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

[celerystalker]

I beat Exile's End on my Vita with over seven hours on the clock, but I didn't manage 100% completion. I had 85% of the items and 3 out of 7 of the hidden messages. Around the time of my last post about the game, I started talking to my husband about it, which got him interested and then he blew through the whole thing. Since he was playing on a much bigger screen, he could more easily spot breakable walls. I noticed the obvious spots in the first mine, but I didn't realize there were much subtler tells in the other areas. So I started examining walls much more carefully from that point on, but I'm not surprised I missed some. I'll check out some online maps to pick off what little I missed and try to get that 100% completion trophy. I obviously didn't get remotely close to earning the Fast Mover trophy, which requires beating the game in under three hours. I hate speedrunning trophies, so I'm just gonna say to heck with that one. I get speedrunning is part of this genre, starting with Metroid's different endings depending on how much time you take, but it's not my thing at all.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised with the game. It's not amazing, but I never expected it to compete with the greats like Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night. I don't think it's fair to hold indie developers to the same standards as industry pros on top of their game. All the mixed reviews and criticism makes Exile's End sound a lot worse than it actually is, which is sad considering a lot of the criticism is straight up false. I guess it shows the difference between pretentious indie aficionados who want to pretend they're into retro games, even though they either haven't played old games since they were brand-new or are so young they never played them to begin with, and people like myself who still play decades-old games in the present day and have no problem playing an indie that tries to be fairly authentic to the way old games played. I found the game pretty straightforward and easy, so it's perplexing to me that so many people find the game so frustrating and confusing. The only real beefs I have with the game are the crappy way the map fills in (some rooms just never fill in completely, making it seem like you've got something left to explore when you actually don't) and that the involvement of the "legendary" Japanese industry veterans didn't amount to much. Despite having the same composer as Ninja Gaiden, the music in Exile's End doesn't stand out, in my opinion, and other than a nice piece of art when the game loads up, there's nothing about the visuals that's especially impressive either. They could've told me the game was entirely made by Western indie developers, and I would've believed it no problem.

I played through Exile's end a few years ago on PS4. I enjoyed it okay, but something about it felt kind of unfinished to me. There were a lot of areas that were pretty sparse with little to do aside from some easy platforming, and the combat felt pretty under-baked as well. I may have had my perspective tainted by playing other metroidvanias around the same time like Axiom Verge that felt a lot more robust, amd followed it a little while later with Hollow Knight.

Finally throughy kids' chess meet season. If your kids ever get into a school chess team, the meets are not parent-firendly. You can't watch them play even. You just sit in a crowded area all day trying to help your kid stay happy and focused enough (or helping the navigate Chrono Trigger on DS...).

I did in the last month play through Final Fantasy III (VI I guess) on SNES with my oldest son, and then for the first time finally played all the way through Final Fantasy V on the PS1. It was fun, and the job system was interesting, but needed a little too much grinding for what it is. Still, I liked it a lot, though it doesn't hold a candle to VI for me.

[kupomogli]

I rarely upload games to Youtube but since the 2024 Game of the Year is about to release soon, February 29th, I decided to start playing Final Fantasy 7 Remake and uploading everything to Youtube. I've been playing each chapter to familiarize myself with it then playing through a second time so I can get a really good run of the chapter. I don't like to upload just anything up there, if I don't feel that it looks good or it's not something I'm not already great at, then I don't upload it. Even though I get almost no views, it's not about the views as the videos are more for me than anything. The reason Youtube existed in the first place, to capture and display things that mean something to me not the millions of people who will throw as much trash up there and hope something sticks.

[Aussie2B]

I played through Exile's end a few years ago on PS4. I enjoyed it okay, but something about it felt kind of unfinished to me. There were a lot of areas that were pretty sparse with little to do aside from some easy platforming, and the combat felt pretty under-baked as well. I may have had my perspective tainted by playing other metroidvanias around the same time like Axiom Verge that felt a lot more robust, amd followed it a little while later with Hollow Knight.

I didn't mind that it wasn't more robust, since I was seeking out short games to begin with, but I do have Axiom Verge for Vita too and should see how that compares someday when I'm up for a lengthier Metroid-style game. I've never bought Hollow Knight myself, but my husband got that for his Mac a while back and, coincidentally, just started playing recently. Maybe Exile's End inspired him to play another Metroid-style game.

