>>14226
Yeah that mission is fantastic. I really like how the ground chatter changes as the mission advances there. Definitely another highlight. It's really satisfying to see the Arsenal Bird go down afterwards. That stuck with me because I thought the sound of it falling to pieces sounded like a death wail.

Few other games I've played recently.

Empires of the Undergrowth
It's a RTS where you manage an ant colony. seeing it gave me some flashbacks to SimAnt which I played a bit of when I was younger. Honestly don't have much negative to say about it, it looked and played well. Was surprisingly challenging even on normal mode for the mid to late levels, but not in a way that felt frustrating but rather made me want to get better at it. Actually found myself repeating levels a number of that I finished just for the heck of it, even though I usually don't do that. It looks nice, runs well even on my laptop, and is a bit addictive.
My only complaint is that the game is very much an Early access title. I thought it was weird while playing it because the game seemed 100% fine. I expected this ant game to have more bugs than it did...
The thing is though, it's one of 'those' early access games where the game comes to a dead stop. Which again is weird though because the place the game stops could easily be the actual end of the game, it certainly felt like the last boss level if nothing else. If nothing else it's nice to know they plan to add more content later on, once they do I might revisit the game.


The original Watch Dogs.
Time has been flying so far lately I can't be sure how many weeks ago it was I played this, might have even been more than a month or two by now. Doesn't feel that long though.
First time I tried playing it was near release. It ran like garbage, and was a buggy mess. I uninstalled and moved on. I ended up with a copy of it for PS4 and as such decided to give it a try. I guess thanks to years of patches it's actually playable now. It still had it's share of issues, but nothing game breaking. Plays a lot like a GTA game, with some "hacking" gimmicks. Story didn't really seem that bad all things considered. Sure felt it's age though with all the meme they used for road sign hacking. What is this I don't even, all your base, ect. They have a tenancy to portray hacking in the streamlined Hollywood way, in which it's essentially magic, but for the sake of a videogame I can't say I blame them. Their portrayal of hackers could have used a bit of work too, but whatever. I'll try out the sequals sooner or later. I didn't even know this had any, but when I checked it turned out to have a few. Guess that just flew right under my radar.

Hobo: Tough Life
I don't really like multiplayer stuff much but a friend who insists on making me play games with him convinced me to try this one out (pretty sure half the reason was to mock me and my current living situation). Seemed like an interesting concept for a game so I figured why not.
Turned out to be really boring and tedious, true to the hobo life I guess. The game mostly seemed to be about trying to stay alive. hunger cold sickness ect are a constant issue, annoyingly so in fact. Felt like I couldn't make any progress because I was too busy constantly rummaging for food. But no mater how much I ate the hunger kept draining quickly, like many other gauges/meters in fact
After starving to death then being beaten to death, I ended up getting tired of the game and gave myself nearly unlimited money. Bought all the best stuff in the game, and even with nearly unlimited access to money and supplies, the hideout was a pain to work on because every single item you craft requires an annoying minigame. One of those games where you have to stop the arrow on the right spot. usually I'm not bad with those but in this game I couldn't judge the speed worth a damn. Dude I played with didn't seem to do much better at it. Almost seemed rigged. He got pretty bored of the game quickly too so we called it quits.

Currently on Yakuza kiwami.
I played the Ps2 version ages ago, but didn't keep up with the series. Got back into it when someone gave me a copy of Zero. Great game that was, and packed with a surprisingly massive amount of content. Think it took me more than 100 hours to finish it.
I couldn't remember much of anything about the original game, so kiwami seemed like a nice refresher. Uses a lot of the same character models music elements, with a few of the side games being carried over which I don't think were in the original, Mainly the Tamiya 4wd game. It was actually pretty nice seeing them continue the story from that side game now that it's like 15 years later, and a couple of those people never really moved on with their lives. The repating fights with Majima feel as tacked on as they are, but they're not as hard as the game makes it seem, and it's easy to avoid them most of the time anyway.
Playing zero before this really helped the game out a lot, since it helps establish a lot of these characters and the relationships they have/had, which this game didn't get across all that well. I also think I had a problem with forgetting and mixing up side characters, who is who and what not, but again playing zero helped a lot with that. Seems like the game also includes the fighting styles from Zero, which helps spice things up a bit. I forget but I think the original version may have just had one fighting style.
I can't remember if it's really the case or not, but the plot is kinda ridiculous with one of the key components feeling very obvious while never once crossing the minds of any characters.
See, The game starts off with the main character having the hots for this girl Yumi. The girl gets kidnapped by a yakuza boss who tries to rape her, your buddy kills the guy to stop the guy and you take the heat for it so your bro and Yumi can get away, going to prison for ten years in the process.
Ten years later, you get out, and meet up with this ten year old kid who's looking for her mom, who as it turns out is your girls very similar looking sister, a sister you didn't know she even had. Your girl Yumi meanwhile is now missing. The sister seals a bunch of money from the Yakuza and leaves behind the ring you gave Yumi. It feels painfully obvious our boy got cucked, but part of me wants to not believe it.

