KateGray

@Ooyah Update: I just got past the 300,000,000 blind with a hand that was worth ONE BILLION POINTS. I used the Plasma Deck, had a bunch of glass cards, and some xmults, plus a few Jokers that upped my chips (because the Plasma Deck balances chips and mults, so it's easier to get higher numbers with chips).

...and then I immediately lost to the next blind, lol

@DashKappei No touchscreen, I'm afraid!

@Indielink I did start doing this towards the end, actually! But each plant has 2-10 clues, so it's a LOT of screenshotting.

@Solomon_Rambling it does get prettier, but not in a huge way. There's a tree that blooms, and new areas allow you to see new parts of the garden and house (which are pretty!), and one puzzle results in lots of birds showing up all over the place... but largely the mansion stays the same. But you can place your grown plants wherever you like, and you can grow as many of them as you want, so you can make it pretty yourself

@Ooyah I had an insane deck recently with Vampire + Midas Mask + Pareidolia + Gold Card, where Vampire would remove all the gold card enhancements and gain +0.2xmult for each one, then Midas would add them all back, then I would get $3 for each one. Vampire ended up with a x45 mult. AND I STILL LOST.

Double Tag isn't a bad idea, I don't usually skip for that! I tend to only skip when there's money or Tarot cards in it

I got this one as an extra when I ordered the Red Fox set, I didn't realise it was so in demand! It's cute.

I knew this was going to be a Jim piece from the title. You and I, Jim, we have similar tastes. By which I mean brain problems.

@Ryne-Gaia There are a lot of extras, like the animation studio where you can make your own clips of the games, achievements, music, costumes, and so on, as well as extra tutorialisation, the story mode, and the auto-play. It was hard to squeeze everything into the review!

Also, these games were in need of a bundled re-release, as previously they were only available on the 3DS eShop with DLC sold separately. Even if this trilogy had no extras, it would still be a great buy in my opinion!

@CANOEberry ah, I don't use twitter much anymore anyway, so no worries there. Most of my writing these days (the fun stuff, anyway!) is here, although I did just start writing for the Epic website, but that stuff's more matter-of-fact.

other than that, I'm mostly working on games these days! Moonstone Island is my main one and then there are a couple of NDAed projects 😊

@Bass_X0 oh no, I'm not actually angry at them 😅 I've been playing this series for decades at this point, I'm just being goofy. That part about the puns is supposed to be read as tongue-in-cheek. Or should that be Tong'in Chi'ik?

@CANOEberry totes fair to find this review a little hard to parse - I think that's an artefact of having to review three very long games, plus their content, plus the ways it's changed over the years, plus the ways it's been remastered, plus all the extras, plus my general thoughts, etc etc, and then having to fit it all into a thousand words.

Actually, my first draft was closer to 1,500, and I had to cut it down, but then I remembered a bunch of other stuff and it got back up to 1,300, and I had to cut it down again... every time you edit a long piece like this, it ends up feeling a little more disjointed and a bit more stitched together. But with the amount of stuff I had to talk about there wasn't really any other way of doing it!

Also, I admittedly have a tendency to be more negative in reviews than I actually mean. A bit like when you ask your dad how a movie was and all he can remember is that the popcorn was stale, the sound was too loud, and his seat was uncomfortable... but he thought the movie was great 😅 it's something I'm working on!!

@AJWolfTill I started Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood last night — it's unusual but very interesting. It's not really like anything I've played before — sort of Tarot-inspired, very, erm, raunchy, fantastic character writing. I have no idea where it's going or what it's about, and I don't mind at all!

Cobalt Core is a roguelike deckbuilder in the vein of Slay The Spire with a touch of FTL: Faster than Light, and really genuinely funny writing. It's all based around movement, which is a cool twist on the roguelike deckbuilder formula.

I hope you enjoy all the games you get to experience for the first time! I'm so excited for youuuu!!!

Most Ace Attorney games, Zelda: BOTW (so I could experience it fresh once again), and same as Jim — Tunic and Outer Wilds would be fantastic replays. I never even got to play Tunic properly the first time because I saw too much of it in development 😭

@AJWolfTill I'm not on staff anymore so I don't contribute to these!! but my 2023 GOTY picks for Switch (that I played) are, in order:

Zelda: TOTK
Ghost Trick
Cobalt Core
Chants of Sennaar
Vampire Survivors
Dredge
Case of the Golden Idol
Pikmin 4
A Highland Song
Story of Seasons: AWL
Venba

I strongly suspect Paranormasight, Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, Cocoon, and Dave the Diver will be on there when I play more. Also, Outer Wilds rules, but I didn't play it on Switch!

