|
Post by Rune Lai on Nov 2, 2022 1:06:29 GMT -5
I was feeling bad that my blog was about to go over a month without an update (since regular updating bumps relevance in Google searches and my blog is also to promote my writing, once I get back to writing regularly anyway) and I had one last day in October to schedule an update since I usually prep the blog post on Sunday and then queue it to go up Monday morning while I'm still asleep. (Which is done because I'm on the Pacific coast, but the blog is updated first thing in the morning for those on the east coast.)
I was planning to bumrush play a short indie game anyway just to have some content, but as it happened, on Saturday I was poking around on VNDB (the Visual Novel Database) to get more information on a recent otome release when I noticed that there was a tag for the 20s. VNDB has tags for a lot of things. Male/female protagonist. Guys with classes. Pilots. If it's a character trait, if it's a gameplay trait, they've got it. But I didn't realize they had a time period tag too, and I loooooove the 1920s. The fact there were enough 1920s visual novels that someone found a need to create a tag to track them sent me over the moon.
Alas, most of the decently rated ones were either Japanese-only or I'd already played them, but one of them that was rated roughly 7/10 was Your Dry Delight. There was just one potential catch. I'm not really a boys' love fan. I don't dislike it, but I don't look for it either just because it's not my thing. Also, I dislike non-consent and "only gay for you" which isn't isn't true of all BL, but still happens a lot when the stuff comes out of Japan. But this was done by a western dev, and though it's hard to tell from an avatar made by an artist, one of the two members of the dev team seems to be a man (notably, the writer) and I like to support "own voices."
So I gave it a whirl. If nothing else, it's 1920s, right?
Well, my verdict is... it's not really worth it. It was only a couple hours long so I finished it hoping that it would lead up to something, given that it has an unusual story structure where there are two routes but only one ending, but it didn't really--lead up to anything that is. It's just the ending is written so that both routes could be canon which is unsatisfying if you, you know, want the protag to choose someone. After you finish one route (which doesn't really end so much as cut off) you'd told to play the other to get the other side of the story, but you don't really need it. My feeling is that if the game didn't force you, you could play the ending without feeling like you missed any of the plot, though the I suppose the relationship part of the ending could still be a bit weird.
I think the romantic elements were fine. At 20k words it's the video game equivalent of a short story so Richter (the protag) needs to make his feelings known and have them reciprocated fast. And the pacing is tight without feeling rushed. It works. I'll give them that.
But the 1920s portion... Ugh... I just want to say, don't write period fiction without running it by a history nerd who loves that portion of history. It wasn't 100% horrible, but you could tell that the writer didn't really love the 1920s. They had picked a setting for the story, likely because they thought it would be interesting and did some cursory research, but because they didn't know it in their bones, they made a lot of mistakes. For instance, the FBI plays a background element in this story, but they didn't exist until the 1930s. However, the FBI's predecessor, the Bureau of Investigation did, and they would have known this if they so much as read the wikipedia page. (And this is why I like the Shadow Hearts writer/director. He does know this stuff, and that's why his 1920s Penny Blood RPG has the BoI in the game.)
Now, I get that this game is free, so I'm griping about a game that I paid no money for, but the thing is, Argent Games does a lot of Kickstarters and I've seen them before on Steam and Itch.io. Sometimes they also venture into otome, though most of their content is BL. This game serves as their free sample, and now that I've had it, I can't see myself supporting anything they do because I have no idea if this sort of worldbuilding/research sloppiness extends to their other games, and if it does, it's not for me. But if they do put in more effort into their paid titles, then they've just alienated someone who could have been a future customer.
I mean, I couldn't tell whether the protagonist was a private detective or worked for a police department because both the dialogue and background art for his office gave contradictory information, and that made a big difference in the amount of authority he would have when working with officers.
The game has a deceptive Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam, but I suspect it's mostly because it's a free BL game on Steam so (most) people aren't going to hate on a game they played for free, and as I mentioned, the romance elements are fine. It's not my cup of tea, but I thought it was done well enough. It's just that wasn't my primary reason for playing the game.
