What are you playing this weekend? 2025-02-21
Phelpssan @ Phelpssan @lemmy.world Posts 14Comments 345Joined 2 yr. ago
Phelpssan @ Phelpssan @lemmy.world
Posts
14
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345
Joined
2 yr. ago
Double-posting since I forgot to add this to my initial post, but I replayed Metroid Prime when the Switch port was released and I was quite impressed. Yeah, it has some outdated aspects like the map, but it's kinda crazy how well it plays considering it's more than 20 years old. The port is also really impressive, one of the best looking games on the console while also running smoothly at 60FPS.
But my favorite thing about the game is the atmosphere. It nails perfectly the feeling of a lonely explorer in a wild, dangerous planet.
It’s always nice when a game respects your time.
Definitely. And while writing that I was thinking that main I issue I have with Fantasian is that a lot of things in the second half of the game feel designed in a way that wastes your time.
High random battle frequency with low rewards, gimmicky bosses which you often have to fight twice, constant need to shuffle around in menus rebuilding your party with different skills/equipments to be able to work around those gimmicks.
Finished Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist!
What an amazing game. A massive improvement in almost all areas over Ender Lilies, which was already a damn good metroidvania.
I love most things about it, starting with near perfection in all technical aspects - flawless controls, beautiful visuals and music, and stable 60fps performance on the Switch. Exploration is an absolute joy with the main movement upgrades (dash and double-jump) getting unlocked early in the game alongside with a well designed open world where you almost always have multiple paths to explore.
Another great thing is how this game respects your time, making backtracking as painless as possible. Fast travel between save points is unlocked early and the map lets you know when a room was fully explored so you can try to find as much as possible in your first run though. The map is also quite detailed including information on whether or not you have the abilities required to open a specific door and even the basic platform layout of each room, making it easy to tell if you are ready to traverse it or not.
Combat is really good with a lot of different loadouts to experiment with, though the balance between combat abilities is uneven with some abilities being far better than others. And my one big issue with the game is also related to combat - I hate the system of having a weak protagonist that dies in 2-3 hits combined with a bunch of healing items. But I know that's popular among games in this genre, and I knew what I was getting into when I purchased this one so I can't complain much about it.
I highly recommend this game, easy 9/10 and a must-play for fans of this genre.
Playing Fantasian Neo Dimension!
Resumed this one after finishing Ender Magnolia. Doing good progress and I'm still having fun with it, but I have to pace myself to avoid getting burnt due to the high random battle frequency and difficulty on bosses, so I've been aiming for shorter sessions doing only 1-2 quests.
Since the second half is mostly open-world it's hard to say how far I am in the game. I do have the "Communication Network" area unlocked which seems to be the path to the final boss, but it's recommending level 50 which is 5 or so above what I am right now, so I guess I should still go exploring and sidequesting more in preparation for it.
Playing Rabi-Ribi!
Current side-game, a very cute metroidvania which comes with high praise from fans of the genre. Only played a little bit and finished the prologue since I'm focused on Fantasian right now.
Looking great and from the same people who did SoR4? Hell yeah, I'm hyped.
I’ve got to (probably) the last “to be continued” of Great Ace Attorney collection. The twists at the end are definitely hitting the Herlock Sholmes ideal of whatever you haven’t eliminated is the truth, no matter how improbable. I’m in the middle of walking to the ice cream shop or I’d be racing to the end right now.
GAA2 is so good, IMO one of the best AA games alongside AA3 and AAI2. That final case also has one of my favorite moments in the whole series.
I don’t think there will be any gameplay patch for this kind of thing, so guess will have to play as it is.
I'm a bit more hopeful here, they seem to be doing good post-launch support with the control fixes and major Switch performance improvements in the last patch.
Random battles and difficulty in the second half are by far the biggest and loudest complaints you'll see for this game, so I think there's a chance we'll get some tweaks to this in a future patch.
Favourite game of the genre
Favorite in recent years. 😅 Which is still a big deal considering how many good games we've been getting in this genre.
Worth mentioning that I'm on the minority of the metroidvania fans that don't love Hollow Knight - I've beaten it, think it's a great game, and I can certainly see why people put it on on a pedestal, but it didn't click with me as well as other games in the genre did.
A bit sad to hear about the grind in Fantasian, I am not a big fan of grinding, or random battles,
The worst part that you don't need to grind, the game simply doesn't give you the tools to avoid it.
