yeo if you see this, and I know Insert Credit is on your radar so you might, keep on rockin man
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I had a hunch. I had a hunch that Shiren 5, even though I own it on Switch and Steam, would be best on Vita. And I was right. I bought a used copy and have been playing it regularly on Vita. I love the d-pad of the Vita and the size of it. Steam Deck and Switch are so honking big. Remember when handhelds were portable???
Playing Shiren 5 on Vita reminded me how much I love the Vita. Itās a weird library but beautiful device and quite a lot of hidden gems on there.
Shiren 5 is a lot gentler than Shiren 6, which has me a bit shook up. Did I get good? No. Itās just easier at the outset.
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Oh heck. How did I not know about this series. This is a reason that I come here. Iām woefully uneducated on obscure games. I just found where Iāve stored my vita too. It even has a working 64gb card in it.
Dang it, now I gotta go back to the game store.
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Yeah Shiren 5 on vita isnāt available digitally (vita digital purchases still work if you have money in PSN wallet which can be loaded up via the website).
Hereās my pitch on Shiren and other Mystery Dungeon games: the best parts of JRPGs distilled into shorter, dynamic runs. Items and equipment and levels and a lil grinding. Stylish art. Bosses. Itās SO good. Especially if you no longer have 50+ hours for every JRPG you want to play.
Also, pots. So many pots.
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From a distance it sure seems like my kind of game. The memory card was an aside. I was just surprised that I hadnāt already sold it out it failed. Iām going to try to get a physical copy. Itās about the same price as on switch
Is the final firmware a little janky for anyone else? I fired it up and played some games but the touch screen function was not working well and it crashed once at the main menu. It could be that mine is failing too.
Ugh I found the vita but the cable wasnāt with it. Instead it was with Soviet has and lapel pins and an unknown cable. It might be for a zune. It is not for a zine or an iPod.
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Finished the demo of The Hundred Line (yes, I continued). It surprised me that it had the same effect as Metaphor, in the sense that I didnāt like at all what the game wanted me to do at the beginning, but luckily things kept getting better, since the mechanics have gotten more interesting and the battles have the sense of being more complicated than what it appears to be during the demo.
Also, you can ākillā your characters by doing a last resort, which is a kind of an ultimate before your character dies once it gets down to 5 or less HP (and it gives you bonus points for that).
Now I donāt know. Maybe Iāll try Tiny Gardenās demo next.
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I adore Shiren and also Shiren on Vita! Running through the 16-bit styled town hubs is a delight. Fast scooting through rooms is what the Vita dpad was made for. I only wish the dialogue portraits more matched the illustrated character art, but ah well.
@Chekonte
Hope you give the series a try! Great combo of enemy gimmicks and mechanical discovery.
If you die in the dungeon on a particularly good run, you can generate a password for someone else to attempt to come down and revive you. No internet connection needed. Happy to run some rescue requests!
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It has been a while and I have played some video games.
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I rolled credits on Scenario 1 Linda Cube English Fan Translation. I was completely engrossed - the openness of the game design, itās unique concept and take on monster collecting, and small details that I personally enjoy that make the world feel more lived in (I love having bank accounts where you gain interest + going to a shopping centre to by small appliances for you ark that donāt do anything). I might take a short break before I tackle Scenario B proper - I understand that you start from scratch but itās a completely different story. Anyone know roughly how long it takes to complete Scenario B & C?
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Iāve been lagging behind on my bedtime games. I finished reading Terminal Boredom Stories Izumi Suzuki and the Gogo Monster manga by Tayo Matsumoto (Iād be surprised if Omori wasnāt inspired by this). Iāve recently acquired a Playstation Portal and have played around with the Urban Myth Dissolution Center. The game is fine - I like the premise but Iām not 100 percent sold on this game yet. It does the visual novel Ace Attorney thing where you know the answers and know where the story is going you just have to wait for the game to get there. I wrapped up the first story last night and the twist was - okay. Iāll hopefully wrap this up soon and maybe start on Citizen Sleeper 2 as my nighttime game.
As always sorry about the essay.
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Unusually for me, Iām playing a whole bunch of things at once.
Iām taking Silent Hill 2 pretty slowly, but I think Iām pretty near the end. I know itās been said a hundred times before, but the sound design in this game and the way it ties everything together is really something stupendous.
I resolved to play :The Longing: for an hour a week, but Iām finding myself playing a lot more, even in tiny bursts to set the Shade onto a task and then turn it off. For some reason, my mind wants to compare this game to something like Animal Crossing. There is that element of small activities and customizing a home. It feels like they occupy the same thought-space, but almost as direct opposites. Instead of a host of villagers wanting to interact with you, you are alone. Instead of infinite playtime and resources, everything is finite and will end. The vibes are off the chart. The Shade lives on meloncholy, gallows humor, and beautiful synth soundscapes. I love this game.
After finishing Guns of Fury, I decided to play through Metal Slug and Metal Slug X to scratch the itch that wasnāt quite hit.
I also decided to give Hades another shot after bouncing off it years ago. Iām really getting into it this time. Like, canāt put it down.
Oh, and Iām checking out Steam Next Fest demos for Haste: Broken Worlds, Mashina, Everhood 2, The First Berzerker Khazan, Moves of the Diamond Hand, and Wanderstop.
