What game are you currently playing?

[Solister]

Quite a few:

• LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga

Revisiting my childhood, despite the game is more different from LEGO SW: I and II than I expected. I'm about 80% complete but seriously considering to give up as now it just becomes more and more level replay (which I already played every level 2 times already). Still, great game and pretty nostalgic. I don't really miss the Sequels part despite being very excited for the new version.

• Mini Metro

This one is a fun story. But doing a recap of the last few days. The game went free for mobile around the time the pandemic was just beginning. Recently, I've been very lazy and spending lots of time scrolling Facebook and playing mobile games and I got addicted to it. I already bought the game for PC about 2 years ago, so now I'm spending some minutes of the day playing it (It's a quick game, like 10/20 min at most).

• Yoot Tower

Ah, the nostalgia. This one is a very classic for me. Despite playing it, once now and never since 2015, I finally decided to dedicate some time and for the first time since then I've built a decent tower.

I'm also currently thinking on installing a The Sims game, I'm just not sure which one: 1 is nostalgic, 2 is the best one from those I have and 4 is abandoned on my Origin account (and have some cool Star Wars stuff).

[Thrippa]

Sims 2 was definitely the best of the series to me, although 3 had some really good bits.  Sims 4 . . . well I didn't even start playing until a bunch of stuff had been put back in and didn't manage even fifty hours - total - before abandoning it.  I don't think I had a game with less than 50 hours in 2, and the only short games in 3 were ones started specifically for a specific achievement.  I just preferred being able to play every house/family in turn and playing my own story plots which was what 2 excelled at.

[BlueFlare]

Pokemon Crystal on my 3DS and  beat Jasmine's gym yesterday. Having so much with this game. I can't stand the current state of Pokemon games so I'm back to some older games.

[Salamander]

Collection of SaGa Final Fantasy Legend (Switch) - Exhausted by overlong games and increasingly jaded by slow, padded modern presentation, I had a real hankering for bite-size, retro RPGs (see also the post immediately above, concerning Pokemon Crystal; now there's a game I still feel at home with).  Well, lo and behold, the SaGa RPG series, currently undergoing something of a rerelease renaissance on the Switch, releases this collection of its first three titles from the GameBoy years, originally brought west under the "Final Fantasy Legend" title.  If the SaGa series is known for being anything, it's being oddball and experimental; these early titles feature heavy character customisation, weapon durability, multiple playable races, stat-based progression, and a lot of hidden mechanics and general obtuseness of a kind which may originally have been explained in a manual but which is now explained on GameFAQs.  All three titles are set in science fantasy worlds where you're as likely to encounter robots as monsters, and where multiple world maps per game are threatened by the interference of god-like figures.  I've been gearing up to have a serious dive into the SaGa series for years - and where better to start than the beginning?  I'll go through each title separately; I actually originally sandwiched them around the latter two titles in this post, but we'll take them in order for now.  Overall, though, I had a blast - without having to spend fifty or a hundred hours on each title for a change!

The Final Fantasy Legend - This game is so janky.  This is very early GameBoy here, and it shows; graphical glitches are everywhere, the presentation is super-basic, you're thrown into a world with character permadeath and an ultra-limited inventory and unclear progression mechanics and very little direction.  It's kind of great!  Deeply experimental, with a vaguely metafictional plot, this is like very little else I've played.  Most significantly, you have a choice between three races: Humans, who gain stats by consuming purchased capsules and equipping items; mutants, which gain stats based on use and randomly gain and lose powerful abilities; and monsters, which come with pre-set stats and abilities and evolve by eating the meat of different monsters.

Final Fantasy Legend II - This title seems to be most people's favourite, and I can see why, as it's basically like a polished-up and refined version of the previous title.  The presentation is an immediate step up, the script is along similar lines but with much greater humour and a certain degree of camp, there are many more worlds and the plot goes one step deeper than last time.  The races have been switched up rather: Humans now gain stats through use, mutants do so less predictably but gain and lose abilities more predictably, monsters are about the same, and robots gain stats entirely through equipping items, which they can equip any permutation of regardless of sense (five axes and three helmets, why not?).  The customisability and variability is pretty deep for a GameBoy game, and for what it is, it has a surprisingly satisfying ending.

Final Fantasy Legend III - This is the odd-one-out game in being actually much more conventional, probably from being made by a different team entirely.  Weapon durability and stat-based development are out, making the game considerably less unique but safer and more predictable.  Characters are all pre-set and have story roles at the outset (er, but for the rest of the game only the lead character matters remotely); you're given two humans, who are better with most weapons, and two mutants, who are better at casting magic.  However, the evolution mechanic is considerably evolved; you can become cyborgs (with equipment-based stats) and then robots (magicless but powered up through stat capsules) by installing robot parts, or beasts (with powerful martial arts) and then monsters (with high stats and strong abilities but which cannot use equipment) by eating monster meat - or vice-versa!  So there's still quite a bit of character customisation, and much of the endgame equipment has to be pieced together by choice from various parts found in optional areas, so there is still variability.  The plot sees you travelling across multiple worlds and time periods in your cool time-travelling plane (years before Chrono Trigger!), and the presentation has been stepped up sufficiently to allow, gasp, multiple enemies of the same type to appear on screen at once!  Technically the best game, but lacking the freedom of earlier titles, this is still pretty fun.

