What games are you playing 2: The revenge

[seitora]

Hyperdimension Neptunia Rebirth;2

Getting through the endings.

I did the Conquest Ending first, and...what an absurdly dark ending, ha. I was not expecting something like that in what have been two lighthearted games so far, and it really is a big genre shift. I guess I'm sort-of happy that the story writers committed to the direction of the ending, instead of making a weird mess by trying to downplay the Conquest ending with lots of self-referential humour and meta. I do get what the ending is a metaphor for, at least. A lot of the English voice actresses absolutely kill it with how good their acting is in parts here.

After that, I did the Holy Sword ending. That took me a few hours, even with the Lili Dungeon and Discs set-up. By this point, I got bored of battles, so using Destroy Symbols/Symbol Gains too. Definitely a happier ending, but...it looks like it was mashed together using parts of the Conquest Ending and parts of the True Ending, with only a very few minor bits of its own, so it doesn't really feel too satisfactory as its own ending.

So after those two, I got the True Ending, which has a few new dungeons over the Holy Sword ending but not too much else that was new. I saved after the ending here, so I'll do a third cycle to get myself some more MB.

On the way, I did some fighting in the Colosseum. There are some of the Colosseum fights that I haven't unlocked yet, because there are item drops that I can't get yet, due to being locked behind hidden dungeons that I have to check specific Chirper messages in Chapter 2 to get Dungeon Changes to get the right items to unlock parts of previous dungeons. For the same reason, I barely get to play with some of the character costumes I like, because they're about the last thing I'm able to create.

 

[seitora]

Hyperdimension Neptunia Rebirth;2

On my third cycle, I got up to the end of chapter 6, and basically went through the Shares system multiple times to get each of the remaining endings (Human, Lowee, Lastation, Leanbox, Planeptune). It's annoying that the CGs don't carry over unless you specifically save and restart a new game off each ending, but whatever. I'm not that much of a completionist. From there, I went through to the True Ending route again so I could get chapter 7 dungeons. I have up to Sublie Marsh unlocked now, so I can make whatever plans I want now.

I did unlock all the Colosseum fights, and did basically everything up to Level 699. That includes Delphinus, which for whatever reason I guess is deserving of its own Achievement, probably since it's the last of the 99s (and anything above 99 requires DLC).

After that, the only Steam Achievement I have left is the one to complete all of Stella's Dungeons, and the 'get all other achievements' Achievement with it. Since Stella's Dungeons are run based on real-time, I'll basically have to pop into the game a couple of times a day for maybe the next week before I get that.

The one annoying thing I've found common to the first two REBIRTH games is that all the cute costumes and stuff I can only get after basically doing all the content, and some of the secret dungeons require a NG+ and having to do extra NG+ if you aren't extremely careful with checking textbox events on the overworld at specific times in your first NG+.

I'll very likely play REBIRTH;3, but it'll be six months to a year down the line. I can only tolerate hyperweebism in moderate doses spaced apart.

 

[seitora]

Paradise Killer

This game is a little weird to describe. It's basically an open-world exploration game. Instead of fighting monsters or anything, you are a lady detective who is travelling around, scouring a developed island for clues on the whodunnit to a mass murder mystery. When I say open-world, I mean open-world. Pretty much every spot you see at the end of your draw distance, you can get to.

Every spot you go to, you search around and try to find items and clues, not just to the mass murder itself, but to support or question the alibi, motives, and backgrounds of the remaining residents on the island who could theoretically have committed the murder. You also talk to the residents themselves several times to get basic information from them, then confront them with evidence of shady stuff they've been doing and hiding to milk more testimony out of them. It gets muddied up very quickly, because any person could have done it, albeit some with a partner.

The endgame is that you're supposed to take all this evidence and go run a trial, pinpointing down the culprit of the mass murder. Interestingly, there is no cutoff point for doing this. I think you could start the trial within the game's first 10 minutes, but you obviously would have no evidence at the time. Presumably, as I get more evidence, my suspicion and concrete proof for a specific character increases, but another couple of hours later, I might have a new suspect.

In-between, the basic background is the island is run by a cult of elder god worshippers who built a metaphysical island to try and help bring back the elder gods they worship that have been wounded by previous wars with humanity. It's that kind of game, but it provides a really interesting spice to the setting.

The one really annoying thing that the game doesn't really mention, and isn't advertised in Paradise Killer's store page, is that there is a lot of jumping in this game. And to be frank, the jumping sucks. You get used to it after a while and can intuit a jump, but it's still such a pain in the rear end. There are a lot of points where you can travel around more easily by going up cliffs and rocks, and I can never really tell what is scalable geometry or something that can be jumped onto, and what is too steep or too high up for me to do that. Later on, you can get the capacity to double-jump and air-glide, which help massively.

Also, this is the first game that's ever given me motion sickness. I played 7 hours already over about a day-and-a-half, and have had to space it out to no more than 2 hours at a time, and I will probably just do 2 hours a day tops. I don't know if it's just the blur of the first-person view camera, or if it's how this game has that obvious Unreal Engine look with the architecture of all the backgrounds and objects. There's also a day/night system that doesn't really affect anything in-game, but less in-game light during the dark hours would probably exacerbate that. I do enjoy the game, just not enough to risk my health by playing too much at a time.