As for my Super Hydorah playing on Vita, I cleared the remaining optional stages and only have the last two stages now. I was surprised at how little practice Path of Scylla took me, considering the in-game "description" (or whatever you wanna call it) is a warning saying "Better not to enter", and a walkthrough I came across talks about the stage being a total nightmare that would take hours of practice. Go figure. Once I had good weapons, it was nothing compared to the struggle I had with Galactic Inferno or even some of the other stages. With all but the last two stages cleared, I now have every weapon at my disposal. The second-to-last stage is a boss rush, which is a design concept I've never been fond of in general, and this one is extra annoying because all six of these bosses you have to beat in a row to clear the stage are brand-new. So you have to learn a boss, probably lose when you get to the next, repeat the ones you've cleared until you learn the next, rinse and repeat. That said, I've already made it to the sixth and final boss of the stage, so hopefully I just need a little more practice before I can move on to the final stage of the game.

[celerystalker]

I didn't mind that it wasn't more robust, since I was seeking out short games to begin with, but I do have Axiom Verge for Vita too and should see how that compares someday when I'm up for a lengthier Metroid-style game. I've never bought Hollow Knight myself, but my husband got that for his Mac a while back and, coincidentally, just started playing recently. Maybe Exile's End inspired him to play another Metroid-style game.

As for my Super Hydorah playing on Vita, I cleared the remaining optional stages and only have the last two stages now. I was surprised at how little practice Path of Scylla took me, considering the in-game "description" (or whatever you wanna call it) is a warning saying "Better not to enter", and a walkthrough I came across talks about the stage being a total nightmare that would take hours of practice. Go figure. Once I had good weapons, it was nothing compared to the struggle I had with Galactic Inferno or even some of the other stages. With all but the last two stages cleared, I now have every weapon at my disposal. The second-to-last stage is a boss rush, which is a design concept I've never been fond of in general, and this one is extra annoying because all six of these bosses you have to beat in a row to clear the stage are brand-new. So you have to learn a boss, probably lose when you get to the next, repeat the ones you've cleared until you learn the next, rinse and repeat. That said, I've already made it to the sixth and final boss of the stage, so hopefully I just need a little more practice before I can move on to the final stage of the game.

I had a lot of fun with both Axiom Verge games. The second one is more streamlined in its mechanics and is more exploration-focused, while the first had an atmosphere I liked better, more and better bosses, but a whole lot of useless weapons. Hollow Knight I love to pieces. I just started a third playthrough of it. My oldest boy got strep throat, and asked me to play for him to watch while he rests on the couch. The only real flaw, if you'd call it that, is in the Godhome section, where the difficulty to complete the pantheons is ratcheted up to the point of being inaccessible for a lot of folks, with the best ending stuck behind one of the most absurd boss gauntlets ever created.

[Aussie2B]

I beat Super Hydorah for Vita last night, and hoo boy, was that a hard-fought victory. I cleared the boss rush not long after my last post, and the final stage wasn't horrible, but it's comparable in length to Galactic Inferno and thus took a fair bit of practice before I could get through it all. And go figure that the same walkthrough writer who made out Path of Scylla as a total nightmare described the final boss, Hydorah, as trivial, even though I lost to him a good number of times. I definitely wouldn't say he's the hardest boss in the game, though. Anyway, I earned the good ending, as I cleared every single stage, and it took me nearly 100 continues to accomplish that. x_x The idea of earning the hero ending, which requires a 1CC, gets a big old from me. I feel relieved just beating the game at all. I spent much of the game, certainly from the Galactic Inferno onward, feeling like I bit off more than I could chew with this game. My middling shmup skill level was pushed to its absolute limits here. I can't even remember the last game to challenge me to this degree, though I'm sure I could've had a somewhat easier time with it if I had been able to play at times of day when I'm not beat. I'm gonna need something mindlessly easy I can plow through to give myself a break in the near future, haha. Until then, I might replay some of the earlier stages in Super Hydorah and see if I can pick off some trophies for the secrets. I only ever found a few, and I didn't even realize until well into the game that most secrets are invisible and require you to just fly over a specific spot. And that you're clued in on the secrets with a chime when you're close. But I'm obviously not going for the platinum here, since there's a trophy for the hero ending, among other tasks that are likely faaaaaar beyond my abilities.

