30.11.16

So, Salt and Sanctuary? I could tell you it's a 2D Dark Souls with platforming, and that would be an excellent description. There's a bunch of games that mimic the Souls games, but I feel this one does it better than any others I'm aware of. And of course it's not just about the difficulty. It's a highly non-linear 2D action RPG with a bunch of platforming thrown in the mix. And if you've played any of the Dark Souls games, then you'll find the level design, combat, progression, and other mechanics feel very familiar.

I can't help but compare it every step of the way. While it obviously lacks the benefits of the third dimension, which plays a huge role in combat, but also in what I feel is about the only other thing this game is missing in comparison to Dark Souls - the gorgeous views and feeling of scale. You can only do so much via a layered background, but you can never go through a doorframe and take a few seconds just admiring the view, because you can't see ahead of yourself much.

But it may have even outdone its source material in other aspects. Honestly, I found the level design much more intricate, tightly packed, and interwoven, which felt really awesome, like everything's just one big place, not a series of connected areas.

The combat felt to be of a more consistent difficulty, the leveling system forced a bit of variety due to having a skill tree, which was mainly composed of stat upgrades, but also nodes that were required for wearing equipment, or that gave you more health/mana replenishing items. The weapon and armor variety was also decent.

About the only points of criticism I can think of right now, is that, one - combat didn't have much of a vertical aspect, especially since you had no way of avoiding damage while in the air, so jumping was often punished. Two - the last third or quarter of the game felt a bit rushed, having mostly bosses and platforming, with no or next to no enemies. And three - some very important aspects of the game weren't explained nor demonstrated.

About the last part - I played through half the game without knowing anything about weapon crafting, NPC bonuses, fast travel, upgrading, and possibly some more stuff. While I'm not a fan of tutorials, this should probably be made more obvious to players.

But overall, I really liked it, as is evident from spending 30 hours on it in a relatively short timeframe. If you like Dark Souls, I can almost guarantee you'll like this too. But even if you don't, you might still not hate this game. And if you want to spend even more time on it, there's NG+, as well as plenty of secrets and hard-to-reach places.

29.11.16

Been a while since the last time, but I found Alicemare on Steam. It's about the equivalent of an RPG Maker game. It's not very popular, but so far the feedback has been entirely positive, and the same developer made LiEat, which seemed to be pretty darn well received. So it's probably worth a try at some point.

Other than that, I finally finished Salt and Sanctuary today after a total of 30 hours. I will try to write my concluding thoughts on it tomorrow, because it's already late, and after 5 hours of being tortured by the game (for better or worse), I feel like I want to sleep on it. Can't form good thoughts neither after all this salt, nor on an empty stomach.

28.11.16

Played about an hour of One Finger Death Punch today, because I felt like it. I should continue with and finish Salt and Sanctuary, but it's kinda beginning to drag on. Only ~25% to go, so it should be bearable.

27.11.16

Maybe I should just pretend I'm not missing days. It's not like anyone notices in retrospect.

Also no games because Windows decided it wanted to update. So I had to deal with the consequences for the entire day.

26.11.16

I forgot two days!

But I've just been playing Salt and Sanctuary in my free time anyways. Exams are creeping ever closer, so I've slowly started preparing for those, which means less time for games.

25.11.16

Oh shit. I didn't just forget one day.

24.11.16

So, the already mentioned Shenzhen I/O is now out of Early Access, and still has a remarkably great review score. Hopefully I'll get around to playing it soon.

And, I found somewhat of an anomaly today. Considering I see all the releases with a 1 week delay, I'll usually hear about any popular release before I actually see it myself. And yet today I found a game by the name of ICEY, which I've never heard of before, yet which seems to be immensely popular. Clearly I must try it out. It looks like an action game, but it seems there's something more to it.

I don't always have something remarkable to write about it, but I played a couple more hours of Salt and Sanctuary today. More tomorrow and maybe I can finish it on the weekend.

23.11.16

I wanted to give a quick mention to Screeps, which released a week ago. It's an RTS, but instead of directly commanding your units, you write code that does it for you. And it runs 24/7. Now, I'm a huge fan of the idea, and would've bought it, but in order to really play the game, I'd need a monthly subscription, which I'm not quite sold on. So in all likelihood, I won't play this, but if you want to give it a try, there should be a demo on its site.

