Five Minute Review: Trials of Mana. For my first trick, I will murder a defenseless puppy…

I came across the Trials of Mana demo while browsing through the games on my bro’s Switch, and I realized, I’ve never played any of the Mana games before. In fact, apart from Legend of Mana, I don’t know any of the others. I know there was one on the DS, maybe one on the SNES? I know they’re action RPGs and there are cute rabbit-type monsters in them. I’m very into action RPGs these days (in theory. In practice I just play Happy Color and Wordscapes all the time) so I thought, why not.

I started the Trials of Mana demo and it looked very bright and colorful. From Square-Enix, so the basics should be sound. Bunch of protagonists to pick from with different stories… uh-oh, where have I seen that before… Many places, in fact, but there’s always room for one more. I picked the beast boy because he looked interesting, and that was my fatal mistake.

Oh, so his name was Kevin. I’d forgotten.

Barely a minute after I started playing, I was introduced to the boy’s cute wolf puppy. I… actually don’t like animals very much in real life. But the puppy was cute, and they quickly squeezed in a backstory about how the puppy was orphaned, and the boy and the puppy bonded over their mutual motherlessness. I thought “Aww” for just a few seconds.

Then it happened.

Puppy gets possessed by bad guy. Puppy attacks boy.

Boy “awakens” to his beastman blood. Boy beats puppy to death.

No… boy doesn’t beat puppy to death…

Square-Enix forces Player to beat puppy to death!

And it’s a tutorial to boot, so they hold your hand every step of the way. Press A + X to rip off his little ears. Tap B to stomp on his curly tail. Hold Y to silence his adorable yapping forever. Not in so many words, but they might as well have. I’m actually starting to see the humor in it now. I mean, who even does that? Who proposed this in a staff meeting, who signed off on it, who programmed it, who tested it… I shook my head for a long, long time.

And like I said, I’m not an animal lover. Not a fan of live, uncooked animals, anyway. Plus a puppy wouldn’t be the strangest thing I’ve killed or the worst thing I’ve ever done in a video game. I just question the good sense of 1) starting a game on this kind of tone and 2) using this kind of event for a game’s battle tutorial. It seems like a foretaste of things to come, i.e. Square-Enix is saying, “Trials of Mana is this kind of game, you sure you want to continue?” I wasn’t sure, so I played another couple of minutes to see what would happen (nothing, also boy’s dad is an idiot) and then moved on with my life.

BTW, this means I have zero idea what Trials of Mana is all about apart from PETA-baiting. For all I know, it could have a super-epic story with a grand soundtrack and the combat might be all kinds of wonderful. Unlikely, but not impossible. So in theory, I’m not ruling out trying a different protagonist’s storyline with the hopes that I might a discover a hidden but slightly distasteful gem. For now, though, I am well and truly turned off. Back to Happy Color!

One Hour Review: Civilization VI – Incompatible genre

Every once in a while, a gamer should try an unfamiliar gaming genre. Y’know, just to shake things up a bit. Either it will be a big success and you’ll expand your gaming repertoire, or it’ll be so-so or a failure, and then you’ve learned more about yourself and what works for you. Since I have the Switch for another two weeks, this is a good chance to try games I’m sort of curious about, but not enough to shell out good money for.

Hence Sid Meier’s Civilization VI, which according to Wikipedia, belongs to the category of “Turn-based strategy” and “4X.” I’ve played a 4X demo before (a vaporware game known as Territoire). It was a really boring, pointless and disappointing experience for me, but it was just a game in development. Civilization VI, on the other hand, is the latest game in the best-known series in the 4X genre. There’s no better game to play if I want to know what 4X is all about.

