What games are you playing?

[Nast]

Beat Kao the Kangaroo: Round 2. My opinion of it hasn't changed much since my last post - it's enjoyable, but ultimately unremarkable. Platforming is simple and relaxing with some fun setpieces, while combat feels tacked-on and is a bit of a chore. I liked it well enough, but it probably won't stick with me in the long run. Also the character designs (barring Kao who is pretty cute) are like, bootleg cereal mascot or something lol

[Argumentable]

Well, I finished the Lilac story of Freedom Planet. I don't think I like this game anymore. The last levels felt bad and with the rest of the game just kind of getting a pass from me I think all the enemy spam and one final awful boss pushed it into bad for me. I won't complain too much about it though, nowadays I think it's more interesting to hear why someone likes something rather than dislike it, and I'm in the minority anyway. Sorry!

[Nast]

Touhou Luna Nights is giving me a really strong first impression. I love the graze system and the time-stop abilities. Went up to the first boss, can't wait to play more.

I oughta play Team Ladybug's SMT game they made at one point, Synchronicity Prologue I believe? It's been sitting on my hard drive for a while now

[raekuul]

i picked up mario kart switch and super mario maker two this past weekend

send help

[Crow]

been getting back into kingdom hearts 2 rando because it's stupid and fun
sometimes also very painful

[Kleetus]

Recently started playing Shadowrun Returns.

In tabletop rpg discussions I sometimes here people bring up Shadowrun. Usually they say it has a very interesting setting, but actually trying to play the damn thing is an experiment in human suffering. Playing the video game adaptation is probably an easier way to see what's going on rather than convincing one of my groups to drop what we're doing and switch to the system that's regarded as having some of the worst source books in the entire industry.

You can tell that Shadowrun Returns is based on a TTRPG because the game narrates everything and everyone.

The game's strongest point is the characters and dialogue. I feel that with the game's bleak tone and subject matter, less skilled writers would make every character either insufferably sarcastic or an abrasive asshat. I quite like that the supporting character are friendly and supportive. It of course, also makes it easy to know what group of mercenaries, crocked cops and corrupt businessmen you're supposed to root for.

The most recent level I played was the asylum raid; it does feels a bit out of place in a cyberpunk game, but *chef's kiss* that's some good medical horror. The best part is how mundane it starts out.

[KobaBeach]

Started the (poorly translated) PSP version of The Legend of Heroes IV: A Tear of Vermillion because man this game has so much text!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And too much untranslated text makes my brain go numb in anxiety!!!!!!!!!!!!!! aaa

Anyway made it to Chapter 2: Searching traces Searching for Distant Memories and I'm just out of the water fight Great Marine Faceoff and search for Rouca's sister. If the strike out text isn't much of an indication (i added great to 水上試合 though) a lot of this game's text feels like a preliminary translation, like they did the basics, some occasional machine translation to speed up the process, but didn't go into actually writing the text to flow better or rewording things or amending text and translation. The legibility is what keeps it from reaching Duwang level. I'm no professional translator, but come the fuck on guys. There's also minor bugs with control codes in the text, also, the text scroll at the end of the prologue doesn't have enough time to finish the second sentence? Not sure if that's just PPSSPP, because I moved my save and iso to my Vita later on.

Story is pretty good so far, simple stuff but pretty comfy as expected from Gagharv. Avin and Mile have a nice red oni-blue oni chemistry, Martie is an adorable dork, Muse/

Mildine

is the cool big sister type, Douglas has a nice mentor vibe to him. Shannon reminds me of Amy from Sonic which honestly, your affection to her depends on how much you like/tolerate characters like Amy. I like Amy so, I find her more comical than anything. Of the characters so far, Avin and Mile have the most development since they're the protags. They're very much dudes hanging out and their chemistry feels very natural and I. Honestly ship them. From what I've seen in the Falcom Discord I'm not the only one?

Male to male platonic relationships are important, I know, I'm just gay and a sucker for the childhood friend romance trope, why else do you think my biggest FF7 ship is Cloud x Tifa (and Cloud x Barret and AUWhereDyneDoesn'tCommitSuicide!Dyne x Barret).