Played it with my partner two days ago from start to finish, since we both looooove language games. Spent a lot of the time going "wow that's so Tunic-coded" about things like Big Doors and Mysterious Statues specifically to annoy him.

I didn't think Fortnite was for me, either, and honestly, a lot of it still isn't — I don't care much about Marvel movies, and all the skins I have are cute rather than a representation of my favourite movies/TV. And that's fine!

I don't even spend much money on it, except when my pals get me Fortnite gift cards for my birthday as a cute present

But, as with most things, it's about who you play it with. Even the most cynical stuff is fun if you play it with people you care about, who make you laugh. Disliking something just because of its reputation seems a bit dull, and I was one of those people before I got into Fortnite, too — but I'm much happier realising I was wrong, and letting myself have a good time instead.

@Cero the options have French and German but not Italian, sorry

@Cero into English, or other languages? The English is the same as it was (as far as I can tell) but I didn't check for other languages!

@Lizuka I really like the third case in AA — it's one of my favourites of the series 😅 not that I'm disagreeing with you entirely. I mean, it's drawn out, it's confusing, it's repetitive, it's gimmicky... but that music! I'm a sucker for melancholy.

@Ryu_Niiyama I'm hoping to give Paranormasight a go when I get time. I'm not sure if it's anything like AA, but it's on a lot of GOTY lists this year!

@LEGEND_MARIOID Ha, I had the same thought while writing it. I mean, how do you preview a game that's already... out? I tried to give a sense of how it was going so far, and the main changes, without doing a full review... especially since I'm not close to finishing it yet!!

@LimitedPower YES THEY CAN. You can play the episodes, special DLC episodes included, in any order!!!

@Bass_X0 I think we should be able to critique the things we love! I've played every AA game that's been officially released over here, and that doesn't mean I can't have some complicated feelings about some of its themes and writing. I don't want to place my favourite media on a pedestal and act like it can do no wrong!

Great interview

OUTER WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILDS

@Savage_Joe kate's been dead for twenty years......................

@Andee I looooove Hades. And I love roguelikes and lites in general!

@sanderev I liked this game less than other Inkle games, and I have given those games 8s and 9s. So, this one's a 7. I entirely disagree that a 7 means "short games without much replayability" but if that's your way of scoring, I hope it helps you! I wish I could give everything a 9, but that isn't realistic or helpful 😅

@nessisonett you make a good point... Inkle games are better when you play them multiple times, and they tend to have persistence. But Heaven's Vault didn't really telegraph that (I mean, I didn't know my dictionary would carry over!) and same with this game... I like that it slowly improves the more you play it, but many people will, I think, only play it once and come away disappointed. I wasn't sure how to judge the game based on that. I mean, it's not like Hades, where there's a goal that takes many runs to complete — I got to the lighthouse by Beltane on my second run in Highland Song — so how many runs should I judge it on? I ended up settling on four, but I wonder if it keeps getting better the longer it goes on, like wine. Or cheese. Or rewatching Prince of Egypt for the 50th time.

For everyone wondering if they should get it: 7/10 is still a hearty recommend!! Also, Edge gave it a 9. An Edge 9 is REALLY hard to get.

I think the major hurdle for me was just that the game doesn't really "get good" until after 1.5 runs, and I had no idea it was a multi-run game to begin with! But the trademark Inkle goodness is there, woven into its bones — I just selfishly wish there had been more.

HELLO YAY I'M ON NINTENDO LIFE

@Anti-Matter you can marry any of the candidates, as any gender (including non-binary)!

@DAHstroy it's very strange that they lock a significant portion of the game's mechanics behind chapter 4! but you get a cool double jump when it's done

thank you all for being very nice to meeeee

@Spider-Kev You wake up every day at about 6am, and when the clock hits 11pm, you get a reminder that it's time to go to sleep. If you don't make it back by 12am, you just get teleported home, and you don't lose anything (but you don't get the well-rested bonus, although I'm not entirely sure what that does anyway). The days are maybeeee... 20-30 minutes long? They feel long enough to get a lot done, and there are fast travel points you can unlock, too.

@Summer235 I actually really recommend reading a bunch of reviews for this game! There's so much going on in Fae Farm that you can only get a full picture from 2 or 3 reviews. I saw a few that I liked — RPGSite and The Gamer, I think?

@Andy_Witmyer I have more reviews on the way, and I've been quite busy working on Moonstone Island... so I'm actually very glad I didn't have to review RF3 as well 😅

@Andee I didn't get to mention this, but Fae Farm's inventory is both super useful and... frustrating, lol.

There's a button that sends everything to your storage as long as at least one of that item is already in your storage, for easy dumping of materials that you collected that day.

