Another crazy week, this time both at work and personal life, but at least this time I managed to sneak some gaming progress.

Playing Senren * Banka!

Completed the first chapter, but I imagine I’m still quite early in the game since I haven’t even met the last of the main heroines.

Story continues to be fun slice-of-life mixed with some supernatural elements. Favorite character is definitely Mako, the mischievous ninja bodyguard.

Playing Sea of Stars!

I usually avoid playing two longer story-driven games at the same time, but needed something with a bit more gameplay to help me get through this week, so I decided to start this one as well.

Loving the pixel art and the Mario-RPG style battle system with timed attacks. Too early to comment on the story asides from the fact that the flashback near the beginning dragged at bit too much for my tastes.

As for characters, the “Warrior Cook” Garl is great but the two main protagonists still feel kinda bland, let’s hope we see more of them as the game progresses.

How long did it take you to beat Little Kitty, Big City? It looks really fun.

Didn’t track it but less than 5h. Really short game.

How are you liking Drainus compared to Lodoss War and Touhou? I know they are different genres, but still.

Liking it less than the metroidvanias, but as you said it’s a very different genre so it’s hard to compare. Still a great game, I even recommended it to a Gradius-loving friend of mine.

Finished Little Kitty, Big City!

This was a fun little game. It takes a bit of inspiration of Untitled Goose Game as you play another small animal messing around in a city.

However, this one has a lot more focus on exploration and less on trolling humans. There’s a lot of places to climb/crawl, plenty of shiny things and hats to collect, plus some animals with funny dialogue to talk around in the city.

It definitely could use some polish - camera, controls and graphics all feel a bit janky, but it’s not too detrimental to the experience.

Playing Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice, part of the Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy!

Slow progress this week, but I did finish the second case which was the good old “someone from the Wright agency gets accused of murder” case we get every game.

And now it looks like we’re going back to Phoenix’s misadventures in Khura’in. I wonder if Maya will manage to get in trouble again this game?

Playing Drainus!

A shoot 'em up from Team Ladybug, the same developer as the the Lodoss War and Touhou metroidvanias I played recently.

I feel this one is inspired by the Gradius games, with you being able to configure your loadout with different options for attack, options, missiles and shields, and also the ability to choose the order you unlock these.

However, there’s some interesting twists to that formula. Upgrades are unlocked as you play, and you can adjust your loadout mid-game. When you get hit you lose one upgrade level, and you only die if you get hit while at zero upgrades. There’s a “reflect shield” mechanic that lest you absorb energy attacks and send them back to the enemies.

There’s also a storyline of sorts, but I can’t comment much on that as I’m still fairly early in the game.

Either saving on media costs (25GB disc instead of 100GB disc, maybe 1 disc instead of 2 if the game is too big), or even having more time to work on the game.

Developer makes sure the early stages are properly tested, send the disc for manufacturing including only those, use the manufacturing time to tweak/bugfix/optimize more stuff the rest of the game.

I haven’t heard of any disc game not being able to be played.

There’s a number of games that don’t come with the whole thing on disk/cart, usually including only the early stages and the rest needs to be downloaded.

Hogwarts Legacy and Jedi Survivor are two fairly recent examples.

The only question I have is what’s gonna happen as game discs are just becoming an access token to download the game and its updates.

That’s a big concern. There’s communities trying to document which games are complete on the media and can be played from start to end without updates (so no major game-breaking bugs or huge performance issues) like this one:

https://www.doesitplay.org/

I’m also part of a FB group that collects cartridge information for Switch games, to document if there’s revisions with all updates included.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CEABCBrPv1tWf89hSZqUunK0JW-sQo8XpxuvZhdtHQs/edit#gid=0

Finished Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge!

Another old-school beat’em up I picked up alongside SOR4, and another great one. Kinda easy compared to other games in the genre, but I still had a lot of fun and it’s going to be a good option to play with more casual friends.

Did a single-player run and will play again in coop when opportunity appears.

Finished LUNARiA -Virtualized Moonchild-!

This game’s biggest weakness is it’s first half - it starts as a fairly generic romance story between a brooding boy and a happy girl, with only a little sci-fi and action mixed in to spice things up. The e-sports segments were definitely my favorite parts in this half of the game.

However, once I reached the second half and the main plot started rolling I could not stop reading. It went in a very different direction from what I expected, and the main twist hit me hard and got me fully invested in the story.

