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.

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.

Triangle Strategy

First up, is Triangle Strategy. This game came out at the very beginning of last year and I picked up a copy after my birthday, at the end of March. Seeing as it’s been quite a while, it’s not as fresh in my memory anymore. I do remember immensely enjoying Triangle Strategy though. What I love about Triangle Strategy is the deep story and really getting you to care about these people and worry about the choices you’ve made. I found myself desperately wanting to get to a point where citizens of the realm respect my party and no longer buy the lies of my enemies. However, it’s not a perfect SRPG. While I am absolutely absorbed into the story, there are a lot of characters and everyone is a unique story character. So between stopping for story content in between each main story stage, watching little scenes for every single character who’s filled up my army and grinding the mere one or two at level, side leveling stages that are provided, the game can get tiring after so many hours. I love what I’ve experienced so far, but I definitely had to put this one down and take a break after… I don’t know, maybe around 40 hours at least.

Tactics Ogre: Reborn

Next, I wanna discuss yet another SRPG I got into. This one I played a lot more recently and again, I’m still working my way through the game. I’ve never played any of the prior versions of Tactics Ogre. The Switch copy I pre-ordered of Tactics Ogre: Reborn is my first time playing. Now, I have played a smidgen of Final Fantasy Tactics before, which is a later game Yasumi Matsuno also worked on. However, FF Tactics was definitely more of a dated SRPG, with some mechanics that made the game a lot harder for me at least, and I never got very far into it. I do love various strategy RPGs, though, and with all the latest quality of life features added to Tactics Ogre, I decided it was worth trying out. I’m really glad I picked it up. The story and battle flow balance is a lot better than in Triangle Strategy, my first 2022 SRPG. Although, because of this, I wouldn’t say I’ve been quite as absorbed into the story. It’s still a decent story, I just don’t think it really pulls me in to the extent of other RPGs. Currently I’m in the final chapter, which I’ve read is supposedly the longest one with a lot to do. I’m looking forward to continuing the adventure later this year.

Atelier

I’m gonna cheat a little here and make Atelier its own category. I enjoyed a lot of Atelier in 2022. At the end of 2021 I had just completed Atelier Sophie, having received the whole Atelier Mysterious Trilogy Deluxe Pack in a Koei Tecmo giveaway. Thus, at the end of that year, beginning of 2022, I got into Atelier Firis. Firis I didn’t play as carefree and blind as I did Sophie, the time limit entries in the series always stress me out a bit. I still enjoyed a good bit of the game, though, and I’m really glad I finished it, because Atelier Lydie and Suelle so far is another really fun, more carefree title, much like Sophie. I believe I’m no more than halfway through Lydie and Suelle at the moment, I might not even be halfway yet, I’m not sure. What I love about Lydie and Suelle in particular, are the battles. The battle UI in Atelier L and S is fantastic. Even though I haven’t finished Lydie and Suelle yet, after how much I loved Sophie, I was dying to get my hands on Atelier Sophie 2. In late September I started my Sophie 2 adventure. In Atelier Sophie 2, I’ve gotten a kick out of putting Sophie in Ryza’s original outfit. Sophie is cute as hell in the outfit and I much prefer it to her usual, oversized dress coat thing she normally has going on; though I do kinda miss the little whale necklace she usually wears. I spent a good number of hours on the Atelier franchise in 2022, and that’s why it’s made this list. It’s typically a wonderful and relaxing time well spent.

Stardew Valley

Fourth, I’d like to discuss Stardew Valley. This is one of my additions to the list that isn’t something I was playing for the first time. Regardless, it’s another charming and fun game, and I love periodically going back to it. I actually got myself a digital Switch copy in the summer of 2021. I hadn’t played on PS4 since before all the larger update stuff finally came out on consoles, and I thought playing on my Switch with an 8BitDo controller would be a great time. Turns out I was right. I returned to my main/original Switch path and made a lot of progress. I started a new beach farm which is going to be my very first Joja path and I even did a bit of multiplayer farming. Sadly, my 8BitDo’s battery decided to kick the bucket recently, at only two and a half years old. Fortunately, however, I’ve just received a new 8BitDo controller as a late Christmas gift, so I’ll eventually be going back to enjoy more Stardew Valley and get to continue playing it how I intended to.

Mahjong Soul

The fifth game I most enjoyed in 2022, is another older title I’ve played before, Mahjong Soul. Mahjong Soul is a mobile game where you play Riichi Mahjong in various ranked rooms with a bunch of other real people around the world. In my opinion, it’s the best way to play Riichi Mahjong. I love having a character who voices the things I call: Pon, Riichi, Tsumo, etc. And being able to get different tablecloths and tile backs and whatnot is pretty nice. I don’t have much of the cosmetic extras unlocked myself since I don’t spend money on mobile games, but I did unlock my very first non starter character in 2022. Overall, I’ve been having a blast slowly ranking up in Mahjong Soul and becoming more knowledgeable about the game of Riichi Mahjong in general. Feel free to check out my clip from Christmas Eve on Twitter of my latest Yakuman win, just pay no attention to the sound going out of sync, Twitter tends to do that nowadays.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3

Okay I know I said this list wasn’t in any particular order, but this last entry is by far the best thing I played all of 2022. If you want to read a more in depth review of Xenoblade Chronicles 3, you can find the review I wrote over here. Like I said in my review, it wasn’t what I expected. I expected a somewhat grander game considering it’s the latest Xenoblade title. It simply didn’t feel complete in the end. And with how they advertised it as the conclusion to the arc, which they started in the first title, I expected more. Still, with how simply burnt out and not in the mood for so many things I’ve been since 2021 and after all the games I didn’t finish last year, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was the breath of fresh air I needed. It might not have been what I expected and wanted in the latest Xenoblade, but I had loads of fun playing it anyways and it’s one game I had no problem finishing. Monolith Soft never fails to give us a good time that’s worth every minute played and every penny spent.

Well that’s it, that’s my 2022 in Review. These are the games I most enjoyed and spent the most time on last year. I hope maybe in 2023 I can possibly return to, and actually finish, some of the games I started this decade that I’ve left unfinished. We’ll see how things go though. I also hope to have many more fun new experiences. Right now I’m anticipating Harvestella which I wasn’t able to get at launch and is scheduled to arrive on the 20th, I adored the demo. I also look forward to playing at least a little bit of Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden which as far as I know, I will be buying for the fifth and fourth time. I’ve been sitting on some cash waiting for the chance to buy them again. What about all of you reading this? What games are you hoping to enjoy in 2023?

The post 2022 in Review: Jenae’s Favorite Games appeared first on oprainfall.

