Zelrune

August 2022 Progress Report

Welp, this month absolutely got away from me. I meant to only play 5 games, but then I got a SG win, bought the HB monthly, and got some rather fantastic trades, and gave into a Horizon Zero Dawn sale. I had to stop playing Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch just to keep up with my backlog since I already had two bigger VN’s I started, so, next month? Aside from Klonoa, nearly every game was “just ok” so it was a sorta boring month for me since nothing I played really stood out as worth replaying.

September is looking pretty good though, I plan on finishing Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, and playing Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, Draugen, Doki Doki Literature Club+, and hopefully Hitotsu no Mori or My Dangerous Life; and then I can finally check out Cyberpunk2077 in October. Plans rarely go well, but fingers crossed!

Games added to backlog: 7
Games 100%: 8

56% (252/450)
20% (90/450)
11% (49/450)
13% (58/450)
0% (1/450)
18.2 hours
Easily the best game played this month!

Summoned to another world, Klonoa the “Dream Traveler” is faced with the difficult task of restoring harmony and preventing nightmares and discord from plaguing the dream world of Phantomile and Lunatea! Team up with new friends, fight multiple bosses, free the residents and collect all the Momett Dolls to unlock special visions to learn more about these beautiful realms.

A 2D sidecroller in a 3D world, Klonoa Phantasy Reverie contains two Klonoa games, Door of Phantomile and Lunatea’s Veil; there are 51 Levels, called Visions, in total and takes 15+ hours to complete. Phantomile should be played first and features a young Klonoa, with Lunatea featuring an older more mature one. The games do not reference each other, but both have similar enemies as well as challenges. The puzzles are excellent and the boss fights are fairly easy, with each one having unique strategies to defeat. Each game has their own collectables which unlock extra content, freeing the residents in Phantomile and collecting all the Momett Dolls in Lunatea.

I will say while both games are very enjoyable, I loved the second game, the dream world of Lunatea, more because of the hoverboard levels were well designed and incredibly fun. The puzzles in both games were pretty good and I enjoyed the boss fights more than I was expecting. The only real negative I have is that sometimes, cutscenes would skip without your permission if you hit the tab key on a keyboard, which you use to move through menus, which would also turn on/off the scenes which typically lead me to reload every other level. I will definitely keep an eye out for a third game if another is made! I also want to note that the Klonoa games also have their own unique language, and there is an entire song called “Stepping Wind” you might want to check out if that interests you.


Half-Life 2
Very meh, but overall decent.

Saku Saku: Love Blooms with the Cherry Blossoms

6/10
31.3 hours
no achievements

Asaba Yuma is a handsome boy who, quite frankly, isn’t interested in love or romance; it’s pointless, and typically both parties involved have their heart broken by the end; but he likes to make people smile. With a growing popularity amongst the girls in his academy and working as an assistant in the nurse’s office, his hours are regularly misused as girls often come to him with their romantic troubles; but the more he hears about other’s failing relationships, the less he’s interested in having one himself. A “Love Fairy” takes interest in his personal life and approaches him, insisting that she can help him get a girlfriend to make him happy.
The conspicuous Reaper’s Scythe in her hands makes him skeptical.

Saku Saku: Love Blooms with the Cherry Blossoms is a 17-50 hour 18+ adult VN with full voice acting. Slow-paced and mostly slice-of-life, everything is pretty basic except for the fantasy elements. There are 4 routes with 1 hidden route, and plenty of CG’s. There is an incest route which is fortunately skippable, and is unnecessary to complete to unlock the hidden route. Overall, Saku Saku is a fairly decent romance Visual Novel that has plenty of content, and it’s worth checking out if you’re interested.

Half-Life 2
I regret picking up the game, spelling errors everywhere and a really confusing storyline & character design.

Fortissimo FA INTL Ver

2/10
15.8 hours
no achievements

Returning to Tsukuyomi Island after training in martial arts for four years, Reiji returns to his adopted family to transfer into High School and see his sister Sayuki again; only to be pulled into some terrible starry dimension and forced to take part in a survival game with 12 others. Every time someone is pulled into this beautiful dimension, one person must be sacrificed or killed to exit it, if no one dies within 13 hours, all life on the Island will be destroyed, including Reiji’s precious people. Everyone is granted a special power dependent on their personality, and the survivor will have a wish granted by Odin; Reiji’s power is to summon a girl named Sakura, a “living weapon”; survive, and end the game.

15-60+ hours to complete, Fortissimo FA INTL Ver is definitely… something. Full voice acting and a rather interesting story, I can definitely see why it has so many positive reviews; but it also has its issues. You can’t take any screenshots, spelling errors and confusing sentences are a common sight; but overall the VN is still understandable. Character design is cute but mostly leans toward odd; everyone has a different school uniform for some reason and hair styles are strange; one girl has what looks to be a… bag(?) on her head with a gigantic safety pin, one has her hair cut at 5 different lengths, and another tied her hair together in front that resembles a beard; to name just a few. The story is interesting, but very, very convoluted and I ended up glancing at a wiki to get some information straight. Play it if you want?

Half-Life 2
Cute, fun, short, hand-drawn, cats. Easy to love and play.

A Building Full of Cats

10/10
1.9 hours
21 of 21 achievements

Recently hired to look after a building full of cats after all the residents decided to travel for the holidays; it’s your job to make sure none of the cats are missing! Some are very skittish and will hide, so seek them out while seeing what a sneaky cat named Fofino wants from you.

40+ min to complete, 6 floors to explore with some relaxing music, A Building Full of Cats is a rather nice hidden object game. There are bonus cats hidden in the menu’s for extra achievements and despite it being short, there is a story with a satisfying ending.