There's also a lot of parallels to White Witch, which (oops) I appreciate. Fururu's bear is named Banban like Filly's pet cub, Avin and Mile are one year apart like Jurio and Chris, Avin does Goose/Jurio and Shirla's "A beautiful woman? Where?" routine with Muse. It's really good, and it doesn't feel like stuff that feel awkward for a player that started with this game to miss out on, which is a problem I have with Arc III giving so much spotlight to the protags of I and II who show up as minor assisting characters along the game.

wrt Arc III, So far I've seen Shante and Poco, and Shante had quite a lot of dialogue for a cameo, with a three second soundclip of the end of Music Man, Poco also had his magic band kid powers never be explained or hinted at (since verbose fanwiki exposition isn't needed for good narrative despite what pop culture junkies would make you believe) despite him literally boosting Alec and Lutz's HP with his trumpet's magic. As an Arc I & II fan I feel like people who started with any of the later games and didn't play I & II before III would just be confused. II handled Arc I's cast better I feel.

So far the story, like White Witch, is a series of vignettes that take place as the heroes fulfill their destiny, in this case, trying to find Avin's sister. Pacing is slow and not the most fulfilling, but thankfully I love laidback stories like that, that just illustrate what the world of a game is like, so I'm on board, but for people who care more about more methodical and in depth stories may be a bit disappointed. This is a bildungsroman, but it's more subdued, more slice of life-esque than FFVII or Wild ARMs 2's more psychological and philosophical approaches, respectively.

god if i ever get more into literature and literary criticism im going to do some fucking. rpg video essays i s2g

The game's strongest point is the characters and dialogue. I feel that with the game's bleak tone and subject matter, less skilled writers would make every character either insufferably sarcastic or an abrasive asshat. I quite like that the supporting character are friendly and supportive. It of course, also makes it easy to know what group of mercenaries, crocked cops and corrupt businessmen you're supposed to root for.

god that sounds based

[Leet]

1! http://www.believeinthe.net/1jam/1jam.html

[AuraLancer]

My Final Fantasy II playthrough derailed into Arcane Labyrinth grinding

[Jongseok]

Touhou 18 is a brand new game by ZUN. Touhou Kouryuudou ~ Unconnected Marketeers - Eastern Rainbow Dragon Cavern was released on May 4. The game has a new system that has never been seen before. It's not a ventra(UFO, animal) thing. The new system is called Ability Card. There are three types ─ Active Cards(remove the bullets mostly), Equipment Cards(additional shot type), and Passive Cards(add some special skills like avoiding death with two bombs automatically). Players can make a game easier by using these cards. It seems that ZUN has sought novelty.
I cleared Normal, Hard, and Extra Stage.

[KobaBeach]

Doing the PSX/PC98 version of The Legend of Heroes IV: A Tear of Vermilion just as a small curio, doing sidequests in Phildin. It feels like a prototypical Trails in the Sky with its sidequests and guild, but also a much more basic version of the previous three Legend of Heroes games with a much simplified story and field map that simply overly reuses chunks to make it up (the path to Ourt is like a path that uses five original chunks stretched out to last like 12) which, I guess saves space, but makes everything very easy to get lost in, the effect is way too similar to the Lost Woods and Lost Hills of Zelda 1. Thankfully the PSX version makes the paths between cities a single flowing map, which lessens the disorienting effect.

In the PC98 version, the flow also takes a hit as Disk 6 includes the battles and Disk 2 includes the towns, so you're always changing floppies. The game forgoes traditional levels in favor of proficiency levels a la SaGa which means quite a bit of grinding, the fact Mednafen has a fast forward button while Neko Project 21W does not is why I went with the PSX version rather than going with the CD version and installing to a hard drive on PC98. np2fmgen does seem to have fast forward but it also seems to be older, so.

