August 2023 Progress Report
This month was a rollercoaster, because it started off terrible and ended well. Symphonic Rain and Lemon Cake back-to-back nearly burned me out and for a good week I genuinely wasn’t sure how this month would have turned out, but Ghostwire gave me a much-needed serotonin boost with it’s collectables and huge map exploration.
It really sucked giving Symphonic Rain a negative review but I really, really couldn’t recommend it. You gotta work on two side characters before you can delve into the actual story and it’s super rough, both the good ends are bad ends and the bad ends are still bad ends, and 18-ish hours was just too much!!!!
I don’t even wanna think about next months games; but I’ll note them down here for records and curious readers. Slime Rancher, Ori and the blind forest - looking at the achievements I’m not super looking forward to that dumpster fire, but maybe the game is good? Oxenfree, but I really don’t wanna play it, I hate horror and jumpscares, especially if you know they’re coming and there is so many… I’m probably gonna play something super gay to offset that. I genuinely just, don’t have that many plans for September aside from POP stuff I’m not even sure I wanna get into. I’ll try to make the best of it, and be optimistic. Maybe it will be great and unexpectedly fun!
…Maybe.
Total games added to backlog: 3
Total completed: 6
Following a traffic incident resulting in being possessed by an ex-cop/supernatural detective wraith named KK, a thick fog rolls in blanketing the city of Tokyo making its occupants vanish, leaving disembodied souls in it’s wake and heralding the arrival of thousands of Visitors, malevolent spirits from the world beyond. Sufficiently frightened, newly-possessed Akito immediately makes his way to the nearby hospital where his younger sister Mari lays in a coma, only to witness her kidnapping by a creepy man in a Hannya mask. Panicked and determined, Akito and KK agree to work together in this desperate situation – Rescue and retrieve the thousands of souls scattered around the city before the nightmarish man uses them all in some incomprehensible ritual, and save your sister, who he needs for some reason.
10-60+ hours, Ghostwire: Tokyo is a supernatural open-world exploration game with a special atmosphere that is not actually a horror game. That tag is a lie, as someone who is an absolute coward I assure you the only scary part was in the newly added DLC Quest “Fear for the Children” where they turned it up several notches. Combat consists of using Spirit Skills and “weaving” which was an absolute delight to use, the main skills being elemental – Fire, water/ice, and wind – and alternatives being talismans as well as assassination-like threads that you would also use to grapple around the empty city. Speaking of- the city is absolutely gorgeous. Frequent rainfall, plenty of cats and dogs – that you can use your skills to speak to – wandering around looking for lost owners, occasional enemies and corrupted areas that you can clean out to rescue the trapped souls there, and the collectables. There are, so, so many, from the spirits that are scattered to random but interesting items to pick up, to capsule machines to collect figurines to add to your many screenshots you will inevitably take. By the way, this game handles screenshots oddly…
SO MAKE SURE YOU TURN OFF YOUR DESKTOP HDR.
For the first 20 hours my screenshots were turning out looking incredibly bleak and with a grey film, a complete opposite to how the game appears. Also; do not take screenshots with the in-game photo mode! They do not go to your steam screenshot folder, and you cannot share them. Use the photomode instead to set up screenshots, and then use F12. Aside from that and the admittingly underwhelming ending, I genuinely, truly loved and enjoyed playing Ghostwire, and I hope you like it too.
Mhakna Gramura and Fairy Bell
Mullbear Orphange is run by Tigrah Anne, a cruel woman who turns her orphans into animals to sell if they are not adopted out by the age of ten. Mhakna and her best friend Sebiarno are just two of the building’s unfortunate occupants. Very unhappy and almost ten, they make a wish to Fairy Bell, a fae known for rescuing children from unfortunate situations, to be taken away to a happier place; a utopia for children just like them! But there is something strange about this place, something Mhakna can’t identify…
2+ hours, Mhakna Gramura and Fairy Bell is a Kinetic Novel with no choices written in the style of a children’s storybook. Very high quality, the artist is Hare Konatusu, the art director for Fault: Milestone One and Fault: Milestone two side:above. Written, animated, and translated very well, the music is superior quality as it’s by Foxtail-Grass, the same studio that has done an immense amount of professional work in the Touhou series. With so many high-level names and groups tagged onto here, I’m honestly pleasantly surprised that Mhakna Gramura and Fairy Bell is only $4.99.
Lemon Cake
Lemon Cake is a 25+ hour Bakery/cat café management game in which you have 42 recipes to unlock as you level up, the max which is lvl40. You are limited to three rooms, the store front, the kitchen, and the greenhouse where most of your ingredients are sourced. Stray cats will frequently arrive in your bakery, and they will be adopted by customers; with cats that have been recently petted that day having an increased adoption chance. You have up to 5 display cases in which to set your baked goods on for people to purchase, and two open tables seating a maximum of 4.
