QueenNioiclin

Member of the Dtoid Exile.

  • she/her/sí/í

Writer of Queer Fantasy & Narrative Designer. Gamer. Tá mé ag foghlaim Gaeilge. Lover of great stories. She/her 🏳️‍🌈 / Amateur artist


Mastodon (mainly writing stuff)
writing.exchange/@Ink_Soul
Mortal Kombat and Horizon fanfics
archiveofourown.org/users/Inkwoman/works

Apparently, everyone on the European side of the globe is busy today, so here I am with this weekend's What Have You Been Playing! :D

Nioh: I gave the game another chance... and then I discovered that there's another path to follow in that first area; one that doesn't lead me straight to the group of enemies that kept murdering me 🙃 I found a bow and arrow, which made a big difference (I do love my bows and arrows!), and thus manage to advance until after the first boss. I also understood how the whole Ki mechanic works (I think), but I still need to figure out how to use my spirit animal. Or what those icons on my screen mean. I feel like this game has so much information going on 😅

I'm progressing, buuut I'm not quite feeling this game. It's good, but I'm not in love with it. The main thing that pisses me off is how many hits enemies take to die, even the simpler ones. And from what I read, this is the norm in this game. I'm not sure if I have the patience for that. But I'll try!

Horizon: Forbidden West: I returned to the game because I saw a lovely picture of Aloy and Talannah and remembered that I hadn't spoken to her again after we completed her questline. Nice scene - and another hug to the collection! I hope we'll see a lot more of Talannah in HZ3. She's one of the best characters in the series and definitely deserves a place on Aloy's team. I was honestly surprised she didn't give Talannah a Focus right there and then.

After that, I started hunting machines again to upgrade my Legendary weapons lol I want to upgrade them a little more to maybe then challenge the NG+ on the hardest difficulty.

What have you been up to, folks? Let us know in the comments section! :D


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in reply to @QueenNioiclin's post:

I still have my copy of the "definitive" release of the original Horizon that I need to get back to. I mostly took a few cool pictures with the Photo Mode and peaced out.

I'm playing Cosmic Star Heroine before I sit down with Starfield when it launches on Game Pass in a few days. The soundtrack reminds me a lot of late 90's into the 00's era MegaTen and the tone feels like a homage to anime like Sailor Moon or Cowboy Bebop. Combat is sufficiently well-balanced and engaging enough, but it's nothing special (so far). Didn't expect to be playing a JRPG for the atmosphere that wasn't Megami Tensei!

I didn't expect to like Forbidden West this much. The story is kind of bad at some points - the DLC is great, though -, but the gameplay and Aloy's personality hooked me again. It became my comfort game haha

Played some Trails into Reverie. The beginning feels pretty slow even for Trails. Walking around towns you've spent multiple games in and talking to important characters after Cold Steels resolution is equal parts nice, and a little slow.

Looking forward to the third route with a new cast and the rogue-like mode where you can gacha the characters and make your ultimate Trails team.

I’m playing Lies of P for possible review, as well as writing up some pieces from gsmescom which should hopefully go up somewhere soon

Thanks for picking up WBP? This week has been rough on me in regards to missing my role on Destructoid. But the beat goes on. I hope you all have a good weekend x

Nice! Hope you're enjoying the game, and I'm looking forward to the review!

No problem! WYBP has been a nice collaborative effort every weekend haha But feel free to take the reins back any time you want :D

Got a new job or just hobby reviewing?

Played the demo for Lies of P and as much as I love the style the atmosphere didn't catch me, so it seems like a no go.

Remember atmosphere in games is alpha and omega to me.

As a massive fan of videogames, it pains me to confirm that I will have to miss out on some of the best games released this year that I would normally play (when my play queue eventually reached 2023), which is probably the first time that this happened in the last decade or so.

I am not going to play Baldur's Gate 3 because I fell out of love with its specific genre. I didn;t enjoy Divinity Original Sin despite all the glowing review, and I couldn't get into a CRPG since I first played Baldur's Gate 2. I feel that the multiplayer aspect is very important in those games, and I am mostly a solitary gamer.

