Thanks @kyleprocrastinations for the recommendations. Usually I’m not a tactics game player but in the spirit of trying something new I’ll at least give them a try! I have at least two games on the go at the same time, so having a handheld one will be a nice little experience.
I think this new experience shall be more documented in here The GBA appreciation thread
Thanks again all!
If you only play two other GBA games, the second one should be Mother 3.
Ah, ok. I still have not played one dangsntompa. I need to remedy that.
We had this game as well. One of the few times I’ve revisited a beloved childhood game and came away thinking wow. This is terrible.
So so so thrilled you finished and had the same sort of experience I did with the epilogue! My “WAIT WHAT?!” energy was off the charts hahaha
I followed a walkthrough religiously and it took i think 30 hours so you kinda sorta doubled that time
The “happy” endings aren’t, I don’t think, “worth” it unless you’re jonesing for more
I went kinda dark on here because of work and a weekend away. I had planned on getting started on The Last Story, but i got sidetracked HARD. I ended up playing Alan Wake Remastered, both DLCs, American Nightmare and Control AWE DLC. I got so into the Alan Wake stuff while playing all of that and listening to Resonant Arc’s podcast on the first game.
This has led me to finally play Alan Wake 2! I just finished the first chapter and I love it so far. It immediatley hooks into all of the other Remedy games in a way that i thought was absurd, fun and definitely intentional. I’m excited to see where it goes.
After that, I’m thinking about actually playing Quantum Break before doing the Alan Wake 2 DLC. Since one of them is playing as literal Shawn Ashmore for some reason. Anyone played Quantum Break in recent memory? I’m curious what people think of it now, when it doesn’t have all the “selling Xbox One consoles” pressure laid on it.
I finished my second Princess Maker 2 run. This time I started as La Dame du Lac.
This time, I went all in on combat early on. I started bulking La Dame up on farm jobs. I earned an early auspicious visit from Valkyria, who gave me combat skill. She also did a lot more to explore the various Errantry maps, including finding a couple of mercenaries and opening every chest she could see. Soon, La Dame was even being challenged by random people on the street.
After that, La Dame won the Harvest Festival’s combat tournament. This would turn into a recurring feat, and I would sell the extra swords never sell the swords because then someone notices and I get personally shamed for it.
By the time La Dame was 13 she was developed enough that I could diversify her stats, and I started boosting everything else, especially Faith. She maxed several things, and she kept getting marriage offers from this man (which I kept rejecting). But you can see the stats I ended up with there.
What was the end result? Novelist. I guess all that time beating monsters and the like tilted to writing because she kept taking Poetry classes and won the painting tournament.
Anyway, good show. Maybe next time I’ll actually remember to talk to the prince all the time. I’ll also lay off the Artistry to see what happens when it isn’t the highest stat.
Wow, what a wholesome occupation for the world’s strongest warrior.
And they even have my Chihuahua in the game
Already picked up a bowl of hot stew and presumably put it in my pocket. A g some of a good rpg. Oh man, and a whole roasted chicken. This game keeps getting better. I’m always relieved when a game is true to the absurd roots of what a video game is.
I’ve done two “runs” so far in Fading Afternoon. One ended with a Takeshi Kitano reference which I found charming, the other saw me die of natural causes.
It’s a very cool game and I want to keep playing it to see what else it has to offer, but I’m a little hesitant to restart again as it seems the first third of each run offers little variety, though I could be wrong.
This game and all of Yeo’s games (from the little I’ve played) deserve a prime seat at the table of any “are video games art?” discussion, especially because of the friction the game design itself introduces. Most of this is intentional in the game’s laissez faire approach to progression and guidance, some of this is unintentional due with the clunkiness and bugs that come from an admirably small development team, while other friction may come from the very form of video games themselves. It makes me want to compare the notion of “gameplay” to something like the “grammar” of a novel. On the one hand, those things are insignificant to the delivery of the overall project. On the other hand, they are the overall project.
Having typed all that out, I can see myself giving it another go or two despite the tedium that awaits. As I said, it’s a very cool game. It makes me want to watch movies and make a game of my own, which is always a cool feeling.
