Category: Gaming

Chained Echoes: One of 2022’s Best JRPGs (other than Xenoblade 3)

by macksamson, posted in Full Reviews, Gaming

With CrossCode beat and Sea of Stars not yet ready, it’s natural to experience pixel-art JRPG withdrawal (and I probably won’t live to see Secrets of Grindea be finished because, well, it’s Secrets of Grindea). Fortunately, thanks to my stumbling-on-things power, I happened across Chained Echoes. It’s an old-school turn-based JRPG with whimsy and mechs. I like both of those things, so it was an easy impulse buy! Let’s find out whether or not said impulse buy was a mistake.

Before I even get into the premise of the game, I MUST praise its visuals. I remember a bygone time when I was not too impressed at modern pixel art in games, but nowadays, it’s what I crave, and Chained Echoes satiates that appetite. It is vibrant, stunning, and gorgeous. It runs silky smooth, and bursts with life. Sure, Sea of Stars and CrossCode still look better, but Chained Echoes is sure as hell up there with them.

In Chained Echoes, a man named Glenn is part of a mercenary group called the Band of the Iron Bull. He engaged in a reckless mission to conquer some place, but when he destroyed the object he was assigned… it exploded. Fortunately, this explosion caused the three kingdoms that were at war to sign a peace treaty. Of course, this is a JRPG; we know there’s gonna be a big adventure and whatnot.

I know that this was in development since 2015, but boy does its basic theme hit hard coming out the time that it did; last December, ten months into an ACTUAL war; the one in Ukraine, to be exact. Right at the beginning, it brings up things that have sent me reeling these past three years, mainly the impossible-sounding process of forgiving the people who were just your bitter enemies. It only corroborates Ezran’s speech in the fourth season of The Dragon Prince, which purports that we must live with our inter-generational hatred bottled up inside instead of trying to not feel it.

Otherwise, it’s your usual classic JRPG story, albeit really dark. In the end, we gotta fight the bad guys and steal the evil superweapon. Eventually—spoilers of a trope that happens all the time—you get to fight gods. It’s not all doom and gloom; there is a lot of good humor. It’s an indie game, meaning that the dev really knows how to meme. There is literally an achievement for selling poop. The peak of meme-ness is the turtle racing minigame; it’s worth doing at least once, because of what occurs during it. The plot is basic enough to feel nostalgic for ye olden days, back when twenty hours was the average length of a JRPG and it didn’t take ten hours to get out of the first town. 

Unfortunately, the trappings of the classic JRPG is the biggest flaw here. One of my least favorite tropes is when you set up all this moral ambiguity, with allegories on real-world issues like racism and war, just to have all suffering in the world be because of a single, higher power pulling the strings. It’s a very good/evil solution to a problem, when the entire story  told you that such clear-cut sides don’t exist. Couple that with the staggering, potentially excessive amount of suicides in the game, and you could honestly argue that the story is actually REALLY bad. It kind of resembles Square Enix’s current philosophy to make everything as grim as possible because of a preconceived notion that the majority of people prefer it that way. The cherry on top is that it ends with sequel bait, despite the dev saying in a post that they didn’t really know where to proceed from here. Maybe it’ll be a DLC campaign?

The cast of characters are pretty good, though. They don’t ham in the memes like Xenoblade characters, but they’re memorable enough. Glenn is a pretty good traumatized war veteran, and it shows. If the game was more popular, people’d be fighting over if the tomboyish Princess Celestia (who uses the pseudonym of Lenne for the most part), the sexy thief Sienna, and a third person who shows up too late to justify me talking about her was the Best Girl. Victor is generally the rational guy who actually knows how to do anything. 

As a retro-RPG, Chained Echoes reinvents the wheel. However, any retro-RPG worth its salt would still find a way to upend the original wheel’s design, and Chained Echoes does that. First off, it has amazing quality-of-life mechanics. Not only is the turn order shown in battle, but enemies, strengths, weaknesses, and whether or not they can be pickpocketed are automatically shown in battle. The bestiary also shows drops, including ones that can only be obtained via a steal. Even more importantly, you are automatically fully healed after battle, basically like in Xenoblade; no consumables nor White Magic required! Oh, and don’t worry about saving your invaluable Ultra Meter for the next boss; it will fill up to full during any boss encounter.

Battle itself is also very wild. Sure, you have your usual attacks, skills, items, whoop-dee-doo. However, the Overdrive bar is where it gets interesting. Actions will automatically fill it up, and when it enters the green zone, your whole party is boosted. Skills cost less and you take way less damage. However, when it enters the red zone, it backfires and you take WAY MORE damage. The fun involves juggling between actions that increase and decrease the meter, so you can maintain Overdrive indefinitely. Most importantly, using skills that match the symbol shown on the left end of the meter (the top-left corner of the screen) will decrease it substantially.

Another interesting feature is how the team participates in battle. You thought Xenoblade 3 was cool for allowing all six party members to fight? Well, technically, Chained Echoes allows EIGHT. Each of the four active party members has a reserve tag team member. You can switch between these two without consuming an action every turn, and reduce Overdrive in the process. To spice things up, most enemies can inflict stagger, a status which lasts about an eternity, but is instantly cured if the staggered person switches out.

Things get fun with the game’s stand-out mechanic: Sky Armors, a.k.a. mechs. They are useful for travel, but make for interesting battles. In combat, you are not able to go into Overdrive, but are instead juggling the meter to stay as close to the center as possible, lest you hit the Overheat zones to the left and right. Sky Armors can switch to Gears 0-2. Gear 1 is the balanced Gear, while Gear 2 grants an attack buff and defense debuff. Gear 0 is when you recuperate; in this mode, all actions significantly restore the Sky Armor’s TP, but you can’t use skills. Like in Xenoblade X, each Sky Armor can equip weapons with various skills (and RAMs that function as accessories). Weapons have their own experience meters, and leveling them up earns new skills, as well as stat bonuses that stay for good regardless of if it has that weapon equipped. This means you’ll be shuffling weapons a lot, and sadly, that also means giving physical weapons to mechs with magic-based builds; maybe you should grind those up later (fortunately they level up pretty fast). To make things simple, there are only four specific Sky Armor pilots in the entire group, unlike Xenoblade X where all fifteen party members can pilot a Skell.

Power progression is perhaps the most interesting it’s been since Final Fantasy X. Instead of XP, you gain SP, which is only used for leveling up equipped skills. Skills are learned through Grimoire Shards—earned only through bosses or other means. These aren’t boons to help you in battle; they’re also your passive skills and even stat gains. Fortunately, you get additional stat gains depending after learning certain amounts of skills in total. Leveling up skills is a combination of both winning battles with them equipped as well as spending accumulated SP on them. It’s a unique way to make you work toward something long-term, while also giving you a semblance of control in deciding what skills you want upgraded faster.

Furthermore, you have Class Emblems, earned by finding a special statue AND a special type of consumable key item, THEN winning a tough battle. Class Emblems give two battle and passive skills that can be freely set on the character once mastered. Basically, it’s jobs meets Espers from Final Fantasy VI (I think?). Also, have fun trying to decide what skills to equip; if you’re an RPG junkie, you’ll feel like you’ll need them all but you can only have ten battle skills and five passive skills.

Of course, the stuff you do outside of battle is important too. The big shaker-upper is how item selling is done. Well, you sell stuff and make money like normal. However, selling the right kinds of items unlock Deals. These are special sets of items that require both materials and cash. Just keep in mind that the item list on the menu only counts the amount of said items that you SOLD, not the ones on you; it can get confusing since that’s generally not how it works in 99% of RPGs. 

Upgrading equipment is like Materia from Final Fantasy VII… but really hard. All weapons have crystals set in them. Crystals need to be at least Rank 3 to be equipped, and you can get stronger crystals by fusing ones with the same abilities together. However, crystals take up more slots the better they get. The slots of equipment can be increased by upgrading them, but require materials and money, and can only be done twice each.

To be frank, the crystals are probably the worst mechanic in the game, at least early on. Unlike the color-coded gems in Xenoblade, EVERY type of crystal possible comes from the same source, meaning that each draw point takes from a pool of every property. Even if you have an idea of what crystals to use for a tough fight, you aren’t likely to actually have them, especially early game. Also, setting them into a piece of equipment is kind of a done deal; you can remove it, but it will lose all of its purity, and thus the ability to be used as a base in crafting better crystals. You get new and better equipment pretty fast if you’re diligent, so you’d be removing and crippling these crystals quite often. 

Exploring the world of Valandis is fun and rewarding… literally. They have a giant Reward Board where you complete various tasks and get rewards on the board. Completing tasks adjacent to each other can start a chain which has its own set of rewards (of course that doesn’t matter if you’re an MLG pro gamer who was going to get them all anyway). In any case, it does borrow from CrossCode and has numerous layers and secrets. Just pay attention to the environment to know where you can jump or climb (and I mean serious attention, because these points can blend in if you have tunnel vision).

Things really open up at the start of the second act. You don’t only unlock Sky Armors at this point; both sidequests AND your airship become available. An important mechanic involves finding various NPCs willing to join your cause. Don’t worry if this sounds daunting; literally the first person you find, right at your home base, exists to give you hints on where to find others. The real problem is that your base is kind of confusing, and has no map.

Anyway… Chained Echoes is actually really hard. It’s not Dark Souls-ian, but it will test you. There are a LOT of nuances, a lot of which is thankfully hinted at via NPCs. The most important nuance is that both you and the enemy will naturally gain resistance to a status effect after you’ve had it once; after that, the effect needs to be re-applied an additional time each subsequent time.

In any case, Chained Echoes follows the usual RPG tradition; random mobs aren’t so bad, static mobs (like the ones from the statues) can catch you off guard, and bosses are where you’ll be put to the test. Due to how leveling up works, there is no such thing as grinding; so you really, truly need to git gud for this one. There are both story bosses and optional Unique Monsters straight out of Xenoblade. Unfortunately, there is some RNG-based difficulty, since the Overdrive bar can ask for a skill that is not AT ALL what you want to perform (including healing skills when I don’t need it and attacks when I DESPERATELY need healing). Switching out partners and defending can reduce it briefly, while Ultra Moves reduce it by a lot. Glenn eventually learns skills dedicated to manipulating the Overdrive meter, and they become very useful. Otherwise, stock up on the special consumable items that activate the corresponding skill type that the Overdrive meter wants.

