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Post by Ambrienne on Jan 24, 2023 22:28:02 GMT -5
Well, I got onto a Persona kick... and went through P4 Ultimax and then P5 Strikers (I got them both during a Steam sale).
I would've played Ultimax a lot sooner if I'd realized that it had a computer-controlled mode for the fighting game portion (as that type of stuff is not my thing... especially on a PC keyboard). Even putting that aside, the game was a lot better than I thought it would be. Kanji's joke ending had me outright laughing. And I loved seeing the age adjusted P3 cast. The hints they gave with Elizabeth at the end, though... the thought of her as a protagonist scares me. ::coughs:: Atlus wouldn't... actually do that, right?
Ahem.
Now, with Strikers, I was a bit twitchy over the 'will time pass' thing when it comes to trips back into Jails for cleanup, etc., but that turned out to be a non-issue. It passes for main story events and the like, but it's usually pretty clear. I wanted to strangle whoever was responsible for the first Jail design music/theme, though. ::twitches:: That boss, the tinkling, ergh... Overall, though, it was pretty enjoyable. Plenty of new interactions, cutscenes, and Yusuke being... himself. For some reason, he's my favorite aside from Joker and not just because I like how his style is implemented in DW style combat. The new playable characters worked well with the main cast, but I thought the female of the two was kind of a little generic looking (loved her final persona, though). Play-wise, I do have some post game requests left to do, but somehow I doubt that taking down the Reaper will be anywhere as annoying as getting snowballed to the face repeatedly by Black Frost. Ha, ha. ^^:
In any case, I'll probably move over to P3 Portable now that it's been relased on Steam. Ultimax got me missing the ol' crew.
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Post by Rune Lai on Feb 20, 2023 16:47:21 GMT -5
Finished Ambition: A Minuet in Power. I think I overplayed it, because it's a game that I found pretty fun the first couple times, but as I replayed it to romance all the characters, it became much easier to see its flaws. Ambition has issues with being a little too rng based for many of its events. This can work if the event pool is deep enough, but it's not. If you have all characters alive and available to interact with, the game feels stuffed to the gills with things to do. But if you are missing one (easy) or two (not impossible) then you can end up with a sparsely populated city map and similarly sparse parties as you run out of events you meet the criteria to see.
Also, the game makes assumptions that certain events have or have not happened without accounting for rng, which results in weird conversations where a character from an optional subplot will act like she doesn't know you when you meet at a party in July, even though she helped you ruin a man's reputation in May (because due to rng she didn't show up at any of my parties until late in the game).
Because rng kept messing with me, I wanted to test the limits of things I "ought" to have done, so I avoided the closest thing the game has to a main villain the entire game. We never spoke. Ever. Most of the time the game climaxes with the protagonist being dragged into court on trumped up charges due to the engineering of the antagonist, who shows up to do some taunting, but I'd never spoken to them soooo... The taunting still happens and the game proceeds as if the two characters had met at some point, but none of it makes sense, because they hadn't.
I still enjoyed the game, and there's nothing else like it on the market (it had me at partying in pre-Revolutionary France since I love Rose of Versailles), but it definitely has its flaws. Also, as a side note, the controls on Switch are pretty non-intuitive. I don't think they did any remapping for the port beyond this computer button goes to this console button, which results in things like me hitting the B Button because I want to cancel out of the calendar screen, only to bring up the menu, because cancel = Esc button on a computer. I brought up that menu a lot.
I came really close to picking up Undernauts: Labyrinth of Yomi for my next game, because I wanted something a little brainless and dungeon crawlers will do it, but convinced myself not to and went with Buried Stars instead, since it's on my 2023 gaming list. And that is getting a lot of thoughts from me so I'll probably make a thread for it.
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Post by Ambrienne on Feb 20, 2023 19:17:27 GMT -5
...Ha, ha. Have fun with that. Darkness and all. I admit to tracking down the theme song and adding it to my collection. It'll be interesting to hear your take on the characters.
