What games are you playing 2023: WGAYP, Engage!

[Captain K]

SO2R: Finished on Galaxy mode. Characters were Rena/Claude/Celine/Ashton/Welch/Bowman/Dias/Noel. Endgame party was Noel (controlled), Bowman, Dias, Celine. Beat Indalecio Gabriel around level 90.

I did a lot of item crafting, but more in a "fill in the pokedex" way than a "break the game" way. I did make a few fun things though like https://imgur.com/a/ypm015n

Speaking of breaking the game, there's about a million new ways to do so. I tried to avoid almost all of these, so the game was still pretty challenging. Hardest fights were Zaphkiel and Metatron (Wise Men #1 and 3).

Formation-wise, I used Free-fight in the early game (bonus XP) and Assault Shift for the rest of the game (gives bonus crit and items affect all). Items! Items are amazing now. They're cast by you, the player, rather than the character you're controlling. So it doesn't matter if the character is paralyzed or whatever, items are still usable. You can do tricks like start casting a healing spell, then use an item to resurrect an ally right before it goes off. They revive and get a quick heal. There's also a factor that reduces the cooldown time between using items. So yeah, use them items.

Character notes:

Noel. Probably the worst character in the game, but he's usable. His spells seem to have a much longer cast time than Celine (Hasten Speech included). He gets Energy Arrow for early multi hits, but it's slow to cast. I mostly just used Fohn Wind and Cure All. Earthquake was his only spell breaking the damage limit, but it's super slow.

Celine. Quite lovely. I had Faerie Ring and Light Cross on her so MP was never an issue. Put her AI on kill all the things and she did. Just stands at the back of the screen and rains AOE hell on enemies.

Bowman. Relatively unchanged from the original. Which means he's still good, but didn't get the buffs that others got. So he's more of an "average" now.

Dias. Also relatively unchanged from the original. BUT! He may benefit more from the remake than others. His weapon from the Fun City Arena doubles his damage. That wasn't great in the original since 9999 was pretty easy to hit anyway. But now with Break Damage Limit, he can hit them high notes so pretty.

I didn't use Welch, but I hear she got some major upgrades and is either #1 or 2 best character in the game. Ernest and Precis also reportedly got major updates.

Overall it's an amazing remake of an already great game. I'm probably forgetting a dozen things I wanted to gush about. But let's talk about the one thing (the only thing!) I didn't like.

The voices.

Japanese got a new voiceover, but English didn't. They're using the PSP version voices. Some of these are okay, but there's a lot more misses than hits. Claude sounds like he's 12 years old. The Wisemen fights were extremely disappointing, especially Michael who is now speaking his lines rather than screaming maniacally like the PS1 version. Certainly this isn't a dealbreaker considering how amazing the rest of the remake is, but it's an ugly blotch on an otherwise beautiful painting.

[Cmdr_King]

Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem- fin

This is a pretty middling FE, certainly weaker than GBA but better than the other remakes. Probably Better than FE6? That area. It’s got a handful of interesting maps but overall is kinda there, at least on normal. It’s probably more interesting at higher difficulties in a vacuum but not sure I’m down for that so here we are.

[Dark Holy Elf]

This Way Madness Lies

Beat on the second highest difficulty. More Zeboyd goodness. It's a lot like Cthulhu Saves Christmas, which was already good! I liked that the larger cast, and I also liked the Shakespeare nerding spliced with magical girl adventure. It's the easiest Zeboyd game to recommend to someone who isn't a big nerd for RPG gameplay.

But I am a big nerd for RPG gameplay and that's the game's real draw. Characters are constantly getting new skills and passives which change how to play, which helps the game avoid feeling too stale. Compared to Christmas, I think the two biggest gameplay differences are both interface ones, which is weird? The big downgrade is the turn gauge is invisible (as are your party members when not active, and thus their status ailments), so uh have fun trying to remember the turn order to decide if e.g. it's worth healing stun or if the afflicted PC already lost their turn from that. The big upgrade is that status susceptibility (and other stats) are now visible, so now you can really see how the Zeboyd status system works and make informed decisions based on that. It's great!

