[Game Journal] The upward spiral of videogames

[Janp]

The Longing
I had to check achievements and internet to see what I'm supposed to do in the secret tower. I had to wait for a stork to fly there and drop me a key. This key opens a secret door. This door shows up on the map only at 0:00:00 each day, so after some more waiting, I entered them. There was a painting of the king, crystal and some more books there. But the door vanished once I picked everything up, so I had to wait whole 24 hours there for them to appear again.

I also read about Halls of Eternity and found out that there are items to be picked there. I got more books, more paper, a horse head, a curtain and a carpet. With those, I got to a whole 16 in-game seconds per 1 real-life second.

I'm almost done with everything you can do in the game so far. I still have to get music components and play music. And then there is an achievement for playing during Shade's birthday, that should be, according to Shade's diary, at around 40 days left. I'm currently at 299 days left, so I'll have to wait for that a little bit more.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance
With Runt's gang destroyed, there is a bunch of new sidequests to play. Sir Radzig wanted me to help a band of mercenaries hunt rest of Runt's gang, sir Divish wanted me to help him with rebuilding Pribyslavitz - that's the ruins Runt used as a base. There was also a problem with abandon silver mines around Skalitz, so I had to investigate what is going on there. And while I was there, I destroyed more bandit camps. Those were actually pretty well armed and armored. Finally a worthy opponents. I also went on another date with Theresa and finally romanced her.

Hans injuries from the hunting are getting better, so he wanted to go to bathhouse to celebrate. And this was probably the funniest sidequest in the game. I had no idea it was there, so it caught me unprepared. First, Hans lost all his clothes to one bathmaid in a game of dice, so I had to win them back. Then he wanted me to steal a wine from Rattay's Rathaus. And then get him some flowers for that bathmaid, which made her boyfriend angry. He tries to drown Hans, who doesn't give a shit and laughs in his face. What a silly quest.

I found a Padfoot potion during my travels. It temporarily grants me +5 bonus to Stealth, Lockpicking and Pickpocketing, which put me on enough high level to locking very hard chests. That means I can finally steal from merchant's chests. Those are chests, where merchants put their inventory in during night. So I paid a visit to the main 4 merchants in Rattay that I actively traded with before and got all my money back. I got around 50k gold plus bunch of expensive items that I sold for another 11k to Peshek. Rebuilding Pribyslavitz will cost around 100k gold, so I'm more than halfway there.

 

[Janp]

The Longing
Got to 20 in-game seconds per 1 real-life second. I'm currently at 146 days, waiting for Shade's birthday.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance
Almost finished the game. I'll make this update short, since it covers about the third of the main story, except for the final three quests.

Picking up from where I last ended, I rebuild whole Pribyslavitz. Now they generate about 1200 gold each day, so I had no problem with money ever since that moment. It took few in-game days, so I went to Rattay tournaments from time to time and completed whole set of armor. I didn't wear it for a long time, since I accidentally started Band of Bastards DLC. In it, Henry joins a group of mercenaries, who are hunting bandits. They quickly figure out that the bandit attacks are led by a fallen noble Zoul, who wants to take revenge on Radzig. The mercenaries decide to betray Radzig, take Zoul's money and run away, so it's up to me to stop Zoul. He's pretty strong opponent, but there is nothing he can do against my mace. And so I got House of Zoul armor, which is a little bit stronger than tournament armor.

I did some more side quests, including joining satanist ritual, going on an adventure with Hans and Bernard, hunting more bandits, stealing more stuff, helping Skalitz refugees and many more.

For the main quest, I had quite a different adventure this time. On my first playthrough, I failed most speach/charisma checks, usually resulting in whoever I was supposed to investigate/catch fleeing or giving me no option other than to kill them.

First I had to go to Merhojed and interrogate a captured bandit. But there is a disease going strong in Merhojed at the moment, so I had to help them with it first. I remembered from my first playtrough what was going on, so I quickly got help and the correct medicine. The captured bandit tells me about that he was the one who was supposed to meet with a merchant at the crossroads near Rovna to get more fake coins.

Going there, the merchant is dead. I followed a trail to nearby charcoal burner's camp. They didn't see what happened, but are treating one of merchant's bodyguards. Before I can talk to him, a mysterious knight appears and demands bags with fake coins, that charcoal burners took. Once he saw me, he run away. I was able to follow him the whole way to Sasau. He thought I was with the bandits, but I was able to convince him I'm with Radzig. The knight's name is Ulrich and he's from Passau. He's also investigating fake coins. With his help, I was able to find counterfeiters and even made them surrender without a fight.

Sir Radzig is able to get more information about the whole conspiracy that is going on. Bandits are recruiting new people at Sasau, preparing for an attack. It's once again on me to get more information about them. Since I had high enough stats, I was able to find out that new possible recruits are send to Sasau church. A recruiter there gave me a simple test. I have to get to Sasau's monastery and kill a traitor hiding there. The catch is, no one knows who the traitor is. Only that he's a novice.

To get to monastery, I had to disguise myself as a new monk. Luckily, there is Karl, a young nobleman that is forced to become a monk. I help him get rid of his guards and got a document that let's me join the monastery. This is one of the best designed quest ever. You are put on strict schedule, lose all your items, can only save in bed and everything you do outside of your schedule will result in either being kicked out of the monastery or put in solitary confinement. The only time you can freely move around the monastery only during the night. If you don't get caught. But since I'm the best thief in the whole Bohemia, it took me only two nights to steal everything in the monastery. I found a secret stash with a dagger and gold on night one. I found out who sells lockpicks and bought few. Now I could get everywhere on night two. I got enough evidence against one novice and confronted him about being a bandit. I talked him into running away from the monastery (but making it seemed like he died) instead of just killing him. It took me two more days to get everything set up and then we run away. I then reveal the last bit of my plan. I won't kill him. But I won't let him go free. I took him to Radzig.

I met up with the bandits again and told him tjhe job is done. He didn't really believe me, but once I mentioned I have gold the novice stole, he agreed to take me to their camp at Vranik. before I could report back to Radzig, I was met with the main antagonist of the game. Sir Istvan Toth. He's the guy who visited Henry's father with Radzig the day Skalitz was attacked. And he is the current owner of Radzig's sword. He torture Henry and reveals the big twist of the game. Radzig is Henry's true father. To be honest, I think this twist is bad. It's not necessary and the story barely do anything with it. Especially since this is basically the end game.

I was able to escape with the help of Zbyshek, a Skalitz refugee. Normally, you are suppose to sneak your way out of Vranik to escape. But... Since I clear Pribyslavitz alone earlier, I decided to do the same with Vranik. I stealth killed one guard, took his equipment, killed another guard with it and took my own stuff back. Now, killing them with mace or sword would be boring. So I killed everyone with just bow and arrows and stealth kills. That was fun. And I barely got hurt in the process.

Getting back to Vranik, Radzig, Hanush and Divish decide to rally their men and attack Vranik. Which didn't really work in their favour, since Toth left with most of his men and took unprotected Talmberg. So we'll have to take it back.

 

[Janp]

Kingdom Come: Deliverance
Phew, finally finished this behemoth. It took me a lot longer than I expected. I'll keep story describtion short and will focus more on my overall thoughts.

Henry, Hans, Radzig, Hanush and Divish attacks Talmberg, but their attack didn't go well. We were able to get the outer circle of Talmberg, but Radzig was captured. So Toth now has Radzig and Stephanie as his hostages.

