New this update
Ongoing game
Beaten
100% Complete!
Currently Playing
- Last Call BBS
- Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky
- Thimbleweed Park
- Final Fantasy XIV
Recently Beaten
- Coffee Talk
- Coffee Talk 2
- Unpacking
- Oxenfree II
- Call of the Sea
- To the Moon
- Rhythm Heaven (GBA)
- Final Fantasy XIV: Patch 6.5
- Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
- Final Fantasy V
- Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
I put off updating again but mostly because I really wanted to give Oxenfree II another chance before I wrote about it. But then I could never bring myself to finish my second playthrough so I guess it's getting a bad review instead!
And then I wrote most of this post in October and, for whatever reason, put off updating even longer so now it's December and I have a bunch more games to write about.
Also................ WE ARE ALL GOING TO BE VERY NICE AND PRETEND MY JOURNAL STILL LOOKS GOOD ON XENFORO.... T_T I miss my cute handwritten-style fonts but not enough to be a diabolical admin and hardcode them into this thread. Maybe one day I'll go through my posts and adjust things to look nice again but we'll see if maybe I can bribe Sheep into letting me set all my fave fonts as defaults too. :3c But the year's almost over and I'll prob do a new style for next year's journal anyway.
Coffee Talk I + II
These were the last of my Game Pass games. I'm glad they were on there because I don't think I ever would have taken a chance on them otherwise and while I did enjoy the characters a lot, I'm not sure I liked the gameplay loops enough to have felt it was worth my money if I'd bought the games outright. Not at their current price points anyway.
The gist of the game is that you run a coffee shop in a modern world inhabited by different fantasy races and you help people work out interpersonal drama that tends to relate to their racial issues, though not always. For example, one of your regulars is a werewolf and a subplot of the game is every time he comes in you try to figure out what's in a certain tea he heard of that helps manage the symptoms of the full moon. Another regular is a catgirl who's trying to break into showbiz while dealing with her father (an ex-showbiz manager himself) hating how scummy her current manager is. The characters are all interesting and the core gameplay loop involves making them their drinks, whether it's a set recipe or making something up that they might like. You can even do the latte art!
That said, it's largely a kinetic novel. There aren't dialogue choices so the only agency you as a
player have is whether you get their drink right. I didn't enjoy the gameplay so much as a result because it usually didn't feel like it mattered if I got the drink right or not and that's all I could do. It's especially frustrating because the twist of the first game is that [ Spoiler:
you, the cafe owner, are actually the offspring of the alien who keeps showing up in your cafe, with your special ability being time travel. You are actually repeating the weeks of the game and upon replaying a second time, your character will say extra things that imply they already know new visitors or how things will turn out. But that's not... very satisfying. I think it would have been much more interesting if we had dialogue choices all through the game and either they added new ones that let us share info we shouldn't know yet or include that the first time and make it easier for the player to figure out the twist themselves based on the reaction. ] I just don't really feel like a game where the player character is a faceless expert of chatting with people is served by not having any dialogue options. Factor in how finnicky the drinks are (your primary ingredient is most important but the order of your secondary ingredients can matter too which sucks when you're trying to figure out two ingredients and they could be in any order -_-) and your choice-making in the game just feels so hindered in ways that just don't serve the story.
That said, I did enjoy my time playing the game and I liked the sequel too. The pixel art is gorgeous and the animations feel nice and cozy for what they are. The pacing is good and the characters are worth getting to know.
Unpacking
I saw on Twitter that there's a secret mode in Unpacking where if you put *nothing* away, you'll still clear the level with a black star instead of a gold star. So of course I had to check it out! It is true, if you find a way to fit everything on the floor or put things in places they don't belong (like toasters in the bathroom, underwear in the kitchen drawers, etc.) then you get a black star and get to move onto the next level. I will admit by the end when you're filling an entire house it was getting pretty tedious in a way the proper playstyle just isn't, but the sheer ecstasy of being able to just absolutely destroy the terrible boyfriend's apartment upon moving in was just perfect. I'll put my degree front and centre
on the bed
thank you very much.
Oxenfree II: Lost Signals
Well... I really wanted to love this game. Oxenfree is one of my favourite games and I love how it's designed, the characters, the mystery, the way things turn out depending on your dialogue choices (or even if you don't make any choices at all). It's just plain fun.
And then there's Oxenfree II.
I admit I didn't look into this game at all. I never watched a single trailer, I ignored news about it besides the release date announcement. I was as blind as I could possibly be going into it, which is exactly how I wanted it to be. And I did not like it!