The Steam Page says thirty to forty hours of playtime. If the higher estimate was to account for completion, then it’s grossly wrong. In fact, the website How Long To Beat puts a completionist playthrough at fifty-three hours, and I’d say it’d be longer if you don’t already know what to do. While there isn’t any such thing as grinding to level up, there is a lot of grinding to get everything. Some of the later Deals require rare drops exclusive to Unique Monsters, which will need to be fought repeatedly if you aren’t lucky. There is also an unrealistic need for money late in the game: to buy expensive cosmetics for your airship, and the need to have one hundred thousand moneys on hand in order to spawn a particular Unique Monster. You will also need to grind Sky Armor proficiency to get the achievement for mastering all weapons (although that honestly goes by really fast if you fight the right mobs). Last but not least, you will need to fight with the annoying crystal mechanic to build the perfect setup for the superboss. Fortunately, one of the recruits can help manipulate the RNG of the Crystals to a decent extent.

~~~~~

Final Verdict: 9.5/10

Chained Echoes is a phenomenal game, definitely up there with the best retro-style JRPGs. While it does take a few too many pages from Square Enix’s current storytelling philosophy for my liking, I still found it worth playing. I highly recommend it to any fans of the genre.

TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children is a Masterpiece I May Never Finish

by macksamson, posted in First Impressions, Gaming

I have pretty much narrowed down the games I prefer to play (read as: the only games I am even remotely good at). However, sometimes, my dumb brain decides to goof. For whatever reason, when I stumbled upon TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children on Steam, I was captivated. Being a strategy RPG, it was completely unexplored territory for me. However, with a high difficulty, insane depth, EIGHT HUNDRED ABILITIES TO LEARN, and a sprawling story that’s on par with Fire Emblem: Three Houses in scope, jumping into this was like driving a racecar without a driver’s license. This is gonna get… uuuuuugly… 

TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children is set in Valhalla, a place where crime is rampant. Fortunately, there are titular Troubleshooters to help out. This story stars an upstart named Albus Bernstein… among MANY others.

The plot of TROUBLESHOOTER is a lot, but it’s a good lot. It’s a traditional episodic cyberpunk, but with classic anime tropes. As you do missions, you learn more about the world and its denizens. They put a LOT of thought into the game, with detailed descriptions of pretty much everything, and loads of environmental details that really make Valhalla appear to be a real city. Being well over a hundred hours long, expect it to really ease you in before sh** hits the fan. Unfortunately… I didn’t exactly enjoy the story. For how much worldbuilding there is, what happens is pretty simple. You basically fight any gang that forms in Valhalla, along with the mainstay antagonists: the Spoonist Cult, and some guy named Carter. All this serves as stepping stones, so Albus’ group can reach Mythril Rank, and he can view classified documents about the classic “incident from ten years ago that everyone talks about all the time but never gives you any actual context until a hundred hours later” trope. It doesn’t help that, with my schedule, I didn’t exactly get to marathon it; that means forgetting what was going on in the first place.

Of course, the biggest caveat with something like this is the fact that the devs are a Korean indie team. Any small outfit that has to translate any foreign dialogue is destined to mess up… a lot. Many Steam reviews, naturally, criticized the writing, but to be honest, it’s not the worst. Some descriptions can sound vague, but a lot of the writing itself is perfectly understandable, even if it lacks poeticness. The game has some pretty good voice acting for what it is, although it only comes up during pure gameplay. It’s actually my first time ever hearing Korean (since I don’t listen to K-Pop), and boy, it really sounds similar to Japanese to the untrained ear. I can just barely tell it’s a different language. 

The characters, however, ended up being WAY better than I expected. Albus is a generic, reckless dingus, and is the weakest link in the game. Everyone else is actually pretty damn awesome, especially considering the translation. They’re pretty basic and trope-y, but I still liked them a lot. 

Where do I even start with this gameplay? It’s so deep it’s not even funny. Actually, I should start with an appreciation of the game’s U.I. It’s complex, sure, but it’s actually really well put together. There are shortcuts to other menus in just the right places when you’re trying to create builds or look up info on enemies and materials. Hovering over a character’s stats will show you the factors influencing their amount (i.e. equipment, skills, etc.). In battle, hovering over a move will show you the exact calculations, and of course, it shows you a preview of non-crit and non-block damage to the enemy’s health bar when targeting. Also, hovering over the different probabilities associated with your attack while targeting (i.e. hit chance, crit chance, damage, etc.) will also show the calculations for that as well; it shows the exact parameters that enemy armor, skills, status, and environment influence over the attack’s result. It also gives relevant descriptions of status effects as needed; you don’t have to look up a giant glossary of effects if you don’t remember what does what. 

As is tradition with strategy RPGs, you have your party, equipment, all that jazz. TROUBLESHOOTER, however, has Masteries. These are the aforementioned eight hundred abilities that can be learned. Most of these are dropped at random by enemies, and can be stockpiled like items. Masteries can be equipped to available slots for their desired effect, and consumed in research to acquire new ones. Mastery Sets come into play when the right Masteries are equipped. The game is kind enough to show you an indicator when you’re on the right track with obtaining a Set. Unfortunately, there is an annoying mechanic where each category of Mastery slots (Basic, Attack, etc.) have their own capacities that limit the value of which Masteries can be equipped AS WELL as there being a limited number of slots for Masteries to be equipped to. It doesn’t matter how many Training Points you actually have in order to equip Masteries with higher costs; if the total value of the Masteries exceeds that property limit in the category, you can’t do it. There are Masteries to increase those capacities, but they’re very rare and specific, and of course, need to sacrifice a slot in another category to be equipped. I think that system is really arbitrary and really hinders your ability to min-max your party.

Equipment is also VERY involved. You can obtain equipment in battle, and they come in various color-coded rarities, as well as an Unidentified or Identified status. Identified weapons will have one-to-four stars on their thumbnail, and have a title of some sort after their name; they are objectively better than Unidentified equipment. These have lower stats and no special effects, but you can pay someone to Identify them. The results are random, which makes for big dopamine when you get good results. 

Materials can be earned from battle, and used as ingredients for various items at the workbench. Even if you don’t get what you need, large amounts of materials can be crafted into the next tier of that same type of item. Conversely, rarer items can be dismantled into common ones. You can also outright buy materials and weapons, but doing this is quite expensive.

However, money ends up being VERY easy to accumulate and manage. Ordering food to maintain motivation, paying your landlord as well as your party members is pretty cheap. As long as you don’t splurge on the rare materials and weapons sold at the shops, you’re good. The only thing I buy a lot of are consumables. When equipping them, it—at a glance—looks like an equippable that comes with X number of charges per battle. In fact, it’s not. It pulls from your stock of that item, so you’ll need a lot of them if you plan to use them a lot. Many of them, such as grenades, are extremely helpful when used in the right spot, and of course, you’ll need potions, especially when you haven’t recruited the dedicated healer. Also, you really don’t need to buy equipment at all. You get SO MANY equipment drops naturally in battle, to the point where selling them is your main source of dough. You also don’t need to worry about identifying any of them, except for maybe a red-rarity item dropped by bosses, which can be identified into something even better. Furthermore, the powerful purple-rarity equipment you can get from sidequests and crafting can ALSO be identified for relatively cheap, and these—with their true potential unlocked—will be your best equipment in the long term. 

Combat is also as convoluted as you can expect. You have your movement, attacks, Vigor gauge, SP gauge, the environment, weather, time of day, enemy units, people to rescue, buffs, debuffs… yeah it’s a lot. Too much for me to describe in this post. Fortunately, while some reviewers criticize the slow start of the game, it does do a good job to ease you in if you’re a virgin of the genre. Scratch that, it does an exceptional job. Missions get more complex in the right way to get you in the game’s groove without throwing you at the wolves. A pro-tip from me is to not undervalue any back-up soldiers you get. They’re pretty basic, but rely on strength in numbers. Their items are really handy (especially when later ones have the Mastery that makes using items not consume their turn), and you can afford to lose them if absolutely necessary.

Oh, by the way, TROUBLESHOOTER is absurdly hard. Even with powerful builds consisting of three-plus Mastery sets across the entire team, really good equipment, and being at least eight levels over the recommendation for a given mission, I’ve gotten uncomfortably close to the jaws of death numerous times. On NORMAL difficulty. I don’t feel like I’m playing the game wrong, it’s just… hard. In fact, I saw one forum post say that they’ve had their characters die over two hundred times in total. I even read that the postgame DLC is borderline impossible. Cover is INSANELY valuable, because anyone not in it basically dies. Even with good equipment, an unlucky crit can one-shot one of our intrepid heroes from full health, especially if it’s from a boss, or a sniper unit. Bosses are generally a good chunk of your grievances, but there are some specific enemy units who are so bad, they are worse than a lot of the bosses. 

One aspect that I feel like should be divisive to strategy-RPG veterans is the Sight mechanic. In any other game of this kind I’ve seen, you get to see and evaluate the entire field, and plan accordingly. Maybe there’ll be an odd stage with fog where you can’t see enemies until it’s too late, and those levels generally suck. Well, with Sight, TROUBLESHOOTER is that fog level all the time. While this is a stat that can be increased, and abilities to reveal enemies in unexplored territory, it is consistently your biggest enemy. You don’t know what an enemy unit is doing until you’re close enough. There are SO MANY times where I sent one person to fight a single enemy unit, when it turned out that there were actually eight of them just beyond my Sight. This kind of misinformation makes missions particularly difficult your first time through; it’s kind of like old-school videogame difficulty, which relied on memorization more than ability to problem solve and adapt, and is generally considered bad game design by today’s standards. While taking time and not splitting up your heroes can be encouraged, there are some more urgent stages where you need to save people or defend a zone (or because the map is huge and it can take forever to complete some missions, although the game autosaves after every turn which is nice). Furthermore, you don’t get to look at enemy units in detail like in other strategy-RPGs, which means even more memorization, and—if it’s your first time facing an enemy unit—absolute terror from not knowing the best strategy to fight them. There is a database for enemies in the company’s office, but by the time you can see all the enemies’ abilities, you’ll already have fought them several times.

Speaking of the office, that’s where your center of operations is. Here, you can do all your crafting and stuff. You must also keep your reputation in mind in different districts. District jurisdiction is vital, because it’s how you get paid. You get the starting district as a free-bee, but you’ll need to satisfy various prerequisites (including money), to apply for jurisdiction and reap the unique benefits of each area. You can also cancel jurisdiction if you hate earning money. Unfortunately, this mechanic is extremely strange and inconsistent. Not losing cases isn’t enough; you need to keep winning cases in the designated district to maintain reputation, but sometimes there’s only one or two missions there—and well—nothing you actually need to do there (at least I think that’s how it works). There are also times where you satisfy the prerequisites to apply for jurisdiction, but your company will arbitrarily not want said jurisdiction. Some districts want you to have a variety of case experiences, which is annoying since 9/10 levels are simple arrest missions. I ended up looking this up on the Steam forums, and it turns out that you only get as many jurisdictions as you have Troubleshooters, and apparently, not all of your party members are considered Troubleshooters in a business sense. In actuality, you only get to have four by the end of the game. You also lose reputation for NOT doing missions in given areas, though this can be helped somewhat by certain Jurisdiction policies that increase the reputation of multiple districts at once. However, it doesn’t take long for your salary to end up being a pretty paltry sum; like I said before, selling unneeded equipment can give you the same amount and then some.

Mission control is where you set out to defend the peace. Story missions are self explanatory enough, but take note of Ordinary and Violent Missions. These are optional filler scenarios that are infinitely replayable, and this is where most of your grinding will take place if you either get stonewalled or want to undertake the daunting task of completion. After a certain point, story missions can be replayed infinitely without repercussions. This adds variety to the completionist grind, and you can skip cutscenes. 

There are also TONS of sidequests, a lot of which are either secondary objectives in existing missions or their own thing. The immediate problem with them is that the first quest, which happens to be the prerequisite to all the others, is uncharacteristically hard if you do it at the earliest opportunity; it’s tougher than some of the quests that come up after-the-fact. A lot of them are a pain, though. From having to prevent large groups of mobile, highly evasive enemies from escaping the level, to having to find a specific enemy unit who isn’t marked on the map… it’s a thing. However, they are well worth doing no matter what; you get REALLY good rewards, and it’s the only way that your company earns brownie points toward its reputation.

With a game this long and chock full of content, it’d be tough to find time to play it in this day and age. As addictive as it is, it is NOT good to marathon; you might as well go slow and steady. In fact, I have yet to finish it even as you read this post. A hundred hours in at the time of publishing and I’m not even CLOSE to done. I just really wanted to get a review out for this underrated gem, and there’s no guarantee I’ll be able to complete it. I’m at the fifth of what appears to be seven or eight chapters, and that’s EXCLUDING the two post-game DLC stories!

~~~~~

Current (Possibly Final) Verdict: 9.65/10

TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children is a true testament to the capability of indie game developers… and it’s only part one of a planned series. If you can somehow find the time (and the computer powerful enough) to sink your life into this one, then I highly advise giving it a whirl. Meanwhile, I gotta finish this thing myself… boy, One Piece will probably be done before that happens.

Tchia: New Caledonia’s Time in the Limelight

by macksamson, posted in Full Reviews, Gaming

It’s rare for indie games to get a lot of press, and Tchia is one such case. It’s had trailers presented at all of the most prestigious gaming events, and acclaimed magazines like Game Informer have been dying to sink their teeth into it. I wanted in on it as well, and now, it’s finally here. I played it on PlayStation because I didn’t want to make an account on EGS essentially for just this game (and I don’t play games often enough to justify the free weekly games quirk).

In Tchia, the titular character is enjoying a life on a secluded island in a fictitious archipelago vaguely based on New Caledonia (but we might as well call it New Caledonia anyway). However, some military guy shows up and kidnaps her dad, taking him to the castle of Meavora, a malevolent god who cosplays as the Michelin Man. Well… time to get him back I guess.

So, this is an open world game, and open world games generally don’t have much plot, in order to account for freedom. I always need to throw that disclaimer out there, because a lot of people still complain about open world games for not having a plot. ANYWAY… it’s a pretty basic, harmless story, but we’ll elaborate on the specifics later in the post.

Of course, what the devs really poured their souls into is the worldbuilding. Well, I call it “worldbuilding”, but what I’m referring to is a presumably painstakingly perfect recreation of New Caledonian culture. Giving them the benefit of the doubt here (since it means their heads if they actually got any of it wrong), they do prove that Disney aren’t the only ones who can really sell you a foreign culture (is it a hot take to say that Disney actually does it right? I feel like everyone assumes their cultural appropriators despite numerous documentaries that prove otherwise). Before even starting the game, they literally have a five page exposition that basically says “Hey, New Caledonia is here, and this game is heavily based off of it!” 

As someone who—not to toot his own horn—likes being exposed to other cultures, Tchia is quite engaging. For starters, it has a beautiful and cozy look to it. The characters look very Pixar-y, and the world—despite not being all 12800p, is really breathtaking. The soundtrack takes you to those islands, and it even breaks out into a full song with lyrics whenever you spend a long time sailing on the sea. There are also rhythm-based music minigames, although you can disable the actual gameplay element if you want. Overall, the devs of Tchia did an impeccable job of making New Caledonia seem like a cozy and welcome place.

What makes Tchia stand out is its gameplay, inspired by Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey. Once you are told to gather the first MacGuffins, you’re free to theoretically go wherever you want, and tackle objectives in any order. In fact, some collectibles are required for story progress. 

Maps are essential in open world games, and the one in Tchia is… interesting. While it marks a lot of points of interest on the map, it doesn’t exactly mark YOUR position. It marks your last known location, which is set to a new position by examining signs, and you just have to go from there. Fortunately, Tchia has a built-in GPS like a bird, for there is a command for her to give you a vague idea of where you are. You will want to use your compass and the pin feature a lot (although it can be enjoyable to wander aimlessly in this particular overworld). There is, of course, a mechanic to reveal all points of interest in a set area, and it might be my favorite ever; you literally climb up to the designated locations and scream. Tchia comes with both GPS AND echolocation!

The other big thing about exploration is the Soul Jump mechanic. Tchia can possess organic matter (as well as rocks, lamps, and jerry cans) and control them. The physics for this mechanic are amazing. When leaving something’s body, Tchia keeps the momentum that it had at the moment of the button press, meaning that if you charge forward with—say—a fast animal, Tchia will go flying out of it as if she was shot from a cannon. She can also perform a Soul Throw, where she somehow jumps out of something and flings it forward at the same time. The Soul Meter drains while in possession of something, and it only regenerates up to about the first half of the meter. You’ll need to rely on food stands throughout the world and storable food items in order to keep yourself topped off. Tchia also has a ukulele to play simple Soul Melodies on. These can change the time of day, and summon animals to possess. It’s really easy to remember what does what, because the letters that represent notes spell out a word that you can generally link to that power-up. There’s also a free-style mode that is insanely more involved, meant for the musically inclined who want to jam out at their leisure.

There are many collectibles and minigames in the world of… Neo New Caledonia? Wait, that’s just New New Caledonia… Anyway, there’s a lot, from fruits that increase stats to pearls and trinkets that are used as currency. Challenges include time attacks, rock balancing, and Totem Shrines.

When it comes to difficulty… Well, that’s for you to decide. The devs say in that opening bit that they want anyone to be able to enjoy Tchia. You can even set it so that you can’t die. However, if you want a challenge, then Tchia delivers in some regards. One big thing is that your stamina is also your health; you can die by climbing a tree if you really want. This makes those Stamina Fruits really valuable. The game gets really, REALLY easy if you go after optional upgrades, so masochistic gamers might want to do a minimal percent run.

There are also enemy camps containing the Maano, which can only be damaged by throwing lamps and jerry cans at them. These can get ugly. The enemy A.I. are very alert, and if you possess something, any movement makes them suspicious as well. After the halfway point of the game, bigger and badder bases spawn in. They don’t only contain more Maano, but they also sport Sentinels which can see you from just about anywhere and shoot lasers. I personally don’t blame you if you enable invincibility, because they can be quite difficult and would otherwise alienate people who just want to embrace New Caledonian culture via Tchia.

Speaking of that, I almost feel like having the conflict as well as the combat arguably detracts from what the game wants to be. There are numerous examples of tonal whiplash throughout the game, where you go from doing a really cozy musical sequence to seeing a baby get swallowed whole. The fact that they made a toggle for literally being invincible shows how arbitrary having any combat ends up being. The other thing is that the combat, mechanically, is arguably tedious. The Maano aren’t just hawk-eyed; there is also no stealth grass like in other games with similar combat. Also, the mobs themselves are even MORE lacking in variety than Breath of the Wild, and furthermore, there is no way to get creative with fighting them whatsoever. Additionally, the inability to see enemy positions on the map in any way makes some of the particularly large bases really annoying to clear. Just pray that you get certain optional Soul Melodies that make taking out the bases significantly less tedious.

With that being said, I also feel like the cast isn’t the strongest. Sure, the cutscenes are Pixar-levels of expressive and memorable, but that doesn’t mean the people onscreen are on that level. For the most part, Tchia herself and a certain race of mythological beings are the only characters I like. Everyone else feels like a half-assed plot device. They tend to be exposition dumpers, like Tres or Kevere. There is also Louise, a friend who becomes a lover over the course of five minutes with no organic buildup at all. Someone literally tries to shoot Tchia dead—with a SHOTGUN—and then she helps them cook crab for dinner. Meavora is also not too interesting. They basically take the Western approach and make him one-dimensionally evil, what with his appetite for infants, and the modern look of his city echoing yet another allegory to colonialism that seems obligatory in any media featuring marginalized ethnic groups.

