What Games are you Playing 2017?

[Captain K]

Alchemist Code:  Although it's a poor use of premium currency in the long run, I gambled and did the full 3-step summon while the summon pool is still small.  It paid off as I got two copies of Chloe.  The second let me limit break her to the Lanceman job.  I learned the skills from there and swapped her back to Holy Swordsman.  So now I have a heavy class that can attack and counterattack from two spaces away.

Since the game doesn't have actual weapon and armor switching, the way it handles cross-class skills is interesting.  Whenever you use a lance skill as a swordsman, your character just pulls a lance out of their ass and attacks, then shoves it back and goes back to sword.

Other than that I'm currently limited by my player level for advancing.  You only gain about one level a day from quests, but once I hit ~45 I'll be able to equip quite a few more things.

[Sierra]

Night in the Woods: If only I could die anywhere else.

I panicked and bombed the moment the rhythm section threw a huge mass of notes at me at once, but looking at a video, I realize they're all just sixteenth notes. Oh well.

Game is immediately charming in a way that I don't encounter often enough.

[NotMiki]

Ys VIII: Lacramosa of Dana: I'm about 95% of the way through the game, but that doesn't mean I'm close to being done, apparently.  This is a long game.  Fortunately it's also a very good game!  I'll have a lot to say about it once I finish, but for now: It's an action RPG using basically the same system as Ys 7 (and, I am informed, Celceta), but you can jump (and eventually, double jump) and you get witch time when you dodge, and that is super awesome.  Like so.  The combat is very good.  The music is exceptional.  The worst of it is above average, the best of it is godly.  The plot is basically two things at once: heartwarming tale of castaways on a deserted island coming together to survive and escape, and a traditional Ys story of an ancient adversary that threatens destruction.  I'll have more to say once I actually finish and can reflect on the totality, but there could have been a number of ways the game put those two ideas together, and the way they chose to do it is very interesting.

There are ps4 and vita versions of the game.  Play the ps4 version if you play it at all.  It's got a lot of extra content, and that extra content is good stuff.

Tsundered: if/when I finish this, I will likely agree with everything Cid said about it.  Great animation, epic boss fights, interesting ideas, execution had serious issues.

[SnowFire]

Belated, but: Djinn, I haven't played Innocent Sin, but I am roughly familiar with its plotline, as I am to EP.  While normally I'm not a fan of being pre-spoiled, P2 is jagged and uneven enough that knowing which characters are previous Persona fanservice, which dark intimations are talking about P2:IS, which ones are relevant to the plotline of this game, and what's just totally random blather is useful.

Also, I beat Joker Noriko, then quit the game for a bit.  Eh.  (Joins Trails of Cold Steel II in the unfinished category, although CS2, to its credit, it's just the aftergame that's left - I saw the dang credits roll.)  Instead, I started...

A Rose in the Twilight (Vita/PS4)
From the horror puzzle game genre.  It's pretty good.

There is zero dialogue in this game.  None.  Characters sometimes wordlessly mouth to each other, so they're talking, but beats me what they're saying.  You can generally get a sense at least.  Luckily, in classic horror game fashion, you can dig up notes, journals, & history books to explain some of WTF is going on.  Anyway, you wake up in a dungeon, you are stuck with a magic rose, you quickly befriend a giant, and I guess you're bored or something so the two of you get to puzzle solving to explore a castle totally wrecked by evil thorns?  Is the main character the one writing the notes you find (they seem to be really specific to her current situation), or someone in a similar situation?  Is she the princess of the castle?  Random girl?  Aberration built as a copy of the original princess?  Not sure, at least at first, and still not entirely sure later.  Luckily, while being quite killable (especially from, grumble grumble, fall damage...  Mario she isn't...), the curse of thorns just resurrects Our Heroine constantly to take another shot at the puzzle du jour.  This does have the side effect of somewhat sapping from the occasional grindhouse horror sides...  no matter what horrible deaths the game imagines for our cute lil' girl, she just shrugs it off afterward, and even the bad ending has that problem of "why should I be that worried about this."  Oh well.

