Rolled the credits on Portrait of Ruin. Liked it even more than dawn of sorrow. I'll probably take a break from these castlevania ds games for a bit though.
Outer Wilds. For anyone not familiar with it, it's a difficult game to explain without spoiling anything, but basically you have to explore a solar system to find clues about the fate of an ancient civilisation. The twist is that you're stuck in a time loop that resets every 22 minutes or every time you die, so you never gain anything permanent other than knowledge. Your discoveries are recorded in your ship's log and you need to use what you learn to help work out how to access places you can't normally get to.
Considering the 'open solar system' nature of the game, it mostly runs well on Switch; there's the odd stutter, but nothing too bad. More annoyingly, though, I had the game freeze on me a few times, requiring a restart - including during the endgame, but thankfully the developers had the foresight to put a save point during this section (in a game that doesn't normally have save points as such) so I didn't have to redo as much as I expected.
It's a difficult game to give a verdict on too, because it can be frustrating at times, between the aforementioned freezes, the fact that the game never explicitly tells you what to do (although I found that every time I got stuck enough to have to resort to Google, someone on Reddit had already asked the same question I had, and the fan community is very good about giving hints as to where to go without outright spoiling the answers), and the way dying or running out of time in the middle of doing something forces you to restart the loop and make your way back to where you were (and possibly wait around for a bit if you're trying to do something you can only access at a particular time in the loop) - but the game is so immersive, clever and unusual that I can just about forgive these issues. In a way, I was glad to be done with it (it took me over 25 hours spread across nearly 2 months, so it's not a quick play), but I am looking forward to playing the DLC expansion (which is included with the physical copy) after a break. It's not a game for the impatient, but I definitely recommend it to anyone looking for something original and cerebral.
Thank you Nintendo for giving us Donkey Kong Jr Math on Nintendo Music
I beat Pizza Tower recently. Part of me wants to call it the best Wario Land, but I do really love the 2nd game and have yet to play the 3rd. But it is the best of what the last couple of games were going for, with them starting as relatively normal platformers and then ending by having you rush back to the entrance. It is better than Wario Land 4 in that it isn't too short and it is better than Shake It! because its less frustrating for the speed focused ending (despite some frustrations for the bosses...though hilariously when I went back to try the final boss after dying a few times the day before, I beat it all in one go). Like it feels like if Nintendo had put out another game to continue improving on those games, without it feeling too much like its just legally distinct Wario Land. Largely because its very speed focused most of the time rather than just the ending, so the game feels more consistent which is probably one of the reasons it feels less awkward than the other games when you have to do the escape.
It also has really great, memorable music, which Wario Land isn't the best at, certainly not by Nintendo's standards anyway. Some of the best music I've heard in a game in a while tbh.
Recently finished up Oninaki. I know they weren't the greatest games ever, but I actually really enjoyed the three Tokyo RPG Factory games. This was probably my least favorite of them, though. It was much easier and much shorter than the others, and the story was kind of bizarre. I also started trying to switch and level up all the different Guardians/Daemons I got, but eventually stopped and just stuck to my favorite two the whole time. Overall, I had a decent time with it.
I know they get a bad rap, but I still think their games are good, especially the first two. It just killed them that so much of their marketing for I am Setsuna revolved around comparing it to Chrono Trigger, and it was nowhere close. If they had just not done that, I think their games would be better thought of.
I just beat Metaphor: ReFantazio. It was a very solid game, but that's a given for the team that produced Persona 5. The story, characters, and world were very enjoyable- and I really loved the gameplay that the game had. It took some of the best elements from Modern Persona and ended up taking them in a direction that only tightened everything together.
The worldbuilding was pretty decent. People say that the game focuses a ton on politics and the standings of races from a perspective of racism in the world, but you still get bits and pieces of the world and the cultures within that world. It's just sprinkled through character interactions, the lore encyclopedia feature the game has, and the taverns themselves telling you multiple things about how people live and what cultures these locales have. You learn a good bit about each tribe, and it genuinely feels like a ton of thought went into the world of the game.
The story also follows suit. It goes from this political intrigue story into the direction we all expect from a Shin Megami Tensei or Persona title. The direction where you tackle a God-like entity with the power of friendship. There's a ton of Shin Megami Tensei and Persona in the roots of this title's themes and main ideas. The villains both representing the ideas of "Law" and "Chaos," which you would expect from Shin Megami Tensei with some of the Psychological attributes which you would expect from Persona (in the light of magic being made by the people's anxieties taken form) I feel like the story was pretty well written, with most of the twists being forecast through pretty well-done foreshadowing. To the point where it all feels like the different elements of the narrative actually make sense and fit together in a way that doesn't leave me wanting.