Touhou Luna Nights (Switch) - One of the many unofficially official Touhou Project games, this is a mini-Metroidvania made by a small team somewhat well-regarded for producing such titles.  As a Touhou game, it's perfectly accessible to outsiders; I know little about the series, but the plot is a basic one in which you run into one character after another from the Scarlet Devil stable and fight them, and there's one surprisingly clever twist - but overall it's an excuse plot which you need pay little attention to if you don't want to.  As a Metroidvania, I actually found it somewhat disappointing, though; while there are some branching paths, there is almost always a "right" way to go, and backtracking is made awkward by limited and poor placement of warp points, and a map which isn't designed to draw attention to locations you couldn't completely explore on the first go-around - and in general, the game could really have been a linear stage-based title with very few concessions.  The in-game economy seems somewhat broken, too: There is a shop offering a number of consumables and upgrades, but whenever I had the opportunity to go back to the shop I tended to find I had only just not enough to buy any one upgrade, and by the very, true, secret end of the game I still had only just enough money to have bought every single one of them; had I purchased even one consumable, I would have had to grind to make up my remaining purchases.  The game has a level-up system, but given that HP, MP, and most prominent stats are increased only by finding upgrades in the world, it's not clear what levelling up actually does and again one feels it could probably have been removed.  Fortunately, the actual gameplay is pretty tight!  Dancing among bullet-flinging enemies, fluidly platforming, using optional weapons - it's all good clean fun, and the showstopper mechanic whereby you stop time and fling countless knives at your foe simply never gets old; bosses seem overwhelming at first but are highly learnable and reward patience and careful observation.  The pixel art is gorgeous, too.  So, good - but I'm afraid to say that I probably didn't need to play it.

Cyber-Shadow (Switch) - I've never played a Ninja Gaiden game or anything resembling it, which seems to be regarded as the major influence on this title; but, based on which, I'd probably like them.  You play as a robot ninja in a surprisingly engaging science fantasy plot involving the combination of advanced technology with mystical arts (I also think there's a certain amount of MegaMan X/Zero influence on the plot, come to that).  The retro graphics are distinctive and well-realised, and new abilities are doled out at an appropriate rate for you to keep pace.  The odd upgrade is hidden here and there, with some you can only return to later - and in fact, in much the same way as Touhou Luna Nights has a lot in common with a stage-based title, this stage-based title ends up looking a little bit like a Metroidvania towards the end.  The gameplay is pretty fun overall, speedy and with a sense of strength in your arm; I sense speedrunners might get the most out of it.  Some people appear to report the game being very hard; I'm usually the first to fall into that trap, frankly (see my thousands of deaths in Celeste), but I actually beat it with few problems, this being once again a game with highly learnable bosses which reward patience and care (even the three-stage final boss ended up being very reasonable and certainly beatable without taking damage).  Overall, a bit of a gamble for me but better than expected, and I look forward to any possible sequel which may or may not have been hinted at in a post-credits sequence.

Coming up next: More SaGa - and, for the first time in a while, a few visual novels.

[WhoYouDontThinkIAm]

Final Fantasy 15 and Mobile Suit Gundam Battle Operation 2.

[Strider_Xhaiden]

At the moment, I'm playing Azur Lane on my phone, Smash Ultimate on my Switch, and I'm close to finishing Kamen Rider: Memory of Heroez on my PS4.

[Azure Blue Tori]

Picked up Trails of the Sky on a whim. I could say that it's because I heard good things about its political intrigue world building, or because it has that conditional turn-based battle system that I enjoyed in Final Fantasy X for the strategy it added, but only ever was a thing for a short time period around FFX's release. But really, my primary reason is more shallow.

You know how so many anime or video games have this cute girl featured prominently on the cover, only for the real protagonist to be some generic dude with a backstory we've all heard a thousand times? I did a double take when I realized that yes, Estelle really is the leading lady this time. And she's not some fanservice-y bimbo, but someone actually relatable, likeable, and refreshingly sincere. That kind of thing shouldn't be as rare as it is, but I'm glad to finally realize why so many people love her.

[Guest]

I began Pokemon Quest. I just hate the whole "free to play" mechanic though, but otherwise sorta like it? There's one part where the difficulty just spikes right up and it takes forever to get new Pokemon.

[KHCast]

Bravely Default 2. And holy shit that prologue was long. My mouth dropped when I saw the title finally and then chapter 1. Never played the first game, but I can tell this is gonna be a game I need to put down and come back to a lot, because it is pretty damn difficult even the first few bosses and mini boss enemies 

[Simasuu]

I'm playing Heroes Might & Magic 3 against AI and I'm getting my shit pushed in there.

[Wraith]

Thoughts on Jak and Daxter: The Precurser Legacy:

 

Spoiler

I think this game's main strength is it's sense of scale. Almost every other game in it's genre segments it's world into little, gamey bubbles but in Jak they've connected everything and kept progress gating to a minimum. This means that there's legitimate hours of uninterrupted exploration, which feels great. The world isn't that remarkable in terms of art or lore, but the fact that you get to experience it uninterrupted and at your own pace is a huge benefit to the game.

Another win is the animation, which is insane even by today standards. Jack smoothly transitions from movement into attacking and back to movement again in a way that's as satisfying to play as it is to watch. It encourages you to chain these actions together which is where most of the really fun high/long jump stuff is. The way Daxter struggles to keep up with it all is funny too. They gave him at least a couple of unique "clinging for dear life" animations for each move Jak has and it's fun to play around with.

Outside of that I think the game is a little bit anemic in most regards, but in some ways it accidentally wound up being to the game's benefit. The story is pretty uninteresting but the lack of cutscenes was refreshing inbetween playing Days Gone and Horizon. There's a lack of the variety you typically see in these types of games, with most objectives boiling down to "go get the power cell" or "go get the orbs to trade for the power cell" but at least it made it so you're playing with the core platforming mechanics for most of the game. At that point. The odd fishing minigame or vechicle section feels refreshing instead of like an undo interruption. It's clear that the game fell short of their vision for it(there are only 3 bosses and there's not really a rhythm to when they show up) but I didn't mind it that much in practice.

