Phelpssan

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.

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.

The game is pretty chill even now. Enjoying it quite a bit.

Older titles have time limits to add a bit of pressure, but plot-wise those games stay chill 90%+ of the time.

It's one of the reasons I like them so much, I find the mix of a chill atmosphere, addictive gather->craft loop and fantastic OSTs incredibly relaxing.

For Switch, I started Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout. It’s my first Atelier game, and I have pretty much just started it, but it seems nice. Very chill, cozy crafting JRPG, without any doom and gloom (yet).

I'm a huge Atelier fan, Ryza is definitenly a nice starting point for those new to the series.

One thing worth mentining is that the beginning of the game is a bit slow, and I recommend focusing on the main plot until you unlock the fast travel option as it makes doing the side quests a lot more enjoyable.

Playing Harvestella!

Since I don't have any games in my wishlist for the next few weeks (next one is Ys X at the end of the month) I decided it was a good time to play a longer RPG.

Despite this game's marketing focusing on the farming/slice-of-life aspects that doesn't seem to be a huge part of the gameplay loop - sure, there's plenty of things you can do to build/expand your farm, but I'm only spending a small portion of the game's day/night cycle doing some chores on the farm and after that it's going out into the world for quests and monster killing.

That would not be a bad thing, weren't for the fact that combat in this game is rather mediocre. It's not horrible, but it's slow, lacks some things that seem obvious in an action RPG like a dodge button, and has some serious issues with the enemy lock-on system. I've seen people argue that it's more of an "Offline MMO" battle system like Xenoblade instead of a real Action RPG, which I don't think is what the developers were aiming for but may be a good approximation of what the game really plays like. There's some good ideas at least, like the idea of having multiple jobs equipped and hot-swapping between them based on the situation, which offers good customization for different playstyles - I've been enjoying to focus more on ranged combat with the mage class and letting the NPC allies do the tanking for me.

There's also some technical annoyances, one being the performance which is usually tolerable but had some pretty massive framerate drops in one boss, and other being the visuals - I'm not usually picky about that, but at least on the Switch it looks incredibly blurry - reminds me of Xenoblade 2 on portable mode, only it's like that even when docked.

Those two are rather big issues making it hard to recommend this one, which is unfortunate because I'm loving several other aspects of this game. The worldbuilding is great and unique, the story is slow but doing a good job keeping me interested, I love the character designs, and there's plenty of activities to do if you need a break from combat.

The water one was the one I couldn’t figure out. That’s the only one I looked up.

I see a trend here, also had issues figuring out that that puzzle and had to resort to google.

I liked the battles though, so maybe I should pick up Engage…

Engage's story is kinda silly, but the maps are fantastic. I highly recommend the game if you're more interested in the battle portions.