But I suppose the bottom line is: I really wanted a good 1920s game so that's why I spent all this time venting here after I already vented on my blog.
|
|
|
Post by Solana on Nov 20, 2022 8:53:14 GMT -5
I finally beat 'Bravely Default 2' getting the true final ending. I think this is the RPG I've logged the most hours on for a single playthrough. After getting Bravebearer and unlocking the final levels of the jobs along with a few Giant JP Orbs, it was a very easy final boss. (The only annoying part was that I had Elvis set up as a mage and the final boss had lots of elemental resistances. I would have needed the Black Mage 2nd job specialty to punch through it. As it was, he didn't do too much.) With Adelle having double HP, Gigagravity and mimic, she was doing almost all of the heavy lifting.
The series has amazing characters, but the one area they all trip on is the final boss. Yes, in the first one, Eternia spends a lot of time being the bad guys because they wanted to hide the REAL villain. In the second one, it kind of came out of nowhere. Here, the Night's Nexus was talked about all the way through but is one of the worst fleshed out villains I've ever seen. I'd say that Necron in FFIX is a good comparison. You don't find out a lot of lore about it until the second ending, but even then, the motivations are pretty bad. So it wants all the memories and wisdom and will destroy the world for it? What?
Even so, the rest of the characters and the sidequests make up for it. This game's villains aren't as likable as in the previous games, but a few have some pretty decent redemption arcs. Folie and Virgilio were incredibly irritating, and it was quite satisfying taking them down. Amazing how one of the most twisted villains in this game is a kid.
The music is also a place where this series really shines. The battle themes are good, though none of them quite match 'And This Person's Name Is' where 'the violinist sounds like she's ready to kill someone'. The town themes are exceptional, especially Rimedhal and Holograd's.
Definitely worth picking up for anyone who likes job class games.
|
|
|
Post by skylark on Dec 1, 2022 21:10:18 GMT -5
*sneezes* Ughhh…
I think I might have caught a bad case of the Genshins…
|
|
|
Post by skylark on Dec 4, 2022 16:11:13 GMT -5
Speaking of…
I love this guy's EXE vids just for the memes alone, but he's also fantastic at model manipulation and sprinkles his videos with actual lore. This was one of his first ones. I think the stinger at the end comes from an anime, but I'm not sure.
|
|
|
Post by Rune Lai on Dec 24, 2022 21:33:37 GMT -5
I "finished" Fairy Bakery, an iOS mobile game where you manage a shop. It's a sim so there's technically no end to it, but I bought/made all the recipes so I think I'm more or less done unless the mood strikes me. It's a cute game, but not particularly well built from a monetization standpoint. I always find it baffling when there's a game I might want to throw a few bucks towards, but the packages for sale are insulting and in Fairy Bakery's case, largely useless. You can buy currency, but you earn it so easily there's no point.
I think Animal Restaurant is better if you want a management sim to go.
This will probably be my last game of the year as I try jamming the rest of my free time into book catch-up.
|
|
|
Post by skylark on Dec 29, 2022 13:05:04 GMT -5
Decided nostalgia was on the menu and got the updated Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance 1 and 2 for PS4. Knocked Dark Alliance 1 out of the park with the Dwarven Fighter, but they upped the damage of mobs even on easy mode. Hopefully I clear 2 by New Year's.
|
|
|
Post by Ambrienne on Dec 29, 2022 18:10:04 GMT -5
I completed Persona 5 Royal sometime last month... but somehow never got around to updating that here. Shockingly, I did get the true ending first time around. I also beat two of the optional bosses along the way (one of them not on purpose, but I figured... okay, might as well try it). I admit my musical hoard increased by a few titles since the music wouldn't let me go. ^^;
Given that I am a descendant of the King of Hearts (aka Charlemagne) and there's that whole... guillotine thing, that got me raising my eyebrow a bit (loved having a legitimate reason to name my thieves Les Mirages, though). I have to say that I wasn't as impressed with the looks of some the party members' personae. Can't imagine what they were thinking there (did all their creativity get funneled into the MC's stuff and the locations?). Ah well. I had plenty of fun with the game anyway.
And I also squeezed in Love Spell: Written in the Stars, Aslan's route, which finally got released. There's a special type of chaos involved when you've got two talking penguins instead of one... and they don't always play nice with each other. As with the original routes, there's only one choice that 'really' matters ending wise (the rest is all flavor/for giggles) but since the route involved dimension hopping, it had an added bonus of seeing an alternate version of each of the other love interests, too.
