I’m playing it on xbox, but yes
3 Likes
decided to fire up the JP-only PS2 remake of Tales of Destiny, a fairly mid (but very pretty) PS1 RPG about anime teens with talking swords, and my first playstation 1 game because of course i bought a sprite art RPG for my new 3d console.
i hadn’t realized that this version of Tales of Destiny has an alternate storyline that sets Leon, the Tragic Battle Twink as the protagonist. in the original, he’s introduced as a rival to the party who eventually forces himself into it to boss everyone around for his employer and Evil Scheming Corpo Guy father. eventually you find out he’s the long lost brother of one of our party members & he later betrays & tries to solo the entire party, fails and is necromancered back to life at various points to fight you again whenever the writers feel like reminding you the big bads are real jerks.
so when i saw the option of course i had to pick Leon’s Side, the Misery Path. it’s been surprisingly light hearted so far considering where i know it’s going to go?
Leon’s motivations in the original are kind of confusing with him oscillating arbitrarily between being an unsympathetic sadistic jerk to the party and being the tragic product of abuse & family trauma who you should feel bad for. the translation for Tales of Destiny (PS1) is functional but prone to Suikoden 2-esque excesses when villains are on screen and i imagine that’s partially responsible for how incoherent his behavior is sometimes.
i can see why this is where they chose to expand since Leon’s Bullshit is a fairly important driver of the plot despite you not really understanding any of it until he’s about to croak after his boss fight in the third act. so far the remake is portraying him as an insecure little weirdo whenever he’s by himself and chatting with his sentient sword, who is also deeply insecure and constantly flames Leon’s desire to assert himself over others thru violence. nothing earthshaking as far as storytelling goes but a fun little nostalgia trip for me either way. we’ll see if i stick with it.
21 Likes
Breath of Fire II - does this game suck? I remember renting it when it came out and feeling like it was pretty cool, but i’ve been trying to play it and it’s just so difficult. everything is expensive, enemies give such little exp and zenny, and normal enemies wreck me. I got to the Colosseum and wanted to keep going, but the grind is just excruciating and the random battles are incessant
4 Likes
Yes, It coasts on Capcom charm, battle sprites, and nostalgia only
It gets easier but not better
I replayed all of Wuppo, great game to play with a kid.
I think this game is upholding the spirit of Barkley Gaiden 2 by being mostly an adventure game hidden inside an action game in which the devs decided to put any bizarre concept they wanted into
- Beautiful underground train that asks you to wait ~5 real life minutes to get into. This is required
- Beautiful underground tram (not train) that you can buy tickets for, but you can just not buy tickets and it’s fine, nothing happens, true to real life
- « Filmstrips » all over the world to collect and then use on a projector at some guy’s home to watch slides with him
- « Secret Diary » filmstrips that the projectionist refuses to watch on ethical grounds, but luckily there are other guys with projectors underground that don’t have such concerns
- Theme park with two rollercoasters you can ride after waiting in line + an alternate currency for the theme park only
- Optional town hall sessions you can participate in if you brought a bell to ring
- Optional paperboy job in which you get a canon to shoot newspapers at other people / poster space inside the city, and get yelled at at the end for wasting paper
- Etc
10 Likes
I did really like Wuppo and I think I played it entirely on your testimony. it felt like an indie Paper Mario but not in the narrow sense that most [indie version of Nintendo games] tend to — totally fully realized within that.
apparently the devs have made a new game since!
should check it out
4 Likes
other games played:
Kirby’s Dream Course - this game is so good and so fun to play with folks who I can convince to play it with me. played some last night with friends and played more today. the game has very particular physics and everything, but once you get the hang out it, it feels really satisfying to knock Kirb around the course. wonder why they haven’t brought this one back?
Bahamut Lagoon - really beautiful looking game and an interesting strategy title. i’ve only completed two maps and i’m still learning the ropes, but i’m curious to see where it goes. the worldbuilding and concept of “Lagoons” (flying islands) and ships that also look like flying islands, the game is really good at crafting a fantastical world that doesn’t totally make sense but just looks super cool. the mix of on-map combat, tactics style, as well as full-on turn-based party combat is a neat combo.
