Thinking about picking this one up, since I didn’t play the OG version.

Combat in the OG was a bit too much “button mashing” (gets better if you swap to characters other than Velvet), but was otherwise a fantastic game.

Velvet is a great protagonist and the whole cast works really well together. One of the best “band of misfits” teams in JRPGs.

Playing Trails Beyond the Horizon!

Finished Rean Route 3 and Kevin Route 3, and now going through Van Route 6. Looks like these are the last parts of their individual routes and after that we go for the final chapter.

I’m quite disappointed by how short Kevin’s route was. I was hyped to have him as a playable character again after all these years, but he has the shortest route by far (his last chapter is just two short maps and a two boss battles, doesn’t even have a second city to explore like Rean’s), and he struggles with the weakest of the three teams as well (Swin really needs a buff).

At least his story beats were good. He and the Picnicking Front have a good dynamic, and it also includes some major reveals that I’ll discuss in a spoiler section after I finish the game. Though I’m curious where they’re going with his character building, he seems to have somewhat “regressed” to how he was before Sky 3 - and even his party members are constantly calling him out on that.

Rean’s route was also on the short side, but that didn’t bother me as much since we had so many games to play with him already. It was damn good though, with some long-awaited encounters and also interesting reveals related to what we saw in Kevin’s route.

I’ll leave my final comments on Van’s route for after I finish the game, but so far it’s the weakest of the three, it feels too much like “filler” - despite being longer than the other two combined it don’t contain as many interesting story moments.

With this current pace I’ll probably finish the game this weekend, which is faster than I expected. If that happens I’ll go back to Super Robot Wars Y to play DLC2.

Fully focused on Horizon so no progress on other games.

Yeah, it’s incredibly weird.

There’s a way to “empty” your stash of monsters without battling but it requires you to teleport to a certain place, pay a fee, then teleport back which is very awkward and requires you to be at a checkpoint.

Late-game the encounter rate gets so high that you fill your “stash” of enemies incredibly fast.

And since the game also goes incredibly “anti-girinding” in the second half you’re not only fighting tons of enemies but often also getting almost zero XP out of it. That made the game feel like a huge slog to me.

The difficulty spike is different matter though. That’s mostly about the bosses.

Hoping to finish Trails Beyond the Horizon in another week or two, then go back to Super Robot Wars Y to play the second DLC batch.

After that, not sure. Maybe finally playing Atelier Resleriana? There’s also Fantasian, @Tamlyn@lemmy.zip’s comment above made me remember I haven’t finished and I might give that game another shot.

I burned out in the later half of Fantasian due to the encounter rate and difficulty spikes, but might pick it up again and see if I can finish it, I wasn’t that far from the end.

At least I had a ton of fun with the first half of the game.

Playing Trails Beyond the Horizon!

Finished Van Routes 4 and 5, Kevin Route 2, and I’m now progressing through Rean Route 3. Probably in the last third of the game, but with my current schedule I think it’ll still take me a couple weeks to get to the ending.

Fully focused on Horizon so no progress on other games.

For beginners I’d recommend Drainus among traditional ("non bullet hell¨) shmups and Danmaku Unlimited 3 on the easiest settings for bullet hell.

And if you enjoy Danmaku Unlimited 3 I’d go for Crimzon Clover next, it’s one of the best games in the genre. It’s significantly harder even on Novice, but still beatable with some pratice.

A bit early to tell. There’s a lot of things being set up in all three routes, so the payoff will say how this game will end up in my ranking.

But I will say it’s looking very promising so far.

Playing Trails Beyond the Horizon!

Currently on Act 3, Van Route 4. The end of the previous act was a very interesting surprise and a great character moment.

Fully focused on Horizon so no progress on other games.

why not just upgrade to Switch 2

I will pick one up eventually, but right now it’s being held back by the combo of “only Bananza as an exclusive I care about”, “high console price”, “high SD Express price” and “game key carts”.

Besides Bananza the only Switch 2 games I have in my wishlist are “Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave” (no release date yet) and “The Adventures of Elliot” (June). All recently announced ports fall into “if I cared about those I’d already own a PS5”.

