What games are you playing?

[Doc Sophie]

I've been playing a lot of Dark Souls 3 lately, ended up getting to the Grand Archives (plus the optional areas of

Consumed Garden/Untended Graves and Archdragon Peak

) before getting annoyed and putting it down for a bit. Not gonna lie, I think I'll end up liking the second game more than the third by the time I'm done!

During my break from DS3, I'm playing Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark because I wanted something... less deeply frustrating than the Souls series. Also the vague rumors of a FF Tactics remake have me itching for a good strategy RPG and by god is Fell Seal a good strategy RPG. It hits pretty much all the marks that keep me coming back to Tactics! <3

[KobaBeach]

Started Popful Mail's US version without the Unworked Designs patch just for the lolz and it's alright, but its challenge feels like my last few colonoscopies, at World 2. Also started Lunar: Silver Star Story's Saturn version, heading up the Crystal Tower. *lion-o voice* Saturn games beat amount inflation, hoooooo.

Also started practicing Keio Flying Squadron, not aiming for a 1cc, but I'm trying to beat it under the amount of continues it allows me. First got to Stage 6 in Easy Mode before game overing, now practicing on Normal. Managed to beat Stage 1 with only one life lost.

[HatKid]

I guess I decided screw SMT4 (for now) and went to go finish my NG+ playthrough of Trails of Cold Steel on Hard difficulty that I started around four years ago. Game's still pretty fun, though holy crap some enemies are really beefy. The plan is to finish the game since I have probably two hours left at most, then after I finish Trails to Azure at some point before I die, replay Cold Steel 1 on Nightmare NG++, then carry over to Cold Steel II and do NG+, and after that, maybe I'll have Cold Steel III on either PS4 or PC (kinda want the Switch version, but supposedly it crashes a ton so eh) by that point.
I played the PS Vita version for a bit with my 100% completely legitimate copy of it and it runs about as poorly as I'd heard (it really doesn't matter since it's a turn-based RPG) but I transferred the save back to the PS3 version because the Vita DLC kept uninstalling itself or something IDK, whatever it was redownloading all the DLC from PS Store would fix it, but I didn't really want to do that every time I booted the game after turning my Vita back on.

[raekuul]

fire emblem 7 is supposed to be one of the easier ones but its still kicking my ass I really need to learn how to think Fire Emblem.

[Scarfley]

I had some money left to spare on the 3DS Nintendo eShop and came across WarioWare: Snapped. I have heard about the game before and know that people are saying that it isn't very good but the experimental gameplay approach the game had really made me curious.
So I bought it. Then I played it... or at least I wanted to but I had to first get the game to even work properly which took like half an hour.

For those who know nothing about the game, it is basically a microgame collection similar to the other WarioWare titles, except this specific entry in the series has the main gimmick of using the digital camera of the Nintendo DSi (or 3DS) as the way to control all of the microgames.
And it unfortunately just doesn't really work well. It already requires tons of effort to get the gimmick to work properly, including having the right lightning and playing it in front of a background with a colour that contrasts your skin colour or else the game does not recognise the outlines of your body properly.

And even after going through the trouble of setting everything up the microgames are just not all that fun to play. The controls are not all that responsive and there is a lot of delay.
Presumably to compensate for the janky gimmick, the actual microgames have a much longer time limit than in other WarioWare titles and there are only five of them per stage (meaning that there are only 20 microgames in total, five of which are only playable with two players).
Even the process of aiming for high scores that made the other games in the series so fun and replayable is not present here.
The only punishment for losing a microgame is also just not getting to see a photo of yourself while playing that specific microgame.
And even the photos don't really matter because they are all being deleted after closing the game.
Everything just kind of feels... pointless?
The part of the game that felt the most gamelike was actually the credits given that you were able to shoot the names of the people who made the game, aim for high scores and dodge aliens and all that. But even this part is kind of brought down a lot by the pretty bad controlls.
(And your high score disappears forever when you close the game :-( )
At least the presentation is quite nice, although the variety of the art you get to see is very limited given the few microgames the game has.
There is also a fun little segment after every stage where you get to see edited pictures of yourself while playing the microgames (my favourite being all of the pictures being presented like a comic strip with speech bubbles and everything. Pretty cool honestly.)

