Love your write ups Harpo, you always go into really good detail with your thoughts & especially in relation to story, dialogue & character arcs.
Couldn't get comfortable at all with the whimsical, comedic writing of the characters in the first game, it really made the dialogue far less interesting & thus made it a chore play on past the first hour or two.
I heard the sequel was a good step up in the dialogue & conversations you have with the NPC's but I still think I'd hit a roadblock quite quickly with some of the other things I didn't like about the original (UI, Inventory management, quests in which you've only a clue of where to go or look).
Does D:OS 2 back off from the whimsical, humorous dialogue of the first game? If so, I'm significantly less interested in it. I bogged down in the first game during the seemingly endless murder investigation in the opening act, but I loved the weird, quirky world they created. It reminded me a lot of the Fable series. It was nice to see humor in a game that wasn't lol-I'm-an-indie-game meta-humor or else that BioWare style of writing that confuses sarcasm with humor.
Does D:OS 2 back off from the whimsical, humorous dialogue of the first game? If so, I'm significantly less interested in it. I bogged down in the first game during the seemingly endless murder investigation in the opening act, but I loved the weird, quirky world they created. It reminded me a lot of the Fable series. It was nice to see humor in a game that wasn't lol-I'm-an-indie-game meta-humor or else that BioWare style of writing that confuses sarcasm with humor.
I just started it a few days ago because it was on sale on PS4. It's very whimsical and humerous in the opening act. It works especially well because the voice acting is quite good. Coming off Octopath Traveller, with it's extremely bland writing and not-great voice acting, the writing and voice acting is just a night and day comparison.
I also bounced off the beginning of the first game.
I'd say that D:OS2 has plenty of whimsical humor in it and that the execution of those bits tends to be a huge improvement on the first in terms of the humor landing. The VO acting is also fantastic in 2, and I remember it being kind of meh in the first. There's a strong chance that if you didn't enjoy the humor in the first you will enjoy it in this one.
There is also humor throughout the game, which is nice (I kind of remember late game having a weird tone shift in the first game.) D:OS2 still feels very different in its world than other RPGs. A lot of the funniest content is hidden behind the Pet Pal talent - the animal writing is great - but there's enough in the world as well. It is still a profoundly weird, silly, specific world.
In general the writing is a lot stronger in 2. I'd say watch a let's play of the early game and you'll get a good barometer for how it lands for you.
This isn't comedic writing, but one of the highlights for me on the writing front was a woman sitting by a lake and just sort of reminiscing about her family. She tries not to share too much - she's clearly wrestling with grief and she holds back initially. If you make yourself available to her though, she talks. There is no resolution, no quest to save her family, and nothing you can do aside from *listen* to her story. She feels grateful for you having listened, but there's little else you can do beyond that.
Its the moment in the game that most sticks with me now that I've completed it. As a player, you have the freedom to walk away from the conversation at multiple points, but if you listen she appreciates it. That's it. There's no resolution later, she doesn't come back in a future act or in a "montage of character wrap-ups" sequence at the end. You are just passing strangers and all she needs from you is someone to listen to her. That's powerful, particularly in a genre that's often so concerned with player agency and giving players the opportunity to help everyone that it neglects the agency of its NPCs, particularly its most minor NPCs.
I will say that the UI is better than D:OS1, but there is a lot of stuff in the game. Inventory management is definitely a thing, though I got by all but ignoring the crafting system. I had to keep my gear up to date, but I was playing on a "classic" difficulty. If you bump it down a notch you can probably get by with minimal inventory management.
This isn't comedic writing, but one of the highlights for me on the writing front was a woman sitting by a lake and just sort of reminiscing about her family. She tries not to share too much - she's clearly wrestling with grief and she holds back initially. If you make yourself available to her though, she talks. There is no resolution, no quest to save her family, and nothing you can do aside from *listen* to her story. She feels grateful for you having listened, but there's little else you can do beyond that.
Its the moment in the game that most sticks with me now that I've completed it. As a player, you have the freedom to walk away from the conversation at multiple points, but if you listen she appreciates it. That's it. There's no resolution later, she doesn't come back in a future act or in a "montage of character wrap-ups" sequence at the end. You are just passing strangers and all she needs from you is someone to listen to her. That's powerful, particularly in a genre that's often so concerned with player agency and giving players the opportunity to help everyone that it neglects the agency of its NPCs, particularly its most minor NPCs.
I experienced that part last night! It's really impressive. I think she does give you a family recipe in appreciation or something like that, but that's it. More than any other RPG I've played, it feels like there's a human dungeon master who's constantly peppering the world, story, and characters with a little extra flavor. It's a strange approach to writing an RPG. It doesn't feel like a "real" fantasy world, but it's worth it thanks to all the cleverness to uncover. I'm really looking forward to playing the whole thing.
Celeste. Real charm. Wish I saw many of that genre
Ori and Cuphead don't count IMHO
Finished 7th Sector, a...cyberpunk-y puzzler, I guess? by one-man developer Sergey Noskov. You play as an...entity traveling through wiring, interacting with electrical macinery, possessing various robots on your way to...somewhere. It's all very opaque, although it does eventually become clear what's going on.
