"Blockbuster Sale" on the Nintendo eShop
Phelpssan @ Phelpssan @lemmy.world Posts 14Comments 347Joined 2 yr. ago
Phelpssan @ Phelpssan @lemmy.world
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347
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2 yr. ago
No, this one is much shorter, something around 20h.
I just didn't have the time to play a lot recently, weekends have been very busy.
Finished Grisaia Phantom Trigger 5.5 to 08.
For those unfamiliar with this series of Visual Novels I left a small explanation about it on the second half of a comment a few weeks ago.
Episode 07 ended up rather disappointing. Given it's the second-to-last episode and we already went through introductions for all the heroes and the main antagonist I was expecting the story to ramp up, but after the decent start with Shiori we go into the warzone and.... get even more setup, with a very late introduction of a bunch of smaller villains alongside the early stages of the war.
Then we start 08 and... somehow there's a brand-new PoV character? This late in the story? But this turns out to be one of the best parts of this VN as you read the grim tale of Patrick, a civilian among the enemy forces trying to survive as the war rages on. The story keeps switching between Patrick and the main character group for the first half, then switches back entirely to the main cast for the action-packed finale.
Overall a decent VN, but nothing exceptional. I wouldn't recommend it for someone starting with the genre as there's much better things to read, but it's a nice "confort food" read if you're a VN fan looking for something new.
GD Scans started catching up to the raws for Eiyuu to Kenja no Tensei Kon and I'm very happy about it.
Despite the somewhat generic premise this one has been consistently fun due to good character interactions and Elria's hilarious expressions. Only 6 chapters so far, so if you enjoy fantasy+romance stories you may want to take a look at this one.
Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE
Really wanted to play this one but my copy is taking forever to go through customs. :/ Might stick to shorter games for a while and pray it gets here soon.
If you're liking the PW series you'll probably also enjoy the Danganronpa games. Much darker stories despite the colorful visuals, but they're another VN/Adventure hybrid with a mystery plot.
In that line of hybrids there's also 13 Sentinels which has an amazing story and mixes adventure-style exploration with tower defense battles.
Depends on who you ask, as they're kind of a midway between a VN and a point-and-click adventure.
I'd consider them VNs, VNDB says they aren't, but I'm pretty sure most people would be fine discussing those on VN-focused forums or communities.
Are you enjoyjng them? I'm a big fan of the series overall, with the third game being my favorite.
As for how it compares to "traditional" VNs: PW games have you interact way more often. You don't get sections of 1h+ of just reading text uninterrupted in PW games, and that's fairly common in other games of this genre.
Livechart.me can usually help find out which streaming service has the series in you region.
https://www.livechart.me/anime/2483
This one in particular I think is in Hidive, and they aren't available in a lot of regions. :/
And I just found out they got Aoi Yuki as Maomao's VA! Getting even more hyped now.
Slow week but still got some progress on Grisaia Phantom Trigger 5.5 to 08. For those unfamiliar with this series of Visual Novels I left a small explanation about it on a comment a couple weeks ago.
Finished Episode 06, which was my favorite so far. The original Phantom Triggers were very fun, in particular Aoi, and we finally get confirmation that the main plot will be dealing with the terrorist group that showed up in 04. We also get a view of the "villain" here, which was the only thing I disliked - while the game shows the reasons for that character to go rogue, the transition is too abrupt, they go from a friendly character into a almost cartoonish villain immediately, so I'm hoping they will explore and explain this better in the following chapters.
Also started Episode 07, which is another Shiori-focused episode. This chapter starts with her finding a way to deal with the fact that her students are also soldiers that are going to be put in dangerous situations and reaching an amusing but also perfectly in-character solution. Then we move into gathering all the people we met in the previous episodes to fight the villains.
Two interesting things about 07: It's much longer, and it actually features choices - all previous episodes were Kinetic Novels, VNs where there are no choices or routes. I wonder if this was done as a callback to the first Grisaia game, where most of the choices (and all the relevant ones) were in the final 1/3 of the story.
With all this, which ones do you think I should try? Or if I should try any at all.
I tend to prefer the simpler, arcade-style rhythm games. Think of stuff like Guitar Hero or Dance Dance Revolution.
Definitely try Theatrhythm Final Bar Line. It's very fun gameplay-wise, has a ridiculous amount of content (something like 380 tracks on the base game, with 100+ extras as DLC if you get the premium version), the RPG elements are interesting, and if you are a fan of FF games it's also a huge nostalgia trip. There's even a free demo with 30 songs which lets you get a good taste of the game.
Project Diva Megamix is my favorite "no frills" game in this genre - just choose a song and start playing. Tons of tracks, gets crazy intense on the higher difficulties. But it's a vocaloid game, and not everyone will enjoy this type of music. There's also a PS4 version which is essentially the same game with better graphics but no option to use motion controls.
