Game Time - July 2018

Game: Octopath Traveler

Developer: Square Enix and Acquire

Platform: Switch

I am always waiting for new JRPG releases to whisk me away to an interesting world where I lose hours of my life. Much to my dismay Octopath Traveler did not do that for me. Prior to its release I had seen a whole lot of Internet chatter about how the game feels disjointed due to the eight characters each having their own stories while never truly interacting. Once I got my hands on the final release, I felt the same. In theory a game telling eight separate stories could be awesome, but because you can't play straight through a single characters story without a ton of grinding for levels it requires you to sample many different stories, so a true flow never develops.

The battle system is quite enjoyable. It's like a mix between Shin Megami Tensei and Bravely Default. Each turn your four party members will gain a bonus point. Like Bravely Default you can use these bonus points to attack up to four times, or power up a skill four times. The SMT comes in when you attack enemy weaknesses. Certain weapon types and elemental damage will break enemies after they are attacked enough times, which makes them unable to attack while decreasing their defense. It's a fun system that requires you to figure out each enemies weakness and whether or not you want to take a fight slow, or unleash attacks in rapid succession to break enemies faster.

I really want to like Octopath Traveler, but nothing about it is particularly grabbing me. It seems as if a great deal of love and care went into the game and it's sold enough copies worldwide to back up that claim. I'm going to keep chipping away at it, but I find myself not wanting to play for more than a handful of minutes at a time. Perhaps once Dragon Quest XI hits my JRPG thirst will finally be quenched. 

Game: WarioWare: Gold

Developer: Intelligent Systems

Platform: 3DS

I have always loved the WarioWare franchise. In an era where Nintendo wasn't really trying to put out a bunch of new things WarioWare was a shining beacon of hope. It was supremely weird and introduced great characters like the pizza delivery girl Mona, and the haunted girl we all love, Ashley. It's the kind of unabashed strangeness that I really love from Japanese games. The concept is that Wario needs money, so he hires his "friends" to make 3- 5 second mini-games known as microgames in order to get rich quick. With little to no instruction the player goes through tons of microgames trying not to fail. It's fast paced and manic, while still managing to be fun.

The franchise hadn't seen a new entry in many years, so when I saw that a new one was coming out I was ecstatic. WarioWare: Gold acts as a greatest hits collection for the franchise. It offers tons of new microgames and even a few new characters, but it also grabs fan favorites from the original, WarioWare Touched, and WarioWare Twisted. They are separated into categories of mash, touch, and twist. At first they're kept separate, but in later challenges you're forced to switch between all three.

It took me a total of three hours to beat the "story," however I loved every minute of it. I've been going back and playing it a bunch because there is an achievement system and I feel like I need to do them all. It's cool to see Nintendo continuing to put out new games in the WarioWare franchise. Hopefully this was a test to see if they should continue producing it for the Switch. 

Game: Dead Cells

Developer: Motion Twin

Platform: PC (Also on Xbox One, PS4, and Switch)

Buzz about Dead Cells started when it first entered early access last year. I personally try to steer clear of early access games that seem interesting, because I usually tend to play them a ton and then get bored before all the content is added. I didn't do this with Dead Cells. I bought it pretty much right away and thought it was awesome. Then, news of the full release in early August happened and I started playing it all over again! Dead Cells rules and if you'tr not playing it then you're a criminal!

I feel like the phrase "smooth controls" is overused in the video games industry, but with Dead Cells it truly applies. Moving around the character is effortless and feels amazing. You play as a weird guy who seems to be dead, but also can't really die. It's a roguelike, so you run through some randomly generated stages, but when you die you have to start back at the beginning. Like many others of its ilk you collect a permanent currency (cells), which you use to purchase upgrades to make each subsequent run easier.  I've been playing it a ton and I don't see myself slowing down any time soon. There are so many intersting places to explore and secrets to uncover. Like, why are there so many doors all over each level that you can knock on? They have to be for something!

I don't really know what to say other than you should totally play Dead Cells. It's on PC, Xbox One, PS4, and Switch. The Switch version seems to be having some issues later in the game, but they seem to be working to fix that. It seems like it's doing very well, which is cool because I can't wait to see this developer make another game. Dead Cells is the best roguelike in ages, which is saying a lot, because we're basically drowning in them at this point.  

Game Time - November 2017

During the entire month of November I didn't really play a whole lot. I kind of just lounged around and let the Holiday season wash over me. I don't even really know what I did other than watch a whole lot of Adventure Time.

That doesn't mean I didn't play games, it just means I didn't finish any... It's game time!

Battle Chef Brigade

Years ago I saw a pre-release video of Battle Chef Brigade and it immediately caught my eye. It's an interesting mix of an action RPG and a match three puzzle game couched inside a fantasy Iron Chef. If what I just said sounds crazy, it's because it is. You play as Mina, a chef. She has run away from home to enter the tournament to become a member of the battle chef brigade. In the game world chefs are apparently super powerful and protect the land.

In order to join the brigade she must win a series of matches without losing three times. The game has you start your day by doing odd jobs for your teachers around town. This doubles as a way to get money and learn advanced game mechanics. You can do fun puzzles where you need to create specific patterns in the match three game, fight enemies, and make orders ads fast as possible in a busy restaurant. When you're all set you can find a fellow chef and challenge them to a battle. You than travel to a battleground and start the cool chef fight.

If only it was this easy to cook in real life.

Initially you're introduced to the judge for the event and they let you know what element they like the best and what the main ingredient of your dish should be. There are three elements earth, water, and fire. The more you have of the specific element the judge requests the higher you'll score. The buzzer goes off and then you need to get cooking! You have to run outside and kill monsters to collect their parts, which are made up on colored orbs. You need to drop the parts into your cooking pot and then match them. When you match three of a kind they fuse together into an upgraded flavor gem and you can repeat the process. Before the timer runs out you bring the dish to the judge and are scored accordingly. It has been a lot of fun the few matches I've played so far. It has a lot of charm, and I'm excited to see where the story and mechanics go.

Pokemon Ultra Moon

It's a well known fact that I love the Pokemon franchise. Despite that I can't bring myself to defend the newest duo of Pokemon releases. I have personally enjoyed my time with it so far, but it's hard to justify it as a purchase for people who played Sun and Moon last year. Game Freak billed this as an all new adventure with an alternate story, which is only a half truth. While there are new aspects to the story it is still largely the same as before. They made tweaks to the pacing so that things get going quicker, but a majority of the changes take place near and at the end of the game. I do think that it's a better overall package, but it just takes a while to see any of it.