Half-Life 2
Short, cute, fun, good storyline and smooth gameplay.

Omno

8/10
3.9 hours
21 of 21 achievements

Waking up utterly alone in a marsh with no recollection on how you got there except a memory of a civilization making a sacred pilgrimage to the golden door that leads to paradise; start your own journey to find your people and see what exactly is behind this door that no one ever returns from. Make an unlikely friend, and find your own definition of utopia.

4+ hours to complete, 5 chapters, one really good ending. An atmospheric adventure game with simple puzzles, the gameplay is pretty smooth; I didn’t experience any errors or bugs. You learn a couple skills to make exploration more fun and gain access to bigger maps, Float, Surf, Teleport, and Navigate. In each area, you need a minimum of 3 “energy sources” to move to the next map, with achievements for getting all of them. A lot of the story is told through “Memory cubes” of a previous pilgrim making the same journey. I enjoyed Omno more than I was initially expecting, the skills were fun to use, especially surf, and the ending was honestly very surprising and I loved it! Omno is an easy game to play and an even easier game to recommend.

Half-Life 2
Act 1 was fun, Act 2 and *that* ending? No.

Broken Age

6/10
17.9 hours
45 of 45 achievements

Vella Tartine and Shay Volta are two people who live in separate worlds and yet somehow inexplicably connected. Vella is a baker who lives in the Badlands in the small but delicious town of Sugar Bunting; chosen as a sacrifice for a terrible monster that appears every 14 years from behind The Plague Wall and eats young girls from various towns in a ritual called “The Maiden’s Feast;” while Shay is the only passenger on the spaceship, the Bassinostra, looking for a suitable world to live in since his home planet of Loruna is dying. With two AI parent’s, MOM & DAD, who keep him safe from anything and everything at all times, Shay is wanting a real adventure! Fortunately, there seems to be a strange stowaway who needs his help “rescuing” innocent creatures from evil forces.
Let’s get this good time over with!

5-10+ hours to complete with 2 chapters, Broken age is a point and click adventure game with excellent writing, voice acting, and difficult puzzles. Act 1 is fairly simple and straightforward, but for Act 2 I recommend following a guide. Broken Age was made by the creators of Grand Fandango, another fun game with notoriously tough puzzles; and it shows. Solutions are not obvious and even if you are a creative thinker, some of these will leave you confused. Despite the drawbacks; I still have to recommend Broken Age for its fun storytelling, writing, and voice actors, but beware, there is a speedrun achievement and while you can save/load sections to shave off time, it’s still not super fun to do.

Half-Life 2
Reviews for this game are mixed but I'm not sure why; no bugs and I had a good time.

The Deer God

8/10
11.2 hours
30 of 30 achievements

You start as a hunter, staying up late and looking for a deer to shoot for an easy meal; two come along, a big stag and a young fawn, and you line up your shot! Unfortunately for you, wolves attack and lightning strikes you at the same time and the baby fawn is shot instead. You definitely died; but the next time your eyes open it’s directly into the floating form of The Deer God, and they look pretty miffed. Appalled by your accidental cruelty, they reincarnate you as a baby deer and the only way to become human again is to redeem yourself. Good luck?

3-7 hour pixel platform side-scrolling adventure game where you play as a deer. Start as a baby and stumble your way to adulthood, complete easy push puzzles to gain various power ups; and use them and your platforming skills to beat some simple bosses. There is a karma system in place, if you’re good other deer will assist you in fights and follow you, but if you murder too many bunny rabbits you get reincarnated as one next time you die. I didn’t experience any bugs, and while the game is pretty easy, you could still die in a moment of carelessness. The only thing “unbalanced” is the Hail skill, where you have a Hail AOE that lasts a couple seconds you can actually stack/spam; I recommend it against one of the last flying bosses. Overall, The Deer God is a fantastic game and I don’t understand why the current reviews are mixed.

Half-Life 2
Loved it and hated it, worth getting on one of their frequent $3.99 sales though if you like VN's.

Our World Is Ended.

6/10
32.0 hours
40 of 40 achievements

Play as Reiji Misaki, a college guy conned into working for a hellish video game company who can only make terrible games called “Judgment 7”; and you somehow end up really liking it and the other 6 employees despite the unethical hours and absolutely abysmal pay. Everyone who works here has their own sin, ranging from Perverted, Delusional, Chaotic, Childish, Airhead, and Plain; and together, this group of misfits has delved into VR to make a brand new, trashy 18+ game with their brand new W.O.R.L.D engine that- hang on, that’s not right; this new program traps the user into a fictional world, and randomly summons characters, creatures, and evil organizations from the previous games created that are at of risk being brought into reality! Save Japan before it is overwritten and destroyed while you try to escape from this false reality!

25-40 hours, 7 routes and 8 endings, a fully voiced VN with multiple options, I have a love-hate relationship with Our World is Ended; on one hand, the art is gorgeous, the world building is incredible, and I already mentioned but- this 40 hour game is fully voice acted and frequently goes on sale for $3.99? What? I’ve only seen two spelling errors and quite frankly, that’s pretty incredible. On the other hand, you will statistically hate all the characters until they grow on you and learn more about them. They are flawed, terrible people who become more human but at the beginning it’s really irritating communicating with everyone.
All the routes are similar except for the endings, but “skipping through all read text” of a 40-hr VN isn’t easy. There really, really needs to be a “skip to next choice” button otherwise seeing all the routes and getting 100% is absolutely exhausting. I wouldn’t recommend Our World is Ended at full price but at $3.99? Absolutely.