April/June 2019 Update

Easter is gone, summer is just starting, it’s time for another update! After all, July has just sta-what do you mean I already used this joke and it wasn’t funny the first time?! *double-checks sanity meter*

As usual, I’m only gonna write about a few of the games I’ve played; for the full list clicky the button on the bottom of the post :3

Sekiro™: Shadows Die Twice

56 hours playtime, 24 of 34 achievements (70.59%)

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I'm not the kind of Dark Souls fan that obsesses over them, playing them multiple times min-maxing and using optimal builds, spending hundreds of hours in their sorry excuse for multiplayer modes. Still, I've enjoyed all 3 of the main series titles so far so I was positively hyped about the latest From Software work, being ready to accidentally ignore my "wait patiently" policy and snag a copy of it at release.

I can't hide I was a little bit worried by the early reviews coming out days before release: while they were all positively glowing they still outlined some significant departures from the tried-and-true formula of the Dark Souls series, namely by focusing on timings (deflecting and parrying instead of just rolling away? Scary!) and the almost complete lack of equipment management.
I thought the latter especially would be conducive to unsatisfactory exploration - after all, knowing that you won't find a cool piece of armor or a new weapon at the end of the rainbow is a bit disappointing - but after playing I wouldn't say that had any impact on my experience.
What *did* have an impact are the changes to the combat, and oh boy, they 100% nailed it!

The game wants you to deflect, parry, jump over or just move away from the different kind of attacks the enemies have at their disposal. It took a very long time to get used to it, but when it finally "clicked" everything changed for the better.
The frustration of feeling like a certain enemy had an unfair move was swept away, replaced by the awareness that everything can be countered if you do it well. Fights turned into adrenaline-fueled dances, rhythmically punctuated by amazingly impactful sounds and animations.
The lack of weapon and armor management turned out to be a blessing rather than a curse: taking out of the equation the doubts that you aren't using the right weapon, armor or accessories leaves only the core realization that's it's just you and your opponent, and you have at any moment all the tools needed to succeed. It felt liberating.

As far as 2019 releases go there's no doubt Sekiro is my "Game of the year", and I can't see that changing in these last few months.



Yakuza Kiwami 2

56 hours playtime, 46 of 59 achievements (77.97%)

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Another series for which I'm happy to buy right at release I actually preordered it, please don't judge me (ಥ﹏ಥ)

Yakuza Kiwami 2 is a remake of the original Yakuza 2 on a new, shiny engine also used for Yakuza 6. The contrast with the previous 2 entries on pc is immediately apparent, both in graphical fidelity and in the lack of loading screens, with seamless transitions to and from combat and going in and out of most shops.

The improvements don't stop at a surface level: the exp system is much more sensible, replacing the "money=exp" paradigm of Yakuza Zero with 5 kinds of skill points (like strength or agility) that you can obtain almost with any action and spend them on a list of passive and active abilities almost devoid of "prerequisites", meaning you can freely focus on skills that catch your fancy instead of being forced through an uninteresting series of "stepping stones" like with the skill trees of the previous entries.

An unexpected improvement was the quality of minigames; I didn't realize how bad many of the minigames in Zero were until I played their refined and polished versions in Kiwami 2. I hope they don't go back to being bad for the next 3 games, which will be on the old engine again. Also, I still refuse to learn mahjong :p

There's little else to say: the game's story and characters are still amazing, almost everything I can think of was improved and SEGA has shown again they're fully committed to bringing the entire series to PC. Speaking of which... when is the next one releasing? Sega please? :3



Mhakna Gramura and Fairy Bell

3 hours playtime, 5 of 5 achievements (100%)

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I received this as a birthday present after having it on my wishlist for a long time. It was on my list because literally everything is it is made by the creators of the Fault series and is supposedly set in the same universe, so it naturally piqued my interest.

It's a short story about two children that escape the orphanage they're secluded in with the help of a fairy - you could call it a literal fairy tale in Visual Novel form. Just like the fairy tales of old it hides some deeper, darker themes behind some cutesy characters and scenes; everything is enhanced by the medium used, with amazing art (just look at the store screens!) and a great soundtrack as well.

It's a pretty short read so I'm not going to write anything more, but I definitely recommend it even to people that haven't read other works from ALICE IN DISSONANCE.



Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc & Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

20 hours playtime, 13 of 38 achievements (34.21%) & 30 hours playtime, 25 of 47 achievements (53.1%)

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I mentioned my fear of starting long games in the past, and I'm pretty sure that was the sole reason I have never picked up Danganronpa before. On paper I should have loved it, with its similarities to Phoenix Wright and Zero Escape which are amongst my favourite game series; but I couldn't bring myself to buy one and try it until they were recommended to me by a friend during the Steam Golden Week sale. I picked up the Danganronpa 1+2 bundle and guess what? It's another series added to my favourites :3

In both games a group of students from the prestigious Hope's Peak Academy find themselves locked in a weird life-and-death game, from which the only escape is to kill another fellow student and then escaping the judgement of a "class trial" very reminiscent of the trials in the Phoenix Wright series.

The stories are both great, and especially the second one is full of plot twists that are very hard to figure out in advance, meaning you'll be constantly on the edge of your seat not knowing where the story will bring you next.

I liked both games so much that I picked up the rest of the series during the Summer Sale and regretted it later when they went on a deepest sale a few weeks ago and plan on beating them over the next few months.



Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark

33 hours playtime, 30 of 43 achievements (69.77%)

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Looking at the store screenshots you'd certainly notice the game is heavily inspired by the Final Fantasy Tactics series: everything from the pixel art style to the interface, from the class system to the inventory seem to be from one game of that series or another.
It's not very surprising: many games in the genre have tried to copy elements from FFT/FFTA/FFTA2 hoping to bank on the fondness many people have for the series; if you, like me, have tried for a long time to find something similar to those games you'd be familiar with the crushing feeling that all those similarities are only surface-level, and once you start playing for more than a few minutes you start to find reasons to complain and ultimately stop, sighing in defeat and accepting that you'll never find what you're looking for.

I was "patiently waiting" (unlike for Sekiro and Kiwami 2) to finally grab a copy of Fell Seal, knowing perfectly well I was probably going to walk into yet another disappointment, but I was happy to be wrong: it's the closest you'll get to a Final Fantasy Tactics game experience on PC without firing up an emulator.

Right from the beginning I felt immediately at home. There are a few basic classes to assign to characters right from the start plus a plethora of more classes (around 30 total) to unlock by satisfying their pre-requisites; each class has a set of 2 passive, 1 reaction and several active abilities you can learn while assigned to it by using skill points obtained in battle, and on each character you can "equip" a set of active skills from another class, as well as any 2 passive (which are added to the 2 passives from the class currently assigned) and 1 reaction abilities they've learned in the past. This level of customization creates great opportunities for fun theorycrafting, trying to figure out sets of abilities that work well together and making each of your characters feel unique.

As a negative I have to point out that aside from the main missions there are barely any side quests - FFTA had 300 missions by comparison - which means you'll be beelining to the next plot battle most of the time. There are hidden chests scattered across the various maps which sometimes require you to backtrack to them after obtaining an item (for example a chest surrounded by water, for which you need water-walking shoes you'd obtain later) but other than that (and grinding) there's little incentive to go back to locations unrelated to where your next plot battle is.

Speaking of that, the story's alright and it will take you around 30 hours to complete. Not too shabby considering the lack of side content, which in games like this can easily push the expected playing time close to 3 digit hours ^^



Shantae: Risky's Revenge & Shantae and the Pirate's Curse

14 hours playtime, 10 of 26 achievements (38.46%) & 13 hours playtime, 26 of 44 achievements (59.09%)

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I beat both games thanks to the June 2019 theme, Lost at Sea. I backlogged them for months and I probably wouldn't have touched them for a very long time if it wasn't for it, so kudos to the theme masterminds (henlo :catpeek:) for that.

Both games are very capable action platformers, taking several cues from more traditional metroidvanias when it comes to backtracking with new abilities. The gameplay's great and the stories, while simple, are filled with wacky characters and funny scenarios that are impossible not to smile at.

If I had to pick my favorite it would probably be Pirate's Curse, as everything felt a little more refined and the items in that game are a lot of fun to use, but that's not to say Risky's Revenge isn't a great game too. Both of them are completely worth playing for anyone remotely interested in the genre or anyone looking for a few hours of challenging fun.