_Lory98_

I've been playing Xenoblade Chronicles X.

The combat is pretty fun. It's a bit more complex than the other two Xenoblade games I played (1 and 2), as there are more support skills you can use and overdrive requires a bit of planning. Enemies also have breakable parts, which add a bit of decision making during combat, although it does still feel a bit passive as there aren't many enemy mechanics to interact with.

The main story is fine and the sidequests are pretty good. They are very short, but they have interesting stories. The "affinity" quests feel like they are the focus of the game instead of the main story.

I played a bit of Phantasy Star Portable, but my PSP's battery is half dead and I'm waiting for a replacement so I didn't play long. Seems like a fun game tho.

I finished Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and I have a few thoughts about it.

The gameplay starts slow, too slow to be interesting, but after around 20 hours you unlock all the main systems and it gets really fun. It is however dragged down a bit by how bad the blade gacha and how grindy other secondary mechanics are (affinity charts and region development/mercenary missions).

The story was fine, it was pretty standard for a JRPG. I felt like the main characters were more interesting than the ones in the first game, but the overall plot and themes were a bit weak.

The story feels overall a bit rushed towards the end (especially the ending comes abruptly, I was expecting it to be a fakeout) and weirdly unfocused before that, but still engaging enough.

Nay, but I have a few exceptions:

FFXV really benefits from the open world and never felt copy pasted like most others.

Outer Wilds (if that counts) could obviously only exist with a continuous map.

While I dislike most open world games, I don't think it's an issue with the open world itself, but with how shallow the games end up being as they all copy the same formula and they all seem afraid to hide "content" from you, so exploration gets trivialized.

After La Mulana I wanted to try more Metroidvanias, so I tried Castlevania: Symphony of the Night but found it incredibly dull and dropped it after a couple of hours.

I understand the historical significance of its level design, but the combat was so easy that traversal became boring, as enemies respawn every time you change rooms. Also, the sprites are beautiful and detailed, and the game looks great, but Alucard's movement feels off due to the animation.

I then switched to Touhou Luna Nights, which was really short but fun. The time stop gimmick was fun to use and I liked the bosses. The metroidvania aspect was a bit shallow, probably due to the length of the game, as it's mainly used for optional powerups.

I started playing Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin. It seems like a fun game, the writing seems really cheesy (but enjoyable) and the combat is fun. A big problem tho is a bug that keeps triggering a slowdown at random times, which is really annoying and got me killed in a bunch of encounters.

Finally, I wanted to play Infinity Nikki, but I kinda lost interest with how the developer has been behaving lately. Can never trust gacha games.

I'm finally free from La Mulana. It took me 50 hours, and I had to look up hints for a couple of puzzles that I couldn't figure out towards the end (and I'm still not sure how you were supposed to solve them without guessing).

The puzzles were manageable for the most part, although not knowing what solving a puzzle did made it needlessly more confusing and IMO a bit unsatisfying.

I found the combat to be too hard and unfair in boss fights and the hitboxes were really bad as they often didn't match the graphics.

I'm conflicted on if I enjoyed it or not - the experience was quite unique (for good or bad), and the game being hostile and designed to waste as much time as possible is a big part of that identity.

The weird controls grow on you and navigation never got boring, as you plan a safe path through the screen. I found the story to be surprisingly interesting, the puzzles were memorable and while I disliked most boss fights, I did enjoy the final one and the previous quite a bit.

Probably gonna play the sequel sometime and also other metroidvanias, as it's a genre I haven't paid much attention to.

Understandable, yea.

The puzzle part feels like Outer Wilds, but without the log to help you and it's also a bit less linear, which I'm personally enjoying but I can see why it could be boring.

The platforming/navigation is a bit janky but usable after a while.

The combat is IMO absolute garbage (the bosses in particular are pretty bad fights that waste your time and the hitboxes are terrible) and wouldn't be surprised if this is what makes most people quit.

For now at least, the exploration and puzzles overshadow the negatives, but they are pretty big negatives that are hard to ignore.

I've been playing Under Night In-Birth II. I had bought it last year but never actually played it. After this first week of matches I'd say it's my favorite in this latest "generation" of figthing games.

I randomly bought Azure Striker Gunvolt on Switch, since I rememberd hearing good things about it when it came out, but it's not much fun to play. It feels really unpolished, the levels and bosses are a bit on the annoying side and the combat gimmick, where you need to tag enemies with projectiles to be able to damage them, feels really bad to use as it's slow and unsatisfying.

Everyone playing Blue Prince reminded me of La-Mulana, which I've been playing in the last few days. I'm a bit conflicted on it, since I like most of what the game does except for the combat which I find rather bad and unfairly punishing when considering how imprecise it is. I am enjoying the game, although I'm a bit worried it might be too long.

Played Splatoon 3. The different modes are really fun, except for Turf War which kinda sucks. It's the first time I'm trying to learn how to play a team game and I'm confused on how to improve, but I'm having fun with it.

For some reason tho Nintendo thought it was a good idea to do two day events ("Splatfests") periodically which lock you out of any mode beside Turf War for their entire duration, so I went looking for other competitive games:

I went back to Guilty Gear Strive after dropping it for more than a year, but after playing it for a few hours, I still don't like how sluggish the game feels and I'm not too happy with the modern design trends in fighting games (or in general the curent state of them). The biggest issue that stops me from playing tho is the terrible online experience which still hasn't been fixed after 4 years.

Not much this week, been looking a lot at the Switch 2 trailers.

I've played Heavenly Bodies with a friend. We liked it, although it wasn't really designed for two people.

I'm back to Fire Emblem Engage, played chapter 16 which took me ages.

I feel like that kind of price increase would encourage illegal downloads too. Especially for countries with weaker currencies

I wonder if that's why they've been more aggressive against emulators lately.

But yea, same for me: there's very few games I'd spend that much money on, and I can't imagine myself paying 80$ for something I don't even know if I'll like. I hope it doesn't become the new standard.

The +$10 for physical games also worries me they might be trying to push more people to digital games only. But also there seems to be the new "game key" cards which might be an improvement over codes, if they are not tied to accounts.

Also yea, I am still not used to $70 for games and even that seems too much.

Quite disappointed with how they are now going for $90 (physical, $80 digital for MKW) games, the upgraded versions are paid DLCs and even the tech demo is a digital purchase.

The console looks good, and $450 seems fine for it, but everything else looks overpriced and that has kinda killed my interest.