So, it's time to siege. I was helping all around the camp. I got beer and meat to feed the army, got some potions to keep soldiers awake for Bernard, got a priest and a monk for Divish and much more. I sneaked on Talmberg with Hans in an attempt to free Radzig and Stephanie, but I was only able to get some regular villagers out. I also helped to build a trebuchet.

After small skirmish outside Talmberg, it was time to get Toth and his men out of Talmberg. I led attack on a western wall and quickly took over it. There was once again a problem with too many NPC soldiers fighting, so I could just spam my own attack in all directions and was able to kill everyone. With Talmberg taken back, Toth has no othet choice other than trading Stephanie and Radzig for his own safety. He leaves Stephanie on Talmberg, but takes Radzig with him. Henry and Hans follow them and are able to retrieve Radzig at Skalitz.

And that's basically it. Henry and Radzig can finally talk like father and son and the game ends. After the credits, the lords are discussing how to counter Sigismund and his army of cumans. Hans and Henry are sent to gain new allies in Kuttenberg. And that's the end of Kingdom Come.

Overall thoughts
Let me start with saying this game is not perfect. It runs so bad you could mistaken it for an Ubisoft game. Even after 3 years, the game sometimes run barely on 20 FPS and sometimes go as high as 200 FPS. In the same place. It crashes like crazy. I don't think I had a single session where the game wouldn't crash at least twice. Textures sometimes don't load at all, so I encountered the same moment at the end of the game as I did during my first playthrough 3 years ago - flying head of Divish argued with a flying sword.

But otherwise it's in my opinion the best RPG of the last decade. It has one of the best progression systems, where you are rewarded for actually playing the game. Everything feels hard and complex at first, but the more time you invest in the game, the more you get out of it. You start as a lowly peasant, who can't read or swing a sword. But you can become the true noble knight, if you put effort in the game. Characters react to you based on your stats and equipment. If you have a shining armor, people will think you are a knight. But if you have dirty clothes, not only will your charisma go down, but people will think you are just some beggar. I sneaked back to the monastery after the main quest, where I had to kill one of the novices. I put monk clothes on me and they thought I was one of them. I could even talk with them about the death of that novice. If I would go there in my armor, they would just kick me out. I should have try going there in my novice clothes.

Then there are the quests. There aren't hundreds of quests like in other open worlds, but almost each quest feels like a main quest. They have their own cutscenes, are long and interesting and usually gives you at least 2 different ways to solve them. There are few fetch quests, but they are even referred to as activities instead of side quests. They are fun to do.

Story is fine. I don't like the last third of the story, mostly because of the whole twist about Henry and Radzig. I still feel like it was unnecessary and doesn't add much to the story. The game also just ends out of nowhere. If I recall correctly, it was because this was supposed to be only part 1 of Henry's story.

I remember a lot of people saying this game is hard. They criticized battle system and the limited saves. I think this battle system is one of the best once I encountered in RPGs. It's original, historically accurate (just like the whole game) and it's just fun. It's hard at the start of the game, because you play as someone who never held a sword before. But just like everything in the game, if you invest your time to train, you can become the best swordsman in the whole Bohemia. As for the saves, I think the game throws saves at you all the time. I ended the game with 15+ saving schnapps in my inventory. And I barely used them at all during the whole game.

Finally, the game is beautiful. Sometimes, I just rode through the world instead of using fast travel, just so I could watch the scenary.

Well, you can probably see where this is going. I already said this is the best RPG of the last decade. While it suffers from technical issues, it's well-crafted and detailed game. It has a living world that no other RP game from the last decade could even come close to. That's why I'm giving it 9.5/10.

 

[Janp]

With Kingdom Come done and The Longing slowly coming to an end (if my math is correct, it should take about 3 more irl days for the timer to hit 0), I wanted to play two more games in March. Ducktales Remastered for the event here and Heroes of Might & Magic III for a similar event on Reddit. As for FE, I'm not sure if I want to continue it right now. The itch to play it was satisfied after 10 maps and I have a hard time returning back to it.

DuckTales Remastered
When I was little, I loved DuckTales. I was even thinking about rewatching it once I finish my Master degree. But now, for the game...

I started it and got hit by a nostalgia. The main menu looks so great. And the music... I spent good 10 minutes just chilling there.

I picked the medium difficulty and jumped in the first level. Iw was a straight linear tutorial path finished with a boss fight with a Beagle Boy and it was fine. It taught me all I needed to know for the next levels.

I picked Amazon level next and got steamrolled only after few minutes of playing. The endless stream of enemies with some pretty hard platforming got a better of me on my first try. I found all 8 coins needed to get to next section of the level, a lost temple, and got pretty far, before I run out of lifes. I learned that I had to restart back from the beginning and get the coins again at this point. I wasn't really fond of this. Even Ghost & Goblins has checkpoints inside each level. I was able to get to the final boss of Amazon level on my third try and even found a secret room with Mrs. Beakley, which granted me one more life. But even with it I got destroyed by the flying statue head. I couldn't time my jumps right and always got sniped down by it. I wasn't sure I'm in a mood to replay whole levels after each death, so I googled a little bit and found out that easy difficulty doesn't have lifes, so I get infinite number of tries. The only problem is that each heart (Scrooge starts with 3) can now take 2 hits, which will make it a lot easier for my taste. I switched to easy difficulty after all and the boss still took few tries to beat. But I did it and got the Incan King's Scepter.

Next level took place in Transylvania, in a mansion of Dracula Duck. It was semi-opened level, where I had to save Huey, Dewey, and Louie from Beagle Boys. Then I had an encounter with Magica De Spell. Her battle was a lot easier. All she did was to turn in a mirror, shoot few magic bolts and turn into a raven, but it was easy to dodge everything and hit her in the head with Scrooge's stick, winning the Coin of the Lost Realm.

Next, Scrooge wanted to get the Giant Diamond of the Inner-Earth from one of his African mines. The mine is apparently haunted, but Scrooge is not afraid of anything, if it means he can get more money. It was another pretty easy level, when it comes to platforming. After getting to the bottom of the mine, it's revealed Terra-firmians live there. Are causing earthquakes and their voices goes all around the mine, resulting in miners thinking ghosts are talking in the walls. The battle with Terra-firmian king was fun. He rolled to attack, let his people roll around and dropped huge boulders on the battlefield. But thanks to the boost from easy difficulty, I was able to beat him on my first try. I think this level was adapted from an episode of the series, because I remember something similar.

Next level took place on top of the Himalayan mountains and it was one of the hardest levels in the game. I got stucked in a snow all the time and enemies covered the whole map, so there was almost no room to dodge. Platforming was also pretty hard, forcing me do some precise jumps. It took me a while and a lot of tries, but I got past it all. But the bossfight was also pretty hard. There was a fight with a yetti. She (yes, it's revealed it's a female at the end of the fight by Webby) jumped all around, threw rocks on me and the only way to damage her was to drop a huge boulder on her head and then jump on her. Beating her, she revealed she has a thorn in her feet. Scrooge removed it and found out it's not a thorn, but the Lost Crown of Genghis Khan.