That being said, the main narrative for this game isn't exactly the freshest thing to exist. It was pulled off better than Persona 5, with the story lacking in a major quality drop.. but it still felt like the narrative isn't anything spectacular either. It starts off pretty generic, and ends in a way you'd probably expect it to end. However- the ride is still enjoyable. The characters make that enjoyable.
The villain is pretty stale as all things are considered, but he's written in a pretty captivating way which ends up stealing the scenes he's in. He's effectively a tamer version of Griffith from Berserk- even down to the design of his character. Aside from that, he effectively does his job well, and serves to give the protagonist the push he needs across the board. The main characters in the party are also pretty well handled as well. Some are about as flat as paper, but towards the end a good chunk of the characters are actually pretty well rounded and showcase a good bit of depth to them. I would've liked more time for some of these characters to shine though- and hate that they yet again rely on Social Links to give them arcs, instead of actually writing those arcs into the story like they did with Persona 3. Even then though, it does feel like the characters aren't completely stagnant during the main narrative... which is something I could say I wish Persona 5 did.
Gameplay is great as well. It's pretty much what you'd expect from a game like Persona, that being the calendar system. However due to the calendar being focused on a three-month span in-game, you're left with tighter story pacing and less dead-time. The only time the story gives you a ton of dead-time is towards the final month of the game, where you effectively have a whole month of the story not really going anywhere in order to get you prepared for the end-game. Outside of that, the deadlines for both the main story dungeons and sidequests are far shorter than you'd see in a modern Persona title. It doesn't really feel like you're stuck twiddling your thumbs while you wait for the story to pick back up. Also helps that dungeons aren't as easy as Persona, and it takes a lot of strategy to beat them in a singular day in-game.
The Archetype system is effectively like a Final Fantasy esque job-system, but done in a way resembling Persona/Demon Fusion in SMT. You unlock each job and level them up independently, but the more jobs you level- the more skills you can fit on other jobs. Mixing and matching the skills with the jobs that have the best stats for your characters. My only gripe is that while any character can be any job, it's not as versatile as the early Final Fantasy games or as Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Any character can be any job in the game, but there's a very clear-cut path you're meant to follow with most of the characters outside of the main protagonist. Their base stats need jobs that actually compliment them, so you're stuck with leveling up the obvious. Especially if you want the Royal Archetypes, which are effectively like the ultimate version of their unique line. An evolved "Persona," if you will.
The only real gripes I have with this game are with the dungeons and enemies. The dungeon layouts are all copied and paste, aside from the big main story dungeons. Most of the smaller ones are pretty much the same few themes that you'd expect, with the majority of those not even being hand-crafted. They're more akin to your mementos or Tartarus in Persona 5 and Persona 3 respectively. The issue I have with them is moreso that their existence feels a bit more jarring in this game. Especially because they're meant to give you insights into the world's culture, which can't really be done when it's the same copied and pasted tower or same mine over and over again. The only other gripe I have is the enemy designs. More particularly the Humans. The Humans are pretty much some of the coolest designs in the game and are all based off of Bosch's artwork. The demons Bosch drew in "The Garden of Earthly Delights," reinterpreted as monsters in a Fantasy RPG. The issue is that they only actually reinterpreted a few of them. They end up recoloring a lot of these designs, and so it makes the humans less interesting to look at over the course of the game. Especially when you refight one of the bosses three times, and each and every time it's just recolored.
Over-all, I feel like Metaphor is a great game. I don't think it's the best game Atlus ever put out of course, but I like it more than Persona 5, and think it sometimes even gets towards the level of Persona 3. I feel like the core of the game's story is solid in terms of both the messages it tries to get across, along with the central ideas. It can come off as a little preachy, but other than that it is definitely something I recommend people play... albeit at a discount, given the full price is a bit much. It is not a 70 dollar game.
"It is fate. Many have tried, yet none have ever managed to escape it's flow."
Unicorn Overlord
I played on expert difficulty and managed to earn the platinum trophy. It is a great game, even for someone like me, who does not play many strategy games.
I beat Doom 3. I had wanted to be it a lot sooner, because...October. I would say Doom 3 is the best horror game of the series but the worst shooter. Part of that is I feel like it probably works the least outside of PC, like it did not control the best to like...shoot successfully. It was fun enough despite that but it stood out compared to even the original, which is such its own thing that it could be ported to console easier it feels like. (especially since porting to consoles is practically why Doom 1 exists at this point)
I also feel like it last hours after it should have. You cut out like 4 or so levels at the end, better game, it had clearly run out of worthwhile, enjoyable tricks. But I liked it well enough. I wouldn't want it over the other games but its cool for what it is.
Similarly, I just finished Castlevania: Circle of the Moon after starting it in mid-October and getting busy. I decided to get the GBA collection even though I had never played a Castlevania game before because something about GBA Metroidvanias just feels right.