There's no mechanism to turn random battles off or reduce their frequency. There is a tool to empty your "saved" battles for a fee, but that requires you to warp to a specific town which means it's really useful if you're at a fast travel checkpoint.
I recall while you liked Ender Lillies, you had some complaints about the game (unless I am thinking of someone else), does it fix all those issues?
I found my old comments about Lilies and I only complained a bit about the difficulty, which souds about right from what I remember of the game, it had some brutal sections where it crossed from "challenging" into "frustrating" but other than that was excellent.
So far Magnolia has been "just right" for me on difficulty - I've died a lot both during exploring and bosses, but so far never got frustrated and/or had to take a break from the game due to this. If they manage to keep this balance until the end this may honestly be my favorite game of this genre in recent years.
Put my Tales of Graces f replay on the backburner to focus on other games. Will still go through it slowly.
Playing Fantasian Neo Dimension!
Quite a lot of progress in this one. And now I can see why the second half of the game is highly divisive.
It goes from a linear story to a more open-ended game, throwing you back into the world with only 3 characters and vaguely defined goals of "go explore, find your missing friends, defeat the bad guy". Story beats gets faily sparse with a huge focus on exploration and combat. Bosses get a huge spike in difficulty and are also very "gimmicky", they feel designed with the idea that you'll lose to them once to learn the boss' trick then rebuild your party around it to try again, but I didn't find most gimmicks interesting or fun so far.
The changes above are not necessarily bad, but one thing that absolutely sucks in the second half are the random battles. The game gets extremely anti-grinding, giving close to zero experience when fighting weaker foes, but the random battle frequency is so high you will reach that virtual "level cap" without trying... and still have to keep fighting enemies constantly for very little reward. This is both boring and frustrating, even if the feature to "batch" enemies helps mitigate the problem.
On a positive note I love the new skill tree you get, it adds an interesting customization layer to and it's great how you can freely respec as you learn more about which skills work better for your playstyle, or simply because you need to shift your strategy for a particular boss.
Playing Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist
Picked this up as a side-game for when I need a break from Fantasian, and I'm extremely impressed by it so far. Ender Lilies was already a good game and this one improves on it in almost every way with with better movement, combat, and exploration. Difficulty seems to be toned down as well, which I see as a positive but YMMV.
Also, it looks beautiful and runs flawlessly on the Switch.
Oooh, vacations! How many do you have?
30 days/year, and I'm taking all of them at once. Since I take a long time to unwind I always need a long stretch of vacations to recover properly.
Slow week for gaming.
It's my first week of vacations but I've been really stressed/anxious recently and I find it very hard to "wind down" quickly to be able to do longer playing sessions. Hopefully I'll be more relaxed next week to put energy the two games below and try to finish at least Fantasian before Trails through Daybreak 2 releases.
Replaying Tales of Graces f Remastered!
Good progress here, finished the desert section and arrived at the Arena.
Playing Fantasian Neo Dimension!
Very minor progress on this one, but there's news worth commenting. Last week I mentioned some control annoyances and long loading times, and there was a patch this week addressing both.
Control issues were fixed, and while it's not listed in the patch notes the battle loading times are down 35-40% from my estimates. This will definitely make it more enjoyable when I resume playing this one properly.
Tales of Vesperia
Depends on what you're looking for. I'd say it's a good old-school JRPG on the same vein as Abyss and Symphonia.
One of the main draws of this game is the cast - some of the characters were incredibly refreshing in 2008, the protagonist being the prime example - a snarky, street-smart, "chaotic good" hero very unlike the typical JRPG protagonists back then. I don't think it has the same impact nowadays, but they were ahead of time on this aspect and it helps the game hold out compared to recent JRPGs.
The story is kinda underwhelming. I like how early game it's more low-stakes, focused on character problems, but the final act is a mess. Combat is fine, but can get a bit boring if you don't switch characters from time to time.
There's a ton of side quests and secrets in the game, likely the most content of all Tales games. It's one of those games where if you want to 100% you definitely should play with a guide.
I agree with the general feeling, Tales was one of my favorite series for a long time but the interest fizzled during the PS3-PS4 era because the games just kept getting less and less interesting.
That being said, Graces is one of the few games from that time I still hold in high regard, mainly for the battle system which is one of the best in the series.
