@BentIeyma That makes sense, I wasn't even sure that the first game ever had a Playstation release. Or that a PSone could be modded, I do know if I use Alien Resurrection with my Playstation One I can force the console to stop then switch the disc out for copied discs. It has a hidden developer exploit that lets the official retail disc function as a boot loader for burned backup CD-Rs without needing a physical Mod-chip. So really it's the same thing. I haven't used it for that, my aim with Retro is preservation, sometimes I play them too, but have to balance them with wanting to play other games. There are only so many hours in the day.

• That's the game, I'm not sure people know it can be used to do that.

I think with Diablo 2 it filled the kind of gap that Diablo 4 didn't for me. I wanted to play a Diablo game that was simple in it's game-play loop and that didn't seem huge. It's really the RNG that held me back, the difficulty balanced out with the right items but getting them to drop was easier said than done. I really liked Diablo 3 too, it was a kind of Vampyre Survivors for me long before I'd found that game, numbers, loot, colours and so on. Also on the microwave, one time I saw something chrome in a person's picture so I asked if that was a car. I've seen them in living rooms before in Dubai and China, they turned around and said it was a washing machine, we both laughed and then they gave me a goPro tour of their kitchen. I'd seen kitchen appliances in The Sims/Project Zomboid/etc, just not in real life. I've never used either appliance either but I know my way around most Retro consoles so that's something. Do you play a lot of older games and when Modded is it just a case of downloading an original file/burning it to a Disc and then playing it? Did you make your own Diablo box?

@Tjuz So I've played Well Dweller for a couple of more hours and now I'm having mixed feelings about it.

The good news is that I don't find the game nearly as hard as Hollow Knight anymore, even on Normal. The boss fights actually get easier and easier. It takes me 2-3 tries before I beat them, compared to Hollow Knight's boss fights which could take at least a dozen tries for me. Not to mention that the boss fights aren't that long and you can easily cheese your way through them by spamming, even if they still require a lot of attention in order to avoid their attacks. Their attack patterns are very easy to remember.

The bad news is that you don't get a sense of progression after a couple of hours, which is a very serious issue for a Metroidvania. Let me first compare the game to Super Metroid, a well-executed Metroidvania:

You're constantly finding upgrades in the form of missile tanks, super missile tanks, power bomb tanks, energy tanks, armour upgrades, beam upgrades and so on and so forth.

In Well Dweller, you rarely find anything of worth while exploring. The main items you find are trinkets, which are perks you equip to limited slots, and trinket points, which open up more slots to equip said trinkets. The problem is that the trinkets aren't really that interesting or feel that meaningful. I've equipped one that increases my damage output, upgraded it several times so that the damage output is significantly increased, and I feel like I don't even do that much more damage to the enemies. Even enemies from the starting area still take several hits before they go down.

Moreover, I rarely feel like I'm making progress in this game. The main goals in this game is to collect golden feathers in order to get access to the final area as well as saving your siblings. I've cleared three areas now, done three boss fights, and only found one sibling as well as gotten one upgrade. This is a very serious issue because you're supposed to be rewarded for exploring and clearing areas. You really don't get that in this game. Not to mention that the recent upgrade I got is very stupid. Now I can hover in the air for a second. Great, the protagonist, who is a bird, is now able to fly for a second.

The thing is that the previous upgrade you get is one that lets you fly indefinitely when there are upward wind drafts. Why couldn't they just combine both of these upgrades into one, i.e. a hovering upgrade? It doesn't make any sense why the protagonist suddenly can fly in wind drafts but not fly for a second when there aren't any. That's also how it was in Hollow Knight Silksong, i.e. you get the hovering ability, so you can hold down the jump button to hover at any time and you could also use it to fly upwards in wind drafts. On top of this, I haven't been in a new area with wind drafts since the first one that had them. So what was the point in separating this into its own ability? It's just so stupid.

But to go back to my previous issue with progression: it really is discouraging. I mean, Metroidvanias are typically very addicting to me because I'm constantly being rewarded and constantly getting a sense of progression under a short period of time I might add. Now it just feels like I'm walking around endlessly without making any progress. I'm clearing areas but my character isn't getting any stronger. I haven't either found any health upgrades or ammo upgrades since the start of the game. The entire game design is just baffling to me, considering how progressive and modern the game has been otherwise.

I'm still finding enjoyment from this game. It's a very cozy Metroidvania: the music is really soothing, the environments are very relaxing to be in and the enemy as well as boss designs are unique and frightening respectively. It feels like the perfect October game in all honesty, which is why I want to keep playing it. It's just embarrassing that it excels in all areas except for being a good Metroidvania.

@Pizzamorg Without asking you to go into too much detail since I'm sure you've covered your thoughts extensively on NintendoLife, how are you getting along with Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave? I've heard a lot of opinions about it, and while mostly positive, it seems to be a game that can manage to both satisfy you as well as annoy you at the same time. I'm planning to get into the franchise by starting with Three Houses somewhere next year, but the hype surrounding this new one has me exercising all my self-discipline. Especially with a Switch 2 in the house which, in my mind, is just begging to finally play a native Switch 2 release! I'd normally assume you're well into it with the time in-between your post and my response, but by all accounts, this game is humongous. At the very least, it seems like your money's worth! Hope you're still having a great time.

