Finished Ys X: Nordics!

Not as good as Ys 8, but a massive improvement over Ys 9. Karja is a fantastic character, probably my favorite Ys heroine alongside Dana, and her sibling-like relationship with Adol was great. I know the odds are low but I'm really hoping we'll have her show up again in a future entry.

The new engine was a huge improvement for Switch players, unlike the previous game there was no point in this one where I considered performance a problem. But I do have a lot of criticism for the "ocean exploration" part of the game - not only there's annoying gameplay issues with the speed and clunkiness of the boat, but it also looks very dated visually.

But overall this was a great game that I can definitely recommend despite some things that could have used a bit more polish.

Oh, and since @slimerancher@lemmy.world asked about it: I got the "all sidequests" achivement by simply exploring the whole map and paying attention to the quest markers.

Playing If My Heart Had Wings!

Picked up this VN from my backlog as my next main game. It's a slice-of-life story about a group of friends who decide to revive their school's "Soaring Club" and try to build a glider and go flying.

Having a main heroine in a wheelchair is interesting, and I really like how the MC is trying to break some of the preconceptions other cast members have about her disability. Another small detail I like is the appearance of the city, a nice mix of old-school buildings like the dorm the MC lives with more modern, maybe even slightly futuristic buildings in the downtown parts.

Overall this was a good start and I'm interested in seeing where this one goes.

Playing Qualia: The Path of Promise!

I had this one in my wishlist for a while, but I was unsure if I wanted to pick it up or not. I'm a massive sci-fi fun and can enjoy almost anything with these themes, but most images you'll find for this game is of a big-boobs maid android, which made me suspect the sci-fi parts would be just a thin background. But in the end a sale combined with some small but promising spoilers I read convinced me to give it a shot.

I don't usually play two VNs in parallel, but this one is supposed to be a fairly short kinetic VN so I can probably make it work.

Playing Vampire Survivors!

Still playing this as a side-game, and still unlocking more weapons/stages/characters.

It's a really fun and fast-paced battle system, and feels a lot closer to a traditional fighting game than most Tales games do. It rewards playing smart, like chaining attacks or dodging at the perfect timing instead just spamming your strongest skills.

Also, some characters have rather unique playstyles that are a blast to play with. Like Pascal who mixes longe-rarge attacks with a gun with close-range magic, with most of her spells being AOEs centered around her. She's a complete glass cannon, but can dish crazy damage if played correctly.

Story is weak/generic, but the battle gameplay is fantastic, one of my favorites in the whole series.

I really like the cast as well, but opinions are more split on that.

There's definitely some sidequests that are missable, though those are usually (always?) marked in the map.

Playing Ys X: Nordics!

Boat is much faster now and exploring the ocean is finally fun. Taking a while to progress the story because I've been trying to get 100% exploration in each area before moving to the next one.

I've reached Chapter 9 and I think I'm getting close to the end, plot has started moving faster and looks like there's only one (rather large) ocean area left to explore.

Playing Vampire Survivors!

Still playing this as a side-game. Not much to add, still unlocking new weapons/stages/characters.

Did no one here get Mario + Luigi Brothership?

Not yet, but with a holiday today I'm probably finishing Ys X and I'm thinking of buying that one as my next game.

How was Ys IX’s performance?

Been a long time since I finished the game, but from what I recall it's "definitely playable, but has issues".

Most areas including dungeons run fairly well with a stable framerante, but there's a lot of fluctuation when exploring the main "hub" which is this huge open-world city. Since you don't do a lot of fighting in the city this doesn't hurt gameplay too much, but it's definitely annoying.

But there are some "tower defense" stages similar to Ys 8, and and performance can tank hard there. It doesn't happen very often, and usually only lasts a few seconds, but it's another thing to keep in mind.

Hope they fix the sea exploration, but the game has been out in Japan for a while, so I doubt there would be any changes to gameplay now.

They probably expect you to stick to the main story for the early parts of the game and go exploring the map later, when you have enough boat upgrades to make it less frustrating... but my OCD doesn't let me progress without checking every corner of the map first. 😅

Finished My Girlfriend is a Mermaid!?!