One more minor complaint I have is that the devs very much misname Tchia’s postgame as “endgame.” It is, by definition, the postgame; it’s set after the final battle, and there are additional objectives to do as well as the rest of the collectibles. It supposedly replaces remaining enemy bases with a new type of mob, but since I beat all of them before rolling credits, I never got to see those mobs and don’t know if they’re any different. Again, it also kind of sucks that there aren’t too many ways to play the game. Most of the joy comes from its unique atmosphere, as well as trying your own custom challenges, such as traveling the whole perimeter of an island without touching the ground as a human… or recreating ‘Through the Fire and Flames’ in the ukulele’s freestyle mode.

~~~~~

Final Verdict: 9.25/10

Tchia might’ve been a better game if it went all-in on the cozy, idyllic New Caledonian lifestyle. However, the game we got instead is nonetheless one of the best I’ve played this year. It might be lacking in a variety of playstyles, but it’s still probably one of my favorite open world games simply because I don’t play games often enough to feel tired of the genre. While it will likely be forgotten due to how our society works, I will certainly not forget about Tchia. I recommend it if you want a nice open world game that scratches the itches but doesn’t eat your time like the triple-A ones do.

Top Seven Videogames I Like But Haven’t Finished for No Reason

by macksamson, posted in Gaming, Miscellaneous

You can’t finish every game, unless you’re a true MLG gamer who has videogames as a career. That’s part of the fallacy of the gaming market, because they’re all like PLAY THESE GAMES AND NONE OTHER, but then every time something popular comes out it only lasts about a week because—oops, almost went on a tangent. Anyway, as a non-gamer, I only own maybe seventy-five games (I traded a lot of my Gamecube and Wii games from back in the day because I didn’t have the foresight to know they’d become antiques), possibly less, and I don’t even think I’ve finished half of them. A lot of the time, I just don’t think they’re worth my precious time, but sometimes there really is no reason. My mind just says “No, you’re not playing it.” Here’s a top seven list of those games.

7) Blacktail

I’d preface this by saying how popular Blacktail was… but I honestly don’t know that information. It was supposedly trending on Steam at some point at launch, but like I said before, there are so many games and the market changes faster than humans can possibly follow yet they expect you to—ANYWAY, this is a title I looked forward to for some time. 

It looked beautiful and unique, drawing inspiration from Slavic mythology. From what I played, it has really good first-person combat with some open world survival elements. The dash is responsive and versatile, and has a morality system. I normally don’t like games like this, because that freedom of choice comes in quotation marks, for there is almost always a True Ending locked behind the devs’ pre-conceived vision. I ended up looking this up and I learned that Blacktail apparently has only one ending regardless of what you do, which a lot of Steam users were mad at. It’s presumably an allegory to how good and evil doesn’t exist and such acts are only defined as such by humans. Anyway, it is great and all, but it is a bit in the edgy Grimm-style gothic fairy tale category, and I generally don’t like that in my games. I prefer even a little humor. Also, I have it on PC, and it is one of the most demanding ones I have at that. My paranoia with my computer’s GPU definitely has an influence here.

6) Sable

I feel really bad with this one… barring the fishing content update, I am basically in position to finish Sable at any time. It’s not even difficult; it’s one of those “wholesome” games. With a unique aesthetic and transportive atmosphere, Sable was definitely one of the best open world indie games of 2021. It takes the barren and empty biome that is the desert and fills it with variety and interesting landmarks. I just… I dunno, man. I just haven’t been in the mood. There is also the fact that I essentially played an altogether better clone of it in SEASON: a letter to the future, which also has non-violent exploration with a vehicle companion, but additionally has a way stronger narrative that just feels more compelling. Sable is excellent in and of itself, though.

5) Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope

I bought this and its DLC at launch, so I clearly was excited. As only one of two strategy RPGs I’ve played, it’s definitely a new experience. Mechanically, the game has a wide variety of strategies with numerous characters that have unique playstyles. There’s plenty to do in each world, and the incorporation of dashing and jumping from Super Mario rewards good reflexes to execute optimal strategies. The cutscenes are some of the best for Mario and Co., with tons of personality. 

However, it does have some iffy bits. There isn’t really any freedom in building your units, other than equipping up to two titular Sparks. Some enemy Units (such as those lightning tiger men introduced in that one world) are just tedious to fight. Also, you are locked to three characters (except in certain missions), but it’s more like two since Rabbid Peach is the only one with a dedicated healing move. It also has a lackluster soundtrack, which is a Super Mario sin. I might come back to it now that the DLC is rolling out—which will eventually include the return of Rayman to his own series—but for now, I haven’t been in the mood. 

4) Nobody Saves the World

From the devs of Guacamelee, Nobody Saves the World is a whacky beat ‘em up/dungeon crawler where you transform into various things—from a mouse, to an archer, to a horse, to an egg—and fight legions of monsters with them. Mechanically, it’s really good. It scratches the beat ‘em up itch, and most importantly, you can assign skills to other forms to create—say—a horse that fires missiles. It’s really good, but… I dunno, again, I just haven’t been in the mood. Most likely, it’s the caveat with beat ‘em ups in that they are substantially more fun in multiplayer, which Nobody Saves the World incidentally has.

3) Both Yakuza 0 and Yakuza: Like a Dragon

I seem to be cursed to where all the games for weebs are not in my wheelhouse. I gave the famously absurd Yakuza franchise a chance, though, with two of its most highly acclaimed titles, but ultimately have not been in the mood to finish either of them. 

Let’s start with what—from what I could tell—makes Yakuza by far SEGA’s most polished and perfected I.P. Even as someone who doesn’t care for story, these two games have engaging cutscenes that are more like live action dramas, but don’t feel as pretentious as Western ones. Yakuza: Like a Dragon (which is technically the name of the series twice, since Yakuza is the Western localization of Ryu ga Gotoku, which translates to “like a dragon”) has a particularly good narrative. The combat of both is excellent. Yakuza 0, as with most of the franchise, plays like a classic beat ‘em up in the vein of Shenmue, with intricate combos, and over-the-top special moves, as well as specific actions that involve the environment. Yakuza: Like a Dragon plays like a turn-based RPG, which is more accessible but is still ridiculous in its own way.

However, both games seem to have their own trappings. One of the most egregious issues is that they are immensely grindy for a number of reasons, such as the gacha-based item-finding mechanic in 0, where you need more and more money to get better loot and to decrease the time it takes to bring the loot in, or the obscene amount of yen you need to upgrade weapons and the crafting shop in Like a Dragon. This is from someone who completed every Rare Blade skill tree in Xenoblade Chronicles 2, so that means it’s REALLY bad. 0 seems to have a mechanic where you generate money automatically over time (that goes to show you how little I’ve done in that game), but man, you need that money all the same. Yakuza 0 is also very difficult at times, and Like a Dragon has some seriously spongey bosses—even when overleveled by a wide margin. 

The biggest turn-off for me, however, is that there are a lot of sidequests locked behind minigames. The sidequests are some of the best parts of Yakuza, and I can’t experience them all. Seriously, I played shogi on the easiest difficulty for over two hours and couldn’t win ONCE. It also doesn’t help that a lot of sidequests have right/wrong answers and can be annoying. Maybe Yakuza is just not for me. Womp womp.

2) Eastward

This is probably one of the best games of 2021. You can tell it was made with blood, sweat, and manly crocodile tears. It has gorgeous and unique pixel art, as well as Eastward wearing its Earthbound influence on its sleeve. The dialogue isn’t just well-written; the story is extremely well-told. 

However, it has some caveats that take getting used to. Despite the gameplay borrowing from 2D Zelda, it really isn’t a Zelda-like game at all. Exploration is limited, almost every collectable is missable, and to rub salt in the wound, there is almost no warning for when you pass one of those cutoff points; just casually going over to someone’s house to deliver lunch can trigger a sudden change in the story dynamic. Eastward is more like Final Fantasy X than Zelda, and this MUST be kept in mind. Unfortunately, I didn’t expect this, and have felt turned off from it for a while. It doesn’t help that the puzzles—from what I’ve played—are mind-numbingly simple, failing to execute upon the wide variety of gameplay mechanics you are given. 

While the story is really good, I don’t know if it can carry average gameplay. I do come to miss this game at times, but I still haven’t played it again in about two years now. Like the Magic Conch says: “maybe someday.”

1) Satisfactory maybe?

I’m not sure this one counts, because I by all means LOVE this game to death but I haven’t been in the mood to play it lately. I have almost a hundred hours in it, and have played a bit of Update Seven. Satisfactory is an exceptionally good crafting/open world/sandbox/base building/automation/logistics game with excellent UI, virtually no limit on how to build a factory, and a—no pun intended—satisfying progression system. It is a game where you feel like you are a god. Also, unlike some other automation games, resource deposits are infinite.

However, these kinds of games are full of caveats, but it actually takes a long time to feel the pinch. Learning how mechanics work is intuitive enough, but—similar to many other crafting games and their ilk—Satisfactory feels more balanced around multiplayer. There are numerous times in the campaign where I feel like I’ve pulled my teeth out to make a mind-bogglingly complex resource, and the best setup I have is about a mile long track of machines, and it takes them about twenty minutes to make one… just for that resource to be an ingredient in even more mind-bogglingly complex resource. In addition to that, you have to build machines that specialize in generating power for your factory, and since Satisfactory is super Capitalist in terms of theming, there is no taking advantage of low-maintenance sources such as solar or wind; EVERYTHING needs to burn at least one resource (also, why does the nuclear plant need water?). Also, Oil is an annoying resource, because it always needs to be refined into other things, and that refinement speed—even with maximum overclock settings—is slower than what a lot of those resulting resources are used for, such as burning fuel in Fuel Generators. The mechanics of the game will actively work against you as it becomes more of a struggle to increase and maintain power. 

It feels like there’s almost too much to do, as if it was intended to split up a team of players to do stuff like keeping up with maintenance in the base, while others expand and build the maze of devices needed to make those insane resources, or explore the vast overworld for loot. I like a lot to do in a game, but even in its current Early Access state, it can take at least two hundred hours to get through all available Tiers. That doesn’t include the hundreds of thousands of resources you need to convert into tickets to redeem various trophies in-game, which I presume will be tied to Achievements once those are added. I also have felt crushing loneliness playing Satisfactory solo, which is similar to a lot of other open world survival games I’ve played. Even if they are really good gameplay-wise, a lot of the fun comes from bringing at least one extra player. I’ve played many open world survival games and felt similar burnout every single time.

On the flipside, Satisfactory’s immensity makes it so that you really don’t need any other game of this kind. It really is one of the best, but I dunno… it might just be TOO good. Also, again, it’s a resource intensive PC game, and even with its internal fans and an external cooling device, my computer feels like an oven when running it. I’ve only had it for a year and it was a top-of-the-line computer too… What kind of beasts are Twitch streamers running by comparison?!

Conclusion

As someone who loves videogames, I often tell myself that I hate videogames. Boy, there are sure a lot of these fellas out there, right? Well, the real purpose of this post was to introduce you, the reader, to some games that I might never get to publish a proper review for. Hope you enjoyed this mess of a post, and maybe, you’ll have a better game clearing rate than me.

Random Thoughts on the Current State of the Pokémon Games

by macksamson, posted in Gaming, Miscellaneous, Rants

This is just a kind of stream-of-consciousness post. I just want to add my two cents into the endlessly toxic world of people complaining about Pokémon, and hopefully do it in a more civil manner. I say I love Pokémon and have given high scores to the very hated recent installments, yet I had times where I was straight-up bored with those games, despite how much I love them and how much I insist I love the series as a whole. My relationship with Pokémon is very complicated, so let’s go over this in segments. 

For context: I started with Pokémon Platinum and stuck with each main release since. My most nostalgic favorite installments are Black & White 2.

First, the Most Objective Flaw: They’re Ugly as Sin Now

No one—from Pokémon’s most devout fans to its most vocal critics—play these for graphics anymore. We all know that the Nintendo consoles have always been incapable of surpassing the 12k 480fps of modern systems, but most people who work with the thing—from Nintendo to Monolith—have managed to make beautiful games that run well nonetheless. GameFreak has not.

They really have no excuses here. At first, I thought that the data of 1000+ Pokémon alone made it so that they couldn’t invest in graphics without jacking up the file size to cataclysmic levels. However, my experiences with digital game copies taught me that the bulk of data IS the graphics. A ten-hour-long Devil May Cry game will take over seventy gigs, while a 80+ hour RPG made with pixel art (like CrossCode) will be barely over a single gigabyte. I really don’t understand why they just can’t get the games to look good. Granted, it is just the environs for the most part; characters at least look respectable. When Gen 10 comes around, they need to borrow some Zelda devs to make a Pokémon game that looks like Breath of the Wild.

Other than That, I Really Don’t Get Some of the Criticisms

Maybe I’m biased, but I honestly don’t understand what’s so bad about these games. I heard it gets divisive from Gen 4 onward, but starting from Gen 6, the hate feels unanimous. People refer to these games as if their badness is a scientific fact; as a level of gaming sacrilege on par with Fallout ‘76. Granted, my only window into the gaming world is what I hear from the YouTubers I watch…

In any case, I can at least understand why people wouldn’t like Gen 7 (i.e. cutscenes) and BDSP (i.e. the lack of Platinum quality-of-life improvements), but that’s about it. The rest of the games have flaws, DEFINITELY, but I wouldn’t call them travesties. People generally say the newer games are too easy (Souls fans, I presume?), but I have a counterpoint for that I’ll address later. 

I just don’t understand the hate for Gen 6, ORAS, Gen 8, and Gen 9. I will say that the Pokémon games have had unsubstantial postgames after Gen 5, which unlocked huge parts of the overworld, optional bosses, and… the stupid movie studio (well the argument is that it was a lot not that it was perfect). ORAS had the Rayquaza post-game story, but that’s the only one I think compares.

Other than that, the newer games are great mechanically. The eventual removal of HMs was huge, allowing more freedom in team builds. The battles are generally faster, and the actual visible encounters (once added) made it easy to avoid battles and find rare Pokémon. They also make TMs infinite use (or methods to infinitely produce them), which means you don’t need to play the entire game again for that Earthquake TM!

However, They Kinda Have Lost Their Magic

I don’t think the games are these cardinal gaming sins like the rest of the Internet does, but at the same time, I don’t know if I can call them masterpieces either. Each Generation, I always love finding the new Pokémon (since I don’t spoil myself on them) and reacting to them. That’s kind of… it for the most part. Like I said before, I love playing them but also get bored sometimes. 

Ultimately, I think the issue is that it’s for kids. I don’t wanna sound like that guy (especially since I love a lot of stuff geared to kids), but I think being adults and veterans of the series colors our impressions to an extent. Everyone these days says the games are too easy, and I kind of agree. You get a lot of XP in battle, to the point where only bosses are capable of requiring a little effort; they might make ONE Pokémon faint. The games aren’t balanced on understanding the competitive meta either. 

This is where my two cents come in: I think that the bulk of difficulty in Pokémon, moreso than any other RPG, is not knowing the mechanics. No matter what game we started with, our first playthrough was an uphill battle. I remember having to grind up to five-plus levels just to potentially beat a Gym, and now, I can do a lot of fights underleveled. To succeed in Pokémon, you need to know the relationship between eighteen different elements, as well as the stats, movepools, Types, and Abilities of over a thousand Pokémon. 

To further corroborate this, I should mention a YouTuber I watch who knows nothing about Pokémon: StephenPlays. He has a series of stream VODs archiving a playthrough he and his wife did of Pokémon Let’s Go. Let’s Go is Final Fantasy Mystic Quest-levels of aggressively easy; it gives XP out like candy, and doesn’t let you challenge any Gym without a Type advantage. However, they both struggled. Immensely. At the easiest games in the series. Why? Because they didn’t know the mechanics, especially with the Fairy Type being brought into Gen 1. 

By comparison, us veterans know the Type matchups, Abilities, and moves off of memory. In a casual campaign, we can eat everyone except maybe the final boss for breakfast (Gen 9 can be hard at points if you do it out of order, though). Randomizers and nuzlockes are the only ways for us to feel a challenge from them now, and sadly, the former is technically illegal (or, at the very least, will inject malware into your computer). 

Kids playing the “easy” newer games will definitely struggle. Also, since they’re the target audience, the stories of the games will—sadly—never go anywhere interesting. Let’s address it. People complain that the stories in the new games are simple, soulless, and boring, but honestly, I feel like it was ALWAYS that way. The difference is that they have a lot more escalation now. In Red & Blue, you went from fighting silly, incompetent criminals, to cultists who want to control literal gods. Despite this escalation, the stories remain cartoonishly simple.