Next level took place on the Moon. Scrooge, Gyro and Fenton travel there, but aliens captured Fenton and took his Gizmo suit, so Scrooge had to save him first. They then encounter Glomgold and Beagle Boys and had to fight them for the Green Cheese of Longevity. I beat them to it, but a rat ate it. This bossfight was underwhelming. It just jumped around and it was easy to dodge its attacks. I beat it and unlocked the final level.

While in Scrooge's safe, Glomgold and Beagle Boys took triplets as captives and demanded all the treasures I found during the game. But then Magica appeared, took the treasure and triplets and wanted Scrooge's Number One Dime for them. Glomgold and Scrooge had to team up and went to Mount Vesuvius to get them back. This was one of the best and hardest 2D platforming level I've ever played. It had sections, where I had to jump on enemies on top of lava field to get to the other side. The final race to Number One Dime was also fun. The boss here was Count Dracula Duck, summoned by Magica. He has pretty interesting phases, changing between a dragon form, bats and a giant form. While being in his regular form, I had to jump on bats he summoned to hit him.

Overall thoughts
While I can't compare this version to the original version, I had a lot of fun. I was surprised by the difficulty while playing on Medium and decided to switch to Easy after few tries. It became a little bit too much easy for my taste at that difficulty, but at least I didn't have to restart whole level each time I died. I had a lot of fun when it comes to platforming. It story was kinda slowing the pace of the whole game, since sometimes it got to the Pokémon Sun and Moon level of annoyance. I started a level after few minutes of cutscene, jumped over one hole to got another cutscene. Got past few more enemies and another cutscene. But the humour in the game is the same I remember from the show. And it was funny. This is another well-crafted experience 9/10.

 

[Janp]

The Longing
The day of Shade's birthday came. I found out you can go to a waterfall and get a special crystal. I precisely planned it the way I would wait only few minutes at the waterfall by sleeping and reading books. I got there, waited and then realized I'm there one day earlier. So I went all the way back, waited some more and... then missed it by 5 minutes, because of discussion on Discord. Thankfully, there is new item laying on a ground, where the waterfall used to me. Lapis Lazuli. This item, if burned, can reverse time. So I went back 1 hour and was able to pick up that special crystal.

Now, I was ready to leave to the surface, because Shade was talking about it more and more. So I thought it would be great ending. But before that I rearranged some stuff in my home. There were few crystals that kinda "fit" together and once I placed them near each other, a portal appeared. There was an option to leave through it. I googled it, just to be sure, and found out this is a secret ending and even a good one. So, I went through the portal and Shade ended up becoming his own king.

Last screens of my home and ending:

Spoiler:

Overall thoughts
Okay, this game is hard to talk about. It an experience that you need to live through yourself. There isn't much to the gameplay. You slowly walk around the cave system and wait. You can explore it to find its secrets or you can just turn the game off and return to it in 400 days. This is another nice example of game rewarding you for actually spending time with it. At the very end, I got 25 in-game seconds per 1 real-life second. It was perfect game to keep open on background while working on my thesis. It had nice art style, which reminded me of old Amanita Design games. Now that I think about it, it's true 2020 simulator. 9/10.

Now, I'll be focusing on Heroes 3. I'm already more than halfway through, because I was playing it in short doses this whole month, but I wasn't sure how to talk about it. So I decided to just write a short summary one I finish it.

 

[Janp]

Okay, finished Heroes 3. Let's talk about it.

Overall thoughts
Heroes III and IV were the main strategy games I've played when I was younger. I always preferred Heores IV because its implementation of RPG mechanics. I think Heroes III has better units. There are more variety and the fact that you can upgrade them makes it harder to find the optimal way to build my towns. I really enjoy skirmishes, but I have some huge problems playing through campains. They feel so uninteresting. Like the overarching plot is cool, but most of the maps are boring. Heroes aren't usually carried over to the next map, so I lost any motivation to make them perfect pretty quickly. And every other map told me that 8 heroes will be carried to the next. I barely needed 3 heroes to win all the maps. I had to spread my army too thin otherwise. Well, enemies usually had only few units, outside of scripted battles, anyway, so there wasn't many reasons to build ultimate army.

Well, I enjoyed my return to this game, but I think I'll rather play Heroes IV next time I want to play a Heroes game. It's still solid game, but I like Heroes IV more. 7/10.

 

[Janp]

Since it's almost the end of March, I didn't want to start any big games, so I can get to Game Along game straight away. So I checked my Humble Bundle account, since I have quite a few games to play there and picked some that take less than 5 hours to complete.

Path of Giants
In Path of Giants, you play as three explorers on a quest to get a treasure located high in mountains. To get the treasure, I had to finish a series of puzzles. These puzzles were pretty easy to be honest. I don't think I've been stucked on any puzzle for more than 5 minutes, aside from 2 levels, where I didn't realize how the mechanics of those levels work. Some puzzles had clever design, but once I figured out the basic algorithm behind majority of puzzles, it was a breeze.

Graphically speaking, explorers are adorable. Animations of them running and jumping is cute and I especially loved animations of them jumping on each other. That didn't got old at all. Each level looked the same, which is a shame.

Overall, it was fun way to kill few hours of my free time. It was short, easy and sometimes controls were going crazy, doing the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do. But it looked great, explorers were really adorable and it was fun to watch them interact with each other. 7/10.

The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game
Frog Detective is a franchise I had my eyes on for years. Basically from the moment it first appeared on a internet. But I never got around to play it, since it only takes few minutes to complete, so I always told myself I can get to it later. Well, now is the right time to do it!

In Frog Detective, you play as Frog Detective. Weird, I know. Anyway, Frog Detective is send to investigate a island that is allegedly haunted by a ghost. Sloth, an owner of the island, can't sleep because of it and ghost scientists didn't find anything.

The game is very simple. It's clear that it's aimed more at kids than a gaming veteran like myself. The graphics are very simplistic, to the point that the expressionless faces of some characters look creepy, dialogues are short and simple, but they still manage to sneak few jokes in them that once again a kid would probably find funny. Like one of the ghost scientists only finds out that they are ghost scientist during the game. Before that, they thought they were toast scientist. Music has a noir feel to it mixed with tropical beats and it fits the game perfectly.

Gameplay-wise, this is somewhere between PaC adventure and walking simulator. You talk to all other characters that are currently on a small island, find out they all have an item and are willing to trade it for another item. So all you have to do is to find the first item and start trading, until you have everything you need to finish the story. And that's it. The big reveal can be guessed right from the start of the game, but it was still fine reveal. The second game is even teased at the end.

Overall it was nice game, especially for the time it takes to finish it. 7/10.

Frog Detective 2: The Case of the Invisible Wizard
Speaking of the second game... This is basically Frog Detective 1, but Frog Detective now has a notebook, where it can write down everything it knows about a case. Dialogues are a little bit better here and you even have to put some effort into getting some items. The music is now eerie and graphics are a little bit darker, since this takes in place in a magical town in woods during the night. You even get a choice to make at the end of the case. And the third game is once again teased at the end. I'm looking forward to it. 7.5/10.

Next up I wanted to play Gothic 1. Not sure if you know it, but I'm an expert on Gothic. So it shouldn't take long to finish it.

 

[Janp]

New month, new updates. I finished Gothic faster than I thought, so I can now focus on Game Along game.

Gothic
Gothic is one of the first RPG I've ever played and one of my most favourite games of all time. I've played it so many times and I'm still looking forward playing it more. But since I'm already familiar with almost everything this game has to offer, I decided to play an OLOG - One Life One Game. Basically I have to restart the game once I die.