The games bring back Team Rocket, but not until very late in the story.

Sadly I can't comment on any of the new story aspects other than the Ultra Recon Squad showing up every so often. When I last played the game I stopped right before getting to the wholly new story section dealing with the legendary Pokemon Necrozma. There is also additional content after the game is over where you fight against a new and improved Team Rocket which I am looking forward to.

In terms of gameplay it's pretty much identical. You fight with Pokemon in turn based battles. You capture Pokemon, level them up, and see them evolve. It's the classic gameplay that we all know and love from the franchise, but I hope that next time they can change it up even more. Sun and Moon were a nice departure from the previous games and tried a bunch of new things. Personally I hope that for future iterations they take the changes even farther. While I adore Pokemon I don't know how much longer they can get away with the current formula.

.hack//G.U. Last Recode

.hack//G.U. originally came out in 2006 for the PlayStation 2. I came into the three part franchise during its second outing in 2007. I played the second and third volumes a ton, and enjoyed them quite a bit. However, that was back then. The graphics were decent then, and the repetitive combat mechanics and melodramatic anime acting did it for me then. Now we're in 2017 and the games have been re-released in a collection on the PS4. What sets this collection apart from others of its type is that it adds a ton of cool features in addition to the improved graphics. On top of all that they created an all new volume 4, which I definitely have not played yet. It is really cool that this franchise has been revived in 2017, but I just am not having a good time playing it.

The combat is simple active combat. You run into a group of enemies and mach a button to kill them. As the games go on you receive more weapons to add variety, but in the opening hours there's little to no variety. You play as Haseo, who is a player in the MMO known as the world who is trying to find out what happened to his friend Shino. She was attacked by a mysterious character called Tri-Edge and was never seen again. Haseo learns he has special powers as all good anime protagonists do, and he goes on a journey while honing his skills.

Haseo is back and edgier than ever!

Even in 2017 the concept of playing a video game about being inside a video game is pretty novel. It still freaks me out that you can "log off" the game and retire to a PC desktop to read email and download sick wallpapers. I still like .hack, but I just don't want to play through it again. I already saw the story once, and the combat actually puts me to sleep. I played three sessions of it and almost fell asleep each time. It would be hard to recommend it to someone who has no nostalgia for it, but it's really cool for fans that Namco put this collection out.

Tis the Season

Pretty much all I've been doing since the 1st of December is playing Xenoblade Chronicles 2. The Switch finally has the hot JRPG action I have been craving. Sometimes I feel like if I go too long without playing one I will wither and die. So far I like it a lot, but it certainly has its fair share of problems.

The Director's Cut of Night in the Woods comes out Tuesday and I'm totally going to play through that again, because I love it so much. Other than that I don't really have a whole lot of video gaming plans. I'm just going to chill for the Christmas season and get really stressed out at work! See you next time!

Game Time - September 2017

I've been waiting for the month of October all year. Tomorrow one of my best friends is getting married. Then at the end of the month I'm going on a week long vacation leading up to my 24 hour Extra Life stream. I have an action packed few weeks ahead of me, but before I can fully dive in I have to tell you about the games I played in September!

The month started strong with Monster Hunter Stories. I am still playing it every so often, but have not yet completed it. I never would have guessed that a Monster Hunter JRPG targeted at children would appeal to me so much.

Then a few weeks later Capcom dropped Marvel Vs. Capcom Infinite. The presentation of the game and marketing leading up to its release made it seem like it was going to be a garbage fire. Unsurprisingly people are trashing it to the ends of the earth and back. The kicker is that it's actually super fun to play! I really like it.

The last game I played was Cuphead. The hotly anticipated indie release has finally come out, and it's everything I was hoping it would be. The 1930's cartoon aesthetic needs to be seen to be believed. In motion it looks stunning. On top of that the frantic boss fights are very fun and challenging.

We have a lot to talk about. It's game time!

Monster Hunter Stories

The fact that I love Monster Hunter is no secret. I feel deep into its trap a few years ago and haven't looked back. It's been a while since a Monster Hunter game has been released in the West, and for some reason Capcom decided to keep XX as a Japan only game. While Monster Hunter World will release in late January the only thing to tide me over until then was Monster Hunter Stories.

The Monsters you know and love are here, but they're small and cute now!

I normally never download demos of games, but I had to know what this one was about. What's crazy is that the demo is just the first five or six hours of the game. You can do almost everything available to you, and the progress even carries over to the main game. By the time the demo concluded I was hungry for more, and ended up getting the game when I otherwise wouldn't have.

I think the most surprising thing about it is that it is essentially a Pokemon game. You collect and battle with cute versions of all your favorite monsters from the series. It starts off very simply. Battles consist of choosing one of three types of attacks, either Technique, speed, or power. Each beats another, so you're playing roshambo. If you lose a trade the enemy still takes damage, but not as much as they would have. Each monster has its own tendencies, so just like Monster Hunter you need to learn each enemies habits to beat them effectively. As the game goes on the patterns get more diverse and you can mix things up by using skills of your own. It has a ton of charm, and while it's not the most complex game out there it manages to capture the charm of Monster Hunter in its own way.

Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite

In my eyes Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite will be the new Street Fighter V. Everyone on the Internet will mercilessly dunk on it without having actually played the game. Alternatively it could be used as a case study in how to absolutely fail to market something effectively. From the start Capcom has mismanaged this games public perception. The models don't look great, but initially they looked even worse. Chun-Li's face looked so bad it quickly became a meme. It is also now coming out that the team was given a very small budget and an incredibly short time to develop the game (to the surprise of no one). When you add in the fact that the roster is largely old characters composed of re-used assets it's hard to see the game in a positive light.

Despite all of that, I decided to try it out anyways. My brother is an absolute Marvel vs. Capcom fanatic. Marvel 3 was the first fighting game he got truly good at, and I loved watching him play. Hell, I just love watching Marvel in general. So I am happy to report that this game has excellent gameplay. The fighting is good in this fighting game. I can's stress this enough. Yes, you only use two characters now instead of three, but the fact that you can tag your partner in at any time and continue your combos allows for so much creativity. The control has changed up a little from 3. You now have a light punch, heavy punch, light kick, and a heavy kick. Crouching heavy punch is a universal launcher, so doing sick aerial combos is still very easy to do. It's fast paced, and very fluid. It feels good!