 

[seitora]

See above comment about being only able to play Paradise Killer a couple of hours a day. So I guess I'll juggle 2-3 games at a time for a little. It's not like I haven't done that before.

Miniature Garden

Stop me if you've heard this one before. A VN about a group of students get thrown into a school mystery with potentially paranormal going-ons. Gee, that's never been done before.

In this game, the students end up locked in their school by themselves, and things definitely start off with a paranormal background, before steadily trending to a more realistic mystery. The game setting honestly feels a little schizophrenic, in that it can't seem to decide if it wants to have occult occurences or if it wants to tidy everything up and have it all be explainable by human hands. Regardless, there are actual paranormal things going on, but 5/7 endings kind of just...completely ignore this by the end. It does this rather clumsily, too. Which kind of goes for the story, in general. A lot of VNs I see kind of want to build up a setting, but then just kind of peter out hard. They don't really want to answer anything, and they kind of just ignore the mystery they've set up to try and wrap things up really quick with a 5-minute ending. Miniature Garden doesn't suffer as much, but it still has some of that.

Characterisation is alright. It's nothing stellar, but still passable, and certainly a lot better effort than some of the obscure crap I've gone through. The game is also really short. Probably 3 hours for a first playthrough, then 2 more hours to grab all the other routes, since the extra content at the end of each route doesn't add up to a whole lot. Definitely some decent music and CGs.

 

[seitora]

CrossCode

After quite a long while away from the game (7 months), finally getting back into the DLC. I went through Chapters 11 and 12, which took me a little while to re-familiarise myself with some of the controls. I took the opportunity to knock the difficulty down a little bit, to 80% damage, because while I enjoy this game, it's been going on way too long. I don't care to repeat quests and dungeons as much because I suck :X

I went through both chapter 11 and 12. Azure Archipelago is a pretty nice new area of the game, even if there's not really a whole lot to do in there (yet?). Moving along and finishing up a few more Achievements, like finding all the chests in the main overworld and all Lore entries. I am down to 8 now. While the chapters aren't quite as meaty as the main game is, it's still an enjoyable add-on.

 

[seitora]

Birth ME Code

This is nominally the sequel to another VN I played earlier in the month, Head AS Code. They're both 'escape room-killing games' mysteries ala the Zero Escape series. Birth ME Code's escape room-killing game's most notable difference from Head AS Code is that while the latter wasn't designed to require deaths (but ended up having it anyways because story), the former's set-up absolutely requires them, and it happens, lots. Probably there's going to be one or two little things that will connect the two games in the ending, though I haven't seen anything yet in my first 4 hours to more than tenuously link them (the biggest, in all legitimate honesty, is that they both take place in Canada. I think. HAC for sure takes place in Montreal. No country's been stated here, but one room has two little giveaways - an exchange where a girl says she's 18 and so can legally drink, another person says she couldn't in the U.S. where drinking age is 21, and the first girl saying they don't live in the U.S. so natch. Then there's a tiny snippet written in French, and one of the characters notes improper grammar).

The premise of this particular 'escape room' novel is actually interesting. Instead of taking place from the perspective of one of the unwitting many thrown into the locked area-cum-killing game scenario, it actually takes the PoV of the mastermind of the killing game. She inserts herself into the killing game with 8 members of her anonymous organisation to smoke out a traitor.

Spoiler

There's a lot of hints that as much as she thinks she's in control, she isn't really. Lots of stuff happens right away that doesn't seem right, things she didn't plan for. Little tells like there's grafitti on the wall that she doesn't know the meaning of, when she should have had control of every bit of the area before starting the killing game. Most importantly, she seems to be affected by the same temporary amnesia drugs everyone else was inflicted with. She can't even seem to recognise this.

BMC is easily superior to HAC. First is the presentation. HAC had these obvious semi-amateur room backgrounds and character profiles, while BMC has a lot slicker, more 'modern' backgrounds and character profiles with lots of colour and zazz. Next is the puzzle sequences...like that they actually exist. HAC had two or three puzzles that existed as basically 'click on these points on the background in a certain order', while BMC has actual puzzles. Granted, they're mostly mindbender word puzzles, with a small amount of 'combine items in your inventory', but still a step-up. It basically is a one-person team doing most of the game.

Character development and storyline is also more tightly plotted, and well-written. Which is just as well, since that same one-person team has more experience. The route flow-chart opens up more as you get specific (bad) endings, and while it's a little bit on railroads as results, it does a good job taking turns with fleshing out specific characters every time you open up another route path.

If I had to pinpoint a couple of issues, besides the game feeling like it's going to be really short (I'm at 4.5 hours and I think I may already be more than halfway done the game...?), the first would be the lack of endings so far. Head AS Code had bad ends up the wazoo, and this game feels like it has a lot fewer. That could be a result of tighter scripting, but it still feels a little bit of a let-down.

