Very limited activity on Lemmy right now.
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.
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.
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.
The Akurasu Wiki is a good reference for SRW info, including series list.
Tengen Toppa Gurren Laggan
Quick FYI that SRWX includes that series. 🙂
SRW games are love letters to fans of Mecha anime that also happens to be surprisingly good Strategy RPGs.
Gameplay loop is fairly simple, short VN-style story sections -> Customize/upgrade units -> Battle.
Stages are turn-based, and late game you can deploy around 20 units. Recent games are more on the easy side (with SRW30 being the biggest offender), but some of the older games like the OG series have a rather good challenge curve. They’re very friendly to handheld play since you can save at almost any time.
Most games are crossovers of 15+ different anime, and the main story is a combination of plotlines from those series. This is one of the reasons why familiarity with at least part of the series helps, if you know nothing at all you about them it may get quite overwhelming with too many characters and plotlines. To their credit, they do a decent job trying to ease you into it, slowly adding series and also featuring a very detailed encyclopedia with series details, character and mecha profiles.
The fancy battle animations are this game series’ trademark, mimicking in good detail the original anime series.
If that sounds interesting, there’s 4 games on the Switch with official english translation: The V/X/T trilogy and the most recent game which was the 30 year anniversary game for the series.
I personally think the V/X/T games are much better, and would recommend any of them as a starting point. There’s virtually no connection between them (just small cameos), so you can play them at any order.
They need to be imported physically or bought from eastern eShops, and one thing to keep in mind that for T you need specifically the Asian version. For V, X and 30 both the Asian and the Japanese versions are multi language.
Super Robot Wars
Did someone type the magic words to summon me? 😆 I’ve commented that I love this series in the past but I don’t think I’ve mentioned how deep I am into it with… 38 games beaten according to my notes.
So yeah, if you want to know more about the series just ask me.
No Vampire Hunter this week?
Vampire Survivor? No, I ended up taking a break this week.
imported the physical?
For this particular game I got the physical version from amazon.co.jp. I’ve been buying a lot from there, because there’s a few interesting games that only get physical releases on Japan/Asia, but also because a lot of Switch games are multi-language and for less popular games it’s often easier or cheaper for me to get them from that site.
Forgot to mention on the post above but IIRC Under Defeat is getting a western release sometime in 2025, no need to import it unless you’re like me and can’t wait.
Do you have a Japanese e-shop account
I also do have an account there. 😀
It got it because of a VN I was really interested that for some reason is only available in Japan digitally, but I’ve also used it to redeem free codes with extra stuff on some physical games I bought from there.
Finished Qualia: The Path of Promise!
Feels to me like the developer could not quite figure out what they wanted to do with this VN and just tried adding a bit of everything, but the end result is a very average game with nothing really strong or memorable.
It spends most of its runtime on the romance, but the chemistry between the two leads is not strong enough to carry the game, and while there are some interesting twists and themes those aren’t explored properly.
There’s one neat feature at least: You can enable two languages at the same time, which can be useful for people learning japanese. I’ve seen VNs before where you can switch between languages with a button, but this is the first time I’ve seen something like this.
Playing If My Heart Had Wings!
Resumed this game after Qualia, but didn’t get much progress this week. It’s quite good so far, I really like the way it’s deailing with the theme of disabilities and the overall relaxing slice-of-life feel of the story.
Playing Under Defeat!
Current side-game, a classic G-Rev shooter. Really hard, and the heli controls can take a while to get used to, but what a great game. Unfortunately only available in Japan right now, so you either have to get it from the japanese eShop or import the physical version.
13 Sentinels is their most unique game.
Strange mix of genres (point-and-click adventure mixed with… tower defense?!) but if you enjoy story-heavy games it’s an absolutely must-play. But stay away from spoilers, going “what the hell is going on” while trying to piece together the story is part of the experience. 😆
Also, while the tower defense segments are fairly simple (in particular compared to Unicorn Overlord) I did enjoy them quite a bit, replayed a bunch of stages multiple times and grinded all my characters to really high levels.
Oh, and the OST is amazing.
Or are you using it with just one hand?
Yup, mostly for things I can play with one hand like VNs. Might also be OK for quick sessions “on the go” or for younger kids like my nieces as well.
Playing Qualia: The Path of Promise!
Still progressing slowly, have not been in a gaming mood. But one thing I realized that putting a kinetic VN like this one on “Auto” works really well as a distraction when I’m cycling at the gym, so this should help speeding up progress. 😆
I also learned that several games that should work well with a single Joycon work like VNs don’t. 🙁 So I bought one of these small controllers from 8bitdo to use on these situations, let’s how it works.
Playing Vampire Survivors!
Still playing this as a side-game, still unlocking more weapons/stages/characters.
Replayed Portal + Portal 2!
Had beaten those games a long time ago on the 360 but could resist picking them up with that -75% sale. They’re still just as good as I remember, and the Switch version runs perfectly.
Playing Qualia: The Path of Promise!
Not a lot of progress this week. So far it’s been underwhelming, just a generic romance story.
Playing Vampire Survivors!
Still playing this as a side-game, still unlocking more weapons/stages/characters.
Finished Ys X: Nordics!
Not as good as Ys 8, but a massive improvement over Ys 9. Karja is a fantastic character, probably my favorite Ys heroine alongside Dana, and her sibling-like relationship with Adol was great. I know the odds are low but I’m really hoping we’ll have her show up again in a future entry.
The new engine was a huge improvement for Switch players, unlike the previous game there was no point in this one where I considered performance a problem. But I do have a lot of criticism for the “ocean exploration” part of the game - not only there’s annoying gameplay issues with the speed and clunkiness of the boat, but it also looks very dated visually.
But overall this was a great game that I can definitely recommend despite some things that could have used a bit more polish.
Oh, and since @slimerancher@lemmy.world asked about it: I got the “all sidequests” achivement by simply exploring the whole map and paying attention to the quest markers.
Playing If My Heart Had Wings!
Picked up this VN from my backlog as my next main game. It’s a slice-of-life story about a group of friends who decide to revive their school’s “Soaring Club” and try to build a glider and go flying.
Having a main heroine in a wheelchair is interesting, and I really like how the MC is trying to break some of the preconceptions other cast members have about her disability. Another small detail I like is the appearance of the city, a nice mix of old-school buildings like the dorm the MC lives with more modern, maybe even slightly futuristic buildings in the downtown parts.
Overall this was a good start and I’m interested in seeing where this one goes.
Playing Qualia: The Path of Promise!
I had this one in my wishlist for a while, but I was unsure if I wanted to pick it up or not. I’m a massive sci-fi fun and can enjoy almost anything with these themes, but most images you’ll find for this game is of a big-boobs maid android, which made me suspect the sci-fi parts would be just a thin background. But in the end a sale combined with some small but promising spoilers I read convinced me to give it a shot.
I don’t usually play two VNs in parallel, but this one is supposed to be a fairly short kinetic VN so I can probably make it work.
Playing Vampire Survivors!
Still playing this as a side-game, and still unlocking more weapons/stages/characters.
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.