Of the three VNs I played from COSEN this is definitely the weakest. It's not terrible, but also doesn't have any particularly strong or memorable points.

It was also another fairly obscure game with no english-language guides, so I once again ended up writing one myself so others will be spared the trouble of going through korean guides using Google Translate to find out how to unlock all endings. 😅

Playing Ys X: Nordics!

So far this game is great. It's cool to see an adventure set early the Ys chronology (this one takes place right after Ys 2), and I'm loving Karja's relationship with Adol, they're pushing towards a more sibling-like relationship instead of a romantic one and it works really well with the themes of the game.

The combat is fun and fast-paced, with two "styles" - solo and duo. The former gives you more movement and evasion, while the latter has the two characters working together to block strong attacks and dish serious damage. However, I feel the balancing between modes is kinda off, there's almost no reason to use solo mode on bosses as duo mode auto-blocks most of their attacks and makes those battle a breeze. Though solo is still quite useful while exploring or fighting a lot of enemies.

Speaking of exploration, the overworld of the game is a large ocean you transverse with a ship, with several islands you can explore. Exploration on foot is really fun, even more after you unlock some skills like the grappling hook and the hoverboard. However, the ocean part is easily the worst part of the game, and for a very simple reason: The boat is way too slow! If there's one thing I want from a patch to this game is a drastic improvement of the initial speed, or at least a much faster recharge for the ability to "ride the wind" that gives you a short speed up. This does improve as you get some boat upgrades, but it's still a major oversight in a game as fast-paced as this one.

Performance on Switch is a huge improvement over Ys 9. I think this is running on the same engine as Trails through Daybreak, and framerate is very stable without any significant hiccups so far. The only issue I have is that some areas have significant object and texture pop-in, which can be distracting but that doesn't cause any gameplay issues.

Playing Vampire Survivors!

Still playing this as a side-game. Not much to add to the, still unlocking new weapons/stages/characters.

MTG and D&D are both amazing games owned by a horrible company.

Oooh, what happened with Magic the Gathering?

Wizards of the Coast (the game manufacturer) announced they are going hard into "Universes Beyond" sets, which are based on 3rd party IP like LOTR, Final Fantasy or Marvel. They have been releasing a few of these in recent years, but next year that'll be half of their product line.

This is rather controversial for several reasons:

• A lot of players dislike this mish-mash of franchises, and see it a loss of identity of the game. This comic from 2020 has been reposted non-stop during the week as a prediction of the future of MTG.
• So far these sets have been more expensive, likely due to the IP licensing costs.
• They also announced a change where all competitive formats will include those sets, removing the option to play without them.

There's a lot of discussion going on if this is just the cynical attempt at short-term cash grab sacrificing the long-term health of the game, or if this new focus will help increasing the playerbase.

And that adds to a few other problems that are already plaguing the game.

• Product and wallet burnout: They doubled the amount of new cards being released in the last ~4 years making it very hard to keep up. And they announced even more sets in 2025 so this will probably continue keep getting worse.
• Power creep: This is something that always existed in the game, but also sped up a lot recently. There's also concerns that they'll push cards too hard to ensure these "Universes Beyond" sets sell - as an example we had a LOTR set last year and "The One Ring" was an game-warping card. Even worse, 18 months later it hasn't been banned and lot of people are questioning if this is going to be the trend with these sets.

For a lot of people this was the breaking point to drop out of the game, or change the way they interact with it. I'm moving away from competitive play for good, and will only play unnoficial "nostalgia" formats based on the game's past like Premodern (1995-2003) or 2015 Modern (2003-2015) where I can just stick to old decks and ignore all new releases.

TL;DR: "Magic the Gathering" is now "Fortnite the Gathering", and a lot of people are pissed.

Slow week. A lot of drama on another of my hobbies (Magic the Gathering), and I spent quite a bit of time putting in action a plan I had in my mind for a while to change how I interact with that game.