However, battles are much slower due to it abandoning real time battles for a more turn based tactics style of gameplay, another similarity to TitS. Maps are also poorly designed, filled with so many rocks and trees and pits that it's hard to move around in, tiles being much smaller (roughly 32x16? not sure of the ratio) doesn't help either, being hard to position yourself. Pisca is also a problem as you gain like. One (1) per defeated enemy if you finish a battle and don't run away (which they helpfully added a manner to escape to the next map block. it's very slow) which is. Oof. Your main source of Rose is gonna be sidequests, can't tell if this is an actual problem yet or just a weird design choice that doesn't affect the gameplay as much like SaGa, recruiting party members does seem to require Rose though, at the very least, Muse and Martie do.

Tadashi Hayakawa's (who upon reading his japanese wikipedia page, did yugioh duel monsters and 5d's??? lol) story also takes a hit, I've only managed to make it up to the part where Avin saves Dinerken from Rutice and Buster before dying without saving, but there is much less dialogue and story here. It also feels less organic, for example instead of Shannon being met through going through a dungeon and saving her from Octum's Apostles (who by the way are literally called heretics by the heroes in the PC98 version, that is on the nose as fuck), you just find her laid on the ground being attacked by monsters halfway to Tibri. Characters also feel more plain due to the openness of the story, Mile has very little dialogue and just happens to be a pupil of Lemuras? This is never really given much detail, he's mostly just there. The prologue is also much shorter. Due to the way the game is stored in each floppy, I'm assuming they simply got too ambitious and ran out of space like the first Star Ocean. This does make Hisayoshi Takeiri and Satoko Ono's Windows writing's reliance on White Witch callbacks feel lazier, but I still prefer their rendition over this, despite my feelings on making the main enemies followers of a "god of darkness" instead of going for a yin-yang sort of approach to light and darkness, where neither one is inherently evil or good, but that's just my JRPG veteran bias.

Music is also much worse, with FM instrumentation feeling much emptier than previous Falcom games, especially White Witch, which is absurd because, according to the Falcom Composer Breakdown spreadsheet (do read the history section for tea on how scummy Falcom's upper management is, especially Masayuki Kato. kato commit die binch), the composer list seems to be roughly the same with the addition of Satoshi Arai (not many confirmations on who made what though), a bizarre anomaly considering how great White Witch's soundtrack is, even just before that there was Revival Xanadu, Brandish III... What happened here? SC-55 MIDI is much better, and is what Sound Team jdk wanted to focus most on, but the FM soundtrack. Just what happened to it?

Saving is also a problem, I honestly didn't find any way to save in the PC98 version other than tents? Reading JP Wikipedia, it seems inns also allow saving and there's a quicksave placed when you exit the game that gets deleted upon loading, which is so backwards. The PSX version allows saving at any time, which is much better. The PSX version has much uglier graphics, taking the pixel art of the PC98 version and smoothening out into weird vaseline, Windows 9x game versions of it, which I don't mind for the tileset, but the character graphics, it feels awkward. I much prefer the grainier, pixelly look, despite that they'd probably be blended in with CRT monitors.




Also, load times are terrible, lasting like roughly 5 seconds to load battles and cities. Thankfully the game plays as best as it can, which is more than I can say for other long loading games like Sonic 06 and MMX7.

The PC98 game was released in 1996 which is absurd considering Windows 95 was already out by then and I'm pretty sure the PC98 was winding down with nothing but doujin releases from here on, I believe? Need to research. Either way, this is entirely due to Kato literally telling Yoshio Kiya that making games for Windows would doom Falcom which is absurd and proof that Kato was still living in the 80s. Kiya would leave shortly after or during Legend of Xanadu 1, roughly 1994, heading to Nihon Application, currently Creansmaerd, to make the Gekirin/Die Gekirin quadrilogy and Last Imperial Prince (Gekirin's Windows versions are available on Internet Archive, no links, Die Gekirin is also on iOS I think?, and Last Imperial Prince is available on PC-FX, not sure of what emulator is best for it but I heard it's pretty decent I think?).

