Hyped to play AAI2, it’s one of the highest rated games on the franchise on VNDB, only below PW3 and GAA2 which were both fantastic.

Finished 1000xRESIST!

This game was really good and one of my best surprises in recent years.

As I mentioned last week, this is a “walking simulator” taking place in a world where human race almost went extinct due to a plague and a new society was created from clones of the last survivor, a girl called Iris. The game has you play as “Watcher”, one of the clone sisters who goes through Iris’s memories and learns about the past and the history of this world.

The writing in this game is excellent, in particular for the main characters. The sci-fi backdrop works well, and I found the connections to the real-world very interesting - the developers describe themselves as a “group of majority Asian-Canadian diaspora creators”, and without going into spoilers it’s very clear they drew from their personal experiences when setting the tone and themes for this game.

Now, the bad parts: While the visual design is interesting, performance and resolution are underwhelming on the Switch, plus I got a couple crashes during gameplay. Also, navigating the main “hub” is horrible and you will get lost often (developers, please add a map or better waypoint system!), but despite those problems I still highly recommend this one to people who enjoy strong narratives.

Edit: The newest patch adds a map of the main hub. Definitely a good improvement.

Playing Senren * Banka!

First time playing a VN from Yuzusoft, a developer famous for lighthearted games leaning more on the slice-of-life/romance genre.

Still very early in the game (Chapter 1-3), but so far this has been quite fun. MC goes visit family who lives in a small montain village, and while there decides to try pulling a legendary sword stuck in a boulder.

Except when he tries it… the sword breaks in half. 😄 But that apparently still counts as becoming the “master” of the legendary blade, so he ends up tangled in a mess involving an arranged married, a priestess cursed with cat ears (?!), the spirit of the sword, ninjas, and even some creepy monsters. Quite curious to see where the story goes from here.

The production values and polish are great. Great art and voice work, clean interface including an excellent flowchart showing the choices you took and potential branches.

How long did it take you to beat Little Kitty, Big City? It looks really fun.

Didn’t track it but less than 5h. Really short game.

How are you liking Drainus compared to Lodoss War and Touhou? I know they are different genres, but still.

Liking it less than the metroidvanias, but as you said it’s a very different genre so it’s hard to compare. Still a great game, I even recommended it to a Gradius-loving friend of mine.

Finished Little Kitty, Big City!

This was a fun little game. It takes a bit of inspiration of Untitled Goose Game as you play another small animal messing around in a city.

However, this one has a lot more focus on exploration and less on trolling humans. There’s a lot of places to climb/crawl, plenty of shiny things and hats to collect, plus some animals with funny dialogue to talk around in the city.

It definitely could use some polish - camera, controls and graphics all feel a bit janky, but it’s not too detrimental to the experience.

Playing Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice, part of the Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy!

Slow progress this week, but I did finish the second case which was the good old “someone from the Wright agency gets accused of murder” case we get every game.

And now it looks like we’re going back to Phoenix’s misadventures in Khura’in. I wonder if Maya will manage to get in trouble again this game?

Playing Drainus!

A shoot 'em up from Team Ladybug, the same developer as the the Lodoss War and Touhou metroidvanias I played recently.

I feel this one is inspired by the Gradius games, with you being able to configure your loadout with different options for attack, options, missiles and shields, and also the ability to choose the order you unlock these.

However, there’s some interesting twists to that formula. Upgrades are unlocked as you play, and you can adjust your loadout mid-game. When you get hit you lose one upgrade level, and you only die if you get hit while at zero upgrades. There’s a “reflect shield” mechanic that lest you absorb energy attacks and send them back to the enemies.

There’s also a storyline of sorts, but I can’t comment much on that as I’m still fairly early in the game.

Either saving on media costs (25GB disc instead of 100GB disc, maybe 1 disc instead of 2 if the game is too big), or even having more time to work on the game.

Developer makes sure the early stages are properly tested, send the disc for manufacturing including only those, use the manufacturing time to tweak/bugfix/optimize more stuff the rest of the game.

I haven’t heard of any disc game not being able to be played.

There’s a number of games that don’t come with the whole thing on disk/cart, usually including only the early stages and the rest needs to be downloaded.

