Albion Online

I've always been a theoretical fan of MMOs (that is, I like the idea of MMOs, their potential, but I don't feel like any actually existing ones quite hit that potential), but I had never jumped on the Albion Online train. I had heard about it before launch, back in 2017. I can't remember why I didn't join at that time. I think it wasn't free to play, didn't really gain that much popularity, and I had heard stories about how end-game was just getting run over by death squads of PvP players whether you were looking for PvP or just trying to PvE / craft. At least two of those things have changed. Albion is somewhere around the 5th most popular MMO right now, and it is free to play. So I figured I'd finally give it a try - nothing to lose.

The first thing I noticed is that the quality of graphics and effects isn't particularly high. It's not a deal breaker, and I wouldn't expect much more from an indie MMO that's also made for mobile, but it does all look a bit bland. Attacks don't really have that impact, neither visually nor audibly. Functionally, the abilities are fine and responsive, and at least as far as I got, I feel like they allow fairly high-skill gameplay. The UI design also feels too mobile-oriented.
But I will look past the graphics. Especially for an MMO, it is not why I'm here. After a brief tutorial, I was immediately put on the mainland, had a few more assistive, though optional, quests, and was then left to my own devices. That's wonderful, and that's a clear sign that this is truly a sandbox MMO. No one will tell me where I have to go or how I have to play the game. But, what is there to do?

The game has four main activities. Crafting & gathering, PvE in the form of dungeons and raids (both open world and private), PvP either just for shits and giggles, as guild warfare for territory, or fighting for your faction. And of course, trading.
Crafting isn't too big of a deal in many games, as players cap out their equipment, but Albion has rather fast gear deterioration, requiring either expensive repairs, or brand new gear. Dying in PvP will also cause your gear to be destoryed or dropped, so you will need new gear repeatedly. Gear types split into over a hundred different craftables, and while you will be relatively quickly able to craft any gear type, it pays to specialize in something, as that will allow you to hit higher quality values for a much cheaper price. There is the glaring issue of all crafting stations being owned by players, and there being something of an oligarchy on them by larger guilds. Especially for new players, this means crafting prices are high and crafting as a main activity is not very lucrative.
I did not really engage in trading, but as each region has its own resources it specializes in, the market in each city is limited to people in that city, and the open world is dangerous to traverse, I would imagine there is a pretty penny to be made from carrying the right goods from one city to another, as well as selling good quality equipment.
For combat in general, I was actually surprised by the high variety in playstyles. Most of your combat power is determined by gear, and there are three "classes", but you're not locked to any and can mix and match at any point out of combat. On one end, there is light armor, giving more damage and energy, as well as ranged staves dealing AoE damage or healing. In the middle, there is medium armor, giving a bit of damage, but also things like mobility or invisibility, as well as weapons like bows, daggers, spears, etc. And on the other end there is heavy armor, giving CC and damage resistance, as well as mainly melee weapons which stun. And this is a very brief overview. There are tons of weapon types, and every weapon and armor type splits into several slightly more specialized types still. The customization options are massive, and there seem to be frequent balance patches too.
I already touched on how the combat doesn't feel very great, and I'd be lying if I said that didn't affect my opinion of the game. However, there are worse things. For one, there is only one server. It's in America. If you're not in America, you will have over 100 ping. The kill times are short enough that this does matter, and that's pretty bad in a game where PvP plays such a large role? How large? Well, remember how I said that the PvP death squad rumours were one of the reason that kept me away from the game initially? All of the higher tier content is located in free PvP zones, so you're never safe if you don't want to spend the entire game gathering scraps in the safer areas. And let me tell you, there is nothing fun or fair about getting run over by a larger group of players while not looking for trouble.

Overall, even leaving the subpar production quality of the game aside, Albion is a PvP game quite thoroughly. If you're not going in for PvP, I would suggest you stay out. And even if you are going in for PvP, make sure you get connections, and get a large group beforehand. Numbers win fights, and there is little you can accomplish on your own. I can imagine Albion is great for people who really want to play in communities, and who have the time to invest into it. I think this is something I might have liked years ago, when I had more time to spend, but even then, I think something like Eve Online just has the same idea for gameplay, but also has way more to do in it. While I wouldn't personally recommend either, I don't see a reason at all to recommend Albion over Eve.

Touhou

Not only am I covering two games at once this time, they're also both from the famous series called Touhou. I grabbed English patches for the Steam versions, and played Hidden Star in Four Seasons, which was the first official Touhou game to release on Steam back in 2017 (To clarify, it released on Steam before any other Touhou games. There have later been even earlier Touhou games released on Steam.), as well as Unconnected Marketeers, which is the 2nd latest one.
The reason for clumping them together is because they're extremely similar, and because I wanted to also talk about the history somewhat.

The first Touhou game was released in 1997. I wouldn't go as far as to say it was one of the first bullet hell games, but there weren't many made before that. Since then over thirty official Touhou games have been released (a few of which have been fighting games, but mostly bullet hells), not to mention all the fan games, other fan works, and I think it even got an anime? My personal favorites are the OSTs of all the games, which I don't seem to ever get tired of listening, even not having played the games. It's a bit daunting to go play something like that. What if it doesn't live up to my expectations?

