Soooooo what'cha playing?

[Sir Gerwald of Vallora]

Most recently, I've been playing Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity with my ypunger brother whenever he's over, so not that much, but it got me playing BOTW again. I decided to run it through CEMU with mods both to spice it up and to personally protest the Smash Tornament Cancelation on Nintendo's part. Currently at a full wheel of stamina, seven hearts, master sword, and one divine beast. I really missed this game, and mods like Linkle replacing Link and Darker Nights with a wearable Lantern have made the game a little more interesting.

[Samz707]

Getting into Smash recently, mainly been using Marth.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Finished Nights of Azure 2.

It was my introduction into this series and also genre "hack and slash".

It was a solid game despite I'm not a big fan of hack and slash games. The fact it's for some part a hack and slash is also the only "weakness" for me because killing masses of enemies was repetitive. Otherwise I had some fun. The story and characters were represented very well. The overrepresentation of fanservice didn't bother me too much. The part I liked the most was the gameplay. The given timelimit for the dungeons and each chapter (I have no idea if it's standard for hack and slash RPGs) forced the player to memorize the dungeon and to focus only on the target of the quests. Doing infinite quests wasn't possible. Thanks to the timelimit it became a very fastpaced game and despite being relative short (less than 20 h without doing all quests) it had its perfect length for me. It could be even shorter, if I hadn't had to visit the same places and kill the same enemies over and over again. Since not all the quests could be done and new game plus run offers more opportunities to do more quests, Nights of Azure 2 definitely has some replaybility. I will play the prequel in the future since I liked the game's idea. 

My rating: 7.5 / 10

 

Started to retry Tokyo Mirage Sessions.

Currently doing chapter 2, and I have to say it's the hardest Shin Megami Tensei game (spinoffs included) on lowest difficulty for me so far. My progress is very slow because I haven't figured out all gameplay relevant things yet. One of my major questions is: How to restore SP? Because I have not seen any purchasable SP recovery items yet, and there's no way to rest.

[Interdimensional Observer]

6 hours ago, Kasumi Yoshizawa said:

One of my major questions is: How to restore SP? Because I have not seen any purchasable SP recovery items yet, and there's no way to rest.

Are you referring to the Special Performances, or to EP, the stuff you use for ordinary skills? SP is slowly replenished with every Session you trigger. You can instantly replenish all HP & EP outside of dungeons via ordering food or a vending machine drink.

[Sidereal Wraith]

I just finished FE: Shadow Dragon and The Blade of Light.

[Lyn]

I've been playing Animal Crossing- New Horizons a lot recently. Winter is really pretty. 

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

15 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Are you referring to the Special Performances, or to EP, the stuff you use for ordinary skills? SP is slowly replenished with every Session you trigger. You can instantly replenish all HP & EP outside of dungeons via ordering food or a vending machine drink.

I meant this what's called SP in Persona games.

Anyways thanks, that helped a lot!

[Sire]

I've been playing Warcraft 3 Classic lately (managed to get my old disks working with manual patching for widescreen support. Reforged is a terrible disaster.) Specifically, I just wrapped up playing through the Reign of Chaos campaigns on Hard. It was pretty managable overall, with about four difficult missions standing out (Human Defense Mission, Orc Finale, Undead Finale, Night Elf Druid Horn). The final mission of the campaign itself was somewhat easier than expected as all I had to do was just change up my army composition for the 2nd attempt.
-- I'll be playing the Frozen Throne campaign missions next. They are fun missions as they don't really follow the classic War3 races (save for the final Undead campaign which is more vanilla in terms of the tech tree).

I have also continued playing Another Eden, which not only had two Persona 5 collabs (Joker, Morgana, Violet, and Skull are available characters, although they only have JP voices), but is now also getting a Tales collab with Cress, Yuri, Milla, and Velvet. I imagine they will also just have the JP voices, but its nice that Another Eden is getting collab events.
-- The best part about Another Eden is that there is no time limit to get these characters, so they are always available to players. Another Eden is one of the best JRPGs I played even though its on mobile, so I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to play a JRPG. I hear if you loved Chrono Trigger and/or Chrono Cross, you will also love Another Eden.