Most importantly, they try and fail to have character development. People complain about characters being soulless now, but again, they were that way back then. The classic Gym Leaders and Pokémon League members in the beloved Gens 1-3 are no better than the newer ones; one-off people who sit in their buildings like hikikomoris. The newer games do put in a nonzero effort for SOMETHING; they actually have some moments. Sometimes, the brief impression of a Gym Leader that you do get from their Gym alone—such as with Larry—is actually sufficient to make a great character.

Unfortunately, the story only peaked exactly twice: Black & White, and Legends Arceus. In Black & White, the Gym Leaders all have established roles (and actually help you at the end), while it goes into Pokémon training ethics for the first time in the series. Sadly, they oversimplify Team Plasma with a classic “puppetmaster pulling the strings” plot twist; probably another consequence of these games being made for kids. Pokémon Legends: Arceus is the only game to give the main protagonist character development. They are a kid who somehow ended up in Sinnoh of the past, and is immediately regarded as an anomaly by the locals and often discriminated against. The endgame pulls out all the stops and it actually feels emotional. I’m betting that we complained less about the older games’ stories because we’re just nostalgic for them; the ones we played AS KIDS. 

The Manga Actually Looks Awesome, Though

Among One Piece and Jojo is a manga that has run for about as long: Hidenori Kusaka’s manga adaptation of Pokémon. Each Generation has a self-contained story starring both variants of the player character, but with actual personalities.

I haven’t actually read it, though, since it’s huge, not part of Viz Media’s subscription, and my local library is sorely lacking copies. I have skimmed through it and what I saw is actually kind of lit. Unlike the anime, it’s faithful to the game mechanics, while taking creative liberties to extend on the story and the otherwise unremarkable characters from each game. Maybe give it a shot if you’re a devout critic of the games. It won’t fix the games themselves, but it’ll be something.

Despite Its Flaws, Other Franchises Have Yet to Surpass Pokémon (Hot Take, I Know)

Pokémon was a big, important series in the creature collector subgenre, to the point where it almost monopolized the subgenre itself. Naturally, a series like Pokémon has rivals. Although many vocal people have pieces—both trollish and scholarly—about how any of those franchises are better than Pokémon, I have yet to encounter such a phenomenon. I have played at least one game from two of Pokémon’s rivals, and honestly, I don’t get it.

Digimon

I played through a Digimon game once: the first DS one (whatever it was called). Despite it still having a devoted fandom that insists it’s better than Pokémon, Digimon seems to have died off. It still has new games, but they never looked too amazing (and the Steam reviews I read of the new, visual novel-esque one were pretty mixed, leaning toward negative). The DS ones seemed to actually be among the highest regarded.

Mechanically, there are some things about Digimon that are neat… actually, one thing. The way evolutions work is a lot more interesting than Pokémon. Each Digimon has its evolutions displayed like a skill tree, along with their conditions. You dictate when they evolve, and you can also unevolve them to experience other paths without having to catch a new one. You’ll need to do this, because Digimon have a level cap that blocks them from certain paths, and unevolving them increases their level caps.

However, the positives end there. For starters, the game was super unbalanced around this core mechanic that they expect you to use. You think Pokémon is easy? I two-shot the final boss of this game, just by using its systems like they wanted me to! Digimon retain some base stats on unevolution, making them much stronger than they were the first time. Some of these evolutions require you to do this several times, and by then, a Level 1 baby Digimon will have three-digit base stats. If there is any depth or nuance to combat, it’s useless. In fact, I don’t even think there is anything, at least not from what I recall (it was MANY years ago that I played it). 

In addition, it was a lot emptier than Pokémon; even Gen 8 and its lousy overworld. Structurally, it’s a dungeon crawler, which is fine in theory, but in practice there is nothing to explore, no treasures, NO REPELS TO STAVE OFF ENCOUNTERS, no nothing. Furthermore, the designs are too intricate. Digimon oozes that 1990s-early 2000s aggressive edginess where they had to make everything as edgy as that damn fourth Chaos Emerald. The evolutions also have no logic whatsoever. The grass starter evolves into… an angel? Meanwhile, there’s some other little puppy Digimon that I recall evolving into either a tsuchigumo… or Funky Kong. 

Yo-kai Watch (henceforth known as Yokai Watch because the hyphen is unnecessary)

I played the first game through the main story and most of Psychic Spirits. I actually thought that this was the one to beat Pokémon. The idea of using Shinto mythology in a creature collector setting is brilliant, since there are SO MANY yokai, and Shinto itself kind of encourages making up new ones as you go. The dialogue is some of the best I’ve seen in any media geared toward children, and the designs are REALLY good; arguably better than that of any Pokémon. It has a traditional RPG equipment system, and no HM mechanics, allowing for better freedom in builds. Its overworld (especially in the sequel) is full of life, and has an excellent map for navigation.

However, the positives end there. Where do I even begin with all the issues—that Pokémon doesn’t have—which led to me rage-quitting this series that had so much promise? The first thing that comes to mind is that Yokai Watch has had the worst Western localization in any game this century; I honestly believe former members of 4Kids worked on it, and you can’t convince me otherwise. Even though it was before I did my proper research on Japanese culture, I had still wanted Yokai Watch to be a learning experience. However, I would be quite disappointed to know that pretty much every yokai (except for Jibanyan, his cousins, and certain others) have Westernized names. They are really good names for what they are, but I hated them as localization. I suppose they thought that kids would have trouble with the Japanese names, but the games have full voice acting, including each yokai saying its own name. Thus, there is no reason kids wouldn’t know how to pronounce the names since they would be spoken anyway. 

More importantly, however, is the borderline censorship of Japanese culture (or at least attempts) that I find comparable to the infamous onigiri-into-donuts of early anime. Despite how much they try to pass it off as America, there are Shinto shrines, shinkansen, an equivalent of Tokyo Tower (or Skytree?), and—most notably—an early cutscene in the second game where the main character inserts a 100 yen coin into a gacha machine, despite the currency being localized as USD. I doubt that this kid got his hands on an old-timey dollar coin (and actually spent it). 

I wish the localization was the worst; the gameplay is worse. FAR WORSE. First off, team building—despite what I just said about it—actually sucks. Yes, there is equipment and stuff, but that’s it. The problem is in yokais’ movepools. In Yokai Watch, each yokai has a physical attack, a magical attack, a support move, and a status move (I.I.R.C. of course; I do know the first two are correct). The problem is that yokai fall into specific roles, just like in Pokémon; dedicated physical/magical attackers, tanks, etc. However, the four moves they have are what they get (I think there are TM-like items but they’re rare). This means that most yokai will be stuck with a move that is completely worthless, such as a physical yokai with a magic move and vice versa.

Oh but it gets worse! People hate Pokémon’s reliance on RNG, but Yokai Watch is significantly worse. Virtually EVERYTHING about Yokai Watch’s gameplay is RNG-based. First off, catching new Yokai is awful. It’s a random chance after they are defeated. You might think “Good, then I don’t have to worry about weakening them and using items—” WRONG! In Yokai Watch, you must feed them their favorite food (and touch them in a certain spot in the second game) to increase your chances of catching them. However, even when consistently fulfilling all these conditions, it almost never works. To make it more luck-based, there are hearts that occasionally fly onscreen—AT RANDOM—that increase the odds further (but even with them it rarely worked). There are even static, unique yokai that are really powerful and can join your team once you beat them; key word “can”. Yes, even THEY are luck-based, although not as much as regular mobs. It’s stupid, since they are stronger than most bosses. 

The problem with this compounds on what truly makes Yokai Watch the borderline-unfun slog that it is; fully autonomous party members. In battle, all you can do is use items, rotate through your three active party members (out of six), direct them at a target, hit random powerups (like those hearts), and use yokais’ Soultimate moves. Every move in a yokais’ movepool is decided BY A.I. For catching, this means that your party can (and often will) murder yokai that you’re trying to catch before you can maximize your odds. However, just fighting with them is no fun either. Theoretically, yokai have fighting styles that—for the most part—synergize with their builds; physical yokai will generally use physical moves, etc. There are also items to change this style if you wish. However, this rarely worked for me. I’ve had physical yokai use magic moves and vice versa quite often. 

All this meshes into a game that’s about as easy as Pokémon. In regular battles, you just need one multi-targeting Soultimate to win. Boss battles are more fun, but they’re also stupid. Yokai Watch is a series that highly encourages inflicting status ailments; generally the sign of a well-built, strategy-driven RPG. However, unlike recent RPGs, bosses are universally immune to status! This means that if you have a status-based team, then you lose. Also, most difficulty really comes from the party not doing what you want. As much as Souls fans insist that intentionally programming the player character poorly makes for good difficulty, there comes a point where it just stops being fun.

Yokai Watch further becomes less fun in the overworld. We all hate the long encounter animations in Pokémon; the fanfare plays, the Pokémon appears, then your Pokémon appears… blah blah blah. In Yokai Watch, you have to bumble around EVERYWHERE to get a reading on your radar, then go into a minigame where you have to do some focus thing on the yokai to get it to appear, THEN you can fight! It’s nice that the radar shows yokai ranks to give you an idea of what’s there, but I’ve had times where I couldn’t get anything to spawn at all. Dungeons are better since they are classic, visible encounters, but that’s only half the battle. You also have to grind for money (a lot), and if you’re a completionist, then you must additionally grind for fish and bugs. Although the journal in the second game shows habitats of undiscovered critters, they are still a PAIN to find. They have different rarities, and a very strict quick-time event that you must beat to get them (also the timing is—of course—random). 

RNG also extends into the overworld. For some egregious reason, every single sidequest has a random chance of giving an additional bonus reward… or nothing. For completionists, this means that you must SAVE SCUM to get all the awards; specifically for the rare super bonus rewards that’re better than the regular ones. I always thought that some of the later quests had really powerful, one-of-a-kind items ONLY available through the super bonus; I at least know it’s the only way to get the best revival items. Also, a lot of yokai are only available through an RNG-based gacha that appears at the end of a nerve-wracking stealth minigame that occurs RANDOMLY. Seriously… I dunno. Maybe the newer ones are good, but the notion of Yokai Watch in the West is a pipe dream now, so I’ll never know for sure.

I Have Hope for Cassette Beasts, Though

People still try to topple Pokémon to this day. The most popular attempt in recent years is an indie game called Coromon. It looked great, and had built-in randomizer and nuzlocke modes. However, I was ultimately turned off by what I read about it on Steam. All Coromon have monotypes, and I.I.R.C., can’t even learn multiple moves types for utility like in Pokémon. Also, Shinies have better stats. While it’s nice that you get a reward for finding such rare critters… it also means actually having to grind 1/4000 odds to get the best party, and since the game is apparently quite difficult, you might actually have to even on a casual playthrough.

For the record, I know about Palworld and I’m not playing that either. Mechanically, it looks interesting; like Legends Arceus on steroids. However, I don’t like the whole “cute but actually dark and messed up” image. It pretty much always ends up resulting in something pretentious and politically charged, and insults the idea of embracing your inner child. My therapist’s son is a marine, and the whole pop culture trope of “all soldiers are mindless, remorseless killing machines” is an insult to our soldiers, and oversimplifies the complexities that occur behind closed doors (at least I hope that’s the case).

Anyway, this part is about an upcoming indie game called Cassette Beasts. It looks cool, has expansive mobility options, and the monster designs are really creative and very different from most creature collectors. It has an in-battle fusion system, and a table-flipping Type relations system where using specific Types on another can trigger status effects that help or hinder. There’s also dual typing (at least in fusion)! There is—again—more incentive to find Shinies, which are called Bootlegs this time. However, they don’t seem to have better stats, but are instead different monsters entirely. Honestly, the game looks really hard, strategy-driven, and complex, but I’ll still give it a shot. I just hope that they show previews of the results of your moves so you don’t have to memorize the Type matchups!

Conclusion

I will probably keep playing Pokémon, but I’m not really so sure what should be done to improve it. Part of me thinks that it might be better to not have overworlds or stories at all. The combat in Pokémon is incredibly deep and strategic when taken competitively. People love Stadium and its ilk; the spinoffs that are literally all battles. Pokémon Showdown allows anyone with a computer to build any team they want, right down to Nature, IVs, EVs, Abilities, etc. without grinding hundreds of hours in the main games to get that perfect Pokémon. Unfortunately, I have no real use for it, since I have no friends (and there’s no way I’m fighting randos). 

The obvious good idea is to expand on Legends Arceus. The series has deep and fascinating lore, and that game set up potential to experience this lore for yourself. It could extend to a game set during the Great Pokémon War, and give huge character development to Surge. Arceus still wasn’t particularly difficult, and it was REALLY grindy, but it was a quantum leap in the right direction. Scarlet & Violet, at the very least, had a memorable and dynamic overworld, with huge variety in landmarks and geography. It’s possible to make an Legends game in a traditional open world setting and have it be good. However, GameFreak has had a long habit of coming up with brilliant ideas exactly once and never using them again.

Well, assuming that you’ve read all the way to the end of this long rant, I’d like to know your opinions. Do you love or hate Pokémon? Does the series have any chance to improve, or has it actually been saved with the most recent games?

Xenoblade Chronicles 3: The One Where They Pull a Steven Universe

by macksamson, posted in Full Reviews, Gaming

Lately, I’ve decided to only follow three types of RPG no matter what: Pokémon, indie titles, and Xenoblade Chronicles. While X was… something, the two main installments of the franchise have more-or-less cemented this as one of Nintendo’s best I.P.s ever. As such, it’s natural for Xenoblade Chronicles 3 to be priority one for me. It’s been five years since we had a new one! Without further ado, let’s play it and pray that it’s good.

The premise of this game will sound very confusing if this is your first Xenoblade, but fans might be even more confused! Xenoblade Chronicles 3 begins when some kids gather in what looks a lot like Colony 9 from Xenoblade Chronicles 1 to celebrate a party, when they crash into… Alrest from Xenoblade Chronicles 2?! Then all of a sudden, we are graced with Aionios, a world that is—in classic Xenoblade fashion—locked in a never-ending war: people from Keves vs people from Agnus.

The plot starts off simple enough, if you don’t read into things too hard. It stars a Homs named Noah, a High Entia named Eunie, and an Machina (I think?) named Lanz. They, along with everyone else in the world, are born soldiers. Basically, it’s your classic military-sci-fi anime setup. A mission to investigate an unusual source of ether starts your usual, epic JRPG story. TL;DR, they run into three other kids from Agnus, and an evil anime guy named Moebius. In a pinch, Noah and one of the Agnians—a Gormotti girl named Mio—fuse together and become Stevonnie—I mean—a being called an Ouroboros. Oh, and after the encounter, Moebius projects a red infinity symbol into the sky, which makes the entire world the six kids’ collective enemy. Their only hope is to band up and book it to the Monado-looking sword thrust into the world’s butthole.

Something immediately noticeable is how much darker the game starts. Even though they both have a big event at the beginning that sets the tone, the Xenoblade games have generally felt pretty damn whimsical. However, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 starts off quite depressing. The opening area is drab and overcast, compared to the Tolkienian grassy fields from the previous installments. It’s fitting, since we have the whole thing with kids being grown in test tubes to be killing machines. Of course, once the journey begins in earnest, it becomes happier and more Xenoblade-y.

I don’t know if this is a hot take, but this game might have my favorite narrative of the series. The fusion aspect is kind of the love letter to the series, and makes for amazing dramatic irony for those who have knowledge, while still having the right emotional hooks to get you invested early. You have the full roster of six by the end of the first chapter, which gives you more and more time to fall in love with them. The cutscenes are noticeably longer, but I found them more cinematic and engaging, plus there aren’t as many cutscenes that feel like filler.

However, as much as I’m praising the story, I kind of feel like that series knowledge kind of carries it. Many aspects of the game, from mechanics to setpieces, scream the notion that Aionios is a fusion of the original Bionis and Mechonis with Alrest. This is legitimately interesting… but you have to know this ahead of time to have said interest. Without that in mind, Xenoblade 3 starts out as a bit of a broken promise. When the cast becomes Ouroboros, they are hunted down by both Keves and Agnus, which screams: “Oh boy, morally ambiguous plot where we have to kill our friends!” However, there is a way to free the other Colonies that only Noah can do. If you don’t like storylines where you get to save literally everyone, then this game’s narrative will probably not be your speed. Sure, there are many moments to keep you on your toes, but there needs to be some amount of early hookage (professional term) on the player’s part for it to mean anything. 