Been trying to knock out console games while I can since I might not have the luxury of a stable power supply in the coming months. I'll probably move over to the Switch since that has a rechargeable battery that I can charge and run off of solar power.

>>14231
I've recently finished Yakuza 5 and 6 as well, finally completing the mainline series featuring Kiryu. 0 is undoubtedly the best game in the series. It's probably the only game in the series where I bothered to finish up all the side stories/mini games. The yakuza series' plot are always outrageous, if you're planning on continuing on with the rest of the series just wait until you reach 3 and 4. It's the first two games I completed so I don't mind it much but those two are infamous amongst fans of the series. The progression of time and seeing recurring characters with the passage of time is certainly one of the best things about the series, for that reason alone I would encourage you to play the other games.

>>14232
Yeah I fully intend to. I haven't really heard much about them, so it'd mostly be a clean slate. I've got kiwami 2 ready to be installed once I'm done with this one. I kinda hope the pocket racer makes another appearance, but if he does I guess it'd mean things didn't work out with him.
You mentioned the main line games, but one I was curious about was the dead souls entry. Is that even canon? Seemed pretty odd to take the series in a zombie horror direction.

>>14233
Yeah, it's difficult to avoid spoilers nowadays but fortunately Yakuza spoilers aren't too common on the net unlike for example, Persona. Kiwami 2 is great and I hope you will enjoy it, it uses the new dragon engine which is different from most of the series however and some people don't really like how it feels. Pocket Circuit Fighter and the Tamiya mini-game is definitely one of the more memorable side stories but it wasn't a thing until 0 which was only released after 3, 4 and 5. Dead Souls is a spin-off and isn't canon.

Decided to pick up where I left off in the last entry of the 3DS Story of Seasons games. Given this guy's background, I shouldn't be (pleasantly) surprised that he said this. Love when there's dialogue like this that contrasts with the generally positive, relaxing, and cute atmosphere; really helps bridge a connection with the characters.

I've been replaying WoTS4, it's as fun as I remembered. A supposed sequel was cancelled and a dungeon crawler/roguelike spin-off was made in its stead, I hope that there will be a new entry in the series in the near future.

Finally completed Yakuza 7. The move to turn the game into an RPG bothered quite a number of people but it didn't worry me quite as much, it certainly changed the feel of the game but it didn't make it any less enjoyable in my opinion. The only downside might be that it gives less satisfaction of beating down characters that put you off the wrong way. What did concern me initially were the new protag and new cast of characters, it would be unfair and nigh impossible to compare them to the old guards but the characters turned to be not as unlikeable as I had thought they would be and there are even a couple of memorable ones. There are parallels between the circumstances the protag, Kasuga and Kiryu of the past games went through but the differences in personality leads to different outcomes. Kasuga is a lot more emotional and expressive/social in contrast to the stoic Kiryu and the creators apparently had it in mind to make him a more relatable character as opposed to the more ideal Kiryu. Plot wise, I would say that the writer have become somewhat better at covering the weaknesses that is often seen in the yakuza series although it might also be helped by Kasuga's personality. There are still occasions where the flow and progression of the plot feels a little odd but there are some really memorable moments in the game that makes up for it. As with previous series, there are ridiculous plot twists but nothing quite as bad or absurd as some of those in past games. There are a lot of references to old RPGs, most notably being Dragon Quest. If I'm not mistaken Yuji Horii might even have contributed to the game. The new setting, Yokohama, is also much bigger and metropolitan than Kamurocho or at least it seems so to me and had me somewhat overwhelmed at the beginning. It's a great game overall and I would rank it as being one of the better game in the series. It's unfortunate but I had to play the game on reduced setting due to my aged PC. Yakuza 7 certainly marks the changing of times as well as the end of an era and the beginning of a new one.

Pokemon Go
You can't even challenge a fellow P-Go gamer to a pokemon duel. What's the point then?!?

>>14307
collecting for the sake of collecting?

The World Ends With You on Switch and Persona 3.

Anyone have any thoughts on Muse Dash?
I'm trying it and I feel a mixture of really liking and somewhat disliking the art and I can't pinpoint why

>>14311
I bought it last time it was on sale and dirt cheap.
It came across like a trap because the base game felt a little like a demo and the DLC is where they get you. Call me a weeb, but I was kind of annoyed 70% of the music that comes with the base version is in Chinese, and you have to pay extra for the glorious Nippon tunes. The art might be Chinese too which could be the issue you're having, I know the way it's animated is certainly a bit unusual looking. I ended up pirating the switch version with all the music. It certainly can be fun gameplay wise. Really gives off that arcade music game feeling.

>>14312
Chinese art huh, and the girls speak japanese, I guess they knew chinese wouldn't sound as good.
What a strange product. But yes the gameplay is fun, really dopamine inducing, not at all the Miku replacement I was looking for though.