The other issue I have is the route flowchart. So during the game, you can make 'choices' on several scenes that level up your relationship with each of the other 8 characters. That sounds OK. The issue is that there are a lot of these moments, probably 20-odd so far split between the different routes. You can create a new file and autofill the route up with previous choices up to a certain point, or manually fill in each choice by hand. As you fill in or edit choices, it also shows which routes further in the future are available, and which are blacked out, because you don't have such-and-such person at a high enough relationship value. The biggest issue I have with this flowchart is that it's been highly unintuitive and a pain in the rear end, and I keep having to delete files and start over because I pressed a button and it locks all my choices in, or something else.

 

[seitora]

Paradise Killer

Finally completed the game. 15.5 hours.

Probably after about...11 hours, I finished finding just about all physical evidence I could on the island that was littered about or hidden in places. There were some bits that were extremely well-hidden (fpr example, one piece is in the Council building apartments, which you can only find by doing some parkour around some narrow ledges to a door that there's no hint of even existing there. Another piece of evidence is in the cliffs at the Paradise Gates, the 'starting area' that you have to go out of your way to return to once you start your investigation proper. Another piece of evidence is finding a weak spot of soil on some cliffs, and this last one is absolutely crucial for progress). The player doesn't need every last little bit of evidence, but I was obsessive and scoured pretty much everything. I still could very well have missed a few things.

Still had some motion blurring, but that was why I cut back my play to only a couple of hours a day.

The last 3-hours of the open-world stuff was frankly exhausting, because it was basically just me going around to each of the suspects, interrogating them for details, presenting them with evidence, then using statements to go back to other suspects, getting their testimony on the new statements, rinse and repeat. The in-game murder mystery is actually laid out very nicely, and it's opened up and exposed without letting me get ahead in unravelling it. Still, I wish some of this corroboration of testimonies was somehow able to be pushed to the mid-game, instead of the end-game. Though maybe that's just how I played it, since it's quite easy to have explored in a vastly different manner.

I mentioned in my previous post that there was a day-night system, but it didn't really affect much. I will retract that. There were a couple of pieces of evidence in areas I combed over at night that I didn't see because of reduced visibility, that I found during the daytime after going over a spot again.

The trial was...a little disappointing. It went pretty much on rails outside of picking a suspect for each crime. I guess at least I didn't have to intuit an exact piece of evidence at an exact person, like the Phoenix Wright games sometimes expect.

Spoiler: End-game spoilers for the main game plot

Basically everybody was guilty of at least one crime. Doom Jazz only covered-up some paperwork, which was the most minor crime. Crimson Acid knew some secrets of the Seals and fished some information out of K HX, the second most minor crime. Sam and Lydia Daybreak assisted with getting a demon crate through the seals, but since they weren't huge roaring jerks in-game, I didn't bother accusing them of anything and let them go. Witness was responsible for the demon crate as a whole, while Carmelina, Yuri, and Akiko all conspired to set Dainonigate off at the council, frame Henry, and keep a closed-room mystery. I actually at first thought Carmelina and Witness were conspiring together, too. Since they were both together at the strike of midnight, I thought they were acting as mutual accomplices with two long-distance murder proxies (the Killer Demon and Dainonigate) that would be able to kill the council and each other. That way, Carmelina and Witness could corroborate each other's alibis, and if anybody actually did make it into the penthouse, there would be an undecipherable mess. It wasn't until the trial that Lady Love Dies showed otherwise.

 

[seitora]

Birth ME Code

Finished the game. All Achievements, with a little less than 13 hours. The game probably would have taken longer if I didn't end up using a guide for some of the puzzles. Some of them are serious brain-busters (and some of them just require a large jump in intuit). It's definitely better-written than its prequel game, but it loses some cohesion near the end, trying to keep track of all the jump in events. Plus the ending twists are a little bit of a rehash, so it loses its impact.

Still a little fun, and scratches that Zero Escape itch. The main character is a really good snarker and she loves to make lots of puns, but I feel like some more self-introspection would have made her a stronger character still.

Also, I find it funny how one of the rooms has an escape question that has a more philosophical answer. Right when the question was asked at the very start, for some reason I immediately thought of something, which turned out to be the correct answer in the end!

Spoiler

Specifically, the reactor room asks 'What is our true enemy?' and immediately, I figured it was either death or time, then pinpointed time. Then some puzzle-solving later, it turns out time was indeed their true enemy.

 

[seitora]

Karakara 2

Yet another VN that I must have gotten who knows how long ago in some Humble Bundle probably. This is quite a little longer than its prequel, at about 4 hours of reading time with letting the voices play out. Despite that, a lot of it seems like filler? There's segments that really don't have too much substance to it. I'd have to compare, but I think there may be one or two new tracks compared to the first game, which is a real recycling of assets alright. The main character ends up with four girls living with him by the end of the game, and the in-game lore actually focuses strongly on society having a scarcity of males, so I guess it at least justifies the polygamy angle. It also sets up for a sequel that hasn't been made. But yeah, these games are so damn short, and I guess I'll just keep playing them for the sake of getting my Steam library trimmed down.

 

[seitora]

Tokyo Xanadu eX+

Or as @Watashiwa calls it, 'Persona but developed by Falcom'. Which...so far, seems to fit. It takes place in the fictional Tokyo suburb of Morimiya, complete with its own Tokyo Tower expy, and is shaping up to be an exhaustively long and big action RPG with long story segments broken up by spurts of dungeon-crawling. The basic gist is teenagers with special spiritual powers go into other-worldly dungeons called Labyrinths and fight monsters formed by negative human emotions called Greed, sometimes rescuing humans who inadvertently caused said Labyrinths to appear. So yeah, Persona but developed by Falcom.