I bought it primarily because of how much I liked his previous game, 35MM, and I'd have to say this one's weaker, primarily because the opaqueness also extends to the puzzle design, some of which tip over into frustrating.
For being a one-man joint though, it has some damn impressive production values:
Yeah, that's gorgeous (and I hadn't heard of it - thanks!). Looks like a Playdead game, but with more color.
I defeated the main boss in Crackdown 3. Underwhelming.
Assassins Creed Rogue, really enojyed it even though it seemed a rehash of Black Flag with a twist the story. Didn't spend as long as I would normally on an AC game, the completion bits weren't as interesting and the end game seemed a bit underwhelming but still enjoyed the experience.
I know Undertale is a pretty divisive game, but I loved it. I just recently finished the free chapter if Deltarune, by the same guy who made Undertale. I really enjoyed it. It felt very complete for a free first chapter. I'd recommend it if you liked Undertale.
I just beat Night in the Woods!
Great 8-10 hour romp. My only complaint is that they really tried to make the main character, Mae, unlikable... but I found her very welcoming and fresh. She was dealing with a lot of issues in her life, and they manifested in multiple ways since she was having a hard time growing up and accepting change. That doesn't make her a bad person to me - it makes her human. She has faults.
Anyway, the game's soundtrack was very good. The conversations were well written and felt natural. I disliked some of the jump platforming they made you do, and the final act was a little bit of a fart since they had to have some drama in a game so there's an obvious ending, but... Still recommended.
8.5/10
Last night, I finished Below.
Looking at my friends' progress in Below, they almost all paint a similar picture. 15 to 30 minutes of play time. 1 death. Then that's it. They stopped playing. And honestly, I bounced off of it at first, too.
Below gets billed as a rogue-like with survival elements. You start as a wanderer washed up on a mysterious shoreline with nothing but a torch and some arrows. You delve deep into a randomized labyrinth beneath the island, battling hunger, thirst, the cold, and the dark. There are traps and enemies everywhere. If you die, you start over on that beach, your pockets once again empty.
And while that's accurate to some extent, it's not entirely true. There's a lot more going on with Below than all that.
It reveals itself gradually, layer by layer, and as you explore the island you begin to realize how inaccurate that survival rogue-like moniker is. You learn that the map isn't as random as it seems; permanent shortcuts abound between the surface and the depths, making it easier to dive back in where you left off. Room layouts change, but each floor's layout is unique and fixed.
You learn that death isn't quite as permanent as you think and that you never really start out with nothing. You learn how to craft better things, yes, but you also learn where the caches of items and gear are, where the food is, where the resources are. You learn how to fast travel. You discover the Pocket, a permanent space to store things you find.
You learn to spot the traps, defeat the enemies, and obviate concerns about hunger, thirst, and cold. You learn not to run, learn how to explore, learn how to harvest resources between areas.
And you learn what you're diving into the dungeon for. There's a quest at the heart of it all, a purpose more specific and more meaningful than seeing how many floors down you can go. There's something permanent and lasting that you're building toward.
Below tells you almost nothing. It doesn't even tell you what all the buttons do. But as a game about exploration and discovery, I'm not sure I've ever played one that was more rewarding and more satisfying. As bizarre as it sounds, the closest comparison I can make to the kind of learning curve it offers is the open-world puzzle game The Witness, one of my very favorite games of the last few years.
I'm glad I took another chance at Below and devoted some time to teasing out the first of its secrets. 26 hours and 26 deaths later, I may have already played my favorite game of the year.
Yay, I'm no longer the only person to like Below 
I still think the game is too needlessly punishing to generally recommend it, but there really is something special about the way it communicates scale and its unique structure. Though I had it in the lower half of my top 10 list last year, the nits I have with it have largely faded in the months since finishing it.
I like the difficulty, or at least I really like the way it was used. There were times when I was frustrated by it, for sure, but everything is there to teach you a specific skill or concept that's valuable as you go along. There's a very Mario 1-1 logic to the placement of things.
For example, look at the spike traps in the early part of the game. They'll one-shot you, for sure, and it's going to feel unfair. But they're also really easy to see, even without a light source, and easy to deactivate, but you have to slow down to be aware of them. They're also a great early game indicator of how useful your lantern can be because spike traps are outlined in red, and it also reinforces that your lantern will reveal things you can't normally see.
Of course, that in turn introduces new obstacles: slowing down puts more pressure on the issue of food and water; using the lantern to help spot traps reinforces the need to fetch it when you die. But the spike traps are only on floors 2 and 3, and there are shortcuts between the surface and floors 3 and 4. You won't see spike traps again until you're much, much further in the game, and you can skip them once you've learned the lesson they're there to teach.
And every lesson you learn comes together in the end game to give you a chance to survive (and by then, the game doesn't even bother with making you fetch your stuff).
