What Game/s are You Playing? Daily / Whenever Check :) (GAMEPLAY)

[kupomogli]

Since the last games I've played, I've been playing Resident Evil Revelations 2.

The first thing I want to say is that this game has a good ending and bad ending. I'm not sure if that's actually been a thing in Resident Evil. I only found this out because I already got the good ending and upon going for all S ranks on normal difficulty for each chapter, the game ended before the true final boss and I got what's clearly the bad ending. I was wondering how I even got the bad ending anyways and it took me a bit, but the game does allow you to watch all of the in game videos whenever you want, and after watching that I was able to come to a conclusion that I won't state here or atleast, what I think as I'm not even certain, but I do think that the ending is based on the very end of Claire's fourth chapter mission.

So despite playing through each mission at least twice in order to get the S rank on each. It still took me six hours to complete the entire game even with the game saving all of my best times. It requires a three hour run, in order to unlock the rocket launcher. Three hours???? So I have to not just cut my time by a quarter, or a third. I have to cut my time by one half on at least the normal difficulty.

So the main campaign on Resident Evil Revelations 2 is part classic Resident Evil, part Resident Evil 4 style action. It's got that very puzzle style Resident Evil aspect to it broken up into multiple chapters and then between all of that it has a focus on shooting. This is also a game that you'll feel that you're always running out of ammo, really makes you want to focus on managing your items, tries to force a bit of knife action, etc. Or, if possible just avoid enemies altogether to save ammunition.

I've never played the original Resident Evil 3, so I don't know how the dodge mechanic is in comparison to this game, but, the dodge mechanic in Revelations 2 seems to be ripped straight from this game and put into Resident Evil 3 Remake. Enemies also have to see and hear you so you can actually stealth behind enemies to deliver and instant kill. Then you've got crafting. You've got fire bottles(molotovs,) explosive bottles, decoy bottles which are just weaker explosive bottles that aggro enemies for 10 seconds(really good,) and smokescreen bottles. Now, until the very end of this particular run I really didn't give a crap about smoke screen, and then I just decided to try it. I threw one where I thought the invisible enemy that one shots you was at, and you could now see this enemy within the smoke. I was like, oh wow, it's actually got a use, then I figured out something better. Just repeatedly attack with my knife and once it gets close enough to where my knife hits it, slowly back up. It works as long as you're not having to deal with a whole lot of other enemies at once.

In between missions you can unlock and make some aspects of your characters slightly more powerful, but the game has a lot of unlockables in the extras. A countdown difficulty where you're trying to beat the stage on a timer, or an invisible mode, where all the monsters are invisible. If it's anything like certain monsters in raid mode they may turn visible when you target them, but I haven't attempted it. But back to the unlockables in extras. You can actually play the game, and unlock stuff, a PS4 game. This is kind of an amazing concept, why didn't developers think of this before.... oh wait.

So Resident Evil Revelations 2 is a great game just with its campaign mode, but they also give you the games raid mode. A completely different mode that I like to as PMB, poor man's Borderlands. This mode has you choosing one of the characters, each one starting with certain unlocks, a certain amount of equipable weapons and skills as well as slots for those skills. From there you go across a total of 66 different missions. A lot of these missions are stages that are never before seen in the game. Some have you going straight through to the end of the stage killing enemies as you progress, others have stages that loop in on themselves and having you defeat all enemies. You'll get up to three randomized rewards that when the treasure is opened is tied to your characters level, or it's a modification part that you can equip to your weapons to make them stronger. So you'll make your character build and go into this sort of spinoff style of Mercenaries. It's pretty cool and like the rest of the game you can play through it with local co op, or (only raid mode) you can play it online with a friend.

The game is really well built for a cooperative experience but you can also play single player as well. Because of how much I enjoyed Revelations 2(and I even enjoyed the first one) I honestly want a new Resident Evil Revelations rather than a new mainline game.

[Steve W]

A few days ago I popped SandLand into my PS4, just to see what it's like. Four days later, I'm finding it hard to stop playing and go to bed. It's a vehicular combat RPG, kind of like Skyrim with a tank. I thought I'd finished the game yesterday, but a good chunk of the map is still blank, and what felt like the end of the story kept going and changing. I'm not one for modern RPGs (like Skyrim for example), but driving vehicles across an open world killing enormous scorpions with heavily armed tanks drew me in. The world is stupidly vast, I spend hours wandering around killing monsters and exploring where I'm not supposed to be able to go yet. A real winner of a game in my book.

[Aussie2B]

I got Pewrep's "End 1" in Yukar From The Abyss on my Switch, earning three more of his CGs. It felt like a properly concluded route and good ending, though there were still some unexpected twists to the ending. I ran through his route again to pick some different choices, but I ended up with the same result. I'm not sure how to trigger End 3. Maybe I should aim for End 2 again and see if there were any options I've yet to pick when it diverged in that way. In the meantime, though, I started from the beginning, doing some scenes with Kyril again to pick different choices, and now it appears I'm on Kyril's route. It seems like the first CG with Moshirechik is where you find out whose route you're gonna be on. That said, I don't really know how that works with Huaisu and Moshirechik. There aren't a lot of chances to interact and pick choices with Huaisu prior to Moshirechik's introduction, and the choices with Moshirechik usually boil down to pick one to continue, pick the other for instant death. But I like playing visual novels blind like this and figuring out things as I go.

[Gentlegamer]

A few days ago I popped SandLand into my PS4, just to see what it's like. Four days later, I'm finding it hard to stop playing and go to bed. It's a vehicular combat RPG, kind of like Skyrim with a tank. I thought I'd finished the game yesterday, but a good chunk of the map is still blank, and what felt like the end of the story kept going and changing. I'm not one for modern RPGs (like Skyrim for example), but driving vehicles across an open world killing enormous scorpions with heavily armed tanks drew me in. The world is stupidly vast, I spend hours wandering around killing monsters and exploring where I'm not supposed to be able to go yet. A real winner of a game in my book.

Woah... I should check this out

[Ostin Powers]

Играта в крипто казина изисква стратегия, за да увеличите шансовете си за печалба. Започнете с игри като покер, където уменията играят ключова роля. https://bulgariaonlinecasino.bg/ (https://bulgariaonlinecasino.bg/) Проучете вероятностите за всяка ръка, тъй като математическият подход може да повиши успеха ви с до 20%. Избягвайте да залагате големи суми наведнъж, вместо това разпределете бюджета си на малки части, около 2-3% на залог. Търсете платформи с ниски такси за транзакции с криптовалути, за да спестите средства. Участвайте в турнири с ниски входни такси, които предлагат големи наградни фондове. Постоянството и анализът на игрите ще ви донесат по-добри резултати с времето.
It is still Cyberpunk 2077. It was a real find for me :hail: thanks to my cousin who invited me to play it. Great gameplay, graphics, everything!

