First: I'll be streaming this week! At least twice, the first one will be a Just Chatting stream where we will be premiering the wonderful music I commissioned from @SaberaMesia as well as doing a recap/update as to where I'm at currently physically/mentally/professionally, and then talking about the future of my streams and other entertainments, my immediate plans, my upcoming plans, and things I hope to do in the future. The second will be a proper LP gaming stream, probably Resident Evil 4 but we shall see.

Second: With my favorite and most used community servers moving to Guilded, I'm planning to kick the tires and spin up my Guilded server again! I'll be posting links and things when it's ready, but I mention it because Cohost isn't the best vehicle with which to deliver random video game thoughts on CJ Samples, and since I originally planned to use the Forum feature of Guilded for those before I realized not enough folks were moving over, that's gonna happen now that folks are moving.

So yeah, keep your eyes peeled for these things and more!

EDIT: The quoted text boxes were originally part of the first post and moved to this for better feed readability for the thread as a whole.

Aw yeah, I'm bringing it back! CJ Samples, now unbound by text limits and with better spoiler warnings and tagging.

So anyways, just started playing Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous and first thing I notice when I can start walking about?

Weird looking masked character called Stranger who said some vague bullshit about answers than walked away and disappeared when they passed behind someone else

And it's like, I love that kind of thing so much. Like, fuck yeah, set that stage baby! Give me that little teaser of things to come! Foreshadow the SHIT out of some ominous overarching plot stuff for later!

So I'm playing a Dhampir Faith Hunter (Inquisitor archetype) because I was told this main campaign is all about demons, so like, first playthrough, let's not get too wacky with the class or anything and let's lean into that demon angle!

But then near the end of character creation I went to pick voices and... I thought the Male - Wise voice sounded like ProZD (SungWon Cho) and even though I couldn't confirm that it stuck in my brain, and since my character is an Inquisitor he has a big hat which caused me to think about the video below...

Anyways, to cut to the chase: my character is named Archibald now and their birthday is the date that video came out because that is the type of person I am.

AND I JUST SAW A GIANT GOLDEN MAN

what resides behind your eyes giant man

why are you so shiny

give me your secrets

the giant man offers fashion magic

truly the best day ever

The talented and helpful @Minalien warned me that there is a time limited thing in this first chapter and so as soon as I could move freely throughout the city and so now Archibald is like, pushing everybody out of my way sprinting full tilt toward it like:

MOVE BITCH, THERE ARE LIVES TO SAVE

GET OFF THE ROAD SMALL CHILD OR BE CRUSHED UNDERFOOT

ANY CULTIST WHO GETS IN MY WAY WILL BE INCAPACITATED AND HIDDEN SO I CAN COME BACK AFTER AND REALLY WRECK YOU, DON'T FUCK WITH ME

Every time I return to the main hub of this chapter, I stop in front of giant man and offer a silent prayer to the gods of badass fashion.

yeah, so... I found the thing from the previous post, and it has been dealt with, and with very minor issues on my end.

BUT

uhhhhhh, I don't remember corpses being in this spot previously, but maybe that's just my memory? I hope that is the case... Probably not but yeah.

But this line right here? ohhhhh baby, this shit is my kind of chaos.

So the team has expanded, and uh, now not everybody on the team is what I would call "nice folks" in terms of alignment. We got some mysteries, and we got some questionable, and the one straight-up Evil, but the lot of them don't seem all that evil? So like, I wasn't feeling bad about the team right up until I pulled this fucking thing out of my bag while I'm selling stuff.

I want to believe it's not connected to any of the new team additions and is, like, an unrelated side quest? But... yeah, starting to doubt my instincts a bit.

WHAT IF A FOX, BUT ALSO A SNAKE

TALKING BOUT A: PIPEFOX PIPEFOX PIPEFOX

THE VERY BEST PET, MY LITTLE FURRY MATE

PIPEFOX PIPEFOX PIIIIIIIIIIPEFOXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Fuckin' love weird puzzle shit. I had to put tiles into an order, fuck yeah!

Weird Puzzle Shit Edit: The next puzzle I came across, I accidentally solved by trying to figure out how it worked. We take those.

Cool idea in theory; a mini-strategy game as part of the world map, lots of different general abilities and types, spice things up with a new side thing!

In practice.... eh. So much of it is just tedious tedious tedious. Like, the reinforcements part; I understand thematically why your reinforcements come from the first city every time, but in practice all it means is that I have to press a few extra buttons every single time to get them from the city to my forward operating base. Morale and Troop Counts also run into a similar issue of "I mean, yeah that makes sense, but also it rarely adds anything to the gameplay but wasted time."

