• 1 Post
  • 330 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 13th, 2023

help-circle




  • After you’ve played more MH Stories, what do you think about the battle system? I bounced hard off the demo, but I’m curious if I should give it another try. I remember it being just rock paper scissors.


    More 13 Sentinels. I’ve done alle the story I could do without progressing the battles (~75%). By now, I have a good grasp on the story, I think, but I’m sure there a many more twists waiting in those last 25%.

    At about ~45% completion for the battles and compendium. Doing the story first I had so much resources, I could may out my score boost for those sweet mystery points.

    Not much more to write about the game. I recommend it, but it’s impossible to talk about it without spoiling stuff.


    God Eater 3 was also more of the same. The story increasingly takes a back seat, which I prefer while doing the multiplayer. At the begining, you had to search and talk to several NPCs after each mission to progress - now it’s only one after every 2-3 missions.


  • Some more 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim.

    I only focused on the story this week, but didn’t have much time anyway. Went from ~21% to ~44% completion.

    With each new character I follow, the story just seems to get better. I’m excited to get the full picture eventually - but I also feel like I’ll need to play a good old linear RPG afterwards.


    As for the weekend, I played a lot of God Eater 3. About halfway through the story, I think.

    On paper, the gameplay has a few problems. Almost all enemies seem to have some badly telegraphed AOE attacks or chain some quick dashes across the area together. Getting hit is mostly unavoidable. At the same time, the game is quite easy. Missions rarely take longer than 5 minutes - some monsters yielding after just a minute. But despite this, the Monster Hunter formula is just inherently fun and there a many ways to customize your character. So even if you don’t care for the story, there’s always a motivation to jump into the next mission right away.

    Unlike Monster Hunter, crafting is rather easy, and you can get most weapons/shields without replaying any missions. But you still can and will be rewarded for grinding, because some of your moves will gain EXP by using them. There are about 10-20 skills per weapon, and you can equip 3 at the same time.


  • More 13 Sentinels.

    It has been a slow week in terms of gaming, I only did a bit of story. The story segments and the battle segments are mostly independent of each other, so you can do whichever for the most part.

    Even though there are 13 characters, each with their own perspective and during different times within the overall story, the game does a great job to interest you in at least one of the other characters during any given perspective. You’re free to switch after each mini episode, but I tend to follow a single character until there’s a progression lock.

    Currently, at 31% battle and 20% story completion.


    Started God Eater 3.

    Monster Hunter Wilds has been announced for Switch 2 and with the last direct being as great as it was, I’ll get one eventually. But until then, we wanted to play something similar to scratch the itch.

    The game throws a lot of progression systems at you, which I like. The monsters are a lot less tightly designed, but still fun. Thus far, the game is quite easy.






  • Just finished Danganronpa. I thought it was great, but my partner wasn’t really invested - which is why we finished it in one go this weekend and will be starting something new next week. I’ll probably get the next one during the next sale.

    Endgame

    Mukuro’s case wasn’t really catching me, I’ll admit. I thought it strange that we never actually see her and everyone had a solid alibi. I trusted Kyoko and got myself an execution.

    In the final chapter all was coming together. Both the control room and the morgue made it clear someone only pretended to be dead. I already proclaimed Junko’s return multiple times in these threads, and it actually happened. I didn’t even believe in anymore until every truth bullet I collected was pointing towards it. Both the fake nails on the corpse and the freckles she claimed would be photoshoped on magazines were things I actually noticed beforehand.

    I would have liked to learn more about the tragedy, or anything at all really. Given Junko’s nature, I don’t fully believe anything she told us. It’s kind of open-ended in that way, we can only theorize if there’s hope or despair beyond the door.

    Speaking of the door, the moment it got opened, my game just crashed. Never happened before, and it made me question whether or not it was intentional. Redoing the whole 3-hour trial certainly gave me some despair - luckily I saved minutes earlier and my brain just skipped over that.


  • How is Shiren the Wanderer a roguelike without any meta progression, aren’t they part of the genre?

    The original game Rogue didn’t have any meta progression, that’s been tacked onto the genre later. Back then, people tried to establish ‘roguelike’ for games without meta progression and ‘roguelite’ for ones who do. Didn’t stick apparently.

    Shiren ist actually quite faithful to Rogue as a whole.

    There are ways to keep gear between runs to force some meta progression, but most dungeons don’t allow you to bring items in anyways. It’s mostly a thing for the story dungeon.

    Any recommendation to try? To see if the genre is for me or not.

    Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is generally the most popular sub-series. Especially the first two games - with Explorers of Sky being the best one overall. There is also a Switch remake of the first game.

    These games aren’t roguelikes at all, you keep your level and everything and there’s an actual story.

