#birfday post

Cheating Demos

Ambrosia Sky

So remember when I said i wasn’t going to play any more games in June? That was a lie I snuck this in. I’m kind of unsure how to feel about it. It feels like a pretty early demo, so I'm sure a bunch of stuff is still under works, but it’s not quite there yet. The UI feels strangely undercooked, text is difficult to read on screen and doesn’t *pop*, the actual spraying of the water kind of sucks, and the performance isn't great. Given that it’s trying to go for a more story-forward Powerwasher Simulator, I feel like it should be somewhat more polished? Idk, i’ll keep any eye on it, but this feels like a sale game for me.

Old Games

Final Fantasy V (Pixel Remaster)

As a long-time Final Fantasy fan, one of my favorite questions to answer is which Final Fantasy is your favorite. Bonus points if people phrase that question as “Best.” Because, I think that’s more a question of which one you played first. Or first that really “hit.”

If I’m feeling kind of a little shit when I’m asked that, I’ll say something stupid like Final Fantasy Legend 2. For one, it’s not *actually* Final Fantasy, it’s SaGa. For two, as much as I love it, it still wasn’t my first encounter with the Final Fantasy name (That would be Final Fantasy Legend 1.) If I’m feeling slightly more truthful, I’ll say Final Fantasy Tactics, which is almost entirely true. It’s still maybe the best tactical RPG in the genre, and the plot is among the best in video games. But it feels…. Disingenuous? It’s too far out of the canon, despite being clearly a FF. Maybe I’d feel differently if it had a number, but it’s kind of like saying Final Fantasy Explorers is your favorite FF. You’re lying, you just like MonHun more than FF. Also this person doesn’t exist, I’m the only one who played FF Explorers.

So if I’m truly, truly limiting it, and spending time thinking on it, I’m probably going to say Final Fantasy V. For one, it’s the first FF I really had to put *work* into playing. The English versions weren’t out when I started downloading ROMs, so I had to patch a translation ISO onto a clean dump that I pulled off a now dead website to play with a keyboard on an emulator that *inevitably* fucked up something about the experience. But I had to put the work in, and the work felt better. For two, the plot is…. Fine. It’s fine. It’s not fantastic, it’s the story of five people fighting a tree after getting advice from a turtle. It’s a bit of a farce, but that’s not really why you play FFV.

You play FFV for the delicious delicious Job system. Butz, Lenna, Faris, Galuf, and Krile all start off the game as Freelancers. No particular skills, but they can equip all sorts of equipment. After certain points of the game, new jobs with new innate abilities are unlocked. The beauty of the system is that you can mix and match abilities you learn at different rates from the jobs. This means you can have a Knight that can cast healing or damaging magicks, or a Ninja that can attack four times in a row. It’s a beautiful system that allows, encourages, and *rewards* experimentation so much more than the similar Job system in FF3. And the limitations of the system feel better than the Esper system in FF6, or the completely blank slates required by the Materia or Junction system of FF7 and FF8. 

The Job system is also robust enough that you can limit it and still expect to succeed, which is also my preferred way to play. The Final Fantasy V Four Job Fiesta limits your choices such that you *must* only have four specific jobs on your team as soon as you unlock them. Sometimes, usually, that means your game is going to be pretty easy. Most classes have some way to absolutely break the game. Some classes though…. Don’t. And my team this year really didn’t. I didn’t end up completing the Fiesta with my team of Thief/Berserker/Beastmaster/Dragoon. I literally made it up to Exdeath, but, I’ve run into two things. I’m severely underleveled, and I don’t effectively have a way to outdamage Exdeath’s final form. This particular team has no healing ability outside of items, and it’s damage output is… lacking. While Beastmasters have surprised me with their abilities, the biggest problem is actually capturing the beasts, especially with a Berserker. A non-Beastmaster using the capture skill can only capture when a monster is below 7/8th health, and monsters hit this particular team *hard*. And Hi-pots only heal 500 HP, when Neo-Exdeath has attacks that can hit for 1600. I could probably grind for levels and captures, but like, fuck that. I made it to Neo-Exdeath with a team that I kind of hate. It’s not a win, but I’ll take it.