I suppose I'll sneak in one cheeky question I've been meaning to ask: knowing that Fortune's Weave ties into Three Houses in the sense it's within the same universe, is there any route in Three Houses that might be more narratively relevant to Fortune's Weave than the others? Or provide you with more lore that ties into the sequel directly? As much as I am planning to approach both games with an open mind and intent to play through multiple routes, I know I'm not a reliable person on the replay-front. I'd like to at least make sure that if I end up ditching Three Houses before seeing all each route has to offer, that I have the most important narrative revelations at the ready going into the sequel!

***

@LtSarge Thank you for the updated thoughts on Well Dweller! I'm glad for both of our sakes that it sounds like the difficulty is not a hurdle to our enjoyment of the game at least. I'm not sure if how easy its become ends up being a detriment for you, but considering you still counted it under good news, I'll take it as a no!

It's a shame to hear that the actual exploration part that is so integral to the genre has been such a letdown. The fact you need an upgrade to fly as a bird is a very funny example, though. Something, something ludo-narrative dissonance or the like. Do you feel like a lot of this is down to the fact that the game is supposed to be quite short? I've heard something like 12-15 hours to fully 100% it. It surprised me to hear that stat at first knowing how long something like Hollow Knight can take, but it starts to make sense when I'm hearing about the lack of collectibles, upgrades or places to explore with any reward. I'm not sure what the track record is for shorter Metroidvanias and if they possibly share a lot of these complaints, but it sounds like a possible explanation for it.

It's good that it still has redeeming qualities in basically every other area, but I can totally understand you're disappointed in it on its most fundamental level. I've seen nothing but overwhelming praise for it so far, which makes me wonder: why do you feel like this game has gotten such a positive reception despite its faults? I mean, I can't imagine that what you're describing to me aren't thoughts that a lot of fans of the genre share with you. Maybe I'm just more engaged with the casual side of Metroidvania enjoyers and those complaints are there, but I find it interesting. Maybe it's also just atmosphere of it doing a lot of the heavy lifting and people being able to forgive its shortcomings more so as a result. I'd like to know your thoughts as someone who's played it and clearly is a seasoned Metroidvania enjoyer!

@Tjuz Funnily enough, I recently did my 100 check in on FW over on NL, so I have a nice little thing already prewritten but will adjust it a bit to kind of envelope your question.

There are plenty of rumours out there that FW was originally an 8 route game, and somewhere along the way, it was changed to 4 route game. How early or late this happened in development, how much material was cut, or not, what material was salvaged and how it was all deployed are all unknown quantities to all of us, and may never be known, but my feelings is it had to happen fairly late in development, because it feels like big chunks of this game are just missing with no accommodation made for the space it leaves behind, but this only becomes obvious through repetition and time spent, I think the game sort of feels like a gigantic mess, hacked apart and stitched back together hastily and pushed out the door. It makes me wonder if any of the people who reviewed the game even finished Act 1, given I haven't really seen much conversation on this.

Examples of this without spoilers, is that I would say a scarily high number of the cast begin and end with their designs, they play no role in the story other than someone to fight in the arena and they have almost no supports, but if you recruit these characters, they'll have little voice lines when they defeat a foe or something like "I will find you my love, one day" or something, so there is clearly story here for this character that is just missing, and I guess this character played a larger role in a route that now doesn't exist and that material for them is now just lost (every route has around 2 - 4 "canon" recruits you get for free, that are different on every route, so you can see how this is a problem if my theory is right if at minimum 8 recruitable units all had their stories told in a different route where they were a canon recruit that is now just gone, so when they are recruited in the routes still in the game, they are just a non entity).

This problem happens with the story as well. My theory is that originally the 8 routes through Act 1 would have created one, coherent, full, narrative. Instead, with just the four routes, we get a real mixed bag where some routes give really important insights into the world and various events, whereas others seem to exist in a vacuum. And that is ignoring narrative events that work in the opposite direction, like there are fully voiced, fully animated CG cutscenes present on all four routes for characters or story beats that vanish after these moments, with whatever arc that went with them now amongst the stuff on the cutting room floor (in my theory).

On your question around Three Houses, playing Golden Deer and Crimson Flower to give you the best oversight of the world and its conflicts, with the other two routes being optional if you don't want to burn yourself out on the game.

That said, I would probably recommend playing Engage > Three Houses > Fortunes Weave, or if you're worried about burning yourself out on Fire Emblem, just skipping Engage and THs and going straight into FW. You don't really need to know that much about THs to appreciate FW, and as someone who strongly disliked the "Personification" of Fire Emblem in Three Houses, I feel like FW makes meaningful, hard to go back from, strides in "fixing" and marrying the loops in THs and Engage, to bring across the best of both and allow them to meet in the middle.

