Started Splatoon Raiders. The game has weird gyro controls where it only work for up-down, not left-right. I tried it for a bit but ended up turning that off and playing normally. Enjoying the game so far, there isn’t much of a story though. You just select the level, go in, beat enemies and come back. You keep unlocking more and more stuff though, which gives you a sense of progression.
I don’t think this is a game I can play as primary though, it’s something to play for a little while every now and then. Maybe play a few missions before I switch to some other story based game. Kinda similar to EDF in that sense. I’ll need to play it more to see if it keeps my interest or not.
Played some Red Dead Redemption 2. Reached chapter 3. For some reason I am not liking this game much. I used to love GTA and other games in the genre like Saints Row, Sleeping Dogs and so on, but now that I think about it, I didn’t like GTA 5 to that degree either, so maybe this genre isn’t for me anymore.
My main issues are that the game feels slow, and can’t get myself to care about any characters. So, all that riding towards or during the mission when characters are talking to each other about their life story, I don’t care about any of that.
If it were any other game I’ll probably have dropped it by now, but I want to finish this so let’s see how long I can hold on, who knows maybe I’ll end up liking it.
Since Splatoon Raiders only released yesterday and I wasn’t enjoying RDR2 enough to just keep playing that exclusively, I went back to playing Monster Hunter Stories. Defeated some monsters, got some new monsties, finished some quests and so on.
Have some subquests left in the area but have cleared the main missions, so going to the next area while taking care of the side missions.
Also played a bit of Star Ocean: First Departure R. Not much to add here.
What about all of you? What have you been playing and/or plan to play?
First and foremost, I have finished Visions of Mana! The post game was done in one sitting and there were no annoying achievements preventing me from getting that completed either. In fact, there’s no even an achievement for doing all side quests, which would have been the most annoying one! I did have to lower the difficulty to beat the Black Rabite though, that thing is insane!
Final Thoughts
The game is generally considered ‘good, but not great’, and I’ll have to agree with that. Weirdly enough, you can very easily divide the game into two distinct halves. The first half, which is mostly exploratory in large locations with very few bosses, lots of time trials, a villain that you generally agree with and boring combat. And the second half, which is focused, has lots of bosses, an interesting villain and you finally have access to all elements to really get into combat! Since I was playing as a mage, the elements were a huge part! It didn’t make combat in general any better, but you can nuke everything a lot easier. And the boss fights are the true highlight anyway. I generally hated the time trials, but I also think I did them way too early.
But the single best thing about the game are the environments. The areas are all very pretty and dense and I can’t think of a single place I didn’t like being in. Maybe the desert during the sandstorm, but that’s temporary.
I know what my next big game is going to be, but I looked through my Steam library to see if there’s something shorter I want to play first and so I started One Piece: World Seeker. It’s generally considered to be okay at best and it definitely is as rough around the edges as you’d expect from a One Piece game that isn’t Pirate Warriors. It’s interesting what they were going for though. There are parts in the movement that are straight-up the grappling hook from the Batman Arkham games, just a bit too stiff. There are parts where you can swing though the town like Spider-Man, except it’s way too stiff. There are even stealth aspects with Arkham-style takedowns, but (again) just too stiff. Also the idea of Luffy being stealthy is ridiculous!
But, for what it’s worth, I’m enjoying it! Rose-tinted fandom glasses just do that, I guess. I basically played it for three days straight, sacrificing my Yoshi time.
Katamari Damacy is progressing. Stuff’s getting rolled up, stars are being made.
In Star Fox, I now have all Normal Medals and I briefly dipped into Multiplayer. I now understand why Peppy always tells everyone to stay in formation, staying together is a powerful move. But good luck communicating that with randoms online!
Last week, I kinda forgot to talk about my impressions of the game! I like how the extended cutscenes explain why the route splits sometimes. The Sector Y split, for example, never made much sense to me on the N64. I do have a problem with a lot of the voice direction, however. The original is the most quoted video game of all time for a reason, trying to play it straight makes a lot of lines feel very wrong. The major exception is the boss of Zoness, he goes hard on sounding like a pirate and that’s exactly how it should be! Overacting is key!
Congratulations on finishing Visions of Mana! It has been on my wishlist for a long time (I say that a lot, don’t I?) should get around to it soon-ish.
Ooh, staying in formation in multiplayer will be really cool, could be fun if you can find 4 people you know.