Cyber Sleuth came out at the beginning of the month and I streamed it a whole bunch, so if you want to see any of that check out my YouTube channel for all kinds of Digimon content.
Right now I'm playing Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest and it is kicking my ass. They weren't kidding when they said it was hard. It's especially rough, because I never want to let anyone die.
Street Fighter came out too and I've been playing that at least once a day. I'm trying to get moderately good at it, but I am not quite to that goal yet. Spoilers, it's a fighting game!
Okay, let's talk about video games now!
Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth
Digimon is one of my favorite franchises of all time. I love the anime series, and a majority of the games have been pretty good. At some point Namco Bandai stopped localizing the titles, so here in America we missed out on quite a few solid Digimon Games. One of which was Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth on the Vita. Fans started a petition that got a crazy amount of signatures to bring it out in English. Now a few years later it has finally come out on both PS4 and Vita.
Digimon games have changed a lot over the years. On the DS they began to take the form of something more like Pokemon than previous iterations. You run into Digimon in battle and scan them. Once you've run into them enough you can reform them and have them as your own. Once you have them in order to Digivolve them you have to meet specific stat requirements. If you reach max level and can't meet the requirements to digivolve you can de-digivolve them. This makes it so that they have a higher max level.
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| I've been grinding to get these guys. I'm so close! |
Combat is turn based, and uses a similar weakness system to Pokemon. There are virus, vaccine, and data type Digimon that all have their own respective weaknesses. Cyber Sleuth follows the same pattern as the 3DS games, but the requirements to digivolve are way less annoying. They are exclusively based on stats and not how many battles you've fought. There are a ton of Digimon to collect, and the battles are fun.
The core gameplay is fine, but the rest of the game doesn't always hold up. The game starts very stylishly, and moves along at a decent clip. However, after the first few hours the pacing begins to fall apart. Many chapters don't involve any tie to the main story, and instead have the main character running around doing pointless garbage. It doesn't help that almost all of the games environments are introduced fairly early on, and then are repeated for the rest of the game.
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| Every area in the game looks like this. |
It's a solid game, but the repetition of areas and random quests can be a little grading. It doesn't help that the translation is a bit spotty, so when the story does happen its not always the best. Seriously, the main character is only a silent protagonist sometimes. They make jokes about him being silent and not talking very much, but there are numerous scenes where he talks to people directly. What!? It's a good thing that the battling and collecting Digimon aspect of the game is good, or I don't know that I would be as into the game as I am.
Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest
Fire Emblem games are always very similar. They are turn based tactics games with tons of generic anime characters. The reason I come to FE games is the combat. It's challenging and fun, and to me the permanent death of characters adds an extra layer to that. I personally have to restart every time someone dies. I don't care that people say this is cheating, or "un-pure." I want to do the best tactically, so when someone does die it's enough punishment to start the map over again.
I'm saying this because I've been starting over in Conquest a whole bunch. In case you don't know about Fire Emblem Fates it comes in three versions. Birthright is supposed to be the easier game for newcomers. You can level up your units easily by completing challenge maps. Money is also easier to come by. Conquest is meant for veterans of the series and is very challenging. There is limited money, and the experience you get in each chapter is all you get. There is a third version called Revelation as well, but I don't know what's different about that. Obviously with each version you get different characters, but I don't have any idea what the gameplay difference is in Revelation.
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| Which game will you be playing? |
It's odd, because the last FE entry was originally going to be the last in the franchise due to poor performance of previous entries. The development team put every popular feature in the game as a sendoff to the series. It ended up selling very well, so Nintendo decided to keep the franchise going with Fates. Instead of adding anything new to the game they kind of just decided to make three games instead of one. Sure, weapons don't have durability and you can change the field a little bit with weird dragon magic, but it still feels like Fire Emblem. It's not "new." I like FE in general, so I'm okay with this, but it might be why I feel so underwhelmed by the game.
The tactics you know and love are still there, but some of the charm is gone. It doesn't help that all of the characters are boring to me. Normally FE characters are generic anime archetypes, but they have interesting quirks. Everyone in Fates is generic and that's it. I don't really have any interest in any of the characters. It feels like Waifu Simulator 2016. It's a game about tactics, not anime wives.
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| Waifu simulator 2016. |
The tactical portion of the game is genuinely good from what I've played in Conquest. The maps aren't all the generic kill everyone maps that I've become accustomed to from the series. There are actual different objectives that make combat feel a lot more varied. I've had to survive for a set amount of turns, defend a point, and escape the field. It's not all good though, because it makes some of the stages feel gimmicky. Like right now I'm stuck on a chapter where wind blows my guys around. People keep dying because they get blown into a group of enemies. I'm sure there's some strategy I haven't thought of yet, but as of right now the map just seems shitty for the sake of killing your units.
Street Fighter V
I like fighting games, and I love Street Fighter V. I knew months before the games release that I loved it. I played every single beta for hours. It's a Street Fighter game. It's faster than Street Fighter 4 and adds in some new mechanics. V-skills are used by pushing medium punch and medium kick at the same time. Depending on the character it does something cool. Ryu can parry, Birdie eats food, and Ken can dash. Once you use the V-Skill enough you can push both heavy punch and kick to activate V-trigger. Once again it does something different depending on the character, but it's always cool. Ryu, Ken, and Cammy power up, while characters like Nash teleport around. It's an interesting mechanic that makes the characters feel way different than their SF4 counterparts,
When the game came out the servers crashed under the load of people who were trying to access the game. This happens quite frequently to online based games when they launch, but people always forget that. This means that the backlash to the game has been quite strong. People weren't able to play the game online for a whole two days! I understand why this upsets people, but local play is where fighting games shine anyways. There's no input delay at all! Where SFV gets a little rough is that if you're connected to the server while in an offline mode and lose connection you are kicked back to the main menu. Seriously, I was in a local versus match and the game booted us out of it. That was shitty,
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| Cammy activating her V-skill. |
Since the first two days of the games release it has worked flawlessly for me. I've fought hundreds of online matches, and none have had a bad connection. The net-code is very solid. It's based on rollback, so if the connection is rough the characters will teleport around a bit. You definitely want to be wired in to the router if you're going to be playing SFV online.
The main gripe people have with Street Fighter V is that there is almost no single player content whatsoever. Story mode is a series of fights that took me about an hour to beat. All you do is see some poorly drawn art and then do a one round fight where you have full meter. It's lame. Other than that you can do training mode, or survival. In survival you fight against the AI, and keep the same health after each round. You can spend points after each round to get stat bonuses, and regain health. It's also lame!
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| Play fighting games to fight, not for single player story. |
Street Fighter V is amazing. The fighting is incredible. It's easier to link things, so doing combos isn't as ridiculously hard for me as it used to be. I am also a huge fan of the new V system. I get why people are upset the game has no single player content, but they also probably weren't super into Street Fighter to begin with. It's a fighting game. You are supposed to fight other people. I get that not everyone wants to do that, so if you don't want to do that don't buy the game.
March
Pokken Tournament comes out next week, I feel like I should be super excited about a Pokemon fighting game, but right now I'm not excited at all. Hopefully I get more hype as the date gets closer.
Before Pokken, the Division comes out. I played the beta and liked it a lot. I'd describe it as a more enjoyable version of Destiny. The final release could deliver on what the beta promised, or totally ruin everything. I guess we'll just have to find out!
See you next month!
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