Pretty well completed a run through of Persona 3 Portable. I was reminded of why I liked the cast/flow of the story so much as their Persona reawakenings/upgrades actually made story sense and weren't just 'hey, you maxed the social link out, so here's an upgrade, whee!' ::coughs::
I'm currently most of the way through Rune Factory 4 Special. At least, I think I am. I've seen the credits twice now (and it wasn't due to restarting, etc.); it's like they are actively trying to mess with my head. I also can't believe it took me so long to notice the 'by the way' menu existed. How embarrassing.
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Post by Rune Lai on Mar 29, 2023 13:58:55 GMT -5
I'm still working on the additional endings to Buried Stars, but had to take a break when things got really busy for me. Since I couldn't commit the block of playing time I'd need to really give BS (nice acronym there) the attention it needs, I noodled around a couple other games.
I went back to My Sweet Bodyguard, which I still find to be an incredibly dorky game that manages to be exactly what it says on the tin. I finished Katsuragi's route, which I'd started last year, and moved on to Kaiji's. The game is not deep, at all, but it's short and sweet (in more ways than one). Not sure if I'll go through the main five guys all in one go. I might get tired of the bodyguard trope after enough of them, and I'd like to get back to BS this weekend.
It's also a bit weird, but because I played Collar x Malice before, I understood more of the departmental drama than I think I would have if I hadn't (since CxM also takes place in a police setting, but goes deeper since it's a long game). Bodyguard isn't clear about it in the English translation, but the bodyguards are part of the Security Police and thus part of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, which is why they interact with the "regular" police so much. They're all part of the same agency (unlike in the US where the Secret Service does not roll up under the Capitol Police or any city-level police department).
I also stumbled across the demo for Frogwares' Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened remake. I remember there being a Kickstarter for it, but given their spotty reviews over the course of the series, I wasn't sure if I wanted to back it. I played Crime and Punishment which is considered the best in the series and found it fun, but still flawed, so I wasn't sure if I wanted to gamble on whether they could do better. But the game's coming out soon and there's a demo now, so I figured that I might as well give it a shot. I like the premise, that it's a Sherlock/Cthulhu Mythos crossover and supposedly the one story Watson would never share.
I'm used to my detective games being more point and click, but Frogware's series is third person with the Unreal engine so it's much different navigating when I've got a body that runs into other objects.
Unfortunately the game's controls are on the clunky side, and doesn't feel like it's really improved since C&P, but it looks like this is going to have an overarching story rather than a series of smaller cases, so I'm intrigued, and I do like the idea of a Lovecraftian Sherlock story. I haven't experienced that combo before. Normally this would mean putting the game on my Steam wishlist and waiting for a sale, but since it's a Ukrainian dev I'm considering doing a full price purchase given all the hell they're going through now.
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Post by Ambrienne on Apr 10, 2023 21:22:37 GMT -5
Well, I finally got through one character's worth of Rune Factory 4 Special. Have I gone to the absolute bottom of the extra Sharance Maze dungeon yet? No, though I did get through the first section. It's almost absurd the types/qualities of high level goodies you can get from chests in there.
Surprisingly, defeating the final story boss to bring back a certain character did not net me another run through of credit watching. Getting married, though... that was apparently credit worthy. Given the sheer randomness of a certain marriage quest prerequisite for Arthur (the character I decided to go for), maybe that really should be deserving of a credit roll after all (ha, ha). Certainly, they put a lot of effort into Arthur's backstory, and if that's indicative of the quality of the other candidates' backstories, then I will definitely be revisiting this game sometime again to check out the others. I will take a break from it for a bit for now as I've already sunk over 150 hours into it. I wish I were joking about that, but no. It's true. Even when you know what you're doing, this game is a real time sink.
...Why do I have the feeling I'm going to use Rune Factory 5 as a break from RF4S? I think there was something about a definition of insanity that could be applicable here.