A more interesting world really would have brought the whole thing together though, even if more cutscenes wasn't really necessary. There just aren't that many memorable locales, setpieces and characters despite how much I was enjoying myself in the moment. There's a point where you wander into a village that's in the middle of being destroyed and I really didn't feel anything during it despite how awesome of a moment that is conceptually. I also...kinda forgot restoring Daxter was the goal until he started mentioning it toward the end, so the final decision to use the magical thing at the end to destroy the final boss instead didn't really hit for me. I like him better this way, and I don't care about literally anyone or anything else in this world, so...kind of a no brainer.

The bigger problems I had with it were all down to polish. There's some awkward collision detection that really wouldn't happen in any of the Crash games and some performance issues that seem exclusive to the PS4 version from what I can tell. There's also a lot of camera issues, though that's par for the course at this point in video game history.

It was fun though. I want another game like this with the exact same structure but with even less progress gating and a more interesting world. Jak II doesn't really seem like that game, but I'm excited to try it anyway.

 

[King Conne]

Yesterday, I played the three GOLDEN AXE games (bought on my X-box One via the Microsoft Store) published on the Megadrive (the first episode is the arcade version, great) and had a lot of fun!!...
So I bought ALTERED BEAST today... and have just finished it : it is also the arcade version!!...
And I had never realized that it was the same creator and that a certain monster was in both licences!!...

I really hope Dotemu (STREETS OF RAGE 4) will revive GOLDEN AXE soon (they said thay want to make new episodes of GOLDEN AXE and SHINOBI)!!...
That's what Tyris Flare looks like when Ben Fiquet from Dotemu draws her :

Ben Fiquet is the artist behind STREETS OF RAGE 4 and WONDERBOY : THE DRAGON's TRAP (new version)!!...

[Salamander]

Gnosia (Switch) - Thinking of this in the terms the game is often described - "anime Werewolf visual novel" - is not especially helpful.  After all, the Switch already has a more conventional iteration of that concept, the fun-but-falls-at-the-last-hurdle Raging Loop.  No, Gnosia is very different, possibly even unique, for reasons other than its extraordinarily varied character design, its phenomenally alien music, every other aspect of its presentation which sets it apart: The fact that it's an arcade visual novel.  Rather than being a linear or even a branching narrative, it's structured around randomised rounds of sci-fi Werewolf which take maybe fifteen minutes for you to win or lose, and then the whole thing resets.  (For all the jokes, maybe it really is more Among Us than Raging Loop.)

It's a bold conceit.  Time loops are a dime a dozen in visual novels, either encouraging you to play again and again to access other plot branches, or as a structural device to take you through repeated variations on the same storyline; but Gnosia is the first one to really sell the Groundhog Day loop to you as a player by truly making you experience it, over and over.  Because there is an overarching story here, with dozens of unique events scattered throughout the game (and to which you can be guided, but never pointed straight to, by a handy event finder); and even more than your goal is to win each round, your meta-goal, your roguelite goal, if you like, is to eke out more information about the other characters, to bring about unique sets of circumstances or meet special challenges.  It's the sort of thing most visual novels tell but don't show - again, see Raging Loop for an example.  The protagonist, or usually their co-lead, has gone through loop after loop after loop, battling to make something new happen; but they don't make you jump through the hoops yourself.  Gnosia does, and it's great.  Risky, too; it doesn't work unless the agony is there.  Because you will be going through endless failed rounds and filler rounds, rounds where you tried something new and it didn't pay off, or failed to rise to a challenge, or just no new events seemed to spawn.  Round after round, wondering what you're meant to be doing, where you need to turn to search for the truth...  The tutorial alone is a dozen or so loops long!  It's a good thing, then, that the standard gameplay loop, the non-metanarrative, is darn fun too, playing Werewolf with as wild and weird a cast as any you're likely to meet, gradually honing your skills (which is to say, grinding experience points to upgrade them!), and, more importantly, learning about the way the characters tick.  Not all information is checkmarks on a spreadsheet.  This character is a bad liar, this character gives themselves away readily, this character won't normally work with this character - in a way, you're learning about them as people as much as you are about them as game constructs, too.

It seems to take most people between about a hundred and fifty and two hundred loops to gather all the information needed to complete the game.  So, is it worth it?  Heck yes.  Gnosia is a sci-fi with texture, its aesthetic helping to sell a world packed with weird and varied ideas - and perhaps some which shouldn't be so weird as they are; how many games do let you choose "non-binary" as your gender, after all?  But it sells the emotion, too.  At the end of the day, any game like this is really about the characters and the connections you make, and at the end, I was genuinely sad to be leaving these characters behind.  But I had a whale of a time with them, on this weird, looping adventure.  Gnosia is a highly unusual game, neither truly a visual novel nor a werewolf simulator.  Thank goodness for games which do something revolutionary.

