Finished The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom!
Loved the game. There are some performance issues, but nothing major. And that’s pretty much the only issue with the game.
It’s not a very long game, but not a very short one either. Don’t know exactly how long it took me (It has only been 8 days, would need to wait 2 more days for hours to show up in profile), but I think it was somewhere around 20 to 30. And while I have explored every area and done pretty much all the side-quests I have come across, I saw total accessories online and I don’t even have over half of them, so there’s apparently many things I am missing.
Loved the gameplay, felt like a TotK lite. Echoes are fun, though if you find some OP echo (there are a few) they can help you blaze through most enemies, but even they have some limitations. Though, you have to go out of the way to find those. Other than fighting, they also help you traverse different areas, and different echoes can help you solve problems in different ways.
There are many “duplicates” though, that is different echoes that do similar things, but this just allows you to use the one you like. There are some echoes I didn’t use much, but my son liked them a lot and used them regularly.
Overall a very good game, though, I haven’t played most of the 2D Zeldas so I can’t stay where it stand with them.
So, just finished the game, one of the rare times where I have finished both what I am playing on PS and on Switch. Now what to start next? I have couple of options, will decide later tonight.
What about all of you? What have you been playing?
I dropped Baten Kaitos Origins. I hate to do it, but as I tweaked my deck more, combat just got more boring. I was curious, so I did some research: Apparently, the fanbase is split right down the middle. You’ll either say the combat is better than the first game’s in every single way or you’ll hate it. I cannot say anything good about it…
It also doesn’t help that the game quadrupled down on Quest Magnus, my least favorite part of the original game. Just lugging random things around that you think you might need when you can only carry a very limited amount of them annoyed me, but at least you mostly needed them for side quests. In the prequel, you also upgrade other cards with them, mix them together to get new ones and they affect your stats? Stop, I’m already dead!
I’ve been wanting to play this game for almost 20 years…
So I started Echoes of Wisdom instead. I didn’t think I’d play it so close to release, I wasn’t too hyped for it. But I quickly remembered that I absolutely love making enemies fight each other in any video game, so that’s a part I enjoy! I’m slightly disappointed at how much it’s taking from the modern Open World formula, I was hoping the 2D side of the franchise would keep things traditional.
I’m not too far in yet, but I have come across my favorite boss from Oracle of Ages! What a deep cut, I did NOT expect to see him ever again! But it makes sense, with a basic block your wand essentially becomes the Staff of Somaria.
I’m still playing Civ 5. I understand now why the game is still being played today. I had no problems playing Civ 1 a few years ago, I would have problems now. It’s simple balancing decisions like large empires having both up- and downsides that impress me. The Civ I know was all about settling like mad.
I have come across my favorite boss from Oracle of Ages
It’s not the only returning boss - I’m not sure if there’s a plot reason for it or they just felt like recycling
It could be because of nostalgia, and also you’ll get to beat them in a different way now since you are playing as Zelda.
As for in-game reason, don’t want to spoil anything, but they don’t specifically mention anything about it.
I can understand the feeling, there are often games I have been wanting to play for a long time, but they don’t meet the expectations when I do.
Which boss was that? Haven’t played Oracle of Ages, so no idea which bosses are the returning ones.
spoiler
The splitting cloud boss that is in the former Eastern Palace.
Ah, that was a tough one. I wonder how you will beat him with Link.
I can imagine him being tough if you’re going in blind, but Link does the exact same thing in his game. The ‘Cane of Somaria’ is literally a magic staff that creates blocks, so that boss was a perfect fit for this game.
Ah, interesting. Thanks for the info!
Finished Ginka!
Overall a good VN. Ginka was a great character and I loved seeing all the different sides of her, there were some good twists, and even a nice epilogue showing a bit of the character’s lives after the ending.
Finished The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom!
While I still prefer more “traditional” Zelda games, this was a blast to play. The developers seem to be experimenting with a middle ground between the old-school games and more open-world entries like BOTW, and I think they did a really good job here.
There’s a few annoyances that could be improved in a sequel, like the lack of good rewards for exploration/puzzles and some clunkiness in the combat, but nothing major.
And since this is a topic a lot of people ask, the performance problems are definitely noticeable and I would have preferred the game to stick to a locked 30FPS, but again it didn’t hurt my enjoyment of the game.
