Crazy week at work so no gaming progress.
I’d like to resume Senren * Banka during the weekend but we’ll see how it goes. Want to get a couple games out of my way ASAP because Trails through Daybreak is coming soon and it’ll definitely eat all my free time.
Hyped to play AAI2, it’s one of the highest rated games on the franchise on VNDB, only below PW3 and GAA2 which were both fantastic.
There’s 4 of them on the Switch/PS4, and all of them have an Asian/English version.
I personally rank them in this order: V > T > X> 30, but I always recommend people trying these games to look into which anime/mecha series are included on each and get whichever has more series you like.
You can find this information (along with a lot more) on the Akurasu Wiki.
Replaying Super Robot Wars V!
The original plan for the week was to continue Senren * Banka, but I got this game on the mail during the week, decided to try it for a just a bit… and remembered how I’m hopelessly addicted to this series.
For those unfamiliar with the series, Super Robot Wars games are turn-based strategy RPGs where units from several mecha anime band together, so you can have the Evangelions teaming with Gundams and Daitarn 3 against common foes, with really cool attack animations and a crazy crossover plot mixing elements of all the series involved.
It’s a very old series, the first game was released in the 90’s for the original B&W Gameboy, but while there are over 50 games in the series almost none of them were released in the west due to the complex licensing involved. But luckily for the english-speaking audience since the PS4 they started released Asian “multi-language” versions of these games, so we can finally enjoy them properly.
I had already played this game on the PS4, but could not resist a recent sale and double-dipped so I now have the Switch version as well. Decided to use the female protagonist (Chitose) for this replay since I love her themes, and I’m currently around Stage 20.
There are three Confidant requirements you need to meet to have access to the true ending and Royal’s extra content.
You only need one for most of the extra content in Royal. The other two do add a bit more, but are not really essencial.
Finished 1000xRESIST!
This game was really good and one of my best surprises in recent years.
As I mentioned last week, this is a “walking simulator” taking place in a world where human race almost went extinct due to a plague and a new society was created from clones of the last survivor, a girl called Iris. The game has you play as “Watcher”, one of the clone sisters who goes through Iris’s memories and learns about the past and the history of this world.
The writing in this game is excellent, in particular for the main characters. The sci-fi backdrop works well, and I found the connections to the real-world very interesting - the developers describe themselves as a “group of majority Asian-Canadian diaspora creators”, and without going into spoilers it’s very clear they drew from their personal experiences when setting the tone and themes for this game.
Now, the bad parts: While the visual design is interesting, performance and resolution are underwhelming on the Switch, plus I got a couple crashes during gameplay. Also, navigating the main “hub” is horrible and you will get lost often (developers, please add a map or better waypoint system!), but despite those problems I still highly recommend this one to people who enjoy strong narratives.
Edit: The newest patch adds a map of the main hub. Definitely a good improvement.
Playing Senren * Banka!
First time playing a VN from Yuzusoft, a developer famous for lighthearted games leaning more on the slice-of-life/romance genre.
Still very early in the game (Chapter 1-3), but so far this has been quite fun. MC goes visit family who lives in a small montain village, and while there decides to try pulling a legendary sword stuck in a boulder.
Except when he tries it… the sword breaks in half. 😄 But that apparently still counts as becoming the “master” of the legendary blade, so he ends up tangled in a mess involving an arranged married, a priestess cursed with cat ears (?!), the spirit of the sword, ninjas, and even some creepy monsters. Quite curious to see where the story goes from here.
The production values and polish are great. Great art and voice work, clean interface including an excellent flowchart showing the choices you took and potential branches.
How long did it take you to beat Little Kitty, Big City? It looks really fun.
Didn’t track it but less than 5h. Really short game.
How are you liking Drainus compared to Lodoss War and Touhou? I know they are different genres, but still.
Liking it less than the metroidvanias, but as you said it’s a very different genre so it’s hard to compare. Still a great game, I even recommended it to a Gradius-loving friend of mine.