One thing of note that the game does really well is color design.  You know how Persona 5 has a Red, Black, & White color scheme thing going on in its design, loading screens, etc.?  Well, they take that to the next level in this game.  Absolutely every damn thing in the game is black, white, red, or a shade of grey.  Rose herself has more of the sharp blacks & whites & reds, but the background is a greyed out sludge, with the interactive and "lively" bits being red.  This is truly a plant vampire camera: everything that has vitality appears as red, you can suck the red out to change the color of Rose's rose, then put it into other objects for one of the main puzzley interactions the game has.  Don't expect to see any blues or greens until the credits roll.  While a bit wearing at times, and sometimes annoying for not making it entirely obvious that oh these grey thorns are background thorns, these lighter grey thorns are foreground and thus deadly, it's very impressive in its dedication to that aesthetic.  (Also, our Heroine is "Rose" = red, and there might possibly be other characters with non-English color-names...)

There is the occasional puzzle that is BS enough I had to look it up, and the final dungeon & boss fight is rated S for sadistic (definitely feel free to look up some of those solutions), but it was pretty cool overall.  Not too long either, which I like.  Strongly themed subsections of the game that don't overstay their welcome in general before mixing things up with a new gimmick.

[Sierra]

Tsundered: if/when I finish this, I will likely agree with everything Cid said about it.  Great animation, epic boss fights, interesting ideas, execution had serious issues.

Speaking of issues: if you didn't roll entirely human or entirely corrupted, don't expect to get one of the frue final boss fights. Mix & match and the game basically just laughs at you in the end. Platinum got, by the way. Evil mode final boss is rough, but I respect it for being a different kind of fight and forcing you to leverage every mobility advantage that your abilities give you.

Night in the Woods: I failed at shoplifting until the game gave up on me trying, then I had a dream about a giant bear with laser eyes. I like this game.

This is definitely some of the most endearing comedic writing I've seen in a game in the past several years. It's also--and this is maybe what makes it so effective--clearly rooted in the realities of 2017 America without explicitly saying so. We're in a dying, Nowheresville rust belt town where the only employment opportunities appear to be in the food service industry or telemarketing, the local mall is an empty shell of its former perceived grandeur, and nostalgia never turns out to be the reassuring or empowering force that we might want it to be. None of the young people in our protagonist's circle of friends seem to know how to get out, and she appears to have been sucked back in just from gravity and personal flakiness (indeed, Mae's entire "Hi I dropped out of school for no reason and came back home without any plan" intro is perhaps too personally familiar). Parental relations are friendly while also potentially fragile; there is a lot of obvious maneuvering around things that no one's comfortable talking about yet. Also all of this occurs in a bizarre parallel world where people are anthropomorphic cats and alligators and bears but there are also pet cats how does that even work.

What I'm getting is that while it is very funny, it is often sad-funny, but there's a place for that so it's okay. Based on what I've seen so far, I definitely recommend it for folks down for a minimal gameplay, maximal dialogue experience that principally cruises on an excess of personality.

EDIT: I think this about sums it up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2UUFFMGcgY

[Scar]

Snes classic.

Letting wifey take the lead in Secret of Mana since she never played it.

The adventures of Lionel, Tutu, and Roger have begun!

[Niu]

Ys VIII: Lacramosa of DanaThe plot is basically two things at once: heartwarming tale of castaways on a deserted island coming together to survive and escape, and a traditional Ys story of an ancient adversary that threatens destruction.  I'll have more to say once I actually finish and can reflect on the totality, but there could have been a number of ways the game put those two ideas together, and the way they chose to do it is very interesting.issues.

And a total paradigm shift of the entire Y's series.
The direction of Y's will never be the same ever again after this.
Y's effectively has been transformed into a mythology from an adventure.

It also makes you wonder what Edel was really doing this whole time, and what had happened in Agartha when the refugees moved southward during the ancient time.
You can really ties the dots in Y's 4 & 7 together now.

[NotMiki]

I'll let you know what I think of that after I beat the game.  I decided I'm not going to use healing items ever, and the final boss in Dana's extra dungeon is giving me some trouble.  (Not as bad as the minotaur guy, somehow.  He was rough.)

