greenthunder

It's that time of year where I fall off my backlog list. Which isn't a bad thing, but I've also fallen into a mood where I'm not really sticking with games, partially because of life stuff, partially because I'm craving something specific gamewise and none of my backlog really has it. Admittedly, part of the issue is I like finishing games before I move onto the next one for a given console and I'm not mega hyped/obsessed with my current set. 3DS wise, I'm on the 2nd half of Project X Zone 2, which I started mostly because of Phoenix Wright lol. They tightened up the map length a bit by capping attack count to 3, having true player/enemy phases and reducing the fieldable unit cap, but at the point of the game where fodder spam is ramping up and about 1/4-1/2 of the units still don't have mass attacks, which is annoying. I'm debating playing Attack of the Friday Monsters because I should be able to knock it out in a night or two, but more importantly it seems rather lighthearted, which I could go for right now. Switch wise, I started the Trials of Mana remake and got a couple hours into it. Didn't have a particular attachment to any of the chars so I went with Riesz, Hawkeye and Duran. I'm enjoying the game, but I haven't clicked with it yet. I've reached Valsena now so I'm hoping classes show up soon. I'm considering starting Persona 3 Portable, but since I'll be in and out of town the next few weeks, my decision mostly hinges on how much voice acting there is since I probably won't always be in a spot where I can listen to the game.

Doing some research, has anyone seen these cards? Grabbed the image off an Ebay listing. The layout is the same as the one used in the Nintendo Power Pokemon Red/Blue guide, so I suspect they were some sort of Nintendo Power bonus.

Yo-kai Watch did alright in the US; it did a lot better in Europe for reasons I'm curious about. It's kinda reflected in their respective region's prices, where Blasters and 3 easily sit amongst the most expensive games for NA due to short runs, but Blasters falls more in line with other 3DS games and 3 has gotten expensive but not to same extent as NA in Europe. I also suspect the main reason why Blasters and 3 went up in Europe is because of the aftereffects of people proclaiming them as the most expensive 3DS games [in the US]. I personally doubt its hackability is the main driver of the price increases, but I don't have a better explanation why. Considering its age (I absolutely hate the fact the Year of Luigi was now 11 years ago), I think it's possible people are reaching the age where they're nostalgic for it and want to grab a console and some games. Ebay also shows regular new 2/3DS XLs bounce between $100-300, so it's possible it's mostly high end collectors or the desperate are going for the Black Friday new 3DSes and collector's editions. I kinda want to pick up a regular n3DS, but if I did it'd have to be a non-American one.

Playasia had a buy 3 for $100 on certain games a month or two ago. I wasn't planning on buying anything originally, but then saw they randomly had new copies of Ni no Kuni: Dominion of the Dark Djinn, so I said screw it, I'll buy a copy to replace the one I already have and also pick up Ghost Trick. I'll open it once I find a box protector for it. Personas from LRG of course.

A webcomic related to Reed's thoughts: Ended up binging through Ace Attorney 2, Ace Attorney 3 and my replay of Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Much emotional dumpstering was had. Outside of figuring about what I want to do for AA5's and AA6's DLC, I'll probably take a break from AA for a bit and then pick up with Investigations eventually. I still want to pick up and start Baten Kaitos, but my copy of Persona 3 Portable came in today, so I should probably start that. At the same time, I've had enough visual novelly cutscenes/lots of text for a bit. I also still can't decide whether to play the male or female protag, since I know their plot/social links are different. I like the design of the male protag more, but I know it's very unlikely the female protag will be added to Persona 3 Reload, but I don't even know if I'll like P3 enough to want to play it again. Decisions, decisions. Or I'll just continue playing off list games; not like there's anything wrong with that.

In the span of time between my last post and now, I beat Return of the Obra Dinn and I really liked it. The length is tight, both the audio and visual aspects are great and I like the way the story unfolded. Putting together who each person was and how they died was also satisfying. I'm already on track to beat my 2023 count. I did 7/20 last year, I'm at 6/18 now, though I did knock out several longer games last year, while so far this year (in regards to my list) I've only done Harvestella for a 25hr+ game. Though to be fair, I don't have several of the longer games on this year's list in hand yet. I'm also still waffling if I want to do the two games in Collection of Mana as well.

I do have 4, 5 and 6 on my 3DS; I just don't know whether I'll binge all six this year. I say that, but it's not unlikely lol. I was wrong about where I was in Rogue Galaxy and beat the final boss today. I did see comments about the ending sucking and it was definitely odd. Not sure how I feel about it. Overall, it's a game very much carried by its gameplay. I did enjoy it, even with the old game jank going on. I still haven't done the bug fight side content yet, so I'll do that and push through the usual Level-5 100 floor postgame dungeon until I decide to move on. I don't know what's next on my JRPG list. Think I might go for a turn based game next since I did play 3 large action JRPGs so far. Possibly Xenosaga 1 on my off list, but I do kinda want to pick up Baten Kaitos and get into that. Really, I should get back into Devil Survivor since I did start that last year, but the desire to play it hasn't come back yet. It's the second SMT game I've played, and for both I got into the game for ~18 hours and set it down. I did eventually pick up Strange Journey Redux again, blazed through until the new neutral final boss, set it down again, eventually got around to suffering the new neutral final boss. I think I'm subconsciously annoyed about the grinding I have to do, because I didn't unlock the gold auctions as fast as I could've, so now I'm stuck with outdated demons, running low on macca and I'm on the Day 3 Beldr fight. I think the setting/main party is also getting to me in a very horror/existential dread kind of way. Sure, the background of SJR is kinda similar, but you're playing as a marine, supported by a team of top scientists and other marines, in an impossible location populated almost exclusively by demons. There are definitely horror aspects, but my brain doesn't overthink them. Meanwhile in Devil Survivor, the game is set in modern day Tokyo, the main three were all normal teenagers, so far you mostly interact with other normal people, resources are running out and the current antagonist is mostly the government. I haven't hit the point where the protagonist really starts unraveling what's going on and what our main goal (outside of get out of the lockdown) is, so the idea of playing kinda stresses me out. I'll fully admit I tend to play more fantastical games / games that don't really play up the horror of a situation like this.