Since I finished Zelda 5min ago I haven’t yet decided what I’ll play next. 😅
Leaning towards towards another VN, in which case Emio: The Smiling Man or Atri: My Dear Moments (link to the Japanese eShop) are the strongest candidates.
Heh, I was same yesterday, made a post soon after finished the game.
I agree with lack of good awards. By the end, I didn’t care about 20 more Rupees, or another monster part. They need to better awards.
Those vn seem good. I will try with steam version on PC.
Whew, Nintendo price mark up a lot.
If you like VNs check my comment history, I play a lot of these and post my opinions on these weekly threads.
I am still working through Tears of The Kingdom. I bought it at launch, but I don’t play very often. The size of this game is wild - I finished Breath of the Wild in 70 hours, and now I am 65 hours in ToTK and still have like 70% of the game left.
Hehe, as long as you are enjoying it, that’s all that matters. Other than Zelda, what other games do you generally play?
Yeah, I enjoy it a lot. I also play Hogwarts Legacy and Disco Elysium on Steam Deck. And sometimes Lego Fortnite with my friends. I have yet to convince my friends to play something other than Fortnite or Minecraft.
I’m playing Pirate Quest 3 and Neir:automata.
Probably switch between both depending on my mood. I might pick a quick, not serious, fun game filled with cat puns or a more in-depth get ready to try to figure out the story with cool anime type actions parts.
Pawsome!
My partner and I are playing through “Digimon Stories Cyber Sleuth Hacker’s Memories” in some kind of challange run similar to a Soullink in Pokemon games.
The Digimon Story games are basically just grinding, but sometimes I’m in the mood for that. Although, I prefered the older ones on DS.
Digimon have 7 different stages and many different paths to evolve from their first stage to their last one. Bacially everything can become everything. Each stage starts at level 1 and is stronger than the one before, with certain stat and level requirements to evolve. They can devolve too and that’s where the grinding comes in: There is a special stat called ‘ABI’ that’s raised by d-/evolving. If you need a certain amount of ABI, you will train your digimon, evolve it, devolve it right away and start from level 1 again. Repeat until you have enough.
During older games, you would accumulate power by doing so - you kept a certain percentage of your current stats when devolving. In the Cyber Sleuth games you don’t. Each Greymon e.g. has the same base stats at the same level. ABI only slightly increases a hard cap for permanent stats you can get from a different mechanic. It’s kinda tedious.
Cyber Sleuth has been on my wishlist for a very long time. I like the idea of Digimon, but I am not good with these kind of min-maxing in any game. Can I play the main campaign without any of this? Just playing normally with upgrading my digimons as I see fit? Like we can do in Pokémon?
Disclaimer: I haven’t played any Digimon game, and only couple of Pokémon games. Let’s Go Pikachu and Pokémon Sword.
Yep, there’s both a normal and a hard mode - normal is quite easy. On top of that, you can get most digimon without much trouble, I just happen to like the ones that are difficult to get.
There’s also a farm feature where you can level digimon passively. Due to a bug on the switch version, the ingame clock and therefore the farm continue running on standby if you don’t close the game properly.
Ah cool. Thanks for the info!
Twilight Survivors on Android. Not much to say about. It is Vampire Survivors with 3D graphics and a dash mechanic. The characters are slightly more varied but there are way less of them. The only ads I have seen are 100% optional, you have to go out of your way to view them. When you do, you receive currency you can use to buy the paid DLC, which I honestly think is incredibly fair. If you enjoy Survivors-Likes, this one is perfectly fine, but it doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel
Don’t play much on mobile, but that ad system sounds very fair. Just going to download it to support it!
That’s awesome! Normally I wouldn’t talk up a game like this with ads and such, but according to one of their updates, they added them after fans requested it as a way to get the DLC outside of real money. They actually seem to understand and listen. I can support the fuck out of that
That’s nice. I just played it once and the game is fun. Going to keep it around when I am bored and don’t have anything else to do 😀
I’m glad you enjoyed it. It should get me by while I wait on Halls of Torment
I gave up on FFVII because it stopped being fun. The Midgar parts were fun, but at a certain stage it just started feeling like a bunch of random events strung together with only a loose connection to the plot. I got up to doing the mandatory chocobo race.
