Sorry these Week in Gaming articles have been so sporadic the latter half of this year. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of review gaming and whenever I’m not review gaming, I’m never sure I have enough to say about other games to put out one of these articles. After the disaster that was Orange Season: which I thought was going to be a great fall game but ended up so bad I put it down early, I got a couple of recently released fall Nintendo titles to play which are very much appreciated. I’m currently mainly working my way through one of those, the first one they released, and sitting on the other one until afterwards. Hopefully I’ll have those reviews out before the year is over, or at least one of them. But on the side, I’ve finally jumped back into Stardew Valley, always a good farming game that never disappoints.

I’ve been getting the urge to go back to Stardew Valley all year but I’ve been holding back, waiting on that 1.6 update content to hit consoles and now it finally has. I quite enjoy playing Stardew on my Switch with an 8bitdo controller. I had a beach farm I started a while back, maybe last year, that I had planned on being my very first Joja route. However, I only ever got a little bit into the first year’s summer. So, since the new update is now out, I decided to start over on that route and deleted my old file. I know I read somewhere that there would be new postgame Joja content to make the route as substantial as the community center one is, thus this seemed like the best idea for me to enjoy the new content. I also ended up joining a friend online in a new multiplayer farm as well where we’re trying out the meadow farm map with blue grass.

So far I’m right about where I left off from my last attempt at this beach farm before the update. I’m in the middle of the very first summer. I always play Stardew pretty slowly, I’m not an efficient farmer whatsoever. My house doesn’t have a kitchen yet and I’m still trying to decide what tool to upgrade first, now that I have the money to go with the copper bars. My pickaxe being so weak in the mines since I’ve reached the icy area, has been an annoyance. Also, watering crops by hand on the beach has been quite slow. Yet on the other hand, I want to upgrade my regular axe a few times asap so I can clear out the regular dirt area the beach farm has that’s full of giant logs, then I can set-up my crops with sprinklers. At the same time though, I might already be about to unlock the greenhouse by the time I would be able to upgrade my axe enough, so maybe I should just focus on my watering can and pickaxe after all. I’ve mostly been collecting the stuff required for the community center because I wanted to try and do it myself as much as possible for the various rewards, and then I plan to buy a Joja membership near the end. I figure maybe I’ll leave the hardest community center requirements, like a lot of the fishing, left undone and buy my membership once I’ve at least donated all of the required farming and mining related items. – Jenae

I’ve been doing a lot of retro gaming lately, both on original hardware and through recent remakes, and it’s been a ton of fun. My sister and I recently finished Lufia, which wasn’t as good as Lufia II but had a ton of charm all its own, and getting to see the evolution between the original and the sequel reminded me of just how much innovation happened during the SNES years. Jumping from that to Mega Man Legends on the PS1 was a different kind of reminder that those early years of 3D were rough when it came to control schemes. We opted to use the directional buttons for turning and the shoulder buttons for strafing, but even then controlling Mega Man around the 3D world comes with a major learning curve. The world of MML is incredibly charming, with that 90s dub you either love or hate, and wacky hijinks abound. The cast is impeccable, honestly. I understand now why Tron is so beloved. The comedy isn’t always a hit, but I have been having a great time watching these characters interact. The animations are also beautiful, and I adore Mega Man’s expressions. That being said, we eventually caved and used a GameShark code for invincibility so we could see more of the story rather than fight with the controls, though the safety buffer it provides has given me a lot more practice with the control scheme, since I do engage with it to the best of my ability. It’s fun when you get the hang of it, but it hurts my hands after extended periods. If ever a game would benefit from a remaster with modern controls, it’s Mega Man Legends. Maybe then I’d finally get to read the dirty magazines, too.

In modern retro news, I’ve been having a blast with the Dragon Quest III HD-2D remake. What a stunning glowup that retains the charms of its NES roots. I’m too old and busy to deal with the grindy nature of the RPGs I grew up with, so having some nice QoL updates here have made playing it incredibly comfy while remaining nostalgic. It’s visually gorgeous, with colorful, vibrant locations, beautiful lighting, and fun voice acting that really gives the characters some pop. I went with the most basic setup of the hero, warrior, mage and healer, but I’ve only reached the second major hub so far, leaving me plenty of time to experiment with new party configurations. The Dragon Quest difficulty feels a tad on the easy side, but I know I don’t have the patience to move up to Draconian, so I’m pretty happy having this to sit back and relax with a couple hours a night. – Leah

What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!

The post oprainfall Week in Gaming: Nov 10 – 16 appeared first on oprainfall.

We haven’t put one of these out in a little while.  To be honest, I usually have the most time to put out these articles myself, but I haven’t been doing a ton of for fun gaming in the last month or two. Most of my gaming was review stuff I couldn’t talk about in these Week in Gaming articles. However, I did play the Metaphor: ReFantazio demo the other week. I just didn’t get around to discussing it here, or in an impressions article of its own. Honestly, I’m now somewhat regretting playing that demo…because it was too fun and I don’t know when I’ll be able to play the full game. At the moment, it doesn’t seem like I’ll have a copy to play anytime soon. And thus, I was stuck playing an older Atlus RPG this past week, instead of the shiny new one that’s been all over social media. I’m jealous of all of you out there enjoying Metaphor right now.

Anyway, I recently found myself picking Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance back up instead. It seems like this year in general, I’ve barely made progress in quite a few games I’ve picked up and keep putting back down. When I last put down SMT5V, I had only gotten a bit past the beginning area of Shinagawa. Vengeance and it’s wonky, horrendous sound balancing, was what prompted me to buy wireless earbuds about 2 months ago now. Going back to it with my new earbuds has been really nice. There is still a bit of an issue with the wonky sound balancing, mostly I have to turn it up one or down one at certain parts, but overall I’m really enjoying it. It’s soooo much better having the sound right in my ears and not having to deal with it too much. Also, while my specific model of earbuds, the Soundcore P30i, didn’t come with a game mode option originally, they just recently received an update which added it. It turns itself off when I disconnect and turn off my Switch though so I have to reactivate it in the phone app each time, but I’m enjoying the fact that it’s there. I’ve opted to turn it on, default SMT5V‘s volume sliders which puts them all back at max and it is working out quite nicely for me. I just have to turn up the volume one for story stuff, and back down one for gameplay, so that isn’t too bad.

I managed to fully get through the rest of Shinagawa this week. I went from the main character being around level 31 or 32 and got him up to 36. I got to enjoy seeing the Fairy Village again and I’ve put a handful of new demons in my party. It doesn’t feel too old or repetitive revisiting the same areas again that I already went through in the original Shin Megami Tensei V, because everything is quite different with the new story. I mean I had read reviews saying it’s the same and doesn’t really change until about halfway through, but that doesn’t seem true at all to me. Things are already significantly different, one boss not seeming as big of a deal as they were the first time, your various friends from school following along with you a lot more and various other stuff. I haven’t been spending as much time exploring though and fully filling out maps. Vengeance doesn’t seem as crazy easy now as it did when I first started it, but I do believe it’s still significantly easier than the original and I haven’t found myself spending as much time on each map. Although, I’m sure I’ll revisit them all periodically to go locate more Miman and clear up quests and whatnot. – Jenae

It’s that time of year again, where I get to attend my favorite local con. This year, RetroGameCon extended to three days, and despite it being a relatively small affair, the extra time was a welcome addition. I love this con for its small size but variety of activities and vendors, and it never disappoints. It definitely got a bump in attendance this year, though, since almost the entire cast of Baldur’s Gate 3 were special guests, and the lines reflected that popularity. I haven’t played BG3 and so wasn’t personally interested in seeing the cast, but the enthusiasm from fans of the game was palpable. I was happy to see so many folks visiting my small con, but I have to admit it was also a bit overwhelming, and I’m not convinced the con staff were quite prepared for the attention having the BG3 cast would bring.

As always, my favorite part of RetroGameCon is walking around the various vendors and seeing what they had in store. There’s always a nice mix of video game and handmade items. I usually buy at least one item, though this time around I only grabbed myself a Suikoden II gacha in honor of that remaster finally coming out next year. I got Mikolotov, the handsome knight from Matilda! (I would have preferred Camus of the two, but one can never turn down a hunky boy.) We did find a couple sealed games for pickup and spotted several titles that I’d love to have some day but wasn’t prepared to pay for (sorry, Ys V), but even if we hadn’t, I just enjoy the window shopping. For my son, his favorite part of the weekend was the extensive free play area. Every year, there’s an assortment of old consoles, PCs, pinball and others for congoers to play. My son has recently taken a shining to pinball cabinets and spent a lot of time playing those, as well as hitting up the older PCs available. He had a ball with SimCity, played some Monopoly on Windows 3.1, and even took a turn at the Oregon Trail. His pioneers died tragic and avoidable deaths, and he learned a valuable lesson in actually paying attention to the amount of food and water he had available.

There were also a ton of board games available in a separate room, along with live concerts and panels. I sat in on an informative panel by industry veteran and Diablo IV writer David Rodriguez, and we all had a great time watching performances by Mega Ran, Danimal Cannon and Lame Genie on the main stage. There were also a ton of fantastic cosplays on display every day. Honestly, it was just a great weekend where we could hang out and immerse ourselves in all things video games, and I look forward to it every year.

In actual video game news, I finally started playing the Silent Hill 2 Remake. I am so far enjoying it, though I don’t feel I’ve played enough to give it a proper evaluation. I love the music and atmosphere, and the environments are gorgeous, with little blink-and-you-miss-it details I appreciate. The fact you can explore more of the city gives Silent Hill a lived-in feel that the original game lacked, though this is a double-edged sword. The fact Silent Hill is a real place means it should have a sense of actual people existing here, but I do feel like it detracts somewhat from the main premise of the game and the dream-like quality that permeated the OG. The voice acting so far is fine, just different than what came before, and the character models are well-detailed if oddly proportioned. I’ll have much more robust thoughts on this remake as I play more, but for now I’m impressed. – Leah

What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!

The post oprainfall Week in Gaming: Oct 6 – 12 appeared first on oprainfall.