However, that also includes potions, and you usually want to have SOME potions on you, but not all (because they stack in 10s, and it fills up your inventory). Sigh.

Also, you can sort the storage, but not the inventory (why?) and you can only sort it by type or name, not value. However, there's also a filter to only display farming items/refined materials/food and so on, which is really useful! Buuuut sometimes it's hard to know which category certain items, like lumber, are in.

Anywayyyy that's the storage/inventory system! You have limited backpack space but you can buy more from one of the market vendors. It's mostly just irritating that some items stack in 10s and others in 100s. My pockets are ALWAYS full, but only because I like keeping multiple food/potion options on me

@Bobb I think it's a really neat idea! BUT feng shui is... not what I'd call it, mostly because you have to fit all this furniture in a REALLY tiny house for most of the game. So it ends up being less feng shui and more "furniture storage with a semi-functional bed" lol

@Princess_Lilly I think the issue I have with Fae Farm is that none of the NPCs have distinct personalities, really... the dateable characters will mention things (one of them likes frogs, the other is from a made-up Canada-like country) but that's the extent of it. They don't say unique stuff, they don't have unique traits, they just say the same lines as everyone else At least in FOMT I felt like the characters were their own people, with their own troubles (being poor, being old, having kids, etc etc) even if they were quite shallow.

@sunspotty I'd say the NPCs are more repetitive than Rune Factory. Pretty much every NPC in Fae Farm says "thanks for taking care of those thorns", something I did in the first five days of the game. I think it's a bug but... I don't know.

@antisumo their day one patch will address most of the hard crashes, it sounds like... but no guarantees!

@Lightsiyd it was really hard to fit everything into this review!

Combat exists - you fight the Jumbles in the mine-dungeons - but it's largely just hitting them with a staff, and later unlocking spells that can damage them a bit.

@Manguy888A thank you so much!!! that's really kind of you to say!

@Woderwick I was wondering if anyone would say this - or point out that friendships that don't give you benefits is kinda the point IRL 😅

@Arckadius unfortunately not, which I'm quite bummed about. You either need a local friend to have the game (which I obviously did not!) or you need an invite from someone else playing the game, and I didn't know anyone else playing

I'm going to give it a go when the game comes out and my local friends can grab it too!

I went there before completing Regional Phenomena, because WHY NOT, and battled through impenetrable fog to get to the end of it (even though it was quite obviously trying to tell me to go away and come back alter). And then, after all that difficulty, I had actually already stumbled across the Spirit Temple while mapping the Depths earlier. I spoiled TWO cool reveals for myself

@amanda12994 press the + button and select "write in journal". it's very annoying that it doesn't tell you this is how you save the game!

@Foxyroex Go to page two, there's a little button at the bottom of the page!

@Nintendencies it's in the blue box by your front door!!

@Pupuplatter I don't know! It's very weird!

To those of you who are upset that I gave a game 10/10, I have this to say:

1. Why wouldn't you want to read a review of a game that someone loved? Doesn't that make you happy? You might love it too! That's why we play games!

2. A short adventure game can absolutely be a 10/10 and I'm not sure I understand the idea that time = value

3. Yeah, the review is subjective, and yeah, I have nostalgia for the game, which means - if anything - I'm a harsher critic with higher standards for this particular game!

4. If you just want to read a review that agrees with you, then you don't really need a review at all. Reviews are mostly for people who haven't decided yet, not people who already know how they feel and just need backing up.

Look, it's fine to not agree with me, but don't make it my fault. People can have different opinions to you and that doesn't make them wrong. But, more importantly: you should really just try Ghost Trick, it's really good, okay? It won't hurt to enjoy things 😊

@khululy the "ghost puzzles" that I put down as a con are the ones I mentioned in the review itself! They're sliding puzzles that are an optional extra, not the actual gameplay. Obviously I liked the gameplay.

@gcunit haha, oops! it's a game called Kalimba! It was a strange second-party Xbox One game (it's also on Steam) from a studio that no longer exists, although most of the team went on to make Trailblazers It's a dual-character rhythm platformer, and to give you an idea of how good it is, I don't even usually like platformers!!!

@fenlix I don't score games based on other games, though. That's not a very helpful way to look at how good a game is! Plus, what if I didn't enjoy Persona 5?

A score is one person's opinion. If you disagree, that's fine, but you don't get to decide that my opinion is wrong.

@Cashews what if a game doesn't need improving?

@Fizza MAKING THINGS RIGHT! GIVING MISSILE HIS DUES! YEAH BABYYYYYY

@Pak-Man 👀👀👀👀👀