More unfortunate is the fact that I am unlikely to ever play Starfield, which is due to my inability to justify buying a console or upgrading my PC for just one game. Maybe in the future I find enough justification to build a PC that can competently run it, but I don't feel the inclination to do that for just one game that, frankly, doesn't look much better than the rather ordinary Outer Worlds.

Curiously, I don't feel I am missing out on anything major, but that has been the case since I religiously started following my play queue. I am rarely impacted by the hype for new games since I am still playing games from 3-4 years ago, which I am enjoying very much. Also, I am noticing the fact that more games are released than I am able to complete, extending the distance between my backlog and the current release calendar.

This is due to my ever-shrinking free-time and the increasing bloat of modern games. I looks as if games like Diablo IV, Baldur's Gate, and Starfield wants you to play them, and only them, for a long time.

No thank you, let me taste the variety of gaming, which has as good or a better experiences than your vastness could offer.

Check out my report on the Top 40-31 PS1 Games according to Retro Sanctuary. This report goes briefly on the games in that list, which includes Darkstalkers 3, Syphon Filter, and Threads of Fate.

Also, check out my latest Mega Man Retrospective blog about Mega Man X6, the point where the series jumped the shark in the opinion of a lot of people, and I am one of them. Despite some excellent music and sprite graphics, the game is simply poorly designed from top to bottom.

Finally, check out my weekly updates on the games I am playing now. Games between brackets are ones I am planning to review:

-[In Cold Blood (PS1]: This is an adventure game by the same developer that made the Broken Sword games, which explains the strong story and voice acting, but doesn't explain the drab and dark art direction. What explains the latter is the jump to 3D polygonal graphics instead of sticking to the beautiful 2D art and sprites. Unfortunately, the downgrade in graphics isn't the only issue in the game. In their attempt to add more action to the genre, the developer introduced tank controls that make the typical exploration of an adventure game's screen a massive chore. Regardless of its good qualities, its rarely fun to play this game.

-13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (Switch): I am very close to the end of the game, with all three "modes" of the game showing a completion percentage of around 80%. Maybe it will take me two weeks at this stage unless I find the time to binge the game to the end. So I will hold my final thoughts until then, but I want to highlight one thing regarding the game's brilliant storytelling:

Despite the shocking revelations that are being revealed right now, I cannot say that I am particularly surprised with any one of them. The game doesn't cheat in withholding information, giving the observant player enough hints to predict a solution to the mysteries of the game. These hints, along with the events themselves, can be liberally revisited at any time to confirm your own theories, and I often did to cement my understanding of a particular point. With its solid storytelling chops and unique style in revealing the story, I think this game is a perfect example of the utilization of the medium's unique attributes to tell a strong and memorable story.

-Knights and Bikes (Switch): I think I am going to drop this game. Its just not grabbing me in any way and I don't ever feel like I want to play it. Frankly, I played so little of it that I cannot fault the game at all. Its probably my fault for not researching enough about it before buying it, as I am sure it will provide a great experience for some people with its unique graphics and charms. Unfortunately, I am not one of those people right now.

-DOOM Eternal (PS4/5): Does it make sense that I am equally frustrated at and enjoying this game? The gameplay is ostensibly the same as the DOOM reboot, with some fast and furious action-packed FPS gameplay, but I feel that this game throws much more bullshit at you. I am constantly moving about, dashing around, jumping furiously, and I still get hit from every conceivable angle from enemies that react to me a second before I appear in their site. When clearing an area, it feels more like a lucky break than skill, and that' not something I felt with the prequel.

I wonder if lowering the difficulty will make me feel more under control, because right now, I am enjoying the game but I have no idea if I am improving or just getting lucky.

-Upcoming Games in my Backlog in Uncertain Order: Rapid Reload (PS1), Daemon X Machina (Switch), Panzer Dragoon Remake (Switch), Resident Evil 3 Remake (PS4/5).

Baldur's Gate 3 is on my list after the excellent reviews it got, but with Spider-Man 2 coming up, I won't have money for both - especially not after buying MK 1 Premium Edition -, and Spidey wins 😅 I honestly don't care about Starfield, so that's one less game I need to worry about.

I had the same impression when I was playing DOOM 🙃 I know my reflexes aren't the best, and some of the damage I received was due to poor skills, but many others... I don't know, it didn't feel right.

