Phelpssan

The commentary was great.

And apparently, so is Nadu. 😀 If I'm doing my math correctly it's getting Hogaak-level meta percentage and conversion rates.

Another crazy week, this time both at work and personal life, but at least this time I managed to sneak some gaming progress.

Playing Senren * Banka!

Completed the first chapter, but I imagine I'm still quite early in the game since I haven't even met the last of the main heroines.

Story continues to be fun slice-of-lice mixed with some supernatural elements. Favorite character is definitely Mako, the mischievous ninja bodyguard.

Playing Sea of Stars!

I usually avoid playing two longer story-driven games at the same time, but needed something with a bit more gameplay to help me get through this week, so I decided to start this one as well.

Loving the pixel art and the Mario-RPG style battle system with timed attacks. Too early to comment on the story asides from the fact that the flashback near the beginning dragged at bit too much for my tastes.

As for characters, the "Warrior Cook" Garl is great but the two main protagonists still feel kinda bland, let's hope we see more of them as the game progresses.

So, it seems they learned from Crystar and improved combat in the sequel

That's my impression as well.

which means I should play the first one first

To be perfectly honest I'm not sure I'll be recommending Crystar when I'm done with it.

Finished Another Code: Recollection!

Early impressions in my previous post.

The first game is quite decent despite it's age. It's short and focused, and that works really well in its favor - there's little downtime and filler, you're almost all the time with just Ashley and "D" so it' easier to get attached to them, the plot is simple but moves fast, you're constantly finding new puzzles so you never get bored.

Now, the second game... well, that one is a mess. Too many characters for something this short, too much running around doing nothing, and too many irrelevant side-plots that keep messing the pace of the game. Also, I didn't count them but I have a distinct impression that it has less puzzles than the first game despite being 1h longer - even if you're nice enough to count the endless "door hacking" QTEs as "puzzles".

It's kinda weird how disconnected the first and second halves of the game feel, almost like completely different games. The first half starts with you running around getting involved into minor issues until settling into helping a boy called Matthew find out what happened with his father who disappeared 5 years ago. They clearly tried to give him an equivalent role to "D" in this game, but I don't think it works very well because you simply don't spend enough time with him to get equally attached.

Then on the second half Matthew leaves and the story becomes completely focused on Ashley's family. Story-wise I like this part a lot more, but the gameplay takes a nosedive with the areas being increadibly boring, almost no puzzles and exploration - you're pretty much just running forward doing QTEs and watching story sections with some rare breaks. All of this section feels rushed and unfinished.

Overall it took me around 5h for the first game and 6h for the second one.

Playing Crystar!

I enjoyed its "spiritual sequel" Crymachina quite a bit, so I decided to give this one a shot. And it's kinda neat how different the two games play despite being games from the same developer with the same base idea for the gameplay loop.

Crymachina had faster-paced combat, and focused on smaller stages with less enemies on screen - but you had to be careful because enemies hit really hard and healing was quite limited. Crystar on the other hand has much slower-paced combat, bigger stages with a lot of enemies, but they are all individually weak mobs and only gets somewhat scary if you're surrounded.

So far I'd say that I enjoyed Crymachina's approach a lot more. The combat was more fun, and the shorter dungeons are (oddly enough) a positive - the long dungeons used in Crystar exacerbate a lot how repetitive the action sections are, and make the game kinda of a slog to go through.

I'm currently on Chapter 7, maybe I'll be able to finish this one next week.

How long is the second Another Code game? About same as the first one?

Just finished it.

It's not much longer, took me around 5h for the first game and 6h for the second one.

Finished Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights!

Early impressions in my previous post.

Overall a really good game, but it subscribes to the Hollow Knight "style" of Metroidvanias - dying is a constant part of the game, with some of the bosses and exploration sections in the latter half being frustratingly difficult.

I finished the game with 100% of the items, which besides a small number of tricky platforming sections was surprisingly easy to get. I also got all three endings.

Playing Another Code: Recollection!

I think it's been almost 20 years since I played the DS version of the first game (Trace Memory), so I barely remembered anything about it. Which I guess is a good thing, because this remake does NOT have an option to start from the sequel.

The first game is a short (~5h) but fun point-and-click adventure. Puzzles aren't as novel nowadays as they were back in the DS, but still solid, and the remake has a nice visual facelift, though there's some inconsistency in quality with some environmental textures looking distractingly low-res. The story revolves around a girl named Ashley and the ghost of a boy nicknamed "D" who team up to explore a mansion in an isolated island trying to solve mysteries relating to Ashley's family and find out the circunstances around "D"'s death.

I'm now playing the second game and so far it's a bit underwhelming. :/ One of the main issues is that the game lacks focus - the first game immediately gives you a good reason to go into the mansion and explore, while the second one has you doing seemly random stuff for a few chapters before you start seeing what the plot will be about. Another issue is that the areas are bigger but empty, so there's a lot more running around going from one place to another.

I finished Chapter 5 of the second game, which I think is around the midpoint? Expect to finish this one either today or tomorrow but we'll see.

I'd argue it's the opposite, EO games have so many interesting builds to try that they're among the most replayable dungeon crawler games.

So, about Crystar: https://mastodon.social/@Phelpssan/112051857806500875 😀

Not sure when I'll get to it, but sooner or later you'll get that comparison you asked for.

HECK YEAH LET'S GO.

Very hyped for this, while Reverie was IMO a big improvement over CS4 I'm really looking forward to a new arc with a new cast.

For me too, but noticeably slower than normal.

Have you played Crystar? If yes, how do you compare the two games. And if not, why not?

No I haven't, and it's because I had never heard of Crystar before - I only learned Crymachina had a "spiritual prequel" when someone on Mastodon asked me this exact same question.

Anyway, I have Crystar on my radar now, but from what I'm seeing it doesn't share the sci-fi setting which is a bummer to me, that was one of the things that drew my attention to Crymachina.

I have heard lots of good things about Ender Lilies, and now that it's getting a sequel soon, I think I should try to play it too.

Spoiler for next week's post: It's a really good game, but the difficulty spikes brutally on the second half of the game and it gets quite frustrating at times.

Finished Crymachina!

As I mentioned on my previous comment this game has a lot of flaws, and I don't know if I can call it good or recommend it - but it does have its fair share of charms too.

They did a really good job in making me care about the main characters and see them as a "family" - seeing Leben geting gradually closer to the others and Enoa's growth over the game was great. The character designs are interesting, the OST is solid. The plot is a bit of a mess, with a LOT of crazy twists, but I still enjoyed it.

Combat is fun and flashy, and I never got bored of it while going through the main game. That being said, there's a lot of extra content that I didn't do, and I think that if I tried to go for full completion the repetitiveness would end up wearing me out.

Also, a minor thing, but I'm really annoyed that I didn't realize before the endgame that you can equip the same gear to all three characters. Spent quite some time trying to find good setups without overlaps. :/

Playing Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights.

This "metroidvania" game has a very melancholic mood in all aspects - visuals, music and storyline. You play as a little girl who apparently is the last survivor of a line of priestesses, who goes purifying monsters in ravaged land while being protected by the spirits of dead warriors.

I always associate darker visuals and styles with Dark Souls so I was worried it would be another game going towards that direction, but this one is a lot less stressful to play - it can be fairly challenging and I already died quite a few times, but there's zero penalty for that.

There's some really good QOL features too - I like how a fast travel is unlocked less than 1h into the game, and I love that the map indicates if there are missing still missing items in a room. This is a particularly big deal because some of the rooms are huge and can take a long time to explore.

Anyway, so far I'm enjoying this one.