What games are you playing 2: The revenge

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
@seitora ,

I assume this game? https://store.steampowered.com/app/460430/The_Letter__Horror_Visual_Novel/

at CDN $22 .. hmm... I don't know. After reading your review, I might give it a shot at a sale or something. But looking at the store page? For a visual novel, the art style is not anime-enough for me. At least, the point I'm making is that when looking at a visual novel, I'm so accustomed to seeing anime/manga that most other art-styles are usually a turn-off. Not always, but usually.

Odd. Looking at https://steampricehistory.com/app/460430 the game was on the 2020 winter sale, but not last year? Darn. :(

-chronodekar
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
@chronodekar That is indeed it. I got it for $4 CAD from a Fanatical bundle back in early January, so it might pop up again in a future bundle.

Hard agree with you for the visual style, though. It's not ugly, but after years of playing VNs that almost exclusively were anime-style, that art shift is jarring to me, too. Heck, even the story idea I have in my head that would fit a VN perfectly would probably also be done that way. Even that studio's other two VNs are in anime style, hah. I made that comparison earlier that for some reason it gave me a reminder of phone games, and the reason for that may be because phone games also trend that way, though they're a lot uglier.


The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky (FC)

I've had this game in my backlog for a number of years, so I figured I may as well get to it. I've polished a few Falcom games off in the last two years, so what's one more. This one is straight up RPG fare, so it's a departure from the action and action RPGs I've been going through (Ys, Zwei!, and Tokyo Xanadu). Even if I like this well enough to play the series, it's not going to be all at once! I had to look up when the game was originally released in Japan, and wasn't at all surprised by the 2004 date.

Since it's a Falcom game, and having heard the reputation of this series, I have a guide on hand for this one. I don't want to miss anything in this game D: I am playing on Normal mode, for what it's worth, which is actually the easiest of 3 difficulty settings.

Anyways, I am enjoying it relatively so far. Obviously, given the mention above that it was first released in 2004, there's a lot of polish missing. Battles are turn-based, but with the added caveat that all allies and enemies are on a grid-based field. Depending on your range, you can hit multiple enemies with one special attack at once, buff several allies at once, or get out of range of a foe's attack. Turn order also is weighted by speed and what you did the previous turn (merely moving around prioritises your next turn, compared to if you actually attacked), so it's possible to move twice in a row. I've played enough games like this that it is easy to pick it up, just with its own little quirks.

Story hasn't really opened up much, and is still small in scale. I just finished getting to the quest where I have to retrieve something from the local mine. Estelle is...something. Dim-witted, genki girl, dense, ditzy, and any other number of descriptors. At least she's still better so far than Joshua, who has the standard aloof I-have-a-hidden-past-that-I'm-not-going-to-mention personality.

I'm playing the Steam version. The DirectX8 configuration was stuttering lots when I tried it, but the normal launcher has been A-OK for me. A couple of mundane graphical glitches have popped up, but that has been about it.

Also, I finished up after about 6 hours of playing today. About 5 hours 40 minutes in, I found out that the R2 button runs the game in turbospeed, about 3x speed? This means my character movement on the overworld moves a lot quicker, and fights and attack/magic animations move a lot quicker. I could have used that a lot earlier. Press F for respect.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
@silentorphan

It's funny you should say that. I put a backlog a while ago of all the games from anything prior to the PS4/One/Switch that I would eventually like to play in my lifetime (or replay, though that's a small fraction of the list). However, since then, this is actually only the second game I can knock off the list, since I would have put it under PSP, while everything else I've played in the last few months has been released in the last 5 years. Considering this is the first game in a three-part series (and then there's four Cold Steel games after that, and two Crossbell games that haven't been released in English yet, and then two more games after that planned), I've got my time cut out for me if I attempt the entire series. I am definitely hoping for some more QoL stuff in the future. Like skipping story scenes if I do a NG+.

Now finished Chapter 1. Bose is nice, with a lot larger open area, and more areas and dungeons overall. The enemies definitely got me out of my comfort zone a little, too. There's more status impairments, more elemental weaknesses, more monsters to be careful about watching with self-destruction on death, and so on.

I'm only playing on Normal mode, so it's not like the enemies or bosses have been tough, but goddamn is Joshua's Flicker broken. Sure, it does use some Craft Points, but against the monster extermination quests or boss battles, I get 6 uses off if I go in with a full bar (technically more than that since it also fills up from the damage you cause with it). For those unaware or who have forgotten, Flicker hits in a straight line, causes damage, and delays the turn for any target hit (AT delay in the game's parlance). For the final fight of Chapter 1, I got two out of the three enemies lined up with Flicker. Literally every time I hit them with it, it pushed their turns back behind Joshua's next move, so they never got a chance to act again. My other three party members have Area of Effect CP attacks, which are really useful as well, but not quite as broken in the right circumstances as Flicker has been.