I basically grind my irl job for paying back a loan so meanwhile I waste time in mmos nowadays, got back into FFXIV because of a "friend" but I don't find it too enjoyable so usually get back to EVE Online.

An offline time-sink would be preferred because I have trash mobile connection but I played most of the Neverwinter Nights modules I was interested in so I'm not sure where to go now, really enjoyed Elegia Eternum & Excrucio Eternum.

>>14309
How am I suppose to train my pokemon then? I needs to duel.

I played a game called Head Lander. It's a side scrolling platformer with a 70s sci-fi aesthetic. You play as a flying head that can take over bodies. Story is that human kind collectively dumped fleshy bodies and uploaded themselves to android bodies, and your head is the only human head left in the galaxy. You help a resistance movement trying to go back to human bodies and fight off a dictator ai that's experimenting on what's left of humanity. Wasn't a half bad game with a decent gimmick and the style it was in was kind of amusing.

After that played I am Bread. It's a very short and simplistic physics based game where you play as bread dropped into a space like a kitchen or living room, with the goal of getting toasted. The challenge is finding a way to get from point A to B without getting dirty and inedible. This means not touching the floor, water, or anything gross. It's a game you can easily finish in a few hours, and seemed like it was geared to youtubers and playing as friends watch.

From there I played the PS4 spiderman game. It had a lot of praise behind it and it's from a studio I like, so while I don't often bother with capeshit games I figured it was worth a try. The only other ones I can think of that I've played are the Arkham games, and for the same reason in fact. The praise is certainly understandable. It handles well, makes the city feel big and grand, but not tedious to traverse since half the fun is swinging around. Combat works well, felt very precise, but all the dodge spamming with occasional punches during rare openings was really hell on my fingers during longer play sessions. I also liked the verity of activities they managed to come up with to keep things from getting stale. The story was pretty good overall, but not without a couple issues. [spoiler]The way doc oct went from leaning to evil, to full on evil mastermind with a half dozen super powered henchmen under his command, felt abrupt and like a chapter was missing. Likewise, it seemed weirdly pointless having villains like scorpion and vulture get introduced just to take part in a single boss fight each. Might have been nice if they did a bit more with the characters.

I went into it thinking it might be it's own story, not having anything to do with other marvel characters. Didn't take long to start noticing a bunch of references to not just the MCU characters but also The Defenders characters too, which was surprising. The problem with this is why events start out as the sort of thing a friendly neighborhood crimefighter can handle alone, things get progressively more and more serious as things go on. Much like with non-avenger MCU movies, it starts to beg the question why aren't the others doing anything to help? I guess you could call it nitpicking, but when the biggest building in the city is the avengers town, and the city is going to hell, you can't blame a person for wondering why they aren't there.

From there I played Mario Sunshine for the first time. I was surprised to see how brutally technical and challenging the game was. It was during a very simple race across the beach that I realized what I was in for. In this race, losing meant not only dying but being kicked to the hub world too. I learned from others that is has some infamously hard and down right aggravating levels to it. I didn't struggle as much with the same maps others named, but I did find myself getting a little frustrated at times, with some of the hardest levels I found being the ones where you navigate floating objects in space, and falling off means dying and starting all over. There was also the occasional cheap trick that could cause an insta death if you're not being careful. I didn't 100% the game because after finishing the main campaign and collecting all the standard "shines" and a couple extra, pretty much the only ones left were from collecting 100 coins on each map and challenge modes of maps I had already cleared. Kind of felt like there wasn't much of a point in bothering.

At the moment I'm half way into the remake of Yakuza 2.
Kinda funny how right off the bat, the kid you save in the previous game fugs right the heck off and stays out of the game so you can 'do your thing'. It's also pretty neat that the game acknowledges you dang near single handedly crippled the organization, leading to a power vacuum and all the problems that come with that.
I really hope future games have other locations to explore. While seeing these two little segments of towns evolve over the years is neat, after three games in the same two locations it's getting a bit old. They certainly seem to be reusing various elements a lot in these games I've noticed,
I find myself wondering a lot if if Kiwami has added content that wasn't in the original version to make it fall more in line with yakuza 0, or if it was always there and 0 just went that far to flesh out all the off hand references to past events in these days. Like if the only reason Majima works the clubs in 0 and looks the way he does in that game, is all because of a joke in a mini game in yakuza 2. Speaking of, I really liked the segments where characters just hang out and talk about random topics totally unrelated to the story. Really helps in making the characters feel more real and fleshed out. Especially the one where the hard to understand characters with low gritty rough voices, make fun of each other for being so hard to understand, challenging each other to repeat what someone just said or do tongue twisters. That'd easily be one of my favorite moments of the series so far, not that there's a shortage of them mind you.
You know, I thought it would have bothered me more than it did that they removed the different fighting styles and leave you with just one, but in the previous games I favored one per character more often than not anyway.
Maybe it's my imagination, but these games sure seem to have some very casual racist undertones to them. Putting aside potentially offensive caricatures of foreign characters, they seem to frame Chinese and Koreans a bit like human garbage or rodents, which one cop in this particular game seemed to have 0 fugs about exterminating like such.
Gotta say, out of all the mini-games this has, it still confuses me why they don't have a playable pachinko game in accessible parlors. Seemed like that'd be a given. Speaking of gambling, I was a little concerned when I saw they removed the rulette game, since saving before playing that is something I often do in games to make massive amounts of cash, but then as it turns out the cabaret club and construction rts minigames are crazy good ways of making money. Now if only there was more to actually use the money on...

