Oh boy my favorite game series!

Admittedly the ones I’ve played the most are 3, 4 and 5, although I’ve tried 2 a couple times a while back. I wouldn’t mind doing it again, I just don’t remember why I kept bouncing off of it.

3 is my favorite, and admittedly I played it at a younger age than I probably should have, as a teenager. I couldn’t bring myself to finish it after getting the ending spoiled to me online, but I always had a fondness for the game and I preordered Reload as soon as I could. I will finish it this time. Mitsuru my love.

4 is my second favorite. Kanji and Naoto in particular really always stood out to me and I used to go by Kanji online for a long time. I made a character who spun into an oc with just traits inspired by him too, who is one of my favorites to write.

5 is fine but my least favorite of the bunch, even though I know a lot of people who only like that one. I felt the pacing was poor and the escalation of the severity of what the adults did wasn’t really going in order. I also didn’t feel any real attachment to the characters, in sharp contrast to the other two games I’ve played.

It still irks me every time a teacher and student romance comes up, or the times the games have been phobic. I wish we had the option to maybe pick between a masc/fem/androgynous looking protag and slap our own pronouns on them and romance who we wanted out of the options regardless of those selections, but I know that’s not ever the game Persona is gonna be. I’m happy they included content warnings at least in Reload.

I…went back to Path of Exile.

It was originally just to see how things had changed, but a lot changed and it’s very different. Not that it answered all of my personal issues with it, but I resigned myself to using a build guide. I’ve been enjoying it, surprisingly. Enough that, when I haven’t been out of the house, I usually play it daily.

Progress is going really slow because I’m not that good at the game anymore. But I also made loot filter sounds that spark joy, and I’ve been managing even if I’d like to be at endgame. I’m on act 6 out of 10.

My partner is also playing but doesn’t have a lot of experience. So I’ve been trying to help, which makes it more enjoyable to me because I like to teach.

Not sure if I’m fully going back yet. But I like the league mechanic and am having a good time.

I decided to try Zenless Zone Zero. I’m already a Honkai Star Rail player and I used to play Genshin Impact, although I gave up Genshin because I was irritated with how they handle story and characters. I originally wasn’t going to try ZZZ, but thought it wouldn’t hurt anything. Worst case scenario, I drop it and go back to solely playing HSR.

I’m really enjoying ZZZ’s combat, even if I don’t feel like I’m doing it “right” or optimally yet. The story is nice so far, I love the Persona vibes it gives me, especially Persona 4. Wasn’t expecting that. I got the guaranteed S rank character I wanted (Lycaon!) and I’m skipping the first limited character because… I really don’t like the maid outfit thing. It wasn’t for me on Noelle in Genshin, and it’s not for me here. I love her design otherwise and she’s a shark girl with a shark tail, which is super neat. She has a casual outfit I like a lot. Just. Cannot. Do. The. Maid. Thing.

I might pull on the second half banner. But I haven’t met the character yet so I have no idea if I want her either. It’s a bit frustrating waiting, because my teams are kinda a mess due to lack of characters. But it’s okay. The story comes first and that has my interest so far.

I watched a friend play Sea of Stars and really enjoyed it! I hope it’s a good adventure for you the rest of the way.

Something to note if you’re in it for combat, the difficulty plateaus a bit towards the middle/end. And if you like this one, their other game, The Messenger, is tied to it lore wise, although it’s a different genre.

Also the music slaps.

it’s been really hot here, but I’ve gotten into watering all of the outside plants every day (I water my aloe and haworthia once a week) and they seem to be doing pretty well! even the tropical hibiscus, somehow.

I’m especially happy about my lavender and the roses, I’ve mentioned previously I think that roses are special to me because of my grandmother (my grandfather would grow them in the backyard in these huge rose bushes for her and bring them in) and these are the first ones to ever grow and thrive. they’re not purely red roses, but I do really like the pattern on them.

uploading images keeps erroring out and I’m not sure how to put an image in here from imgur, so here’s a link to the picture of the lavender and roses instead.

yep! here it is on the steam workshop and I hope it helps you out! if you want the video series too, I can shoot that your way, it doesn’t really spoil anything and I didn’t know 95% of the mechanics even existed.

live and drink friend!

story is usually an important part for me! it’s one part of PoE that never impressed me. I might still check out Diablo 4, and I’m glad you laid out a lot of things for me. most of the stuff I could find online was still harping on previous issues that I now know some have been addressed.

