13.07.17

So I gave Rakuen a try, and... To put it shortly, this story should never have been in the form of a game. It's purely focused on the story with no action or combat or anything whatsoever. You just walk around the place interacting with various things to uncover and advance little bits of the story. Now, aside from the fact that you're a potentially terminally ill boy in a hospital (I didn't actually learn a single thing about why he's hospitalized during the time I played), I never really reached any part where the story would pick up.

The first two hours that I played were doing a piss poor job at keeping me awake. I couldn't grasp what the story was going to be about - there was no big initial problem that needed fixing, instead you just walked around the hospital talking to people, looking for your stolen book, which continued for a good hour. I guess this served as some form of introduction to the characters, but gosh, was it forced. Then the next hour out of the two was spent in the game's alternate fantasy world, where certain characters correspond to the ones you saw at the hospital. And so the first two hours were spent on mind-numbingly boring things with no apparent reason behind them from the story's perspective. Again, a forced introduction, I believe.

It was only after that that the game gave a promise of what the rest would be about. I was to help the people I had met at the hospital in exchange for one of my wishes to be granted. But, sadly, by that point I had lost hope in the game. But this is still a rather highly rated title, as far as the story-only games go, so I didn't just want to leave it at that, and proceeded to read elsewhere what I was missing out on.

No spoilers from me, but the game is supposedly pretty sad towards the end, probably more so if you actually bothered to experience it. And while I wouldn't shun this game for the story, despite it having its flaws as well, I would most definitely call any gameplay attached to it a load of crap. I am not sure why the developers went the route of making this a game, when there was practically no effort put into making it bearable to play. Even for an RPG Maker game, the setup of the menus, interactions with items in the game, the placement of those items... It was terrible. Were you to write this story as a book, it would be a light 100-150 page read, not the 8 hour sleep-inducing semi-errand-simulator it is. The text runs too slow, there are too many tasks that need to be done that don't connect enough to the story, the distances are too long, and navigating the menus feels unnatural, which is even worse when this makes some of the characters sound like broken record boxes.

If you really want to know what this story is about and don't want to just read someone's compilation of it, then I guess you can play it. Otherwise I'd stay far away.

 I cleared out a few games from the list that clearly had problems and that I no longer wished to try out. Coupled with the other game I played today, that should bring my total down to 102 games. (Plus some visual novels, and VR games I can't play.) That's just about 2 per day for the rest of the summer if nothing gets added to the list, which of course it will.

But that other game I mentioned was Hyper Knights. To describe it through other existing and popular games, it's a clear mixture between Mount & Blade's campaign mode and One Finger Death Punch. So you got a bunch of villages, outposts, and castles, which stock you with gold and troops to fuel your expansion. You can also hire knights to lead larger armies for automated conquest or more solid defense of your own lands. The enemy responds in kind. There's a lot going on on the map at all times, but the AI takes good care of it all.
When you personally enter a battle, however, your knight is not like all the others. You have a dash, two attack keys, and a power key. Each enemy has some keys above their head that each correspond to one of the attack keys you have. Like in OFDP, you have to hit the right key to deal damage to the enemy. The power key allows you to choose a power that can be an AoE, multiple dashes, shield, shockwave, or a bunch others - basically a super strong attack.
There's not terribly much content there, but given the mechanics I've described, it'd be at least as fun as OFDP, right? Well, it very well might be, were it not that some of the powers are way too strong, basically making the game devolve to charging those powers, then using them to win. But even worse than that is that unlike OFDP, there is no penalty for hitting a wrong button. So the strategy is just to mash the two attack buttons alternately until you get the special power, everyone's dead, or your fingers are too tired.
So, due to these pretty major flaws, I can't actually recommend this game, but I did have a few hours of fun playing it. It's quite the grind, and that couples well with the mindless combat system, so if you want to switch off your brain for a few hours and beef up your fingers, get tapping.

12.07.17

Starship Theory recently went into Early Access on Steam and seems to be a game that's somewhere between FTL and Rimworld, as you build your spaceship while traveling across space and making sure your crew is okay. The review score is rather low for the moment, but I will probably be waiting until it's out of Early Access anyways, as usual.

11.07.17

Finally continuing on with other games.

Riptale is a game where you run around somewhat randomly generated levels, hitting stuff with your sword before that stuff manages to hit you. I feel I have a little something to say about each of its aspects, so lets start at the least significant.

The music is pretty nice and matches the game in its fast pace. The game uses black-and-white pixel art, which looks stylistically fitting, but makes it difficult to spot some enemies. Due to the fast and rather unforgiving nature of the game, being unable to instantly recognize an enemy becomes a big problem. There's also apparently a story told via books that appear every few levels, but as far as I saw, it's very brief and not at all interesting.

As for the gameplay, it's quite simple. You can run around and jump. Then you have (by default) three attack charges, which can be used to launch directional attacks that one-shot enemies, dash you in that direction, and also offer a very far-reaching sweep. These clearly overpowered attacks are the game's main, and pretty much only mechanic. After hitting an enemy, time stops for a split second, allowing you to aim at another enemy to potentially continue the combo.

I think this is a very nice mechanic, but it is plagued by a bad aiming mechanic and level design that heavily hinders your line of sight to a lot of enemies. I think this might even be playable if you could aim with your mouse, but as it stands now, I have at best 8 directions where I can aim, and while the game tries to slightly adjust my aim, it also often adjusts it in the wrong direction, causing me to miss an otherwise perfectly aimed attack. Secondly, a lot of the enemies have very spazzy movement, meaning that if the game placed them in some cozy nook where you can't get line of sight without getting close, it's very difficult to not take damage. Other enemies fire projectiles at you, which can also make hitting them without taking damage a very difficult task in some of the generated levels.

So, it's a nice idea, but the implementation is really rather poor, hence I wouldn't recommend it.

Weapon Shop Fantasy is a game where you get workers, have them gather materials, use those materials to make items, then sell the items to get new gathering locations and item recipes. And that's basically the whole game loop. It's a very simple game, it's a very grindy game, and it's not a very good game. It's basically a clicker game because each item has to be queued up, and you can't really automate the process. So if I were to compare it to a clicker game, I could say it's pretty decent with a nice amount of variety as you have to stay on top of what items are being requested from you. Compare it to any "normal" game, and it's just a complete waste of your time, as most clicker games tend to be.
If you're looking for a game about running an item shop, try Recettear. It's not super good, but I liked it enough that I would recommend it.

10.07.17

There's a nagging little voice in the back of my head calling me weak or a casual for quitting when facing a challenge. The other part, that I decided to listen to, tells me that if I'm not having fun, I don't have to spend my time playing a game even if I like the concept and it's a modern genre-definer that a ton of people like.

So for largely the same reasons as I once quit the original Dark Souls, I now quit Dark Souls II. I had been progressing at a steady pace, lit the third Primal Bonfire, usually taking a couple of deaths to gather most of the stuff in the area and find the boss, then a few deaths at the boss before beating it. Definitely nothing disheartening in itself, and I was by no means stuck, given the current difficulty. However, the difficulty was definitely a factor that influenced the decision to stop playing after a particular death while running through another area.

My thoughts were plain and simple. "I am not having fun, I don't want to play this anymore." But being who I am, I can't just leave things at that. "Why am I not having fun?" I asked myself. And starting from the end of the story, I figured I could've probably prevented that death. Instead I just charged at the enemy without caution, opting to rely on my heavy armor and tons of Estus. As for why I did that, it's clear - I didn't care to analyze this enemy's moves, to find a strategy to beat it without taking damage, because it would overall probably be faster to just run through it. It's not like I'd encounter them again all that much, I don't need to know their ins and outs. But this just meant I had subconsciously shifted from trying to experience (learn) the game, to trying to get it over with.

While I'd normally enjoy a challenge, because that means I was incapable of using my current pool of experience to easily dismantle the situation, and can thus use this new challenge to gain new experience for further trials... Dark Souls just didn't feel like that kind of challenge to me. I wasn't trying new things. I didn't felt like I was learning new things. Maybe I should have done both, but I didn't need to. My current build and strategies were carrying me through the game just fine, but I wasn't learning how to play better. I was just learning how the game worked.

I'd normally say that a game that isn't too easy and isn't too hard has to be fun because of that precise balance of difficulty alone. One source of fun is definitely learning (but not studying, mind you, which is why we like games but not school), which can't be done when something is so easy you can not learn from it, nor when something is so hard you can not wrap your head around it. But I guess a balanced challenge doesn't always make you learn something from it.