Busy weekend too so it's unlikely I'll be able to play a lot, but I really want to finish my current VN ASAP so I can start Ys X.

Playing My Girlfriend is a Mermaid!?!

Very minor progress this week.

Playing Vampire Survivors!

Played this during the NSO Trial and loved it, it's stupidly addictive and a great game to play in short bursts. Focused on unlocking more characters and items right now.

My MTG money is now getting funneled into more Nintendo Switch games.

I have a Cube which will never contain UB cards, and I'm now in the process of converting all my existing decks for different formats into a "Modern Pre-Horizons" Battle Box since that was my favorite format ever.

Will probably spend some money in this, but after that I'll never upgrade those decks again, and with more focus on UB there will be even less things I care about to put on the Cube.

This way I can keep good memories from those times, have ways to play the game with friends, and never again bother with WOTC's bullshit.

Unfortunately I think this is too little too late. Format was starting to recover but it got two big kicks to the nuts in the last few weeks:

• No Pioneer RCQ season next year is going to hurt a lot Pioneer competitive play,
• Yesterday's announcement is probably going to do some damage to the playerbase, most players I know were into at least partially to avoid UB sets. The likelihood that more sets per year with half of them being UB is going to increase deck prices is going to be another issue for player retention.

One lesson from recent years is that the slope is always slippery with WOTC.

Definitely a little discouraging. I mean it’s fine for fun, but they should just continue to build off their own universe.

I don't expect Magic universe to continue existing after a few more years.

Fortunately I had mostly dropped of competitive play already (though I was considering going back because Pioneer looks good right now), this announcement just pushes me even harder on other hobbies.

Crossover sets like Marvel, Final Fantasy or Assassin's Creed.

A lot of people dislike those sets, but so far you could ignore them depending on the format you played. From now onwards it'll likely be impossible to stay away from those if you want to play competitively.

Besides the overall dislike of this new "Fortnite the Gathering" world, there's also concerns of pricing, these sets so far have been more expensive than regular sets, and also even more product burnout - we're up to 6 major sets/year from the 4 we used to have not too long ago.

A lot of people rank Engage as one of the best in the series on gameplay. I think the only recent game that gets as much praise in that aspect is Fates Conquest.

Finished Harvestella!

I'll stand by what I said last week - this is a very flawed game with major questionable design decisions and technical problems, but it also has a ton of good things including great story, worldbuilding and OST. Even the "farming" part also ended up being way more fun than I expected.

It's hard to recommend this game because not everyone will be able to tolerate those flaws, but there is a very shiny gem hiding behing those problems.

Playing My Girlfriend is a Mermaid!?!

I liked The Fox Awaits Me and its sequels quite a bit, so I decided to track down a copy of this older VN from the same developer.

So far it's kinda mid. :/ The main draw for me in VNs are the characters and dialogue, but the main heroine is way too shy and quiet, constantly speaking in brief sentences, and despite the MC being prone to long monologues he somehow managed to stay uninteresting so far.

But I'm still early in the game, so let's hope it improves.

Mostly physical. I do pick up a decent amount of digital games, but either they are cheaper indie games or were bought with a heavy discount.

It's extremely hard for me to pick up a $60+ game digitally.

Playing Harvestella!

On my previous post I mentioned a lot of problems with this game, and while I still think all of those are valid criticisms the game has grown a lot on me. This is partially due to the game opening up significanty during Chapter 3, with plenty of new characters (which also means more jobs for you to experiment with), more cities, more quests, and a ton of things to do in the farm.

But the main draw of the game for me has been the the worldbuilding and the story. While the game's world is not that big, there's a lot of care in making each region feel unique and alive, I love how many sidequests are connected forming a small storyline for a specific NPC. The main plot also has some surprising twists that are keeping me hooked, plus the OST is amazing, Go Shiina did a fantastic job once again.

As play this I keep thinking of the original Nier for the PS3/360 - both are game with deep flaws, hard to recommend blindly, but that also offer a great payoff if you can get past those flaws.