The dungeon-crawling is thankfully engaging with lots of movement. I have 3 characters so far with lots more to come going off the opening video. Each of them have a fairly unique and fluid combat style, which is also a plus. Fighting is really nice and dynamic with a decent amount of stuff to do, and for some reason I just adore that I can both dodge and jump in one ARPG. I just finished Chapter 2. Also, some extremely banger music.

Voice acting is reasonably OK, but the story segments really do run on at times. If I was to estimate, it's probably like 80% story, 20% gameplay so far. There's a little bit of accessorising and skills set-up to slot to your weapons, but I haven't really gotten deep into the game to really be able to tinker with it yet.

Also, if anybody is following along reading my commentary and is playing/intends to play this game...read this next bit carefully. Like a lot of action games, TX lets you 'lock on' to your enemy Greed and keep the camera locked on so even as you move around, the camera stays focused on that foe. This works perfectly fine in Chapter 1. The problem is that after Chapter 1, you get the ability to execute something called an EX Skill. Before performing an EX Skill, you need to also target onto the Greed you want to use the EX Skill on. For some baffling reason, these are two separate forms enemy targeting, but only the first command actually keeps the camera fixed in place. If you intended to move around and dodge, you have to move your camera with it, and it becomes a pain in the read end. What's worse is that the button command for each of these separate enemy lock-ons is the exact same, L1. And the EX Skill lock overrides the regular enemy targeting.

I went into the game and remapped some of the controllers. I assigned my items menu hotkey to D-Pad Up, which is normally used for the text backlog, which I didn't need at all, then made my regular enemy lock the D-Pad Left. Believe me, it's really not pleasant trying to battle while fighting the camera at the same time.

 

[seitora]

Tokyo Xanadu eX+

Finished up to Chapter 4 and side-story, with a little bit over 16 hours finished. The basic pacing is a new character every chapter. Since there's an interface spoiler showing who new future characters will be, there's at least 7 more people who will join my party. If it keeps up this rate of one new party member per chapter, then this game would run at least 11 chapters, 12 to have a final chapter after getting my last party member. So I expect this may be compressed in the future to two new characters a chapter, maybe?

The dungeon romps are just short enough to stay fairly fun, though they are getting noticeably longer in length as the game progresses. Enemies so far have been switched up relatively frequently between Labyrinths so I haven't yet felt like they've been rehashed so far. Basic combat revolves around using a standard thrust/slash attack (depending on weapon), a projectile attack, and a powerful attack with a charge time. The projectile attack varies some between characters with how long-range it is, and whether it's a single projectile or multiple bullets at once. Power attacks vary in how long it takes to charge up and how strong they are. You can also jump, and do a regular attack, a power attack, or a dash-attack through the air. There's an energy gauge in there as well to power projectiles and power attacks, and then separate gauges for special skills and then tag-team attacks. It definitely took a few Labyrinths before I had it all down pat.

There's also dodging. I'm actually really happy with how intuitive and easy dodging is. The only thing that messes me up is that dodging speed is faster than running speed. I instinctively want to dodge all the time for faster speed, but I can't. I have to watch for enemy tells to dodge, because if I just dodge right away, the enemy reacts on the fly sometimes and I don't have the time to dodge again just yet. But evading attacks is fairly fluid. What's really cool is that even if you're in the strike range, there's always a few frames in the dodge animation where you're invincible, so if you pull off a dodge perfectly, you get a brief slow-motion effect and avoid damage. Since you can jump in this game, some enemy attacks will hit the entire horizontal plane in front of them and you can't dodge it, but you can jump over it.

Something that's kind of annoying is the Score system. Like a lot of games, each individual level (Labyrinth) in this game gives you a score, and for completionist purposes, I'm trying to S-Rank every Labyrinth. Most of them I do get an S-Rank on right away, and an A-Rank so far on the remaining few. Where it's annoying is that you get points if you are able to execute a 50-hit, 100-hit, or 200-hit combo during the course of your run. The bar for your combo lasts several seconds before it times out, so normally you can try to run and hit another enemy (or break boxes, as these also count) further into the Labyrinth.

Where this becomes a little bit of an issue is that multiple times, you have to double back to a previous room to go through a new door that's opened, or you have a split with no idea which way to go. Sometimes, I move too far ahead and kill Greed, only to have to double back to hit a switch somewhere else. But now I have nothing to preserve my combo for several rooms and corridors, so instead of getting a 200-hit combo, I might only get a 100-hit combo. I've gotten to the points of preserving a few boxes in areas to retain my hit combo in case I return, but you also get points for breaking 80%+ or 100% of boxes. So basically, I have to know the map ahead of time to really be able to get the bonus points from this.

I should mention that of that 16 hours, probably at least 2 hours alone, maybe 3, is expended talking to everybody in town during ever free time to wring every last bit of flavour text out. If you don't do that, while the game is still long, it gets a little shorter. A NG+ would be much shorter still, since you can skip basically every scene and only have to run around the town for a few minutes a chapter to progress to each Labyrinth.