Otherwise, the skillsets are interesting, the way characters play is interesting, it's fun trying to pull off good combos while enemy damage ticks ever upward as an encroaching threat. Just a very fun time.

PC notes:

Imogen - Locked which is unfortunate but she's extremely good. Strong unites, the attack buffing is strong, good damage options, good status options (charm which doubles damage dealt? Yikes)... she's pretty much the second best at everything (best at buffing), and incredibly versatile. The passive which sets unite damage to 100% when hyper allows for some pretty quick clears.

Paulina - The healer. I'm not super enamoured of healing in this system but Paulina is good enough at it to make it work and feel valuable, and she has so many ways to make it work, like really powerful regen to open the fight. Has some okay damage options (either bear or ice) but you have to pick one to build around, and even then it's not exceptional; you're using her for the healing.

Viola - Physical damage. Her money move is "physical attack, take another turn" and her second money move is "use the previous attack again", hi there tripleturns and quick hyper/unite acceleration. So she can do pretty good damage. That's all she really does that I cared for, and she's not the best at it (at least against multiple foes, might be against a solo but this game does not have hard solo fights generally).

Rosalind - The multitarget damage specialist. Multiple unites that do this, loads of good damage which exploits elemental weaknesses. Interestingly her big spells become ST during hyper mode, which would be a major downer except you can throw out a unite then if you want MT. Oh yeah, the "next unite does 100% damage" item on her was pretty ridic, and she has neat status options too.

Miranda - She's weird, in that her hyper mode moves aren't better just different. She also gets an ability to switch to/from hyper mode. So she's trading power for versatility. On the whole this is a losing trade; the near-lack of MT hurts in this game, and even her ST moves are often unreliable. Overall probably the LVP, but she does so many things you can definitely find uses for her anyway.

Beatrice - The status whore. Love this girl. MT poison alone is so incredibly valuable, and then there's MT stun, MT disarm, MT charm, speed buffing, and some vaguely passable damage options once you've thrown down status but realistically those are just finishers at best. Her Hyper is interesting in that it's supposed to be turn 1, 6, 7, 12, 13, etc... but any "next turn is hyper" effects can see her with three hyper turns in the space of the first three rounds which lets her gain control of fights early really early if needed. Probably the best non-Imogen PC.

Kate: The defender/tank. I didn't really use her that much, I found the lower offence offset any gains that defensive play would offer; the usual thing where the longer the enemies live, the more ways they'll find to fuck you up (their damage rises, and they start landing more statuses the way the Zeboyd system works). But she seemed neat enough anyway.


New Super Mario Bros.

Watching a bunch of Mario games inspired me to revisit this, beat the game 100% again. Then I beat it a few more times clearning the minimum number of levels (took around 35-40 minutes), which mimics the way I played Mario when I was young and they didn't have save files. Fun little nostalgia run. This game's stage design remains really good!


Brigandine 2

Beat a hard mode file as Mana Saleesia, which I hadn't done before. Most used PCs were, in roughly this order: Rudo, Emma, Kyle, Katri, Veyta, Titania, Selena, Monica, Aisha. It's a rough set of knights: Kyle's good but has 3 command area, Katri is a sniper which I love but bad magic pool, Veyta joins late/underlevelled. Fortunately Rudo is crazy good, Emma is solid and got a bit supercharged when she got some stupid +1 move spear.

Beat the game in 21 turns which is my fastest ever, pretty proud of that. I also managed a zero-reset run... right up until the final boss where the enemy force just gunned down Rudo in a way I didn't even think would be possible (he had nearly 900 HP). Oops! At least that was on the first meaningful turn, I took the fight apart on the next try.


Tales of Berseria

Line counting run! In the second third of the game, just got the rhinostagros.


Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright

Remembering my last year's run fondly, I decided to roll another random team. I decided I would choose my route based on the identity of the first two characters rolled (excluding universally available characters): the first two were Saizo and Hinoka, so Birthright it is!