I think I gave it a proper chance. I found it kind of hard to get into even on my first playthrough. I'd catch myself tabbing to the other monitor every few minutes to check twitter and discord constantly. The environment was exactly as pretty as before, but the maps were bigger and traversing them just takes so long... The dialogue isn't nearly as engaging as the first game and because you spend basically the whole story with just Riley and Jacob and then faceless NPCs on the walkie talkies, it feels a lot more lonely.
There are some teenagers who sort of act as the main antagonists of the game, sabotaging you (or is it the other way around? They honestly don't feel like much of a threat for the entire game), but the game never
really introduces you to them in the first place. You get an overview of who they are and then suddenly Jacob has major beef with one of them and the other you never learn any motivation for and if you don't know the exact things to say to these absolute strangers who you have never met before, you get (presumably) locked out of major story beats. When I finished the game I still had no idea what was going on. All I could glean was that Olivia, their ringleader, had made a deal with Alex from the first game to, what, swap bodies??? I'm still unclear.
I will admit there was one point where I failed at a critical moment -- I had to go block off an escape route or something but I went the wrong way to do it and couldn't make it in time and Olivia escaped. Between that and not convincing one of her cronies in my first playthrough, I worry it locked me out of essential story explanation and it meant I had no idea what was going on at the end. This was just so... deeply unsatisfying. There were similar mysteries in the first game where you didn't get the whole story with just one playthrough, but at least that first playthrough had a better sense of closure. You might be missing context and a whole side story by only playing once, but you got to know the main characters and their motivations. You might not befriend or save everyone, but you come away with a good idea of what choices you could make next time to get a different ending.
I also... well, okay, maybe my first playthrough was just bad. I didn't actually finish my second one because I don't find the game very engaging, but I will admit that I really slacked on the radio/walkie stuff in my first playthough. I completely missed one of the radio NPCs because you have to tune into a specific station early on and I guess I just didn't. You're lowkey supposed to check in with every single walkie NPC on every map, but I'd often forget to do that. I guess that's why the maps were so big, but I don't like walking around while conversations are happening because if you walk into a plot trigger it drops the conversation you were happening and that can happen even while having the conversation that often starts with Jacob as you walk into a new map. -_- So there's not actually enough space in the maps to have all your conversations while walking, meaning the ideal way to play for me to ensure you hear everything is to stand around in one spot the entire time you talk to like 5 people in sequence and
then you silently traverse the map to the next one. Even like... they added a note in this game that's like "you can move onto the next map and your conversation will contiunue!" so they
want you to be walking around as these conversations happen. Obviously, since it's insane to just stand there and ruin the pacing... but the very first time I noticed that note and went "oh good!" and moved onto the next map, I took like 4 steps in the new map and my conversation was immediately overwritten by a story trigger conversation. This was kind of a problem I had with the first game, but I'd really hoped they'd fix it this time. I think it's worse, though, since at least with the first game, all your conversations were with people on the screen with you. This time even if you're talking to Jacob on screen with you, you can be interrupted by the walkies out of nowhere. Or if you're having a walkie conversation, there's no body language to watch out for that might imply someone is speeding up to go look at something that will stop the conversation for another one. It's just... bad. I don't like it and it made me not want to play.
Um... besides the fact that I didn't like how most of this game was, I didn't hate the new mechanics in theory. I liked the spatial tears that let us go into the past (especially the one near the end where you could change the time period of it). I liked being able to contact people on the walkies even if it was kind of lonely -- it would have been nicer to meet up with them here and there, maybe. I wish we met with the teens more often and had more of a chance to talk before they got immediately hostile. I still want to finish my second playthrough because I've been a lot more thorough with it and I do think I have a better chance at learning more this time since I've interacted with people more consistently, so maybe I'll find the ending more satisfying. But we'll see. (Man I didn't even talk about how I didn't like how they implemented the characters from the first game but frankly I still don't really understand parts of that!)
This was really rambly but I also beat this game like a month and a half ago now and only had bits of notes I'd written out lol. u_u
Call of the Sea
I got this for free through Epic however long ago and it got picked as my RNG game for September's game theme. I powered through it all in one or two days and really enjoyed it. I wish I'd taken some notes when I played it because now I can't remember what I wanted to say about it, if anything.
The story is you're a chronically ill woman whose husband went searching for a cure for your mysterious illness that's been passed down through your family, but he went missing on an island off the coast of Tahiti so you go after him and on the island, you discover something about your illness that changes everything you thought you knew about your past. (With a healthy dose of Lovecraftian themes to boot, but, like, not the racist ones.)