Oh yeah, story. Things haven't really progressed much to an end-game yet. The in-game calendar has moved from April to the start of June. Persona games usually conclude around late December/early January, and while this isn't a Persona game, it's definitely lifted a few things. If this follows the same trend, I've still got 7 more months in-story. Eh, as for plot speculation. My guesses.

Spoiler

There's a Tokyo earthquake 10 years prior mentioned on several occasions, which I'm going to guess was caused by the Eclipse. Asuka was made an orphan by the earthquake and got ferreted away and trained by Nemesis before returning to her hometown. There's a human big bad who didn't cause the appearances of the Eclipse but is taking advantage of it, and maybe influenced the Greed to take advantage of the God app and the Blaze gang. He or she hasn't appeared on-screen yet.

 

[seitora]

Sakura Shrine Girls

Yet another Sakura VN, since I seem to have a gazillion of them from a bundle (and now I'm going to check for an actual number. It looks like I had 13 of them, with 4 of them cleared as of this post, and 9 more left. I do have Sakura Dungeon cleared, which I think is the only one of the lot that isn't a straight-up VN). By this time, I'm just about cottoned on to the set-up. Boy moves locations to somewhere away from his familiar home. There, boy meets not one but two girls, and slowly gets to know both of them. By the end of the 2-hours-of-reading game, boy is in a relationship with both girls. Insert specific framing device to separate the game from the 20 other VN.

That said, Shrine Girls is actually...well, surprisingly a lot better than the last couple I've gone through. It's not good, being more of a 4/10 compared to 2/10 for Swim Club or Spirits, but it still has noticeably stronger writing. The protagonist is actually a little more assertive and less a blank slate, and the girls are more relatable with real personalities and conflict. Plus, there's surprisingly three routes with choices, with a threesome route and a route for each of the girls. I have no idea if it's intentional, but the game even punishes the threesome route with a more abrupt ending.

 

[seitora]

CrossCode

I finished Chapter 14, which is the end of the DLC game proper. I then went around and mopped up basically all the remaining DLC quests. After that were a number of Achievements, most of which actually weren't too bad once I focused on them. Guarding 4k times could have been time-intensive, but thankfully, the Cold Circuit gives you the chance for a 360 degree guard, so I let some of the Hedgehags in Autumn's Rise wail on me for several minutes before I got it. Finding all the Traders went quick. Killing 100 enemies by the environment can be done quickly in Autumn's Rise using a specific spot. I had every one of the consumables already on-hand except for two brewed items that you have to use the brewery in the desert town, so that went quick. Surviving the Ring of Spiders for 5 minutes was easy as well. That mini-game opens up when you're around Level 45-50 in Sapphire's Ridge, and after the DLC dungeon, I was level 74. So, yeah.

Then there was...complete all the Bergen Trial Caves in under 1:45. Sigh. The first two were easy and I had them done a long time ago, but that last one. Arrrrrgggh. Fortunately, I got a lucky break and was able to do it in 20ish runs, but still. Arrrrrgggh! But with that, I finished all the Steam Achievements. There are a couple of random in-game tasks too, but I've essentially completely finished the game in its entirety now.

I'm actually still happy with the content as a whole, especially with how tight the controls and the combat are. But it's the puzzles in the endgame that were really beginning to slow everything else down for me. The dev(s) are making a new game (not a CrossCode sequel), so hopefully it comes out sooner than later. I'm sure I'll enjoy that too with how polished this is.

 

[seitora]

Tokyo Xanadu eX+

Finished Chapter 5 and the intermission chapter. At some points, it gets a little exhausting, but I've still been having a good run of it so far.

On the story side, something I appreciate...the characters in this game (outside of one) aren't particularly high-handed. The narrative does a good job of making it clear that everyone involved is really a bunch of dorks. By that, I mean the way they interact with each other, their slapstick antics, even the way they speak. It really helps keep stuff fairly light-hearted most of the time.

I'm modestly impressed by how the Labyrinth dungeons always have new designs with each one I run through. Maybe some of the little ones repeat dungeon aesthetics after a while (I would have to go through and check), but they otherwise appear to be completely refreshed with new floors, walls, doors, etc., as well as new Greed enemies, though the Greed are definitely getting recolours at this point. But yeah, one of the high points going through the game is seeing the new background visuals in each Labyrinth.

Speaking of the Labyrinths and dungeon-crawling, I'm probably falling behind on the equipment systems. I'm upgrading my equipment best as I can as I go along, but I haven't really bothered changing out my skills too much, or exchanging in for new, better ones. I should probably do that soon, before the lack of high stats or miscellaneous effects catch up with me. Especially since I'm starting to run into Burden, Paralysis, and Poison effects in some dungeons, and some of the equipment and skills would help me out there.

As for story predictions...