That's probably all for the year as I need to make more inroads on my reading backlog.
|
|
|
Post by Solana on Jan 1, 2023 18:35:01 GMT -5
I got my PS2 hooked up downstairs so that there's enough room to play DDR. (I need to up my cardio as I spent a lot of time at a desk as a vet tech now.) My nephews were staying over and my older one tried it, and he got 'E' for effort. Usually I have a hard time finding someone to play with me. (Or that's sober and willing, anyway...)
|
|
|
Post by Rune Lai on Jan 4, 2023 17:23:28 GMT -5
Decided to jump into Opus: Echoes of Starsong for my first game of the year. I'd been meaning to play it since I bought it last year, since it was very high on my list of want-to-play indies ever since it got the enhanced port and I saw the trailer.
For my playthrough I chose Chinese audio since the game is from a Taiwanese studio and thus there is a high likelihood the original script was in Chinese, but I understand why the game used Japanese audio for its English language trailer. (Sadly, more people will likely glom on to the game if they think it's from out of Japan.)
I would probably call this an adventure game, with elements of space exploration and puzzle solving and a lot of text. The storytelling is absolutely lovely though. The only part that feels a bit tedious is the setup of the world state that doesn't directly impact the protagonist, Jun, but we get a really clear picture of what Jun himself is like, both in the present and the past.
There's a frame story with an elderly Jun, who is probably in his late 80s or even older, coming to a probably isolated and faraway planet to do something in regards to someone he'd known only a brief time in his youth. This Jun is a retired clan elder, highly respected, and wishes to undertake this task by himself, though it's implied it might be dangerous. He opens a massive alien door and then thinks back to 66 years ago when he met Eda.
I'm not sure if I'm also muddling in elements from the trailer, but it's pretty clear that elderly Jun has his share of sorrow and he wishes to meet Eda again, who he had probably not separated from under favorable circumstances. So I'm pretty much preparing for a tear-jerker.
I'm not particularly fond of the autosave system, since if you don't hit a save point you need to replay through scenes you already completed, but I do like that when you resume a save you don't immediately jump into where you left off in the past, but spend a moment with elderly Jun, who is sitting on a stone in the sunshine amidst the alien ruins he's in, before getting back into the story. It probably would get annoying in a longer game, but for something I expect to be 12-15 hours that's fine.
|
|
|
Post by Rune Lai on Jan 7, 2023 22:05:26 GMT -5
Finished Opus: Echoes of Starsong. I really should have played this when I bought it last year. It's just a gorgeous game. I looked forward to the end of the workday everyday just so I could get back to it. The worldbuilding, after the initially dry info dump to set up the recent history of Thousand Peaks, is quite good. The mythology and the lore is deep and make it feel like a larger world than we're allowed to see. I love the varied groups of people you can run into, from trade guild members to cave runners to space pirates just in it because they can't get other jobs. The recent war left a lot of people in poor shape, but at the same time there are places where you can hear research seminars, there are pirate radio stations where a woman can sing without being a big name performer; all under the watchful eyes of a space corporation large enough to have its own military. It won the war against what seemed more traditional nation-states. The starsong idea (locating lumen rich asteroids through the music they give off) is neatly woven into the universe so it's not as hokey as it initially sounds.
Now that I've finished, I highly recommend going with the Chinese audio for better immersion. Aside from being the dev team's native language, it's pretty clear that Jun comes from a culture that is a far future take on feudal China and a fair number of proper names are left in untranslated Chinese, though important ones like the star system's name is translated to Thousand Peaks and the ship is the Red Chamber, probably for ease of understanding. (That the ship is named the Red Chamber is likely not an accident either, though any significance likely passes over the heads of people less versed in Chinese literature, including me who doesn't know much more than the novel title and basic premise.)
As expected, Echo of Starsong is a tearjerker, but the ending is beautiful and I love how the frame story is resolved. The game itself is a little weird in that the actual mechanics feel very simple and stripped down, but for the length of this game and what you need to do, it feels appropriate. I delved into asteroids, sold relics for cash, upgraded most of my mining ship, and explored everywhere just for the heck of it, because I could and I wanted to uncover as many memories as possible. (Memories are the game's collectibles, all of which come with a little commentary from elderly Jun, implying he's held on to them in the 66 years since he last saw Eda.) This has been one of the few games where I find myself wishing it wasn't over. I want to spend more time with Jun, Eda, and Remi, and wish they could have spent more time together too.