But damn. Falcom game. Until I got to the last area of Chapter 1, everything aside from Shining Poms were only giving me 1 XP. In the last area, the enemies were finally giving me 3 or 4XP each. Again, good thing I'm playing on Normal, I guess. The drop rates from some of the enemies are also really low. I've probably killed ~50 Shining Poms between both areas by now, and still no T-Anklets that protect against Petrify and Freeze.

Maybe it's blasphemy for me to say it, but the music so far in Trails in the Sky has been fairly...uninspiring. Lacklustre, even. One or two tracks I like, and the rest of them are just boring.

Storywise, eh. Still fairly vanilla. I guess I'll get to see if that changes in the next few chapters.
I find the catfight between Josette and Estelle amusing, anyways. Since the game is making hints about Joshua, I'll make the prediction right now that he's nobility of some sorts, possibly from a fallen house and/or Erebonian royalty. There's nothing really specifically towards that direction, but given how much media I've consumed in my lifetime, I'd put better-than-even odds on that kind of plot twist.
 

Jimbobob5536

Well-Known Member
Have you been checking every chest again after you open them?

It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure they each have their own flavor text for doing so.

Just one of those examples of Falcom putting massive effort into the weirdest places. I liked it.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Have you been checking every chest again after you open them?

It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure they each have their own flavor text for doing so.

Just one of those examples of Falcom putting massive effort into the weirdest places. I liked it.
I have been. Halfway through chapter 2 now, and I'm pretty sure I missed one chest text. It might be the single chest in the prologue that's missable, or one in Emelas Tower. I got the Hide Jumpsuit for certain from the missable chest, but I may have forgotten to check for the text after. I'm not too worried since I'm decently certain the checked text stuff carries over to a NG+ so I can just get the last one
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky (FC)

Finished Chapter 2 now. Making some decent headway.

Characters in-game can use magic, but they don't have set spells. Instead, you equip the local magic MacGuffins, Orbments, and each character can equip 6 of them. Most Orbment grant usage of at least one spell while they are equipped. However, if you equip certain Orbments lined up next to each other, you can get some exclusive new spells that are more powerful or have special effects. It feels like a case of 'Guide Dang It', however. I don't remember seeing anything in-game that gives you help on finding these exclusive spells, just a couple of mentions that they exist. Some of them are significantly powerful enough that they hugely help progress through the game, too.
 

Zetas

Lurking upon the deep
Going to be playing Skyrim again and have decided to have a few self made rules.

1) No crafted equipment used other than dragon bone or scale until i "donate" 100k gold to the top of the Throat of the World.
2)No abuse of Alchemy and/ or Enchantment until a 300k donation is made.
3) No abuse of creation club or mod methods of gaining gold for no work (The farming CC, and a couple mods i have that have the option).
I'm going to exclude the auto-sell option from LotD from number 3 due to it getting you less that half the items worth.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky (FC)

Finished Chapter 3. Definitely moving quickly towards end-game here. Funny story about a scene near the end of the chapter, right before the Chapter 4 title card.
I was commenting on the TFF Discord server that I was a little disappointed when I got Zin because he was the last playable character of the game. This was because I was expecting to be able to use Princess Klaudia, a character briefly mentioned early in the game as the granddaughter of the ruling queen, because JRPGs love the trope of having young princesses or princes as a part of your party. Then at the end of this chapter is a scene that basically all but says Kloe is Klaudia in disguise.

I finally got new S-Breaks for my characters. Joshua's new S-Break, Black Fang, is basically also broken just like Eagle Eye and Flicker were. I was able to wipe out Shining Poms with ease in my last level/sepith grind for the chapter thanks to Black Fang. As I mentioned before, I'm playing Normal, so there might have been other techniques like status-afflicting or stat-reducing spells that would be a godsend on Nightmare. However, since I blow through most enemies fairly easy on Normal once I get leveled up, I haven't had to experiment too far.

Some cute scenes in this chapter. Like Estelle finally realising Joshua is, in fact, a male, lol
 
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seitora

Well-Known Member
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky (FC)

Finished the game. All Achievements obtained.