Overall a good and short kinetic novel, but don’t go into this expecting a lot of focus on sci-fi - that element of the story is mostly a backdrop for the romance and action.

Playing Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice, part of the Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy!

Finally being able to get the 5th and 6th games physically in english was a nice motivation for me to pick up this bundle, and I decided to go straight for the last game, since it’s the only Ace Attorney game available in english I had never finished.

So far I finished the first case, the new “Divination” is a nice twist on the previous formula. From the looks of the second case we’ll be going back and forth between cases with Phoenix using this new mechanic and more traditional case Apollo/Athena, sounds like a good way to keep things interesting.

A LOT of positive reviews for this one, including a 10/10 for Destructoid. https://www.destructoid.com/reviews/review-animal-well/

Definitely interested in it, just not sure if I should pick the Limited Run Physical version.

Finished Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown!

Quite impressed with this one, a really nice metroidvania from Ubisoft. The platforming controls are superb, the abilites you unlock make it even more fun over time, and the combat is solid.

Definitely not a game for casual players (unless you don’t mind turning on assists), there’s some tricky plataforming sections and nasty difficulty spikes in some bosses, but the main complaint I have about the game is the limited amount of fast travel spots, the map is HUGE and backtracking can be a pain in the ass. Other than that and a few minor bugs I don’t have many bad things to say about this one, definitely play it if you like the genre.

Minor bonus for Switch players: Looks like this version is the only one that does not require an Ubisoft account, it’s going to ask for it when you open the game but you can just press a button to skip.

Finished Streets of Rage 4!

There’s been more opportunities for coop play with friends recently, so I decided to pick this one. However, I could not wait and already did a quick single-player run through story mode using Blaze.

Really fun old-school beat’em up, I recommend it for fans of the genre.

Playing LUNARiA -Virtualized Moonchild-!

Was too focused on other games this week, just resumed it today, so no significant progress.

The review chart is hilarious.

Doubt Sony or the developer expected this would happen.

Edit [May/04, 14h UTC]: Updated chart. More than 70k negative reviews already.

Playing LUNARiA -Virtualized Moonchild-!

Slow progress, currenty going through chapter 5. As I predicted last week there’s some trouble brewing with the cute AI girl, though they started earlier than I expected. Let’s see how things develop from here on.

Playing Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown!

This is definitely a Ubisoft game, ran into a bug that forced me to close+reopen the game only a few hours in - I accidentally “skipped” a boss because it glitched and threw me past a closed door into the next area 😅, but luckily it didn’t autosave so I just had to replay a that particular section. I also ran into a few more smaller gliches, nothing gamebreaking but definitely annoying when I’m coming from bug-free experiences in similar games from small developers.

As for the game, it’s pretty good! Nice exploration, plataforming is fantastic, and I’m enjoying the puzzles. Not a big fan of the combat system, but it’s more a matter of preferences than a problem with the game, it has a lot of focus on the parrying mechanic which is not something I enjoy.

Could definitely use more fast travel and save spots, though at least you don’t lose anything when you die, you go back to the last checkpoint keeping everything including the map and collectibles you may have picked up. One really neat QOL feature is the ability to take screenshots and attach them to the map, makes it easier for you to remember “why didn’t I go this path” or “which powerup did I need to go that direction”.

I really missed this series, glad to see it back even though the first half of S2 was kinda of a mess (in particular in pacing).

And this episode felt much better paced and directed than the previous cour, so I’m hopeful it’ll be a fun ride.

The VNs go like this:

Original Trilogy:

The Fruit of Grisaia -> The Labyrinth of Grisaia -> The Eden of Grisaia

They all got anime adaptations with the same names. I hear they are a fun watch but cut a LOT of content, in particular from the first game (12 episodes for a VN with an average length of 75h on VNDB).

Phantom Trigger:

Grisaia: Phantom Trigger Vol. 1 -> Vol. 2 -> Vol. 3 -> Vol. 4 -> Vol. 5 -> Vol. 5.5 -> Vol. 6 -> Vol. 7 -> Vol. 8

Takes place in the same universe but it’s an indepentent story, it only contains a few references to the original trilogy.

From the descriptions on Anilist, I believe the first movie adapted the first two volumes of the VN, and the second movie adapted the third volume.

So, it seems they learned from Crystar and improved combat in the sequel

That’s my impression as well.

which means I should play the first one first

To be perfectly honest I’m not sure I’ll be recommending Crystar when I’m done with it.