Taiko Drum Master games are generally fun, in particular if you can get your hands on a physical drum, but even on a regular controller I have a good time with these.
There's Old School Musical which is a hilarious indie rhythm game with chiptune tracks inspired by 8-bit and 16-bit classics. Doesn't have as much content as some of the games above, but it's also fairly cheap and fun.
As for more "unique" rhythm games, I enjoy Thumper, which is kinda hard to describe but it's a metal rhythm game on a racing track of sorts, and Crypt of the Necrodancer which is a rhythm-based roguelike. There's also a Zelda crossover for this last one called Cadence of Hyrule , but I haven't played it yet.
I was quite stressed this week, and one thing that helps when I'm like this is playing games where I can just shut down my brain and play purely on reflex. So I went back to Theatrhythm Final Bar Line for a few days.
I'm a huge fan of rhythm games in general and this series in particular, even got the fancy overpriced premium version with all DLCs at launch and have been playing on and off since then. I caught up to the DLCs by playing the latest pack focused on Romancing Saga 2 and 3, which brought some of my favorites from that series like Seven Heroes Battle from RS2 and both of the Sinistral themes from RS3.
I also achived two milestones in this game this week: Over 100h or play time, and finally completed all tracks in the "hard" difficulty (Ultimate). Some of the tracks also have a "very hard" difficulty (Supreme), and I started playing them but the jump in difficulty is crazy - I'm managing to finish those just because I have a party with a ton of HP and defensive skills keeping me alive despite all my mistakes.
As mentioned last week I'm also playing Grisaia Phantom Trigger 5.5 to 08, the second and final batch of chapters for this episodic VN.
Finished chapter 5.5 which was about Shiori's past - she's the new civilian teacher that joins near the beginning of the story, and the second "focus character" in th VN alongside Haruto. As per Grisaia standards it's a pretty sad backstory, but makes it much easier to understand some of the things about the way she acts, and also why she fits well with the others.
I also started chapter 06, which is another flashback story - this time about the previous generation of agents (the titular "Phantom Triggers"), and also about Haruto's (the main "focus character") origins. Everything with the Phantom Triggers has been fun so far, they are a very entertaining bunch and it's pretty cool to see how some of them were in the past.
Haruto's backstory however is so goddamn crazy that I'm not sure I like or not. I am however having a lot of fun reading about the hijinks of a bunch of assassins trying to raise a baby.
There's also couple new characters - Aoi, one of the agents and someone Haruto refers to as his "master", and Enishi, another of the Phantom Triggers and some kind of father figure to him. Given that the chapter starts with them gathering for a grave visit (implied to be Aoi's) and that Enishi also hasn't shown up yet in the present I'm curious to see what happened to the two of them.
I finished the all the english-released games (my mini-review of Reverie is somewhere in this thread), but I still consider Zero+Azure my favorites. Best cast overall (though Estelle is my favorite protagonist), a fantastic setting, goddamn amazing OST.
I love this duology so much, simply hearing the CSPD theme play during one of the sections in Reverie was enough to make me immediately crack as smile.
Finished Trails into Reverie.
Well, that took a while, more than 90h, but I went for full completion - main game, post game dungeon, trials, daydreams, minigames, everything done.
I love the Trails series, it's one of my favorite JRPG series ever, but it has its fair share of problems - they use the same formula for most games so it's easy to get burned out if you play many of them in sequence, there's a lot of cast bloat due it being a series with all games interconnected, an annoying tendency to keep trying to redeem villains, and just being too verbose at times (often because they want to use all members of that huge cast).
Why I'm talking about this? Because while I had a lot of fun with the previous game (Cold Steel 4), it also did showcase all the problems above at full strength, but Reverie does something different and provides a much necessary "break" from the usual Trails experience.
The game is split in three routes, two for protagonists of previous games (Lloyd and Rean) and one for a mysterious new masked character ("C"). This breakdown is a good shift from the usual game dynamic, lessens the issues with cast bloat since they are all spread around, and "C"s route is focused on new cast members making it a much fresher experience.
Another major change is the Reverie Corridor. Most of games in the series are heavy into sidequests, but this time the "main" game barely contains any, only a few optional extra-challenging monsters. Instead, almost all optional content takes place in this dream-like world where time flows differently and memories from the real world as hazy. Here you have access to the full cast of the game (and even some extras!), a randomly generated dungeon you can use to grind freely, a ton of minigames including series classics like Pom and Vantage Masters, and a very nice section called "Daydreams" with a lot of mini-stories showing what's going on around with both the main cast and some familiar NPCs - very similar to the Doors from Sky 3rd.