I also want to be clear, while this probably all sounds overwhelmingly negative, I want to be clear that isn't how I feel about the game. I agonise over its faults out of place of borderline obsessive love. I am someone who struggles with playing a game for more than 30 hours before I get completely burn out and turn on the game. The fact that I have played this every single day since launch, played over a 100 hours, and keep coming back, doing optional activities I don't even need to do anymore shows that I love this game, even if I think it is deeply flawed and compromised.

Time for me while playing this game is rendered a meaningless construct. I think I just did a couple of skirmishes and some busywork in between and made little progress, but in the real world, eight hours have gone by. And while I may also grow a little tired of the repetition of the loop, or may grow frustrated that some routes are objectively easier and better tuned than others, the fact that I never feel that passage of time makes it clear to me I am still enjoying my time as there are plenty of games I can play for just an hour or two and be already exhausted by it, painfully aware of every second that goes by.

@Pizzamorg A happy coincidence! Like you said, your post came across a bit negatively to my surprise, but the 100 hours in three should've given away from the start that this is clearly a game you find a lot of enjoyment in despite its faults. I hadn't heard about the rumours of the original eight routes, but that does make a lot of sense with your explanation as well as the titbits I'd heard about it here and there. It's a shame that whether or not that's entirely correct, it has ended in a game that feels unfinished in more ways than one. Especially with how praised Three Houses was for its approach to narrative. It sounds like ambition might've gotten in the way of what they were actually able to achieve within a reasonable budget and time-frame.

Stuff like the dialogue you mentioned definitely points to those rumours having substance at least. I wouldn't be surprised if, like you said, many reviewers didn't manage to go beyond Act 1 by the time their reviews were up. I don't know how far ahead of release Nintendo tends to send out review copies, but this one seemingly would be a huge undertaking to fully form an opinion on by embargo time. In terms of the eight routes possibly being a lot more coherent as one narrative, does it still feel that way once you progress through to Act 2 with the available routes? I imagine a cohesive narrative is ultimately the goal either way, so I wonder if it's just the beginnings that now feel lacklustre while the back-end still comes together nicely.

Thank you for the little addendum regarding the routes in Three Houses! Good to know which ones are most vital to getting the most out of the sequel's narrative, even if it's perfectly enjoyable by itself. Interesting that you'd recommend going with Engage first if any. I've always heard largely negative opinions on that entry, so my intention was actually just to skip that one and possibly come back to it in the future if I go full on Fire Emblem-nerd. I'll say what really got me interested in Three Houses was the praise for the more narrative focus and how that was unusual for the franchise up to that point, so you'll see why hearing plenty about Engage having a supposedly bad story was a turn-off for me personally. And with Fortune's Weave following up on Three Houses specifically, it just seemed like the perfect entry point. Though I will say I've heard that Engage simultaneously has some of the best gameplay in the series apparently!

I can relate to your feelings of time passing quick being a relatively rare thing in games, so I feel both the obsession and danger you've fallen into with this entry! As long as it stays enjoyable even with the repetition, that's all that matters. We gotta take the wins where we can get 'em, and this sounds like a winner to you!

@Tjuz Engage is a really interesting title, for a title largely forgotten outside of Fire Emblem diehards. Engage seems pretty clearly designed entirely to address the complaints about how much of Three Houses was social sim v tactics battling, effectively making Engage a game entirely about battling, with a little admin on the side. The result was a game that felt rather mediocre after Three Houses. Even if you didn't maybe love parts of THs - as I certainly didn't, THs scope, scale and ambition were hard to argue with, and it was strange to play a game that came after that with almost all of those things missing. What Engage has though is the most refined, polished, core loop of the three Switch FE titles. It just doesn't have anything else. And so while Engage functions seemingly in direct response to THs, I think if you play them out of order and play Engage first, inside a vacuum, outside of the expectations set by THs, you will come away much fonder of that title than if you played it after THs, if that makes any sense at all.

@Pizzamorg i'm starting to regret not picking up Fire Emblem: Engage when I saw it on a clearance sale for just 15 bucks... What you're telling me in regards to it being a response to everything Three Houses both did right and wrong to long-time fans makes a lot of sense. Hell, I don't even think the story being either bad or not at the forefront would necessarily be a dealbreaker to me, since I enjoyed Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope for its tactical battles in spite of its lack of an engaging story. I'm assuming Engage is also a much shorter game as a result?

I'll give Engage one thing as an outsider looking in, and that's that its colourful aesthetic looks a lot more inviting than Three Houses' comparably drab and ugly environments judging from the screenshots I've seen. I'll have to give it another look and see if I might heed your advice and try it before anything else. I appreciate the input!

@Tjuz Oh yeah, Engage is the smallest time commitment out of the three by a significant margin. No multi routes for the full story, no recruiting units (except for a couple you need to speak to on the battlefield first). Just a collection of battle scenarios in a chain.