In other news, the huge flood of games on Steam is really demoralizing in that I can't really pick games solely based on what I think. Due to the sheer volume, I automatically filter out games that don't have at least a dozen reviews, as being good generally means at least gaining that much popularity. Every now and then I've tried some of these less popular games, and they have indeed not been very good, thus reaffirming my suspicions that popularity has a correlation with how good the game is. And so, with each such game, I try these kinds of games less. So, I put Way of the Red on my list to once again either reaffirm that "if it's not popular, it's not good", or for the slim chance that this isn't the case. We'll see when I get around to playing it.

Regarding Salt and Sanctuary, which I played for another few hours today, someone watching my stream notified me how I'm doing everything wrong. And wow, I really was. I take back about half of the negative things I've said and/or thought about that game. Basically, NPCs are a huge thing, and I thought the statues I got would only temporarily summon the corresponding NPCs. So I'm now definitely half way through the game, and I only just learned about weapon and armor transmutation, fast travel between Sanctuaries, merchants, hidden doors, and possibly a couple of other things.

Finally, I'd like to draw attention to the newest Humble Bundle, which is pretty good for a change, as well as whatever The Steam Awards are. (Honestly, I'm not really sure what the real goal with The Steam Awards is, but I have faith in Valve.)

22.11.16

And another good multiple hours of Salt and Sanctuary gone through today. I think I'm approaching the mid-way point in the game after about 13 hours, but I'm the kind to take things slowly and go through all the secrets and whatnot, so it might be slightly shorter for most others.

Encountered the first enemy type that's actually annoying in a bad kind of way. It didn't really kill the experience, but that one area (out of like 20+) was remarkably worse off due to this. Basically it teleports around, but there's no real cooldown on its teleportation so you can't attack it, nor does it attack you. You just have to chase it around the places it materializes and hope you get a hit in before it blinks away again, and that's just a waste of my time.

Otherwise, it's mostly been good. I'm a little concerned that I have nothing to spend my gold on, and I've probably lost without exaggeration 95% of everything I've ever earned to the "mysterious revive clerics", but that might just be my fault for not increasing my level in my faith.

The reason behind that is that I want to switch my faith, but these places are few and far between. I guess another minor negative notch for the game is that when choosing your faith in the beginning, it doesn't really explain what each one specializes in. So it happened I took a cleric faith. Wisdom spells and cloth armor, while I'm actually rolling around in the heaviest plate and 2H weaponry I can get my hands on.

21.11.16

Salt and Sanctuary actually got me hooked enough that I lost track of time slightly and before I knew it I had been playing for over four hours straight. What snapped me out was my computer reminding me it was getting late, and since I really needed to wake up the next day, I didn't have the time to write here.

So +1 for Salt and Sanctuary. Rare to see a non-sandbox engulf me like this. I'll write more of my thoughts on it later on.

20.11.16

Started Salt and Sanctuary today and got about 3 hours in. No clue how far that is, but I feel like I progressed a whole lot.

It's essentially a 2D Dark Souls, and that's actually a very accurate description. I'm quite enjoying my time with it, perhaps even more so than I did with the first two Dark Souls games. (I haven't played the 3rd one yet.) I can't quite pinpoint the reason for this, because Salt and Sanctuary is obviously worse in the sense that it lacks a 3rd dimension, which can actually take quite a bit away from the game. I'd also say the combat mechanics aren't quite as deep.

But it seems just a little bit less frustrating so far, and it's not because of the difficulty. (I can't even judge which game is easier.) It's probably a bunch of little things acting together that incorporates movement, how enemies are made, and perhaps, yes, a little bit of how it hasn't been overbearingly difficult at any point yet. Seems like a much more steady experience so far.

I'll definitely be continuing this in the foreseeable future. Hopefully it'll deliver more of the same - just a little bit frustrating and despairing, but not absolutely demoralizing.

PS. Note to self: Get a pencil and paper and make yourself a map. I am so lost.

19.11.16

So I did have time to play today. Got some more Rabi-Ribi done, but I have sadly reached the conclusion that I do not like this game. Why? Well, let me try to sum up my thoughts as best as I can remember.

I must say the the initial impressions for Rabi-Ribi are great. The music's kinda catchy, the art (both the sprites as well as the character art) looks nice and cute. The world seems large, not entirely linear, and there's a lot of skills and stats to level, lots of items to collect, new moves to learn, and it seems like there's so much to do, yet it's not overwhelming. I really wanted to like it.