In the case of Dark Souls, I dare say the content is unfair. Far too often I am not given an option to learn upfront, only as a result of getting defeated. I do not wish to re-run the same content multiple times unless I have something left to learn from it, but in many cases here, I didn't. I just needed to get the information that was pretty much only acquirable by dying, and then I could use my already existing knowledge to work out a solution. I guess it's kind of hard to tell the two apart, but really, I didn't approach a boss with a different strategy on the fifth time than the first time. "Dodge or block their attacks, use the downtime when they're not attacking to either heal up or deal damage." And that's a pretty comprehensive guide I was following in my head. I just needed to know what their attacks were and how their downtime worked. Most of the times I died to something new I hadn't seen before. But I couldn't possible prepare for those times.

It's really hard to tell sometimes why I like one game but dislike another. Dark Souls has named a whole genre, meaning it clearly did something that was not only new, but also desired. Sure, the souls-like games, as they're called, aren't really big as a genre, but I've seen a decent bunch of them. I even quite like Salt and Sanctuary, despite it being shockingly similar to Dark Souls. So I can't not recommend Dark Souls, simply because of how influential this game is. Even though I didn't like it, it's a game that I'm glad to have played because of it's higher-than-average historical significance.

09.07.17

(Click to enlarge)

Finished the other bell tower and the Iron Keep. Since that was the second Primal Bonfire out of the four (I vaguely remember there were four?), I guess I should be halfway through the game now, DLC aside. I reached the 50 strength I was aiming for and am now running with my great hammer in one hand, Tower Shield in the other. I found the armor merchant was selling the Smelter Demon's armor as well, which was pretty good, so I went ahead and got that. That all of course caused my equip load to pass 100%, so I'm working on building up my capacity now. At least I got a majestic strut instead of the usual jog.

Also beat the Grave of Saints and The Gutter (screw that place) later on this day. Should probably be continuing with the Shaded Woods instead of that poison-filled hellhole after The Gutter.

08.07.17

This session took care of Huntsman's Copse, Harvest Valley, and Earthen Peak. Also the Iron Keep should be about half-finished. I'm fairly close to getting 50 strength so I could one-hand the mace great hammer. Someone who summoned me one time had an even larger one though, so I guess I'm not capped out yet.

07.07.17

Dark Souls progressed a little faster this session. Cleared The Lost Bastille, Sinner's Rise, Heide's Tower of Flame, unpetrified the pyromancer at the lever in Majula, cleared some of that area until the 3rd bonfire there, There's some stairs at The Lost Bastille that I have actually yet to go down, and probably some other stuff I can't recall right now.

06.07.17

I've been designing blueprints for Factorio. I currently have early-to-end-game smelting blueprints and 4.5/6 science production blueprints done. I guess certain parts of Factorio will eventually just devolve into placing down blueprints and hooking them up to your main bus. But that just gives you more time to focus on other, less automatable aspects of the game, or further perfect your existing designs. On the other hand, nobody likes inventing the wheel over and over again, even if you do it the first time instead of copying someone else's work.

Other than that I got started with Dark Souls II. The bosses are pretty grueling and it doesn't much help that the more you die, the harder the game gets (from loss of maximum health). So by the time you eventually do beat the boss, you'll pretty much manage to do it without even getting hit. But I promised to record my progression in the game, so here goes.

I wake up in the middle of a stone altar, the only source of light being the entrance to a deep chasm. The same one I am in now. The only path is forward, and I am greeted by some four-legged abominations that still somehow resemble humans. They are not hostile and lead me to a house, the inhabitants of which help me recall who I am. I guess I was what would be called a bandit, not that it seems to matter much here. There is ever only one path - forward, and so I proceed out the door. A bonfire greets me, offering an odd revitalizing sensation. I pause there briefly before continuing on to the area ahead. The path is narrow and any wrong step would lead to me falling into yet another abyss. There are undead scattered around the various branching paths, reminding me the basics of combat. From my experience in life, I've seen a decent amount of it, and these barely moving souls do not pose a threat. But each branch leads back to the main trail, urging me forward. It is only at the end of the last branch that I find something interesting - a bird's nest from which I hear the voices of some whom I do not see. They ask for a stone I have on me, and I lay it down in the nest only for it to disappear and be replaced with another stone. Albeit the latter being slightly more valuable to me. I find an egg in my possession, and after some hesitation I offer it to them. By some odd force I can not explain, they thank me for it, and in return give me a weapon that can best be described as an ornate boulder on top of a long and similarly ornate handle. It is much too heavy to fight with for now, but I take it anyways. Having exhausted my options in this cavern, I head forward into a small tunnel. At the end of it I finally reach a source of light and emerge into a large open area.

For once, things don't look quite as grim. I spot another bonfire in the distance and proceed straight to it. Near it, a green-clad lady stands, offering me a chance to transfer the power from the souls I've defeated into my own soul. Other than that, she rambles something about finding larger souls and the king. I swear, no one here can just say what they want to say, instead stopping at vague hints. She also hands me a flask containing a liquid that much resembles the revitalizing sensation from the bonfires. There are a few other people around in the area as well as a large well and a locked house. One of them is a blacksmith, who has managed to get locked out of his own workshop. The other is an armor merchant, though he doesn't sell much anything I'd care to spend my currency on. Speaking of currency, it seems regular money has no value here. Instead everyone seeks souls in exchange for their wares or services. How cruel that so many must die in order for the few to succeed. Though I can't say I care much for the shambling undead I've seen so far. Among the weirdest inhabitants of this area I find a talking cat who compliments my bodily odors. She sells magical rings, one of which even catches my eye. It would grant me the ability to land better, allowing for jumping down from higher places. Sadly the price in souls is far too steep for me right now. Having exhausted this area as well for the time being, I head into one of the multiple tunnels leading away from here. Surely I'd return often, for the chance to further enhance my own soul by the power of others'.

The tunnel winds a bit, leading through some water and gates, but I eventually reach a forest inhabited by more of these weak undead. A bonfire catches my eye in the distance, and I am drawn to it, eliminating the undead that block my path. Yet again there is not much choice for me in terms of direction, so I proceed to clear my path. I soon reach a knight in white armor. He's holding a sword which catches my eye. Mistaking him for dead, I attempt to take his sword, but he retaliates, and I jump back. I can not see his body under that armor, but from the way he moves, he does not seem to be fully alive either. Still, the armor helps shield him and he lands two blows on me before I finish him off, but the sword is now mine. Compared to my axe, it is short, but it crackles with energy, and as I felt from fighting against it, each hit not only cuts, but also stings like lightning. This will be useful. I empty the flask I was given into my mouth and my wounds miraculously heal. I guess I need to thank her for this. Heading forward still, through more undead, a larger one of their kind blocks some stairs upward. I hesitate momentarily before deciding that neither his armor nor his sword can be as threatening as the knight I just fought. Surely enough, while more dangerous than his smaller friends, he is not a problem. The path continues for a while, going over and through broken buildings, trees, and more undead. Of note is a cave with a giant fire-breathing lizard, inside of which I find a similar sword as the lightning one I am carrying right now. The newly found sword is instead fire-based, but on closer inspection I decide to stick with my current one. Beyond a gate, I find another bonfire and an old lady who sells various trinkets I do not have use for. She does however have the blacksmith's key for some reason, which I purchase off her. Most of the undead beyond this bonfire are the larger kind, and some of their archers manage to land a few shots on me. Luckily the flask replenishes itself at the bonfires, allowing me to use it over and over again. Additionally, some of their armor has not completely deteriorated and I manage to fit it onto myself, as it provides better protection than what I arrived here with. In another cave I find a man claiming to be a cartographer and also the one living in that locked house I found, for which he hands me the key. As I head back towards the bonfire with the old lady next to it, something... different happens. I check out the rooftop of a building, when a giant bird carrying a similarly gigantic knight flies by, dropping said knight onto the rooftop. It is easily four times my size, with a sword to match. It closes in on me with surprising swiftness and strikes me with his sword, sending me flying. I scramble to reach the ladder to escape, but he is faster, and with another swing of his sword, my life ends. Or so I thought. Instead I wake up at the nearby bonfire with the only thing missing being the souls I had managed to gather. But soon enough I notice that my skin has turned green, more resembling the undead which I've killed here. Furthermore, the enemies I have already slain are back where I first met them, ready to meet me again. I can only imagine the implications.

Ugh. This is proving to be more time consuming than I thought. I'd hate to spend a large fraction of the time I spent playing also cataloguing my events. I guess I underestimated how long it would take. No use scrapping what I already wrote, but I won't be continuing it. So far I beat the first two bosses and am now using the Drangleic armor as well as two-handing the giant hammer I got in the beginning of the game. I'm stuck at the three Sentinels right now, wishing I had enough strength to one-hand the hammer so I could use a darned shield.