Then there's also Fate/Grand Order, but there's a relatively active topic here on the boards already about it. It's farming season for FGO and they have their Christmas event going on.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Playing Kirby Robobot right now. I already completed story mode (still need to get some blocks though) and arena. Of course I'll do all the extra challenges including true arena of course. Honestly this has been my most favorite single player Kirby game for me yet because I love the design and creativity of the stages. Driving Waddle Dees and taking care of billiard balls are something I didn't expect at all. Also the puzzles are very well made but never unfair, even if there are few blocks I have no idea yet how to get them. The game featured a bit of fanservice which didn't not bother me at all. Soundtrack is great (as usual for a classic Kirby game). It feels like Triple Deluxe, but the superability, the mech, has more variety since it can be combined with any ability to have a special attack of this one. It's relevant to keep this in mind for certain collectables. Anyways even if I haven't completed everything yet, I'm really impressed by this game so far.

[Samz707]

ALFA: Antiterror

An Obscure fun Russian strategy game that I've started playing recently.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I went back to 2013 for these next two. Starting with Ducktales Remastered on my Wii U. The iconic NES music is lovingly remixed, and you can even switch to that original soundtrack after beating the game. It's also a wonderful adaptation of the 1990 cartoon with several characters turning up looking and sounding like the source material. The way they weave the original games levels into a cohesive narrative makes it feel like you're playing through a movie length episode of the show. They even made Scrooge's money vault so you can dive right in and observe your accumulated gold. There's a new prologue level setting up the story, and the game's original stages have been expanded by perhaps 50% just to pad out the game length and introduce more set pieces such as riding minecarts in the Transylvania level. My only issue with the game's presentation is that scrooge is pretty talkative during gameplay, and cutscenes are plentiful. Which is a problem if you want to hear the game's music uninterrupted.

While the original game had linear levels where you must collect a certain amount of money to progress to the end, now all but one of the levels task you with hunting for specific items. If you don't know where to go, the game's metroidvania-esque map will tell you, but it's up to the player to find the occasional secret passage on the way to getting there. This is where the level design shows its imperfections. While I think the game's exploration and platforming feels good, its rooms were clearly only designed for Scrooge to travel in one direction. If you choose to backtrack in the opposite direction, some jumps and enemy placements are difficult to impossible to clear without taking damage, while others are trivial. Also the extra life system felt unnecesary. I only game overed twice in my playthrough of Normal mode, but both times were after defeating the final boss and I had to do one last set piece to reach the game's ending. Failing this sequence kills you, and running out of extra lives forces you to restart the final level from the beginning. it's very annoying, and I think even when this game released in 2013, extra lives had already exited your average indie or triple A game, Nintendo excluded.

Ducktales was quick, but I'm especially surprised at how quick this next game was, Assassin's Creed Rogue. As the final entry of the franchise releasing for 7th gen consoles, I expected more of a send off than this. You play as Shay Cormack, an Assassin of the American colonies during the French and Indian War, who breaks from the Brotherhood to join the Templars. Shay's a very nothing protagonist, whose Irish accent is capped off by his catchphrase "I make my own luck". Get it, Luck of the Irish. I accept payment for this joke in facepalms. I cleared the game in 11 hours, which is less than half the time it took me to beat Black Flag a few weeks ago. This shortened length is surprising with so much of the game retreading the gameplay and activities of both Black Flag and 3. The only completely new environment to the series is the north atlantic seas of Newfoundland, where I did indeed blast apart icebergs with cannons and harpoon a narwhal. The other two locales were New York and the Hudson River Valley. The former was fun to do side activities in but few of the game's characters or main missions took place there despite it being such a visual spectacle. In the river valley it can be tough to discern how best to traverse the forest environments on foot since your map doesn't inform you of invisible boundaries. Both naval environments felt too narrow for naval battles, and I was repeatedly opening a sea map to discern how to get to a specific place without running into dead ends.

In terms of gameplay, Rogue is a dud. There's no new idea or activity that changes the experience meaningfully, and the application of ideas and activities from previous entries felt lazy. As a 60 dollar game, it must have been quite the letdown. Speaking of money, I ended up with way more of it in-game than I knew how to spend.. You just make tens of thousands passively after doing a fraction of the side activities. The narrative may be a different story though. This is the first time the player takes on the role of one of the Templars, and there are many answers to questions to satiate lore-hungry fans. I myself appreciate an explanation for why the Assassins were so weak in the American Colonies by the time of 3, and there are several returning characters from both 3 and Black Flag. I just wish the game's protagonist were more interesting. We don't see his upbringing or transformation into an Assassin, so his converting to the Templar cause and murder of former allies is treated as dramatically inconsequential. The game also had no interesting interactions with popular historical figures like Ben Franklin and James Cook. It does end on a very cool epilogue scene. Perhaps they noticed how bad Black Flag's epilogue was and sought to make up for it. Unlike that one, Rogue's ending is very satisfying, and ties directly to the next game.