And then the first thing I notice is that there's a ton of talking. I mean, that's fine for the beginning of the game. Lots of games do that to introduce the setting and story, but the more I play, the more I realize that these characters just can't shut up. The story's not really gripping or exciting or anything, but that'd be fine under normal circumstances.

Yet, sadly, a vast majority of the dialogue is completely useless unless you're reading it to look at the character art and how they act "cute" towards one another. I found myself starting to skip through the stuff being said without realizing it, and that's a clear signal that it was really boring me.
Okay, so, what else is there? Art and music are pretty great, as mentioned, so no complaints there. So, perhaps a look into what should probably be the most important part - combat. And a preemptive note: I may very well be missing some details that are important in high-level play, but I'm pretty sure this applies to any first-timers.
What infuriated me to no end, was the fact that I had to control my fairy and myself at the same time. In most games, you're used to just managing your own attacks, and you can't really do multiple attacks at once. Combos and such feel nice, and perhaps managing your movement while attacking to avoid the enemy and whatnot is also fine. (The latter of which is not in the game, by the way.)
But here I just have two completely unrelated entities whose attacks don't sync up, who I still have to control at the same time. It's incredibly difficult to get the timing of both attacks right, as I only have enough attention for one of the characters. I very much want to delve into a rant, but I'll leave it at comparing the feeling to trying to do quick side-to-side motions with your left arm while doing up-down motions with your right arm. Do give it a try, and then apply that feeling of "I can't quite do it." to a several hour time span.
Another major problem was understanding where my hitbox was. I never really did quite get it, and it didn't help that it seemed to change depending on what I was currently doing.
Overall, trying to mix a bullet hell with an action platformer didn't really work too well in my opinion. In a bullet hell game, I expect to have full control over my position. Here, I only have that control about half of the time, as my jumps need to land, and my dashes and attacks have a short recovery time. So it feels more frustrating when you get hit during falling or otherwise "recovering".
Furthering that point - the fights divided too much into two separate portions: dodging bullets, and attacking. Instead of being a nice mix, it feels like two separate pieces taped together.
Slightly relating to the previous point, having SP and MP also felt like too artificial of a restriction. Most enemies would just stop what they were doing while you were hitting them, so of course you'd need a cap as to how long you could keep doing that, but, again, this feels like a frustrating system, and it could be something better instead. Maybe that instead of being forced to stop attacking due to some arbitrary meter running out, you could be forced to stop because it's dangerous to stay there? Reactive combat perhaps?
That and a lot of things feel like they're just not well enough made. Great systems, but they lack polish. But seeing as this is already by far the longest I've written about a game, I won't delve much more into the other issues I may have had.
I'll just tack on that I didn't enjoy the amount of backtracking, and it felt really silly that it couldn't manage to restrict me from going into certain places but instead had to resort to some character telling me "no, you can't go there", then assuming control of my character and walking back.

Despite the long list of complaints, most of it isn't really game-breaking stuff, and is more or less also a matter of preference. A huge amount of people love this game, and I can't really say it's terrible either. But I, certainly, did not enjoy playing it.

18.11.16

No games today. Instead, I fight with my computer because for the past week every time I start it, it fails to install an update, spends 15 minutes reverting the changes, then downloads over a GB of data just to try installing the update again the next morning.

I'm also trying to get as much schoolwork preemptively done as possible so the holidays and the end of the semester would be more tranquil. So, hopefully more games on Sunday, at least.

17.11.16

Well, this should be a well known game, so it's not much news, but I added Tyranny to my backlog. I don't actually generally like RPGs though, because I'd prefer to play a game for either the gameplay or the story, not both at the same time. The reasoning being that it is inevitable that one is better, so whenever I'm not doing that which I like more, it just feels tedious, because I want to get back to the better bits. But we'll see how this one holds up.

16.11.16

Sometimes I don't even notice the day passing by. Come back to write here, and suddenly see there was no post the day before. Ah well, better late than never.

15.11.16

I got a little over 2 hours of Rabi-Ribi in today. I really like the overall atmosphere of it - that is the art, the sounds, the dialogue - it all fits nicely together.