Romancing SaGa 3 (Switch) - And speaking of revolutionary, here is a game I have been meaning to play for a long, long time.  Romancing Saga 3 is one of those legendary lost RPGs which never made it to the west the first time around; but after a successful remaster of the previous title in the series, this game (and, subsequently, more of the series since!) was given a new lease on life and a long-awaited localisation.  I'd heard this one was relatively easier to get into.  If that's true, well, emphasis on the "relatively".  The SaGa series does a lot differently.  You have eight different playable protagonists to choose from, and after a largely common introductory sequence, you get turned out into the world with little in the way of direction and are basically given leave to wander about as you please.  I've heard this game styled as a "SNES open-world game", and honestly that's not far wrong; you roam about, finding boat rides to new places, following leads to dungeons, completing sidequests, and for the longest time a larger goal than that seems nowhere to be found.  It's a frankly weird experience - not helped by a similarly weird set of mechanics, with no level-ups and fixed base stats, with improvements to HP, skill points, magic points and weapon proficiency coming at random, and ditto learning new moves.  Encounters scale with you (bosses, thankfully, do not), meaning that you can go almost anywhere in any order you choose; events and sidequests often have multiple outcomes, consequences unclear; items, moves, the whole shebang is unbelievably mysterious.  Frankly, I found it stressful.  Elusive mechanics and an elusive plot are a bit much for me simultaneously, and I spent a lot of time looking at guides.

But here's the thing: After a while, it clicked.  The gameplay loop started to solidify.  Hints to a wider plot and overarching objectives began to appear.  The mechanics started to click.  Sure, there was still a lot I didn't know, but did I need the guides?  Probably not.  (I don't regret looking at them, though.  I prefer a game to tell me how it works; it can be as hard as it likes if it does that.)  For all that much of the game seemed like meaningless meandering, be honest: What RPG isn't full of irrelevant sidequests?  Once you start to see the big picture, the pacing of plot-versus-sidequests becomes more controllable and more satisfying.  Indeed, there's actually rather more plot than I'd quite been prepared for, though much of it is still implied, or only hinted at.  Once I found my feet, the game ended up being more up-my-street than I'd imagined, and ultimately I don't regret a minute of my dozens of hours in the game, through to the last moments of the tough-as-nails final boss, which, like all the best ones, took everything I had and was won at literally the last move I could muster.  No, my only regret... is that playing this game to prepare me for more SaGa worked too well.  I'd originally intended to move forward to the recently remastered Saga Frontier; instead, I'm going back - to Romancing SaGa 2, the one they say really is hard...  Fingers crossed that the practice will have paid off.

Carrion (Switch) (Greatest Time of Year DLC) - For some reason, Carrion got DLC.  Christmas-themed DLC.  In April.  Well, why not?  It's a good game which has a certain amount of room to grow - and that's what this DLC does, adding a short, single-sitting mini-episode with fairy-lights and Christmas tunes and a new array of challenge rooms to sneak around.  Most importantly, there are a couple of new mechanics added to this installment: Electrical traps which can (of course) be turned against you or your enemies, and switches tied to the lifespans of particular antenna-waving foes.  Are these embellishments a sign that the developer is actively considering new ideas for a future installment?  Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but what matters it that this is a fun half an hour or so's extra gameplay from this cathartic alien murder spree, whatever it may bode for the future.

Coming up next: More of just about every one of my usual genres, from Metroidvanias to visual novels and RPGs - with a decided tilt towards the obscure...

[HPX]

I just finished Final Fantasy XV and I must admit that I had to force myself through the end.

Spoiler

 

It was my first real Final Fantasy outside of Ring of Fates and the III remake on the DS, neither of which I ever finished as a kid. I'm ultimately disappointed because it presents so many elements and gestures towards better mechanics and themes than it ever commits to.

Maybe it isn't fair to compare the two given the gap in time between them, but after having recently finished season 4 of Netflix's The Crown--which is perhaps some of the best drama I've ever seen--I couldn't help but feel left wanting by FFXV's frankly uncritical, more storybook approach to monarchy. None of the principal characters are intentionally flawed in particularly relatable or even despicable ways; I don't think the game is actually all that interested in what it means to be a king. There are peripheral gestures towards borders and the refugees they necessitate, with Cid having a falling out with King Regis years ago after he erected a wall around the crown city, leaving everyone outside the wall to fend for themselves against the rival faction. But this is only mentioned in one or two lines of dialogue and never actually explored.

The meeting with the First Secretary of Accordo in Altissia offered a real glimpse into a much more interesting and thematically committal game in which diplomacy is a key mechanic that changes Lucis's relationship with foreign countries and the state of the world at large. I loved the idea of being given dialogue options that would affect the outcome of an agreement with a neighboring power. I'm willing to bet that what's in the game likely has a fixed outcome no matter what dialogue options are chosen, but a more narratively focused epic like Mass Effect would have been an avenue with more leeway to explore a theme as complex and fraught as monarchy.

I'm also just baffled at the handling of character like Revus, who has legitimate reason to hate Noctis and what he represents, having been left behind by King Regis to be violently assimilated into the rival empire. To say nothing of his sick design, he was completely wasted on this game, showing up maybe two or three times in the entire game in scenes that just confused me as to what his actual motivations and feelings even were, before literally dying off-screen?

As a consequence of Noctis falling off a bridge? Was he just standing there, wrong place at the wrong time? Was he already dead? Am I supposed to even care?

It was around this point in the final hours that I felt the game was indicating to me that it had given up on itself and just wanted to get things over with. Revus was a character with so much potential, and having him as a permanent party member would have added some much needed color to the game. The same goes for Aranea, who is unfortunately only one of three or four female characters in what is otherwise a fairly miserable sausage-fest altogether.