[Tron 2.0]

This i got my physical copy of it from lrg for switch recently and i forgot how hard arcade gradius is since i'm so use to the nes port.
https://cogconnected.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/gradius-origins-review-1.jpg

[Aussie2B]

I got End 2 and then End 3 for Kyril in Yukar From The Abyss on Switch. The way it apparently works is that the second endings have one CG unique to each, the others are obtained through the best endings, and the third endings aren't much different from getting a game over. End 3 gets no credits roll and seems to be the result of a single wrong choice. Not sure how I missed it with Pewrep, but I do still have to redo the choices that led to his End 2 and see if there was another choice in there I forgot. Anyway, even though it's not an entirely unhappy ending, End 2 for Kyril feels more tragic than End 2 with Pewrep. Kyril's route in general feels a lot more dramatic. It's funny that of all the love interests in this game, only Pewrep's voice actor gets a love interest role in the developer's newer game. (The others play side characters in the newer game.) Kyril's actor is being tested a lot more than Pewrep's here. That said, I have been thinking that Kyril's laughter sounds quite fake, but that actually could be fitting, given his character.

[kupomogli]

I got Pewrep's "End 1" in Yukar From The Abyss on my Switch, earning three more of his CGs. It felt like a properly concluded route and good ending, though there were still some unexpected twists to the ending. I ran through his route again to pick some different choices, but I ended up with the same result. I'm not sure how to trigger End 3. Maybe I should aim for End 2 again and see if there were any options I've yet to pick when it diverged in that way. In the meantime, though, I started from the beginning, doing some scenes with Kyril again to pick different choices, and now it appears I'm on Kyril's route. It seems like the first CG with Moshirechik is where you find out whose route you're gonna be on. That said, I don't really know how that works with Huaisu and Moshirechik. There aren't a lot of chances to interact and pick choices with Huaisu prior to Moshirechik's introduction, and the choices with Moshirechik usually boil down to pick one to continue, pick the other for instant death. But I like playing visual novels blind like this and figuring out things as I go.

Would you say this game feels like Steambot Chronicles or aside from the customization is there more of a significant departure from anything Steambot Chronicles?

[kupomogli]

So I've played Evoland and also went back to play Armello with a friend and play more of Siralim 3.

Evoland is at first a nice novelty, but closer to the end of the game I rushed to the end because despite finishing in around three hours and 30 minutes, the game more than overstayed its welcome and just became pretty boring near the end. I think if my end game time was around two hours, I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more, but for how long it took me and how long it dragged on at the end it felt like a 4/10 game.

I dabbled in the second one which is likely a better game, defeated the first boss and quit playing. But, just not really that interested to keep playing.

The first Evoland starts off with Game Boy graphics and you can only move left and right, after getting the first and second treasure you can then move up and down, graphics change and update to color, 8bit, 16bit, 3D, prerendered(in one town,) a weak turn based combat, etc. The second game starts off as a 16bit graphical style and swaps between 8bit and 16bit like a parallel world rather than the mechanics of graphical progression.

----

Armello is a board game. It's a video game that is designed specifically as a board game and apparently it even received a Kickstarter after the fact to release as a board game. Each character has their own stat spread and a unique mechanic specifically for that character. Brun for example gains extra fight(battle dice) for each spell he casts temporarily. While everyone else is pretty viable, Sana is the worst character and pretty much unplayable as she only has two fight, now, her unique trait is that she uses spirit as her dice but only if you're fighting rot enemies, and rot enemies specifically mean enemies, this does not effect characters or guards who are rotted, so she will pretty much lose against anything that goes directly after her. It's possible to still win if everyone stays away from her, but it's hard and near impossible depending on the situation(if anyone goes after you at all.)

----

Siralim 3. So first off, after playing around 10 hours of my save data around 160 hours just trying to get everything, I later on received an error when starting the game. It was a save data error based on my level or something being a negative value, something. I tried every trouble shooting that I could think of and the game immediately crashed every time it got to the title screen. Restarted console, deleted and reinstalled the game, deleted and reinstalled the game plus restarted the console, powered off the console, deleted multiple other game data that was on the console itself. Eventually the only way to resolve and get to the title screen was to delete the save data itself and it worked, I got to the title screen.

I no longer have PS+ so there was no way to download a save data and I wasn't going to spend $10 to download a previous save. I just decided to just start a new game.

So I do want to start that I do think Siralim 3 which is the latest physical release of the Siralim series, Ultimate has not yet received a physical release. This is one of my favorite monster capturing games. I've never been much of a fan of Pokemon, and not because I don't think Pokemon is bad, I did think Pokemon Blue was pretty good, balance was decent, etc. Every Pokemon I've played since has had no difficulty whatsoever and I'm not going to do any self challenges to do the job that the developer should have done in the first place.

SMT is a great series and SMT Nocturne and Strange Journey are my favorite games in the series, but go and play a new save data on either of those games and the progression on how you play will be identical in every run even across games outside of whether you're going to make the MC a physical or magic build. I still rate these games higher than Siralim 3, a game which I will rate a 7/10, but I'll also highly recommend Siralim 3 over them for things Siralim 3 does better than anything else in the genre. Which btw, developed by one person.

With the games 700+ monsters, each monster has a unique trait. The first floor you might have the ability to extract four or five monsters, the next floor maybe one or two more, the next, one or two more, etc. The further you get in the game it might take a couple floors or more before you see a new monster. But at first you only get monsters, you'll then get artifacts which are equipment with six random stats or status effects with a max of one trait, then you'll get spell gems with several hundred spells with multiple effects that have a percentage to activate, but the effects are procedural and you only start off with a single spell gem tied to a single monster class(class being element, species, type, etc.) But then as you play more you unlock the ability to have a blacksmith create equipment, whether it's a base piece of equipment with its one stat, or even craft an equipment with randomized stats which can potentially go above the extra stats that can't be rerolled(but with the rerolled stats you can choose what you want to add to the weapon. You'll get that later though, as the next person to set up shop in your castle allows you to add stat effects and traits to weapons. You'll then be able to equip runes to your MC, you have five different rune slots and the runes each apply to one of the five classes with half a dozen or more different rune type per element. You then can customize and add or remove effects from your gems and randomize the effects, you can kill creatures once you have the altar to sacrifice them to gain traits to add to weapons, gain nether traits to add to a nether creature(a creature that can have three different traits but you can only have one in your party at a time.)

