Well, I was planning to Medieval Dynasty on PS5, with a friend, but due to PSN outage, couldn’t do that. So, went back to playing Tomb Raider
Played quite a bit of Rise of the Tomb Raider, mostly focused on main story, though did any side stuff I came across, without going out of the way to search for all of them.
Not much new to say about it. Story seems to be nearing end, but I can be often wrong about these, so let’s see. Unless Medieval Dynasty took too much of time, would try to finish this over the weekend.
Started Metroid Prime: Remastered, playing this as my primary game.
It’s fun to play as Samus Arun in a 3D / First Person game. Game is very good, with the usual Nintendo polish, though it does feel dated in some aspects, mainly the map. There is no way to mark anything in the map, and it only shows you doors, so if you come across some blocked or unreachable passage, you can forget where it was. There are multiple such places that I remember seeing somewhere but now that I have the upgrades required, I don’t know where they were.
This also means, it’s not always clear where to go next.
Another thing is that doors require different weapons to open, it makes sense for the first time, but you need to that everytime, so when going back and forth, you often have to keep changing your weapons to open door, then change it to fight the enemies, then change it again to open the next door. It’s not a big deal, but still a minor complaint.
That aside, I am enjoying the game, the visuals, sound and gameplay itself is good. I have gotten all visors and weapons (got the last one just a little while ago), there are probably still some other stuff left to get.
I hope they release Prime 2 and 3 remastered too. Would love to play the whole trilogy before Prime 4 drops.
So, what about all you? What have you been playing?
Finished Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist!
What an amazing game. A massive improvement in almost all areas over Ender Lilies, which was already a damn good metroidvania.
I love most things about it, starting with near perfection in all technical aspects - flawless controls, beautiful visuals and music, and stable 60fps performance on the Switch. Exploration is an absolute joy with the main movement upgrades (dash and double-jump) getting unlocked early in the game alongside with a well designed open world where you almost always have multiple paths to explore.
Another great thing is how this game respects your time, making backtracking as painless as possible. Fast travel between save points is unlocked early and the map lets you know when a room was fully explored so you can try to find as much as possible in your first run though. The map is also quite detailed including information on whether or not you have the abilities required to open a specific door and even the basic platform layout of each room, making it easy to tell if you are ready to traverse it or not.
Combat is really good with a lot of different loadouts to experiment with, though the balance between combat abilities is uneven with some abilities being far better than others. And my one big issue with the game is also related to combat - I hate the system of having a weak protagonist that dies in 2-3 hits combined with a bunch of healing items. But I know that’s popular among games in this genre, and I knew what I was getting into when I purchased this one so I can’t complain much about it.
I highly recommend this game, easy 9/10 and a must-play for fans of this genre.
Playing Fantasian Neo Dimension!
Resumed this one after finishing Ender Magnolia. Doing good progress and I’m still having fun with it, but I have to pace myself to avoid getting burnt due to the high random battle frequency and difficulty on bosses, so I’ve been aiming for shorter sessions doing only 1-2 quests.
Since the second half is mostly open-world it’s hard to say how far I am in the game. I do have the “Communication Network” area unlocked which seems to be the path to the final boss, but it’s recommending level 50 which is 5 or so above what I am right now, so I guess I should still go exploring and sidequesting more in preparation for it.
Playing Rabi-Ribi!
Current side-game, a very cute metroidvania which comes with high praise from fans of the genre. Only played a little bit and finished the prologue since I’m focused on Fantasian right now.
It’s always nice when a game respects your time. And it’s great to see the advances and improvements people are making in the genre. Would love to (eventually) play both Ender games.
I have heard about Rabi-Ribi. Just looking at the screenshots I may have ignored the game, but have heard good things about it. They made another similar game after it TEVI, and are apparently working on a direct sequel to Rabi-Ribi now.
Double-posting since I forgot to add this to my initial post, but I replayed Metroid Prime when the Switch port was released and I was quite impressed. Yeah, it has some outdated aspects like the map, but it’s kinda crazy how well it plays considering it’s more than 20 years old. The port is also really impressive, one of the best looking games on the console while also running smoothly at 60FPS.
But my favorite thing about the game is the atmosphere. It nails perfectly the feeling of a lonely explorer in a wild, dangerous planet.
Agreed, even with the issues the game is a joy to play. That is why it makes me excited for next games in the series!
Definitely. And while writing that I was thinking that main I issue I have with Fantasian is that a lot of things in the second half of the game feel designed in a way that wastes your time.
High random battle frequency with low rewards, gimmicky bosses which you often have to fight twice, constant need to shuffle around in menus rebuilding your party with different skills/equipments to be able to work around those gimmicks.