Crazy week at work so no gaming progress.

I’d like to resume Senren * Banka during the weekend but we’ll see how it goes. Want to get a couple games out of my way ASAP because Trails through Daybreak is coming soon and it’ll definitely eat all my free time.

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.

There’s 4 of them on the Switch/PS4, and all of them have an Asian/English version.

• Super Robot Wars V
• Super Robot Wars X
• Super Robot Wars T
• Super Robot Wars 30

I personally rank them in this order: V > T > X> 30, but I always recommend people trying these games to look into which anime/mecha series are included on each and get whichever has more series you like.

You can find this information (along with a lot more) on the Akurasu Wiki.

Replaying Super Robot Wars V!

The original plan for the week was to continue Senren * Banka, but I got this game on the mail during the week, decided to try it for a just a bit… and remembered how I’m hopelessly addicted to this series.

For those unfamiliar with the series, Super Robot Wars games are turn-based strategy RPGs where units from several mecha anime band together, so you can have the Evangelions teaming with Gundams and Daitarn 3 against common foes, with really cool attack animations and a crazy crossover plot mixing elements of all the series involved.

It’s a very old series, the first game was released in the 90’s for the original B&W Gameboy, but while there are over 50 games in the series almost none of them were released in the west due to the complex licensing involved. But luckily for the english-speaking audience since the PS4 they started released Asian “multi-language” versions of these games, so we can finally enjoy them properly.

I had already played this game on the PS4, but could not resist a recent sale and double-dipped so I now have the Switch version as well. Decided to use the female protagonist (Chitose) for this replay since I love her themes, and I’m currently around Stage 20.

There are three Confidant requirements you need to meet to have access to the true ending and Royal’s extra content.

You only need one for most of the extra content in Royal. The other two do add a bit more, but are not really essencial.

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.

It’s getting pretty repetitive though, and I am getting a bit bored of it. Playing a single chapter of each character, and then for all intents and purposes, forgetting that character in any kind of narrative just feels like waste of time. And after going through the map, recruiting 7 characters, my highest level character is level 21. So, even if I hadn’t recruited them, I would’ve to grind a lot to reach chapter 2.

That’s exactly why I ended up dropping Octopah - the stories being too disconnected didn’t look good to me, and the game felt way too grindy. It’s interesting that I also dropped it on a similar timeframe, I finished all initial chapters but barely started the second batch.

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

Case 5 was interesting but flawed. It’s broken into two halves, starting with a a civil trial where Apollo and Phoenix are defending different sides - a novel idea but the writing of this section was just bad. Feels like everyone except Apollo has an “act stupid” debuff applied (in particular Phoenix) which hurt a lot my enjoyment.

The second half as much better, and gave us a nice conclusion to the arc in Khura’in. However, while the stakes were supposed to be higher, it didn’t feel as impactful to me as the third case. I think one of the biggest problems is that we didn’t have enough time to get attached to the new characters from this side - Nahyuta is underdeveloped and boring, likely the weakest of the “main” prosecutors in the entire series, Dhurke was awesome but got wayyyy too little screentime, same with Inga and Ga’ran. The only character I got really attached was Rayfa, she had a nice development arc over the game.

Finally, the special case was a nice throwback for fans of the original trilogy - an old-school case set in Japan America with Phoenix and Maya teaming up against Edgeworth, and even the return of Larry. The dynamic of that trio was as good as I remember, and the case was solid.

Overall a good game, and I hope we see more of the series. Maybe Capcom will give us a package of the two Investigation games? Maybe we could even hope for a new entry? I’d take either option happily.

Playing 1000xRESIST!

A lot of people saying good things about this game combined with my love for sci-fi convinced me to give it a shot.

It’s an adventure/“walking simulator” game with an interesting setting: Humanity was destroyed by a plague, leaving behind a single survivor. All the main characters are clones of her, and you play as “Watcher”, one of the clone sisters whose role is to relieve and preserve the memories of their “mother”.

Finished Chapter 1, and it left me with an excellent impression. Let’s how it goes from here.

Finished Drainus!

Early comments on the previous post.

This is a great shoot’em up and a very good option for people getting started in this genre - it features a (minimal) storyline, saves and checkpoints, and it’s nowhere near as hard as the usual “bullet hell” game. There’s some fun experimentation you can do with the upgrade system, though I felt the game got quite easy once I unlocked a few upgrades and figured out a good loadout.

There are some small annoyances including a somewhat clunky upgrade menu and one specific boss, but nothing too detrimental to the experience. Definitely recommending this one.

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

Well, I was right last week about Maya getting in trouble again. Case 3 was long and intense, stakes felt high, there were some really good twists to the formula and I loved seeing the classic Phoenix+Maya team together again. My favorite case in the game so far.

Case 4 on the other hand is short and wacky, with Athena trying to solve a murder involving japanese food and Rakugo theather with the help of Simon Blackquill. It’s definitely a filler case, but I think it’s one of the best short cases in the series.

Next is final case for the main story (there is an additional DLC Case), but I haven’t started it yet.

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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.

There’s also the problem that they’re clearly rushing this without much thought, they don’t even have an answer to the obvious question of “what happens to people in regions not supported by PSN”.

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The developer is involved. Though it’s pretty obvious that the push for this is from Sony, they are the publisher for the game.