Even though the game has a lot of problems I still respect the game a lot for what it tried to do even if it really did not work well at all in the end.
It is still a super unique experience that is probably going to disappear forever in the next few years after the 3DS eShop closes since I doubt that it is ever going to be able to be emulated properly due to its weird gimmicky nature.

So... can I recommend this game? No, not really, I mean the fact that it took me twice as long to get the game to work properly than it took to play through the actual game itself (including the credits) kind of speaks for itself.

The other games in the WarioWare series are REALLY good though so please give them a shot if you have never heard of the series before. :-D

[Kleetus]

WarioWare: Snapped is one of those glorified tech demo games. It was included with early DSi models as a way of showing of the fact "yes this system does indeed have a built in camera".

A few of the WarioWare games are fancy tech demos, but Snapped was the one where showing of a piece of hardware was clearly prioritized above all else.

[Scarfley]

I think what makes the best WarioWare titles so good is probably that they take a weird console quirk and go wild with it, making you appreciate something a console can do which would otherwise just be seen by the majority of gamers as an annoying gimmick (like motion controls for example).
The main problem with Snapped was probably that its gimmick, the built in digital camera, was just not capable of being explored in the same fashion as other gimmicks due to technical limitations (after all the game is a challenge to even get to work properly).

One major downside to all of those gimmick heavy WarioWare games is definitely that preserving them is really difficult since they are basically tied to the console they were released on, making proper emulation and rereleases very challenging if not basically impossible.

[Onurubu]

Finally built the motivation to record another episode of my OMORI LP today and that was a lot of fun. Finally experiencing the combat properly which is way more indepth than I thought it would be.

Currently waiting the release of deltarune chapter 2 so that I can do an LP of that as soon as possible. My LP of chapter 1 was one of the first on youtube and I loved that game so so much (more than undertale)

[Nast]

Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight - now that I've finished it I can say it's pretty great. Combat is super simple but punchy and satisfying, movement can be slightly clunky but works well, and it's soaking with eerie atmosphere. Went ahead and played new game+ as well, which was a little more frustrating because your map completion carries over so it was much harder to tell where I'd already been. Also tried beating every boss without taking damage since it unlocks special items. I don't think contact damage belongs in a melee-oriented game like this at all - but otherwise it was a decently fun challenge.

Metroid Fusion - beat this one too, and man what an excellent game. It's definitely more on the linear side which goes a little against the spirit of the old Metroids, I guess? But taking it for what it is, it's really good. Unfortunately I'm not even going near 100% item completion since apparently some of them are pretty obtuse and/or require advanced techniques.

To The Moon - didn't take long for this one to fully engross me, and I blew through it in two sittings. It's a great little story with a fascinating premise. There's a few corny jokes in there but it's got a pretty good mix between lighthearted and bittersweet. Only really bad thing I can complain about is that the puzzles felt a bit tacked in.

Drill Dozer - been playing this one to get another fix of GBA platformer goodness. Just finished area 3, the ruins. It's got pretty neat ideas for various ways to use your drill, and tearing through shit is fun, but it feels a little shallow for some reason. The level design is so, I dunno, rigid? There's barely any exploration, you just go where the game wants you to go and there's little variation in how you can approach any given obstacle. Like, I wouldn't see much reason to replay these levels if there weren't some as-of-yet inaccessible areas sprinkled in.

Phantasy Star IV - I've enlisted the help of my husband to get through this one a little easier, and it's going ok. One dungeon early on had enemies that were wiping the floor with me and that jarred me a bit, but by now I've accepted that as the norm and I've internalized some of the nuances to get by, such as healing frequently between battles and not being too stingy about using tech. I'm also getting lost in the overworld quite often but that's likely down to poor sense of direction on my part. Anyway, I think I'm managing to have a good time all things considered. Just had my first encounter with Zio, got separated from Hahn and Alys, and am on my way to some tower whose name I forgot.

Streets of Rage 2 - finally beat this with my husband! It's a lot of fun with two-players but the later stages are so spammy lol. I'm curious to try it solo to see if it's more manageable.

