Started Monster Hunter Stories. Have been itching to play a JRPG, and got this. I have played a few hours, and have 2 “monsties” now, but it still seems like a prologue. Unlike other Monster Hunter games, we are not hunters, but riders. People who forge bond with monsters instead of fighting them (but then use their bonded monsties to kill other monsters). The village though small is exactly like other Monster Hunter games, and they also give us in-game reason why riders are not mentioned in other games.
Enjoying it, but too early to say much about it. Playing this as my primary game on Switch 2.
Played some more Owlboy. Unless there is some story twist, I should be more than halfway through. It’s a fun platformer. If you can fly, it feels like there wouldn’t be much difficulty left in platforming, but the game is well designed for that.
Spent a good amount of time playing Fallout 4. I have explored most of the area north of Diamond City now, except for some area in the middle and extreme right. Came face to face with another Legendary Deathclaw, tried to kill it but it threw me in the sky. That was a fun scene, my character flying in the air.
Started Earth Defense Force 5!
I loved EDF, it’s sometimes fun killing tons of bugs and aliens without worrying about anything else.
I generally play with Wing Driver class, it’s the most fun class IMO. One issue I have with this time is the weapons. For most of them you hold the attack button to charge, and then release to attack. Once you release the button, you can’t stop firing, it will release the whole charge. This is very in-efficient, and I can’t get my mind around it, specially cause Wing Driver’s have limited amount of energy that they also need for flying, and unfortunately that’s how most (though fortunately not all) of the weapons for Wing Driver class work. Thankfully there are enough other weapons that it isn’t a big issue yet, but if all high class weapons are like that, I’ll probably have to switch to another class.
Also played some Yoshi and the Mysterious Book. Went back to starting levels to 100% them instead of playing the post game, but hardly played an hour or so. I probably won’t mention this again unless I play it for significant amount of time, or reach some interesting milestone.
What about all of you? What have you been playing and/or plan to play?
I’m so deep into summer vacation that I forgot it was the weekend! I got some Father’s Day gaming in today! I played Clank Catacombs with my oldest. Due to some crazy bad luck, he was killed twenty minutes into the game, so we started over. In my heart, it’s like we got to play twice.
Later, I played an Unlock (escape room in a box) with my wife and youngest. It was a mini-adventure, so it was only supposed to last 40 minutes. We had some trouble at the very end, so it was a good family hour.
I also bought Fortune Mill, an incremental game by the maker of IdleOn (an idle MMORPG). It sucked up almost all of my Sunday for only eight dollars!
Some more 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim.
I only focused on the story this week, but didn’t have much time anyway. Went from ~21% to ~44% completion.
With each new character I follow, the story just seems to get better. I’m excited to get the full picture eventually - but I also feel like I’ll need to play a good old linear RPG afterwards.
As for the weekend, I played a lot of God Eater 3. About halfway through the story, I think.
On paper, the gameplay has a few problems. Almost all enemies seem to have some badly telegraphed AOE attacks or chain some quick dashes across the area together. Getting hit is mostly unavoidable. At the same time, the game is quite easy. Missions rarely take longer than 5 minutes - some monsters yielding after just a minute. But despite this, the Monster Hunter formula is just inherently fun and there a many ways to customize your character. So even if you don’t care for the story, there’s always a motivation to jump into the next mission right away.
Unlike Monster Hunter, crafting is rather easy, and you can get most weapons/shields without replaying any missions. But you still can and will be rewarded for grinding, because some of your moves will gain EXP by using them. There are about 10-20 skills per weapon, and you can equip 3 at the same time.
Last week I finished Yooka Replaylee on the Switch 2. It’s such a pretty looking game. It’s a shame the final boss battle is a bit boring and tedious. Like they ran out of game design ideas.
I got High on Life Switch 2 Edition to play now. But this weekend has been very busy and I haven’t had time to play at all. Hopefully will do some gaming during the evenings this week. Next weekend is busy too! Have to take advantage of the nice weather and sunlight while it lasts! Hopefully I’ll play some Star Fox on Thursday 😁
Hehe, enjoying nice weather and sunlight is also important! Have fun!
Finished Horizon Chase Turbo!
An excellent arcade racer and a nostalgia trip for those who played those games during the 16-bit age of consoles. Loved almost everything about the game, with the only negatives being a handful of tracks that were annoyingly narrow or had horrible visibility.
Finished Witch on the Holy Night!
Absolutely stunning presentation, I haven’t played any VN that comes close. Not only there’s an immense amount of CGs, but the director also uses many tricks like panning, zooming, changing character placement and lighting to make the game more “fluid” - background and characters and never still, shifting every few lines of text in a way that feels very “cinema-like”.
The main cast and story is also pretty good, though I think there’s some pacing issues, in particular in the in the slice-of-life segments. I’ll also drop some praise for the “Extra Chapter”, a very fun mystery story taking place some time after the main game.
Definitely interested in playing more Type-Moon games after this.
Away from home for my brother’s wedding so won’t be playing much this weekend. Still undecided about which game I’ll play next.
Congratulations on the wedding!
You didn’t feel any rubber banding in Horizon Chase Turbo?
You didn’t feel any rubber banding in Horizon Chase Turbo?
It’s obviously there, but nowhere near enough to bother me.
I think the part I noticed the most was the CPU players in the lead slowing down considerably in the last lap, but it honestly felt like a reasonable implementation of this “feature”, keeping the race from getting stale without being excessively punishing of mistakes.
Every single complaint or frustration I had with the game was related to the layout of some tracks - besides what I mentioned about narrow tracks or visibility there’s also issues like awkward fuel placement in some of them.