14 Likes
I actually just learned about it yesterday too! I’ll report on it later
2 Likes
Love Lorn’s Lure, as a heads up if you are interested there is an entirely different final chapter (well second half of a chapter) that was included as part of I think a casual mode that was added as the original one was driving some less action oriented gamers nuts. It’s IMO the weakest chapter in the game (dev probably threw it together within a month) but if you wanted a bit more of the game to play it’s there for you.
Should probably look into what the DLC map pack actually is one of these days.
1 Like
Last year I claimed Hotwheels Unleashed as a free Epic Game and I finally installed it.
This is basically the hotwheels game of my dreams. The cars are incredibly well reproduced hotwheels models. They look how the models look including the plastic/metal/painted parts. I can’t explain why this is appealing and satisfying to look at, but it does. It looks like you’re driving a toy car around. Plus there’s very good drifting, and that’s the only thing you do with Hotwheels on flat surfaces - constant drifting.
Plus one of the early cars I unlocked is…a specific Cadillac with a “Busselback” trunk
One really nice touch - the cars have scratch and dent damage and by the end of races look like a hotwheel that’s been through Some Shit. As someone who didn’t exactly take care of their hotwheels the damage looks realistic.
I do wish the car list were more on these cars and not the weirder hotwheels but whatever, this is a game for children. It’s not super deep. More satisfying to drive than most games but not as deep as most arcade racers.
13 Likes
The only map I got all the crystals on was the last one, which unlocked “simulation mode” which as far as I could tell was a totally new bespoke map, with a bespoke combo of powers (like, there’s no point in the main game where you have this exact combo). I couldn’t quite parse what it was getting at, structurally, and without a narrative holding it down I didn’t feel compelled to finish it, especially since the likelihood of me getting all the other crystals in the main levels and unlocking all the “simulations” is zero.
DLC though, who knows, could be interesting…
1 Like
hey now, there’s nothing inherently on-the-spectrum about having spreadsheets and systems for playing games. i have like 20 meticulous lists on backloggd and am always doing some kind of “mission” so that i know what to play next and like all my friends are autistic… but i’m not! 
7 Likes
Want to also give a quick update on the Tales of Rebirth playthrough my buddy and I have been doing.
Tales of Rebirth update: Sidequests
I know I say this every time, and @Rudie warned me about this, but the game burns through its entire story and all interesting content within the first 6 hours. You then fight a Racism Dragon and you are turned loose to wander this world for an additional 75 hours, doing little subquests to earn party-wide permanent stat buffs.
In one, we were made to go to a specific town, talk to a guy trying to get his library off the ground, and then deliver a book to a guy on the other side of the planet. We carved our way through the usual ball-breaking dungeon wander, found him at the end, gave him the book, and the guy said he needed to read the book. However, I need to return the book. This means you have to fully leave the dungeon where you found the guy, go outside, go back in, go back through the full dungeon to get back to him, get the book back, then go through the dungeon again to leave. Then fly back to that first town and give him the book back. You must then do this 15 times.
In another, we needed to find all Skies of Arcadia-like “Discoveries” across the world, because this would grant us a very-much-needed party-wide stat buff.
This one was brutal. You have to get it pixel-perfect on an unremarkable spot on the ground to trigger the discovery. Lot of us wandering around the same area, fighting battles, until we got the right pixel. Sometimes, we learned, you cannot actually find the thing unless you are sufficently high-level.
Some fun descriptions though!
When the story kicks back up on occasion, it is not able to move beyond what happened at the 6-hour mark. Everyone in this world is being affected by the Racism Dragon’s racism “Will”. Every single blessed soul in this game you speak to, will talk about how they dislike the huma (humans) or the gajuma (furries). THAT’S THE ENTIRE GAME. THAT’S WHAT EVERYONE IN THIS WORLD TALKS ABOUT, EXCLUSIVELY.
WE GET IT.
Tales of Rebirth update: Furry Rivalries
One town does not have any huma in it, and is instead all gajuma. The elder as decided to implement a TOS-style social stratification class system where feathered gajuma are at the top of the totem pole, bears are at the bottom, and the fish guys are I think in the middle.
@AutomaticTiger are featheries as a term a thing???
Thankfully, we lecture them and, while we do not solve the problem really, we give them much to think about!