Once again, it’s been a few weeks since I’ve added to Week in Gaming. A few weeks ago I wasn’t doing any major gaming and was making barely any progress playing Persona 3 Reload on and off. This past week I’ve been playing Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid which I’ll be writing a review for in the future, so I won’t be discussing that yet obviously. And other than that, I’ve hardly done any other gaming this week. However, just yesterday my wireless earbuds I finally bought arrived. The sound balancing in Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance was so wonky and out of whack, I finally took the plunge and bought my first ever pair of wireless earbuds. I’m no audiophile but, wonky bad sound balancing is my main, potentially only, gaming pet peeve and I play my Switch a lot now days, mostly docked. After looking through the budget options available, I started watching a few different pairs of Anker Soundcore earbuds on Amazon. Most of them have great reviews, they’re relatively budget friendly depending on the pair and there’s a Soundcore app that works with each pair and includes various settings.

Originally I found very little if anything about people’s experience using wireless earbuds on their Switch without an adapter, since the feature’s been added to it by Nintendo. I got input from some people who said it worked great undocked with their wireless earbuds, even cheap pairs. But considering I mostly play docked, and for undocked gameplay the Switch has a headphone jack, that info wasn’t the most helpful. Although, getting confirmation they could work without lag and reading all the good reviews about the earbuds, I finally took the plunge and spent $30 on Anker’s Soundcore P30i model. Unfortunately, I did end up with a pair without a low-latency game mode option in the Soundcore app, I believe I thought all of the sets I was watching had it. Regardless, I’m now quite glad I bought them anyways.

I’ve never had wireless earbuds before and after testing them out a bit yesterday, I found out that there isn’t this horrible game ruining lag like people seemed to think, or have stated there would be in what little I was able to find on the subject online. People claim Switch has bare minimum bluetooth support which won’t pick-up settings and that without a game mode or adapter they’re terrible and lag horrendously. After testing it for myself, I think they’re quite good honestly. Feeling like they have to lag and expecting it, I think I’ve noticed or feel like there may potentially be a minuscule eighth or quarter second lag possibly, something around that at least. But I’m not having any major issues. The place where I believe I can tell for sure there is some slight delay, is just when going back to the menu, or back to a game from the menu, and then once the sound starts up after that quite minute delay, it seems to be fine. I’ve messed around switching between game thumbnails quickly in the main Switch menu, I’ve selected stuff quickly in menus and did some fishing in Animal Crossing: New Horizons when I got on last night for the fireworks event, and they seem pretty good still. I did start to wonder in ACNH if there was more lag than I thought. I thought I was starting to notice that very minor delay ever so slightly. But again, the fact that after researching it, it sounds like there has to be this horrible lag no matter what, I may simply be expecting it and that’s making me believe I’m truly noticing it. I should also probably mention, my Switch is connected to a small standard HDTV, not a smart TV. That may help lessen any potential lag as well.

I still need to do some additional testing, try them in Theatrhythm Final Bar Line perhaps, the only rhythm game I have on Switch, or in a shooter such as Splatoon 3 and/or Perfect Dark. I did try them with online multiplayer last night in ACNH, I joined a friend for that weekly August fireworks event. That might be my favorite seasonal event in the game. And yeah, like I already said, I’m not noticing any major lag. I do think and hope they’ll work for now, for the reason I bought them. In the future though, when I have more cash to spare for wireless earbuds, I’m hoping to maybe upgrade to the P3 model, or just any other well reviewed Soundcore wireless earbuds that actually have the low-latency game mode my current pair is missing. Oh that’s another thing, despite reading that my Switch wouldn’t pick-up any special modes set on my earbuds, the Soundcore app lets me connect them to both my phone and Switch at the same time. When I’ve messed with what settings they do have, the surround sound, various equalizer options, etc., my Switch picks it up and it works just fine.

Anyway, the reason I’ve decided to discuss my wireless earbuds experience this week, with a docked Switch, is because I had such a hard time finding any info about it myself, when attempting to research it beforehand. I figured I should put this out there for anyone else who wanted to know I suppose. Maybe one of you will find this info useful. And if not, well it’s the only gaming I can talk about this week. I’ll keep making Natsu-Mon progress and hopefully I’ll be able to write my review soon. – Jenae

What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!

The post oprainfall Week in Gaming: Aug 4 – 10 appeared first on oprainfall.

Symphony of the Night – Dracula X Chronicles version

A little while ago I replayed the Dracula x Chronicles version of Symphony of the Night. Mostly the same experience as the PS1 version, I have to say, I don’t mind the small changes between the two. The voice actors are the most obvious difference, but I was never as obsessed about them as others across the internet. I particularly like the extra Maria boss fight, and I wish the developers had added more beyond this. I recall hearing that the Saturn version of the game had additional areas, or at least the data for them was left over, so I wouldn’t have minded seeing the original developers’ ideas fleshed out. I guess I’m always wanting more in these instances.

Anyway, I can blitz through this pretty fast, even faster than Aria or Portrait, which is why I just went ahead and played it in a sitting or three.

One thing I’ll mention, I always took issue with the unique weapons and how rarely they drop. I also never liked how some enemies drop equips that are already available in the castle. Similarly, I never like it when castle items or weapons found later are worse than items found earlier. I just never understood the logic behind such decisions.

Equips other than weapons were never special either. I do always get a kick out of the Crystal Cloak, though, and how the sprite artists made it semi-transparent. I’m impressed with the imagination it took to do so every time I see it. It’s a personal favorite.

I’ll be done with this by the time this contribution gets published. As for what’s next, I’m leaning towards more manga and LN reading than gaming, so I’ll see you over on that weekly post. – Drew D

What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!

The post oprainfall Week in Gaming – Jul 21-27 appeared first on oprainfall.

This week in gaming I continued to progress through Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero. I’ve made it up to chapter 4 and I’m very curious to see who or what KeA actually is. Finding out about Lloyd’s brother would be very interesting to at this point. Hopefully I can finish this one up this week and get some answers.

I also started looking at the Nintendo Switch version of Tokyo Xanadu eX+. I can say so far the localization seems to flow better than the previous releases and the game runs really well on the Switch. I know it should since this started life as a Vita title, but with Switch ports you never really know til you dig into them. I hope to have a full review ready soon. -Steve

I honestly haven’t been doing a lot of gaming lately. I’ve been spending my free time watching random shows, badly attempting some art stuff and playing a tiny smidgen of games on the side. I always play a bit of mahjong every day on my phone via Mahjong Soul and Riichi City, but other than that, I’ve been very slowly making progress in Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance. I’m still pretty close to the beginning of the Shinagawa area. Also, this past weekend while I was away from home and only able to play my Switch undocked, I didn’t really want to play SMTVV. All the of the visual details are a bit small undocked. And thus, I actually ended up finally starting Sea of Stars which I’ve been sitting on for a long time now. I’ve been sitting on quite a few games actually, and as usual, I have now started yet another game I probably won’t completely play through and finish all at once. Nonetheless, I got into it and played for a few hours. I’m not too far into it yet, but I think I may potentially enjoy this game a bit more than Chained Echoes, the last big 16-bit indie RPG I played a chunk of. All of these indie RPGs inspired by famous games of the past, tend to have more tedious battles that start to wear on me pretty quickly. But at the moment, I definitely am enjoying Sea of Stars’ system a bit more. It’s not too overly complicated and while early battles are a bit challenging, it doesn’t feel like every single battle is a whole ordeal in itself. Though I have gotten stuck a few times and had to restart when these large ant looking things kept inviting their friends. But other than that, battles seem to be relatively reasonable and the atmosphere of the game is as charming as expected. – Jenae

What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!

The post oprainfall Week in Gaming: Jul 7 – 13 appeared first on oprainfall.

Castlevania – Portrait of Ruin

Since my last contribution to our Week in Gaming post, I played and completed Castlevania – Portrait of Ruin. One of my favorites of the series, this plays and feels like a true Metroidvania without forcing tacked-on controls or stylus-based play mechanics the way they were with Dawn of Sorrow.

For the uninitiated, Portrait of Ruin follows vampire hunter Jonathan Morris and his friend the talented witch Charlotte Aulin, as they investigate the appearance of Dracula’s castle. A vampire by the name of Brauner has taken over the keep, channeling Dracula’s and the castle’s powers for himself through the use of his magic paintings. Having suffered a tremendous family loss during World War I, Brauner intends to use these powers to remake the world, again engulfed in a world war, to end all strife and finally create a peaceful existence for himself and his daughters.

Before starting it, I distinctly remember being upset with the art direction, as they did not opt for Ayami Kojima’s talents, instead adopting a more common anime style. Anyway, soon after, I noticed that the game itself still looks great, combining detailed 2D sprites with the use of 3D backgrounds throughout. The soundtrack has several real bangers, too, with remixed classic tracks and new music composed just for this title.

The gameplay is still fun, though I encountered the weird difficulty curves I remembered from previous playthoughs. I felt like I would swing from underpowered to overpowered, back to underpowered in spurts. I also did not entirely enjoy the game’s quest system, as so many quests are only complete-able or even available towards the end of the game. Being a completionist, I, of course, mulled through them all. I also did something I hadn’t done in previous playthroughs: I never powered-up Vampire Killer. I, instead, opted to complete the game using alternate weapons and a heavy reliance on Charlotte’s magic. Especially using Charlotte more than I ever did previously, I think this ended up being my most enjoyed playthrough. And so, flaws aside, I had fun re-experiencing this chapter in Castlevania. – Drew D.

I started the week by finishing off The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3^rd. I really enjoyed this entry in the series and I learned a lot about all of the characters involved, especially Renne. I knew she had some bad stuff happen to her, but I had no idea how messed up it really was. No wonder she is a bit crazy and lays everyone that gets in her way to waste. Anyways, I’m looking forward to seeing her more as I play through the rest of this franchise.

