End-of-week Report

You know, one issue with saving all the information for the end of the week is that I might get an idea of something to write about during the week, but then I forget it by the time the weekend comes. I think I had one of these situations this week. I'm note sure, but it might have been that I decided to switch over to having paragraphs have some space between them. Should make my posts less like walls of text, which might have been a bit intimidating to read. Hopefully it is less so now.

As for games, I got a fair amount played this week. First actually free week too, so it makes sense. Two more, and then it's back to school. Not among the game listed is Total War: Warhammer II, which I tried to play. Sadly, despite my computer meeting the recommended specs, it wasn't able to manage acceptable framerates on even the lowest graphics. As such, I won't be playing it. Maybe the next Total War game.

You might also notice a drop in the number of games this week despite not getting as many reviews. This is from games I removed but didn't play. Maybe because I already had played them but had forgotten to remove them, maybe because the ongoing development had shown them to be below my expectations, maybe something else. I'll count that Total War as "played" though, since I technically did try.

• Games in backlog: 205 (-6)
• of which VR: 14
• of which Visual Novels: 40
• of which Early Access: 52
• Games reviewed last week: 4
• Progress to 18.02 game goal: 6 of 30

PS. I had been watching Code Geass over some longer period of time, and recently finished it. It was good. With certainty my favorite anime I've ever watched, actually. You should be happy when you've experienced something great, but it kind of makes me sad when I get a new favorite. Just makes me think that it's going to be even more difficult than before to find something that's even better, and most everything else you're going to experience won't be nearly as good.

Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection

Heyyy, it's another RPG right after me saying I don't like RPGs. No, no, it's toootally different this time around. Y'see, this one is a JRPG, the kind I have a love-hate relationship with on top of my usual feelings for RPGs. I keep telling myself after each JRPG that I'm just attracted to them because I love the art style, and the cute, cheerful, and colorful world and characters, but that the gameplay always ends up being shit. Well, clearly I'm not learning from my past mistakes.

I put a good few hours into Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection this evening. (Also known by its original name, Zwei II.) It came out on PC late in 2017, but was actually made about nine years ago, so it's nothing fresh, keep that in mind. It feels very much like a JRPG alright, but perhaps a bit less obnoxious than the average one I've had the misfortune of stumbling upon. Onto the details, shall we?

As in any JRPG, story takes the front in this game, where the amount of dialogue and cutscenes is far greater than I can patiently sit through. I almost quit before getting to the meat of the game. In some scenes, voice acting is present, and it's actually remarkably good. The music's pretty nice as well, but I hear that these are the things this developer does well. It's from the same people whomade Ys and The Legend of Heroes series, see. Sadly, neither is something I give overly many points for in my head.

The story is basically that you're a treasure hunter / courier-for-hire (an odd combination for sure), and on your most recent package delivery you're shot down from your airplane and killed by two girls flying dragons, who had previously taken over some vampire chick's castle. The latter then revives you in exchange for help in reclaiming her lost home.

To go about that, you run dungeons searching for this vampire's lost magic. The level traversal and combat is action-based, but is pretty much exclusively based around either spamming the melee button or holding down the ranged button until stuff dies. The latter is safer, but slower, which is an annoying combination, because I'd rather not lose, but hell, things take long to die. Another really annoying bit is that the camera can't be rotated manually, so you often find yourself at a really unfortunate angle where you can't see what you're fighting or if an enemy is preparing a ranged attack at you. Other than these two (rather major) issues, the combat feels fine, fluid, and surprisingly difficult enough for a JRPG.

As far as new equipment and new powers goes, there's fairly little progress and stuff stays (at least conceptually) the same throughout the game. There's an interesting bit though where instead of getting exp from killing monsters, you get exp from eating, which also restores life. However, saving up food allows you to combine it for more efficient exp once outside the dungeon. So if you're more skilled and the game's easy enough for you, you can make it even more easier by also getting ahead in levels? Ain't that a fine idea./s

In conclusion, I don't think this would've been a fun run for me from any angle, but the grindiness, monotone combat, as well as an excessive amount of dialogue for my taste were turn-offs enough that I quit mid-way. Still, as much as I've played JRPGs, it was definitely in the top half, so if you're a fan of the genre, why not give it a try. Otherwise, probably not worth it. Reminded me of Recettear, which I'd consider better, maybe you'd like that instead.

Dragon Age: Origins

A considerable amount of people I know have told me to play BioWare games, mainly Mass Effect and Dragon Age. I figured since I'm more of a fan of fantasy, I'd go with Dragon Age, see if I liked it, and if I did, move on to Mass Effect. So with that in mind, I started Dragon Age: Origins today, and it went about as well as I expected.

Dragon Age seems to be a pretty standard RPG in terms of overall build. You get a selection of a few races, a few classes, and a few starting stories to shape your overall character. Assign stat points, select skills, talents, and whatnot... But what surprised me, and not in a good way, was that Dragon Age wasn't an action RPG, but more like a pause-based RTS. Like Pillars of Eternity or Tyranny, which I had played before. Of course, that comparison is backward, since Dragon age came out about 5 years earlier.

Further, I didn't feel like any of the game's systems was particularly well made. Micromanaging everyone was tiresome due to various reasons such as: Equipment management was for one character at a time - no quick way to switch between them or get an overview of who has or needs what. Activating skills took some odd amount of time and had poor indicators, meaning I couldn't understand what in the world my party was doing. AI sometimes felt the need to assert its own decisions over mine. More so, it was rather poor at that, failing to path around units, failing to understand it needed to attack something, or that maybe it was trying to shoot arrows through a wall. As for other systems, none of the skills and abilities seemed interesting either. Very plain, basic, and boring. While normally I would say for RPGs that they're just not my thing, I'd actually say this one is rather poorly made. If I wanted to play something just like this but better, one of Obsidian's RPGs would be fitting.