I still haven’t gotten back to gaming as much as I usually like to. At this point, it’s possibly only part gaming slump and part getting distracted by other stuff, plus simply having been a while since I was consistently gaming like normal. Regardless, I did get back into Stardew Valley again this week. Kind of dropped it for a week or two and then this past week, I picked it back up and finally finished restoring the community center on my main Switch path. This is actually the first time I’ve finished it since my original path back on PS4, before any major updates were added to the console versions. Since now there’s quite a bit more postgame content than back in 2017, I’ve gotten started on that, been collecting golden walnuts and slowly working towards unlocking stuff. I also decided to go ahead and have a kid with my usual Stardew husband, Shane. I don’t normally get far enough into these farming sims to have kids, but I figured why not? It doesn’t seem like a very tedious addition and now I get to see all of Shane’s new parental comments and whatnot. – Jenae

This has been a pretty light gaming week for me. Outside of my usual Final Fantasy XIV activities (really trying to catch up on PVP) and rolling on the new summer outfits for Nier Re[in]carnation, I’ve been mainly jumping around with Xbox GamePass titles. As mentioned in a couple previous columns, I finished Unpacking and poked around some more at Chinatown Detective Agency. I also played around a little bit with the Sonic Origins collection, though not enough to get a good feel for it. I will forever lament the music changes, even if I understand the licensing issues, but Ice Cap Zone was my absolute favorite Sonic song and it just isn’t the same without its music. – 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: July 3 – 9 appeared first on oprainfall.

Mega Man Maverick Hunter X

Rockman Day was a couple days ago and to celebrate I decided to return to Mega Man Maverick Hunter X, the remake of the classic SNES action-platformer Mega Man X. I had not played this game in a very long time, but remembered it being one of my favorite PSP games. I was happy to find that the game still holds up remarkably well. The game looks absolutely stunning on the PlayStation Portable and I appreciate how much extra depth and detail was given to the backgrounds in each stage. The game does make some changes in some of the levels, most notably in terms of the powerup locations, but I didn’t find that it hurt the experience at all. On top of this, they added a lot of voice acting for all of the major characters and the performances are solid all around. Really I was impressed at how much this game went out of its way to establish the Mavericks’ motives in siding with Sigma. This is aided by the fact that the game features a 25 minute OVA, which acts as a prequel to this game’s events. And if that wasn’t enough, you can even play as one of the main antagonists in a separate campaign. It’s an overall amazing package for Mega Man fans and one that I highly recommend if you feel like dusting off your PSP. –Justin

Perhaps by now my weekly gaming exploits are becoming boring to read about. I’ve been playing smidgens of the same few games lately, occasionally adding in one and then dropping it a few days later, forever burnt out and hopping to my next mini adventure. However, I have been somewhat glued to Stardew Valley pretty regularly these last few weeks. I do feel like I’ll be needing a break soon though, but yet again I made some progress on my main farm. I got the second house upgrade, bought a few new furniture pieces and I purchased the wallpaper and flooring catalogue so I could decorate my newly added rooms more freely.

Aside from Stardew, I also played Tetris Effect: Connected and Mahjong Soul this week. In Tetris Effect: Connected, I got further in “Journey” mode and participated in another weekly ritual event. Unfortunately, all of us Tetris Effect players across the world failed to reach the goal this time, so no special event avatar was unlocked. And lastly is Mahjong Soul, which I wanna talk about again because I made some significant progress this week. Just a couple days ago, I went up from the 1 star Adept rank to 2 star Adept. It took me a long time, numerous months of playing off and on, because anytime you lose a match, you lose a chunk of the points you previously earned. I always get into a losing streak at some point, it’ll likely be quite some time before I ever get to Expert. Maybe that’s a good thing though? Once you hit Expert, you don’t necessarily stay there. If you lose often enough, you’ll get demoted back down to Adept. Ranks Expert and higher all have the chance of being demoted when you lose too much. – Jenae

I’ve spent most of my gaming time this week working on an upcoming otome review (which I’m super enjoying so far), but I did get in some time on Final Fantasy XIV, as well. The most recent patch brought with it a bunch of side-content, including the new daily Arkasodara Tribal Quests, and the weekly Delivery Quest with everyone’s favorite mom, Ameliance Leveilleur, and her cougar friends. With the Final Days averted, Ameliance is looking to help students from around the world attend college for free, and she’s gathered up some of the most powerful merchants to help her see that endeavor come to fruition. I’ve always loved the Delivery Quest stories, but seeing the twins’ mom get one over on Rowena is probably the best one yet, as most FFXIV players would agree. I’ve also been keeping up on my mahjong matches in-game and just dithering about between story sequences. MMO downtime is always great for other gaming opportunities, so I hope to get a lot more time into my otome game as well, and hope you all look forward to that review! – 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: June 5 – 11 appeared first on oprainfall.

This week I didn’t play a ton of any one game, but I did play a few different things. In Stardew Valley, I continued to make progress on both my main Switch file and on my new beach farm. Last week I mentioned Robin was building my first chicken coop. Well, she finished building it and I got one white chicken and a blue one. I may get myself a couple more blue chickens in the future sometime. Also, the traveling cart finally had a truffle for sale. So two of the four master fish are the very last items I need to collect for the community center. Over on Crystal Isles Farm (my beach path), I merely kept trudging through my first spring. There was a little mine exploration, a bit of fishing, I continued to farm my small plot of crops and then I finished up spring and planted new summer crops, mainly blueberries. – Jenae

Alongside my Stardew Valley fun, I also slowly got back into Atelier Lydie and Suelle. In Atelier Lydie and Suelle, I finished up the vacation chapter in which the party explores an underwater painting. We found ourselves hanging out with Captain Backen and we traveled around to check out what kind of treasure he’s been keeping safe. Then I got a tiny bit into the following chapter where I’ve started going through all the newly available story scenes. There always seems to be loads of those stories all over town, each new chapter. Though I’ve realized that’s pretty much the standard in Atelier games where there’s one main town as your home base. Later on, when I wanted a break from all the new chapter Atelier happenings, I jumped back into Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition. I’ve already beaten the definitive edition but find myself doing the same thing I’ve done with XC2, periodically grinding further and completing various endgame sidequests and other stuff I hadn’t completed beforehand. This past week I mostly just fought a handful of enemies around level 82 and got everyone up to 80 or 81 from level 79. Also, earlier tonight I started working on unlocking more of the optional skill trees as well. I got Sharla’s fourth skill tree and have gone back to complete old Colony 9 quests so I can get Shulk’s next. My Colony 9 affinity isn’t high enough yet for his. And that’s about it for my latest weekly gaming, well besides a little bit of Mahjong Soul on my phone, as usual. – 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: May 22-28 appeared first on oprainfall.

Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising

Full disclosure, I’m a backer for the Eiyuden Chronicle Kickstarter, and also purchased Rising at a discounted price due to that backing. I’m definitely not disappointed that I did, either. I’ve played this side game for about six hours now and it’s a solid little action RPG with a colorful cast of characters, interesting world, good music and deceptively fun combat – especially after you unlock Link Attacks and elemental runes. You play as CJ, a scavenger on the hunt for a giant rune as part of her coming-of-age ritual back home, and she’s come to New Neveah to explore the Runebarrows in order to complete her mission. In typical RPG fashion, there’s main quests and tons of sidequests, but I like how the game uses a stamp system to incentivize side-questing and make it feel less like busy-work and more like CJ’s actually accomplishing something. Completing sidequests helps grow the town, providing CJ with an assortment of businesses she can visit to aid in her exploration, so it behooves you to do as many as possible. Meanwhile, the main quest focuses mostly on rune bandits and helping the town thrive despite an increase in monsters. It’s standard fare, but it’s fun and executed really well, and I can’t ask for much more. – Leah

NieR Re[in]carnation

I make no attempt to hide the fact that I love Final Fantasy XIV, so when my favorite MMO and NieR Re[in]carnation had a collab, of course I wanted to write about it. I’ve been playing the NieR mobile since it released in the West, and as the first (and only) gacha game I’ve ever bothered with, it’s pretty okay. I’m complete free-to-play, but I specifically saved up my gems to roll on the XIV costumes (as seen above). As for the collab itself, it’s basically a simplified retelling of Emet-Selch’s story from Shadowbringers, and so of course I loved it. One of Re[in]carnation‘s strengths is the storybook-style cutscenes it uses for its story bits, and they did a fantastic job here with Emet’s sad tale. I also liked the little touches in his boss fight and how the game recreated XIV‘s AOE effects and such. Hearing Masayoshi Soken’s “‘Neath Dark Waters” playing for the fights was a decided bonus. This was just a fun little collab that smooshed together two games I enjoy. – Leah

Stardew Valley

I didn’t play much this past week besides more Stardew Valley. First of all, I did end up starting that new beach farm I was thinking about starting last week. I wanted to try out a new map and see what it’s like. Obviously I was able to make a little more progress playing solo, no multiplayer coordination, so I got a good bit into the first season. Once I started the path and got through the intro, I sectioned off an area in the sand for my first crops, which clearly I’ll be manually watering. You can’t efficiently use the smaller regular dirt spot where sprinklers are allowed until you’ve upgraded your axe a couple times. Money making has been going extremely slow so far. I haven’t gotten around to doing much mine adventuring yet and there aren’t as many shells and things spawning on my beach as I thought there would be. I really love the style of the beach farm though. That’s about all I’ve done on that farm at this point, got my starting crop area set up and cleared out various trees, did a smidgen of fishing and donated some of the easier, early game things to the community center. I did say I wanted this to be a Joja path and I think I still do, because this needs to be a different farm than my main for me to have a reason to play. But that doesn’t mean I can’t do the majority of the community center myself first and get all the good rewards, before I buy that Joja membership.

After getting the beach farm set up, I went back to my main farm on my Switch copy of the game. I’m right at the end of trying to finish up the community center and getting to all the fun stuff added in the last big update. I still need a truffle, along with two of the four fish shown in the Master Fisher’s Bundle. Honestly, seeing as I still need two more barn upgrades to get a pig who will look for truffles and the fact that even the easiest two of the four fish I can choose from are difficult, I’ve decided to proceed through my regular farm life, waiting for those last few things to show up in the traveling cart shop. Two of the required fish are sold in the cart and two aren’t, but I only realized this week (took me long enough to notice) that you only need two of them. In the meantime, I’m trying to get more profit flowing. I’ve been regularly hovering around 20-30k in my Stardew wallet with all of my regrow crops planted in the greenhouse and need to start saving more than that. So, I increased my fish ponds from one to four. I’m farming sturgeon for caviar to sell and hoping some rainbow trout will give me prismatic shards. I got Robin to build a coop so I can start raising chickens, hoping maybe I’ll hatch one of Shane’s blue chickens. And finally, before I realized I only need two of the four “master fish,” I actually paid the 25k needed to finish the bundle that fixes the bus. Thus, I took some trips to the desert this week as well, got to floor 25 of the Skull Cavern on one of my trips and I also finished the required quests to unlock Qi’s little casino room. – Jenae

I missed the boat for this last week so I’m going to make this one a double. I started last week finishing off Seven Pirates H. I was pretty excited for this since it had been quite a while since I had gotten my hands on a good Ecchi title from Idea Factory. The middle of the week I played through JAST’s upcoming release Neko Night. This Nukige title features two adorable cat girls doing some very naughty things to the protagonist. The most unique feature of this one was the inclusion of ASMR audio. I will have a full review posted later this week. Lastly I’m about halfway through my first full play-through of Trek to Yomi. I had really good time with this and loved the multiple story paths you can choose. It gives the game a ton of replay value.

This week was one of my slower weeks but I am working on a review of the Steam port of Brigandine The Legend of Runersia. This will mostly be an overview of how the port turned out since there is a full review of the Switch version on the site. I also started reading Hatsumira -from the future undying- from our friends at Frontwing. This one has our protagonist thrust into an fantasy world filled with warring nations and monster girls. I’ve only begun this huge visual novel but I’ve enjoyed it so far! I am working on one other title under embargo I hope to have a review posted for by the end of the week as well. I am pretty shocked by how this one plays actually, I didn’t expect it to be much going into it. – 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: May 15 – 21 appeared first on oprainfall.