After that I started Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero. I was pretty excited to see a new region in this world, and Crossbell doesn’t disappoint so far. The cast of characters here is great. Lloyd is a bit of cheesy guy, but he is very likable. The deadpan Tio basically stole my heart from the beginning and I can see why she is so popular among the fans. I can’t wait to see more of the antics from this crew and where this adventure leads me. – Steve

My whole week has been solely dedicated to getting through Final Fantasy XIV’s latest expansion, Dawntrail. After the universe-ending stakes of Endwalker, it’s been nice taking a detour and helping out Wuk Lamat and company on an entirely new continent. I’ll have a fuller review ready later, but so far I’ve really enjoyed this expansion. Wuk Lamat is a great character, and spending more time with Erenville and Krile is never a negative. XIV has always excelled at world building, and getting to see a new region and people’s for the first time, and building up their political and cultural structures, has been such a joy to experience. The music as well has been phenomenal, with Soken pulling out all the stops to bring forth newer styles with varied instruments that really fit the tone and messaging of this expansion. I’ve also been having a blast with the fights and dungeons. This has been an all around enjoyable time and I am so excited for when Arcadion drops in a couple weeks. – Leah

What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!

The post oprainfall Week in Gaming: Jun 30 – Jul 6 appeared first on oprainfall.

Rise, ye Tarnished, for yet another ass-kicking!

So yeah, I’ve been banging my head against the Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree DLC. Thanks to work and family commitments I haven’t spent nearly as much time as I’d like playing, but what I’ve tackled so far has been both frustratingly difficult and incredibly fun. Jumping back into the Lands Between and the Realm of Shadow is like coming home after a long stint away, and while there’s a lot that’s stayed the same, the changes add up. I don’t think the DLC is actually that much more difficult than the base game, but the addition of the Scadutree blessings means base-game levelling doesn’t account for as much here, so even though I was at end-game, everything in the Realm of Shadow hits like a truck. New enemies have also been thrown into the mix, so I’ve had to relearn a lot of animation tells and fight mechanics. It’s added back a lot of wariness and trepidation while exploring that I was able to forego when trotting around the Lands Between for the most part, and that’s refreshing. It also feels like my INT build isn’t nearly as viable here as it was in the base game, but I’m too stubborn to switch up play styles so I’m either going to beat it this way or die trying.

The Realm of Shadow is stunningly gorgeous. Exploring the map has been an absolute joy, not only thanks to overcoming difficult enemy encounters but because it’s just so gosh-darn pretty. I’ve stopped numerous times to just swing my camera around and take in the sights. The opening area is breathtaking on its own, with endless fields of ghostly graves dotted with broken and writing trees; but the castle keeps are also vast and varied. Several locations in the Lands Between ended up feeling samey, so that possibility remains for my time in the DLC, but so far I haven’t found anything that quite strikes me as the copy-pasted catacombs did in the base game. There have also been some stellar enemy designs (see the above dragon). I love me some grotesque beauty, and Elden Ring has it in spades. I find myself constantly thinking about this game and wanting to get back to it even when it frustrates me to no end. Actually, I think I’m gonna go boot it up right now. See you on the other side, fellow Tarnished. – Leah

This week in gaming I finished up Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance. The new route is pretty interesting, and they definitely brought the difficulty late game. I will have a review of this and Sisters: Last Day of Summer later this week.

Other than working on these reviews, I setup The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3rd on both my laptop and desktop. I want to get back to the series, since I loved the first two games I played a year or so ago. Hopefully I can get up to the Cold Steel games by the end of the summer.  – Steve

What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!

The post oprainfall Week in Gaming: Jun 16-22 appeared first on oprainfall.

This week in gaming I’ve spread myself a little thin, but I made a ton of progress. First up I finished up my review of Genso Wanderer -FORESIGHT-. I love this franchise, and I was very happy got this review done. I should go live on the site in the next few days.

Sisters: Last Day of Summer from JAST is the second title I’m working on. I’m just about finished with this very interesting mystery title, and I’m very curious to see how all this turns out. This is a unique visual novel in that it is fully animated, and honestly it looks great. I’m hoping to have this review out by the end of this week or the first of next.

Finally I got started on Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance. The new story is very interesting so far and I’m glad they let me carry over some of the demons from my run in the vanilla game. I had to get my Alice out of the compendium first thing of course. I will be doing a review for this as well, but it will probably take a me bit to get this one ready to go. – Steve

I also got started on Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance this past weekend. Now, I wasn’t sure I was going to start it at launch. I pre-ordered the game for Switch but I figured I’d either get further and try to finish Persona 3 Reload first, or I’d go back to the vanilla SMT V and work on my existing path which I never finished. Ultimately, I ran a poll on my Twitter (X) account and no one voted that I go back to my vanilla path and the majority of people who voted, said I should just enjoy Vengeance at launch. Thus, despite my plans to backlog it, I ended up starting Vengeance after all.

I’m finding lately I have this weird need for significantly challenging RPGs. Ever since I played Xenoblade Chronicles 3 a couple years ago, which was way too easy in comparison to prior entries, I worry about my RPGs being too easy to breeze through. I mean they’re already super long games, but I find I’m pretty worried about the experience ending too quickly and not having time to truly be absorbed in the game and enjoy my time with it. It’s a bit of an irrational complex lately. I bring this up because both Persona 3 Reload and SMT V: Vengeance so far, seem way too easy in comparison to their prior releases. I decided to play P3R on hard because I heard it was much easier than before and I always played Persona 3 on normal. I’m playing Vengeance on normal because I didn’t actually expect Vengeance would be so much easier than the original. I just feel like I’m breezing through this first Da’at area too easily and the demons haven’t been that much of a challenge at all. I know they rebalanced the game, but it’s still Shin Megami Tensei. It’s not like I want my games to be impossible either, I’m quite lazy when it comes to grinding. Still, I’ve got this weird complex recently and I feel like I should’ve played P3R on merciless and gone with hard for Vengeance.

So far in SMT5V I’ve gotten up to the save right before Tokyo Tower, but I haven’t yet grinded enough for the boss. I’m now doing quests in the area and trying to level up a bit more on the latest demons by the Tokyo Tower save point. I’m mostly enjoying the changes to the game. I really like the little area to converse with your demons, mainly because you get to talk to Aogami more. It’s no longer just him advising you on what to do while you’re out in the field. I think my only big complaints are the seemingly significant difficulty drop, like I said before and also I feel like this is yet another re-released game that has had the sound levels thrown out of whack. I got it on Switch because I wanted a physical copy, which the PS4 version lacks, so I’m stuck playing without earbuds to enjoy it docked. I don’t yet own a wireless pair of earbuds, though I’m now considering buying a budget pair soon since I do so much docked Switch gaming now days. My biggest gaming pet peeve is wonky sound levels and it feels majorly out of whack in Vengeance. My old TV equalizer settings I used for the vanilla version didn’t work and I’ve had to do things a bit differently with the in game sliders. Plus, I’ve had to turn my TV up even louder than last time as well. I really wish these devs and/or publishers would stop messing up the sound levels when they re-release games. It drives me up a wall fiddling with equalizers and sliders and whatnot, plus having to constantly change my TV volume at different parts of the game. – Jenae

What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!

The post oprainfall Week in Gaming: Jun 9 -15 appeared first on oprainfall.

Recently, I’ve finally been playing Persona 3 Reload. I’ve been my bad habits self lately and put aside Infinite Wealth before finishing it, having played for anywhere between 85 and 100 hours. I needed a break and a nostalgic fave sounded like just the thing to jump into next. At the moment, I’m in June and I just finished up the latest section of Tartarus. I believe I’ve dealt with two full moon bosses already, outside of the initial one you fight at the start, when you show up to the dorm for the first time. I haven’t gotten too far in yet, but I’m enjoying most of the new additions, such as being able to hang out with the guys on the team periodically when they ask you to, and having study sessions with everyone before an exam week.

There are also some other changes which I don’t enjoy as much, being a longtime fan of Persona 3. Mostly however, it’s minor nitpicks. For one, that “I’m minding my biz, so mind your own biz,” line in the dorm song lyrics starts to become quite annoying after a while. It really stands out more than the rest of the song and it gets old fast. I wish this game had the option to use the old soundtrack, or even better, something more like what the Atelier games have and let you pick between both soundtracks for various situations or places. Also, it’s disappointing they give you a whole little intro/forewarning about the Reaper and Fuka doesn’t get to say, “I sense death.” It was cooler in my opinion, when the chains just randomly start and Fuka mentions death. Overall though, I’m enjoying myself so far and I appreciate the added time spent with the guys on the team. I didn’t realize until I just barely started a Persona 3 Portable replay on my Switch last year, how much that version of the game was truly missing in comparison to FES. I mean I loved it back in the day on PSP, I love getting to hang out with all the guys and being able to date Shinji. It’s just weird you don’t get to do anything with half the team in PS2 versions of Persona 3. But otherwise yeah, P3 always needed a significant update. It sucks we didn’t get a remade FeMC route, but at least the game got some extra content regardless. It definitely needed this refresh. – Jenae

In our neverending quest to defeat our backlog and play a bunch of games we missed out on growing up, my sister and I completed Lufia II. Much like Ys and Lagoon before it, this was a nice romp through some nostalgic, old-school RPG gameplay, and was overall a lot of fun. The characters were charming if one dimensional, with that very specific style of 90s localization that is fun and bouncy but not necessarily the most accurate. (Considering Lufia II isn’t even the game’s original title, this all tracks.) You can definitely feel the beginnings of what would later be deeper, more fleshed out narratives and characters as developers iterated on the concepts laid down here and in its contemporaries, but what I found refreshing was the game wasn’t bogged down by a lot of the more frustrating aspects of 90s RPGs. It wasn’t overly grindy. There weren’t a lot of obtuse directions to follow. It was a straightforward, breezy affair where we never felt like we needed to focus on leveling up or needing money. Gear upgrades were frequent and impactful. I really liked the IP system attached to gear, which would grant your character certain abilities based on their equipment that could only be accessed by a separate resource bar that filled when you took damage. Some of these abilities were straight up game breaking, but it also meant there was some give and take between whether you wanted to keep a piece of gear that had a good IP trait or had better raw stats. It was nice.

