What We Played - April 18, 2017

It's that time again, time to recollect what we've been playing for the past week, and an opportunity to hear from you. We don't just play MMOs—we would be pretty boring if we did—and these weekly posts are our opportunity to share just how far our are horizon's stretch ( a little bit).

Let us know in the comments below what you've been playing, especially if you have some top-notch recommendations. 2017, so far, is off to an excellent start and I still have plenty of catching up to do.

Matt - I didn't get quite as much time as I'd like to play games this week due to going out of town for several days. I continued my journey back into the world of The Elder Scrolls Online, completing several full questlines in Elden Root related to the construction of the Khajiit Embassy. I played a bit of Record of Lodoss War Online outside of the stream and I'm finding myself oddly entertained by the classic gameplay, but simultaneously continuously frustrated with the randomness involved in hunting golden monsters. I've also been playing Yooka-Laylee and I've found it to be far better than I thought I would, but there are a few key issues I have with it, such as the fact that it is constantly breaking the fourth wall. Regardless, it's definitely a great addition to the genre and I'm glad that someone is making higher profile collectathons again, even if it's not the true Banjo-Kazooie sequel that we've all wanted for two decades now.

Omer - This week most of my free time has been occupied by Persona 5, I'm about 24 hours in so far and really enjoying the game. Persona 5 is one of the main reasons I bought a PS4 and it was 100% worth. I've continued to play PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and actually won 3 games in a row last night with the dream team (me + Shurelya, ChaosShield, and Whichi). Played a bit more of Master x Master over the last few days too and really love the core gameplay.

Sean - My gametime has been spent bouncing between a motley library of titles. i tried out the Kickstarter-funded Shardbound: a tile-based tactics game crossed with CCGs. It's clean and entertaining, and I wish it had a larger playerbase; then again I'm not playing at the moment so maybe I shouldn't expect it. Also, headed into the vibrant 16-bit Kingdom of Loot: game's got more charm than Faust. It's a delightful-looking setting but needs a bit more depth to make it in the long-run and I'm rooting for it to succeed.

Erhan - Back to Path of Exile this week. I am closing in on level 80 on my Witch, but I'm getting an itch to start an alt. I’m thinking of making a Ranger, but the thought of playing through the 4 Acts three times each is quite daunting. Maybe I’ll wait until the 3.0 Expansion that will add 6 new acts and eliminate the current difficulty mode system shared by games like Diablo 2 and 3. Besides that, I did enjoy our Grindfest game this week. Record of Lodoss War Online is an old school isometric MMORPG with grind based leveling. It’s not revolutionary, but the single server is quite active which shows there are still many players looking for a traditional MMORPG.