Crazy week at work so no gaming progress.
I’d like to resume Senren * Banka during the weekend but we’ll see how it goes. Want to get a couple games out of my way ASAP because Trails through Daybreak is coming soon and it’ll definitely eat all my free time.
Hyped to play AAI2, it’s one of the highest rated games on the franchise on VNDB, only below PW3 and GAA2 which were both fantastic.
There’s 4 of them on the Switch/PS4, and all of them have an Asian/English version.
I personally rank them in this order: V > T > X> 30, but I always recommend people trying these games to look into which anime/mecha series are included on each and get whichever has more series you like.
You can find this information (along with a lot more) on the Akurasu Wiki.
Replaying Super Robot Wars V!
The original plan for the week was to continue Senren * Banka, but I got this game on the mail during the week, decided to try it for a just a bit… and remembered how I’m hopelessly addicted to this series.
For those unfamiliar with the series, Super Robot Wars games are turn-based strategy RPGs where units from several mecha anime band together, so you can have the Evangelions teaming with Gundams and Daitarn 3 against common foes, with really cool attack animations and a crazy crossover plot mixing elements of all the series involved.
It’s a very old series, the first game was released in the 90’s for the original B&W Gameboy, but while there are over 50 games in the series almost none of them were released in the west due to the complex licensing involved. But luckily for the english-speaking audience since the PS4 they started released Asian “multi-language” versions of these games, so we can finally enjoy them properly.
I had already played this game on the PS4, but could not resist a recent sale and double-dipped so I now have the Switch version as well. Decided to use the female protagonist (Chitose) for this replay since I love her themes, and I’m currently around Stage 20.
There are three Confidant requirements you need to meet to have access to the true ending and Royal’s extra content.
You only need one for most of the extra content in Royal. The other two do add a bit more, but are not really essencial.
Finished 1000xRESIST!
This game was really good and one of my best surprises in recent years.
As I mentioned last week, this is a “walking simulator” taking place in a world where human race almost went extinct due to a plague and a new society was created from clones of the last survivor, a girl called Iris. The game has you play as “Watcher”, one of the clone sisters who goes through Iris’s memories and learns about the past and the history of this world.
The writing in this game is excellent, in particular for the main characters. The sci-fi backdrop works well, and I found the connections to the real-world very interesting - the developers describe themselves as a “group of majority Asian-Canadian diaspora creators”, and without going into spoilers it’s very clear they drew from their personal experiences when setting the tone and themes for this game.
Now, the bad parts: While the visual design is interesting, performance and resolution are underwhelming on the Switch, plus I got a couple crashes during gameplay. Also, navigating the main “hub” is horrible and you will get lost often (developers, please add a map or better waypoint system!), but despite those problems I still highly recommend this one to people who enjoy strong narratives.
Edit: The newest patch adds a map of the main hub. Definitely a good improvement.
Playing Senren * Banka!
First time playing a VN from Yuzusoft, a developer famous for lighthearted games leaning more on the slice-of-life/romance genre.
Still very early in the game (Chapter 1-3), but so far this has been quite fun. MC goes visit family who lives in a small montain village, and while there decides to try pulling a legendary sword stuck in a boulder.
Except when he tries it… the sword breaks in half. 😄 But that apparently still counts as becoming the “master” of the legendary blade, so he ends up tangled in a mess involving an arranged married, a priestess cursed with cat ears (?!), the spirit of the sword, ninjas, and even some creepy monsters. Quite curious to see where the story goes from here.
The production values and polish are great. Great art and voice work, clean interface including an excellent flowchart showing the choices you took and potential branches.
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:
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
There’s also the problem that they’re clearly rushing this without much thought, they don’t even have an answer to the obvious question of “what happens to people in regions not supported by PSN”.
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The developer is involved. Though it’s pretty obvious that the push for this is from Sony, they are the publisher for the game.
So if it were clearly written on the Steam page, I don’t really get the complains.
It was optional for several months and the info on the PSN page contradicted that, so there was a lot of room for confusion.
Not surprisingly that PSN page was edited earlier today, but there’s a million screenshots floating around already, plus you can check the previous version in the Wayback Machine.
And even if it was clearly written on all places, it’s still a “too bad you didn’t read the fine print, now you’re past the limit time for a refund, so either let Sony track you or lose access to the game” situation which is very shitty. There’s also the fact that they sold the game to people in countries where is PSN is not available, which should not have happened if that requirement was going to be enforced in the future.
Not hard to see why people would get pissed and lose trust in the developer. I also think that players have been annoyed for a while with this type of requirement (not specifically in this game), and they are now getting a good outlet with a lot of publicity around to vent about it.
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.
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.
For me too, but noticeably slower than normal.
If you have access to a PS4 or Nintendo Switch: 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
A crazy and interesting sci-fi game, mixes point-and-click adventure with tower defense action stages. Story is amazing and I absolutely love Vanillaware’s 2D art.
Looks like the original source is this: https://www.gov.br/mme/pt-br/assuntos/noticias/alexandre-silveira-celebra-recorde-de-carga-das-fontes-renovaveis-no-sistema-interligado-nacional
O Sistema Interligado Nacional registrou consumo recorde de energia nesta quinta-feira (7/2). Às 14h15, a carga total foi de 101.860 megawatt (MW), com 92,4% de fornecimento por fontes renováveis, especialmente usinas hidrelétricas, usinas eólicas, usinas solares e micro e minigeração distribuída, segundo dados do Operador Nacional do Sistema Elétrico (ONS).
Rough translation:
The Sistema Interligado Nacional (“Interconnected National System”) registered record energy consumption this wednesday (7/2). At 14h15, the total load was of 101.860 megawatt (MW), with 92,4% provided by renewable sources, in particular hydroeletric plants, wind plants, solar plants plus micro and mini distributed generation, according to data from the Operator Nacional do Sistema Elétrico (“National Electric System Operator”) (ONS).
So if I’m understanding correcty this was peak generation.
According to the DF review vídeo the account is required on PS/Xbox unless you’re offline, but entirely optional on the Switch.
It’s discussed around 15min into the video.
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.