[Niu]

I'll let you know what I think of that after I beat the game.  I decided I'm not going to use healing items ever, and the final boss in Dana's extra dungeon is giving me some trouble.  (Not as bad as the minotaur guy, somehow.  He was rough.)

Make sure you did everything possible so you can get the true ending.

[SnowFire]

Cid: That was a pretty awesome song.  You made a sale...  well, the next time a Steam sale rolls around, anyway.  Reminds me that I need to finish the OTHER graphic adventure game with moody 20-year olds, though...

Niu: Ys has always had a mythology, it's just always wildly inconsistent with itself.  Or, in fairness, it's the kind of mythology where when you're in location X, their local mythology is totally true, but its power also doesn't extend beyond the borders at all (not that they tell you this in-game) such that for the next game, you can safely forget and ignore everything that happened earlier.  I mean, this is a game series where magic is totally extinguished from the world at the end of Ys 2...  please ignore all of the magic-esque things that happen later...  I guess it was just Black Pearl-based demon magic that got zapped or something.

Also, not very far in, but boo hiss if they're bringing Ys 4's stupid-ass backstory back.  The complaint about the goddesses in Ys I / II is arguably that they are "too weak" to even qualify as goddesses; they don't do a lot.  Eldeel has the reverse problem of being too powerful; you're telling me that this one flaky idiot was responsible for all human technology and advancement, and great scientists are just random people who got a special trip to visit his place?!  No, that would be stupid.

[Niu]

Cid: That was a pretty awesome song.  You made a sale...  well, the next time a Steam sale rolls around, anyway.  Reminds me that I need to finish the OTHER graphic adventure game with moody 20-year olds, though...

Niu: Ys has always had a mythology, it's just always wildly inconsistent with itself.  Or, in fairness, it's the kind of mythology where when you're in location X, their local mythology is totally true, but its power also doesn't extend beyond the borders at all (not that they tell you this in-game) such that for the next game, you can safely forget and ignore everything that happened earlier.  I mean, this is a game series where magic is totally extinguished from the world at the end of Ys 2...  please ignore all of the magic-esque things that happen later...  I guess it was just Black Pearl-based demon magic that got zapped or something.

Also, not very far in, but boo hiss if they're bringing Ys 4's stupid-ass backstory back.  The complaint about the goddesses in Ys I / II is arguably that they are "too weak" to even qualify as goddesses; they don't do a lot.  Eldeel has the reverse problem of being too powerful; you're telling me that this one flaky idiot was responsible for all human technology and advancement, and great scientists are just random people who got a special trip to visit his place?!  No, that would be stupid.

Technically no, Ys story with exception of Ys7 and Ys 8, are just mythology at first glance but turns out to just be super science.

The whole wingly race turned out to be just another race that lived on the planet, just their Emerase Tech are so advance that other race begin to treat them like gods.

Magic wiped out? When? Black Pearl are wiped out in Ys region and... that's it? Not to mention Black Pearl is not the only Emerase that can produce magic. Wait, Black Pearl was not wiped out during Ys2. The Ark of Napshitim is still around at that time.
There are also magic that's unrelated to Wingly's civilization. Say... the alchemy based magic from Kefan in Ys 5.


But Ys8 escaltes the series into a whole new level with Lacrimosa and the Three Pillar Gods.
The existence of Lacrimosa actually make Edle's descent into insanity sensible.
How could he not go insane if he knows all his effort to make human history better will hit an unavoidable dead end no matter what he does.
I wouldn't even be surprised if he had been using the Mask of Sun to delay the Lacrimosa through Akashic Record hacking.
Consider the time gap between Ys4 and Ys8, I am seriously believing that Lacrimosa got boot up because Edel is no longer around to suppress it.

[NotMiki]

I'll let you know what I think of that after I beat the game.  I decided I'm not going to use healing items ever, and the final boss in Dana's extra dungeon is giving me some trouble.  (Not as bad as the minotaur guy, somehow.  He was rough.)

Make sure you did everything possible so you can get the true ending.

