Topic: What (Non-PS4) game are you playing??

Fantasy Life is one of the best games on the 3DS. Really tragic that the series went down the mobile rabbit hole and never reappeared. Yet another amazing Level-5 property that'll become irrelevant.

@KratosMD Oh, yeah, it's a story-driven JRPG that takes tens of hours to "beat" (i.e. reach the credits). If you want to master all of the various "lives," though, you'll be playing long after the credits finish. Especially if you spring for the DLC, which adds a difficult post-game area to explore, and adds another final level onto the 'life' mastery system.

I'm not sure I'd say the game even has "grinding" to it, unless you mean level grinding to better survive in some of the game's more dangerous areas (which I found to be pretty necessary in the DLC areas, and sometimes before tackling a difficult enemy). Each life, or job, requires you to complete a series of increasingly difficult tasks to go up in rank. For the woodcutter, this means cutting down trees from increasingly more dangerous areas. The warrior, if I remember correctly, has to fight increasingly difficult creatures (there are a number of special boss monsters you can find wandering around various areas in the game that you'll want to fight as well, sort of like Monster Hunter). The cook had to create increasingly more elaborate dishes. etc. Because all of the crafting jobs require the acquisition of resources, all of the lives feed into one-another and cumulatively help you grow stronger. Like, Woodcutting and Carpentry go hand-in-hand, as do Mining and Blacksmithing. You'll probably find yourself frequently switching between lives (which is easy-ish to do; you just go to a desk and request a Life change, which changes you active job) because of this, and most of them feel like they contribute to bettering your character in some way (if I recall correctly, all the Carpenter life does is task you with building furniture, which is mainly good for selling and for decorating the houses you can buy, if you're into that sort of thing; almost everything else is very useful to the JRPG side of the equation).

If you have any 3DS playing friends, the game is a lot of fun in local co-op multiplayer, btw. Still great even if you play it purely single-player, though.

Fantasy Life has a lot of charm to it. I did really enjoy my time with it, but at the same time I didn't think it was particularly amazing or anything.

@KratosMD If you’re liking the grinding and sheer difficulty of The Denpa Men, SMT IV and it’s expansion are on 3DS and fit both of those categories. There’s also the Etrian Odyssey games. Honestly, the 3DS has the best library of any console I’ve played, I’m still discovering gems on it.

@nessisonett The 3DS is my all-time favorite handheld. Its library isn't as diverse as the original DS', but I feel like the average level of quality of its titles is a lot higher. Also, the majority of its games are still in print and easy to obtain, and it hasn't received any of these irritating limited run releases, making it an easy system to collect for.

@KratosMD Good plan. The content in this game is fairly well-segmented, so I never found it too intimidating, and it's easy enough to sit down and pick back up again later on. The story and music aren't great, but the gameplay loop is extremely addicting.

Legacy Of Kain: Soul Reaver. That's right, the first one after Blood Omen, thoroughly enjoying it so far.

Dragon Age 2 for PS3. I love sarcastic Hawke.

Got myself in the mood for WWF No Mercy. Forgot how much fun it was and the entrances are spot on, albeit in about 180p. Love how The Rock is just known as ROCK.

@KratosMD I totally agree with you. Bought it, played it for quite some time, deleted it.
For the past week I've been playing Metroid Fusion, Metroid Zero Mission and obvisously Super Metroid. In my opinion, all much better than Axiom Verge. It's nice enough but could have been much better.

I can feel Kyle’s seething rage slowly building 😂😂

@nessisonett hey it’s just coz I hated on Pokemon. It’s ok, @KratosMD just doesn’t “get” it 😉🤪

Axiom Verge was a merely OK Metroid clone, IMO. Definitely not bad, but nothing I'd ever go out of my way to recommend to people, either. There are so many better experiences in this vein to be had on modern systems.

Isn’t it a bit disingenuous to compare Axiom Verge and the Metroid series considering that AV was developed by just the one person? They might be similar in terms of gameplay but I enjoyed AV despite it clearly lacking a whole team of developers and massive resources that the Metroid series has. It lacks polish, sure, but it’s a bit unfair to attack the guy who made it for not being a multi-million dollar company with thousands of employees. This is an indie game that actually lives up to its genre, the lack of polish is part of the charm.