05.07.17

Writing here wants to slip through my hands. It's doing a good job, since I again already forgot what I was doing for the entire day. Probably various non-ending, non-new games.

04.07.17

Today is the day I give in to the difficulty of the puzzles in Shenzhen I/O. TIS-100 is the only Zachtronics game I've completed so far, but I was quite close to the end in Shenzhen. Clearly I still need practice. But I've already given my thoughts on this game, and I remain by my early opinions - I like it. It just became too much of a chore once the difficulty passed a certain level.

So, I also started a new game today. But before I tell you what game it is, I'd like to mention that Steam has a pretty large amount of what I would call minimalist casual puzzle games. And nine times out of ten they're bad because due to the minimalism they offer nothing in terms of gameplay, and due to being casual they offer nothing in terms of challenging puzzles.
Now, all of this applies to what I started playing today - Linelight, but what makes me not only not dislike, but even actually like this game, is its presentation. The pictures and trailer don't really convey it to the full extent, but it feels unnaturally great because of the combination of the minimalist graphics, the audio, and the flow of the game. I'm not entirely sure, but I think it's the flow that ties everything together, and makes it so that you would really have to experience it yourself.
I can't really say it's a great game though. Even after the really nice experience it has provided me with, the above listed faults still apply. There wasn't much in terms of gameplay, not much in terms of puzzle difficulty, and it takes 3-4 hours to get everything, probably ~2 hours if you were to rush through it (which really defeats the point, but some levels are flat out skippable), or some indeterminate amount of time more if you were to go look for all the hidden areas.
Regardless, I would absolutely recommend this game for the experience it provides.

I'll probably be starting a playthrough of Dark Souls II (yes, I still haven't completed the second one) like tomorrow or the day after that. I've tried it briefly before, but I'm mostly going in blind. I know it's another really long game, so if nothing causes me to quit midway, it could be a few days or a week before I start anything else new. Maybe I'll try keeping a sort of diary detailing my adventure to compensate for the lack of regular content. We'll see how it goes.

03.07.17

Aside from a lot more Factorio, I tried The Signal From Tölva.

The judgement was quick on this one - it's shit. Basically it's something between an exploration game and a FPS, but it's unenjoyable in both aspects. The map is large, but quite empty, often forcing treks of half a kilometer or so while the scenery is just rocks, unexpectedly impassable terrain, and scarce, unimpressive foliage. The guns handle terribly and are very generic, just as the enemies. There's nothing even remotely interesting about the combat nor the boring long walks. So when both of the aspects that make up your game are terrible and devoid of content, what's left? Nothing. Don't even try this.

02.07.17

So I played 4 more hours of Atelier Sophie and looked up some info on the Atelier series as a whole to get an idea of what I might be missing were I to quit right now. Apparently, not much. So I'm going to tell you what I think about it.

The Atelier series is just a month and a half younger than me at 20 years old, and has apparently stuck to a similar theme throughout the entire time, releasing more or less one game every year. It differs from most RPGs in that the story is very "trivial", and there's a very heavy focus on crafting.

What I mean by the story being trivial is that there's no huge issue to solve or a grand plot, but it's more like an amplified slice of life. Really not my cup of tea, and I could've literally fallen asleep had I played for a little longer. And while I'm a big fan of crafting, then at least in this installment, the crafting depends way too heavily on the rest of the game, while not giving much back. That is, in order to experience the most of the depth of the crafting system, you have to really grind some other aspects of the game, but the difference in actual results is negligible. But if you don't want to spend more time than is fun on the other parts of the game, then the finer points of the crafting system might as well not exist. So, really, it doesn't tie in too well to the rest of the game, yet is dependent upon it.

And as is tradition for JRPGs, they overdo certain aspects. The first of which is of course cutscenes. I came to play a game, not to read a 3D visual novel, so I wouldn't be surprised if someone just quit before even getting to the game since they were stuck watching cutscenes for the first hour of the game. Secondly, the incredibly complicated, but not equivalently deep mechanics and game systems strike again. There's pages upon pages of tutorials explaining to me the multitude of possibilities, yet a sizeable portion of them go unused for the most part.

And a short but very important note is that the keyboard controls were simply atrocious, not listed anywhere except a text file in the game files (and even then lacking two very important keys), and none of them were rebindable, making navigating the world and the menus a hellish experience.

Each next JRPG I play further drums it into me that all JRPGs are pretty much the same. Although I felt this one was perhaps even slightly better than the average JRPG I've experienced. It felt kind of sweet, for lack of a better word, and I like that, but I'm really going to doze off from how boring and bland it is for the most part. As such, this is the last I'll play of it.

I'm quite sure all of this also applies to the next game in the series, Atelier Firis, which I've removed from my backlog as well.

01.07.17

Aside from another good lot of Factorio (if that is where my summer goes this time, I'll understand), I started on Atelier Sophie. The first hour was without exaggeration 90% cutscenes, and I was almost driven to quitting, but once the game started, it wasn't half bad. I'm two hours in now, and it's estimated to take around 50, so... Could be a long ride if I don't decide to quit halfway. There's still a ton of cutscenes, but there's actually okay combat, a neat-ish crafting system, and the entire thing isn't too easy this time. (Probably because I bumped the difficulty above Hard to Extreme. I'm struggling with the enemies now though, but it's better than the alternative?)

30.06.17

I had Inversus on my list as a game I wanted to try out in multiplayer. Well, I couldn't get multiplayer to work on it, and judging from the singleplayer, it probably wouldn't have provided entertainment for too long anyways. So that's now removed from the list. Yay, progress...

29.06.17

Hmm, I swear I did something other than continue my ongoing Factorio game this day.

28.06.17

Okay, so I tried out Formula Fusion. It had recently launched and for some reason taken a large hit in ratings. Well, as retrospective inspection revealed, it was because the game was a laggy mess that couldn't run on any computer without at the very least hitching. My computer's pretty good, I dare say, and it froze like once a minute for 5 seconds on high settings, and had a split-second hitch every few seconds on the lowest settings. I'm not even really sure how the game itself was. Didn't look all too interesting, and the multiplayer is dead, but none of that matters because the lag renders it basically unplayable. Good riddance the review score is dropping.

Other than that, I took One Way Heroics for another playthrough. Failed about 10 times, but the 11th or so attempt went really well and I won. =) I don't really have much to say about the particular playthrough, and I don't really want to give lengthy opinions about games I've already played a bunch before, but One Way Heroics is an absolutely wonderful little game with more depth than you could ever imagine from looking at it or even playing it. It'll take a long time before you stop finding new things, and the sense of constant exploration and discovery is simply amazing. I should really get the expansion to it as well. Good thing the Steam Summer Sale is underway.

27.06.17

I was slightly occupied with other matters today, so no new games completed or started, but here's a new game that released on Steam a week ago.

Nex Machina is a 3D bullet hell game. It claims to focus on the action, so perhaps that's all there is to it. Looks pretty, ratings are okay, I guess it'll do.

Oh, also, PCGamer did an article on some hidden gems of the store, based on some mathematical formulas that basically searched for well-rated games with a low amount of ratings. I think a lot of the games included are pretty good, and there's a good chance you haven't heard of them. Which ones of course depends on the genres you're into. Here's the article with the top 100 listed at the bottom. And here is another list with a similar algorithm for a top 250.

26.06.17

It is done. I have played a 4X game from start to finish on "normal" settings. Not actually the first time, but it is a rather rare accomplishment, because when playing against AI there is a tipping point after which the outcome of the game is clear, yet half the game is still ahead of you. This issue plagues all large-scale TBS games, and Endless Space 2 is no exception. I'll be happy the day I find something that fixes this, but as long as I haven't I can't really hold it against any of these games either.

There are a lot of similarities between most TBS games, from the more known Civilization series to less known games whose names escape me for the time being. It's honestly difficult to describe one uniquely without going into all the tiny details. I guess the main difference of Endless Space 2 would be about the same as that of Endless Legend - the different factions / empires have a very different playstyle, even more so in Endless Space 2 than in Endless Legend. Another thing they have succeeded in yet again is making a very beautiful world. I find the aesthetics of the game pleasing, the soundtrack nice to listen to, and each of the factions has a solid backstory as well as a story that can be pursued in different directions through in-game quests. This really makes factions stand apart and give each a goal that is emphasized by their faction traits as well as lore, making playing different factions kind of like playing slightly different games.