If I can figure out what I'm missing with Licht (the medical student) I'll get it.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Cid: That was a pretty awesome song.  You made a sale...  well, the next time a Steam sale rolls around, anyway.  Reminds me that I need to finish the OTHER graphic adventure game with moody 20-year olds, though...

Niu: Ys has always had a mythology, it's just always wildly inconsistent with itself.  Or, in fairness, it's the kind of mythology where when you're in location X, their local mythology is totally true, but its power also doesn't extend beyond the borders at all (not that they tell you this in-game) such that for the next game, you can safely forget and ignore everything that happened earlier.  I mean, this is a game series where magic is totally extinguished from the world at the end of Ys 2...  please ignore all of the magic-esque things that happen later...  I guess it was just Black Pearl-based demon magic that got zapped or something.

Also, not very far in, but boo hiss if they're bringing Ys 4's stupid-ass backstory back.  The complaint about the goddesses in Ys I / II is arguably that they are "too weak" to even qualify as goddesses; they don't do a lot.  Eldeel has the reverse problem of being too powerful; you're telling me that this one flaky idiot was responsible for all human technology and advancement, and great scientists are just random people who got a special trip to visit his place?!  No, that would be stupid.

Technically no, Ys story with exception of Ys7 and Ys 8, are just mythology at first glance but turns out to just be super science.

The whole wingly race turned out to be just another race that lived on the planet, just their Emerase Tech are so advance that other race begin to treat them like gods.

Magic wiped out? When? Black Pearl are wiped out in Ys region and... that's it? Not to mention Black Pearl is not the only Emerase that can produce magic. Wait, Black Pearl was not wiped out during Ys2. The Ark of Napshitim is still around at that time.
There are also magic that's unrelated to Wingly's civilization. Say... the alchemy based magic from Kefan in Ys 5.


But Ys8 escaltes the series into a whole new level with Lacrimosa and the Three Pillar Gods.
The existence of Lacrimosa actually make Edle's descent into insanity sensible.
How could he not go insane if he knows all his effort to make human history better will hit an unavoidable dead end no matter what he does.
I wouldn't even be surprised if he had been using the Mask of Sun to delay the Lacrimosa through Akashic Record hacking.
Consider the time gap between Ys4 and Ys8, I am seriously believing that Lacrimosa got boot up because Edel is no longer around to suppress it.

Y'know, I've played all the Ys games. But there are so many proper nouns in this paragraph that my eyeballs rolled back into their sockets...

[Sierra]

So Dragon's Dogma got a PS4 transfer. If no one else ever played this, it's a fine entry in the Good Dumb Fun category. You climb around on giant monsters and stab them a lot, it has probably the most robust character creator I've seen*, and there is CAPCOM SERIOUS PLOT that results in one of the most laughably nihilistic cosmologies I've ever encountered in a game and I doubt the game's actually aware of that (although the optional superboss seems to be). It's highly entertaining fluff when you're in the mood for open world hack and slash.

(*Which one of these things most contributed to me picking it up again? Look, with FFXIV and Souls games out of the picture, my quota for designing a female alternate self and playing dress-up hasn't been met lately.)

Night in the Woods: Mae's dreams got real eldritch all of a sudden, in that a giant space cat showed up to warn me about literal giant space fleas (in language sharply reminiscent of the Arilou warnings vs. the Orz in Star Control 2), but I'm unsure how plot-critical this occurrence is since it unlocked a trophy that apparently only 2% of PS4 players of the game have picked up (I'm not at all clear yet on how much dialogue choices and decisions on how to spend your evening influence events in the long run).

I bombed that last song so hard. I'd guess I landed something like 20% of the notes? I'm told there's a trophy associated with perfecting every song. I'm guessing that's one of the 0.1% collected LOCKED TROPHIES in the list.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Cuphead - Holy shit, this game -rules- and Elfboy must play it, it's the kind of platformer that'd be right up his alley. I'll have to buy a controller to play it, though, it's slightly awkward to play on keyboard.

[SnowFire]

If we're going to force Elf to play games that Jo'ou has played, he should pick up Ys Origin now that it's no-longer Steam exclusive and on PSN for EZ controller access, so that he can get SF / NotMiki / Otter / etc. cred simultaneously.  I'm sure he'd be thrilled by the scintilating philosophical discussion of animu characters about the morality of infusing demon magic into yourself.  (also awesome boss battles.)

