Slowly playing through Trails of Cold Steel, which is finally starting to pick up after chapter 4 (the characters are still pretty dull and I’m not a huge fan of the orbment changes).
Played a bit of Tales of Vesperia which I’m enjoying more than expected, but got distracted and mostly played Dragon’s Dogma which is really fun but a bit confusing on where I’m supposed to go (and when).
I also got Triangle Strategy, Horizon Zero Dawn, Ys Memories of Celceta and Ys Oath in Felghana which were all on sale, but haven’t started any yet.
I don’t hate them, and actually think they improve dungeon crawlers like Etrian Odyssey.
But for other games I think they slow down the pacing too much, especially when you want to get back to an older area, as you are going to fight lower level enemies and there’s usually an unavoidable scene transition which takes time.
After enjoying Ys I and II, I played Origin, which was hugely disappointing. It just felt so unsatisfying to play, and the single dungeon was boring af. I pushed through hoping at least the story would get interesting, but after almost finishing it again with the second character it never did, so I gave up and dropped it. I’m not sure if I want to try the other games in the series, seeing as this is considered one of, if not the, best.
Literally just started playing Tales of Vesperia (~30 minutes). First impressions are that it looks really nice, the combat feels better than the other Tales I tried (Arise and Berseria) and I’m linking the setting and character designs.
Crimzon Clover’s really fun. It’s similar to Dodonpachi. Another good one is Ikaruga. It has an interesting mechanic we’re you switch colors to absorb bullets.
Avoid Sine Mora and other “euroshmups”, they just suck to play.
Continuing Trails, now at Cold Steel (started chapter 3) and it’s… bad? It feels like a huge drop in quality from the previous games. The dialogues feel too long and boring, the characters uninteresting and I’m not vibing with the school setting.
Played a couple of hours of Atelier Ryza, which I had accidentally put on hold midway through, and felt lost and confused. I’m not sure if I should restart it or push through.
Played Ys I and currently playing II. The first one was a fun simple adventure, the combat system is kinda weird, as you just run into enemies to damage them, but surprisingly satisfying. The bosses were more annoying than anything. The second one seems to have made the combat more interactive, as there’s magic now, and the first two bosses were fun to fight, but the maps are a bit too big and confusing.
Playing through the Trails series, just finished the Crossbell arc which was fantastic.
Tried playing Tales of Arise, but I’m not really liking it. The combat seems fine for now, albeit a bit clunky, but the story started off really weak and after the first lord I’m not really interested. I got Vesperia too, so I might try that.
A few I’ve played with a friend of mine: the We Were Here series, Portal 2, Monster Hunter World, Factorio and Deep Rock Galactic (which we both didn’t like, but it’s pretty popular)
Forgot that came out, I should play it. Had a lot of fun with 1 and 2.
This week I played around 12 hours of Bravely Default 2, but dropped it because the boss mechanics (counters) feel anti-fun and like they want a specific party composition, and it feels a bit too grindy for my taste.
Continuing the Trails series with 3rd: it seems interesting, but I’m not sure I like how it’s structured, the gameplay feels too disconnected from the story.
This week I finished Trails in the Sky SC which was good, although I enjoyed FC’s story’s smaller scope more.
Tried playing Sea of Stars, but I felt like the writing was so bad I couldn’t play more than like 3 hours. So I started and finished Chrono Trigger over the weekend which was great and I’m surprised it exists on SNES.
As soon as I got a Steam Deck I completely stopped buying Switch games (or playing on Switch in general). Most games are playable on both systems and the prices seem more or less the same (at lest for the ones I’m interested in), but the main advantage for me is being able to move save files between the deck and my PCs.
I hate the Joycons so much. The clicky buttons are terrible, the split dpad sucks for games that use it for movement, the sticks aren’t great either for precision (ignoring the drift issues), and I find them painful to hold.