funnily enough, I used to love running “lab” (I believe it’s short for “labyrinth” but my memory is shot and it’s been a long time) in Path of Exile, which was running through traps to rush to a boss. they nerfed that route shortly before I quit, too. but you got a lot of rewards at the end that had the potential to be good, and a blessing on existing equipment that you picked. a shame that boss farming in Diablo 4 isn’t as fun, but it’s something I’ll keep in mind when a sale rolls around.

sorting was probably one of the things I disliked the most in PoE, I could never grasp what was worth using or selling that well. goes hand-in-hand with my inability to roll with theorycrafting builds, so to hear Diablo 4 eases that some is nice.

ayyy new thread new game!

well kind of. I’m actually playing Caves of Qud a bit, now that I understand it more (I did end up installing the tutorial mod, thank you for that! and I did watch a small non-spoilery tutorial series as well) and I’m having a really good time. I started out with a character the tutorial recommended and have been fighting fish to level up. planning on taking on the first big quest tho!

sadly I’m stuck on an old gaming laptop that doesn’t really like to play games, so I can’t jump into all the games I want to. even my gacha game I play is pushing it, although I still login every day and do my required stuff. the laptop just gets extraordinarily hot. it handles Caves of Qud, because ascii, but I was wanting to jump in to Elden Ring at some point (I don’t have the DLC, does it make new runs more exciting at the beginning or is it a later thing?) and realized it’s not an option I think due to my laptop’s specs and general grumpiness.

so I’ve been wrestling with Borderlands 3 to get it to work, and my partner and I have been playing that for a bit. I love the BL series, although 2 was imho the best for writing. the humor still annoys me sometimes but I started playing the series with the first one when it came out, as a kid, so it has a special place in my heart. my partner hasn’t really ever played first person shooter games, so Destiny 2 (when we played) and Borderlands was their introduction.

honestly I wasn’t going to watch these and then I started to and now I have to watch all of them. Jauwn is genuinely entertaining and that’s always a nice find for me.

thank you for sharing!

I love the game, but I like extremely slow progress, so I use mods and modify the wealth multiplier(?) as well in the vanilla to make it more challenging. I also really love mods that add content, and there are quite a few out there! it’s annoying to always update mods manually (as compared to the steam workshop) but I did really enjoy when I was playing with my partner and we had 30+ mods!

a family member who I’m close to who also plays Stardew Valley likes to refer to me playing “Dark Souls Stardew Valley” which I thought was funny, especially because I’m terrible at Dark Souls.

overall I really like the game on it’s own. it helps that ConcernedApe has kept adding to it even though he absolutely doesn’t have to (it’s a big game as it is!) and I appreciate him for that. I do get a tiny bit stressed about the timer on days (notably when I’m playing with someone else and they’re really stretching the time thin) but it’s a very, very small thing. I had never played Harvest Moon or any other farming sim games before SDV, so I have no point to compare, but I just really appreciate the game being chill and a change of pace from games I’d usually play, that are almost entirely based on combat.

thank you for the tip!! I didn’t even notice it had a steam workshop, hahaha. I got the mod, so hopefully things go a little smoother next time. I have to play on controller currently which is a bit weird but I’m hoping I get used to it.

I used to do emulation but stopped for a while. now it seems more difficult, but a family member just gave me quite a few old games (and I’m planning to ask for some others, like Banjo Kazooie and Pokemon SoulSilver hahaha) so I’m looking forward to getting back into that! I also miss the pokemon fangames that weren’t actually for emulators, have some good memories of those.

I love modding things and appreciate the modding community for games a lot. most recently modded game I played was Stardew Valley, but it made me miss the steam workshop and auto updating mods :c

I still haven’t touched Breath of the Wild but I own it for the switch.

trying out Mario Odyssey, since my main computer is down for the count. I don’t know why console gaming has become difficult for me after I started gaming on pc.

then, I’m dipping my toes in with Caves of Qud, but I don’t know if my brain is in the place right now to learn how to play. tutorial videos are likely in my future.

Heyo! So recently we got some new plants, and thank you for the tip a while ago to re-pot my aloe, it’s doing much better now, I think. The middle is still brownish red, but the rest is very strong and green, and there are still parts of it growing out of the center.

I’d post pictures but I’m on mobile, maybe when my power comes back on!