Solving more puzzles, having mystical conversations with people far away because one of the best gods liked me solving the shit outta that puzzle, found more creepy shit about one of the creepy party members.

Good times.

So.

It's several hours later, and you could rightly assume that I had been playing all this time. Or at least, normally you could. What actually happened is after last post's spoilery things I had a fit of bisexual panic strong enough to knock me out of the game. Or I got sidetracked making food and then watched TV for a bit. Or both.

ANYWAYS after that break I realized that Archibald? Not living up to his potential honestly. The entire point of this man is to poke people with a rapier, so I ended up respeccing him into a Magus Sword Saint (and also changed what god he is for because reasons) and my internal reasoning is that he too experienced bisexual panic but his was so powerful it warped reality retroactively. The new and improved Archibald is now ready to yell his catchphrase louder and prouder than ever before:

"I THINK THAT ENEMY GOT: THE POINT!"

Void howdy, I don't know what I expected from the crusade management aspect of the game but I definitely wasn't expecting for the complexity and options to BALOOON as they have.

In hindsight? Probably should've realized they'd include stuff like this given, y'know, gestures vaguely at Kingmaker.

I have been playing this game.

On my TV.

With my keyboard and mouse lapdesk.

And TODAY was the first time I realized this game has surprisingly good controller options?!

...

FUCK

A loading screen message just said "If an angel can fall, does that mean a demon can ascend?" and that right there is the perfect example of what I want from loading screen messages.

At how good controller support is in this game.

And like, according to Shorty (my brother who despite outgrowing this nickname cannot shake it) this is pretty standard for modern CRPGs so like, I foresee a lot more CRPG playing in my near future.

Oh, and you can bet your slappable ass that I'm gonna try and play some of these on my Steam Deck when it arrives!

Jesus fuck how has it been like twenty days since I played this game.

Feels like it's been... Idk, like, 7 days tops!

is justttttttt on the edge of being an interesting character to me, but every dialogue or part of her companion quest is just bare minimum interesting, y'know? She's the fantasy rpg companion equivalent of putting salt and pepper on a dish and claiming you used spices; like, yeah you're not 100% bland, but also, c'mon bud you can do better

BITCH, IS THAT A CHALLENGE?!

Hey I haven't played this in like 20 days! What's up with that?

So yeah, because I don't want to just redo the first 2.5 acts of this game, I'm gonna do the Through the Ashes DLC first this time, cause it has an import effect on Act 1! So for our 2nd Gig we've got:

• Jane Nottafoxe (pronounced Jane no-ta-fex) for Through the Ashes: A Normal Human who is DEFINITELY NOT a transformed Kitsune.
• Bob DeVille for the Main Campaign (and probably DLC 1 after that): A Tiefling.

So I fucking love Through the Ashes already!

It's such a wacky idea, so far (20 minutes in I figure?) it reminds me of those one shots where you play Level 0/1 characters that are the type of civilians who normally would ask an adventurer for help but due to circumstances cannot, but combined with something like Rogue One (the Star Wars movie) where it takes an off-hand mention in the main story and gives it a whole story.

Just a bunch of mostly-average folks trying to survive in this fucking demon infested city and tell the important people about a thing, let's roll!

Alright, we got a minor spoiler in this image, but I'm pissed about this and things like this are causing me to start actually sour on this DLC pretty heavily cause what the fuck! The environmental traps are like, one of "the things" for this dlc, yeah? And up until this screenshot none of them had been set up to just hit a group of enemies after use, you have to like lure them into the path and then do it but it's glitchy and messy and yeah, it's not great. But this one was; that guy I've drawn an arrow pointing at walks back and forth through the path! I was so excited!

Except when I approached it a bunch of fucking zombies crawled out of the dirt beside it!

When I tell you I'm about ready to drop this dlc? Know that I'm serious and it is 50/50 between the weird framerate issues and these glitchy/mean traps. FUCK!

Edit; I just swapped to Story difficulty after this post because the Rogue was detected by the zombies and I'm just like, I'm not having fun with these weird design choices for the traps and their bugs so fuck it.

There's a section shortly after this where one of the plans is one character prepares the trap and then as soon as the enemy is lured into it, it's automatically activated.

You just... You could've just done that for all of them?! It would've eliminated all the weird issues I have with them!!

