March 2018 Update

March, also known as “the month that disappeared thanks to Final Fantasy XV and Slay the Spire”.
As you might have guessed, this month I made no progress on the backlog, which actually gained ground on me thanks to 3 SG wins and a bundle I picked up T_T

I’m not too unhappy about it though as I hit my target of getting FFXV out of the way. I might not have that much free time in the next few months so I really wanted to take that behemoth (pun intended, not a spoiler~) down and I did that - with days to spare :3

I don’t have much else to add other than writing this has been pretty hard due to a killer cold and headache, I hope it will be gone soon >_<

Shoutout to kubikill for their game bar generator, it will be useful once I’ll be back to playing and showcasing more than 2 games in an update :3

Orwell: Ignorance is Strength

5.0 hours of playtime, 11 of 19 achievements

I really liked the first game released by Osmotic Studios so I had high expectations for the sequel.
I was a bit puzzled when they revealed there were only 3 episodes planned (compared to the first game’s 5) but I was weirdly reassured when I saw the game’s price was still 9.99, almost as if they were stating “yes, we are confident this shorter game will still be worth just as much as our previous one”.
After playing it, I’m not entirely sure I would agree with that.

Let’s talk about new stuff:

• time now passes every time you upload something to Orwell, meaning that you are at times encouraged to choose carefully what to upload and what to ignore;
• some websites let you use datachunks that you’ve already uploaded to Orwell as input, meaning that you can potentially access new data by guessing a password or looking up the right name
• there’s a new tool (called Influencer) that you can use to craft a narrative based on the info you fed to Orwell and then spread it using a hashtag and a small description

The big theme of this second game (and what much of the marketing effort from Osmotic focused on) is the concept of the creation of fake news and how they can be used to mislead and manipulate the public opinion.
It goes without saying that the new Influencer tool goes hand in hand with that, and using it is just as awesome (and terrifying) as it sounds.
There’s one fatal flaw with it though: it comes up too late: you get access to it only during the last chapter, leaving you a little confused and disappointed you didn’t get to use it more. It would have been fine to introduce it in Chapter 3 out of 5, but as I said before this one only has 3 chapters T_T

I liked the overall message they were trying to go for, a warning about the way stories and facts can be presented and manipulated to create and/or fit a narrative.
It’s a shame that they didn’t quite deliver a 10/10 execution, and it makes you wonder what went wrong, if it was merely a lack of funds or if they ran out of creative juice at some point during development.

Orwell: Ignorance is Strength feels incomplete and a bit of a step back: the scope of the game is narrower, the stakes are not as high, you get to investigate and know fewer and less interesting people, the voice acting is utterly terrible and the ending feels like the game just ends too soon, without managing to engage you emotionally or making you feel like you had an impact or as much agency and you would have liked.

Still, I would still like to see more games in the series, as despite all the flaws Orwell: Ignorance is Strength is still a decent game and I think there’s a lot of untapped potential for future episodes.

FINAL FANTASY XV WINDOWS EDITION

69.2 hours of playtime, 60 of 90 achievements

3 of my friends and I had a small dream: just getting in a car and going on some adventure for a couple of weeks, with no destination. That dream ended up never becoming reality, but it was what attracted me to Final Fantasy XV and what pushed me to jump on it right away, despite the fact I very rarely buy games at launch (the sub-30€ offer GMG had was also part of the reason, it was too good :D).

I wrote and deleted entire paragraphs and I'm not sure even multiple pages would be enough to put into words how I feel about it.
I could spend hours focusing on complaining about the crappy magic system; the disconnected pacing of the narrative; the important plot points glossed over or hidden in a DLC episode or in the movie or the animated series; and so on.
I could also spend that time focusing instead on the attention to detail and the love that was poured into the game; the top notch world building; the amazing graphics; the believable group-of-friends dynamics; the epicness of the monsters and boss battles; the show-stealing antagonist...

All of that would be... pointless. I don't want to convince anyone to play the game as I am aware that it's a "love it or hate it" one. I just want to say that I greatly enjoyed my time with it and that the overall story and world they've built are among the best in the series, even though the narrative is delivered across multiple pieces of media and in a sometimes confusing manner.

If you end up picking up the game at some point, do yourselves a favour and watch the animated series (it's less than 1 hour long) before starting, then the movie Kingsglaive after the end of Chapter 1 (you could watch it before too, as it doesn't really contain spoilers). Those two give a lot of information that is sadly not explained quite as well in the game by itself.
As for the playable DLC episodes, Episode Gladio can be played after chapter 7, while the other 2 episodes can be left for the post-game or at least after chapter 12 (Episode Ignis) and 13 (Episode Prompto) respectively. While Episode Gladio is mediocre and potentially skippable, I definitely recommend playing the other two, especially Ignis' :3

I was half-tempted to just link this 45 minutes long review of the game and calling it a day, just commenting on how much I agree with a lot of the points that are brought up. One of their quotes is a fitting way to close: "Final Fantasy XV is probably the worst game I've ever loved".