If something recent like Tales of Arise gets a port to Switch 2, though - then I’ll be interested.
I'd recommend almost any Tales made in the last 15 years over Arise. That game looks great and has a very strong start, but oh boy it takes a massive nosedive in quality over time. The endgame is one of the biggest slogs I've seen in recent JRPG history.
Unless a rerelease comes with a massive reworking of the entire second half of the game I'd stay away from it.
Finished Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana!
Most of my comments about this game are on previous week's post. There was an annoying difficulty spike on the final boss, but overall a great game that I can easily recommend.
Playing Fantasian Neo Dimension!
It feels like I'm playing a long-lost JRPG from the PS1 era and I'm loving it.
The "diorama" visuals are an interesting take on the prerendered backgrounds from old days, with the constrast between them and the 3D models creating a very nostalgic look. There's that classic exploration where you'll keep finding items at every corner of the city, something I adore but you don't see much in modern JRPGs.
Battle system has some great ideas, Iike how you can "curve" a spell around a tankier enemy to hit a mage on the back row. Being able to "store" enemies and fight them in a batch is a fantastic idea, not only it helps exploration flow better without the constant breaks from random battles, but also makes even weaker enemies offer some challenge as you're often fighting 20-30 of them in a row.
Story... is not much to talk about so far, but I'm enjoying the character interactions. There's also short VN-like "memories" that seem reminiscent of the "A Thousand Years of Dreams" sections from Lost Odyssey, though unfortunately they don't have the same amazing writing and emotional depth. But at least they do a good job developing character backstories.
One thing I'm a bit underwhelmed is the music, mainly because I heard a ton of praise for it. It's a definitely solid OST with some great highlights, but IMO it's nowhere near the masterpiece I heard some people claiming it to be.
Finally, there's two main annoyances worth commenting - one is the controls can be a bit wonky, they don't adjust the way you'd expect when the camera shifts and you have to stop moving if you want them to "reset". The second is that loading times on the Switch are a tad high, with battles taking 5-6s in average to load, but that's only of a problem in the first 1-2h of the game, as the ability to "batch" battles makes this a much smaller issue.
Replaying Tales of Graces f Remastered!
I know I shouldn't be playing two JRPGs in parallel, but since I'm going on vacations starting next week I can probably manage it? 😆 But I love this game, have beaten it 3 or 4 times and the moment I saw the Switch version I knew another playthrough was coming.
While the plot of this game is fairly basic (even for Tales standard), the gameplay is incredibly fun and there's a lot of diversity in playstyles between the characters. The cast is great and has some good chemistry, including some of my favorite skits in the series.
One really interesting feature of this version is that it has the "Grade Shop" where you can buy game modifiers like increased XP gain unlocked from the start - this used to be only a NG+ feature. I chose not to use it but it's definitely a welcome addition as it can make the game easier for those wanting a more relaxed experience, or simply help cut down on grinding for completionists.
Finished Astral Chain, played couple of post-game arena-combat missions, but ignored the rest. Overall, a very good game, the story wasn’t anything out of the world (except literally speaking), but it wasn’t anything bad either. The gameplay and combat was really good.
That game was a ton of fun. We need more good tokusatsu-inspired games.
If you're interested in Oath in Felghana you may also want to take a peek at Ys Origins.
Runs on the same engine so it has the same fast-paced gameplay, and this one has multiple characters with different combat styles to make it more replayable.
Playing Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana!
Plenty of stress and anxiety at work this past week made it hard to get into a more story-focused game, so an old-school Action RPG worked a lot better.
This is a port of a 20 years old game, but it's aged surprisingly well. Gameplay is fast-paced and generally quite fun, but there's a few spots where it really shows it's age. The lack of quest markers can lead to strange situations like when I spent a long time stuck on a dungeon only to find out I needed to go back and watch a cutscene I missed in the town, and there's a wild variety in quality in bosses going from "amazingly fun" to "pure slog".
Also, this game is quite hard, so be ready to die a lot on bosses, even on normal difficulty. But since those battles tend to be short and the game lets you retry it immediately it doesn't end up being particularly frustrating.
I think I reached the final dungeon yesterday so I should be done over the weekend.
Finished Metaphor: ReFantazio!
I stand for all that I wrote last week - this is a fantastic game that unfortunately is also quite frustrating due to some poor decisions on dungeon design and combat balance.
