A friend got me a copy of EMUUROM and I finally played it for a bit last night. It’s a fun little thinky puzzle exploration game. There are some tough timing puzzles, but mostly the challenge so far is in finding and understanding different routes through the rooms.
Different wildlife have varying interactions, and you scan things to learn more about them + unlock other interactions, and the scanning is itself a movement mechanic, which is neat. For those who have enthusiasm for how a game’s made, as I do, this happens to be a TIC-80 game! Super cool.
Every time I play a neat game made with a fantasy console it makes me want to try to make a neat game with a fantasy console. Then I think about the restrictiveness and get discouraged immediately. '^^ Then I think “well, I could make a game normally but commit to scoping it down to something like a fantasy console game” which never seems to work out in practice lol.
In basically act 4… but still on disc 1. I guess disc 2 is only for the final dungeon and FMVs???
Still a fun game but it is a lot less difficult than i remember if being, verging on the trivial. i’ve had a tiny bit of trouble with one fight so far… and it’s an optional boss that i trounced (with only one party member left up, but they could literally not die)…
Like even major roadblocks like Miguel were done in one shot, without any trouble at all.
Booted up Baldur’s Gate 3 again. Decided on a bard with a single level of knowledge cleric for the moonmaiden (yes I am romancing Shadowheart why do you ask).
Also I’m a half-drow Dark Urge. So. You know. Interesting things are happening.
Started Ripper, one of Take Two’s early efforts before unlocking the infinite money cheat code called “Grand Theft Auto.” It’s a grody FMV detective game, one of many, where all of the actors are on wonky green screen, the cast is surprisingly stacked but not putting in their best work for obvious reasons, and the UI is comical nonsense (the talk command icon is a yapping skull with one eye)
What makes it special besides the absurdly stacked cast list even for these sorts of games and licensing Blue Oyster Cult music (which I’m certain was because the word “Reaper” in Don’t Fear the Ripper kind of sounds like “Ripper”) is the fact that one of the major characters is played by Christopher Walken, who has found a baffling and wonderful middle ground between his two acting styles of playing a dramatic role for comedy or playing a comedic role dramatically.
Also the game randomizes who the actual killer is at a certain point in a run and only one of the possible four killers has a sensible motivation beyond “I’M CRAZY WEHEHEHEHE!!!”
I’ve picked up playing Okami’s Steam port again; I never played it as a kid, but I loved watching Let’s Plays when I was young and Okami was one that always stuck with me! It’s been a lot of fun, and the visuals are gorgeous!
Edit: holy shit the jumping is bad. That’s my only complaint, but it is BAD.
So bad news everyone, the mind goblins have taken hold again and I’m doing that thing in every CRPG where I keep making new characters that are quickly abandoned because my brain goes “but what if you were a warlock”
And I gotta tell you, BG3 taking so fucking long to give you easy access to animal speak potions is not helping because now every build I come up with becomes “okay but will this let me speak to animals” due to all of the really cool animal talking events and boy howdy that just removes so, so many class options. It gets worse trying to make a Dark Urge, because then I have to look up what class gives bonuses to wisdom saving throws entirely for a single scene where having a wisdom saving throw bonus is EXTREMELY important (similar to trying to go legend in WotR has exactly one scene where making a will save becomes EXTREMELY important).
Playing Dragon Quest Builders. Fun little game. controls are a bit fiddly and the first chapter felt way too basic but i’m in chapter 2 and the game is findings its legs. I think Chapter 1 would’ve needed to be significantly faster to better work as a tutorial.
No matter. I’m having fun and that’s what matters, even though everyone thinks i’m a stupid, dopey, ugly mess.
My guilty pleasure game has to be UFS1. I love to just boot it up, grab a rod and reel in the big fighters. Turns out the smaller fish fight way harder!
Picked up Veritas Tales: Witch of the Dark Castle, a virtual RPG gamebook made by a former Vanillaware employee who quit to just lead a quiet farm life and also spent six years making this. It shows. It is genuinely incredible seeing the sheer mastery of the craft here. The art, the animation flourishes, the fantastic UI and menu design, everything. Please go buy this game
oh and also I played more Ripper and can confirm that Christopher Walken was taking the piss the entire time. He keeps putting a cigar in his mouth when 70% of his dialog ends and also mugs like a cartoon character when he does it. He remains the best part of this game. I am enjoying it a bit (I liked the cash register puzzle) but it’s really hard going back to old FMV slop after playing Spycraft, probably the best FMV game on the 90s.
Realized i had almost finished fire emblem awakening something like 6 years ago, but then never did.
So i put it back on the 3ds, and realized i have no idea what the hell is happening on the story in my over 80h long save
Of course, that means i started a new game, and made different romance options this time.
I also decided to play on casual now, cuz i think it really sucks to have permadeath on a game that is built around the idea of making couples out of your characters to eventually have their kids on your team, and all of them are actual characters and you have no replacement for them. And also even when you have permadeath on their dying dialog is like “oops, that was close, i’m gonna go back to camp” just to never return, so really that kills the drama
I played Fire Emblem Awakening pretty obsessively in highschool, but I could only ever do Casual mode. I’m surprised that they don’t even have actual death dialogue for permadeath mode, I always assumed the “I’m too hurt to continue, I’ll go back to camp!” lines would be different.