Which DOOM are you talking about?

I had a feeling of lacking control in the first DOOM reboot game, but Eternal is much more chaotic for me. I am not great at FPS games, but I am also not as bad as this game makes me feel sometimes.

Maybe I will give up and reduce the difficulty to normal if I don't get the hang of this game.

I've been grappling with similar issues in regards to getting around to new releases versus playing through my backlog. I may try your approach (building out a planned queue of games) because I think I'd be happier that way in the long run - though I'd make exceptions in certain cases.

That's what I pretty much do too. I made exceptions for Horizon: Forbidden West and FF16. I'll also make an exception for Spider-man 2.

I actually have a spreadsheet to keep track of my backlog...hobbies.

Gaming became happier and more efficient once I made a queue and made the decision to strictly adhere to it.

I don't get post-completion hang overs anymore since I know exactly which game I am jumping into next, and that knowledge also keeps me focused on completing the current game. Also, I am no longer impacted by hype cycles as much, and so experience each game with little knowledge about how I am supposed to receive it.

I only jump the queue for multi-player games, but I am not sure I am interested in playing those anymore since I don't have much time for them.

The human body would collapse without bones providing structure for it.

I feel I would similarly collapse I didn't have a schedule and structure to my life 😆

You should see my travel plan, it looks like a project schedule.

HAha. We are so SO different on that =D

Going on vacation to a complete different continent and have like gotten the hotels and that's basically all I have planned. Might take a looksy at TGS while I'm there =D

I'd highly recommend giving BG3 a shot when you see a discount. Larian's come a long way since the first Original Sin (I didn't really like that one either), and the multiplayer aspect is far less of a draw here. In fact, I'd say anyone who plays BG3 in multiplayer before playing through solo is doing themselves a massive disservice. You need to be able to take your time, poke around, and enjoy the characters/story, which is hard to do in the MP setup

I'd say it's close to Persona 5 length. I'm about halfway through act 2 with about 45 hours, add maybe 3 to that for retries on battles. Good news is it doesn't FEEL that long. I'm breaking it up, basically going in every night with a specific goal. Go check out this corner of the map, complete this quest, finish advancing to the next level up, stuff like that.

I've never really gotten into a CRPG before (I lost interest in OS2 about 10 hours in), but this one has really sunk its hooks in me. As in, forget GOTY, this game might be in the running whenever I start talking favorite game ever

Hi all!

I played through Gears 5 this week. I've played it before, so I was playing on New Game Plus. Played on Easy, and used a special NG+ feature that refills your clip on a successful Active Reload. So I basically blazed through the game with a Boomshot (rocket launcher) and a Longshot (sniper rifle). It was a dumb, fun way to play. Would I do that every time? No. But it's a good way to have some absolutely mindless fun.

I'm basically just killing time til Starfield releases. Boy, do I hope I enjoy that game!

Not much this week. Played a bit more of BG3, which remains excellent. I've still never left act 1 and it's a lock for my game of the year.

I watched that One Piece live action show. I have mixed feelings about it. I read the first arc of the manga and I absolutely recommend that. The actors on the Netflix show do a good job and I admire them really going for it. They're really delivering live-action anime acting and it works for me. The problem is, they had 8 episodes to cover 11 volumes of story. And so you get abridged, inferior versions of all these stories. I'd watch the Netflix show first, then let the manga impress you. I did the opposite.

Majora's Mask: After doing a bunch of side stuff, I'm finally off to the first dungeon...I think. Anyways, I do really like the game overall, but it's also very repetitive with the groundhog day time travel stuff.

Torchlight: I died. 🥲

Pokémon Yellow: About half way through now. No fun quotes to post today.

FF16: Trudging on through FFM playthrough for the plat.

I also can't wait for Spiderman, the last game I'll be buying this year. As for Nioh, it's all about gear and chaining combos. Not much you can do about the gear in the early game because nothing good starts really dropping till mid game, so just keep updating what you have with anything that has better numbers. Make sure to get the Flux weapon skills, this is what allows you to chain combos non-stop. It's the only real way to melt enemy hp before getting legendary weapons. Fair warning, human enemies are the easiest in the game, if you're struggling on them it's going to get much harder. Also, Hino-Enma is the next boss you face, she's very hard at this point of the game and a lot of people give up at her. I think she's the second hardest boss on a first playthrough especially if you have learn how to flux combo yet.