Still screens look so bad, but it plays just fine.

Do I think this game deserves a lot of crap for the way it was marketed? Yes. However, when you actually play the game its easy to see that it's a good fighting game. I don't think it's wrong to like a fighting game because the actual game is great, but the content surrounding it is not. So far it has absolutely tanked in sales, but I am personally hoping for it to have a long tail. Like Street Fighter V they are going to be selling DLC characters. Capcom has a plan for this game, so thankfully I think we'll have many years of Marvel tournaments to look forward to.

Cuphead

Cuphead began development in 2010 and it is finally seeing the light of day. The 1930's cartoon inspired game was first shown in an indie game montage during a Microsoft E3 press conference. Details started to trickle out and it was revealed to be a sidescrolling boss rush game. Even back then it was said to be fiendishly difficult despite its playful cartoon look. At first there were only bosses, but the game was put back in the oven to add some platforming levels. I can safely say that the platforming levels are my least favorite part of the game, but the bosses are awesome.

Cuphead is a relatively simple shoot-em-up. You run from side to side and shoot magic bullets from your finger. The challenge comes from the fact that you need to keep shooting while simultaneously dodging everything that gets thrown at you. You begin each encounter with three health, and after three hits you're finished. In order to defeat your enemies you'll need to learn the patterns for each phase of the fight. Damaging enemies enough will get them to change up their strategy. It's cool, because you never know exactly how long a fight will go, but if you fail a progress bar of sorts will let you know how close you were to victory. To ease the burden of the game you can purchase different types of shots and charms to help in specific scenarios. The shots have varying damage and range, while charms will give you specific power-ups. While it's certainly possible to beat the game with the default shot and no charms it's not necessarily going to be easy.

If I didn't know better I would think this is a still from a 1930's cartoon.

The game is definitely about the gameplay, but it does have a story. It's actually surprisingly dark. Cuphead and Mugman sneak out of their home and visit a casino. They get on a hot streak in craps and think they're unbeatable. Turns out the Devil owns the casino and he challenges them to a bet. If they win, they get tons of cash, but if they lose he gets their souls. They obviously lose, but plea for their souls. The devil agrees to release their souls if the duo can collect other souls he is owed. So each boss you defeat is someone who owes their soul to the devil. Both this concept and the difficulty are in direct opposition to the beautiful and fun art style, which might be why everything works so well. This game controls like a dream and looks like you're literally playing a cartoon. Cuphead rules!

OCTOBER!

As I stated at the beginning of this fabulous edition of Game Time, October is upon us. I am unrealistically excited for Fire Emblem Warriors. I've been craving some mindless Dynasty Warrior action and now I can get it! However, the true best Switch game is also releasing. Super Mario Odyssey will be out right before the end of the month. I can't even begin to describe how ready I am to play a brand new 3D Mario product. It's been a long time since Super Mario Galaxy 2, and Odyssey looks like it's going to be a worthy successor.

What's even better is that both of those Switch games are going to be out in time for me to play them on a five hour plane ride. It will be my first plane ride with a Switch, and it should be a great time.

Game Time - November 2016

As with every year November is when the holiday season really begins to ramp up; It's the busiest time of year for me at work, and my family and close friends start coming around a lot more frequently. It's an awesome time of year that brings me a lot of warm feelings.

Part of why I enjoy November so much is because games I want to play tend to come out. This year it was especially true. Pokemon games come out semi-annually now, but it's not every time that a new generation begins. Rumors of the 7th generation of Pokemon have been swirling for over a year now. It didn't help my excitement that when the demo came out in October almost the entire game leaked onto the Internet....

So yeah, I played a whole ton of Pokemon. Somehow I also ended up engaging with a decent amount of Watch Dogs 2, despite telling myself I wasn't going to get it. I have way too many games I started this year, but didn't finish. I guess I was too interested in seeing how it turned out. I'm not done with it yet, but I think it's an okay game. Not amazing, just okay.

Then you have the crown jewel of this month, which is Final Fantasy XV. The troubled development cycle made it take around ten years to come out. To be honest I never thought I'd actually get to play it, but here I am playing it. It's actually running on the TV next to me right now.

Oh yeah, I bought a sweet 50' 4K TV on Thanksgiving. It was on sale for $328 and I just couldn't pass it up. Now I can actually take advantage of my PS4 Pro, which is really neat.

There's so much I have to say about these games. I could actually spill out thoughts about FFXV until I explode, but I'll save you from that tragic fate. Instead I will outline my basic experiences here and then write up a Game Time ID when I have finished the game. I still have a bunch to say now though, so let'e get into it. It's game time!

Watch Dogs 2

I actually didn't think the original Watch Dogs was a terrible game. It was an open world game. Like all open world games it was mostly about shooting your foes, but you could also hack things with your phone to take them out as well. More often than not that meant incapacitating people by exploding things near them. It was a novel idea, but it didn't have much depth. The real issue with the game was the main character Aiden Pierce and the story surrounding him. He's a completely unrelatable character and an all around asshole. He uses his own sister as bait at one point. It didn't help that everything was hyper serious. There was absolutely no comic relief, which left me with a very sour taste.

Now it's a few years later and we have Watch Dogs 2. The good news is that the characters and story are worlds better than the original. You play as Marcus, who is a young hacker trying to change the world in a positive way by taking on big data. He's a regular guy who loves technology and bad movies. He's relatable and interacts with the other characters in the world in a fun way. The game's tone overall is a lot less self serious, which is exactly as it should be. The game knows it's goofy and uses that to its advantage. The issue I have is that the story is very disjointed, much like most Ubisoft games are now. You learn a lot about Marcus and his crew at DedSec, but the overarching story jumps all over the place. The game constantly introduces new characters with no explanation of who they are, and then proceeds to not really clue you in afterwards. It's frustrating, but the characters make me forget about the seemingly non-cohesive plot.

Marcus is a pretty likable guy.

The gameplay has both changed quite a bit, and not very much at all. What I mean by that is that Watch Dogs 2 is still an open world game. You can drive cars, take cover, and shoot at a bunch of people. My issue with the gameplay in Watch Dogs 2 is that the shooting feels much worse than the original game. I eventually got used to the combat, but Marcus doesn't feel powerful like Aiden did. Before I could go into any situation guns blazing and come out unscathed, whereas with Marcus I go down almost instantly. I guess this fits with the character, but it's still frustrating when I get caught in a stealth section and can't really do a whole lot about it.