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Post by Rune Lai on Apr 30, 2023 20:11:26 GMT -5
I need to get back to Buried Stars, but a new league for Path of Exile started up earlier this month and I missed playing it since my Friday night group moved on to Civ VI and then back to World of Warcraft. I don't care for the new league mechanic, but I'm happy enough just progressing through the new/updated end game since the last update I played. PoE is known to be brutal in its end game, and it has one of the most complicated skill trees I've ever seen (think Final Fantasy X's sphere grid, only every point you spend really matters, your points are limited, and it's really hard to respec), but I really comfortable with this build I adapted from someone else's character. Like, I actually understand how and why they made the decisions they did for their character, so I was able to make my own version of the build when they updated the skill trees so the old version is no longer possible.
I'm spending this league refining this build to be even better than last time so I can hopefully take out one of the big end bosses this time.
This bout of PoE may or may not have been brought on by the fact I discovered my computer is too outdated for Diablo IV so my Friday night group will not be playing that this summer.
Aside from that, I've been really busy with home maintenance stuff and a family vacation, so I haven't had a lot of time for gaming. I did finish Kaiji and Subaru's routes in My Sweet Bodyguard though. Kaiji's was all right. If I was handing out letter grades I'd give him a B. He and the MC had a good dynamic, but I just wasn't feeling the plot or the presentation. Subaru though gets a C. I know he does some sweet things for the MC once things get going, but I generally don't like the alpha male types and he makes it very clear that if they're having a relationship he gets to be the one in charge. I actually like him more as a side character on other routes. Subaru has a good discombobulated WTF facial expression though, which is always a joy on those arrogant types.
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Post by Solana on May 4, 2023 15:26:45 GMT -5
Not yet, but I'll be leaving for my beloved Atlantis in 10 days and have decided what to play on the plane ride. (I get very airsick so reading books is not an option.) I like to bring my DS because it holds a charge for a long time and isn't as tempting to thieves as my Switch and will probably play 'Okamiden' this time. I usually bring Lunar Legend or Dragon Quest IV so this will be a nice switch up.
For a sequel on a handheld, I think they did a great job. The music is just as incredible, if not better in some ways (Hello, Ryoshima Coast!) and I love seeing new areas and what people are up to nine months after Okami.
And yes, it's lovely having a mermaid as a partner for part of the time, although Kurow is my favorite.
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Post by Ambrienne on May 6, 2023 21:17:13 GMT -5
I got through the first appearance of credits in Rune Factory 5... Apparently, they play the same gags in this one with regards to the credits appearing multiple times before you actually see the complete content for the main game. And then, shortly after that, I pulled some boneheaded stunt where I accidentally exited the game and lost a game day's worth of actions that I didn't feel like trying to repeat in the near future. Bah. So, I put RF5 off to the side and... ...finally got around to the Our Life: Beginning and Always Derek DLC. ::twitches:: If I ever hear the phrase 'Derek's back' again any time soon, I'm going to lose it. And not in a good way. I know the character saying it was a little kid and it was supposed to be funny, but it honestly got on my nerves after the first few times. That might have been the point really; I don't know. Anyway, Derek's DLC did add some nice fleshing out to his character. And as a bonus, you get to see Baxter as a younger teen in the Soiree portion with a follow up in the main story based on the interaction with him there. It makes me even more curious about what his DLC will be like when it comes around later this month. As for what Derek's epilogue is like, well... there are definitely some funny and cute moments. Considering how organized his character is in certain respects, though, he totally manages to lose track of time with regards to a certain promise he made. Adds a nice 'oops' moment at the end. And then, I went right from that to another VN Glass Heart. Make sure you have the Kleenex handy when you play it; you won't get away without using some unless your own heart is made of stone. Each of the six routes will take you around 2 and a half hours or so. Technically, the sixth route is longer if you account for the fact that its narrative prerequisite is the bad ending of one of the other routes (and yes, that route is locked until that BE is done). So, yeah, extra Kleenex for that one. Overall, I liked the game. Every character except the MC has spoken dialogue... for every line. Yes, really. Even the side characters, faceless characters, etc. And it's actually very well done if you can get over the fact that some of the characters have slight fail moments when it comes to pronouncing certain Japanese origin words/names. Ah, well. The one area that is a bit of a miss for me is Tamaki's bad ending. That one's tail end part I thought was pretty lame. But then, Tamaki's route (no 4) I'd say is the least plausible of all six combined. So, yeah. Do not save that one for last if you decide to play the game yourself, not just to avoid ending on a meh note but because both route 5 and 6 on the prologue list will spoil to some extent his character duality. The one that hit me the hardest emotionally was actually the singer's route due to my own family's medical history, so... yeah. That and it has a nice vocal duet in it, too. When his route started off though, I thought I would hate his guts as he was really laying on the biting sarcasm a bit thick, but he did well development-wise. And he gets extra points for being first attracted to her voice/lyrical ability instead of her looks. The long and short of it is... Glass Heart is worth it even if it isn't super huge. Just be prepared to cry.
