Preparing for Switch life after Xenoblade Chronicles 3

Dunno who needs to know this, but Square-Enix is having a sale on most of their games in the Switch e-shop until August 4th. It seems they have sales several times a year, so there’s no panic if you miss one. It’s mostly of interest to RPG lovers who bought a Switch for Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and need to build a library of other games to play once XC3 has been disposed of with record speed. It’s a very specific subset of people, but I know at least one person who fits into that category…

What I bought

Oninaki, like I said I would. Now that some time has passed since I played the demo, I think even $19.99 is a bit much to pay for Doom and Gloom: The Game. But I liked the little I played, I don’t want to wait ages for it to become cheaper and I want to encourage Square-Enix to keep trying new ideas (like Harvestella) so I went ahead and got it.

Romancing Saga 2, Romancing Saga 3 – I’ve been curious about them ever since I played Romancing Saga Re; Universe earlier this year. However I have very little nostalgia for SNES-era and earlier RPGs, so I’m beginning to regret it a little bit. Like maybe I should have bought just one and tried it first… Oh well, what’s done is done. Bizarrely enough, I really, really like the font they used for the text, so at least I’ll have something nice to look at.

What I considered buying but haven’t pulled the trigger yet

Final Fantasy VIII – My favorite Final Fantasy. I already own two copies, and until recently I used to play it every year, but hey, one more won’t hurt, right? I’ll probably get it one of these days, but not in this sale… or should I…

FINAL FANTASY X/X-2 HD Remaster: I enjoyed plain old Final Fantasy X but loathed X-2. Can’t remember why for sure, but the word “dresspheres” keeps popping up in my mind. And I never liked Yuna so a whole game about her was just blechh. Until there’s a way to get just FFX without the X-2, this one will stay on the wishlist.

Final Fantasy XII: Zodiac Age – A game I played in a blur. I know I finished it, but I can’t remember most of the story or even the ending. And I only recall bits and pieces of the stages like fighting skeletons in a mine and a huge crystal where the map didn’t work and you couldn’t save. I remember that one well because the power went out when I was almost done and I had to start again. You kids today don’t know how lucky you are, etc etc. Since I can barely remember playing it, much less whether I liked it or not, I want to give it another try, but for a very cheap price, i.e. not $24.99. I’m gonna hold out for the long haul with this one.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition – Not a game I’m very familiar with, apart from the sucky spin-off I tried briefly. FFCC looks very cute from the screenshots, but I can’t tell whether it will be my sort of thing or not. Is there a demo…? Oh, there is a demo. I’ll try the demo and decide.

BTW, you might be wondering, “What about FF7 and FFIX?” I’m not very fond of FF7 and I already have FFIX through shared Switch shenanigans. Will probably replay it one of these days for old times’ sake. And I still have both for the PS1, just FYI.

Xenoblade 3 when?!

Just a few days more to Xenoblade Chronicles 3! I already preloaded it, but I’m going to be unavoidably busy this weekend. I’ll probably start on Saturday or Sunday evening. In the meantime I started yet another gacha game… but I’m planning to drop it soon so I won’t bother writing about it. I’m planning to drop everything when XC3 comes, in fact. Even Picross. Especially the all-consuming Picross. See you guys next week when the fun begins!

Princess Connect! Re: Dive – What do I see in this game?

I just finished my second “tour” of Princess Connect! Re: Dive. By that I mean I downloaded it in the past, played for a while, uninstalled it, downloaded it again recently, played a little more and uninstalled it again. In that sense, it has a lot in common with Epic Seven. But while Epic Seven had great graphics, passable turn-based gameplay, flashy animations and stories and characters I unexpectedly enjoyed, Princess Connect is a whole lot of nothing. Okay the anime is kinda fun but that’s about it.

However I am writing this post not to trash Princess Connect but to try and figure out what made me play so long and what made me come back again. Okay, the second question is easier to answer. I don’t remember where, but I read somewhere that a top-tier unit named “Summer Saren” was available to be pulled, and I remembered I had a lot of gems saved up, so I logged back in to get her, which I did in about 160 pulls.

The reason I wanted Summer Saren because one of the reason I quit initially was frustration over the slow pace of progress. I was spending a lot of time stuck on certain stages because of a lack of DPS and she was supposed to be a first-class support to solve all my DPS woes. Maybe she is, maybe she isn’t. It’s hard to tell because I also pulled and raised characters like Djeeta, Monika and Anne (all three from Granblue Fantasy IIRC). If I really cared, I could take them out and run my OG team of Nozomi, Yukari, Rino and Karyl with Summer Saren added and without to see the difference, but I don’t care that much. It’s the game’s job to make me care, preferably by showing me with clear numbers so I can compare characters to each other without resorting to spreadsheets and external sites.