Hogwarts Legacy and Jedi Survivor are two fairly recent examples.

The only question I have is what’s gonna happen as game discs are just becoming an access token to download the game and its updates.

That’s a big concern. There’s communities trying to document which games are complete on the media and can be played from start to end without updates (so no major game-breaking bugs or huge performance issues) like this one:

https://www.doesitplay.org/

I’m also part of a FB group that collects cartridge information for Switch games, to document if there’s revisions with all updates included.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CEABCBrPv1tWf89hSZqUunK0JW-sQo8XpxuvZhdtHQs/edit#gid=0

Finished Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge!

Another old-school beat’em up I picked up alongside SOR4, and another great one. Kinda easy compared to other games in the genre, but I still had a lot of fun and it’s going to be a good option to play with more casual friends.

Did a single-player run and will play again in coop when opportunity appears.

Finished LUNARiA -Virtualized Moonchild-!

This game’s biggest weakness is it’s first half - it starts as a fairly generic romance story between a brooding boy and a happy girl, with only a little sci-fi and action mixed in to spice things up. The e-sports segments were definitely my favorite parts in this half of the game.

However, once I reached the second half and the main plot started rolling I could not stop reading. It went in a very different direction from what I expected, and the main twist hit me hard and got me fully invested in the story.

Overall a good and short kinetic novel, but don’t go into this expecting a lot of focus on sci-fi - that element of the story is mostly a backdrop for the romance and action.

Playing Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice, part of the Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy!

Finally being able to get the 5th and 6th games physically in english was a nice motivation for me to pick up this bundle, and I decided to go straight for the last game, since it’s the only Ace Attorney game available in english I had never finished.

So far I finished the first case, the new “Divination” is a nice twist on the previous formula. From the looks of the second case we’ll be going back and forth between cases with Phoenix using this new mechanic and more traditional case Apollo/Athena, sounds like a good way to keep things interesting.

A LOT of positive reviews for this one, including a 10/10 for Destructoid. https://www.destructoid.com/reviews/review-animal-well/

Definitely interested in it, just not sure if I should pick the Limited Run Physical version.

Finished Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown!

Quite impressed with this one, a really nice metroidvania from Ubisoft. The platforming controls are superb, the abilites you unlock make it even more fun over time, and the combat is solid.

Definitely not a game for casual players (unless you don’t mind turning on assists), there’s some tricky plataforming sections and nasty difficulty spikes in some bosses, but the main complaint I have about the game is the limited amount of fast travel spots, the map is HUGE and backtracking can be a pain in the ass. Other than that and a few minor bugs I don’t have many bad things to say about this one, definitely play it if you like the genre.

Minor bonus for Switch players: Looks like this version is the only one that does not require an Ubisoft account, it’s going to ask for it when you open the game but you can just press a button to skip.

Finished Streets of Rage 4!

There’s been more opportunities for coop play with friends recently, so I decided to pick this one. However, I could not wait and already did a quick single-player run through story mode using Blaze.

Really fun old-school beat’em up, I recommend it for fans of the genre.

Playing LUNARiA -Virtualized Moonchild-!

Was too focused on other games this week, just resumed it today, so no significant progress.

The review chart is hilarious.

Doubt Sony or the developer expected this would happen.

Edit [May/04, 14h UTC]: Updated chart. More than 70k negative reviews already.

Will of the Wisps just uses checkpoints.

The second game drops a lot of the experimental things from the first game in favor of things you usually expect in this genre. Loses some originality but it’s a more solid game IMO.

I like that Ori tried to experiment with the save/load system, but I feel that the whole “save anywhere as long as you have energy” thing ended up being worse than traditional checkpoints in that game.

Playing LUNARiA -Virtualized Moonchild-!

Slow progress, currenty going through chapter 5. As I predicted last week there’s some trouble brewing with the cute AI girl, though they started earlier than I expected. Let’s see how things develop from here on.

Playing Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown!