[Aussie2B]

It's funny how slow-paced and easy the early stages in Super Hydorah on Vita now feel to me, having dealt with the later stages, haha. I blew through the eight stages prior to Galactic Inferno, using a guide to get the secrets in all of them. That only netted me one additional trophy, as only a few individual secrets pop a trophy (though there's also one for finding all the secrets). I did still use a couple continues even on these easier stages. I guess I'll give Galactic Inferno a try and see if all my practice can produce a relatively easy clear. If not, I'll probably stop hunting down secrets here and move on to another game.

One thing that's annoying is that I read, once you earning the good ending, on subsequent playthroughs, you get a free shield upon starting each life, but I guess that's not in this version. I see nothing different in this replay versus my first time through. I know there are some differences between this version and later releases. I know later releases got a difficulty option where you get a 3-hit shield with every life, which sounds like it would make a HUGE difference. Though, you can't earn the hero ending on that mode, and your score is reduced. But no such thing in the Vita version, nor the two-player mode.

[Aussie2B]

I'm still playing a tiny bit of Super Hydorah on Vita here and there. I didn't clear Galactic Inferno on my first try this replay, but I did pass it shortly after that. I guess all that practice has stuck with me. So I cleared some more stages after that, getting all their secrets and nabbing two more trophies. Now I have access to Path of Scylla, Charybdis, and Red Eden. I know those first two are worth attempting without better weaponry, and go figure that Red Eden is a sticking point for me now. I didn't have too much trouble with it my first time through the game, but this time, I've already blown through several continues. It doesn't help that my weapons aren't powered up at all, and Red Eden doesn't give you much of a chance to power up.

I did start up a new game too. I decided to return to the PS1 game Rapid Angel. I still think it's a shame that it wasn't localized in any way at all for its US PSN release, even if it's perfectly beatable without knowing any Japanese. The game bills itself as a "high tension comical action game" (it says this in English on the front cover), but other than coming off as random and wacky, the comedy is basically lost if you can't understand the cutscenes. This is another game where you gotta beat the whole game in one go, which I did with Natsumi. She's got almost nonexistent range, but it doesn't really matter because, with infinite continues, there isn't much challenge on the default difficulty. I agree with others who say it has a "doujin" feel. The game is a weird mix of some things looking very amateurish (namely the character art) and other things being highly detailed (all sorts of unique sprites in the backgrounds that you'll probably zip by in seconds). Nothing amazing in terms of gameplay, but it's definitely got personality and charm. Gives me a lot of Kendo Rage vibes.

[Aussie2B]

I haven't done much gaming these last couple weeks. The visit with my family came to an end, and so, between prep, traveling, and settling back in at home, I haven't had much free time. Plus, I always seem to lose interest in continuing with my "vacation" games whenever I return home. I guess the transition makes me want to shift gears all around, and with access to my full collection, I have a lot more to choose from. But I do want to tie up some loose ends. I have a book to finish, so I don't want to start up any game that's going to consume all of my free time. I'm also not quite done with Rapid Angel on my Vita. After clearing the game with Natsumi, I then did so with Ayane and Haruna, the other two girls available from the get-go. Once I got back home and settled in enough, I then played through the game with the two bonus characters unlocked after earning the good ending with one of the initial three girls. One of the bonus characters is cool in that she gets her own story and a "remixed" version of the game that even has some new content. The other bonus character has the standard stage order but without any cutscenes. It kinda feels pointless playing with him, but I guess it's good if someone wants nothing interrupting the gameplay. That said, both bonus characters have kind of annoying move sets. They can cheese some bosses pretty well, but their animations are too long to feel good for clearing out standard enemies. Anyway, I think I'll run through the game at least one more time, since I never got the bad ending. After that, I'll probably move on. I could replay to check out different dialogue options, but eh. The value of that is lost on me, considering my understanding of Japanese is far from fluency.