You are constantly unlocking stuff for around the first 70 hours until it slows down a bit. The last 300 require a lot more time running through getting deeper and deeper into the games floors.

Then finally while you do unlock it earlier, there's tavern brawls in which you can take your customized monsters and everything they've had equipped and they're all put on level 100. Allowing you to do pvp against real players. Now the pvp is asynchronous, however you can customize macros. If any ally, any enemy, ally 1-6, enemy 1-6, etc, etc, etc, then has > than, < than HP/MP, highest or lowest of any stat(current and maximum health,) if they're itherian or singular, if they're on a specific turn, if they're alive or dead, if they're a class, etc, then attack, cast spell, etc.

The amount of depth and synergy along with every aspect of this game is massive. This is why it's procedural. The game wouldn't be able to exist without this. The tavern brawls are really good to see if the build that you can create can overcome other builds made by other people. You're not going to be able to win any battle as soon as you get to that point, you can however make a successful build even without everything. Your runes and class of your MC do not account, only the monsters and their equipment.

I'd highly recommend this game if you have any interest in a turn based monster catching games.

[Highwind Dragoon]

In my 4th playthrough that I set up in Pokemon Crystal Clear, a modded version of Pokemon Crystal.

I started out in Cerulean city as a Female rocket grunt with Voltorb as a starter.

[Aussie2B]

Would you say this game feels like Steambot Chronicles or aside from the customization is there more of a significant departure from anything Steambot Chronicles?

Did you quote the right post? Yukar From The Abyss has no connection to Steambot Chronicles and is nothing like it. It's an otome visual novel.

Anyway, as for my playing, I redid Pewrep's End 2 in Yukar From The Abyss on my Switch. Still no End 3. Maybe it's earned via some weird conditions, like in the middle of another character's route. I gave up on that for the time being, and I figured I'd aim for Huaisu, as I had no clue how to land on Moshirechik's route. So I tried giving answers that wouldn't have a good impact on Pewrep or Kyril and focused on sticking with Huaisu as much as possible. But go figure, that landed me on Moshirechik's route. Went along with that until I picked a choice that was very obviously not going to lead to a good end, haha. Well, short of the game pulling a fake-out and having the protagonist decide against doing what I selected. But that didn't happen and she did indeed go through with it, earning me Moshirechik's End 3. Interestingly, that had its own CG, so I was apparently wrong that an End 3 always gets nothing. I guess I've been looking for patterns, having seen so many other visual novels with a formulaic way of handling their content, but this game is throwing me for a loop a little bit. Another thing I forgot to mention is that there are actually a number of side characters with portraits, not just Koshimpuk, so the theory I had that he was a dropped love interest doesn't hold water. Anyway, I started from the beginning again after that and did the same stuff prior to Moshirechik's introduction, then picked a different choice when I got to the first selection where I had only picked the first option prior. That had led me down a path with a good bit of new text, so I'm not sure if this still leads to some kind of ending with Moshirechik or if this is actually the way to land on Huaisu's route. One thing suggesting that it may be the start of Huaisu's route is that Kurumi is having flashbacks to things Huaisu said. That said, she also had a lengthy dream in which Kyril appeared and gave her guidance amid the events leading to Moshirechik's End 3, and despite that and the flashbacks to various things Kyril said, it most definitely had nothing to do with Kyril's route and endings.

[kupomogli]

Did you quote the right post? Yukar From The Abyss has no connection to Steambot Chronicles and is nothing like it. It's an otome visual novel.

Yeah sorry, I actually quoted the wrong post. I thought I was back on the right post so I then copied the first paragraph and then quoted you. I have some vision issues so may have not been able to read what I was quoting at the time if I wasn't zoomed in.

Anyways. I scrolled back to the last page and it was Steve W's post with Sand Land that I meant to ask if it was anything like Steambot Chronicles or reminded him of that during gameplay.

[Aussie2B]

Yep, I ended up on Huaisu's route in Yukar From The Abyss on my Switch. I kinda wanted to stick with Moshirechik to get his other endings before moving on to Huaisu, but oh well. Apparently, after avoiding Pewrep and Kyril, things fork in Moshirechik's castle depending on if you have Kurumi stay single-mindedly focused on escaping the castle versus having her take an interest in Moshirechik. It's pretty hilarious how casually Kurumi leaves the castle on Huaisu's route compared to how much of an ordeal it is to leave on Pewrep and Kyril's routes. Anyway, after seeing what happens with Huaisu on Pewrep and Kyril's routes, I'm interested to see just how he and the romance will be handled on his own route.

[JSoup]

We're at the final major patch for the current WoW expansion and I'm pretty much down to farm stuff now. Finished off the easy rep yesterday and the second one requires running all the three LFR wings for the another month, but it's quick and once a week. Unless I'm interested in doing other achievement clean up, there's not much left to do until Remix: Legion drops in a few weeks. And...I'll probably no life that at first.

This lead me to look at my PS5 for the first time in months. I started Sonic Frontiers months ago and sat down with it again the other night. Feel really odd and it finally hit me why. The game feels, visuals and sound, a lot like PSO2. And I'm not sure if I'm enjoying it or not. But it's good at the Breath of the Wild thing, making you say 'here's a good stopping point' and then giving you more reasons not to stop. Could really do with more vertical movement options, though, objectives are always on the other side of the maps behind tall mountains with only one hidden route in a maze of routes.

[Steve W]

I scrolled back to the last page and it was Steve W's post with Sand Land that I meant to ask if it was anything like Steambot Chronicles or reminded him of that during gameplay.

I've never played Steambot Chronicles so I couldn't say. I've watched my nephew and brother-in-law play Skyrim, it reminds me of that. Just with tanks, dune buggies, motorcycles, and Jump-Bots.

I finished the main story of Sand Land finally, and yet it tells me I've only finished 50% of the game. There's a ton of side quests that I'd like to finish up, but I'm not advancing due to a quest that would unlock a bunch of new quests, but it's a stealth mission. I absolutely despise stealth missions. The "prize" for completing it will be a Hopper Bot frame I can use to build one. I have two already. I don't need it. But I can't access half of the 78 side quests until I finish it. Yuck.

All in all, Sand Land is a really good game. The first week I was playing it I had dreams about it at night. To me, that's the sign of a compelling game, when I'm not playing it my brain is craving more, even while I sleep.

