Join my harem or die!
I’ve realized now that if I don’t force myself to sit down and try some actual video games, I’ll be playing Candy Crush Soda Saga till the end of the year. At the same time, however, the thought of committing to another 40-hour slogfest doesn’t appeal to me at all. I mean yeah, in practice I’ve spent waaaaay longer than that on casual games, but it’s the thought, you see?
So I thought about applying a productivity hack to video game playing. Instead of saying I would “start a new game,” I set an alarm clock for an hour and told myself I would “try something new for only one hour.” My plan is to do this for a couple of games and then see which ones I want to pursue and which ones to drop.
First up, Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment. I watched the Sword Art Online anime and it really wasn’t that bad despite the many negative reviews online. I even watched season two, and I’ve been meaning to watch the rest someday. While I didn’t have much success with the first SAO game I tried (Infinity Moment), the idea of a colorful RPG with a different take on the usual turn-based system was appealing-ish. In theory-ish.
How? Tell me how!
Results
I started playing around 3pm, and stopped around 4:30. A little longer than I had planned, but I also spent a bit of that time eating lunch and playing with my phone, so it all evened out. And I must say, the “one hour” limit of focused play is a really good thing. Left to my own devices, I wouldn’t have made it past the 10 minute mark.
There was no tutorial for what different attacks did until the end of the first dungeon, so I was going through this dungeon, fighting weak mobs which nevertheless have a lot of HP, and mashing buttons without any idea what they did. My party member Philia would be begging me to stun the enemy and I’d be like WUH? Stun? Huh? Even worse, my main character Kirito is already level 100 with 32000 HP, so the puny EXP dropped by the enemies didn’t do jack for me. All in this really really boring featureless dungeon with no items or treasures to discover.
Luckily at the end of the dungeon, they finally provided some clarity about skills and how and why to use them. Also I realized too late that enemies in the first dungeon won’t attack you if you don’t aggro them, so just ignore them and run towards your target.
TBH I still don’t think I fully understand the system yet, and the game has been talking non-stop since then so I haven’t had a chance to fight again. The endless talking is a little more bearable than usual because I’m familiar with the characters. Just that IMO they’ve made Kirito too much of a typical harem protagonist. You know, the type who is always bullied and pushed aorund by girls and can’t ever tell them off or stand up for himself. The Kirito I know had much more of a backbone of that. Furthermore he was clearly a one-woman man and everyone knew it. But whatever, it’s not canon and I don’t care that much.
Oh yeah, story. Well so far Hollow Fragment is a blend of Infinity Moment and a new plot. As in IM, the characters beat the boss on the 75th floor but instead of clearing the game they’re still stuck inside. Now they’re aiming for the 100th floor. Oh, and for some completely improbably reason, Leafa and Best Girl Shinon were also warped into the game. How possible? Leafa almost makes sense because she’s related to Kirito, but Shinon literally dropped from the sky with no explanation. How does this even work when they’re not wearing the gimmicked NervGears Kayaba sold? Improbable fanservice is improbable and fanservicey!
Also in the midst of all that, Kirito got warped into a special area called the Hollow Area which only he and one other party member can enter. And now he has to deal with two girls, Philia and Strea, who will of course fall in love with him because he’s a harem protagonist. The goals of the game seem to be two fold: get up to the 100th floor and explore the Hollow Area.
Will I keep playing? I’ll give it another hour before making up my mind. The first hour was frustrating at first, then promising, then the characters have been talking ever since so I don’t know any more. It will all depend on whether the battle system “clicks” with me or not. So far it seems like a watered down Xenoblade Chronicles where your character auto-attacks until you make them use skills or items. I hear old school MMORPGs played like that in general but I wouldn’t know.
Depending on how the skill trees go, how complex battles get, how annoying the enemies become and how interesting the dungeons turn out to be, the next hour could be the last. Or I could decide to make a proper go of Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment. That second hour will have to wait till I’ve One-Hour-reviewed some other games, though.
Other games in the One Hour series:
Atelier Lydie & Suelle
The Lost Child (just discovered that all the versions are incompatible with the PSTV. Cancelled for now)
The Alliance Alive
Final Fantasy XIII
There are about 200,000 other games I want to play (conservative number), but these are the candidates I’m most serious about right now. I’ll play all of them for one hour each, arrange them in order of desirability and play all the non-dropped ones. Then I’ll scrounge up another batch of games and process them that way. Let’s see how things go.
Last note: just in case you’re doubting whether one hour is enough to properly see what a game has to offer… it probably isn’t. However the point isn’t for them to show me everything. It’s enough if they give me a general idea of the story, gameplay and characters and entice me to keep playing. Any game that can’t do that in one whole hour isn’t for me.
This one hour thing isn’t a bad idea! I have way too many games on my backlog so I’ll give it a shot.
This sword art game doesn’t sound that bad either. Might pick it up if it’s on sale.
The battle system is a bit weak IMO. Watching the anime, I always thought it would be this cool ARPG kind of deal, instead of just standing around hitting with weak attacks. But if you can get it on sale, go for it.
And the One Hour Review thing is great for weeding things out… except so far I haven’t weeded anything out but only increased the number of things I have to play…
This is…this is absolutely genius. I’m in the same situation as you, want to play a lot of games, but 90% are long winded JRPGs and I just don’t have the energy for most of them. So all I’ve been playing lately are phone games that almost play themselves. I’ve been able to get through some games, but after two years I feel like I’ve finally hit the wall and don’t even give most games twenty minutes before I get annoyed.
But I don’t watch TV or read much, so this is my main form of entertainment. I want to play games, but the thought of spending 40-120 hours on one…
But looking at it like this, it’s as if I’m writing or drawing. I don’t want to do them most days, but I force myself to do it because I want to improve. Using this system, I can just discard games I don’t like and feel no guilt, and hopefully I’ll find something my mind can play eventually. So thank you very much! Yeah, one hour might not seem ‘fair’ but neither it is making us wait 5 hours until the game actually starts, so heh.
Agree with you 200%, and I must say the One Hour thing is working better than I’d expected. Almost all the games I’ve tried so far have given a fair idea of their contents within the hour. It’s nice to only have to “force” yourself to play for an hour – even 30 minutes will do in a pinch. Beyond that, it’s the developer’s job to make me want to keep playing.
The experiment hasn’t reduced my backlog as much as I thought it would, but it has helped to reorder things into “Stuff I definitely want to play” and “Eh. Maybe one day” and to arrange games in order of priority. A highly recommended exercise for anyone with backlog problems.