[Aussie2B]

I did play through Rapid Angel on my Vita with Natsumi once again, intentionally earning the bad ending, and now I think I'll give my Vita a break for at least a little while.

I decided to start up Donkey Kong on my Super Game Boy 2. I rarely use either my US Super Game Boy or the second model, since the portability of Game Boy games is a big plus to me, but the Super Game Boy enhancements to Donkey Kong are so nice that I can't bring myself to play it on anything else. I'm glad my husband picked up the Super Game Boy 2 on a whim a while back. It's nice to get the enhancements while also having it run at the correct speed. Not that it's a huge problem with the original Super Game Boy, but I still prefer to have things running properly. Anyway, I'm loving the old school Nintendo charm and polish of this game, down to the adorable demo of Mario doing an acrobatics performance. And I love that the game trolls the player, pretending to be a straight port of the arcade game at first. I cleared Big-City, the first world, and left off in the middle of the second.

[Aussie2B]

Up to Jungle, the fourth world, in Donkey Kong on my Super Game Boy 2 now. The difficulty has definitely increased, so I understand why they load you up on so many extra lives early on, though I've been able to keep my reserves at around 30. I like that the game mixes in stuff from both the original Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior. I also like how you get a face-off with Donkey Kong after every three puzzle stages. It's a nice action-focused break that adds variety to the game.

[Aussie2B]

I didn't get a chance to post more as I went through it, but I beat Donkey Kong on my Super Game Boy 2. Great game that really shows off what the Super Game Boy was capable of (yet barely utilized by any other game). I'm guessing the game was overshadowed by Donkey Kong Country released later the same year, but I'm glad I finally bought and played it. I managed to keep my lives around 30-40 through the whole game, though I had fewer than 10 by the time I beat it because the last couple stages stumped me a bit in terms of what exactly I needed to do. But overall I never found it overly challenging, but not a total cakewalk either. I just managed to keep earning extra lives at about the same rate as I was losing them. The airplane area was probably my least favorite, as I wasn't crazy about any stage with wind pushing Mario, but it's a shorter area with only eight stages anyway.

[Gametrek]

I am just DLCing stuff and checking them out. From big hits like "The inquisitor" or Bioshock rip offs like
"Hazel Skies". Otherwise looking at many RPGmaker stuff, which is like Amazing if not mentioned please go and play "Fear and Hunger 2" and just enjoy it. Just checked out if Sonic Dash again ( android ) could work, and of course my network settings messes that up ( because it keeps trying to connect ).
There are also some nice OpenBOR makes out theree with 3d running simular to "Guardian Heroes" ( you literally could make a GH game in OpenBOR now.

[Aussie2B]

I haven't started up anything seriously since Donkey Kong, but I did finally clean and test out a number of 3DS and DS games I bought before my visit with family. On 3DS, I played a tiny bit of Steel Diver, Bust-A-Move Universe, and Adventure Time: Hey Ice King! Why'd you steal our garbage?!! (That's exactly how the box of Adventure Time has the title written out, missing punctuation and capitalization and all.) Gotta say, I find the humor of Adventure Time absolutely insufferable. Just the art style and vibe of it always made me think the cartoon would definitely not appeal to me, and if the game is representative of the humor in the show, then that seals the deal. I'm just way too old for this kind of millennial/zoomer humor, haha. (Though, I'm a xennial, so depending on what cut off point you wanna use, some would claim I'm a millennial myself.) But a Zelda II homage from WayForward? I'm potentially down with that. Steel Diver is interesting, but I can see why many people don't dig it. Bust-A-Move Universe seems like a pretty barebones rendition of Puzzle Bobble. Not even a Vs. CPU mode?

On DS, I briefly played Style Savvy, Theme Park, Mario Party DS, Super Mario 64 DS, and Cooking Mama. There's something very appealing about DS games that have you flip them and hold them like an open book to play, as is the case with Style Savvy. I have a couple other DS games like that, and it still feels really cool. Cooking Mama doesn't seem quite as fun as Ore no Ryouri, but that game set a high bar. Super Mario 64 is great in any form, but I still have a hard time playing it with anything but a standard N64 controller.