Since I don't want to make this extremely long update, let's get the boring part out of the way. I died thrice. Once right at the start of the game against regular Scavengers near Old Camp, once while falling down from Gilbert's cave and once in Free Mine, where Gort decided I'm the enemy and killed me.

My 4th attempt went really well. I quickly got best digger armor from Frisk and then Axe from somewhere I can't remember now, which was enough to kill every Scavenger, Molerat, Bloodfly, Wolf and Waran. After I got enough levels to level up my 1h weapons to expert level and had around 60 points in strength, I went to New Camp and beat Lares to get his Axe. With it, I was able to kill Shadowbeasts, Lurkers, Biters, Black Goblins, Snappers, Orcdogs and could probably also take down Orcs, but I didn't want to risk it.

So after getting my strength to 100, it was time for me to join one camp. I've never joined Brotherhood before, because I find their camp unfinished. Like Novices can't get their best armor and you can't take magic-only path in this camp. After joining Brotherhood, I was granted a passage to Old Camp's main building, where I beat Scar and took his sword.

Now that I got the best sword in the game, there was nothing to stop me. I quickly finished all main and side quests. I even got some items for main quests prior, since I cleared the whole map, which made the whole game even faster. And when I say quickly, I mean it. My plan was to finish just first two chapters and then write it down here, but I got so sucked in the game that I continued and finished the game three sittings, where two of them took place in chapter 1. I spent around 6 hours in chapter 1 and then around 5 hours in the remaining chapters combined. Since I'm fairly familiar with the game, its secrets and mechanics, I had no problem with getting what I needed or wanted. I beat most merchants and took their stuff each chapter, mostly because of potions. Not that it would help me with the final showdown at Sleeper's Temple, since I was forced to use Uriziel anyway. I hate that part so much. It took so many hits to take down templars and demons with Uriziel.

Overall thoughts
It's not that long since my last playthrough, but I got so involved in Czech Gothic community in a last 2 years, that I return to Gothic every few months. Which means this playthrough wasn't that special. I've joined Brotherhood for the first time and could finally finish some exclusive side quests, but it also proved what I was thinking about Brotherhood for a long time. It's not finished. Not that the game itself would be finished, but when I compare Old or New Camp with Brotherhood, there are some problems with the latter. You can't get the best Novice armor and it's not intentional like with Old Camp's Guards and there really isn't any reason to return here after getting the best Templar armor. Brotherhood isn't even involved in or even affected by Old and New Camps war, which is a shame. Since I know everything about this game, I got to maximum strength and Scar's sword by the end of chapter 1. And it was easy even with OLOG rules.

The story of G1 is a lot better than G2. I like the mystery about Sleeper and dark and unwelcoming atmosphere of the Colony. The music is memorable. Controls are a little bit junky nowadays, but since I'm already used to them, I had no problem with them. The world of the Colony is really well crafted. NPCs feel alive. They have their own daily routines and react to the player's actions. I think the only game that was able to surpass this feeling of "alive world" was Kingdom Come that I've played last month. Overall, I love this game and prefer it over G2. I'm not sure if I should rate it, since you can probably see I have a huge bias towards it. So, let's say 9.5/10.

 

[Janp]

The Stillness of the Wind
I've been looking forward this game, because it looked like cool atmospheric that could deliver a WOW effect like The Longing or There Is No Game earlier this year. And I got one. Sadly, it was: "Wow, this was a waste of time."

You play as Talma, last resident on a farm. Her family left for a world, but keep in touch with Talma via letters. You can take care of her chickens and goats, which give you eggs and cheese you can either eat or trade with a merchant for other items. You can also plant your own seeds and grow some plants. But here comes the huge problem with the game. There is no substance to any of those activities. Talma will get tired only if she is working and few eggs will give her enough energy to work for several days. You start with 6 chickens, which is more than enough for Talma. You can buy more chickens, but what is the point, when they just disappear one day? You can make cheese from goat milk, but you will most likely just buy hay for goats. You can buy books or other trinkets, but they are useless, usually don't even show anywhere in the house and are overpriced. You can buy shotgun shells, but the wolves will still kill your goats even when you shoot at them. You can sometimes buy billy-goat, but it will only lead into you making more cheese and buying more hay for it. Speaking of making cheese, it was just so boring. You just click a mouse three times when the game tells you and that's it. And don't even let me start on growing your own plants, because there was barely anything interesting in that.

As far as the story goes, it has interesting premise, but sadly the whole story takes place outside the area you can play and is told in like 10 short letters in total. Which isn't enough to make me invested in characters (which there are many) or events taking place in the world. And there was no conclusion. The game just ended out of nowhere and then crashed on desktop. At least the it has nice atmosphere that changes between days and fine aesthetic. But even here is a problem. While the game aims at being relaxing experience, I found myself in rush to do everything, since days were so short and since I had to click multiple times to get something done, I didn't feel relaxed at all. Quite the opposite actually.

What surprised me was an amount of bugs I encountered in 2.6 hours I've played this game. Talma sometimes stopped or decided to do something completely different than what I told her to do, dropped held item or just bugged in the ground. Goats were probably even worse. They loved fences and got stucked in them all the time.

So, this was first unpleasant experience this year. I only sticked with it until the end because I knew it was short. 4/10.

Now, I'm going back to dungeon crawlers and play Eye of the Beholder.

 

[Janp]

Eye of the Beholder
It's another dungeon crawler, so I had to create a party first. I had a room for 4 adventures, which meant I had to plan my characters carefully. I checked official cluebook for help and ended up with Jonathan - Male Human Paladin, Atti - Dwarven Male Fighter, Denise - Female Human Cleric/Thief and Ivy - Female Elven Cleric/Mage.

At first, I had a problem with the controls. Moving with arrows didn't really work, since my party didn't turn. I quickly found out that using numerical keyboard works just fine for moving, but since I'm playing on notebook, I have a hard time moving and performing actions with touchpad. So far it wasn't really a gamechanging problem, since I didn't really need to move during combat, but I heard there are enemies that require moving around them, which means I'll have to change the controls soon. I should also mention that I'm using an addon called All-Seeing Eye, which works as a minimap, so I don't have to draw my own maps or check cluebook all the time.

First two levels were easy. I only encountered small goblins and worms on level 1 and since there wasn't any puzzle to be solved, I quickly made it to the second level. That one was huge, but thanks to the All-Seeing Eye, I didn't get lost. But I have to say that bigger groups of skeletons really made me afraid of wiping, especially in one section, where you have to open several cells full of skeletons. I also got stucked here after exploring whole level, because I didn't notice a keyhole that would open the passage to the next level.

I'm enjoying this game a lot and will probably also try the next two installments.

 

[Janp]

While it's already May here, I did finish Eye of the Beholder few hours ago when it was still April, so I'll count it in the April games. Here's what I have to say about it:

Eye of the Beholder
Level 3 was the last sewer level and it was full of Kuo-toa, fish-like creatures that could cast the Lightning Bolt. I found out the hard way. I was stepping back, hoping to heal a little bit, when a freaking lighting bolt comes chasing me down. The gimmick on this floor was picking up gems and putting them in the right sockets. But I did clear this one pretty quickly.