Like... That was a cool sequence, that type of stuff is what I wanted from this. I really would have loved this if it had stuck more to the idea of "overcome fights with your skills and wits!" Instead of just... Lots of difficult low level combat.

The cinematic cutscenes are very nice!
The skill/planning sections using the book interface is very fun! ...but the rest of it was mediocre and is just spiraling downwards from there

So I did the DLC, still like the story bits but yeah

• Encourages you to avoid fights but gives your side quests with vague locations that need you to explore the whole zone.
• A puzzle that isn't immediately visually obvious as to what it is, and trial and error can cause you to immediately (first action) TPK.
• So many moments made overly difficult by the camera (which didn't happen to me in the main campaign at all from what I remember)
• Unclear choices for certain interactions.
• Noticeably more bugs and issues than the Main Campaign.
• Strings along a mystery that exists solely for a fucking sequel bait cliffhanger.

A fucking "To be continued" title card... Lick my fucking balls.

So the biggest issue with Archibald was I played him like I normally play RPGs; Focusing on Good over Lawful/Chaotic. Doesn't work great for Azata, but that style fits perfectly for our new gal:

Meet Jen(eric Good Paladin)

So Jen's adventures are progressing, and I found out what the reward for doing Through the Ashes is;

A really fucking good spell-altering rod. Like, potentially good though to justify playing that DLC, which fills me with hate.

Anyways... that's all. Jen is pretty Angelic and we're nearly done Act 1, see ya laters

That's pretty neat, right?

It's a very good horse. There is no other news.

So this playthrough I actually accepted Regill into my party, and I recognize how on the surface it's seems to be fucking wild to accept the Lawful Evil character into my party on my Angel run but... it makes a lot of sense to me, honestly.

I think I'm starting to like Regill

Two Paladins, a hellknight, and a cleric is too much overlap and it's making me grow hateful I think I may do a minor respec

So, hey, Angel's story opens up fast and goes HARD and I am so happy I picked it for attempt 2 cause no offense to Azata and it's pals, love those wacky little free crusaders, but they didn't have a lot of story happening early Act 3!

Got a taste of what life is like for femme-presenting folks isn like: this fuck thought we were in a relationship because I was vaguely nice to him like one time 🙃

Anyway I "dumped" him but holy shit, messy.

So in the area I'm currently in, there is a door.

And that door can be opened with a code.

And that code is 3 symbols long, using 6 possible symbols.

And forcing myself not to brute force this lock was killing me inside

So we're taking a break until the new WotR DLC drops cause I'm right at the end of Act 3 near the point of no return and part of the DLC starts in this act, so we're just gonna backburner this until then for MAXIMUM GAME.

Enjoy Jen's new Abyss Slayer look in the meantime.

EDIT: I may have been misinformed about when this dlc is accessible so idk what's happening now, ahahaha. Keep an eye on this space I guess

Oh, fuck me; there's a game mechanic for this act that involves things in the environment moving or adjusting when you rotate the camera to any of the carfinal directions... Oh this is going to drive me up the wall!

So yeah I'm going to bed now realizing I didn't update this at all for the rest of Act 4, which in turn made me realize that I don't know super enjoy just retyping the story, which is where these ended up somehow? So I think going forward I'm gonna revert to just posting about fun moments and such.

So yeah, I'll make a highlights list for Act 4 tomorrow and then hopefully have some fun moments in Act 5 to drop as they happen✌️

Just got to the end and it was just so good! I love this little saint!

Having that moment in the last part with the Tsundere-ass Redeemer Queen really brought the whole thing together, ahahaha

The crusade mechanics are always jusssssst on the verge of being cool. Changing it to straight to types of troops instead of the number of units system would've alleviated a lot of the pain I think, but would've been a more complex system so yeah. Messy.

EDIT: The quoted text boxes were originally part of the first post and moved to this for better feed readability for the thread as a whole.

Aw yeah, I'm bringing it back! CJ Samples, now unbound by text limits and with better spoiler warnings and tagging.

So anyways, just started playing Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous and first thing I notice when I can start walking about?

Weird looking masked character called Stranger who said some vague bullshit about answers than walked away and disappeared when they passed behind someone else

And it's like, I love that kind of thing so much. Like, fuck yeah, set that stage baby! Give me that little teaser of things to come! Foreshadow the SHIT out of some ominous overarching plot stuff for later!

So I'm playing a Dhampir Faith Hunter (Inquisitor archetype) because I was told this main campaign is all about demons, so like, first playthrough, let's not get too wacky with the class or anything and let's lean into that demon angle!