It doesn’t help that the worldbuilding is kind of… weird. The rules are simple: people are born in test tubes, and kill enemies to feed these machines called Flame Clocks. They all die if the Flame Clock of their respective Colony runs out, but they die anyway after ten years. This ten year thing is also bizarre because it is not clear AT ALL how characters age. Noah and Co., for example, are almost ten years old, yet clearly appear to be in their late teens; they aren’t born that way either, since flashbacks show them as much smaller when they were kids. Also, some characters look like they’re in their twenties. Additionally, it’s inconsistent how much control the Flame Clocks have over people. Noah and Mio, even before Ouroboros, had conscious thoughts and feelings (i.e. hating war). There’s also a straight-up brainwashing feature of the Flame Clocks, and the bad guys would have an edge if they simply… used it. 

So, before discussing the cast, I need to bring up the age old debate: dub vs. sub. I’m pretty sure most people and their grandmas have played the dub, and a few weebs—normally myself—stick with the original Japanese voice actors. However, since I didn’t know when I would replay this game, I decided to do something different. I alternated between dub and sub each sitting. That way, I can really compare and contrast.

It goes without saying that the English dub is excellent. The cast is, as always, European, which I definitely prefer over American dialect. Well, there are some American voice actors, but they’re pretty sparse. I greatly preferred the Japanese audio in Xenoblade 2, since it’s significantly more anime than the rest (and they’re already pretty anime as it is). With that game going down the laundry list of anime tropes, especially with the Rare Blades, I stuck with the sub, especially since I heard that dubs tend to not understand the tropes on a cultural level. In Xenoblade 3, the Japanese cast is also really good; no one knows how to convey anime better than the professionally trained seiyus from the Land of the Rising Sun itself.

The cast is something they generally tend to get right, and the characters of Xenoblade 3 are no exception. From Keves, we have Noah, Lanz, and Eunie, while the representatives of Agnus are Mio, Sena, and Taion. Let’s go over them all.

Noah is your typical military sci-fi anime protagonist; a kid who’s born into war yet hates war at the same time. Yes, he’s one of those “I don’t want to kill anyone even if it’s the only way we don’t die” people. He seems like one of those goody-two-shoes types, but he has some interesting dialogues when it comes to his job as an Off-Seer; someone who plays a flute to honor the fallen. Lanz is Reyn, but less meme-y; he’s still a lovable oaf, though. He’s a meathead, but is loyal to the death. Best Girl Eunie is the sassiest High Entia you’ve ever laid eyes on. Her dub actress is admittedly really good, since the British insults are far superior to any others. Just be forewarned that there’s a moment early on where she has a big WTF moment, and—in classic JRPG fashion—she writes it off as nothing when asked why she’s suddenly clammed up, and no one else bothers to press her even though it’s something VERY PERTINENT TO THE OVERARCHING PLOT.

From Agnus is Mio, who is basically Noah but from Agnus. She hates war just like he does because some girl from her childhood always spat philosophical stuff about how their enemies are people too and whatnot. Best Girl Sena is, quite noticeably, a Blade, which is confusing since the weapons are also called Blades; obviously, I mean she’s a Blade from Xenoblade 2. Anyway, she’s also a big musclehead, and is a VERY different beast depending on her voice actor. I prefer her Japanese voice, since it suits the moe persona that she was clearly intended to have, whereas she’s very… wrong-sounding in the dub. Taion is very dense, but he’s smart and deductive.

These games tend to ham-fist ships (except in the case of Pyra vs. Mythra), and… well, if you couldn’t tell, Xenoblade 3 telegraphs them REALLY hard. In case you couldn’t tell who was destined for whom when describing the main cast, the other four have Orobouros forms as well. You can try to draw Mio with Sena, or Lanz with Taion, but it won’t change anything; the worst part is that there are troll interactions that imply ships that can never be. 

A glaring flaw with the main six is that—for the first time since Xenoblade X—there is no playable Nopon. Tagging behind are Riku and Manana from Keves and Agnus respectively. They are great, as always, but it still sucks that you can’t play as either of them. The dubs tend to be universally better for Nopon because they localized their dialect to be an endlessly charming form of grammatically incorrect English. Riku, who has an uncharacteristically deep and masculine voice in the dub, sounds ridiculous and incredible. His dub actor is probably one of my favorites in the series.

Beyond the main crew, there are WAY more characters, including Heroes, whom we’ll discuss later. The game keeps up the tradition of characters named Vandham… but takes the Xenoblade 2 route and kills him immediately (this is not really a spoiler; he’s from the first chapter). Both Agnus and Keves have a load of people with their own thoughts and feelings.

There is also a large assortment of villains. Moebius, incidentally, is not a person, but rather the true form of the Consuls. The Consuls are Ultraman cosplayers who have their own distinct personalities, even if their names are just letters of the alphabet. The best Moebius actually has a full name: Triton. I won’t spoil why he’s so great… just be excited for when he shows up. Unfortunately, his dub actor has one of the worst performances I’ve ever heard. I don’t know what the casting team was going for, but the result doesn’t match Triton’s character at all.

Overall, the cast is solid, but the dub vs. sub verdict is kind of up in the air on this one. I liked some dub actors more than others, while the Japanese cast is more consistent. However… as great as Riku is, I think I’m going to have to give it to the sub. The biggest advantage to playing Xenoblade in general dubbed is because they always had a tradition of working in voice clips that would become memes in the community, and to be honest, I have no idea what lines in Xenoblade 3‘s dub were meant to be memed on. So, with memes unaccounted for, I will decree—for the time being—that the Japanese voice cast is better, albeit by a slight margin! Look… I really don’t like Triton’s dub. At all.

Anyway, onto gameplay! For starters, exploration is more-or-less unchanged. You run around, fight enemies, and collect loot. Collectibles have unique icons in the overworld, already giving you an idea of what they are before you pick them up. There are also containers that, well, contain useful items. You can even find dead soldiers whom Noah is able to send off, increasing your Affinity with the area.

I was really worried about how the overworld would shape up, since I thought that Alrest from Xenoblade 2 had some weak spots. Aionios in terms of design takes some getting used to, admittedly. What’s notable is that the world is divided into several regions, within which contain many areas of their own. Because of this, the landscape can change biomes very abruptly and with no rhyme or reason. This mish-mashy look feels intentional, because it just so happens to suit a world that would be a product of two worlds’ fusion.

Overall, Aionios is large and fun to explore as it opens up. Outside of quests, there’s a lot of ground to cover; it achieves the perfect bifecta of scope and density. Of course, it isn’t short of spectacular vistas. The only real disappointment is that you never get to explore the iconic Urayan Mountains that make up most of the game’s cover art; they talk about it a bunch, but it’s just flavor text (Agnus Castle is pretty lacking as well). Okay, I guess the fact that not every Colony on Aionios is actually accounted for is a flaw too; they are also flavor text.

In any case, fast travel is really easy because you can travel to discovered landmarks, as well as various rest stops, and even the graves of defeated Unique Monsters. You can also set the time of day for when you arrive, in case there’s something time sensitive that needs to be taken care of in that area (which is an ironic feature, since the in-game time is virtually unused in this installment).

Speaking of rest stops, many of these will be encountered in abandoned Ferronis hulks throughout the world. You can use some juice harvested from ether channels that you can find pretty much everywhere to reactivate them. They have exclusive loot, and a fabricator that randomly spits out items if you feed it money. There are many types of rest stops, with different and important abilities unique to them. At campsites, you can cook learned recipes for a temporary buff. Visit canteens and order their food to unlock new recipes. There is also Gem Crafting, which is WAY simpler than in Xenoblade 1. This time, you just feed it the materials and there you go. Also, Gems aren’t exactly items. Once crafted, a Gem sits in your Gem box(?), and can be equipped to anyone and everyone at once. Crafting better versions overwrites the previous versions as well.  You’ll occasionally find random bits of information throughout the world. This can unlock topics to discuss at the canteen or campsite, and doing so can trigger new quests.

Another advantage of more biomes means more music! Each area has its own theme, and like I said, there’s a lot of them. As expected, Monolith delivers on all fronts. From atmospheric to epic, they do it all (although they lean on the former a lot in this one; some gamers might not approve). Although the Unique Monster theme might not be my new favorite (vs. the one from Xenoblade 2), the special theme for Chain Attack is adrenaline-pumping goodness.

For the first time since Xenoblade X you have a job system. For basics, the cast can change jobs, and naturally, characters can master that class’s Arts as their rank grows. However, there are some complexities to say the least. Only the OTPs have access to each other’s jobs at first, while the others unlock them over time by fighting alongside the job users. When changing a job, you can set specific Arts and Skills that were mastered by ranking up in the job. There is also job compatibility to worry about, which affects the growth rate of the job. Although, you probably want to max out everyone at all jobs regardless, don’t you?

It surely can’t get more complicated in a game where all six party members fight together, can it? WRONG! Inevitably, there are more jobs than the starting six, and this is where Heroes come in. Heroes each have a Hero Quest, which—yes—are basically Rare Blade quests from Xenoblade 2. Upon completion of the Hero Quest, you can recruit that person to fight as an autonomous seventh party member. Additionally, one character inherits that person’s job, with everyone else eventually following suit through the same method as unlocking jobs to other characters.

What makes this mechanic interesting is that a lot of Hero Quests are tied to freeing Colonies that are off the beaten path. This results in—yes—skipping entire towns—quests, Affinity Charts, and all—if you don’t do these. The game implies that there is a huge risk to freeing the Colonies, but all it really does is increase the amount of spawn points for mobs of the respective faction. The Colonies are small and numerous, but thought was put in to give each a memorable design that stands out from the rest. There aren’t as many quests per Colony, but this works to their advantage as well, because it feels like each Colony has its own self-contained story that gets full focus throughout the game.

Now that I’ve discussed Hero Quests, I can now discuss the Heroes as characters. At first, there isn’t a lot going for them when introduced. However, the real character development comes forth during their second Hero Quests, the reward of which increases the maximum rank of their respective job from ten to twenty, and at rank twenty, their Talent Art turns into a Master Art that can be freely set at your leisure. The main six also have special quests to give them closure that they otherwise wouldn’t have, and this, naturally, increases the maximum rank of their own starting job.

After playing every Xenoblade game at least once, my motto became this: your first time playing a Xenoblade game will always be your first Xenoblade game, meaning that they tend to change things up so much that even veterans will face a high learning curve in each game. However, I found that Xenoblade 3 rewards past experience moreso than previous installments, since most of the basics carry over. Obviously, you have your auto-attacks, which are self-explanatory, and a choice of three Arts, and a Talent Art that builds up from various actions. Furthermore, your starting formation already has the ability to do a complete Break>Topple>Daze combo before you’re taught the mechanic. Oh, and in case you’re new to the series, it’s a staple mechanic where you knock enemies over so that they’re helpless; the only change is that Topple can be followed up with Launch and Smash Arts OR Daze and brand-new Burst Arts. Both forms of Arts recharging come back as well; the gang from Keves has their Arts refill over time like in Xenoblade 1, and the gang from Agnus through auto-attacks like in Xenoblade 2. Also, the ability to use Arts right when an auto-attack hits comes back from Xenoblade 2. An important change to note is that YOU CAN FIGHT WHILE SWIMMING. THANK YOU, MONOLITH!!! Boy, going back to older installments after this will be tough to say the least.

There are some new standout features. As said before, you have all six characters fight at once. Furthermore, you can switch who you’re playing as mid-battle. ALSO, Healer-type characters are the only ones who can revive allies. ALSO ALSO, there are Fusion Arts, where you use a regular and mastered Art simultaneously. Due to the removal of the Party Gauge, the Chain Attack meter resets after every battle, meaning that you can’t store an almost full charge for a tough fight.

Speaking of Chain Attacks, the ones in Xenoblade 3 are perhaps simpler than Xenoblade 2, but still more complex than in the original. When initiated, you choose one of three orders. Each character can use an Art (or a Fusion Art if possible) to build up Tactical Points. When the Tactical Points are at least 100% full, a Chain Art is performed, granting the chosen order’s bonus effect for the duration of the Chain Attack. There are all kinds of bonuses from using specific Arts and with whom, so… get experimenting. Inflicting Break>Topple>etc. still works in battle, and fortunately, all positional bonuses are guaranteed regardless of where your party is standing. Also, Heroes have their own special abilities in Chain Attacks. 

In case you forgot, certain pairs (i.e. OTPs) can fuse into Ouroboros. In battle, they have access to really powerful Arts for the duration of the Heat Gauge. You don’t want to fuse all the time, though, for using Fusion Arts increases the Interlink Level, and at Level 3, Ouroboros Arts gain their really awesome bonus effects. Each Ouroboros has its own Soul Tree, where it can learn new Arts and other helpful abilities with SP gained from battle. Eventually, Ouroboros can participate in Chain Attacks by completing an Order from both members of the pair, or by having a Level 3 fusion active when you trigger the Chain Attack. You will also unlock alternate forms of the Ouroboros, each with their own ENTIRE Soul Trees, with the ability to share a skill with the other form. This essentially means you have a grand total of TWELVE CHARACTERS to manage.

You’d think that having full party participation would make this game a cakewalk, right? Well, once you enter the second region, Xenoblade 3 takes the kids gloves off, making enemies spongier and nastier than ever to balance out your extra manpower. For the most part, it’s standard fare; regular mobs aren’t so bad as long as you’re on their level, while Unique Monsters and bosses offer the bulk of the challenge. However, with so much more going on than ever, I daresay this is the toughest installment yet. Even with a balanced team, aggro management can be all over the place; I’ve had non-tanking members be ganged up on by the entire opposition for what feels like no good reason at all. Also, of all the mechanics, I’ve felt that raising the Interlink Level is a bit touchy. It doesn’t always increase when you use a Fusion Art; in my experience, it seems to go up every two or three uses, despite what the tutorial tells you. 

However, as difficult as the game is, it’s easy to overlevel if you do certain quests at the earliest opportunity before advancing the main story (leveling down via Rest Spots isn’t available until after beating the game). The A.I. is also—still—not the best. While they’re pretty good in normal situations, they tend to fuse willy-nilly, which makes it more difficult to get off those Level 3 Ouroboros fusions. You eventually unlock a setting to control ALL fusions yourself, but that only increases the amount of control memorization and omni-awareness of the battlefield on your part; a panic fusion can get you out of a tight spot, so trying to reach that Level 3 might be greedy.

Of course, being a 1st party Nintendo game, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 has several DLC installments that are immensely helpful and punish anyone who plays through the game at launch. For starters, they unlock two new Heroes, Ino and Masha. Ino is one of the best characters in the game, and more importantly, she has a Break Art that can be mastered at Rank 10. This solves an issue where you only have one Break Art for a long portion of the game, which makes it impossible to have a full Smash combo without creating an imbalanced party due to limited Arts options. Masha… is kind of bad. She’s a great character and Hero, but she also introduces a crafting mechanic. It’s a gacha system, where you get Accessories with randomized buffs, and randomized stat improvements each time you upgrade them.

The problem is that all the hundreds of materials you’d be collecting naturally are useless here; the only way to get them is through Challenge Mode, the other part of the DLC. The standard Time Attack is as it’s always been. However, the interesting new mechanic is the Archsage’s Gauntlet. This is a roguelite, but fortunately, it isn’t as demanding as most games in the genre, at least not in Normal Mode. Here, you have to fight waves of enemies with one party member, while buying Heroes who are distributed at random in a shop you access between rounds. There are also Emblems, sold at random, which give bonuses that can be upgraded by buying the same Emblems multiple times. Your performance in your run rewards you Blue Noponstones, which can be used to get permanent Emblem Upgrades, as well as the necessary materials for Masha.

I honestly don’t like this, because it makes Xenoblade Chronicles 3 almost as bad as Xenoblade Chronicles 2 for completionist grinding. The Accessories from Masha aren’t really necessary, unless you plan to fight the superbosses, which completionists need to do anyway. However, the base game is grindy for completionists as well. The worst task by far is to get every Rank X Gem, which requires tons of very rare enemy drops, and there’s no shop to trade large amounts of common drops for rarer ones. It’s still more reasonable than in Xenoblade 2, though. You can actually craft Gems out of order, meaning that you can just focus on the Rank X ones alone. After that, it’s simply a matter of finding the highest level Unique Monster of the appropriate enemy types, and use Burst Combos over and over again to force them to drop materials in addition to what they drop on defeat. Uniques also have the highest chances to drop very rare items.