On that note, I'd feel better about the core "royal retinue" if I felt any real, honest intimacy between them. The game thinks it presents scenes of characters growing closer to Noctis, but each one is always constrained by stifling norms of masculinity that keep them from saying what they mean, or embracing one another, or generally doing anything people who love each other would do to express their happiness, appreciation, or even hurt to one another. Instead, it's all endless ribbing, back-pats, and "you guys are the best." It's rather surprising, these characters having presumably been created by Tetsuya Nomura who, throughout the Kingdom Hearts games, was very interested and unafraid to tell stories about men loving men in a way that's earnest and relatable.

A character like Ardyn was done much better in Black Panther's Killmonger which, again--fair enough--came out two years later. But it's not as if that narrative was particularly groundbreaking or new. It's just another failure on this game's part to examine its pieces and understand their inherent strengths.

 

All in all, I respect Final Fantasy XV for making it out into the world in any capacity. It's a gorgeous game that ran like butter on my Series X; I adore the driving engine being 'a fantasy based on reality,' I only regret that it wasn't handled with more focus and aplomb.

Also the Leviathan bossfight offers a good glimpse at what a remade Sonic Adventure Perfect Chaos fight could look like

How is FFXV generally regarded by Final Fantasy fans?

[BlueFlare]

On 4/6/2021 at 12:24 PM, Simasuu said:

I'm playing Heroes Might & Magic 3 against AI and I'm getting my shit pushed in there.

This game was pure gold for me and my friends for years. Should try this again some time.

[Bobnik]

Time to kinda revive this thread, because, while I'm not playing it right now, I recently finished Nier Replicant v.1.22474487139… (as in, got all endings). I'll start with the bad stuff first, cuz there's a couple important things:
1) The PC port is, again, kinda bad. There's supposed to be a 60fps cap again, but this time they wrongly capped it at 90 fps. This wouldn't be much of a problem if the physics weren't tied to the framerate, but they are and it leads to everything pretty much sped up. The game stutters pretty hard if something is happening with Steam input, it's implemented poorly. There are some graphics options, but no framerate limiter option, so you have to force it through your GPU's control panel...or download Kaldaien's Special K fan patch that pretty much fixes the issues with this port as well as allows you to run the game at higher framerates without breaking physics. That's how I've been playing it.
2) The side quests for the most part are kinda bad boring fetch quests.
3) Structurally not much has changed, which means the start is still slow and needs some time to really get going. It's not necessarily a negative for me, I found that portion to be pretty cozy, but might be a negative for people who don't like slower starts.

And that's it for negatives, because everything else is pretty sublime. The gameplay is simplistic, but very satisfying, which was probably one of the biggest selling points for this "version upgrade" for me, graphically it looks good - maybe not big boi AAA level of good, but it's so much better than the original game, the music is still outstanding and you can appreciate it more if you haven't heard the original tracks before playing the game, the dialogue is top-notch, the characters are very likable even if you think they wouldn't be, the story is probably one of the best in years (I know, it's technically an 11-year-old story, but still), the redone VA is outstanding - both Zach Aguilar and Ray Chase have done a great job portraying Young and Adult Protag, Liam O'Brien is still awesome as Grimoire Weiss, all NPCs are voiced and voiced very well, and of course, Laura Bailey as Kaine is still probably one of her best works. I even like the new/cut content they added to the game, which is rarely the case with these kinds of remasters/"version upgrades". Heck, you can easily see how it just jumps in quality whenever you get to the new content made for this specific version, it's kinda funny. I can't even say much more about the game without spoiling the story, I'll just say that playing through the game multiple times was worth it.

Also, since my brain has been on Square Enix wave for many months now, I guess I'll say this - no matter how shitty their business decisions are and how hard they've been struggling during the 7th (and probably most of 8th) gens of consoles, to me they probably have some of the most talented people working there. Yoko Taro, Yosuke Saito and their teams, Naoki Yoshida and his team, and yes, even Nomura and Kitase and their creative business unit brought me a lot of good gaming experience lately, and I guess that's what matters at the end of the day.

Now if only Square's actual business decisions wouldn't make me want to pull my hair out.

[Salamander]

Cathedral (Switch) - Throw a stone at the Switch eShop, and you'll hit a retro graphics Metroidvania.  What makes Cathedral stand out?  Well, it has a confident if not particularly inspired visual style, heavy on bold colours and readable designs.  The controls feel a little slippery and basic at first, but over time they grow on you.  Perhaps more to the point, it's that the game is substantial; and past the opening sequence quickly reveals a considerably wider scope than you might at first anticipate...  It's a game that gets a lot right.  The controls are precise.  There is a heavy emphasis on traditional platforming, which it pulls off well and with considerable variety.  The plot is somewhat mysterious, with a number of points which aren't spelled out to the player but which can be deduced.  It's big, too; big enough to have multiple towns, and a whole quest system to keep track of your objectives.  More importantly, it's a game that understands that a Metroidvania should have a ton of upgrades, and the game goes all out in this regard; for example, there are maybe half a dozen types of upgrade tied to your armour alone!

I should probably stop here to explain my theory that there are two types of Metroidvania.  There's your genuinely open game through which you can take completely different routes and in which two playthroughs may look very different; Hollow Knight, for instance.  And then there are Metroidvanias which are actually quite linear, just tied in such a complicated knot that it's effectively disguised; Metroid Fusion, for instance.  Cathedral is an example of the latter, with a right road that's set in stone.  However, it's good at giving you short-term choices (A is unlocked by first playing B, C, and D, but you can do those three in any order); and it's better at being absolutely stuffed with optionals, collectibles, and secrets.  That helps to make this a big, big game; perhaps too big, at times, with fast travel points scattered just a bit too far apart for backtracking through its challenging stages to be comfortable.  Further to that, it really is a challenging game; Cathedral is hard, with every major room chaining platforming challenges and puzzles - and enemies dealing a whacking great load of damage.  Much like Blasphemous, Cathedral provides you with health potions to top you up; less like Blasphemous, it is very much designed around using them, with lategame enemies and bosses frequently dealing well over half your health in a single swoop (and that's assuming you're fully upgraded!).  This is one respect in which the game actually feels a bit too hard; an upgrade which used your potions automatically on death, effectively turning them into multiple health bars, would have given a long way given how frequently you'll have to use them.  This is a particular issue in boss fights, which can have a lot going on or place you under fairly absurd pressures; there is a considerable emphasis on pattern-learning in bosses (and the odd puzzle even on top of that!), and each fight will gradually become more manageable as you learn the ropes... but you will die again and again.

