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The Arcade: INSERT COIN

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Over the past week or so, I started Monstro in Kingdom Hearts Final Mix, finished the quests in the Lands of Lord British and Lands of the Feudal Lords in Ultima I after grinding to near max stats in the signposts and the Castle of Lord British quest (half the quests increase your strength) because yolo, started Final Fantasy I PSX's Easy Mode in my therapist's waiting room this monday, and went from Cornelia to Melmond in roughly 2 hours (Normal Mode/NES grind was too much) today, and as for The 7th Saga, I got the Sky Rune after a battle with Lejes, saved the kids from Serpent/Louise, earning me the Moon Rune from Prosa, saved Blithem from Doros, getting the Light Rune, and I just have the Wizard Rune (神のアーク) left. I'm gonna grind a bit outside of Valenca first.

Also at 2-1: あみーご さばく (Amigo Desert) in Bonk's Adventure (PC Genjin but w/e), スタープラチナとつきすすめ2's secret exit in VIP5 and あくまのもり in 8 Powers, got to 8-2 in Mario Maker 3DS' Super Mario Challenge, and sometimes I boot up Mario Maker 2 to play online stages, but I'm too lazy to 100% story mode or work on my own. #smrpg{:D}

EDIT: Made it to 4-1: ひろびろ さばく (The Great Desert) in Bonk's Adventure. #smrpg{y}

Originally posted by Y.Y.
Oh, it's ok. I'm not too worried about it.
While I sometimes think about the Switch Lite, and how I could probably buy it by saving enough money, I feel like I'm have a lot of bigger priorities right now, so while it is a bit of a bummer in some moments, I know that I need to get some more important stuff out of the way first. (Like buying a drawing tablet and taking studies more seriously).

That's valid. Never get discouraged when trying to get better at drawing! Magi brought up some channels like Deep Blizzard, Saito Naoki and Manga Materials for good art tutorials, but I also have to suggest Proko and Croquis Cafe (can't link, it's figure drawing videos, thus, nude models. They're on Vimeo, I believe), I don't use CC as much as I should but it should help you quite a bit! Line of Action also has some nice nude and clothed model photos (some of the clothed models also coming in younger ages) for gesture drawing as well.

Originally posted by Y.Y.
Um... anyway, about Tales of Phantasia, I did play that many years ago, but I barely remember much other than the great visuals and music.

It's kind of a Star Ocean without the whole extraterrestrial aspect (since Star Ocean likes to stick too close to medieval aesthetics for the planets that make up its main settings sadly) and also a bit longer, I believe. Depending on what one feels about Star Ocean, that can be an ill omen, but it's really good.

Originally posted by Y.Y.
Also, recently I've been playing Fortune Street DS Dragon Quest x Mario, and I still love how this game is a perfect mixture of joy and anger, like, I don't play competitive games at all, but this gives me a glimpse of it, it's like it has been carefully made to play with your emotions. It's not completely luck-based, but it's not something that you can play without planning and trying out a bit of strategy either, and that's what consistently can make it so fun and frustrating at the same time. lol

I've had games that had made me angry all throughout my life, but I don't know how many can stack up to this one, but it's not a lot, at least not so easily. Probably exactly because of the mixture of it being luck-based and the CPU being really easy to insult, if you know what I mean. They can get so lucky and screw you over super easily.

Fortune Street games are really mean, aren't they? lol
At least, I think that's what I heard.
HackPortsASM"Uploader"

I recently played through Braid, which is a weird (in a mind screwy kind of way) puzzle platformer where the player character has time manipulation powers (which works like built-in emulator rewind function) and each world does a little something slightly different with it. IMO world 5 is the most difficult to collect all puzzle pieces cuz its gimmick is creating a shadowy doppelganger of yourself that copies your recent movements every time you rewind time, and that kinda reminds me of a similar mechanic in some puzzles in Talos Principle.