As mentioned in previous reviews though, I don't wish to play something like this. I'm not a fan of most RPGs for the simple reason I'll repeat yet again. I play games for their gameplay. RPGs tend to have a lot of segments that don't have gameplay - the story and dialogue bits. While I can appreciate a good story, books or other dedicated story-based entertainment does a better job most always. I'd reckon the reason behind that might be that they're focused on that bit. RPGs also have to worry about gameplay, and thus they suffer two-fold - a bad story due to effort on gameplay, and bad gameplay due to effort on story. That's not a rule, but it is very common. Not that I think games should forsake any story components altogether, not at all. A little bit of story, or rather, lore, can give much-needed meaning to gameplay and immerse the player more. All of this is just my preference though, as I know a lot of people love RPGs, as well as other games with a split between story and gameplay.

From my experiences with this game, I wouldn't recommend it even if you do like RPGs. Myself, I won't be checking if either of sequels is better, since Origins was disappointing, and the whole I-don't-really-like-RPGs thing.

WaveLand

Randomed a more obscure one from my list this time. WaveLand isn't particularly popular, nor do I believe it to be particularly good.

WaveLand is an action platformer, with movement mechanics built around some dashing mechanic from a specific fighter game I've never played. The game is split into short levels, each pitting you against a time limit and scoring you based on your completion speed. Essentially, it's a game for speedrunning. The pixel art style it has evoked some feeling of nostalgia in me, but was otherwise unmentionable.

First of all, I'm no fan of speedrunning, so I guess I'm not really the target audience, and the game's not very enjoyable for me. Secondly, I've also not played that other game whose players the developer apparently tailored the movement to. If you fit into both of those categories, then maybe it's worth trying this game. Otherwise, not so much.

Even accounting for the fact that neither the goal nor gameplay is aimed at me, this game feels like it's lacking substance. The levels feel empty, plain. The story is something obscure, and more of a thing in the background, so it's hard to care about that either. All that's left is traversing these levels and chasing numbers, which, even if it wasn't about speed, and if the movement was more generally appealing, doesn't seem to be enough for a good game.

So I wouldn't really recommend WaveLand. Maybe unless you really are the very narrow target audience for this game and are otherwise bored.

End-of-week Report

Not much to report this week. Exams are over, finished with another semester of all A-s, so I get to enjoy my well-deserved break until mid-February. I've been playing a bit of Mabinogi in the pockets of free time I've had. I could just keep spending my time on these infinite games I know I like, but then I'll never discover anything new and great. So I just have to get over the initial grudge of starting a new game.

• Games in backlog: 211 (+4)
• of which VR: 14
• of which Visual Novels: 40 (+2)
• of which Early Access: 52
• Games reviewed last week: 0
• Progress to 18.02 game goal: 2 of 30

End-of-week Report

That 30 game promise is starting to look more and more unreasonable. I'll have to really go on a spree at some point if I want to finish that. Two games per day, or something like that.

In other news, Windows decided it was time for another major update, which screwed over a lot of things regarding how my computer works. That includes a lot of the automation I do, which is consequently the reason why this report is a day late. While yesterday was lost to fixing these things, I should be mostly done with that now. So on to the report, which now includes the change from last week:

• Games in backlog: 207 (+1)
• of which VR: 14
• of which Visual Novels: 38
• of which Early Access: 52
• Games reviewed last week: 1
• Progress to 18.02 game goal: 2 of 30

Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy

Getting Over It with Bennet Foddy is some sort of sick game for masochists, I swear. Not the most elegant thing to say about a game, but it's quite true. It's a game about climbing a mountain of things with a big hammer, very strong arms, and mostly realistic physics otherwise. This is, as you might imagine, quite difficult.

Normally, I would just label this game as "not worth looking at", since it features basically no gameplay, no variety, no fun - only a static environment and frustration. It even says so as the only sentence of its short description: "A game for a certain kind of person. To hurt them." But, as circumstances would have it, Getting Over It has amassed a pretty large amount of players. This could probably be attributed to it being fun to watch others suffer as they fall down over and over, so it's a natural fit for YouTube and Twitch, which are a huge popularity boost.

But regardless of this popularity, regardless of the hidden message that if you don't want to play this game, it's because it's too difficult for you, and you're just giving up... It's still a bad game. I could go on at length, probing that from different angles, but there isn't really any need. If someone tells you to play it, just tell them that it's frustrating without being any fun, and you see no reason to subject yourself to something like that, even for some petty feeling of accomplishment.

So I wouldn't recommend you play Getting Over It. Unless you hate yourself or something. In which case, go right on ahead.

End-of-week Report

January is exam month. This means the entire first week was spent on finishing up all the school projects and homework that had been left undone. The one I did for a Computer Graphics course is even worth mentioning here, so take a look if you want. This project page includes screenshots, some info about what I and my team did, as well as a download link. Next week I have three exams, which means little time for games, lots of time for studying.

• Games in backlog: 206
• of which VR: 14
• of which Visual Novels: 38
• of which Early Access: 52
• Games reviewed last week: 0

PS. All posts now include a little date at the bottom. This is a replacement to the dates I've been writing as the post titles until now. It also took way too much time to properly implement, but at least I'm now a bit more familiar with editing Blogger's template.