Some notes for anyone who chooses to play through and also wants to get all Achievements on Steam. The GameFAQs guide suggests 164 chests, but the Steam ticker says 163. I think one of the ones in the Prologue was patched out to not count? I noticed I was behind by 1 as of the Prologue, and thought it may have been the missable chest in Mistwald Forest. I knew I had the item from it, since it's one of only two Battle Suits in the game, but thought maybe I had missed the extra message. I'm too lazy to load a save file right now, but are there two or three chests in the sewers in Rolent? The Steam ticker says 'non-story chests', so if it's two chests, it may not be counting the chest you have to open to progress.

Also, there's no need for a NG+ to get both Ultimate weapons. Grab one, reload a save, grab the other. This is only something I can confirm on Steam. No idea if this is the case on the console versions.

This was a lot longer than the previous chapters, and a good thing, too. I clocked in at about 14 hours for this chapter, with 35 for the Prologue and Chapters 1-3, and 49 hours in total. Probably 6-8 hours chasing around flavour text is included in that. Turbo Mode is a godsend. Probably sliced close to 10 hours off by itself.

The boss battle against Lorentz is totally a bunch of bullshit, though. I had the speed-up quartz on all three of my members, along with Clock EX for 50%+ speed, and he would still be able to move fast enough to use an Art and get off a Teara before I could interrupt him. Heck, sometimes he'd be able to do an attack, followed by starting an Art, followed by casting that Art. What was infuriating was that even with Hit 3 on each party member, there were times where I would miss 3 times in a row. Hard Break. Miss. Sturm. Miss. Kaempfer. Miss. Over. And over. And over again. I made use of Schera's AT+ technique a few times, but only really when her turn was right before Lorentz', or for a couple of strategic points. Oddly enough, what helped me finally whittle his HP down wasn't trying to time for critical hits, but rather blocking him off from getting the HP restoration turn bonuses.

Amusingly enough, I was mentioning on the TFF Discord server again once the ancient ruins dungeon got revealed that clearly Professor Alba had to be the big bad, because he was an archaeologist and the final dungeon was right up his alley, and because of conservation of characters. It's annoying sometimes when I'm too clued in to tropes.

Finally, the narrative may say Estelle x Joshua, but my inner depraved character says Estelle x Kloe with Josette as a third wheel for lesbian catfights

Anyways. I have SC added to my wishlist. It may be on sale in the middle of this month on Steam, actually. This also makes my...fourth Falcom game that I've finished in the last 18 months. The first Zwei, Ys VI, Tokyo Xanadu EX+, then this, all wildly different games. Probably at least SC and another Ys by the end of this year, I would imagine.
 
Re: spoilers: Remember that the game is from Falcom. The company's entire schtick, with both the Legends and Ys franchises, is embracing tropes whole-heartedly and trying to show that coloring within the lines can be a good thing if it's done very well. (For the most part, they succeed, and with very little stagnation too.)

Heck, at least Square Enix and Nintendo aren't afraid to try to mix things up a little with Dragon Quest and Zelda, respectively, even when those franchises also do the "Tropes Are Tools" and "Nostalgia Is Your Friend" selling points.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Re: spoilers: Remember that the game is from Falcom. The company's entire schtick, with both the Legends and Ys franchises, is embracing tropes whole-heartedly and trying to show that coloring within the lines can be a good thing if it's done very well. (For the most part, they succeed, and with very little stagnation too.)

Heck, at least Square Enix and Nintendo aren't afraid to try to mix things up a little with Dragon Quest and Zelda, respectively, even when those franchises also do the "Tropes Are Tools" and "Nostalgia Is Your Friend" selling points.
Yeah, I mean, I definitely enjoyed the game. And I'll play SC, too, though it won't be right away. I've been trying to space out games of the same genre lately so I don't burn out from video games trying to play too much of one thing.

The Letter - Horror Visual Novel

I've done about another 10-12 runs in the last couple of weeks since breaking in other games, picking away at some new character and game endings, and getting a lot of the other unpicked text options chose as well. I've completely 100% the first two characters, Isabella and Hannah, for all their possible branches as well.

