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

[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.