I feel like a mix of console and PC releases instead of focusing exclusively on PC with the occasional 3rd party port to console would help secure Falcom's livelihood in the pre-PSP era, sadly Kato is a fucking hack who doesn't know how to run a company properly, focusing on paranoia to downplay the contributions of each dev to each production and disallowing them from speaking of their work publicly, making them seem like a homogeneous corporation where no one stands out and preventing them from furthering their career.

The PSX version was released in 1998, which is adequate. While FF7 would have been released at the time, it's not exactly that bad a port outside of the load times and lo-fi presentation, I'd give it a 2/5 at worst. It's very much a budget title, but the PSX ports seem to have had a moderate reception going by the amount of people who look back on PSX White Witch fondly. LoH I & II had much worse reception due to being just straight ports of the PC98 versions with Redbook audio which is just jarring as fuck.

As for the PSP version I'm at Guia (I've been to a town with the same name IRL, fun fact), just met Rael and Elenoa (pretty sure I've seen an old shitposter in old Sonic forums with the name rael (a bunch of numbers) and also a crossdressing (drag queen?) rabbit furry from decades back with the name raelbunny or something, nsfw warning). As for the PC version, I'm still only at Borun, heading to Torkas Cave.

The segment with Archem and the Meefas was really cute and spoke to me a bit, as an animal and insect lover (I feel bad crushing roaches and accidentally stepping on snails and ants haha!), a very relevant commentary considering the amount of waste people do to nature even these days, from Bolsonaro ravaging the Amazon and driving natives out of their homes for agriculture (iirc) and cryptocurrencies contributing to pollution (and GPU shortages!) all to try and line the pockets of idiots who want to seem hip and with it, like idiot Twitter artists and celebrities hopping on NFTs or just silver spoon privileged Silicon Valley dudebros. Truly we live in a hellscape of which there is no reprieve.

[Lejes]

Taking pictures of Pokémon in New Pokémon Snap. This is the first time I've even seen like half of these guys. Very chill game, and is great for small doses since a stage run only takes two or three minutes.

[HatKid]

Been making pretty steady progress in Super Robot Wars V. It's starting to verge on the patented SRW difficulty but I don't think it'll ever get to the level of some of the classic games thanks to the ability to use spirits at almost any time, among other things. Some of the SR Points have been really annoying to get, but I'm persevering because I'm a silly person that wants a PNG that says I got all the SR Points in a playthrough. At least once I get that I never have to concern myself with them again because UNLIKE most SRW games, there are no scenarios locked behind having a certain amount of SR points, I think. Except maybe the final route split? I'm not totally sure. If it is based on SR Points, then nevermind. It's like most SRW games then in that regard. I am so glad the Vita version has the ability to add custom songs, makes it objectively better than the Switch and PC versions which lack that. Makes me sad for when I got to play SRW T someday as that wasn't released on Vita, I don't have a PS4, so my only option is to play the Switch version. I've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of setting custom songs for characters haha.

Also went and got the second FF Crystal Chronicles game, Ring of Fates. It hasn't been to bad so far, but playing it on my 3DS has been somewhat painful. The D-pad on the 3DS isn't the best so my hands start hurting after a while thanks to how awkward it is for me to hold the thing and use the dpad. At least the circle pad isn't awkward to use in this game as it's 3D, so that's nice. I would just use my DS but the thing is basically broken so.... It's interesting seeing what was changed between CC and Ring of Fates, like the combat overall feels smoother, though they made magicite one-use so you aren't practically invincible the moment you get Cure/Cure Ring (which doesn't seem like it'd be in Ring of Fates,) you attack faster so you can defeat enemies faster, stat improvement is based on level ups + equipment, instead of equipment + artifacts, so it's easier to get stronger, and more. I kinda hope Squeenix decides to remaster Ring of Fates and Echoes of Time because they really don't look too good. They're fine for DS games, but they aren't the prettiest games around.

also maybe go read my reviews on my talkhaus site except don't because they're really bad!!!!!!!!!!

