Blogging motivation at an all-time low, sorry. The odd thing is an idea pops into my head almost daily to write about, but then the words never hit digital paper. Here goes a bunch of unrelated gaming thoughts and updates.
I’m still heavily playing Mighty Party. I’m now in the long-term grind phase, but since I like the core gameplay, that’s a good thing. A big update is expected by end of month, which should shake some thing up, and hopefully doesn’t break a ton of stuff.
I’ve been playing Darkest Dungeon again, having picked up the two paid expansions when they were on sale recently. It’s still an excellent game, and the expansions nicely enhance it. I especially like the Crimson Court dungeon, which rather than a random layout, is just one giant map you slowly explore that saves your progress. My goal here is to actually beat the game, having never killed the final boss. I think the power creep from the expansions should make the possible now without extreme end-game grind.
I’ve stopped playing Mount and Blade: Bannerlord after 80 hours not because its bad, but because I’ve played enough for now and want to give the game a nice break for when it comes out of early access.
I’m back playing League of Legends. This will get its own post later, but here I’ll just saying it’s like coming ‘home’. Just a fun game with top-tier polish and support.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is coming out in Early Access maybe in August. I’m very torn on jumping in right away as this might be a ‘play it once’ game, and I don’t want that first and most important time to be in a version that is far less than complete. On the other hand, maybe I play the EA version doing something I normally wouldn’t, like playing a full evil character, and seeing how it goes, so when the game is fully out, I can do my ‘normal’ playthough.
Dwarf Fortress on Steam is still coming along, and still sounds like it might ruin a whole bunch of my gaming time. I have a weak spot for games like this, and if the graphic and UI updates help me dig into the million systems the game has going, it should be a blast.
Finally the Battle Brother’s expansion is still at the top of my hype list. I’m just very, very ready for another go with that game.
Hardcore Casual 
Another mobile game that you might like, if you haven’t tried it already, is Idle Legends. I was able to play it off and on for several days before I hit the wall where I actually needed to wait for stuff rather than actively play to progress, so you can get a good feel of whether or not you like it before you get into the grindy bits.
The core gameplay is a chessboard setup, but the battles auto-play. You place your heroes, and they will attack the closest target in their attack range, or move towards an open square where they can attack if nothing is in range, kind of like how Clash of Clans works, except you are facing off against another team instead of a village. You start out with a small party, but can get up to 10 heroes per battle after you level up a bit.
You level up heroes with collectable/auto currency, have various ways to unlock heroes through collectable currency, and rank up heroes by combining sets of 3. You also unlock a tower that automatically fills up with your 10 highest leveled heroes. This tower then gives you slots which you can unlock. Placing a hero in one of these slots raises their level to match the lowest of your top 10 highest level heroes, and you can switch them out with a 24 hour cooldown. This gives you the ability to use new heroes that you unlock right away without feeling like you wasted a bunch of currency leveling up another one, you just have to switch gear out for them.
Sounds decent but right now I am so tapped for time on mobile I can’t even entertain another game. Adding it to the list though.
whatever happened with Kenshi. I was planning on picking it up next time it is on sale on Steam but not sure if it has enough content or is more of a 10 hour play sort of game? Seems like you were liking it when you first tried it but never read any good followup on the game.
I’ve got 1100 hours on Kenshi, but it’s hard to say it has plenty of content because there are massive areas of the world that has little in it. It’s the systems the game uses that enables the emergent gameplay and makes it so unique, so 2 people rarely have the same story to tell. There is no other game quite like it imo.
It’s a grindy ass game though and can sometimes feel like it’s taking ages to make any head way, definitely more for people who get an unhealthy sense of satisfaction from watching progress bars increase.
Also the fun factor drops off a cliff once you get high stats and the danger of the world mostly disappears, it’s a game where the journey is the fun part as there is no real destination. I just start a new game when I get to this point.
I got 108 hours out of it, and honestly will give it another bunch at some point when I dig more into mods. It’s an awesome game.
I saw a game that came out last year called Outward that looks pretty good, and a lot of reviewers put it down as the best co-op game ever made. I only mention this because you talk of playing with your friend quite a lot.
Star Sector is also definitely worth a look if you ever get time, it’s not on Steam though.
I’m also really looking forward to Dwarf Fortress, one of the devs brought a video out of it’s current state last week if you haven’t seen it.
I think I hate the art style of Outward, but yea, its on the list for when its on a big sale because of all the glowing co-op reviews.