Overall, the game was pretty solid. Visuals fit the theme and I still have about 50% of the music in my head, but the game gets really hard near the end to the point of being unfun, with the final boss being a series of attacks that are either so easy you’ll never get hit, or unbelievably difficult to avoid. I also felt the RPG stuff was kind of superfluous, 90% of the time it’s clear what the best equipment is and I never figured out what the cards do. Still, the loop of exploring areas and finding secrets was so fun that I feel compelled to play more games in the series at some point.
8/10
“A fool and his money are soon parted.”
Proverbs 11:20
Switch Friend Code: 6009-5662-0517
Sonic Frontiers
And another platinum trophy. It was a really fun game, I did not expect to like it so much. Running through the levels and collecting everything is mostly relaxing and the parcour is really satifying. The last boss fight is great and a little bit challenging. For the most part, I did enjoy the vibes of somberness and solitude a little bit, but I would still say, that this was by far the weakest part of the game for me. I need my good vibes and colours in a Sonic game, or maybe even in all of my games.
Definitely excited now for the new Sonic game, but I think I will skip Sonic x Shadow because of the changes they made and because I am not really interested in the Shadow part.
Okay I can finally play a Nintendo game with good vibes again. Mario & Luigi Brothership here we go!
I wrapped up Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir this morning. It's a short, decent visual novel from Nintendo's archives remade by Mages, a Japanese dev studio well known for their work on VNs (Steins;Gate, Corpse Party, etc.). This is a mystery game where the protagonist investigates the passing of a wealthy family's matriarch at the request of the family's butler and needs to locate the family's rightful heir. As events unravel, nothing is as straightforward with this case as it initially seems. The visuals are amazing, the music is decent, and the notes section and optional recaps between sessions are very helpful. However, since the skeleton underneath it all is a game from the late 80s, sometimes it isn't obvious how to advance. Usually, something very specific needs unlocked through the player's dialogue or prior actions in these cases, so it doesn't hurt to have a guide ready if the player becomes stuck.
This game is somewhat easy to recommend if one likes the investigation sections of Ace Attorney and VNs in general. However, neither this game nor Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind have ever received a meaningful discount, so it may be wise to use a gift card at a retailer who offers these digitally.
Six hours to play through. Had a blast. As a gamer who feels Castlevania II is an underrated classic, I felt those vibes throughout all of Infernax. Maybe a couple minor gripes about needing specific spells to access certain areas? That aside, loved it.
Love the gore, loved how the platforming gets a little sweaty, love the progression, love the alignment system for different endings, it's all immaculate.
10/10 - Are you in need of a mature rated Metroidvania? I can't recommend this strongly enough.
@Magician I've actually played an hour or so on gamepass a couple years back. It's actually on Netflix games which Is wild. I also tried playing it on Netflix but it's hard as hell with a phone for controls. I did like it, and I'll buy it at some point I'm sure.
@NintendoByNature Netflix has some surprisingly good and occasionally mainstream games, especially considering most people don't seem to know they exist and mobile is sometimes a kinda awful way to play some of them (Sonic, dead cells, etc).
Well, earlier this week I finished Mario & Luigi: Brothership. It was a disappointing slog of a game that left me exhausted by its end.
Today, I decided to pick a much shorter game to clear to get the Brothership padding out of my mouth and settled on the first Portal, with the developer commentary on. It was an insightful journey into the making of not just a fantastic game, but also a fantastically paced game. It never overstays its welcome and that was wonderful. Let's hear it for short games, folks!
"Now I have an obligation to tag along and clear the area if Luigi so much as glances at a stiletto."
Gungrave G.O.R.E.
Under five hours. 32 stages, most of which are less than five minutes long. I'm not sure how reviewers clocked 10 to 15 hours for this? Maybe a whole bunch of mission retries?
Anywho, the game is good. Although there are several design decisions that feel stuck in the style of the early 2000's. Doors that won't open because just one enemy is hiding somewhere. Enemies can spawn behind you but your camera won't pan as quickly as you'd want it to. It's an arcade experience through and through; the game is made to be played in short bursts because you're doing one thing continuously. Move forward, kill, move forward, kill...
7/10 - It's the AA quality arcade experience we don't get very often anymore.
Contra: Operation Galuga
A reboot of the Contra 2D games of sorts. Developer Wayforward are on a bit of a hot streak after the not-so-good games Trollhunters: Defenders of Arcadia and Bakugan: Champions of Vestoria. Operation Galuga feels very similar to their effort on Contra 4 back in 2007 and that's a good thing. My only gripes are that the jumping feels a little too floaty for my liking and that my playthrough of the game crashed about three-quarters of the way through (after meeting Beowulf).
Thankfully, mission progress had saved prior to the crash, so it's whatever.
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