@nessisonett it’s fair to stack a game made by one guy against a game made by an entire team I think, it’s down to the individual to decide whether the fact AV was made by one guy is a factor that elevates it to greatness. Personally, it made a big difference to how much I enjoyed that game but I can see why it won’t be a consideration for some other people.

@KratosMD btw I remember that shotgun got me past a particularly troublesome boss!

@kyleforrester87 The guy has absolute mastery of pixel art anyway, the animations are incredibly smooth, especially the metal egg save room thing. Indie games have gone through a total gentrification over the past few years so gamers expect the world, when they’re working on a shoestring budget. Most of these guys have nothing but a computer, loads of time and sheer talent.

@nessisonett Nah. "One guy" made that brilliant Metroid fan-game that's probably better than the real Metroid 2 remake Nintendo published. "One guy" made Stardew Valley, as well. "One guy" made Undertale.

Additionally, I don't think anyone is comparing AV to Metroid in terms of how polished it is, but in terms of how eerily similar the gameplay loop, atmosphere, and much of the art is.

I'm not lukewarm on AV because the creator didn't have the resources of a Nintendo developer. I'm lukewarm on it because it feels like warmed-over Metroid, and doesn't do enough, IMO, to establish its own identity. Its sins, in other words, are almost entirely of the non-budgetary variety.

@nessisonett @Ralizah sometimes it’s just the right game at the right time 👍🏻

So, I cleared the new Shantae's first chapter, and wanted to talk about it.

First: this game is BEAUTIFUL. I wasn't necessarily happy when I saw that the developers would be continuing with the engine used in Half-Genie Hero, but backgrounds look cleaner and more two-dimensional, and the character portraits are dramatically improved from that game. Character models themselves are detailed and highly animated, and seem like a step up from that previous game.

One thing I'm really digging so far are the frequent animated cutscenes that play. Now, these are almost all extremely short: anywhere from a couple of seconds to near half a minute. But they add a lot of flavor to the game, and help to establish drama during big setpieces and plot events.

It's not fully voiced, but I'm also noticing a bit more voice acting than there was in the last game.

The big change I want to talk about relates to transformations. Now, in previous games, Shantae's transformation dances, while iconic, tended to be a bit clunky and slowed down the gameplay quite a bit. One of the things people really liked about Shantae and the Pirate's Curse was how the game ditched transformations (for plot reasons) in favor of specialized equipment like in other Metroidvanian-style games. It worked really well, but it also felt like it clashed a bit with the pre-established identity of the series.

It seems like WayForward really took notice of feedback from fans, though, because Seven Sirens seems to integrate the best of both approaches. Shantae uses "fusion coins" to transform in this game. I don't know how the other transformations will be integrated into the gameplay, but the fusion coin allows Shantae to use transformations like she would pirate equipment. I won't spoil what the first transformation is, but all she has to do is dash mid-air to trigger the transformation, and it holds until she lands on her feet again. It's not an approach I would have thought of, but it seems like it works really well so far.

I'm also noticing a lot of original characters so far. I'm curious to see how well this game develops the new cast.

So far, this game almost seems perfect: beautiful presentation, puzzles, dungeons, non-linear exploration, backtracking, etc. Alas, no game is ever fully ideal, and the new composer's music so far is just... OK. It's not bad by any means, but some of the series' identity is nestled in its recognizable style, and especially in certain tunes that reappear from game to game, and those aren't showing up here.

Otherwise, I also think the game is perhaps too generous with handing out healing items. I already have a lot of health restoration items in my inventory and haven'r spent any money yet! Hopefully the game has a hard mode or something that limits this sort of thing.

In general, though, I'm super happy with the game so far. It's such a return to form after the mediocre Half-Genie Hero.

@Ralizah Good to hear the positive first impressions of Shantae and the Seven Sirens. Sounds like WayForward took note of the issues with past games, and tried to make this one as good as possible. It's for sure something I'll have to get round to playing eventually.

Those screenshots do look really nice. And I've heard that the opening animation was made by Studio Trigger. I'm a fan of them, as they did the animes Kill la Kill and Little Witch Academia.