This is definitely a Ubisoft game, ran into a bug that forced me to close+reopen the game only a few hours in - I accidentally “skipped” a boss because it glitched and threw me past a closed door into the next area 😅, but luckily it didn’t autosave so I just had to replay a that particular section. I also ran into a few more smaller gliches, nothing gamebreaking but definitely annoying when I’m coming from bug-free experiences in similar games from small developers.

As for the game, it’s pretty good! Nice exploration, plataforming is fantastic, and I’m enjoying the puzzles. Not a big fan of the combat system, but it’s more a matter of preferences than a problem with the game, it has a lot of focus on the parrying mechanic which is not something I enjoy.

Could definitely use more fast travel and save spots, though at least you don’t lose anything when you die, you go back to the last checkpoint keeping everything including the map and collectibles you may have picked up. One really neat QOL feature is the ability to take screenshots and attach them to the map, makes it easier for you to remember “why didn’t I go this path” or “which powerup did I need to go that direction”.

Had to do a little searching because the trailer doesn’t really tell much about the game, looks like this is a Mystery Otome VN.

Got fairly good reviews on VNDB.

According that what I’ve found so far it looks like coop is online-only. :/

Which probably turns this one into a “pass” for me, I’m finally getting more opportinities to play local coop again.

I also like that they’ve been releasing their games physically on Japan but they are multi-language, I just ordered Drainus on Play-Asia.

They are a bit pricy for the game’s short length, but I’m a physical game collector so I still prefer to get them that way.

Finished Ori and the Will of the Wisps!

Comments on the first game on this post from a couple weeks ago, and early impressions of the second game here.

Overall a big improvement on the first game and one I can more easily recommend to others.

However, I think the praise both games get is excessive. Don’t get me wrong, they’re good games with beautiful art, fantastic OST, really cool world and exploration. But IMO they also have some significant flaws including plenty of cheap deaths, frustrating platforming sequences with a lot a of trial-and-error, hard-to-see hitboxes, and subpar platforming controls on the first game.

Finished Record of Lodoss War-Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth-

Same developer as Touhou Luna Nights, and I’ve enjoyed it almost as much. This one is a lot easier and beginner-friendly (maybe even to its detriment), but the smooth controls and exploration make so, so fun to play.

These two games definitely made me a fan of Team Ladybug, they have another game called “Drainus” which is now high in my wishlist, and I’ll keep an eye for new releases from them.

Playing Ori and the Will of the Wisps!

I commented about the first game on my previous post, and while I did have a good time with it there were some pretty annoying flaws as well.

The second game fixes most of my complaints - platforming feels better, plus you get some of the relevant movement skills earlier which also helps improve the experience when exploring. Combat is pretty decent this time, and the game also includes plenty of customization with a lot of attack and passive skills for you to choose from.

I get that this comes at a cost of the game feeling a bit less “unique”, but I’m definitely having more fun with one.

Added Touhou Luna Nights to my wishlist, I am leaning towards shorter games these days, so 10 hours to 100% sounds really good to me.

It’s a fantastic game, my second favorite in this genre in recent years after Axiom Verge. Worth mentioning that it can be quite hard at times, in particular at bosses, but I feel it gives you more than enough tools to learn their patterns and beat them.

The protagonist’s time-manipulation power is really neat, you have the ability to slow or even stop time for short periods which is handy when you’re stuck on “OK, so how the hell do I dodge this attack”. There’s also a “grazing” mechanic that lets you recover HP by getting close to the enemy or their bullets, which you can use to recover mid-battle if there’s a particular attack pattern you can’t dodge perfectly.

Didn’t expect to hear bad things about Ori, I haven’t played it yet, but the universal acclaim it gets, I was expecting it to be near the perfect / masterpiece level.

I’m now playing the sequel and having a much better time, though it does lose some of the uniqueness of the first game in favor including more common elements seen in games of this genre.

How is it if you aren’t into poker? Since everyone describing it mention poker, I didn’t even look into it.

Balatro to me is a card/deckbuilding roguelike that just happens to use the poker rules because people are familiar with those and it helps shrink the learning curve.

The focus is not getting the best poker hand, but rather on finding a strategy that maximizes the chips you get with the tools you’re given each run. I just had a very successful run where I build a deck solely focused on getting “Two Pair” hands all the time.