$450 for the Switch 2 is pricy, adding another $200 if I simply want to have the same 1TB I have on the Switch 1 makes it sting a lot more. Simply letting me use my current SD card for my existing Switch 1 library would’ve been a huge deal.

Game keys make everything much worse - I refuse to buy those as a game collector, so for a lot of games I’d end up picking up the Switch 1 version anyway (this includes Trails Beyond the Horizon) or wait for a heavily discounted digital (meaning I wouldn’t be playing them for 1-2 years). And it also adds to the storage problem too.

Playing Trails Beyond the Horizon!

Quite a bit of progress, I’m on the latter half of Act 2 having just finished the second part of the Rean route.

Seems like the route splits aren’t quite like Reverie, with Van’s side taking most of the playtime (I’d say his team gets 50-60% of the game), but despite their reduced playtime the other two routes have been far more interesting. The end of latest Rean section brought a major reveal that has me extremely interested in direction the story is going alongside a long-waited battle where they nailed both custscenes and challenge.

One thing I haven’t commented before is the quality of the Switch 1 version, which has some really odd problems - it keeps going back and forth between “this looks pretty good” and “extremely low-res and blurry” very abruptly and all the time. It’s very distracting, and given how much worse it looks than Daybreak 1/2 (which AFAIK runs on the same engine) I think something is wrong in this port.

Fully focused on Horizon so no progress on other games.

My wishlist is kinda empty for “major” releases right now.

If I get a Switch 2 I’m interested in the new Fire Emblem (plus Bananza which is already out), and maybe Adventures of Elliot depending on the reviews. Other than that I only have the two games from Falcom (Kyoto Xanadu and Trails in the Sky 2) and the new Professor Layton game.

Of all of these I think only Adventures of Elliot has a release date and it’s only in June!

Mario Tennis is not my cup of tea.

I’ve tried DQ games before but I almost never liked them enough to finish, 5 being the main exception. So while I might give 7 a shot it’s probably a “pick it up with a big discount” situation.

Wow, it’s friday already? This week flew by so fast, was really busy with my new job.

Playing Trails Beyond the Horizon!

Finished Act 1, and looks like from Act 2 onwards we’ll get a split storyline between Van, Rean and Kevin.

I went with Rean’s route first, and this section has them arriving at Basel, learning the lay of the land then going into a mock battle against the Republic’s new mech, the beautiful Excalibur.

Van’s route will be next.

Playing Super Robot Wars Y!

DLC2 has arrived so it’s time to get back to this game.

This DLC includes Steel Jeeg which got a LOT of love in the animation department, plus an alternate universe Getter Robo and Da Garn from the Brave Series.

So far this DLC has been on the easy side, I guess it isn’t balanced for endgame units with Level 99+ and tons of upgrades, but I’m having fun. Curious if the new storyline will be as interesting as the one from DLC1.

With two of my favorite series to keep my busy and a lot to do at work I didn’t get any progress on Hades 2 or Witch on the Holy Night.

Thankfully there’s no major game release I’m interested this month and we have an extended holiday coming soon (Carnival!) so I hope I’ll be able to go back to these games soon.

I like it a lot. It was clearly developed by Falcom’s “B-Team” but has a lot of heart.

It’s a mix of Ys-style action gameplay (though not as polished), current-world setting with supernatural elements like Persona, and Trails-style sidequesting. Cast is great, story is classic anime-style “superpowered high-schoolers fighting monsters” and they fully embrace it, I love how they even replay the game opening at the beginning of each chapter as it if was a new “Episode”.

The OST is amazing.

Excited for Kyoto Xanado (I love the previous game), and good to get a release date for the Aventures of Elliot.

Not much else for me though. Tons of ports of games I don’t care enough or I’d already own a PS5.

Yes! And in two weeks we have an extended holiday here in Brazil for me to play like crazy.

AdHoc absolutely deserves the beating they’re taking. Even if they had no way to prevent the censorship they should’ve announced this a long time ago.

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