The cool changes come in the form of hacking. You can still hack nearby objects with your phone nothing has really changed in that regard. There are some cool new features like the ability to call gang hits on enemies. This makes is so that gang members come in and start shooting, which alleviates the need for you to shoot yourself. What's really cool though is that you can complete every mission without having Marcus enter the mission area himself. He is equipped with a small rover and a drone. The rover can jump, and do physical hacks in place of Marcus. The drone can fly around buildings and hack anything that doesn't require physical contact. This means that as long as you're not seen by the enemy you can do everything with these two tools at your disposal. The only downside is that if they get shot down or blown up, then you have to wait an oddly long amount of time before you can bring them out again. Regardless it's a really cool concept that works well.

The rover adds a whole new way to tackle each mission.

I was personally hoping for Watch Dogs 2 to be a huge step above its predecessor. Instead it takes incremental steps forward. It makes me worry for the future of the franchise. I don't really know where they go from here. So far I'm really enjoying my time in the game, and think I'll actually try to finish it. Initially I wasn't really digging it, but as I got more skills and access to the drone I began to have a much better time. It's definitely a lot better than the original.

Pokemon Sun/Moon

Pokemon is one of those magical franchises for me that will never get old. Despite the fact that you essentially do the same thing in each iteration I can't get enough of trying to capture all of the little critters that I can. However, this time the adventure is actually quite different. Prior to release I was a bit skeptical, but now that I've put 60 hours into the game and completed it I can safely say that Pokemon Sun and Moon are great games that do a lot right! Long running franchises like Pokemon walk a razor thin line where they need to try new things to pull in new people, while not changing the things that long time fans will get upset about. Obviously someone always gets upset, but I honestly think that Game Freak did a wonderful job this time around.

This time around you play as a Pokemon trainer who has just moved from the Kanto region to the beautiful island paradise of Alola. Surprise, it's basically Hawaii! The journey takes you across four different tropical islands, which are all very different in terms of what they have to offer. It's cool, because large cities take a back seat for more lush natural environments. I feel stupid every time I say this, but it's the first time that the world feels like it's actually inhabited by both humans and Pokemon instead of it just being a world where humans live and Pokemon are their battle slaves. You interact with Pokemon in the wild, and see them walking around way more than in any other entry in the franchise and I love that!

People and Pokemon live in harmony in the Alola region.

For those of you who have played Pokemon before you know what the goal is usually to collect eight gym badges and then take on the Elite Four. In Alola that is not the case, because they have not established their Pokemon League yet. Instead you travel across the islands in search of trials. Some trials are battles with powered up wild Pokemon, while others have you collecting items. It's a nice change of pace. Each trial you complete awards you with a Z-crystal, which allows you to use Powerful new Z-moves. Normally Pokemon have four moves, but if they are holding a Z-crystal of their type then they can use a powerful Z-move once a battle to do a ton of damage, or increase the buff they receive. It sounds simple, but it adds a whole new layer of strategy just as mega evolution did in the last generation.

The plot is slightly different from standard Pokemon fare, in that it's actually a real story. Since Black and White Game Freak has been trying to make their stories have more depth, but I think they truly succeed in Sun and Moon. You're introduced to a host of interesting characters over the course of the game such as the lovable Professor Kukui, the shirtless professor, who I genuinely was interested in by the end of the game. While the central plot ends up being essentially the same as other entries in the franchise it builds up the characters and world they live in, in a way that has yet to be seen in a Pokemon game to date.

Battle's look better than ever before.

The number of new Pokemon is around 80, which is low compared to previous generations. I think that the level of quality is slightly higher this time around though. That can just be said for the games in general as well. The visuals are better than ever before and everything is done with a flourish. It's funny, because as I'm writing this and thinking about the game a smile is creeping across my face. I have always loved Pokemon and it warms my heart to see the franchise continue to move forward instead of stagnate. If you've never played a Pokemon game before there has never been a better time to jump in and immerse yourself in the world.

P.S. Team Skull is the best

Final Fantasy XV

In the ten years since the announcement of Final Fantasy Versus XIII I tempered my expectations. At the time I was beyond excited, but as the years drew on and the game wasn't really shown I tried to ease my excitement. Years went by with no news, and then in 2013 the game re-emerged as Final Fantasy XV. At that point it had been so long I was no longer able to hype myself up. I just didn't believe it was every going to actually come out. Now we're here in 2016 and I'm playing the game. I still can hardly believe it, but I definitely am playing it. However, much to my dismay I am not enjoying it as much as I wanted to. It's a very interesting game. There are a lot of great ideas, and a lot of horrendous ones intertwined into what is a pretty good game.

Yes, I realize I said I wasn't having a very good time and that's true. Personally when I go into a Final Fantasy game, or really any JRPG I'm looking for a semi-compelling story with well developed characters. Final Fantasy XV has one of those things so far, and that's compelling characters. Prince Noctis starts off as a spoiled brat, but seems to be opening up and realizing that he has a responsibility as the crown prince. It helps that the central focus of the game is traveling around the world on a road trip with your bros. The story on the other hand is a disjointed mess that has yet to pull me in. As of right now I'm halfway through, so I'll wait to pass judgement until the very end. However, I can't really see it shaping up. For starters if you didn't watch the prequel movie (Kingsglaive) you would have literally no idea what's going on in the game and understand next to nothing about the world it takes place in. That sucks. I get that sometimes supplemental material is cool, but when something is an integral part of understanding the story of your 40+ hour JRPG maybe put it in the game... I'm saying this as someone who watched the film. Then on top of that the game itself starts off with little to no introduction. That's okay though, because there's a 40 page prequel novel PDF that you can download to see what happened beforehand....

These are the characters you'll be seeing the most of. (Left to right: Gladio, Ignis, Noctis, Prompto)

Aside from the ancillary content I don't think the story in FFXV is told very well, but that's not entirely the game's fault. See, because it's an open world game. I like open world games, and think that they can tell good stories, it's just that most of them don't. Instead they focus on making the open world compelling while putting the story on the back burner. This causes pacing issues right off the bat. I did the first two story chapters which took about 2 hours, and then did sidequests for about six. That means that instead of doing the super urgent story matter I needed to attend to I messed about collecting monster bits for people at a diner. That's my own fault though. Let's look at a different scenario now. I finish my sidequesting and do the main plot again. I end up doing three story chapters in the course of 20 minutes with little to no explanation. The pacing is all over the place. I'm not even going to get into how half the story chapters come out of nowhere and seem like they're remnants from a completely different game. That's a story for a different time.