Everywhere you go is absolutely gorgeous, from the bright sunny beaches to the watery caves. I loved the dripfeed of story and the way you slowly work out what happened to your husband and his crew. The puzzles to move through everything were quite clever. The game didn't overstay its welcome and it switched up the environment enough that I never got tired. Some places were also just breathtaking! Highly recommend.
To the Moon
I replayed this because I was gonna go to the local art show that the devs would be attending the launch for. I RSVP'd for my brother and I and then... his flight got cancelled two days in a row and the one he actually came in on arrived basically at the time the event started. :'( I'm still gonna try to make it down there to see the gallery but I'm kinda bummed I missed out on meeting the devs. I will update here again after, I just. Felt like I needed to explain why I replayed this again so soon lol. (Game is great, as ever!)
[ December edit: I wrote most of that in October when I still planned on making it... but alas my mom was in a car accident at the start of the month and I ended up going to stay with her and did not have time to make it out to the art gallery showing before it ended! Wahh! ]
Rhythm Heaven
Decided recently I wanted to test out more of the emulators on my Steam Deck so I tried to play Banjo Kazooie for the third time and gave up deciding the game simply isn't for me. (I think it's a hate crime to do two water-based levels in a row.) Anyway, the game I moved onto after that was the GBA version of Rhythm Heaven. The DS version is one of my fave games of all time and I'd never actually played the first in the series before, so it was interesting to see what minigames/characters were series staples from the start. I liked that I could hear melodies that got expanded on in later games in some of the minigames. :D
I was godawful at a bunch of these so I did not go for completion, but I did get a decent handful of perfects while playing. I could see myself picking this up for one-offs before bed every so often, but mostly it just made me want to replay the DS version which I don't think emulates well. Wahh.
Last Call BBS
Have I talked about this yet? I don't think I have. I picked this up off Game Pass a few months ago and it was the only time I went "okay, no, I need to own this for real" and dropped everything to buy it on Steam instead. It's basically a minigame aggregate wrapped in a retro PC theme. The idea is you're in the age of usenet and dial up and you download games from various sources, some legally and some cracked. You unlock a little more story as you obtain and play the games but mostly they're just standalone.
I haven't actually played all the games yet--I kept thinking I'd be able to update my journal when I was all done but some of them require a lot of thought so I've been slow to get through them. There's sort of a solitaire, a weird version of hanafuda, and then a bunch of other games. My favourite for whatever reason is a game meant to replicate building model kits. You clip all the pieces out of the grid they come in, you figure out how to put them together, you paint them (and can even mask off parts with tape so you only paint the part you want), and then... you're done. It seems kind of weird but it's SO relaxing. I watched like 4 whole anime series just putting these things together.
I also really love this one minigame where you're trying to automate various food cafeterias and you need to set up systems of conveyor belts and machines to create any possible order. It's rough to figure out because the instructions are so minimal but sooo satsifying to get right.
[this is where I stopped writing my entry for October and I haven't touched this game since, but I still want to go back and play everything in it!]
Final Fantasy XIV: Patch 6.5
Not really sure what to say about this besides "it was nice that the alliance raid wasn't a total snoozefest". The MSQ was... okay. It went basically where I thought it would and it was boring for it. I am so thrilled that the patches are over (besides 6.55 of course) because it means we're done with this awkward FF4 rehash. I think the best marker of how bored I was with the plot was the way I stopped in the Crystarium for half an hour when the MSQ took me there because somehow I found out there were fishing holes there and I suddenly decided I had to find them all. Far more interesting than plot, right?
Anyway in just general FF14 stuff, I haven't been up to a whole lot. My static cleared p12s part 1 recently. It took us a while but we've been having scheduling issues a lot this tier. We even had to ditch prog for this last week before we break for like a month because of things cropping up, but all the same I'm excited to be on part 2. Tanking has been really rewarding. :>
The only other thing of note that I can think of is the Cloud Server beta test they did a couple weeks ago. The servers were on the east coast of NA and my ping to them was 10ms.
10 ms!!!!! Oh it was glorious!!! I did a Fall Guys on my very first night on the server and won it right there and then on my first try, even though I struggled a bit getting used to, like, things actually happening on screen as the actual attacks and AOEs happened. Wild! Unheard of! I did most of Eden, all of the 70 and 80 Alliance Raids, and then because I thought it would be funny to get to Hydaelyn, I did all of 6.0 too?? Wild.
