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

By contrast, I can now say the glide ability is practically the saving grace of the game at this point. An excellent and worthwhile and in some ways better change from the Banjo equivalent move.

@Ralizah Granted I am not very far into it yet, but I would agree with all of those things you mentioned except for the cast. From the start I haven't liked these people nearly as much as those from the first game. I think too many of them are far too similar to characters from the first game, and those that are different are beyond annoying. I'm also having a lot more trouble remembering their names and who they are when one character refers to another. I'm sure they will grow on me (at least I hope so), but first impressions of the cast are not favorable for me.

One Piece Odyssey (PS5) - Recently started the first memory world (Alabasta) and it's pretty decent so far. Has a clean, Dragon Quest like vibe (though I'll say Oda's designs can be a bit more quirky than Toriyama's) with an easy to grasp turn based battle system.

Ryse: Son of Rome (Steam) - I was recently reminded that this existed, and being one of the few Xbox One launch games that seemed interesting at the time I decided to check it out. Think I'm a little over half way through it & it's been solid so far. Definitely worth the $10, and it wasn't even on sale.

Right now I’m playing Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies on 3DS. I’ve heard some people say that this is one of the weaker entries in the series, but so far, I’ve really been liking it. Granted, I’m only about halfway through the second case, so I’ll have to see if it keeps its momentum.

So far, the writing has been great, the music is super catchy, and Blackquill has been a really interesting prosecutor so far. The anime cutscenes that play throughout the cases are great too, although the voice acting is pretty cheesy at times. The 3D models look slightly janky compared to Great Ace Attorney’s, but since this is their first attempt at 3D, I’m willing to give them a pass.

So yeah, hopefully this game can keep my interest and leave a more positive impression on me than Edgeworth: Investigations did.

@StarPoint The 3D models improve pretty significantly in Spirit of Justice. As does the quality of the writing overall.

This is definitely one of my least favorite Ace Attorney titles, but at least it's better than Apollo Justice, and it still has some cool tricks up its sleeve. Also, for whatever reason, I believe it's the only M-rated game in the series, lol.

Be sure to grab the DLC case, btw. Arguably one of the best cases in the game.

@Ralizah Yeah I’ve heard that SoJ is an improvement in almost every way, so I’m really looking forward to playing that. Would you say that SoJ’s quality is on par with the Great Ace Attorney games, at least in terms of visuals? So far, I’ve been enjoying this one more than Apollo Justice, but it remains to be seen for me whether or not it’ll be better overall.

Yeah, the ESRB really screwed up the age rating. Apparently they rated it Mature since one cutscene shows a courtroom being blown up, and a couple others show a bit more blood than the norm. Which to me is not a great reason to close off the game to a ton of the normal audience. I don’t tend to play M rated games but after seeing why this one got rated what it did I decided I’d be fine with it.

And yes, I made sure to snatch the DLC. I think I’ve heard at some point you need to cross examine a whale or something? Not sure if that’s accurate but that would be awesome.

@StarPoint I'd say the Great Ace Attorney duology has both higher highs and lower lows than Spirit of Justice, whereas the latter is consistently good, and caps off with a really fantastic final case that wraps up characters arcs throughout the trilogy. So... very much like T&T in that respect. Visually... well, I played GAA on the Switch, so that obviously looks better in HD, but I think otherwise they're pretty similar in terms of how expressive and smooth the 3D models are. The in-engine cutscenes look amazing for the 3DS. I'm tempted to say it's one of the most attractive titles on the system.

SoJ also has an excellent soundtrack, and even significantly improves certain tracks introduced in Dual Destinies.

Spirit of Justice, Trials & Tribulations, and Great Ace Attorney 2 are all such fantastic games that I struggle to choose between them. It depends on my mood.

The M-rating was bizarre, yeah. Sorta reminds me of how inconsistent movie ratings can be as well ("This Film is Not Yet Rated" is a documentary that did a great job investigating the MPAA's biases regarding how it treats different types of content). The Persona games being M-rated always struck me as being weird as well, considering the games never stray especially far from subject matter teenagers would be exposed to anyway, and inarguably speaks best to people in that age bracket. You can show Nathan Drake murdering a small nation's worth of foreigners in a T-rated game, but god forbid a game make even vague references to teenage sexual identity issues.

There's actually an orca whale, and it's sorta your defendant. The case is just super fun, and if you've played the OG trilogy, there are some really great callbacks and cameos.

I really, really loved Dual Destinies at the time but I'm concerned that like Apollo Justice, I'm not going to feel the same the moment I look back at it. Though unlike Apollo Justice where I was genuinely surprised at how much I didn't care about a good chunk of it in hindsight, its a bit easier for me to see that happening this time (though I hope not to the same extent, Apollo Justice went from like 2nd best to 3rd worst in the series for me). Absolutely part of the reason I loved Dual Destinies is that I had played an AA game every 6 months for 2 years, and then outside of 1 spinoff had to wait 5 years for the next one. I could've seen myself not being as overwhelmingly positive about it without that.

Ironically though, being a stealth Apollo Justice sequel was largely the best part of Spirit of Justice for me.

@Ralizah It's great to hear that it shares similarities to T&T in terms of wrapping up stories and characters. I'll never forget that moment in the final case of T&T where it's like "Oh wait, everything is connected!" I'm also interested to hear SoJ's soundtrack and how it compares to DD's. I've been liking DD's so far but from what I've heard, SoJ packs a bit more of a punch with its soundtrack.

