I’ve recently started playing Pokemon Unbound and… what they say about it is true. It spoils you so much that every other pokemon game starts to look bland. Possibly even the future ones.
yep, story is so-so, but gameplay wise it is the best pokemon i’ve played.
gyms, league and some story fights where actually tough and required bringing different pokemons without being unfair, the port of newer mechanics like raid dens and special evolutions are well done…
You are right. I just tested it on my mobile browser and it just says “Perhaps on a desktop browser?”.
But I found a way to make it kind of work, but its not as good or seemless like on a real desktop PC. It halfway works if you switch your browser mode to Desktop mode. In your browser menu (the 3 dots, what’s called? hamburger menu?) should have an option to enable “Desktop site”. Then reload page and if you click the gun, it should pop out. Now try to click an element on the webpage, maybe the text. If it does not fall, click again. Unfortunately you can’t (or I can’t) hold an element and drag it around.
I started with what I had fond memories of and came to mind, but of course, I went to my steam library, and looked through games tagged platformer. And now I’m wondering if I should also link my reviews of the titles, specifically the most interesting ones. Either way, the list of fond memories / very positives became too long for one list, so it’s split by category now.
3d ego platformers
A Story About My Uncle, left a lasting impact on me back then as a very good if not exceptional title
Portal
Hot Lava, great, pure 3d platformer, a lot of of quality content
Supraland, 3d puzzle and action platformer
3d 3rd-person platformers
New Super Lucky’s Tale, a great 3d platformer
A Hat in Time, a great 3d platformer, with cute characters, good humor
RiME, I remember I wrote a very positive review about RiME
A Short Hike, great
Yooka-Laylee
2d platformers
Sheepy: A Short Adventure, free, exceptional atmosphere
Ori, with its great atmosphere and visuals
Webbed, very cute, great theming, playing as a spider
Yoku’s Island Express, great mixing of pinball and platformer, in a great setting
Spiritfarer, great atmosphere
Battleblock Theater, great absurd humor
Super Meat Boy, ok, this has been a long time ago, but it was incredibly fluid and fast, with a ton of content
Dustforce DX
Jubilee, I played this on my Steam Deck quite a bit (unfortunately no save sync)
Trine, for its great physics approach and narrated humorous storytelling
Wunderling DX, an “auto-runner platformer”, quite interesting, well polished, so try to for something different
Braid, I don’t actually know if it holds up today, it’s been so long ago
I’d love to hear your opinions on
A Highland Song, deep lore, great atmosphere - I felt a bit lost though, or wasn’t captivated beyond that, and beyond one run
Treasures of Aegean, another “roguelite” platformer, with interesting progression and discovery - still, I found it well made, but ultimately not personally captivating, maybe because of the disorganized nature [of re-runs and timeloop-crossing story]
Sable, only partially platformer, and not the best quality overall, but great atmosphere, exploration, and platforming discovery
I forgot there was a sequel. At least I think I’ve seen it before.
Grow Up is currently 75% off on Steam. Very positive ratings, and watching this ign review, seems like a decent iteration with enough fresh content. I think I will buy it 🤔 and go climbing again :D
Pokemon Emerald: I used to play it a bunch to escape reality. Now my mind just associates it with safe spaces. It never fails to cheer me up when I hear the ost or see pokemon from that gen. Only bad part is that I can't play for longer than 20 mins without feeling so cozy I fall asleep.
Guilty Gear Strive: Strangely relaxing once I got a hang of the controls. I just play a few rounds against the AI for a pick-me-up. Not sure if it's still uplifting at higher levels.
Muse Dash: The music and cutesy artstyle are so overwhelmingly positive, it's hard to stay negative when you're in the zone and grooving.
Like everyone else Journey was the first thing that popped into my mind.
Id give a shout-out to Death Stranding, too. The game is far from perfect but it’s basically a hiking simulator which I find soothing. You also carry things so you could say it’s uplifting in the literal sense haha!
I don’t like recent FF tendency of reducing the playable party to just one character. The whole beauty of JRPGs is that you can play around with your party, and XV and XVI don’t have that, which is a shame. VII Remake, however, is great at combining action with the party management, I hope Square would choose this path for future FFs.
I’ve always liked FF. We had FF1 on the NES back when but the battery in it was dead so we had to the leave the console on. My brother got through it after a good number of afternoons.
I never got into it though. I like watching it. I remember the obsession around FFVII.