~~~~~

Final Verdict: 10/10

I am honestly astonished by how amazing Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is. I wish I could get 100% completion, but alas, the march of time isn’t allowing it. Maybe it’ll be something I come back to on occasion, while waiting five more years for a Xenoblade 4 (or Xenogears HD remaster). For now, though, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 has become my favorite game of all time. There, I said it.

PS: I’ll cover the upcoming DLC campaign in its own post, since I presume it’s a separate game like Torna.

SEASON: a letter to the future is a Bicycle Ride of Emotions

by macksamson, posted in Full Reviews, Gaming

If you’ve read my review of Spiritfarer, then you’d know that it takes a LOT for a videogame to make me cry. SEASON: a letter to the future is another one of those games; narrative-driven art pieces meant to change your life forever. However, SEASON is more than just walking forward and watching the assets do everything for you like in What Remains of Edith Finch. Read on to see why.

In SEASON: a letter to the future, the world is about to end. Apparently this happens all the time, but it doesn’t affect Estelle’s idyllic village. Estelle decides to go on a spiritual journey to record the world in its current state before it ends. Thus, she leaves her home to accomplish this task.

While I normally don’t care about story, such a thing is vital to make indie games like this enjoyable. However, before getting into the plot, I need to preface this by saying that I personally don’t dig the core themes in the game. It’s partially about media preservation, which is something I’ve grown to care very little about for an admittedly dumb reason. I’ve forgotten much of my childhood, especially a lot of the really bad bits (specifically school).

However, much of my disdain toward my own childhood didn’t come until adulthood. A lot of the YouTubers I watch were kids and teens back when I was growing up, and through them, I’ve learned of some really cursed things that I was alive for. As an example, my first session on SEASON was on the day I watched the episode of the Disc Only Podcast where they talked about some TV commercials from the 1990s and 2000s that would be considered horrifyingly unhealthy by today’s sensibilities. People tend to laugh hysterically when harkening back to these, but I honestly feel really uncomfortable. To think that an entire board room of adults in a marketing department thought that this stuff was A-okay… it just makes my skin crawl. I know it sounds dumb, but it’s through this that I really don’t care for media preservation. This kind of extends to actual personal memories. While I’d like to remember the best part of my childhood while I’m alive, why would I care if a complete stranger in a post-apocalyptic world received those memories after I’m gone?

Besides media preservation, SEASON has a much bigger, obvious theme. You could probably tell from the fact that these seasons have happened multiple times that the game is an allegory to change. It’s pretty apropos, since we’re four years into the most recent season: COVID-19. Anyone who was born before the pandemic should immediately be able to relate to SEASON. After all, it really did feel like the entire world transformed into a different planet overnight, and we’re still feeling those changes. I have not gotten over the trauma from 2020-2021 to this day. And now, another season in the form of the war in Ukraine is occuring before we’ve even had a chance to recover from THIS season!

In terms of the story therein, SEASON is what you’d expect from this ilk. Every line of dialogue and narration is as poignant and poetic, as it should be. I normally call this writing pretentious, but I actually didn’t mind it in SEASON. It allows for open interpretation, and you could have some interesting debates with a friend over the themes brought up in this game.

In SEASON, there are more-or-less five characters, including Estelle. Estelle is basically the narrator, and she takes notes from Edith Finch; every sentence is super esoteric and poetic. You never really know anything about her beyond three objects you choose to imbue into a pendant at the beginning of the game, and you don’t know what she’s thinking throughout her journey. While it seems like a lack of character development, in a game like this, it’s probably better that she keeps her thoughts to herself instead of a lot of times when writers appear to impose predefined takeaways into the audience.

The other four characters whom you interact with for the bulk of the story are the last people to evacuate from the main overworld, Tieng Valley. They’re what you’d expect from an indie game like this; relatable in every way possible. They are no doubt the weakest aspect of the game’s story, basically being templates for the audience to connect with from every angle; loss, moving to a new home, uncertainty, etc. The reason is because you basically show up to do their quests, and then… that’s it. You can speak to two of them and show them some of the stuff you’ve found, but it’s just cosmetic (Matyora is actually pretty great though).

Before we get to gameplay, I must praise SEASON‘s visuals. Despite being a world about to end the next day, it sure looks nice. It has a lovely cel-shaded look that makes every corner of the place look like a painting. It’s not the most novel style, but it beats out any of those photorealistic games nonetheless.

There are many games, like Breath of the Wild, where I go into them telling myself to enjoy every detail of the world in order to appreciate it. However, those games, especially Breath of the Wild, have so much to do and collect that I just never had the time to do that. However, in SEASON, those details essentially ARE the collectibles.

The gameplay is divided into two sections. First, you freely explore the world on your bike and collect anything you can find. Theoretically, you can take any photo and record any sound you want. However, there are specific sights and sounds that are actually considered “collectibles”, and you generally want those. Fortunately, these are pretty easy to find, as long as you are explorative. Visual landmarks stand out very well, while the game’s excellent sound design organically points you toward relevant audio keepsakes.

I’ll admit that recording stuff in SEASON felt really engaging, exciting, and rewarding, despite the latter not actually existing in gameplay. Each area of the game is thoughtfully handcrafted to be rife with metaphorical roses to stop and smell. You are meant to just drop everything you’re doing and just do nothing for minutes at a time. This is also a relatable aspect of the game’s story, especially in events where you can choose to record a scene or just listen. As someone who used to bring a big fancy camera to Disney, I wholeheartedly understand the pros and cons of actually choosing to preserve a moment in time versus just living that moment.

After you collect enough stuff, you can place them in that area’s page in Estelle’s journal. This part is really fun, and highly customizable. When you fill the Keepsakes gauge by finding the relevant capture points, then it is considered complete (although it doesn’t take much to get the bare minimum). It also unlocks stamps for that page as well, so you can really make it look nice.

However, the caveat comes in the form of the most justified use of bad inventory management in all of videogames. Estelle’s journal is not a College Ruled notebook; it’s a tiny little scrapbook. To keep with the game’s themes, the devs intentionally put an excessive amount of keepsakes throughout each area. As a result, you must constantly decide what stays and what goes. It’s actually pretty tough, since a number of keepsakes come together to frame the full extent of the game’s plot. The biggest battle is with the text that comes with each capture; you can’t shrink the font size.

This deters you from getting everything. Don’t worry completionists; you don’t have to in order to complete this game! Getting 100% is so easy that even someone like me was able to do it just by naturally exploring around. There aren’t even achievements related to filling the scrapbook whatsoever. 