So anyway, I left because I was sucking, came back because I thought SS would help me stop sucking, and I did make a little more progress than before, but then got stuck again so meh. That progress might have to do with the game storing over 9000 stamina for me to use all at once in 24 hours, so I got some good weapon grinding done. But whatever, let’s attribute it to Summer Saren if it makes her feel better.

Now, more reasons why I quit in the first place and why I can’t figure out what on earth possessed me to try again:

1. Most battles are fought on auto, and once you auto them, most battles are skipped using Skip tickets. So for the bulk of the game, you aren’t actually playing much. Just grinding stages for weapons so you can beat more stages so you can grind for more weapons. This is what happens in most gacha games, but in my preferred type, you actually get to play those stages. I intensely dislike games with gameplay so boring the developers encourage you to skip everything. I wouldn’t go so far as to say “I hate skip tickets and everything they stand for,” but I would go about 90% of the way there.

2. The story is confusing. I wanted to get into it but I lost track pretty quickly. I got to the part about some queen who followed us from a previous time loop to try and destroy the MC because he’s a hero, like, IDK, okay? Nobody plays gacha games for the story… do they?

3. Progression is non-intuitive. In most RPGs, online and offline, you get a character and you want to level them up as much as possible. Right? Get them all the best gear, give them all the necessary promotions. Not so in Princess Connect. In fact, some characters like Summer Saren can be ruined by overleveling and overequipping them. Good luck knowing that without the usual spreadsheets and wikis, though.

4. In many cases, ranking up makes your characters weaker. At least temporarily. When you rank up, you lose all the weapons you have equipped (can’t unequip weapons ever) as well as all the refinement you’ve made to them. You now have to collect and refine weapons all over again, even if the next rank uses the same weapon as the previous one. It seems the optimal method would be to research what weapons the next rank needs, farm them while you’re still strong so that you are ready to equip them as soon as you rank up. Yeah, I’m not gonna do that, I’m just gonna complain. Unintuitive and unrewarding gameplay is unintuitive and unrewarding.

5. The grind is way too long. I’ve played up to player level 70 and I only have one 4-star character and one Unique Equipment. That’s because getting character shards for those upgrades are a long, slow process where you accumulate them little by little every day for months. Ain’t nobody got time for that! Actually I’m okay-ish with slow progress in general as long as you’re doing something fun and different all the time. Not stalled on the same few stages with no idea how to make a breakthrough.

6. It’s stressful because you’re always running out of resources, especially mana and EXP potions to upgrade your characters. And you’re all but required to spend about 120 gems a day refreshing stamina or you’ll never get your daily farming done. So I don’t feel compelled to pull for most characters because I know I won’t be able to raise them for a long, long time.

All this listing of reasons is me trying to stop myself from going back to Priconne. I like the bright layout, I like the characters and the voice-acting and the music. And it got me to watch a few episodes of the anime, which I’ve been meaning to continue one of these days. Time to move on and put this game behind me.

In other news, I started Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia recently, and I’m really suffering because it’s making me nostalgic for all the old FFs I used to play. Especially my favorite FFVIII which doesn’t need a remake but I waaant oooone~~~ My Playstation CDs should still be working, and my PS2 as well, but I’m considering buying them on the Switch instead. Nowadays I do my best gaming on my back or on my side in bed, so PC and console games don’t tempt me as much. I’m even thinking I should have bought a Switch Lite instead.

Anyway, none of that is relevant to Princess Connect, which I say a fond-ish frustrated-ish farewell to. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 in 27 days! And then Harvestella in November!

The Caligula Effect: Overdose – Too slow, couldn’t play

It is enough to play a little bit of The Caligula Effect: Overdose. It’s another game that would have ended up as “the one that got away” in my mind if I hadn’t tried it. The ideas are great, I love the publisher (Furyu) and I usually enjoy high school RPG shenanigans, but the battle system is just too sluggish and drawn out to be fun.

The story about people trapped in a fantasy world by a well-meaning AI is interesting enough. I can think of few things more nightmarish than being trapped in high school again, ew, ew. So I’m definitely rooting for the main characters to make it out of there and back to their normal lives, whatever those may have been. I’m just not rooting hard enough to fight those endless battles.

