Finished Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed.
Apparently I was near the very end when I posted last week, I was expecting some kind of warning before point of no return, but they didn’t mention it. It’s possible they mentioned it when giving me the quest but I forgot about that.
Overall, really enjoyed the game, but it didn’t provide much new information about the worlds, or what happened to all the characters from first two games, though there were implied hints. I wanted more details, but as it is, even without playing it, I don’t think it would have made too much of a difference.
Apparently, there’s a hint in the end / post credit scene, that possibly connects it with Xenogear saga or Xenoblade Chronicles X, I haven’t played either so no idea, just saw it when trying to see what people thought of the ending. I think the story ended well enough, they should move to something new, but I trust the devs.
Played Guns, Gore, and Cannoli, it’s a side scrolling run and gun (like beat 'em up, but with guns), though I played it more like walk and gun.
Setting is 1920 Mafia in Zombie apocalypse, voice acting is nice, and gameplay is fun. Finished it in 2-3 days. There’s a sequel out too, where they have apparently improved a few things. Will definitely try it out (eventually).
Played quite a bit of Rise of the Tomb Raider, but didn’t make much progress as I was focusing on side content. Did the Baba Yaga DLC content (part of 20th anniversary version on PS), also explored some optional tombs and did optional side quests.
Going to start Medieval Dynasty on PS5, with a friend this weekend. I have always wanted to play some crafting / survival game, and one of my friends was interested in playing this too, and since it’s on sale right now, we decided to get it and give it a try.
No idea if I’ll actually enjoy this or not though, on paper (and videos) it looks good, so, let’s see.
Would I play this for next 3 months? or never touch it again after this weekend? Tune in next week, to find out!
So, what about all you? What have you been playing?
Put my Tales of Graces f replay on the backburner to focus on other games. Will still go through it slowly.
Playing Fantasian Neo Dimension!
Quite a lot of progress in this one. And now I can see why the second half of the game is highly divisive.
It goes from a linear story to a more open-ended game, throwing you back into the world with only 3 characters and vaguely defined goals of “go explore, find your missing friends, defeat the bad guy”. Story beats gets faily sparse with a huge focus on exploration and combat. Bosses get a huge spike in difficulty and are also very “gimmicky”, they feel designed with the idea that you’ll lose to them once to learn the boss’ trick then rebuild your party around it to try again, but I didn’t find most gimmicks interesting or fun so far.
The changes above are not necessarily bad, but one thing that absolutely sucks in the second half are the random battles. The game gets extremely anti-grinding, giving close to zero experience when fighting weaker foes, but the random battle frequency is so high you will reach that virtual “level cap” without trying… and still have to keep fighting enemies constantly for very little reward. This is both boring and frustrating, even if the feature to “batch” enemies helps mitigate the problem.
On a positive note I love the new skill tree you get, it adds an interesting customization layer to and it’s great how you can freely respec as you learn more about which skills work better for your playstyle, or simply because you need to shift your strategy for a particular boss.
Playing Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist
Picked this up as a side-game for when I need a break from Fantasian, and I’m extremely impressed by it so far. Ender Lilies was already a good game and this one improves on it in almost every way with with better movement, combat, and exploration. Difficulty seems to be toned down as well, which I see as a positive but YMMV.
Also, it looks beautiful and runs flawlessly on the Switch.
A bit sad to hear about the grind in Fantasian, I am not a big fan of grinding, or random battles,
I recall while you liked Ender Lillies, you had some complaints about the game (unless I am thinking of someone else), does it fix all those issues?
The worst part that you don’t need to grind, the game simply doesn’t give you the tools to avoid it.
There’s no mechanism to turn random battles off or reduce their frequency. There is a tool to empty your “saved” battles for a fee, but that requires you to warp to a specific town which means it’s really useful if you’re at a fast travel checkpoint.
I found my old comments about Lilies and I only complained a bit about the difficulty, which souds about right from what I remember of the game, it had some brutal sections where it crossed from “challenging” into “frustrating” but other than that was excellent.
So far Magnolia has been “just right” for me on difficulty - I’ve died a lot both during exploring and bosses, but so far never got frustrated and/or had to take a break from the game due to this. If they manage to keep this balance until the end this may honestly be my favorite game of this genre in recent years.