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Post by Ambrienne on May 16, 2023 19:35:21 GMT -5
...And now, I managed to roll through another VN, Band Camp Boyfriend. Apparently, this is a game that managed to escape a development hell of... I think I heard that it was 8 years. ^^; I have to admire the dedication involved. There is a whole boatload of music/marching band related humor, however all is not sunshine and roses. But then, how much of a game could it be without some kind of drama (and I'm not just talking about the romance)? The MC is the marching band's drum major with the vast majority of the game taking place at, you guessed it, band camp. The entirety of the story takes place within a few weeks, not counting any flashback/backstory or epilogue stuff that says 'x' time later. As a result, you can expect the kind of behavioral insanity that comes when you cram any group of teens in a closed environment that has 'a purpose'. And that's even before one of the characters goes crackers. And no, I'm not talking about one of the love interests. Not that they're all the pictures of perfect mental health either. Ahem. The LI routes all branch off a common route beginning. Unless you go directly to the developer's walkthrough right off, though, there's a chance that you won't be able to purposefully target a specific guy right away. I didn't look at the walkthrough until I played through once (and not surprisingly got stuck with a bad ending). After that, I decided that I wasn't going to continue blindly wandering about and kept the walkthrough open in the browser while I was playing. Other than the Side Story, which gets unlocked after a specific couple of routes are played and the final route, the other routes can be done in any order. If you include the common route, most of the routes average around 15 or 16 episodes/chapters. Garth's and the Side Story are both shorter, the latter because it's comic relief. I don't want to explain/spoil why the other one is shorter. As far as the routes go... some characters are more interesting than others, or more drama laden or... well... Let's just say that I don't think people will like each one equally. With Doug, the drummer's route, I was thinking 'where is this guy's brain?' and 'why isn't Aaron the LI instead?' Not that Doug's a bad guy or anything. He's just not my style. Then, there's Clark, the clarinetist. He's the super uptight type and his route would have been more enjoyable if the MC's behavior in said route wasn't so... ugh. Let's just say I was annoyed and leave it at that. Poptart's route is a bit of a mind trip with heaps of backstory for why he acts the way he does. Garth's doesn't really count due to, well, spoiler reasons. Peter's route is, well, a little bit of a technically toe stepping/cheating issue here... and it didn't really need to be given how Peter's relationship plays out in routes he's not the LI in. Or at least the MC shouldn't have been involved in it. But hey, high school drama. Freaking drama. Ergh. And yet, this is probably one of the best three routes because he's one of the characters that has more of a history with the MC before the high school marching band. Oh yeah. His instrument is the trumpet. Samuel is a saxophone player, and he's a very reserved type. Logically speaking, his way of dealing with a certain crisis common to all routes makes more sense than most. It's also more slow to burn romance wise. At least, as slow as it can get in the game's time frame anyway. Ha. Lastly, there's Tom, the trombone player. He's a loveable, slacking goofball. And yes, I do recommend saving him for last as there's adorably sweet backstory with him and the MC. Certain other characters are less jerky/more evenly involved in making the route fun, too. The Side Story is... not from the MC's perspective. Other than adding that it is comedic and found under the Extras once unlocked, I really shouldn't say any more. Ha, ha. The final route is located under the Extras, too. I guess it would be considered the Friendship route. Not that it doesn't have a heap of insanity in it... just not from the same character as the other routes. Not to mention that it has a character that's not present in any of the other routes. Anyway, while still having certain core similarities, it also has a heap of stuff that isn't in the other routes. It's truly a good way to send of the game as a whole. Overall, I liked the game pretty well despite my opinion of some of the LIs or the MC's behavior at times. It has nice music, good banter, funny situations that have to be at least partially based in real band camp experiences, and partial voice acting. The voice acting all seems character appropriate. It deals with some serious and/or crazy stuff, too, enough that they warn of triggers. I guess that's about all I have to say about it. I should probably get back to my reading backlog now.