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B and C will be a bit longer but will probably āfeelā shorter or at least as short because you know where to go and how things work generally! Are you playing the PS1 or PCE one?
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I just played Atelier Ryza 1, my first Atelier game! I didnāt think theyād ever get me with one of these, but they really did it.
The big narrative conflict for the first half of the game being āWe used to hang out with this kid but now we do NOTā was really cool. The vibes all around were just nice? Like this is pleasant?
Apparently the combat is controversial for long time series fans, itās like FFX plus ATB. I had a decent time with it, sometimes iād just knock the difficulty down if i wanted to grind out some drops.
Thereās a fun balance of risk in the higher difficulties with building up the tactics gauge: normal attacks give you tactics points, which you can spend on skills. Or, if you max out the gauge, you can dump them all for a BIGGER gauge with a higher cap. You can do this up to five times, and youāll need to because not only is it basically your skill fuel but youāll also need more than the initial maximum to interrupt big boss moves. So youāre always juggling: do i auto attack for more skill fuel/bigger gauge? is it safe to dump gauge for a bigger gauge right now? will i need to interrupt soon? can i get enough gauge back for my next interrupt? Much more going on than i expected.
The character designs are, yknow. Feels unnecessary to me, and I guess this is a more restrained subseries in that department, so. By the end Iād grown pretty fond of the main trios designs though! Ryzas shorts have got to chafe so bad, but if they were normal length i think I wouldnāt feel too embarrassed to be seen playing this.
Anyways, had a good time! Gonna do Sophie 2 if I do another one.
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Well, i wasnāt able to resiste āBalatro Free on Gamepassā and yesā¦ it is a stupid addicting game. So addicting i went and for the first time ever bought a mobile game. So now i have it on my phone.
The pleasure of watching multipliers go up isā¦ incredible.
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Been playing the original Citizen Sleeper lately thanks to the prodding of the fine denizens of the There Are Too Many Games thread.
I didnāt know too much about it going in, except that it involved dice. I adore the game and the way you can play it in bite sized chunks. This is the first game in many years that I do pick up before bed and complete just a few cycles before sleeping.
This game really nails the feeling of having a shitty ass day under capitalism. You wake up, the looming threat of an upcoming debt or something much worse hanging over your head (displayed with a countdown timer even). You rolled 1s, 2s, and 3s on your four action dice (letās call it a bad nightās sleep). You would normally have six action dice but youāre too broke to buy life saving medicine you have to score from a scalper. You take a shift at the yard because youāre a decent welder but since youāre working off only a couple hours of sleep, you manage to injure yourself. Now you have to spend the daysā wages on patching yourself up for the next day. Repeat.
You end up finding small areas of respite from the crushing realities of life on the margins. Feeding the stray cat every day, hanging out with your equally out-of-luck friend, building something useful from scrap parts, etc.
The characters you meet all have believable self interested motives. You have to in order to survive. I feel often like Iām having my chain yanked, being used and/or lied to by multiple competing interests at once. Itās great tension building.
The dialogue has gotten a bit weird at points, like where my character will mention a friend of mine who I definitely have not met in-game yet. Or when a local Yatagan enforcer says that I just wouldnāt understand because I donāt know the Lowerend, when in face I do understand, I have a residence in the Lowerend, do volunteer work there, and frequent its establishments. A few such moments shook me out of my concentration and reminded me that yes, this is a video game. The vast majority of the time though, Citizen Sleeperās dialogue, character and world-building are fantastic and the game feels like a good novel mixed with a TTRPG.
Iāll post more thoughts as I work through it. Happy thereās a second one of these now.
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Hah, exactly the same for me. I remember asking my dad to get me Golden Sun and I didnāt know the sequel was the current one out. He came home and pulled the first game, which he got from the pawn shop, out of his jacket. Happy accident since I donāt think it was retailing anymore and I ended up getting to play both.
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I should probably play Golden Sun someday! Iām not exactly sure how I managed to never play it, since I was and am a big RPG fan. My guess is I probably missed the ever-narrowing window of it being on shelves for some reason and then just never came across it.
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I see and yeah that makes sense. There was a lot of aimless wandering around exploring caves in my first session but it didnāt take too long to get used to things. I wasnāt too sure how to end my first session either - like I could access the ark but I didnāt finish the story and collect all 30 animals.
But yeah Iām playing the PS1 version on a hacked PlayStation mini. I think it came out on Saturn as well? It would be cool to own a copy but itās pretty expensive.
I tried the game for a couple hours and really disliked my experience. Between not knowing where to go and getting killed and unable to revive my dog(s), it was just needlessly frustrating. Was I missing something?
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So glad more people are checking out Citizen Sleeper. Please let us know what you think after youāve finished it!
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If youāve played a couple of hours of it and didnāt vibe with it then Iād say itās just not for you. I didnāt mind wandering around because I was rather charmed by the world.
Scenario A acts as a tutorial - they give you plenty of time to collect monsters and complete the story. I canāt recall exactly what happened early on in the game but Iām pretty sure the voicemail systems helps guide you through the game objectives wise.
I did get stuck maybe once or twice but I relied on this letās play/guide Linda Cube [LindaĀ³] to push me in the right direction.
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