[HatKid]

Finished my Trails of Cold Steel replay, which made me want to continue Trails to Azure so I am doing so. But then schoolwork had to happen so I haven't had much of a chance to play it :(
At least I got to Chapter 2. By the end of today though I should be good to play some more though.
On and off been playing Ys Origin on my Vita - the port is mostly fine, sometimes some extreme lag during boss fights when there's a lot of effects going on, and for some reason the game is very quiet. And Nightmare NG Ys VIII Vita, which has been kicking my butt a lot so not tons of progress there.

Haven't really touched SMT4, I'm just not into it right now. My plan was to finish it and SMT4A before SMT5 releases, but that's probably not going to happen. Oh well, I'd rather play them when I want to instead of forcing myself to play them since nothing good comes of that. Excited for SMT 5 though!! Hope it's good

[Ashan]

I started playing Death Stranding. Went in curious, but mostly blind and after about 5 hours (so like 30 minutes of gameplay) I can say I still barely know what's going on.

One of the weirdest games I've ever watched

[Ashan]

7.5 hours into Death Stranding and it seems like the game is opening up a bit more, and I'm actually doing mostly gameplay now instead of watching movies. And I think as of today the gameplay is finally starting to click.

It's kinda crazy to still be getting tutorials 7.5 hours into the game, but there's a surprising amount of mechanics for a game where you basically just run across a map without falling over. Also the menus are kind of overwhelming and I still occasionally get stuck trying to figure out what's going on in menus, but whatever. And also I've played Mario & Luigi Dream Team so as long as the tutorials don't go to the end of the game, it doesn't match that.

I also booted up Minecraft for the first time in a while yesterday and today. And before that it would be like an hour or 2 play sessions maybe every couple years or something. I mostly was into it during the alpha days, a bit in beta, and by the "release" I wasn't touching it much. But idk, it's fun to pick up every once in a while, and it's like a perfect podcast listening game.

I do have some qualms with recent updates. It seems like they've added so much crap that you can find in regular digging around, that it's too much to keep track of. And even aside from the knowledge of what materials are for (I haven't been Googling anything cause I just want to play the game, so I get by with my existing knowledge), having new types of blocks and new materials means you have less stacking in your inventory, and more spaces being used. Like there's multiple types of sand, multiple types of rock, so many minerals that I don't know what to do with them. Whereas in the earlier days, you'd dig for a while, end up with a bunch of cobblestone, and then like charcoal, steel, and maybe gold/diamonds. It was pretty simple. But now there's so many blocks that are all basically just stone blocks, but they don't stack.

I haven't dug around to see what all this launcher can do, but it seemed to imply you can have multiple versions installed. If I knew about this I might have booted to an earlier version, from around the time when i was more familiar with the game.

Also this isn't an entirely new thing but at one point they redid the whole biome/world generation system, and I don't find the world's nearly as interesting. I remember back in the day you'd get crazy land masses generated and it seems like you don't get those any more. It's just the generic biomes pieced together, but the individual chunks basically all look the same.

[Crow]

a monster's expedition is a stephen's sausage roll esque puzzle game with easier puzzles that are much more numerous

i am at the stage of the game where there are only the bonus multi-island-involved puzzles and it is slow going and kind of frustrating but I am making progress, 10 of 60 done at least

also started journey to the shkskdh planet but it's uhhh. 2005 newgrounds humor and a very linear "exploration" game and idk I think outer wilds spoiled me this is just not doing it for me but it's ""fine""

[Nast]

Doing the postgame levels in Drill Dozer. They're a relative step up from the main levels in my opinion, with interesting applications of the mechanics used in said levels, but they're a tad frustrating at times. This engine is just not well-suited for some of the precision maneuvers these levels ask you to do. On another note, those blocks scattered around stages which you can only break by upgrading your drill, just reek of artificial padding. And having to grind for money kinda emphasizes how repetitive the gameplay can be.

On a more positive note geez, did a replay of Deltarune chapter 1 and am two or so hours into chapter 2. It doesn't disappoint so far - really likeable new and returning characters, super funny writing, fun encounters and gimmicks, etc. The additions to the formula are greatly appreciated, such as recruiting enemies which gives more incentive to ACT, or the various ways in which the party members have become more useful in battle.

