Stellaris Archives - Shards of Imagination

Stellaris – Federations DLC first impressions

March 21, 2020March 21, 2020 by Rakuno

Last Tuesday saw the release of the Federations DLC for Stellaris. While others have been eagerly awaiting for the the release of other games I’ve been waiting for this DLC. And for good reasons too, as they not only they completely revamped the whole Federations system but they also made all aspects of diplomacy a lot more interesting. Plus a lot of other interesting bunch of stuff as par for the course. 🙂

But even though I knew everything that was coming with this DLC there were still a few things that confused me at first but I think I am starting to understand how they work.

Games I’ve been playing – February 2020

March 1, 2020March 1, 2020 by Rakuno

February certainly felt like a busy month. I think part of it was because of all the Valentine’s events going on in online games. The other part was because despite my best intentions I ended up going into “MUST PLAY ALL THE GAMES!” mode near the end of the month.

That kind of crazy feeling might be settling down though and I might be getting back to a more manageable number of games to play. On the other hand this month has the release of a pretty good DLC for Stellaris and I believe Animal Crossing: New Horizons as well. Maybe even other games I am forgetting about. All of those might throw me into “MUST PLAY ALL THE GAMES!” territory again.

Oh, well. I will worry about that bridge when I have to cross it. For now these are the games I’ve been playing:

Games I’ve been playing – December 2019

February 1, 2020January 1, 2020 by Rakuno

Happy new year!

The last few months of last year were a bit of a blur for me. December in particular I am not even entirely sure of the games I actually played and which ones I thought I played. So I will just stick to the ones I am absolutely sure I played for this post.

One of the things I wanted to do for December was to finish some games that I was close to the end. Another was to get some easy trophies/achievements I was missing to finally move on from them. In the end I was only able to achieve it with Nier: Automata. I guess this gives me some thing to look forward in the beginning of the year.

Anyway, enough rambling, let’s get on with this!

UPDATE: And I just remembered one game I forgot to include the first time. I put it at the end of the list since I don’t have enough to say about it for a whole new post. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Favorite games of the decade – Part 3

December 31, 2019December 31, 2019 by Rakuno

This will be my last list covering my favorite games of the last decade. Again these will be all PC games. In case you missed the other ones, you can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here. For convenience let me just copy and paste my criteria for this list:

First I am sticking only to games that I actually finished. Or at least finished one route if it has multiple story routes. Otherwise this list would be much bigger.

Secondly, I am not sticking to any particular number of games or ranking them. This is just the ones I can remember from the top of my head and they are all special in my heart for different reasons.

Lastly, this is my personal list. Yours will surely be different. In fact, if you made a blog post like this feel free to link it in the comments below or if you don’t have a blog of your own feel free to write down your list there. ?

Ok. Let’s talk about the games now!

Games I’ve been playing – November 2019

December 1, 2019December 1, 2019 by Rakuno

After recovering somewhat from my depression on October I began this month with the intention of playing ALL THE GAMES! … which didn’t last for long as I my plans got disrupted by the Ishgardian Restoration in Final Fantasy XIV and that sweet, sweet craft XP. But that also didn’t last as long as I thought it would and I end up going back to some other games I wanted to play.

In the end I played a lot of games but I didn’t feel like I played enough of them. In fact I barely touched some of them but I will mention them here anyway least I forget my current thoughts about these games.

With all that said, these are the games I’ve been playing this past month:

My reasons to replay games

August 23, 2019 by Rakuno

This is post #13 for Blaugust 2019

Over at the Dating Sims On The Holodeck, TheRoyalFamily wrote an interesting post about Replaying Games. It is was just an answer to a question from a post from Kim of Later Levels about if people replay a game immediately after finishing it.

Although I’d like to say my answer was like TheRoyalFamily and that I did, indeed, replay a game immediately after finishing it I can’t say with 100% conviction that I did and which games.

I can at least say what are my reasons to replay a game though…. which come to think about it might be universal. But who knows, maybe they aren’t and maybe there are people with different motivations out there!

Anyway, this is what usually motivates me to play a game again from the start, after finishing it:

Games I’ve been playing – May 2019

June 1, 2019 by Rakuno

Another month that at the same time felt long and too short at the same time. I guess in this case it is because I finally sorted some real life things I have been putting off for a long time and because I didn’t play all the games I wanted to (isn’t that always the case?) due to tiredness and overall terrible mood.

This month should be pretty busy in terms of game releases so maybe this pattern will change. For now this is what I’ve been playing:

First impressions Stellaris

May 15, 2019 by Rakuno

Stellaris is one of those games I kept wanting to give a try but wasn’t sure if I would enjoy it. The reason for that is because it is developed by the same Paradox, the same company responsible for Crusader Kings 2. Now I love Crusader Kings 2 but that game has a very steep learning curve right from the start. My fear was that Stellaris would be the same and for a game like that I just need to be in the right mindset.

Since Steam had a free weekend for Stellaris I decided that this would be the time to find out if it was a game I wanted to play or not. After playing it through most of the weekend I can safely say: yes, I love the game. And yes, I bought it and all the DLCs. 🙂