Buuuut, as you can guess from the title, I did discover what it was about, and I did discover that it’s not for me. I only played an hour or so of the tutorial, but even that was a struggle to get through, for a few reasons:

  • I don’t like sitting idle for a long time. You have to spend the first 50 or so turns producing a variety of units, researching technology and exploring the world, all of which takes a lot of time but doesn’t produce any immediate results. It’s not like you click “Gimme a scout” and immediately get a scout. You ask for something, wait for several turns and eventually get it many turns later when you’ve even forgotten what you wanted it for.
  • I don’t like games where I have to think too far ahead. It’s the same reason why I don’t like chess, or any strategy game that actually requires, you know, strategizing. The easy JRPGs known as “turn-based strategy games” like Fire Emblem don’t really count. And even those are too tedious for me to play these days.
  • I don’t like micromanaging. There are too many elements to think about in this game. You need to produce food, produce all kinds of units, research technology, explore the map, fight enemies, defend your cities, build new settlements, meet new NPCs, form diplomatic relationships, establish trade routes, etc etc. That’s the little I got through in under one hour in Civilization VI, but it was already too much for me.
  • I don’t like development games where enemies attack me out of the blue. In fact, I don’t like development games where enemies attack me at all. It really stresses me out in every such game I’ve played, and I just realized I mentioned it back in 2014 when I played Territoire… and re-reading that post, I discovered I own Civilization IV? Where did I put those CDs? I’d love to play Anno 1404 again… Back on topic, the prospect of combat was the dealbreaker for me, TBH. Everything else I could have figured out with time and experience, but I just didn’t like the thought of random marauders showing up to ruin my hard work. I prefer the kind of turn-based strategy where the enemies kindly and politely wait for me to arrange and equip all my units and click “Okay now you can attack” before they come. I mean, that’s just me.
  • TL;DR 4X games just aren’t for me. I don’t even think it would be fun to watch it being played because it takes so long for anything to happen. But I’m glad I tried it, because I do see the quality, at least in theory. And it makes me appreciate the Anno-type games more, which take the same idea but let everything happen sharpish so I don’t get bored.

What’s next before the Switch goes away: I started playing the expansion of Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Torna the Golden Country or something like that. IIRC it’s the first expansion to a game I’ve ever played? Maybe I can think of it like a fan disk. Either way I soooo don’t care about the game and the characters. I don’t know why the Xenoblade games always elicit that reactions from me, it’s kind of crazy. Maybe they try too hard to make me care, and so the rebel in me goes “Nyeh!” Anyway, as long as the exploration and combat are good, I’ll take what fun I can get. I also need to give Dragon Quest 11 the ol’ One Hour try, so I’ll probably post about that before too long. See ya.

Disappointed after finishing all the chapters in Octopath Traveler

Notice I didn’t say I finished Octopath Traveler proper, or that I finished “the whole story” or anything like that. When I beat H’aanit’s chapter 4 boss, the credits rolled and I got the option to take her out of the party at that point. So in a sense you could say I did finish the game. But once I had cleared all the final bosses for all eight paths, all progress just stopped. A few new side quests opened up but that was it. No new credits, no “Thanks for playing,” no nothing. The game kept going but there was nothing left to do, or so it seemed.

I was more than a little confused by this turn of events so I took to the ever-trusty Google to find out all the tedious and obscure requirements to unlock the final, “true” ending of the game. Octopath Traveler was good all along about providing clear guidance about where to go and how to proceed to progress the story. I never expected them to throw something like this at me in the final instance. So those of us who like to play without referring to a FAQ should just take a hike?

It’s been about two weeks since I completed the chapters. I was holding off on saying anything because I thought I’d miss the game and somehow feel compelled to complete the extra quests for the true ending. But the longer I waited, the more disillusioned I felt. 50-60 hours of gameplay for a lukewarm non-ending. And this is a game from Square-Enix, the largely undisputed masters of JRPGs. This is why I’m turning into a casual player. The “big name” games cost so much, and in the end all you’re left with is a hollow feeling and a ton of wasted time.

All the things I wanted to say about Octopath Traveler are stuck in my mouth because of that hollow feeling. I played a bunch of fairly interesting stories, fought some battles, the battle system wasn’t bad, the music was nice. It was okay. Now I just want to go back to my Happy Color and Picross. At least when I’m done with a picture, I feel like I really achieved something.

Dropping Genshin Impact temporarily, almost done with Octopath Traveler (spoilers)

Yo! Long time no write. I already explained that my gaming life these days consists almost entirely of unexciting casual fare, so there’s nothing to write about… or there wasn’t, until a few days ago.