But then near the end of character creation I went to pick voices and... I thought the Male - Wise voice sounded like ProZD (SungWon Cho) and even though I couldn't confirm that it stuck in my brain, and since my character is an Inquisitor he has a big hat which caused me to think about the video below...

Anyways, to cut to the chase: my character is named Archibald now and their birthday is the date that video came out because that is the type of person I am.

AND I JUST SAW A GIANT GOLDEN MAN

what resides behind your eyes giant man

why are you so shiny

give me your secrets

the giant man offers fashion magic

truly the best day ever

The talented and helpful @Minalien warned me that there is a time limited thing in this first chapter and so as soon as I could move freely throughout the city and so now Archibald is like, pushing everybody out of my way sprinting full tilt toward it like:

MOVE BITCH, THERE ARE LIVES TO SAVE

GET OFF THE ROAD SMALL CHILD OR BE CRUSHED UNDERFOOT

ANY CULTIST WHO GETS IN MY WAY WILL BE INCAPACITATED AND HIDDEN SO I CAN COME BACK AFTER AND REALLY WRECK YOU, DON'T FUCK WITH ME

Every time I return to the main hub of this chapter, I stop in front of giant man and offer a silent prayer to the gods of badass fashion.

yeah, so... I found the thing from the previous post, and it has been dealt with, and with very minor issues on my end.

BUT

uhhhhhh, I don't remember corpses being in this spot previously, but maybe that's just my memory? I hope that is the case... Probably not but yeah.

But this line right here? ohhhhh baby, this shit is my kind of chaos.

So the team has expanded, and uh, now not everybody on the team is what I would call "nice folks" in terms of alignment. We got some mysteries, and we got some questionable, and the one straight-up Evil, but the lot of them don't seem all that evil? So like, I wasn't feeling bad about the team right up until I pulled this fucking thing out of my bag while I'm selling stuff.

I want to believe it's not connected to any of the new team additions and is, like, an unrelated side quest? But... yeah, starting to doubt my instincts a bit.

WHAT IF A FOX, BUT ALSO A SNAKE

TALKING BOUT A: PIPEFOX PIPEFOX PIPEFOX

THE VERY BEST PET, MY LITTLE FURRY MATE

PIPEFOX PIPEFOX PIIIIIIIIIIPEFOXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Fuckin' love weird puzzle shit. I had to put tiles into an order, fuck yeah!

Weird Puzzle Shit Edit: The next puzzle I came across, I accidentally solved by trying to figure out how it worked. We take those.

Cool idea in theory; a mini-strategy game as part of the world map, lots of different general abilities and types, spice things up with a new side thing!

In practice.... eh. So much of it is just tedious tedious tedious. Like, the reinforcements part; I understand thematically why your reinforcements come from the first city every time, but in practice all it means is that I have to press a few extra buttons every single time to get them from the city to my forward operating base. Morale and Troop Counts also run into a similar issue of "I mean, yeah that makes sense, but also it rarely adds anything to the gameplay but wasted time."

Solving more puzzles, having mystical conversations with people far away because one of the best gods liked me solving the shit outta that puzzle, found more creepy shit about one of the creepy party members.

Good times.

So.

It's several hours later, and you could rightly assume that I had been playing all this time. Or at least, normally you could. What actually happened is after last post's spoilery things I had a fit of bisexual panic strong enough to knock me out of the game. Or I got sidetracked making food and then watched TV for a bit. Or both.

ANYWAYS after that break I realized that Archibald? Not living up to his potential honestly. The entire point of this man is to poke people with a rapier, so I ended up respeccing him into a Magus Sword Saint (and also changed what god he is for because reasons) and my internal reasoning is that he too experienced bisexual panic but his was so powerful it warped reality retroactively. The new and improved Archibald is now ready to yell his catchphrase louder and prouder than ever before:

"I THINK THAT ENEMY GOT: THE POINT!"

Void howdy, I don't know what I expected from the crusade management aspect of the game but I definitely wasn't expecting for the complexity and options to BALOOON as they have.

In hindsight? Probably should've realized they'd include stuff like this given, y'know, gestures vaguely at Kingmaker.

I have been playing this game.

On my TV.

With my keyboard and mouse lapdesk.

And TODAY was the first time I realized this game has surprisingly good controller options?!

...

FUCK

A loading screen message just said "If an angel can fall, does that mean a demon can ascend?" and that right there is the perfect example of what I want from loading screen messages.