Pocky & Rocky Reshrined

This week, I finally received my copy of Tengo Project’s latest release, Kiki KaiKai – Kuro Manto no Nazo, which will be released in the West next month as Pocky & Rocky Reshrined. Like Wild Guns Reloaded and Ninja Saviors before it, Pocky & Rocky Reshrined is the latest retro revival from this humble team. They took yet another Super Nintendo cult classic the team previously worked on called Pocky & Rocky, and completely revamped it to turn it into something that is much more than just a remaster. In fact, calling it a “remaster” can be a bit of a stretch as both the levels and the story deviate rather heavily from the Super Nintendo game it’s based on after the second stage. Still, this overhead run-and-gun shooter is one that should be on your radar. The graphics are nothing short of mesmerizing. Every single frame is packed with detailed sprites moving around and interacting with you and the environment. It’s the kind of game where you can easily be distracted and take several hits or even lose a life because you’re too busy taking in all of the sights. While the game is overall easier than the SNES game, it still packs a solid challenge with some levels throwing some very tricky obstacles and seemingly endless hordes of enemies your way. Thankfully, you are given unlimited continues and the game allows you to continue at certain checkpoints instead of the beginning of a stage with the checkpoints usually being before a boss. It is a short adventure at only eight stages, but with a surprisingly interesting story and a great cast of playable characters with unique gameplay elements, it’s a release that fans of the series or people who enjoy 2D arcade style games won’t want to miss. There are a couple flaws, however: the “Extra easy” mode needs to be unlocked by collecting 3,000 coins dropped by enemies; and the two player co-op mode will only be available after you complete the Story mode. Both of these are rather baffling design choices but ultimately did not ruin the experience for me. – Justin

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 / Torna ~ The Golden Country

For whatever reason I haven’t been gaming a whole lot these past few weeks. I’ve been hopping between only a few different games and playing them all for a small amount of time each. Maybe it wasn’t the best time to start my Torna new game plus run after all. Nonetheless, since my update last week, I’ve made a little more progress. I told you all in the last article that Hugo had just joined the team. Well now I’ve got not only Hugo, but also Minoth, the final blade character who joins us in the prequel. I did a little bit of grinding once I had everyone collected and I made my way to Aletta, Addam’s domain. I spent some time there doing some more leveling and then started the journey towards the capital.

Along with making progress in Torna, I also did a little messing around in the main game. Like I mentioned last week, I periodically go back to the main game to raise blades and sidequest further. This time around I went to a special area in the Uraya titan’s stomach I believe and attempted to farm some legendary core crystals off a high level, unique enemy there. I used up all my bonus exp a while back to raise my party to 98, so I was more than ready. Unfortunately, my luck hasn’t been so great. I still have yet to acquire KOS-MOS. But I did unlock one of the last few new game plus blades I’m missing. – Jenae

Stardew Valley

I played a smidgen of Stardew at the end of the week. I actually got started on a new multiplayer farm, we’re only at the very beginnings of it. I got a little starter crop area set up and I’m trying to collect some wood. I forgot how weak you are in the beginning and how slow the game is overall at this point, stamina runs out fast and you can only do so much each game day. This new farm is on the hilltop map which I’ve never used before. Having played a good amount of hours now on both PS4 and Switch, since originally getting into Stardew Valley, I’m starting to wanna change things up on new farms. I’ve been doing that by trying out different maps and using the remix option for the community center bundles. However, now I’m potentially getting the urge to start another new solo farm and try out yet another unique farm layout. It might be time to try out either the river or beach map. Plus, I haven’t ever sold out to Joja before and I marry Shane every single time. I’m wondering if perhaps I should finally try out a new spouse and bow down to the big corporation.  – Jenae

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

You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!

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Stardew Valley is the little farming/life sim that just keeps on giving. Although the game officially launched back in 2016, ConcernedApe has continued to add content in the form of free updates, and to prove they’re not quite done yet the release date for the next big update has been announced over at the developers blog.

Right now, ConcernedApe is being pretty hush-hush regarding the specifics of the new content, but we are given a little information: Wild Bait, a next to useless item previously, will now give the player a chance to catch two fish instead of one, and now every spouse will have a unique 14-heart event after marriage. Players will have the option (on PC) to take a screenshot of their entire farm, a nice feature for sharing your farm on forums and whatnot. It was also previously revealed in this Tweet that fish farming would be a new feature, even allowing the player to collect their roe.

Beyond that information the blog post simply mentions “…nearly every aspect of the game has been expanded or improved upon…”. It’ll be interesting to see what more is in store when the update launches on November 26th for PC, and (hopefully) a week or two after on consoles and mobile platforms. A little thing I noticed is that in the image provided in the blog post we can see a dog with different coloration than the games normal dog, AND in the fish farming Tweet we see a different color cat. This suggests to me that 1.4 will provide more options for the appearance of your pet.

ConcernedApe did have other news to announce besides this update as well. XBox and PS4 are now updated to 1.3, the PS Vita version will still be updated to fix some performance issues, but will remain in version 1.2, and that there currently no plans to bring multiplayer to the mobile version. There’s also some other stuff about merchandising and the mobile version’s nomination on the Google Play’s “User’s Choice” awards. If you’re interested in that I highly recommend checking the blog post for yourself.

Stardew Valley is currently available on PC, PlayStation 4, XBox One, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation Vita as well as iOS and Android.

The post Stardew Valley 1.4 Update Coming Soon appeared first on oprainfall.

Seems there’s a treat for Stardew Valley fans out, in the form of the Stardew Valley Piano Collections album. Currently available on iTunes, Bandcamp, and Spotify, this album features a total of 22 songs comprising of piano renditions of the indie farming sim’s soundtrack. The collection was put together by pianist Augustine Maguya Gonzalez and arranger Matthew Bridgham of the Materia Collective, with of course the game’s creator and composer Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone.

The album’s Bandcamp page also hosts pre-orders for the Limited Edition Compact Disc. This CD will be shipping some time in October~November this year.

(source)

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Now that you’re thinking of cubic cows, let me explain this idea in more detail. Staxel is a farming simulator with voxel-based graphics along with exploration and building. While there is not a real story to get things in motion, the idea is that you’re new in town and will be taking care of the old farm. A NPC named Farmer Fan greets you and shows you the ropes of life on the farm.

At first everything is quite similar to Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley but in a first-person perspective. Use the hoe to prepare the land, buy seeds, plant them and then water the plants. After a couple of days they will grow so you can sell them and repeat the cycle. The major difference to other farming games comes from the building aspect. If you want to build a barn to raise animals, you have to literally build it. You will get a sign that is put on the floor which will show you the area of construction and the requirements for the building as well. In the example of the barn it needs to have a roof and two troughs for the animal’s food. Then you have to build the walls, floor and roof using square blocks like in Minecraft.

Since I have never played Minecraft this was a bit weird at first: I was expecting the building to be finished once the requirements were met. But it’s kind of fun to get more invested in the building part, unlike other games where you just pay and wait for someone else to build it for you. However, I feel that the game didn’t explain this properly in the tutorial so it’s something that definitely needs more work.

But that’s not the only concept that is similar to Minecraft. In order to get the wood blocks to build, you first need to cut trees, and process the wood through a saw that you can use on a table in town. On this section I have mixed feelings. I appreciate the attempt at realism, that in order to build things you have to use different tools. For some furniture, for instance, you may need to buy glue, combine it with the wood using a table that’s designed for it, then use a different table to carve into it with additional ingredients. This really emulates the difficulty of building things in real life, unlike most games where you just combine things in mid-air to build a rocket engine.

