18 characters and one who was level 11. The latter got a huge amount of exp for the level 15 slimes, the former not so much. So I spent a few hours farming. And here's the result: Max level for those three. Garrison and Red Monika are incredible at dishing out damage so I should be set. I don't like Knolan, or rather I prefer to have a different character (healer) which I sadly didn't level up via this method. Since King Slime was a boss, I can't repeat the process. My dedicated healer is still level 18 but who cares. I will wreck everything for the foreseeable future, so I'll put him on my team This game is truly something else. The battle system is amazing. Very well thought out with the right amount of challenge (which I just destroyed ). The overworld/exploration is pretty bland. Quite repetitive and samey, The story and characters are so-so. It's refreshing to have badass characters right from the start who are just thrown in to stop an evil creature. But there's less (and probably no) room for heartfelt side-stories or twists and turns. It's pretty in-your-face. I enjoy it, but basically only because of how good the turn-based battles are. And it's hart to overstate how much I enjoy them

Different strokes, I guess

Sadly no, or not enough for everyone. And since there's a practical course coming up (starting tomorrow - don't ask me why it's allowed in these times...) and because I still have 4 months left for my thesis I decided to just wait.

Finally, after a few weeks of dealing with a software and theory it was time to go back to the lab and do some experiments. Today I went in 'cause I wanted to prepare some solutions/buffers/etc. I managed to prepare one (out of 9) before the water was turned off without any warning. Turns out that the thingy that produces distilled water is fucked so the entire building was without water (that could be used for work). This also made it impossible for us to get more Milli-Q H2O (which I tend to use) as the machine is connected to our distilled water line. We have no idea how long it'll take to fix. Hopefully just a few days...

Watched the finale and loved it. Apparently it wasn't very well received. I thought it was great. A little bit "out there" but executed quite well.

I see. Regarding your last sentence in the "Endgame" spoiler: A lot is lost to you, because it plays off of the original game.