Finished Little Kitty, Big City!
This was a fun little game. It takes a bit of inspiration of Untitled Goose Game as you play another small animal messing around in a city.
However, this one has a lot more focus on exploration and less on trolling humans. There’s a lot of places to climb/crawl, plenty of shiny things and hats to collect, plus some animals with funny dialogue to talk around in the city.
It definitely could use some polish - camera, controls and graphics all feel a bit janky, but it’s not too detrimental to the experience.
Playing Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice, part of the Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy!
Slow progress this week, but I did finish the second case which was the good old “someone from the Wright agency gets accused of murder” case we get every game.
And now it looks like we’re going back to Phoenix’s misadventures in Khura’in. I wonder if Maya will manage to get in trouble again this game?
Playing Drainus!
A shoot 'em up from Team Ladybug, the same developer as the the Lodoss War and Touhou metroidvanias I played recently.
I feel this one is inspired by the Gradius games, with you being able to configure your loadout with different options for attack, options, missiles and shields, and also the ability to choose the order you unlock these.
However, there’s some interesting twists to that formula. Upgrades are unlocked as you play, and you can adjust your loadout mid-game. When you get hit you lose one upgrade level, and you only die if you get hit while at zero upgrades. There’s a “reflect shield” mechanic that lest you absorb energy attacks and send them back to the enemies.
There’s also a storyline of sorts, but I can’t comment much on that as I’m still fairly early in the game.
Finished Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge!
Another old-school beat’em up I picked up alongside SOR4, and another great one. Kinda easy compared to other games in the genre, but I still had a lot of fun and it’s going to be a good option to play with more casual friends.
Did a single-player run and will play again in coop when opportunity appears.
Finished LUNARiA -Virtualized Moonchild-!
This game’s biggest weakness is it’s first half - it starts as a fairly generic romance story between a brooding boy and a happy girl, with only a little sci-fi and action mixed in to spice things up. The e-sports segments were definitely my favorite parts in this half of the game.
However, once I reached the second half and the main plot started rolling I could not stop reading. It went in a very different direction from what I expected, and the main twist hit me hard and got me fully invested in the story.
Overall a good and short kinetic novel, but don’t go into this expecting a lot of focus on sci-fi - that element of the story is mostly a backdrop for the romance and action.
Playing Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice, part of the Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy!
Finally being able to get the 5th and 6th games physically in english was a nice motivation for me to pick up this bundle, and I decided to go straight for the last game, since it’s the only Ace Attorney game available in english I had never finished.
So far I finished the first case, the new “Divination” is a nice twist on the previous formula. From the looks of the second case we’ll be going back and forth between cases with Phoenix using this new mechanic and more traditional case Apollo/Athena, sounds like a good way to keep things interesting.
A LOT of positive reviews for this one, including a 10/10 for Destructoid. https://www.destructoid.com/reviews/review-animal-well/
Definitely interested in it, just not sure if I should pick the Limited Run Physical version.
Finished Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown!
Quite impressed with this one, a really nice metroidvania from Ubisoft. The platforming controls are superb, the abilites you unlock make it even more fun over time, and the combat is solid.
Definitely not a game for casual players (unless you don’t mind turning on assists), there’s some tricky plataforming sections and nasty difficulty spikes in some bosses, but the main complaint I have about the game is the limited amount of fast travel spots, the map is HUGE and backtracking can be a pain in the ass. Other than that and a few minor bugs I don’t have many bad things to say about this one, definitely play it if you like the genre.
Minor bonus for Switch players: Looks like this version is the only one that does not require an Ubisoft account, it’s going to ask for it when you open the game but you can just press a button to skip.
Finished Streets of Rage 4!
There’s been more opportunities for coop play with friends recently, so I decided to pick this one. However, I could not wait and already did a quick single-player run through story mode using Blaze.
Really fun old-school beat’em up, I recommend it for fans of the genre.
Playing LUNARiA -Virtualized Moonchild-!
Was too focused on other games this week, just resumed it today, so no significant progress.