What about the gameplay you ask? I want to be joking when I say that for combat you essentially hold a single button to win, but it's true. You hold the attack button to do combos, and if you hold it forever Noctis will keep going until he gets hit. The longer the combo the more damage you do, and you'll eventually stagger the enemy and break parts of its body. The fun part of combat comes from Noctis' ability to teleport and change weapons rapidly. He has special powers, because he is one of the chosen kings in a destined line. This means that he can throw his weapons and teleport directly to them. You can lock onto an enemy and push the warp button to do a warp strike at them. This uses mana, which can be recharged by standing still or hanging from a warp point. Warp points are scattered around the battle, and act as ways to rapidly recover both HP and mana. This mechanic feels cool, and looks awesome, but isn't totally necessary. So far I have been able to get through every battle by holding circle and occasionally dodging. Oh yeah I forgot to mention that if you hold the dodge button you can essentially dodge every single attack forever. This trivializes all combat, and it doesn't help that if you don't mainline the story and do sidequests you become over leveled immediately. Despite all this there is actually some depth to the system for those who are willing to look for it, but there's really no reason to unless the post game bosses are absolutely insane.

Sadly battles are not very challenging.

I feel so conflicted about Final Fantasy XV. On the one hand I find the story to be a disjointed mess, and combat to be a dull slog. However, on the other hand I like exploring the world, driving along the roads listening to the radio, and camping under the stars with my bros. It's a beautiful and flawed game that has a lot of heart at its core. The open world and the story often seem at odds with each other, and remnants of what the game used to be still remain. Keep in mind I'm only halfway through the game and it apparently stops being open world at some point and becomes completely linear. I don't understand how such a shift could possibly happen, but I can't wait to find out how it's done. I'm enjoying myself enough to keep playing, but it's definitely not the masterpiece I was secretly hoping for after ten long years.

The Wait is Over

The Sony exclusive The Last Guardian was announced right around the same time as FFXV. Similarly people thought it was never going to come out, but in just a few short hours UPS will be delivering it to me. It's crazy that two games that have been in development hell for almost a decade will have come out within two weeks of each other.

While I have enjoyed Team ICO games in the past I am cautiously optimistic about The Last Guardian. While FFXV seems to have changed greatly from what it originally was, The Last Guardian seems to have kept the old PS2 style gameplay it was shown off with originally. All I know is that I love how lifelike the weird bird-dog animal is and I want to give it a hug. I really hope you can hug it!

With that said look forward to another exciting edition of Game Time next month! I'll be putting it up right around the same time as my game of the year list and podcast, which you won't want to miss!

Memorable Melodies: Guzma Encounter from Pokemon Sun/Moon

Song: Guzma Encounter

Composers: Minako Adachi, Go Ichinose, Junichi Masuda, 

Hitomi Sato, Tomaoki Oga, and Hideaki Kuroda

Games: Pokemon Sun and Moon

There's something about the release of a new Pokemon game that makes me genuinely happy. I'm always down to see what the new monsters are like and explore a brand new region of the Pokemon universe. Somehow I am never tired of these games, and it helps that they're improving over time. Sometimes I get to hype that I feel like I'm crazy, but then I see the sales numbers and that's enough to reassure me that I am not alone in my Pokemon love.

The new games came out last Friday, and I beat my copy of Sun just a few days later on Monday. I had two days off in a row and I played the game a ridiculous amount. I am now catching as many Pokemon as I can, and even trying to breed for a few shinies! I am still deep into my semi-annual Pokemon Hysteria, which is why I just had to put up a song from the franchise.

So the new "evil" team in Sun and Moon is Team Skull. As far as I can tell they're just trying to steal Pokemon in order to sell them for money. They don't really have a whole lot of motivation other than the fact that they're delinquents. Their whole ascetic is that they wear sick bling and a tanktop with their logo on it. The grunts also wear a hat that unsurprisingly looks like a skull. The whole ensemble looks great, but when you see them walking at you waving their arms trying to be all gangster their charm really comes through.

Team Skull just might be my favorite evil team in Pokemon to date. While their outfits and swagger really do it for me, the music composed for all of their battles is on another level. It has a ton of weird vocals, and hip-hop influence. The track I chose for this week is the music that plays when you fight the boss of Team Skull, Guzma. His music takes things up a notch, which is fitting of a true boss character. 

It's so ridiculous that the only discernible lyrics are "Yo" and "Uh". Team Skull rules!

Game Time - August 2016

I went quite a bit without playing video games this month, because I went on a week long vacation. Somehow, despite all the relaxation I managed to play a whole lot more in August than I thought I did.

Originally I expected to be playing a whole ton of No Man's Sky. However it didn't turn out to be as captivating as I wanted it to be. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a really cool game, but the "gameplay" aspect of it leaves a lot to be desired. That's why I ended up playing a whole ton of Starbound, which finally exited early access with its official 1.0 release.

Before I get into all the space video game talk let me regale you with tales of how I got homebrew to work on my 3DS and imported the newest Taiko Drum Master! It's game time!

Taiko no Tatsujin: Dondon! Mystery Adventure

Nintendo has been region locking their consoles forever, which is a total bummer. It's especially odd since both Sony and Microsoft have given up on the practice. There are a ton of games, especially on Nintendo platforms that don't make it outside of Japan. I've known of ways to make the 3DS region free for a long time, but the easiest and most common method required a cartridge that costs a ton. Somehow on the newest version of the 3DS firmware an exploit was discovered in the web browser that would let you run unsigned code by visiting a certain website. It's incredibly easy to do. I don't want to get into the specifics here. If you're interested look up 3DS browserhax and menuhax.

Now that my 3DS can play games from any region I made the choice to import a game that I've been wanting for a long time. Long time readers may remember that the last game I imported was Taiko Dum Master V Version for the Vita. The series releases on one console at a time, and for the most recent release it happened to be the 3DS's turn. V version introduced RPG battles to the classic rhythm game formula, but this new game takes it a step further. Instead of just battling Myustery Adventure adds a whole RPG adventure. You still battle enemies, but you also get to walk around an overworld and interact with various characters.

Explore the world as a friendly talking drum!