The problem with this is that it is slow: just sawing several pieces of wood at the same time can take half a day in game. Also, building things can be complicated at first. You have to gather different materials, some that are not available to buy and you don’t know where to get them, which can feel overwhelming.

Something to note is that the game just launched on Early Access on Steam, but it has been in beta for quite some time through their own website. So while I did experience a couple of things that I feel were problematic, these may go away as more work is put into it.

An example of this is the economy of the game. Seeds feel expensive since you buy them individually and there’s not much return on the investment. Food for animals, materials, and pretty much everything else is also quite expensive considering how hard is to make money at the start of the game. But the developers apparently are working on balancing this in the future.

In regards to content, while the basic mechanics are solid and in place, there’s nothing much to do. The tutorial basically shows you how to grow plants and make buildings but that’s the only thing. There are a few quests involving the construction of buildings, and collecting bugs like in Animal Crossing, but nothing story related similar to the Community Center in Stardew Valley. From what I gather on the forums this is something that will be added, but take it into account if you’re like me and you prefer to have an end goal from the beginning.

The game takes place on an island that is not very big and there is only a forest, sand, and a mountain made of stone at the moment. While the map is randomly generated there’s not much randomness to it. And unlike Minecraft there is no combat at all, again something to keep in mind so you don’t go in with the wrong expectations.

In addition to the single player mode there’s also a multiplayer mode which is, well technically the same but with other people, but I can see the appeal of farming with someone else. Currently the way that it works is that one player will set up the server and everybody else will connect to his/her PC as clients. While I couldn’t test it with anybody I saw several videos on Youtube of people playing like this, so it seems to be working properly.

And finally there’s a Creative mode in which you can buy any item for free and items are unlimited. While this clearly kills the fun of building your farm from nothing it’s for the people who just want to create unique buildings, towns from scrap and overall customize the world as they like. My experience with Minecraft comes from watching my niece play it and I can confirm that she loves to sit down and build things, so this feature will have a lot of appeal.

Graphically the game is very colorful and shiny. I feel it’s maybe a bit oversaturated, but that could be only me. Just keep in mind that this is a voxel-based game so if you’re not a big fan of 3D pixels you may want to look away. While testing the game and creating a lot of blocks on the map I noticed that it’s possible for the game not to load the textures properly, but the game never got stuck and was able to load everything after a while. For a randomly generated game this shows that things are well optimized. The music is what you might expect, simple relaxing tunes. While it’s not remarkable it works well.

So, at the end this is still a game in early access which is far from complete. But the foundation of the game is solid, and I feel that there’s a lot of potential in the game. I spent six hours with the game experiencing what it has to offer, but if this is your thing I imagine a person can spend hundreds of hours building their perfect town, which will determine if the $20 entry fee is fair to you. So if you’re into Minecraft and farming and want to see the game grow then go right ahead. If not, keep it in your watch list as I feel that there’s a lot of potential for a really fun game once it exits early access.

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For fans of the first game, Treasure Adventure World is a long awaited, much expanded remake and reimagining of 2011’s Treasure Adventure Game. After years of development, Robit Games has finally announced a release date! Best of all, it’s right around the corner! Treasure Adventure World is launching on February 7th, 2018. They’ve already posted pages for the game on both Steam, and GOG.com. The game will be priced at $10/£7 when it launches, and you can preorder it now on Gog.com with a 5% preorder discount. It doesn’t look like you can preorder it on Steam yet, though. For those who have not played the original, it is a 2D, side-scrolling, open-world, platform adventure game. It’s a little bit Zelda-esque as well.

During the game’s long development, fans were able to pre-order at different tiers on Humble Bundle to help fund the construction of the game. Currently, the game is not available through that site, though. On the Treasure Adventure World official website, they kept the community up-to-date on the progress of development, and posted blogs as well. Now the development cycle is nearly over and that is exciting! They’ve also released a brand new trailer with some pretty cool music showing off the game:

Treasure Adventure World has added a very nice new HD coat of paint, and tons of new stuff. The game is being published by Chucklefish Games, who have published other well-received titles such as Starbound and Stardew Valley. You may have noticed in that trailer that the game contains some nods to some of those other titles. For example, there is a Jojamart in the background in one scene. Some other goodies hiding in the trailer are that he appears to be wearing a variety of hats, such as a bear mask in one scene, and in another, he looks like his original sprite from the first game. We also see him wearing a pair of glasses. Clearly it seems there are some new wearables in the game, among lots of other new things.

If you’re interested in this game, you can check out the original adventure, Treasure Adventure Game, in the meantime. It’s a free download at the Treasure Adventure Game official website, so give it a go and see if you like it! I very much enjoyed the first game, so I helped support Treasure Adventure World by pre-ordering it back in March of 2014. Has it really been that long already? Just remember that Treasure Adventure World is a huge improvement over the original game, an evolution of that game and its ideas. Fans now have just one short month left until the game is here!

SOURCE

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Stardew Valley is a farming game with many similarities to Harvest Moon. That’s no surprise considering Eric Barone, the creator himself, has stated that he is a huge Harvest Moon fan and since he couldn’t find a suitable substitute for PC, he made his own. You can find that here in his interview with PC Gamer. For future reference, be aware that when I refer to Harvest Moon from here on out, I am only referencing the original Bokujō Monogatari games, thus including Story of Seasons (the new western title under XSEED) and Rune Factory (their spin-off fantasy/farming series). I will not be talking about Natsume’s continuation of the series and attempts to make their own games. I have only recently finally had the joy of trying out and playing through Stardew Valley for the first time. I don’t PC game all that often myself and was waiting to own a console I could play it on. Before playing Stardew Valley I had played multiple Harvest Moon games. Among them are Sunshine Islands, Grand Bazaar, Tale of Two Towns, A New Beginning, Story of Seasons, Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns, Rune Factory 4 and a small bit of Magical Melody, Animal Parade and Harvest Moon 64. As I previously stated there are obviously various similarities between Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley but these are the top 5 things I think Stardew Valley very much improved upon.

