Still playing Dragon Age: Inquisition, I am about 50 hours in, and I can see at least 20-30 hours more, maybe even 50, who knows. Still enjoying the game, so no complaints there.
Cleared the Goron Dungeon in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, got lost on my way to Zora domain. Found the way, but haven’t reached it yet. Controls aren’t much of an issue anymore, and didn’t need any help until clearing the Goron Dungeon, though had to look up a bit because I got lost after that.
When looking up where to go next, I found out there are tons of collectables that I missed, got couple of them, but then thought I don’t want to use guide to find these things, at least not in my first playthrough, and not before I have finished most of the game. So, left those, and did some exploring my own, and now getting ready to go to Zora domain.
During the week, when looking for a game to play in small bursts, resumed Swords and Soldiers, it’s a 2D strategy / tower defense game. I started playing it a long time ago, but only did 15 out of 40 levels, so played some of the older levels to get the feel of it again and enjoying it now. I am at level 35 now. There are 4 campaigns, and each has 10 levels, so I am basically halfway through the last Campaign. Got a sudden difficulty spike so stuck for a bit, but plan to finally finish it now.
What about all of you? What have you playing lately?
Working my way through the Paper Mario TTYD remake, just got through chapter 4 (Twilight Town) in about 2 hours after taking 5-6 to get through the Glitz Pit. Granted, despite getting the Yoshi the Glitz Pit is my least favorite part of the game (it really tends to put the game to a grindy halt for a while), so now it’s more fun from here! 😁
Oooh, it has Yoshi? I like Yoshi!
I am also looking for a Switch game to play in short bursts after finishing Mario v Donkey Kong
Captain Toad’s Treasure Hunt is quite relaxing if you’re into puzzles and Mario games.
The new Monkey Ball game is pretty good for this. Each world is split into 10 levels you can knock out anywhere between 10-30 minutes depending on the difficulty and the challenges you are trying to clear. Since there’s 200 levels that’s 20 separate sessions if you strictly play the singleplayer mode.
There are many smaller games on Switch suitable for this. What kind of game are you looking for?
For small burst play sessions, I guess just not strategy or RPGs or anything that requires me to remember a bunch of rules and mechanics. I tend to lean more towards puzzle games and platformers with generous save points. And the occasional racer
Playing Senren * Banka!
Slow progress, still going through the second chapter of the “common” route.
Playing Unicorn Overlord!
I’ve been bouncing from game to game the past few weeks trying to find something that catches my attention and helps me relax because my usual RPGs and VNs haven’t been working, I’m having a hard time focusing on them due to real life problems.
I think this one is the best candidate so far. Battles are usually short so it’s good game to play in quick bursts (and you can save mid-battle in case you hit a longer one), there’s plenty of story but it’s fairly standard fantasy stuff so you don’t need to pay too much attention.
It’s a bit grindy, which could be a problem on other moments but works well right now, just going around doing short missions and unlocking more characters and sections of the map has been really fun so far.
A couple things to comment: First, as usual for a Vanillaware game it looks beautiful and it’s generally well polished. I think a few menus are a bit clunky, but nothing you can’t get used to after a couple hours playing.
Second, the game has an absurd amount of customization, so much that it’s almost overwhelming:
- You can have up to 10 active battle parties
- Each battle party can have up to 5 characters, so you can have up to 50(!) characters active at once
- There’s a ridiculous amount of classes (more than 60 IIRC), all with different strenghts and weaknesses
- Each character has multiple equipment slots, and those not only can provide status boots but also add new skills
- You can configure the skills and its usage for each character, similar to the Gambit system in Final Fantasy 12
As you can see above, that’s a LOT of stuff to fiddle with. So far I’ve been only doing basic stuff, balancing the parties and keeping everyone minimally equipped and it’s been working, but I can see myself at some point later in the game just sitting down and spending a whole afternoon tuning everything to the max.
Unicorn Overlord is on my wishlist, but have been constantly hearing about grinding in the game, which I am not a fan of, so not sure if I’ll like it or not.
Not sure if this will make sense for people who haven’t played the game, but I when I say “grindy” it’s less “keep repeating the same stages to gain XP/Money” and more in the lines of “there’s a lot of small optional stages that look similar and you’re not required to do… but probably want to because it unlocks extra portions of the map and makes life easier”.
These shorts stages are somewhat repetitive so it’s annoying if you try to play them at all at once, but they are optional and their compact nature make them a good option as a break between longer stages or when you only have time for a short gaming session.
Ah, makes sense. Thanks for the info!
I’m playing Jusant right now. It’s one of the best non-combat games I’ve ever played I think.
You play as a climber who tries to make it up a towering mountain/rock tower, and you find letters along the way that tell the story of what has happened to the world and the inhabitants of the tower. All the water seems to have disappeared from around where the tower is located. Ships and boats decorate the desert around the tower. Some letters are found in chronological order as you go up the tower, following certain characters, indicating they also made the climb up. Others are in reverse chronological order, indicating the need to incrementally descend the tower as the water level decreased. In those, you can tell the desperation and mindset of the people changing as things got worse, but more relaxed the higher up you get.
The exposition is simple reading of text, but in combination with the story it makes it very interesting.
The gameplay is super fun: it’s challenging enough to be entertaining, easy enough to be chill. Simple yet engaging controls.
The art style is very cool IMO. The world is not textured. The developers instead relied solely on very detailed colored and shaded geometry to convey texture, leveraging UE5’s nanite and lumen systems respectively. And I have to say, there’s a lot of detail in the geometry and in the amount of world objects. It really brings life to the game world.
Very difficult to put down. I think about wanting to play/finish it when I’m doing other things. 😅 Haven’t had that feeling with many games.
9/10
I remember watching it in Xbox Showcase, but thought it isn’t for me it. Your description sounds very interesting though, so going to check out some quick review.
Thanks!
Hey, my pleasure! I always like to share what I enjoy, so I hope it’ll be to your taste in the end. 🤞❤️
I’m taking a break from Animal Crossing to try and finally finish Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. We’ll see how far I get this time. It’s got a lot of classic RPG feel that I really love, and the Ghibli animated cutscenes are gorgeous, but I’m really not used to having to “watch” my games, so we’ll see.
I really liked Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, and it was probably my first game in monster collecting genre. Never finished it though.