At how good controller support is in this game.

And like, according to Shorty (my brother who despite outgrowing this nickname cannot shake it) this is pretty standard for modern CRPGs so like, I foresee a lot more CRPG playing in my near future.

Oh, and you can bet your slappable ass that I'm gonna try and play some of these on my Steam Deck when it arrives!

Jesus fuck how has it been like twenty days since I played this game.

Feels like it's been... Idk, like, 7 days tops!

is justttttttt on the edge of being an interesting character to me, but every dialogue or part of her companion quest is just bare minimum interesting, y'know? She's the fantasy rpg companion equivalent of putting salt and pepper on a dish and claiming you used spices; like, yeah you're not 100% bland, but also, c'mon bud you can do better

BITCH, IS THAT A CHALLENGE?!

Hey I haven't played this in like 20 days! What's up with that?

So yeah, because I don't want to just redo the first 2.5 acts of this game, I'm gonna do the Through the Ashes DLC first this time, cause it has an import effect on Act 1! So for our 2nd Gig we've got:

• Jane Nottafoxe (pronounced Jane no-ta-fex) for Through the Ashes: A Normal Human who is DEFINITELY NOT a transformed Kitsune.
• Bob DeVille for the Main Campaign (and probably DLC 1 after that): A Tiefling.

So I fucking love Through the Ashes already!

It's such a wacky idea, so far (20 minutes in I figure?) it reminds me of those one shots where you play Level 0/1 characters that are the type of civilians who normally would ask an adventurer for help but due to circumstances cannot, but combined with something like Rogue One (the Star Wars movie) where it takes an off-hand mention in the main story and gives it a whole story.

Just a bunch of mostly-average folks trying to survive in this fucking demon infested city and tell the important people about a thing, let's roll!

Alright, we got a minor spoiler in this image, but I'm pissed about this and things like this are causing me to start actually sour on this DLC pretty heavily cause what the fuck! The environmental traps are like, one of "the things" for this dlc, yeah? And up until this screenshot none of them had been set up to just hit a group of enemies after use, you have to like lure them into the path and then do it but it's glitchy and messy and yeah, it's not great. But this one was; that guy I've drawn an arrow pointing at walks back and forth through the path! I was so excited!

Except when I approached it a bunch of fucking zombies crawled out of the dirt beside it!

When I tell you I'm about ready to drop this dlc? Know that I'm serious and it is 50/50 between the weird framerate issues and these glitchy/mean traps. FUCK!

Edit; I just swapped to Story difficulty after this post because the Rogue was detected by the zombies and I'm just like, I'm not having fun with these weird design choices for the traps and their bugs so fuck it.

There's a section shortly after this where one of the plans is one character prepares the trap and then as soon as the enemy is lured into it, it's automatically activated.

You just... You could've just done that for all of them?! It would've eliminated all the weird issues I have with them!!

Like... That was a cool sequence, that type of stuff is what I wanted from this. I really would have loved this if it had stuck more to the idea of "overcome fights with your skills and wits!" Instead of just... Lots of difficult low level combat.

The cinematic cutscenes are very nice!
The skill/planning sections using the book interface is very fun! ...but the rest of it was mediocre and is just spiraling downwards from there

So I did the DLC, still like the story bits but yeah

• Encourages you to avoid fights but gives your side quests with vague locations that need you to explore the whole zone.
• A puzzle that isn't immediately visually obvious as to what it is, and trial and error can cause you to immediately (first action) TPK.
• So many moments made overly difficult by the camera (which didn't happen to me in the main campaign at all from what I remember)
• Unclear choices for certain interactions.
• Noticeably more bugs and issues than the Main Campaign.
• Strings along a mystery that exists solely for a fucking sequel bait cliffhanger.

A fucking "To be continued" title card... Lick my fucking balls.

So the biggest issue with Archibald was I played him like I normally play RPGs; Focusing on Good over Lawful/Chaotic. Doesn't work great for Azata, but that style fits perfectly for our new gal:

Meet Jen(eric Good Paladin)

So Jen's adventures are progressing, and I found out what the reward for doing Through the Ashes is;

A really fucking good spell-altering rod. Like, potentially good though to justify playing that DLC, which fills me with hate.

Anyways... that's all. Jen is pretty Angelic and we're nearly done Act 1, see ya laters

That's pretty neat, right?

It's a very good horse. There is no other news.

