I mean, I will say that one of the reasons I didn’t keep playing Bloodstained (RotN) despite dying to the first boss a bunch of times is that I could tell that if I grinded enough I might be able to beat them… but I’d also be sick of all the systems already. (I kinda regret Kickstarting it, for that reason).
Yeah that first boss kicked my arse a bunch. I guess I went in not knowing what type of game I was playing whatsoever and it took me a minute to switch gears
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Slay the Spire - Did some experimenting runs with Ironclad and Defect last night. Didn’t manifest in any wins, but a few 
fights. Favorite discovery last night was the spoon that makes it so cards don’t exhaust 50% of the time. I got to Feed off the Sentinels three times which was great. The Giant Slime fight however…
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Yesterday I took some drugs and punched out a bear, so Valhalla might be better than I’ve been giving it credit for.
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I finished Gears Tactics and it was pretty fun! It felt a little sparse in the end with repetitive side missions, a basic story and not much variation with units but it was fun and a typically crunchy blast to play. Might have a go at the harder difficulties once I’ve had a bit of time away from it and had some time to get into Xcom.
I’ve also made my second attempt in recent years to do the Kingdom Hearts saga. Have started Kingdom Hearts 1.5 Final Mix (I think that’s its title??) on the Game Pass this time. I actually completed this originally 18 years ago (time… time…) and it just took too long for the sequels to start rolling out. This game is a lot. In many ways it holds up pretty well with it being relatively easy to play, it’s got cringe and charm in equal spades but it also deeply sucks. Everything is confusing and I’m noticing because I’m about 3/4s of the way through after 14 hours because I’ve used a guide for directions whereas I stopped playing on the PS4 because I got lost in every world for what felt like 14 hours at a time. I’m not even gonna get started on the camera and the jumping controls.
It’s very charming though and there’s nothing I love more than deep lore and a game that takes the lore and mythos incredibly seriously. I think I’m stoked to get further in? the Lore Reasons podcast has sold it for me.
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pokémon mystery dungeon: red rescue team. no auto-explore, or whatever else they’ve added to update the dx one on switch, but that’s fine.
also turns out that a roguelike that starts easy and takes time to ramp up is fine by me right now. i’m a bulbasaur so i learned sleep powder naturally at some point, kind of early even, and that sure is a really good move. like zapdos spent most of the fight sleeping, and more recently i took apart pretty much an entire monster house on my own with it. (several of them were gravelers that i one-shot with any of my other moves, but still.) i’ve linked moves on exactly one occasion so far, for a certain boss with a busted room-wide move of their own (articuno), and it sure was something to go into a fight i’d repeatedly lost nigh-instantly and clean house without using a single item. i guess that’s how it goes if you link all four of your moves for yourself and your partner both. i de-linked everything afterwards because i like to be more precise about what i’m doing.
i tried howling forest and played through magma cavern recently, and this, this is going exactly where i want. give me these marathons where every battle matters. i don’t even care if the boss is a joke, which it was. maybe i was a bit overlevelled for it? also lol onix showing up on the last level in numbers. have some of this razor leaf. howling forest though, that’s another story. that’s the other of the two monster houses i’ve encountered so far, which started with an exploud using uproar and a snorlax dropping in next to me. i had an escape orb on hand to bail and keep all the loots i got to that point, at least. i think i’m leaving that one for later…
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Played a few more levels of DOOM Eternal. Made it past the Mars Core, got the crucible, unlocked the unmakyr and reached the point of no return. Now that I’ve got a better handle on the combat rhythm, I figured out how to stunlock marauders for example, it’s a little less actively frustrating. It’s still hella tedious though, the vibe is off and it’s just not as exhilarating. I’m fighting trash mobs in a DOOM game, dude.
That Mars Core level is pretty sick though, you can see why they made it the showcase demo.
…
I’ve also wrapped the campaign of Star Wars Squadrons and have dipped my toes in the multiplayer, and it’s really good! I expected it to be pretty lifeless, but the story is solid and they did a good job making all the ships fun. If I had some more time, I might go back to play the campaign again, or at least the Imperial parts which did a pretty good job of making your fellow crew likable, while not shying away from the darker implications. Like, I love how Shen’s backstory is kind of an aspirational story of resilience, but also deeply sad because he’s basically been turned into an automaton, having no real choice in the matter.
I wish the multiplayer had some more to it, though. I haven’t really checked out the fleet battles, but bad matchmaking with the dogfights saw me mainly getting rocked by A-Wings and TIE Interceptors. They’re adding new starfighters though, so maybe I’ll keep taking a look at it. We’ll see.