Next level started a dwarven section and I found a wounded dwarf Taghor, who joined my party after I healed him. This level was annoying. It was full of spiders that could inflict poison on hit. I had to save after few steps and had to learn how to take care of them from distance, using only daggers and Denise's bow. Well, and magic, but I forgot about that all the way until level 10. And after spending an eternity clearing up this floor, I found 4 potions of poison healing. Great.

There was a dwarven camp on level 5. Their leader revealed a little bit of the game's story. Basically, dwarves wanted to find their ancestor's home under the city, but got ambushed by drows, who poisoned their king and kidnapped their prince. They ask me to help. The leader gave me a stone necklace that can activate a portal to level 7. There was also a dwarven cleric that can bring dead back to life. I revived one of the bones I picked up on previous levels and a thief joined my party.

Next, I cleared level 6 without any problems, got some Kenku eggs there and got to drow territory on level 7. I used Kenku eggs to bribe few drows, but I still had to fight through majority of them. They could paralyze my team with each hit, so I once again used Denise as my main way of dealing with them. I also got some cool spells like Fireball and Create Food on this level, which made huge difference. I was slowly running out of rations on this level, so Create Food was a livesaver. I also think it was this level, where I found a mage that told me more lore. The huge evil I'm looking for is a Beholder called Xanathar. It wants to take control of the city above and his agents were behind the attack on dwarves, because they possess the Wand of Silvias, which is the only artifact strong enough to seriously hurt Xanathar. The mage then attacked me and wiped my whole party, so I had to load up my game and dodge him next time.

I did skip majority of level 8 and 9, because I accidentally dropped down few holes all the way to level 10. Level 10 is the start of Xanathar's lair. This was a home to Mantis Warriors, who once again could paralyze my party, so I had to kill them from a safe distance. One of Xanathar's agents found me here and told me about a potion that could heal dwarven king. That's cool. Another good thing was that I found prince Keirgar and freed him. He joined my party, but since I can only have 6 adventures at the time, I had to drop one. I decided to drop the thief, since he didn't really do much so far.

I had to climb all the way back to level 5, which meant I could return to levels 8 and 9 and clear them. This was the time I cleared a prison on level 7, full of Skeletal Lords, which were powerful warriors, and opened up the room with portals to several different levels (basically room of fast travel). I got to dwarven camp, but prince was like: "You know what? I'll go with you and kill Xanathar."

Going back to level 10 and even 11, I encountered Mind Flayers there. I wiped few times on them, since they easily stun whole party and could take few hits. Denise once again shined against them. I solved the puzzle at this level and got the healing potion for the king. I returned back to level 5, saved the king and got the Wand of Silvias.

With it, I got to the final level of the game, which looked magnificent. Reminded me of WoW's Darkmoon Faire for some reason. There were few golems that I easily took care of and it didn't take me long to find Xanathar. He's almost unbeatable, but you can push it to a spike trap hidden in the throne room. After a short dialogue, he attacked my whole party and killed Ivonne. She was the only one who could use the wand. So I had to restart the encounter. Several times. But in the end, I got Xanathar right in front of the trap and pushed him there, finishing the game.

Overall thoughts
I wasn't sure what to expect when I started this game. I remember playing it when I was a kid, but I never got past the sewer levels. But I enjoyed this playthrough a lot. It has solid story for a D&D dungeon crawler, clever puzzles and fine difficulty curve. Each level feels unique and has its own gimmick like level 11, where I had to align buttons on a wall to open new sections of the level. There was a lot to explore and it was worth it. I got awesome equipment that was hidden behind fake walls or some hard puzzle/fight. Speaking of equipment, I have only one problem with it. There game or its manual doesn't have a table with weapon/armor stats, so I had to crosscheck with D&D player handbook to be sure I'm really using the best items I can. The same can be said about spells, but I'm kinda familiar with them, so I knew what to use. I also fought with controls for a few hours, before mapping my own, but it was still pretty clunky.

Overall I enjoyed it enough to try its sequel. 8/10.

This month, I'll probably only have time for two or three games, which will be Eye of the Beholder II, Game Along game and Siphon Filter, since I also want to start playing through PS1 era games.

 

[Janp]

Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon
No time to waste, let's dive into Eye of the Beholder II.

It starts right after the first game. The party is celebrating their victory over Xanathar at Waterdeep's Inn, when they get a message from one of the Lords of Waterdeep (who hired them in the first game), Khelben. He senses something sinister is going on in temple Darkmoon and sends party there to investigate.

I imported my party from previous game. I could only import 4 characters, so I chose my initial party. It makes sense that dwarven prince and his companion that joined my party last time would stay with their folks. My characters even kept their items.

The game starts with the party in the forest, just outside Darkmoon. There were few wolves, but I was able to beat them with no problems with my magical weapons. When I was exploring, I noticed characters talk and comment on their surroundings. Like Denise comments on a hidden passages and traps since she is thief, Ivy reacts to enchanted items since she is mage and so on... I found a graveyard and when I attempted to dig one of the graves, Jonathan said he will leave if I do it.

There is more dialogue in the game. I found an old lady in the forest, who helped me get to the Darkmoon. Inside the temple were two weird clerics, but they didn't attack me. I found a female warrior inside, who was looking for her sister that got lost in the forest. She left before I could help her tho. When I tried to explore the temple more, clerics stopped me and told me I can't go anywhere except for the first chamber. Well, since there was no way in continuing, I had to fight and kill the two. Ivy then found a magical seal on the wall that will be probably important later.

I went in the lower floors of temple and found myself in the catacombs. First set of guards there used throwing daggers and it caught me completely unprepared. After a while, I found a locked up thief and released him. He wanted to join my party and I let him. But when I was resting, he took some of my items and run away. He took pretty good stuff, so I decided to load the game up and released him, but did not let him join my party. I found a magical horn on this level with instructions to blow it and 3 more horns in front of the magical seal above. So the quest for now is clear.

Second floor of catacombs was hard. It was full of skeletal lords acompanied by Darkmoon clerics that could use Hold Person spell. That's the spell that will paralyze the party. Skeletal lords were strong opponents last time, so I was glad I had my equipment from the first game. There was even a room where about 12 skeletal lords and 8 clerics attacked me at once. Ivy and Denise shined during this encounter, since they could attack from safe distance and heal my party at the same time.

I found another bunch of prisoners in this floor. One of them, female warrior, joined my party. And she was useful. She was about 2 levels stronger than my party and could tank like crazy. And it really helped on the third floor. Once I got there, the door shut behind me. And when I tried to rest, my party only got nightmares about a dragon. So I couldn't fully heal for free or regain my spells. And this floor introduced gargoyles, who not only could take a few hits, but also hit hard and usually were placed in such places that I got attacked by multiple gargoyles from multiple directions at once. And they loved to respawn. This floor was one huge struggle. But I made it without casualties, found the last 2 horns and got back to the first floor of the temple.

 

[Janp]

Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon
I decided to check up the upper floor of the temple before using all 4 horns to unlock new passage. And it was priest quarters. And it was full of enemies. I could barely move few tiles before being attacked by a group of priests. And they were respawning like crazy, so had to fight all the time and had no time to heal. I found a magical mouth that would only let me pass, if I had a mark of Darkmoon. So this is not the right way for now. I also found the remains of Khelben's scout Amber. She's thief/mage, which means she can not only use bow, but she also has some pretty cool and powerful spells. Perfect member for my group.

