Apologies to anyone who‘s already been subjected to my unstoppable gushing on Twitter, but I started Crayon Shin-chan: Ora to Hakase no Natsuyasumi this morning and they put DINOSAURS in my Boku no Natsuyasumi and I absolutely could not be happier right now, it’s like the gaming gods answered a prayer I didn't even dare to whisper to myself:
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@“Kimimi”#p37578 That looks so beautiful… I cant wait until my japanese is good enough as to be able to play this game and the boku no natsuyasumi series
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navigating some of the environments an absolute pain
prepare yourself for deliberately alienating controls in a visual novel of all things wrt to silver case lol
(great game imo though)
@“yeso”#p37588 tbh that sounds great, looking forward to it
Started playing Yakuza: Like a Dragon again - I quit 10 hours in earlier this year (not because of the game, just wasn't in the mood).
I'm really enjoying it but man does it front-load a LOT of exposition. The first two hours are mostly cutscenes! All interesting stuff though.
The battle system is pretty fun. I got lucky with some random drops and my equipment is fairly strong so it's not been that challenging. I will say the mix of Yakuza and JRPG means there's quite a lot of busy work and sidestories to do, which is fine but can feel overwhelming.
Played OMORI. Enjoyed my time and will be coming back to see some stuff I missed, but I had perhaps too high expectations after seeing the insanely positive steam reviews. Mainly, the story didn't grab me as hard as it seems to have other people (even though I did tear up at some point) and the combat could be way better.
Going deeper in the combat (this will make no sense if you haven't played): Emotions sound cool but since the 3 people in the party that apply them are all decent attackers, you might as well just use the basic attack on the enemies and the battle will probably end faster. On bosses, the play will always be getting into a "type advantage" and keeping it there. Figuring out how to get there as fast as possible is fun, though.
The concept of follow-up attacks is amazing. I especially love how they level up and start to do different stuff later. I just wish you could use more of them, maybe after every attack but reduced effect? Maybe as a reward for an action minigame in the style of Paper Mario or Mother 3? Having to not use them to save up for Release Energy also does not help.
I know this game is meant to be more of a casual thing, but I think the battles could be good as a nightmarish complex game. I can only dream.
Heavy story spoilers:
||I got the best ending! Thank god. Some of the other ones are horrifying. I will do the Hikikomori* route next time I play and try to explore all of the dream world. Really liked the horror aspect of Something appearing occasionally, like in the mirrors.
*I did not realize that's where the name OMORI comes from until reading about it after playing, even though I noted the Yume NIkki similarities very early on. I let myself down :( ||
Overall I recommend it, just don't expect to be challenged mechanically. Didn't even mention the beautiful artwork and the music, but that's obvious,
I also played [Venineth](https://store.steampowered.com/app/976500/Venineth/), a marble puzzle platformer! The vibes here are incredible. I appreciate the game's refusal to use text and letting you turn off the robot that points to where to go, it makes exploring be as chill as you want to. I think this game is a weird case where the middle is the best; the early levels are a bit short and not too interesting visually imo and it can be hard to find your way around some of the last ones.
For more thoughts, I leave you with Errant Signal's video which is what made me aware of the game in the first place.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0NAWIG8Cvg
@"Gaagaagiins"#p35816 [Prestige Tree](https://jacorb90.me/Prestige-Tree/index.html) is one of the better ones despite being obtusely abstracted right from the very beginning.
[upl-image-preview url=//i.imgur.com/Pp6eCgJ.png] Thanks for the brain junk food!
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@“Snowdecahedron”#p37652 Gaagaagiins Prestige Tree is one of the better ones despite being obtusely abstracted right from the very beginning.
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Thanks for the brain junk food!
Nice............. I liked the sort of puzzle box aspect of this one.
13 hours of co op dark souls 2 in a couple days. first time playing it since 2013. first time playing scholar of the first sin. much less depressing with a good buddy to play with. 