Team:
Corrin (+HP, -Def, Fighter)
Sakura
Jakob
Saizo
Mozu
Hinoka
Setsuna
Azama
Kaden
Ryoma
Felicia
Dwyer

Pretty stacked as you can see, Jakob/Saizo/Hinoka/Ryoma are all amongst the best units available on the route IMO. I turned Jakob into a Paladin because I have so many staff users and he's been kicking ass, MVP so far. Just finished Chapter 12.

[Twilkitri]

Edna & Harvey: The Breakout (Steam)

Point & click in the 'has responses (of varying degrees of humour) for a lot of incorrect actions (but not all)' vein. Main characters not as sociopathic as I was expecting going in, although far from free of it.

The interface isn't brilliant, and some animations are pretty bad. An enhanced edition has been released (not as an update) since I originally bought this so maybe it does a better job with those.

Early on you get introduced to a mechanic where the main characters flash back to Edna's childhood to remember things that she's forgotten, which seems interesting at the time, but then it only ends up getting used twice more across the game. I think there should either have been one or two more of those sequences, or if that wasn't possible, the rest of the game should have been shortened so that they were more of it proportionally.


Ninja JaJaMaru: The Lost RPGs - Ninja JaJaMaru: The Ninja Skill Book (Switch)

NES RPG somewhat similar to DQ1/2 (I imagine, not having played the NES versions of those).

Structured a bit atypically - after finishing Quest 1, when starting Quest 2 you're delevelled back to level 1 and lose all your equipment and get a basic set - then the same again after finishing Quest 2 and starting Quest 3. When moving on to Quest 4 you keep everything you had at the end of Quest 3, though. (Quest 4 is essentially just an endgame sequence and you can't actually get any new equipment in it in general, except from random drops possibly).

You can actually select whether you're starting from Quest 1, 2, or 3, so not sure if you started with Quest 3, whether you'd follow the same process into Quest 1 and Quest 2 and then enter Quest 4 with what you had at the end of Quest 2, or if you'd just go on to Quest 4. Each of the main quests has different equipment sets past the early items, and the characters also get partially different sets of Jutsu. One concern with that possibility is that Quest 1 is to some extent flagged as 'the first one' so I'm not sure if it'd make sense to rotate into it after completing a different quest.

The way text scrolls is terrible and was persistently annoying for the first couple of sessions of play, although I guess I ended up acclimatising to it.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Fire Emblem Fates - Birthright Lunatic random team. As mentioned earlier, I rolled up a team of 12, and got a very strong team. As a result no fight caused me massive headaches, a reset or here or there to be sure but that was about it. Unit notes follow (battles/wins in parentheses):

Azama (20/15): Great Master. Mostly just a staffbot, he could do a bit of combat after promotion because his stats are pretty good but the weapon rank means that "pretty good" isn't too special. The extra bulk sometimes comes in handy. I had too many healers this run, probably, and should have promoted him earlier.

Dwyer (28/19): Butler. Got him just after Ryoma, before Chapter 14. Could have gone Strategist but I figured he woudln't get Inspiration. Again, maybe I should have promoted him earlier. Otherwise, see Azama, with worse stats but shuriken are cooler than spears in a few ways so that was nice.

Sakura (50/35): Onmyoji. Yet another healer! Tomes gave her a bit of offensive niche and Horse Spirit is great, so she actually got the most combat of the promoted healers by quite a bit. And her defensive aura was nice. I promoted her a little earlier than the others.

Felicia (97/77): Strategist. Early Inspiration is sexy as always. Got her as the second servant and for a while she was just staffbot #4 but as time went on I leaned on her combat more and more, she actually was my fourth best combatant by the end with her high magic/speed, Horse Spirit, and res-targeting.

Kaden (101/77): Kinda mediocre. Bet than last run since he was my only fox so got exclusive access to all three weapons, but for the most part he's just a worse ninja/swordmaster.