Also started playing Singularity, which also involves time manipulation, tho not nearly in quite the same way as Braid, tho one of the TMD upgrades kinda reminds me of the gimmick of world 6 in Braid. That's where their similarities end, as Singularity is a first-person shooter with the occasional puzzle and survival horror elements. In addition to conventional FPS weapons your TMD can restore or age certain objects and make enemies quickly age into death. There's also an upgrade that functions like Half-Life 2's gravity gun. Still decently challenging (but perfectly manageable) even on easy difficulty. The segment where you go back in time to save that one scientist right after acquiring the TMD (as well as the preceding combat segments) might be an example of early game hell.
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Recently completed Astral Chain. I had my typical "Platinum Games" problems with it that I already had with Bayonetta. That is, I just couldn't figure out the dodge timing for the life of me. It seemed like dodging required almost frame-perfect timing for even the most basic enemies, which of course frustarted me.

That being said, I actually ended up enjoying the game more than Bayonetta for the simple fact that it had more layers to it. Not only were there more ways of approaching combat, some of which shifted the focus away from having to be great a dodging, but the gameplay itself also had multiple layers to it. Bayonetta was pretty much pure action with only few and short breaks inbetween, whereas Astral Chain makes you explore sometimes and even lets you do sidequests. I also like how on the lower difficulties, Astral Chain doesn't even hand out ranks to you. This annoyed me so immensely in Bayonetta. Even on the lower difficulties, I was really bad, and the game was just like "haha, you're so bad, man, you didn't even get bronze medal despite playing on normal". That honestly just made me frustrated with the game. Astral Chain doesn't hand out ranks until you start playing on harder difficulties, and even then, it seems way more lenient. Like, you can actually lose lifes and use items and still get the best rank with some luck. Overall, this made me feel les overwhelmed by the game, though I do have to say when combat got serious, it still somtimes frustrated me.

One thing I wasn't a big fan of was the astral plane. I mean, it started out interesting and I liked the concept of it. It was a place that also introduced a few puzzle and platform elements alongside the combat ones. I was totally fine with that. What I didn't like about it was that it appeared in every single chapter, multiple times per chapter even, and it alwasys looked exactly the same. Basically, take the shrines from Breath of the World, but with even less variation in its visuals. It got boring fast.

Another thing I really, really didn't like was the silent protagonist. This really is not the kind of game that should have one. It doesn't benefit from one at all. The game doesn't even have an online multiplayer, and yet for some reason, they thought it was a good idea to have a silent, customizable main character. It's made even worse by the fact that the whole story revolves very personally around the main character, so it just feels out of place. To add insult to injury, there actually exists full voice acting for your player character in the game, but you only get to hear it if you don't play as them. You get the choice between a boy and a girl in the beginning, and the one you didn't pick appears as a fully voice-acted character in the game. I really can't imagine what rationale they could have possibly had for making them silent, but it just doesn't work at all for me. It's not as offensively bad as the hero in Dragon Quest XI was, but still very high up there.

Ironically, while the multi-facetted gameplay did make the game a lot more enjoyable for me, I also think it makes it a lot less replayable. That's because all of the chapters get really, really long and sometimes even feel like they drag on and on and on. Bayonetta, with its combat focus, is so fast-paced that you can probably get through the entire game very quickly and thus replay it more easily (well, that is, if you enjoy the game in the first place). Astral Chain felt so long and slow at some points that I don't really feel like ever replaying it.

Overall, this was a game that I really enjoyed playing through once, but I don't have much of a desire to ever go back to it.
Feel free to visit my website/blog - it's updated rarely, but it looks pretty cool!
Got through most of Chapter 3: 国王のあかし in Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes, might grind to upgrade my gear again; am grinding to get as much magic as my White and Red Wizard can after getting the best equipment I could get in stores in Final Fantasy I PSX's Easy Mode (they fucking beefed up the bosses what the fuck) and I beat Ys I Chronicles+ yesterday because I dunno. Also started Ys II Chronicles+, currently grinding at Rasteenie Mine.