[Aussie2B]

I progressed through Huaisu's route in Yukar From The Abyss on my Switch until I ended up earning his End 3. Go figure that the third endings have come to me so easy for every character except Pewrep. I then started from the beginning and got on Moshirechik's route again. It feels weird to bounce back and forth, but I'd rather finish with the one I started first. Even more so because Moshirechik's route is one of the original two routes, while Pewrep and Huaisu were stretch goals for the Kickstarter campaign for the game. On that note, Huaisu's route was the last to be confirmed, and I guess something happened during development that led to his CGs very obviously being drawn by a different artist than the one who did the sprites and other CGs. I had read people commenting on that, sort of as a "warning", but I figured I wouldn't care, as the other CGs aren't always drawn the best. (In particular, a couple for Pewrep don't look so great. But with him being the other stretch goal character, maybe his were rushed before the artist had to back out altogether with Huaisu.) But I gotta admit, Huaisu's CGs are rather jarring, and the better CGs by the other artist look nicer than Huaisu's, in my opinion. It's not a huge deal. There are only a handful per route, after all. But I am curious about what happened behind the scenes.

[JSoup]

Finished off Sonic Frontiers. It was...fine. The navigation sucked and the story was your typical excuse plot. Although them formally trying to straighten out what is and isn't canon to the loose story, and also setting up a proper order of events, was interesting. Gameplay was a mixed bag. Sonic never feels like he's going fast enough, but you're given small pile of battle moves that more than make up for that. I didn't mind getting sucked into random fights I really didn't need to bother with, cause this is one of the few games that gets fighting as a speedster right. The really simplistic fishing mini-game was pretty nice too, I wouldn't mind a standalone version. Maybe a good mobile title?

Got a wild hair and did a couple idle games. Magic Archery is by the same dev that did Wizard Tower, which I posted here about before, and was the free test game they did as practice. It's very straightforward, the end game is get every skill to 160. But it's pleasing to look at and the 'number go up' part feels good. Was a little high on numbers after that, so also knocked out Idle Pixel Fantasy. Another free idle game by a dev that's still learning, it's about as straightforward as the concept gets. It's literally buy-all-the-things: the game. And I liked it. Supposedly the dev is planning more content.

[kupomogli]

So at one point I quit Unicorn Overlord, and later started a new character on expert again, got part way through Drakenhold and just got bored of it again, despite all the praise it's not that great of a game. Well, I picked it up again the past few weeks and got just before I initially quit the game, got bored, and quit again. Unicorn Overbore amirite?

So the past week after putting Unicorn Overlord again, I've decided to pick back up and play The Ascent again, give it another chance after completing one mission after the tutorial with a friend, this time solo. And visually this game has an amazing looking cyberpunk aesthetic. Unfortunately it's not very good. I mean at first, it's like, okay, this is alright. You have two weapons that you can swap between, you've got a weapon that will charge up and you can use that to stun enemies or as depending on the attachment an explosion in a big radius, but this you can use very infrequently. Honestly you'll likely use this once and then a long long period of time will pass before you can use it again, and then you have an ability that you can use provided you have enough points for it, but it never seems useful to even need to use and I haven't bought another one.

The weapon swapping is honestly not necessary, because you often can't hit anything off screen(it's got a birds eye view world,) so either the shotgun that I have I shoot the enemies point blank or I take several shots with the weapon I had since the beginning of the game, just upgraded several times which btw, I only have the option to buy a few other weapons and I've had the option to buy these few other weapons since the start of the game.

The enemies that I've been fighting are identical to the enemies I've been fighting. You might have a slight change in the weapons they use but it's either a homing rocket, a grenade, a melee weapon, some form of ranged weapon be it pistol, machine gun, or shotgun which always fires one shot or burst then stops for a period of time. 10 hours later... same sh--.

And then, you're going to the games objective, and the game does such a bad job at providing where you need to go with its semi open world environment, that you pass the objective point by a few feet and then at full HP you get OHKOd, then you're like, oh, I should have went down that hallway or in that area right there. Everything about this game is just so badly designed outside of the beautiful looking world. Hard to actually get around because it's a bird's eye view game that is so dense with multiple layers, extremely repetitive from the start of the game, extremely unbalanced with an absolute shit tracking system, a large number of tutorials and the game half asses on telling you important shit like what the attributes actually mean(despite having a tutorial for it,) you can't see the weapon upgrade path without just doing them so you need to just upgrade the weapon multiple times and then restart the game in order to know what future levels do(only to realize that yeah, the very first weapon is still the best weapon in the game.)

This list of complaints and sometimes nitpicks could go on, but this visually stunning looking game is a whole lot of sh--. Oh, one more thing. The game has hard crashed on me around 10 times. Now most of the time it's when I've died, and if I get OHKO'd the game hard crashes. Like the game can't comprehend dealing more damage than I have HP so it just hard crashes.

So this time I'm done with The Ascent again and it's received all the chances of me ever picking it back up again that it ever will. The Ascent looks beautiful, and it's not a bad game, but it's not a good game. I'd say it's about a 4/10 with all the complaints I have with it which is just mediocre. I don't need to play 20 more hours of this slog to know my opinion of it won't change, infact, forcing myself to play beyond the 10 hours that I have will likely have me unfairly rate it even worse seeing as how I don't like the game as it is. Unlike what most people state, the game doesn't get good after 16 hours(referencing Final Fantasy 16,) infact, you can generally pick everything up about a game within the first five hours of gameplay, and then beyond that it's just story, which most video game storylines such.. so there's that, is The Ascent story good? No, it's not. It's acceptable for what it is, enough to keep you listening to what's being said if you can suffer through the rest of the game.

[Aussie2B]

I fully finished off Yukar From The Abyss on my Switch since my last update, earning the first and second endings for both Moshirechik and Huaisu, playing through all four after stories (which in turn completed the CG gallery), reading all the glossary entries, and then finally getting Pewrep's End 3. It seems like some endings aren't just a matter of picking a branching choice that leads to whichever ending but rather the result of a hidden cumulative affection score. I had a little bit of trouble getting Moshirechik's End 1 until I really made an effort to pick good responses to him, and on the flip side, what finally got me Pewrep's End 3 was picking only enough to land on his route and otherwise go with choices that didn't seem to get an overly favorable response from him. Now that I've seen everything, I think I'd go with Kyril's as my favorite route, and I think he also had the best drawn CGs. Funny enough, I'd go with the second endings as my favorites. I can see why people who play with guides and only pursue the "best" endings could be left feeling "meh" here. Pewrep's End 1 felt like the one that most wrapped up the overarching plot, but the other three were kind of weirdly abrupt. Not in that the routes ended awkwardly fast, but they just left me with a feeling like "Okay? We're ending it here?" And the after stories didn't help in that regard. I'm used to after stories just being a little bit of fluff or spice, but these all had some degree of conflict or questioning. Even without the after stories, End 2 for each character felt like it had more finality. Maybe things didn't get resolved in a proper way, such that there's some tragedy in the result, but they were more interesting. You get to see a totally different side of Pewrep that doesn't come out in any other ending or route, Kurumi's relationship with Kyril and Huaisu on their respective routes is arguably more solid in End 2 (though you could also argue that makes it less believable), and the whole star-crossed lover thing just works well for all of them.