That said, the game was also substantially easier than a lot of its contemporaries. Magic felt overall weak and I spent most battles just hitting enemies with melee attacks or IP skills. The capsule monsters were a fun idea that had no teeth and ended up being glorified punching bags that would, at most, save me a round of healing. They were a great way to unload excess armor and weapons when I filled my inventory though. There were also several bugs, including a persistent text bug in the equip menu, as well as several bits of untranslated text and one entire area that was completely glitched but thankfully navigable. Item, spell and IP descriptions were unhelpful at best, misleading at worst, with some items being translated in two different ways (at least one of which was definitely for censorship purposes). Even characters would randomly change names, such as when Guy was suddenly Gai. It made for an uneven experience in terms of quality, but the fun if easy combat, charming characters, gorgeous sprite work, impeccable soundtrack and overall comfy feeling of the game was enough to outweigh a lot of the negatives, which were more humorous than detrimental for the most part. For folks who like old school RPGs, you honestly can’t go wrong giving this one a try. As for me and my sister, we’re moving on to Lufia I, so I’ll let you all know how that goes!

I’ve also been gearing up for the launch of Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail (and you can read fellow Warrior of Light Quentin’s excellent Media Tour coverage here, here, here and here!). The end of expansion lull always gives me a lot of little things to catch up on, so I’ve been finishing up my sorely neglected tribe quests and FATE grinding, as well as crafting to get me through the opening levels of the expac with as little hassle as possible. The developers also released an updated benchmark that fixed several lighting issues and tweaked the upcoming graphics update. The best part is that they fixed the missing tarutaru nose smudge for lalafells! This graphics update is long overdue and very much welcome, but I cannot express how upset I was that I might have lost my nose smudge in the process. Thankfully, that’s been averted, and my lalafell is as adorable and perfect as ever. The end of June is jam-packed with stuff I want to play alongside Dawntrail as well (looking at you, Shadow of the Erdtree), so I’m sure to have more thoughts of those going forward~ – Leah

What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!

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The post oprainfall Week in Gaming: Jun 2-8 appeared first on oprainfall.

Lately, I’ve been playing a ton of mahjong and hopping between a couple of other games. A few weeks ago was the Whale Cup tournament in Riichi City, which I joined last year and yet again signed up for this year. I feel like I possibly did even worse than last year. However, Riichi City‘s helpful tip features, dora tile highlights, winning tile wait hints, etc., being turned off for the tournament, I didn’t find much of an inconvenience at all this year. Last year, that was a bit odd for me and I more significantly felt that change from how I usually play. This year, it didn’t really matter to me much at all. So I suppose in some ways I’ve improved. Although, I have been having horrendous luck in mahjong overall, all year.

Not only did I do miserably in that tournament for the second year in a row, but I’ve also managed to recently lose my rank in Mahjong Soul. I went from an Adept 3 star rank, back down to 2 star. I wasn’t even a high rank to begin with, but I just haven’t had much luck lately. Some of it is my own fault. Nonetheless, these last couple weeks I’ve been using the efficient discard method to try and rank back up and I haven’t been making significant progress without eventually losing it all simply due to bad luck. Sure, occasionally I’ve taken a risk or two and those losses have been my fault, but in the majority of my matches I’ve been making myself play efficiently and it’s been going extremely slow. I already felt like Expert 1 star and the gold ranked rooms were quite far away, now I feel like I won’t even ever rank back up to where I was. I’ve pretty much been losing all my points this year in both Mahjong Soul and Riichi City.

Other than mahjong, I’ve done a smidgen of console gaming here and there, but not a lot lately. Finishing up Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, has been going a bit slow. I’m nearing the end, but also trying to finish up various side adventures. I’m attempting to not simply rush through the end like I did Gaiden, back when I wanted to finish it and be ready for Infinite Wealth right at launch. I mostly want to finish Infinite Wealth simply because it’s been months now, in addition to the fact that I finally got my hands on Persona 3 Reload a while ago during a sale and have been anxious to start that. Persona 3 was always my favorite Persona. Also, this past week I managed to get my hands on Endless Ocean Luminous as well, thanks to Nintendo. I’m playing that with the purpose of reviewing it, so I won’t say too much about it now. I’ve gone on some solo dives, made a bit of story progress and have done some online dives as well, plus I checked out the first online event this past weekend. But once again, if you want to hear more about my thoughts on Endless Ocean, you’ll have to wait for my future review. – Jenae

What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!

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The post oprainfall Week in Gaming: May 5 – 11 appeared first on oprainfall.

It’s been a while since I’ve gamed, as the urge to play just hasn’t been there for me lately. I’ve been reading less manga too, but have read a few more LNs here and there. However, I had a chunk of time this weekend and decided to replay Aria of Sorrow. I really needed to just turn my brain off and I know I can easily blitz through this game in a sitting or two effortlessly.

Hardly any story to be had, Aria of Sorrow follows exchange student Soma Cruz as he finds himself transported from Japan to Dracula’s Castle, which is currently bound within an eclipse. To find a way out, he must traverse the castle and reach the throne room, utilizing his newly awakened ability to collect the souls and copying the abilities of enemies.

Anyway, having replayed this many times, I know which weapons and souls to go after to mow down everything in the least amount of time. And, well, it’s kinda satisfying, in that it’s a game I can quickly get into, while also being quick for me to complete without feeling guilty for playing it over something in my ever-growing backlog.

After this, I may revisit Dawn of Sorrow, as I’ve only played that twice or thrice, though I distinctly remember enjoying it far less than Aria due to gimmicky touch-screen nonsense and powers that felt lame. Thinking about it as I write this, maybe I’ll do the Julius mode for that so I can play as Alucard instead. – Drew D.

So I’ve been waiting ages for The Alliance Alive HD Remastered to go back on sale in the eShop. I loved the game on 3DS and have been wanting to replay it on Switch. Unfortunately, I missed out on the Switch physical copy before it went out of print and I also missed out on the last eShop sale over 10 months ago, not realizing it would be so long before it went on sale again. Anyway, it finally went on sale again a few days ago and I’ve spent this past weekend beginning my replay. I always loved The Alliance Alive. Back when it came out on 3DS, I do believe I had already bought my PS4 and played a little bit of some more recent console games I missed out on for years. But it really hadn’t been that long since the newest RPGs I played and had access to, were all on the 3DS. I was still pretty behind on current console stuff and hadn’t played all that many modern games. I spent so much time on the most wonderful 3DS games for years, which I might not have even noticed if I was distracted by a bunch of fancier and larger console titles at the time.

Replaying it again for the first time in years, now having played tons of flashier RPGs and other games on both Switch and PS4, I see now how simple The Alliance Alive is. The visuals are very basic and the cinematic scenes almost seem like they couldn’t make them quite as HD as the rest of the game in this port, they’re somewhat more blurry. Also, there is no voice acting. However, despite all this, I still find it to be an extremely charming little RPG so far. I don’t think I would pay full price for it today, but I still think it’s a fantastic game to pick-up and get into during a sale.

The Alliance Alive has always felt like it was the answer to the various complaints people had about The Legend of Legacy, its predecessor. Now, I personally enjoyed the time I spent with The Legend of Legacy, but thinking back, it was definitely an even simpler game and the story was something subtle you had to piece together for yourself. Nonetheless, Cattle Call seemed to add all of the features “missing” from The Legend of Legacy when they came up with The Alliance Alive. You’ve got charming characters, a much more present and significant story and a whole world to explore in typical RPG fashion. I’m quite enjoying the time I’ve spent so far replaying the game. I do think they could’ve added a speed toggle on cinematic scene dialogue, it skips ahead a bit quick sometimes. But other than that, I like the simple charm of the game and it’s still a pretty great game. I definitely think it’s an underrated gem a lot of people missed out on, possibly due in part to people’s fear of it being just like The Legend of Legacy and also simply because many people haven’t heard of it before.

Before The Alliance Alive finally went back on sale, I also checked out the Switch version of the SaGa Emerald Beyond demo. Honestly, I didn’t find myself eager to finish it after playing for about an hour or two. My main issue with the game, is it seemed ridiculously cheesy. I think a significant part of what makes it feel so cheesy, is the English dub. For example, in the early game this narrator voice is constantly cutting in during battle to explain basic mechanics, and the way they voice their lines makes it sound like they’re trying to explain to a child how awesome and exciting all of the game’s basic battle features are. Also, the overall game seemed very simple and like it didn’t have a lot going on. Although, it is the very early game, so maybe I judged it too quickly. But typically if it’s a game I would normally play and is actually good, the demo sucks me in relatively quickly and I find myself impatiently anxious to experience the full game. SaGa Emerald‘s Switch demo did not do that for me, at all. Plus, I felt like battles moved a bit slow and I just really didn’t enjoy my time with it. – Jenae

What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!

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The post oprainfall Week in Gaming: Mar 31 – Apr 6 appeared first on oprainfall.

I spent most of this week finishing up Unicorn Overlord. I will have a full review coming very soon, and despite the last battle being a bit crazy it was still pretty fun. I’m playing one very familiar game for review on a console I never thought I would see it on. It feels very strange, and I’ll have more to say on this one shortly as well.