Hinoka (210/105): So I realized this playthrough that getting her to A+ with Setsuna (easy) and promoting her to Kinshi gives her Quick Draw so she has a ridiculous player phase, +4 atk / +5 spd on her already good stats. Ultimately moved her over to Spear Master for the lategame maps where flying isn't too special and Bow Knights are everywhere. Saw a ton of use throughout the game, always had great stats, her 1-2 range being iffy (either Javelin or Bolt Naginata) is her biggest weakness compared to the top types. And then she has that great +2 damage aura.

Setsuna (144/107): Sniper. Generally killed things pretty well once she got rolling. Doesn't have that much strength but speed + high Yumi power + Quick Draw is nice. Pursuer is great but only for a one full-size map. Bow lock is obviously a bit limiting. Solid physical pairup stats are nice as an option.

Mozu (137/108): Kinshi Knight. Had a bad start but I gave her the second Heart Seal and she got rolling as a competent Kinshi. Never really had amazing combat but competent enough.

Corrin (192/114): +HP -Def, but the RNG would make me believe she was -Spd instead; she gained like 4 speed in her first 20 levels, awful. Practice Katana could only go so far. Probably the worst Corrin I've ever had, though still not bad precisely, the flexibility of swords or dragonstones is nice. But more often her supportive contributions (+2 atk/def/res to either type of support partner) were what mattered.

Jakob (236/118): Paladin. So my team for Chapter 7 was Corrin/Jakob/Sakura and I didn't really want two staff users, so I heart sealed him to paladin immediately. He has extremely solid combat for a long time, unquestionably top three until everyone promoted, and respectable enough even at the end.

Ryoma (147/129): Swordmaster. Y'all know what he does. His performance in the game's hardest maps (IMO, Chapter 23 and 25) can not be overstated; he could intercept and one-round whole groups of enemies. He's definitely not invincible but figuring out how much he can safely delete (which is more than you might kneejerk from his stats, because of how he fills up the dual guard gauge and his personal buffing his durability) wins fights. I feel pretty confident calling him the overall MVP of this playthrough and Birthright in general. The only unit who hit Level 20, and also barely reached S rank in his weapon without an Arms Scroll (Hinoka and Setsuna got there with help).

Saizo (261/157): Ninja Master. Saizo is excellent as well. The lower attack (due to shuriken might and only average Str) is his main downside compared to someone like Ryoma, but he's even more durable (against physicals at least) and a wonderful enemy phase contributor, while also being good on player phase both against the very squishy (due to one-rounding them) and very durable (due to debuffs/poison).

I could have been more aggressive with my reclassing/money use; I had well over 20k in hand at the end of the game so I could have done things like have Jakob dip into Strategist for Inspiration or perhaps just forge some weapons up a bit more. But it's fine, this team was strong enough that I didn't need to be very fancy.

[Captain K]

Marvel Snap: I have 20/46 Rian Gonzales variants. Never going to catch up at the rate they're releasing her cards.

[Cmdr_King]

Baten Kaitos- abused VN mode in the HD remaster and saw how this played out.  I have to admit I might have really disliked the game playing it straight because it goes hard on "we are going to fill this hallway with encounters to cover up that this dungeon is 5 screens long" and bullshit backtracking puzzles.  I guess that's just kinda the cost of having VA and the gorgeous prerenders in that era.  And honestly the cast and story are kinda... there, aside from some sharp writing here and there... right up until the end. 
The final boss and what comes after in BK1 is just this pure, ongoing melancholy that made me go "oh that explains a lot" when Masato Kato's name came up as the scenario writer.  Like, actually, 1000 years as a dismembered, soul-damaged corpse is a lot even for a rampaging god.  Even that creature has earned a peaceful rest.  I wish the game had done a little more to really build up to that in other parts of the game rather than getting lost in the "let's exposit justifications for our cool background locations" sauce but being there at all... yeah, that's cool.

And also like.  Damn y'all.  Just another thing from the deep backlog dusted, even if in a cheat-y form.

[Cmdr_King]

Sonic Superstars- Haven't quite cleared the last boss on this, but I'll get around to that.