[KobaBeach]

Makes me sad for when I got to play SRW T someday as that wasn't released on Vita, I don't have a PS4, so my only option is to play the Switch version. I've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of setting custom songs for characters haha.

gotta keep this in mind for when i jailbreak my ps4 after an exploit for 8.xx is found sometime in the next whenever

[yoshicookiezeus]

Finally getting around to playing Return of the Obra Dinn, after having good things about it for a long time. Such a wonderful detective game, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything really like it before. I’m up to just above half of the fates solved at this point, and things are definitely starting to get tricky now.

[AuraLancer]

For some reason, Josef's "ultimate weapon" from the Arcane Labyrinth is a dagger. I've never heard of anyone not building him to use his fists. (FF2)

[KobaBeach]

At the Meribian Sewers in Lunar: Eternal Blue. Very much enjoying the nods to the previous game and how colorful everything looks despite being on the same system, it's great! I really like Nall's choice of taking in orphans and raising them into his own army of bandits, it's very cute. Dunno if the flavor text about him yelling at them is part of Working Designs' adlibs but I wish he wouldn't do that! The extremely identical descendant of Remus that has the same name is also a funny little NPC.

I will say having been with Lemina since the Ghost Manor, she is much more interesting than Mia, a moneygrubbing sassy mage fits her, being voiced by Megumi Hayashibara in Japan (lina inverse hello??), she and Ronfar are tied for my faves. I hope Jean gets a bit more scenes showing her off beyond mentions of her troubled past, and Lucia reminds me a lot of Rei Ayanami which I dig, the English script (I think) writes her into a sort of Starfire type as well which is honestly funny, it's basically the personality I want the character who is sort of my fursona, Koba, to have in a small story I'm writing (I'll probably put them up on dA, Weasyl and FA and post links to the dA uploads here once I finish a chapter /plug).

As for dungeons, they haven't been too hard, Ghost Manor was alright but figuring out the shutters line had me going for a guide and the bricks were just annoying. Magic Tester is apparently a huge pain in the dick in the American version but I used the Unworked Designs patch so, I managed to get the Japanese difficulty, and it was alright. The Ruins were interesting, I appreciate how

Ghaleon

was framed, even to a player who didn't start with Lunar 1, with the flashback and his speech alone they could tell he's basically an ancient evil. I also enjoyed seeing the return of

the fairies in his old garden

. I could pass on the hand in wet water joke Ruby does though.

The Snow Cave I had to redo twice (one and a half because I only finished it twice), I was playing under Fusion, which is programmed in a 32-bit, x86 environment, circa WinXP? And whenever I open Paint Tool SAI, which is on my toolbar next to Discord, it asks for administrator permission before opening. Since I'm on Win8.1 it basically puts everything in a sort of background mode, with a faded out desktop background and the admin permission window in the center. This makes Fusion bug out and crash. Twice. Twice I tried to open Discord, I think to talk to my boyfriend or MotorRoach and it fucking died on me.

But Snow Cave is alright, Lucia walking out for us dilly-dallying to help the village of Zulan feels a bit out of the blue and I'm wondering if stuff didn't get mistranslated, or completely rewritten. The dungeon is pretty convoluted at first, but it's pretty linear once you get used to it, and the "Lucia comes back to help because she feels love for the party" scene after the avalanche is really cute, if super tropey and cliché. I'm a sucker for clichés used properly though!!!!!!!!!! Missing Link is alright, the first time I wasn't prepared, but AI still did the trick, the second time, I did it for real and it was pretty good. I'm glad the guide warned me about getting Power Flame, because I would never have gotten that at that point, I'd be too focused spreading the levels evenly on my magic.

The town of Meribia is alright, I enjoyed seeing Remus, a descendant rather, and Lunn/Linus is honestly pretty hot, glad he's not a youthful bishounen like I expected him to. I don't like his voice though it feels like. Almost yellowface but not quite. It's really embarrassing haha. I like the visual design of Taben's Peak (Machine Mountain in Japanese) and seeing Nall again while not being as much of an annoying bitch is neat. >tfw u kin hume nall

Taben's Peak I also had a crash but I forget why. Either way I played It on my Vita, RetroArch, and it has a lot of paths that don't go anywhere, I'll tell you that much. The Ice Mongrels are really cute but sadly I've only managed to beat one of them (you can max out the exp counter by killing them I think, but there is the chance of overflowing if you beat an Ice Pup as well I think) and it was before the crash. RetroArch, I tried but they all got away. Paused at the Meribian Sewers before continuing because that place got much worse since the first game, it's like a maze.