[fpbrush]

Played with my Nintendo DS Lite version today

[Aussie2B]

Still haven't gotten particularly invested in anything, but I have been cleaning and testing a bunch of stuff these last few weeks. A few years ago, during a walk, my husband and I came across some clear bags put out on the curb for recycling and saw they were loaded full of Atari, Intellivision, and Coleco stuff. We brought everything home, and the first thing I tried was the boxed Atari 7800, which we found with ten 2600 carts and seven 7800 carts (plus some manuals). At the time, we discovered the 7800 could play the 2600 games just fine, but no matter what we did, the 7800 games wouldn't work. Disappointed with that, I cleaned up all the Colecovision carts we found. I think there was somewhere in the ballpark of 15 carts, plus some overlays for the Super Action games. I already had a Colecovision and small collection of carts, so I figured I'd test the carts on the system I already had and worry about cleaning up the found Colecovision and all the controllers (two regular and two Super Action) later. That's when I learned my Colecovision had stopped working at some point since the last time I had used it. We tried a bunch of stuff but couldn't resolve that problem either. So then the wind was really taken out of my sails, and I packed everything else away.

All these years later, I finally got the urge to mess with the stuff again. I cleaned the Intellivision II we found, plus the one whole controller (found another that was strangely pried open and missing pieces) and 30-some carts. Also found a big stack of overlays and some manuals. Fortunately, the Intellivision works just fine, as do all the carts, though the controller is only partially working. Luckily, I have an Intellivision Flashback I received as a gift a long time ago and barely touched, and I learned people make adapters for using Flashback controllers on real Intellivision systems. So I got a pair of those and can now use perfect, mint condition controllers on my Intellivision II. I also had a collection of nearly 20 Intellivision carts kicking around, despite never owning an Intellivision before this literal find, so I tested those out too. Here's the list of all I played:

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
Astrosmash
Atlantis
B-17 Bomber
Bomb Squad
Bowling
Boxing
Demon Attack
Frog Bog
Horse Racing
Ice Trek
Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack
Lock 'N' Chase
Loco-Motion
Masters of the Universe: The Power of He-Man
Math Fun
Mind Strike
Mission X
Motocross
NBA Basketball
NFL Football
NHL Hockey
Night Stalker
Safecracker
Sea Battle
Space Armada
Space Battle
Space Spartans
Stampede
Star Strike
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
Sub Hunt
Swords & Serpents
Triple Action
Tron: Solar Sailer
Utopia
Vectron

I've got over ten duplicates, so that's why the numbers don't quite add up. Anyway, it's been fun exploring this library that I had practically no knowledge of or experience with. So far, I think I like Loco-Motion best, as I was already a fan of the Game Boy version under the title Guttang Gottong on the European Konami GB Collection Vol. 3. But some other notable ones to me were Astrosmash, Frog Bog, Space Armada, and Stampede. I guess I'm grativating toward the ones that are easy to quickly grasp. Some of the others will take some time to figure out.

We also have an Intellivoice we found, but it ended up buried away elsewhere, so I'll dig that out, clean it up, and test it another time.

If all this wasn't rad enough already, my husband managed to fix the 7800 too. His skill at tinkering with electronics has gotten even better than when we last messed with it, so this time he noticed oxidation on one of the sockets, put in a jump wire, and voila, a 100% working 7800. All the 7800 games we found worked fine, and I played a bit of Centipede, Choplifter, Food Fight, and Joust. Then I popped in Asteroids and Pitfall for 2600 just to make sure the system still plays 2600 games too.

I think I'll leave it at that for now. The Colecovision we found was in the roughest shape of everything, so I have no faith that it'll work any better than the Colecovision I've had longer. I do want to have a working Colecovision again someday, but I need a break from cleaning and troubleshooting.

[Aussie2B]

I received a few imports in the mail yesterday, and the first I cleaned and tried out was Sailor Moon R for Game Boy. I cleared the first stage via the main game mode, where you get all the different types of gameplay. Pretty middle-of-the-road, not particularly good nor bad. But I'm a Sailor Moon fan, and I thought it would be fun to get some more Sailor Moon games, even if they, overall, aren't that highly regarded. Already have a copy of Another Story, which seems the highest praised of the bunch.