Demon's turf.
Seems like indie 3D platformers are finally getting figured out, it's well made and pretty much copies Mario's moveset.
Yet I hate the style and I'm not having any fun with it.

>>14370
>I hate the style
Yeah, the promo art looks okay, but the in game art has western and low-effort written all over it. The main character is practically the same concept as Etna, but her character design has zero appeal.

>>14371
Yeah it's low quality. Even if it wasn't and the whole thing was higher quality like the promo art I think I'd still dislike the character designs and the grimy urban look to it all.
But you just gave me the idea to go replay prinny instead, thank you for that.

I really don't want to make a thread just for this, so it will have to be here. I'm currently going through Princess Maker 5 and decided on a whim to stream it as well. I think Tohno's denizens are among the few who could really appreciate a game like this. Don't worry, I don't talk over the game or plug my dumb face anywhere, it's as anon as yt can get. I'm doing a 'decent childhood' run att, I think you might enjoy it. Streaming daily for about 7 hours until I finish this run at least. Drop by if you like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9YiYtTphJg

>>14442
In Princess Maker 5 you are the legal guardian of a ten-year-old girl. She’s the only daughter of a royal bloodline and the center of a political dispute that quickly escalated into open war. Surrounded by enemies and fearing for her safety, you take her far away, into another dimension, to the land of early 2000s Japan, in order to give her a safe and decent upbringing. Cube, your loyal servant and friend, is there with you. You bond as family. Your new life begins.

Yesterday my very first run of this game. This is the first PM I played and the first raising sim game I played as well. I’ll say the most important thing right away. This title needs your complete devotion. It plays like a casual game but it needs your complete emotional investment in order for it to work. I think this is why it’s a rather niche sort of game. I don’t think many people could play this to the end and the reason is simple; Gameplay is pretty much looking at stat numbers slowly rising while the same sequence of short animations play over and over again. It is repetitive, slow and mostly uneventful. Yet, this is one of the best games I’ve ever played. How is that possible?

Like I said, it all depends on your emotional investment. For the past several days I did nothing but play this. I would close the game and think about my decisions and how to make the life of this girl under my custody better. A lot better. In fact I was aiming for a beautiful childhood. This was the point that appealed the most to me and what made me enjoy this game so much; the possibility to provide someone with a meaningful, wonderful childhood.

As such, my gameplay was guided completely by roleplay. I didn’t look up any guides or tips on how to improve this or that stat or what to do in order to get this or that ending, I didn’t care about the numbers so much. I wanted to experience this game in a completely organic manner, mistakes and all. For example, I allowed my protégé to continue to attend music classes long after she mastered the skill, just because her best friend also attended there. I figured that’s what she would like, given the fact she only had that single friend during that time. This is how I made every choice in this game and it was completely worth it. I was completely invested in the task of raising this girl and it made every consequence very meaningful to me personally as a player.

If this is the type of thing that sounds appealing to you, then there’s only one problem to overcome with Princess Maker 5 and that is the gameplay. It’s a raising sim and that means creating a routine for your daughter is fundamental to her upbringing. This game will make you feel what a routine is like. You’ll watch every single week of an eight years period, as she goes to class, attends extracurricular activities, extra courses, cram school, do tests, club activities and later, part time jobs and everything else in between. You’ll help her pick birthday presents for her friends year after year and you better remember which friend is which. It is repetitive and I even feel asleep a few times (if you watch my streams, on rare occasions you’ll see the mouse cursor running offscreen. That’s because I dozed off for a few seconds) but the repetitiveness of it gives it the proper weight of reality and gives you the time to actually care about the game and with some luck, you’ll end caring a lot and having a fascinating experience with it.

Graphics are beautiful. I love the character design and the animations. It has that appeal of early 2000s anime like Toradora, Soul Eater and Haruhi Suzumiya. It has a sort of quiet charm about it, can’t really explain it but the visuals add a lot to this game. The music is so good I consider it to be a good enough reason to at least play a couple hours of PM5. It’s relaxing, engaging and quite beautiful in its own right. In fact I predict I’ll continue to listen to some of those BGM for years to come.