I also hope Talannah has a lot more screen time on HZ3.

Good luck on the Platinum hunt!

I won't say I'm having trouble with the human enemies. What I am is getting bored 😂 I feel like From Software does a much better job of balancing difficulty vs pleasure. What's this Flux skill thing? It does sound useful 🤔

Talannah is one of the best people Aloy could hope to have on her team against the New Threat, she'd be dumb to not ask her to join 😂

So many names I have no idea what they mean 😂 I'll keep playing, see how far I can go. Although Elden Ring grabbed me again, so I might not touch Nioh again for... well, for a good while 😅

I like the combat, I just don't care for the story and that can be mostly skipped which is what I've been doing. Nothing can be done about the garbage merit badge colleting quest stuff though unfortunately.

Thankfully the combat is far more interesting in hard mode, so it's worth it to get the last trophy I need for the plat.

I'm also not a plat whore. In the 15 years trophies have been around I have less than 40 plats. I'd say more than half those plats are from games where you get all trophies from just plaything through the game normally. I usually only plat games I really like, but now that every FF game except XI is on PS with trophies I've been debating plating them all, especially since most of them are straight forward and easy plats. The only problem is FFXV which I don't really want to ever play again, and FFXIV which is a huge time investment.

In any case, I'll plat this and be done with the game forever. That way if I ever do decide to fully commit to plating the games at some point, I don't have to worry about this one.

I don't even like trophies, so of course I never plat anything. I even turn of all notifications because they annoy me and ruin the immersion.
But got a friend who can't stop playing a game if it isn't platted, unless he can't stand the game that is and just drops it.
He liked Ghostwire enough to plat it. Took him about 40 hours, but I played for almost 60 and didn't plat anything.

And I would never have played FF16 if I thought the story sucked. I would have dropped it long ago, but curious to where it's heading.
The gameplay does gte better with time even in normal mode. Just beat...Uhm.. I have my last Eikon now and that battle was pretty intense. Must be bad-ass on hard mode.

I do, however, love to beat my own scores, but that's mostly in arcade style games of course.

Fun to see how different people play games.

I enjoy getting them, but I don't obsess over it much. It's more of a goal I'll put time to it if I have it. I also like people can see what I've accomplished in games.

I think that goes all the way back to being a kid back before trophies existed and we had to prove we did this stuff. Now people can just see I've done them thanks to trophies.

Yeah, being "FOX" or "ASS" in arcades to show off my scores was always fun =D
Talking with people my age we do sometimes brag of achievements like beating TMNT on NES =D

Remember when I first got my 360 and played the wonderful game Bioshock and was completely sucked into the fine atmosphere of Rapture and got sucked out because of that annoying achievement pop-up. I instantly turned it off and I always do when I get a new console.
On rare occasions I look at them. "Oh cool. I got a trophy for petting a dog.." Or finishing a level. Yay I guess.

Until someone told me you could turn off the notifications, trophies caused me anxiety and lessened my enjoyment of games.

I felt compelled to get all the trophies, and felt my time was not well-spent if I didn't get them. That made playing games a chore rather than a fun activity.

Thanks for taking up the WBP baton this week!

I did it! I finally took down the hardest challenge in Sackboy: A Big Advenure (The Ripsnorter) last night! I had to complete a gauntlet of tough platforming sections in under 10 minutes to get the Gold and, after a few weeks of perfecting each section but never managing to reach the finish line, I got there in under 7 minutes. Guess I didn't need to perfect every little part like that, whoops. But, frankly, nailing down the most efficient route for each section was extremely fun and the reason why I wasn't getting frustrated with each failed attempt. While it wasn't necessary after all, I feel that much more accomplished that I was so far under the bar they set. Now I just need to enlist my wife to take down the co-op levels and I can place this game's platinum on my figurative mantle!