Beat case 5. I do think it ran a bit too long and I said above, the investigation sections didn't seem as well threaded as the other cases. Overall, I really liked Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. I like the Phoenix/Maya/Edgeworth/Gumshoe dynamic and hitting that key contradiction and then laying the smackdown on the suspect was super satisfying. In that vein of games, thinking of starting Return of the Obra Dinn or Ghost Trick next. Obra Dinn was the other game I was debating starting between it and AA, while I picked up Ghost Trick recently and know it also involves AA's creator. I originally had 123 on my backlog list before cutting it down to just 1, but I think I'm gonna end up hitting 2 and 3 this year anyway. May also throw on a replay of Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney for good measure, since it'll be fun to see Phoenix and Maya after experiencing their trilogy.

I have similar sentiment, though do I get why the hate exists. As I said before, I do like the concept and personally didn't mind going through the loops, but I definitely understand why it's unpopular. It makes sense narratively, but it's kinda awkward playing out the same flying around the functionally same world, fight the same bosses several times. Maybe if they leaned more into the parallel worlds things by playing up differences between worlds and carrying that over into the boss battles, it would have worked better. The stuff after definitely does get more fun, but it's kinda person dependent on whether it's worth it or not. As for my games, still coming up on the end of Rogue Galaxy. Thought I was at the last few chapters, seems like there's 1 or 2 more. My biggest complaint as one who likes suffering and filling out logs is I really wish weapons levelled up faster or there were less of them. Admittedly, part of the issue is me being completely stupid and not realizing the analyze option exists (even though I read it in the tutorial bit), so I didn't get to analyzing weps till midgame, far past using low level weps. But to be fair to myself, the char I like playing as has a weird ratio of buyable low level (1-10) to not (20+) level weps, about 7:5 or so. Though weapons levelling up faster would mean I'd have to stop and open my inventory to analyze weps more often, hmm. I've hit what the game counts as 100% for weapon fusions (100 weapons analyzed, 50 fused), so I could just stop, but no, I hate myself. I took a break from the story to run around and open chests because I realized I completely skipped the first chest key and in turn, the second and third keys. Ace Attorney wise, I'm on the last day of the 5th case. I'm mildly curious if this was added in a rerelease or something, because it plays differently from the other 4 cases, and I felt like I wasn't hitting all things I needed to do with NPCs during the investigation sections as consistently as I was during 2-4. A lot of the times I would talk to a NPC, leave, realize I wasn't finished dealing with them and then had to half guess which evidence to present to them.

Nope, unless you didn't have them before (which I don't know if it's possible). The indicator is just to show they're ~there~.

I love the idea of that one bit in Bravely Default, but I can definitely agree it could have been executed better. Do note the only thing you have to do for each loop is the crystals; you can just skip the Asterisk refights if you don't want to deal with them.

Still going through Rogue Galaxy. I'm reaching what appears to be the second to last, if not last, chapter so I'll see how things go from here. Decided to skip the Pong with a screw you twist bit of Bit. Trip Beat for now and moved onto Bit. Trip Core in the collection. I'm struggling a lot more with this one compared to Beat and Runner because it's not linear like those two are. Linear in the sense of all objectives come from the right of the screen in Beat and Runner, but in Core the screen is split into 4 sections and beats come from the two sides of every section. I had this issue with rhythm games like Elite Beat Agents before, so we'll see if I get through it. I also decided to start Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. It's been one of those series I've been meaning to get into for a while based on people who have similar tastes to me and what I know of it, so when I learned the 3DS version of 123 has English on the cart (even though it was a Japanese release with no physical English release), I figured I should finally give it a shot. I'm up to case 4 now and I'm definitely enjoying it so far. Only stumbling block so far was an odd piece of evidence I needed to submit during case 3, but other than that, the cases have made sense so far. I like the Phoenix/Maya/Edgeworth/Gumshoe dynamic.

Beat Layton Mystery Journey two days ago. As expected, the game didn't really shake up from what you get in the earlier hours. I do think I would have enjoyed it more if the final case was the overarching mystery/hinted at throughout the other cases. It wasn't the worst game ever, but definitely weaker in comparison to what came before it. It wasn't on my original list, but I mentioned it in the thread so I'll mention it again here. I've been going through Rogue Galaxy since I like Level-5 and my friend lent his PS2 to me, so that's been my current main JRPG. There's definitely a bit of old game jank and odd balancing going on, but so far I'm enjoying it. I saw people complain about a specific boss battle and that was definitely rough, especially when it's right after another (easy) boss battle, and it's a 1v1 where you're playing as an axe wielder with slow attacks against a faster attacking character. At the point where I'm starting to get into the main plot, since the first few chapters were mostly introducing the party members and cast.

Hmm, that's a lot more beat up than I was expecting. I'll keep it in mind though.

How's the condition of the PQ cardboard box?