Will of the Wisps just uses checkpoints.
The second game drops a lot of the experimental things from the first game in favor of things you usually expect in this genre. Loses some originality but it’s a more solid game IMO.
I like that Ori tried to experiment with the save/load system, but I feel that the whole “save anywhere as long as you have energy” thing ended up being worse than traditional checkpoints in that game.
Playing LUNARiA -Virtualized Moonchild-!
Slow progress, currenty going through chapter 5. As I predicted last week there’s some trouble brewing with the cute AI girl, though they started earlier than I expected. Let’s see how things develop from here on.
Playing Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown!
This is definitely a Ubisoft game, ran into a bug that forced me to close+reopen the game only a few hours in - I accidentally “skipped” a boss because it glitched and threw me past a closed door into the next area 😅, but luckily it didn’t autosave so I just had to replay a that particular section. I also ran into a few more smaller gliches, nothing gamebreaking but definitely annoying when I’m coming from bug-free experiences in similar games from small developers.
As for the game, it’s pretty good! Nice exploration, plataforming is fantastic, and I’m enjoying the puzzles. Not a big fan of the combat system, but it’s more a matter of preferences than a problem with the game, it has a lot of focus on the parrying mechanic which is not something I enjoy.
Could definitely use more fast travel and save spots, though at least you don’t lose anything when you die, you go back to the last checkpoint keeping everything including the map and collectibles you may have picked up. One really neat QOL feature is the ability to take screenshots and attach them to the map, makes it easier for you to remember “why didn’t I go this path” or “which powerup did I need to go that direction”.
I’ve had to replace the sticks on mine with less than an year of use due to drifting. Other than that I really like the controller.
Had to do a little searching because the trailer doesn’t really tell much about the game, looks like this is a Mystery Otome VN.
Got fairly good reviews on VNDB.
Playing Lunaria: Virtualized Moonchild!
Almost exactly an year ago I finished Planetarian, a classic visual novel that was also the first game from the “Kinectic Novel” series - a Visual Arts brand for VNs without any choices or branches in the storyline, more akin to a visual book than a game.
So I thought it was appropriate to celebrate this anniversary by playing Lunaria, another Kinetic Novel from the same studio (Key, of Clannad fame) that I had just received in the mail.
One of the things that drew me to both these games is that I’m a huge sci-fi fan, and both deal with interactions between AIs and humans. However, they take very different approaches to this theme - Planetarian is bittersweet story focused on the contrast between the post-apocalyptic present and the small glimpse of a better past the MC encounters, while Lunaria is a much brigher slice-of-life story with focus on VR and e-sports.
The plot so far is the typical “boy meets cute (AI) girl, romance starts to develop between them”, but this being a Key game I’m already expecting something tragic to happen in the latter parts of the story - there’s already some hints of a bigger plot around the AI girl’s origins and circumstances.
Getting “Untitled Goose Game” vibes from this one, and if that comparison is correct this is 100% a day 1 purchase for me.
According that what I’ve found so far it looks like coop is online-only. :/
Which probably turns this one into a “pass” for me, I’m finally getting more opportinities to play local coop again.
Another crazy week, this time both at work and personal life, but at least this time I managed to sneak some gaming progress.
Playing Senren * Banka!
Completed the first chapter, but I imagine I’m still quite early in the game since I haven’t even met the last of the main heroines.
Story continues to be fun slice-of-life mixed with some supernatural elements. Favorite character is definitely Mako, the mischievous ninja bodyguard.
Playing Sea of Stars!
I usually avoid playing two longer story-driven games at the same time, but needed something with a bit more gameplay to help me get through this week, so I decided to start this one as well.
Loving the pixel art and the Mario-RPG style battle system with timed attacks. Too early to comment on the story asides from the fact that the flashback near the beginning dragged at bit too much for my tastes.
As for characters, the “Warrior Cook” Garl is great but the two main protagonists still feel kinda bland, let’s hope we see more of them as the game progresses.