Only one thing bothered me while playing this game and it’s the lack of character development for many of the characters, particularly the students. There’s just not enough events in there for everybody. The few that there are are really nice to follow and read about, but it’s too little. It took me about 50 hours to finish this, I completed the entire ‘arc’ of several students and there’s just not enough text for them, they deserve a lot more dialogue, a lot more things going on in their lives. I can well imagine a Princess Maker game being enhanced this way by adopting a little bit of VN gameplay. It would be absolutely perfect. In my opinion it’s the only thing missing really.

I think that summons up my experience with PM5. A beautiful, precious gem of a game that maybe requires a very specific type of player to really enjoy it, but if you’re one of the lucky few, man, you’re in for some very good times with it.

>>14443
I played PM2 non-stop for a few days years ago. It was nice. It's interesting how simple gameplay doesn't need to be as inane as most "mobile titles" are.

I just finished Kirby and The Forgotten Land. I became a fan of Kirby maybe just 6 or 7 years ago, exploring the GB, SNES and N64 games. I never bothered to try them out back when I had those consoles. Kirby games never really interested me but since playing many of them, they’ve grown on me quite a bit. You kinda have to understand what they are first, though. You’re there to appreciate cute characters huffing around, colorful and relaxing little worlds and happy music. It’s all leisurely and relaxing, There’s no timer, no urgency of any kind. It’s just you and Kirby walking around magic caves, green fields, around mountains and other such beautiful places.

I’ve seen a lot of people saying this game is too easy so let me address that for a second. Look at the character design, the way the stages look and just the general atmosphere of this game. Now tell me what the target audience for this title is. Of course it’s easy, it’s a game for school children, you’re not playing Kirby to improve your platforming skills, you’re there to take a stroll with Kirby while some catchy tune is playing in the background and a soft breeze goes by. You’re there to enjoy yourself. Maybe it’s difficult for 9 yo but it’s probably not going to pose much of a challenge for you. Also, as a side note, it makes sense it’s easy. Kirby is the most powerful creature in the universe. He can actually gulp down a black hole without breaking a sweat (check the manga), so keep that in mind while you’re playing this game.
Yeah it’s too easy at times, so why play it at all? First it has all that relaxing, cute atmosphere and endearing characters I told you about. If you like that it’s reason enough, but there’s something else. For me, playing Kirby is like having a small window into how children perceive the world in a way. The innocence of Kirby’s universe grows on you and it feels nice to be part of it, even if it’s for a little while. Speaking of which, this game is quite big as far as Kirby games go, so you’ll be in there for a while. It was quite a pleasant playthrough for me.

I my opinion this is one of the best 3D titles of the series. Back when they released the trailer I thought they were going to try to turn yet another cherished series into an open world full of nothing but I’m happy to report they didn’t. It’s a lighthearted platformer with lots of different environments to explore, a lot of collectables (there are over 200 capsule toys to collect in this game) and many interesting enemies to interact with. Also there are tons of minigames this time, a lot more than in any other Kirby title.

As far as difficulty goes, this game is not difficult but still can pose a challenge, especially on the several time attacks. Some of those I still can’t beat under the required time (it’s not necessary though, you just get a few extra coins for your effort just finishing them is enough). Since the platforming is not difficult, you’ll have plenty of time and peace of mind to wander around looking for the lost Waddle Dees. They’re scattered and lost all around the stages and it’s funny how some are hidden right under your nose and still you can’t find them. The plot is simple enough, and doesn't even need its own paragraph. One day, a vortex swapped the land and many Dees got sucked into another dimension. You go in in order to find and rescue them.

The music is fantastic. All the tracks are readily available on YT and you can check it for yourself. I particularly liked the music for the Wondaria stages, which are absolutely brilliant. They have that nostalgic Kirby tune to it but introduces something new and catchy as well. Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHv3vWHbgPw and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yq_8thBr98 and tell me if that doesn’t sound pretty good indeed. The Winter Horn world music is pretty good too, like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw_SIdt3vfE .

So all in all I’m very happy to see how well this Kirby game came out. It really stayed true to its nature and managed to add a lot to the series. I hope they make another one soon.

>>14445
Glad you liked it. I've been enjoying it myself. The postgame isn't exactly hard but it's much more challenging than the main game was so there is that to it.

I had a blast with Umihara Kawase Fresh! I feel like not enough people appreciate this game. I finished it yesterday but my library is still missing some items and there are 4 or 5 enemies I haven’t encountered yet, so I went looking for a FAQ or guide to the missing stuff but to my surprise there is none. There’s barely any content at all about this game out there. So I’m slowly replaying it from beginning to end in order to find everything by myself. It’s better this way really, that way I can enjoy it all over again.

I find this is my favorite Umihara title yet. The way you make progress now is by completing quests in an open world ripe for exploration. Fresh! is huge compared to the rather smaller stages of the previous entries, which makes it more fun not only to explore but to try to solve the difficult jumps and pulls in a lot of different ways. Gameplay is pretty much the same but this time you can enhance your abilities by eating certain types of dishes. You learn that by completing quests that grant different food recipes. They’ll grant you boosts like jumping higher or a longer fishing line.