So this playthrough I actually accepted Regill into my party, and I recognize how on the surface it's seems to be fucking wild to accept the Lawful Evil character into my party on my Angel run but... it makes a lot of sense to me, honestly.

I think I'm starting to like Regill

Two Paladins, a hellknight, and a cleric is too much overlap and it's making me grow hateful I think I may do a minor respec

So, hey, Angel's story opens up fast and goes HARD and I am so happy I picked it for attempt 2 cause no offense to Azata and it's pals, love those wacky little free crusaders, but they didn't have a lot of story happening early Act 3!

Got a taste of what life is like for femme-presenting folks isn like: this fuck thought we were in a relationship because I was vaguely nice to him like one time 🙃

Anyway I "dumped" him but holy shit, messy.

So in the area I'm currently in, there is a door.

And that door can be opened with a code.

And that code is 3 symbols long, using 6 possible symbols.

And forcing myself not to brute force this lock was killing me inside

So we're taking a break until the new WotR DLC drops cause I'm right at the end of Act 3 near the point of no return and part of the DLC starts in this act, so we're just gonna backburner this until then for MAXIMUM GAME.

Enjoy Jen's new Abyss Slayer look in the meantime.

EDIT: I may have been misinformed about when this dlc is accessible so idk what's happening now, ahahaha. Keep an eye on this space I guess

Oh, fuck me; there's a game mechanic for this act that involves things in the environment moving or adjusting when you rotate the camera to any of the carfinal directions... Oh this is going to drive me up the wall!

So yeah I'm going to bed now realizing I didn't update this at all for the rest of Act 4, which in turn made me realize that I don't know super enjoy just retyping the story, which is where these ended up somehow? So I think going forward I'm gonna revert to just posting about fun moments and such.

So yeah, I'll make a highlights list for Act 4 tomorrow and then hopefully have some fun moments in Act 5 to drop as they happen✌️

Just got to the end and it was just so good! I love this little saint!

Having that moment in the last part with the Tsundere-ass Redeemer Queen really brought the whole thing together, ahahaha

EDIT: The quoted text boxes were originally part of the first post and moved to this for better feed readability for the thread as a whole.

Aw yeah, I'm bringing it back! CJ Samples, now unbound by text limits and with better spoiler warnings and tagging.

So anyways, just started playing Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous and first thing I notice when I can start walking about?

Weird looking masked character called Stranger who said some vague bullshit about answers than walked away and disappeared when they passed behind someone else

And it's like, I love that kind of thing so much. Like, fuck yeah, set that stage baby! Give me that little teaser of things to come! Foreshadow the SHIT out of some ominous overarching plot stuff for later!

So I'm playing a Dhampir Faith Hunter (Inquisitor archetype) because I was told this main campaign is all about demons, so like, first playthrough, let's not get too wacky with the class or anything and let's lean into that demon angle!

But then near the end of character creation I went to pick voices and... I thought the Male - Wise voice sounded like ProZD (SungWon Cho) and even though I couldn't confirm that it stuck in my brain, and since my character is an Inquisitor he has a big hat which caused me to think about the video below...

Anyways, to cut to the chase: my character is named Archibald now and their birthday is the date that video came out because that is the type of person I am.

AND I JUST SAW A GIANT GOLDEN MAN

what resides behind your eyes giant man

why are you so shiny

give me your secrets

the giant man offers fashion magic

truly the best day ever

The talented and helpful @Minalien warned me that there is a time limited thing in this first chapter and so as soon as I could move freely throughout the city and so now Archibald is like, pushing everybody out of my way sprinting full tilt toward it like:

MOVE BITCH, THERE ARE LIVES TO SAVE

GET OFF THE ROAD SMALL CHILD OR BE CRUSHED UNDERFOOT

ANY CULTIST WHO GETS IN MY WAY WILL BE INCAPACITATED AND HIDDEN SO I CAN COME BACK AFTER AND REALLY WRECK YOU, DON'T FUCK WITH ME

Every time I return to the main hub of this chapter, I stop in front of giant man and offer a silent prayer to the gods of badass fashion.

yeah, so... I found the thing from the previous post, and it has been dealt with, and with very minor issues on my end.

BUT

uhhhhhh, I don't remember corpses being in this spot previously, but maybe that's just my memory? I hope that is the case... Probably not but yeah.

But this line right here? ohhhhh baby, this shit is my kind of chaos.

So the team has expanded, and uh, now not everybody on the team is what I would call "nice folks" in terms of alignment. We got some mysteries, and we got some questionable, and the one straight-up Evil, but the lot of them don't seem all that evil? So like, I wasn't feeling bad about the team right up until I pulled this fucking thing out of my bag while I'm selling stuff.

