The logo is such a downgrade, I would love to see the last build they had before restarting. The original announcement had me way more interested than this one.
Still, I’m glad there was anything at all to show. It’s been 9 years since DQ11. Almost a quarter of the whole 40 years they are supposed to celebrate. Seems like it will take a few more years, given the barebones trailer.
Yep. I loved Joker 1 + 2, but questioned my nostalgia with Dark Prince. That one just felt off, Joker still is great.
I was starting to get hyped, but no Switch (2)? It actually ran suprisingly good on there. Also, seeing how the Steam Deck is priced now, I probably won’t buy a Steam Maschine once it gets properly announced. Or any other PC.
Almost finished Octopath Traveler II.
Finished my run through with the 3 character team, finished most side stories and am almost done with Hikaris solo run. From what I’ve heard, the post-game isn’t very long, although it does require a lot of annoying grinding. Normal content only goes up to level ~50, but the final boss seems to require level ~80. You can only reasonably reach this level by hitting a 7% chance for 100x EXP from a certain (expensive) recruitable NPC within a fight with a rare monster encounter. Think metal slimes. I don’t have a number for that one, but I’ve seen 2 during my ~65 hours. Rinse and repeat for multiple teams.
…yeah, not really feeling that one. I’ll try fighting him low level. I’m not good with resetting for random stuff.
Did the second chapter of Danganronpa. Just an hour ago, actually.
The status quo changed so much, I feel like any semblance of normalcy or trust are gone.
Mondo killed Chihiro. As someone else wrote, the game is linear.
I went in with two assumptions:
After this case, I feel like any and all events between cases are directly related to the next case. I previously assumed the whole sauna bromance thing to be a setup for later conflict.
Going into the next chapter will be weird.
Bravely Default, Octopath Traveler, Triangle Strategy, Various Daylife… Usually, they just stick with the project name and people made fun of them over it for years. Turns out keeping the project title was a good choice as they can’t name games for the life of them.
I remember putting so much time into the GameCube version as a kid, but I don’t think I ever finished the game even once.
For the most part, I just enjoyed doing the police chases and dragging them out as long as possible. Think multiple hour long ones. Destroying police cars and creating as much property damage as humanly possible. Sadly, on the higher levels these became quickly frustrating as the police started deploying instant K.O. spike traps. Losing your run an hour in to one of these was the worst feeling.
The actual racing was fun, too, although I never liked drag races. Their control scheme was just awful. And I probably wasn’t any good at racing, given that I don’t remember ever finishing the game.
Still, I have a lot of nostalgia for the game and the soundtrack shaped my tastes in music to this day. I haven’t enjoyed another racing game since then, I should probably go back and finish it.
I think it’s worth to have a look at either the Gothic or Risen games, both made by the same people. They are quite old and janky, but they check a lot of your boxes.
There’s also a remake comming up for Gothic 1.
Did a lot less than gaming than I originally planned. Still on Octopath Traveler II.
My B team, consisting of Castti, Agnea and Partitio feels a lot weaker than the other one, even accounting for the missing fourth character. I probably need to rethink their classes before finishing their final chapters. However, it’s hard to beat the automatic buff and debuff at night in combination with the automatic weakness revealed. I did finish up a lot of other things, like collecting all rusty weapons (all of which are equipped to Hikari for his solo run attempt) or the Commerce chapters from Partitio.
Started Danganronpa and also completed the first chapter with my partner. The first case was super obvious, but I really enjoyed the courtroom gameplay anyway. I expect the others to become increasingly more difficult. I hope nothing bad ever happens to Sakura.
Careful with the spoiler section, I don’t know if the game play out the same each time or if murders differ between playthroughs.
Leon killed Sayaka, after initially being targeted by her.
I never trusted Sayaka to begin with, she just tried too hard to get my trust. Obviously, she either wanted to murder us or pin it on us.
Her death message could have been a fake out, but the way other characters couldn’t read the letters at first glance made me disregard the possibility. Also, there’s no way anyone but our baseball prodigy could have thrown that glass ball.
I was, however, super surprised by Junkos untimely demise. I’m going in blind, but I’ve seen her referenced quite a lot. Makes me think the murders aren’t always the same, or she’s somehow coming back. Either way, please don’t tell me.
Oh, and there’s definitely a 16th character. You don’t just throw an empty seat in there, it has to be a Chekhov’s Gun.