Edited December 23, 2020 by Glennstavos

[Lyn]

Story of Seasons- Friends of Mineral Town. I'm collecting materials to upgrade my coop. 

[Sire]

Gotten back into playing Earth Defense Force 5, specifically the online multiplayer. It's fun blasting bugs with all sorts of different weapons, even though I'm currently playing the basic Ranger class.

I also gotten Code Vein during the Steam Sale, so I look forward to how that game works. I have some experience with God Eater and Dark Souls as I hear Code Vein is a hybrid of sorts between the two. I'm expecting a fun time.

[Lightcosmo]

Tales of Vesperia. Just got to level 130 without any grade exp mods, and completed pretty much everything, soooooo yeah. 

[BrightBow]

Back to Berwick Saga.

Figured I could wait until Aethin releases the next version of the translation, but I just couldn't hold it in anymore.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I binged the entirety of Final Fantasy 9 Remastered and I'm sorry, what day is it? Normally I only report on games I haven't played before, since I seldom replay games, but this replay felt inevitable as I have been fighting an urge to replay FF9 for years now watching streamers and friends play for the first time. Perhaps the biggest thing I like about Final Fantasy 9 is that it gave its character's definitive gameplay roles. The casts of Final Fantasies 5-8 are jacks of all trades where every character can do everything. 7 and 8 in particular have character skill and stat loadouts you can literally swap from party member to party member. Nothing was permanent, your choice of party members did not matter. 9 is flush with character progression via new abilities to learn, but there's no point in the game in which I can teach Zidane Firaga, or Vivi to use Cure. And yet the balance is kind of excellent between the 8 party members. My only gripes are the high defense on mage armor, making them tankier than the physical fighters at every stage of the game, or how Freya is underwhelming and becomes moreso as the other physical fighters pick up amazing skills. But if you're not steeped in the game's mechanics like I am, you'd never notice these discrepancies. 

And my god, learning new abilities through equipment is so awesome, despite sounding so dumb on paper. It gives you another thing to look forward to besides just leveling up, and ensures that any grinding session will give you something substantial. You also feel rewarded for holding onto old gear because new party members might need it for their own collection, or you may need it to synthesize a new piece with an even better ability attached to it. The timing in which they rollout new equipment pieces is very well considered. Side quests and secrets in FF9 feel important to seek out simply because they reward you with new gear. How is it that we haven't seen this system in like, every jrpg?

But okay, is FF9 the best final fantasy? I definitely can't fault somebody for choosing this as their favorite, but even before this week, I never considered FF9 to be perfect. Most of it comes down to the battle system. I can't think of a game with ATB bars that runs worse than FF9, not even the game that invented it - FF4. Like the previous two games, actions don't have cast times, so just identify what will do the most damage and spam it. There are extremely slow pauses before and after every action taken. And despite the slow pace of battles it's very hard to follow what's going on and make informed decisions. Once you've entered in your commands, everybody just gets added to a queue that is completely invisible. The animation of anything, even using a potion, takes so long that by the time it finishes, the person who acted previously has already gotten their command prompt for their next move. I want to stress that the battles being slow isn't the problem, it's how they neuter the decision making possibilities. Also why is Trance in the game? It activates so infrequently, your characters will probably trance on average of four times in a single 40-50 hour playthrough. And unlike limit breaks, you can't choose when to use it, so there's no strategy around building it up or saving it for an opportune moment. It's just another annoying thing that further ruins the pace of battles.

The rest of FF9's gameplay is pretty solid though. I might even say it has the best loadout of side content in the series. The only real bloat there is is the card game, which is a more complicated version of Triple Triad that doesn't give you any tangible rewards beyond one story sequence. Totally superfluous, glad they stopped with the card game in 10. Dungeon design gets very creative, I'm only mad at the Desert Palace for being needlessly obtuse. The story is unfortunately not so solid. Discs 1 and 2 are consistently good to great quality. Character writing feels incredibly natural with world views getting challenged pretty much from the get go. Disc 3 is where it begins falling apart. Previously important characters like Fratley, Beatrix, and the Tantalus crew just disappear from the plot for no reason. Kuja is a nothing villain and his redemption arc couldn't have been handled any worse. The plot twist with Zidane is so ill conceived it gives me a headache. There are several plot points that get contradicted later. And the final boss is so lacking in presence I challenge anybody that played this game to identify him, because I certainly didn't remember him. 