The Tartarus Key

Picked up during the steam sale based on a rec from one of CaseExplosion’s threads, I believe. Super glad I did. This is basically a puzzle room simulator; you’re wandering a murder mansion and get locked in discreet rooms that have puzzles that you have to solve. I don’t believe there’s anything that travels from room to room, so each puzzle is unique and doesn’t build off the others. The puzzle is…. Fine? It’s good, for the most part, but there’s a couple puzzles that stuck in my craw that feels like they could use a few more hints. Am I partially salty because I, as with Splinter Cell guards, don’t look up enough? Maybe. Fuck you. Graphically it’s interesting; very PSX-coded, but the game seems to relish when you have swimming textures, and it really adds to the ambience of the game. The story’s pretty good too. I really liked the twist at the end, which made me think of You Will Die Here Tonight, which absolutely killed any good feelings I had towards the game with it’s own twist. But that’s the risk you take when you write around a twist. Highly suggested, good pick.

TinyFolks

Darkest Dungeon by way of 4-bit graphics. I…. I have a complicated history with Darkest Dungeon. I picked it up as one of the first EA games I played. And I want to make it clear, I played the fuck out of EA DD. To the point that I completely burned myself out on that particular version, which was not particularly far along. To this day, I have not played it since. Steam says the last time I played DD was…. February 14, 2015. And I don’t even have this in my Uncategorized slurry of games I’ll one day (maybe) get to, it’s in my “Never Again” folder. Because I don’t think I like DD very much. To be clear, I love basically all of it aesthetically. The art is perfect, the story and world are good hooks to explore in, and the narrator alone would make the game’s existence worthwhile (RIP). But there’s a point in DD that you hit where your characters are decently leveled, and then you make a mistake, and you lose them and their progress. And then you have to go back and grind your way back up on the less dangerous, and interesting, areas. It’s a loop I love the *idea* of, but hate in practice. I’m someone who cannot stand to play FF8 because they turned magic into finite items. And it’s not like I use magic frequently anyway, but the idea that I could lose out on something hurts me at my core. Side tangent on a side tangent, this is one of the reasons I don’t really like playing Fear and Hunger, despite the fact that literally everything else about that fascinates me. TinyFolks tries to ameliorate this feeling by being…. Tiny. The game will only last 45 in-game days, during which time you have discrete choices to make with how to spend your time. Your town is less complex. Dungeons are a handful of fights with the same combat system of DD instead of sprawling labyrinths you explore. Everything’s winnowed down to be more (theoretically) manageable. But I literally just closed the game after wiping my oldest and most well-equipped party, including my monarch character, and I’m like. I don’t know if I will go back to this. Something about losing these characters here in this way hits a lot more than losing mechs and pilots in Battletech, and that’s worth exploring more, but I don’t know if I like DD’s gameplay style enough to give it a second thought. Hm. 

Zer0Ranger

Yo why didn’t anyone say this was just Gurren Lagann? It’s like no one wants me to play good things.

I’ve spoken before (in brief) about my love with Void Stranger. It’s a game I adore basically all of, but I am too dumb to really dig into it. This was reinforced when I watched Super Eyepatch Wolf’s latest vid and watched through the spoiler-y bits and they discussed doing things I literally never would have thought of. I am not a wise man, but holy shit is that game a pristine example of a puzzle game.

Zer0Ranger is that but for the shmup genre. In it, you play the pilots of the Rybb and Decker starfighter and you have to destroy the Green Orange lifeform that’s attacking your planet. To do so, you play through some of the tightest shmup levels I’ve ever seen with some of the most impressive graphic design and music I’ve ever heard. It’s phenomenal. It’s also very clearly so full of love for the genre; references to all the major pillars of shmups are present; from a fire-breathing Salamander, to a Witch hidden in a Moon, to an absolute bastard of a midstage boss.

Problem: Remember when I said I was too dumb for Void Stranger? I am similarly too Bad At Reflexes for Zer0Ranger. Much like fightmans, I really love shmups, but I’m dogshit awful at them because I just do not react quickly consistently enough to be good, and I don’t generally care to get good. I love the idea of piloting a fighter through waves of bullets so much. So much. I’m just awful.

And Zer0Ranger is no different. It’s hard as fuck. It’s got a few things to make the process easier; each run you complete contributes to a wheel of samsara which, when filled, grants you an additional continue (up to 8), which means you get more tries over all. But some of those encounters are *hard*, especially near the end of the game. And then, for plot reasons that system gets stripped away for the final-final run of the game, which, if you fuck up, it’s gone forever and you’ve gotta restart. Now, it’s a super interesting plot, and I’m going to keep trying at it because I’m stubborn. But I’ve fallen to the same point five times, and I can’t effectively practice because of the way the devs have it set up. Maybe one day I’ll get it. Maybe I’ll have gotten it and no one will ever see this part of the note. But I haven’t yet, and even if I don’t, this has been an exceptional game. Looking forward to whatever System Erasure does next.