Unlocked the job system in Yakuza 7… I got a love/hate relationship with these. Never liked the feeling of getting weaker because I switched to a job I've got no experience with, but I love the customization and different attacks. Job systems always make want to grind them out ASAP haha.
I played The Witness for like an hour and decided I hated it and released myself from thoughts. While I won‘t pretend it it’s not kind of impressive how many iterations of it there are, that One puzzle is not good enough to be the only gameplay in the game, especially in the sense of how the only reward you really get for solving one of The Puzzle is either concentrated pretentiousness in spoken word form, or another one of The Puzzle
Also, don't worry, I was able to… acquire a “refund,” for my “legally acquired licence to play videogame The Witness”
I picked up the myst collection on steam a little while back and have been enjoying working my way through that series. Really wonderful games, under-appreciated I think
@“Gaagaagiins”#p37958
Hmm it’s tricky to discuss this without spoiling the most interesting part of the game but, if you have played for about an hour or so, have you understood the “trick” yet?
I am assuming here that you started the game without any knowledge of the mystery behind the game. There is something about the island that The Witness wants you to understand. It’s definitely not just a game about puzzle panels. I’d say depending on your sense of observation, you’ll understand it between the first and third hour of the game.
My main criticism about The Witness would be that understanding the secret of the island is the climax of the game, and that you are then stuck with about 20 to 40 further hours of puzzle panels that never really give you the same endorphine kick, but I’d vouch for the game that it’s definitely worth staying with The Witness for at least a couple hours just to find out what the game is really about.
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I have been playing Crayon Shin-Chan Ora to Hakase no Natsuyasumi (on Switch). There is a button dedicated to showing Shin-chan’s butt, as there should be.
I have been playing Metroid Fusion and Metroid Zero Mission (on an actual GBA). I am not a huge fan of Super Metroid, mainly because of its controls that would have you believe the game was developed by Vic Tokai. So it’s pretty impressive how both GBA games improved on the controls with two fewer buttons.
I have been playing Tengai Makyō II (on the PC Engine Mini). Felt a rush of nostalgia after mentioning the game somewhere on this forum. Probably about two hours in? Kabuki has just joined me. The script size and cultural references make it very tricky but I really hope this game gets translated someday so more people can enjoy it.
@“Gaagaagiins”#p37958 I think I agree with chazumaru (||I actually don‘t know what secret they’re talking about, and that's impressive||) but I‘d say the #1 secret to enjoying The Witness (or at least my #1 tip for you, judging by the sound of your gripes) is to forget it has anything to do with “John” “Breeze”. I don’t think the video and audio clips are the only (or even the true) rewards for completing the puzzles (and would also say I don‘t think all of them are pretentious, though that’s not really something I can argue). On the other hand it‘s not worth forcing yourself through (if anything at all could be said to be worth that). If you are interested in following up on it I’d say don't feel bad about hoisting the colours and plundering some booty yo ho yo ho.
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In preparation for the [August 1st Insert Credit Reckoning](https://forums.insertcredit.com/d/923-alert-deadline-approaches-the-2021-forumsinsertcreditcom-video-game-poll) ("Insercreckoning" for short) I've been playing Metroid Prime 2, which I played only once in 2011. I remember liking it more than Prime 1 for what I thought were denser puzzles and more challenging/interesting combat (common enemies _and_ bosses).
It's also been a while since I've played Prime 1, so I can't say for sure whether these things I thought were better about 2 really are or not, but I'm enjoying myself all the same. Ten years ago I didn't really notice that Prime 2 also largely confines play to one area at a time—you can complete all of Agon Wastes without going back to Temple Grounds, and ||almost|| all of Torvus Bog without going to AW or TG. I like this quality about it, I enjoy keeping one area (and its dark world counterpart) in my head to solve as a single set of puzzles/item locations. Maybe I'm tricking myself somehow but it seems like keeping it all localized to one area allows the design to demand more mental work from the player (in a way that's not tedious), which makes it more satisfying to me. I remember (perhaps wrongly) a sense of figuring things out in Prime 1—not single-room puzzles, but like "oh, I need to go to location X to use the new item I just got so I can do Y which will allow me to access Z"—and then spending a great deal of time just going from place to place (impeded later in the game by [Chozo ghosts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cWbLagjxbA)).
