I’d heard a lot of alright reviews of Unicorn Overlord. There were plenty of bits that people seemed to love, some that seemed like they were inserting their preferred headcanon and some that was just people sharing the bits of the game they loved most. For example, there’s an exchange between two women in one of the early encounters that is easily read as incredibly gay. It isn’t a stretch at all and while I’m skeptical of actual lesbian representation in this game, I would be surprised to find out that this relationship isn’t canonical. Needless to say, short videos and screenshots of this exchange made their rounds on the internet in the weeks following the game’s release, which is how the game caught my attention. There’s some later interaction that lend to this kind of read as well, but still nothing that actually outright says it or demonstrates it. Shortly after those images and gifs went around, the absolutely delicious food you can get at taverns in the game–as part of the relationship building mechanics of the game–started showing up in screenshots and helped tip my opinion in favor of trying the game out. It all looks so delicious! Not quite like food in a Ghibli film, but close enough that the comparison is deserving. What really hooked me, though, was learning that it was basically a Fire Emblem type game but with different battle mechanics and a better gaming experience than Fire Emblem: Engage provided in early 2023. Which is a low bar to clear, in my opinion, but an important bar given how much I love those kinds of strategy games and how disappointed I was by Engage.
Continue readingCombat
Early Thoughts On Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth
After a week of cramming what gaming I can into my work nights, I’m about six hours into Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth. Which might sound like a lot, but much of that time has been spend exploring the largely open world available to me about an hour into Chapter 2 of the game. After all, I can’t NOT explore every nook and cranny of the wipe world open world suddenly thrust upon me with its incredibly limited potential since there doesn’t seem to be much in it other than crafting resources. What if I missed something actually interesting [turns out that following the plot unlocks exploration activities so the interesting stuff isn’t even there or available to you until you’ve gone through the requisite steps]? What if there was a quest that I missed because I didn’t run along the top AND the bottom of each cliff? And, like, after spending some sixty or so hours (probably more, to be honest) playing two Final Fantasy 7 games–Remake and Intermission–that didn’t let me move freely around the world, I might have gone a little bit overboard. Also, you can jump now. Sort of. You have to be next to a cliff that the game judges is short enough for you to jump up, jump down, or somehow clamber over, but you can do it. Only vertical jumps, though, which lends some credence to one of my idle theories from a post that went up just over a week ago. If you want to hop across a small gap, you better hope you can jump down and then back up the other side. After all, you’re not jumping. You’re executing environment maneuvers. Heaven forbid you actually jump. Still, all that aside, it’s been an interesting look at what I might be able to expect from this game as I continue playing.
Continue readingMy Unplanned Break From Heart: The City Beneath Has Ended
Six weeks after our last session, my game of Heart: The City Beneath has finally come back around again. We even got through a full session, even if our metaphorical table wasn’t entirely full. One of the players couldn’t make it, since they have been firmly knocked out by a pair of sicknesses that have left them unfortunately unable to do much without needing to take a nap to rest up. We didn’t get much further through the delve than we were before, but I think we made some good progress overall, especially after being away from the game for so long. In total, they dealt with a difficult fight (which was the result of a fallout one of the players gained right at the end of the previous session) and then started in on the rest of the delve. They have not made much progress, so far, since they’ve rolled incredibly poorly on every single one of their delve roles save the very last one. They’re not super happy about that, either, since that delve roll brought them right up to another difficult fight and they no longer have the moves they used to make the earlier fight less potentially hazardous. Plus, due to the player missing the session and their character having a fallout come due right at the end of the session before, they party is once again split up. There’s a group of three and two isolated party members wandering around on their own, hoping to eventually meet up again. It’s a rough spot for them to be in.
