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.
“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...
Premieres sometime in 2024. This is an anime adaptation of a visual novel game. This series will pick up the story from the Phantom Trigger series of games following the events of the previous movie, Grisaia: Phantom Trigger THE ANIMATION - Stargazer. Check out the ANN article for more information. Synopsis of the previous...
The Fruit of Grisaia -> The Labyrinth of Grisaia -> The Eden of Grisaia
They all got anime adaptations with the same names. I hear they are a fun watch but cut a LOT of content, in particular from the first game (12 episodes for a VN with an average length of 75h on VNDB).
The first game is quite decent despite it’s age. It’s short and focused, and that works really well in its favor - there’s little downtime and filler, you’re almost all the time with just Ashley and “D” so it’ easier to get attached to them, the plot is simple but moves fast, you’re constantly finding new puzzles so you never get bored.
Now, the second game… well, that one is a mess. Too many characters for something this short, too much running around doing nothing, and too many irrelevant side-plots that keep messing the pace of the game. Also, I didn’t count them but I have a distinct impression that it has less puzzles than the first game despite being 1h longer - even if you’re nice enough to count the endless “door hacking” QTEs as “puzzles”.
It’s kinda weird how disconnected the first and second halves of the game feel, almost like completely different games. The first half starts with you running around getting involved into minor issues until settling into helping a boy called Matthew find out what happened with his father who disappeared 5 years ago. They clearly tried to give him an equivalent role to “D” in this game, but I don’t think it works very well because you simply don’t spend enough time with him to get equally attached.
Then on the second half Matthew leaves and the story becomes completely focused on Ashley’s family. Story-wise I like this part a lot more, but the gameplay takes a nosedive with the areas being increadibly boring, almost no puzzles and exploration - you’re pretty much just running forward doing QTEs and watching story sections with some rare breaks. All of this section feels rushed and unfinished.
Overall it took me around 5h for the first game and 6h for the second one.
I enjoyed its “spiritual sequel” Crymachina quite a bit, so I decided to give this one a shot. And it’s kinda neat how different the two games play despite being games from the same developer with the same base idea for the gameplay loop.
Crymachina had faster-paced combat, and focused on smaller stages with less enemies on screen - but you had to be careful because enemies hit really hard and healing was quite limited. Crystar on the other hand has much slower-paced combat, bigger stages with a lot of enemies, but they are all individually weak mobs and only gets somewhat scary if you’re surrounded.
So far I’d say that I enjoyed Crymachina’s approach a lot more. The combat was more fun, and the shorter dungeons are (oddly enough) a positive - the long dungeons used in Crystar exacerbate a lot how repetitive the action sections are, and make the game kinda of a slog to go through.
I’m currently on Chapter 7, maybe I’ll be able to finish this one next week.
The rhythm part is very “mild” on this one, timings are very lenient and most characters don’t have any major penalties for “missing” the beat, you simply stand still intead of moving and lose your combo multiplier.
There’s even a character that ignores the rhythm part and makes the game fully turn-based.
Overall a really good game, but it subscribes to the Hollow Knight “style” of Metroidvanias - dying is a constant part of the game, with some of the bosses and exploration sections in the latter half being frustratingly difficult.
I finished the game with 100% of the items, which besides a small number of tricky platforming sections was surprisingly easy to get. I also got all three endings.
I think it’s been almost 20 years since I played the DS version of the first game (Trace Memory), so I barely remembered anything about it. Which I guess is a good thing, because this remake does NOT have an option to start from the sequel.
The first game is a short (~5h) but fun point-and-click adventure. Puzzles aren’t as novel nowadays as they were back in the DS, but still solid, and the remake has a nice visual facelift, though there’s some inconsistency in quality with some environmental textures looking distractingly low-res. The story revolves around a girl named Ashley and the ghost of a boy nicknamed “D” who team up to explore a mansion in an isolated island trying to solve mysteries relating to Ashley’s family and find out the circunstances around “D”'s death.
I’m now playing the second game and so far it’s a bit underwhelming. :/ One of the main issues is that the game lacks focus - the first game immediately gives you a good reason to go into the mansion and explore, while the second one has you doing seemly random stuff for a few chapters before you start seeing what the plot will be about. Another issue is that the areas are bigger but empty, so there’s a lot more running around going from one place to another.
I finished Chapter 5 of the second game, which I think is around the midpoint? Expect to finish this one either today or tomorrow but we’ll see.
I think I’m going to check out more of River City Girls 2 which I restarted last weekend. It got an update which makes it way more playable, I hadn’t played for months, but the input lag was excruciating before. Maybe some Mario Wonder which I haven’t played in a while (and still need to finish!)....
As I mentioned on my previous comment this game has a lot of flaws, and I don’t know if I can call it good or recommend it - but it does have its fair share of charms too.
They did a really good job in making me care about the main characters and see them as a “family” - seeing Leben geting gradually closer to the others and Enoa’s growth over the game was great. The character designs are interesting, the OST is solid. The plot is a bit of a mess, with a LOT of crazy twists, but I still enjoyed it.
Combat is fun and flashy, and I never got bored of it while going through the main game. That being said, there’s a lot of extra content that I didn’t do, and I think that if I tried to go for full completion the repetitiveness would end up wearing me out.
Also, a minor thing, but I’m really annoyed that I didn’t realize before the endgame that you can equip the same gear to all three characters. Spent quite some time trying to find good setups without overlaps. :/
This “metroidvania” game has a very melancholic mood in all aspects - visuals, music and storyline. You play as a little girl who apparently is the last survivor of a line of priestesses, who goes purifying monsters in ravaged land while being protected by the spirits of dead warriors.