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I don't think Elfboy has a PS3/4, though...

[SnowFire]

Good point.  Alas.

[Grefter]

Nah he has one 😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Besides, Cuphead has Elfboy's name written all over it. Insanely difficult platformer/shooter with obscenely charming graphics, emphasis on multilayered boss fights with memorable patterns and designs, tight controls and a simple, interesting equip/weapon system and scoring measures to reward skill and speed. They didn't spend over three years slaving over the game for nothing.

EDIT:

Nah he has one 😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎

what the fuck is this shit

[SnowFire]

Nah he has one 😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎

Grefter trying to lure Elf to Australia with the promise of using his gaming consoles, I see.  Scandalous.

I'll believe Elf actually has one when we see evidence of that here.

[Captain K]

btw anyone who isn't planning on actually playing Cuphead should spend an hour watching this video.  These bosses are gorgeous.  Spoilers of course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjdbhClke1g

[Grefter]

Snowfire organized one as a group Wedding present.  Those X-Com 2 posts are played on PS4.

Edit and as I was posting The Man Himself judges that they have something else to be playing for an hour.

[SnowFire]

I'm not so sure, Grefter.  Maybe they picked up the Steam version.  It's entirely possible that PS4 is sitting in an abandoned box in Vancouver right now, alone, surrounded only by hip bubble tea, ramen, and cannabis shops.

If Elf & Ciato ACTUALLY kept it, there'd be proof.  Musical proof, if you know what I mean.

[NotMiki]

Ys VIII: Still working on the postgame dungeon superboss (I'm playing on hard, and decided I'm not going to heal during boss fights, which is silly but I've come this far!). Anyway, I figure I've seen enough to talk about this.  Ys 8 is a good game, and also a very long one.  It starts out with a shipwreck - washing to shore seems to be one of Adol's favorite modes of transport - on a deserted island.  So our hero sets out to find the other castaways, and as they gather one by one, they create a castaway village, with the goal of surviving long enough to find a way off the island.  So, like prior Ys entries, there's a very small cast.  But Ys 8 really takes this further than Oath or Origin - there are a boatload of sidequests and gifts you can give to the villagers to increase their approval of you and get stuff built, plus events and the like for every castaway.  The game goes much further than prior ones in the series in fleshing out the whole cast.  Regrettably, a lot of the cast is laaaaaaame and the game is laden with anime tropes.  When it works, it's great!  But when it doesn't, it's pretty groan-worthy.  Mostly, though?  It works.  And villagers are admirably incorporated into the exploration aspect of gameplay.  Adol's role in the village is to explore the island and look for more castaways and more information, and there are obstacles like landslides and boulders that you need a certain number of villagers to clear.  Additionally, sometimes the village is raided by wild beasts, and you need to defend it in somewhat tower defenseish combat - and when you do, villagers will help out with various effects.  It's fun.  There are places to revisit and flesh out, and a few optional areas, but it's fairly linear overall - more than you might expect for a game about exploring an island.  The first half of the game could have stood to be less linear overall.  The island is geographically split by a great ravine and a tall mountain, and so's the plot.  Once the mountain is traversed, the plot begins in earnest, and it's by necessity a lot more linear (and the linear nature feels a lot more natural).  So while all this is going on, Adol is having recurring dreams where he relives the experiences of Dana, a girl who, it seems, lived on the island in the past, and became the Maiden of the Great Tree, the high priestess of her civilization.  Aaaaaand the second half of the game relates to Dana, Dinosaurs, and the Demise of her civilization.  This is a deserted island, after all.  If there were people, what happened to them?  Why is Adol having these dreams?  How do the events of the past relate to the present?  What the hell does the game's subtitle Lacramosa of Dana mean?  Find out next time on Ys 8!