That’s right, I almost forgot about him! While I can remove Ochette now, I think the extra challange of using only 3 characters and then a single one is a welcome one.
More Octopath Traveler II.
I may just finish the game in the coming week. I wrapped up several stories this past week and can gladly report that the final bosses are a difficulty spike. At least the first one. I needed to devise an actual strategy and think about my builds for the first time. Looking forward to doing the same with my B team and probably for the secret boss as well.
You can, but only with really specific people. I think the person needs to be both physically able to do so and have enough knowledge to execute the task. For example, I don’t think you can make someone write a death message in a language the person doesn’t know.
So, you could say ‘eat a specific anmial and die’ and that would be a dice roll. ‘Eat a corona infected animal and die of the virus’ would be likely impossible, since your average person couldn’t tell which animal is infected.
However, just find a person working with deadly diseases in a lab setting and command them to infect themself before going outside. Let them go on a trip until they die and your chances are quite good, depending on the virus.
It’s been a while since I played the first one, it was my very first Switch game and OT II is probably one of my last ones before I get a Switch 2 (…assuming Monolith announces anything). Overall, I feel I enjoy them roughly the same. OT II improved on almost every front, except for the most glaring issues I had with the first one. I still think both are good games, though.
Continued with Octopath Traveler II.
By now my Ochette pretty much one shots most random encounters, her whole kit of monsters is just a collection of strong multi target attacks. Since these don’t even cost mana, there’s not much reason to switch it up. Once I’ve fully levelled her Merchant job, it will be her latent power AOE every fight instead.
Funnily enough, I’m not even that much overlevelled. I’ve done all stories up to Lv 30 (Well, almost - since the first character is fixed until their story is done, I’ve got 2 teams of 3 I rotate between. Hikari will be a solo run afterwards.) and I’m level 34 with Ochette. About 31 with the other three I took along.
Also watched my partner play a ton more Tomodatchi Life. One they had enough of it, we’ve also got Danganronpa THHAE from the recent sale lined up. I don’t know much about it, but seems like a big jump in terms of atmosphere coming from AI: Somnium Files.
I’ve played so much on lower end devices growing up, a stable 20 is fully playable. Even played some games dipping into single digits. 30 is buttery smooth. I can’t tell the difference above that.
Been working through Octopath Traveler II.
I’ve done all chapter 1 and most chapter 2 stories for all 8 characters. I’ve come to accept that any attempt to prevent overlevelling for the main story is fruitless as my Ochette just cuts through any boss. Instead I’ve done some optional high level stuff to get challanging boss fights, which were great.
Also watched my partner play a ridiculous amount of Tomodachi Life. It seems like a lot of fun, but the pool of random events seems quite small. Also, a few things from the original game were cut, like the option to create custom songs.
Started Octopath Traveler 2 this week.
Didn’t play too much, only did the introduction for 4 of the characters. Initially, I really struggled with myself on how to approach this game. Just go with one character for the challange, do everything for 4 characters and then do the other 4 or just everyone at once. In the end, I’ll probably juggle all 8, but it’s really annoying that I can’t remove my starting character (which is why I considered the solo run, you can remove them after their story is done).
No matter what I do, I’ll proabbly end up overleveled for a lot of stuff, which sucks.
Otherwise the game is great, but I still think the main gimmick - 8 more or less independant characters and stories - just doesn’t work all that great on a fundamental level. Maybe I’ll think otherwise after finishing it, supposedly it does it better than the first one.
I’m no expert, but I think Santa Claus isn’t exactly a biblical figure and neither is the Easter Bunny. These are normal holidays around here, but you’d be hard-pressed to find many children who know any of the christian stuff.
Also, I think Christmas was actually built on top of the prior winter solstice celebrations. It’s not like anyone knew the exact date of birth for a random guy from hundreds of years ago.
Played Persona 5 Tactica, which is fine.
The gameplay is similar to the the Mario and Rabbits games, although mostly focused on getting screen wide All-out Attacks - which target everthing within the triangle your three team members create on the map. Spam these and even on hard most maps are done in 1 or 2 rounds.
The story is quite wordy and feels like a slog in some early parts, but overall I really like both new characteres and their story. All in all, I much prefer this over P5 Strikers.
Next up is Octopath 2.
The existence of a queue sparks the follow-up question: What happens if something is born while the queue is empty?
Wait, what? Is that something people experience?