Playing Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana!
Plenty of stress and anxiety at work this past week made it hard to get into a more story-focused game, so an old-school Action RPG worked a lot better.
This is a port of a 20 years old game, but it's aged surprisingly well. Gameplay is fast-paced and generally quite fun, but there's a few spots where it really shows it's age. The lack of quest markers can lead to strange situations like when I spent a long time stuck on a dungeon only to find out I needed to go back and watch a cutscene I missed in the town, and there's a wild variety in quality in bosses going from "amazingly fun" to "pure slog".
Also, this game is quite hard, so be ready to die a lot on bosses, even on normal difficulty. But since those battles tend to be short and the game lets you retry it immediately it doesn't end up being particularly frustrating.
I think I reached the final dungeon yesterday so I should be done over the weekend.
Finished Metaphor: ReFantazio!
I stand for all that I wrote last week - this is a fantastic game that unfortunately is also quite frustrating due to some poor decisions on dungeon design and combat balance.
Besides that not a lot more of gaming this week, only played a bit of bullet hell games like DoDonPachi Resurrection and DoDonPachi True Death.
Will probably start another JRPG this weekend but not entirely sure which one. Fantasian Neo Dimension, Persona 3 Reload and Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance are the strongest candidates.
I have heard great things about Metaphor, though they will probably release a Metaphor: ReFantazio Royal with fixes and balances by the time I get around to it, so will just play that.
Hopefully so. This is the first Atlus RPG in a long time where I feel a fixed/improved version is necessary.
Playing Metaphor: ReFantazio!
Yes, a non-Switch game! Since this is from the Persona team and had very positive reviews I was quite interested in the game, but I'm so disconnected from the Playstation/Xbox world nowadays that I assumed this was only out for the PS5! 😆 But I learned that it has a PS4 version and even a physical and multi-language version in Japan, so I dusted off my old PS4 Pro, got the laser which I knew was broken since earlier this year fixed, and decided to give this one a try.
I came into this mostly blind and was expecting a more traditional JRPG, so I was surprised when I saw all the classic Persona elements like calendar system, social stats and social links. But it does provide some very welcome changes - the calendar is very compact, with only 5 months in-universe, the social links are shorter and no longer need "grinding" affection levels, each day is better used with events on the night from the beginning, social stats grow faster.
There's plenty more to love in this game. The art and music are fantastic, though the UI is too busy and can be distracting. They've definitely crafted an interesting world, so much that I even spent time reading in the in-game encyclopedia to learn more about the different races and places. I also love the way they incorporated travel into the story with campfire events, beautiful locations where they just stop for a short breather, random encounters at night - all of this adds a lot to the feeling of adventure.
That being said, there's also some pretty massive flaws in the game, with the biggest ones being related to dungeons and combat mechanics. The dungeons are a slog - they are boring, stupidly long, full of enemies that have tons of HP even on normal. It's clear that the developers wanted to make it harder for players to complete them in a single day, but they took the worst possible approach here.
There's also issues with the combat mechanics. It uses a similar system to Trails though Daybreak where you start battles using action combat to kill weak enemies or stun stronger ones then move into turn-based. But this time enemies can also get advantage over you if you don't dodge properly, and the action combat is very clunky so this ends up happening way too often, with the difference between who gets the advantage being potentially as big as "win without taking damage" vs "getting a full party wipe". They also start using Repel/Drain effects way too early in the game, and this is a Press Turn system game which makes these incredibly punishing, plus for some reason they decided to not include items or skills to scan enemies for vulnerabilities, all of which leads to frustrating trial-and-error gameplay where you can accidentally hit a Drain and lose your entire turn.
Finally, the UI definitely could use improvements. There's a lot of QOL features that could and should have been added for better inventory and skill management - both very important things in a game where you're juggling 10+ weapon types and 20+ jobs with different skills.
I know I spent a lot of time on negatives, so I just want to emphasize that despite those problems I've been playing this game non-stop and having a good time. But there's a ton of frustration mixed in because I think this game could've been one my all-time favorites with a bit more polish.
Playing If My Heart Had Wings!
Slow progress between holidays and Metaphor. I'm enjoying Aoi and Kotori's dynamic quite a bit now, but it definitely feels more sibling-like instead of romantic. Twins still haven't joined and I'm curious to see how they are so maybe I'll give this one a push during the weekend.
