11.10.16

In the 3 hours I had today, two went into some more Hyper Light Drifter, and one into trying out something that claimed to be a MMO/MOBA hybrid.

The latter is Crush Online, and, honestly, I only tried it because of the curious mix it said it was. Wouldn't have lost anything if I hadn't... It isn't really good as an MMO or a MOBA, and while I may not even have gotten to the main game, you can pretty much tell that if something that's trying to be a MOBA only has 3 characters to play, obviously bad item balance, very lackluster abilities... It's not going to be good. And as far as I saw, the MMO part was just some struggle over territories - nothing particularly interesting either.

As for Hyper Light Drifter... It looked like something I really wanted to enjoy, but it's getting highly frustrating, and worst of all, it's not because of the difficulty. I'd be fine fighting enemies again and again - they're rather well made, even if the combat system doesn't feel as fluid as it could be. (And the most efficient strategies are kind of cheesy.) No, my main problem is the exploration. The damn thing feels like a puzzle game, but not the kind where you have to figure out a problem based on the information you're given, but the kind where you got a 1000 pieces and you got to find the fitting one.

The game's open-endedness does it a disservice in this regard, as I'm not sure if I'm missing something in the current area that is halting my progress, or if I need to have been somewhere else first? So I'm spending most of the game not on the combat that this game feels like it should be trying to capitalize on, but instead looking under every bush, tree, and cliffside to make sure I'm not missing anything, and while the world looks pretty, it does a very poor job of telling me where I can and can't walk. I can't even find the stuff necessary for the main game, and I hear half the content's purposefully hidden. I can't even imagine trying to look for that...

I understand it's trying to be pretty and cryptic by literally not saying a word to me, with characters speaking in pictures, and the only text being glyphs that I can't read, but gosh, I need to know what to do, okay? It's not that obvious.

I'd like to point to Titan Souls here, which I feel is quite similar, yet much more enjoyable for me. Fights are just as difficult and learnable, environment and music are pretty, I get to walk around a bit between the fights, and it doesn't really have any in-game written text either, but the game focuses on what it does well - combat.

10.10.16

Aside from my daily fix of PvP, usually in the form of Brawlhalla these days, I didn't really get any playing done. What a shame.

09.10.16

Honestly feels like the first post should be special somehow, but I got nothing special and have to start somewhere.

I tried Harmonia today, which is a VN developed by Key, possibly known for also making Clannad and Planetarian. I haven't read either, but apparently Harmonia is similar to Planetarian, which I've also been wanting to read for some time.
Sadly, I didn't enjoy Harmonia at all. Both the characters and setting seemed too implausible to relate to, and thus, even when presented with an event outside the slow build-up, I couldn't really care much for it. It's about a 4-8 hour read overall, and I stopped slightly more than halfway through after I found myself just clicking through the text - barely reading, barely caring.

Also tried about 2 hours of Hyper Light Drifter - that's about a fifth of the entire game. It's decent. Nothing particularly good or bad about it so far. It's plenty difficult where a boss fight can take >10 tries and you can actually die during the tutorial, but you'll eventually learn how to approach each enemy type, so it's not overwhelming.
My main issues so far are that the game does a poor job of telling you what you're supposed to do, it's often difficult to distinguish floor from wall from abyss, and the combat could feel just a little bit more fluid.