If I had to say something about em it'd be like. LoH1 is a very run of the mill 80s turn based RPG? It has a neat story about a young prince, teaming up with a resistance to take back the kingdoms of the world of Iselhasa from an evil regent who killed the prince's father. I'm not understanding the story 100% but it makes me wanna learn more Japanese, so.

Final Fantasy I PSX, would be the best version simply for retaining the Vancian Magic system, but they Had To Fucking Beef Up Enemy Stats. Like if they saved that for a Hard Mode, I'd be down, but it's kind of dumb? And I dunno, something feels off about how Easy Mode gives you so many shots for each magic level, making managing it kind of meaningless. It's okay if you're more of a casual gamer, but I dunno, I feel like it ruins the integrity of the game. I'd just lowered enemy and boss stats, alongside bigger EXP and Gil drops.

Ys I is a good game, please go play it. My one complaint is that Dark Fact's final battle in Chronicles has so many particle effects it's kind of hard to see where Adol is going which is Bad because you can get owned pretty hard by the floor vaporizing spell which can also vaporize you or just restrict you to part of the platform.
HackPortsASM"Uploader"

Originally posted by Sokobansolver
Also started playing Singularity

And the ending is such a mind-screw.
Renko has to to kill himself to prevent himself from rescuing Demichev from the burning building so he doesn't rise to power because apparently he shouldn't have done that.
Of course the plot as a whole is already a mind-screw since it involves time travel and 1955 bleeding into 2010.
Originally posted by Sokobansolver
The segment where you go back in time to save that one scientist right after acquiring the TMD

Even after finishing the game, I still ended up dying more times on that section alone than any other point in the rest of the game (including where you first encounter the Phase Ticks). Of course, I didn't have the auto-cannon yet.
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Replaying the original Etrian Odyssey for the first time in over a decade. It's just as stupid as I remember it, and I still love it.
After mulling it over (and also cuz it was on sale) I decided to try Planet Coaster. It kinda feels like an (actually good) RCT4. It looks way prettier than RCT3, possibly almost on the level of No Limits 2. The coaster editor in particular kinda reminds me of RCT3's a bit except for not being nearly as grid-based and allowing you to edit by angle rather than having to pick from buttons representing a specific handful of pitch, roll, or turning angles, tho still nowhere near as robust as NL2.
You know what's funny? There's an achievement for guest bowling (crashing the party). When a coaster train flies off the track and into guests, some of the guests will fly upward like ragdolls and other guests in the vicinity will cheer when the coaster cars hit the ground. When you drop a coaster train onto a full queue, the guests in the queue just duck for some reason.
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Started Final Fantasy XIV's free trial (Light data center, Twintania server, EU) and Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst through the Ephinea private server. They're fun I guess. Just gotta be careful not to get sucked into these games.

Went with a Hellsguard Roe and an orange HUcast respectively. My Roegadyn has blond long hair, moustache and chin hair, as well as dark skin, while my HUcast, I went and gave him a bit of a gachimuchi♂ build (okay, stocky but tall, fine). Roe!Koba is kind of a mix of me and Leomon, HUcast!Koba is just what I'd like to look like as an android.

Other than those two helldumps, continuing Dragon Slayer: Legend of Heroes, slowly but surely. Becoming really fond of this game. There's a lot of love put into it. God bless Yoshio Kiya. Currently speaking to a fisherman at Jord to try and find a Sealass that likely swallowed the Golden Key that was dumped oversea by the dipshit pirate captain Bo'Ard.
HackPortsASM"Uploader"

i started lunar the silver star and im at reza p.s. fuck victor ireland

edit: i'm at chapter 4 in dragon slayer: the legend of heroes and i'm at baznune/havlok fart fart fart
HackPortsASM"Uploader"

Luigi's Mansion 3 unfortunately doesn't attempt to capture the cool atmosphere of the original, but it's still a fun game. I've played for a few hours and just gotten to the fourth floor. Pretty solid so far, even if some of the room designs are reused too much.
Started Dragon Slayer (1, not Legend of Heroes), PC88, ver. Level 2.0 and I'm almost at the end of Phase 1 of 20 (Phase K; 1-9, A-K). Save unlocks for a phase once you have at least 50000 EXP so I took the chance to save for now and continue later. Each phase (level) seems to take up to an hour or so?