The core gameplay is the same as it has always been.  Red notes indicate head hits and blue notes indicate rim hits. If you're large they require you to hit two buttons of each type. It's easy to learn, but crazy hard to master. It still has the ridiculous Oni difficulty, which I don't know how anyone can realistically do.

Since the whole thing is in Japanese I don't really know what's going on in the story. This means that I get the most satisfaction from just playing the rhythm portion of the game. In the story mode you get into random battles as you walk around. This is fun until you realize that you're going to be hearing the same song over and over in each battle. Eventually the songs change as you advance, but the battles happen with such frequency that you'll grow to get annoyed by the songs rather quickly. Outside of that the battles are interesting. You collect monsters to fight alongside you and they all have their own unique skills. Luckily the google translate app works with pictures now, so I can loosely know what each creature does.

Recruit all kinds of monsters to do your bidding in battle!

So far I like the game quite  a bit, but I always like the core gameplay of Taiko Drum Master. It's cool that they're trying to add in more replayability as they continue on with the series, but I don't how valuable it is in the end. Yes, you're doing "different" things in the game, but in reality you're still just playing a Japanese rhythm game. That's totally fine by me.

No Man's Sky

When I first heard about No Man's Sky I became very excited. The thought of exploring a procedurally generated galaxy with all kinds of interesting planets. Then I realized that the team making the game was the same team that had made Joe Danger. For those who are unfamiliar Joe Danger is a sidescrolling motorbike game where you try to do tricks. It controls well and is a lot of fun. As you may have surmised it is vastly different from No Man's Sky in almost every single way. It was because of this that I tempered my expectations. Hello Games had made games before, but nothing on the scale of No Man's Sky.

Apparently most people who bought No Man's Sky didn't adjust their expectations as I did. The backlash I've seen for this game is bonkers. I'd like to say that it's totally undeserved, but it isn't. While I don't think No Man's Sky is a great game I do think that it's a technical feat. While they delivered a sprawling galaxy for players to explore it isn't necessarily "fun" like I wanted it to be. Yes there are technically a Quintilian planets, but when there's nothing to do on them other than mine for resources so you can get to other planets it doesn't make for a very compelling loop.

Who likes to mine resources?

See, that's what happens in  the game. You're stranded on a planet and you need to find the resources to fix your downed ship. You can go off on your own, or follow the path of Atlas and be guided to where you need to go. Once you get the resources you can move off the planet and go to another one. Then you, just kind of do the same thing over and over until you get to the center of the universe. You collect resources so that you can upgrade your equipment and collect more resources. There's a little more to do than that, but I'm largely being serious when I say all you do is collect resources.

This wouldn't be so detrimental to the experience if you started off with an appreciable amount of inventory space. Instead you'll be full up within minutes of starting the game. Inventory management isn't fun! Items don't even stack. If you get some carbon, you'll be able to carry a stack of it, but if an NPC gives you a magic ball you can only keep one per inventory slot. You can upgrade your personal inventory and get larger ships with more space, but you still need to be constantly looking in your inventory because there are other systems that require you to do so. You have life support systems that need to be replenished with resources, and your ship's fuel needs to be refilled as well. It's all a bit tedious.

You're going to be refilling your ship's fuel a lot.

When you're not foraging for resources you may come across one of a handful of events. There are settlements you can come across that will either have a person inside, a "puzzle" to solve, or a weird plant infection. I'm not exaggerating these are the three events you can have happen when you come across a settlement. Talking to NPCs is interesting, because at first you don't understand their language. As you explore plenets there are obelisks to find that will teach you a single word of the local alien language when you approach them. So far this has been my favorite part of the game.

Planets will also be inhabited by flora and fauna too. You can scan them and then upload the discoveries to the server for a reward. Each discovery grants some currency you can use to buy more resources. If you want you can name each discovery, but I found myself uploading them with their default names most of the time.

No planet I visited looked as cool as this.

No Man's Sky is really cool. The procedurally generated animals, plants, and landscapes are fun to see. However, that doesn't mean that you'll want to be doing it for long periods of time. This is why people are unhappy with the game. There isn't a lot to do other than explore. The lead on the game Sean Murray gave plenty of interviews prior to the games release and talked about tons of features they were planning. Not all of those features are in the final game, or have not yet been implemented, so now people are accusing Hello Games of false advertising. While I'd normally say this is ludicrous I do think that the marketing campaign behind this game could have been handled better For a very long time most people had absolutely no idea what the game even was. All they heard was that it had almost unlimited content through procedural generation and their minds filled in the rest. No one told them they were wrong, and instead the hype around the game grew to epic proportions. Like I've said a few times, the game is cool. I honestly think that with a few content patches this game could get a lot better, but right now it's just not doing it for me.

Starbound

Years ago I started to play Terraria with my brother and a few friends. I liked it better than Minecraft because it had a clear progression and minute to minute goals. I'm not the kind of person who can just build and have fun for hours at a time. I need clear and directed goals, which Terraria has. One night my brother showed us that a "space Terraria" was in development, which happened to be Starbound. It purported to be a Terraria-like game, but it took place in space with procedurally generated planets. At that time the game was in pre-production, but it eventually came out in early access and has now been fully released.

I played Starbound when it first came out in early access and enjoyed it to a certain extent. I began to tire of seeing the same prison colony on almost every planet and decided to give the game a rest. However, it did what an early access game is supposed to do. It showed me what the base gameplay would be like, so I knew what to expect when the game was completed. Now that the game is released officially I do like it a whole lot more.

Building is always more fun with friends.

To start I don't think that Starbound should be compared directly to No Man's Sky despite the fact that they are both procedurally generated space games. Starbound is meant to be a building game like Terraria and Minecraft. Hell, it looks exactly like Terraria because the lead artist is the same on both games. The comparison I will make though is that Starbound has a whole lot more going on with its planets than No  Man's Sky does. To be fair it is a lot harder to make 3D content than it is to make a ton of 2D sprites.

Starbound is almost literally Terraria in space. I know I've said that a few times, but it's 100% accurate. While in Terraria you have a single world, Starbound gives you an insane amount of planets to travel to. You can build on a planet, but you also have your own ship that you can place objects on. Since you'll be traveling across the galaxy it's best to store all of your resources and crafting tables on the thing you'll have with you everywhere. Starbound has an actual story progression to it, which I find to be refreshing. In Terraria all you did was beat bosses in order to unlock the next tier of ore and armor, but here you're on a quest to save the universe from a great threat.