Otherwise, I finally dove headfirst into Elden Dingaling. I'm having a great time! I've found the importance of remembering that I don't need to beat my head against a boss forever and can go explore just to come back later. And with so much to explore, and no real direction, discovering this world has been a treat so far.

I think that's all I played this week. Hope everyone is having a superb start to September!

Thanks! You should - it's a delightful experience. If you're not trying to get the best scores or collect everything, you can beat the game in a dozen hours or so, I'd guess (I know there's a lot to play these days so game length is pretty important lol).

Any tips for Elden Ring? I have no idea what I'm doing. Magic, or Ashes, or Spells, or whatever all that junk is, continues to mystify me.

A shorter game is definitely a plus haha I doubt I'd aim for the highest scores; when I think of Sackboy, I imagine a more relaxing experience 😅

I'm afraid I'm not an expert on Elden Ring either lol But are you building an Intelligence/Faith build? If not, you can ignore the spells and incantations. Ashes are special skills you can give your weapons. This is mostly for "common" weapons. Remembrance Weapons (those you get from bosses' souls) and some other special weapons have unique skills already, so you probably won't want to change that. But if you decide to wield a claymore, for example, you might want to give it a more "wow" skill, and that's where the Ashes enter. To be fair, I collected a lot of Ashes but never used any of them on my first playthrough 🙃 In which location are you right now?

Okay I see, that all makes sense. Not a magic build at all, just going straightforward with Str/End/Dex, and a healthy amount of Vig lol. Good to know I can just not spend mental energy on magic and ashes. Where am I... I've made it to a stormy castle, then headed to a swampy bog, now I'm surrounded by wolves in the south. I haven't cleared any areas, just kinda poking around. Last night I put it down after getting demolished by the Rune Bear a few times.

Nice! That was my first build as well - always strength and endurance 💪 Magic is quite good in this game as well, so I'm enjoying my new run.

Ah, Rune Bears! They're a delight haha Good exploring!

Sea of Stars! A little over 10 hours in and I loooove it. Hoping I beat it before Starfield drops on 9/6 but if not, I'll just make Starfield wait a bit longer so I'm not juggling them both at the same time. So excited to jump into that one though! It's more Bethesda action and I'm all for it.

Other then playing more of that, gonna watch my fights this weekend and just relaaaax. No big plans and honestly, a chill weekend is my fav type of weekend haha.

Hope everyone is doing good and has a great weekend!

Oh, wow, sorry for being late, I was too busy playing. So uhm, Queen, TGIF, WYBP ... Am I witnessing a complete takeover here ?
;-)
Also does anyone know what's up with Pat ? I hope he didn't get lost in the countryside or something.

Anyway. Last weekend I played some Splatoon 3. The season was closing so it seems they boosted the catalog points or something. I think I got a pair of shoes out of it.

The boxes of Splatoon 3 and Pikmin 3 Deluxe

I also started playing Pikmin 3 Deluxe. It's very good, I have trouble putting it down (which is why I'm so late) but I'm kind of mad at the control scheme and how you can't do much about it. The lock-on is very annoying to use when there are multiple enemiew, the dodge is mapped in a way that you have to let go of the left (movement) stick to use it which is beyond dumb, it's also annoying how you need to compose squads "manually" and can't just split with a number of pikmin from the map and I wish they let us control the pikmin crowd with the right stick like in the first game, since the camera only rotates around the player it could have been mapped to triggers without issues. I wish there were ways to customize the control scheme to your tastes.
Also, while it is very pretty and cute I still find it rather unimpressive technically speaking. I still feel they could have done more to showcase the WiiU's capacities.
But it's very fun nonetheless and as I said I can't put it down.
Other than that I still play some Super Mario Run regularly for the plat coins. It really is quite the ideal distraction for throne time.

I read or am reading the following too :

Stupeur et Tremblements by Amélie Nothomb, Demon Slayer vol.6, Coffee Moon vol.5

It's all pretty good !

With that I wish you all a fine weekend and pleasant gaming !

He was apparently running late to a family gathering, hopefully he'll pop in here tomorrow!

Glad you're loving Pikmin 3 - I've been loving it, myself. I have to agree about the controls as I will apparently never get used to a non-Gamecube controller for these games, but maybe Pikmin 4 addresses it a bit more.