Meanwhile I made it to Meryod in Lunar: The Silver Star, grinding for equipment again.
HackPortsASM"Uploader"

In the last two weeks, I have played a few different hacks.

I finished the relatively easy Kaizo hack Snoman's Land after taking a break from it; it was okay, but wasn't very interesting. It was only "another kaizo hack" to me.

I made a whole bunch of progress in VLDC8, but unfortunately I had left off right before the dreadful Variety Path. Everything after that was pretty smooth, and I quickly got all of the exits needed to reach the secret levels. I have yet to finish those, but they should be pretty fun. Overall, VLDC8 has been enjoyable.

I order to get myself acquainted with the JUMP Team's style, I jokingly decided to play some of YUMP, their lowest-rated hack hosted on the site as of now. I played around 35% of it, and I didn't like it. There were one or two good levels, but everything else was unenjoyable. I'm not sure if anyone likes YUMP (there are probably some people), but it isn't for me.

After playing some of YUMP, I decided to start JUMP. I want to 100-% complete JUMP and JUMP 1/2, and perhaps YUMP 2 if I'm not "JUMP-ed out" by the time I'm finished with the first two I mentioned.

Anyways, I started JUMP and am currently tackling the levels in the star world. I have 37 exits right now. The hack so far has been good but not great, although I'm hoping that it gets better. World 1 had solid design but was rather bland, and the only level that I liked in it was Bastion in Blue. World 2 was a little better, but there were some rather bland levels in there as well. I liked Euphoric Mushroom Backyard, Roy's Terrible Sadistic Castle, Suspicious Warehouse, Aquiferic Pressure and Back to the Future. (However, I'm not sure if the last few are considered World 2 levels.) I played a little bit of World 3A and reached the World 4 level UNDER CONSTRUCTION, but I haven't played the second half of 3A yet so I don't have a consensus on it as of now. I'm currently working on the levels in the star world, which have been pretty good so far. Baseball Mountain (by lolyoshi) is my favorite level so far, and Disco Dance Party and Chains of Atrophy were fun but difficult levels. I'm going to start playing Cryophobia Cavern next, but the author is Jolpengammler so I'm rather worried. I haven't liked the three levels that I played that they made, and their star world level is probably going to be much more difficult. On another note, I'd like to bring up the overworld, which is probably my favorite. I'm looking forward to playing more!
I forgot how much I absolutely love Disagaea 4. I find it way more fun than Disgaea 5 despite—and almost because of—its comparative lack of polish.
Finished all the sub stories in Yakuza Kiwami 2 a few days ago, which means that for now, I've done all I wanted to. I want to do Clan Creator some day and maybe some more of the completion list - but I know for sure I am NOT going to do true 100% + all achievements. I would come to hate the game if I tried to do that. With that said, I had a ton of fun with the game. Next is Yakuza 3, but since I don't have a PS4 for the Remaster, I'd have to play the PS3 version. I don't know when I'll get it but I plan to at some point. I guess I could play 0 but I sort of want to save it for later.

And with Kiwami 2 finished, I moved on to the Sega CD version of Popful Mail. I've been playing it in small chunks but I've been enjoying it. It's annoying though how the camera tends to not show you what's in front of you when you're moving so you have to take it slow or risk getting hit by an enemy you have no chance of reacting to. The music is alright, but nothing special. The graphics and cutscenes don't look all that bad though. The color palette has been pretty dull though. Lots of muddy greens and browns.