This is Earth before it gets totally wiped out.

In order to save the universe you'll be visiting various planets and scanning objects that pertain to each of the game's races. Once you've done enough you'll be able to enter a mission, fight a boss, and then move on to the next mission. You don't have to though. If you're one of those people who's all about building and crafting sweet items you can do that as well. The story isn't a requirement and you can access everything without interacting with it.

When I find something cool on a planet in Starbound I get genuinely excited. Eventually I started to see some repeating areas, but then there are still new items to discover in chests as well. I feel bad comparing No Man's Sky to a much smaller 2D game, but it doesn't stop me from wanting to like exploring in No Man's Sky. In Starbound there is sweet loot to find, but in No Man's Sky all you can really find are new resources to mine and that's lame!

It's Time For More Cold Steel

God Eater 2 Rage Burst came out a few days ago and I've been playing a ton of that. Ir's the only Monster Hunter-like game that I still enjoy for some reason. Perhaps it's because the extreme anime edge the game has. It also helps that the combat is less nuanced than Monster Hunter, so I can mash like an idiot if I really need to. I've already played it for like 20 hours, so expect more on this anime hunting game in the next edition of game time.

You can also expect me to regale you with tales of Ace Attorney 6 and the 10 billion hour long RPG, Trails of Cold Steel 2. I played through the first game a few months ago with a friend and had a great time with it. It has one of the craziest ending twists that I've ever seen in a video game. I did the bare minimum and it still took me around 60 hours to get through, so I expect the second game to be similar in length. I don't know if I'll have enough time to beat it, but I will definitely be pumped to talk about it regardless.

It's been nice ranting at you all, but it's 4 AM now and I really need to get to sleep. See you next time!

Game Time - July 2016

I'm going to be real with you guys. I'm going to say a lot of mean things in this edition of game time. I initially thought that this would be a hype filled month where I'd regale you with tales of the dope JRPGs I've been playing. Instead I'm going to tell you about how I hate one of them, and think the other one is average at best.

Don't worry though, because Monster Hunter is still awesome. It hasn't let me down yet! I've got a lot to get off of my chest this month, so let's get right into it.

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness

I love Star Ocean as a series, but man do I not really like this game. The original Star Ocean was okay, I really liked 2 and 3, but 4 was a complete train wreck. 5 isn't much better in my eyes. To be honest after 4 I was not expecting there to ever be another Star Ocean, but there is and it was made on a shoestring budget. The action battle system is alive and intact. I'd actually say it's the only thing I like about the game. I used to have a lot of trouble linking skills and canceling, but now it seems like you can spam the same attack to get a cancel bonus, so it's really easy to do tons of damage at a time. I look forward to battles, because I enjoy beating down monsters and trying out new skills.

You know what I don't like about Star Ocean 5? Literally everything else. I don't even know where to begin with this one. One of my favorite parts of playing RPGs is that the characters are developed over the course of the game. Let's take the main character Fidel as an example. I'm right before the final dungeon and you know what I know about him? His name is Fidel, he has blue hair, he's way into swords, his dad's name is Daril, and he inexplicably wants to protect a little girl he knows almost nothing about. That's pretty much it. It's infuriating. Normally the game's personal action system would fill in any gaps in character development, but that doesn't happen either. All the characters do is talk about random things like how much they love cats. The most upsetting part to me is that the entire game revolves around Fidel's quest to help out a girl he finds randomly named Relia. Despite the fact that he knows nothing about her, he makes it his life goal to protect her. This leads to him throwing a bunch of tantrums. There's no conceivable reason he or any of the other characters should care as much as they do. I could rage about the terrible characters and plot forever, but it's best if I move on.

At least battling is fun.

The budget of Star Ocean 5 was undoubtedly small, but some of the design choices they made were questionable. You know what's a good way to make me not pay attention to any dialogue ever? Make it so I can move around the environment and spam emotes. You can do that. So instead of seeing the characters talk up close and personal I'm standing there as Fidel clapping like an idiot every scene. Yes, this is my fault, but there could have at least been cinematic camera work or something. It's weird, because two scenes in the game did have a cinematic camera and they looked really good.

The flow of the game is dreadful, and every time I got somewhere I cringed, because I knew I'd have to immediately walk back to where I was previously. The story flows like this. Go to a new place, realize that what you need to do it really back where you were before, go back to the old place, find out about a new place. That's the game. It constantly has you go back to the same areas over and over again. There are very few areas in the game, so they needed to have you go to them over and over. It wouldn't be so bad if every single map wasn't huge and empty. If you're going to have a wide open map at least fill it with something. This could have been mitigated by giving access to a fast travel system early in the game. Instead they wait for what seems like an eternity to give you fast travel, and then take it away in the next story scene you get to. Then you have to play for another eternity to get it back. By the time I got fast travel permanently I no longer wanted to play the game.

There are way too many scenes like this.

I wanted to love this game, but I just can't do it. So many things about it drive me absolutely nuts. I'm still glad I picked it up, because the battle system is fun. It's classic Star Ocean. I just hope that Tri Ace is allowed to make a bigger and better Star Ocean next time. Hopefully there's a next time...

I Am Setsuna

My favorite game of all time is Chrono Trigger. So when I heard that a new game was being developed with the same ATB ( Active Time Battle) system I was super excited. I was even more excited to know that Square-Enix opened the new developer Toky RPG Factory to make new games in the same vein as the Super Nintendo RPGs I hold so dear. At first glace it seems like they succeeded in making a SNES RPG in modern times, but under the surface there's a solid game that doesn't deliver on the feelings of old.

Don't get me wrong, I like the game. At first I thought I was being overly critical, but after a lot of thought I feel like there are fundamental problems with the game. The battle system is spot on. It feels and plays like Chrono Trigger. You wait for the bar to fill up and then you can attack. Characters can team up to do special dual, and triple techs. There's even an added layer to the combat called momentum. If you don't attack right when you're able to you can add additional bonuses to your attacks with a well timed button press. It's a fun addition that sometimes feels a little too powerful. Where the game falls apart for me is both its lack of characterization and variety.

Sometimes the Chrono Trigger references are a little on the nose.

