Octopath TravellerStarted this up. Playing as Tressa, since the Kotaku review indicated she had the best plot anyway, and sure Capitalism Ho works. Looks like this will be one of those casts with backloaded damage in the DL though, as they want to wait for turn 3 to really go nuts.
The art is very nice.
Night in the WoodsI actually started this up about 45 minutes before Sir Alex started his stream of it, since I've been meaning to get to it. Played 3 hours or so (and grabbed another hour since), on Day 2 of Chapter 2 after visiting the dying suburban mall with Bea. I think I was a tad better at it than Alex's report, though, since I only died once I got to the Blood Moat. Leafy Graveyard however can screw right off. (For those that don't know, there's a reverse-Zelda effect where to make the game challenging, you LOSE max health every level. By stage 8, you die to a stiff breeze, and have to deal with teleporting dagger ghosts.) Also the band makes fun of my bad bass playing every time. Come on folks, I'm not THAT bad.
Also, per Sierra, this is definitely a CmdrKing simulator at times. Maybe not some of Mae's decision making, but the general "burn it down, burn it all down, but in a nice way" kind of attitude.
Cosmic Star HeroinePretty fun. On Chapter 7. Some thoughts in disconnected bullet point form:
* I have to say, for a 2-man project, I am amazed at all the sprite work they did. This is not a game where they made 15 enemy types and then got out their palette swap tool; there's an amazing diversity in enemy designs, with plenty of enemies that appear for just one or two fights. And even the popular mooks will only be in one dungeon, so maybe ~6-8 fights at most. A lot of love in the backgrounds.
* Battle system is good, as is usual for Zeboyd. They clearly thought long & hard about making a system where your best option was not either "use your best damage" or "heal" every turn. That said, the result is a somewhat stressful system at times? The main innovations are that some turns are just The Right Time To Act and are Hyper turns, which I like, similar to the random effect on turns that Xenosaga or Trails has. And also you can't just spam your best ability, abilities all go on cooldown after you use them and you need to use a Defend ability to recharge 'em. Finally, the Vulnerable status exists, which doubles damage, as well as various buffs that are short-lasting. The result is that normal attacks are just a gentle rain, and it's all about setting up deadly Hyper turns - double damage from Hyper, double damage from Vulnerable, and some +X% buff means you're dealing like 5-6x your normal damage if you set it up right, and renders anything else tiny in comparison. Screw it up and forget to Vulnerable, or even worse be forced to do something like Heal on a Hyper turn, and you give up a lot of damage - and enemies gain Style too, so their damage tends to rise as the battle goes on, similar to Zeboyd's other games. Anyway, I found the battles in C1-C2 pretty darn intense on Heroine (=Hard). C3-C6 or so was easier and I sometimes amp'd the difficulty up to Super-Spy (=Lunatic), but that honestly makes randoms a bit too much of a slog, so the game might be more fun on Heroine anyway, plus the bosses are nightmares on Super-Spy where you usually need at least some targeting RNG to go your way. So back to Heroine it is, for all that the Desperation bonus is a little too nice on this mode (I'd be fine with the same stats, but losing 100% style to activate it so you're a bit less immortal).
* A lot of the music is only okay, but the parts they got right were the most important ones: the regular battle theme and the boss theme, which you hear a LOT. Also, the overworld theme for Planet Araneu is great, blatant Blade Runner vibe ripoff, but that's what you want. (
https://hyperduck.bandcamp.com/track/araenu )
* Still not all the technical kinks worked out, I see.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/T1yzB7eG4MPUvrr18 Picture of Alyssa trapped forever between her sofa & table. Had to do the Creature-X boss fight again, which I cranked down to Agent for a fast curbstomp rather than doing another tense Heroine fight. Other times the game has straight-up crashed. Luckily, this is a save-anywhere game, so it isn't actually that bad.
* Writing is... hit or miss. Which is better than miss or miss, which is what I was kinda expecting after Otter's reaction to C1. The early part of the game clearly has "TODO: add hacking minigame here" where Alyssa is supposed to let the players have some agency and win some hacking minigame, after she goes to do this herself at the end of C1, gets separated from the team for no reason and has to hack a terminal in C2, and there's a busted hacking game you can't play at the
Millenium Fair Freedom Festival. Anyway, some of the meta jokes are pleasantly understated, while others are shoved uncomfortably in the player's face. Also the dialogue from townspeople generally doesn't zing, and the writer still thinks that having other people tell you how cool somebody is works rather than just showing how cool they are. That said, it has its moments when I appreciate what it's up to, especially other-game homages that the characters don't loudly comment on - the Chrono Trigger ripoff above (which was rather lovingly done, I liked it), or the Resident Evil 2 ripoff with a zombie-infested police station with a secret facility beneath it and dopey puzzles totally incongruous to a police station. I also don't mind when the townspeople properly react to the Obvious Plot Barrier with wry comments about how inconvenient it is for the train system to be out and the like. Zeboyd still has a lot they need to work on, and the jury's still out on the serious overplot, but I guess I'll take it.
