January 2021 report!!
My 2021 goals are:
- 100% my SG wins. (Which is more difficult than you would expect despite there being only 11 of them.)
- to complete more games every month than I add to my backlog.
I’ve had some reasonably good trades this month and added 4 to by backlog, and finished 6 games.
I’ve also kept a promise to myself that if I hit 100 game reviews I would make my own curator group, and I would like if you considered joining. For every holiday and 100 followers, I’ll be giving away HB monthly games or ones I really enjoyed.
Thank you and please stay safe!
The year is 20XX, and Gamindustri is held tightly in ASIC’s evil grasp! The world is against you, the CPU’s have vanished. It’s up to Nepgear, Uni, Rom and Ram to bring everyone back home! Not all is as easy as it seems though, as strange shadows watch from a distance.
I thought long and hard about recommending this game or not and I can’t.
After playing this game, I can say with confidence that it’s 20% story and 80% grinding. I didn’t enjoy Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2: Sisters Generation as much as the first one and it felt like a bad copy. A lot of the enemies, outfits, materials, and dungeons were recycled and the multiple endings were rather difficult to grind and get.
I originally felt like I was cheating, I paid for the DLC “Histy’s Rescue Plans” for the 6x exp booster and the DLC for an overpowered weapon, but looking at others playtimes the DLC shaved off about 50 hours of my total time and now I can’t recommend playing the game without them.
If 10 hours of story and 70+ hours of grinding mats and levels sounds like your game, go for it.
Also it’s super weird how you start off playing the bad end route from hyperdimension Re;Birth1 where you fail to save Gamindustri.
Manifold Garden
Manifold Garden is a truly brilliant game about screwing physics and defying gravity.
The puzzles are deceptively simple and will have you questioning if you are capable of critical thinking. While there is not much story, the utter skill it must have taken to create this game and all the rooms and puzzles are masterful.
Even though I was mostly wandering around confused like a lost pet, I absolutely enjoyed my time in the Manifold Garden. $20 is a steal for this kind of content!
A Bird Story
Another excellent and heartwarming game by Freebird Games, I recommend you play Finding Paradise before playing A Bird Story so it will make more sense and have a bigger emotional impact, but you do you.
You play as a young boy named Colin, who struggles with his loneliness in his day-to-day life. That all changes when he finds an injured bird, becomes friends, and nurses it back to health.
Takes about 1 hour to complete. Very satisfying to finish.
Divination
In Divination, you divine the future of three humans and one robot. Will you make the fate of this city one of CHAOS, or peace?
Divination is a very short game, in one hour you can discover every ending. I was very pleased with the layout, theme, and the choices and consequences of those choices, good or bad they may have been. The art was very well done and I hope to find a longer, similar game like this in the future! It was very fun!
Ladra
In Ladra you play as the thief Estella, who's main goal is to relieve noblemen and women of their burden of wealth, and occasionally dabble in information gathering.
When a friend of a friend hears an unsettling rumor, Estella, the best thief in the city is hired to look into it. After eavesdropping and uncovering vital information of an unsettling plot, you must do everything you can to prevent a war from ever happening.
Coming into this I had pretty low expectations, I don’t typically enjoy RPG maker games but I was pretty happy with this one. The stealth mechanics were pretty neat and I enjoyed the plot more than I thought I would. The music was pretty standard and I did have a slight issue with the achievements. The "Social Link" Master didn’t pop for me the first playthrough but it did the second, I’m not sure what I did differently, others in the discussions have reported it’s bugged.
To fullscreen the game, open the game and right click on the white bar on the top where you can close out the game (X), click properties and then “fullscreen.” Restart the game and enjoy!
Shelter 1
You are a mother badger with 5 young, the area you made your den in no longer has enough food to support you and your family, and so you must move on to find another home.
This game is about survival, you need to feed your kids so they don’t die of starvation and avoid larger predators and threats from the sky. Natural disasters, crossing raging rivers, forest fires, it’s not easy to get your family to safety.
Lost one of my children to the river, and another to the Eagle. My fattest child has somehow survived despite my expectations.
1hr 20 min to beat, I was pretty impressed by the gameplay and mechanics. When your children are close to starvation, they slowly turn grey; but when you get food they circle around you, so you choose who gets to eat. Not a very wholesome game and pretty short, I recommend getting it on sale.
Oh went back and saw your hyperdimension review. Yeah I felt the same way mainly with the story actually, I felt like I had to force through 2 and 3 while the 1st was just a bit of silly fun. Doesn’t help that I really don’t like Nepgear and its all about them. I dont even remember the story for the 3rd game - correction looked back and yh gosh now I remember. Plutia was nice at least
I’m enjoying 3 so far, I hate that they recycled a bunch of dungeons again but at least the new ones they added look super impressive! I like the new Stella’s dungeon too, switching out the sidekick for different perks is awesome!
Oh yh I forgot about the stella dungeon. Wasn’t a big fan of that stuff, just wasn’t really good at it and I wasn’t patient enough to deal with it
If you get Histy’s Rescue plans for 0.99 it literally takes one second for her to go through the dungeon. 1 second per floor, it’s bliss.
Ugh you reminded me I wanna get the dlc before I start. I only have the deluxe pack are you serious! Didn’t realise that helped with the dungeon thought it was just another dlc that gave out a couple of potions
Nope~ Also adds a super exp (6x) plan that you can choose to add or not. No ultimate weapons, getting it for Stella’s dungeon alone is worthwhile, also adds a couple extra companions for her. She has a fish on mine.