My mom bought a tropical hibiscus which I’m not sure will survive but we’ll see. It seems to be doing well enough. I managed to get an english lavender and I’ve been told by a friend who knows more about plants that it looks very healthy. And roses have been really hard to grow for us but one of the two rose bushes my mom bought seems to be doing well too!

Questions, though. I’ve read that lavender wants pine needles over leaf mulch, are they significantly better? I’m also wondering how much I should be watering it, we’ve had a lot of storms lately but I want to stay on top of it.

Thanks for any more tips and thanks for the thread!

Stardew Valley! but…extremely modded SDV. I’m playing multiplayer with my partner and we have almost 60 mods going. quite a few of them are aesthetic but we have some area expansions and stuff like that as well. I really like tweaking the game so that it’s more difficult, I’ve played it so much (over 300 hours!) that it’s more appealing to me that way.

I love modding games in general. it’s my curse.

aaaaaaaa Persona 3’s remake finally came out!!

I was a little too young to be playing the game when it first came out, but it really left a mark on me and I’ve always wanted Atlus to update the game. I started with FES on the playstation 2. and when I tell you I was so excited for Persona 4 that I called every video game retail store in the city until they said they had a copy and immediately went and bought it, I’m not lying.

so far really loving the remake! I’ve been busy with another hobby so I haven’t gotten to finish it. the voice acting is great (Akihiko is really the voice I felt strongly about out of the entire cast that I liked, and I know the voice actor from work in Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, and of course he knocked it out of the park. so did Allegra Clark, as my favorite character in the game, Mitsuru) and while I know reviewers complained about Tartarus being copy paste environments with the same enemies over and over, it really hit good for me and brought back memories.

other than that, playing Honkai: Star Rail (taking a long break from Genshin, because I’m really frustrated with how it’s being handled overall) and trying to pace myself with the content since Sparkle’s banner is going to last for another ten years. I’m so excited for Acheron (also voiced by Allegra Clark!) that I’ve prefarmed almost everything for her, short of her relics. there’s a reason my Discord status is “I love you in every universe” with a Raiden Ei emoji, hahaha.

I actually had some issues with root rot previously, but those cleared up. however, because of that, I moved it into a smaller pot (a friend actually told me to, and advocated for a cut in half water bottle when I said I didn’t have anything else smaller) and while it did okay for a bit, now it has the browning center. I tried giving it some more sun like someone said I should, but that didn’t help.

I can certainly try to repot it, I have some soil leftover from when I went to a greenhouse, same place I got my haworthia. and thank you for the tip on the hyacinth!

Not sure if the first part of my question counts, since it’s about indoor plants, but I have an aloe plant and haworthia (I think is what it’s called) and while the haworthia is doing well, the aloe plant started to have it’s stalks in the center turn brown. I’ve tried giving it more sun like someone recommended to me, but it doesn’t seem to be improving. However, it does seem to still be growing.

I have one outside plant, a hyacinth, and it’s already started to come up, which is exciting even though it started kind of early(?) but I had a question. When it initially bloomed, it was super top heavy and flopped over. I couldn’t get it to right itself no matter what I did. Anyone got any tips?

I might be able to plant some more flowers this fall, but I’m not sure what to go with. I would love to do roses in memory of my grandparents, but I don’t think they would do well in my area.

I stand by Persona being my favorite game series of all time (3 was my first one, but 4 is very good too) but those are available on Steam now so aren’t a great recommendation. but if you’re taking games that are in other places as well, I would say Disgaea (2 was my favorite) and Devil May Cry (3 was my favorite.)

I would echo what someone else said here about Jak and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank. I know it wasn’t as popular as some of the other games in the series, but Ratchet: Deadlocked was the first game I beat multiple times in a row.

I also played a bit of Dark Cloud 2 and never got too far in, but heard a lot of good things.

I’m admittedly playing Honkai: Star Rail, and do so daily, although I’m just waiting for new story content so it’s just dailies.

besides that, I’ve been thinking of playing Pillars of Eternity, and hoping it would click for me this time. I struggle with focusing on one game, and will normally skip around, but I want to get better about that.

lastly, I’m really wanting to get Baldur’s Gate 3, and Jagged Alliance 3. I know BG3 isn’t out of early access yet, so I’m waiting, but Jagged Alliance 3 looks fun af, and I’ve heard lots of good things from a family member about the series.