Unfortunately, Vaigue is still the main character of this game, even though well and truly his entire thing is that he is worried about his smalltown sweetheart Claire. This will haunt you for the totality of the game. They never thought of another thing to do with this guy.
Tales of Rebirth update: Claire Obscura
YOU SAVE HER. SHE IS IN YOUR PARTY. But she has been body-swapped with the literal queen of the entire planet, a catgirl in a wedding dress. NOBODY SAYS ANYTHING ABOUT HOW YOU ARE WALKING AROUND WITH THE PRESIDENT OF THE PLANET. IT NEVER COMES UP.
Vaigue has a really, really, really hard time understanding that the catgirl is now Claire. He really just never grapples with this idea. It almost destroys him.
This leads to him having a magical crisis usually reserved for someone undergoing a complete mental collapse. It takes soooooooo so long to resolve this fucking story.
One highlight, though, is that you get to fight Second Best Character Tytree in a 1v1 Youske v Kuwabara battle to knock some sense into Vaigue:
As miserable as this quest was, I really love how the game brings you into fight arenas sometimes to do story progression!
21 Likes
Well in this particular instance I can confirm there’s likely a correlation for me.
2 Likes
I have been playing so much goddamn Voxelgram on Steam. It’s just Picross 3D, and the finished products lack the charm of Picross 3D, but I’m not even looking at them. My brain just craves that subtraction.
Also went back to Dragon Quest HD-2D for the first time in like two months and beat Spiketail on my first try. That fight was kicking my ass for a week when I dropped it, guess I just needed to walk away.
6 Likes
Accidentally stayed up until 4am playing Uncharted: The Lost Legacy.
It’s one of those, if you don’t like the others this one won’t do anything for you. But I like 'em well enough and it’s been years since I played one and this has been on my backlog for ages.
It stars Chloe Frasier (the Fujiko to Drake’s Lupin, if you will) and Nadine Ross (secondary antagonist from Uncharted 4, picking up the pieces after having the PMC she led fall apart partially at the hands of Nathan Drake).
Thus far the preexisting relationships the characters have with others in the series is only barely acknowledged, and these two have no history with each other. Unfortunately Nadine seems a little nerfed, rather than the ruthless soldier of fortune from the previous game she comes across as sort of a kicked puppy and very much a sidekick rather than a character with her own real agency.
Chloe Frasier is half Indian, I can’t remember if this is mentioned in the earlier games. The plot in this one revolves around a hunt for an artifact of the Hoysala Kingdom but so far her ancestry seems to exist purely to give her a reason to have expertise in the relevant history and mythology. She says on multiple occasions she’s a thief and that’s all there is to it.
The opening hour or so of the game has actually been the strongest imho (it opens with Chloe stalking around in a war zone in an unnamed Indian city where similarly unnamed “rebels” are fighting against the Indian army, but this seems like pure set dressing and ultimately not very important to the plot). If nothing else this sequence has a lot of strong visuals, very impressive stuff for a PS4 game.
This game is supposed to be short so I’ll probably power through in another sitting
6 Likes
I had the same reaction to Lost Legacy as to Pirate Yakuza— thought it was entertaining and much less bloated than the game they actually made all those assets for that I quit early on
3 Likes
can i have a user title and if so can it be this
4 Likes
I’m finally playing the new Keita Takahashi game To a T while simultaneously watching the NFL playoffs on a cross country flight (I have it on my laptop directly below the seat back monitor showing football). This probably makes me look psychotic but imo it’s a much easier way to focus on a game like this that’s really delightful but has a lot of weird busywork friction than any other circumstance in which I could play it (sometimes I also set up a dual screen situation with both my phone and laptop in the tub to achieve something similar). Anyway I like it
9 Likes
I think had I somehow multitasked while playing To a T I would have stuck with it longer. I still do want to see the later parts where it reportedly takes some surprising turns.
4 Likes
Onirism: I’m still playing this game. it refuses to end. it keeps going.
I got to a point and the game pulls a Jet Force Gemini (if you know, you know) and I realized the developers were having sicko to sicko communication with me, because I was suspecting they would pull such a thing for a while
I got my wish and I’m not even mad
6 Likes