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I’m playing Demon’s Souls! The old one! For the Playstation 3! IT’S VERY GOOD! So, yeah, some back story: I played this game for the first time early last year, probably after beating Sekiro. At the time I enjoyed myself, but I ranked it as my least favorite game from the Souls series. At the time it had been a few years since I played a game from the series, but since then I have played through both 1 and 2. All the remaster talk made me want to return to it to reevaluate, and boy am I glad I did! It’s great! It has a lot of what made the later games great: the combat was refined right out of the box! There’s atmosphere FOR DAYS. Everything is dense and confusing at the start, but you intuitively figure out what all the mechanics do as you play. It’s surprising to me how much of the core Souls formula was already perfected with their first entry. What’s more interesting to me is how it differs from the later games. This game is genuine uncanny on both a level design and monster design level. It’s not nearly as cohesive as Dark Souls 1 (or even 2!), but that opens the door for some truly weird stuff. The flying manta rays, the enormous tardigrades, the truly mazelike and claustrophobic tunnels, all of it is just so strange! There are more gimmick bosses than not in this game, which is GREAT. You can tell they sanded a lot of this off to focus on a more coherent tone and further refine the combat, but damn if it isn’t a treasure!
There are a few things about Demon’s Souls that are kind of bad compared to later games in the series, like the way upgrading weapons is more convoluted and requires a lot of grinding. On the whole though, I really love this game!
Alright, I’m going to do some mild griping about the remake, but I’ll hide it as to not expose you folks to the D I S C O U R S E without warning:
Summary
There are two main things about the remake that have really bummed me out while replaying the original. First off, they changed all of the weirdly named items. “Old Spice” is now “Aged Spice”. The weirdly gross “Sticky White Stuff” is now the somehow even more explicit “Sticky White Slime.” All the weirdly named items are great, and never didn’t delight me. Imagining my character consuming deodorant to refill MP made me chuckle a little every time.
Second, the new voice acting might be better, but it really loses the uncanniness of the original. The Maiden in Black just sounds bored in the remake, while in the original she sounds otherworldly. In some cases the new delivery completely changes the meaning of dialogue. In the original Scirvir the Wanderer seems genuinely out of his depth when you meet him deep in the Stonefang Tunnels. When he asks you to retrieve a sword for him to see, you can tell he’s afraid to find it himself. In the remake there’s none of that. He’s just a guy asking you to find a sword.
Like I said, these are minor gripes, but it’s still just a bummer. The only reason I know about these changes is because the fextralife wiki has been completely overhauled with everything from the new game. There isn’t even an option to see the original version like their Dark Souls 2 wiki has. I haven’t played the remake (I probably won’t for a few years at least, when I can justify the purchase of a PS5), so I don’t want to make a judgement, but still, the original Demon’s Souls is a truly special game, and it’s really sad to see already being bulldozed over for something shinier. My biggest fear with the remake is that it would completely replace the original, and it’s really disheartening that it seems to have happened so quickly. 
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I was genuinely moved to tears by the ending of Miles Morales, which is basically everything that was good about Insomniac’s Spider-Man with all of the filler and bloat cut out and a plot that really plays to the characters’ relationships, which was the first game’s biggest strength. (Also aside from the first like 5 minutes, much lower on the weird copaganda scale. Also setting it in winter gave it some even cooler atmosphere.) And it was maybe 15 hours in the end, which was utterly perfect. Very wholly in love with this one. Might be a late GOTY contender after all.
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I would highly recommend the fleet battles in Squadrons. I think the dogfight mode pales in comparison.
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The last cutscene the one with Miles drinking coffee upside down, not the Osborn scene was one of the most heartwarming moments of the year. Just, like, heck yeah. And Miles in the suit + hat + scarf suit is just the greatest thing. I can’t wait to see someone cosplay that.
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Y’all Risk of Rain 2 with the artifact that makes enemies drop items leads to some really fun broken endless runs. That game continues to impress me with how fun every character is while feeling kind of unique.
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I am currently replaying Pyre on True Nightwing (new game+) and while I have a decent record, I feel like there’s a level of passing play that I just haven’t managed to get to yet. Advice is welcome, but damn this game is just special
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Slay the Spire - Y’all, I finally won an A10 Ironclad run!
I think it’s maybe the luckiest run I’ve ever had, I got an early Feed and finished with 152 Max HP, I had 6 rares. Maybe luckiest of all, I had a Corruption + Juggernaut + Dark Embrace combo for a good part of Act 3, only to finally find a Feel No Pain in the Act 4 shop and got a really powerful synergy going for the final fight. Oh and I had a mummified hand so every time I played corruption or my other powers, I got a free attack.