If there is any big flaw I find with SEASON, it’s the same flaw I have with pretty much every philosophical narrative like this: us. One of the things I really resent is that we—in a pop culture sense—are aware of so much about good, evil, life, death, capitalism, the corruption of the media, climate change, yet… as is pointed out in the Tomorrowland movie, no one bothers to fix any of it. We just consume the latest thing, maybe write a pretentious review of it to make us look smart (I actually went out of my way to read reviews of things game to confirm that they were pretentious, and boy howdy were they), and then move on; I at least know I’m not going to be “transformed” by my experience. I just couldn’t let that feeling go during my playthrough of SEASON. In a sense, it could be interpreted as an allegory to the rapidly shifting “seasons” of pop culture, where the new constantly eats the old alive. SEASON, a game about remembering and forgetting stuff, will probably be forgotten, perhaps this year. However, not to toot my own horn, I will make sure as hell I do not forget the unique experience that is this game.

~~~~~

Final Verdict: 9.5/10

SEASON: a letter to the future didn’t make me cry, but it is still a fabulous game that has helped me appreciate the unique and important role that this type of game plays in the community. Other than some frame drops in specific spots, it is an extremely well-crafted little story rife with universal messages. The price of admission (24.99 USD on Steam, and 29.99 USD on PlayStation) might seem steep, but if you play it the way it was intended, that price is well worth it. Besides, you probably paid 59.99 USD for Metroid Dread which isn’t even ten hours long. This one really is a no-brainer.

Pokémon Scarlet & Violet: Is The Series Great Again?

by macksamson, posted in Full Reviews, Gaming

The Pokémon series has suffered ever since its transition to the 3DS. With the exception of some spinoffs, opinions have gotten more and more divisive. It wasn’t until January 2022 when the series was saved by Pokémon Legends: Arceus. It changed a lot of mechanics while maintaining the franchise’s core philosophy: gotta catch ‘em all! It also has a decently seamless open-world design, and rudimentary JRPG mechanics that lay the groundwork for greatness. In that same year, GameFreak—in that classic Japanese overworkiness—had already released a new generation: Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. This is an important installment for the series, for it will ultimately cement whether or not Pokémon as a whole is great again, or if Arceus was a fluke. I decided to play Pokémon Scarlet, since I realized I’ve played the latter installments of dual Pokémon games way too often.

In Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, you sign up for the prestigious Naranja Academy. Time to catch Pokémon and make some friends, such as a mysterious red/purple dinosaur that possesses superhuman strength. Oh, and go to school.

I don’t mean to go critical right off the bat, but… I really don’t like the school theme in these games. While it’s neat that the Pokémon school has a real purpose for once, it’s the exact antithesis of what you’d want in an open world game, which emphasizes freedom. For a Persona-like Pokémon spin-off, school would work, but not here. In fact, the school seems like an afterthought, since as soon as you get there, they skip months of in-game time just so their workaround for the school setting in the open world game kicks in: the Treasure Hunt. This is an independent study where all students leave school and do literally whatever they want, as long as it leads to them finding their true calling. It’s a cool idea, but it would’ve been just as good of an idea to have your character think there must be more to this provincial life, and heads out into the great wide somewhere. Unfortunately, in order to be able to keep playing after you beat it, your character never finds their “treasure”, meaning that you’re to be left an empty shell after all that transpires.

Fortunately, if there’s a good side of the story, it’s that of the antagonists in Team Star. Instead of a criminal organization, you have a group of students who were just misunderstood. They are perhaps the most relatable Team in the entire Pokémon series. The other thing that stands out is having the box-art Legendary—Koraidon/[Insert Boxart Legendary from Violet Here]—as a permanent traveling companion. This sandwich-guzzling fiend is just cool, whatever it is. Although there aren’t many scenes where you interact with it, this is still perhaps the most intimate relationship that the player can ever forge with a Pokémon.

The characters in Pokémon have been getting better… right? Well, it’s kind of hit-or-miss this time. The teachers at the school are pretty great, although a lot of your interactions with them are entirely optional. Your rival, Nemona, is… alright. They definitely gave up on making your rivals jerks, but this time, her quirk is an obsession with battling. There is a whole backstory with her (that you don’t get until after beating the game), but I don’t believe it justifies her addiction with beating people up. This dude named Arven is pretty cool; he has a heartwarming story where he wants to find legendary herbs to cure his dog. The headmaster of Naranja, Clavell… I mean, he’s okay, but he doesn’t hold a candle to Clive, who aids you in your battles with Team Star. Clive is just the coolest, and I’m not at all doing a bit to pretend that I don’t know that he’s obviously Clavell in disguise, because he’s not. He’s Clive. 

Unfortunately, that’s about it for positives. Everyone else has been more dumbed down than ever, which stinks because their character designs are up to snuff as usual. The Professor, Sada, is just someone who phones in on you every so often regarding one of the major questlines, and that’s about it for a while. The Gym Leaders, due to structuring mechanics, have been downgraded once more. You don’t even see them outside the Gym, not once, which sucks because a lot of them are actually really good going off of what little you see of them. I mean—come on—one of them might as well be the famous V-tuber Gawr Gura!

Before we get to gameplay, I must address the one thing that GameFreak will clearly never learn: graphics. Man… they cannot make good environments! There’s numerous bad textures, lag, pop-ins, and whatnot. What’s worse is that character animations have taken a step back as well; almost to PS1-era jank. Movements are stiff and awkward, plus the textures are even inconsistent. While important characters look fine enough, a lot of NPCs have bad textures and pudgy fingers that look like they’re from two console generations ago. GameFreak needs to learn from Nintendo and Platinum Games, who have made beautiful games using the Switch’s inferior hardware. At least the Pokémon themselves still look good. Heck, the crystal texture from the Terastallize ability is straight-up gorgeous. If they can make something like that, then why can’t they follow through with everything else?

Fortunately, Scarlet and Violet are so damn amazing and addictive that you probably won’t notice the bad graphics for too long. Right off the bat, there are more quality-of-life improvements than ever. The U.I. is easy, the map has SO many details, nicknames can be changed at any time from the Pokémon menu, moves can be freely relearned from that same menu, and battles are even faster than ever. Pokémon Centers are just kiosks now, meaning no more loading zones just to heal or shop. However, the biggest, most important improvement of all is… THAT THEY FINALLY GOT RID OF THE TEN MINUTE POKÉBALL TUTORIAL! NOW IT’S JUST TWO TEXT BOXES THAT TAKE THIRTY SECONDS TO READ!

Of course, the elephant in the room with Scarlet & Violet is its full open-world map. While I bet there’ll be a lot of memes along the lines of “Is this Pokélder Scrolls?”, the region of Paldea doesn’t quite hold a candle to its open world contemporaries, especially Breath of the Wild. However, Paldea is easily the best region that the Pokémon series has ever had in and of itself. There’s tons of slopes, ledges, bodies of water… it only took three years for GameFreak to finally do it right! It’s a truly beautiful world… well, it would be if they understood the hardware, but you know what I mean.

There is a LOT to do in Paldea. For starters, there’s Pokémon, Trainers, and loot pretty much everywhere. There are also hidden Gimmighouls who give you their coins (that are really important for a specific purpose). Most importantly, however, are the three major quest lines. You not only have the classic Gym challenge, but you also have the five Titan Pokémon and the five admins of Team Star. It’s a lot, but for the first time, they can be tackled in any order.

Towns are the best they have ever been, at least in a long time. Each has unique characteristics, and thoughtful designs that make them feel live-in-able. I was concerned with them at first, since the early ones didn’t have good shop variety outside of food (which is a whole other thing). Fortunately, the later towns start having really powerful shops; you’ll be able to buy competitive hold items and even Nature-changing Mints, which you would otherwise have to grind BP. Unfortunately, they have something I really am torn on: Gym Tests. Instead of a puzzle room with Trainers, each town with a Gym essentially has the town become the Gym. It’s a cool idea, but I feel like some of them are just padding. 

The Team Star bases kind of suck, gameplay-wise. Basically, you assemble three Pokémon with an advantage over the Type that Squad uses, then mash R. It can only be hard if you don’t have an advantage, but they give you tons of time to defeat enough enemies. I can appreciate the streamlined process, but it still feels like a waste of time when there is almost no chance of failure. The boss fights themselves are great, at least.

The Titan Pokémon are the most straightforward. You go to their location and fight them twice, that’s it. The second time is fun because Arven assists with a friend of his own. Your reward for each is a new field ability for your steed. Unfortunately, the Titans don’t show their level, meaning if you get bodied by one, there’s no way to gauge if it was your fault or if it was just too strong.

Battling Pokémon is easier than ever. In addition to touching them in the overworld, Arceus mechanics return in full force. You can hide in the grass, and throw your lead Pokémon’s Pokéball to engage in battle. Also, like in Arceus, you can strike Pokémons’ backsides to give yourself a free turn. Do you not even want to bother fighting but still want XP? Simple! Just press R to send your lead Pokémon on a murder spree, where it’ll instantly destroy any opposition in its way, provided that it has the proper advantages. 

Unfortunately, TMs have been nerfed. They’re all back to being single-use again! That means doing an entire playthrough all over again just to teach a Pokémon Earthquake—Psyche! TMs are consumables, but they are REALLY easy to come by. They are lying just about everywhere in the world, and Pokémon also drop materials with which to make more. You can track up to five TMs whose materials you need.

In battle, everything is pretty much the same. Well, except for the latest gimmick: Terastallizing. Aesthetically, I love it. Pokémon become crystal, and it looks really pretty; like they’re unleashing their inner Magical Girl. Mechanically, it might actually be my new favorite gimmick; it’s not too broken, but can turn the tide if used wisely. Basically, what it does is change the Pokémon to its Tera Type, and give a STAB bonus much bigger than regular STAB. This is a meta mechanic for numerous reasons, such as changing the Pokémon’s type to something completely different in some cases. Also, all Tera Types are pure Types, meaning that this state can potentially erase a Pokémon’s quad-weaknesses. Just have fun building a competitive team around this, because the mechanic to change a Pokémon’s Tera Type requires farming for an obnoxious amount of Tera Shards.

Tera Raid Battles are also a big improvement over the Dynamax ones. The A.I. for people who have no friends is more competent, and the fights themselves are faster. There is no limit to Pokémon that can faint, but it does run down the time limit, which is not a limit on turns taken, but a literal clock that trickles away in real time. These battles encourage fast and smart plays, and the faster pacing complements this a lot. Unfortunately, they are kind of buggy, at least solo. Stuff happens so fast that the game can’t seem to keep up with it; sometimes a fainted Pokémon will continue to act, or it will faint while it still has health left. Still works better than Skyrim, at least.

My biggest concern with the transition to open world was that Scarlet & Violet would be a repeat of Gold & Silver: abysmal level scaling to account for doing things in any order because apparently programming enemies to grow dynamically with the player is impossible (obvious sarcasm there). Does that actually happen? Well… sadly… kind of. There is a clear recommended order to do things in, and as a result, your journey will be all over the place, with difficulty being anywhere from really challenging to a mind-numbingly easy victory. Nuzlockes are a must if you want actual difficulty, maybe even hardcore nuzlockes since the games give you so many free items in the overworld—including Ethers and Elixirs! However, that would of course ruin the sense of discovery in a new generation of Pokémon. Additionally, nuzlockes can be unfair, since unwittingly running into something above your pay grade will cut your run short, and you have to start the whole game all over again. I thought that asking Nurse Joy for advice would clue you in on the intended path, but she seems to recommend random events, regardless of if you’re actually capable of taking it on or not. The descriptions of some of these objectives can give you hints on the pathing, but the key word is “some”. It doesn’t help that the actual intended path makes absolutely no sense from a game design standpoint. Boy, I’m sure doing a good job making these games look appealing, aren’t I?

Well, I might as well commit. Furthermore, the cooking mechanic is worse than ever. I feel like they become more excessive and complicated with each Generation. On the positive side, the minigame is fun. You basically have to painstakingly build a sandwich piece-by-piece with the added challenge of no drop shadow. However, the foods themselves are where it gets excessive. There are hundreds of sandwiches, among other cuisines, sold at the many, MANY eateries and food carts throughout the world. The buffs from them apply to specific Pokémon Types, making each buff situational. The real kicker is that every item has several buffs and they’re distributed across the foods like a hodge-podge with no rhyme nor reason. While you don’t need these at all unless you want to min-max, it’s still sad that cooking in Pokémon has never once felt practical for core gameplay. There is also a washing mechanic for when Pokémon get dirty. However, I had no idea about this mechanic for the vast majority of the game, and when I used it for the first time, none of my party actually looked dirty. What doesn’t help is that some Pokémon don’t even want a bath at all, and there’s no way of knowing which ones that applies to!

Also, when I said that the school felt like an afterthought, I meant it. Although, that’s definitely because I’m biased against all school-based mechanics in videogames. Unfortunately, taking every single class is actually worth it. All you have to do is answer various quiz questions, and you get rewards for passing each class’ exams. The classes actually give you good hints on game mechanics (especially if you’re not a Pokémon veteran), plus the history class actually helps with foreshadowing and worldbuilding. Speaking of building, you can also build your relationship with teachers through special events (indicated by an exclamation mark over their rooms), thus allowing you to… fuse higher-ranked Personas? Well, you do get various rewards for seeing these events through to the end, and more time with the teachers whom I praise so much is definitely a good thing.

If there’s one thing that’s both a blessing and a curse, it’s that they have a really good selection of new Pokémon. I ended up shuffling my team a lot in my playthrough—mainly because I didn’t plan on replaying either of the games in the near future if at all—but also because a lot of the Pokémon are really good. They have great designs and work well in battle. Also, one other collectible in the overworld consists of thirty-two black stakes. They come in four sets of eight, and finding all of a set awards you with a Legendary Pokémon. That’s FOUR Legendaries that you can obtain before the credits roll!

However, there is one Pokémon in my playthrough whom I ended up feeling at odds with. So, spoiler warning for a whopping one Pokémon that was probably announced or showed off in the leak: Toedscool and Toedscruel. This is a Ground-Grass regional variant of the Tentacool family. Toedscruel is really fast and boasts the same great special defense as Tentacruel. It also learns Spore. However, its ability is what makes it really awkward as a team member: Mycelium Might. This ability gives it minus priority when using status moves, but those moves ignore abilities. This sounds great, but I feel like there are almost no situations where this works out in its favor. It doesn’t ignore Safeguard nor Misty Terrain since those aren’t Abilities, and I presume it won’t work when Uproar is in effect for the same reason. I also used Spore on a Pokémon with Vital Spirit. While the move successfully puts it to sleep, I learned that Vital Spirit also checks if the Pokémon is somehow put to sleep anyway, and thus makes it wake up immediately after the turn ends. The minus priority also means that Toedscruel’s opponent can attack, and potentially one-shot it since it’s physically squishy (quad weakness to Ice doesn’t help either). As a Spore user, it’s still great for catching Legendaries, but Mycelium Might is too situational for the minus priority to feel like a good trade-off. Who knows, maybe Chuggaaconroy will prove me wrong when he plays through these games on his channel in ten years.

In any case, another plus with the newcomers is that I feel like their evolutionary conditions aren’t as BS as Galar. I remember having to look up almost all of the evolution conditions for Sword and Shield. This time, however, I only looked up a few, and those cases were actually ones where I was doing the right thing but I just didn’t do it enough times. Most of them evolve from level up, and pretty early too. Unlike the usual throwaway early game Pokémon, a lot of these very quick evolutions are really good, including the new Wooper’s evolution. The only late boomer is—as tradition—the new Pseudo-Legendary. Fortunately, it’s no Hydreigon (and I hope nothing ever will be).

I always have to discuss the post-game last, because—well—it’s the last part of the game, and the post-game content of Pokémon is always VERY important. You start by fighting every Gym again (without having to take another test, thankfully), and they’re way harder. After that, you can unlock a boss gauntlet that refreshes daily. Once this is unlocked, beating enough 5-star difficulty Tera Raid battles will unlock EXTRA difficult battles indicated by black crystals; you WILL need a team of four human, M.L.G. gamers to take these on.. You can also catch a second instance of the box-art Legendary, which mainly serves to trade to someone who owns the other game and help complete each other’s Pokedexes.

Hey, that’s a perfect time to complain about Gen 9 not being Arceus! You don’t get the other box-art Legendary, you don’t get the other two Starters, you don’t get Link Cables… Nope, you’re back to completing the Pokédex the old fashion way: by—*gasp*—socializing with people, and hoping they like Pokémon (which is really hard for adults since a lot of them are still very harsh on the series). Boy… Arceus was really great.

With that little aside out of the way, there’s a bit of a caveat at this juncture. Every single time I think I’ve done all the post-game content, there’s something I miss and never find out about. This time, I’m dead certain that there’s more than what I wrote above. Scratch that, I KNOW there is because… sadly, I was spoiled of it in the thumbnail of one of Tom Fawkes’ stream VODs (however I still would’ve had a feeling based on the Scarlet Book (or presumably Violet Book?) containing Pokémon that you don’t see in the endgame). Anyway, as of this post’s publication, I have not started this remaining post-game content. I have a feeling that it might actually be an Oracle of Ages/Seasons situation where you need to beat both to unlock whatever this content is; if I’m right, then that’s just mean. If the prerequisite really has anything to do with playing the other game as well, then that would be kind of BS, since these are probably the longest main games in the series and I doubt a lot of adults would even have the time unless they were gamers by profession. Also, the target demographic—kids—would probably not be able to convince their parents to spend over $100USD on both games. Whatever it would’ve been, however, I would not want to discuss it due to spoilers, so it won’t change the review anyway. 

~~~~~

Final Verdict: 9.35/10

Pokémon Scarlet, despite its ugliness and other issues, has perhaps been the greatest main series Pokémon experience I’ve ever had, at least since my nostalgic days of Black & White 2. It does a LOT right for the series, but sadly, I don’t think it’ll save Pokémon from its critics. People’s obsession with 8k 240fps graphics are already enough to give Gen 9 a bad reputation, but knowing the Pokémon fandom, they’ll take any flaw with these games and balloon them to make it sound like GameFreak are gaming blasphemers. In any case, I highly recommend you play at least one of these two games, provided that you are capable of enjoying Pokémon.

Dinkum (Early Access): A Farming Sim as Fresh as The Outback

by macksamson, posted in First Impressions, Gaming

One of the most contradictory genres in videogames is the farming/life sim. In theory, they are wholesome sandbox games with emphasis on relaxing and getting lost in their worlds. In practice, however, they are anything but that; instead, players must juggle massive laundry lists of daily tasks and NPC relationships with a suffocatingly tight in-game day/night cycle, all with the most punishing stamina system outside of Dark Souls. Animal Crossing in particular doesn’t quite suffer from these particular grievances, but thanks to real-world time being incorporated into gameplay, players are punished for not booting up the game EVERY SINGLE DAY, turning an escapist little world into the same stressful ritual you have to do IRL. However… one farming sim would appear in 2022, and win the hearts of thousands of users. Dinkum, while only in Early Access, is already being pegged as one of the highest rated games of the year. The reviews I’ve read seem to imply one thing: that it is, in fact, a farming sim that is ACTUALLY relaxing and quaint. I just had to know if this was true, so here we are.

In Dinkum, your customizable character notices an ad to accompany an eccentric old geezer named Fletch to an untamed land. Sensing your only opportunity to escape your dystopian life in South City, you join Fletch, and fly off to this land, seeking a better life. What awaits in the Australia-inspired wilderness?

What’s immediately noticeable about Dinkum is that it does absolutely nothing new for the genre in terms of gameplay. As a hybrid of Minecraft, Animal Crossing, and Stardew Valley, it has all the stuff you can expect. You gather resources, craft stuff, raise animals, plant crops, cook food, fight predators, bribe NPCs with presents, and try to fulfill a myriad of satisfying milestones as you do it all. There really isn’t much to say about these mechanics, since they’re more-or-less what you’d expect. The only novel thing are licenses, which are essentially your qualifications to buy and use various types of items. You spend Permit Points, earned through milestones and daily tasks shown in your journal, to obtain these Licenses. It sounds like an arbitrary gatekeeping mechanic, but I found them very satisfying to unlock over time. I’m looking forward to unlocking them all eventually. Keep in mind that the game has the time-honored tradition of setting yourself on fire if you touch a campsite.

What makes Dinkum so great is how all of these basic mechanics fit together. The most important aspect is how it handles the march of time. In-game days go about as fast as you can expect. However, here’s the real kicker. Similar to Garden Story, staying up past midnight FREEZES the in-game clock indefinitely, with the only penalty being a reduction in base stamina. Stamina, however, is much more tolerable. While it decreases in a manner similar to Stardew Valley, eating food will restore it, and unlike My Time at Sandrock, you have access to plenty of plants and cooking right out of the gate, so it’s no problem stockpiling a good amount of food. While it’s not recommended to do anything dangerous during the late night, it’s still a phenomenal security blanket for any last-minute tasks in town (even if your character looks miserable the whole time).

The other standout feature is its building mechanics. You decide the entire layout of the town, down to every single building and decoration. Right now, my town is a rinky-dink little splotch in the middle of nowhere, and I look forward to seeing it grow over time by my own hand. The building system is also intuitive and easy, plus you can relocate buildings and terraform the environment itself. 

As definitively amazing of a game Dinkum has been thus far, it’s actually tricky to recommend. After you recruit the first resident to the town, the game sets you free, which sounds great, but comes with the caveat of no more tutorials. This means you must learn how to do everything yourself. You pretty much need knowledge of games from three different genres; scratch that, it straight-up EXPECTS that knowledge. Fortunately, the brilliant design of the License mechanic is a great teacher. As you acquire licenses, new ones unlock in a logical order to introduce new mechanics organically. 

Unfortunately, there are still some early-game grievances. For starters, you can’t store most bugs and fish in crates (plus they don’t stack). Also, convincing visitors to move in permanently is an investment and a half. They only visit for one day, and since you can only do one favor a day, you’re not exactly going to win them over immediately, and have to wait until RNG decides their return. As per tradition, these guys can ask for items that are very rare or remote, plus they have specific food preferences that aren’t tracked in any way, shape or form, as far as I could tell.

Fortunately, these flaws actually feel justified ONLY in Dinkum. In fact, it might be programmed this way on purpose. Shops aren’t open 24/7, and they are always closed at least one day a week. Because of this, you can—and will—actually make mistakes in Dinkum; your only penalty is reduced efficiency. Because of how Dinkum is structured, you can actually take the time to learn its ins and outs (it took me over ten hours to learn how to grow trees). You have time to do things, or nothing if you really want to. Any frustration I felt from Dinkum was because the instincts from other games like it took over.

In any case, Dinkum wants you to take your time, so keep that in mind if you do gaming as a job, and are required to beat everything in a timely manner. Dinkum is straight-up not meant to be steamrolled through. Plants take a minimum of a week to grow, and those Permit Points don’t exactly grow on trees either. If you undertake this endeavor, you better prepare to enjoy a slow life of leisure! It’s actually quite the experience for me. Whenever I boot it up, I never really have a plan. Sure, there are goals to work towards in the long run, but because there’s no viable way to gun for those, I’m forced to take each in-game day as it comes. There’s something wonderful about it.

One of the objective flaws that I’m sure have been pointed out is that the NPCs are souless. They’re so unremarkable that they have the same EXACT text as one another. However, I kind of believe that’s a good thing. Romancing isn’t an option anyway, so why make NPCs likable enough in the first place? Also, again, the lack of depth in your relationships just removes another mountain of daily rituals that you would have otherwise had to do. Besides, is it even realistic in other games like this? All you do is grind up their favorite thing (which you generally need to find out through trial and error or a guide), and gift it to them over and over and over again, until—suddenly—they have enough of that same thing like Clark Griswold’s boss in Christmas Vacation to want to marry you. Platonic relationships are better!