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Post by Rune Lai on May 23, 2023 0:55:36 GMT -5
As I mentioned in the random thoughts thread, I was given a free game code to cover a yuri VN, and I did. It's not something I'd normally play since it's yuri, but it caught me at a good time, so I figured I'd give it a shot. I don't have a lot of reach, but I also like covering games other people haven't played since it makes for more unique content. Also I tend to be disappointed when I can't find much information on a smaller/indie game I'm considering playing, so I figure other people are likely the same way.
After having gotten all the endings, I'd have to say my verdict is: it's uneven. The game gets better the further in it goes, with a very nice twist at the halfway point no matter which girl you go for, but it doesn't have much replay value since it weaves all the love interest scenes around the a central story rather than splitting into individualized routes for each person. It's not without heart, the game has some genuinely moving moments, and I definitely was not prepared for the direction the twist went, but the game itself has a lot working against it.
On the other end of things (i.e. the non-story stuff I don't cover on my blog), I think this game has a real problem being a paid title given its simplistic art style. The team is very frank in the bonus material that this was their first game. There were largely two people involved, a writer and a coder/artist who did all the artwork in the game except for the CGs, which were handled by a third.
This game was clearly a learning experience for a team that was starting out, which is fine, but competition is steep, especially once you start asking for money, and the first thing anyone is going to notice is the art.
The backgrounds look like a stylistic version of how a five year old might draw a room. That is to say, it's done well enough you know that it wasn't an actual five year old and was done with purpose, but I suspect due to the fact one guy was doing the sprites, backgrounds, and coding, he decided for simplicity's sake to go with the crayon style (which I think may have been done by coloring a layer over photographs or other line art). I suspect the CG artist was a hired service since she didn't do the sprite work and her art looks so much better. If she was an equal partner she probably would have handled those too. And the CGs look good enough for a paid product when you see them on the Steam page, but then when you look at actual in-game shots we go back to something that I would more closely equate with a hobby artist.
There are other indies I've played that have this level of artistic skill, but the thing is, they were free, so it's easy to be forgiving. Also, something about this particular style (I think being relatively simple and using such thin black lines) makes it actually look worse in thumbnails than it does full screen. Once I got in game it didn't look nearly as bad as I thought it did when I was getting ready to download.
From a consumer standpoint I think the cost could be justified by the length of the game, which is longer than the average free indie VN, longer than a good many novels even, but the thing is, most people don't buy a game based on the word count (I doubt word count even means much to someone who isn't a writer). The art is very much part of the package, so the story has to be so much better to get past that, and the writing itself is not polished enough that I could really call it more than "okay." I think if it went through a few more drafts, if they paid for a good sprite artist, and used some free stock visual novel backgrounds (those exist!) they could have ended up with a much more professional looking game.