Anyway, it's very satisfying to fully complete a visual novel. It's been years. I'm used to having a bajillion half-played visual novels. And that means I can freely read other people's thoughts without having to dodge spoilers. Now to decide what I want to tackle next.

[kupomogli]

Finally finished the hardest difficulty on Star Renegades. Now if you don't care about physical releases(it's on PS4 and Switch) and you don't care about getting PS4 trophies if you do play digital, then I'd recommend it on PC, however, I'd definitely it regardless. If you haven't bought this game, buy it, it is a great game, one of the best RPGs on the last generation of consoles.

Now, if you play digital only, the only reason why I recommend it on PC instead is because the expansion which adds an extra planet, the enemy homeworld. It allows you to pick up a sixth character at the end of the main game and play through that last planet and get the games true ending. This never released on consoles, not even as an update patch.

However, if that didn't exist, I would still say the game itself is a complete experience. Without using fast forward it's maybe an 8-10 hour game your first time through. It can be completed in a single run on normal(I did,) but it's not "easy" it really depends on how quickly you understand the game. I've already probably thoroughly detailed the game somewhere in this thread, and it does have 15 different classes(only 14 are on disc) starting with three, with an additional one added to your party at each of the first two planets. It's a 9/10 game. Worth owning. Here is my final turn on the last difficulty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ6biKJvCu0

[Aussie2B]

I've been wanting to get my PlayStation going for a while now, and though I do have other plans for it, I first wanted to squeeze in a replay of Tail Concerto, one of my favorites. I used to play it semi-regularly, like at least every few years, but it's been 8 years since the last time, so well overdue. It is a little weird playing it now that it's become one of the most expensive retail releases in the US PlayStation library. Makes me a little nervous handling my copy. It's CIB and all mint as the day I bought it new for $15 at Toys R Us way back when, but I would hate if anything happened to it, as I really couldn't justify spending what it would take to get a replacement. And here I remember scrolling past countless auctions for the game in the '00s that were selling for 10-15 bucks. I didn't see any reason to own more than one copy, and I was just trying to track down merch then. But my husband is planning to get a MODE installed in one of our PlayStation systems someday. I also have a Japanese copy of the game, and those are still cheap. And though I've gone through it in Japanese once before, I really should again, as it's got some fun content that was cut from the US version (a j-pop opening song, original art pieces in the photo album that were replaced with standard character designs due to depictions of alcohol, etc.). But I actually like the English dub in this game a lot. In most games, English dubbing makes me cringe, but the Saturday morning cartoon-style dub works with the tone of this game. Anyway, I'm in the second part of the Black Cats' fortress so pretty close to the end already. I'll probably have it beat in just a couple more nightly gaming sessions. In a way, my limited free time kinda of works to my benefit here, as I used to blow through the game in a couple days. I typically have 5-some hours on the clock when I'm done, and that's with collecting all the photo pieces. But I'm not complaining either way. Back in the early '00s, I thought it was a flaw that the game is as short as it is, but that's what's made it so replayable for me. Meanwhile, I've yet to replay Solatorobo nor the first Fuga, which has more content unlocked in a replay, and after as much time as I spent on the first Fuga, I've yet to even start Fuga 2 (and obviously not Fuga 3). On that note, it's fun going through Tail Concerto having played the first Fuga, as the ancient history they reference in Tail Concerto is basically what happens in Fuga.

[Aussie2B]

Not much gaming since I polished off my most recent replay of Tail Concerto. We got our girl a new bed and set up a new room for her, so we've been doing a ton of rearranging of furniture and repurposing rooms all throughout our apartment. But I did start up Ogre Battle on PlayStation, and I cleared the first two stages, though the second one is what I would consider the first "real" stage. I still feel like I don't really know what I'm doing, though, haha. All this alignment and reputation stuff seems rather fiddly to manage. But I don't particularly care if I don't earn the best ending. I read through the manual and own a strategy guide for the game that I've been reading, but I think I'm going to have to reread some stuff to better understand the game. The guide is at least showing me where to find hidden items and towns.

I'm hoping this will be the game to break my Quest curse, haha. I've played 20-some hours of Final Fantasy Tactics in the past, but my husband was also playing the game at the same time, using the same memory card, and in the process of switching back and forth between files, I accidently saved his file over my file. Then I sunk over 100 hours into Tactics Ogre, was halfway through the huge bonus dungeon and had yet to beat the game, and my husband accidentally formatted the memory card I was using while fumbling through the Japanese menus in the first King's Field. I still to this day haven't beaten either of those games.

Normally, I would prefer to play through the original version of a game, but I don't own Ogre Battle on SNES and likely never will given its current value. (Of course, I could easily play it on my flash cart.) But it sounds like I'm better off with the PlayStation version anyway, as I've heard the ability to save mid-battle isn't in the original. With as little gaming time as I've been getting, being able to save at practically any time is a lifesaver. I assume the mid-battle saves are just temp saves and can't be reloaded to save scum, but that's perfectly fine by me.

[celerystalker]

Tail Concerto is fun. Haven't played my copy in ages. I got really sidetracked playing the Super Metroid/A Link to the Past Randomizer a bunch over the last year. Probably did about 15 seeds, and had a great time. I'm no speedrunner, but I do know both games pretty well, so it takes me 3 1/2-5 hours to complete a seed. I really enjoy it.

I also did Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin on the Castlevania Dominus Collection. I hadn't played through them since the DS heyday, so it was fun to revisit. I still like Portrait of Ruin best of the portable Castlevanias. I still have my DS copies, but my hands have never liked the cramped feel of Nintendo handhelds. It was nice to experience them on the bigger screen with a comfortable controller. Since Play-Asia stocked a version, I didn't have to go through Limited Run, which was also more pleasant.

I played through Castlevania II: Simon's Quest on NES twice last week. Once to get my bearings, and again to get the best ending, as I don't believe I'd earned that before. Cut it pretty close, but I got it, and that felt good.

Otherwise, I got a few 1ccs on shooters I'd been meaning to. MUSHA and Trouble Shooter on Genesis, mainly. Good stuff.

