Wait, where did Friday go? I think this week had one less day! Well, better later than never.
Finished Astral Chain, played couple of post-game arena-combat missions, but ignored the rest.
Overall, a very good game, the story wasn’t anything out of the world (except literally speaking), but it wasn’t anything bad either. The gameplay and combat was really good.
Also, I want a Lappy plushie now!
Finished Nier Replicant completely. Well, first two endings. Didn’t want to replay just to watch 3-4 different scenes, so watched those on the YouTube.
Combat and gameplay is good, but quests are very grindy and fetch quest heavy, I think I already mentioned this, people would ask 10 of something that’s a random drop in a specific dungeon, and going through whole dungeon would drop it maybe once or twice, so you have to go through it five times. And that’s one person’s request.
Story was really interesting though. And not counting the quests system, enjoyed the game. Looking forward to playing Automata and see where they take it from here.
Started (well resumed from World 2) and finished Donkey Kong Country 2. The game started easy enough but got pretty tough in further stages. If it weren’t for save states I would have never been able to finish it. Probably died about a 1000 times. Near the end I started saving after every small section.
Though it wasn’t a constant difficulty, even in last world, there were couple of stages that felt easy enough. The last boss was pretty difficult though, specially in the last phase, dunno how many times I died on that.
Now playing Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed. Just started it, so will write more about it next week.
So, what about all you? What have you been playing?
Future Redeemed is one of my favorite experiences in recent times, after loving every title before that. I hope you enjoy it just as much! I’m always itching to replay all 3 games + their DLCs.
Anyways, I’m still on Witcher 3. Currently about 70h in and the main story just sent me to Skellige. After I’ve heard the story will soon pick up its pace, I decided to do a lot of side-questing. That was some 20h ago and now I’ve done almost every quest I could find in Velen, Novigrad and Skellige - excluding a few level 30+ ones and some I can’t do right now. I’m guessing it will be another month or two to finish, DLCs included. Just on time for Xenoblade X!
Wow, 70h in and still would take a month or two? I did most of the side quests, but got a bit tired of some side activities. There’s just too much content,
To be fair, that’s 70h over the course of 2 months already. And I’ve still got a big chunk of the main story and 2 DLCs in front on me. Sadly, life’s been quite busy.
When I play a lot, I play around 10 hours a week, so 70 hours in 2 months is pretty good for my standard.
BTW I was just surprised by how much you are going to spend on the game, as I said, I loved the whole game, but got bored of some side content.
I admit I’m not big on gwent and especially not horse racing. However, I really enjoy learning about different creatures, their lore and how to dispose of them. The game is great at introducing new ones every few quests. There are some great moral questions in there, too!
But at the end of the day, I just like long RPGs. The feeling of getting lost in a vast world is one of my favorite things in games. Tweaking a build over months, slowly diving into more and more mechanics. I don’t play much else, honestly, and only one at a time.
That’s nice. I am glad you are enjoying it so much!
I’m working my way through the back half of Great Ace Attorney now, but OCTOPATH Traveler II is back in my Switch for the first time since launch. I’ve been itching to get back into it since the mobile game recently expanded into the second game’s world. I stopped because I enjoyed Octopath Traveler Champions of the Continent more. We will see how long it catches me this time.
Heh, I thought OT 1 was quite repetitive but have heard good things about OT 2, so plan to try it some day.
How’s the mobile game? Never heard anyone mention it before.
Storywise, it’s kind of amazing that there is so much more in OT1’s world in this free-ish game. It’s not life-changing story, but it’s entertaining even when predictable. Gameplay-wise, I love the battle system so much more (8 characters instead of four, 8 weapon types).
But I did enjoy my time beating a boss this weekend before going back to Great Ace Attorney.
Ahan, thanks for the info.
I randomly started playing Death Stranding again. I’ve finished it before a few years ago and it’s a great game but playing it now on hard difficulty with no assists items or lethal weapons makes it more survival like and it is even better.
I still have to play Death Stranding, may tackle it this year, before Death Stranding 2 comes out.
I haven’t been excited for a game (DS2) in a long long time. If only I could afford and justify buying a PS5 though :/
It will come to PC eventually, if you can wait. Unless it’s very important for you to play on launch, just relax and wait.
I’m a bit late to Echoes of Wisdom, so I’ve been trying to finish it off. I believe I am currently 80% through the game.
How are you liking it? I really enjoyed it, but I have seen mixed opinions about it from people.
I am definitely at the age where my zelda itch is only scratched by the larger zelda games now. But I am enjoying it better than Link’s awakening, and some of the puzzles have actually been a little challenging. You no longer rely on a handful of game items to solve a puzzle, but dozens (some repeat and serve the same purpose).
Yeah, when I played I thought it was maybe a lazy choice, but when my kid played it, he used different items from me, which I found surprising, so maybe they have multiple so that people can choose the one they like the look of more.