And I've been doing a clean up in New Super Mario Bros U. I'm at the very last leg of it, in Superstar Road, beating the levels there and taking their star coins. The game's fine, but it's not the greatest game ever. Also disappointing Nintendo is still reusing NSMBWii music. The songs aren't bad, but something new would be nice! There are new songs in the game though, but a lot of them are just copy pasted from NSMBWii

Edit: FUCK YES Yakuza 3-6 on Steam eventually!!!!!!!!
>Mark danced crazy!
Backloggery MyAnimeList
I've grinded out Donkey Kong on NES as of late. The game starts to repeat at it's max difficulty on the 7th round (or 19th level) and that's exactly what I managed to hit today. Feels good.

I'm gonna see if I wanna take this further or not. These high score games are really fun in times where productivity has been low.
Started playing Dragon Quest 11 S recently and now I'm already 46 hours in and loving the game. I've just got the
6 orbs and am about to head to the World Tree.

Turn-based combat is a lot of fun and I just love the symphonic soundtrack. Glad I waited for the Definitive Edition.
This is the second DQ game I've ever played with the other being DQ8 on the PS2.
I'm playing the PC version, 60 FPS looks so good! #smw{<3}
Although, the framerate in
Gondolia
does drop a significant amount (went from 100+ FPS to around 50!)
Oh, yeah, right. I have ordered a new controller for my Atari 2600 (yes I got one during my hiatus) because the one that came packaged didn't, uh, work.

Ms. Pac Man is surprisingly great on the system. Of course it's not the arcade or 4th generation console version by a long shot but it didn't need to be. It's kinda interesting to have 4 difficulty modes and try to hit certain milestones which reach higher every time.

I understand how 80s kids survived long days now, they just huddled behind their CRT and grabbed a stack of Atari carts. It's great to experience that sorta fun myself now.
Recently completed Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. I sure have a lot to say about this game, but I'll try to keep myself short here.
haha, as if I even knew how to do that... 😂

I already loved the first Hyrule Warriors, with hundreds of hours invested into it. Literally the only thing about it I didn't enjoy all that much was the story. It was appropriate for what the game was trying to be - a celebration of Zelda, thus including characters from many different games and timelines - but that unfortunately made the story wild and chaotic, and as a result, not very great in my eyes. I actually ended up having most fun with the game's adventure mode, against my expectations.

Naturally, I was kinda excited for Age of Calamity. A new game based on the same gameplay style, but with a canonical (?), more focussed story and the potential for some refinements to the gameplay. In addition to that, putting focus on some events of the Breath of the Wild storyline that most players were interested in. Making a new Hyrule Warriors as a Breath of the Wild prequel really was the perfect opportunity.

So after completing the game, what do I actually think about it? Well, in some ways, I got what I was hoping for, and in other ways, I didn't. Generally speaking, I do think the game is an improvement over the first Hyrule Warriors, but there were some aspects I wasn't fully satisfied with, so let me go into detail.

First of all the gameplay. I do think that in most ways, the gameplay has improved compared to the first game. There's now way more different ways of attacking an enemy's weak point. Of course you can still just wait for them to expose it or use specific items at specific times. The first improvement already starts here, because most enemies will now actually respond to multiple items and get into the stances where you can use those items more often, so just from what that alone, it's already easier to attack a weak point and there's less waiting. For example Lynel's have three different attacks that can be countered with items, as well as having other attacks that regularly leave their weak points exposed for a while. On top of that, there's also some new methods, though. You can attack an enemy's head, which will always do weak point damage (but is difficult to do with most characters), you can use elemental magic, which will always expose an enemy's weak point gauge and even make it more vulnerable if it's the right element, and, my favorite addition, you can dodge attacks with perfect timing. Taken directly from Breath of the Wild, doing this will put the game into slow-motion and allow you to deal hefty damage to an enemy's weak point gauge. This is probably my favorite addition to the game, because not only does it add a great risk and reward mechanic to the game, but it also allows you to counter every single attack if you're good enough. All of these improvements combined make for a battle system that's way more skill-based and requires way less waiting. I like this, because bigger enemies in the first Hyrule Warriors could really become quite tedious to fight. Bosses were absolutely terribly to fight in that game, because they all just had a single weakness and tended to never expose it when you need them to.