Spoiler

I meant to say that the XiPhones were derived from Eclipse technology as a prediction previously, but that was kind of obvious. The game reveals this to be truth in Chapter 5. I'm also making what is an obvious assumption that one of the gang's teachers, Gorou Saeki, is well-versed in the Eclipse. There's tons of hints that he knows more than he should and he's physically competent. Conservation of characters means he's probably the White Shroud, and to a lesser extent possibly the man in the battle suit in the one side-story. Also, Mitsuki's fiance is obviously a bad guy, which was confirmed when he was shown to have meddled with the fairytale book, but I'm doubtful that he is the bad guy.

 

[Zetas]

Space Engineers
Helping a friend design a boat for a modded multiplayer survival series he plans to record for Youtube/ stream on Twitch

 

[seitora]

Tokyo Xanadu eX+



Finished Chapters 6 and 7.



I finally started to go through the different skills to equip to your weapons, and start to set up some of the more powerful ones. The ones that increase my X-Skill gauges and D-Skill gauges are pretty broken, along with the ones increasing dodge invincibility and your character's speed. I no longer have to worry about linking together a 200+ combo ever again: Azure Netsuke from having 3 stars of Courage, and Full Gallop skill take care of that (the former halves the cooldown on your timer before the combo runs out, and Full Gallop significantly increases character speed). Since I've also been on top of my side quests and trading in stuff at the Pawn Shop, my accessories are also well fleshed-out with high stats items. I was S-ranking most dungeons on the first try, but there were a few aberrations. The last chapter and a half, I've never even come close to missing out on the rank, usually hitting 2200 or 2300 and sometimes even 2500 score.

The game's also been more fun once the systems all clicked together completely. I was mostly good in earlier chapters, but it's just taken a number of Labyrinth runs for it to finally be seamless. Probably the worst part was that I couldn't consistently get my air dash to work (the reason for that was since I hold the R1 button down steady for dashing, I have to let it go while jumping, or else it'll trigger the power attack in mid-air instead).

One of those little observations is how strangely optimised currency is in this game. I'm basically at the endgame, but I'm still very much on a fine line for how much money I have. I haven't had to grind for more money at all, but at the same time, I barely have anything left after I upgrade my equipment, purchase all the new books and collectibles, and get some new skills purchased. Usually in games with currencies, by the time I hit the end of a game, either I'm grinding for lots and lots of cash (or having to find in-game craft combinations that I can exploit to make lots of money), or I've got ludicrous amounts of currency that I can buy basically everything without a second thought. I'm honestly not used to this scenario!

Spoiler

So I guess Gorou was the man in the battle suit at the end of the intermission side story. White Shroud still hasn't been revealed, and I've stayed spoiler-free for the game in its entirety thus far. It's either a female student at school or somebody with a feminine voice, so for lack of new characters showing up, maybe Jun? As for Shiori being possessed by a Greed of her own, that's been hinted off-and-on for several chapters, so no big surprise.

 

[chronodekar]

One of those little observations is how strangely optimised currency is in this game. I'm basically at the endgame, but I'm still very much on a fine line for how much money I have. I haven't had to grind for more money at all, but at the same time, I barely have anything left after I upgrade my equipment, purchase all the new books and collectibles, and get some new skills purchased. Usually in games with currencies, by the time I hit the end of a game, either I'm grinding for lots and lots of cash (or having to find in-game craft combinations that I can exploit to make lots of money), or I've got ludicrous amounts of currency that I can buy basically everything without a second thought. I'm honestly not used to this scenario!

That IS a unique situation! Perhaps you just got lucky?

-chronodekar

 

[seitora]

That IS a unique situation! Perhaps you just got lucky?

-chronodekar

Nope. Seems really balanced. I got to the end of the game and only finally just started to clear a good chunk of cash. There's a Steam Achievement/PSN trophy for having 500,000 yen which isn't even a ludicrous amount. On Steam, 15% of players finished the final final ending, but only 10% have the currency achievement.

Tokyo Xanadu eX+

Finished chapter 8. And the epilogue. And the true ending. And the eX+-exclusive After Story. I will say, there definitely could have been some pacing work at the end, because I felt like it kept on going.

I think I clocked in the first run at about...61 hours? An easy 10 hours of that would have been from running around the city every chance I had, basically picking away at every last bit of flavour text.

I started a NG+ on Infinite mode with Calamity difficulty, and made it up to the end of Chapter 5. Greed and Bosses are definitely stronger with the change in settings and level boost. I've mostly cruised through still, but every so often I run into a boss that the increased stats just cranked up the difficulty (the Witch boss in chapter 5 was probably the worst. To be fair, I went in with two members who had Shadow equipped. If I had reloaded and changed them to Spirit and added Yuuki with Spirit when I saw that was what she was weak to, I would have certainly had a much easier time).

Also, I had the S-Poms from the DLC, which I never touched in the first runthrough. Since the DLC resets in each playthrough, I now have 44 S-Poms, so if I wanted to, I could use them all up and basically make the rest of my Calamity playthrough a cakewalk. Otherwise, I'll just catch up on all the remaining Achievements I have, but consider this my last post for this game. Battle system is pretty fun overall, though of course late game some of the skill set-ups are really pretty game-breaking. I think if you watch through every cutscene and try to get all the flavour text, the combat is around 20-25% of the overall gamelength?

EDIT: Oh yeah. Also, I think the game dropped a really subtle Zero Escape: 999 reference.