But yeah, FF9 holds up very well with the new remaster. I think I can comfortably say it's my third favorite. Speed up is much appreciated, though it doesn't seem to aid the long load time of getting in and out of a random battle. What's great about it though is that it doesn't speed up the menu navigation, or the music, so you can still enjoy jams while speedrunning the game. Awesome. I like the inclusion of checkpoints since this game does not consistently place save points before each boss fight. Unfortunately checkpoints only occur on each screen transition, and not when saving the game. So sometimes that causes you to lose progress on things like switching to the right equipment, grinding overworld enemies, or doing moogle related stuff.

[Interdimensional Observer]

Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin. It’s equal parts 2D action and rice farming simulator. It’s been fun so far. The farming is distinctive from the usual farming sim, because it’s focused solely on a single crop. But the rice growing process is more much detailed than your Story of Seasons/Rune Factory/Stardew Valley approach to agriculture. The game could offer some additional guidance at the beginning on how to get a good harvest, but things become clearer later.

The combat has a few minor hiccups, but it is fundamentally good. Remind me somewhat of the fellow feudal Japan beat ‘em up Muramasa: The Demon Blade. My main issue is that overleveling makes things too easy and the game could use a hard mode for pro action players. Increasing your stats BTW doesn’t happen by killing enemies, they go up at the end of every rice harvest. And if you figure out how to better develop a particular trait of the rice, like Aroma or Yield, a corresponding stat will increase more when the time has arrived. It creates a functional gameplay loop where you venture out to progress the story and get stuff to improve your farming, and the the farming makes you stronger so you can fight better.

[Samz707]

Starting playing Fire Emblem Heroes.

Got a bunch of good units from the free rolls starting out. (Then again, I'm a weirdo who actually wanted to get Merlinus and Lucius)

Edited January 4, 2021 by Samz707

[null]

Been playing Hollow Knight, mostly. So far it's been a punishing, yet rewarding experience. The game's world and enemies are certainly no joke, but there isn't a single time where the gameplay feels unfair. The atmosphere, tone, and visuals are all spectacular, and the music only serves to enhance that. I just arrived in the City of Tears, got a nail upgrade, and a few other charms as well. Looking forward to continuing with it.

On the side I've also been dabbling in the official Touhou games, Perfect Cherry Blossom in particular. Another challenging-but-fair game. The music is fantastic and the gameplay is addictive. The farthest I've made it is the end of the fourth stage, but I'll keep at it. Maybe I'll beat it at some point in the future.

[DragonFlames]

I've been dipping my toes into the Warriors series again, because I have some pent up aggression lately, and started (re)playing Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends and Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate, two games I haven't played in quite some time.
It's interesting how perspectives and opinions can change when you give it time.
For example, initially I couldn't get behind Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate, due to me knowing exactly nothing about a large majority of the characters. But now, I can appreciate them more after playing more main series games and reading the Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel, which the Dynasty Warriors series is based on. However, the story is still complete nonsense (though it's good nonsense), and many of my initial criticisms I still stand by. Those being:

• the game's cast is too bloated. You'll very quickly pick a main team and stick to that. There is no incentive to try and use everyone. However, if you want to unlock everyone, you still need to use more than your core team, because some side battles require you to level specific characters' friendships with each other. And spoiler alert! Only very few of the ones you HAVE to use are actually worth a damn
• the game overall suffers from one of the worst examples of Early Game Hell that I have ever been witness to. Early on, you can get one-shot by practically everything, especially other officers and their special attacks. And characters start out piss-weak, which plays into my point above that it discourages you from using more than a core team of 3), but maps don't scale with your level, meaning if you want to use a character you get in Chapter 3, you have to replay stages in Chapter 1 to get them caught up, because they will NOT last very long if you try and beat a Chapter 3 map with them, even on Easy difficulty
• you can already see where both of these points, well, point: "But you can grind!"
  Yes, yes, you can. And you HAVE to grind by replaying the same maps over and over and over again to unlock everything (if you want to safely level up characters, you have to play one of the three earlygame maps... and even then, depending on how bad the characters you're forced into using by side battle requirements are, that can be hell all on its own.
• it just looks absurdly dull in its overall color palettes. Hope you like brown and grey.
• This is a personal thing, but many of the Japanese voices for the characters are just plain annoying. Special mentions go to Goemon Ishikawa, Hideyoshi Toyotomi, Masanori Fukushima, Ma Dai, Huang Zhong, and Xiaoqiao.
  Especially Xiaoqiao's voice is like nails on a chalkboard. This is a shame, because I do like how Xiaoqiao plays, and I like the character itself, too. But her voice is a rather large "Oof".
  Her sister, Daqiao, who is voiced by the same person, isn't much better, but due to her being more soft-spoken than her sister, it's not AS godawful.
  Goemon, Hideyoshi, and Masanori, on top of not being very compelling in the first place, have voices that just make me wish to yell "shut the f*** up!"  whenever they speak. With Goemon and Hideyoshi, it's the way they speak that irks me to no end (the way Goemon stretches some syllables is really annoying, and Hideyoshi talks in this weirdly slurred manner that makes him hard to listen to, whereas Masanori is just way too loud.
  Ma Dai's voice actor got the direction of making his character sound like that one annoying guy who would pester you about completely irrelevant stuff in the middle of the night, and who you have to put up with because your friends like him for some ungodly reason.
  And I have no flippin' idea what they thought with Huang Zhong's voice. He sounds like he has some kind of liquid stuck in his throat, which ends up making his voice sound more like he's gurgling constantly.
• This is a new one I have after playing more main series games: this game does a piss-poor job of portraying most of the characters.
  The girls who are married get hit with this especially hard, because nearly every line from them is about their husbands, whereas they weren't as obsessed in their home games (Bao Sanniang is the worst about this, with her only going on about Guan Suo (who himself is probably the biggest waste of space of a character in all of Dynasty Warriors, if not games in general) in a manner and frequency that would put Faye from SoV to shame).
  It also severely exaggerates some traits other characters have, such as Sun Quan's penchant of apparently being quite the riot when inebriated, almost completely axing his humility, self-doubt, and kindness he displayed in the Dynasty Warriors games (which make him my favorite character in the series).

As for Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends, my opinions are still largely unchanged from when I first played it.

Edited January 7, 2021 by DragonFlames

[Dinar87]

I'm playing breath of the wild, since I STILL haven't completed it yet! I've been putting it off for ages because I get bored of the core gameplay, but I'll continue with it, it's still fun most of the time.

[Samz707]

I've been exploring that leaked Tomb Raider 10th Anniversary remake that fans managed to get in a playable state.

[Etrurian emperor]

Still playing Hades, #gameoftheyear2020

I'm also playing Miles Morales which is great but also a teensy bit on the short side. 

[Harvey]

I'm playing Shin Megami Tensei Devil Survivor. Boy is the game lacking in terms of gameplay. Like sure, story and branching paths are good but what good is that if the game is too basic with little to no tactical limitations?

And it has issues with difficulty. Majority of the time its a cakewalk till suddenly you come across a boss who becomes near invincible unless you get the right needed skills. 

[Interdimensional Observer]

1 hour ago, Harvey said:

I'm playing Shin Megami Tensei Devil Survivor. Boy is the game lacking in terms of gameplay. Like sure, story and branching paths are good but what good is that if the game is too basic with little to no tactical limitations?

And it has issues with difficulty. Majority of the time its a cakewalk till suddenly you come across a boss who becomes near invincible unless you get the right needed skills. 

🙁

Sorry you feel that way.

Though on thinking about it, I would define Devil Survivor as SMT JRPG gameplay adapted to an SRPG movement grid, that it has gained elements of the latter but leans towards the former. (I do prefer this JRPG > SRPG adaption over Final Fantasy Tactics's version of the same.) If you went in with FE as your ideal of what an SRPG is, I can see grounds for disappointment.

As for difficulty, by SMT standards, I would say that DS is relatively easy. Though I'd add that it may be dependent on how much you focus on getting demons with perfect skill setups and stat spreads. A fresh file without free battle grinding would be tight on Macca and I'd think it'd be fairly difficult.

Edited January 15, 2021 by Interdimensional Observer