Another notable improvement is the way items are used in the game. Instead of hectically switching through them with the D-Pad and then using them with a button, you now hold down a shoulder button and press a face button to use them. This allows you to easily access any item at any time, which in turn just made me use them all that much for. In the first game, switching items was so annoying that I just never used them if I didn't have to, but here, you can use any item whenever you want, so I actually used them all the time. This also ties into my first point of making weak point gauge's easier to destroy.

Another minor improvement is that checkpoints now also exist for side missions. The absence of this could be really frustrating in the first game's adventure mode, where you could be forced to replay an entire 15-minute mission because of a minor mistake. That's no longer the case here. However, all of the checkpoints are now automatic and activate whenever you complete certain tasks. There is no longer any manual saving. This can be impractical if the checkpoints activate at inconvenient times. For example, one reoccuring annoyance was the checkpoint activating right as I was facing away from my next target, so every time I'd restart from the checkpoint I'd have to first turn around my camera. Still, I'd rather have slightly annoying, unpredictable checkpoints than to have no checkpoints at all.

Now for a few things I'm kinda mixed about. First of all, bases. In general, I do like how bases got a redesign. They no longer have to fixed-size, sqaure-shaped rooms. I think the first game looked quite ugly due to this limitation. Instead, they can now pretty much just be any vaguely enclosed area, which makes for way more organic-looking maps. The game in general looks a lot better and, in my opinion, quite pretty. I know that some people will disagree here, but I personally found the game nice to look at. However, one thing that's kinda weird about bases is that they barely play a role in this game. There seems to be very little benefit from stealing an enemy's base, and enemies also don't seem to try stealing your own bases any longer. In my entire hard mode playthrough, I don't think they've done this even a single time. In general, stealing bases only really seems to be an objective for missions this time around and can more or less be ignored aside from that. However, I say my feelings on this are only "mixed" because I'm not sure if it really impacts the game in a negative way. I guess in theory, it's an element of strategy that plays less of a role now, but in practice, I don't think the game got any less fun to play because of this.

Another thing I'm mixed on is the game no longer featuring any form of teleportation. The original one had the Ocarina for this, which you could use to fly to owl statues across the map. This one doesn't have anything like that. If you need to get from point A to point B, you have no other options aside from running all the way. Again, though, my feelings on this are only "mixed", because I don't feel like it impcated the game negatively. In fact, I didn't even notice this feature was missing until very late into the game, and it was while doing some completely optional stuff. I think just being able to always control multiple characters already helps more than the teleportation ever did, and the design of missions requires geting from point A to point B quickly less often.

Finally, time to talk talk about some aspects of the gameplay that I mostly have negative feelings on. First of all, Korok seeds. I didn't like them, I don't think they did much for the game. I already wasn't a big fan of Skultullas in the first game, but at least there were only two of them per mission, and getting them could be a bit challenging, since they only appeared for a limited time and were often kinda well hidden. Koroks in Age of Calamity are basically less exciting version of that. There's way more of them per map, but they aren't cleverly hidden, and they aren't challenging to get. You pretty much just have to walk up to suspicious spots on the map and press A. At least the reward for finding them is more useful, but aside from that, I could do without them. Finding Koroks in Breath of the Wild was fun, but that was an exploration-based game, and the Koroks were often in clever places and even had puzzles tied to them. Age of Calamity, on the other hand, is such a hectic game that I just don't even feel like running around the map to search for Koroks.