Endless Legend was my favorite TBS game, and Endless Space is a fair competitor. I'll get to the reasons shortly, but first I can foresee a certain question. "Why would I play Endless Legend/Space 2 instead of [Your Favorite TBS Game Name Here]?" And really, I can't give you a reason. As I mentioned before, most TBS games are very similar to each other, with only the little details setting them apart, and it's usually a matter of preference. I happen to like the Endless TBS games the most due to the beautiful world, and a larger emphasis on the combat side of things. Why Endless Space 2 didn't feel as good to me as Endless Legend, was that I felt some of this focus had been taken off combat and put into diplomacy and system management. It reminded me a bit of Stellaris in the sense that you were partially subject to what your people wanted, and didn't have absolute control. This didn't sit with me quite as well, but it could totally appeal to someone else. Another thing were the odd connections between systems. There was pretty much no sense of a perimeter or which were your "outer" planets, and which were your "inner" ones - the enemy could just warp to any one of them, and you couldn't stop them, forcing you to defend literally everything, lest you wanted to suffer because of a stupid sneak attack.

So, yeah, I liked Endless Space 2, but the games take an eternity-and-a-half, and as usual, the AI doesn't pose a challenge past a certain point. It offers a lot of the same as Endless Legend, but is also very different. Perhaps some DLC will improve it in the future, as I heard a very recent patch already increased the intelligence of the AI.

25.06.17

It has been forever since I've lost a battle. My massive fleets are present in every single one of my systems, for I am constantly under siege from all sides and from all empires. There must be at least five battles happening at all times, yet despite all this, not only I have I not lost a single battle, I have not lost even a single ship. Most flee before I can engage them, others perish before so much as scratching my ships. I am by all means invincible. Sadly, time is not on my side, as there is one other empire who is working on a project to end this war once and for all. My conquests are slow, and I fear I may not be able to stop them in time. But suddenly, my scientists alert me of a new discovery. They tell me of a piece of Endless technology capable of shattering planets. Surely this would hasten my war efforts, for I have no need of the planets of my enemies, I simply need them not working for who they do now. I order as much of my empire to switch around to science production as possible, and get to work on researching this technology, as well as a ship large enough to fit this device. Further along the line, I set in motion a counter-project for ending this war. We are close to unlocking the secrets of the Endless, and with all of their knowledge combined, we can finish the war. As the planet destroyer's research draws to a close, I order one to go into production. A special fleet is prepared as an escort, and in due time, it is finished. I immediately receive a plea for a truce, but I reject it. I will settle for no less than total eradication. This universe shall be wiped clean of all lifeforms, just as this universe is eradicating ours. It is only fair that we take this one in exchange. The destroyer arrives at its first target. In a panic, they manage to muster a large enough fleet to destroy one of the ships protecting my destroyer. It's been a long time since that last happened. But their now shattered planet serves as a fair trade. I move on to the next one, slowly approaching their homeworlds.

So, yeah, the Endless Space 2 game is really starting to drag on as I have to fight a ton of battles each turn and carefully manage all my systems to make sure I don't slip anywhere. Unless someone manages to ninja a victory condition past me, I should be on my way to a Science Victory, but that'll still take around 50 turns - about 4 hours at the current pace. Honestly, I feel like as always, that the only true victory time should be complete elimination, but I didn't know if they'd managed some good victory conditions before I started. Apparently not, but I'm stuck with them for the current game. So if all goes well, I'll finish this run tomorrow.

24.06.17

A ton more Endless Space 2 today. I'm starting to really see my empire gain superiority over the others and feel like I don't have much of a chance to be overpowered anymore. I'm also starting to get a pretty good grasp on the game's mechanics. I think I can give my thoughts on it once the campaign is done. But that will still take a day or few, depending on how much I play it.

No Factorio today, I instead finished off the hopefully last lingering schoolwork assignment.

23.06.17

You know, both Endless Space 2 and Factorio are such time-consuming things, that I really don't have the time for anything else. I'm nowhere near "completing" the Factorio run, and Endless Space's campaign is probably less than halfway finished.

22.06.17

The next game of Endless Space 2 I started was with a race that will hopefully prove to be slightly easier. After all, I wasn't dead after 3 hours of playing, and I seem to be doing rather well, if I may say so myself. I picked The Riftborn, whose gimmick is apparently that they don't need food, new populations are constructed (as in, literally built like buildings), and they have time accelerators and decelerators, to boost or wither resource gathering rates, respectively. I haven't yet figured out how to use the decelerators on opposing star systems, but I really hope it's possible, as I see no reason why I would want to decrease my own resource generation. Also, it appears that for most races, you can have other races come to live on your planets as well. Well, as The Riftborn hate organic life, and the whole universe overall, then any foreign population is quickly drafted into the military and replaced with the superior Riftborn. It appears I'm naturally driven towards xenophobia in all space games that allow it.

Factorio is magically consuming the entire day, as usual. I'm playing in a three-person group, and we went for a world with increased Biter evolution, more expensive recipes and technology, as well as resource deposits that are further apart. The result was getting overrun by the end of the day, so I tuned down both the time-based evolution, as well as lowering the current evolution progress. If you don't know exactly that you're doing, don't do Death World.

Also, of final note is that the Steam Summer Sale began today.

21.06.17

So, I did start with Endless Space 2. Sadly OBS has something against it and crashes when I try to play it, so I can't stream my efforts. I managed about 3 hours of playtime before switching to Factorio for the rest of the day, but during those 3 hours I hadn't the slightest idea what I was doing. The game has an abundance of menus, submenus, stats, options... Sometimes it took 3 paragraphs explaining to me what something was and I still didn't understand it. However, I won't hold the complexity against this game just yet. If the systems really contribute toward a better game experience, then that is a good thing. Intuitively, they do so, but I honestly can't tell until I've played this more. Probably a lot more.

Also of note is that much like its predecessor, Endless Legend, each of the different playable races offers a really unique way of playing. Part of this difficulty might be that I started with the Vodyani, who apparently don't colonize planets in the usual manner, but instead live in giant spaceships and simply harvest the planets for resources. They also need a resource called Essence to make more of these vessels. Sadly, due to my relative inexperience, I was unable to secure enough Essense early on to expand my empire, and could later no longer muster the fleet required to defend my harvesters. As such, one of the more militarily inclined races destroyed me. (Note to self: Unanchor your Ark if you see a warfleet approaching, because for some odd reason you can't do it while under siege.)

20.06.17

Shit, I didn't complete or start a new game today.

But Brawlhalla's season was ending and I got enough ranked games done to get my season's rewards even though I might not even play it next season. And HotS had a new free week with one of the new heroes being free for the first time, so I simply had to try them out.

I did play a little of yesterday's last game though, and got Endless Space 2 all ready for the next time. Thing is, I might be occupied with Factorio tomorrow, and possibly most of some other days, as my friends finally have time to play it. But between and after that, I'll continue with my games list.

19.06.17

The first game I tried today was Next Jump: Shmup Tactics. It wasn't (and still isn't) terribly well known, but all the reviews were positive so I figured it might be good. I initially described it as a scrolling shooter, but that was incorrect. The background does indeed scroll, but each game board is stationary. Overall this game takes a lot of ideas from FTL. Namely the goal and travel methods are pretty much identical, the ship upgrades are very similar, and it has multiple ship types which can be unlocked in-game. But the gameplay is completely different.

And of course as is tradition here, I must reveal that the game was bad and proceed to list the reasons starting from the least significant ones. Combat lasts only three turns after which the battle is just abruptly cut short. You can extend this with specific combo attacks which shift from being unusable, to clearing the entire level in one turn, and back to being unusable as your ship gains upgrades, and then your enemies catch up. Also, once you run out of turns, you can just spam movement to get like one or even two more turns in before the game pulls you out of the combat screen, which is a huge bug.

Secondly, there is no indicator of what the enemies do. I've taken damage from one multiple times without even understanding in hindsight why that happened.

And thirdly and most importantly, this game is not grid-and-turn-based, only the movement is. Considering the previously listed very obvious and very huge bug, I'd chalk this up to just incompetent developers. While the game world is a 9x7 grid or something like that, bullets, pieces of scrap (currency), energy, and ship hitboxes are actual models in the game, not bound to the grid. So maybe you have a spinning piece of scrap? Wait until it spins closer to you to collect it. In a turn-based game this is unacceptable. Similarly it makes evading bullets, and collecting scrap and energy very unpredictable, as your ship's hitbox is not marked in-game, and you have to either learn where it is through trial and error and very carefully make sure that the hitboxes of your ship and other entities touch (or don't touch, in case of projectiles), or as a beginner, just hope that they do.

Furthermore this game is low on content and not well balanced, but those were the least of the issues.

