Redwolf's Journal (continued)

 Man, I keep waffling on whether I'm playing the Godbound game wrong. I envisioned Kara as a behind-the-scenes sort of entity - someone whose influence either supports or hinders other powers and whose personal appearance/involvement would be as harbinger of change/chaos. That really doesn't lend itself to having her own churches, worshippers, or territories in an organized fashion. Not sure if I mentioned previously, but she was loosely inspired by Isaac of The Skeleton Soldier Failed to Defend the Dungeon . So by some metrics, everything is going swimmingly. Kara is involved with the PCs (particularly Seraphiel, as she seems the most motivated/purposeful) in a way that is supportive, but also a little testing at time. She's tangentially influenced a cult, but doesn't have much direct interaction with it. This fits fairly well. But it also doesn't give much opportunity to sink Dominion into things, which is limiting her level advancement (Kara's now level 4, bu

 In D&D, we finally took down the dragon we were fighting. As with my previous experience in 5E, it took about three full sessions, which feels like a slog. The game keeps dragons from feeling like chumps by giving them a bunch of extra "legendary/lair" actions, plus flying alone is a huge advantage in D&D that can completely negate melee builds, and they typically sport some big AOE effects. How anyone keeps that exciting is beyond me. Merely the mechanical pace of keeping up with all of that seems like a huge burden to overcome. But hey, dragon dead. We lost a handful of NPCs and took quite the beating, but rawr us! - In Godbound, perhaps I'm being overly critical. I mean, brains often latch onto the negative. When you get down to it, I enjoy my Godbound character. She fits in a good, non-spotlight role where she can get some good lines in, but isn't really required for plot motion. The argument that she doesn't have enough in the way of personal goals i

Horizon: Forbidden West finished out its story solidly. I haven't done everything in the game (such as arena fights and collectable hunts), but with a vast majority of side missions done and the main story complete, that's good for now. The ending wraps up a few things and still leaves more to do and a lingering threat. I'm still struck most by the emotiveness and development of characters. There's a scene at the end where one character is absolutely prepared to leave and do his own thing, but watching the others there is a subtle (but apparent) dip of his shoulders telegraphing his decision to stay and help that is only stated a few moments later. There's personal bias, sure, but Forbidden West was awesome. And so I started in on Elden Ring over the weekend. About the only thing shared between the two games is the "open world" tag. In fact, some contrasting controller commands have been tripping me up on occasion. Crouching instead of running, for inst

 So in a lull, I went back to Insomnia: The Ark , which I bounced off of before. I did better and got farther into the game, but it's still a little bit of a struggle. The "old school" isometric style itself isn't back. The dieselpunk aesthetic on a space ark works well enough. I'm fairly neutral on what I've seen of the story - not horrible, but nothing has really brought together the material scarcity setting and the sort-of-supernatural aspects for me. I ran into a few bugs and translation issues. The combat is not terribly great - being almost impenetrably difficult starting out (one or two hits can lead to death), but becoming so much easier with better gear and potential companions. A lot of time is spent traveling back and forth between zones on the "world map," which feels like a waste. Overall, it's a bit "meh" and I may get back to finish it eventually, but I'm not in any rush. On the other hand, I was quite looking forwar