I want to believe it's not connected to any of the new team additions and is, like, an unrelated side quest? But... yeah, starting to doubt my instincts a bit.

WHAT IF A FOX, BUT ALSO A SNAKE

TALKING BOUT A: PIPEFOX PIPEFOX PIPEFOX

THE VERY BEST PET, MY LITTLE FURRY MATE

PIPEFOX PIPEFOX PIIIIIIIIIIPEFOXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Fuckin' love weird puzzle shit. I had to put tiles into an order, fuck yeah!

Weird Puzzle Shit Edit: The next puzzle I came across, I accidentally solved by trying to figure out how it worked. We take those.

Cool idea in theory; a mini-strategy game as part of the world map, lots of different general abilities and types, spice things up with a new side thing!

In practice.... eh. So much of it is just tedious tedious tedious. Like, the reinforcements part; I understand thematically why your reinforcements come from the first city every time, but in practice all it means is that I have to press a few extra buttons every single time to get them from the city to my forward operating base. Morale and Troop Counts also run into a similar issue of "I mean, yeah that makes sense, but also it rarely adds anything to the gameplay but wasted time."

Solving more puzzles, having mystical conversations with people far away because one of the best gods liked me solving the shit outta that puzzle, found more creepy shit about one of the creepy party members.

Good times.

So.

It's several hours later, and you could rightly assume that I had been playing all this time. Or at least, normally you could. What actually happened is after last post's spoilery things I had a fit of bisexual panic strong enough to knock me out of the game. Or I got sidetracked making food and then watched TV for a bit. Or both.

ANYWAYS after that break I realized that Archibald? Not living up to his potential honestly. The entire point of this man is to poke people with a rapier, so I ended up respeccing him into a Magus Sword Saint (and also changed what god he is for because reasons) and my internal reasoning is that he too experienced bisexual panic but his was so powerful it warped reality retroactively. The new and improved Archibald is now ready to yell his catchphrase louder and prouder than ever before:

"I THINK THAT ENEMY GOT: THE POINT!"

Void howdy, I don't know what I expected from the crusade management aspect of the game but I definitely wasn't expecting for the complexity and options to BALOOON as they have.

In hindsight? Probably should've realized they'd include stuff like this given, y'know, gestures vaguely at Kingmaker.

I have been playing this game.

On my TV.

With my keyboard and mouse lapdesk.

And TODAY was the first time I realized this game has surprisingly good controller options?!

...

FUCK

A loading screen message just said "If an angel can fall, does that mean a demon can ascend?" and that right there is the perfect example of what I want from loading screen messages.

At how good controller support is in this game.

And like, according to Shorty (my brother who despite outgrowing this nickname cannot shake it) this is pretty standard for modern CRPGs so like, I foresee a lot more CRPG playing in my near future.

Oh, and you can bet your slappable ass that I'm gonna try and play some of these on my Steam Deck when it arrives!

Jesus fuck how has it been like twenty days since I played this game.

Feels like it's been... Idk, like, 7 days tops!

is justttttttt on the edge of being an interesting character to me, but every dialogue or part of her companion quest is just bare minimum interesting, y'know? She's the fantasy rpg companion equivalent of putting salt and pepper on a dish and claiming you used spices; like, yeah you're not 100% bland, but also, c'mon bud you can do better

BITCH, IS THAT A CHALLENGE?!

Hey I haven't played this in like 20 days! What's up with that?

So yeah, because I don't want to just redo the first 2.5 acts of this game, I'm gonna do the Through the Ashes DLC first this time, cause it has an import effect on Act 1! So for our 2nd Gig we've got:

• Jane Nottafoxe (pronounced Jane no-ta-fex) for Through the Ashes: A Normal Human who is DEFINITELY NOT a transformed Kitsune.
• Bob DeVille for the Main Campaign (and probably DLC 1 after that): A Tiefling.

So I fucking love Through the Ashes already!

It's such a wacky idea, so far (20 minutes in I figure?) it reminds me of those one shots where you play Level 0/1 characters that are the type of civilians who normally would ask an adventurer for help but due to circumstances cannot, but combined with something like Rogue One (the Star Wars movie) where it takes an off-hand mention in the main story and gives it a whole story.

Just a bunch of mostly-average folks trying to survive in this fucking demon infested city and tell the important people about a thing, let's roll!

