Recently completed Sakuna of Rice and Ruin. Very surprised by this game. It's a perfect example of what I would call a "hidden gem".
I basically picked up this game completely blindly. Didn't know anything about it beforehand, only randomly saw a single trailer and then stumbled over a physical version on Amazon. That was enough for me to think to myself "This actually looks kind of interesting, so why not give it a try". Definitely don't regret this decision, it very quickly turned out to be a really fun game.
Sakuna is a game with a farming component and a combat/exploration component. I assume you can compare it to games like Rune Factory, but I've never played one, so I could be wrong. In any case, where most games in this genre allow you to plant and farm many different things, this one is focussed entirely on rice. While this might sound boring at first, it's actually not, because the rice farming in this game goes really in-depth. It basically simulates an entire year's cycle of rice farming in all its details. Not gonna lie, I barely knew anything about rice farming before playing this game, so I can safely say it taught me quite a bit. There's so many things to do and so many little details that can influence your harvest that there's always something to do and that it never gets boring, and the longer you play the game, the more you understand and the better and better your harvest becomes. It's really satisfying to finally get a good harvest after one or two rather bad ones.
What I really love most about the rice farming is how it holds the entire game together, though. It not only ties into the story, but also directly into the gameplay. As in, the combat gameplay. Combat and exploration are the main ways in which you advance the plot in this game. However, you won't actually be able to make it very far early on, because Sakuna starts out rather weak. So how do you make her stronger? That's right, by planting rice! Rice farming is the only efficient way of boosting Sakuna's stats. Every time you harvest rice, her stats are increased, base on the quality of the harvest. Since you only harvest rice once per year (consisting of twelve in-game days), this gives an big incentive of doing well with the farming, since you don't want to wait such a long time only for a minor stat boost.
Though there's even more reasons to go for a good rice harvest. Rice also functions as one of your main currencies in the game. Being able to trade more rice means you can afford more expensive items. This means you're not only aiming for high quality rice, but also for a big harvest size. And on top of all that still, eating food also grants you temporary stat bonuses (such as health regenration), which will allow you to do even better during exploration. The combat is basically designed to be so difficult that it's difficult to explore very far without these bonuses, meaning you're generally expected to go exploring with a full belly only. It's definitely possible to do without, but some of the areas in the game get really big, so without at least health regeneration, you usually won't get very far. Now rice isn't the only food in the game, however, I'd say about 80% of recipes are in one way or another based on it. On top of that, rice is one of few ingredients in the game that doesn't expire, so harvesting a lot of is is definitely the best way of assuring you can always go exploring with health regeneration. In short, rice ties pretty closely into all facettes of the game, and I think that's why it works so well.
Now while the game is definitelly really good and a lot of fun, that doesn't necessarily mean I have no complaints. Naturally, there's a bunch of things that bothered me, and most of them are related to combat and exploration. Now while the game's combat definitely has a solid foundation and some good ideas, I have to say it feels very "off" a lot of times. I think what happened here is that a lot of times, the odds are stacked so much in favor of the enemies that the combat in its entirety can feel quite unsatisfying. To give a few examples: Pretty much all of Sakuna's attacks have gigantic animations, yet for some reaons really tiny hitboxes. This constantly leads to the frustrating situation where you clearly see your attack animation touching the enemy, yet nothing happens. It's outright awkward how close you have to get to enemies for some of those attacks to land. However, when enemies attack, it seems you only need to get even remotely close to their animation to take damage.
A similar thing can be observed with invulnerability frames. When Sakuna takes damage, she gets barely any invincibility at all, to a paint where if you get stuck between a group of enemies, they can fling you back and forth for a ridiculous amount of time without any chance of escaping. On the other hands, enemies often times get such a high amount of i-frames that it feels outright ridiculous. Basically, once they land on the ground, don't even think about attacking them again until their stand-up animation has finished completely, otherwise your attack will just go right through them. One of my favorite moves in the game was a special attack that dealt like maybe eight to ten consecutive hits, and you won't even believe how often I had not a single one of those hit an enemy, simply because of the ridiculous hitboxes and the absurd amount of i-frames enemies have. It outright feels broken at times. It's also very inconsistent. As I said, enemies have a ridiculous amount of i-frames, but only when you attack them directly. There is several moves in the game which let you fling enemies around, which I would consider a key gameplay element in combat, and when you fling one enemy into another, they apparently don't get any i-frames at all. Just because of this, catapulting enemies was basically my dominant strategy in the game. I just didn't want to deal with the i-frames, and flinging enemies also happened to deal a lot of damage.