Also there’s a plot now and several characters. You can skip everything with no detriment to your enjoyment of this game but it’s nice that they put it out there anyway. I enjoyed it throughout. This time, Kawase is a traveling chef working at a particular restaurant and many of the quests are about you finding ingredients or doing some delivery. It’s just an excuse to get you out there in the field to do some tricky jumps with your fishing line and hook. It’s not only that though and the plot suddenly takes a much more interesting turn by midgame. Even Cotton shows up eventually. Now, I’m a fan of the Cotton games so this was pleasantly surprised when it happened. Also, after you finish the main story with Kawase, you get an extra set of fields to play as Cotton on her quest to fetch some candy. I found all of this to be a very nice addition to the whole thing. I would be happy with the classic Umihara gameplay by itself.

The only thing I didn’t quite like was the graphics. It works just fine, but I kinda liked the original one and Sayonara a little better. There’s nothing wrong with it but the world now is much less surreal and mysterious. They also added a hunger feature here that works like a soft timer to the quests but if you’re like me who likes to harvest all the stuff that shows up around you, you’ll have all the time in the world.

Music is pretty good, it fits perfectly in this game. It’s relaxing enough and not distractive, so it works. I feel like the BGM for this really helps to not be overly frustrated when something goes wrong and if you played any Umihara game you know it will happen a lot. One particular quest took me a few hours doing the same 4 or 5 platforms over and over again. If you don’t have that patience you can always prepare a pizza or a burger on the fly to increase your jump or something and that will make things easier. If you still can’t make it, after you unlock Cotton you can play all quests as her and she can fly around for a few seconds which makes the entire game a lot easier. Not easy, just easier. Still, I feel like this is one of the most accessible games in the franchise.

All in all I really loved this title. Definitely one of my favorite games now. The combination of hard, sometimes brutal platforming, endearing characters, colorful environment, relaxing tunes and throwing Cotton in an Umihara game when I was not expecting it at all really made it for me.

>>14446
You probably finished it by now. How was it?

last game I played was Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun.

It's basically Commandos/Desperados but set in pre-Meiji Japan.

It was pretty good, and it's not nearly as difficult as the original Commandos, so I actually managed to finish it.

It's not exactly authentic in terms of the Japanese culture it portrays, but the Japanese voice actors are very good.

I just finished playing メイドさんを右にミ☆ or Super Zangyura as I just found out there’s an English release for this. Not sure what the English title means but it’s not a translation of the original one. Anyway, this is an almost 20 yo doujin game remade for the consoles. It’s a rather interesting game that plays like Castlevania but I feel like deep down, at least visually, it kinda wanted to be more like a gothic Megaman. In general the game looks more colorful and optimistic than any Castlevania title and the characters tend to be cute instead of monstrous.

The story here is that every century Dracula wakes up and the land gets filled with monsters, so the people call for a vampire hunter and instead of Van Helsing they get a young lady dressed as a maid and capable of handling a gigantic ball and chain flail about her size, so you know she must be right for the job. There are 5 main areas divided in several rooms filled with spikes, falling platforms that will crush you, and huge chess pieces wandering around eager to hurt you. Also flying jack-o'-lanterns, lots of them.

This game is not exactly hard, as far as doujin games go but it can be if you play it without patience. The way some things work in this game can really destroy your run if you’re not careful. First, meido-san (I called her Mei on my save file, it’s fitting) doesn’t have an invulnerability period when she gets hit, meaning she can get stuck and continue to get hit until dying. This happens often if you’re not careful and there are several spots during the game that it can happen. Best policy is not to get hit at all, just to be safe.

Then, your common attacks with the flail don't go across walls and doors (unless you swing it overhead but that takes a few seconds so you can’t always use it) but the jacks can go across any part of the stage, this causes the problem where you’ll attack them but the flail will hit a wall, giving ample time for the jack to do some damage. This would not be a problem but since many stages have a very limited space, very often you’ll find yourself in very close range of several enemies at once. This is not exactly an issue, just something you need to get used to.

The music is nice but it’s too fast paced for me and for the game, too, sometimes. It gives me a little bit of anxiety to be honest. The graphics are quite nice, I really like the animation for the main character. The designs are a little bit like 90s anime of sorts and that’s my thing too, so I enjoyed it. All in all I’m definitely happy I found out about this game, I enjoyed it enough that I’m currently trying to finish it on hard mode now. They mean it, it is hard. My only complaint is how short it is, soo all it's left up to do is to get better at the few stages available. You can probably finish this in about an hour or so.

I don’t usually care for FPS games at all but after seeing a few pictures of The Citadel I was very captivated by it. It’s made by a single developer and he’s also a fan of Blame! so I pretty much had to play it. There’s a very unusual charm about this title, I can’t really put my finger on it. It’s a super violent shooter, all the enemies are either weird biotech creatures or female soldiers, you seem to be walking around this futuristic endless city and you’re there to kill angels, destroy the false god and set people free… by spilling their guts all over the floor. Like I said, I don’t usually care for FPS games but as you can see by my quick description it’s a rather unique game and it loosely reminds me of Baroque, that old title for the Sega Saturn. In there you also have all these odd elements and you pretty much don’t quite know what the hell is going on.

