Finished Ori and the Blind Forest. It’s a really good game, very polished, visuals and sound are great, but some part of design feels a bit dated, or well they require very twitchy reflexes. Other than that though, loved the game. Highly recommended for any metroidvania fans....
Quite impressed with this one, a really nice metroidvania from Ubisoft. The platforming controls are superb, the abilites you unlock make it even more fun over time, and the combat is solid.
Definitely not a game for casual players (unless you don’t mind turning on assists), there’s some tricky plataforming sections and nasty difficulty spikes in some bosses, but the main complaint I have about the game is the limited amount of fast travel spots, the map is HUGE and backtracking can be a pain in the ass. Other than that and a few minor bugs I don’t have many bad things to say about this one, definitely play it if you like the genre.
Minor bonus for Switch players: Looks like this version is the only one that does not require an Ubisoft account, it’s going to ask for it when you open the game but you can just press a button to skip.
There’s been more opportunities for coop play with friends recently, so I decided to pick this one. However, I could not wait and already did a quick single-player run through story mode using Blaze.
Really fun old-school beat’em up, I recommend it for fans of the genre.
Not surprisingly that PSN page was edited earlier today, but there’s a million screenshots floating around already, plus you can check the previous version in the Wayback Machine.
And even if it was clearly written on all places, it’s still a “too bad you didn’t read the fine print, now you’re past the limit time for a refund, so either let Sony track you or lose access to the game” situation which is very shitty. There’s also the fact that they sold the game to people in countries where is PSN is not available, which should not have happened if that requirement was going to be enforced in the future.
Not hard to see why people would get pissed and lose trust in the developer. I also think that players have been annoyed for a while with this type of requirement (not specifically in this game), and they are now getting a good outlet with a lot of publicity around to vent about it.
There’s also the problem that they’re clearly rushing this without much thought, they don’t even have an answer to the obvious question of “what happens to people in regions not supported by PSN”.
Playing Kingdom Come Deliverance. Tried fighting a few people / bandits, but they just kill me so easily, apparently I have to take it slow, and do other stuff to get strong (or I can just rush the main quest which is easier, but I don’t to do that)....
Slow progress, currenty going through chapter 5. As I predicted last week there’s some trouble brewing with the cute AI girl, though they started earlier than I expected. Let’s see how things develop from here on.
This is definitely a Ubisoft game, ran into a bug that forced me to close+reopen the game only a few hours in - I accidentally “skipped” a boss because it glitched and threw me past a closed door into the next area 😅, but luckily it didn’t autosave so I just had to replay a that particular section. I also ran into a few more smaller gliches, nothing gamebreaking but definitely annoying when I’m coming from bug-free experiences in similar games from small developers.
As for the game, it’s pretty good! Nice exploration, plataforming is fantastic, and I’m enjoying the puzzles. Not a big fan of the combat system, but it’s more a matter of preferences than a problem with the game, it has a lot of focus on the parrying mechanic which is not something I enjoy.
Could definitely use more fast travel and save spots, though at least you don’t lose anything when you die, you go back to the last checkpoint keeping everything including the map and collectibles you may have picked up. One really neat QOL feature is the ability to take screenshots and attach them to the map, makes it easier for you to remember “why didn’t I go this path” or “which powerup did I need to go that direction”.
I like that Ori tried to experiment with the save/load system, but I feel that the whole “save anywhere as long as you have energy” thing ended up being worse than traditional checkpoints in that game.
The second game drops a lot of the experimental things from the first game in favor of things you usually expect in this genre. Loses some originality but it’s a more solid game IMO.
Almost exactly an year ago I finished Planetarian, a classic visual novel that was also the first game from the “Kinectic Novel” series - a Visual Arts brand for VNs without any choices or branches in the storyline, more akin to a visual book than a game.
So I thought it was appropriate to celebrate this anniversary by playing Lunaria, another Kinetic Novel from the same studio (Key, of Clannad fame) that I had just received in the mail.
One of the things that drew me to both these games is that I’m a huge sci-fi fan, and both deal with interactions between AIs and humans. However, they take very different approaches to this theme - Planetarian is bittersweet story focused on the contrast between the post-apocalyptic present and the small glimpse of a better past the MC encounters, while Lunaria is a much brigher slice-of-life story with focus on VR and e-sports.
The plot so far is the typical “boy meets cute (AI) girl, romance starts to develop between them”, but this being a Key game I’m already expecting something tragic to happen in the latter parts of the story - there’s already some hints of a bigger plot around the AI girl’s origins and circumstances.