I realized I don't actually have a lot to say about the gameplay itself. Touhou has probably defined a good chunk of how bullet hell games play, but I feel like it hasn't changed much itself. (Might be a false claim, I've only briefly watched videos of gameplay of the earlier games.) Dodge the bullets, shoot enemies, collect falling stuff to get points / level up your weapon / charge your bombs. Collecting stuff higher up the screen is generally worth more. And if you're in trouble, use a bomb to clear the screen and deal a lot of damage to any enemies. There's usually one extra gimmick which changes per game and helps you clear the bullets sometimes. It's really nothing special, and honestly, I felt kind of disappointed.
Of course, it's not all about the complexity. It could be fun to just challenge myself with these core concepts. Touhou is certainly plenty difficult, probably more so at the higher end than most other bullet hells, but that peak has never really interested me. Much like games that focus on speedrunning, I don't get a lot of enjoyment over perfecting my technique, and am instead satisfied to just get through everything at a slightly above average difficulty. That seems to take around 6 hours for one game, which I think is rather little.
No, what bothers me more is the lack of quality of life features I've come to expect. Most importantly, mouse controls. A keyboard is nowhere near as precise as a mouse can be, and I can not fathom how this still hasn't been implemented. I would have also liked things like indicators at the bottom of the screen to see where the enemies are, and better bullet contrast with the background at times. On a personal level, I just don't see anything about the gameplay I could recommend. It's not bad, but it just feels so average and minimal. Perhaps it's been quantity over quality all along.

As an afterthought, I suppose Touhou has gained its popularity through the world / characters, the music, and maybe the higher ends of difficulty. But I heard that the mechanics and gameplay have never been Touhou's strong suite, even in the early years. The earliest bullet hell I can name is Jamestown, which is from 2011, and that definitely had more to do. I think I played some Flash ones at least a couple years earlier, and, as far as memory serves, those too had better gameplay. And Bullet Heaven 2 still reigns as my favorite bullet hell, and the one I'd recommend to people if they asked me. (The first one was good too.)

Cubic Currency

Oh no, I missed my usual Friday evening post due to a combination of currently playing a new game I'm finding fun (this is good), and being oddly busy (this is bad). So I swapped to quickly playing something else to write this post. That something else happened to be Cubic Currency. It was technically below my minimum review score threshold, but I let it slide due to the previously mentioned circumstances. It wasn't actually that bad.

Cubic Currency has a pretty solid, if simple, game loop. You start the day with some dice and a bunch of customers lined up. Each customer wants some dice, and offers you a combination of money, dice, and ability uses. Abilities let you roll new dice, reroll old dice, upgrade a die to a better roll, and "split" a die into two worse rolls. (You can also unlock 2 other shopkeepers with other abilities.) With these abilities at your disposal, you must make enough money from the customers to afford your rent every three days.
Throw in some permanent powerups (such as sometimes getting a new die when using an ability), random events between days (such as finding an extra die for the next day), daily modifiers (such as every customer being on a timer), and a few more mechanics, and the game isn't that shallow anymore.

Still, I ultimately find that the game's downfall is the lack of a strategic element. You have the option to decline a customer, but all the customers offer a better reward than what the raw dice are worth, so the only reason to decline them is if you don't have abilities stored up to get enough dice. I served ~95% of the customers. Beyond that, what choice is there... Just give the customer the right dice. Customers who pay a lot get golden dice (increase the pay amount by a percentage), those that don't offer dice nor powerups get counterfeits (which remove those things from the offer)... Print is clearly the strongest ability, followed by reroll, so just focus on getting more of those...
It took me less than an hour to figure out the game, and the rest was just autopiloting. I'm afraid the gameplay loop isn't quite fun enough that I'd enjoy just watching things unfold as I do my certainly near-optimal actions without thinking. For this lack of decision depth, I can't recommend Cubic Currency.

Mini War - Three Kingdoms

Mini War - Three Kingdoms looked like a game with a terrible translation and programmer art level graphics, but despite the fact that relatively nobody had played it before, the gameplay looked interesting enough for me to try it. Sometimes the games with the least polish in presentation hold the most in-depth gameplay.

So, what I had assumed of the gameplay, was that you control this character going against a large army, and then you have to strategically approach them from the right angle, use the right abilities, maybe there's some cooldowns or specific movement patterns you can do, etc., etc.
In reality, the game was sadly much more shallow than that. The enemies do not move, they do not change where they attack at any point, and you don't have any abilities at all. Your attack pattern is passive, so the only thing you have to do is figure out the right route to move. Each level is designed to be completed with a few moves, and moving in a straight line counts as one move, so you're essentially just looking for a few straight lines that take you from start to finish (or through all the objectives). This is not particularly difficult, and most certainly not fun gameplay.

A disappointment then, sadly. Mini War is less a strategy game that I hoped it was, and more a semi-casual puzzle game. The amateur visual design of course doesn't help to sell it, but regardless, I doubt it's worth anyone's time.