I also started with Mages of Mystralia. I quite like the aesthetics of it and the music's pretty nice too, but the gameplay hasn't really been up to my standards. The spell crafting system is neat, but some of the modifications feel very specific and pointless or barely ever usable. The combat, the progression, the story, the puzzles - everything else feels kind of boring and just barely passable. It's not bad, which is why I played it for the 3 hours that I did. Heck, I'm not sure I can point out any concrete flaws in the game, but aside from the spell crafting, there is absolutely nothing noteworthy to be experienced here.
If you're looking for a good spell crafting game, even then (the original) Magicka has this beat. If you're looking for something else, you won't find it in this game.

18.06.17

I have begun.

I went ahead and tried two games today.

The first one was Owlboy. I initially described it as a "platformer-y adventure game" that looked nice, and I wasn't far off the mark. It really looks like a platformer, but since you're given the ability to fly with pretty much no restrictions, there's little point in even having the possibility to traverse terrain by running, jumping, and rolling, all of which you can do.

Is that a speck of irritation visible in my writing? Why, yes it is. I disliked this game, but the dumbed down movement wasn't my main issue. Neither was it that the other aspects of the game felt too simplified as well. Let me elaborate on that.

You had to carry your companion who couldn't fly, so you had to go to them, pick them up, then place them down when you needed to carry something else. In return, they'd act as your firearm, allowing you to shoot at things. Now, the problem with this was that that you could just toss them down a cliff or straight at the enemies - he was invincible. "But surely that's a bad idea, as you couldn't retrieve them from such a place." Ah, well, not really, as the game decided to give you a button to teleport your personal gun holder straight back to you, mid-flight too. And this just completely eliminates the need to even have a dangling person with no hitbox attached to you. Just give our owl character a gun and say he can't use it while he's carrying things. Much easier to make, play with, and much more logical. There were also useless obstacles and enemies that you just shot down in a split second since your gun had no perceivable fire rate limits. And with those things gone, there's not much content left in the game except for flying around.

And this finally leads me to my main issue. With 90% of the game being flying around the place, I'd expect that to be made at least half-decent. But I have no map, no indicator of where I'm supposed to go to, nor sometimes even a clue what the immediate thing is that the game wants me to do. It's pretty irritating when the game tells you to "go to the Lab", and you've never been there before. Heck, you've never even heard of it before. It could be anywhere on the map, but those four words are the only clue you have of what you're supposed to do. Out of the 90% of the game spent flying around, I dare say another similar percentage of it was aimless. You're hoping you're going in the right direction, or that maybe if you look through the area a third time, you finally find a clue that tells you what you're supposed to do. ...but hey, at least the game looks nice.

So in case it wasn't clear, I would not recommend this game. Don't even try it.

Now, something noticeably better was MidBoss. It was also of a completely different genre. It would be a pretty generic dungeon crawler were it not for the notable feature that allows you to possess the bodies of the foes you kill. Each of these characters could also be leveled up, unlocking more of their abilities, and then those abilities could be equipped on other characters you possessed, making for fancy hybrids. But sadly, that's where the gimmick ends. The equipment, items, stats, abilities and everything else really were terribly generic.

My first run almost got me through the entire game, and it was for the most part a grind. New enemies popped up frequently enough to keep it from getting boring, but I can't imagine going for a second run. So, yeah, I enjoyed it for the 4 hours it lasted, but there's not much replay value.

The various abilities gained from possessing monsters still faint in comparison to, say, the builds you can make in Dungeons of Dredmor. In fact, pretty much everything does. If you're looking for a dungeon crawler, go play that. If you've already played that a bunch, then I guess you can give MidBoss a try. It should be fun for the first playthrough, doubtful it will be for the second.

17.06.17

So I have just one final thing left to do before I can really start my summer break. It's been getting delayed due to reasons outside my control, and as such I haven't wanted to start going through the games yet. But I guess I shall, starting next week, as promised. Probably going to have a stream up as well, if I feel like it.

For now, here's two more games on top of the overflowing pile:

Hell Warders looks like a wave defense game, where you control the characters yourself. Something like Dungeon Defenders, I guess? Fancier graphics, but the gameplay remains to be seen.

Monolith is a shoot 'em up that seems to be played in very tiny maps. The reviews are quite positive, it looks nice, and claims to be a rogue-lite, whatever that means these days. The map size is scary small though.

10.06.17

I am very tired from my exams and other things.

I don't even have the willpower to write anything about these two games I found.

Tokyo 42 and Armed with Wings: Rearmed.

Just click the links if you're curious. The latter seems pretty cool.

Also I've been playing some Warframe. But I'll get to my backlog starting Monday after the next week.

03.06.17

I had time to play some stuff after all.

First up was Rain World. I'd had my eye on this for a while even before it launched. It looked fairly unique and I liked the setting. I wouldn't say the gameplay trailers were misleading or anything, but in retrospect, they clearly had people playing who already knew what they were doing. I did not. And sadly I couldn't keep my patience for long enough to start understanding the game enough. So, rushing ahead, I ultimately didn't like it and gave up after an hour or two of struggling. And oddly enough, it was all because of the difficulty. I'll try to break it down in some arbitrary order.

The first thing you'll notice is how the world looks. It's... gray. Every single non-living thing is mostly gray. And this is a problem because it makes it difficult to tell things apart. It doesn't help that there isn't any visual difference between the scenery and the interactables. Spear? Nope, just a pointy piece of scenery. Rocks? Lost somewhere in the grass, good luck finding them. Climbable pole? Nope, not this one. So there's a lot of trial and error involved, but I don't feel it contributes to the experience.

The second thing you'll notice is that your slugcat is quite unwieldy. With the animations being somewhat procedural you have a hard time understanding what your character is doing. Jumping is for the most part a tiny, rather useless, hop. (Although it can be used for some clumsy wall jumping and combined with some other mechanics to kind of approach the basic jump functionality you've come to expect from games, but it's far from consistent.) And I swear, the amount of times the adorable white blob refused to grab poles and instead fell all the way down, destroying my progress... The amount is troubling.

Then somewhere along the lines you'll realize that the timed shelter and food system is putting quite the pressure on your exploration. Fail to gather enough food - dead. Fail to find a new shelter? Better hope you have time to run the entire way back, or you're dead. It's essentially a checkpoint system, not much unlike Dark Souls. And you don't even lose any progress, because aside from exploring the map and managing to navigate it, there is no progress. I wouldn't complain about the infrequent appearance of these checkpoints, but I would complain about the fact that I am put on a time limit.

One part of the difficulty that I did like was the sense of discovery. The game tells you pretty much nothing about any of the systems, only the very basic movement. And if you always try to play it safe, it's possible you won't learn much. But it's moderately surprising how many elements of the world you can interact with and how those elements can interact with each other. There's always more tricks to be found to help you survive, and that's an acceptable substitute to character progression. The latter of which, as mentioned, doesn't exist here.

So, if you don't like the fact that you'd finish the game with the same character you started with, you probably also won't like that this game doesn't tell you anything about where you're supposed to go. It's generous enough to give you a map of explored locations, but navigating around the place is hell even without the constant threat of wildlife. So when you find out you also have no idea where you're going, and if the struggle up these pipes and ledges is difficult because it's the way forward, or because you're not supposed to get up there.

In conclusion, I didn't like it because I crumbled under the difficulty, but for some, this particular type of unfair struggle might be enjoyable. If you can embrace your role as the incapable slugcat you are and are dying to get to know all the secrets that sewer system has to offer... maybe you'll like it.

Not having any gaps between classes the next semester nor over the summer obviously, I won't really have an excuse to watch any anime. In any case, I currently finished Angel Beats. It was a rather badly put-together jumble of action, comedy, music, and tragedy. It was difficult to follow, felt somewhat rushed, and there were logical inconsistencies everywhere. But darn it, it made me sad multiple times and even cry at the end. I'm honestly confused since the characters and the entire story were too fake to be relatable, and yet they got me.
This is getting a little long, but it's apparently from the same company, Key, that is known for making sad visual novels. Planetarian being one I've played, but there's also Clannad, and other, slightly less popular ones. I guess they know their stuff. And for me, the animation and voice acting helps deliver the emotion better than static pictures and whatever voice I can come up with in my head from reading. Well played, Key. ;_;

And two more new games from this week. I swear I'll try all of them during summer. 1-2 per day. It's going to happen.
MidBoss (not to be confused with a different developer of the same name) is a rogue-like. Crawling randomly generated dungeons, as per seemingly usual, with the twist being that you can take control of the bodies of your enemies. Not too popular, and also tagged Casual, but it looks good enough to warrant a try.
Vanquish is probably some rather popular game that I don't have a clue about, because it was only ever available for consoles. Well, this is the port, and people seem to like it. You're in a... nice suit. And have a gun to shoot stuff. Which probably shoots back. Lots of shooting, lots of action. Looks cool, hopefully it's fun as well.