A bunch of enemy types in the game were also really, really annoying. One of the biggest themes I've noticed in this regards were enemies with super quick movement, making it really difficult to hit. The early game already has a few of those (mainly birds and fishes), but then the second half of the game has enemies that just jump around so unpredictably that it gets outright annoying. This coupled with the small hitboxes and the high amount of i-frames means you will often see yourself just slashing at thin air, and yeah, it often becomes frustrating.
A final frustration, at least for me, came in the form of really ungenerous checkpoints. Basically, the game only gives you checkpoints whenever entering a "room", and since rooms in the game get really big towards the end, it means you will have to replay quite a lot of stuff whenever you die. And with some enemies being able to kill you in just a few hits (especially at night, where they're stronger), this will happen quite often. To make it just that tiny little bit worse, whenever you die during a boss battle, their cutscene plays again. Yeah, you can fast-forward through it, but that just shouldn't even be necessary. I mean, even the fact that there is a fast-forward in the first place is kind of annoying. Like, why a fast-forward and not a skip? Just to waste more time? Funnily enough, a cutscene skip actually exists in the game, but only for the final boss for some reason. Talking about the final boss, it actually is the worst offender in this regard. Not only does it replay its cutscene every time, but it also teleports you out of the boss room upon death, unlike all previous bosses. This means whenever you die, you're forced to sit through at least one two loading screens before you can attempt the battle again. Not only that, but the battle also has a small tutorial at the start, and this one is unskippable, so you will have to redo it every time you die. Incredibly annoying.
Now despite all of these frustrations, I wouldn't say combat was terrible, or even game-breaking. It took some getting used to, but aside from a few really frustrating sections and bosses in the game, I wouldn't say it was too much of a problem. Like, it worked, and flinging enemies into one another was also kind of satisfying. It's even possible that most of these frustrations were an intentional gameplay choice, to emphasize the importance of raising your stats via rice. I mean, if so, I'm not sure if that's necessarily the best way of accomplishing that, but it's at least a possibility that this was the idea.
Story-wise, I think the game turned out surprisingly well (you know, for a game that is all about farming rice). As I said, the farming ties into the story really well, and the game knows how to utilize this to hit the player where it hurts the most. Obviously I won't spoil anything here, but I was quite surprised a couple of times. I do have to admit that the game feels slightly padded towards the end (you will not only have to beat every boss multiple times, but will also have to replay a bunch of levels), but it didn't bother me all to much, since at least the story stayed interesting throughout all of that. All of the characters in the game were also really interesting. I loved how at the end of each day, when having dinner, all the characters would sit together and have a conversation, and all of them would have really detailed eating animations. Not only does the game display the actual food they're eating, but you can even observe their bowls slowly getting empty. If you keep one of their text boxes open, you can even prevent them from eating (as they'll be stuck in ther speaking animation), and as result, they finish their meal after everyone else. It's really neat little touch and made everything feel so authentic.
Overall, I really just had a lot of fun with this game and won't forget it. Recommend it to anyone who has remote interest in this genre.
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Recently played a little bit of Moving Out with my girlfriend. It's a really silly and fun little multiplayer game that never takes itself seriously and will definitely entertain you quite a bit, especially when playing with friends. It's the perfect multiplayer game when you don't need anything profound and deep, but just want some mindless fun.