Playing Crimzon Clover - World EXplosion!
Attempting to get a 1CC on Novice, so far I made it to the stage 4 boss.
I've asked around for more "non-bullet hell" shmup recommendations and heard good things about Super Hydorah.
Also got a few comments to take check the Darius series. The CS Core version of Dariusburst which people say is the most complete one is on sale, and there's also G-Darius and two different collections of older games (one for Arcades, one for Consoles).
If you don't mind older games you can get 19xx on the Capcom Arcade for $2. Input lag on that collection is slightly high for my tastes (I play a lof of Gigawing there), but it's still playable, and it doesn't get much cheapter than that.
Haven't played it yet, but also heard good things about Super Hydorah which is another Gradius-inspired shmup on the Switch.
Would love a schmup, that isn’t a bullet hell.
Have you tried Drainus? Really good Gradius-like shmup from Team Ladybug which also made two of my favorite metroidvanias in recent times ("Touhou Luna Nights" and "Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth").
Playing If My Heart Had Wings!
Not a ton of progress, but I've completed the "prologue" and the Soaring Club is reborn! Lots of bonding moments with Kotori and Ageha so far, and I'm curious to see how long until the twins we saw in the opening join.
Playing Atelier Shallie: Alchemists of the Dusk Sea DX!
Had a rough week at work, and few games are more relaxing to me than the Atelier series so I decided to replay a bit of this one. Unsure if'll go for a full run, but so far it's doing its job in making me feel better. Last time I beat this game I went with Shallistera for the protagonist, this time game I'm going with Shallotte, the other "Shallie".
I feel the game wants you to play Shallistera first, she's much closely connected to the earlier plot beats, but there's some good reasons to play with Sharlotte, like the fact that you get best girls Miruca and Wilbell as your initial party members. Also, I love when characters have unsual weapons and she uses a goddamn broom.
Playing Crimzon Clover - World EXplosion!
I was going to stick with Under Defeat as a side-game for a while, trying to unlock enough continues to beat it, but then this showed up as "on sale", and a decided to pick it up since I had heard a lot of praise for it.
And holy crap, what an amazing game. I'm a huge shoot'em up/shmup/"bullet hell" fan even though I lack de skills to beat them, so I've played a lot of games in this genre and this is quickly climbing the ranks of my all-time favorites.
It's a love-letter to the genre, clearly inspired by Cave classics but having a lot of interesting and unique ideas. I love the bomb/break system, where instead of a stock of bombs you have a charging gauge that can be spent for a screen-clearing bomb, or give you a massive score and power boost if you last enough to get it full. Stages and bosses are very well designed and fun, the sprite work is fantastic and the OST keeps the adrenaline pumping.
The different modes also deserve praise, "Arcade" is a crazy-hard difficulty for the experts on this genre, while the "Novice" mode feels just right for my somewhat limited skills, challenging and adrenaline-filled but something I can realistically attempt to get a 1-credit clear. And then there's "Arrange" as a middle ground, plus a few other modes like a time attack.
What were your Top 3 most played games this year? Here's mine:
Harvestella was a really good surprise for me this year. It felt really unimpressive to me at first, but kept growing on me as I played and I ended up with a quite positive opinion of the game at the end.
ou can change your own account’s region too
Heard that's easy to do as well, but haven't tried.
I'm used to having multiple accounts for different regions, have been doing that since the Xbox360 days.
My utter hatred of UB sets won't let me get excited by this, but it's honestly a fantastic update for Modern players.
Any chance any of them will be coming to west?
The general consensus is "almost zero". Would be a licensing nightmare since they'd need approval for the license holders of those 15+ different series in the US/EU. Releasing Japan/Asian versions with english support is probably their best way to support a western audience without dealing with this.
That being said, it's not that hard to buy from a different eShop region. When I bought Atri I simply created a Japanese account using a different e-mail and got a prepaid card for that region from play-asia.com.
If you're interested in Oath in Felghana you may also want to take a peek at Ys Origins.
Runs on the same engine so it has the same fast-paced gameplay, and this one has multiple characters with different combat styles to make it more replayable.