Felvidek

I don’t remember remember where I first heard about Felvidek; I don’t exactly have a finger on the pulse of RPG Maker circles, so I’m not generally going to pick up on any weird ones unless they somehow hit it big (Funger says hi.)  But the game has a particularly unique look to it, and the actual setting (15th century Slovakia, while it was a part of Hungary) is unique. So I was curious, and then it was gifted to me, so I had to play it.

And it’s an RPG Maker-ass RPG. It’s good, the battle system works as intended and has an emphasis on status effects, particularly the armor down attack that the main character has. But, the actual abilities are highly limited by an MP meter that doesn’t regenerate between battles and requires either an item or praying at an altar. This would be more interesting if you couldn’t basically go pray at an altar between every fight. 

That feels a bit harsh to write, especially as the game’s only four hours long and feels perfectly paced for what it is. The plot goes to some weird places, and the dialogue feels period-accurate. Plus, every time someone drew a picture the game would cut to a medieval-style illustration and the characters would say “Oh that’ so realistic” and I always laughed. I actually had a lot of fun with this game; for what it is, it’s great. I still think it’s hard to recommend, but it’s a weird absurdist thing.

Trails into Azure

I've written previously of my newfound love of the Trails series, and hey, the next sequel of the game? Basically the same thing but marginally improved. It reminds me of playing through the Yakuza games, where the marginal improvements are most apparent over time, but you better believe the actual changes are miniscule game-to-game.

But it's good times, they're fun games, and the amount of character writing is astounding, both in scope and quality. Plus this one's still based in my (so far) favorite setting with my (so far) favorite set of characters. Plus one of the character names of all time, Wazy Hemisphere. It's a good cooldown game to do before bed; like a good chapter book.

New Games

Blue Prince

Finished this up with the basic ending. About 14 hours; forty-some houses built before landing on a final run. I think I can say that it's a brilliant game, probably as good as most people were saying it was. It's not perfect; I don't really love the way that RNG interacts with the puzzley nature of the game, especially with how reliant a bunch of the later puzzles are on having two very specific (and rare) rooms connected to each other. It feels bad to get a series of runs where effectively nothing happens; way worse than an equivalent action roguelike. But, there's still a bunch of really cool shit, and when the cogs fall into place and you solve a puzzle because you're a braingenius? Whoooo boy does it feel good. Great game, highly recommended.

Cauldron

Look I’ve literally written like a thousand words on Cauldron. I stand by those words, given that it’s only a couple week olds at this point. 

Fill Up the Hole

So, I’ve written about 1000 words about why Cauldron made me uncomfortable. As a comparison point, look at Fill Up the Hole. It’s *also* an Idle game that has some more active minigames. The difference: the minigames are much less integral to your initial success and are only necessary if you’re going for the “Good” ending, so the rest of the game requires much less input. Fill Up A Hole doesn’t compete for my attention half as much as Cauldron does, so for that very reason it’s a much better game. I say that as a joke, I don’t think I mean. But what this sentence presupposes is…. Maybe I do?

Expedition 33: Clair Obscur

I’ve been looking forward to this game since I first saw a trailer for it. So I was hoping it was at least good. And then it came out and basically the entire gaming world fell head over heels for it. But I still waited, because I am strong of will and weak of wallet. Sure I have a few half-spoilers, but what’s the fun of life without half-understood plot details?

I haven’t made it very far in; my Steam clock says six hours and I’ve only completed the first two major dungeons. And I have to say; I am head over heels for this fucking game.

The overwhelming feeling I get from this game is an adoration of old-style JRPGs. This is maybe the closest I’ve felt to Chrono Trigger since…. Chrono Trigger? The sheer level of joy I felt on getting plunked into an honest to god world map cannot be overstated. And then nailing a parry to kill an enemy that was a right bastard to me literal moments before? 

And this is to say nothing of the actual quality of the plot and writing. It’s (so far) understated, but in the way that’s kind of stereotypically French. The Prologue, which was brilliant and beautiful, followed Gustave and Sophie, who loved each other, and probably still do, but failed in their relationship, but clearly still kind of want to try again, as Sophie experiences her last few hours. Neither of them directly talk about their wants and desires or regrets, instead leaving the feelings festering in the midst of everyone else wanting to talk about feelings and relationships with them. I am constantly thinking of the exchange that went “You two are in love, aren’t you?”/”We broke up recently.”/”But what does that have to do with love?” 

I’m looking forward to experiencing more of this game. I think it’s an interesting counterpoint to a Trails game; where Trails games are maximalist in their worldbuilding and character writing, E33 is painting a world with significantly fewer strokes of the brush. Can’t wait to beat up more mimes in it.