This is where I would normally explain the system, try to find some screenshots, maybe even a video to prove my point. But I’m beyond that point now. Now I realize  I ain’t gotta explain diddly. Though I suppose it would be helpful to explain exactly what bothered me: too much time is spent entering commands and seeing how they play out via a simulation before actually committing to that course of action. You essentially play every turn twice in a turn-based RPG. Intriguing idea, horrible to actually play.

Turn-based SRPGs often have something similar where they show you your chance of success and the expected damage, but that’s a quick series of numbers, not a full-on animation. All that faffing about every single turn of combat killed my motivation. It wasn’t so bad in the first half-hour because I only had one party member to control. But they quickly added two more and now I’m expected to simulate every single turn to make sure everyone attacks with the right timing to launch or knock down enemies and avoid or counter attacks. Every battle takes forever, and that’s not even factoring in the unnecessarily long attacking and “roaring” motions the enemies make. It’s only been an hour and I’m already tired.

Now then, I’ve been playing games for a long time. So I know it’s possible, nay, likely that things will get faster and more interesting as you get more characters, stronger equipment and more powerful attacks. However I’m too old and impatient for that “gets better after 30 hours” thing. Get better after 30 minutes or get out.

That said, the idea is great and I have good memories of a more basic type of this system in the Grandia games (especially cancelling enemy’s telegraphed attacks). So this isn’t a blanket condemnation of The Caligula Effect: Overdose‘s battle system. It’s just not for me at this point in time.

The story also lost me a little bit when it turned out that those 500 school mates you can befriend and add to your party are faceless with barely any personality. I’m so naive I actually thought they would create 500 individual character portraits and stories, but even Suikoden struggles with 108 so my expectations were too high.

TL;DR I’m too lazy to play The Caligula Effect: Overdose. Gotta find something easier for my hamster brain to process. Right now that something is Dissidia: Final Fantasy – Opera Omnia coupled with a little Genshin Impact here and there. I want to start Tokyo Xanadu eX+ again and run it through properly, but I promise this is the last time I will mention it on this blog until/unless I finish it.

45 days until Xenoblade Chronicles 3!

Disliked Shining Resonance Refrain and Labyrinth of Refrain demos

Going 2 for 4 on Switch RPG demos now. The first batch was good, this second batch was a disappointment. Thank God for demos is all I can say, because Shining Resonance Refrain and Labyrinth of Refrain are the games I was more likely to shell out for sight-unseen, the former because I liked previous Shining games and the latter because I like first-person dungeon crawlers.

Shining Resonance Refrain – Very short demo that didn’t tell much about the story but did introduce the three boobies beauties the game is probably going to revolve around, as well as the worthless sap main character Yuma who they are all going to fall in love with because that’s what girls in Shining games do. I don’t mind harem RPGs at all as long as the gameplay is fun. Which sadly isn’t the case for Shining Resonance. I fought a few battles with three different party members and the controls are sluggish, clunky and unresponsive. After those few minutes I didn’t want to play any more, which is very rare for me and ARPGs. That said, SRR has gone on sale for as low as $9.99 before. At that price, it would be worth continuing to play and seeing if the combat picks up. Until then, I have no interest.

Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk – I was a bit cautious going into this one. I don’t have a good history with Nippon Ichi, because IMO they have a habit of taking basic systems and mucking them up with too many complications. E.g. their Disgaea stuff overcomplicates SRPGs and Zettai Hero Project went overboard for a roguelite. All IMO of course, but nevertheless it keeps me away from their games.

All that said, however, initially Labyrinth of Refrain far exceeded my expectations. Exploration was a bit annoying because I’m used to auto-travel from Experience Inc. games, but I got on great. The demo was meaty and I got to explore a lot of territory, create several party members and equip and level them as well. There’s quite a bit of customization involved in creating characters too. Combat wasn’t bad – nothing exciting, just the usual dungeon-crawler fare. The Game Over/Escape penalty wasn’t too harsh and even the roving enemies that initially gave me pause weren’t very F.O.E.-like.

I was all set to wishlist it and buy it at the next opportunity when the story destroyed everything with a scene of a lesbian nun sexually assaulting the witch main character. It would be hard to express in words just how repulsed and disgusted I was, so I’m not going to try. Yes the game did have a “Mature” label, but not like this NIS, not like this. Someone actually proposed that scene, someone wrote it, someone programmed it, someone recorded the voice lines, someone translated it and all along no one ever thought to scream, “WHAT THE HELL IS THIS GARBAGE?!” All right, then I won’t say anything either. I deleted the demo and we will never speak of it again.