Finished Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs. The last few bosses were pretty time taking, they had huge amount of health and took waaaaaaay too long to beat....
Comments on the first game on this post from a couple weeks ago, and early impressions of the second game here.
Overall a big improvement on the first game and one I can more easily recommend to others.
However, I think the praise both games get is excessive. Don’t get me wrong, they’re good games with beautiful art, fantastic OST, really cool world and exploration. But IMO they also have some significant flaws including plenty of cheap deaths, frustrating platforming sequences with a lot a of trial-and-error, hard-to-see hitboxes, and subpar platforming controls on the first game.
Same developer as Touhou Luna Nights, and I’ve enjoyed it almost as much. This one is a lot easier and beginner-friendly (maybe even to its detriment), but the smooth controls and exploration make so, so fun to play.
These two games definitely made me a fan of Team Ladybug, they have another game called “Drainus” which is now high in my wishlist, and I’ll keep an eye for new releases from them.
I commented about the first game on my previous post, and while I did have a good time with it there were some pretty annoying flaws as well.
The second game fixes most of my complaints - platforming feels better, plus you get some of the relevant movement skills earlier which also helps improve the experience when exploring. Combat is pretty decent this time, and the game also includes plenty of customization with a lot of attack and passive skills for you to choose from.
I get that this comes at a cost of the game feeling a bit less “unique”, but I’m definitely having more fun with one.
I know almost nothing about the Touhou universe, but even without knowing the characters I had a ton of fun with this game.
Combat is fantastic, and it’s challenging without being too frustrating. Exploration is a bit too linear, but overall I really appreciate seeing a recent metroidvania game that is not just following the formula set by Hollow Knight. The only bad I thing I can say is that the the game is really short, there’s no in-game timer but it definitely took me less than 10h to get 100% completion.
There’s a lot of good things and a lot of bad things going on on this one.
Production values are great, the world is very interesting, some stages are quite unique, and most puzzles are well designed. On the other hand, for a game with a lot of focus on platforming the controls don’t feel quite right - they’re kinda floaty and weird, it’s easy to miss platforms when jumping (or even more strange, when climbing them from the side), wall jump sometimes doesn’t grab and you’re not quite sure it didn’t work… Maybe I’ve been spoiled by games like Mario or Celeste, but I sometimes get an impression that I’m fighting against the controls in this one.
Combat is underwhelming, but that’s not really the focus on that game. Also, you’re going to die A LOT, and even with the mechanic that lets you save almost anywhere this can get annoying.
So after hearing a billion people commenting about this game I picked it up, and I can confirm it’s as fun and addictive as advertised. Not that hard as far roguelikes go, I had my first win somewhere around 3h of playtime and managed a few more already.
I’m bored with this game but I still want to finish it, so I’ll playing it slowly and sparsely. Not sure how long it’ll take, and probably won’t mention in future posts unless I hit some relevant landmark.
Added Touhou Luna Nights to my wishlist, I am leaning towards shorter games these days, so 10 hours to 100% sounds really good to me.
It’s a fantastic game, my second favorite in this genre in recent years after Axiom Verge. Worth mentioning that it can be quite hard at times, in particular at bosses, but I feel it gives you more than enough tools to learn their patterns and beat them.
The protagonist’s time-manipulation power is really neat, you have the ability to slow or even stop time for short periods which is handy when you’re stuck on “OK, so how the hell do I dodge this attack”. There’s also a “grazing” mechanic that lets you recover HP by getting close to the enemy or their bullets, which you can use to recover mid-battle if there’s a particular attack pattern you can’t dodge perfectly.
Didn’t expect to hear bad things about Ori, I haven’t played it yet, but the universal acclaim it gets, I was expecting it to be near the perfect / masterpiece level.
I’m now playing the sequel and having a much better time, though it does lose some of the uniqueness of the first game in favor including more common elements seen in games of this genre.
How is it if you aren’t into poker? Since everyone describing it mention poker, I didn’t even look into it.
Balatro to me is a card/deckbuilding roguelike that just happens to use the poker rules because people are familiar with those and it helps shrink the learning curve.
The focus is not getting the best poker hand, but rather on finding a strategy that maximizes the chips you get with the tools you’re given each run. I just had a very successful run where I build a deck solely focused on getting “Two Pair” hands all the time.
“S2 please” is my overall opinion of this season. In no particular order, I want more of:
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End
The Apothecary Diaries (S2 announced!)