Continue readingStar Wars Jedi: Survivor Was a Great Sequel
After almost two months of intermittent playing, I’ve finally finished Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. It was a lot of fun, even if I struggled with just how many collectibles there are (though the game gets points for giving you the ability to eventually unlock map icons for all of them) that I just did not care about. Honestly, the thing I was most-consumed with hunting down was enemies, so I could unlock the extensive collection of skills that were made available to me over the course of the game (and I’ve still got about a third of them to unlock despite having run through as much of the game as I care to at this point). The variations in combat options was incredibly refreshing, as was the variation in enemy combatants. Sure, it could be frustrating at times if my loadout was absolutely not the right set of powers and moves to be using in a given combat situation, but the number of options available within those loadouts meant only that I’d need to be a little creative to overcome these limitations. Throw in an interesting plot, some fun references to the greater Star Wars universe, a cast of great characters, and I’m willing to overlook the buggy and visually lackluster experience I had playing the game.
Continue readingHorizon Zero Chill
I’m going to preface this by saying I really enjoy playing this game. No matter what else I say, and I’ve got a lot to say, I really enjoy playing this game and can’t wait to keep playing it once I’ve finished creating my blog buffer. The combat is rewarding, all of the action moves feel incredible, and the lore is just waiting for you to stumble over it. The skills you can unlock by leveling up feel diverse and any one of them can have an incredible (positive) impact on my play style.
I’ll admit my first impressions weren’t super positive. Having never owned a PlayStation anything, I consistently bear a minor grudge against all exclusive games on a platform I never intend to buy. A grudge that grows in size depending on how cool the game looks. Sure, I have access to one now since one of my roommates owns a PS4, but the game looked so cool when it came out that I made myself wait about four months before I bought it. Somehow, I managed to avoid all spoilers for the game, so I was essentially going in blind other than what turned out to be a few unfortunate comparisons to Breath of the Wild.
I say unfortunate because the comparison does Horizon Zero Dawn no favors. HZD is much more focused on lore and story-telling. Characters will constantly tell you all sorts of really interesting information about the world and what has happened in its recent history. Also, and this was the biggest problem for me, you can’t climb everything. There were so many times I had to settle for hopping up a pile of boulders or finding a way around the cliff rather than just being able to scale it. It isn’t really a problem given HZD’s preference to make you feel like there’s danger around every corner, so being forced to walk around more requires you to get really good at sneaking or decent enough at combat that you can eliminate several robo-beasts as you’re trying to find a path that leads up to the top of the cliff. Or ruined skyscrapers (which are so freaking cool).
Probably the best comparison between HZD and BotW is in their atmospheres. I absolutely love the atmosphere of HZD. Both maintain an air of neglect, decay, and loss but BotW veers toward melancholy and then focuses on what is now gone forever while HZD turns toward attempts to understand the mysterious and forgotten past. Around every corner is some relic of a past that is slowly revealed through text or audio dumps that hint at what was going on in the world before civilization collapsed. Everything from the various machines you encounter to the remnants of cities or bases you can explore works to paint a picture of a world that was headed toward the collapse you know happened.
One thing that I’m still on the fence about, which is the reason for the title, is how every robo-creature you kill lets out a keening scream as it dies. It is a really nice effect, making each of the kills feel rewarding and real, but stealth kills also result in loud noises and nothing seems to notice the death cries of anything. If you stand around and gawk once you’ve killed something, THEN something might notice you. There seems to be almost no concept of noise and some of the line-of-sight stuff can be confusing, too. You can walk within a dozen feet of something and it won’t notice you, but it’ll watch you from a mile away if it noticed you and ran away, no matter how much you attempt to sneak or hide.
I have a few other gripes, but it’s mostly stuff about what I prefer in video games. Stuff like particular movements the character models make, word choices and personality stuff, the way they wrote some of the lore. Nothing of importance. Any negativity is far-outweighed by how much fun it is to sneak around and look for new lore. I can’t marathon it the way I could marathon BotW, but HZD is definitely something I try to play for at least a little bit every day. If you haven’t played it yet and have the means to do so, I suggest picking up the complete edition and playing your heart out.