Other than that I've been continuing Record Dungeons and the main story in Final Fantasy Record Keeper and Arc the Lad R respectively. Also did a bunch of drawing in Romancing SaGa Re;univerSe with like most of 20000+ gems I just had accumulated from doing the main story and logging in and managed to get like so many As, Ss and SSs. At one point I got like three SSs on one pull (White Rose, Mesarthim and Cat). The best part is that I never pay because I don't like paying for games of chance, training my party in expeditions rn because why is this game hard. Might try to reinstall Tokyo Afterschool Summoners (cleared up to make some room) and Live A Hero and do some main story stuff.

[Bean]

After beating a replay of Mega Man II (GB), I've been taking a few days away to just rest up and do stuff like more Among Us. My bro wants to do a co-op run of It Takes Two, so I'm down for that before settling in to record some Mega Man 3.

[thatguyif]

Been struggling with...things lately. Not exactly pleased about some stuff. Still, managed to game a little bit.

Last month and a half, I picked up Sky Rogue again (after spending 20 hours on it a few years ago playing it on my Mac). The game was fun for an air combat roguelike. It took me...30 hours from starting again to finally defeat the endgame boss, Typhon. Then the game gives you postgame unlocks that include a bunch of new ships to muck around with...but also a bunch of game-breaking weapons, including the Murder Thunder Beam. I played another round immediately after unlocking these, beat the endgame boss with the Thunder Beam in less than 30 minutes. It's absurd. (There's also a Shmup-style homing blaster, two missile sets literally called the Itano Circus (and they do function like Macross Missile Massacre, the weapon), and a bomb that's just a freaking nuke.)

Also been plodding along to Hollow Knight. The new game I started this year, about 13 hours in and I'm about where I was story-wise before I stopped playing last time, which stopped at 19 hours. But I've also explored FAR more stuff in those 13 hours too, including clearing out Deepnest (done before getting the Dream Nail...it'll be annoying to get back to the Dreamer there after accidentally finding it) I doubt I'll finish the game this month, but I aim to be done sooner rather than later.

Not much else going. I do want to get back into Bully and move forward with that game, but we'll see what happens. Also downloaded Control for shits and giggles on XBGP, but I've yet to start it. Given it's only the standard edition, just going to lollygag and demo it to see what it's like before uninstalling. Do want to play Falconeer before I have to start paying for Game Pass, though. And I also want to give Yoku's Island Express an honest try, though I don't like the idea of playing two Metroidvanias, so I'll either put Hollow Knight down (again) and start it or skip raocow's LP of it until I'm done. That said, I might do the former for the simple reason that it's nowhere near Hollow Knight's length (supposedly).

[KobaBeach]

i uninstalled romancing saga re;universe after getting like some bomb ass pulls yesterday because grinding to advance in the story of a gacha, a game that has a long but limited timespan of availability by nature, is the stupidest shit ever im sorry. like i would be able to do this in mmos, but the difference in that and this is like, have you tried doing SaGa style stat gains in like a game that hinders your grinding with stamina and time between expeditions unless you use gems and tickets?? it's very bad. have fun y'all who play it, im done. i literally just wanted an excuse to play with a varied cast i don't want fucking. strategizing in a glorified slot machine with rpg elements tacked on.

At Pentagulia in Lunar: Eternal Blue. Had to grind a bit for Silver back in the Meribian Sewers to get some equipment at Azado, leveled up some magic a bit. The Cult of Althena is getting more and more cartoonishly evil and I think that's funny.

