This has been a weird year in gaming for me so far. I've been playing Tears of the Kingdom on and off for a year now, and I've gotten to Hyrule Castle, but I don't think I'm close to finishing it yet. I started playing it around the same time as Baldurs Gate 3, but then put it aside for however many months it took me to beat Baldurs. With BG3 and Zelda sitting in my consoles forever, I wasn't doing much more than dabbling in other games and it hasn't lent well to me actually finishing anything!
I did manage to beat SaGa Scarlet Grace after Robio showed so much enthusiasm for it and I finished Eiyuden Chronicle Rising because I eventually DO want to get to Hundred Heroes. I miss Suikoden games, so I'm planning on getting to that some time in the next few months...
In the meantime, I've been playing a little bit of this and a little bit of that like...
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Megaton Mushashi W Wired - ultra colorful Armored Core baby brother from Level 5 with super bright anime sequences and story bits. It's fun, You're always getting new weapons to try and mech parts to build new bots. It gets deeper and deeper as you go on (like any Level 5 game) and there's actually incentives to log on every day or even try your hand battling others online.
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V Rising - plays a bit like a Diablo game but there's more of a focus on Survival than loot. You gather resources, build your own Castle(Vania) from scratch and take on a hundred+ bosses that all fight VERY differently! You can set up an online castle that plays out in real-time or a single player one that exists only for you when you save and load it up again (you can invite people to join you) but it's offline in the sense that events don't happen when you're not there. All of the Vampire strengths and weaknesses are incorporated into the game play from avoiding the sunlight (and garlic), turning people into your servants, blood magic (along with a whole host of other elemental spells)... even the quality of the blood you drink matters! Pure or unpure, you'll be stronger or weaker as a result. When I first heard of the building aspect, I thought "Well, that's not for me" --BUT-- it's so easy, well done and intuitive, you'll be making castles worthy of Dracula before you know it! Speaking of: there is a CastleVania Legacy DLC that incorporates all sorts of elements from the series, including a one-on-one showdown with Simon Belmont himself! THIS IS SERIOUSLY THE BEST VAMPIRE GAME SINCE LEGACY OR KAIN!!! Yep! I said it! It really is --THAT-- good!
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Metal Slug Reloaded - it's a Gatcha game for sure, but it's Metal Slug... as Tower Defense...!? Imagine all the smoothly-animated, pixelated gore/humor/drama of a Metal Slug game, but with a bit of strategy thrown in. I don't know if you've ever heard of Battle Cats, but THAT game is a bizarre-ass side-scrolling tower defense game starring mostly weird cat-hybrid creatures, that is admittedly VERY hard to put down! The two games play almost identically, but in here you get Metal Slugs, attack Camels, puking Zombies, Fanatics with magic spells, Women with Rocket Launchers, alien Bug Queens, mad Scientists... it goes on and on... There's literally HUNDREDS of sprites from all throughout the series' history that you can mix and match in easy-to-control but sometimes hair-pullingly hard 2D strategy scenarios... I know I'm not doing the best at describing it, but if you know Metal Slug, you kinda have an idea what to expect!
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Yeah, there have been other games I've tried on and off but the few mentioned above are the ones I've been sticking with albeit sporadically... Like I said: Weird game year...
...but still fun!
Battle Cats! (So weird, but so much fun!)
Yeah... it gets even more weird than this!
You ain't seen nothing yet!
Oops! Forgot one! I've also been playing F.I.S.T.: Forged in Shadow Torch -- a shockingly good MetroidVania starring a fisting bunny that also likes to drill things!
(I'll post pictures next time I'm not on my phone!)
Crap! I'm also several hours into Sea of Stars -- an RPG styled after the king of classics, Chrono Trigger, among others!
Specifically the art style and setting of course.
Oh, the poetic irony of ME being deep into a FIST...
V Rising Review
Yes, F.I.S.T.: Forged in Shadow Torch does star a bad-ass bunny. YES, it is incredibly well worth playing!
The graphics and details are kinda amazing. The combat is very well done and FUN! I am actually enjoying it A LOT more than Metroid Dread... It is NOT hard just for the sake of being hard. It is easy at points, challenging at points, but always FAIR. NOT something that can be said for Dread!
[It's almost like some of the development team of Dread played Hollow Knight, saw what a devoted following IT had, and said "We have to make Metroid more like THAT!" No, you really, really don't. Metroid should be handled by two dev teams only: Retro Studios and an internal Nintendo one!]
Sea of Stars used Chrono Trigger as one of it's biggest inspirations and it shows!
It is every bit as good as everyone says it is! Combat is clever. The game so far is a good blend of exploration, puzzles and combat. Two things concern me slightly though, but I don't know how true they are: 1) I heard you can't see the real ending on your first play-thru... That was also true for Chrono Trigger, but it let you skip back to points in the story to replay, iirc. You didn't have to play the ENTIRE game over... I hope that's not the case here! 2) Somehow, the plot of Sea of Stars ties into the dev team's first major hit, The Messenger. They say you may want to finish THAT game before completing this one... So, let me get this straight: you might have to play this game several times to see what it is trying to convey --AND-- you should complete an entire --OTHER-- game before you do?! I really DO want to finish both, but at the rate I am playing games, that would happen until 2027 at least!
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