While admittingly cute and somewhat enjoyable, I won’t be recommending Lemon Cake. In total, there is only about 2-4 hours worth of content that is stretched out into 25+ hours, which I don’t appreciate. The tip system is terribly flawed, as even having a menu set to “100% tip” I still got the same or a similar amount as when I had a 0% tip streak shown at my end of the day report, so I genuinely have no idea as to what that was influencing. NPC’s regularly got stuck on cats or someone else, and instead of going around, they would stare at each other until the game deleted the npcs in question; meaning that not only does the game need a better pathing system, you just lost a bunch of sales that day. A lot of the upgrades felt superficial, like they only existed to exist and justify the price hike between them to increase play time. There really isn’t a lot to do, and to be clear, the entire main story, or what can be called a main story, revolves around you getting the lemon cake recipe which you get at lvl 38, and only 4.2% of players ever got that far. Play something else?
Symphonic Rain
Piova Communal School of Music is a famous location for budding musicians in Piova, the city of endless rain. With a constant cloud overhanging the sky, Chris Vertin has spent almost three years here writing letters back and forth to his hometown and childhood sweetheart Arietta, a promise he made before he left was that he would return when his table drawer was full of letters; a date that is rapidly approaching. A music prodigy and general wallflower, Chris is a third-year student with a graduation examination; a stage performance happening in less than three months. Needing to find an accompanying vocalist for his instrument to even be allowed to take the exam, Chris must utilize his poor social connections and abysmal social skills to find a candidate to practice with so he can finally leave this city of eternal rain behind and go back to his hometown, to Arietta.
Warning! This visual novel is dark! Only recommended for VN fans or masochists!
30+ hours to complete, Symphonic Rain was actually released in 2004 and has since been updated with many quality-of-life improvements such as the updated, easier to use UI and text box. Hand drawn watercolor backgrounds, full voice acting, 3 routes leading to a final 4th route, I really loved playing Symphonic Rain! Well, almost. Despite how amazing the true route and the grand ending was, recommending this is difficult for two reasons. One, you need to play 3 routes before you can play the real ending, and second… the first 18-ish hours kinda suck. It’s boring, and I didn’t like playing Lise and Fal’s routes which are basically bad ends just so I could start the actual storyline. If their good endings were even remotely enjoyable, or you learned important storyline information that wasn’t told in Torta’s route, or even good, I wouldn’t be complaining about these two side characters that you don’t even need to interact with but the fact you gotta slog through them and that it takes almost 20 hours to get to the genuine game is a bit much?
Overall, I have a positive impression of Symphonic Rain, but I would only recommend it if you’re fine with spending that much time getting to the part of the game that’s genuinely interesting and a pleasure to read. If I had known everything I knew now, I would never have played Symphonic Rain.
Kouichirou Ayase is a skilled samurai who was previously one of the captains of a military force known as the Kodokushi; an elite force wielded by the government devoted to protecting the people, expanding the Mirai Kingdom’s reach, and driving back invading forces. Kouichirou practiced for years and rose above his peers to join this selective samurai militia, but realizes the truth too late. Unable to leave the group or else he would be hunted down and killed, it takes a couple long years and his wife’s suicide to drive him away from the Kingdom. For weeks, Kouichirou was pursued until he finally had to stop at a small rural village to recuperate and obtain food supplies, only for the forces to suddenly catch up and burn it to the ground, slaughtering all its occupants. Looking for supplies in the flames before everything turns to ash, he finds a newly made orphan instead. Her name is Chiyo. He adopts her, and together, they build Hotsu Village back from the ground up.
30+ minutes to complete, Wander No More is a Kinetic Novel with no choices, no voice acting, little to no character art and simplistic backgrounds. It’s admittingly pretty mediocre, but I enjoyed it because Kouichirou is pretty to look at and because the story isn’t slice of life or extremely optimistic. It’s dark without being too gory and the writing was well received. For the low price of “Free”, you can’t go wrong! Although, it would be better if it was set at $1.99 or something.
Blades of Time
Ayumi is first and foremost a treasure hunter, and secondly, an adventurer. After hijacking a magical orb that belongs to a suspicious organization only known as “The Guild”, she teleports herself to Dragon Island in search of wealth and new experiences; only to find herself stuck with hundreds other treasure hunters in the middle of two powerful groups at a standstill. Make your own side, team up with a magical entity that likes to bestow you various powers, and set this cold war ablaze if you want to make it to the top to be the first person to loot the Dragon Temple.
9-14+ hours to beat, Blades of Time is a Fantasy Hack and Slash Adventure with optional multiplayer, co-op, and PVP in “Outbreak” mode. The successor to X-Blades with the same protagonist, Ayumi, Blades of Time has improved itself graphically, in level design, combat, skills, and in magic use. While the voice acting and writing is still so terrible it’s amusing, the game is very fun to play and surprisingly challenging. The Time-Rewind skill keeps the game interesting along with it’s special use against quite a variety of enemies and puzzles. Genuinely enjoyable, highly recommended.
You could totally make September a BG3 September. 😉
Symphonic Rain and the side character thing sounds like a weird design choice.. Very frustrating!