I don’t think I’ll have another run like this for a long time, but everything lined up last night for my best run yet and it felt so dang cool
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its really good, huh?
…so Earthbound. I am about midway through, I have connected with Poo. This game is fine? It is so so grindy. Dungeons are a drag, there is a lot of flipping through menus to use and upgrade items. Its way too long. I do not understand what it is trying to relay to me as an experience. Okay, numbers have gone up, but that dopamine hit wore off at hour 10 of what is probably around 30 (and I must have 20 more to go…).
The game’s length is a major detriment, because at this point it has been six weeks since I started it and I cannot give you a single plot point besides what happened the first hour of the game. The quirky dialogue and characters are fun, but once again there is only so much variation. If this game was 10 hours, with combat centered around major characters/events ala an Undertale for example, this would be an extremely memorable and fun experience for me. But everything is really a drag. But I’ll finish it because I discovered my emulators fast forward button, which means numbers really go up.
In contrast to the other game I am playing Demon’s Souls (PS3) I see two different game experiences contrasted. Demon’s, and games like it, have a bit more up and down from me. I am elated when I defeat a boss, or get through large portions of a new level successfully. But then you’ve died repeatedly to one boss or one section and you keep making that same run so you switch it off your game or irritatedly forge ahead. But Earthbound is this middle path, where I hit fast forward to get to some morsel of enjoyment.
Lastly I picked up Tenderfoot Tactics which I was hoping to like and have ended up really liking! I haven’t played many tactics game but oof is it satisfying. There is a lot of small smart design choices I really appreciate, like swapping abilities just in a menu, upgrades being interchangeable at any time, etc. Also just aesthetically, it can’t be beat. And the music is incredible, it reacts to your battles. The OST has a wide variety of different sounds and instruments which keeps things varied and enjoyable, just as someone who also loves to hear different synths and less common instrument sounds on a daily basis.
I thought Earthbound was gonna be my game, and hooo boy is it not. Oddly difficult and grindy, really weird boss battles that frequently require you throwing yourself at again and again to get good rng, awful item management/menu design. The rolling health doesn’t make a difference until the late late game, and the “no random battles” thing is just… not true really. For all of its charm, interesting dialogue, quirky music, it’s still just an absolute slog to play in 2020.
I thought I was alone in that feeling until I saw this video that basically echoed my exact same complaints (and by exact same I mean I literally have a google document from 4 years ago when I wrote about it, and it was very similar to this video essay). Don’t worry about not loving it, you’re not alone.
I’m playing Steamworld Quest. I am enjoying it for the most part. Going into it, I thought it was going to be more of a card game. Instead, it’s more of a turn-based RPG where the combat is really just managed by a small deck of cards governing your abilities. On the whole, things progress with a good bit of fun. Even normal encounters can be pretty challenging and require strategic thinking to avoid trouble. However, when you get to boss battles, it seems like you pretty much have to approach them with specific party and deck configurations or you have no chance of winning. In that sense, not every “build,” as it were, is viable, all the time. Nonetheless, it’s a refreshing spin on the turn-based RPG that I don’t regret nabbing while it was on sale.
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I beat Demon’s Souls(2009), and it was good! I don’t have a lot more to say about it than I did before, but I can confirm it doesn’t stop being great in the last third. It’s hard for me to tell because souls combat is second nature to me now, but this might actually be the easiest souls game??? Sure, you have the Royalty starting class which starts you out with a ranged spell that just eats enemies early in the game, but even beyond that! The bosses themselves are usually less about mastering combat, and more about finding a weak point and exploiting it. Levels do have fewer shortcuts, but they’re generally shorter than the ones from later games in the series. I dunno, like I said it’s hard for me to tell, but it definitely feels more forgiving than the following games. I’m not saying people should go out and buy the remake if they don’t know if they like souls games, but it’s definitely worth picking up an old ps3 copy if you still have a working console.
On the topic of accessibility, and the new remake: if Bluepoint had added the easy mode like they said they wanted to, that would honestly probably be the only change I wasn’t mad about. There’s so much more to love about these games, and it’s a bit of a bummer that more people can’t see it.
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After finishing Miles Morales I decided to play Maneater and it’s… exactly as advertised? I wish there was a greater variety or things to do but the killer shark power fantasy is very fun, the environments are beautiful and it all looks really good on the PS5. It’s a great podcast game, and I’d say one of those really good 7/10s that I’ll drop some time into as I veg out post-finals.
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My PS1 disc of FFVII is freezing 18 hours in. This was always part of the risk using an actual old disk but “I never thought it would happen to ME etc.” I feel only pain.
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