27.05.17

Exams are now in full swing, and so I have missed another week of posting.

I have 3 more weeks of these, then I'm free for the two and a half months of summer. So I'm estimating I'll be mentioning my game-related doings (as many or few as have accumulated over the week) on the next three Saturdays, but not the days between them, as to avoid the majority being a list of reasons why I, yet again, didn't have time.

For the past two summers now, I've set myself the goal of actually making it completely through my games list. While I've made significant progress both times, I haven't actually gotten close to finishing either time. Why that is continues to elude me, as I can't remember what the hell I spent a summer's worth of time on. At least this time around I'll have written evidence.

But for today, here's four new games I found.

Oxygen Not Included - Oh, this one's quite popular. I'm not sure if it was in poor condition the last time around or if I didn't take a proper look at it, but it was on my "Not Interested" list. Might have been the non-serious-looking graphics. Apparently it's a 2D base-building game inside asteroids. So you have to manage all your resources very carefully, making sure you don't let anything go to waste due to the limited amount available. Especially the oxygen. But that's just what it looks like, I haven't played it. But since it does look interesting, I will eventually.

Mages of Mystralia is an action-adventure game. Plenty of that genre around these days, but this one's slightly more popular, and the spell-crafting system caught my eye. So as you can assume, there's magic involved, but beyond that, I can't much guess what it's about.

Willy-Nilly Knight is some sort of RPG that boasts an isometric view, real-time gameplay, and yet turn-based combat. I can't help but notice a lot of other things here also really remind me of a certain game named Divinity. I mean, Divinity was good. Still is good, as I regrettably haven't finished Original Sin yet despite the second one launching mid-September. And I have nothing against a game similar to it, as long as that game also carries its own ideas, because I really doubt it can do the exact same thing better. But, I'll see how it is when I get around to it.
And finally, Nongünz. It's an action-platformer-roguelike, but also a shooter. I love it how sometimes you can just mash together a few genre names and give a pretty good idea of what kind of game something is. It also has duochrome (not a real word meaning only two shades of color as opposed to the single shade of monochrome) pixel art graphics, which look quite nice. I just hope it won't have the same problems with it as Butcher did.

I've actually mostly been playing Stellaris during the patches of free time I've had in the past week, after acquiring it from the latest Humble Monthly. I'm surprised I haven't written a word about it on this blog, but since I'm nowhere near doing a fresh start with it, I won't write anything lengthy on it. It's noticeably improved since I last played it, and it seems the updates (free and otherwise) are still being deployed quite often. A lot of the more "objective" complaints of mine have been quelled, but what remain are still the issues I personally have with it, yet can't fault to the game. Most of them have to do with the fact that I'm playing Stellaris like a turn-based game, while in reality it's an RTS. Two of the more prominent ones being:

I can't micromanage all my planets, but am instead forced to leave the vast majority into sectors and let the braindead AI make terrible decisions. Of course, as an RTS, I probably wouldn't have the time to micro 20-50 planets, but... yeah...

And secondly, stuff happens at an inconsistent pace. That's kind of vague, but I can really have lengthy periods of fuck all happening except for the void slowly lulling me to sleep. Or I can have like five things requiring my extensive attention all at once all of a sudden. I imagine this has something do with the fact that if I pause, then do all the things, they tend to also finish in clumps, whereas if I did them as I had time to get around to them, they'd also finish at a more staggered pace.

So if you like strategy games, but don't want the real-time aspect rushing you on, maybe try the recently launched Endless Space 2. Or if you instead want to get over the habit of pausing, get some friends and play multiplayer. Pausing at every convenient moment isn't really plausible there. As for me, I probably won't really play it anymore. At least not in singleplayer.

20.05.17

I noticed a couple of games today that reminded me of Salt and Sanctuary from the artstyle. And non-coincidentally, they were made by the same people. Sadly, these were not new releases, but ports, I suppose, of their 2011 and 2013 console releases, respectively.

The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile and Charlie Murder are said games, and while neither is as popular, highly rated, nor probably nearly as good as Salt and Sanctuary, they seem to be worth a try.

19.05.17

Yeah, well, so much for new games on the Thursday I hoped I'd have time. The only thing I did play some of was HotS, where I'm still really close to hitting Master rank.

18.05.17

Sometimes it really feels like good games come in waves. There's another wave of three today:

First up, something that I've heard loads and loads about recently: Dead Cells. Pixel Graphics, Metroidvania, Souls-like. Honestly, until I play it, I suppose these genre names will have to do for the description. It's also still in Early Access, but already very popular and with an Overwhelmingly Positive rating, so I think it's going to be alright.

Next is what looks like a more story-based adventure game. The name's Rakuen, and it looks like it's made in some form of RPG maker engine, but I'm not sure. I can't quite grasp what the game is about by just looking at the (honestly rather pretty) pictures, but it's possibly a mild feels trip.

And finally something that I previously rejected, but since I haven't actually tried it, and it looks interesting this time around... (I'm guessing it just came out of Early Access.) ...I added Block'hood to my list. It's like a building game where you make a giant tower that really shouldn't be able to stand up and looks incredibly impractical. I hope there's an overarching game mechanic to it all and it's not just about designing weird towers.

17.05.17

Stuff to write, stuff to write...

I got to Diamond 1 in HotS a few days ago. I'm just playing that if I feel like I have an hour or so to spare, but not enough to actually start anything new. Even got onto the promotion match to Master League, but I lost that, so now I'm shifting around in Diamond 1 again.

Planetside 2 still hasn't managed to unscrew itself from the implant-related stupidities/cash grab, so I'm steering clear from that. Considering I don't have enough time anyways, this isn't too bad for me.

And since we're on the topic of Multiplayer games, Crowfall released one of the more massive news updates it has done. Basically they're reworking the fixed archetype system into a race + class combination system allowing for more customization both on the visual and gameplay side of things. They also did/are doing a revamp of the graphics system, apparently due to the help of Unity developers. The entire thing really looks much better now, not that it was any bad before either. So now they just need more content and a working gameplay loop, and I'd hop to playing it.

16.05.17

I'm adding a game about every other day on average, yet I'm completing like one or two per month. These numbers are not sustainable. I need more progress.

15.05.17

Where am I supposed to get content for each day if I don't have time to do anything?

14.05.17

No other news aside from that I finished watching Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Opinions are just opinions, but it's so far my favorite anime due to actually having a story with consistently good quality that has a start and an end. (As opposed to many series that start, but never finish. Or ones that let their quality slip near the end.)

Thursday seems like a possible day to start the next game, but with the semester ending, I'm constantly burdened with tests, and soon, exams.

13.05.17

I both feel bad for adding so many games that I currently don't have time to play, but also for not adding so many games that might be a tiny bit fun. So, uh, World to the West is some sort of "funny" action-adventure game, and I don't really know much beyond that, just that it looked to be a bit above the majority of the releases in terms of quality.

12.05.17

Realistically, however, I'll probably be in this state of constant busyness until the exams end in a month and a half, as the final tests and such are happening each week now, and then begin the exams, not leaving me with any free time intervals. I wonder if summer will be more productive games-wise, or will I get some other responsibilities wrought upon me.

11.05.17

The time I once had now seems lost, and I can not find it.
Regardless, I will continue my search. Perhaps I can find even just fragments of it.

10.05.17

I've heard relatively much about TumbleSeed, although looking at it myself, it looks more like a casual game. In any case, it's about tilting platforms roll a seed from left-to-right, all the while climbing ever higher. I really hope to one day have more time to play the games I'm adding to my list, but onto the stack it goes.

09.05.17

I skipped on two metroidvanias today that I probably wouldn't have skipped, had my backlog not been overflowing. Ah well, probably nothing lost.

I did add Next Jump: Shmup Tactics. It's oddly unpopular for having such an interesting idea. It's a scrolling shooter, but instead of being speed-based, it's turn-based. Perhaps it's low on content, perhaps it's badly balanced, but I want to try it.

And then Hearthlands, because I haven't played a city builder in a while. Each time I do though, I just quit soon enough, because "I could as well be playing Dwarf Fortress, but I'm not because I don't have enough time for it." So I opt to rather save my time. Still, I want to try some alternatives every now and then.

08.05.17

I found a nifty action platformer (Riptale) that seems to about making flashy sword attack combos with time being slowed down during said combos for extra flashiness. I'm not sure if the level(s) and balance are actually fun, but the game certain looks good, so I want to try it.