Oddly enough I had the lazy sentiment playing through it. “Boy, that’s a lot of platforms… I’m just going to fly on the tile across all of this”. I loved the puzzles where the easy out was removed for me.
I finally got myself Future Redeemed as well, so i definitely intend to finish it soon
How are you liking it? I am loving the game.
It’s been absolutely excellent just like the rest of XC
I actually started playing Crypt Custodian on a whim and it’s pretty fun. It’s not super hard or challenging yet though and I wonder about that.
It has overwhelmingly positive rating on steam, so they must have done something correct. But the visual do give a bit of the “cozy game” vibe. Is it supposed to be a difficult game?
I don’t think it is. And it does have a cozy game vibe. I guess I was expecting a little bit more resistance getting to new areas and stuff… A lot of rougelites and metroidvanias and such that I’ve played are much harder. The art is adorable. The puzzles are pretty easy so far. And I guess I just expected it to be harder because of other games I’ve played.
I was just having this discussion with a friend of mine, after playing Hollow Knight and Blashphemous, he was mixing metroidvania with souls-like difficulty. While some games do have that, metroidvania by itself doesn’t have to be difficult, or even have any kind of combat or deaths. Same with puzzles.
I do understand your point though, sometimes you can’t completely enjoy even great games cause your expectations from them were different.
Yeah. I think part of it is that I’ve played so many and even ones that I thought weren’t particularly difficult still had sections that got progressively harder over time, or required me to think about what I was supposed to do. It’s perhaps conditioning as much as anything.
Finished Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana!
Most of my comments about this game are on previous week’s post. There was an annoying difficulty spike on the final boss, but overall a great game that I can easily recommend.
Playing Fantasian Neo Dimension!
It feels like I’m playing a long-lost JRPG from the PS1 era and I’m loving it.
The “diorama” visuals are an interesting take on the prerendered backgrounds from old days, with the constrast between them and the 3D models creating a very nostalgic look. There’s that classic exploration where you’ll keep finding items at every corner of the city, something I adore but you don’t see much in modern JRPGs.
Battle system has some great ideas, Iike how you can “curve” a spell around a tankier enemy to hit a mage on the back row. Being able to “store” enemies and fight them in a batch is a fantastic idea, not only it helps exploration flow better without the constant breaks from random battles, but also makes even weaker enemies offer some challenge as you’re often fighting 20-30 of them in a row.
Story… is not much to talk about so far, but I’m enjoying the character interactions. There’s also short VN-like “memories” that seem reminiscent of the “A Thousand Years of Dreams” sections from Lost Odyssey, though unfortunately they don’t have the same amazing writing and emotional depth. But at least they do a good job developing character backstories.
One thing I’m a bit underwhelmed is the music, mainly because I heard a ton of praise for it. It’s a definitely solid OST with some great highlights, but IMO it’s nowhere near the masterpiece I heard some people claiming it to be.
Finally, there’s two main annoyances worth commenting - one is the controls can be a bit wonky, they don’t adjust the way you’d expect when the camera shifts and you have to stop moving if you want them to “reset”. The second is that loading times on the Switch are a tad high, with battles taking 5-6s in average to load, but that’s only of a problem in the first 1-2h of the game, as the ability to “batch” battles makes this a much smaller issue.
Replaying Tales of Graces f Remastered!
I know I shouldn’t be playing two JRPGs in parallel, but since I’m going on vacations starting next week I can probably manage it? 😆 But I love this game, have beaten it 3 or 4 times and the moment I saw the Switch version I knew another playthrough was coming.
While the plot of this game is fairly basic (even for Tales standard), the gameplay is incredibly fun and there’s a lot of diversity in playstyles between the characters. The cast is great and has some good chemistry, including some of my favorite skits in the series.
One really interesting feature of this version is that it has the “Grade Shop” where you can buy game modifiers like increased XP gain unlocked from the start - this used to be only a NG+ feature. I chose not to use it but it’s definitely a welcome addition as it can make the game easier for those wanting a more relaxed experience, or simply help cut down on grinding for completionists.
Finished Astral Chain, played couple of post-game arena-combat missions, but ignored the rest. Overall, a very good game, the story wasn’t anything out of the world (except literally speaking), but it wasn’t anything bad either. The gameplay and combat was really good.
That game was a ton of fun. We need more good tokusatsu-inspired games.
I hate the difficulty spike at the final boss. There are some games that I never finished because of that.
Nice to see you are liking Fantasian Neo Dimension, it’s on my wishlist and looked pretty neat.
Tales of Graces f was my first Tales game, so I have a special spot for it. Don’t want to play it again though, I pretty much never replay JRPGs.
Amen to more good tokusatsu-inspired games. (I had to look up tokusatsu 😛 )
Heh, they look so old now.