Not sure if you know this already:
With the screenshots for Ghostwire - you can copy screenshots over from other folders over to the steam folder for the game. Usually requires renaming, and sometimes a restart of steam/PC to come up. It is do-able though. I usually do that for games without photo modes, where I use Nvidia Ansel to take screenshots. You do need to take at least one screenshot in steam first (F12), so that it creates the folder for you. You just need to find the file location the photo mode was saving them to and copy them over!
I was trying to do that with Ghostwire but it didn’t work from taking the screenshots to where the files were originally stored, to the steam folder, but it works in situations where the screenshot didn’t appear in the screenshot manager, but did appear in the accompanying disk. I’ve had another user spend a lot of time with me working through it, and while they were able to post my screenshots on steam, I was unable to.
I’m leaning towards user error but either way, it’s done, I’ve warned other less technology advanced players, and I don’t need to do it again.
Thanks for telling me about Nvidia Ansel, I’ll start looking it up and see if I can manage it, I really do love seeing your stuff show up in my activity feed!
Slime Rancher is a blast. I’m looking forward to playing it again this year.
Congrats on the progress and good luck for this month!
Omg, finally someone who agrees on Lemon Cake. All those positive reviews on Steam… no, just no… I been slowly going back and putting old BLAEO reviews to Steam and this game is coming up soon and I can’t wait to shit all over it, its terrible.
I can’t wait to read it! The reviews lately have been mixed, I recall them being Very Positive when I played it. Guess there was a player increase from that bundle, huh.
I didn’t know it even was in a bundle. Back when I played it 2 years ago it was all positive, I am not even sure mixed is deserved, but much better than positive.
Symphonic Rain and Lemon Cake back-to-back nearly burned me out
Thanks for the heads-up, those two did catch my attention and I’ve entered a handful of GAs for them but they didn’t make it to my wishlist. I’ve read the music mini games aren’t that good in Symphonic Rain but wasn’t aware of how dragged out it is.
Also; do not take screenshots with the in-game photo mode! They do not go to your steam screenshot folder, and you cannot share them. Use the photomode instead to set up screenshots, and then use F12.
I’ve only recently learned about this in The Witcher 3. Makes me wonder why these photo modes allow players to take photos using in-game UI at all; surely that adds nothing but potential confusion and frustration, right??
Slime Rancher, Ori and the blind forest - looking at the achievements I’m not super looking forward to that dumpster fire
Highly subjective obviously, but I found Slime Rancher really addictive and its achievements not hard to obtain. I bought it on steam for 4.99USD weeks ago when I was itching for a cute collectothon, and here are my stats after 30 hr playtime. Late game doesn’t offer enough variety and feels a tad too grindy for me, so I stopped playing for now.
Ori on the other hand was a bit underwhelming for me. The story hasn’t caught my interest so far, and the metroidvania side of it, while undoubtedly very solid, doesn’t offer anything I haven’t seen already.
Congrats on your progress, and may your September be more fun than your August :D
Just started Slime Rancher again, I like it but the tarr is really annoying.. Need them for 100% though. ;;
For Symphonic Rain there is an option in settings to let the minigames play themselves, so you don’t actually need to do them! I tried to do them at first but they feel.. slightly off beat. I just ignored them and moved on. I really, truly do not suggest playing Lemon Cake though- that’s 20 hours of my life I would like to get back.
I hope my September is successful as well, thank you!
I really, truly do not suggest playing Lemon Cake though- that’s 20 hours of my life I would like to get back.
Duly noted, that’s how I feel about playing Spirit Hunter: Death Mark too :p
Congrats on your assassination!
That looks like a busy month, and very inspiring!
Don’t know much about it, but I’ve been intrigued about Ghostwire for a while now. Isn’t it scary? It looks like it might be. By the way, you talk about your aversion to jumpscares. I’m not too fond of them myself, although I do brave through the occasional horror stuff. I played Oxenfree quite a while back, so my memory is slightly vague, but I don’t remember it as scary. If it had anything scary in it, it had to be very light, and any sudden jumpscares or such were porbably a rare exception. Just mentioning it so you can better assess whether to play it or not.
Bets of luck, and much fun, for your month of September!
It’s not scary at all, it’s actually kinda cool! It felt like the developers took offense to people calling the game “chill” or something because the “Fear for the children” DLC quest is genuinely scary. (I did like it though!)
Blades of Time was surprisingly good and I remember I really enjoyed it. I even liked X-Blades back then and the devs improved it so much I can even say an underrated gem for Blades of Time. :)
I saw X-Blades, I don’t think I’ll play it because I got too much to do but how does it compare to blades of Time? A favorite new function? less buggy? Better story or level design?
Don’t really remember the details since I played it more than a decade ago but I can say the core hack’n’slash mechanics were good. It was kinda boring and repetitive comparing to Blades of Time though. And the character design of the MC was more of a 3D anime style and didn’t really fit the world generally, they fixed that with BoT.
I don’t remember there really being anything actually scary in Oxenfree and I too hate jump scares, so you should be good. If anything, I’d describe it as creepy.
My 2016 memories are telling me it was very scary and now I’m having a hard time starting the game. I really need to get over it, but why do that when I can keep putting it off and avoiding it?
Lol. Heard that.