Topic: What Game(s) are You Currently Playing?

Everyone’s favorite IRL game — Jury Duty!

But I did bring my Switch, just haven’t started it yet. Maaaaaaybe Puyo Puyo or Super Mario Sunshine.

Took me forever to install an undub mod for Soul Hackers on my 3DS. I know a lot of people think it's weird for an English speaker to want Japanese audio if I'm just gonna read the subtitles anyway, but I'm just more comfortable with the Japanese language in a Japanese-originated game. Call it purism, call it weeabooism, I just consider it as an appreciation of the language.

I've been told vague reasons why Great Ace Attorney 2 is better than the original but so far the real reason is that the pacing is back to normal. The series was already getting worse at pacing, but the first game's ideas to "switch things up" in that regard was a bad idea that I'm glad they're not doing again. They found the formula for this series in Justice for All and stuck with it for a good reason.

@Maxenmus I really enjoyed the story of Strange Journey. And I quite like the dungeon crawling, apart from that one really tricky area with all the warping.

Not sure what you’ll think of Soul Hackers gameplay wise as it’s also a dungeon crawler and a 1990s product. But I loved it too.

Gameplay wise, Apocolypse is my favourite. It took what IV did and refined it. People didn’t like story for being more like Persona but I think it’s better than SMT V in that department.

Overclocked is also great, 70% gameplay vs 30% story so like Digimon Survive flipped around.

I hear hints (that can’t be expanded on due to the embargo) that Soul Hackers 2 will be divisive from SMT YouTubers with review codes. So I’m intrigued how it’ll pan out.

@JoeDiddley
The Redux version is significantly worse with Womb of Grief.

Soul Hackers is fine so far, but I already accidentally made the wrong choice and picked the Fire line for Hitomi and I'm forced to restart again because Megidola is the best, c'mon.

I'll probably play Apocalypse once and not bother with the NG+ if I hate it enough, just like I did with SMT V (though the latter gives me more reason not to bother with NG+ since the only different content between routes is in the last 20% of the game).

I liked Survive, but didn't really enjoy the gameplay affecting the story, so I'm not sure how I'd feel about having more gameplay... lmao

Soul Hackers 2's trailer alone is already divisive. The Steam discussion board is a mess and is full of "Stop pretending people care about this stupid game" topics.

@Maxenmus from memory I think you do a strength build for the protagonist if you’re restarting Soul Hackers.

I saw the credits on Strange Journey Redux and Apocolypse but I’m a fake fan as I avoided Womb of Grief after a couple of floors on the former and did the ending avoiding 2 extra long dungeons for the latter. Best not to get burned out.

@JoeDiddley
You can't access the full Womb of Grief till NG+ anyway, which I'm planning to skip until I finish all my other SMT games (so that I could start playing all the NG+ for all of them, except SMT V and maybe SMT IV:A).

Kirby Star Allies.

Not really enjoying the first Soul Hackers for a few reasons.

• The Magnetite system was a bit annoying at first until I figured out that you could basically farm it using Hitomi and your Zoma.
• The story's kinda... dull. I guess cyberpunk is cool and all, but it all feels so mundane compared to other SMT games with their more mystical and grandiose storylines dealing with gods and devils. Here, you deal with... mafia mobsters...
• The characters are... okay. Feels like they came out of a Persona game rather than a Demon Summoner game: teenagers with attitude sticking it to the man.
• The casino sucks so much, but only because I'm not good at Poker. I know the basics of Poker, but I couldn't get any winning hands most of the time (often only getting no higher than "one pair"). The way they designed the Poker game doesn't seem like you'll get even a flush 9 times out of 10 no matter how I tried to get my cards to match. I seriously don't know what I'm doing wrong. Also, why do I have to learn how to play Poker in a JRPG about demon summoning? What am I doing with my life?
• Dated skill-transfer system for your demons, meaning the kind of skills your demons inherit during fusion are random. I'm glad they've decided to update it as early as Nocturne (can't remember if Strange Journey had the updated system... even though I literally just finished it a few days ago lol).
• Recruiting demons is a chore, more so than other games. I kinda like that the alignment of your party has to be the same as the demons you're recruiting as that makes more logical sense... but man, it's still kinda tedious. I literally gave up on completing my compendium about an hour in.
• NO DEMON LORE. Boo. I play these games to learn about the interesting mythologies of different cultures.

All in all, definitely a very dated game. NOT recommended as your first SMT game.

Kirby ball roll eating strawberries game

Started up Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA with the Game Trial that's currently on here in Europe and made my through all of the prologue and most of Chapter 1 (right up to where you unlock Sahad at least).

As my first introduction to the real time JRPG genre (Xenoblade and the like), I must say: I'm impressed. It's got a lovely style to it, the voice acting is pretty good for the most part and hacking and slashing through enemies is great fun. I may have a few gripes with it at the moment (animations are quite janky at points, the frame rate stutters often and switching characters is a bit cumbersome at points) but I can definitely see myself coming back to this one. Whether I'll bite the bullet and get it fully once the GT period is over is still up in the air but I can definitely see why people like this one

Also, would anyone who's played it mind linking the regular boss theme (specifically the one that plays when you fight the unnamed tentacle in the tutorial and the Monster Hunter-esque dino with Sahad)? The music overall has been excellent so far (particularly the theme for exploring the Isle of Seiren) but that one specifically stuck out as an absolute bop. I don't want to look it up myself out of fears of seeing a spoiler hence why I'm asking here. Would highly recommend picking the game up if you're in Europe at the moment though, cannot stress that enough!

@BruceCM That's it! Cheers man!

Heh, not like the other boss music you'll get isn't great, too, @Fizza ..... Let us know how you get on!

@Fizza I loved Ys VIII, a great world, combat, characters and music. Enjoy

Pop'n Music Portable 2 PSP

Started Playing Chrono Trigger and Ys Book 1 on my android phone, been watching a lot of retro gaming youtubers so got me in the mood to play some I never played

@Fizza Deadly Temptation is my favorite track! Pretty much all of *Ys VIII's OST ranges from decent to amazing. If that hadn't been correct, I would've linked this one:

So from what I gathered, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner - Soul Hackers (what a freaking mouthful of a title) isn't very well-received among hardcore SMT fans either. The story is described as literally "nothing" by one member. lol But that explains why I'm so bored. If I'm playing SMT IV right now, I would have tons of things about the story I would discuss here, but as you can see, there haven't been many updates from me aside from one complaint post pointing out how dated the game feels.

To be fair, the story's not terrible, and I think it has the benefit of being more well-written and its characters more consistent than SMT V, so that's something. It's just such a generic teen cyberpunk mystery that you could find in many sci-fi anime. I'm just going through the motion because I don't want to abandon the game midway. Can't wait till I finish this and start playing Devil Survivor: Overclocked, part of the highly acclaimed Devil Survivor series.

Got some 200 games unfinished at the moment (some I might have to restart altogether), but the ones I've slated to beat next are Vectorman 2 on the Mega Drive Classics (and the rest of its alphabetical library), Castlevanias 2 and 3, Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, and Halo 4 on the PC.
And I'm grinding Pokemon Shuffle on the side.