[Aussie2B]

Still very slowly working my way through Ogre Battle on PlayStation. I cleared the fifth stage last night (so that is, both of the stages that opened up after the third). I guess I'm kinda getting the hang of the game now, but I think I already got locked out of the best ending a while ago. I believe recruiting Gilbert at the end of the third stage is a requirement for that, but despite jumping through all the hoops to recruit Canopus, I was never even presented with the option. I guess my reputation was already too low. I do recall that my card draws early on were almost all met with booing, so maybe I just had some bad luck in that regard and had my reputation drop from that. I also wasn't being mindful about the alignment of the groups that were doing the liberating of cities. But like I said, I don't care if I don't earn the best ending my first time through. It doesn't seem like the developer intended for that anyway, given the extensive requirements. So maybe I'll try to recruit Deneb. The guide says not to, otherwise you lose out on the best ending (which I'm not sure is entirely accurate anyway), but if I'm not getting it regardless, I may as well recruit as many special characters as I can. That said, they only seem special in that they're palette-swapped versions of regular character classes. I suppose their stats are better too. But it's not like you're getting totally unique character sprites or anything.

[Aussie2B]

I should be close to clearing the eighth stage in Ogre Battle on PlayStation now. I'm still not entirely sure I properly understand the game, and I also feel iffy on if I'm really enjoying it or not. I appreciate that it's a very unique game, but I think I'd probably have more fun with it if it were just a standard strategy RPG. It gets tiresome getting interrupted over and over for battles that the player has little control over. I've started to occasionally turn off the animations, which is not something I tend to feel is necessary even when games offer it as an option. It's also frustrating when you set the AI to, say, target the leader, and your characters still refuse to do so, even when they can reach them just fine. I find a lot of the menus quite clunky, and the controls are twitchy in them. On multiple occasions, I've screwed myself over by selecting "Retreat" when I meant to change the battle tactics. Also wasting healing items on characters I didn't mean to select. And why on earth can't the item menu "clean up" itself? All this tedious, unnecessary fiddly stuff.

While I don't care if I don't get the best ending, I would like to at least grasp how to have some control over my reputation, but the game really seems to be stacked against the player in that regard. No matter my best efforts to liberate towns with groups that have high alignment, it feels like everything ticks away at reputation. Can't even revisit a cleared map to gather anything missed and hit the towns to see if anything special opens up without losing reputation after a day passes, which very likely will. Maybe I'm expected to waste extra money sending out multiple flying units to speed around the map before a day is done, I don't know. It would be nice if not everything felt like a rush and like I'm doing something wrong, even though I've yet to actually lose my base or Opinion Leader or anything. All that complaining aside, I actually slowed things down on this current map, and it seems like maybe that worked to my benefit? Try as I may to garrison liberated towns, I've lost them to the enemy here and there, which tanks reputation. My meter ended up completely empty, or at least visibly empty. Why they don't give you an actual number for reputation is beyond me, considering each pixel on the bar isn't literally a value of one. You could have reputation going up and not even realize it because it may take multiple increases before you see a visible change. Just another aspect that obfuscates things. Anyway, I managed to get a sliver of reputation back and could deal with the hoards of enemies better by taking it slow, keeping multiple units on cities in some cases, and having a flying unit pick off fleeing leader-less enemies. I know enemies aren't unlimited, so I kept at that until I seemingly had them all wiped out. I know you get a bigger Goth bonus for faster clears and also that reputation drops if you take too long on a map, so I was trying to be speedier in prior stages. But rushing to send units all over the map, liberating all the cities, always seemed to result in at least one enemy going after a weaker garrisoning unit and ultimately recapturing a town. I would send out my strongest units, but again, the game punishes the player for doing what would be "right" in another RPG. You're being a "bully" if your level is significantly higher than that of the enemies, so they lose alignment and then aren't good for liberating cities. So I reconstruct my units after every battle, trying to bench the ones with the highest levels and lowest alignment. But then it gets dicey in some battles if my characters can't outdo the damage output of the enemies. It's all kind of a convoluted mess, haha. I just want to have fun, not feel like I'm in a college calculus class again, trying to track and manage all these numbers that you get insufficent feedback on. I heard that the Saturn version actually tells you stuff like if alignment is going up or down after a battle. Navigating the menus each time to attempt to check in this version would be way too much of a pain.

[Aussie2B]

Should be about ready to clear the 10th stage in Ogre Battle on PlayStation now. Apparently, there are 25 slivers to the reputation meter, with each worth 4 points. I've been holding steady at 3 or 4 bars. It's hard to see much gains when the damn RNG of card pulls will occasionally drop my reputation. But at least I'm getting better at not losing much otherwise. But taking it slower and more carefully has been making it harder to rack up Goth (the game's currency). I'm deploying my max of 10 units pretty quick into a battle, while I'm slower about liberating towns, resulting in greater troop expenses and less tributes. Things seem to be getting more and more time-consuming too. Between prep in between battles, seemingly bigger maps, and the time it takes to clear a map of all its enemies, I'm spending a few nights on each battle. Granted, I've also had less time for my gaming sessions lately. But seriously, thank goodness for the mid-battle saves. If I were to play the SNES original, I think I'd have to use my flash cart in order to have save states. Though, I wouldn't have to deal with all the annoying loading screens that stretch things out. I've gone back to letting the animations play out, but maybe I'll turn those off again sometime soon. Mostly, I just don't want to miss seeing any new animations I've yet to see.

[Aussie2B]

Well, clearing the 10th stage in Ogre Battle on PlayStation wasn't as simple as I expected and ended up being quite infuriating. The boss, Norn, is a healer, and the strategy guide I have, along with some online guides, claim she's easy to beat. True enough, she doesn't inflict damage herself, and her defense is pretty low. Only problem is that she's protected by two Titans in front of her, and she's healing herself and them constantly. I couldn't get anywhere close to getting the Titans killed, so only characters with attacks that reach the back row were useful. But Norn's agility is also extremely high, so attacks miss constantly. What damage I could inflict would just be erased with her healing, so it's like fighting an enemy with infinite HP. It seems like the only reasonable way to take out the boss is by using specific tarot cards that either cause damage or eliminate the Titans. But of course, despite having a sizable assortment of cards, nothing I had was useful to those ends. After a bajllion frustrating attempts, trying every unit I had deployed, fiddling with formations, equipment, stat-boosting items, etc., I was finally reduced to savescumming with the single Joker Tarot I had in my possession. Like liberating a city, it gives a random tarot card, and I kept reloading until it gave me a good one. I'm lucky that the mid-battle saves are actually hard saves and not temporary. So I eventually took out Norn, but it's just one more thing added to the list of stuff in this game that seems half-baked. I want to like it, and I do overall, but sometimes it feels as if the game is actively trying to make me dislike it. It almost felt like the game was cheating me out of victory with how many times I was one hit away from defeating Norn only for it to then make every attack my unit made miss until she got another chance to heal.