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Started playing OMORI with my friends last week. Another game I picked up more or less blindly. So far, I'm enjoying it, but the pacing also feels a bit slow to me (though this could just be because I'm playing it with my friends and don't want them to get too bored, so maybe slower sections feel even more slow because of this). I definitely expected this to be a bit more on the horror side, but there's quite long stretches of just regular RPG gameplay (smiliar to games like Earthbound, I guess) before anything horror-related even happens, and then it usually doesn't last very long. Still, I'm very itrigued by the game so far, and maybe this pacing is just how these RPG Maker horror games usually play out. I haven't really played any of them myself yet, so I'm not sure. I don't really care much for the combat (which can make it feel like a drag sometimes), and I also think the game's interface can feel a bit clumsy (especially in battles, where it's difficult to know what's going on if you don't pay attention), but at least so far none of that is really so bad that it gets in the way. Basically, it's just something I can deal with because the game otherwise feels kinda promising.
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Started playing Stardew Valley on Switch today. Have had this game for quite a while, but always avoided starting it because... well, you probably know the reputation this game has. It's a game that is said to easily get you hooked for hundreds of hours once you start playing. I simply wasn't ready for that yet. Still not quite confident that I am now, but started to go ahead with it, anyways.
After a few hours of play, I haven't quite reached the point yet where I'm obsessed by it, but I definitely do see how there's quite a lot to do in the game. There's so muchs tuff that in-game days basically feel way to short to do it all. You go exploring for just a little bit, and the sun is already setting in-game. Nevertheless, I'm having fun so far. I loved playing Harvest Moon on the SNES, and this game definitely brings back some of that nostalgia.
It's kinda funny how I'm dropping from one farming simulation to another one. These games really aren't too great for my sleep schedule. I love to play games before sleeping, but in this genre in particular I have found that it's difficult to put down a game before finishing an in-game day, and since every day can easily take like ten minutes or so, you will often find yourself still playing these games past 2 AM or so before you finally force yourself to put them down. It's just one of those ways in which games fuck with our brains, because there's no logical reason for us to have to do everything in one sitting, but wanting to do so is hard-wired into our brains and difficult to prevent.
Feel free to visit my website/blog - it's updated rarely, but it looks pretty cool!
I basically picked up this game completely blindly. Didn't know anything about it beforehand, only randomly saw a single trailer and then stumbled over a physical version on Amazon. That was enough for me to think to myself "This actually looks kind of interesting, so why not give it a try". Definitely don't regret this decision, it very quickly turned out to be a really fun game.
Sakuna is a game with a farming component and a combat/exploration component. I assume you can compare it to games like Rune Factory, but I've never played one, so I could be wrong. In any case, where most games in this genre allow you to plant and farm many different things, this one is focussed entirely on rice. While this might sound boring at first, it's actually not, because the rice farming in this game goes really in-depth. It basically simulates an entire year's cycle of rice farming in all its details. Not gonna lie, I barely knew anything about rice farming before playing this game, so I can safely say it taught me quite a bit. There's so many things to do and so many little details that can influence your harvest that there's always something to do and that it never gets boring, and the longer you play the game, the more you understand and the better and better your harvest becomes. It's really satisfying to finally get a good harvest after one or two rather bad ones.
What I really love most about the rice farming is how it holds the entire game together, though. It not only ties into the story, but also directly into the gameplay. As in, the combat gameplay. Combat and exploration are the main ways in which you advance the plot in this game. However, you won't actually be able to make it very far early on, because Sakuna starts out rather weak. So how do you make her stronger? That's right, by planting rice! Rice farming is the only efficient way of boosting Sakuna's stats. Every time you harvest rice, her stats are increased, base on the quality of the harvest. Since you only harvest rice once per year (consisting of twelve in-game days), this gives an big incentive of doing well with the farming, since you don't want to wait such a long time only for a minor stat boost.