I started playing Azur Lane again as well this week. I left cause I felt the designs were getting very boring with every boat being huge tiddy bunny girls, but they added some fantasy skins and new girls to the mix I thought looked very nice. I mean she’s a cute maid, it’s like a moth to a flame! I’m hoping to dig into Yohane the Parhelion – NUMAZU in the MIRAGE later this week. I do love a good card game and Yohane as well so I think I’ll really love it! – Steve 

Last week I finished Stranger of Paradise and had a great time with it but wanted to follow it up with something lighter. Princess Peach Showtime! fit that bill perfectly. This game was oozing with charm and creativity with every level featuring Princess Peach as the lead actor in a play. From decorating cakes to becoming a martial arts master or saving the world from an alien invasion, Peach was allowed to express herself in ways we rarely get to see. The variety here was incredibly welcome even though I can see some of the slower paced plays like the detective one not being as engaging on a replay. Still, it’s refreshing to see her exist without Mario or even Bowser for that matter. They even managed to throw in some platforming sections so the game can still feel like it belongs in the greater Mario series. Princess Peach Showtime! was not an especially long or challenging game, but it was one that had me hooked from start to finish and left me wanting more. Despite there being some decent post game challenges, I do wish there a couple extra unlockable plays or a two player mode as I can see this game being a great one to play with friends or kids. – Justin

This week I dug my teeth in the Stellar Blade demo for the PlayStation 5. The first thing that hit me when booting it up was how Nier: Automata it felt, to the point I started naming all the similarities that cropped up in just the opening sequence to my husband. Scantily-clad female androids? Check. Disastrous decent that leaves most of your squad dead? Check. Trying to reclaim Earth from an alien threat so that humanity can return? Check. Floating drone sidekick? Check. Music? Check. This is not in and of itself a problem – lots of games lean into their inspirations, and Shift Up was pretty open about Nier being one of several influences for this game. But it did end up veering just this side of derivative. The caveat here, of course, is that the demo is just a slice of the game so how derivative it pans out to be remains to be seen, but it constantly tickled the back of my thoughts as I played.

That being said, I found the character and enemy designs quite appealing. EVE is lovely, and I’m a fan of the blend of human skin and cybernetic prosthetics. The fanservice itself isn’t even all that in-your-face, at least during gameplay (unless you want it to be), though I did find it borderline distracting during a couple cutscenes. I don’t necessarily need to see an android’s ass jiggle while she’s being impaled, that just comes across as silly and undercuts the horror of what’s going on. It’s not deal breaking or anything, but I do find it a touch crass. (Ogling EVE’s ass while she swings from an overpass is whatever, you do you fellow nerds. Goodness knows I had fun with the camera.) EVE feels great when she’s running around and swinging over obstacles, but water sections were a chore. She’s difficult to redirect when swimming and because she does not latch onto items you need to move in the water, directing them is a struggle. EVE also feels super sluggish in combat, at least when it comes to parrying and perfect dodging. I am not going to completely rule out user error here, but inputs felt incredibly laggy, and Shift Up’s cheeky Tweet about making sure your TV is set to Game Mode was unhelpful. (Mine is, and it didn’t help.)

Overall I enjoyed what I played of the Stellar Blade demo, though I still haven’t done everything it has to offer. I’m concerned about input lag and the game borrowing too heavily from other titles, but I’m also excited to see how the total package comes together. The monster designs are fantastic and I think there’s some really neat worldbuilding to be had here. The lack of a Japanese voice track in the American demo is annoying, but you can download the JP version and not have an issue. Imports of the game will also include English text so if you want the entire package there are options. I’ll be playing the game with Korean VO so it’s not a particular issue for me outside principle, but JP VA contracts are weird.  If you’ve got a PS5 this one is at least worth checking out the demo for. – Leah

What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!

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The post oprainfall Week in Gaming: Mar 24 – 30 appeared first on oprainfall.

I was planning on having something to say for a Week in Gaming article last week, but my copy of Unicorn Overlord came late. I was quite annoyed I pre-ordered in advance with 1-day shipping which should’ve shown up on release day, but I had to wait until last Monday to finally get my copy. Anyway, after the game came I finally went and spent the full amount of time allowed in the demo, before transferring my progress and continuing on in the full game. I think my game clock says I’ve spent around 20 hours or so total, playing Unicorn Overlord. I cleared out most of the early game Cornia battles and built up my army. There are a few leftover battles there still which I’ve been periodically going through and a couple much higher leveled ones I can’t touch until later game.

But now I’m just trying to grind to start getting further into Drakenhold. I decided it made more sense to go there first than straight to Elheim. Elheim, story wise at least, sounded like it continues the main story. Drakenhold sounded more like a good preparation detour, so that’s what I went with. I’m really glad I went there and picked up Virginia. Her little party I put together absolutely destroys enemies. I’ve got her paired with her Drakenhold Swordfighter friend, one of the Warrior class girls and I believe I put a healer of some kind on her team as well. I’ve got a couple units that have worked out really nicely. In the early game, I found I relied on Josef a lot, being that he’s higher leveled. But now I’m finding I’ve got even better units put together and don’t need to rely as heavily on him. I’ve barely gotten into Drakenhold yet, I went back to leftover Cornia battles for grinding, but I think I’ll be ready soon to get further.

I’m enjoying Unicorn Overlord quite a bit so far. I am realizing however, that I need mini breaks during SRPGs more often than other games. Nonetheless, overall I’m having fun with the game. It’s a nice change having an SRPG with an actual overworld map to explore. I don’t know if any SRPG has done it before because obviously, I haven’t played every strategy RPG that exists. But it’s my first time playing one set-up like this. It’s nice being able to explore and collect stuff, not simply go straight from story, to a battle stage and then back to another story bit. It did take some getting used to the battle system at first though. I had a hard time in the demo trying to get multiple parties to move at once. The demo insists on teaching you how to, but I find I don’t even use it anymore since I like to check on my individual units and send a lot of them after different enemies or to alternate spots. I also turned on the setting to automatically pause at the start of battles so I can look around and plan things out, and have thus left it like that ever since. I’m looking forward to getting further, seeing where the story goes, exploring new places and getting to know some of the characters better. – Jenae

I spent most of this week playing Unicorn Overlord, and I’m pretty much addicted to it at this point. The story is your typical prince escapes a hostile takeover of his lands, but there are plenty of plot twists along the way to keep it fresh. Characters get a lot of development as you play through the story, so whenever I get a new companion its great getting to know more about them.

You expect great artwork from any Vanillaware title and Unicorn Overlord delivers. Every character has a ton of details and each area looks as good as any top tier fantasy movie you will ever watch. The gameplay is great as well with a mix of unit positioning, formation balance and skills. I love finding new ways to take on each different obstacle I have encountered. – Steve

What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!

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The post oprainfall Week in Gaming: Mar 10 – 16 appeared first on oprainfall.

This week in gaming I played around with some of my backlog. I didn’t want to start anything too big with Unicorn Overlord coming at the end of this week but I did spend some time with two games I liked quite a bit.

The first one was Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition. I love a good Musou game and these are good titles that if you have to take a break from for a long period of time you don’t forget many of the details about them. This game is packed with content, lots of maps to explore, plenty of side modes and other content to unlock as well. I played several maps on story mode, and while I don’t like the amount of running around you do on each map, the puzzle elements they added in really do make it feel like a Zelda title.

The other game I spent some time with this week was Record of Lodoss War -Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth-. I’ve wanted to try this one out for a while, and I wish I had gotten to it sooner. I love the gameplay here, solid Metroidvania action. I played through the first chapter last night and it went by like a flash. I love that you can get Deedlit all sorts of new weapons, and the each one of them is slightly different than the others. Throw in the bow action and magic and it’s no wonder why everyone loved this one. I hope I can finish it by Friday, and seeing I’m addicted to the gameplay it’s very likely I will. – Steve

At the beginning of the week, I continued on with Piofiore: Episodio 1926. I’ve now gone through each individual guy’s route that’s available at the start. I also did all the little advent calendar scenes which take place after Fated Memories‘ final happy ending route, where you don’t end up with anyone and doing those has unlocked the main sequel, Alternativa route. After unlocking it, I miraculously managed to pull myself away from the otome addiction. Like Steve, I’m also waiting for and excited to play Unicorn Overlord. I’ve honestly never really gotten into Vanillaware games before, though I do have a copy of 13 Sentinels I plan to play eventually. But I enjoy the occasional SRPG and I had fun with the couple hours I’ve spent on the demo so far. It’s definitely unique, being this overworld strategy system, rather than on grid based stages, but it seems like there will be a lot to do and it should be worth getting into. The unit groupings, where you put a few characters together and they move as one, reminds me a bit of Soul Nomad.

I didn’t spend long on the Unicorn Overlord demo because I didn’t want to get too sucked in and then have to wait to keep going. In the end, I’m quite looking forward to that one. Until it comes out, I think I may be spending some time on Smash Bros. Ultimate. I was playing with my nephews over the weekend and I definitely need to practice for the next time I hang out with them. My older nephew was spamming Link’s remote control bombs on me and the younger one kept sending me off a cliff with Steve’s minecart attack. I’m able to keep up because I spent a ton of time as a teenager playing Melee, yet I find that Ultimate feels quite a bit more stiff. I almost feel like the Nintendo brand pro controller has too much stick range, which makes quick movements more difficult and clunky. Thus, mostly I’m using my 8bitdo SN30 pro instead. Overall I’ve spent 60 hours on SSBU, but my in game stats menu says I’ve only spent 28 hours actually in battle. So I definitely still need some practice to get the hang of the newer, more stiff mechanics. I’m also about to finally get the second fighter’s pass which will be another reason to play some more while I wait for Unicorn Overlord to arrive. – Jenae

I finally wrapped up my time with Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth after about 120 hours. I’m working on a complete review of Ryu Ga Gotoku’s newest entry in the franchise, but figured I’d give some quick thoughts here anyway. In a nutshell, I adored my time with RGG8, but it does not reach the heights of RGG7. The gameplay is solid and a cut above its predecessor with some welcome quality of life tweaks and additions, but the story lacks the emotional payoff I got from Ichiban’s introduction. That’s not to say Infinite Wealth lacks in the story or emotional investment departments: It’s quite good! But I admit I’m very biased in RGG7‘s favor, seeing as it’s my favorite game in the franchise, and no small part due to Ichiban himself. Infinite Wealth‘s standout moments are definitely in its Bucket List substory for Kiryu and the expanded Walk & Talks and Table Talks that let each party member’s personality shine in ways the main narrative doesn’t really have the space for. I highly recommend picking this one up if you haven’t yet!