Then I picked up one of those SNES Mini things that came with… FFIV. That one got me. I wasn’t surprised to find out that loads of people love that one in particular.
I’ve gotta put this one out there because it will largely get overlooked every time the topic of “Visual Novel” gets brought up, but Digimon: Survive.
As a tactics RPG, it’s pretty mid. Character growth and customization exists, but isn’t quite as expansive as I’d like for that kind of game. It’s no Final Fantasy Tactics, for example, but comparing it to other tactics games doesn’t do it justice, because it’s one of the better-to-best written visual novels I have ever played.
Each of the endings explores the way small changes in circumstance can heavily impact people’s decisions, each of the characters and their partner monsters are oozing with personality, and some of the potential outcomes for each character represents some of the most wild, fucked up, and human emotional responses possible. Your decisions as the main character have minor impacts in the lines of which characters reach their end of their growth arcs, and which evolutions are available to your partner and some of your companions partners, and the collective value system limits which of the main branches you’re permitted to explore for your ending. Which it doesn’t boast the wide assortment of branching narrative paths that some visual novels take, it does still succeed in making your decisions feel like they matter.
And this is completely aside from the fact that it’s a Digimon game. A franchise widely viewed as “for children”, yet it engages with heavy existential themes and doesn’t shy from letting horrible things happen to good, and bad, people. People die, on screen, in ways I would not want small children to see. In a lot of ways, the game is a functional “reboot” of the franchise, sharing a lot of commonalities with Digimon Adventure, but using older characters, more serious mature themes, and never referencing the monsters as “digimon”. In fact, the term is only used once, during the epilogue of one of the endings, otherwise they’re referred to as Kemonogami, and treated like Yokai. They’re engrained in the history and legendsof the world, and it’s an amazing take on the franchise.
I’m gushing at this point, but what really matters is it’s an extremely well-written visual novel with competent enough Tactical RPG gameplay, and also currently on a rather deep Steam Sale. Cannot recommend it enough.
Doki Doki Literature Club is the GOAT. Can any VN gamers recommend something similar? Every other VN game I’ve tried had me wishing it was just a book and quitting before the end.
It’s definitely not exactly DDLC, but it’s so good and unique I put it in the same ‘greatest VNs of all time’ category. Slay the Princess is a masterpiece, and I’d urge you to bump it up on your backlog!
I’m a huge fan of otome visual novels, but I don’t think it’s something that many here would appreciate lol, so I’d rather talk about a different subgenre that I like, Danganronpa-esque VNs. Basically, these are crime novels involving a quickly shrinking group of characters with interactive elements. For me the entertaining part is that actually thinking about cases matters to progress the story. I love to guess “whodunit” based on clues and my own intuition.
Of these, there are 3 Danganronpa games (there’s a spin-off, but it has a vastly different gameplay). These are great to check out VNs in general if you don’t know if that’s your thing. They are very well-made, although their aesthetics may not be for everyone. The second one is my favourite, mainly because of its catchy tunes.
Zero Escape games - also a staple of this subgenre. They are half VN, half puzzle games. It’s a great sci-fi story involving time shenanigans, you’ll probably like it if you enjoyed Steins;Gate.
Kimi ga Shine - I really, really love this game! It’s a Japanese indie game made by one person, Nankidai. It’s available for free and also has a Steam version. It’s not complete yet, but it’s absolutely worth it to check out the content that already exists. What makes it stand out is that your choices have a great impact on the following story. An atmospheric, psychological game that feels very authentic. It has plenty of interaction, it’s not long and it’s fun to replay to make other choices.
I also love Ryukishi07’s VNs, “When They Cry” series. The art is admittedly ugly, but the stories are very intricate and convoluted in the best sense of the word.
Best way to fix that is to join in and post something!
Otome isn’t my personal interest (my sexuality goes the other way), so I don’t have much to say myself, but I’ve seen Elevator7009 trying to build a community first on kbin.social (before that site died) and then on kbin.run (before it died) and now there and I’d like to see her efforts succeed.
If you’re not interested, feel free to ignore it, but if you’d like a place on Lemmy for discussion, there are at least a few people there who’ve been trying their damnedest to get something going.
I also love Ryukishi07’s VNs, “When They Cry” series. The art is admittedly ugly, but the stories are very intricate and convoluted in the best sense of the word.
The first of the “When They Cry” series are the only VNs I have ever played clicked through and it was surprisingly good, even for someone like me who isn’t into anime and kept me hooked through all the episodes. I highly recommend it.
beehaw.org
Ważne