Though there's even more reasons to go for a good rice harvest. Rice also functions as one of your main currencies in the game. Being able to trade more rice means you can afford more expensive items. This means you're not only aiming for high quality rice, but also for a big harvest size. And on top of all that still, eating food also grants you temporary stat bonuses (such as health regenration), which will allow you to do even better during exploration. The combat is basically designed to be so difficult that it's difficult to explore very far without these bonuses, meaning you're generally expected to go exploring with a full belly only. It's definitely possible to do without, but some of the areas in the game get really big, so without at least health regeneration, you usually won't get very far. Now rice isn't the only food in the game, however, I'd say about 80% of recipes are in one way or another based on it. On top of that, rice is one of few ingredients in the game that doesn't expire, so harvesting a lot of is is definitely the best way of assuring you can always go exploring with health regeneration. In short, rice ties pretty closely into all facettes of the game, and I think that's why it works so well.
Now while the game is definitelly really good and a lot of fun, that doesn't necessarily mean I have no complaints. Naturally, there's a bunch of things that bothered me, and most of them are related to combat and exploration. Now while the game's combat definitely has a solid foundation and some good ideas, I have to say it feels very "off" a lot of times. I think what happened here is that a lot of times, the odds are stacked so much in favor of the enemies that the combat in its entirety can feel quite unsatisfying. To give a few examples: Pretty much all of Sakuna's attacks have gigantic animations, yet for some reaons really tiny hitboxes. This constantly leads to the frustrating situation where you clearly see your attack animation touching the enemy, yet nothing happens. It's outright awkward how close you have to get to enemies for some of those attacks to land. However, when enemies attack, it seems you only need to get even remotely close to their animation to take damage.
A similar thing can be observed with invulnerability frames. When Sakuna takes damage, she gets barely any invincibility at all, to a paint where if you get stuck between a group of enemies, they can fling you back and forth for a ridiculous amount of time without any chance of escaping. On the other hands, enemies often times get such a high amount of i-frames that it feels outright ridiculous. Basically, once they land on the ground, don't even think about attacking them again until their stand-up animation has finished completely, otherwise your attack will just go right through them. One of my favorite moves in the game was a special attack that dealt like maybe eight to ten consecutive hits, and you won't even believe how often I had not a single one of those hit an enemy, simply because of the ridiculous hitboxes and the absurd amount of i-frames enemies have. It outright feels broken at times. It's also very inconsistent. As I said, enemies have a ridiculous amount of i-frames, but only when you attack them directly. There is several moves in the game which let you fling enemies around, which I would consider a key gameplay element in combat, and when you fling one enemy into another, they apparently don't get any i-frames at all. Just because of this, catapulting enemies was basically my dominant strategy in the game. I just didn't want to deal with the i-frames, and flinging enemies also happened to deal a lot of damage.
A bunch of enemy types in the game were also really, really annoying. One of the biggest themes I've noticed in this regards were enemies with super quick movement, making it really difficult to hit. The early game already has a few of those (mainly birds and fishes), but then the second half of the game has enemies that just jump around so unpredictably that it gets outright annoying. This coupled with the small hitboxes and the high amount of i-frames means you will often see yourself just slashing at thin air, and yeah, it often becomes frustrating.
A final frustration, at least for me, came in the form of really ungenerous checkpoints. Basically, the game only gives you checkpoints whenever entering a "room", and since rooms in the game get really big towards the end, it means you will have to replay quite a lot of stuff whenever you die. And with some enemies being able to kill you in just a few hits (especially at night, where they're stronger), this will happen quite often. To make it just that tiny little bit worse, whenever you die during a boss battle, their cutscene plays again. Yeah, you can fast-forward through it, but that just shouldn't even be necessary. I mean, even the fact that there is a fast-forward in the first place is kind of annoying. Like, why a fast-forward and not a skip? Just to waste more time? Funnily enough, a cutscene skip actually exists in the game, but only for the final boss for some reason. Talking about the final boss, it actually is the worst offender in this regard. Not only does it replay its cutscene every time, but it also teleports you out of the boss room upon death, unlike all previous bosses. This means whenever you die, you're forced to sit through at least one two loading screens before you can attempt the battle again. Not only that, but the battle also has a small tutorial at the start, and this one is unskippable, so you will have to redo it every time you die. Incredibly annoying.