[Aussie2B]

I had an easier time clearing the 11th stage in Ogre Battle on Playstation. On top of that, I had some decent card draws for once, so between that and what little boosts to reputation I get from liberating towns with high-alignment units, I've actually recovered a decent chunk of my reputation meter. Still below half, but not close to empty anymore. While I should be out of the running for the best ending, and have already missed a number of recruitable special characters due to low reputation (the aforementioned Norn being one of them), I wonder if I can still possibly get the sword needed to open the Chaos Gates, which I believe, in turn, opens up more stages. Regardless of which ending I get, I would like to try to see as many of the game's stages as possible. My reputation was obviously too low previously to get the sword, but I don't believe it's something that has to be obtained upon one's initial visit to the map the particular temple is in.

[Ostin Powers]

I’m finally making some headway on my backlog, though it feels like for every one I finish, I find two more to add. Currently sinking some hours into a replay of Ogre Battle after seeing it mentioned here, and man, I forgot how much the RNG can just wreck your reputation if you aren't careful. Definitely thankful for mid-battle saves because some of these maps are absolute marathons.

[Aussie2B]

Nice, I'm glad if my posts are helpful for coming up with ideas for games to play.

I'm still in the thick of my first playthrough of Ogre Battle on PlayStation. I've cleared 14 stages now, but the last one was one of the optional sky islands. Even though I still have less than 50% of the reputation meter filled, I was able to get Brunhild, the sword needed to open the Chaos Gates. The first sky island I cleared was pretty fun. I like that these stages are compact like the earlier stages. You can quickly reach towns and temples for liberation and garrisoning, and it's easier to get your own units swarming the enemies wherever their troops emerge. The giant, sprawling maps feel a lot more tedious and make me feel more vulnerable because 10 units isn't much for decent coverage of a huge map, especially when enemies can suddenly appear anywhere and make a beeline for a town I've left insufficiently guarded. For the sky island I cleared, I sent out nothing but flying units, and it's satisfying knocking the enemies off the edge of the island, haha. Of course, it's better to fully finish them off and get the EXP for units that need it, so that's what I did with most of them.

[Aussie2B]

I cleared a second sky island stage in Ogre Battle on PlayStation, which was also fun, and now it's back to the slog of the overly large stages. I'm currently very slowly chipping away at the City of Malano map. I'm losing Goth with every day that passes, as the expenses for my troops are greater than what I'm bringing in with tributes, but every time I try to press forward to liberate more towns, more enemies pop up out of the middle of nowhere. Then I scrap my plans to take more cities, as that would spread my troops thinner and leave me with more locations to defend. That's another thing about this game that drives me nuts, that enemies can seemingly appear anywhere with no rhyme or reason. You have no idea what the group will comprise of either. For the first time since I started playing, I very nearly lost my base (which I always leave the Opinion Leader on), as high-flying groups would suddenly appear in the mountains below the base and zip over in an instant with little I can do because my units can only match that speed at best (as high-flying groups are the fastest.) It's kinda hard to properly strategize if you can't even see what's coming. There's just way too much that comes down to chance, and it seems like the way to victory is to learn all the nitty-gritty details of these various opaque mechanics (probably from outside resources because the game itself sure as heck doesn't explain it clearly) and then see what you can exploit yourself. Anyway, it looks like my reputation meter is 50% full again, or very close to it, so hooray for getting back to where I started the game at, haha.

[Aussie2B]

I finished off the Malano map in Ogre Battle on PlayStation, recruiting Prince Tristan in the process. It's been quite a while since I last was able to recruit a special character. I've read that he's the protagonist in the Neo Geo Pocket Ogre Battle, which is a side story to this one and I believe takes place concurrently? He's a powerful character, but his party was pretty lame. Who needs two clerics in a unit and a wizard in the front row? I rebuild all my units after each stage, but his especially needed it. Malano ended up being a bit of a wash with reputation. My reputation meter looked over 50% full when I beat the stage's boss, but then my return trip to the stage chipped away at my gains. Between it being a huge map and having loads of buried treasure, I ended up spending so much time that my reputation started dropping from too many days passing, and I also lost some from how I answered an NPC's question. There are seriously so many pitfalls for reputation. So I started up the Antalia stage with what looked like less than 50% of the meter filled, but either way, the point is I'm hovering around half, give or take. Whether that's enough to recruit Yushis in this stage, I don't know. But I'm liking this map. Not too excessively large, and the towns aren't laid out like someone dumped a bag of Skittles. Instead, they're clustered near my base and along the western edge of the map, with a big empty expanse surrounding the enemy's base. I was able to quickly liberate several cities without that posing a problem for me, and even after only the first day passed, I was already getting more in tributes than what I was spending on my troops. Though, lately, my approach has been to clear a map fully of enemies besides the boss, returning most of my units to my base, and then letting high noon come again with that limited military presence to get a good haul from tributes, while praying it's not gonna hurt my reputation, haha. I'm sure it lessens my bonus Goth after clearing the stage, but that's an insignificant difference compared to what I can pull in with tributes after every town is liberated.

[Aussie2B]

I cleared Antalia in Ogre Battle on PlayStation, and as far as this game goes, it was a pretty breezy stage. Quite a few battles with undead troops, and it's always satisfying having a healer take them all out in one shot. To no great surprise, Yushis wanted nothing to do with me. Though my reputation is steadily climbing, so are the requirements for recruiting special characters. So I won't be able to have her interact with Mizal in Tundra, the stage I'm working on now. It's another big one, with cities scattered everywhere, making it slow going to press forward. A lot of angel enemies so far, who have the annoyingly slow Banish attack, and I assume they're not going to do any favors for the alignment of my troops. If alignment was just a matter of your levels compared to the levels of the enemies, that'd be one thing, but it's annoying that it's also affected by the character class versus the class of the enemy characters. Some classes are innately regarded as "good" and others as "evil", and killing "evil" enemies is generally good for your alignment and "good" ones bad for your alignment. It's especially bad for "evil" classes to kill "good" classes. So some classes, like healers, are inclined to have their alignment go up and up until maxed at 100, unless you reeeeeally overuse them and have their levels get way higher than the enemies, and other classes, like wizards, are inclined to have their alignment drop and drop. And enemy units tend to be a mix of both "good" and "evil" classes, so there's only so much you can do to control who kills what. Add on to that that many classes have to be within a certain alignment range to upgrade to a higher class. Cities have their own alignment too, and whether it hurts or helps reputation is dependent on if the liberating unit has an average alignment below or above the city's. At the very least, I believe the cities tend to have lower alignment the closer I get to where the Empire is based, so even if many of my troops end up with low alignment, it won't take quite as much to get a positive effect out of liberating.