I made a giant roe woman because I didn't want there to be record of me playing anyone tall because tall people have no rights. n_n But I named her Hydaelyn's Favourite and she was a Warrior main (with MCH picked up because I wanted to know what my dps main played like with good ping and it was So Good). It made me finally learn how to play WAR past level 50 (where I'd promptly dropped it as my tank job to become a DRK main upon getting into Heavensward) and ohhhh my god it's just an absolute beast in dungeons. There were sooo many times where I was undergeared, the healer was undergeared, everyone was undergeared and I didn't even break a sweat on massive pulls. It's insane.
One thing I really loved about the Cloud test though was just the mix of people. They only had the one data centre, so everyone worldwide crammed onto this NA server. Since my sleep schedule is currently ""oops"", I ended up playing largely with Japanese players and it was fun trying to remember how to speak Japanese on the spot and otherwise trying to remember the set auto-translation phrases. My fave was this one time I joined a Zodiark party finder to help someone clear (because not enough people were in duty finder for things to pop after the first few days) and the person was immediately like "oh no I don't speak any English, what do we do?" (in Japanese) when I joined and another person was like "chill, it's not like this will be hard, that's what auto-translate is for". It was very cute lol. (And it was, of course, fine, because warrior can carry anything.) It was interesting seeing how different regional cultures approach the game.
Related to regional cultures, another great thing was the way the Other tab was mostly just housing ads. So like, instead of infinite crappy clubs, it was people who'd done something cool with their free house for the week. I went around with Faf (who had made my main wol as her charater on the Cloud Server LOL thank u for spreading the Cherrim love) on the last day just checking out some of the houses and it was actually really impressive what people had done with only a week. (How on earth did they get all those Verdant Partitions!?) I think my favourite was an elaborate maze someone had created in a large house that used every inch of the house. I also loved the house where someone had created several different photo op areas to gpose in. The one with the little coloured housefronts was so cute!
The last highlight was some of the memey names people came up with for their temporary I-only-exist-for-a-week characters. I mean, I went with Hydaelyn's Favourite and all, but it was really funny this one time I was in someone's Zodiark trial party finder because I ended up in there and my cotank was "Zodiark's Babygirl" so we were basically cousins LMAO.
I wish the cloud server had lasted two weeks instead of one. I'd also love if they just randomly did this once a year or something. The transient vibe of the server, the mix of people and gaming cultures, there was just something kinda magical about it and I'd love to see it back. I know it wouldn't have the population without them requesting a test but a girl can dream. It just won't quite be the same if/when they ever instate cross-DC travel. Ah well, at least I got to experience it at all. Although I do wish I'd been able to be there when the week was up! The end of the server coincided with the end of my raid night so I wasn't able to be there wahh. :(
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
I played this for my October game-along game. (Horror was the theme, which this... sort of fit. I don't play enough horror to really have had anything to play that wouldn't have just been a repeat of last year's theme game.) I haven't replayed this in years and while I remembered most of the main story beats too well, I was pleasantly surprised that I'd forgot almost all of the details of each case.
It was also nice playing on Switch where trophies don't exist because it meant I wasn't worried about going back in for completion. If there were any characters I got a bit curious about refreshing their social links for or w/e, I just read the script on a wiki instead of putting in the effort. I've platinumed every DR game on the Vita and might have been tempted to do it again if I'd played this on Steam or something.
Final Fantasy V
I picked FFV as my retro game for November. It was once again down to the wire to complete it, but I did manage it! (Thank u gp for not posting the new theme until 15 minutes after I collapsed over the finish line while the credits were rolling.) I played the GBA version on my Steam Deck.
Anyway, this is one of my favourite Final Fantasy games now! I was so surprised at how much I took to it. It feels so modern in basically everything but graphics. The story went places I didn't think stories really went in that era of games and the characters were so good. Not a ton of detail for most of them but they were fairly fleshed out for what the game had and I really liked the way they interacted with the plot. And I'm ALWAYS here for a majority female main cast. :D
But mainly the gameplay was so good! I am always here for FF's ATB system and whatever job system they put on top of it and FF5's is one of the best. As you level up your jobs, you gain abilities from those jobs permanently that you can equip as a secondary trait to any other job. So like, if you level up Monk, you get the equippable trait to go "barehanded" on other jobs, meaning if you don't equip a weapon, you'll do as much damage as a monk would without one. Or for the mages, if you level up White Mage enough, you can straight up just use ALL the White Mage spells as a secondary trait on something else. And anyone can be any job and there's no inherent traits that makes the girls better at white mage and the boys better at physical attacking or anything like that. It's so good!!