I love Prime 1, I'm talking it down to myself in order to make choosing one over the other easier.
Prime 2 isn't perfect, though. ||It does break this rule it seemingly establishes: at some point in Torvus Bog you have to get the seeker missiles, which are in... _not_ Torvus Bog! They're in Temple Grounds, and the only indication of this is that the only way to leave TB is through a super missile door (you get the super missiles about an hour into TB). But because I didn't expect I would have to leave TB, I never went and checked that out. I'd encountered basically no major amount of friction in the game up to that point, which made it more jarring, made me think I did something wrong. I putzed around TB for twenty or thirty minutes before giving up and turning on the in-game hint system (which I had been playing without), at which point it told me to go back to Temple Grounds.|| I figured it out from there, but don't know how much longer it would have taken me to investigate in that direction if I hadn't turned on hints. Feels frustrating.
EDIT Oh, and one other stupid thing: ||In the dark Torvus temple you have to scan these three locks to raise a big stone ring at the bottom of the central chamber. When you raise the third one, though, there's no way (that I could figure out) to get back to the save room up top, and I couldn't restore all my energy before fighting the Alpha Blogg boss down below. I died and lost like thirty minutes of progress. It did only take me twelve minutes to get back to where I was, but still. Annoying.||
Also the Dark Suit looks cool.
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@“captain”#p35624 Oh and I found my DS charger!
@“captain”#p37966
@“chazumaru”#p37962
@“Gaagaagiins”#p37958
I enjoyed my time with The Witness, but I have an affinity for puzzle games and don't mind spending time with a game that is just iterations on one puzzle theme. See: my hundreds of hours across all the Picross games.
and @"captain"#258 , (big witness spoiler: ||they are talking about the environmental puzzles surely, where you rotate your viewpoint _just so_ and a puzzle line appears in the world rather than the normal panels||)
@“rejj”#p37968 Oh yeah, that‘s probably it. ||I guess in that case I would disagree that that’s the climax of the game, and that that‘s what it’s “about” in a general sense, but it's the kind of game where everyone (who likes it) has their own favorite thing about it.||
@“yeso”#p37588 Gotta love the game tutorials explaining convoluted mechanics that have no use outside said tutorial.
i‘ve been playing the original dragon quest. just decided to fire it up one day out of curiosity but have gotten to level 8. i enjoy how explicit the numbers game is, like finally amassing enough gold to buy the iron axe has me killing some enemies in one hit, so they never hit me and sap my HP, allowing me to stay out on grinding runs longer and collect more gold faster, etc. on the whole i just enjoy how consequential every action feels, every step, knowing that you’re one away from walking into a skeleton who might kill you. i actually just got destroyed by a dragon in a cave out of nowhere. a real palpable sense of danger and almost loneliness that i think is not really possible to replicate on a modern machine.
i've gotten lost a lot so have been drawing some shitty maps which i will post in the DQ thread
@“connrrr”#p37450 I am surprised to hear someone say Gen V is the best. I‘ve definitely heard that sentiment before, but it just didn’t grab me at all. I honestly thought it looked pretty ugly, almost like they were trying to replicate the gray streets of NYC a little too well. I didn't like that many of the new mons, and I thought the battle animations were hideous. A friend of mine got me into this fan made Pokémon MMO that I am started in Unova, which I thought was obligatory. Needless to say, it feels like a slog to get through Unova a third time
Yes, I played White 1 AND 2 Even though it's my least favorite gen. And yes I sunk easily HUNDREDS of hours into each because I was trying to breed for stats. And YES my opinion is highly subjective and probably wrong and influenced by the fact that I was playing primarily Pokémon White when most of my friends who were into P-mon graduated hs ahead of me AND when I mistakenly left my 3ds with almost all my games (including a physical version of Cave Story 3D :((( ) in a Cleveland hotel on a marching band field trip.