So I found a pretty good walkthrough on Steam for collecting all the memories, since I'm missing 12 out of 240. Since I played on Switch I don't have achievements, but the achievement icon for collecting all the memories is heartbreaking with elderly Jun's face in his hands like he could never let go. (Not sure what that says about me the player, seeing as I want them all too.) I wouldn't say this game is a complete downer, but it's definitely bittersweet.
And the music is really good. I just want to put the track Red Chamber on repeat. It's such an energetic and buoyant theme that it conveys both a sense of danger and rising above it. I never bought anything on Bandcamp before, but seeing as I don't have the base game on Steam I'm not sure I can get the soundtrack by itself there.
|
|
|
Post by skylark on Jan 11, 2023 23:57:54 GMT -5
Still playing Genshin. Now here is your serotonin fix.
|
|
|
Post by Rune Lai on Jan 13, 2023 3:13:37 GMT -5
Finished a second playthrough of Opus: Echo of Starsong and got all my collectibles. One of them you have to do a substantial amount of backtracking to accomplish, which I didn't even think to do my first time through, but the reward is another lovely scene of our two leads enjoying each other's company and a special post-game version of the continue screen, letting us see a younger Jun and Eda hanging together instead of just Old Jun (though he still comes back to narrate after you hit Continue).
I was contemplating listening in Japanese for my second playthrough, but the VAs just weren't my Jun and Eda. While Jun was okay, Eda came off a little too cute to me when I was rewatching the trailer. Eda has a nice bite to her personality when she has a mind of it, and I just couldn't hear a potential for that kind of edge in her Japanese VA.
Caught a number of things on replay that passed me the first time through, and I found myself counting the number of times Jun ends up blowing up a cave since at one point in the late game he says he's already done it three times before (lol).
I'm gonna miss Jun, Eda, and Remi, but I think this game was just the right length. Long enough to get a fairly deep amount of worldbuilding and to build up the characters to be more than simple broad strokes, but not so long that the game is plugged up with too many side quests and filler.
It also made a second playthrough pretty quick compared to the first time around, though I was also a lot more reckless. I actually destroyed my ship a couple times because I was like "Meh... I'll be all right." and generally you can only get your ship destroyed immediately following some sort of checkpoint so reloading is quick.
|
|
|
Post by Rune Lai on Jan 19, 2023 22:47:16 GMT -5
Playing Ambition: A Minuet in Power, which I bought on sale when it came to Switch. I originally heard about it when it had its Kickstarter for PC and thought about backing it, but decided I didn't want to gamble on an unknown dev, so it languished on my Steam wishlist for a "good enough" sale after it came out.
But then it got ported to Switch, which meant I'd be more likely to play it. Though, to be honest, it's probably better to play on PC. There are some cut-off text issues and the button mapping is a little weird. You can use Esc to bring up the save menu on PC, but having the cancel button do that on console is non-intuitive and I would keep bringing up the menu when I wanted to exit the calendar and go to the city map.
The game's much more addictive than I thought it would be considering it's essentially a social sim with a story where you play as a commoner woman making her way into high society on the eve of the French Revolution. You can be a completely awful person, or relatively benign, but you can't be completely nice because you need money to pay the rent and if you don't have a job, you need to do it by selling juicy gossip to a newspaper rag. There's actually a lot of time management involved since each time you go out into the city, whether it's shopping, to the newspaper, or to a party, it takes a day. Resting also takes a day. And you only have so many days in a month.
My first playthrough I ended up changing history enough the revolution failed, but Yvette (the protagonist) had fallen for Saint-Just, an actual historical figure on the side of the revolution, so they ran off to continue fighting the good fight in the countryside. It sounds like a good number of characters can end up dead by the end of the game depending on what the player does, so I'm hoping a second playthrough will be entertaining. This time I'm hoping to keep Thomas-Alexander Dumas alive (he lived historically) and have the revolution succeed, but anyone else can die and I'd like to see how things change.
|
|
|
Post by Solana on Jan 22, 2023 14:34:10 GMT -5
I'm replaying the last case on 'Phoenix Wright- Justice for All'. I forgot that Pearl is your assistant, and I'm always happy when she has more screentime. The 'Ask Frisk and Company' comic was right- Will Powers is quite a bit like Asgore from 'Undertale'.
|
|
|
Post by skylark on Jan 22, 2023 19:44:31 GMT -5
Finally finished my Azure Moon playthrough of Three Houses. Now I'm rinsing the opposite end of the spectrum and running Crimson Flower.
|
|