Next, the playable characters. Age of Calamity somehow manages to once again have a respectable amount of them, and all of them are very unique, with probably even more different gameplay styles than in the first game. While at first this sounds like a positive (because there's more variation), it didn't actually end up being one for me. While more variation in theory is nice, the characters in this game all felt so different that I just never felt comfortable playing the majority of them, since I could never quite grasp how to play them. Link and Impa were the only ones that I really liked playing. Aside from that, there were a couple more that I could do just fine with, but also few others that I absolutely couldn't get into. Some characters really felt like a struggle. This wouldn't be too much of a problem if the game didn't once again force you to play as specific characters every now and then, especially for the side missions. I already disliked this aspect in the first game, and it didn't really change this time around.

And talking about side missions, one thing I disliked was that once again, the game tried its best to make these as annoying as possible. The first game was already quite good at that, but here it feels even worse, because they're actually integrated into the main game and have some side plots tied to them. I already mentioned forcing you to play as certain characters, but another thing I really disliked was that 95% of them were on a time limit. I can deal with playing as characters I don't like, I can even deal with playing as underleveled characters, but having to do all of that on a time limit is where it starts to feel like bullshit. Suddenly, most of these missions are no longer about skill, but just about making the attack stat of your characters high enough so that they can deal enough damage within the time limit. I even had to cheese some missions once again by using co-op mode, because I just couldn't see myself beating them with whatever character the game wanted me to play. The most annoying thing about this is that the time limit doesn't even make sense from a story perspective on 90% of these missions. The game is usually like "Kill these three random monsters in five minutes. What, it took you five minutes and one second? Too bad, we'll just revive all three of them, because unless you can do it in five minutes, we'd rather just get killed by them!". While I did complete all the side missions in the game, they did get quite frustrating, especially in the second half of the game.

I think with that, I have said everything I had to say about the gameplay, so now it's time to address the elephant in the room and talk about the story, but for that, I'll have to get into major spoilers, so be warned.

I'm kinda disappointed to say that the game's story did not quite deliver what Nintendo promised us. Pretty much every single trailer advertised it as a prequel to Breath of the Wild, but that was just a blatant lie. While the game starts out as pretty much just that, around the half-way point it starts pulling a Hyrule Warriors and resorts to the same timeline chaos shenanigans as the first game. So the little guardian that is travelling around with Link and his companions? It turns out to have time-travelling powers. The first half of the game pretty much just plays out like a Breath of the Wild prequel, and to me, that was the most enjoyable part of the story, but just as the four champions are about to die, the little guardian opens four time portals, calling their successors from the future (Riju, Yunobo, Teba and Sidon) to save them, thus creating an alternate timeline where, ultimately, the champions don't die and the calamity is defeated, thus preventing the events from Breath of the Wild from happening in the first place.

I just... don't really like how all of this played out. Final Fantasy VII Remake got a lot of criticism for even just implying an alternate timeline, which didn't bother me too much because we haven't seen the consequences of that yet, but Hyrule Warriors literally created an entire new timeline where everyone survives, and I haven't heard anyone talk about it. In all fairness, I was trying my best to avoid spoilers for the game, so I might have just missed all the discussions, but still, it seems weird.

Really, what bothers me most about this is just all the false advertisement. As I said, the game was advertised as a Breath of the Wild prequel to us, and even the name "Age of Calamity" sounds like it was referring to the events that lead to Breath of the Wild.

I can kinda understand why they did this. They just wanted to have more canonical playable characters in the game, so they came up with these time travel shenanigans to put characters from the future in there. I just don't think it was worth it. All of these characters in particular play like ass, so I don't think they really enrich the gameplay, and I really would have prefered a more serious take on a Warriors game, with an emotional story line putting some light on the events leading to BotW. Instead, they decided to go the Hyrule Warriors route once again and just put as many characters as possible into the game. I don't think this was necessary, as the first Hyrule Warriors was already a celebration of the Zelda franchise, hence Age of Calamity didn't need to be one as well. I guess if nothing else, I'm just disappointed about this missed opportunity, because I doubt we'll ever get another Breath of the Wild prequel again.