    If you don’t care for that, Shiren has the most depth instead but can be quite overwhelming. Unlike Pokemon you can get these games for like 2 bucks during sales.


  • Started 13 Sentinel Aegis Rim!

    It’s a weird mix of a strategy game and an adventure/visual novel. It didn’t grip me immediately, but I’m really starting to get into it. There are 13 different perspectives you can follow - they all overlap, but they are not told in order. There’s giant mechs and time travel shenanigans involved. The biggest hurdle thus far was simply starting it. From the get-go, the story gets told like you already know most things, and it’s on you to make sense of it all. I like this approach, but I’m not always in the mood for it.


    Dabbled in some rougelikes this week.

    Played some Ball x Pit while it was free. I did really enjoy the game, it has a certain addictive quality to it. At the same time, I don’t feel like there’s enough player agency outside of picking upgrades. Most of the time, I basically just needed to walk left - right to collect EXP. It’s one of those game I can see myself putting a lot of time in really fast and then kinda regretting it. Every blue moon, that happens with an idle game.

    Also played some Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate. This one is quite the opposite. There’s little to no meta progression and it’s choke-full of decisions to make. I simply love Mystery Dungeon games and this is no exception, even though I specifically avoided it for so long because I prefer the story based ones like Chobo or Pokemon. But that makes it perfect while I only have Visual Novels going on and sometimes need a burst of pure gameplay.


    Just did the 4th trial of Danganronpa.

    Chapter 4

    I got the murderer right, at least! Everything else not so much.

    It was the best class trial, I think. But it’s also the one I was most invested in since Sakura was my favourite throughout the whole game.

    I’ve got no idea where the game will take me from here. Thanks to slimerancher pointing it out, I was weary about anything regarding the remaining length of the game but still missed the info. Luckily my partner caught it. But I simply do not trust that information, there’s no way this is the halfway point!

    Seeing how slimerancher finished the game, chances are I’ll finish the game over the weekend. If so, I’ll add another post about it here while it’s fresh in my memory.



  • Finished Octopath Traveler II!

    The final stretch using all characters together within the story and allowing you to swap them at any time was the best part of the game by far. The final boss was quite epic and even had a cool new mechanic!

    Sadly, the hidden final boss was none of that. It’s one of those ‘wiki bosses’ you’ll usually only beat by looking up either just a guide or lists of all available abilities and pieces of equipment and where to find them. I didn’t feel like doing hours of prep work.

    Overall, I did enjoy the game a fair bit more than the first one, but Octopath is still leagues behind Triangle Strategy and Bravely Default in my personal ranking. Still, anything by Team Asano is at least good. (Well, maybe except for Various Daylife, but I never played it myself. Someday on sale, perhaps.)


    More Danganronpa!

    Still enjoying the game, but I think the class trials could be a tad shorter. They can also be somewhat frustrating, I died twice testing every single combination in an argument, simply because I didn’t know or forgot about being able to carry absorbed arguments into the next cycle. Luckily, you don’t have to repeat the whole thing when running out of hearts.

    Finished Chapter 3

    Oh boy did Taka change indeed. I still liked him, but when I couldn’t spend time with him, I knew something was up. He will be missed.

    Also, I’m glad the laptop got brought up. I was actually wondering about the missing laptop in the last chapter and somehow nobody brought it up.

    Going into the class trial, I knew Hifumi was both victim and offender, but I actually thought a second Robo was involved - controlled by the 16th student: the AI. Although, a few minutes into the trial the actual blackened was obvious.

    I’m with slimerancher on this, I also came to the clone conclusion. The dusty letter in the library and the photos strewn around make me think they just collected DNA of all the students, and now they make them kill each other for entertainment. This would offer up another explanation about Junko being so popular - maybe she’s also in later entries?

    Also, the big machine in the physics lab could be for cloning, I guess. I’m certain it will be involved somehow.

    Just found the Chapter 4 victim

    It’s starting to get lonely. I’m curious to see what happens once we have only 3 people left. At that point, we don’t have enough of us to ‘discover’ a body and the trial would be pointless, too. I’m guessing something is going to happen at either 5 or 4 students left.

    Anyways, I guess the AI isn’t the 16th student? The luchador guy was either the final student, the headmaster or both.

    Now for the worst part, Sakura, my favourite, was both the spy and the next victim. I haven’t investigated anything yet, but the obvious theory would be assisted suicide. She let Hina poison her to make her the winner. However, that doesn’t work with the head wound in the Monokuma files. Probably a setup to make us antagonize Hina?


    Next up is 13 Sentinels! Actually my last game on the backlog, discounting Nioh 2 (lent out my PS4) and stuff on Steam I’ve had for almost a decade (I was waiting for the crypto craze to die down before buying a modern PC, then AI happened…).