The rhythm part is very “mild” on this one, timings are very lenient and most characters don’t have any major penalties for “missing” the beat, you simply stand still intead of moving and lose your combo multiplier.

There’s even a character that ignores the rhythm part and makes the game fully turn-based.

And yes, the game is definitely tough.

Finished Another Code: Recollection!

Early impressions in my previous post.

The first game is quite decent despite it’s age. It’s short and focused, and that works really well in its favor - there’s little downtime and filler, you’re almost all the time with just Ashley and “D” so it’ easier to get attached to them, the plot is simple but moves fast, you’re constantly finding new puzzles so you never get bored.

Now, the second game… well, that one is a mess. Too many characters for something this short, too much running around doing nothing, and too many irrelevant side-plots that keep messing the pace of the game. Also, I didn’t count them but I have a distinct impression that it has less puzzles than the first game despite being 1h longer - even if you’re nice enough to count the endless “door hacking” QTEs as “puzzles”.

It’s kinda weird how disconnected the first and second halves of the game feel, almost like completely different games. The first half starts with you running around getting involved into minor issues until settling into helping a boy called Matthew find out what happened with his father who disappeared 5 years ago. They clearly tried to give him an equivalent role to “D” in this game, but I don’t think it works very well because you simply don’t spend enough time with him to get equally attached.

Then on the second half Matthew leaves and the story becomes completely focused on Ashley’s family. Story-wise I like this part a lot more, but the gameplay takes a nosedive with the areas being increadibly boring, almost no puzzles and exploration - you’re pretty much just running forward doing QTEs and watching story sections with some rare breaks. All of this section feels rushed and unfinished.

Overall it took me around 5h for the first game and 6h for the second one.

Playing Crystar!

I enjoyed its “spiritual sequel” Crymachina quite a bit, so I decided to give this one a shot. And it’s kinda neat how different the two games play despite being games from the same developer with the same base idea for the gameplay loop.

Crymachina had faster-paced combat, and focused on smaller stages with less enemies on screen - but you had to be careful because enemies hit really hard and healing was quite limited. Crystar on the other hand has much slower-paced combat, bigger stages with a lot of enemies, but they are all individually weak mobs and only gets somewhat scary if you’re surrounded.

So far I’d say that I enjoyed Crymachina’s approach a lot more. The combat was more fun, and the shorter dungeons are (oddly enough) a positive - the long dungeons used in Crystar exacerbate a lot how repetitive the action sections are, and make the game kinda of a slog to go through.

I’m currently on Chapter 7, maybe I’ll be able to finish this one next week.

And the base game is on sale, you can pick both the game and DLC for less than $10. https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/crypt-of-the-necrodancer-nintendo-switch-edition-switch/

This game is amazing and I highly recommend it for anyone who likes roguelikes.

How long is the second Another Code game? About same as the first one?

Just finished it.

It’s not much longer, took me around 5h for the first game and 6h for the second one.

Finished Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights!

Early impressions in my previous post.

Overall a really good game, but it subscribes to the Hollow Knight “style” of Metroidvanias - dying is a constant part of the game, with some of the bosses and exploration sections in the latter half being frustratingly difficult.

I finished the game with 100% of the items, which besides a small number of tricky platforming sections was surprisingly easy to get. I also got all three endings.

Playing Another Code: Recollection!

I think it’s been almost 20 years since I played the DS version of the first game (Trace Memory), so I barely remembered anything about it. Which I guess is a good thing, because this remake does NOT have an option to start from the sequel.

The first game is a short (~5h) but fun point-and-click adventure. Puzzles aren’t as novel nowadays as they were back in the DS, but still solid, and the remake has a nice visual facelift, though there’s some inconsistency in quality with some environmental textures looking distractingly low-res. The story revolves around a girl named Ashley and the ghost of a boy nicknamed “D” who team up to explore a mansion in an isolated island trying to solve mysteries relating to Ashley’s family and find out the circunstances around “D”'s death.

I’m now playing the second game and so far it’s a bit underwhelming. :/ One of the main issues is that the game lacks focus - the first game immediately gives you a good reason to go into the mansion and explore, while the second one has you doing seemly random stuff for a few chapters before you start seeing what the plot will be about. Another issue is that the areas are bigger but empty, so there’s a lot more running around going from one place to another.

I finished Chapter 5 of the second game, which I think is around the midpoint? Expect to finish this one either today or tomorrow but we’ll see.

I’d argue it’s the opposite, EO games have so many interesting builds to try that they’re among the most replayable dungeon crawler games.