It's definitely been an enjoyable game so far, but the completionist in me will probably make the last little bit a drag. It does do a good job of providing events from the perspective of different characters, so when you get to the route of the person who's a huge asshole, he's still a huge asshole, but at least you're seeing things from his perspective :p

One of the annoying things is that the game occasionally doesn't recognise read text at common points if you've taken a different branch to get there. It's not every time, but it pops up enough that it definitely slows things down. Most of the time, it just stops you if there are a few new lines in a given common scene, so it's annoying when it does occur to read lines. Also, at least on the Steam version, there's a bug that will force-exit the game at the very end of the second-last character route and onwards if you've done a certain combination of choices and try to skip scenes again. So that has slowed me down.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
The Letter - Horror Visual Novel

And finished, with everything 100%. I wouldn't recommend it after a certain point. Of the 7 playable characters, it's possible for all of them to die throughout the game depending on your choice. The 7th character's route has a lot of branches depending on what combination of the first 6 characters die. Then there's more combinations added in depending on whether or not the 2nd character dies, is possessed, or is alive but splits up, or stays together with her husband. The 6th character route also has some more branches depending on if the 1st character dies, or merely gets put into a coma that takes her out for the rest of the game. Altogether, to try to get every piece of dialogue, where most of it it just repeats after a while but counts as a different 'branch' in the branching tree that counts towards completion, is somewhere between 150-200 separate runs. Exhausting, obviously. To get everything that's really substantially different is probably 30-35 hours, but trying for true completion is an easy 45-50 hours. That's with using the handy Steam guides for a flowchart, too.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Highway Blossoms

Yet another one of the hundred VNs I'm still digging myself out of. This is a kinetic (in other words, no dialogue options, just a straight readthrough) novel that works its way up to a lesbian romance near the end. The setting is...mid-to-late 2000s, with two girls who go on a roadtrip in an RV motorhome across the U.S. southwest, from New Mexico up through to California. On the way, they get caught up in a miniature gold rush craze as somebody's memoirs are published who had supposedly hidden four separate boxes of gold across the southwest. The game actually has the girls visit several interesting landmarks and parks between New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada. Add a few more places onto my bucket list if I ever go on a road trip down that way. Characterisation is reasonable, though I guess I feel like none of the characters ever quite get pushed out of their comfort zone. Also, a lot of surprisingly pretty CGs, considering how much games of this length try to scrimp on it.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Ys: The Oath in Felghana

For some reason, I was thinking Oath in Felghana was an entirely new release in the series, but I guess it's actually a remake of Ys III. I guess this makes V the only SNES-era Ys that never had a remake that was localised, then. IV was remade and also localised as Memories of Celceta.

So far, while I still enjoy the game, it's...really not impressive. I felt it a little bit in Ark of Napishtim too, but the controls feel unoptimised. There's something janky about aiming with the control stick, where Adol occasionally fires in a 45 degree angle away from wherever I've pointed him to, so I ended up playing one boss fight with the D-Pad instead of control stick. There's still that inexplicable 'slowing down' movement of Adol when he goes up or down stairs, which has thrown my timing off for jumps more than a few times.

While I doubt the Ys games are ever really 'open-world' in the true sense of the game, this one feels a lot more straightforward and rigid, with very little freedom thus far. I've just completed the lava dungeon, so 3-5 bosses deep depending on how you count them. Given the wind magic effects, I assume this means there is no dash jump function in this game, which can only be a positive. Seriously, fuck the dash jump. Remembering trying to pull it off in Napishtim still gives me nightmares. In turn, love the dash. I need that in a bad way to speed the game up, and obviously I set auto-dash function on.

One last thing. This game may very well have the worst English voice acting I've ever heard, and I was able to tolerate stuff like Baten Kaitos. Some of it is alright, but some of the voices are downright grating.
 

Oni_Rinku

Knower of Stuff
I'm going back through the Dragon Age series, starting with Origins. Lets see how much I remember from my last playthrough!
Last time playing:
Origins: 2011
DA2: 2014
DAI: 2020
Side note, I've never played any of the DLC for Origins, so that will be a first for me.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Ys: The Oath in Felghana

Making steady progress. I've gotten through the Abandoned Mine (the second dungeon in the Tigray Quarry) and the Elderm Mountains now. The boss in the Elderm Mountains was really easy. Probably because I spent half an hour power-levelling up 3 levels at a spot just a few screens prior, since there was a nice grinding spot haha. I've been keeping up on the sidequests, too. Thank goodness the escort missions aren't too tedious in this game.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Dear Esther: Landmark Edition

Well, that was a...game. Well, it's a walking simulator, and it's one of the earliest ones. I understand the general gist of the story from the letters that get read out over the course of the game, but not going to bother with a second replay to try and piece things together better and decide if the Narrator is there in real life or if it's just a dream sequence where he's dying or in serious surgery.