So that's the plot, or as much of it as I want to give away, anyway.  Let's talk about gameplay.  It's awesome.  Hey that was easy.  So this game is a lot like Ys 7 (and Celceta, or so I have been told) in that you have 3 party members you can switch between at will, each with their own movesets and special attacks.  The flow of combat is you refill your SP gauge by hitting enemies with charged normal attacks, then use SP to perform special attacks.  For tough bosses this often means you're employing a hit-and-run tactic of keeping your distance and looking for a time to come in and hit it to replenish your SP gauge, then back off and use long-range specials.  Some characters have short-range specials that encourage a more aggressive approach too - Laxia's best move is a charge that pauses movement for a bit when it hits, giving you time to decide when or how to dodge if necessary.  Adol's best allows you to ram into an enemy, which if you do it at a slight angle (yes really) keeps you safe from an enemy's frontal attack.  Another key element is that if you dodge or block just as you are about to be hit, it activates a witch time-like slow motion bonus where you can wail on the boss and use your specials without fear.  The timing on it is fairly generous but the game still makes you feel like a complete badass when you do it.  Reading enemy tells and flash dodging or blocking then retaliating is at the heart of combat, and it enables hit-and-run tactics on bosses that sometimes seem like they're never truly safe to get close to.  It's a lot of fun, and bosses are very well designed for the system.

Did I mention that the music is excellent?  It's excellent.  It's never bad, and it's usually very, very good.  Here's some overworld music.  Here's some more.  It's all like that: energetic, powerful and melodic.  Boss themes do not disappoint.  It's great, and really sets the tone for the game.

One other thing worth mentioning is that all the village side quests, all the areas you want to explore, all the treasure chests, all the locations on the map where an event will happen - ALL of that is easily checked.  This is a game where a bunch of stuff is permanently missable, but you may never need an FAQ because the game does such a good job of communicating it to you, even telling you when your window to complete a quest is about to end.  I got 100% of everything and the only thing I ever looked up was one gift item I'd missed and the location of a couple fish.  It should be noted that the game has a true ending, and getting it is dependent on completing most of the sidequests (not sure if it's 100% or not).  And the true ending is worth getting.

Hokay SPOILERS:

Mostly some random thoughts here:
WTF is up with Hummel?  I assumed he had some foreknowledge of the ship crashing on Seiren but it doesn't really seem like it.  Has there ever been a character that seemed like they were important to the plot that turned out to be so irrelevant?  I appreciate that the game points out what a self-serious goofball he is but...maybe you could just not write that sort of character?  And that hat is just awful.
I thought the way they handled Dana in past and present was really great overall - as long as you don't think too hard about the precise mechanics of changes in the timeline, which you should not.  Works for the narrative of the game, I'll take it.
Has there ever been a better fake final boss fakeout?  That was incredible.
Relatedly, was there really a point to fighting the Origin of Life?  Maia says after the fight that we can see Dana now because we've "touched" it, implying that no, there really wasn't a point.  I'll take it, though.  That was a fantastic final boss.
That whole sequence with Maia was a little demoralizing.  I get that they're making an analogy to Reah and Feena sleeping so as to prevent the Black Pearl from causing problems, but making (apparently) the entire world dependent on a sleeping goddess is a dramatic escalation.
What destroyed the civilization of the people descended from dinosaurs?  Climate change following a catastrophic meteor impact.  Checks out.  I love that this is a plot point in a fantasy game.  I hate that somehow I did not predict meteors.
The whole thing with the Great Tree turning out to be a harbinger of disaster and calling meteors to destroy civilization really has an FF7-in-reverse kind of vibe.  Not sure if that was intentional but it did kinda make Dana feel like Aeris to me.  I thought Sarai would turn out to be Sephiroth but it was not to be, alas.
Speaking of: not having any real villains (other than the doctor, who is too lame to care about) was an interesting narrative choice.  Guess you don't need 'em when you face the existential horror that the world itself exists in a state that is hostile to continued civilization, and that the only one who can change that is the goddess for whom the world is a figment of the imagination.
Speaking of: whatever the original term in Japanese was, the souls or ideals or hopes of prior civilizations were localized as "notions."  WTF NISA.  Also Archeozoic Big Hole.  WTF.  They kept "I am the King of Bees" though.  Jesus H. Christ.