[Aussie2B]

I cleared the Tundra stage in Ogre Battle on PlayStation and moved on to Antanjyl. I think that was the name at least. Most of the names of cities in this game look like a cat walked across a keyboard. This is another stage where most of the cities are hidden, but since I'm referring to the strategy guide I've got, it's no problem to find them all. Well, besides the fact that the guide is kind of ass in terms of the accuracy of the spots circled on the map, so sometimes I have to wander a bit in a small area to find something hidden. I believe liberating hidden towns doesn't affect reputation, same with temples. Though, you'll lose reputation if the enemy takes them. Of course. My reputation meter is well over 50% full now, probably still under two thirds. I'm in an awkward spot now where it's still too low for "good" special characters but way too high to recruit Galf from this stage if I had wanted him. But to get him, I would have to give up the Brunhild sword too, which I believe would lock me out of at least one future stage. I think it also locks the player into a particular ending? Or that there's an ending that requires Galf, at least, I think. It's a little hard to say many things for sure because, in addition to being a newbie to the game, I've noticed there's an abundance of misinformation out there on the game. Not just in the official strategy guide but also all over the internet. And not just from people who seem clueless but people who seem like they do know a lot about the game. It's just another thing that illustrates how opaque the game is. With so many different endings and so many things affected by reputation, alignment, etc., it's probably easy for someone to make an assumption that things will go one particular way becomes they've never seen otherwise. For example, there are so many people who talk as if you're guaranteed to get the opportunity to recruit Gilbert if you've already recruited Canopus, but I know for a fact from my playthrough that you can get Canopus and then not be given an opportunity to recruit Gilbert.

[Aussie2B]

Lately, my husband's sleeping schedule has gotten even wackier than usual, and he's been sleeping when I'd normally be playing Ogre Battle on the PlayStation hooked up to the CRT we have in our bedroom. Rather than going to the trouble of moving the PlayStation to a different CRT, I decided to just take a break from that and get back to my Switch. Honestly, I've been pretty eager to finish off Ogre Battle and do that anyway. Besides, my mom is going to visit soon, staying with us for most of February, and I wasn't planning on playing in our bedroom then either. And at the rate I've been moving through Ogre Battle, I didn't expect to have it beat before her arrival. So maybe in March I'll have it licked. Not that I'm saying I'm not going to touch it until then.

Maybe I'm an oddball, but I'm actually really excited about this Virtual Boy stuff Nintendo is doing on Switch. I already have a real Virtual Boy, but I don't see myself ever acquiring the outrageously expensive titles. With a good number of the expensive titles planned to be available via Switch Online, with an accessory that will hopefully offer an authentic experience, unlike, say, emulating with no 3D effect, I went ahead and signed up for a yearly membership a little over a month ago when the accessories first went on sale (as a Switch Online membership is required to make a purchase). I'll upgrade to the Expansion version when the Virtual Boy games I want to play are actually up, but in the meantime, I figured I should actually make use of this membership. So I installed the Game Boy player and played a little bit of Tetris and the first stage of Castlevania Legends, just to get a feel for it with games I'm already very familiar with. Even without a proper D-pad, it didn't feel too bad. I'd like to eventually get the Switch Online NES controllers and/or SNES controller, but of course, with Nintendo's artificial scarcity tactics, neither are in stock at the moment, and they supposedly sell out quickly whenever they are restocked. I did buy my daughter a Hori controller that has a D-pad, but that only works with the system when docked, and I'm not at all interested in playing Game Boy games that way.

Other than that, I also started up an otome visual novel called Romance MD: Always On Call (cheesy title, but that's never stopped me before, haha). This is my first time playing anything from Voltage, even though they're a major player in the genre. It's certainly lower budget than stuff from Otomate and what have you. No voice acting, meh art, etc., but if the story is good, it's fine. Some of the best visual novels ever made have lousy art because the developer excelled way more in writing than other areas. Meanwhile, there are others that look gorgeous but are dull to read. I'd certainly take the former over the latter. Of all the Voltage games that were ported from mobile to Switch, this is rated highest on VNDB, so hopefully I'll enjoy it well enough.

[Aussie2B]

I've been getting pretty absorbed in Romance MD: Always on Call on Switch, so I haven't touched anything else since my last update. It doesn't have a common route, just a short prologue, and then you can pick whoever's route to start on. Whenever I encounter a visual novel with this kind of structure, I just go in order from left to right, so I picked Takado, the first guy listed. I'm on Episode 8 (so the eighth chapter) of his route. The writing is engaging, so it seems like both the scenario writer and the localizers did a solid job. I like the banter between the cast and the quirky protagonist. It's also cool that all the love interests are over 30 and the protagonist is 26. While I don't overly mind, it does get tiresome when it feels like practically every otome visual novel has a protagonist who's 20 at most and love interests who aren't older than their late twenties, if that. Especially after playing London Detective Mysteria somewhat recently, which feels particularly juvenile, despite its Mature rating. So it's nice to have a story about actual adults (even if all but one are still younger than me, haha). The medical drama can be pretty heavy and is coincidentally hitting close to home. Never expected to be playing an otome route that heavily focuses on leg amputation. There's yet to be the slightest hint of romance, just Takado and the protagonist being at odds with each other over how they think the cases should be handled, which I've got no problem with because I've been invested in seeing how things go for the patients and their family members.

One thing funny about the game is that it barely feels like it's not a kinetic novel. When I've been presented with a choice, it's always been two options, I've always picked the first, and it virtually always seems like the worse answer. One reason I haven't touched mobile otome games is because the systems sound kind of predatory (on top of the games usually being pulled down eventually). With the original mobile version of this one, I've heard that you have to spend real money on hearts, then spend those hearts to access the better options during choices. And to get the best endings, it's a must. I assume in the Switch version, the first option for choices is the one available by default and the second the one that would cost money in the mobile version. I'm certainly glad I don't have to deal with that nonsense on Switch, and considering I grabbed the game at 70% off, it's a steal for the amount of content. But it does seem like making choices is so brain-dead that the choices may as well not even be there. It's okay, because I don't have a problem with kinetic novels to begin with. It just makes it feel less game-y than most other otome games I've played. Which would probably be a moot point to most players, as I seem to be in the minority in avoiding using guides (unless I end up really, really stumped on how to get a particular ending or CG).

[Steve W]

I always fall behind the trends and games that others leap on immediately. I bought Warhammer 40K: Boltgun maybe a year ago, and now that I'm stuck in the house due to the ice storm earlier this week, I've finally started playing it. The one good thing about playing a game years after it came out is that people have already found all the good stuff and mapped everything out. That was really necessary with the one level with the M.C. Ecsher architecture.