Still playing Borderlands 3 as my main PS game. Nothing to add there.
Finished Hades! Killed the 3rd region’s boss, where I wast stuck, soon after the last weekly post and reached the final boss. Died first time, didn’t even reach the boss in next try, but beat the game in try after that.
You need to beat the game multiple times to get the credits roll, and there is post-game content to get final / true ending. There is not much new in the gameplay though, except turning on different difficulty modifiers to make the game more difficult. So, after beating the game a few times, I had enough, and just watched the rest of the narrative online.
As far as I am concerned, I have finished the game.
Played a bit of Oceanhorn - Monster of Uncharted Seas, but for some reason couldn’t get into it. It’s a zelda-like, and I don’t really have any complaints, just not in the mood, maybe. Though one thing I missed from Zelda was the music when you solve some puzzle. There is no such thing in the game. I would be in a locked room, and then push the block in correct place, and while it would show me the door has opened, I wouldn’t get any music indication that I have achieved something. Never realised I would miss that.
Since I couldn’t get into Oceanhorn, I started ATOM RPG. It’s like Fallout 1/2, isometric view, post-nuclear world but situated in Soviet Union. I didn’t have high expectations from the game, specially since Fallout 2 is one of my all time favourite game, but I fell in love almost from the start. My only complaint is loading screens take a bit of time on Switch, but they are only annoying when you are traveling and get a random encounter, no issues in towns or dungeons once they are loaded. Have already spent quite a few hours, and am fully enjoying it.
What about all of you? What have you been playing?
Finished The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak!
The first half of the final chapter dragged quite a bit and that’s the main reason I’m putting this below Trails from Zero as my favorite “first game in an arc”, but overall I had an excellent time with this one.
Van is easily the highlight of this game, and while my initial impression of the playable cast was underwhelming I still ended up getting fairly attached to them. There’s some characters that need more work in future games (Feri, Risette, Bergard), but others like Judith and Aaron more than make up for this.
Also, while individually there’s some clear weak points in the cast, I really liked their progression as a group, their interactions with Van in the final stretch of the game were excellent.
Finally, the new battle system has a lot of good ideas and feels like a step forward for the series. Looking forward to Daybreak 2 in 2025.
Character interaction discussion, mild spoilers for the final chapter
The game brings up Van’s self-sacrificial tendencies more than once, and I loved seeing him try that near the end only for the rest of the team go “nope, you’re not pulling that crap on our watch”. 😄
Finished Planetarian: Snow Globe!
Planetarian is classic Key VN that I played a while back and enjoyed, and they recently released a physical version which I could not resist picking up for my collection.
Snow Globe is a very short (~1h) prequel story that comes bundled in the physical version, which shows a bit of Yumemi’s life and coworkers in the past. An interesting read and a nice bonus, but not something I’d recommend as a standalone purchase.
Finished Harmonia!
Another short Key VN I had on my backlog, but this one was decidedly “mid”. It has a similar structure to Lunaria with a boring start then getting a lot better when the “real” plot starts rolling halfway into the game… but unfortunately I found the main “twist” in this one incredibly predictable and figured it out in the first 10min of the game. 😕
I’d say the best part of this one was the setting, there were some very interesting ideas there but sadly not enough time to explore them.
Playing Senren * Banka!
Resumed this one and reached Chapter 3, the foreigner Lena got introduced as the last main heroine. So far Mako is still my favorite, but now that Yoshino’s getting more friendly I’m starting to like her a lot too.
Second favourite game in such a long series is still pretty high. Glad to see these games are still going good.
Second favorite of the “first games in an arc” so it’s #2 out of 4. That sentence may have ended up more confusing than I expected. 😅
Though if I sit down to rank all the games Daybreak would still end up quite high in the list.
Haha, my bad. So, Trails in the Sky is 3rd or 4th? I loved the game, but knowing there are games in the series that might be even better is really cool.
#3 because I like Estelle way more than Rean.
I generally rank the Cold Steel games the lowest of the series - I did enjoy my time with them but I also think they’re the games where the flaws of the series are more obvious.