Gameplay Mechanics

There are a couple of mechanics in Stardew Valley that I personally used or noticed and found to be a welcome addition. Crafting for instance; I like being able to quickly craft my own makers in SV with merely a few simple but understandable material requirements. Aside from A New Beginning & the first Story of Seasons, I would have to pay an NPC to do it in other games as well as pony up a lot more materials. Not only that, but they give you some useful new options, like sprinklers, which will automatically water a certain amount of crops for you every day. Some Harvest Moon games have an easier way to water such as in A New Beginning where you can unlock the geyser to water crops in its range. Yet not many HM games give you an auto watering system and entries that do, usually take a while to unlock. The second mechanical aspect I noticed while playing and appreciate in Stardew Valley, is the real time to game time ratio. From what I counted, it seems to be a standard 10 real life seconds per 10 game minutes amount. Older HM titles up until newer ones as recent as Sunshine Islands, would give you a crazy quick game clock that was more like 5 real seconds per 10 game minutes. Animal Parade was the only entry released during those years that was an exception to this. This was especially a pain in Sunshine Islands on account of all the islands you had to travel to for daily tasks. Unlocking a teleport item was something for much later in game, which I never did unlock when I played. The fact that Stardew Valley keeps a reasonable game time ratio has been perfect.

Pressure To Do Varying Tasks

On the topic of a reasonable game time ratio, one of my favorite improvements in Stardew Valley has to be the lack of constant pressure to do everything, during each and every game day. This pressure to do everything possible in Harvest Moon had me getting burnt out much quicker. I find that Stardew Valley is different in that it’s only as tedious as you make it. Because of the decent time ratio I’m not overly rushed on time, no NPCs tell me I have to do something, no NPCs have complained to me about how I haven’t talked to them in however long and the game isn’t crammed with as much stuff to make and do as newer 3DS exclusive HM titles. You can do whatever you want in SV. I only started off with a nice small section of crops and I didn’t feel pressured to talk to every NPC daily in fear of their hearts dropping should I not. Well other than Shane, my Stardew hubby, who did lose a heart at one point. Though after some research I found it’s not hard to prevent that, only really requiring one or two gifts a week and talking to them regularly in the morning before you go off to do whatever else. So for the most part, Stardew Valley doesn’t pressure you whatsoever. I haven’t even purchased any animals yet because crops are always the less tedious option in most farming games. No NPC in the game will insist and try to push animals upon you. The only one forced upon you is a cat or dog which doesn’t actually require any taking care of. Oh and because of the fact that this is one of those games where you can only save when you go to bed at night, not whenever you want, I find it’s extremely easy to pick back up when I haven’t played in a while. Harvest Moon on the other hand, most entries I have played let you save whenever you want. While this might seem like a good thing, I found it makes it more difficult to pick up where I left off, not to mention the already added pressure to do so much stuff every game day.

Music

Stardew Valley handles music just right. It has some really enjoyable songs, with a lot of them quite calming and they don’t play nonstop in every area. There are seasonal songs that sometimes start up randomly in the morning or at different times during the day, and there is music for different areas around town. For example, the desert has its own tune and the mine has songs that will only randomly start on certain floors but don’t play elsewhere. The bar has its own music as well and includes a jukebox so you can change the currently playing bar music to one of the other songs played during the game. In Harvest Moon a lot of times there are only 4 standard seasonal songs. Yes some titles have other songs that are played in certain areas or during events and whatnot, yet on the other hand, there are entries like the original Story of Seasons. SoS has only four songs for each season during the daytime(four different ones play at night), that play everywhere nonstop, and start a new loop fairly early on. The fall theme in that game I personally find especially grating after a while and is a big part of why I haven’t picked that game back up since I last put it down.

One of my fave Stardew Valley songs.

Marriage Candidates

In Harvest Moon you are only able to marry the opposite gender. And in older games where there is just a male MC, your only option is to marry the female bachelorettes. I always found in Harvest Moon that a lot of the females had much more unique designs and seemed more appealing in general than their male counterparts. The only entry that had a lot of super appealing and unique male options was Rune Factory 4, which in general gives the characters much more personality than traditional Harvest Moon. I always preferred to have a female MC as well though, so I’d choose one guy I could settle for who seemed alright. Whether you’re partial to your own gender in life to begin with, or whether you just don’t like the opposite gender options available, that’s a non issue in Stardew Valley. You have the ability to marry any of the 12 available bachelors and bachelorettes(there are 6 of each). In addition to this, should you find them to be a bore after marrying, divorce is an open option. HM never let you divorce your spouse after you already chose and married them.

The Right Amount of Stuff

The final thing that Stardew Valley does well, is it adds in the right amount of stuff to do. Rune Factory 4 added in a whole story aspect and more personality to the characters. Although because of this, the farming isn’t extremely necessary and a lot of traditional farming game features are overshadowed by more important aspects. And then there are the 3DS exclusive HM entries which give you way too many things to keep up with. This sort of coincides with Stardew not pressuring you to do anything. Not only do you need to not be pressured to do anything, but you need something to do when you’re not farming. Stardew Valley has a more complex fishing system than HM, it has a lot of quests, places to explore, and it has a combat system as well. What it does differently from Rune Factory with its combat system, is that it’s contained to places like the mine or the secret woods. They keep the combat contained to those specific areas and it isn’t attached to some overarching story that requires it.

In the end, I love both Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon. Unfortunately, despite that, Harvest Moon is becoming more and more overwhelming and tedious with every new entry. It also has lost a lot of charm in recent titles and older entries are in various ways, too dated for me to be able to easily go back to. Stardew takes all of the charm you’d expect in an older Harvest Moon game, mixes it with a few aspects from newer HM titles and sprinkles in a few completely new features to sweeten the pot. I’ve very much enjoyed my time with the game thus far and I hope to off and on continue to play it for many more hours. It is an amazing farming/life sim and Eric Barone did a great job improving upon what Harvest Moon had already done yet somewhat lacked.

The post Top 5 Ways Stardew Valley Improves Upon Harvest Moon appeared first on oprainfall.

First, let’s start with a couple of fantastic new releases headed to your 3DS tomorrow. If you are a fan of zany RPGs with your favorite plumbers (sorry Nintendo, they will always be plumbers in my heart), then you might want to pick up Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser’s Minions. It may be a mouthful, but this lush remake of a GBA classic looks to bring the trademark laughs and mayhem the series is well known for, on top of an all new mode that gives the spotlight to Goombas and other minions of the B man. If you prefer puzzling adventures, then you’ll be excited to pick up Layton’s Mystery Journey, which puts you in the role of Layton’s daughter, Katrielle. While I’m sad we don’t get to play the duo of the Professor and Luke, I am looking forward to how Katrielle’s adventure plays out. However, if you are looking for new Switch games, then you might want to check out Stardew Valley, which is making it’s way to the new console and eating up thousands of hours of playtime for fans.

