End-of-week Report

Still playing Crusader Kings II, which takes as much time as any of the other micromanagement games like Dwarf Fortress or Factorio. Aside from the obvious (school), it is mostly the reason why I haven't played many new games lately, and also the reason why I try to avoid games of such length until I've mostly caught up with everything else. However, it's fun, and... I'm not going to give that up. I'll just finish this one game (which is a gigantic task), then probably not play for a while as I tackle other games.
I've also nearly finished my almost-biannual Terraria playthrough after about 4 months of very irregular play. Always feels nice to finish a long game. And then there was that random review this week, so it's not all dead.

Meanwhile, my Steam Wishlist finally passed 300 titles, so that's worrying for me. I'm contemplating a purge of 50+ games, but then again, just looking through them all again would take a long while that could be spent on playing them, so I don't know. Maybe a bit later.

• Games in backlog: 222 (+4)
• of which Early Access: 55 (+1)
• Games reviewed last week: 1

Never Split the Party

Never Split the Party caught my eye and skipped in line due to being free, and being multiplayer. My friends and I are always burning through games we can (and might want to) play together faster than they come out, so any half-decent opportunity is worth jumping on.

Sadly, the opportunity was the only half-decent thing here. The game itself tries to be a copy of The Binding of Isaac, except they kind of butchered all aspects of it and it's a buggy mess. But as I already mentioned, it's multiplayer, and it's free, except for most character classes which cost nigh 20€. Absurd, really.

In case my bashing hasn't been clear enough, don't even take a look this game's way. If you wanted a multiplayer Binding of Isaac, then you'll have more fun playing that simultaneously on different computers and talking about your experience than you will playing this game.

End-of-week Report

I have severely underestimated the amount of work I've had to do. It's usually the end of a semester that robs me of all my time, not the beginning. At least unlike with my games, there's a constant feeling of progress. I just hope it's actually faster than the amount of new work being piled on. Life comes first, but I'll try to find time to continue with my games.
Have a report that has lost its former glory, being reduced to 3 lines.

• Games in backlog: 218 (+4)
• of which Early Access: 54
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

The blame this week goes to: Crusader Kings II, Tales of Berseria, Mabinogi, and the continuing start of my school semester.
At least the first of those got a review, so it wasn't an empty week. Surprisingly, no new additions to the backlog this week.

• Games in backlog: 214
• of which Early Access: 54
• Games reviewed last week: 1

Crusader Kings II

I'm a bit hesitant on how I feel about Crusader Kings II. I actually only decided to play it because I acquired it for free during one of their promotions and because of all the stories I've heard about the game. It's a bit legendary, you see, yet the Steam reviews don't really reflect that, and neither did my initial impression of it through looking at its gameplay and descriptions. And if you were to ask for my honest, in a way, opinion, I'd still have to agree with that. But after binging it for more than 12 hours on some days, how can I really walk away and say I didn't enjoy it and that it's not a good game?

Crusader Kings II is one of Paradox's Grand Strategy games. They're really a genre of their own. I would say they're most similar to Turn-Based Strategy games in that your main focus is on building up these cities (counties), keeping control of them, and using your armies to conquer more for yourself. Crusader Kings isn't really turn-based though - the simulation is always running, albeit slowly or even on pause whenever you want in singleplayer.
However, a big difference is that ultimately, this game is not about your counties and your armies, and how well they're doing. It's about you, as the ruler. And unlike other strategy games, you're just a human with all your human problems you need to take care of, and so are your subjects. Ruling too much land by yourself? You'll have trouble administrating it, meaning less taxes, and fewer armies. Divide your land up into pieces to give to your vassals? Better hope they're content with your rule, or they'll plot to rebel against you. Own a large kingdom but are about to succumb to disease or old age? Watch as your land gets divided amongst your children and your unhappy vassals use the opportunity to claim independence from you. And there's just so much more.

Ultimately, most of these differences from a regular TBS (or a 4X, to be more precise) are that things are more difficult. A large domain and a powerful army will never guarantee your success, and in the long run, nothing will. Rise and fall, and rise again, but so will your enemies. Some, myself included, would consider this lack of control and these restraints which seek to pull you from power ever stronger as you achieve more of it to be terrible. Why am I even playing and trying to grow larger if I can't truly win, or if I can ever only control a tiny speck of this land I own?
The latter was what frustrated me in Stellaris as well, which is considered to be like a halfway point between a Grand Strategy and a 4X game. You may recall I didn't ultimately like Stellaris, and although with different wording, I criticized this same uncertainty of it, where its gameplay can't quite decide where to fit. I approached CK2 with the same mindset, and I believe that's where I went wrong. CK2 is not a 4X game, and it shouldn't be played like one. It's not about the destination, it's about the journey there, and those same amazing little stories you can tell after your long playing sessions.