I returned back to the 1st level and finally unlocked the magical seal. This part of the temple is called Silver Tower. 1st floor is full of mantis warriors and they are as annoying as in the first game. Their weapons can stun my warriors, but luckily I had Denise and Amber to take care of them. After clearing their breeding grounds, I got to the wasp nest.

At this point in real life, I was chatting with my few of my friends on Discord and we found out we are all playing old-school RPG games. One of them played Might & Magic 9 and the other one played Wizardry 8. We started sharing screenshots, so I figure out I could also post some of them here.

As you can probably see, there were way too many wasps. Getting through this part was hard. I even wiped here twice, because those Beedrill on steroids trapped me in a corner.

2nd floor of Silver Tower had pretty cool puzzle. There were magical mouths that told me various riddles to solve. I had to feed them specific items like potions, rocks, magical swords and so on... Also enemies on this floor were flying snakes, which could poison my party, but were pretty easy to kill. Oh and I encountered the main villain of this game, Dran Draggore. But he didn't fight the party right now. He instead trapped them on the 3rd floor.

I had no personal reason to kill Dran, but then I found out what monsters I'll have to face on this floor...

Yeah, beholders are back. And I wiped so many times on every single one of them. Especially their death spell was annoying. I had no way to revive my party members, so I had to restart every time I got hit by this spell.

There were some pretty funny encounters with beholders, like this:

I somehow made it back to the pedestal with the imprint of a hand, which burned a mark of Darkmoon in my character's hand. But it let me get back to the first floor of the temple.

I got to the magical mouth that required the mark and got to the Azure Tower. 1st floor had no enemies, so I got quickly past it. 2nd floor had basilisks, which could turn my characters to stone. Poor Antti got turned twice. It was also long and hard to navigate level. I got lost multiple times and spent way too long on figuring some teleporting puzzles. But in the end, I even cleared the special trial, where I had to beat a greater daemon without magic.

And that's all for now. I barely made it on the 3rd floor. I have a bad feeling about the difficulty in the upper floors.

 

[Janp]

Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon
Third floor of the Silver Tower was nightmare. It was full of greater daemons and they were usually placed in such positions that I got attacked by multiple ones at the same time. After a while, I got the puzzle I feel so embarrassed failing multiple times.

It starts like this. Khelben contacs the party and sends them magic amulet that should protect them from Dran's magic. All they have to do is to die and they would be resurrected and protected by the amulet. I went to the next room and let daemons kill me. And the amulet didn't work. I tried it again, this time putting the amulet in Denise hand. And it didn't work. I searched the internet to see how to use the amulet, only to find out this whole amulet is just a scam set up by Dran.

So I had to fight those deamons after all. I got to the next floor and it had a little bit weaker enemies. Ghosts and medusas, who could petrify my party, but were also pretty squishy, so I could kill them quickly.

Getting past that part, I was greeted by moving floor. I had to time my movement right and fell down way too many times. And after that, there was one of the worse puzzles in the game. I had to lure medusas on 3 specific spots and stun them for a long enough for me to get through the newly opened door. Phew, that was awful.

I made it after many tries, only to be trapped by Dran and sent down again. I ended up in Frost Giant Prison. And I quickly encountered frost giants. They were able to hit my whole party. This is how my party looked like after 2 hits:

At least they couldn't round me in a corner, since this was one long tunnel. And they rewarded me with good chunk of XP. So I went out of my way to kill everything single one of them. And then I encountered their king... Poor giants :(

Let's skip all the way to the end, since nothing interesting happened in Crimson Tower, which was the final dungeon. There were mages and hellhounds. Mages were easier version of Dran, since they both used powerful magic. I mastered my dodging and attacking from more than one direction on them, and got to Dran. I like how his story is tied to the previous game. It's literally at the end of the game, but at least it's something.

Battle with Dran was hard. He loved hitting me straight in the face with his magic, but his melee attacks weren't that strong. In the end, it was one of the daggers I picked up in the first game that killed him. I was so happy to see him down...

But it was only the 1st phase. Look at my team! Once Dran transformed, I had to run away and heal. This phase was insane. He was fast, so I couldn't really walk around him, and his fire attacks were now even stronger and hit the whole party. Funnily enough, I delivered the final blow with my last dagger from the first game.

And with that, the game was over. There was a short cutscene, where Khelben saved the party once again and he and his mages destroyed Darkmoon.

Overall thoughts
This game was great. It took everything great about the first game and made it even better. And harder. I wiped all the time. But I also had more fun, since there were new types of enemies, new weapons and cool puzzles. I don't think there isn't much I could say about this game that wasn't already said about the first one. This game is literally the first game, but with better mechanics and story. But with the very same problems like weird controls. 8.5/10.

Next up, I'll either start Syphon Filter, Eye of the Beholder III or Yo-kai Watch, since I recently got back to the series and now want to replay the first game.

 

[Janp]

Yo-kai Watch
Big disclaimer: I think I'll make fun of GameFreak and the quality of Pokémon games while playing Yo-kai Watch, since I find it highly suspicious that Pokémon games started having features way too similar to Yo-kai Watch's acclaimed features only after Yo-kai Watch got released. But to be fair, there are some things that Yo-kai Watch got inspired in by Pokémon...

Anyway, let's dive to the game. It starts simple. Nate, the main character, is hanging out with his friends. One of them is teasing him about a super rare bug he got, so Nate decides to catch even rarer bug. He picks up his bug net at home and goes on a hunt. He eventually ends up in the forest just outside the town Springdale and finds a mysterious machine.

Did I mention Nate has more than one expression?

You can't hear it, but this game's cutscenes are also fully voiced.

And so Nate meets a Yo-kai named Whisper, who introduce him to the world of Yo-kai. Yo-kai are based on spirits in Japanese folklore. In this game, they have an ability to influence someone's emotions or skills, like making them angry, lucky, strong and so on.

He gives Nate the Yo-kai Watch, that let's Nate see Yo-kai.

And Nate accidentally wakes up Yo-kai Buhu, who now wants to battle. This Yo-kai makes others feel depressed and can also inflict bad luck, usually by creating the false impression that something good will happen, only for a mishap to ruin it soon after. That's not really a Yo-kai you would keep on your side.

Luckily, one of the bugs Nate caught earlier turned out to be Yo-kai Cadin, a samurai cicada.

Soultimate move... Special powerful attack with unique animation. There are various types of Soultimate moves. Ones that inflict huge damage to one enemy, ones with AoE effect, ones that will heal or buff the party, ones that will debuff enemies... Where have I seen this? Cadin's Soultimate move is Cicada Cut, which inflicts damage to all enemies. It's pretty useful move at the start of the game, since it can KO all 3 enemies at once.

And with Buhu defeated, it decides to be Nate's friend. Each Yo-kai can give a human their medaillon as a token of their friendship. To make it simple, medaillon = Poké Ball, which means I can make my own team of 6 Yo-kai. The battle system is usually 3v3 with automatic attacks, so it's a good idea to always have 6 Yo-kai on hand.

And that's the first chapter done. The second one starts with Nate's parents are arguing and Whisper reveals it's another Yo-kai's doing.

Dismeralda is rank D Yo-kai, which is one rank better than both Buhu and Cadin, so she easily beat them both. Each Yo-kai has a rank, which basically means how strong their are. Tihat also means that I'll be rotating my team as I get stronger Yo-kai, since the game and especially post-game can get hard with just rank E or D Yo-kai. Well, there are post-game fights that are hard even with rank S Yo-kai, but we'll get to that.