Unlike last week, the Game Guide is functioning once more, which means we have savings to share! But first, fans of the blue blur can take advantage of the Sonic game sale, picking up several titles at a nice discount. The titles on sale are the following – Sonic Lost World (3DS and Wii U), Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed (3DS and Wii U), Sonic Generations (3DS), 3D Sonic the Hedgehog (3DS), 3D Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (3DS), or if you want some garbage, you can pick up Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric (Wii U), Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice (3DS) and Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal (3DS). To see the prices, just click here.

I did mention the Game Guide, and it’s ready with some new goodies. If you are hankering for RPGs on sale, you might want to check out Eliminate Original (3DS) discounted to $9.99; for those who like their puzzle games multiplayer, check out Death Squared (Switch) for only $11.99; if you like insane felines, check out Go! Go! Kokopolo 3D (3DS) for a mere $4.49; if you like curious, artsy games, look at 3Souls (Wii U) for only $0.97; and lastly, if you want another inexpensive title, might I suggest 99Moves (Wii U) for only $0.99? Not a huge selection, but better than nothing. The full list can be found here.

My Nintendo is gearing up for Halloween with sales on the following games (which aren’t all that creepy, but whatever). If you hate the moon, you can pick up The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D (3DS) for 40% off; if you like spraying paint but don’t have a Switch yet, you can nab Splatoon (Wii U) for 20% off; if Yoshi is your favorite dino horse, you can pick up Yoshi’s New Island (3DS) for 20% off; if you like hardcore, epic shmups, Sin & Punishment and its sequel, Sin & Punishment: Star Successor, both Wii U, are 30 and 40% off, respectively; for fans of old school RPGs, Golden Sun (Wii U VC) is 30% off and Golden Sun: The Lost Age (Wii U VC) is 40% off; if you like less than inspired puzzles, Brain Age: Concentration Training (3DS) is 30% off; if you feel left out by mobile gaming, Puzzle & Dragons Z + Puzzle & Dragons Super Mario Bros Edition (3DS) is 30% off; lastly, Xenoblade Chronicles 3D, arguably the reason the 3DS exists, is 40% off!

If you’re a fan of Boxboy, you can pick up a new anniversary theme for your 3DS, but of more importance are the new digital game releases. Fans of Metroidvanias can rejoice as Axiom Verge is finally hitting the Switch! If you’re more of a shmup fan, though, you should definitely check out Earth Atlantis. If you love ultimate maid combat, you need to look at Touhou Kobuto V: Burst Battle. If you loved Conan the Barbarian but wondered how a game with him would play, check out Tiny Barbarian DX and Volgarr the Viking. If you like mystery games, try out Oxenfree. If you want Tetris with a strange aesthetic, you should try out Tumblestone. Lastly, if you want more retro arcade goodness, check out ACA NEOGEO Metal Slug X!

Not a bad week, huh? Lots of new games just around the corner and many more out today! Today should make fans of multiple genres happy, and if you invested in a Switch on day one, that loyalty is finally being well rewarded. Check back with oprainfall next week for the newest Download, and enjoy this batch of trick and treats!

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Developer ConcernedApe and publisher Chucklefish Games have announced the release date for the Nintendo Switch version of farming simulator Stardew Valley. Previously announced as coming to Wii U before being moved to Switch, the game will finally release on October 5. It will be available for $14.99 USD, the same price as the digital releases on other consoles and PC. The port is being developed by Sickhead Games, the developer of the game’s other console ports and some others, including Axiom Verge and Octodad: Dadliest Catch. There’s no specific word on whether this release is digital-only or if there will be a physical version as well.

Stardew Valley is a farming simulator in the vein of Harvest Moon, and you play as a disillusioned corporate employee who moves to take over their grandfather’s old farm plot in the rural, idyllic Stardew Valley. It’s your job to get the overgrown farm prosperous once more, befriend the villagers of Pelican Town, and live your new life.

Stardew Valley was originally released on Steam on February 26, 2016, with PS4 and Xbox One versions following on December 5, 2016.

If you want to see our thoughts on the game, we’ve got a review for the PC version here. I personally am quite fond of the game on PC, and am looking forward to picking it up on Switch as well to play on the portable system.

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Are you ready for the Adventurous Summer Sale on GOG.com? There are over 1500 deals with up to 90% off. Your first purchase gets you a free copy of Rebel Galaxy.

Some games on sale:

Two weeks of Summer Sale feature more than 1500 games with some of the highlights being The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt GOTY (-50%), Pillars of Eternity (-60%), Dragon’s Dogma (-60%), SWAT 4 (-40%), Stardew Valley (-33%), Night in the Woods (-15%), Shadow Warrior 2 (-33%), Dragon Age Origins (-80%), and more.

The Summer Sale will last until Tuesday, June 20, 12:59 PM UTC / 5:59 AM PDT / 8:59 AM EDT / 2:59 PM CEST.

PRESS RELEASE

Set Off for the Adventurous Summer Sale on GOG.com

1500+ Deals up to 90% off · Free Game with first purchase · Redeem 40 games in GOG Connect

Warsaw, Poland – June 6, 2017 – It’s time for the biggest sale of the year at GOG.com (https://www.gog.com ), the digital distribution platform with curated selection of DRM-free games. Set off for a great summer adventure on Mystery Island, follow the exciting story about saving the world, while exploring great games and fantastic deals. The Summer Sale starts on June 6th at 1 PM UTC / 6 AM PT / 9 AM EDT / 3 PM CEST.

To kick off your adventure, your first purchase during the Summer Sale will be rewarded with a free copy of Rebel Galaxy – an action-packed space adventure, where you find yourself as the commander of an immensely powerful star destroyer. And with more than 1500 games put on sale, it won’t be hard to make at least one purchase.

GOG Connect is back again, this time giving the opportunity to redeem 40 titles from your Steam account and grow your DRM-free collection on GOG.com. Games in GOG Connect this time include among others Dropsy, Not a Hero, The Walking Dead Season 1, Brutal Legend, Frozen Synapse, Deponia and more. To add those games to your collection at GOG.com, check out connect.gog.com, connect your Steam account, and grab free DRM-free copies of your games.

Two weeks of Summer Sale feature more than 1500 games with some of the highlights being The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt GOTY (-50%), Pillars of Eternity (-60%), Dragon’s Dogma (-60%), SWAT 4 (-40%), Stardew Valley (-33%), Night in the Woods (-15%), Shadow Warrior 2 (-33%), Dragon Age Origins (-80%), and more.

To make the decision process easier, we’ve teamed up with our friends and partners, and created sets of influencer and media collections, including some of the biggest brands and names in the gaming world.

The Summer Sale will last until Tuesday, June 20, 12:59 PM UTC / 5:59 AM PDT / 8:59 AM EDT / 2:59 PM CEST.