Now despite all of these frustrations, I wouldn't say combat was terrible, or even game-breaking. It took some getting used to, but aside from a few really frustrating sections and bosses in the game, I wouldn't say it was too much of a problem. Like, it worked, and flinging enemies into one another was also kind of satisfying. It's even possible that most of these frustrations were an intentional gameplay choice, to emphasize the importance of raising your stats via rice. I mean, if so, I'm not sure if that's necessarily the best way of accomplishing that, but it's at least a possibility that this was the idea.
Story-wise, I think the game turned out surprisingly well (you know, for a game that is all about farming rice). As I said, the farming ties into the story really well, and the game knows how to utilize this to hit the player where it hurts the most. Obviously I won't spoil anything here, but I was quite surprised a couple of times. I do have to admit that the game feels slightly padded towards the end (you will not only have to beat every boss multiple times, but will also have to replay a bunch of levels), but it didn't bother me all to much, since at least the story stayed interesting throughout all of that. All of the characters in the game were also really interesting. I loved how at the end of each day, when having dinner, all the characters would sit together and have a conversation, and all of them would have really detailed eating animations. Not only does the game display the actual food they're eating, but you can even observe their bowls slowly getting empty. If you keep one of their text boxes open, you can even prevent them from eating (as they'll be stuck in ther speaking animation), and as result, they finish their meal after everyone else. It's really neat little touch and made everything feel so authentic.
Overall, I really just had a lot of fun with this game and won't forget it. Recommend it to anyone who has remote interest in this genre.
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Recently played a little bit of Moving Out with my girlfriend. It's a really silly and fun little multiplayer game that never takes itself seriously and will definitely entertain you quite a bit, especially when playing with friends. It's the perfect multiplayer game when you don't need anything profound and deep, but just want some mindless fun.
--------------------------
Started playing OMORI with my friends last week. Another game I picked up more or less blindly. So far, I'm enjoying it, but the pacing also feels a bit slow to me (though this could just be because I'm playing it with my friends and don't want them to get too bored, so maybe slower sections feel even more slow because of this). I definitely expected this to be a bit more on the horror side, but there's quite long stretches of just regular RPG gameplay (smiliar to games like Earthbound, I guess) before anything horror-related even happens, and then it usually doesn't last very long. Still, I'm very itrigued by the game so far, and maybe this pacing is just how these RPG Maker horror games usually play out. I haven't really played any of them myself yet, so I'm not sure. I don't really care much for the combat (which can make it feel like a drag sometimes), and I also think the game's interface can feel a bit clumsy (especially in battles, where it's difficult to know what's going on if you don't pay attention), but at least so far none of that is really so bad that it gets in the way. Basically, it's just something I can deal with because the game otherwise feels kinda promising.
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Started playing Stardew Valley on Switch today. Have had this game for quite a while, but always avoided starting it because... well, you probably know the reputation this game has. It's a game that is said to easily get you hooked for hundreds of hours once you start playing. I simply wasn't ready for that yet. Still not quite confident that I am now, but started to go ahead with it, anyways.
After a few hours of play, I haven't quite reached the point yet where I'm obsessed by it, but I definitely do see how there's quite a lot to do in the game. There's so muchs tuff that in-game days basically feel way to short to do it all. You go exploring for just a little bit, and the sun is already setting in-game. Nevertheless, I'm having fun so far. I loved playing Harvest Moon on the SNES, and this game definitely brings back some of that nostalgia.
It's kinda funny how I'm dropping from one farming simulation to another one. These games really aren't too great for my sleep schedule. I love to play games before sleeping, but in this genre in particular I have found that it's difficult to put down a game before finishing an in-game day, and since every day can easily take like ten minutes or so, you will often find yourself still playing these games past 2 AM or so before you finally force yourself to put them down. It's just one of those ways in which games fuck with our brains, because there's no logical reason for us to have to do everything in one sitting, but wanting to do so is hard-wired into our brains and difficult to prevent.
Feel free to visit my website/blog - it's updated rarely, but it looks pretty cool!