Although it's certainly not a traditional game so traditional critiques aren't quite as valid, I really do wish that there was a quicker walking speed. Goddamn it's slow.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Ys: The Oath in Felghana

Finished the game on Normal mode at level 54. What a goddamn shitty final boss. Just gimmick after gimmick. I wonder if we're not just under a collective delusion that the Ys games are good and they're not, or something. I think it's that the dungeon-crawling is fun, and I truly enjoy that, but for whatever reason, the boss design seems to be EXTREMELY hit-and-miss. Some of the bosses are a joy to fight, and then we get the ones that are just endless projectile spam that makes me think I'm playing a danmaku game instead of an action-platformer. Off the top of my head, the next annoying boss would be the tank boss (the last one in the castle proper), with the limited hit box for damaging it and it constantly moving around.

The Dash mechanic...it's nice to be able to move around quickly, but I really do wish it was just on 100% of the time, instead of it cutting off when you're not fulfilling the arbitrary condition to keep dashing. There's little as aggravating as Adol just...suddenly coming to a complete crawl while trying to run from another boss projectile in a boss fight.


A little skit that formed in my head while level-grinding in the last corridor before the final bosses:

Ys Big Bad: Muwahaha, you cannot defeat me Adol, for you are only level 51!
Adol: doesn't say anything, but lets the narrator inform the Big Bad he is actually level 54, and also add an 'omae wa mo shindeiru' for good measure
Ys Big Bad: NANI?!

Ah, Falcom levelling mechanics.

For some reason, I don't particularly hate Elena, even though she is the type of heroine I should hate most — the heroine with no real good qualities besides that she's nice and she's related to somebody important in driving the narrative, has no combat abilities but CONSTANTLY keeps running off and getting kidnapped.

I cleared Ark of Napishtim on Catastrophe Nightmare Mode after playing a normal first run, because grinding out gold for Item Seeds actually made it quicker than level grinding once you got through the early difficulty hump. But I'm definitely not going to bother with a second run for this one.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Ara Fell: Enhanced Edition

Another one of those 10-20 JRPG-inspired indies that can probably be beaten in under 20 hours. Ancient lore, modern day low-fantasy style setting, the world is dying, girl gets an artifact and has to save everything, you've heard the whole spiel. That said, I have been enjoying the game. Lita, the protagonist, is a female shorty redheaded sour-and-sweet tomboy. It's like they designed her to get (almost) all of my favorite traits together. She's a genuinely nice protagonist, but almost everyone gets their 'lol ur short' digs in at her, and she snarks just as well back. 6 hours in, and probably about a third of the way through? I've just undone the stone curse on the townspeople.

Enemy encounters are done on the overworld through running into monsters instead of random battles. Turn-based battles with lots of buffs and debuffs, regenerating MP through battle, and HP/MP both recover completely between battles. It's been just versatile enough so far to stay fairly enjoyable, though a little of a drag after a while when I play too many hours straight. Instead of buying new equipment, you upgrade your current equipment through a relatively low-key crafting mechanic, using material you can forage, excavate, win killing monsters, and occasionally buy (flowers, minerals, and animal hides being the main common ingredients, and then of course some rare materials).

The biggest thing that keeps the combat 'unique' is that at each level up, you're actually allowed to slot your stat gains, and it's not 1 or 2 points, but 10 points per level. Strength, Defense, Magic, and Agility. What I've found useful so far is to boost Agility just enough so both my characters get the first turn in each battle, and just enough Magic so I can get a specific number and order of spells in a fight before I run out of MP. Basically that order of spells will always be enough to wipe out the common mobs. Everything else goes into Attack or Defense, mostly Attack.
 

Karnath

Well-Known Member
So I now reach a conundrum, I've been playing Rune Factory 5 and really enjoying myself, but on the other hand Chrono Cross just came out for the Switch. The problem is that Chrono Cross is one of my top 3 favourite games of all time, so do I put aside this new game I'm quite enjoying, or do I wait to replay one of my favourite games now that it's easily accessible.
 
I'd suggest finishing what you're currently playing.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
So I now reach a conundrum, I've been playing Rune Factory 5 and really enjoying myself, but on the other hand Chrono Cross just came out for the Switch. The problem is that Chrono Cross is one of my top 3 favourite games of all time, so do I put aside this new game I'm quite enjoying, or do I wait to replay one of my favourite games now that it's easily accessible.
As somebody with an enormous backlog that has been slowly trying to whittle away at them, I've found that it is possible to balance several games at a time, so you can go ahead and do it. However, I also hold myself to a strict shortlist of games, so I only rotate a new game in after I've completed one on my shortlist, so I never end up with 50 different games with a few hours of progress in and being paralysed by the choice of too many games to play.

Of course, that's also why I post so many times in the last couple of years in this topic. Forcing myself to post on an ongoing basis actually helps me keep on track on finishing my games :p
 
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