ganoo_slash_linux

ganoo_slash_linux, rok temu

My recommendations are Dodonpachi Resurrection, Mushihimesama, and Deathsmiles. They’re all on sale, they’re all made by CAVE. One more CAVE game, Akai Katana, is also listed but it’s not on sale. They are all extremely difficult if you have never played the style of game before (Japanese arcade bullet hell / scrolling shooter). Heavy emphasis on learning bullet patterns and doing precise dodges. It feels so good when you manage to dodge a pattern, or time a screen cancel/hyper just right.

If you only try one, Mushihimesama is 6 dollars right now, has an awesome soundtrack and a cool fantasy forest and insect theme. It’s relatively beginner friendly but you will definitely notice a sharp difficulty spike going from stage 3-4-5. I got to play it on an actual cabinet at PAX west, definitely my highlight of that weekend.

ganoo_slash_linux, rok temu

I don’t know how far you got into the first one but they are pretty similar games in my opinion. Everything that was good in Octopath 1, got better in Octopath 2. So: music and sound design, still amazing. Art, it’s the same HD-2D style that’s popular nowadays and Square is good at it. Character storylines are still mostly separate and not extremely complicated. The endgame scenario of Octopath 2 is more fleshed out than the hidden/True Last Boss of Octopath 1. I had a lot of fun in the endgame but in my opinion it was still too short.

The battle system is even more broken than Octopath 1 and largely revolves around setting up a team that can generate lots of BP, stack all your buffs onto a single character and maybe a debuff on the boss, then break it and deal 10k or 100k damage in a single round with your strongest attack. I think with certain setups it would be possible to deal 2 million damage in a single break. No boss has that much HP, though.

You still get powerful by exploring the map for gear and stealing/path-actioning good items from the end game cities. Grinding isn’t really necessary to beat the game but there are multiple setups that can turn trash encounters into 1-button wins.

The sub-job system is more flexible in Octopath 2. In addition to Break, characters have unique Latent Power “limit break” skills. There are so many ways to build a team that works well and part of the fun is figuring out what skills you can spec onto your characters and combine in order to win the game. That was also the case in Octopath 1.

ganoo_slash_linux, rok temu

Takumi Shu… will you write another game? I’m begging. Ace Attorney 7. DGS3. Ghost Trick 2. New IP? Anything, I want it so bad.

I am partial to Apollo Justice, the first one on DS. I personally loved the storytelling and this ominous aura of mystery that begins in Case 1 and looms over the entire game. Also Trucy. It was also the first time I remember that I, as a kid, was challenged to think about why we believe certain things to be true. And it has a great soundtrack and art / character designs which on their own are enough for me to love a game to death.