I finished West of Loathing. What a fun, silly little game. I'm actually impressed that it manages to keep throwing jokes or puns at you in every other line or so without feeling like they were trying too hard. And stacking food is ridiculously overpowered.
I finished 999 last night - as in, I've seen multiple endings. I'd never tried one of these kinds of game before (visual novel, I guess?) and was curious to try one out.
I think they're just not for me. I appreciated some of the clever plot twists, and the way it plays with the structure of a branching narrative, but the way it was presented felt slow and tedious. Maybe with a better editor I'd find something to love, but to me it felt like the plot payoffs didn't justify thumbing through endless screens of dialogue to get there.
I also have Virtue's Last Reward but I think I'll save that for later. I need something a bit more action packed for my next game.
I finished 999 last night - as in, I've seen multiple endings. I'd never tried one of these kinds of game before (visual novel, I guess?) and was curious to try one out.
For what it's worth, there's one specific ending which completely wraps up the entire narrative and makes the whole story make sense. I think it's technically two endings (as in you must get one particular ending before the "real" ending is even possible to get). You might consider looking at a spoiler-free walkthrough just to go through those couple of endings, because they payoff is worth it. Also, you know that you can hold a button to fast-forward through all dialogue you've already seen? That makes the subsequent playthroughs much less painful.
Thanks, I did end up using a guide to see all the endings.
I do admire its cleverness. I love it when games do something with narrative that only games can do, but the pace of delivery here just made it feel like a bit of an ordeal to play. It did definitely improve towards the end when I had the freedom to jump around the flowchart.
Finished off Wargroove! There's still an epilogue to unlock and I haven't even touched the Arcade mode, but the main campaign is done so that's good enough for me. I'll probably keep playing though - there's definitely still plenty of enjoyment to be had here.
Basically it's an Advance Wars clone. Given that we haven't seen a new Advance Wars for around 10 years now, that's ok with me. There are differences though - enough to make it feel like its own game. There's some great characters and fun writing (even if the overall plot's a bit ordinary) and the critical hit system is a welcome addition. A lot of love for dogs in this game too!
One difference I didn't like so much is that every army felt the same. I mean sure, the colours and sprites are different, but the units are equal. This is because the commanders are actual units on the field and their unique ability is a chargeable local effect. So while in Advance Wars you knew to fear air units and adjust your strategy accordingly if Eagle was the commander for example, with Wargroove your general strategy will stay the same because all the armies are the same.
Still, I really enjoyed this and will likely put a lot more hours into it before moving on. If you've never played an Advance Wars game, I'd probably recommend playing that over Wargroove, but if you're a fan then this is an excellent choice.
I just finished The Swapper. What an interesting little game. I thought the puzzles and setting were creative, though I would have liked a little less distortion in the voices -- it would have helped me better understand what was going on.
Finished (and started) Oxenfree today, nice little game. Not too challenging, more about getting your head round what is going on and working out what to do to move forward in the game.
After 100+ hours... I finally finished Persona 4 Golden on the Vita
What an amazing game.
It was my first persona game ever and I really liked it.
The bad thing about it was that i had to put on hold my Zelda WiiU marathon and some other games.
I got the second best ending and I am looking forward to now focusing on persona 5
After 100+ hours... I finally finished Persona 4 Golden on the Vita
What an amazing game.It was my first persona game ever and I really liked it.
The bad thing about it was that i had to put on hold my Zelda WiiU marathon and some other games.I got the second best ending and I am looking forward to now focusing on persona 5
I feel that Persona 5 was a drop off from Persona 4 (especially the Golden version), so be warned. I still like P5, but there was a little too much useless fluff in it. 4 I felt was just incredibly well paced and filled with content.
I tend to agree with Vrikk. Persona 5's mechanics all improved, and there are loads of little QoL things and nice updates. The music, presentation etc. are all lovely but...
4 just had amazing pacing and story-telling. 5 is a great game, but held next to 4, it just wasn't as good (though, really, not many games compare to P4!) Way too much fluff, repeated dialogue etc.
Still one of the PS4's best RPGs, no doubt. Just a note for your expectations going in.
That's funny, because Persona 4 (especially Persona 4 Golden) feels like a too-long and over-fluffed Persona 3.
Thanks for the tips... I will start P5 tonight
I beat Tacoma finally, which is a bit embarrassing considering how short it is. It had some cool ideas but never quite "wowed" me. I think on a fundamental level it suffered from its small scale, and never quite reached the same ambitions as something like Firewatch. Still, I'll be curious to see what else this studio puts out, because their craft and artistry is undeniable.
That's funny, because Persona 4 (especially Persona 4 Golden) feels like a too-long and over-fluffed Persona 3.
This reminds me of debates about which Final Fantasy is the best Final Fantasy.
VII! Say the people who were first exposed to it on PS1.
VI! Say the people who were first exposed to it on the SNES (don’t hear many lobbying for IV as best, though it was certainly great).
Maybe much like FF, people have a defining Persona experience, then compare all other games to that one?
XV, obviously.
It's the only one I've played.
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