Genshin Impact

Sometimes “If you don’t like it, don’t play it” is indeed the correct answer to complaints about a game. Usually it’s a cop-out response meant to deflect valid concerns, but sometimes a gamer does need to move on when something is not working. In Genshin Impact‘s case, I and many other players have said that they want new areas to explore instead of the minigames, “festivals” and visual novel sequences Mihoyo has been pushing for the past 4-5 months. We’ve said it so often and in so many places that there’s no doubt Mihoyo has heard us. Nevertheless, they still decided to make the 1.5 patch another inconsequential non-event affect, except now with house decoration shenanigans. If I wanted Animal Crossing, I would play Animal Crossing.

At this point, it’s clear that Mihoyo can’t or won’t release new maps at a fast pace. It’s likely that the maps simply aren’t ready because making, testing and balancing them is taking longer than expected. Genshin Impact is an ambitious blend of open-world action RPG with gacha elements, so there’s a ton of things to design, program and test. Even after all this time, they only have concept art of Inazuma to show and nothing for the Chasm, so they probably don’t have anything presentable finished yet.

Alternatively, it’s possible that Mihoyo wants to milk the dairy cow for a long time, so they’re seeing how long they can string fans along before releasing substantial updates. Maybe it’s even fine with them if the fussiest and most impatient players give up and leave, so the more easygoing and patient ones can stay behind for less drama and hassle.

I rank myself as one of the “easygoing and patient” ones, but there’s really nothing I want to do in Genshin Impact right now. Daily commissions are boring and repetitive. Primogems, mora, etc. are all wasted on me because there’s no character I want to pull after getting Venti, who I don’t even use. I know the game is going to be full of fun and excitement again once new areas finally open up. That’s why instead of plodding along so long that I get angry and burnt out before then, it’s best to drop Genshin Impact for a while and pick it up when either Inazuma or The Chasm is released.

Octopath Traveler

My brother accidentally left his Switch with me. And being the nice sister that I am, I decided to take good care of it for him. Naturally, that involves turning it on every day and testing the games just to make sure everything’s working well, what a hard worker I am❤.

So, I was almost done with Octopath Traveler last November when I had to pause for a while. It’s a straightforward RPG though, so it didn’t take me too long to get back in the saddle after I fumbled around for a bit. I’m at the last chapter for all the routes. IIRC I’ve beaten the final bosses for Therion’s route (I was convinced Heathcote would be a traitor, but he wasn’t), Tressa’s (incredibly trivial as usual and oh-so cringy), Primrose (soooo much talking, what the heck) and H’aanit’s (simple case with decent conclusion).

Four more to go and then I can give a final review. I enjoyed this game even more than I thought it would, though not all the stories are equally interesting. The battle system was good, but could get a little boring once you hit a good combination of skills. And the encounter rate was a tad on the high side. That’s one thing that puts me off turn-based RPGs these days… Random encounters… Can’t even walk around in peace, just swoooosh after swiiissh after swoooosh… But we’ll talk about all that once I’m finally done. See ya!

Updates on all the games and non-games I’m busy with

Just because I’m not blogging doesn’t mean I’m not gaming. It just means I’m not playing anything worth blogging about. In this case, it looks the “game worth blogging about” drought is going to continue for a while, so I might as well show I’m still alive by mentioning what I’m up to lately.

Genshin Impact

Adventure Rank 52 now, more than halfway to 53. I’ve done a lot of the things I said I would do in my last post, but I’m resin-gated or mora-gated for a lot of the other stuff. For example, Xiao and Sucrose share a lot of resources, plus I’m hoping to pull Venti, so Sucrose has been benched. And the amount of mora it costs to raise talents from level 6 upwards is like whooaaaa. So I’m focusing on raising artifacts and levels to some extent first.

That said, I’m not complaining too much about the resin system, because it makes it easy to fit Genshin Impact into a busy schedule. You only have to log in once a day, less if you use one day to make condensed resin and another to spend it. The reward for doing your daily commissions is small enough that it’s a-okay to skip them. So while I’m disappointed that Genshin Impact promised to be an open-world RPG but instead became a Romance Your Waifu Visual Novel with mini-games, I have a lot on my plate IRL anyway, so I can wait till The Chasm comes out in the next update to get another exploration fix. It’s going to come, right, Mihoyo? Riiight?