The Unwanted Undead Adventurer
Villainess Level 99
7th Time Loop
The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic
Honestly one of the best seasons I’ve followed.
Besides the ones mentioned above I’d like to give a mention to “Brave Bang Bravern”, a completely crazy and amazing mecha series by Masami Obari that more people need to watch.
Last week I thought I was 80% into the game, but I realized there’s a lot more story left than I expected, so this one will take a longer to finish, probably a week or two more at my current pace.
It was a really neat twist though.
Major Crystar spoilers___ You beat the final boss, get a somewhat sad ending with a lot of loose ends left and start thinking “there’s got to be a better ending, I wonder what are the requirements”. …and then you get a messsage “There’s a new story available” and the game immediatelly loops back to the beginning. But there’s some very obvious differences from the start, like the reveal of the identity of the butterfly/soul that helps you during the prologue. I guess the game is going into the direction of multiple timelines? And from the icons on the loading screen I think there will be 3 or 4 loops total. At least these additional loops seem to be much shorter, it just skipped from the Prologue straight to Chapter 6 (of 8), but that still means I have a lot to go.
I wanted to like the game, and I’m still planning on finishing it eventually but each dungeon is 30min of the exact same (average-at-best) combat gameplay, and I’m estimating there’s at least 40 of these required to finish the game.
I was already getting very tired of this last week and I believe I’m still only halfway through. :/
If someone ever makes a Crystar mod that cuts dungeons from 3 floors to 1 and keeps everything else the same that might be a game I’d recommend.
It’s also interesting that I think the developer did have an inkling that the dungeons were too big, there’s optional “grinding” stages that are exactly as I described with 1/3 of the size and they flow so, so much better.
Combat is faster paced and way more fun, dungeons are shorter (maybe even too short) and the enemies are more interesting, there aren’t really any “mobs”, they are all sort of mini-bosses that you need to be careful around as they hit really hard. It also hit a nice spot of being challenging without being too hard - I got a few game overs but it never got to the point where I was frustrated by the difficulty.
When I finished the main story for Crymachina I was thinking “I could still keep playing this for a while before I got bored of the gameplay” despite replaying several stages for extra gear/XP.
Haven’t decided yet. Have been trying to get into wine lately, have come around to liking it with food sometimes, especially dry white with fish or cheese, but never will it taste good like a mixed drink can. Having a birthday party (one of the adult kids) with Indian food and trying to decide between something mango and...
ANIMAL WELL – Launch Trailer – Nintendo Switch (youtu.be)
What are you playing this weekend? 2024-05-05
Finished Ori and the Blind Forest. It’s a really good game, very polished, visuals and sound are great, but some part of design feels a bit dated, or well they require very twitchy reflexes. Other than that though, loved the game. Highly recommended for any metroidvania fans....
Helldivers 2 Players Express Frustration On Steam As It Will Soon Require A PSN Account (www.gameinformer.com)
cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/14764738...
What are you playing this weekend? 2024-04-28
Playing Kingdom Come Deliverance. Tried fighting a few people / bandits, but they just kill me so easily, apparently I have to take it slow, and do other stuff to get strong (or I can just rush the main quest which is easier, but I don’t to do that)....
Nintendo Switch 2 report details magnetic Joy-Con, Pro Controller compatibility (www.eurogamer.net)
9 R.I.P. | Announcement Trailer | Nintendo Switch (www.youtube.com)
Visual novel by Idea Factory, coming in 2024.
What are you playing this weekend? 2024-04-20
Finished Cat Quest II. I love how polished the game is....
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate – Announcement Trailer – Nintendo Switch (www.youtube.com)
Coming in July....
Little Kitty, Big City – Release Date Reveal – Nintendo Switch (www.youtube.com)
Releasing May 9
What are you playing this weekend? 2024-04-13
Finished Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs. The last few bosses were pretty time taking, they had huge amount of health and took waaaaaaay too long to beat....
What are you playing this weekend? 2024-04-07
Still playing Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs. I am very close to the end now....
What are you playing this weekend? 2024-03-31
Last weekly thread of March!...
Winter Anime Season Wrap-up and Discussion Thread [Week 13]
Previous Thread | Next Thread...
What are you playing this weekend? 2024-03-23
Still playing Regalia: Of Men and Monarch....
What are y'all drinking this weekend, Lemmy?
Haven’t decided yet. Have been trying to get into wine lately, have come around to liking it with food sometimes, especially dry white with fish or cheese, but never will it taste good like a mixed drink can. Having a birthday party (one of the adult kids) with Indian food and trying to decide between something mango and...