Back to Picross. Good old Picross. Casual games are the best!

Really liked the demos of Oninaki and Monark

I almost wish I hadn’t played the demos, because now I really want both full games but I don’t want to pay $49.99 (Oninaki) and $59.99 (Monark). They were nice but not that nice, and I’ll kick myself if they go on sale later.

Oninaki – Dark and dreary game about Watchers who guide the souls of lost dead people. Seems to be heavily influenced by Hindu beliefs, but it’s not clear what direction the writers are going in. On one hand there’s a blithe attitude towards death, on the other hand unauthorized suicide is a crime? The worldview and story are a bit confusing, but I just started out so it’s too soon to say.

The combat is action RPG-ish, with skills that can be used off cooldown. There’s also stuff about Daemon possession, which is basically a switchable party member kind of thing. Think Pokemon or personae except not as easily switchable. I’m really liking the solo nature of my party so far, and I’d like to keep it that way if possible. The enemy density is high too, which I always enjoy in an ARPG.

In keeping with the theme of living and dead, you can switch between the Living World and the Beyond at set points (or at random if you like Game Overs) to cross roadblocks, solve mysteries, kill bosses, etc. I thought it would be an annoying gimmick, but it’s pretty clear when and where you’re supposed to switch. I hope they do more with the two worlds later, otherwise it’s going to feel very tacked on and “trying too hard to be different.”

TL;DR – I’m enjoying the combat and the story is vaguely interesting, but the mood and colors are too dreary for me to pay full price for this. Luckily I noticed that it occasionally goes on sale and even went as low as $19.99 recently.

Monark – Now this one I’m really tempted by. It’s a modern high-school occult RPG in the vein of the Persona games or Tokyo Xanadu eX+. The combat is a free-moving SRPG like… hmm, Shining Force Feather? Where there’s a circular range you can move in instead of a grid, but really it boils down to the same thing. And you have back attacks, side attacks, counter attacks, etc. Same as typical SRPGs. I thought I was done with SRPGs, but this ain’t half bad. Maybe because it doesn’t come with the typical grid format so it doesn’t trigger bad memories.

In the early game I’m playing, the main character and his companion have to venture into a spooky mist to rescue people and defeat monsters. There’s a lot of walking and talking and not much fighting, so at this stage I consider it more of a Tokyo Majin-like. I hope the ratio improves significantly as the game moves along, though. Balance is important in this kind of game. (BTW it turns out there’s a semi-official term for “majin-like” coined by the developer of the Tokyo Majin series. He calls them “gakuen juvenile denki” but it’s a mouthful so I’ll call them what I want).

Why I want it – I like the Majin-like / high school occult RPG genre a lot, actually. There are only so many Persona games out there, so any game “inspired” by the series is likely to get played by me. The characters aren’t annoying, the story is moving along at a pretty fast pace and the Madness gimmick isn’t as frustrating as I’d expected.

Plus Monark was developed by Lancarse, who also developed WiZman’s World, a game I have fond but bittersweet memories of. Also it’s published by Furyu, which has made a lot of games I really enjoyed.

Unlike Oninaki, I’m quite tempted to buy Monark straight up regardless of the price, because I’m about 80% sure I’ll like the whole thing. Plus since it just came out two months ago vs. 3 years ago for Oninaki, it will take some time for the price to drop significantly. Still I’m nothing if not patient when it comes to new releases that aren’t called Xenoblade 3, so I’ll find other things to play while waiting for the inevitable drop.

Important finding

What I realized from this demo-playing experience is that I can still enjoy JRPGs. They just need to be handheld so I can start them on my bed. Starting is the hurdle, after that it’s not hard to keep playing if I like the game. That means I should give some thought to getting a Steam Deck or other handheld PC if I really want to make a dent in my gaming backlog. And I should get the Switch version of more games instead of the PC version. Food for thought, for sure.

On the topic of demos, it seems the Nintendo EU eShop has a lot of demos that other regions don’t have. I wonder why? EU gamers are a harder sell? Stingier? Broker? Hmm, so curious. I’m not complaining though, since I’ll be trying the demos for Shining Resonance Refrain (really hope I like it) and Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk next. 11 more weeks to Xenoblade 3!