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is out and I’ve been digging into this title as well. I’m about 10 or so hours in and have been enjoying faffing about in the Grasslands just outside Kalm. So far the open world elements of the game have been great, if somewhat bog standard. The area is gorgeous, both visually and melodically, with tons to find while exploring. It doesn’t feel empty the way some open worlds do, with points of interest to investigate, neat little hideaways tucked into off-the-trail locations, and a decent smattering of NPCs to chat with as you explore. The dreaded towers are here, but they’re integrated into the gameplay in at least a somewhat sensible fashion, so I can’t complain too much. Taking a much-needed page from the Star Ocean book of gameplay, Rebirth adds little party chat moments in town where you can build up your friendships with everyone on an individual level. Private Actions are one of the mainstays of the SO series and something I think most RPGs could benefit from incorporating, so I was thrilled to see it rolled out in Square Enix’ flagship series. I’ve been playing on Performance Mode and the game holds up really well, with smooth movement and snappy combat. The pop-in is aggravating, though, and probably the worst I’ve seen since Elden Ring. It’s not game breaking and nothing I would swap out of Performance Mode for, but man is it distracting. I know there’s a patch coming to address some Performance Mode graphical issues, but it definitely speaks to a wider problem with big budget games that we still have to sacrifice graphics for a solid framerate despite the increased technical capabilities of consoles. I’m looking forward to seeing what else the game has in store as I progress, and I’ll hopefully have a proper review of this title in a couple weeks. – Leah

What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!

The post oprainfall Week in Gaming: Feb 25 – Mar 2 appeared first on oprainfall.

After playing through and reviewing Sympathy Kiss recently, I found myself starting to slip back into a slump and wasn’t sure what I would even enjoy next. It’s part of the reason I play otome so sparingly. Like I mentioned in my review, I tend to get extremely absorbed into otome and have a hard time stepping away. But also, once I’m done with a good one, I typically just don’t know what to do afterwards, or what actually sounds fun. And thus, rather than stew in that slump forever, I decided to play even more otome. Probably not the wisest decision, but I ended up in the mood for more and I had one on hand that I needed to finish, Piofiore: Fated Memories. When I first played and eventually put down Fated Memories, I had done all but two routes, Gilbert’s and the happy ending no specific guy route. Plus there were a handful of extras I hadn’t checked out.

Gilbert was my favorite of all the choices at the start just based on his design. However, he is also a forced last choice and I was anxious to finally play his route. It turns out, after going through his path and seeing more of him, he is definitely my favorite Piofiore guy. Recently, I also picked up a copy of Piofiore: Episodio 1926 as well. I wasn’t planning on buying it just yet, but it seemed like physical copies were starting to disappear, so I went ahead and bought it before it was too late. After finishing the last two routes and some extras in Fated Memories, I finally started Episodio. Episodio 1926 lets you choose any guy’s route to start and they play as direct sequels to Fated Memories‘ best endings. So far I’ve played Gilbert’s, Orlok’s and Nicola’s route. Gilbert and Orlok I’ve already blindly run into the bad endings first and went back with a guide to get the good endings. Nicola’s, I only just finished last night and haven’t gone back through for the good ending yet. Gilbert’s new route made me love him even more than I already did. In Fated Memories his path was pretty short and tame, so I enjoyed that you got to hang out with him a lot more as a couple with the main girl in Episodio. His sequel route is everything I wanted, he’s simply the best guy in the whole game in my opinion.

The only thing about Piofiore I haven’t enjoyed, is the sheer amount of grammar issues, typos and just overall unfixed mistakes which are all over the place. I’m happy so much otome is localized these days and that the Switch has no shortage of it to enjoy. But, I really wish more time was spent on each one and they were put out without such a ridiculous barrage of typos and incorrect, never fixed grammar. I thought Fated Memories was bad enough as is, but at least that game isn’t version 1.0.0 like the sequel, so something was fixed. Not to mention, every sentence was complete. Thus far in Episodio 1926, I’ve run into quite a few lines where it just cuts off. No sentence ender with punctuation, only a cliffhanger of a line. And sometimes the main character’s speech box will cut off where she’s talking to someone and then continue into a thought bubble next. Or, she’s talking to someone and then thinking to herself partially in the speaking text box, only for it to cut off and continue in the thinking more narrative style box. Plus, I ran into one line (pictured above) where parts of the sentence were repeated multiple times so it says a whole lot of nothing, which left me quite confused. Not only that, but like I mentioned before, Episodio is still version 1.0.0 and didn’t have a single patch. Which means, no one went back to fix even a fraction of the issues after launch. It’d be nice if these otome games had significantly better quality control and editing, or that anyone even tried to fix them after launch and didn’t forever leave them so horrendously bad. – Jenae

With Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth right around the corner, it was finally time to tackle a game that has been in my backlog for over a decade: Crisis Core. Thankfully I didn’t have to drag out a PSP for this one, as the remaster is readily available, so my sister and I spent a little over a week blowing through the story of Zack Fair and his merry band of visual kei wannabes. Actually I’m sorry, I’m being a little harsh and a bit unfair. But to say this entry into the VII franchise left me underwhelmed and disappointed would be an understatement.

First, though, the good. Visually, the game is quite gorgeous, with some particularly stunning locales and set pieces, great lighting and cutscene choreography, and the models all look expressive and lively, especially Zack. The music is great, but that should go without saying. I didn’t mind the combat overall, or the way the Digital Mind Wave (DMW) reels played into the actual story. If anything, that was a master stroke of genius. The RNG elements to literally everything else, including leveling, I could have done without, though. Zack himself was likeable and fun, and his puppy dog attitude and fish out of water responses to the more outrageous stuff happening around him made him relatable when everything else started going off the rails. His budding relationship with Aerith was cute, and the little we got between him and the Turks was a nice bit of characterization for a group of antagonists I really had no previous investment in. Cadet Cloud was refreshingly stupid, and I liked Tifa’s attempts to ask about the “blond SOLIDER” without giving away who she was asking about. All very adorable and well done. The final setpiece of the game was legitimately amazing and such a brilliant blend of narrative and gameplay that it actually pulled at my heart strings. It’s hard to overstate how well that sequence was done.

Unfortunately, the rest of the narrative up to that point fell incredibly flat for me. I hated everything to do with Angeal, Genesis and Sephiroth. I don’t fault the game for wanting to introduce new elements to the world, or even a self-contained villain, but I could not get behind this plot at all. We didn’t spend enough time with Angeal to care about him before he left, nor did we see nearly enough of the three of them together to believe they had any real connection. I think the idea of a failed experiment before Sephiroth could have been really interesting, but I disliked the way this game handled that, and it felt far too derivative. In the end, rather than being a foil for Sephiroth, Genesis undermined what little I actually liked about his story. And all this was happening while the game actively did not do the one thing I wanted from it – give me Zack and Cloud bonding. I am not a big FFVII fan. I do not stan this game. I’m not particularly fond of the OG. But “we’re friends, right?” has lived rent free in my head for over two decades, and all I wanted from Crisis Core was to give me a reason to believe that line. And I never got it. We spent so much time with Angeal and Genesis and Sephiroth but not enough building the emotional core of Zack and Cloud, and when I finally put the game down I just felt like I’d wasted my time. Glad I played it so I have the context, and again, that final setpiece was worth going through everything else for, but the emotional and narrative throughline that I wanted never came to fruition, and that’s a shame.

Looking forward to Rebirth, though. – Leah

What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!

The post oprainfall Week in Gaming: Feb 18 – 24 appeared first on oprainfall.

I made a lot of progress in Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth this past week. I’ve been absolutely glued and loving the game so far. It’s nice finally being sucked into something again. I go for so long, somewhat burnt out, not really feeling like anything, and then a new Yakuza game comes out and I’m completely glued again. I’ve done a ton of stuff in the game at this point and I’m in the middle of Chapter 9 now. I spent a long time in the beginning of the game, checking out Hawaii, doing some substories, getting important things unlocked like the Street Surfer and various jobs, etc.

It took me a while to get going, making money at the start was pretty difficult. First, I worked on getting my Sujimon team put together and tried to get into that a little bit. I figure any big side thing like that will eventually lead to a lot of money if you just spend some time on it. After that, I also spent quite a bit of time on Dondoko Island. You unlock Dondoko through the story, but you only have to spend 3 fictional days there before you can move on. I spent a good two weeks there and made the place a 1-star resort before I left. Dondoko Island is great for making money and that’s what really got me going. After I got cash from making the place a 1-star resort, I went back and raised a few personality stats to unlock all of the available jobs at the time. I’m now in Chapter 9, about to go back there and make some more money.

See where I’m at now, Kiryu headed back to Japan and has his own party and Ichiban is in Hawaii with his still. Chapter 9 got a little hectic, so I stole some equipment from my Kiryu team temporarily. It’s really nice that you just have access to all your stuff no matter which party you’re currently with. Unlike Yakuza 0, where whenever you switched between Majima and Kiryu, they each had their own inventories and cash on hand and you had to transfer money through an NPC and put items in a shared storage. So yeah, I temporarily stole some equipment off my inactive party. Now that I’m past the hectic beginning part of this chapter however, I’m getting ready to head back to Dondoko Island and do some sidequesting stuff again so I can make the necessary money to get the whole gang all properly equipped.

I’m loving all the main characters in Infinite Wealth. I feel like the new characters have so much more personality than a lot of Yakuza 7‘s party characters did. Plus, I feel like you get to know certain returning party members quite a bit better. Also, in the past I was always partial to Majima and Akiyama a little more than Kiryu. I mean, after the seventh game, I liked Kiryu much more than Ichiban, yet he still wasn’t my fave among the series. But there’s just something about Kiryu in Infinite Wealth, the way he acts and the things he says. I’m quite amused with this latest iteration of Kiryu and I think he’s the best he’s been in any Yakuza game ever. Overall, I’m having a blast with Infinite Wealth and can’t wait to play some more. – Jenae

I spent most of this week playing Persona 3 Reload. I’ve gotten about 23 hours in and so far there hasn’t been a lot changed story wise from the previous releases. There are some changes to the story I’ve seen posted from later on, but I’ll reserve judgment for those when I see them in context.

The gameplay and graphical style have been vastly upgraded, and honestly I love how most of it has turned out so far. Tartarus has been redone in a more 3D style and honestly the three sections I’ve been in look fantastic. They have added some new items to find and some new chests that require you to find Twilight Fragments. I would suggest anyone playing hold on to these until you see a chest that requires three of them to open, you get much better items out of these.