Spoiler: Spoilers for Tokyo Xanadu AND 999

Shiori's family name is Kurashiki, which is the same as Akane Kurashiki in 999. More than just the family name, those two have extremely similar backstories of dying a decade ago but carrying on with a false life, then through manipulation of fate/time travel, becoming truly alive in the present day.

 

[seitora]

Cosmic Star Heroine

Before sinking my teeth into another big timesink of a game, I figured I would play something a little shorter again. So CSH it is.

So this game is fairly broadly a Chrono Trigger homage. It isn't just subtle winks or anything, but quite blatant references. Just a little bit into the first hour of the game is a battle with a mechanical monster on a bridge (technically, it's supposed to be a ghost thing, but given the battle system treats it as mechanical, I'm going with that). The 'style' of the character graphics in town and dungeon sections, and on the overworld map even mimics CT. Plus, there's a section right at the start of chapter 5 where I've finished off for the night, that is straight up a riff on the Millennium Fair. Funny enough, it's called a Freedom Festival, where the festival lasts all year long, every year.

That sound you just heard was a million Ottawans crying out in terror and suddenly being silenced.

(Wow, that reference might be dated if anyone ever responds to this post in a year or two)

Fortunately, the battle system breaks a ways away from CT. You don't have random encounters, but rather run into single or groups of enemies on dungeon maps, yes, like CT. It is turn-based. Each character gets a number of abilities and attacks to use. Instead of having anything like an MP system, each party member can use every ability as much as they want. The catch is that most abilities can only be used once, and then you have to take a turn to recharge those abilities. Some techniques can only be used once per battle, but (at least so far) they're less numerous and less varied.

Also, each party member has a counter (a 'Hyper' bar) that ticks up to a maximum value after a few turns. Having a full Hyper bar causes you to deal more damage, before it resets. So there's some strategy in setting up certain ability combinations and timing it for a full Hyper bar, like buffing an ally and that ally using an ability to hit all enemies the next turn, in time for her to have the increased attack from the full Hyper bar. You can only equip 8 abilities at a time per party member, so once you level up and acquire 9+ abilities, you can swap them out. Admittedly, I feel like I'm already getting in a rut using the same set-ups, as how long it takes to get a full Hyper bar is fixed per party member and equipment set, so hopefully the game throws something at me to change it up soon.

Also, the game moves fast. There's story segments of course, but they're only a few minutes at a time and then I get to go move on again. I switched the movement controls so I literally move around at fast speed all the time, too. That helps

I really appreciate the aesthetics I've seen so far. There was a little bit of the jungle planet surface, but everything else has been some decent cyberpunk, whether it be the cleaner, modernised spots in the well-to-do areas of the industrial planet, or the grimier, run-down sections. There's also a lot of pretty short videos that imitate that whole 2D effect, which lends well to the general atmosphere.

 

[chronodekar]

I remember Wata talking about Cosmic Star Heroine some time back. Only reason I haven't bought it is because I buy too many games but don't actually play them beyond the first few hours. Tales of Arise was the last one I actually finished. I got Hades a few weeks back, but haven't turned on my console to play it for far too long (It's even more embarassing when you realize that Hades has a built-in God/Invulnerability mode and I haven't *used* it yet).

Am looking forward to hearing how long you think the game is. i.e. how long to finish the main story-line + some (not all) side quests.

-chronodekar

PS: It is taking me a *lot* of effort not to make a political comment. Ill just say that I'm a coward and leave it at that.

 

[seitora]

@chronodekar

There actually is a website for that. How Long to Beat, with crowdsourced entries of how long it takes to play a game, both on just the 'main game' and the completionist. Obviously, the more popular a game is, the better an estimate you'll get. So Cosmic Star Heroine is an average of 12 hours to beat, and 16 hours to complete all content.

The Letter - Horror Visual Novel

That subtitle lol.

As you can guess from the title, this is indeed a VN, and it indeed has horror elements. I can't comment on if the horror part becomes pervasive later on. So far, in the first 6 hours, it's more under-the-radar unsettling atmosphere, with no jumpscares. There is a spirit, which occasionally appears every few scenes to rattle one of the characters, and a couple of very brief quick time events.

Otherwise, the bulk of the story takes place in the fictional city of Luxbourne, and a haunted historical manor just outside the city. Funny enough, I thought the city was supposed to be in western Europe, potentially around Luxembourg, but I guess it's actually set in the U.K. Anyways, it looks like the events of the game are supposed to take place over about 10 days, from late October to 1 November. There's 7 different 'main' characters. Thus far, the progression of the game actually has shown the viewpoint of one character going through the course of events of several days, then moving to a second character, rewinding several days, and going through more events from the new person's own perspective. Some events are repeated, just from a different person's PoV. I think that might technically be in media res, in a sense? Thus far, I'm in the middle, on the 4th person's view. I'm not sure if the game will end after the 7th person, or if it'll rotate back around again, or just turn into a free-for-all narrative switch then.

While the background art is nice, and the CGI scenes are good, there's just something about the character portraits that is a little bit...off. It feels kind of like those crappy mobile soap opera story games that were pumped out by the dozens in the 2010s, like Kardashians Hollywood Story. You know the ones. You might not have ever actually played one (and I sure didn't!), but you must have seen ad trailers. The portrait work is more in-depth and detailed, but somehow the different poses and such just kind of sets off the same sense I get from watching the trailers for the above mentioned mobile games.