Phantasy Star IV, I'm in the planet of Dezolis trying to figure out how to stop the endless blizzard after failing to do so from the satellite Kuran. I'm genuinely surprised that I've been able to get into this game, even with all the old game jank. Meanwhile my husband tried out the second game and did not have a good time - can't choose a target during battles? Every dungeon is a teleporter maze? Items needed to progress in the story are hidden in random chests inside said mazes? Hoo boy, glad that's not the one I'm playing.

Tried the demo for Goodboy Galaxy, an indie exploration platformer for the GBA. You shoot at aliens and make friends with various NPC's. It's really cute! And the pixel art is gorgeous, it's hard to believe it's running on such limited hardware.

[Ashan]

Alright I really maintain that Minecraft has gotten too complicated.

My old strategy was to setup base, make a bed in it to reset my spawn point to where I want it, do some mining to get iron gear, then dig down real deep until I find redstone to put together a compass, and from there I'm generally secured to find my way back to base no matter how far I go.

But it seems as if now the compass doesn't point towards your bed's spawn point, and it always points back to your original spawn point. And the only way to change where it points to place something called a lodestone. So I look up how to get a lodestone and jesus christ, what is all this:
https://www.sportskeeda.com/minecraft/lodestone

Really regretting not making a world in an earlier version!

[Slimeman01]

Alright I really maintain that Minecraft has gotten too complicated.

My old strategy was to setup base, make a bed in it to reset my spawn point to where I want it, do some mining to get iron gear, then dig down real deep until I find redstone to put together a compass, and from there I'm generally secured to find my way back to base no matter how far I go.

But it seems as if now the compass doesn't point towards your bed's spawn point, and it always points back to your original spawn point. And the only way to change where it points to place something called a lodestone. So I look up how to get a lodestone and jesus christ, what is all this:
https://www.sportskeeda.com/minecraft/lodestone

Really regretting not making a world in an earlier version!

I mean, I'd argue that things have gotten less complicated over time, but maybe that's just because I've been keeping up with it for so long. Just adventuring around your world will teach you so much, like adventuring around the Nether will teach you a heck of a lot in 1.16, such as the value of gold. However, to each their own!

[KobaBeach]

World 3 into Luigi's Adventure, non-overseas and it's barely RTA viable, this is like. Hyper or ASMT levels of garbage trash: Blind drops, ASM that's coded against the player, cheap shots, generator usage for the purposes of fucking the player over rather than season a level. No offense to Anikiti, if he ever decides to make another level or hack, but I was legit getting mad. I'm at Hanging Gardens Secret and Hanging Gardens 4 is also available to me.

[Ashan]

Finished Death Stranding and holy cow I swear the ending was like 3 hours of cutscenes

[Crow]

outer wilds dlc

i found a thing that gave me Bad Vibes and it's the only thing i have left to do atm i think so i stopped because i'm afraid of Bad Vibes

[raekuul]

I've been mucking around in Hypnospace Outlaw on switch, trying to find out what I can find with 3y3 on the first day (before the Outlaw Alpha test). It'd probably help if I knew what all the pages were.

On 3DS I've been playing through Might and Magic - Clash of Heroes again (a themed match-3 game). The Haven chapter is such a pain in the ass, mostly because it doesn't really prepare you for the Haven boss fight at all.

[KobaBeach]

Started Grandia's Saturn version, but didn't feel like patching the English patch (need to redownload Flips too, I've deleted my SMW folder for mental health reasons). Even then what I can get from the Japanese and my bad skills is a whimsical game with a lot of heart and soul. For every soulful moment, there's a little joke to help sweeten the vibe a little while afterwards.

Like Justin deciding to go alone on his journey, and Sue breaks into tears at him abandoning her..... So she runs off then comes back and kicks him in the shin. She and Puffy (Pooey in JP, Puffy is a much better name) later also play the role of stowaways to follow Justin, making the two work without pay aboard a steam ship. Lotta slapstick going on in this game, Saki I believe also plays with the idea of putting a thumb tack in Leen's boot in some flavor text, for being the closest to Mullen. Justin's mom is always hitting him over the head... It's a bit uncomfortable, having gone through abuse myself. But it's ok.