I had most everyone in Freelancer for the ending since if you mastered a job, you got all of its stats added to Freelancers (aka jobless) and could equip two abilities instead of one. I think my main jobs for the game were largely:
- Lenna: Knight / Magic Knight / Dragoon
- Faris: Ninja / Thief / Magic Knight
- Krile: White Mage (for the cat ears!) / Blue Mage / Geomancer / Monk
- Bartz: Time Mage / Black/White/Red Mage / Dancer / Bard
It's a mixed blessing that I picked the game for the theme since it meant I actually finished it within the month, but it also meant I had to rush it at the end to make sure I hit the deadline. I could have grinded these jobs for ages... I intended to go back but I feel like it's probably not happening. Next time I play I'll be more thorough!
I now only have a handful of mainline Final Fantasies to play before I can say I've at least played all of them (I/II/XI/XVI). I'd have played I for this theme, but there's some hints that Krile is important in XIV for the next expansion and since she's inspired by the character of the same name in FF5, I wanted to play this one the same way I played FF4 in the leadup to Endwalker. (And speaking of XIV, I loved how many references to FF5 there are in it! As I went through FF5 I was just thrilled every time I ran into something I recognized from XIV.)
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
I preordered this when it came out on Steam/modern consoles, but I ended up not playing it because it felt like it was too soon since my last playthrough (which I believe was in 2020?). But I finally felt really nostalgic for it recently and played through it all in roughly a weekend. It looks soooo good in its new format. I think it's not as fun when you're trying to control where you go with a control stick on a controller vs a stylus on the DS touch pad (and actually struggled with juggling the two characters near the end with precise directional jumps near another node) but on the whole, great port.
I just love this game so much. The writing is so good, the game design is so good, the characters are so memorable and lively, and it's just such a great game. Please play it!!!
I got my brother to buy the game when I visited him in June/July but he didn't get too far. I'm hoping we'll have time to sit down and get him through the game while he's home for Christmas these next few days. Part of why I decided to play it myself was in anticipation of this--if I'm gonna get him to play while I watch, I knew I wouldn't want to play myself for ages again.
There is No Game: Wrong Dimension
Google Play Pass was like a dollar a month for a few months as part of their Black Friday sale so I decided to check it out. I'm pretty impressed with how many games are on it so I downloaded a whole bunch and this was one of them.
This game was GREAT. It's basically all about breaking the fourth wall and trying to interact with anything you can to achieve your goal while your game narrator looks on in horror at what you're doing. It has some really endearing parts and it's just so creative. I felt like the ending was maybe a little blah but I just enjoyed myself so much going through everything.
I don't even really wanna spoil it because all the levels are so interesting, but one of my favourite bits was doing a little RPG game and then getting dropped in the same game but if it were a cash grabby clicker game lmao.
Murder by Numbers
This is a crime investigation game merged with Picross, which is right up my alley so I was happy to see it as one of the free Epic games this year. I started this a while ago but it took me a while to really play it through, not aided by losing progress or something at some point and having to play half a case over again. My thoughts are... hmm.
I can usually suspend disbelief pretty well but Murder by Numbers demanded a bit too much of me. If it had leaned even further into the ridiculousness of the characters and world, I think I could have gotten on board with it, but the characters were just a little too real (read: older than like 15) for me to be like "okay, it makes sense that this person might make this bizarre leap of judgment based on the available evidence" or even "okay, I believe that this person would think it's a good idea to sneak into the murder scene through the air ducts to investigate when they're the prime suspect and not see how that would be even more suspicious". This happened almost every case and it was kind of infuriating.
On the whole, I think the game took itself too seriously for what it was. As a Picross game with a story, it was cute and well balanced between plot and puzzle, but either the characters and stories needed to be lighter to make it more acceptable how outlandish their decisions and drama were or they needed to tone down the goofiness to make that drama land better. As it was it just felt a bit dissonant.
Still fun tho! And I liked the character designs and general stories, so I'd still recommend it. I'm just kinda glad I didn't pay for it.
![[PokeCommunity.com] Cherrim Tries to Talk About Games Other Than Final Fantasy XIV](http://imgurl "[PokeCommunity.com] Cherrim Tries to Talk About Games Other Than Final Fantasy XIV")
![[PokeCommunity.com] Cherrim Tries to Talk About Games Other Than Final Fantasy XIV](https://www.pokecommunity.com/media/e14.89443/full "[PokeCommunity.com] Cherrim Tries to Talk About Games Other Than Final Fantasy XIV")