(Note: I'm not naming the game here because my blog coverage just went live today and I think it would be awkward if this post got Google indexed and the devs found it, since it would be pretty obvious from timestamps and context that it's the same person behind both posts. I just want to be able to talk under my gamer hat and vent a bit on why this game is likely struggling to find an audience.)
Now that that's done, I've decided I'm going to finish My Sweet Bodyguard since I only have Mizuki's route left out of the main five. It'll be an easy gimme and then I'll have to think about a meatier game to tackle.
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Post by Rune Lai on May 23, 2023 23:04:15 GMT -5
And... My Sweet Bodyguard is done. I was worried for a bit, because Subaru and Sora's routes stopped having goofy bad guys, but Mizuki's route came to the rescue with the Gumbi cultists (their outfits make me think of Gumbi, not that they worship Gumbi). Over I'd rank the guys Katsuragi > Kaiji > Mizuki > Sora >>>> Subaru, but their routes Katsuragi > Mizuki > Kaiji > Subaru >>> Sora. Subaru is the annoying alpha male archetype I can't stand, but he's okay, even pretty funny, as a side character. On the other hand, I do like Sora, but his route was a hot mess of never resolved cross-dressing angst, terrible narrative logic, and somehow managed to never include the prime minister in its story even though the MC is in danger specifically because she's his daughter. (I like the prime minister. He's a good anime dad who otherwise shows up more often than the parents of protagonists in other games!)
I was also pleasantly surprised by Mizuki. The promo material for him calls him mysterious, but he's so mild mannered he fades into the background on other routes. That's not mysterious. That's a lack of presence. >.> But he's much livelier on his own route and his sprite uses facial expressions that he doesn't in the rest of the game. He's not really mysterious. He's a freaking Disney princess who happens to have a job as a bodyguard. (Seriously, he has random animal buddies who listen to him and he can understand.) But at least I finished this title on a positive note. His route was a good mix of somewhat serious and funny, and the cultists were great.
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Post by Rune Lai on May 24, 2023 16:59:40 GMT -5
I wasn't sure how well my computer would run it, but I pulled down Frostpunk and installed it (mildly encouraged by hearing other people were able to run it on their own potato PCs). It's a game I'd been wanting to buy on Steam for a while, but held off because I didn't want to buy it only to find out it wouldn't run. Then the Epic Game Store offered it for free one week, so I ended up getting it over there. I suppose it doesn't make much difference which platform I play it on except if I want to get the DLC later since Epic's sales generally aren't as good. (In fact their mega sale, which they usually run in the four weeks leading up to Steam's summer sale, is going on right now and Frostpunk isn't discounted at all.)
Frostpunk is by the same studio that did This War of Mine which is probably one of my favorite PC games. It's dismal as hell and I really liked playing as ordinary civilians scrambling to survive in a warzone. I still want to finish playing every last scenario in that game, but with what's happening these days in Ukraine, it's a little too real.
So I'm going for its more fantastical but similarly dismal cousin. Frostpunk takes place after the world has frozen over. I guess kinda like the Snowpiercer movie. We assume most if not all the world is gone, frozen over by snow and ice, and our ragtag band of survivors is trying to survive it in the little outpost we've managed to find in the far north. There seems to be a bit of a story behind the scenario, but I don't know much other than I'm clearly in command of this band of survivors and referred to as the captain.
Like This War of Mine, you've got a group of people (a much larger group this time) who need food, shelter, and supplies, and you've got to somehow make them self-sufficient in the face of everything working against you. I started with 80 people who were cold and unprotected from the elements, but otherwise in good health, and after playing about an hour, they were all still alive, everyone had a tent to sleep in, but six of them were sick, one of them gravely so. We completely exhausted one coal and one wood resource. There are more near our outpost, but clearly they're a finite resource so we're going to have to go further afield for more or set up genuine mining operations, which we currently don't have the tech to do. On top of that, our food is running low despite the fact I have almost a fifth of the population dedicated to hunting.