I think removing the fatigue mechanic has made the game a bit easier, and throwing in the baton pass from Persona 5 and some new super moves has further made the difficulty here a non issue. If you want a more true experience to the original Persona 3 or FES, I’d suggest starting on a difficulty of hard or greater. That said, I’m enjoying my time so far and we’ll see how I feel when I reach the end of this journey. – Steve

What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!

The post oprainfall Week in Gaming: Jan 28 – Feb 3 appeared first on oprainfall.

At the start of this past week I finally went ahead and finished up Like a Dragon Gaiden. It was Infinite Wealth launch week and I wanted to be ready. There was still some leftover side stuff I would’ve liked to do first, but it was more important for me to finish up the main story and see how things go for Kiryu leading up to the latest game. I really enjoyed Gaiden overall. It was short, but it was a nice little entry and I had a lot of fun playing it. I definitely think it’s something fans of the series should check out before the eighth mainline game.

My copy of Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth showed up a bit late on Friday, but it got there in time to start that night. I was also pleasantly surprised that it came with a small double-sided poster, which I didn’t see mentioned in any promotional info beforehand. I went through all of the early game Yokohama stuff and have only just begun exploring Hawaii. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of Ichiban. I didn’t find myself as enthralled with Yakuza 7 as the rest of the Yakuza series, the story just wasn’t quite as exciting for me. At least not until certain returning characters showed up. It’s also a little surprising that despite RPGs being my absolute favorite game genre, I find myself preferring Yakuza‘s original gameplay style. It simply seems to suit it better in my opinion.

However, thus far I feel like Infinite Wealth will be much better. Having Kiryu in the game helps and overall the big trip to Hawaii is making things a lot more exciting for me. I’m looking forward to checking out all the new minigames and side content, not to mention seeing where the story goes. Battles still aren’t the most exciting compared to some other RPGs, but there do seem to be improvements, such as with there being more nearby scenery interaction than before and the ability to manually move around during battles. I’m still not very far, I believe I’m about to head back to the house Ichiban was at before from the return address on the envelope, this time with Kiryu. I was checking out some substories in the area before heading off. – Jenae

On the road leading up to Infinite Wealth‘s launch, my sister and I continued our retro game replays, this time visiting a couple SNES classics. First on the docket was Lagoon, a favorite of my husband’s that I never played as a child. In the same vein as Ys, Lagoon is an Action RPG that clearly started life as bump combat but was changed to manual slashing when ported to the Super Nintendo. Unlike Ys, Lagoon did not age as well – at least in my opinion. The story here is similarly refreshingly straightforward with an attempt at a twist and a moral at the end, but it’s basically just chosen hero go out in the world narrative, and that’s fine. There’s plenty of locales to explore and I actually liked Lagoon‘s multiple races more than Ys‘ standard towns. It’s all aesthetic, but I’m a fan of fantasy races so it was nice seeing a smattering of them here. Unfortunately, it’s probably the only thing Lagoon has going for it when compared to other old ARPGs. The music was fine (I’m a huge fan of the start screen tune, for instance), but it’s hard to compare to Nihon Falcom. There’s plenty of variety in locations, but you spend so little time in them they feel like you blink and miss them. There’s little quality of life tweaks you don’t realize how much they add to the experience until they’re not there. For instance, you have almost no feedback when you take damage. Nasir’s sprite will flash, but there’s no audible indication you’ve been hit, and there were times I found myself not realizing I’d taken damage because I thought the sprite flickering was the enemy. Your NPC companion moves so slow as to be a hindrance the few times he joins up with you. Nasir can learn multiple elemental spells and obtains multiple rods that power up those spells, but I found no real reason to engage with the magic system outside using a simple fireball or wind strike. I forgive it a lot for how old it is, but considering Lagoon was contemporaneous with Final Fantasy IV, I can’t give it too much of a pass. That being said, I had a lot of fun with this game even with its frustrating difficulty curves and off-center combat. This is a classic RPG for a reason and I’m glad I played it.

After Lagoon, we started up Lufia 2. I’ve never played Lufia, but this is one of the few games I’m willing to play out of order on the suggestion of my husband, who feels the games work better this way. So far it’s incredibly fun – much more so than Lagoon. A more traditional RPG with turn-based combat and parties, Lufia 2 is a gorgeous game with fantastic music. It’s difficult but not unfair (so far) and I love the presentation. The sprite work is particularly gorgeous. We’ve only completed the first real dungeon and are heading to our third town after defeating a giant catfish, but I’m curious to see how the very basic narrative hook is going to build into something larger.

Now for the meat of my week: Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. I’ll be writing up a much more complete review once I finish the game, but I’ve got some thoughts based on my first 20 hours with this eighth mainline Yakuza title. Unlike Jenae, Ichiban is my favorite franchise character, so I was incredibly happy to have him back and catch back up after the events of Like a Dragon, which I adored. (I was also a huge fan of Gaiden.) It’s been three years since the events of Yakuza 7 and Ichiban’s having a bit of a rough time. His prospects pick up a bit and he finds himself heading to Hawaii, where circumstances force him and the Dragon of Dojima himself into a mutual partnership.

Exploring Honolulu City has been a blast. I love the detail Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio puts in its locations, and Aloha Beach is no different. Not only are the locations gorgeously rendered, but the team tackles the same down and dirty issues and themes the Yakuza series is known for: homelessness, police corruption, gang warfare, social disparities, family – it’s all here. The Like a Dragon series is one of the best at taking a deep dive into the human condition, and Infinite Wealth is no exception.

Battles have also been lovingly updated with some nice quality of life features. You can now move around freely within a specific range, giving you the option to set up attack combos with your friends. Your attacks can shove enemies in a specific direction, and shoving them into your teammates will cause your teammates to join in the attack for extra damage. You can also knock enemies into the environment for additional damage, or into other bad guys to deal damage to other baddies. If you attack an enemy from close enough, you also get a proximity bonus. Attacking from behind deals higher damage and can circumvent shields. It’s a small addition, but the movement adds a lot of consideration for how to handle battles. One of my absolute favorite additions is the Smackdown. If Ichiban and company engage in combat with blue icon’d enemies, they will immediately win the battle. This removes the tedium of fighting low-level enemies while providing the money and experience you’d get otherwise. Star Ocean The Second Story R implemented something similar with its Bodyguard ability, and I think it’s the single best QoL feature for RPGs and should be standard.

I do have some quibbles with the game, though. You can access a podcast early on in the game that is not subtitled nor translated, so unless you can understand Japanese you won’t be following along. There’s an English language version podcast once you hit Hawaii that is also not subtitled, so I supposed RGG was going for authenticity and both languages miss out on something. The podcast also pauses whenever you open your menu or the map, and every time you get into battles – and there are a LOT of battles – leading to me just not even bothering trying to listen to the English podcast either. It’s too hard to follow along. While in Hawaii you can also access a scooter to zoom around Honolulu City, but you can’t interact with anything while on it, so if you’re trying to collect the items scattered around the region, or greeting anyone on the street, you’re better off walking.

Overall I’m having a blast with Infinite Wealth and can’t wait to jump back into it. The game plays beautifully on PS5, Xbox Series S and PC, so you can’t really go wrong with any platform of your choice. I’ll have a full review later but until then, this is definitely worth checking out. – Leah

What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!

The post oprainfall Week in Gaming: Jan 21 – 27 appeared first on oprainfall.

It feels like it’s been forever since I’ve added to a Week in Gaming article. We skipped a couple weeks around the holidays and then last week, well I was at the very beginning of a not so great cold. Not to mention, honestly I haven’t been doing a ton of gaming lately in general. I was getting into other stuff before I was sick and having a hard time getting really absorbed back into any one game. Being that I’ve been sick this past week, I still haven’t actually played much, but I do have a smidgen to discuss. First of all, I never really put down and stop playing mahjong phone games for any extended periods of time. I’ve been playing a lot of Riichi City as always. Recently, I’m on a pretty significant losing streak which has been frustrating. However, it’s Riichi City‘s second anniversary and I got some of my yearly stats. They’re a lot better looking than the overall results of my most recent ten matches, and I found out that I played even more mahjong than I thought last year. In addition to Riichi City, I’ve also been slowly getting back into Stardew Valley. I got back into my very early game, beach farm path. I plan for it to be my very first Joja path. Later this upcoming week, I’m hoping to finish up Like a Dragon Gaiden finally so I’m ready for Infinite Wealth on launch day. I had been holding off near the very end of the game because I still wanted to do more sidequests. Now I don’t really have time to run around doing side stuff anymore. – Jenae

I was all over the place gaming this week. I started the week off checking out the JAST release of Goblins on the March: Breed all Humans. This one is a very simple title, but the artwork here is top tier. I’ll have a full review coming this week for those interested in taking your horde and conquering some maidens.

A good part of the week was spent playing Blue Archive as well. I skipped through some story I will have to go back and read to get more rolls on Swimsuit Hina, which I had to get off of pity this time. Kinda sucked that I had to use that many resources for this, but I got a few other three star girls along the way who I love as well, Reisa is just adorable as hell! I’m pretty stoked for the upcoming events and the anime. Blue Archive has one of the best stories of any gacha game, so this should turn out really well.

The rest of the time was spent with the Switch release of Neptunia: Sisters vs. Sisters. I’ll have a review posted this week for this one as well. -Steve

What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!

The post oprainfall Week in Gaming: Jan 14 – 20 appeared first on oprainfall.

It’s been a while but we’re back from the holidays, and with it some ponderings on a slew of games played during the end of the year!