I'm currently on the steam ship, Jin (Java) was a neat character, but I wish I had more knowledge of Japanese to truly appreciate his character he seems super hot blooded. I kinda want to apply the English patch, but it's a bit fun playing it this way. I'll double dip on the PSX version later on out of curiosity. Kind of glad Working Designs didn't get this, despite them trying to get it. Like yeah, the localization would be a bit better.... But we would have also gotten some cringe worthy attempts at humor. Also, lots of delays (especially with the voice acting), and the game likely wouldn't see a European release by Ubisoft, as was the case with every Working Designs venture except for Dragon Force (Shining Wisdom has an entirely different SEGA-made localization in Europe).

The battle system feels like a straight evolution of Lunar and I'm all over it. It kind of feels more fun than the FF ATB system, and I like the slight incentive to create combo attacks. Weapon class levelling is also straight out of SaGa and I'm all over it too. Biggest complaint is the occasional massive framerate drops (is that just Mednafen??) and the orcs not being as hot as Beyond the Beyond's but that's a high bar to reach (BtB's gameplay however has the bar so far below it's gone through the Earth and reached China by now).

I also really like the graphics, the 3D maps feel like Breath of Fire III, while the 2D graphics feel a lot like a more colorful Mega CD effort, with nicely done dithering, more MegaDrive-ish color choices; this game started as a Mega CD effort, post-Lunar EB and it shows.

------------------------------

I've also started Panzer Dragoon Saga and so far it's been pretty emotive. I'm halfway through Disc 1 and past the first "dungeon"? Flight area, either way. I'm headed to Garil Desert and I've given my real name to the game, David, and my online name to the durrgon, Koba. This is what I've also did in Digimon World, but my name didn't overwrite Edge's, which I appreciate.

The blending of rail shooter with 3D RPG is novel, but the first flight section isn't the most exciting. Long corridors, occasional side paths, occasional destructible scenery... Where it does shine is the battle gameplay, which is really fun. The ATB gauges/Panzer Juice™ is a novel twist on the ATB concept, it's a bit similar to what Bravely Default would do with added turns, but mixed with consumable points.

You can store up multiple Panzer Juice™ gauges for a powerful Berserk technique, or go ham and fire away with Edge's gun or the Dragon's lasers with each gauge that gets filled, and there's no wasting going on. If you run out of full gauges and you still had a bit left in another, the last one that wasn't fully finished, goes to the first slot, picking up where it left off.

Enemies also have weak points to hit for massive damage, which can be revealed with the positioning of the Dragon. The enemies are in the center and your Dragon orbits around them, in one of four quarters of a circle. Depending on where the enemies are facing, the portion of the arena you may be in may be tinted red in the radar in the lower center of the screen, meaning the worst attacks are used here; Tinted green, meaning no attacks; Or no color at all, meaning weak attacks.

Trying to juggle that and the weak spots is the fun part, especially since you can "beat them to the punch", by triggering the menu before they get a chance to turn, basically position yourself to the area with the weak spot, then press C as soon as your Dragon reaches the spot, to access the menu and choose the gun or lasers. It's a ton of fun and I recommend playing it just to try out that system alone, just don't pay the money for an English copy. Piracy ho!

My biggest regret is that this didn't go full on Panzerese instead of relying on Japanese for a lot of the voiced dialogue (the voiced dialogue being basically all of it). That'd be some moxie, but this game, being a fully 3D RPG, on the Saturn, in 1998, with a whole fucking bunch of voiced dialogue is like, The Definition of Moxie. You know The Meaning of Sharp in A2MT, well this is The Meaning of Moxie. And the development of this was a goddamned nightmare.

If you're okay with a YouTuber Personality detailing the horrid mess that was this game's development check the video below.

Should you prefer a more subdued form, here is an interview of 15 staff members on the development of the game.

------------------------------

Lastly, I've been making my way back to Chapter 8 (of 25 + Chapter 0) of Summon Night 2 because of an ill timed save.

The game is more of the same, but what it has it feels more refined, minigames are repeatable and feel more engaging, summoning is made into more of a magic system with further spells unlocking the better your rank in a certain "element" (Machine, Youkai, Spirit, Therian), I think this improves by levelling up. Saves in a pre-battle screen are also made possible instead of having to sit through a whole cutscene with each loss. Though they're not always useful, because you can lock yourself in a hard battle without the ability to grind and unlock more summons, which is what happened to me. A lot of the times it's worth it to have a spare save on hand, or fast forward the dialogue scenes with the X + R2 secret, thanks Hardcore Gaming 101.