The story of I Am Setsuna is one that RPG fans have heard before. Monsters are invading the land and the only way to calm them is to have a sacrifice travel across the land and offer themselves to some unknown being. This isn't the issue though. Where things go awry for me is that the characters are all interesting, but the pacing and writing of the game don't allow the characters to develop as they need to. In Chrono Trigger I felt like I intimately knew each character by the end. In I Am Setsuna I'm right before the final boss and I know very little about each character. Most of them are surface level archetypes and nothing more. I can't quite put my finger on why they all seem so flat. Part of it is definitely the pacing. Everything moves along so fast that before you know it you have a full party of characters. It's not easy to develop seven characters all at once.

The entire game takes place in a snowy land accompanied by a piano only soundtrack. I love the music and the snow covered land, but it definitely leaves me wanting some more variety. As I made my way through the game I found the setting enjoyable. What made me like it less was when I had to revisit literally every area I had been to previously in order to unlock chests that you can't unlock until near the end of the game. Then after doing that I now have to go back to many areas for a third time in order to finish the end game sidequets. Once is fine, but three times per area is way too many. It's made even worse by the fact that you can't quickly exit areas and have to backtrack all the way through them to exit. It really starts to grate after awhile, which is why I haven't finished the game yet.

The game is beautiful, but the environments have little variation.

I understand that this is Tokyo RPG Factory's first game and that they had a relatively low budget. I hope that this game sells well enough that they're able to take another stab at making a nostalgic RPG. I feel like I Am Setsuna gets so close to what I want, but falls just short of the mark. I Am Setsuna is a solid game, but it's not the JRPG classic I was hoping it would be.

Monster Hunter Generations

You know what's great? Monster Hunter. I feel like I no longer need to say that Monster Hunter is a hard game to get into. I feel like people know that now. It's cool that it's becoming more popular over here in the U.S. but it's still not some huge mainstream success. What's interesting to me is that the developers of the series actually seem to be trying to broaden its appeal as opposed to catering exclusively to the crowd they know they already have s stranglehold on. The newest game in the franchise is called Monster Hunter Generations, but it should really be called Monster Hunter: Greatest Hits. It's got all the old Monsters you love, and a few new ones that you'll probably enjoy fighting. You can still use all of the old weapons you're used to as well, but now there are multiple styles and what are essentially super moves.

That's right, Monster Hunter has super moves now and they're pretty rad. They're called Hunter Arts, and you charge them up over the course of a hunt. They have a wide variety of effects, but they all look flashy. You can use anywhere between one and three Hunter Arts depending on which of the styles you are using for your weapon. In previous iterations there was one way to use your weapon, but now every weapon has four styles, which broadens the depth of each weapon quite a bit. The issue that I'm running into is that I feel that some of the styles make the game too easy, but I'm still enjoying myself.

The Malfestio is a cool new owl monster.

The first style is the traditional Guild style. If you have played Monster Hunter before, then this is what you're used to. It's the same, so if you're adverse to change you're going to be rocking this style a lot. Next up we have the Striker style, which is the one I'm most unfamiliar with. It's essentially Guild style with a few less moves. The tradeoff is that you can equip three Hunter Arts and they charge a lot quicker. The third style is my personal favorite, which is Aerial style. Since I use Great Sword we'll take that as an example. Normally you can charge your strikes up on the ground to do a ton of damage, but in Aerial you can only charge while in the air. In this style the dodge button lets you vault off things to get a ton of air. This allows you to mount monsters all the time, and it's a ton of fun to jump around like an idiot. Finally we have Adept style, which I feel will end up being the elitist style. Essentially if you dodge right before a monster hits you it's possible to dodge out of the way and do a powerful counter attack. Timing the dodge properly is important, so you need to learn a monster in and out to be effective with the style.

It's cool that there are so many more options for each weapon in this game. The bummer is that I feel like the weapons were all made equal in terms of damage. What I mean by this is that Great Swords used to be a power house, but now they do about the same as someone using the dual blades. It's cool that the game is more balanced, but now there's no real reason to use one of the slower weapons over something that hits faster and just as hard. Yes, I can still break parts better, but I'm a fan of huge damage. I hope that this is changed back in the next true iteration of Monster Hunter, but we'll have to wait and see.

Welcome to the space jam!

Like I said in the beginning, this is akin to the greatest hits album of Monster Hunter. If you've never been into the series before there has never been a better time to join in on the fun. Hunting monsters is exhilarating once you learn the basics.

What does the future hold?

Approximately 800 million games I want to play very badly come out in September, which means I have about one month left of not playing a whole bunch of games left ahead of me. Next week No Man's Sky finally drops, so I can see what the heck it's actually all about. I'll probably end up streaming a bunch of it, because it seems like the kind of random exploration that would be fun to do with some company.

Other than that the only thing that's on my radar is God Eater 2. I feel like it came out forever ago in Japan, which is probably true. Now that I'm way deep into Monster Hunter I don't really like the clones of it, so we'll see if I outgrew God Eater as well. Hopefully not, because I enjoyed the hell out of the original game despite the fact that it was on the PSP.

Ohh, just kidding. King of Fighters XIV comes out at some point as well. The demo is a lot of fun. It's like they took the KOF I love and made it possible for regular humans to play and enjoy!

See you guys next month!

Memorable Melodies: Zinogre Theme from Monster Hunter Portable 3rd

Song: Zinogre Theme

Game: Monster Hunter Portable 3rd (Also every iteration after it)

Composer: Masato Kouda

I started playing Monster Hunter a few years ago when Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate came out. Somehow I ended up falling in love with the series and have been playing it ever since. It's an odd series, which is definitely not for everyone. It has a high barrier to entry, and has a lot of repetition. What's cool about it is that each one of the monsters you fight is wholly unique. They have their own patterns and movements that you need to learn in order to take them down effectively. That's why I tend to describe Monster Hunter as a series of boss fights. 

Like their abilities and looks each monster also has a unique theme. There are tons of themes to choose from, but the one I always think about it the theme of the Zinogre. It's a crazy electric wolf and I love fighting it. Not only is it one of my favorite monsters in the series, but its theme is great too. It's appropriately intense, and always makes me feel like I'm taking part in an epic struggle with the beast.

Here's a picture of a Zinogre for reference:

Game Time - February 2016

February happened, and I am somehow still standing. I played a few of my most anticipated games of 2016, and had a wonderful time. Sadly I didn't end up beating any of them yet, but I will get there eventually. I am right at the end of Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, and I guess you can't really beat Street Fighter V. Well, I did beat the story mode, so I guess that counts? Who knows!

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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,

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!

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!