Now let me make this clear. I don't absolutely hate the story. I do think it lead to some fun interactions, especially between Urbosa and Riju and between Mipha and Sidon. It's also interesting to see a happier take on the BotW universe where even Zelda and Roahm managed to work out their problems and where the Yiga clan ended up becoming good. Doing this alternate time line stuff also allowed for the game to include an entirely new end boss, which I think was kinda cool. However, ultimately, I do think I would have preferred for this game to be an actual prequel.


So yeah, those are my thoughts on Age of Calamity. Overall, I liked the game a lot and think it was an improvement over the first game. If you liked that one, I also recommend giving this one a try as you will likely enjoy it. Just be aware that not all aspects of the game might turn out the way you expect them to.

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Okay, everything below will be a lot shorter, I promised.

I recently completed Forgotton Anne and really enjoyed it. A beautiful, hand-animated adventure game with some strong Ghibli vibes and interesting characters that will easily kill a few hours. The gameplay feels a bit tanky and slow, probably as a result of the smooth animations, but it wasn't to the point where they hindered my enjoyment of the game, I managed to get used to it.

A few words on the game's ending:
I didn't really like it too much. You basically get the choice between two endings. The choice is more or less presented to you as a choice between a more negative and a more positive ending. However, in practice, one ending turns out to be quite the "nothing" ending with seemingly no point whatsoever, and the other ending turns out to be quite sad. The game doesn't really seem to have a good ending, and I think that's a bummer, because in my opinion it definitely should have. It's just not a game that I think should have ended on such a negative note.


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Started playing Ori and the Will of the Wips. Metroidvanias are probably my absolute favorite genre of games, and this is just another really great one. I'm amazed by how great the game looks on Switch, all while still running at 60 FPS. Not much else to say here, but I'm really enjoying the game. Give it a try if you like Metroidvanias.

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Yesterday I started playing Vitamin Connection with my girlfriend. It's a really fun multiplayer game! Basically, both of you control the same vitamin capsule, with one player controlling its position and the other player controlling its rotation. There's also a laser beam, where one player controls the trigger and the other player controls the aim. Basically, it's a game about coordination and trying to understand one another blindly. It's really silly, and it's really fun. All while having some great vibes and featuring a nice cartoony art style and a funky Japanese soundtrack. These tracks will immediately get stuck in your head.
Feel free to visit my website/blog - it's updated rarely, but it looks pretty cool!
@RPG Hacker
Ori is a super fun game, I hope you enjoy it. The controls are super fluid and you can do some crazy stuff with certain abilities if you get a good hold of them. It's pretty fascinating actually.
Хуй войне!

桐生会FOREVER #ThankYouCoco / Rest in peace, Near, thank you for everything
Yeah, absolutely! It's a super fun game so far.

I love how, in a very "Super Metroid" fashion, the game actually lets you take a lot of shortcuts if you're skilled enough. In Metroid, that was accomplished via wall jumps, shinesparks and bomb jumps, which allowed you to reach stuff way ahead of getting Space Jump, but only via difficult tricks. In this game, it's a combination of multiple different abilities that all improve your mobility, without immediately breaking the game. For example, arrows actually emit light and to some degree allow you to run through dark areas even before getting the light ability. The triple jump is an entirely optional ability that gives you just that tiny little bit of extra height, letting you reach a few areas ahead of time. The "fling shot" move can also be used in all kinds of places by just bringing an enemy with you. I especially love how the fire ball doubles as both a projectile attack as well as an object to fling yourself from.

To me, these are all the qualities of a great Metroidvania: not being too restrictive and letting you take meaningful (but non game-breaking) shortcuts if you're skilled enough. That also makes these games great for speedrunning.

I played the first Ori with my girlfriend and a friend a few years ago, and it only stuck in my mind as "kinda good" game, not more, but maybe that's just because we played it in a group, and I think Metroidvanias might actually be more enjoyable alone. So I don't know, maybe after completing Will of the Wisps, I might return to the Blind Forest and give it another shot as well, now that I have it on Switch.
Feel free to visit my website/blog - it's updated rarely, but it looks pretty cool!
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