07.05.17

I'm not even going to pretend I didn't miss the last 4 days, and that I don't really have much to write today either. School's been really taxing, and I've been working like 12 hours a day, with the other 12 going into keeping me alive, fed, and mentally okay. So instead I'll pretend the opposite, that I missed the entire week and will continue on Sunday. I'll try to have my opinions on Trillion gathered by then.

So, it's Sunday, and I have finished Trillion: God of Destruction. And if I had to summarize it with one short sentence, it's the worst game I've binged for two days straight.
Okay, but that's a rather odd claim, so let me elaborate in some fashion. I'm honestly not quite sure where to begin though. There will be spoilers, but then again, I don't really recommend you play this game anyways.
Trillion is a game about fighting this huge and immensely powerful monster named Trillion that has the power to consume entire worlds, and now it's at the Gates of Hell, ready to eat its way to the Core. As its name may hint, it has a trillion health points, which you are supposed to wither down to 0. The game begins with you getting a quick taste of combat against it, only to see that your attacks barely manage to scratch it. It's played in a turn-based fashion on a grid, and all of Trillion's attacks are displayed a turn or few in advance on the grid, so you could move aside before they hit. Still, it's not quite as easy as it may sound, as there's often multiple attacks each turn, and most are not only aimed at you, but also cover a very large area. So, eventually you probably get hit and die instantly, having taken at most 0.01% of Trillion's HP. But that's all part of the game, as you get revived by some mysterious person asking for help killing Trillion as well as your soul once Trillion has been defeated. Then you get a briefing of what the hell is going on as well as rather obvious foreshadowing that no single person could kill Trillion alone, but instead you have to send people to their deaths one-by-one, with each chipping away a fraction of the immense health pool. (Also you can't all attack at once because you need some fancy ring to even stand a change against it, and any other plot holes are also quite conveniently, although not very elaborately, patched up.)
So, up to that point, stuff looked pretty good. I liked the combat mechanics, the overall idea of the game. The setting was pretty cool with each of the combatants being titled and personalized after one of the seven sins (with you being Wrath, although now already out of the fight), and it was supposed to create this sad and desperate atmosphere as the other six were all either your family members or close friends (and cute girls, because of course they were)... and you were sending them to their deaths. But sadly, this game failed to deliver on what it seemed to promise at this early stage of it.
I'll go through my own experiences of what the game was like mostly chronologically. This will focus mainly on the gameplay aspect, and a bit on the story. The audiovisual side was about average for a Japanese game, except for the magic casting bits in cutscenes. I could literally not find a more ear-piercingly painful sound if I tried. Also, keep in mind that I'm probably a lot better at strategy games than the average person, so the average person would probably have had a more difficult (and thus an arguably better) experience.
So, I select the first of my dear friends to head to death battle against Trillion. Except Trillion likes to take month-or-so-long naps inbetween its gluttonous rampages, so I have that time to train my cute little sacrifice combatant who fights with an oversized lollipop. This part has a bunch of menus for various things such as training, point allocation, skill unlocking, resting, shops, etc. The tutorials were scant (but luckily not completely absent), and I was left mostly guessing as to what might be the optimal approach to spend the limited amount of time I had to train. This is definitely a part where people can and probably will choose a suboptimal approach, which makes the game much more difficult. (Un?)luckily, my intuition went for a pretty solid allocation of both my time and the points I got from training. Now, in hindsight, the game was pretty poorly balanced and most of the options I had been given were useless. But I can't particularly hold this against the game, as that felt like a part of it. You're fighting this mysterious all-powerful enemy, of course you don't know what the optimal way to approach it is. There was a weekly practice session against a training dummy that imitated Trillion's moves and allowed you to gain a pretty good idea of what worked and what didn't. I found out a relative safe spot near the tail that would allow me to constantly keep attacking, dishing out great DPS with little risk. But I would later discover that that practice was the most terrible deception of them all. Namely, it's health pool was tiny. Why was that a bad thing?
Well, let us fast forward to the first real fight against Trillion. I went in quite motivated and exited, perhaps even planning to bring it down in one go. After all, I had managed to find a safe spot where I was nearly untouchable, as I had never been hit even once during practice. "Just like we did in training," I even whispered to myself. But alas, my enjoyment was not fated to continue. It turns out that the real Trillion had a mechanic against just this. Inflict too much damage on it, and it leaps forward. Forward where? Towards the weird glowing line that for some reason was synonymous with me losing. Probably there for that exact reason that you wouldn't just finish the game in one go if their balance wasn't faring too well against you. And so, try as I might, it inevitably crossed that line.
At that point, all my hope for this game was swept away. Imagine my frustration. My perfect plans, ruined. The story, ruined. What is this? An all-powerful force running from a little girl who was supposed to not stand the slightest chance. And worst of all, the game dared say that I lost? Still, that only counted as a defeat, not an outright death, so I had two tries remaining, but with a shortened training period. And this changed everything. Where initially I thought I had all the time in the world, as long as I managed to stay alive, I now forsook everything else and funneled all my points towards DPS and speed. And that was, as I later learned, indeed the most optimal build (with a few extras, which I won't delve into). But what that also meant was that about 90% of the skills and training possibilities were pointless. All this variety and complexity, reduced to a shallow grind. I honestly considered quitting right then. But I didn't. And I also didn't have enough training time to get enough offense. There was no way I could bring it down with the last two tries I had remaining, but losing altogether seemed out of the question as well.
So, skipping forward another fight which it escaped, I was now on my last try, and it had lost around 250 billion HP. But after losing another 50 billion the fight suddenly stopped. "I won?" And indeed, it cut the fight, Trillion went to sleep, and I still had my last try left. But what was most to my surprise was that it changed its form. And while I'm not sure why I hadn't quit already, this sparked my curiosity again. A short training period later (with no practice match this time), I went to battle again. But I knew nothing about this new form, and I couldn't even begin to predict that it had two new body parts which had a non-telegraphed attack if you went right next to them. Which I did. And it proved fatal. But this reset the sleep timer back to the long one and most of the exp I had spent on my little lollipop warrior also carried over to the next person. But this time I could allocate it correctly. This time I could make the perfect build.
And so I did. And the training was back too, allowing me to figure out the optimal way to beat this form. It was a little tougher, as it really had no safe spots and made my prioritize mobility and range a tad more, but overall, compared to the first learning curve, this was easy to overcome. And so, came the time face Trillion again, I was prepared. I finished it in one go, all remaining 350 billion health of this form, but of course there was the next one with the final third of its health pool. I was prepared to lose this lady as well, considering I couldn't go for a practice round, but with how well she was trained, I was at least expecting to give Trillion a run for its money. Well, turns out that even in the future I couldn't do any practice rounds against this form. And this form... was bullshit.
I go for a slow and steady approach, to conserve the mana I have left, but Trillion has other plans. Bam! Huge-ass AoE straight on you, ready to strike the very next turn. It takes my longest range dash to escape it, but I'm immediately showered with more. For every turn I am free to approach it, I have to spend three dodging backwards, and my mana reserves are low from the previous form. It's worth noting at this point that there is a stat in this game called speed, which is supposed to be your action speed. It really puzzled me at first, as this is a turn-based game, and nobody ever gets two turns in a row, nor does it affect your movement speed. But I figured out that what this does is make Trillion do attacks less often and have a longer delay before an attack hits, to simulate you being faster. And this turned out to be the most important stat of the game. Another very important thing was a passive ability that cleaved your starting stats in half, but gave you 2-4% of your stats back each turn. That was pretty much the only way to reach 999 on the stats, and an absolute must-have. Now, I had about 400 speed in the situation described above, and even as my speed approached 999, Trillions attacks were still lightning fast and executed often. I had enough mana to figure out its attack patterns, but there was no way I could get close enough to attack and have time to get out. So I spent the last of my mana getting close, getting two attacks in, and that was that.
I was beaten. This fight was literally impossible, and I couldn't even train against it, not that it would have mattered - I had already seen all its attacks. In even further hindsight, possibly not such a great idea, but I resorted to a guide that basically told me I just had to seal its torso. See, each of the girls gets a death skill - one final attack to execute before they die. One of the options was to seal a body part, preventing all attacks from it. And it just so happened that the torso was responsible for the two worst attacks it had. Stumbling upon this myself would have been very rare, and yet it turned the completely bullshit fight into something of about equivalent difficulty with the second form.
And that's about the end of the story. For whatever weird reason, I only had one try against this form, instead of the usual three, and it, too, was adamant about rushing forward. Training the third girl didn't go optimally, (praise RNG) and they weren't able to finish Trillion in time, so I lost them too, finally securing victory with the fourth one. But I wasn't satisfied. It felt like the game had cheated and completely strayed from the path it promised. While looking for the guide, I had also caught wind of a so-called "true end", which got me curious. Sure, they had a bunch of events with each of the girls, and I still had two remaining. The true end wasn't the same as game-over either, meaning I couldn't lose all of them? So how could I reach that? With no desire to play this horrible grind any longer I resorted to quickly skimming the playthroughs and endings. For 4 hours. Yes, 4 hours to "quickly skim" the visual novel side of this game which, as it turned out, I had barely seen. and that's when I realized that this wasn't a mediocre/kind-of-bad-and-grindy strategy game, it was just a terrible visual novel. But before I explain that, let me quickly recap the gameplay.
After a promising start filled with much uncertainty as you navigate the poorly documented training menus, you quickly realize 90% of what you see is useless, everything's a terrible grind, the game is badly balanced, and nothing fits with the story as you overpower the bosses while they run away from you.
"What, you were actually playing Trillion? No, no, that is all wrong dear lad, this is a visual novel through and through, as I can easily prove by simply explaining to you the requirements to reach the true end." See, I'd expect most people would win the game at one point or another even if they just mindlessly went with it, at the worst case scenario picking the "Final Blow" death skill, which deals a good 50-100 billion damage. You actually have 9 character to fight with instead of 6, so unless you're really bad at this, you will win. That triggers the specific ending for that character, which is usually some romantic plot as 8 of the 9 characters are female, and only 4 are your blood relatives. (Not that it would stop the romantic plot... Thanks Japan.) But still, that's not the fabled "True End". You can basically reach the true end by acquiring a boatload of "affection" points with each of the 8 girls (and 1 dog), and having Trillion on its third form by the time they all die. (Remember, the first two were relatively easy.) However, the way you get affection is by "interacting" with the characters during training. Basically this consumes a day of training and gives you a nice cutscene with that character and a bunch of story. That's right, you skip training to play with your damned waifus, and that's the "correct" way to play this game. Let that sink in. You are not allowed to beat the game. You are not allowed to spend your training time actually training. Just go through the 20-30 hours of visual novel instead, lose miserably, and through the magic of I don't even know what, you gain supreme power, one-shot Trillion, all your waifus resurrect, you no longer owe your soul, and everyone lives happily ever after.
And that is why I hate Trillion: God of Destruction.