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Finding a good farming simulator isn’t hard to do since there are plenty out there, but finding a great one? Now that’s a challenge. A lot of farming simulators have come out recently, but they all seem to just blend in to the background. None of them really stand out. That is, until this game. But how exactly is Stardew Valley different?

When you first start a game of Stardew Valley, you’re given a choice of farm layouts. It’s your job to find the one that would best suit your preferred playstyle. You have a choice between either the Standard Farm for farming, the Riverland Farm for fishing, the Forest Farm for foraging, the Hill-Top Farm for mining, or the Wilderness Farm for combat. As per usual, you can do everything in the game without the specific farm; picking a certain layout just helps one particular skill. You can literally plan out your farm any way you want after selecting a layout. The possibilities are endless. You also get the typical choices of choosing a pet, name, and farm name, but you also get an in-depth character creation tool. You have a wide variety of things to choose from, including different hairstyles, clothes, skin tone, and sex. It may have the most in-depth creation that I’ve ever seen in a game like this. It really makes you feel in control.

The game starts out with your grandfather handing you a letter to open whenever “you become crushed by the burden of modern day life”. He passes away, and sometime later you open the letter. You leave your old life of working in a boring cubicle to work on your grandfather’s old farm. You can do all the usual farm simulation things, however, unlike most farming games, you also have the option of going into the mines. Here your job is to move deep into the mines to obtain new ores for upgrading your tools. The combat system isn’t too in-depth, but it works well for breaking up the pace and providing an extra level of curiosity of what monster could show up next.

You do different tasks and that increases your level. As your skill level increases in a certain field, you may occasionally get the opportunity to unlock a new skill. These can be anything from increasing the amount of ore you receive to increasing your profit on crops that you ship. This isn’t the only level of progression as you can learn new items to craft so that you can improve your farm, upgrade all of your tools via the blacksmith, and even upgrade your buildings by paying a visit to the carpenter. The gameplay is simple and allows for very calm and stress-free play sessions, which is exactly what a farming game should do.

At some point most farming games begin to feel like a chore, but not Stardew Valley. There’s enough variety in this game to where it’s almost impossible to get bored. You can do whatever you want as there are plenty of objectives to complete, including getting to the end of the Skull Cavern, finishing the bundles in the Community Center, helping the library rebuild its inventory, or fulfilling the wishes of your deceased grandfather and passing his judgement. The first time it happens, your grandpa will return at the beginning of year 3. If you don’t like what he has to say, then at any point afterward you can leave a diamond at his shrine. The following day he will return and reevaluate your progress. Not only are there the big quests, but a bunch of smaller quests that you can do as well to earn more friendship with the villagers, get more money, and even unlock new things to do and explore. The RPG and farming simulator elements fuse flawlessly in this game, meaning you have quite a lot to accomplish.

The characters and overall design of the game are beautiful. There are so many small details in the environment that I doubt you’d be able to find them all without really looking closely. The music always fits what you’re doing, be it the serenity of tending to your farm life or a brooding dark venture into the depths of the mines. Couple this with the absolutely gorgeous graphics and you have one beautiful game to play, both visually and audibly.

The characters might be my favorite part of this game. All of the villagers that you run into are unique and have their own personalities. None of them ever felt stale to me, and I wanted to know each of them more on a personal basis. Their stories start simple and slowly grow more complex the closer you grow to them. As well as the normal villagers, all 12 of the marriage candidates are fun and intriguing as well. That’s right, there are 12 of them in total, 6 from each sex. There’s the geeky Abigail, the quiet artist Leah, the dark and mysterious Sebastian, and so many more. There’s someone in this game for everyone, no matter your personality or type.

For only one person to have designed every aspect of this game in a span of only four years, it’s very impressive. Everything from the sound design, to the character design, to the core gameplay works wonderfully well. Right now the game is only $14.99 on Steam, which is a steal considering the sheer amount of content that you get. I have over 60 hours in this game and still haven’t done everything there is to do. The game is immensely addictive and chock full of objectives to complete, crops to farm, animals to raise, and mines to excavate. And with updates still happening, the replayability just keeps increasing. You can tell just how much love and dedication went into this game, and that’s exactly what I want to see from game developers. Definitely pick this up if you have the extra money. Whether you’re a fan of farming games or just video games in general, you’ll fall in love with this fantastic title.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy provided by reviewer.

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Stardew Valley has been given its release date for the PlayStation 4. The game will be released on the 13th for North America and the next day for Europe and the global Xbox release. If you’re not familiar with the farming simulator here’s a description from the game’s Steam page:

“You’ve inherited your grandfather’s old farm plot in Stardew Valley. Armed with hand-me-down tools and a few coins, you set out to begin your new life. Can you learn to live off the land and turn these overgrown fields into a thriving home? It won’t be easy. Ever since Joja Corporation came to town, the old ways of life have all but disappeared. The community center, once the town’s most vibrant hub of activity, now lies in shambles. But the valley seems full of opportunity. With a little dedication, you might just be the one to restore Stardew Valley to greatness!”

Stardew Valley is now available for PC and will be headed to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on December 13 for NA and December 14 for EU, while the Xbox One version will release globally on December 14.

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GOG.com is currently holding a huge fall sale where you can save up to 90% off on select games. In addition to this massive sale, you can also currently get Little Big Adventure 2: Twinsen’s Odyssey for free for the first 48 hours of the sale!

Some of the noteworthy games in this sale include:

• 75% off Bastion
• 40% off The Witcher III Game of The Year Edition
• 85% off Spelunky
• 69% (!) off Huniepop
• 40% off Darkest Dungeon
• 75% off Guacamelee Super Turbo Championship Edition
• 75% off Freedom Planet
• 25% off Stardew Valley
• and many more!

I think this is a pretty sweet sale, as there are a lot of stand-out titles in this one. I have to say I like the nice touch with a game like Huniepop being 69% off. Does anything in the sale catch your eye? Let us know!

The fall sale will last until November 13, 2016.

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After being teased not too long ago, it’s been made official that Stardew Valley will be coming to Playstation 4, Xbox One and Wii U! The console port is being made in conjunction with Chucklefish and Sickhead Games, with a planned release window of Winter 2016. The developers cited making the game feel intuitive on modern-day game controllers, and specifically mentioned taking advantage of the Wii U GamePad touch screen.

For those who don’t know, Stardew Valley is a Kickstarted game that is heavily inspired by the Harvest Moon series, and quickly gained mainstream attention from gamers and media alike. It’s nice to see no current console owners will be left out on this farming sim adventure.

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