Cathedral is a good game.  It falls short of greatness; I don't think it quite tops the vibe of an overgrown Flash game.  But it is very solidly decent, and I will cheerfully recommend it to any fan of the genre.

Abyss of the Sacrifice (Switch) - What attracts a person to a game like this?  Is it the lure of a visual novel about which nobody is talking?  Or is it the homely amateurishness it exudes?  Perhaps, in a strange way, it was fate; for only after buying this game did I realise it is actually by my old friends D3 Publisher and Intense Corp., who previously developed the Parascientific Escape trilogy on the 3DS eShop (which I enjoyed) and the early Switch title Escape Trick: 35 Fateful Enigmas (which I did not).  In doing a little background research for this review, incidentally, I determined that 35FE was, in fact, cobbled together from a pair of previously unlocalised DS games from 2007/8; Abyss Of The Sacrifice, meanwhile, is a port of a previously unlocalised 2010 PSP game.  In other words, the first D3/Intense games I played, the Parascientific Escape titles, were in fact their most recent; and both their Switch offerings were resurrected from over a decade ago!

For the present, though, the more important implication of this revelation is that AotS isn't just a visual novel; it's a visual novel and escape game - and, much like Parascientific Escape before it (which in retrospect inherits a great deal of AotS's DNA), is heavily inspired by the Kotaro Uchikoshi stable of games (though it's actually almost contemporaneous with the original 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors).  I'm reluctant to disclose much more than that, though, because as I said, part of what drew me to this game was its mystery box value; and indeed the game takes its time in explaining its premise.  What I should foreground, though, is that this is a chunky game; it tops 35FE to run to a total of 36 stages, for instance, each with one or sometimes several escape or "Search" sequences (the UI beats 35FE too).  Past the tutorial, stages are doled out broadly in lots of five, one for each of the five protagonists; but it's here that the game structure gets interesting.  Again, part of the puzzle of the game is just figuring out how the structure works; but suffice to say that there is a non-linear element, that sometimes playing stages in a particular order may affect the content of later stages, and that some stages may unlock (or lock!) certain other stages.  Although the game has a stage select, you're essentially building a custom route through the game; once you reach an ending, you unlock the ability to reset an earlier stage in your timeline to its point of completion, opening up your options again.  (You can't skip whole stages, but there is a well-judged text skip function for previously-read text, and previously-played escape sequences can also be skipped from the menu.)  It's quite an original way of structuring a visual novel, at least in my admittedly limited experience; the closest analogy I can think of is Zero Time Dilemma.

Unfortunately, this is where the flaws start to creep in.  Because so many stages have to make sense regardless of order played, most stages do not and cannot develop the overall storyline; instead they focus on developing the characters, with escapes frequently taking place in flashbacks or dreams.  When the order does start to matter in the late game of each route, however, it can be incredibly confusing to figure out what combinations of stages will change anything or unlock new possibilities.  The game has multiple endings, and while I found a few on my own, I did resort to a walkthrough to figure out what route to take for the remaining ones; I can figure out the logic in retrospect, but it's not really the sort of thing you could deduce in advance - it's a matter of trial and error.  It's also reportedly the case that you can't get the true ending without having first beaten all the other stages, but if so the game doesn't actually indicate this... which isn't great.  These same problems - baffling logic and an ultimate need to depend on walkthroughs - also extends to the game's escape sequences, which, while they start out strong, do grow increasingly challenging and obtuse in the later stages of the game.  As with 35 Fateful Enigmas, I ended up looking at walkthrough videos a lot, seeking out which perspectives I missed or seeking answers to puzzles so that I can reconstruct the logic backwards.  Some puzzle solutions I still don't understand.  It's worth noting that the game does have a built-in hint system... but it's incredibly inconsistent, with its hints ranging from outright giving you the answer to merely restating the premises of a problem.  The barebones translation frequently doesn't help - and doesn't always read as if it was composed with reference to the game itself, either.  Perhaps this is a controversial statement, but I feel that escape games in particular should always come not just with hints but with a built-in walkthrough.  This isn't a game about skill of execution; it's a game purely about understanding the designers' logic, and as a long-time escape game player, I can tell you that some people's mindsets just do not click.

...With that said, I actually enjoyed this game a lot - far more than 35 Fateful Enigmas.  It's original, it's experimental, it's genuinely stuffed with content; and if the writers' skill isn't equal to their ambition, if the art is distinctly amateurish, if the puzzle design is sometimes off-kilter... well, frankly, I'm far more inclined to be forgiving of what is clearly not a particularly professional outfit.  When it clicks, it clicks; as an overall package, the game is fun.  It also has a surprisingly satisfying and completely bonkers ending, and ending on a good note goes a long way.  I'd play another D3/Intense game, if they give me one.  Just... maybe they can actually make a new game again next time; or at least port over something a bit more recent.  How about a compilation of those intriguing-looking Dasshutsu Adventure games from the 3DS which never got localised?  There are about half a dozen of them!