I’ve been watching my son play some Echoes of Wisdom and got called upon to solve some dungeon puzzles he couldn’t get past. The hardest ones were figuring out that you could place echoes far away by holding down the button (presumably that was in a tutorial, but I missed it). Then there was trying to get past a water flow that was pushing in the wrong direction.
spoiler
It didn’t feel like the correct solution, but I did it my placing a shark and following it so that it took me to the other side.
Last, in the ice temple, there was a room with a fan and ice and fire vents on either side where I couldn’t reach the doorway. To my shame, I had to look up how to do it
spoiler
I knew I wanted to turn the water to ice, but didn’t realise you could do it with the orb in the adjoining room.
For myself, I started playing Fire Emblem Engage. I could have chosen Three Houses, and its story looks more interesting, but I’m not that into social sim stuff and they say the Engage battles are better.
The water one was the one I couldn’t figure out. That’s the only one I looked up. And while I was looking up I accidentally saw heading for another puzzle (two switches on ground), so when I reached that I was able to use that hint and figure it out soon enough, but I believe it would have stumped me for quite a bit otherwise.
My son also got stuck on the vents one. Another one he got stuck on was the cloud boss.
I was playing Three Houses but gave up due to the sim stuff. Well, it was more the frustration that I am not able to recruit anyone, so I might be missing out on important stuff. Didn’t officially drop it, just stopped for a bit and didn’t pick it up again.
I liked the battles though, so maybe I should pick up Engage…
Yeah, a few of the puzzles are really hard if you just don’t see it. I think I was trying for half an hour on both those tricky ones before getting it or giving up.
I’m still really early on in Engage, so I can’t really comment on it, but between battles I’m just watching the cutscenes and going through the dialogue, not doing any of the optional support conversations or even going back to the base to check the shops etc. so it’s quite a fast pace. The story so far feels a bit meh, though - not very epic.
I thought I might try Three Houses after this and just skip/auto as much of the monastery stuff as I could, but if I actually have to do that stuff to recruit people, it’s going to get annoying.
I haven’t really played any Fire Emblem games, so I could be wrong about Three Houses, but that’s what I gathered from what I have read about it. So, when I couldn’t recruit them, I got a bit frustrated.
The water one was the one I couldn’t figure out. That’s the only one I looked up.
I see a trend here, also had issues figuring out that that puzzle and had to resort to google.
I liked the battles though, so maybe I should pick up Engage…
Engage’s story is kinda silly, but the maps are fantastic. I highly recommend the game if you’re more interested in the battle portions.
It could be because not many puzzles use that mechanic, so we don’t expect it much.
Thanks for the info about Engage, will add it to my list.
Started playing the Silent Hill 2 remake on Sunday. As a big fan of the original, I think they did a phenomenal job. Combat is harder, but that’s a pretty low bar.
Glad to hear. I am not a survivour horror fan myself, but some of my friends were a bit skeptical after the first trailer.
I didn’t have much time to play this week, but I’ve been really enjoying The Legend Of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. I don’t know how it compares to other 2D Zeldas yet, but I’m really liking it so far. I agree on the performance issues, they’re not too major. My only complaint would be there’s a lot of reading on this game. Not that I don’t enjoy reading, but there’s so much story being told by conversations with the characters… It feels like a lot at times. I’ll keep playing on the weekend.
As I mentioned on the other post, I just ordered the Patrick Star Game, so I’ll probably get it some time next week.
Heh, yeah, there can be lot of talking in the start, but I don’t think it’s that much when you are out exploring, and very little when in dungeons.
I wasn’t that interested in Patrick Star Game (never saw SpongeBob as kid, so no nostalgia), but I just watched the trailer and it looks fun. Will see your opinion and then decide if I want to add it to my wishlist or not.
I play Pokémon violet.
But the excitement i feel while playing, as on gameboy, or gba, is good.
I feel like the game isn’t so polished.
I felt like Scarlet/Violet were maybe the worst mainline pokemon games I’ve played. The performance issues and glitches can be annoying, but it’s not a dealbreaker. It’s more the overall feel of it. The gyms didn’t have the same sense as older games, and the battling aspect didn’t seem to have as much importance in the game.