29.04.17

You know, despite all the new games I play, there's almost never anything really good. Something actually enjoyable comes along maybe once a month, and a truly great game maybe once or twice a year. I suppose the specific games differ depending on which genre you're after, but there's still a very lengthy period between completing one good game and finding another.

Although with ~100 games that are still sitting in my to-play list, I shouldn't be the one to make these complaints. I'm just getting the feeling like my efforts of looking through all the games myself are kind of going to waste, because if ever another really good game came along I'd know about it anyways.

This was actually just a small rant / prelude to explain that I'm not really satisfied with the games I found after fixing my parser and going through nearly a week's worth of Steam's new releases, but I figured I'd pick something at least. And oddly all my three picks have an aesthetically similar look to them.

WaveLand is like a platformer, but it's made for speedrunning, not puzzles, as they usually are? From my own description, I guess it's kind of like Super Meat Boy, except it looks like the movement feels different? Heck, like I said, I wasn't particularly satisfied with what I found this week.

Flinthook is the most promising of these three. It's a room-based grapplingflint hook rogue-like thing. And from the screenshots, a whole lot is happening at all times. But I won't know how good it is until I try it, so until then.

And then Red Obsidian Remnant, which is also a rogue-like. Except it's Chinese, looks cute, and is a dungeon-crawling RPG. Uh, yeah.

28.04.17

I regrettably kind of wasted this day. Should have at least gotten the Steam parser back working, but no. It's a tedious task.

27.04.17

While the new lootboxes and other shinies in HotS are pretty sweet, there's been no changes on the gameplay side, so it's still the same game. I haven't gotten to Factorio yet, but they're releasing a hotfix every day or two right now, so it's not too stable anyways.

And speaking of unstable things, my Steam parser broke down a few days ago. Turns out the issue is some unknown change in what Steam expects in a request to get past the age verification thing. So I'm a few days behind on Steam games until I fix it.

26.04.17

Long day, plenty of catching up on studies to do, nothing to report.

25.04.17

With Ludum Dare behind me, I turn my attention back to my usual activities, realizing I have a ton of homework that I now didn't complete over the weekend as I usually do, the next (kind of) big release of Factorio is out, and the biggest update of HotS is coming out tomorrow. So I'm sitting here and scrambling to get all my stuff done so I could enjoy these new updates to some of my favorite games. So, sorry, but Trillion is on hold for a little while.

24.04.17

By the last day I was already getting tired from working like 14 hours each day.

Not many additions on the last day, but rather fixing of anything broken or incomplete. Got the little enemy sprites and animations in, made a boss, balanced out the enemies and complected them into progressively more difficult encounters which were placed on the map. Got some small story elements in, put in some particle effects... And well, we managed to complete something. Here it is.

In hindsight, I think there are two major design flaws. One is that making good melee action combat takes longer than we knew we had time. The other is that it's not fun the be the slow and sluggish boss, even if you hit hard. That's kind of the reason why traditionally, the player is the small, agile, and smart one. (Also, I'm not allowed to actually make the AI good enough that it would beat the player, so this game can't even be a reverse bossfight simulator.)

23.04.17

By the end of the second day, most of the stuff was coming together quite well.

We had various types of enemies who could mindlessly charge you, evade your attacks, be stunned, be knocked back... Most of the player animations and attacks were in, we had scenery, movement and attack sounds, music, and a level, a tutorial, and various GUI things were being made from them.

The game was already kind of playable, but still quite bare and slightly broken.

22.04.17

So here's a retrospective coverage of what Ludum Dare was like for me.

Taking part of a local event, I got into a team with two programmers (me included), an artist, a sound person, and someone who ended up mostly putting all the various things together into one level.

As the theme was announced slightly past midnight, we got to deciding the game in the morning. The theme we had to follow was "A Small World" and after like 4 pages of various ideas we settled on an action game where you're a giant and have to kill tiny enemies. So it's like the tables are turned, and the tiny enemies are more agile and are trying to outsmart you.

This idea phase was actually the most fun part, and it was a difficult decision between this idea and one where the game's like an RTS and you control a bunch of villagers living on a small island. The goal would have been to build dams and drain the water to expand the island while managing your resources and making sure none of the dams break from the water. I actually liked this idea the best, but alas, the team did not fully agree with me.

So, back to the idea we did go with, I decided to be the one writing the AI for the little enemies. The first day's progress ended with some basic AI that can run towards you, keep a distance, and also fire stuff. On others' end, we got player movement, some attacks, and character sprites. Possibly some other stuff, but we were each working on our own things for that day mostly.

21.04.17

Starting with Trillion: God of Destruction today. As expected, the game is made to be played with a controller. I figured I'd get into it and find out the keybindings as the game went along. Well joke's on me - there are no keyboard keybindings by default. So after it took like 15 minutes to get through the initial dialogue, I got into battle, and none of the keys on my keyboard did anything at all. Fighting's no fun if you can only control the camera and attack the tile in front of you. I don't understand why proper keybindings are so hard to come by on console ports. It really should be a trivial task in comparison to everything else.

20.04.17

So it's been another long while since I've last picked up a new game. The next four days are mostly filled with Ludum Dare, then it's the busy part of the schoolweek again, and only about an entire week from now will I properly have time again. I've acquired Trillion though, and it'll be the next game I play. Didn't have high hopes for it before, don't have them now either, but it doesn't look bad so I have to at least try.

19.04.17

I've never played console games, and as such I don't know of any games on them. But apparently Bayonetta was something rather popular and people are excited for it coming to PC. I haven't heard of many port issues, the game looks fun (although a bit over-the-top), I see no reason why not to give it a try. It looks a little old... Although it's from 2009, so I guess it's just the design? shrug

18.04.17

It's been over a week again with no new games, so after some consideration I deemed The Signal From Tölva worth trying. At first glance it bears a lot of similarities to other open world FPS games I've played some time ago. It remains to be seen if that is true, but if it is then I'm afraid it won't fare too well in my eyes, because it seems precisely the quality and quantity of the content is the weakest point. I wouldn't recommend a game that's mechanically similar to another, but not executed as well, even if the original game was good. But that's far too many assumptions for now.

17.04.17

generic filler text

School's keeping me busy, and will probably continue to do so until LD takes over on the weekend. Could be worse. Time consuming things could be happening simultaneously instead of consecutively.

16.04.17

This is scary actually. 24 hours is a really long time if you start to think about it. And every know and then you just lose one such period of time. What was I doing on Sunday again? For the most part, no clue.