I haven‘t been playing many games lately, but I’ve enjoyed the little time I've spent with the games I have.
Played the first quest of the first campaign in _Lord of the Rings: Adventure Card Game_. There are pre-built decks but I've been building my own because it's so fun. I like the process of discovering card synergies, incorporating them into my deck, and going to test them out. It's also fun to put famous characters together in a deck, in a fanfic sort of way.
Someone pointed out to me that the game is similar to turn based RPGs, but the ones on ps1 that stretched the complexity of the battles. Each deck has three heroes that start the game in play. Each hero has abilities above and beyond regular cards, and their specific abilities often work well in combination with other cards you can put in your deck. I take an action, then Suaron takes an action, and we go until neither one of us can take any more actions that round. Everything resets and we start again. If all three heroes die you lose. Abstractly it plays out similarly to a turn based battle, it's just that the cards in my hand end up being the hero abilities... kinda.
I played the _Harvestella_ demo. Well, most of it. I will definitely finish. I really like it so far with some caveats. Hopefully the demo is built around introducing the story, because having a story beat to get through every morning and only getting to my crops at noon was frustrating. The tone is alternating maudlin and absurd-silly, which I find charming. So far there's always been an "advance the story" quest marker waiting for me at all times I'm in control, leading to that classic JRPG tension of "the world's in danger but I really need to fish rn." It's dumb but I think that tension is pretty funny and often makes maudlin or overly sentimental stories go down easier for me, so I actually like that it's there. I do wonder if the whole game will be like this.
About two weeks ago I picked up a Series X as a birthday present to myself. Really enjoying the system, especially the controller. Everything about the system just feels sturdy and responsive.
The first game I decided to play was Nier Replicant. I finished a standard play through last night. I can appreciate why so many people love the game, but I just didn't like it nearly as much as I was prepared to. The music is great and the characters were solid, I especially liked Weiss. My biggest gripe is that the game design was straight up hostile frequently. The game knew it was wasting time and relished it. I'm a weirdo who doesn't mind backtracking in games, but Nier made me grow to loathe it. At one point I needlessly backtrack a couple times between two areas to complete a necessary quest and Weiss says something like, "For once can't a quest be completed in the vicinity of the quest giver?" It's a slightly funny moment, but not much of a payoff for the hassle.
Nier falls into that ideal 7/10 category for me. Interesting, fun enough game but has warts. Can I even call them warts though if they're not unintentional flaws? Too many tests of patience I should probably say instead.
At the moment, since sadly I‘m stuck on mobile for now all I’ve been playing are emulators (mostly wrestling games) and a handful of mobile games, such as a TABS clone (that actually looks and plays like TABS called “Fun Battle Simulator”, I also recently started playing “Head Boxing” (basically boxing with Mortal Kombat‘s X-RAY attacks and Pocket Fighter Mini Mix’s supers, yeah they‘re a bit goofy at times), and I gotta say, for being a mobile game, it’s pretty epic.
Also got into playing "Gladihoppers" (another mobile game, but I mostly just watch it for the AI vs AI fights, love me some AI vs AI stuff, and yeah I know "why don't you just watch SaltyBet or play MUGEN... 1) SaltyBet shows a lot of matches I don't care about. 2) MUGEN doesn't run on Android, at least not good anyways).
And lastly, also on mobile, I've bought all the Mat Dickie (MDickie) games a long while back, so things like "Wrestling Revolution" and "Wrestling Empire" or even "Hard Time"... I'm aware these are technically "bad" games because they just outright goofy and nothing makes sense, but something about them just hits that wrestling itch of mine, which I also play a LOT of N64 to scratch that itch.
So yeah, that's all the beans spilled... uhh, trying to learn a few SNES sumo games, and some others, but since I don't speak Japanese, navigating menus is rough.