The story is still pretty anime as shit, but the characters feel pretty likeable, much like the first one's and still not very deep. I'm aiming to get Nesty's ending, myself, he's a huge tsun-tsun dork, Amer is a precious bean, Keina and Folte are a funny duo, Folte being a huge goofball and Keina being the straightwoman, Minis is precious and I wish her mom Famy wouldn't be mean to her, and Rocca is kind of "the normal one", he's not very exciting, but he's the most level headed one so you appreciate him for that.

Paffel is completely bonkers, she's just everywhere delivering for her part-time job at a bakery. Meimei also seems drunk, but I like her spirit. Their minigames are really easy so I appreciate em. Morlin and Kazamine rule, I seem to remember Kazamine being just kind of there in the first game, so I'm glad he's more explored here. Leonard as a concept is completely insane, a Los Angeles gumshoe being isekai'd into a JRPG. And he uses a gun, it's great! I still need to recruit Yuel but she seems super precious, Sion has a sort of advisor role for the protagonist in his recruitment subplot and it's really cool, Mimoza and Gibson are back and they serve as big sister and brother for the whole team!

Then there's the Guardian Beast I summoned in the prologue to be my sidekick, Resi (default name). He's the therian one (from Maetropa), a Metral (iirc that's like cows and the like) and. He's just the most precious thing, I want to protect him so hard oh my fucking god. He's the biggest weenie I have ever seen, I vibe with him so much. He and Nesty are my faves so far and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

------------------------------

Anyway that's basically it. Happy Koichi Sugiyama death day

[HatKid]

Got to the final chapter of The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure (I guess technically it's Ao no Kiseki since it's the Chinese PC version with Geofront yadayadayada) and it's about as crazy as I'd heard. It's nice to finally find out what was behind all the "weird things" happening in Crossbell that you get told is happening in Cold Steel 1, but there's never any explanation given, which makes sense since how would the Cold Steel cast even know about that stuff. It's a little saddening to know this game is the last in-game appearance of Kevin and Ries (for now, RIGHT???) but oh well. I'm not exactly looking forward to doing the final dungeon though since it's supposedly extremely long, but not nearly as cramped as Zero's final dungeon.

Played a little of Phantom Brave - a strategy game by NIS. Seems fun enough, though I only played for like half an hour.

[Bean]

Got my first experience with the Xbox Series S, so the first thing I did naturally was play Xbox One games on it.

Powerstar Golf is good and kind of reminds me of the older Mario Golf games. It's not the best or anything, but it was solid. I like some of the later challenges like only being able to use a driver and a putter on some courses, so it's not just always the same thing.

Sonic Colors: Ultimate started out fun enough on it, but there were a couple of times where Tails saved me in a 2D section only for the level to inexplicably become 3D. This would be great except I fell through the floor as a result in a couple parts and had to restart. Game also crashed a few times on me. Took a good game and turned it into an okay one with too many glitches. Give your developers a chance to finish the thing next time, Sega.

Also in my quest to avoid playing Persona 5 Strikers on the Switch, I've played more Among Us, won a round of Pac-Man 99, finished 3rd a couple more times in Tetris 99, and started up Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania, a remake of the first two games in the series. And with Metroid Dread coming out tomorrow, I think I'll be enjoying that next. There's my gaming for September when I wasn't working, hobbying it up, or resting up and recovering.

[Onurubu]

outer wilds dlc

i found a thing that gave me Bad Vibes and it's the only thing i have left to do atm i think so i stopped because i'm afraid of Bad Vibes

I used the release of the DLC to start a new save and properly get into Outer Wilds. I started playing it last year but kind of just fell off because of school and stuff. Now I've been playing for 15 hours or so and I am loving it so much. Rediscovered most of what I got on my original save and also discovered a lot of new things.

I finally started the DLC last night and the new type of soundtrack they have for it really spooked me initially. Just from the fact that

They included an option to reduce frights

I have been at the edge of my seat all the time scared of jumpscares, even though I don't think this game will be the type to do that. The

ring world

is also beautiful and I was taken aback when I first saw it. I haven't even finished this game but I know that it is my favourite game of all time even now.

[Crow]

don't worry there's not any real jumpscares lol

stealth sections, however, there do be, and they shouldn't be