Ghaleon

just being part of Althena's magical religious government would be criticized for bad writing these days and I think that says a lot about how story telling in JRPG and games in general has evolved. Not to imply that people in real life aren't just cartoonishly evil a lot of the times, just look at some of the far-right folks and a lot of rich people, they are toxic to the point of disbelief. I do like simpler, sillier plots like this alongside more methodical stuff like FFVII and Xenogears though, the latter of which I should play soon, disc 2 and some of the platforming heavy dungeons are gonna be """""""fun""""""".

Also fake Althena's voice actress is terrible, like, you know how raocow was like "oh the mighty no. 9 french voice cast is awful they all sound like they're talking down to you" it's like a mix of that and just speaking very slowly like you were being talked to by someone who thought you were stupid, I'd say it's hilarious but most of Working Designs' voice cast is a case of Jelinek/Chaos Wars syndrome where everyone is basically friends, family and workers because the budget is like tiny as fuck, so it's really inevitable. Jenny Stigile my beloved, tho (even if I hate WD). Voice acting got mad desynched in the Destiny/Vulgan cutscene with Hiro and Lucia and I can't tell if it's from technical incapability or if it's a bug from the Genesis Plus GX core on Vita RetroArch.

Some chuckles here and there but, Borgan is designed as an fat and ugly caricature but man this game is heavy on the fatphobia at points, shout outs to using the term "magically challenged" which is a bit, oof. By the way, Leo ru- I mean, Leo and Mystere, yes, they both rule, yes. (shifty eyes) Taking a break, maybe playing another RPG or something else for a few hours before going to get Jean and Lemina. I should do Terranigma again but I'll probably catch up to PSP AToV on Win AToV, or fuck around in Arc 3.

Betting hard that the evil karate dude is just resident hot dad Lunn in a fancy getup and mask, the latter of which Jean kicked off because she's cool like that. Don't spoil it, I wish to laugh if it's the case.

[raekuul]

At this point it's probably just more comprehensive to post what's on my literal todo list.

Code: Select all

## Videogame To-Do List, in no particular order

1. Pokémon Crystal - Rising Badge
2. Switch Online SNES - Super Metroid, Demon's Crest, Star Fox
3. Intense EET - Mary Sue the Fighter/Wild Mage - First Beregost loop
4. GZDoom - Grab the FreeDoom IWADS, and try out Roguelike Arsenal.  Also try to find Chex Quest IWADs
5. Wii Sports+Resort - Putting practice
6. Trickster Online - Oops Wharf: Gabby; Episode 1-3: Aura,  Mjolna, Steel
7. Pocket Monsters Sword - AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
8. Revelations: The Demon Slayer - Test Modern Spell Names + Better Monster Names

[KobaBeach]

My Lunar: Eternal Blue run has slowed to a crawl as I grind Magic EXP to get Jean's Dance Magic to Lv.16 to unlock Dopple Dance so I can survive Lunn's Chameleon attack (I was right on the

black karate thing

btw) in his boss battle. It's at Lv15 rn so I'll do another session tonight (it's almost 7 PM) or tomorrow morning.

The battle against the White Fiend felt like I got lucky, I could barely keep up. I don't know if I'd have thought of putting the Tri-Ring (status ward) on Ronfar without a guide, but probably. I'd probably put it on Hiro first like an idiot. Seeing

Nall

(technically Silver Star spoilers) go "See? See? I told you it'd be cool" while he's in his white dragon form over his transformation is extremely fitting for his character. I like this

Nall

a lot more.

I appreciate that WD managed to do a "straight guy isn't interested in a queer guy's advances" scene with Ronfar and an NPC in Horam (I think they were a guy they seemed bald with two buns of hair on their head) without resorting to queerphobia but they also did a "Fake girls gross me out" quip with Ronfar in Taben's Peak as a joke on the current evil Mauri not being the real Mauri (not sure actually), so OOPS. Before anyone says anything I literally don't know how to read something about being "grossed out by fake [gender]s" without it being transphobic and as someone who is kind of non-binary, I think I know what I'm talking about.