I always associate darker visuals and styles with Dark Souls so I was worried it would be another game going towards that direction, but this one is a lot less stressful to play - it can be fairly challenging and I already died quite a few times, but there’s zero penalty for that.
There’s some really good QOL features too - I like how a fast travel is unlocked less than 1h into the game, and I love that the map indicates if there are missing still missing items in a room. This is a particularly big deal because some of the rooms are huge and can take a long time to explore.
Have you played Crystar? If yes, how do you compare the two games. And if not, why not?
No I haven’t, and it’s because I had never heard of Crystar before - I only learned Crymachina had a “spiritual prequel” when someone on Mastodon asked me this exact same question.
Anyway, I have Crystar on my radar now, but from what I’m seeing it doesn’t share the sci-fi setting which is a bummer to me, that was one of the things that drew my attention to Crymachina.
I have heard lots of good things about Ender Lilies, and now that it’s getting a sequel soon, I think I should try to play it too.
Spoiler for next week’s post: It’s a really good game, but the difficulty spikes brutally on the second half of the game and it gets quite frustrating at times.
I’m checking out the demo for Contra: Operation Galuga, and maybe going to play some more Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons to unlock some characters. Potentially other beat 'em ups and Mortal Kombat if I get the chance to get together and play some co-op....
Sometimes you pick a game despite mediocre reviews and it turns out to be just what you wanted to play - this was one of theses cases.
People complain about this game being repetitive and limited and they are correct - you just navigate through menus, watch some conversations, then choose a destination for a short hack-and-slash stage. Scenarios are very similar and kinda bland, everything is too grey and mechanical.
But it’s definitely clicking with me so far. The action parts are fun, the bosses are challenging without being too hard, the plot is a bit of a technobabble mess but the real focus is on character interactions and I’m enjoying those.
It reminds me the original Blue Reflection on the PS4, a game where the developers clearly had passion and ideas but lacked the skill or the budget to realize it. However, some of this still shines through the game’s flaws and make it enjoyable.
One of the highlights of the week is that I received a lot of games that were stuck on transit due to local customs going on strike for over two months. I had already finished this game on the PS4, bought it again just for collection purposes, but could not resist replaying at least the early portions again.
This is a brilliant gem from Vannilaware. It’s made up of a weird mix of point-and-click adventure sections and tower defense battles, with a crazy and complex storyline involving 13 different characters that end up having to pilot mechs and fight an alien invasion.
One of the interesting parts of the storyline is how things are told out-of-order and you have to gradually piece together the events - at the same time you’re playing the tower defense sections which are chronologically the last part of the story, you’re also rotating between the background of each of the 13 pilots and learning how they ended up involved in this mess.
Vanillaware’s art is beautiful as usual, and the OST is fantastic, I’m a huge fan of the battlethemes used for the tower defense sections.
If you like story-focused games and haven’t played this one, please do. It’s absolutely worth it.
pretty much the title. i have played most of sierra, lucasarts and telltale catalogues so if you are suggesting one of their games i’ve probably already played it. it doesn’t have to be a copycat, homage or in the same style as these companies’ games either, just that it must satisfy the vague definition of being an...
A crazy and interesting sci-fi game, mixes point-and-click adventure with tower defense action stages. Story is amazing and I absolutely love Vanillaware’s 2D art.
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...
"Grisaia: Phantom Trigger" New Key Visual (ogre.natalie.mu)
Premieres sometime in 2024. This is an anime adaptation of a visual novel game. This series will pick up the story from the Phantom Trigger series of games following the events of the previous movie, Grisaia: Phantom Trigger THE ANIMATION - Stargazer. Check out the ANN article for more information. Synopsis of the previous...
What are you playing this weekend? 2024-03-16
Finished Axiom Verge. Loved the game! Got lost once, couldn’t figure out where to go, other than than didn’t have any issue....
Crypt of the NecroDancer: SYNCHRONY – DLC Trailer – Nintendo Switch (www.youtube.com)
What are you playing this weekend? 2024-03-09
Finished Lichtspeer: Double Speer Edition, last couple of levels were pretty tough, needing very twitchy reflexes, but finally beat it!...
What are some good games with *zero* replayability?
I want to try and play some more games. That feels more fulfilling if you play games that you can finish and be done with....
The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak – Release Date Announcement Trailer – Nintendo Switch (www.youtube.com)
Coming July 5.
Facebook and Instagram are currently down.
What are you playing this weekend? 2024-03-02
I think I’m going to check out more of River City Girls 2 which I restarted last weekend. It got an update which makes it way more playable, I hadn’t played for months, but the input lag was excruciating before. Maybe some Mario Wonder which I haven’t played in a while (and still need to finish!)....
Dungeon Drafters - Consoles Release Date Teaser Trailer (www.youtube.com)
Coming March 14....
What are you playing this weekend? 2024-02-23
I’m checking out the demo for Contra: Operation Galuga, and maybe going to play some more Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons to unlock some characters. Potentially other beat 'em ups and Mortal Kombat if I get the chance to get together and play some co-op....
What adventure games do you recommend?
pretty much the title. i have played most of sierra, lucasarts and telltale catalogues so if you are suggesting one of their games i’ve probably already played it. it doesn’t have to be a copycat, homage or in the same style as these companies’ games either, just that it must satisfy the vague definition of being an...
Nintendo Direct: Partner Showcase 2.21.2024 (www.youtube.com)