So I was pretty disappointed to find out that the autumn DLC wouldn't be the usual small zone DLC, but rather something akin to a roguelite arena added as a location in Apocrypha. I'm not a big fan of roguelites, but as usual I decided to give it a go anyway. Never say I didn't try.
So I logged on with my main, which is a healer build with decent dps and the only character I have who's got a companion, and off we went to the Archive. Things went fast and easy until the fifth boss, which is the last one of an arc. The bosses are all randomized nerfed dungeon, trial and world bosses. The fifth one I got for my very first arc was Z'Baza, The Sload secret boss from the Coral Aerie dungeon, which I haven't actually done. This boss summoned lots of adds, covered most of the fighting area in AoEs and also teleported around which made the boss very hard to properly attack while also dodging everything all at once.
You get three attempts in one arc. After you've died the third time it's off to the start with you and start over. I got Z'Baza down to 50% HP every time, but never further.
After every boss you get to pick an effect which lasts you either specific amount of time or until the arc is over. The effects are typically extra damage, extra defense or extra healing, and it works well. I think my favourite effect I got that first arc was the summons of plague rats which would help fight the enemies and once they died they'd turn into plague blobs that could be picked up and thrown at the enemies doing poison damage. Pretty neat. Another great effect I got was the ability to summon a decoy which would distract the enemies and effectively make them stand still in one spot attacking this decoy with a huge health pool, making them easy to kill all at once.
The Tho'at stuff could prove interesting though. New Daedra Lord! :)
All in all, not very impressed with this, but I'll keep at it for a while longer.
Fast-forward to November 2023. I receive Phantom Liberty as a birthday gift and get playing. I resolve to play through the entire game from start to finish and not just do the DLC. That turned out to be a good thing because they have changed so much since my original playthrough. Especially the levelling system, which was a lot more extensive and a lot quicker. There seem to be less NCPD scanner things and less gigs in each zone, which makes completing each zone less of a hassle. I'm disappointed there still isn't any follow-up to Regina's cyberpsychosis research.
Ironically, now that everyone is praising the game for being good I'm starting to experience all the bugs people complained about the last time around. I've had CTDs, I've fallen through the map, I've had loot fall through the ground and vanish, quest NPCs getting stuck, calling the car simply not working and being stranded in the Badlands after a gig, having to reload the game to get quest prompts to work, and with a better GPU I could have larger crowds which meant I got to see first hand people's complaints about duplicate NPCs - hell I even had quadruplets attending the Samurai concert:
Complaining done, let's get into the good stuff.
I loved all the hints to Edgerunners that they've added to the game and until I got Johnny's jacket I ran around in David's. Once I got Johnny's I put David's jacket in my stash because I'm holding on to that ♥
I wanted to do all the side content available before I did any main story so I completed Watson before I even got the biochip, and then I did each zone before I moved on with the main quest. Which ended up meaning that I was almost level 50 by the time I started Phantom Liberty and got inside Dogtown.
The Phantom Liberty story was overall really great. Starting with a bang (literally), mellowing out as a multitude of questions rose up, before all hell broke loose at the conclusion. I made sure to make several separate saves so that I could unlock and see all the endings, just like I did with the base game back in 2021. The King of Wands and King of Swords endings were less dramatic and chaotic than the King of Cups and King of Pentacles endings. Those last two... My adrenaline was so high my hands were shaking by the time I got to make my final choice. That damn robot piece of shit junk... The new ending to the whole game made me super sad.
Another thing I really liked about Dogtown was that the gigs there always came with a twist and they were never as cut and dry as the ones from the base game. Always a choice would pop up around the middle that could give the gig an entirely different outcome than you would originally think, sometimes for the better and sometimes the fixer would call afterwards and scold you. But that twist and choice & consequence really made those gig a lot more memorable. Run This Town is probably one of my favourite side quests in the DLC.
Last time I played I missed out on saving Takemura so this I made sure of that and then followed through on his ending so I could get that last achievement.
Speaking of achievements, some of them don't seem to work. I know for sure I affected 3+ enemies with one single Detonate Grenade quickhack more than once, but that achi never popped for me. I know I hit 2 enemies with the sname sniper rifle shot more than once, but that achi never popped either. And I rigorously used the Distract Enemy quickhack to get that achi, but that never popped either.
Towards the end of this playthrough they dropped Update 2.1 which added hangouts with your love interest, radio for walking, being able to take the metro around the city (sightseeing woooo!) and repeatable car races. I made sure to do everything.
I had a really great time with Cyberpunk this time around as well, despite this buggier experience!
From the creators of The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor, still this show came completely out of left field since neither of us had even heard about it. Yet after two great shows ofc we had to watch it and it didn't disappoint.
Because each of the other two shows were based on one book each, I originally thought this would be a show based entirely on the eponymous work by Edgar Allan Poe, but I soon discovered that each episode was named after a Poe text, and each of the episodes was a retelling of a Poe story with the House of Usher as the overarching plot. It was brilliant.
I love Poe and I've read a bunch of his work so it was great to see how they transferred the plots of those stories into the overarching plot of the show and make it work.
There's very little of the "spot the ghost" game from Hill House, but it does happen. There are a few jumpscares, but nothing too bad and usually you can see them coming from a mile away.
I really, really, really enjoyed the original animated Castlevania show, so when this finally dropped on Netflix I couldn't wait to get into it!
Setting it in revolutionary France is interesting, but it works out. Richter and Maria aren't as fun and interesting as Sypha and Trevor and I can't really bring myself to care about Annette. But Edouard's fate and plight are both extremely interesting to me (although whenever he bursts into song it feels mostly like filler), and I absolutely loved both Olrox and Drolta. Especially Olrox.
The art style of the Vampire Messiah reminds me of Sailor Moon villains though.
It's only got this one season so far, but after that ending how can I not look forward to the next season?
Comparing it with the original show when this one only has one season seems unfair so I won't do that.
The last three episodes of the season were a hell of a lot better than the first five episodes, though.