I have been waiting for an ARPG to get its hooks in me that isn’t an fromsoft game and I think I’ve found one. I’ve had a lot of Franchisimo over souls games. I’ve genuinely held the belief that that they made the greatest games of the genre since demon’s souls and that might be true. But, it’s been to my detriment. I haven’t been been able to really get into other ones. Elders scrolls and Fallout seem so locked into the past that they haven’t been able to move forward. I suspect that we haven’t seen a new one because there might be no practical way to make a game like it while keeping all the garbage that make it feel very old. Not having that stuff will piss off a lot of people. I don’t need to pick up everything. It was neat when morrowind came out but it just became an inventory nightmare. Where you have to drop half your inventory just to make it back to town. It’s not fun when you press the wrong button and steal something and have to reload a save drum 30 minutes ago. It ducks to have a game so large that you can’t make interesting and bespoke areas. It ducks that open world design makes enemy placement and level design feel like theme taken a back seat to volume. Ask these things suck and you can’t have an elder scrolls game with out them.
I haven’t played much Avowed so don’t take my words for it. But the beginning of this game feels like how elder scrolls might consider moving forward. Combat is still a little ropey but it’s still good enough. There’s plenty of little treats to find and secrets to uncover but you can’t pick up every plate and open every door. I think I’m in this for the long haul. I might even get a physical copy once they drop to 20 or so. I’m so glad to have soothing I want to see unfold.
Also this is why that animal reminded me of my dog. What a guy what a goblin
I have not played one of his games. I’d there one I should start with. Also, I don’t know Japanese well enough to have any business playing a game in that language
I think friends of ringo ishikawa (the other I’ve played) and fading afternoon are the ones to play first. They’re two sides of the same coin I believe, where you either play a teenage delinquent (ishikawa) or a dying old yakuza (fading) and choose how to spend your days.
And the developer is Russian, actually! Like many of us, I think he is just really enamored with yakuza type media and finds it a good vehicle to tell a story, not to mention the aesthetic of the setting. Probably another discussion to be had there.
How curious! I’m actually more interested now. I will check that out. It can be very fun to see how other cultures take on other cultures. Sounds like a good thing to play on a handheld
yeah I think release order is a reasonable way to go. The middle game Arrest of a Stone Buddha is set in France though and it’s a take on Jean-Pierre Melville rather than yakuza films.
I’ve been playing this deck builder type game called The Bazaar that is in beta. Never heard of it before, but one of my friends gave me a free key he had. It’s pretty enjoyable so far and very addictive in a Slay the Spire “one more” kind of way.
The basic setup is that you have 10 spots arranged left to right on the board, and you try to assemble the best combination of cards you can muster to place in those 10 spots. Different cards have different abilities, damage type and synergies, etc. and the cards come in small, medium and large sizes that occupy 1-3 spots on the board respectively. The only game I’ve played that is fairly similar is Balatro, specifically arranging your joker cards in Balatro where you arranged you cards to utilize synergies, that’s similar to The Bazaar’s gameplay style.
The gameplay alternates between battles, which are a set things up and watch it go kind of affair and town activities. Some of the battles are against preconfigured enemies that are always the same, but at the end of each in-game day you fight a battle against the ghost(not spooky ghost, like racing game ghost) of another player’s setup from that point in their run. The town activities are just a series of 3 different fairly interesting choices. For instance you might find yourself deciding whether you want to go to the shop in search of new cards/upgrades or get a stat buff at the restaurant, or possibly go to a wizard to learn a new skill(passives that apply to your cards.)
A couple complaints. Don’t care for the art style that is aping Hearthstone. Also, the people who made this game are some absolute maniacs - you have to access the game through the Tempo Launcher. They made an entire, empty-ass launcher for one game. Despite those annoyances, like I said it’s a pretty enjoyable game thus far.
That’s right—that sounds awesome to me.
I’m not super plugged in, but I also really like the developers general response to the success of his games (or perceived lack thereof). Some might call it unprofessional, I call it the mark of a true auteur.
Yeah, Yeo and team rule. One of the few devs I follow on stuff. Cool to see a clip of co-op beat em up testing, and then the next vid is yeo himself getting his ass kicked in boxing which leads to a solitaire mini game clip
Oh god, too many games. I’ve only recently dipped my toes into deck builders after resisting them for most of my life, ever since my friends got into Magic. I played inscryption because it seemed like a game trying to subvert the genre but the dam has started to crack.
Oh, no, the HearthStone exbros are spreading out!
It’s interesting to have a mixture between a card game a la Slay the Spire and a pseudoRPG structure in which you accumulate events and experience and becoming able to make a build.
Also, the dev is an ex-pro player of HearthStone.
