Picard S1 was great. But then it was a character driven sci-fi drama that just happened to play in the Star Trek universe, while later seasons were essentially Star Trek. And I don’t like Star Trek (nor Wars for that matter).

Is Reacher S02 out now?

Didn’t even start yet, it’s under my “upcoming” subheading ;)

Love, Death & Robots

Some episodes fall flat, but there are a lot of really cool shorts in that series.

Fringe

Amazing show, watched it twice, once by myself and then later again with my wife.

Currently, we are rewatching Continuum. It’s decent, but not as good as I remember. There are quite some writing issues and logic sometimes goes out the window.

We watched 3 episodes of “The Old Man”, but stopped because it was too much of an action show. We might check out “Blue Eye Samurai” on Netflix, a bunch of people on a Metal Discord were loving it and the trailer seems okay.

Upcoming shows that we plan to watch once their respective seasons are done:

• Invincible, we will wait till the whole season is out, as it’s weirdly split.
• Vigil is returning for Season 2, typical slow British crime drama mystery show, with tons of well-known people because there are only like 50 or so British actors doing these shows ;)
• Fargo, slightly comedic seasonal crime drama anthology, is returning for a 5th season. The last 4 were amazing, so I have high hopes for this one as well.
• Slow Horses, an off beat spy drama about bad spies. Not a comedy, though it has its moments. 3rd seasons of a show that is very much character driven.
• For All Mankind S04, we only recently started watching it. The series feels a bit aimless, but has very strong acting and characters, which carries the often weak writing.
• Reacher S02 is easy watching, funny and over the top action.

Indeed. I haven’t seen him in anything since, love it.

I usually buy games for under 10, or kickstart them for more. This one’s pitch sounded awesome enough that I backed it on fig originally, and now bought the season pass ;)

It was painful ;) TB actually started as a mod, that was later with permission taken by Owlcat and improved for the enhanced edition. During the development, there was almost an even split between devs preferring TB and RTwP, and RTwP barely won. So with the mod having laid some groundwork and it being extremely popular, it was easier to pitch the addition.

And yeah, I’m an old school RPG fan, I love TB. I actually stopped playing RPGs just before RTwP became popular with the Infinity Engine games, and only returned to them with NWN2.

decided to start with Kingmaker

Yeah, it was a good idea, as usual, for the reasons you mentioned. I just wanted to shill the successor a bit just so you won’t skip it because some things with PF:KM irked you ;)

(I’m playing on the recommended difficulty for someone new to the Pathfinder system)

You are smarter than 90% of people playing the game ;) It’s crazy, their games have super detailed difficulty settings, and presets with explanations. And yet people go, play on the brutal because they like Dark Souls and then complain it’s too hard. It’s like there’s some mental health pandemic with gamers. /rant

but you can pretty comfortably win against

Besides the difficulty, TB vs RTwP also influence this. I play on Core (actual setting in WotR, requires manual changes for KM, essentially as close to tabletop as possible; then some mods to bring it even closer to TT), but a lot of fights I could not do with RTwP, but they become far easier once I play the game in the way the system was designed.

Ohhh, one of my favorite all-time games, only surpassed by the successor.

So first off: Wrath of the Righteous is far more approachable. Better tooltips, better tutorial (including a dynamic one that pops up when relevant), better interface. Just in case you feel like more pathfinder. Note that the powerlevel is far higher in WotR because of mythic powers.

Right after the short tutorial, I went to pick up some berries in a spider-infested cave, which wasn’t too bad, just that the spiders have poison that reduce your stats. I

Fun story: This encounter was heavily nerfed (twice actually, once shortly after release, and then overhauled a few months later). It used to be mandatory and much more brutal :D It literally made some people stop playing :D

Consumable items to remove them exist, but for some reason, drinking a potion can fail. I guess your character just spills everything over the floor.

Hah :D So essentially the potion is a spell in a bottle. Wait, not essentially. That’s what it is. It has a caster level that depends on the creator of the potion. So with that caster level when drinking it, the spell casts Remove Curse against the DC of the curse. And that is what can fail.

After those two experiences, like an hour into the prologue or act 1, I was ready to get fucked at every turn

Sounds like you didn’t encounter the overleveled undead random encounter on the western side ;) Owlcat generally overhauled quite a lot of the encounters to remove difficulty spikes.

My only other gripe with the game is the Kingdom Management.

That is a very common complaint. I liked it, and the time pressure it added. Though only for the first few hundreds of hours (1283h played in total, and without beta testing), later I did what you did.

Went back to wishlist it. I played the demo, but it was pretty buggy. The “Very positive” is encouraging.

I’m a bit in a not-yet-released slump. “Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous” gets a new DLC in late November, so not playing that until then. The same company releases their new game “Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader” in December, so I’m not playing the Beta until then. “Vagrus - The Riven Realm” gets a new DLC some time this year, so also waiting there. “Colony Ship” gets out of EA and releases November 9, so obviously not playing EA either.

I had enough of BG3 for now (finished it only twice, it’s not as captivating as the Pathfinder games) and will only eventually replay it with one of those “make it like actual D&D5” modpacks. Regarding D&D5, I should some time check if there are updated fan campaigns for Solasta that use the higher DLC level cap :D

I did plan to replay Wasteland 2, but that will take quite some time, and as I mentioned, upcoming releases.

So after telling you what I have not been playing, what I currently do play is alternate between my typical fallback games: Stellaris (a game I never once finished despite 1080h of time played) and Civ V with the amazing and mandatory Vox Populi mod.