This keeps the main story very tight and focused while also having a lot of fun optional content, and gives you freedom to decide if and when to focus on each. I don't expect this to become the norm for future games in the series, but I enjoyed this structure a lot and I hope they do use something like this time to time to avoid burnout from the usual formula.
Finally, on the story, this is an epilogue for both Zero+Azure and Cold Steel 1-4, so obviously not a game for someone starting the series. It does a much better job story-wise then CS4 IMO, in particular in the Crossbell section - it's still the weakest of the three routes largely due to it just rethreading old plot lines, but it fixes a lot of the things that bothered in the last two games. Rean's route is a nice epilogue that touches on the impact of the last game's events in Erebonia, and "C"s route is just great fun with a cast of anti-heroes.
And now the wait for the next game begins. Really looking forward to see the Calvard arc.
Started Grisaia Phantom Trigger 5.5 to 08.
Phantom Trigger is the 4th game in the Grisaia series, with the three first games (Fruit, Labyrinth and Eden) being available as a bundle as well on the Switch. This last game was released as a bunch of 2-5h "Episodes", and this is second half of that game.
The original Grisaia games have a very interesting structure. The "Common" route of Fruit is 70% of the story and it's full slice-of-life comedy, but once it splits into the individual routes for each heroine it gets crazy dark as you learn their backstories. Labyrinth shifts into having the main story being dark (it's the MC's backstory) with "lighter" after-stories for each heroine. Finally Eden goes towards a more action-focused story, but I wasn't a big fan of it, and one of the main reasons is that most of the cast was just regular girls, so having they become involved in a spy conspiracy didn't really work for me, it was just too hard to believe.
Phantom Trigger is more action-focused, much like Eden, but it fixes the above problem by stating from the beginning that the cast is part of "school of assassin" of sorts. It takes place in the same universe as the earlier games, but so far has been a completely independent story with a brand-new cast.
The first five episodes were focused on introducing the cast.
- 01: Introduction of the initial cast (Shiori, Haruto, Rena, Tohka, Chris and Murasaki) and premise.
- 02: Rena's backstory, adds Maki.
- 03: Tohka's backstory, adds Gumi.
- 04: Chris' backstory, adds Taiga.
- 05: Murasaki's backstory, adds Yuuki.
I only had time to start 5.5 for now, but it seems to be centered on Shiori, the focus character of the first episode - a new "civilian" teacher that just joined this school. Looks like this chapter will be about how she is adapting to the her new school and students, but I'll talk more about it next week.
As for my overall impression of the story, a redditor once described Phantom Trigger as "pretty cozy comfort food reading", and I think that's an accurate description. It doesn't do anything special or amazing, but it's been consistently fun and entertaining.
Already done! :D Right now working on some post-game stuff.
I'll post a write up/mini review on next week's thread.
Damn, that was the problem here too! I didn't even notice it was username instead of e-mail because Bitwarden was auto-filling the fields.
I'm more surprised than anything - I'm not one that usually tries to 100% JRPGs, but for some reason I could not stop going crazy trying to do all the optional content in this one.
Anyway, quick update: Did the final dungeon yesterday, saved right in front of the boss room because it was a getting late and I know it's going to be a long battle with a ton of cutscenes.
Also, to my surprise, I actually managed to get every single treasure chest in this one! And I'm pretty sure I'll be getting all profiles as well, the ones missing will likely unlock with the final scenes. Not something you usually do in Trails games without using a guide.
Somehow still on Trails into Reverie, LMAO.
I was planning on tackling the final dungeon during this week, but instead I ended up going go crazy with optional stuff and doing everything that was available in the Reverie Corridor.
- Went as far into the dungeon as the game allows (midpoint of Stratum 4)
- Tracked and scanned all missing enemies in Stratum 1-4
- Completed all Daydreams
- Completed all Minigames (including all Vantage Masters and Pom opponents, and even that stupid "beach date" minigame)
Doing that alongside doing the remaining events in Crossbell took me most of the week.
I left a save yesterday right in front of the exclamation point that triggers the continuation of the main storyline, so I'll resume this today and hopefully be done with the main story before the end of the weekend. I heard there's plenty of post-game content but I'm unsure if I'll play that right now as well or if I'll take a break.
Oh, and the VNs I mentioned last week did indeed arrive - this is the second half of "Grisaia Phantom Trigger" and also "Little Busters", both games are japanese version but include english text, and I've already decided to start Grisaia after I'm done with Reveri.
If you enjoyed this game and want more, looks like Ys IX is also on sale. The sequel has a more urban setting as it takes place around this huge city and includes some really fun magical-powered parkour for exploring the place. I like the scenario and story of VIII more, but still had quite a bit of fun with this one too.