[Cuz]

Final Fantasy Tactics (PS3: originally PS1) - been plugging away at this one for a month now, (took a bit of a hiatus as I got into sculpting), but I'm just about ready to dive back in. Tactics is one of a number of RPG's I've started a few times and trailed off and forgot about it.  That happens with me and meaty RPGs. I can't tell you how many times I've attempted FF6 at this point! This time I'm tackling Tactics rather unconventionally by following a speedrun route as a guide. I'll be missing out on some side content no doubt, like Cloud's cameo, but it makes for a pretty streamlined experience and helps insure that I reach the end before my attention span gets the better of me. That said, I did have to go off script for a moment when I lost track of an important unit in a sea of unconscious bodies... and suddenly someone the route kind of counted on was perma dead. Hahaha. Luckily it only took a mild bit of effort to get a replacement up to speed. Hopefully that won't come back to bite me later. 

[zackarybell]

Final Fantasy Legend III.

[JPunxR]

Single Player: I'm playing Banjo and Kazooie for the first time (Rare RePlay) and really fun. I've been holding his game back just cause I never been interested, now I kind of regret it cause ive been missing out. Pokemon HeartGold (first time playing) is on hold at the moment cause I'm kind of pokemon'd out from finished Pearl. YGO: Legacy of Duelists and I tried out Yakuza for a bit so this'll be fun.

Multiplayer: Just Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled. I don't play much multiplayer cause they seem, eh for me. 

[King Conne]

I'm playing ALEX KIDD IN MIRACLE WORLD DX and it's a really nice game!!...
It's a great idea to allow infinite lives because the game is very hard!!...
I had only played ALEX KIDD IN THE ENCHANTED CASTLE on my Megadrive decades ago so I discover the first game of the series with its remake and it's great!!...
Now SEGA, let's remake the Megadrive episode and keep on making new ALEX KIDD games!!...
I hope it will be successful enough to see Alex again...
I bought the "Signature Edition" and there are many things to please my eyes and my heart inside the box!!...

[HelenBaby]

I feel like this thread is the single most successful thing I've ever created, lol

Currently playing :

• Pacman 99
• Age of Calamity
• Tetris 99

Oh! Oh!

And I keep my older handhelds at my boyfriend's place. So I have something to do when he's faffing about (which is often). So during those times also playing :

• Theatrhythm : Curtain Call
• FFTA

[King Conne]

Still playing ALEX KIDD IN MIRACLE WORLD DX... did you notice that?!...

[Danj86]

I recently finished the campaign in Mario Golf Super Rush and it was fairly enjoyable but I do find myself in the same situation I was in when completing the campaign in Mario Tennis Aces. I don't know what else to do on the game. It lacks the variety of modes that Aces also lacked but was prevalent in the N64 and NCG versions. It just gets boring playing the same modes all the time, even though Speed Golf is pretty fun and hectic.

The story was a little weird. It did something surprising too but ultimately didn't really do anything with it. I'll go into a little detail in spoilers.

Spoiler

The story starts out as a normal rookie rising in the ranks type of tale with your chosen Mii. While strange weather patterns are foreshadowed, I didn't see that as significant until I plunge into suddenly saving the island from an evil snowman. Once the world saving stuff shows up, the tournament and ranking up plots totally disappear.

One surprising aspect was that the deity who informs you of the threat hails Bowser as the hero since the evil snowman's base happens to be the same location as Bowser's holiday home, when he is there, he has is much preferred fire and brimstone decorations all over but he has been mysteriously in a deep sleep for some time. Allowing the area to freeze over and crazy weather to occur all over.

Unfortunately, they don't really do anything with this. I assumed some sinister force was responsible for Bowser being in a sleep but no, you face the snowman after Mario was shoehorned into the plot and then taken out so the Mii can be the hero, you beat the Snowman, it turns out he can revive and then Bowser shows up. It was a little jarring and Mario being brought in to only get immediately captured could've been cut and nothing would change. Heck, Wario and Waluigi have more involvement in the plot and even come off as more heroic despite their obviously selfish reasons for doing so.

I guess he was treated that was as to keep him mute in a story, despite the story not having him as the protagonist?

And yeah, after that, the story just ends. You don't meet your fellow rookies who were seemingly being set up as rivals or play any final tournament in the now no longer frozen over Bowser course.

Also, this game game had unique named NPCs with unique appearances which the Paper Mario devs claim isn't allowed. The names were more like job descriptions like "Lob Master" for example and the outfit was a generic cloak with hoody but it's still better than fucking Toads everywhere!

I go back to Miitopia since they seem to add new random side quests each day and for some reasons, I'm compelled to try and get all those medals despite them seemingly giving nothing in return. I've completed the main campaign at least and was surprised how deep it was for a game that wasn't taking itself very seriously.

Since I never played the 3DS version, playing the Switch version was a whole new experience. I'm surprised about how much British slang is included in the writing. I generally only hear "I fancy a cuppa." in my neck of the woods. Localisers never really both adding unique accents or slang terms from other countries, except for those that localise Dragon Quest games.