I bet there's gonna be some excuse for Ruby staying with us until the end of the game because she has to take up the mantle of the Red Dragon or whatever. This game isn't that deep (it's still god tier tho). It'd be really funny if we never see

Leo (and Mystere ofc, wonder why they just vanished *whistling*)

again after he said he'd be LEANING FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! though like can you imagine.

[Bean]

Yeah, okay. It Takes Two is pretty fun. Was not expecting a magical platformer from this expected co-op game, but it's been real fun so far.

[KobaBeach]

Beat Lunn in Lunar: Eternal Blue after one psychotic break from video games being temporarily unable to help me cope with extreme mental distress. Also beat the Blue Fiend and the Blue Dragon Cave while watching Slayers Next and it went pretty well, the dungeon design was annoying with the encounter rate though.

Can you believe they actually had Ruby say the r slur to an NPC in the Zen Zone post-Lunn battle? Like legit she says "You r*t*rd!". Homophobia, classism, sexism, (what is likely) transphobia and ableism, on top of rewriting things in a way that it doesn't convey the same feeling and meaning as the original text. That's some quality localization from Victor Ireland Incorporated. I know I bitch a lot, I'm very sorry, but it's mostly from me wanting these games to have good localizations. Like I respect Breath of Fire II's fan retranslation a lot because I love BoF2 so much due to it, but I really wish Ryusui's team didn't put the r slurs in place of like baka etc, I believe, same for FFVII and SaGa Frontier's translations (FFVII's translation isn't very good at all but it's iconic). So.

Also made it to like just past the Yami battle (man that was a bit of a crapshoot) in Romancing SaGa Re;univerSe because I'm an idiot and I love pain. I've been grinding more on expeditions with the help of expedition tickets and I managed to get a lot of my available characters to pretty good CP (combat power) amounts. It's a fun timewaster, but being a predatory microtransaction filled game, I don't really respect it. My main party for now (biggest damage dealers) is S Black, SS Emelia, SS Barbara, S Mariah and SS Hector (the latter being a guaranteed SS from the beginning of the game). I do not feel comfortable writing all those SSes but oh well. And before you ask, I don't like gambling in real life like at all, it feels wasteful to me, especially with a "game" that will eventually end its service in a few years, so I don't pay or buy anything.

Managed to link my FFRK, Arc R and RSRS accounts to Apple, will have to dig out my old Facebook account from my school days for when I end up getting an Android once this one gets too old (fuck Apple), sadly Housamo (and likely LAH) I can't, most likely due to Lifewonders being a smaller company and the whole LGBTQ+ aimed game thing (also the amount of pedobait in there, got one of those shitters in my new account I hate it). Thus I can't delete Housamo and LAH for space. When you transfer data, they only retain the data for like 2 weeks.

DISCLAIMER FROM STAFF: Whaling is never worth it, don't do it, dame zettai. Please don't play gacha if you have a gambling addiction, you will be endangering yourself.

Also started playing Bejeweled Classic's Zen Mode as a time waster and its alright.

[thatguyif]

Sooooo, I decided to take Yoku's Island Express for a spin. And then I 100%ed it in less than three days.

It is a short game. Not Gato Roboto short, but short nonetheless. I played through about 80% of the game in 5 or so hours, with another 20% from the beginning being 2 hours or so? Then I spent maybe ten minutes today getting the last bit to 100%.

It was a nice light romp. Considering I've been playing Hollow Knight lately, the contrast between the two games visually is stark. The former's super vivid colors and detailed characters was a marked relief from the dark and dreary that the latter possesses in spades. There was also a certain lushness to the general environment that I really enjoyed. The story...it was fine. The ending felt a bit flat though.

For the most part, I liked the pinball-centric nature of the game. That said, there were quite a few times where getting around on a table to get to the next area was a huge pain. So much of what makes Metroidvanias successful is being able to move about in different ways, and pinball can be the antithesis of that. I wished the devs built the "tables" with more of that in mind, but alas. At the very least, there's no serious punishment for screwing up, so that at least alleviated the the problem.

Now with that done...moving on to The Falconeer, which (people say) is not good. Will mess around with Control this weekend, heat permitting.