I already know I've made some mistakes with how I laid out my city, and I don't know which technologies to prioritize, but I figured this first playthrough would be a learning attempt and I will probably stop once it gets too miserable and then start another run. It not too bad yet though. I probably should force my people to do a couple more 24 hour shifts in the coal mining and wood cutting so we'll have a stockpile and they'll be free to do other tasks without worrying that we'll run out of fuel, but I'm not sure what a good cadence for that would be yet since too much overwork will ruin morale. I don't mind having to make difficult decisions (I've already cut rations and made everyone subsist on soup to ease up on our food supply), but I want to do that with a clear understanding of how useful it would be.
What I'm curious about, since this is more of a city builder game, is how we're going to get more people, since post-apocalyptic nuclear winter isn't exactly a setting that makes it easy for new immigrants to come calling. I did send up a beacon so other people know there's a (wannabe) city where we are, and apparently there are another 20 members of my survivor group that need to be picked up after having previously been left behind, but it doesn't seem like there could be all that many more.
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Post by Solana on May 24, 2023 18:13:51 GMT -5
We still get people moving to Minnesota despite our hellish winters, so (shrugs).
I learned that 'Okamiden' is not a great game to play on airplanes. (Just got back from the Bahamas last week.) It's very hard to trace constellation outlines while the plane is shaking from turbulence.
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Post by Ambrienne on May 24, 2023 20:52:30 GMT -5
You saying that reminds me of a surgery/medical simulation game I heard about where they purposely have things shaking like you're riding in the back of an ambulance. ...Yeah, definitely not type of challenge.
I finally completed the last part of the first Our Life game as Baxter's DLC (the final addition) was released a few days ago. I like it better than Derek's because Baxter is wickedly funny... with certain flaws that make the gap in communications with the time skip between his time in town and his epilogue make a good deal of sense. The point where the MC meets him again is freaking hilarious. I don't know if it was the lines I chose specifically then that made it that way, but I was loving it. I can't wait to play then second one when it comes along.
...Except I can, because, you know... book backlog. I'm making good progress, honest! Sadly, a lot of them aren't worth mentioning, though. It's not like there's anything that could 'possibly' derail me in the near future, right? ::coughEtrianOdyssey1-3cough::
It should be smooth sailing.
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Post by Rune Lai on May 25, 2023 21:18:29 GMT -5
Those Etrian Odysseys are crafty! I'm still about halfway through the third one on DS, and hearing about the ports made me a little sad that I hadn't finished it already. I actually fired it up a few days ago while thinking of what to play next since the more mechanics minded part of my brain wanted something crunchy to bite into, but Frostpunk is doing that. It's kind of interesting how they're handling the story, in that there actually seems to be one, but they don't tell it to you in a conventional way. Like I didn't know how my initial band of 80 ended up at our outpost, but after sending out scouts to do some exploring I get details like "this is where we had the accident that wrecked our vehicles" and "this was supposed to be another settlement, but it looks like everyone here has starved to death." So I now know this is an alternate Victorian England (I guess steampunk style, hence the name Frostpunk) and there was a volcano that went off, blocking out the sun. There were supposed to be multiple generators set up for people to travel to and build shelters around, but the only one working right now, but it's possible we're the only one for miles around. Since we found the dead settlement, the game's hope meter has fallen, and discontent is rising. You have a choice to maintain the community through either order or faith. I chose order, because I thought faith might turn a bit cult-like, but now I just feel like an authoritarian. (Double shifts people! You may hate it, but you'll like it less if you have no food because people didn't work! ) My settlement is hanging on better than I thought it would though. There are some malcontents who want to go back to London and have started stealing and vandalizing, but most of the citizen comments have been in my favor. We get really close to running out of supplies sometimes, and people have died, but we've brought in other survivors to increase our numbers and the only complaint at the moment is that it's a bit cold in some of the housing. Food is plentiful now. Everyone gets full meals. Most of my focus now is scouting the area for other settlements and improving my generator so people stop getting cold. It's -40 F outside. >.>
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