Thing is, almost all the bosses in this are so bad.  There's like one I actually thought was pretty fun, which also was in basically the best stage, Cyber Station.  That's one's not bad, and the overall stage is just neat, full marks.
Some of the problem is some wonky physics, which is nothing new to Sonic but does feel uncommonly bad here.  There's one boss with a like... a compacter or something like that, that one's especially bad.
The Zones themselves are mostly good, ranging from genuinely pretty neat to explore like Cyber Station to some stuff that's' just kinda an average Sonic 2 stage.  But yeesh, the bosses are just not fun, entirely built around dodging for like a full minute at a time then having a narrow little exhaustion frame to hit them, it's one thing for the final boss to do that but this is constant and that's just... not how a Sonic boss should work.  Honestly if the bosses were remotely fun or at least unobtrusive this would probably be a step up from Sonic Mania but... yeah, they really drag down the experience.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Cthulhu Saves Christmas

Replayed this, as is appropriate for the season. Great fun. Is it more fun than This Way Madness Lies? ... maybe? I decided to write a comparison, focusing entirely on the gameplay because eh that's why you're playing these games. I think they're both pretty cute for what they are writing-wise.

Anyway, thoughts on the comparison:

-CSC only lets you set four abilities, with the other three appearing randomly. Overall I'm pretty neutral on this, and appreciate both games more for the difference. I like that TWML lets you make more than four choices, but I also like how the randomization of CSC shakes up battles just a bit... and maybe more significantly, lets me preview how the abilities I didn't take actually work. Sometimes I've liked one of them and have shifted it into my main set as a result!

-Both games have one major interface advantage. CSC lets you see the turn order (as well as what status effects are active on your PCs), while TWML lets you see enemy stats, which is particularly important for status. Really wish we got both!

-I think CSC's boss design is probably slightly stronger, I feel every boss in that game has a very clear identity. But they're reasonably close in this front.

-CSC has r'lyehlationships which give you choices of stuff to get, which is neat, but you also miss a bunch of stuff as a result and the choices are blind and based on name.

-CSC has equipment, TWML has traits. Equipment can be found in various ways, traits are gained only by level. Traits are a bit more flexible since you can choose any three.

-Probably my favourite thing in TWML's favour is how abilities "upgrade" at certain levels, which can cause you to shuffle in an old ability again.

-TWML has party choice past a certain point, which is fun.


Tales of Berseria

Finished a replay of this. Really couldn't muster energy to care about the gameplay so I left it on the default. One day I need to figure out why I just don't vibe with Tales gameplay at all, but that's probably giving it more thought than it deserves.

Anyway the game was a great joy to play again knowing all of its twists and turns. The core story beats of the game are excellent, Velvet is super-compelling in particular. I don't have much new to add but way the game deconstructs and skewers the idea that reason is the highest human virtue remains really good.

I also did all the sidequests this time and honestly I was almost tempted to lower the game's score a bit just for that. While there's some good stuff in there (in particular, Rokurou's sidequest gives some important context for his character which is kinda hand-waved in the main plot) there's also some of it that is very cringe, namely anything when Zaveid is on-screen. What a terrible advertisement for ToZ he is.

Fortunately after that I got to play the conclusion of the game and it rules, one of the best final confrontations in gaming tbh. So the game can stay where it is.


Stray Gods

What if an Ace Attorney case were also a musical?

I enjoyed this a lot! The setup of the game is that the Greek Gods are real and still living secretly in the world. One of them dies in your arms in the opening and you are assumed by the other gods to be their killer. In Ace Attorney-like fashion, you are guilty in their eyes unless you prove yourself innocent. (It makes more sense than AA at least.) Cue visiting locations, talking to lots of deities / mythological figures, and figuring out what the heck actually happened and why, before you face your trial.

The complicating issue is that the protagonist has inherited the powers of the god who died, and that god is a Muse, who can inspire others to sing what's in their hearts. So the major adventure-game moments of the game are musical numbers, where you inspire people to sing and then nudge them in the direction you want. Apparently there are a crazy number of variations in how the songs can actually go.