RE: Nioh, it has a very long learning curve. In fact I would say I didn't learn how to "properly" play the game until NG+.

So I would say you have to make a choice of whether you want to hang in there for the long haul. You do reach a point where you can destroy normal enemies with ease, but it can take dozens of hours to understand how to do it (it's all about destroying your enemy ki before they have a chance to do anything).

As for me, I've mainly been playing and developing mods for Genshin Impact. I'm actually enjoying patch 4.0 (Fontaine) a lot with the diving exploration. And on the modding side I've starting messing with pixel shader coding so I'm well down the rabbit hole there too.

Mainly I'm waiting for Lies of P which is probably my most anticipated game of the year.

My current mindset is "Let's keep going and see how far I can get" 😂 I'd like to at least finish the main story even if I stumble all the way there.

Hope you like Lies of P! I had a few issues with the demo, but it looked quite promising!

That's the spirit. I'm sure you'll be able to reach the end even if its sloppy (which would definitely describe my first playthrough). The good news is that once it clicks it never goes away. Even many years later I was able to blow through Nioh2 easily based on my Nioh learnings.

Personally I loved the Lies of P demo. It took me a while to figure out the timing of the parries. They were weirdly slower than I expected. In a lot of cases attacks can be reacted to rather than needing to be anticipated. Once I figured that out I was locked in.

To be honest, I remember enjoying my time with Nioh 2 (the demo/beta) more than I'm enjoying Nioh 1 😂

Lies of P annoyed me because I didn't like the parry or the dodge. Both felt half-baked, even though I did get better at parry by the end of the demo. But I'm still looking forward to playing the full game (someday)!

TBH, Nioh 2 is strict upgrade to Nioh 1 in every way. So you would not even be wrong if you just skipped the first one completely and started with 2. But I guess you already own it so you're stuck with it.

The core gameplay is still the same but the first one definitely gets long in the tooth with the repetitive side missions and lack of enemy variety. Don't feel obligated to do all the side missions (especially some of the latter ones which get harder than any of the main missions).

I was this close to skipping Nioh 1, but then the game clicked with me (well, clicked more than before, at least), so I'll give it one more chance. Very excited to play Nioh 2, though - I have both on my PS+ list, so I didn't really buy any of them 😂

To be fair, I wasn't thinking of doing any side quests haha This is the game of game I want to finish the main campaign asap and be done with it lol

Queeny to the rescue 😁

FF16. HAve to finish at least game before I go on vacation and that's just two weeks away. I will not be gaming much then, unless I go the an arcade or two of course, so I'll have to gibe it my all now.
So 52 hours in FF16 and as I said last time it gets better all the time. Surprisingly so. More and more curious as to who, why, where etc.
The characters so far are great, Jill has grown a lot on me of late.
I still take them side quests if I can and have the time and I do it very much for the back stories I get from the NPC crowd which gives the game so much more life. Blackthorne ain't just a grumpy Blacksmith =D Also Goets(?) and Charon and the rest of the lot are pretty great.
The atmosphere has at the point I am now has changed a lot and has of course a lot to do with visual design story but damn that music is so great.
I'm getting very similar vibes as I got later in FF6 and 7, which is just positive.
The game does have it's flaws (damn that primitive QT stuff) but it's way better than I imagined. Those Eikon battles are really going nuts =D

Also a little Shenmue again. Now I am like 5 min gameplay away from where I "stopped" last time. Damn curious to see what happens now. 'Bout fucking time! Hope I can finish this one before I go to the big foreign country! Everything outside of Norway is "the big foreign country" 😀

That's the gaming I had time for this week. I need to win the lottery soon! 😑

Have a jolly weekend!

Gotta dirty my hands now and then 😅

Glad you're enjoying FF 16 more and more. I'm curious to see what my reaction to the game will be whenever I get to play it. And FF 7... I kind of forgot that game, need to get back to it... someday lol

We're all just one big foreign country wrapped around Norway and looking down on it condescendingly.
It's shameful but true, you found us out !
:-P
Really though, I'm quite drawn to scandinavia in general, from images and media at least, so Norway is a big snowy foreign country that I have nothing but admiration for.