Alright, we got a minor spoiler in this image, but I'm pissed about this and things like this are causing me to start actually sour on this DLC pretty heavily cause what the fuck! The environmental traps are like, one of "the things" for this dlc, yeah? And up until this screenshot none of them had been set up to just hit a group of enemies after use, you have to like lure them into the path and then do it but it's glitchy and messy and yeah, it's not great. But this one was; that guy I've drawn an arrow pointing at walks back and forth through the path! I was so excited!

Except when I approached it a bunch of fucking zombies crawled out of the dirt beside it!

When I tell you I'm about ready to drop this dlc? Know that I'm serious and it is 50/50 between the weird framerate issues and these glitchy/mean traps. FUCK!

Edit; I just swapped to Story difficulty after this post because the Rogue was detected by the zombies and I'm just like, I'm not having fun with these weird design choices for the traps and their bugs so fuck it.

There's a section shortly after this where one of the plans is one character prepares the trap and then as soon as the enemy is lured into it, it's automatically activated.

You just... You could've just done that for all of them?! It would've eliminated all the weird issues I have with them!!

Like... That was a cool sequence, that type of stuff is what I wanted from this. I really would have loved this if it had stuck more to the idea of "overcome fights with your skills and wits!" Instead of just... Lots of difficult low level combat.

The cinematic cutscenes are very nice!
The skill/planning sections using the book interface is very fun! ...but the rest of it was mediocre and is just spiraling downwards from there

So I did the DLC, still like the story bits but yeah

• Encourages you to avoid fights but gives your side quests with vague locations that need you to explore the whole zone.
• A puzzle that isn't immediately visually obvious as to what it is, and trial and error can cause you to immediately (first action) TPK.
• So many moments made overly difficult by the camera (which didn't happen to me in the main campaign at all from what I remember)
• Unclear choices for certain interactions.
• Noticeably more bugs and issues than the Main Campaign.
• Strings along a mystery that exists solely for a fucking sequel bait cliffhanger.

A fucking "To be continued" title card... Lick my fucking balls.

So the biggest issue with Archibald was I played him like I normally play RPGs; Focusing on Good over Lawful/Chaotic. Doesn't work great for Azata, but that style fits perfectly for our new gal:

Meet Jen(eric Good Paladin)

So Jen's adventures are progressing, and I found out what the reward for doing Through the Ashes is;

A really fucking good spell-altering rod. Like, potentially good though to justify playing that DLC, which fills me with hate.

Anyways... that's all. Jen is pretty Angelic and we're nearly done Act 1, see ya laters

That's pretty neat, right?

It's a very good horse. There is no other news.

So this playthrough I actually accepted Regill into my party, and I recognize how on the surface it's seems to be fucking wild to accept the Lawful Evil character into my party on my Angel run but... it makes a lot of sense to me, honestly.

I think I'm starting to like Regill

Two Paladins, a hellknight, and a cleric is too much overlap and it's making me grow hateful I think I may do a minor respec

So, hey, Angel's story opens up fast and goes HARD and I am so happy I picked it for attempt 2 cause no offense to Azata and it's pals, love those wacky little free crusaders, but they didn't have a lot of story happening early Act 3!

Got a taste of what life is like for femme-presenting folks isn like: this fuck thought we were in a relationship because I was vaguely nice to him like one time 🙃

Anyway I "dumped" him but holy shit, messy.

So in the area I'm currently in, there is a door.

And that door can be opened with a code.

And that code is 3 symbols long, using 6 possible symbols.

And forcing myself not to brute force this lock was killing me inside

So we're taking a break until the new WotR DLC drops cause I'm right at the end of Act 3 near the point of no return and part of the DLC starts in this act, so we're just gonna backburner this until then for MAXIMUM GAME.

Enjoy Jen's new Abyss Slayer look in the meantime.

EDIT: I may have been misinformed about when this dlc is accessible so idk what's happening now, ahahaha. Keep an eye on this space I guess

Oh, fuck me; there's a game mechanic for this act that involves things in the environment moving or adjusting when you rotate the camera to any of the carfinal directions... Oh this is going to drive me up the wall!

So yeah I'm going to bed now realizing I didn't update this at all for the rest of Act 4, which in turn made me realize that I don't know super enjoy just retyping the story, which is where these ended up somehow? So I think going forward I'm gonna revert to just posting about fun moments and such.

So yeah, I'll make a highlights list for Act 4 tomorrow and then hopefully have some fun moments in Act 5 to drop as they happen✌️