Overall, I can't deny I've enjoyed playing Crusader Kings after I got over the initial steep learning curve and past the 4X mindset of absolute control and conquest. Still, it's far from a great game in my opinion with lots of flaws, which would take too long to point out. The game's pretty massive with lots to do, and it's an experience you can't quite get anywhere else (aside from perhaps Paradox's other Grand Strategy games). And despite its flaws, I love this experience and would in fact recommend playing it if you have a ton of time to spend.

End-of-week Report

I wasn't expecting to have time for anything on the first week of school. The beginning and the end are always a little hectic.

Tales of Berseria might actually be starting to reach it's conclusion after the 48 hours I've already played it. I'm not sure how much more of it I can take. They've really stretched it out, and there's not much interesting to do. I hope it ends soon, or I might just quit that one too...

• Games in backlog: 214
• of which Early Access: 54
• Games reviewed last week: 0

Regarding tracking visual novels and VR games in the report:
See, I can't play VR games, even if I roll them.
As for VNs... Well, Steam isn't the best place to gauge how good they may be. Steam's good for regular games, also because there is no other place which actually has all this user review info on all these games. Visual novels however have VNDB, which provides much better results, because the ratings there are by people who are much more into VNs, and are better judges of them because of it. So while I do keep my Steam list of VNs, I actually scout new ones out on VNDB, making the number of VNs on my list mostly irrelevant.
So, this is why I'm excluding them from now on. Less information to keep track of this way, which makes for less interesting data, but it's probably for the best. Truth be told, should the games ever run out, I'm doing away with that report altogether. But we've still got a ways to go until that happens.

End-of-week Report

Busy week this one, actually.

For starters, I played Vermintide 2 over the free weekend it had. Basically, it's an all-around improved version of Left 4 Dead 2. It is so incredibly similar, I wonder how they got away with it. In that sense, there is nothing wrong with the game, but the negative reviews apparently come from broken promises on the devs' part, and because the players wanted more than what they got. Objectively speaking, Left 4 Dead 2 has great reviews, and this one is most definitely a better game, and would by that logic deserve better reviews, but sadly, it's not how the world works. I've never been a fan of the genre though, and this game was never on my list, hence the not-full-review. It was still fun for the 2 days and dozen-or-so hours I played it, but that's that.

Additionally, I read through Phenomeno one night. It was supposedly the best Visual Novel that was under 2 hours, which is why I picked it. (Not that I have any clue how they rate the times - it always takes me twice as long to finish them.) I'd say it was a good but not great horror story. Surprised and fooled me at times, and never used any dumb cliches like jump scares, instead properly developing the eerie atmosphere. Still, it had some moments in the story that just didn't add up, which hurt the whole in many aspects. On the upside, it's free. On the downside, it's fan-translated (a few small mistakes every paragraph, but it's still completely understandable at all times), and is only an adaption of the first of the six light novels it is based on, leaving the story unfinished. There is no English translation available for the LNs either, so I guess I won't ever get to read them.

Well, that was a bit long for just a "passing mention".
Anyways, my last year of school is beginning tomorrow. Not at all satisfied with my progress over the summer, but at least I can see where and why my time went. I don't think it's a lost cause ever getting this pile of games over with, I just have to do it at some point. As someone once told me: There's never time to do anything. Not today, not tomorrow, and not in a week or a month. That's why you just have to do that thing.
I guess it's a bit ambiguous, but what I gathered from it is that this lack of time is just an ever-present feeling. No matter how much or little you fit in your schedule, you'll always feel out of time, but if you just don't think about whether you have time do something and do it, you can get it done. Realistically speaking, of course you have a limited amount of time, but what I just said comes from that very few people are actually out of time. They still have time to do more, but if they start thinking about it, they won't find that time.
So I'm confident that if I really want, I can complete this pile of games. But it's still easier said than done. I mean just look at these numbers:

• Games in backlog: 283
• of which VR: 18
• of which Visual Novels: 53 (+2 - I'm really not even playing these from my list, maybe I should exclude them from the report along with VR, would make for more realistic numbers...)
• of which Early Access: 61 (+1)
• Games reviewed last week: 3-ish

PS. I also hammered together some CSS to make embedding images prettier, mostly on my side. The defaults really make we want to dive in there and just rip some of that stuff out, but I know that would take too long to be worth it.