Besides that not a lot more of gaming this week, only played a bit of bullet hell games like DoDonPachi Resurrection and DoDonPachi True Death.
Will probably start another JRPG this weekend but not entirely sure which one. Fantasian Neo Dimension, Persona 3 Reload and Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance are the strongest candidates.
I have heard great things about Metaphor, though they will probably release a Metaphor: ReFantazio Royal with fixes and balances by the time I get around to it, so will just play that.
Hopefully so. This is the first Atlus RPG in a long time where I feel a fixed/improved version is necessary.
Playing Metaphor: ReFantazio!
Yes, a non-Switch game! Since this is from the Persona team and had very positive reviews I was quite interested in the game, but I'm so disconnected from the Playstation/Xbox world nowadays that I assumed this was only out for the PS5! 😆 But I learned that it has a PS4 version and even a physical and multi-language version in Japan, so I dusted off my old PS4 Pro, got the laser which I knew was broken since earlier this year fixed, and decided to give this one a try.
I came into this mostly blind and was expecting a more traditional JRPG, so I was surprised when I saw all the classic Persona elements like calendar system, social stats and social links. But it does provide some very welcome changes - the calendar is very compact, with only 5 months in-universe, the social links are shorter and no longer need "grinding" affection levels, each day is better used with events on the night from the beginning, social stats grow faster.
There's plenty more to love in this game. The art and music are fantastic, though the UI is too busy and can be distracting. They've definitely crafted an interesting world, so much that I even spent time reading in the in-game encyclopedia to learn more about the different races and places. I also love the way they incorporated travel into the story with campfire events, beautiful locations where they just stop for a short breather, random encounters at night - all of this adds a lot to the feeling of adventure.
That being said, there's also some pretty massive flaws in the game, with the biggest ones being related to dungeons and combat mechanics. The dungeons are a slog - they are boring, stupidly long, full of enemies that have tons of HP even on normal. It's clear that the developers wanted to make it harder for players to complete them in a single day, but they took the worst possible approach here.
There's also issues with the combat mechanics. It uses a similar system to Trails though Daybreak where you start battles using action combat to kill weak enemies or stun stronger ones then move into turn-based. But this time enemies can also get advantage over you if you don't dodge properly, and the action combat is very clunky so this ends up happening way too often, with the difference between who gets the advantage being potentially as big as "win without taking damage" vs "getting a full party wipe". They also start using Repel/Drain effects way too early in the game, and this is a Press Turn system game which makes these incredibly punishing, plus for some reason they decided to not include items or skills to scan enemies for vulnerabilities, all of which leads to frustrating trial-and-error gameplay where you can accidentally hit a Drain and lose your entire turn.
Finally, the UI definitely could use improvements. There's a lot of QOL features that could and should have been added for better inventory and skill management - both very important things in a game where you're juggling 10+ weapon types and 20+ jobs with different skills.
I know I spent a lot of time on negatives, so I just want to emphasize that despite those problems I've been playing this game non-stop and having a good time. But there's a ton of frustration mixed in because I think this game could've been one my all-time favorites with a bit more polish.
Playing If My Heart Had Wings!
Slow progress between holidays and Metaphor. I'm enjoying Aoi and Kotori's dynamic quite a bit now, but it definitely feels more sibling-like instead of romantic. Twins still haven't joined and I'm curious to see how they are so maybe I'll give this one a push during the weekend.
Playing Crimzon Clover - World EXplosion!
Attempting to get a 1CC on Novice, so far I made it to the stage 4 boss.
I wanted to spend my last weekend of vacations playing Trails Through Daybreak II but my copy is stuck in Customs. 🙁
Finished Rabi-Ribi!
Cutest metroidvania I've ever played, and it's quite a good game too! Extremely non-linear and open, I finished the "main quest" with only 50% map completion! Between that and some post-game content there's still plenty for me to do here. Oh, and it also has a ridiculously catchy OST that will definitely get stuck in your head.
Had a ton of fun with this one. Easy recommendation to metroidvania fans, and I even added Tevi from the same developer to my wishlist.
Playing Fantasian Neo Dimension!
Slow progress but still following my plan of doing short sessions completing a quest or two. Getting brickwalled by some of the optional bosses though, got my entire party one-shot from full life a couple times already which is never fun. 🙁