[Aussie2B]

Since my last post, I tried more of the batch of imports I mentioned and then bought and received a few more yet. On Nintendo 64, I played a bit of the sample games in Dezaemon 3D. On Super Famicom, I played Chrono Trigger and Front Mission: Gun Hazard. I've had the SNES version of Chrono Trigger since shortly after it released, but it's fun to have a Japanese copy too. Also, there were a couple files already on the cart, and one had some funny names. Here's what the person changed the names to:

Crono -> Nuts
Marle -> Panna (presumably either a reference to panna cotta or "pan", the Japanese word for bread)
Lucca -> Milk
Frog -> Kerokon ("kero" is a Japanese SFX representing the sound frogs make, akin to "ribbit" or "croak". I'm not sure what is intended by the "kon". Maybe "complex", as in "lolicon", "siscon", "brocon", etc.?)
Robo -> Robokon (same deal as with Frog)
Ayla -> Chibi (basically means "small", but it's like calling Ayla a runt or a pipsqueak, so I guess it's supposed to be ironic, like how you might call a huge, tough guy "Tiny")
Magus -> Signal (your guess is as good as mine as to why "Signal" was chosen, haha)

Anyway, I also bought a couple other Japan-exclusive N64 games, but my husband was the one to test those. And I bought a couple PC-FX games, but I don't feel like pulling out the system just yet.

I did finally start up something to actually get invested in. Two games, actually, which wasn't my plan, but I got a jury summons and figured I should pick out a handheld game to start. I don't know what jury duty is like elsewhere in the country, but here, there's usually a ton of sitting around doing nothing while you wait to see if you're even going to be selected. A previous time I had jury duty I played through all of Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge on a Game Boy Pocket. I decided I'd take my Vita, and I started Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack and got up to the third area. It should be enough for my jury duty (and I have digital games on my Vita too if I'm desperate for something else) but hopefully won't be too long and take me away from the longer game I started, which is Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness, aka Star Ocean 5, for PS4.

I bought the collector's edition of Star Ocean, which was exclusive to the Square-Enix web store, way back when the game was new eight years ago, and despite it being another entry in my favorite series, I hadn't even opened it until recently. I didn't have a PS4 when I bought it, but if I recall correctly, I had one within a year or two. But I continued to put it off, then got pregnant and for a long time figured an involved RPG just wasn't doable for me. But now I'm at a point where I sleep relatively okay (never enough, but it's not like nursing repeatedly through the night like before), and I pretty reliably have a little time to myself each night. The game doesn't do auto saves or temp saves or anything, just old school save points, but if I'm smart about when I start and quit, I should be able to fully shut down the PS4 each night.

Even though I now have dozens of PS4 games (even after purging a ton of Limited Run Games stuff), this is the first one I'm playing on the system. I've just been using my PS4 for DVDs and Blu-rays all these years, though my husband has played some games on it (but prefers to get stuff for PC over PS4 when possible). I guess I've just been holding out for Star Ocean when it felt like the time was right.

I am aware that the game has a terrible reputation, but I've remained optimistic, as I've loved every Star Ocean I've played thus far, which includes Star Ocean 4, another one that gets a ton of hate. But I do have to say that Star Ocean 5 made an awful first impression on me, which I've never experienced with a Star Ocean game previously. The NPC interaction is frankly just horrible, all the text is hard to read, and all the attempts to make the game "seamless" just work against it. Things feel awkwardly abrupt, like I'm missing something or the game itself is missing something, as if the game wasn't fully finished. It's been giving me Infinite Undiscovery vibes, which is my least liked tri-Ace game, and even kind of reminds me of my experience playing Quest 64 in some ways. But once I got out of the opening town, I started enjoying it more, and I'm currently at the second town. I'm hoping the game will grow on me more and more, and I'm hoping Star Ocean 6, which I haven't played, doesn't repeat some of these mistakes. Sometimes it feels like game developers need to keep "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" in mind, but I also realize I'm a dinosaur stuck in the past and some things change just because that's the direction modern gaming demands. But I'd sure as heck rather simply press a button to initiate and advance dialogue than have a ton of junk pop up all over the screen and disappear before I can even finish reading. This game kinda makes me all the more want to stick with retro games and new releases of retro games or games that stick to older styles of design.