My sister and I spent the holiday playing the first three Ys games on the Turbografx CD, courtesy of the new Analogue Duo I bought for my husband. Ys is a series I’ve often said I wanted to check out but never bothered because there are so many games and the continuity was slightly confusing. The first three games are ones my husband played a long time ago and remembers fondly, so we finally just said screw it and started from the beginning (without owning an actual PC88, that is.) I can definitively say I do not like bump combat, so I let my sister play the majority of Ys I and II. I appreciate the simplicity of that game design, I’m just far too impatient for it. Ys II‘s addition of magic helped, but it was still overall not my cup of tea. Bump combat aside, the first two Ys games were incredibly charming in their presentation, with lovely sprite work and portraits that felt nostalgic despite me never having played them in the past. They definitely evoked that sense of 80s aesthetic I grew up with though, and the straightforward story only added to that feeling. There was no grand sweeping narrative, no major plot twists, no deep and misunderstood villain. It was just Adol the adventurer, doing his best to save the folks who needed his help. That’s not to say Ys I and II lacked a story or didn’t have anything to say about the fallibility of humans and the ways hubris can fracture otherwise utopian worlds, but compared to modern standards, it’s pretty quaint.

Ys III was a major departure from Ys I and II, both in story and gameplay. I played the majority of this one, since I preferred the side-scrolling action compared to the overhead bump combat, and I’ve gotta say it was both incredibly fun and incredibly infuriating at times. Some of the boss designs were just flat out unfair for the style of combat, and I banged my head against it longer than I would like (I’m looking at you, hidden cave boss with the bullshit teleporting crystals).  Having rescued Ys from evil, Adol and Dogi continue their adventures, this time heading to Dogi’s homeland after hearing of nefarious things happening there. An ancient evil is being resurrected (as you do) and Adol takes it upon himself to help Dogi’s village. This will take him through mines, up a mountain, into the pit of a volcano, and deep into the heart of a corrupt empire. Again, not the most convoluted story, but a satisfying one in its simplicity. The characters are silly and suffer from some particularly bad voice acting, especially compared to Ys I and II, but the gameplay is solid and responsive. I had a blast with this one, and it’s definitely the kind of game I’m glad I played with others around so I could kvetch and laugh in equal parts with everyone else.

I would be remiss not to touch on how phenomenal the music was in all three of these games. Straight bangers the whole way through, and I can see why Nihon Falcom has the reputation it does for producing games with magnificent soundtracks. I’m looking forward to advancing through the rest of the series soon.

Continuing with the Analogue Duo, we also spent an hour or so with the charming Dragon Half board game on the Turbo CD. Seeing as the game does not have an English patch, we fumbled through to the best of our ability, but even not knowing what we were doing, the game was a lot of fun. Dragon Half features an eclectic cast of characters, and each of them break off to form four different teams that players control. You roll dice to advance around the board, which is just an arrangement of towns and castles, where you can buy items, get into fights, or take on quests, depending on the color square you land on. Blue tiles are shops and quests; yellow tiles are events – both good and bad – and red tiles are battles. Battles are played out using RNG, with the enemy and player taking turns. At the start of each round, there’s a character screen with the enemy and your team, under which is a power bar that ebbs and flows. You determine how well your team will do by timing pressing Button I such that the enemy has fewer bars and you have more bars under your character. Once that’s decided, the battle plays out automatically. If you have less power than the enemy, your team will often make mistakes, either falling down and missing the enemy, or sometimes damaging your own party instead. This mechanic can also work in your favor if the enemy has less power than you on its turn. Once you win, you earn money and experience. You’ll need money to buy the items quest givers ask for, so it’s a fun gameplay loop regardless of your level of Japanese understanding. I’d love to see an English patch of this so I can better know what I’m doing, but it was a ton of fun even with my beginner-level Japanese thanks to the animations and voice acting. If you’re a fan of Dragon Half, this game’s a hoot. – Leah

Super Mario Bros. 3

Before the holiday week, I had continued my slow and steady foray through SMB 3, crashing and burning plenty, yet it was a fun bit of gaming. Mostly fun, thankfully, however moments of actual frustration did pop up from time to time. I have to say, some of the stage designs are particularly obnoxious, probably on purpose too, having taken me several tries to figure out the necessary timing or platforming sequence to successfully get through. The forts in Worlds 4 and 5 were the main culprits of my difficulties then. I’m glad stockpiling lives is fairly easy, so far at least. Anyway, I managed to complete World 4 and make it through both of World 5’s maps as well.

I also wish to share, what has impressed me from the start are the graphics. I had forgotten how good this game can look. It’s no Kirby’s Adventure, yet SMB 3 has its moments where I can’t help but to appreciate the thought that went into particular designs. And with the cleverness and creativity of the world themes, stage designs, and enemy designs, you have a notable visual achievement here.

Another observation, it was at this point when the game started to distinctly feel more challenging. Fewer easy stages in which I could complete without taking a hit, more stages and forts where I’ll fail several times before making it through. Worlds 7 and 8, I’m fearing, will be a nightmare for me.

Unfortunately, once the holidays came about, my playthrough came to a halt. Not because of a lack of time, but because I couldn’t muster the want to do so. For several years now the holidays haven’t felt like they used to. I no longer look forward to them and the resultant depression is real. I can only hope the scales tip for the better sooner rather than later, as I would very much like to game, but at the same time, I don’t feel like it, and that feeling is currently the greater of the clashing two. – Drew D.

This week in gaming I finally finished up the very first Ys title. I decided to play the Chronicles version on Steam and I had a lot of fun with it. Though that last tower was a real pain in the ass with all the backtracking and such. Looking forward to digging into Ys II when I get a chance.

The other game I played last week was AEW: Fight Forever. I ended up getting a very late review copy of this and I have to say the game overall is pretty fun. It plays a lot like the N64 wrestling games such as WCW vs. nWo: World Tour, but has been greatly modernized. There are a good number of customization options and the story mode here is pretty fun as well. There are something I’ve found lacking here but I will go into more of that when I write up the full review this week.

Also on tap this week, Goblins! I guess Goblin Slayer lost in this world! – Steve

What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!

The post oprainfall Week in Gaming: Jan 7 – 13 appeared first on oprainfall.

Super Mario Bros. 3

This week, I didn’t get to play too much, but I did complete World 3 and some of 4. I should have mentioned last week; I’m playing through this by completing every stage without the use of warping or P Wings. My hopes with this playthrough are to appreciate every stage’s design, secrets, and challenge, and to gain a renewed awe for a game that provided so much fun in my childhood.

I continue to be pretty terrible at it, though. My rusted skills don’t seem to be improving, most likely due to my inability to commit serious time to the game. Or I’m just getting older. Nonetheless, I’m enjoying all of the pleasant reminders of why I loved this game so much. That nostalgia factor is just one reason why I also love retro gaming in general.

A slight tangent now, earlier this week I was casually looking at my collection of Game Boy games and something came over me. I was remembering when I had gotten several of the games I was looking at and realized that I would never get to experience the feeling of purchasing or receiving a new Game Boy cartridge ever again. Yes I know, this isn’t quite a unique feeling, as systems have come and gone, but the Game Boy’s lifespan was quite long and was a large part of my young gaming life. It was a moment of…sadness? Loss? Longing, I think is the best way to describe it, though I did feel hints of those other feelings, too. It was strange, knowing I would never again get to look forward to the release of a new, physical Game Boy game. Nor opening the box, popping open the plastic case, or, as I often did, read the instruction booklet.

Just another indication that I’m getting older and time goes on. – Drew D.

This week in gaming I split my time between a couple of interesting titles. The first was YS 1 & 2 Chronicles. I’d never played a version of this despite playing other entries in the series, so I thought I’d give it a go. The bump mechanic is a little strange at first but it does work well overall. The game isn’t overly difficult, though there was one boss battle that gave me fits for a few minutes til I figured out exactly how to handle him. I’m just about to wrap-up the first game here, and I look forward to getting back to this later in the week.

The other game I’ve been into, Custom Mech Wars from D3 Publisher. I decided to take this one on for review cause I love mechs and EDF, so I figured this would be a mix of the two. It sorta is, but I think the mission structure could be a bit a better. I do love the almost infinite amount of ways you can customize your mechs, and the gameplay is pretty decent so far. I’ll hopefully have a full review of this one next week. -Steve

River City Rival Showdown

It’s not a secret that I have a huge soft spot for Kunio and Kunio-related games, so when the River City Rival Showdown remaster was announced for the Switch, naturally, I was interested and I picked up a copy. I loved the original version on the 3DS and I am happy to report that the game still plays well on the Switch. This game is just a real vibe with a very simple yet addicting gameplay loop. You have three days to explore town, complete quests and level up your character by beating up other gang members and delinquents. The sprites look more crisp than on the 3DS and the relatively lowpoly look works for the game giving it a rather distinct style compared to other modern beat em ups. What I forgot was just how much lore and worldbuilding is buried in this game. Just about every NPC has something to say and a lot of it further fleshes out the characters and the setting they’re in. It can be a lot to take in especially on a first playthrough, as you are trying to keep track of who is who. Still, the game lends itself quite nicely to replays as you likely won’t find or experience every event in one playthrough. There are even multiple endings based on your decisions throughout your journey. It’s a rather unique title overall and I was happy to revisit it. I’ll probably stream this one of these days. – Justin

It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve added to one of these. Honestly, I’m somewhat back in one of my gaming slumps, or at least I had been most of these last few weeks, but I’ve been playing little bits here and there. A week or two ago, I was playing various Tetris games I have on Switch simply to pass a little time when I wasn’t sure what else I felt like. And of course I’ve still been keeping up with mahjong on my phone. I actually just got a great achievement the other day in Riichi City. I got their The Path to God achievement after coming in 1st and/or 2nd place for ten 4-player matches in a row. I was one win away from the next ranked room after that, but I had two losses and now I’m not quite there yet. In addition to this, most recently I’ve been trying to get back into Atelier Ryza 2. I’ve been playing Ryza 2 on and off for the last few years. I’m not sure why I can’t seem to ever finish it, but I’m enjoying playing it again. However, I’ve realized that all of my current character sidequests, which show up in the main story tab, are quite a bit further ahead than the actual main story. A couple of these sidequests require me to craft certain things through alchemy which require materials I’m not even far enough in the story to gather yet. Ultimately, I’m not super sucked into anything right now, but I’ve been cutting back enough on games during this latest slump, I should be playing a little bit more now. I’ve enjoyed getting back into Ryza 2 again. – Jenae

What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!

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