Another caveat that I’m pretty sure is just unavoidable even for Dinkum is the inevitable emptiness from having nothing left to do. Eventually, you’ll be flush with cash that you have no use for, with crops and resources by the thousands that you don’t need to sell, and enough Licenses to fill a wardrobe. I’m pretty sure this will happen no matter what. The fun comes from progressing to reach that point more than anything, and it’s a journey I’m more than willing to make with Dinkum. Lemme tell you… it’s gonna be long. 

~~~~~

Current Verdict: 9.65/10

Dinkum is well worth the hype and price. It’s the Animal Crossing/Stardew Valley that actually manages to be what it says on the tin. I’m very much looking forward to seeing how it evolves over the course of its Early Access period, and I suggest you hop aboard as well, especially if you’re sick of those other games.

CrossCode: Secret of Mana and 2D Zelda on Steroids

by macksamson, posted in Full Reviews, Gaming

If there’s one variant of RPG I haven’t done much of, it’s the types like Secret of Mana, where you actually have to move and physically strike enemies to deal damage. Paper Mario: Sticker Star gave me PTSD with any RPG that has only one party member throughout the whole game. But, you know what, Sticker Star sucked. So today, I’m going to cover a retro RPG that gives a lot of bang for its buck: CrossCode for Nintendo Switch (I started playing this game before I got Steam)!

After a confusing opening sequence where you play as some angsty chick, CrossCode starts out when a girl named Lea logs into the high-tech MMO, CrossWorlds, in hopes of recovering her lost memories. CrossWorlds is set on an actual alien planet called Shadoon, and players have to travel the Track of the Ancients, in order to discover its secrets. If you’ve seen SAO, you know things are gonna get ugly.

This game sure knows how to hook players! They throw the intrigue right at you when some weird spaceman, who claims to know Lea, attacks during a tutorial. After that, however, it’s chill city as a lot of the early game is just getting acclimated to CrossWorlds itself. While I don’t normally care much for story in games, I must say that CrossCode nonetheless has a great story. It’s pretty straightforward, but is consistent at throwing you curveballs.

The story in CrossCode wouldn’t mean anything without its phenomenal writing. There’s your usual witty banter, but an indie game wouldn’t be an indie game if it didn’t break the fourth wall! As you can expect, CrossCode makes fun of RPG and videogame tropes. In fact, it even comes up with an actual justification for Lea being a silent protagonist! Since it’s an MMO setting, the meta humor feels much more natural in the context of the story than most indie games I know.

If you’re familiar with me, then you would know that I don’t care if there’s realism, especially when it comes to characters. However, CrossCode actually makes me proud to say that the characters are great because they’re realistic. Due to the setting, all the characters are, well, gamers. From the main cast, to random NPCs, the dialogue feels like how actual videogame nerds would discuss videogame stuff amongst one another, and it creates an intimacy with the player unlike any game I’ve played.

As mentioned before, Lea is a silent protagonist, and is one of the best I have ever seen. I’d dare say she’s the best next to Link himself. Over the course of the game, her friend who basically plays the role of Navi gradually unlocks more words for Lea. Despite her limited vocabulary, the writers give her tons of personality and emotion with what little they have to work with. Speaking of that Navi—i.e. Sergey—he’s also awesome. He’s smart and rational, but also has no shortage of quips.

The others are great as well. Her friend Emilie is a raucous tomboy who is just adorable when she’s dealing with her phobia of bugs, and her love for laser bridges. Along with her is C’tron, a nice, introverted boy who likes making fun of the game’s tropes. There’s also the egomaniac Apollo (who you’ll come to hate for gameplay-related reasons), and his down-to-earth partner, Joern. Even the Navi wannabe, Sergey, is a very likeable character. Unfortunately, a lot of characters don’t have enough eggs in their baskets. Most NPCs have their own stock designs, and even then, some named ones—specifically those involved in side quests—have no personality. It’s a real shame, but hey, nobody’s perfect.

Before getting to gameplay, I must praise the graphics. The game is beautiful and vibrant, as expected of a lot of pixel art games. The spritework is so good, some characters—like a giant whale you fight at one point—look three dimensional. CrossWorlds itself brims with life as you observe other players running around and doing parkour alongside you. It really helps the game feel like it’s set in a real MMO, but without the toxic fandoms and newbie PK’ing of actual MMOs. Somehow, this thing was made using HTML 5, and apparently, this made it very difficult to port to the Switch. It works fine, but can lag a bit during weather effects or if there are a lot of large AOE attacks going off at once.

The gameplay is, of course, the most important part, and CrossCode gets it right. The game has your typical skill tree, with several branches, each containing different abilities that you unlock by spending CP, which you earn on level up. It’s the usual stuff. However, you’re only able to outfit Lea in this game, and that’s because your party members aren’t always going to be there. While you can use them all you want when exploring, things like Dungeons and PvP are done solo. More on those mechanics later.

CrossCode handles Quests really well. There’s tons of them, but they make it really easy to cycle through them. You can favorite a Quest by pressing Y on them, which will display the tasks for it on the HUD. But the best part is that you can favorite multiple Quests at once, and cycle through each one by pressing the Left Analog Stick. It’s a phenomenal way to manage tons of Quests that most RPGs don’t do. The only real issue is that you can’t favorite them at the initial prompt when receiving it.

Quests are nice, but it wouldn’t be a true RPG if there weren’t a million things to do. The other monstrosity is the Encyclopedia, which fills up by talking to NPCs, playing the main story, and learning about the world. This is basically Character Notes in a Falcom game… with additional notes regarding in-universe terminology. I didn’t bother getting 100% on this because of Trails of Cold Steel PTSD, but like in that game, I assume that entries are permanently missable in CrossCode. Additionally, plants of all kinds populate CrossWorlds, and there is a whole section in your Encyclopedia called “Botanics” that records data. Getting an item drop from a given plant is what moves analyzation along, so don’t be afraid to spend hours and hours violating the ecosystem.

Before covering combat, I must praise CrossCode for having an amazing overworld. It’s not just beautiful, but it’s chock full of stuff. You will have to really study the land to figure out “Just how am I supposed to reach that?”, and it’s really fun to do. Every area is full of puzzles, some of which extend to adjacent rooms. Other than some specific instances, it’s pretty easy to get a grasp of planes of the z-axis despite the 2D graphics. But when you can’t, you can always use your projectile attack to get a feel for the depth. Also keep in mind that Lea’s jump is NOT to be underestimated; it puts Link to shame!

Speaking of Legend of Zelda comparisons, the dungeons in CrossCode are among the best I’ve seen in any RPG. CrossCode utilizes its mechanics to create an explicitly Zelda-like experience when going through them. They have seriously tricky puzzles that make use of all of the game’s mechanics, as well as the dungeon-specific mechanics that are taught to you organically with no intrusive textboxes. 

There are a couple of issues I have with them, however. While the puzzles are really great, a lot of them are extremely fickle, requiring pixel-precise setup. This leads into the other issue, which is Emilie’s addiction to racing you through the dungeon. Although it doesn’t seem apparent, you can actually try to win somehow. Unfortunately, if you’re going through the dungeon for the first time, as well as trying to get all the treasure before the boss, you’re NOT going to win a single dungeon race. Even if you were to speedrun it on a repeat playthrough, I imagine every single puzzle is a run-killer; it wouldn’t be an indie game if there was no “Hey do this thing with constant frame-perfect timing, please” BS. Since I’m a filthy casual, I have to accept being an absolute loser at everything.

Combat is a whole different story. When playing, you have your usual melee attacks, but Lea also has projectiles. To use projectiles, you have to move the right analog stick to aim while ALSO moving. Plus, there’s a dodge, but ALSO a guard. The latter won’t make you invincible from damage, but—naturally—there is a perfect guard that allows you to counterattack. Things can get ugly fast if you aren’t adept at all this. 

There’s also Combat Arts that are used with ZR. However, they work very strangely in CrossCode. Your arts aren’t mapped to ZR + a face button, but to ZR + a specific action. They come in four types: Melee Arts, Ranged Arts, Dash Arts, and Guard Arts. Pretty self-explanatory which is which. Note that you can only have one Art set to each action at a time. But fortunately, the skill tree allows you to freely switch between different branches with no CP loss, so there’s no consequence in learning an Art that you’re not sure about. As you find MacGuffins, you unlock further branches of the skill tree, which allow you to learn stronger Combat Arts that cost more SP.

As if things couldn’t get any crazier, there’s Elements. In CrossWorlds, players gradually acquire mastery of the Four Elements. As you unlock them, you can freely switch between them to give your attacks that property. This is great when fighting enemies with different resistances, so you’re not “Oh great, I’m fighting something weak to this and I can’t go into my inventory to equip my weapon with this attribute!” However, there’s Element Overload to watch out for. Basically, too much attacking with an element active can force you back into neutral for a while. It’s also important to know that attacking with no Element active will make your Elements cool down much faster. Each Element found opens up a new section of the skill tree, with their own Combat Arts (which means you’ll be able to have up to FORTY of them active once you gain all four Elements). The thing to notice is that each upgrade is only applied in that particular Element mode. For example, if you give yourself a bunch of base defense ups in Neutral, you will lose it when you switch to another Element. This needs to be kept in mind as you fight.

One mechanic that makes the game extra fun is Combat Rank. This is basically a combo system; defeat enemies in quick succession to increase your rank, which makes them drop better items. I only recommend it if you’re specifically grinding for rare drops, since the adrenaline rush can make you ignore loot your first time through an area. Fortunately, you can press minus after defeating all nearby enemies to end combat immediately if you don’t want to get that combo going. However, whenever you decide to go on a killing spree, Combat Ranks make it feel really good. It gets even better once you acquire equipment with the Botanist property, which causes plant item drops to be affected by Combat Rank. Thanks to this mechanic, I had more fun grinding for materials in CrossCode than in most other games I’ve played in my life.

There are also a lot of nuances that take much learning to figure out. The NPCs are very helpful in that regard, but there’s still some stuff you gotta figure out on your own. For example, when an enemy is glowing red, that means they’re charging up an attack that you can break them out of with a charged projectile attack. There’s also the dash cancel, where you use your dodge in order to prevent yourself from using a melee combo that has recovery lag in favor of continually dishing out damage, and more importantly, hit-stunning enemies repeatedly. Also, parrying with your guard ability becomes crucial if you want to be really good at the game.

You will need to learn these skills quickly; like most indie games, CrossCode wants to be on par with Dark Souls in terms of difficulty. Fortunately, unlike other hard-ass indie games, CrossCode actually considers EVERY POSSIBLE PERSON playing it. In the settings, you are able to freely tweak the amount of damage you take, as well as the frequency of enemy attacks and the leniency of puzzles. That last modifier is really good because you can mitigate the ridiculousness of the puzzles; you’ll still have to figure it out, but execution won’t be as much of a chore. Of course, these are at max by default. I had each setting one tick lower than max and it still gave me a consistently rough but fair time (maybe I just suck).

Despite how rough it was, I rarely felt truly frustrated. The game’s tough, but somehow, it makes the challenge feel fun. However, nothing’s perfect, and there are some specific points that can get VERY frustrating. One example is the case of Elite Quests. Most of them are harder versions of earlier quests. MUCH harder. For instance, the hard versions of these sadistic platforming gauntlets require the kind of frame-perfect perfection that most indie games have come to expect from gamers. There’s also some quests that have interesting ideas, but next-to-no leeway and require memorization of enemy formations. It’s also very easy to be walled by any of the game’s PvP battles. You can’t use items, and even if you could, your opponent is very capable of overwhelming you instantly, and tries various strategies built around stun-locking you until you go from full health to dead. It’s meant to teach you these strategies, but doesn’t mean they’re easy to implement yourself!

If that wasn’t scary enough, don’t get me started on the Arena. Late-ish into the game, you unlock the ability to challenge a preset of mobs from each region, as well as every single fixed encounter, miniboss, and major boss battle that you’ve been through. Beating the challenges is doable enough, but it’s getting the best scores that are insane. You need serious reflexes and ability to pay attention to multiple onscreen entities at once. And assuming you get platinum on each challenge? Well, guess what; you’re also going to have to do it again, but this time in Rush Mode. This is—you guessed it—every challenge within its given bracket in a row with limited healing. Yes, you’ll have to worry about getting platinum on this, and it’ll naturally be even worse to screw up.

I would’ve had this review out faster if it weren’t for the game’s long-awaited DLC: A New Home. It took until early 2021 to drop, and the wait for console users was even longer. However, it’s a bit complicated. The DLC, A New Home, is CrossCode’s post-game (I am unsure what happens if you beat the game before buying the DLC). To unlock it, you need to get the Good Ending. Now, before you assume that they pulled a Falcom by having a Good Ending in a long RPG, lemme reassure you: the sole condition that needs to be met is close to the end of the game. They’re very upfront once it comes up, so it’s not hard to miss. The problem is doing it right. I, thankfully, had managed to get the Good Ending in one try without even knowing that it was such an important thing. Fortunately, if you get the Bad Ending, you can warp right back to the start of the final chapter, retry the event, and then warp straight to the final boss at the point-of-no-return spot.

A New Home unlocks new quests, a new region, the true final dungeon, and resolves many unanswered plot twists. The new region, while beautiful, is kind of a disappointment considering how long I waited for it. It’s easily the smallest area in the game, and is very linear. On the plus side, you unlock special “ascended” equipment, whose base stats grow with Lea’s level, making them objectively better than anything else you can wear. A lot of these are upgrades from stuff you already have, so it’s easy for you to prioritize certain kits based on your playstyle. Also, the superboss at the end of the dungeon was probably the hardest fight I’ve experienced in my life, and taught me that my heart isn’t physically capable of handling that level of difficulty.

Unfortunately, there are some issues with A New Home. For completionists, you will need an excessive amount of materials found in the final dungeon in order to get all of the equipment. However, due to how dungeons work versus the overworld, you can’t take advantage of combat rank, making it one of the worst grinding spots in the game. Also, if you consider reaching level cap part of completion, grinding XP will be hard toward the end. The plus side is that the least amount you can earn is 1 per enemy, so finding a spot with a lot of enemies is the best strategy… but even spots with many enemies don’t exactly expedite this process. Also, the game doesn’t resolve EVERY plot twist, possibly intentionally so; it definitely baits a sequel, and there just so happens to be a very CrossCode-looking game, currently known as Project Terra, under development right now (that I hope has customizable difficulty and only one ending). Also, the final-FINAL segment is a bit anticlimactic. It doesn’t even take half an hour to get through despite the big buildup. Maybe it would’ve been better to have the final dungeon after it, since it’s a much better end to your journey. The cherry on top is that the game does the thing where it resets to right before the cutoff point after beating it, which is really arbitrary since not enough changes after finishing the DLC to warrant this.

How have I gone this long without talking about CrossCode’s soundtrack?! It is one of the best soundtracks I’ve heard in a videogame, and perhaps the best I’ve heard in an indie game. There is so much variety when it comes to atmospheres and moods. I could rock out to any of the awesome battle themes, or chillax to the serene tunes of Autumn’s Rise.

Final Verdict: 9.95/10

CrossCode is awesome. I’d give it a perfect ten, but some of the puzzles really do feel excessively savage. Ah screw it!

Actual Final Verdict: 10/10

CrossCode has become my favorite indie game of all time, and is sure as heck up there with my favorite games of all time. I recommend it to anyone who loves JRPGs, puzzles, pixel art, great story, and phenomenal gameplay.