[Tron 2.0]

PS5
Star Wars Dark Forces Remaster Night Diver Studios does it again

[Aussie2B]

I'm getting into somewhat of a groove with Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on my PS4 now. I got Victor and Fiore, and I think I had an encounter with a couple other characters who will join later. Then I got to the castle, so Vic and Fiore took off. Now I'm back to just Fidel and Miki and have to head back to the initial town. I know this game was advertised as seamless and streamlined, and true enough, everything feels rather stripped down. Battles feel like they have less depth than in prior Star Ocean games, so I haven't even bothered to use anyone but Fidel yet. I basically just mash on X and O alternatively with an occasional skill if the enemies seem a bit tougher. I guess it's fitting in a way. The whole opening feels very derivative of the first Star Ocean, with the starting characters being a group of fighters who are tasked with defending a rural town. Fidel and Miki are basically Ratix and Milly. ("Miki" could even be a portmanteau of "Milly Kiliet", which is the official romanization of the name in Japan. Never mind the nonsense changes made in First Departure's localization.) Miki also has a nickname for Fidel, just like Milly does for Ratix. And I guess Ted would be Dorn, since he doesn't join the party (though Dorn does very briefly). Anyway, where I'm going with this is that, in the first Star Ocean, Ratix sits and does nothing if you switch to controlling another character, so it makes sense to control Ratix the vast majority of the time. In SO5, Fidel is the only character you can control outside of battle, and given the similarities to the first Star Ocean, it's fitting that I'm controlling him in battle too. But I'm sure I'll use others eventually.

I've learned some roles, specialties, and Item Creation abilities, but there's not a ton to do with those either. But now I can harvest and such like in SO4. I've completed a number of quests, but there's only been one so far where I didn't already have the required items when accepting the quest. By simply buying stuff in shops when it says I have zero of an item and fighting most enemies I see, it's been easy to amass whatever I need. I guess I'll see if quests turn into grindy busywork later. I've also heard there's a lot of backtracking, so I guess heading back to Sthal is my first taste of that. But there's a shortcut to take, so it sounds like I don't have to retread the same ground.

Overall, I'm enjoying the game now and have mostly adjusted to its annoyances, though it's definitely on track for being my least favorite Star Ocean so far. But like I said, I've loved every other one I've played, so being in last place isn't necessarily much of a slight. And even if past Star Ocean games didn't leave a bad first impression on me like this one did, I do have to admit that the series isn't the greatest about its opening sequences. I mean, the sheer amount of dialogue in SO2's opening, especially if you pick Claude, can be a real slog to get through. With SO5, they did themselves a disservice by abruptly throwing you into a battle tutorial, then making you deal with the terrible NPC interaction, and then having your first real battle take place at night while townspeople are "fighting" all over the place too. You can barely see or follow what's going on in that attack on the town. Once you get to regular battles, it's so much better.

[Aussie2B]

I did my jury duty and wasn't selected for a trial, so it was just the one day, and since my name was called early, I didn't have to wait around long and thus didn't get to play much. I got in like 30-45 minutes of time with Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack on my Vita while I was there. But I played more last night too, so now I'm in the fourth area, the Badlands, on, I think, the final stage of the area. And as far as I can tell, there are only two more areas after that.

In Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on my PlayStation 4, I went back to Sthal, did what I needed to do there, and now I gotta go back to Central Resulia, haha. So I'm definitely understanding why people complain about backtracking. And I've yet to explore anything that I would consider a legitimate dungeon. Anyway, I decided to take the long way back, since there's new stuff I can do along the way. I did my first run through the optional Cathedral of Oblivion, which is kind of like an arena. It appears to be a reference to the Cave of Oblivion from Valkyrie Profile, which also had a degree of randomness to it. I had to do three battles before I could leave. The second was a bit challenging, and the third definitely was. I blew through most of my healing items on that one. Next I'm gonna restock in Myiddok (some of these town names are really over-the-top) and see what new stuff is available there. There should be another portal to the Cathedral of Oblivion on the plains too. (I know because I just recently bought the Prima strategy guide for the game, which I'm referencing to see what I may be missing.)