I think I‘ve been burning myself out trying to 100% Splatoon 3’s hero mode, and you don‘t even have to do every level with every weapon class anymore (they won’t let you!).
currently i'm playing a few games, but the main one i am focusing on is 13 sentinels: aegis rim!
genuinely one of the best video games i've ever played. it's very much in the lineage of games like 428 shibuya scramble eve burst error, yu-no: a girl who chants love at the bound of this world, etc. it's also got this whole RTS battle system part that feels a bit superfluous, but is actually quite fun and well done so it doesn't matter.
i could not even begin to tell you what this game is about. i may never be able to speak about this game to anyone who has not played it. it feels like an anime adaptation of a pynchon novel. i also love all the characters, and there's some surprisingly great bisexual and gender-nonconforming characters that really made me happy.
also, because it's a vanillaware game, it's absolutely gorgeous. it screenshots amazingly, obviously, but it also looks fantastic in motion with a great blend of traditional 2d animation and 2d skeletal/paper doll animation. i'm actually blown away that this is a vanillaware game, because they've never made anything even remotely like this before and they completely knocked it out of the park.
the writing and translation are fantastic, too. it feels like a game attempting to capture everything anyone has ever liked about anime, and it succeeds brilliantly. in doing so it also captures a substantial portion of everything anyone has ever liked about anything.
Someone recommended that I try Gato Roboto (which has been on my to play list for a while) so I picked it up for several hours last night that basically melted away until it was much later than I thought. It‘s got its issues of course– I think it misses opportunities in service of maintaining the monochrome look– but it’s an excellent example of a pared-down metroidvania and a bunch of fun while it lasts. And the cat is of course cute.
Other nice aspects: the controls feel quite good, it's a relatively small world for one of these games but as a result it doesn't feel like you've got to travel through 5000 rooms whenever you have to backtrack (and this is a major thing to me at least-- I'm really seeing it clearly after finishing all three GBA Castlevanias, which somehow feel short for a post SOTN Castlevania but also filled with uninteresting, crufty rooms that you have to run through over and over), and the sound design is quite nice. I'm not sure it will ever end up on my top-whatever games list, but it's nice and fun and refreshingly concise.
Oh, and also-- something I haven't seen any mention of in reading up on the game (spoiler is probably not necessary since you can see this in review videos but I'll do it anyway): >!the underwater parts, where the kitty gets a submarine, play appealingly close to the sub/plane levels in Super Mario Land, and given the monochrome aesthetic, I think it's almost certain it was on purpose, which I love! Control here is even more spot on than in the rest of the game, and has a feel of how you want SML to have played.!<
@“Syzygy”#p85427 oh i should have been more specific, i did mean gameplay wise and not visually, obviously 13 sentinels builds on their typical house art style.
honestly, i don't think odin sphere and muaramasa are all *that* similar to 13 sentinels. it's not like, the most surprising thing in the world, but for a studio that had mostly made action rpg beat em ups a visual novel/rts is *pretty* far away.
@“cass”#p85432 i never played it, but grimgrimoire is an rts by vanillaware for the ps2. you might be into it. my impression is it's just a straight ahead fantasy rts though.
edit: just looked it up, and there's a remaster of _grimgrimoire_ for ps4 and switch, an english localization coming next year, out now in japan.
I'm so stoked for that remaster and continue to pray every day that Mursmasa Rebirth and its DLC gets put out on a more accessible platform(you can pirate it of course but when that Vita store goes away ugh). Man I love that game.
The only game I can get to play on my MC2SIO is Legend of Kay (2005). So be it, it’s actually not that bad.
It’s a German game set in a furry medieval China where you play as a tough cat (@穴’s thread about tough cats sent me on a google hunt for tough video game cats and this is where that led me) named Kay whose cat village is under occupation by gorrillas and rats. The music is pleasant and the comic book cutscenes are slick! Nice art, whoever you were!! (It was Henrik Fetz.)
Kay controls like a sixth gen action adventure protagonist and has a double jump from the jump. You can drift race boars. The game has a lot of tutorials in it.
The English voice acting was bad so I switched to French and had a cartoony time with it. Would have loved an undub to put it into German but that’s not gonna happen. Spanish is also available on the NTSC version.
Also available on a ton of other platforms, including the DS.
This game got a physical anniversary release for the Switch a few years ago. Was this a beloved game in Europe? I’m pretty sure I’d never heard of it until today.
I’m on the water level in Returnal now having just defeated the snow level. I have also completed forest level, desert level, machine tower level, and forest sequel level.
I started playing a bunch of games and demos, but the Game I got the most into it is Lost Odyssey, and let me tell you: as a JRPG is fine, although a bit dated in some senses and with a plot that‘s sometimes dull, but, while being good overall, I feel we’ve been robbed of an incredibly JRPG where you are an immortal and also a secondary character going places just by looking at the dream contents.
currently working to 100% The Longing. absolutely have no shame about reading through the wiki to find everything there is to find in the game. now i'm just going to sit in my little home sweet hole until the end*.