The game is not intended to challenge; in fact as far as I'm aware it isn't possible to truly "fail". But there are certainly branches in character relationships and fates, and of course major ones in the ending.

In that sense perhaps the better comparison for the game is something like AI: The Somnium Files (or other Uchikoshi games, but AI is the best parallel I think). It's a really compelling yarn, but it doesn't really provide even Ace Attorney levels of gameplay. While speculating in advance of what's going on is a lot of fun, it's not really necessary. That said, the game very much sets up its own lore in service of the story and mystery, and does so very well.

Where the game probably excels most is that the characters are compelling. The protagonist, Grace, is of course a bit of a cipher for the player, but with oodles of good dialog choices she's a very enjoyable one. The other major characters are pretty much all very well-done, and coming to understand them, and the unique perspectives they have due to their long history, is perhaps the great joy of the game. The game is also rather unabashedly queer and there are romance options, so that's fun too.

As far as "games that basically don't have gameplay" go, this is certainly a good one. Recommended.

[Cmdr_King]

Persona 5 Strikers- It's funny how I started playing this when it came out, then got distracted due to some controller issues, then set it down for like two years only to pick it back up because of a silly fic idea.

So there's just a ton of ways this is really a "y'know what we can do better than that" response to the original Persona 5, and while I am not gonna say I like it's riff on musou gameplay more than a proper jRPG, they do do a pretty good job of looking at the narrative and thematic ground they covered in P5 and doing it more thoughtfully, not just as writers but within the narrative itself; the Thieves had some regrets and second thoughts about what they did before, and decide to try and do some things differently.  It does often come across as more cheesy, but that's okay, they're teenagers.  Teenagers are allowed to be cheesy.

Sophia's great.  It's fun for me when Sophias are good.  While people will joke about Wolf and yeah, a little bit he's the 'main character' at times, the end of the game shifts more definitely towards Sophia's plot just like it started and that's fun. 
(Praise Accepted~)
Otherwise there's not toooooo much to say really, it's very much "more Persona 5".

[Twilkitri]

Pokémon Trading Card Game (3DS VC)

Primarily a replay, although I'm not sure if I've ever actually played the entirety of the game from the start through before. Generally entertaining although given that my final deck was 80% my original deck (Charmander & Friends) with Dragonair & supporting cards added in in place of some of its less necessary ones I suppose I can't be said to have really gotten into the spirit of the game. Collected all the cards available in the VC version.

I've never actually gotten around to playing the sequel, I should probably do that some time.


Pokémon Scarlet - The Indigo Disk (Switch)

At BB Academy, the 'B' stands for Busywork. Both of them.

The plot is sparser than the plot from Teal Mask, especially for the parts where you're at BB Academy itself. It does at least continue on from the Teal Mask plot & tie into the main game to an extent.

The problem is that a lot of things at BB Academy are paid for with a new BP currency, acquiring it is comparatively slow, and several of the things you're going to want to spend it on cost a significant amount. Also, most of the postgame appears to be gated behind BP costs - I haven't touched any of the parts in question yet as a result as I was already fed up with collecting it.


Super Panda Adventures (Steam)

Fairly breezy world-map-based platformer. You can get upgrades which allow access to more areas in levels you've been to before, but given the number of levels I hesitate to refer to this as metroidvaniaish. Does not have any way of tracking whether you've collected everything in each level unfortunately.

I feel that some of the plot lands a bit more awkwardly these days than it would have 9 years ago.

The final boss was a major difficulty spike over pretty much every other boss in the game and took me a fair amount of attempts to beat.

Also replayed Commander Keen 1 again but that hardly deserves its own section. Didn't try the randomizer again. I've formed a tenuous conclusion that given I replay the game for its breeziness, using the randomizer would actually work at cross purposes to that.


The Walking Dead: Season 2 (Steam)

Finally got round to this after playing the original season in... 2014.

The impression that I have is that it's generally more stressful than the original season, which does match up with the time interval between the two, but makes for a less enjoyable experience.

The situation at the end of my playthrough was Clementine & AJ in Wellington.