So far though, the combat portion seems to be worse in comparison. Not that it's particularly bad, but most attacks lack that visual and auditory feedback to really feel fluent and impactful. Can't even properly tell when some of my attacks are charged, and the SP system feels a bit clumsy. Then there's the matter of not properly understanding where my hitbox is, and having to simultaneously control both my fairy companion's attacks as well as my own (and they're somewhat mutually exclusive, not that I'd understand how the system works), and then managing my movement on top of that. With the various difficulty levels, I suppose this just makes for a high skill cap, while the skill floor can be as low as I want, but it does make the combat feel clumsier. On the optimistic side, I feel like my experience will improve as I get more familiar with it.

Now, I'm not sure if the following is good or bad, keeping what I said about combat in mind, but there's not all too much of it. I was hoping to take another break from visual novels after the last one, but this one's just dialogue, dialogue, and then some more dialogue.

In any case, it's good enough that I definitely want to continue playing it for now. So expect more.

14.11.16

Oh look, another one of Idea Factory/Compile Heart's games: Trillion: God of Destruction. I'm not even sure why I added it to my list, since their games are always terrible gameplay-wise, and only perhaps average story-wise. At least they got English voice acting and can spark a chuckle every half an hour.

I also figured out the next game I'm going to play: Rabi-Ribi. It's not going to happen today though, hopefully tomorrow. But it's supposedly really good, so I got my hopes up. Let's hope it's not for naught.

13.11.16

I think my habit of missing days is increasing. I spent yesterday mostly on various non-game related automation stuff and Divinity. Nothing exciting.

12.11.16

Seems Fault - Milestone Two side:above was significantly shorter than the first episode. In other words, I just finished it.

What I've mentioned earlier about this still stands, so I won't repeat myself, but I do have some new observations to add.

First of all, I noticed a pattern in how the story's built. Now, while I'm not a very avid reader, stories generally seem to follow a pattern of starting slow and comparatively uninteresting, then winding up until almost the end, and then quickly slowing down as stuff wraps up. These, however, have a very strong beginning and ending, with the middle portion being the less interesting part.

Both episodes so far have started off with a lot of action, then most of the story is a slow development of events, and the ending always tries to make you cry. And honestly, I like this style. A fast start quickly sparks one's interest, then we can trudge through the brunt of the story (It's not actually bad, this is more of a generalization.), and an emotional ending leaves a stronger memory of the story.

The story also divides into portions where it's serious and stuff is progressing, and parts where the characters are just acting all cute towards each other. The fittingness of the latter rather confuses me, but perhaps it helps with defining the characters. I couldn't really tell.

I was completely mistaken about one thing though. I though that this tale would be one of fantasy and magic (or "manakravte", as they call it), but that hasn't at all been the case, nor will it probably be in the future. This episode especially drew very clear parallels with technological advancements in real life. A bunch of stuff, including some primitive form of the internet, in the form of a book acting as a message board.

But more than that, a huge topic was ethics. A developing country. A class system. How unfair life can be for some. Greed, and choices in life. It really tries to tackle a bunch of problems of society. And I'm not exactly good at discussing those kinds of things.

Sad for me, because I just wanted action. Perhaps the lighthearted segments I mentioned earlier were there to help against the overall slightly depressing mood of the story. Still, I can't criticize how it handles the topics themselves, as I quite enjoyed what I read. My only concern is that things do turn out just a bit too well for reality. I guess a story needn't have a happy ending, but at least a good one.

Aaand I went off on a ramble again. Reading a bunch of words must make me want to write a bunch of words in return.

To conclude, I must say that this VN series seems at first glance to be something completely different from what it actually is, but despite that, I think it's really good, and I can't wait for the next episodes.

11.11.16

Continued with Fault. Nothing to really add to yesterday's observations except that oddly often some character repeats a line they just said, or that the name of the speaker is wrong. Might be a bug, might be sloppy writing, but it's a minor annoyance either way.

As for Beglitched, my predictions were true - I didn't really enjoy it, but I can't say it was a complete waste of my time either.

It is essentially a 2-in-1 puzzle game. Minesweeper in the map view, and a match-3 in the battle mode. There's enough of a twist to both that they're not outright boring, but I still found them way too easy to be fun, and too lengthy to not care about them. There's hidden tidbits here and there as well to keep the experience more exciting, but they're rather few and far between.

I feel like the cutesy audio and visuals might drive some people away, but it's not as bad as the graphics make it out to be. Not that either is bad, no, I think they're well made for the style, but most people probably don't expect a good game in this art style.

If you like easy and cute puzzle games, then you might like it. I, however, do not.