Whisper suggest getting more Yo-kai friends to help. I got Coughkoff, Noway and Dimmy, all rank E, since my Yo-kai Watch can only find rank E Yo-kai in the wild.

Whisper then senses a strong aura, so we went to investigate. It belongs to the Yo-kai called Jibanyan. He is the Pikachu of Yo-kai Watch. So be prepared to see a lot of "-nyan" Yo-kai. Some are cool and useful, some are not. Jibanyan used to be regular cat, but then got hit by a truck. His former owner said he's lame because of that, so now he's training on the street to be strong enough to take on a whole truck.

Some Yo-kai stole photo of his owner, so we helped him and he helped us with Dismeralda. I also befriended Negatibuzz while getting the photo back. Oh and I also meet a new character, Det. Holdit, who tasks Nate with finding a wanted Yo-kai criminals. That's a cool and rewarding side quest, so I'll be finishing it later.

Dismeralda fight was long, pretty much mini-boss fight to prepare the player for what is coming. And she joined my party after that. Her husband Happierre made Nate's parents happy again, which means this story arc is finished. And that's the end of chapter 2.

 

[Janp]

Yo-kai Watch

Chapter 3 opens up new areas of Springdale. Which means I could go back to the mysterious machine, where I found Whisper and could get more Yo-kai friends. And some pretty good. Like rank A and S good.

I also finished few side quests and got even more rank E Yo-kai. My Yo-kai Watch can only reveal rank E Yo-kai in the wild, but can still reveal rank D and above during the story or on special ocassion. And there is a special rank S Yo-kai that can be obtained by fulfilling easy requirements this early in the game. By crossing the street 5 times on a crosswalk, while the signal light is red, Snartle will attack me. But here's the twist. While Snartle is strong, his stats are influenced by the rank of my Yo-kai Watch, making him relatively weak at rank E. My party of rank E/D Yo-kai on level 6 was able to take down half of his HP before wiping.

So I knew I would be able to beat him, but needed either to grind more or get stronger Yo-kai. And here comes the mysterious machine. It's called Crank-a-kai and I can put a special coin inside to get a chance at pulling out a rare rank A or S Yo-kai. I got 6-7 pieces of each coin just by talking with people around the Springdale, so I was set to have some quality gacha time. I get 3 chances each day. And the Snartle hunt took me more than a week, so you can imagine how many pulls I got.

And I got so lucky to get one of the rarest and strongest Yo-kai in the game on my 3rd try. Rank S Restoration-attribute Shadow Venoct. Regular Venoct is recurring character in the story and will join my team at the end of game and Shadow Venoct is his shadow. And cool Yo-kai that can both hit and heal hard. I also got Tunatic, which is Fire-attribute rank A fish, that I used on my first playthrough, so I'm not sure I want to use it again this time.

I also got some rank D and A Yo-kai, as well as food items, so my team after all those pulls looked great. This team could beat Snartle in a heartbeat.

But it took me several days to get him. Snartle has the lowest "catch" rate and I was about to give up for now and return next chapter, since Snartle can be persuated better by giving him a meat and that's one of few items that can't be obtained by any normal means at this point. But there are daily quests and one of them rewards the best meat in the game and it just happened to be active few days ago. It took me another few days of grinding, but I got Snartle.

I also returned back to Crank-a-kai each day and got another bunch of rare rank S Yo-kai and few rank A and B.

I then remember there used to be passwords that would give me more coins and other items, so I looked them up and spent about 30 minutes just writing them in the game. I got some great items that can be equip to my Yo-kai to make them even stronger. Maybe a little bit too much powerful. But I got more coins to use at Crank-a-kai and some post-game-only fusion items, meaning I'll be able to get more powerful Yo-kai early.

So this is my team now.

Now, let's get back to Pokémon banter... EXP booster? In 2013? And I was told SwSh are revolutionary games because they added them.

And while this is hard to see, you can move in 360°. Once again, this is so weird for 2013 game, since everyone knows Pokémon did it first. In 2016. And there is even free camera movement. Even Switch doesn't have enough power for that and it can only be utilized in special areas. Wild.

But let's get back to the story. We meet up with Kate and she tells us about she and her friend having a nasty argument and that she wants to make things right. Whisper senses it's Yo-kai doing once again and it doesn't take long for us to find Tattletell. She posses Nate and likes his secrets, so she join us.

Tattletell mentions suspicious man doing suspicious stuff around the town, so it's time to investigate. The writing here is top notch.

The suspicious man is actually Yo-kai Tengloom. He and his companions are trying to break 4 seals around the city. It's not revealed what they do for now, but we have to stop them.

And it all leads to the first boss fight. It's pretty simple. Slimander has 3 mouths, in which he hides his only eye. He only takes damage by hitting the eye, so the whole bossfight was about hitting mouths enough for them to open and then focus on the eye. Most of my Yo-kai had AoE attacks, which meant it was quick fight.

I find it funny that regular Venoct shows up and saves us in a cutscene. Especially since I had his stronger version on my team, alongside bunch of Rank S Yo-kai.

 

[Janp]

Yokai-Watch

Time for another chapter. Whisper tells us about a shop that can upgrade our Yo-kai Watch, so we go there.

The owner asked us to get him few items, including his lucky underwear.

But before going for them, we had to visit 3 different places and find cogs and screws, including a abandoned mansion full of Yo-kai, where we were able to get Baku, which is based on the same yokai as Drowzee. Baku allows us to stay awake, meaning we can explore the town during the night.

But night adventures also brings up new dangers. An oni can appear and chase Nate down to battle. But oni are one of the hardest enemies, meaning I can't do anything aside from wiping on them.

Getting past the oni, I got to hot springs to get the underwear. But... There is yet another Yo-kai in the springs and he's wearing those wanted underwear. Sproink is 2nd boss and his phases are almost as easy as during Slimamander fight. First, he protects his face or belly with a wooden tub, meaning he takes less damage in those parts. After enough hits, he is stunned and both parts are fully revealed. But hitting them will slowly charge Sproink's Soultimate move. Bad thing was that my Yo-kai were strong enough to fully charge his ultimate attack with few hits, good thing was that they got barely scratched by the attack.

Beating Sproink, I'm able to get rank D Yo-kai Watch, meaning I can get even more Yo-kai. I sidetracked a little bit, hunt some Yo-kai down and cleared few side quests at this point, which probably left me a little bit overleveled for the next chapters. I also unlocked fusing, which is nice way to get rank A Yo-kai by fusing 2 rank E/D/C Yo-kai together or fusing rank E/D Yo-kai with special item.

We are helping another of Nate's friend in the next chapter. He lost his mother's ring in a pond, while he was fishing. Yeah, those premises are going crazier and crazier.

To find it, we tracked down a water-based Yo-kai Walkappa and befriended it after feeding it 3 carps.

Swimming in the pond is forbidden by the king of the pond SV Snaggerjag, which means it's time for another bossfight. And this one was quite easy. Snaggerjag summons fish to help him, but ultimately, he's extremely vulnerable to AoE attacks.

Yeah, this battle was done before I could even use my final Soultimate move. Getting and returning the ring ended this chapter.