I finished the first 3 acts on my own but when I realized it was going to be a fairly repetitive thing, I just used a cheat and finished the rest with the best weapon in the game. Maybe I don’t really appreciate FPS gameplay but the first 3 acts were quite enough for me. I was still interested in the story so I wanted to continue but couldn’t stomach to slowly crawl my way through hordes of deadly enemies to see it. This game is not hard by the way, but you need to take it slowly. The enemies are not particularly intelligent but that could easily be explained by the brainwashing done to them by the false god. All they do is walk forward and shoot. The way it works with this game is you have to take the enemies one by one pretty much. If you just run in there without any caution you’ll get shot to smithereens, so it can be a slog sometimes. Then again, maybe it’s me and people who do like FPS games will like this one a lot.

It’s a pity that there isn’t much dialogue or any plot exposition. You’ll have to assume most of the story since there’s only a couple of people you can talk to and the dialogue is very limited, maybe 20 or 30 sentences total. To me the world was the most intriguing part of this game and I would have enjoyed a little more plot exposition here and there. Gameplay is very similar to the original Doom but a little bit more smooth I think.

Along with the weird world and the interesting graphics, the music is really, really good. I can’t remember a single bad bgm for this, every single one is really fun and enhances the whole experience of going through this super violent, super depressing neon future. I think people who actually enjoy this genre would really be able to appreciate this. I had a lot of fun with it myself. It’s one of those games that don’t particularly excel in any aspect but just the combination of its parts create this charming, rather odd experience.

I just finished going through Pocky & Rocky Reshrined or the much more appealing title 奇々怪界 黒マントの謎. I’m very fond of the Pocky & Rocky games for the Super Nintendo so this is a game I’ve been waiting for a very long time. Let’s just say it right away: If you liked the original Snes titles you’ll enjoy this as well. The music has pretty much the same tunes but got an update in quality and a couple new ones were added that are on par with the original BGM. Graphics are very good and has that fourth generation pixel art going for it that goes really well with this type of cute and endearing direction this game has. While the sprites are very, very good, I found the characters’ pictures during cutscenes, especially for Sayo, to be a little bit off. She doesn’t quite look right, at least for me. I would like her to look like the concept art as you can see on the box and elsewhere (https://www.natsumeatari.co.jp/kuromanto/character.html). The others are alright.

Now, one VERY IMPORTANT thing if you actually want to purchase a physical copy of this. The release under the publisher ININ is censored. One of the new characters, Ameno, had her character design mutilated in order to cover her cleavage. Getting ININ’s version of the game is of absolutely no gain whatsoever because the Japanese version actually has a language option and English is included, along with a bunch of other languages. So really there’s no reason whatsoever to get the mutilated version. How do you know which version is which? Simple, The box for the ININ release has their logo on the box, right in front. The Japanese release doesn’t. Easy to avoid. Anyway, moving on.

Like the previous games in the series, this game is very colorful, has an optimistic and cheering atmosphere and all in all is quite a joy to go through. The story got a little bit convoluted here but I can’t talk about it without giving spoilers, so you know, I won’t. What I can say is that it’s about Black Mantle again, but there’s more to it. This is not spoilers by the way, it’s right there on the title. There’s a lot of story here for a Pocky & Rocky game. You can skip it if you like but I appreciated that they decided to include a plot for this. I just wish Sayo would look more like her concept art. Oh well, still very good indeed.

The most interesting thing to me about this game is the fine line it walks between being a remake and an update on the graphics. There are a lot of parts of this game that are pretty much the same as the original, Snes game. If you played that one, get ready to revisit a lot of places. Sometimes all they do is rearrange the stage or add a couple of new obstacles. I would say half of the game is very close to the original and the other half is mostly new. There are a lot of new monsters here and all of them look adorable. There are also three new characters you can play as. Ameno, a Goddess who can fly, Ikazuchi, an anthropomorphized marten able to release thunderbolts and Hotaru, a samurai. You have to beat the game on normal and hard in order to unlock all the characters.

As far as the difficulty goes, it went way down compared to Snes title. The actual gameplay is mostly the same difficulty but the game now gives you a lot of extra lives and there’s an autosave system in place. That means you won’t be redoing the stages over and over again in order to make progress in the game. Progress is pretty much a given now and even if you absolutely suck at scrolling shooters you won’t have a problem finishing this one at all. But then again, I really doubt anyone getting this is going after a super hard game, if you wanted that you would be playing an actual bullet hell or some Touhou derivative. You would get this one for the colorful world, the lighthearted atmosphere and because you’re a fan of the original.