Haha I'm constantly going back and forth as to whether I like T&T or Resolve more. I consider both games to be masterpieces, but for a few different reasons. T&T has a lot of surprise factors with what I mentioned earlier, along with some extremely emotional moments that caught me completely off-guard. Godot seeing Mia's spirit in Phoenix with the classic Pursuit theme playing gave me more chills than I think I've ever experienced in a game before. Whereas Resolve has a much more cohesive story throughout with no real "filler" cases, with some absolutely remarkable character development and out-of-this-world plot revelations. Sholmes' character revelation was so unexpected for me that I still find myself thinking about it sometimes. "Partners - The Game is Afoot!" is also my favorite song in the entire series, so I gotta give Resolve props for that.

The moral of the story is: I really love Ace Attorney. So far I've played games 1-4, currently playing 5, played the Great Duology, and played Investigations 1. Every game I've played has had something new to offer and something to appreciate about it, even if some of them aren't as strong as others. When I picked up the Trilogy on sale last year, I genuinely did not expect to find myself as invested in the series as I am. I'd never played a visual novel before and I didn't tend to play story-focused games much at all. But something about Ace Attorney just clicks for me in ways very few other series do. Get along with AA7 already, Capcom!

Started Mega Man 3 on the Legacy Collection today and hoo BOY I've got some thoughts.

Starting things off, I absolutely adore the increased speed of everything. 1 and 2 were very methodical platformers, but did feel a lot on the plodding side of things (especially exacerbated when a single wrong move could send you tumbling back to the last checkpoint). 3 keeps this intact while ratcheting up the pace considerably, with additions like better physics and the slide making Rock an utter joy to control compared to the previous two entries. Another major improvement is definitely seen in the spritework: whereas 1 and 2 definitely felt very plain looks-wise, 3 is a gigantic improvement. I've only gone through Needle, Snake and Top Man's stages so far but the detail in them is jaw-dropping at points for a NES game. And, of course, who could forget about the music? This is something every game has done well so it's not all too surprising that 3 would follow suit but WOW dude: these songs are absolutely bonkers. Needle Man's especially like holy mother of Metal Man IT'S SO GOOD.

Despite all of that though....I've never wanted to keep going with a Mega Man game quite like 3 so far. It's brutal as sin and it's probably going to take a LOOOONG while before I'm even close to beating it....but goddamnit is it still so, SO fun despite it all.

So in short? Yeah I'm having a good time.

Chicory: A Colorful Tale (Switch) - A highly acclaimed game I picked up on sale over the holidays. The paint mechanics are fun and remind me of Splatoon in a few ways, though the top-down style and progression also remind me of The Legend of Zelda at times as well. That said, the game does have its own identity. Beautiful art style too. It also isn't afraid to tackle some real world themes. Some genuinely freaky boss fights too.

Mole Mania (3DS VC) - I'm on level 7. This one has been slow going, partially because I wasn't expecting it to be as challenging as it is (not a bad thing) and because it's also my side game. The digging and push-pull mechanics are fairly unique, essentially giving the player two stages in one to deal with at once depending on the layout. There are 7 levels/worlds total - at least to start with. They can be played in any order after the first, though I've been playing them sequentially.

@Fizza Mega Man 3 is my favorite of the series. It still felt fresh especially with adding the slide mechanic and Rush. Later games in the series especially 5 and 6 just felt the same. The Robit Master's are some of my favorites in the series. And yes the music, I especially liked Spark Man's theme.

Just like any Mega Man game the trick is figuring out what order to take the Robot Master's on, once you figure that out the game is nothing.

Glad to hear your enjoying it, just keep at it and you will get through it.

@Tasuki Just went back on it there half an hour ago (took down Magnet Man and Hard Man respectively) and I can definitely concur with your opinion so far. It just feels a lot more fun to run and gun compared to the previous two entries and, while I think 2 still has a better difficulty balance as of now, 3 is just so infectiously addicting to run through that I don't really care. Literally about to hop on again as we speak, it's just so damn good

@Fizza Sounds like you got a good start there by beating Magnet Man and Hard Man. The game can be quite addicting especially once you down a few of the bosses.

Whoever on the dev team for Mega Man 3 decided on both the level design for the stage replays and the fact that if you die to the first Copy Bot you go all the way back to the beginning, I just want to talk to them.

@Fizza Sorry to break it to you, but that GIF or whatever seems to be lagging and slowing down page loading.

@TeaCatherine Thanks for letting me know, just subbed it out for an image there 👍

I think I'm about halfway through Danganronpa 2, maybe a little farther. I'm not sure what to make of this game, and I probably won't be sure until it's over. Sometimes the story is great and the twists are amazing. Sometimes the story just drags and the new things it tries to do don't go over as well I don't think. I thought my favorite new character was about to die, too, but a twist I did not see coming appears to be taking place and it will be someone else, which is good as I do not like most of the new characters and really didn't want the one I do like to be killed.

FE:3Houses and FE:Engage.

Pokemon Violet.
I have obtained 1 badge gym from beating Katy.
Ironically I played this game despite I already knew the graphic was really terrible and unacceptable.