In the meantime, the events in update 1.4 aren’t terrible. At least they’re better than the non-event Lantern Rite in 1.3. The festival mini-games aren’t bad either, though I have mixed feelings about the simplicity. They’ve made it so that you just need to play all the mini-games once or twice to get the reward. The busy real-life person in me likes that, but the gamer in me wishes there was more of a reward to acing them. I understand the desire to avoid driving poor performers away, but at least there should be mora rewards for a higher cumulative score or something.

The Hangout events and the festival event quests are a good short distraction as well. I’m not too much into visual novels, but these don’t take long to clear. Plus the NPCs in Mondstadt are nicer and more familiar than the ones in Liyue (except Albert, brrr) so it’s not so bad hanging out with them and helping them. Honestly, I really don’t want this kind of event/VN/minigame fest to be what GI is all about, but since that’s all we’re getting for now, welp, I play it when I get the time.

Granblue Fantasy

I’m still sort of playing. The anniversary event just ended, so I logged in regularly for all the goodies. I got 160 free sparks, so I added 140 and sparked an Europa spear. Just didn’t bother documenting it because it was almost all bronze/silver/gold moons. And even if I got new characters, I wouldn’t really use them. At Premium Gala I’ll spark a Pholia bow and in summer I’ll spark Summer Cagliostro, if I remember to. New Granblue players, take heart! One day you too will be sparking characters like Dio Brando eats bread. It will just take… 4-5 years? Something like that.

Anywayz, as I mentioned some time ago, I don’t feel like grinding any more for new weapons, so my weapon grids are stagnant. But they’re enough to finish event bosses, and as for non-event grind fests like Tower of Babel and the Rising… thing… the one with the many gods like Suzaku… Yeah, I just skip all those these days because I don’t need them. So really, I’m sort of playing but really mostly done.

Rakuen Seikatsu Hitsujimura

My faithful browser game I’ve been playing since 2015, for those of you who think my casualization only began with Granblue Fantasy. I took a long break at one point because the game specializes in breaking the hearts of free-to-play players, but I came back because I like the aesthetics and simple gameplay. Plus once you fully understand that you ain’t getting diddly as F2P, you make peace with reality and just enjoy the ride. It’s a bit sad to see how quickly new players that join my guild fizzle out, though.

I always mean to post an update about it, but it’s just one of those games that are kind of there. Nothing much to say about it, but here’s a quarter of my current farm:

This is the only patch I actually use for farming and ranching. The rest is filled with houses, pets, items, assorted clickables and treasures, etc. I constantly need more space, but of course for an F2P to get even the tiniest patch of land is an ordeal. Have I mentioned that I love this game? 🤣🤣🤣 Man vs. Game Developer, the ultimate challenge.

Ray Gigant

Just a few more months to go before Experience Inc. releases Yomi wo Saku Hana, their latest dungeon crawling extravangza. While I’m waiting, I thought I’d catch up on their other dungeon crawlers I hadn’t finished. Right now it’s just Ray Gigant, Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy and Operation Babel: New Tokyo Legacy. Abyss I’ve played enough of. Babel I’ve never tried. Ray Gigant I tried earlier and it was a pretty insipid experience. However I didn’t drop it because I hated it but because I lost my save for some reason I can’t remember.

I restarted it recently and played for about an hour. I’m planning to try the strategy where you give the MC in each chapter all the good stuff and ignore the hangers-on. Maybe that will make things a little faster and more challenging in a very pedestrian game. I’ll report on it if/when I pass the area I reached last time.

Happy Color

My latest obsession isn’t even a game. It’s a paint-by-numbers app. Like, not even a coloring app with creativity involved. Just see number, paint number, see number, paint number. Every once in a while they hide a tiny splotch of color in an obscure area to try to trick you into watching ads for hints. No need to fall for it, though. Just save the pic and continue later, and the incomplete area will just pop out at you the next time you load. Human brains are funny like that.

Why did I “play” this for 3 hours yesterday, at least 2 hours the day before and countless hours in the past month when I have so many AAA games in my backlog? If traditional game companies knew the answer, they wouldn’t have lost so much ground to mobile gaming, now would they? The honest truth is i just want to relax sometimes. No, a lot of the time. Games require too much headspace. They’re nice, but sometimes I just want to look at pretty colors and zone out.

And with that, you know all the things I’m up to when I’m not blogging. Next update will probably be about Ray Gigant, since talking about it has made me want to play it. After that… we’ll see.