And lastly, I've been playing the DLC of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. It's kinda nice that you have to unlock the content, rather than simply getting it straight up. Going back to the game might've been real brief if I didn't have to work to earn them. Even though some missions are a pain in the butt. lol

[Salamander]

Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan (3DS) (replay) - It's been over two years since Etrian Odyssey Nexus came out (granted that it took me a year to finish), and I am missing the series rather badly.  Sure, there are other dungeon crawlers, but in terms of mapping, atmosphere, and intricate character-building as a combination, there's simply nothing to compare... and so I've been getting a hankering for a replay.  Actually, more specifically I'd been thinking of replaying EOV with the classes I didn't use the first time; but then I figured that, so long as I'm replaying at all, I should go back to earliest 3DS title first, or else the later QOL developments would make it even harder to go back to.  More to the point, back then, I was a newcomer to Etrian Odyssey and had no idea what I was doing...  So, this was a chance to do it right.

And wow, was it refreshing to be back.  The later titles are more refined, but it's clear that this one got the budget, with a full-sized overworld to map as well, sailing about on multiple Z-levels in your airship, plotting your route not just within but between labyrinths.  The opening class selection is very limited; even in New Game+ you don't get to start out with the unlockable classes.  So I started out completely fresh, only swapping out the healer and tank classes from my original team for the slightly more interesting Runemaster and Dancer I hadn't used before - building up for a full-blooded Link-based party with a Landsknecht, Nightseeker, and Sniper.  It's an unbelievably satisfying set-up once it really gets going; once I started hitting the Master skill levels, then with a couple of turns of set-up bosses would simply be minced to pieces...  Result being that, with all said and done, this is now the only Etrian Odyssey title in which I've actually managed to beat the postgame superboss.  Granted, this is the title with an in-game version of making that boss easier, but it's still not trivial.

One thing that surprised me, though, going back to this title, is just how plotty it is.  It's stuffed with characters and settlements and interactions, something EOV was painfully lacking (Nexus can be forgiven for having to stretch its plot out over a ludicrous number of labyrinths).  I'm a reader, so this was right up my street; frankly, who needs the Untold games?  They may give you a characterised party, but there's more than enough plot in this game to go around.  That's probably my biggest hope for Etrian Odyssey Next Stage, when they finally scrape together enough staff to work on it (and with Persona 5 Royal and Shin Megami Tensei V more or less out of the way, I have to hope that Etrian is next on the list): That, as well as capturing everything that was already good about the series, they don't fall into the trap of making it too story-light.  I like systems, but narrative is a motivation too.  It's fantastic here, even if the overworld system apparently wasn't too popular with players overall; still, I hope Next Stage will try once again to be an evolutionary step, keeping what worked and trying to take it one step further.

Romancing SaGa 2 (Switch) - This is a fascinating, if rather intimidatingly experimental game.  The SaGa series, post-GameBoy, is one which heavily emphasises non-linearity in its storylines; in this title, you play as the emperor of a small country, expanding your empire across the world map whilst simultaneously fighting a generations-long battle against the evil Seven Heroes.  You select locations you can travel to, as limited by links on the world map or through other areas, explore, and pursue sidequests in the places you reach; and these typically resolve with you adding a new region to your empire, or unlocking a new unit, defeating one of the Seven Heroes, or acquiring some other tangible resource.  The directions you can take through the world at any one time are multiple, and so the order in which you will encounter events diverges increasingly between playthroughs.  Your party is made up of a personal selection of classes from among the conquered regions; and even the emperor themself is chosen from these classes - for after every few plot events you resolve, you'll undergo a sudden generation skip and have to choose a new heir to inherit the abilities of the previous ones.  There is no levelling up and your base stats do not grow, but your proficiency with weapons and magic increases with use, and new skills will emerge in battle or from investing in magic research; conversely, the more battles you fight, the harder the enemies you face become.  (Bosses are largely fixed, but the Seven Heroes generally have triggers which will cause them to become more dangerous the later you find them.)  Additionally, as the game continues, you'll be able to unlock and construct more facilities within your capital, invest in new weapon and armour upgrades, and so on.

It's a game with a lot of freedom!  But it's also a hard game that is sometimes not afraid to be punishing.  Sidequests often have multiple ways in which they can be resolved, but it's easy to stumble into a "wrong" way which will rob you of a new recruit or some other choice without you realising it's happening.  Furthermore, if you're partway through a sidequest but resolving another plot event causes a generation skip, that sidequest or elements of it will enter an irretrievable fail state.  Playable characters have Life Points which are reduced by one whenever they lose all HP (or are attacked whilst having zero HP), and die permanently when their LP reach zero; LP cannot be easily restored.  If your emperor loses all LP, or your whole party is knocked out, you'll encounter a forced generation skip.  And if you're unable to keep pace with new blacksmith items or equipment, it's possible for enemy difficulty to outpace you.  If you get far enough into the game, you'll also enter an endgame state in which no further generation skips are available, meaning it's a true game over if you lose all of your emperor's LP!

In reality, having played the game once now... it's not as bad as all that.  There are more safety nets in place for you than I thought, and so long as you play the game honestly, fighting the battles you come across, investigating new options, then you'll probably be fine.  I'm tending increasingly to find that the SaGa games are like this.  The trouble is, I generally feel like I only really become comfortable with each title in the endgame - or once I'm already done.  In a sense I feel like the best way to play them, at least for me, might be to replay them; but a second playthrough for a fifty-hour RPG is a big ask!  The general mysteriousness with which SaGa tends to approach its mechanics, which are rarely outright explained to you, is a part of this; a certain element of mystery is one thing, but in a game which is both lengthy and difficult then it just makes me anxious.  (It's my understanding that the most recent SaGa game is a bit better at this, though.)  Even so, ultimately I've finished each SaGa game I've played feeling pretty good about it; I just wish they weren't the sort of games I feel I can't play without a guide...

NEO: The World Ends With You (Switch) (demo) - Read here.

Coming up next: Famicom!  Metroidvania!  More SaGa!