Next chapter unlocked another part of the town and side quest to upgrade my Yo-kai Watch to rank C. I didn't do it this chapter, just because it requires beating 3 Yo-kai in the new part of town and this chapter has special instance of that part, plus I am put on a strict timer.

This chapter is nice change of pace. Nate's dad forgot his work related documents after being possessed by a Yo-kai Wazzat. So it's up to Nate to return it. After getting the documents at a train station, we take a train to the Downtown Springdale to deliver them before Nate's dad need them for a presentation. But this area is infested by Wazzat, meaning we have to carefully sneak past them. Like I said, it was nice change.

And I also befriended one Wazzat by the end.

 

[Janp]

Syphon Filter
I finally got around to finish this game. And while I enjoyed it, I had to really talk myself into continue playing it. It's not a bad game, but some of the mechanics didn't age well. The whole shooting system is based on two bars - one shows how well the enemy sees you and the other one how well you see the enemy. But you both could stand right next to each other and both bars wouldn't be even at half. Which resulted in some pretty comical situations and I also didn't lose a single HP or armor for half of the game.

Another example of the "bad" mechanic were enemy spawns. They were set to trigger once you reach certain area of the level, which resulted into me running in the halfway and suddenly having an enemy right in front of me out of thin air. It was fine during action passages, but awful as hell during stealth passages, since enemies just appeared out of nowhere and every time they saw me, I was sent back to the start of the level.

Which reminds me of another thing. Some level objectives were vague or didn't tell you much about what you are suppose to do and the game will randomly kill you, if you don't clear the objective it wants you to complete. And so I got stucked in one of the first missions, because I was suppose to let bomb defuser in the destroyed metro station, so they can defuse the bomb. I found a stucked door that could be related to this objective quickly, but had no way of opening them. And after way too many tries, I was randomly picked C4 to open them. There was no indication there is an item on the floor and I was running around it all the time, only actually picking it up by random button press. I'm all in for less hand-holding in the games, but this was ridiculously bad.

Well, now let's talk about positives, since I got carried away in the last paragraphs a little bit. The maps are great. They have enough room to explore and get special weapons, while giving clear indications where are you suppose to go. I loved most locations the game had to offer, especially the museum and destroyed metro station. Graphics are also nice to look at, especially for PS1 game. The story was captivating and reminded me of Pierce Brosnan era of James Bond.

My favourite parts were stealth missions. Sadly, they always resulted in action shoot out in the end. Bossfights were also nicely done and required some degree of thinking to get through them.

Overall, I with all the negatives I mentioned up earlier, I still think this game is one of the best PS1 game I've ever played. 7/10.

 

[Janp]

Yokai-Watch
Okay, this update is cursed. Not only I lost all the images, but this is also 2nd time I'm writing this because of my complete inability to save posts before leaving PC.

So, let's make this one short and quick. There are few story missions that are basically: Dungeon A is haunted, you go there, find Yo-kai X that will join you, beat boss Yo-kai Y. There locations like haunted hospital or school, where you investigate 7 mysteries and can catch Drifloon or Gastly... No wait, that's a different game. But to be honest, school has pretty cool looking Yo-kai, so I spent some time in there, befriending them.

Actually, after the very next mission, that was all about investigating construction site, I was able to upgrade my Watch to rank A and decided to get as many Yo-kai as I can before I get bored. And with literally whole map revealed, I had plenty of locations to go through. I even unlocked legendary Yo-kai Shogunyan. Legendaries require you to get 8 specific Yo-kai to unlock and Shogunyan is one of the easiest legendary to get, since it needs only Yo-kai you befriend as part of the story or that are rank E. I also finished bunch of sidequests and overall enjoyed the game and exploration a lot.

Finally, after eating my cake, I was ready for a final chapter of the game. Yo-kai McKraken, who is current leader of Yo-kai, wants to attack the human world, so it's up to us to save the day. To stop the invasion, we have to go to the Yo-kai World, and this is really cool dimension with lots of different themes, enough room for exploration and bunch of new Yo-kai to catch. Basically what everyone expected from gen VII's Ultra Space.

Sadly, it's not accessible right now, since we have to stop McKraken. He has two phases, that are separated by rematch with Slimamander. He is draining HP and Soultimate meter out of Yo-kai in the first phase. He's also more defensive in this phase, even protecting himself with tentacles, while charging his own Soultimate move.

Second phase is incredibly annoying. He doesn't hurt much, but he is inflicting debuffs like crazy, making it almost impossible to unleash Soultimate moves. But I was able to beat him after a while. I think having rank S and legendary Yo-kai helped a little bit. Oh and I befriended regular Venoct right before facing McKraken, but I haven't used it, since I had better Yo-kai.

With that, McKraken is stopped and Whisper seals the passage between Yo-kai world and regular world. But only for like 5 minutes, since there is still stuff to do in the post-game.

Overall thoughts
Well, this is one of the best monster catching game I've played and nice change from playing Pokémon games all the time. It's biggest strength is exploring Springdale and looking for new Yo-kai. Locations were interesting enough to explore them (and most of them had different set of Yo-kai in day and night). But befriending Yo-kai is one of the worst things in the game. They have a small chance to become your friends and you can increase it only a little bit by feeding them their favourite food. It's frustrating especially on "one encounter per day" Yo-kai. Befriending stronger Yo-kai as you upgrade your Watch is also hindered useless by Crank-a-kai, where you can get strong rank S Yo-kai at he start of the game and keep them until the end of the game. There are few Yo-kai that have whole sidestoryline to get them tho, and those are usually fun to do.

The story is mediocre and is usually just a tool to get more Yo-kai. Whisper is cool character, but otherwise there isn't really anyone that interesting. Good think there is great soundtrack to compensate for this. Overall, I would take this franchise over Pokémon all the time. 8/10.

So, what is the next game? I bought Switch, so I will be playing some games there. Then I'll play Tsioque, an old-school point and click adventure and will probably play 911 Operator for this month's Game Along.

 

[Janp]

Tsioque
Tsioque is an old-school point and click adventure that takes everything I loved about this genre back in early 2000s and brings it to modern era. You play as a little princess Tsioque, whose mother left the castle to fight a pheonix. An evil mage took over the castle and took Tsioque as prisoner.

And the game kicked my ass right at the beginning, where I got stucked literally on the first puzzle. But the game wasn't that hard after that point. I got stucked few more times, usually in a part, where the game opened up more locations at once and you had to figure out what to do in each location, but I still beat the game under 3 hours.

The graphics was amazing. The whole game is hand-animated and I think that, in combination with the UI and puzzles, is exactly what makes this game feel so nostalgic. The story is fine and I loved the twist by the end. The music and voice acting were surprisingly nice for such a small title.

Overall, it's great game with not that many flaws. Some of the time-based puzzles were usually trial and error, since there were several options for action, but only one (and sometimes not the obvious one) was right. I also found myself backtracking a lot in the final section. There was one part, where I had to go between two rooms like 5 times, because I always got one item in the first room, used it in the second room, got another item, had to use it in th first room, where I got yet another item to use in the second room and so on... But those are basically my only complains. 8.5/10.

Next, I'll be playing 911 Operator and I also advanced with CTR, FIFA and Monster Hunter: Rise single player campaings, but I don't think I'll won't dedicate them much space here like I did with Yo-kai Watch or Eye Of The Beholder, since there isn't much to talk about.