All in all I really enjoyed playing this and I’ll definitely play it enough to get actually good at it. If you liked the original or if you enjoy stuff like Goemon, retro games and/or cute shooters, then I definitely think you’ll enjoy this one as well.

>>14453
I tried out a little of the demo some time back and remember being unimpressed by it. It felt more like a GZDoom mod than a standalone game, and also had really bad mipmapping that I couldn't find a way to turn off which kind of soured me on it. Still, the character art is great and it's cool seeing a Japanese dev actually do this genre of game. Maybe I'll try it again sometime and have a better opinion on it.

>>14476
That's good, I was looking forward to this one. I'll give it a try sometime but I think I'll replay the original before I do.

I finally finished Morrowind's main quest last night I think. I enjoyed the game a lot, but my biggest problem is that you get really powerful far too easily. By the time I get half-way through the main quest, I'm already destroying everything with ease and I get bored because any further progression is pointless.
The quest design is generally pretty weak for the most part as well. The quests in Bloodmoon were pretty enjoyable however, maybe because they focused less on the worldbuilding and more on the fairly sparsely populated island.
For me, I enjoyed the exploration the most. Maybe due to the small world, you had a lot of dungeons with something unique to them. Be it a really cool secret section that leads to really good loot you would have missed if you weren't being attentive. There's so much really cool stuff that you can very easily miss that in later games would have just been handed to you after clearing the dungeon or finishing an easy quest. I could only imagine how fun it'd be to talk to friends or whoever about what you found in this unassuming dungeon.
You hear people complaining about the combat mechanics a lot. They didn't bother me at all. It's functional and consistent. Marksman sucked though. They should have made the skill determine the chance you could retrieve your ammo from a corpse and maybe nerf damage slightly in return.
It's by far my favorite TES game so far. I may try Daggerfall at some point.

>>14483
Might want to try Gothic I or II, if you haven't already.

>>14484
I played Gothic 1 last year. It was really fun. It surprised me a lot, as I had my doubts when I started.
Haven't gotten around to Gothic 2 yet. I'll play it soon enough.

I do want to learn to play Yu-Gi-Oh through a single-player video game however. Does TC have any recommendations?

>>2452
I played 10 min. didn't know wtf was I doing then I entered a battle and died. then I never played it again
should I give it a retry?

I'm playing Elden ring, is anyone playing Elden ring?

>>14489
How is it? I'm not in a rush to play it myself. I don't care for the pacing of combat Dark Souls 3 had, and it looks to be more of the same. Makes the big slow weapons worthless compared to something smaller and faster.
I also don't want to pay full price, and I can't pirate because my PC can't handle it.

>>14490
aren't keys half the current price?

how do I make defense build in Elden ring?

>>14492
Same way you did with the other games. Make a physically strong character, enough that it can wear all the super heavy armors and gigantic shields and boost the stamina so you can keep the shield up even after several hits.

>>14489
I bought it the first week, I have barely played 70h until now because lack of time, but it's been very enjoyable. It's a very overwhelming game, everything's huge and you feel like you're missing stuff every minute, it's the kind of game I would like to sink for weeks but I can only play a little from time to time which is frustrating. I guess I'll be playing it for months, I hope I can keep the interest. I miss the times when I could play and replay the same games until I discovered every little detail, I replayed Dark Souls 1&2, Code Vein and Dragon's Dogma to death.

>>14494
ty sorry

>>14495
Sorry for what?

>>14496
sorry for asking. for now I have 20 in strength, 20 in esoterism and 15 in stamania. Is it good?

I'm going to give Deus Ex another try. Normally I'm not bothered by dated games, but I couldn't get into Deus Ex when I tried it before.
I don't really understand the mechanics like stealth.

I really like Human Revolution. The stealth there is great. I never played the first one, though.
What do you mean by not understand, do you keep dying?
I should try it too, someday. I head the other games have a lackluster stealth, and went for a more brute tanky approach.

>>14534
Yeah, I keep dying. Maybe I should just kill things instead. I just kind of suck at it.
Haven't played the other games.

>>14535
Speaking from my experience with Human Revolution, I don't think a brute force works for most portions of the game, the game is designed to prioritize stealth, because the health bar drops very fast when being attacked, so you die very fast. In human revolution, I would try to go full stealth, using vents and cardboard boxes, or whatever else I could use to distract the enemies and get by unnoticed. Another neat thing the game had was this tranquilizer rifle, it made no sound and the enemies did not get startled hearing screams or thuds. It's only downside was the lack of ammo. All that said, playing on easy is always an option.

I'm going to play the M&B:WB Touhou mod again. I return to it fairly often because my computer runs it just fine, and there's just a lot of ways you can have fun with it, especially with everything the mod gives you to play with.
This time around, I want to see how far I can get without any troops. It started off pretty difficult, but I found that my character was faster than most of the weak bandits so I could manage to kite the enemies around and slowly kill their groups.
Now I'm just doing horse archery to raise money that I'll invest in some towns that'll give me a bit of passive income for when I decide to get some troops.