Voice acting is really good. I haven't had any faults with it, and it genuinely does feel like Europe, with the British accents. There's a good separation of fancier accents for the upper-class characters, and less-fancy accents for those whom are working-class. Isabella, the local Filipina immigrant, certainly has a very charming VA. The only thing that threw me off a little bit at the start, which I don't really fault the game for at all, is that sometimes the VA doesn't quite line up with the text. I guess somebody combed through the script one last time after all the voicework was done to tighten up lines.

 

[seitora]

Cosmic Star Heroine

Finished the game. My in-game timer was pretty much 12 hours on the dot (11:59:51) on my last save before the last boss @chronodekar . Every sidequest in the game cleared, including all three optional superbosses. Well, technically there's five, but two of them are significantly weaker than the other three.

While I did enjoy the game, it felt like I was running on fumes the last few hours. I think a little bit of it is what I mentioned about pacing. At first, it was nice to have the game move quick, but near the end, the fact I was basically always in a battle was getting to be a drag. There was just about nothing to break up the monotony, in a way that even old-school JRPGs usually had even a little bit to break things up. There's a weird scaling of monster HP vs damage, too. Early-game fights could be cleared in a few turns, while late-game fights dragged on a lot longer, as enemies basically all became HP sponges. I was able to figure out a few ability combinations to increase my damage output with the new skills I learned as my party leveled up, but it meant I was still spending a lot more time per fight.

I'm vaguely reminded of my commentary from playing South Park: The Fractured But Whole a year and change ago. The Stick of Truth had fairly quick-paced fights, where you could be done in under a minute. Fractured But Whole, as the sequel, changed out the rote RPG fightfor a more in-depth system with more characters in an encounter, and battles generally ran to five minutes because of the grid-based strategy RPG set-up. However, it didn't drastically reduce the amount of fights or grinding required compared to Stick of Truth. CSH isn't anything like an SRPG, but I think the same commentary on Fractured But Whole applies here: the battles stop being fun when it becomes a chore to take so long and set-up an ability combination. In CSH's case, it's worse, because there's nothing in between fights.

Of note is that I played on Agent difficulty, which is the second of four difficulty settings. Enemies get tougher on each difficulty setting. If I was willing to invest more time and play a higher difficulty setting, I would probably be able to explore the intricacies of the abilities and set-up different combinations for each set of enemies, depending on their weaknesses and techniques. However, it didn't draw me in enough to commit to that kind of time!

What else? My five cents is that there still is some nice user-friendly features. First off, once you clear a group of enemies on any given dungeon map, they never will reappear. So if you need to backtrack through a dungeon, you don't have to go through the fights again. There's an optional menu choice to re-fight mobs to grind for EXP, but you're not forced to clear enemies out again and again every time you go through an area. You can save literally anywhere. HP is completely restored after each battle, so there's no need to carry around healing items or heal up after battle (though the game is certainly balanced around you starting at full HP every encounter!).

 

[chronodekar]

It says something unflattering about an RPG game's battle system when repeated battles feel like a chore and not entertainment. Thanks for the commentary @seitora !

-chronodekar

 

[seitora]

I try lol. I seem to be one of the rare people who posts in-depth thoughts on the stuff he plays ha

The Letter - Horror Visual Novel

I finished the game, after about 16 hours. Then I've since done 3 more runs, and have plans to do a few more. This game doesn't really have 'routes' in the manner of a traditional romance VN, but it does have a significant amount of choices that can be made. Most of these are ones that increase or decrease the relationship counters between characters, which can affect ending. Some of them are character-specific 'bad ends', where the character in question gets killed or basically put away for the rest of the game until the ending. Then there are a handful that will alter the flow of events for the next part of their episode, or significantly later on. These are more than just little alterations to the lines, but can open up entirely different subplots and have significant ramifications later on.

What's actually impressive is just how cohesive this is. There is a sort of 'final confrontation' in the game, where you can have all 7 characters, or as few as 2 characters able to get to it (mostly) unharmed. The ending isn't just a matter of 'the characters do the same rote actions as before, just now more or less people are alive', but significantly changes depending on who is around still, and how dead/incapacitated characters went out. I can speak from experience on that, having gone through 4 runs already, hah.

Re:voice acting, as mentioned in my previous post. Something that I find impressive is how much is allowed of the diction. There's no careful, meticulous, eloquent speaking of every line. Character speech is actually allowed to stumble over words, stutter, and infrequently repeat themselves. Also, the person who plays the manchild character, Luke, absolutely kills it dead. Granted, he gets the lines to be a giant ham, but he does it well.

I'm actually a little surprised at how higher-budget this VN seems to be, yet I've seen just about no real discussion of it online. Lots of CGs, reasonably well-plotted and quasi-in media res narrative, and full English VA.

 

[Jimbobob5536]

I'd be playing Elden Ring right now, if the delivery of my copy wasn't delayed by weather.

UPS tracking is saying I won't get it 'til Monday.

Damn.