De_Narm

There is a shitload of cosmetic DLC, background music and gestures.

But, I've clocked in about 300 hours and never got promted to buy anything. I had to look up the DLCs and was suprised myself. You never feel like there's something missing and there are no mechanics you could speed up or avoid by paying money.

Also no paywalled monsters, missions or anything.

The vouchers to change your appearance are scummy, no question, but you don't see your character anyways. (If you play with helmets on.)

Sad story, but I kind of lost my favorite. It used to be Dunsparce, but they ruined it for me with the new evolution. I honestly wish they would leave old lines just be.

Anyways, now it's probably Espeon and Umbreon. The best legendary is Lugia. But I'm also super partial to the GC games.

Finished Vol. 1 of .hack// G.U. Last Recode.

The game stayed quite easy throughout the second half. These volumes are also somewhat short, I've done almost everything for a 100% completion within 30 hours. I usually don't care for completion, but carrying everything over to the second game was suprisingly motivating.

The biggest thing introduced in the second half was a second battle system. It's not used often, mostly for story boss encounters, but it was quite a fun addition.

Not much progress on the Ace Attorney Trilogy.

Since last time, I've only done the Steel Samurai case and it's not even finished yet.

Unsure about this one. I loved the Joker games as a child, but Dark Prince made me question myself on whether I still enjoy these. I didn't even have the heart to go back to Joker since then to see if Dark Princes changes were the problem or the core gameplay just isn't my jam any more.

Regardless, this game seems to land in the middle mechanics wise. E.g. special synthesis recipes return, size variance seems to stay. Definitely will be a game I'll wait for the general opinion to settle on after its release.

Wenn du <Pedanterie aus> zu machst, bist du dann wieder pedantisch bzw. war das dein am wenigsten pedantischer Kommentar?

They are always eager for violence, but paying for universal healthcare? Food and housing? Suddenly, they spew some bullshit about personal responsibility or somerhing.

I have this game on wishlist for over a decade, how does it play? Not too dated, I hope. You are piquing my interest, and a quick look shows it doesn’t look too bad.

Quite dated, to be honest. You'll mostly be using basic attacks - either charged or as a combo - and blocking. There are skills, but there's a cooldown attached to using skills, and you don't get many of them. They are mostly used to cancel enemy skills by using them while they cast their own. Later on you get different weapon types, but I'm not there yet. And there's an ultimate skill you get to use every so often.

However, often it doesn't matter. The game has a strong level scaling, as in you'll one shot everything 5 levels below you. This, along with the EXP bonus in this remaster made most encounters a breeze. You can generate areas above your level for a challenge, but this will only further overlevel you.

That being said, while it did bother me in the beginning, I still came around to liking it. Maybe it will expand more with future unlocks.

Legends is a tough one to rate, I think. The first area was some of the most fun I had with a game made by GameFreak. In fact, I had so much fun, I left with Lv. 50+ Pokemon and a maxed Pokedex for everything in there - which ruined every area thereafter.

This is my first Star Ocean game and I am surprised to see how good it is. [...]

Felt the same way about Second Story R, but I think the game fell apart in its second half. I'm curious to see if First Departure has similar problems.

Started .hack// G.U. Last Recode. It's a collection of three old PS2 RPGs along with a short 4th game made for this collection. They all share a single story and most stuff carries over between them.

It may be the first MMORPG story, at least it's the first one I know about. You even log out periodically and check mails, forums or news on your desktop before logging back in. With the MMORPG jargon and the use of emoticons, its super nostalgic to me - I used to play a lot of them when I was younger.

The actual battles feel quite simple, but the story is fun. Just be prepared to read a lot. Watching the recap of the first .hack// series (which never left the PS2), reading everything available at the start - including a wiki with lore about the MMORPG - took about 3-4hours with almost no actual gameplay.

Finished God Eater 3. Overall I recommend the game, but I haven't done any of the post game story yet. The small pool of enemies got quite tedious towards the end so we're taking a break. We'll finish it before MH:Wilds arrives on Switch!

Started the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy. Currently only on the second episode. Thus far, I really like the characters, the game is unexpectedly funny at times. Depending on my partners feedback, I plan on doing the entire series eventually.

Looks really good, I'm already more intrested than I ever was in FF16. Also glad they didn't return to ATB.

The OST really is great! But I've got to admit the battle voice lines did get jarring towards the end. Well, at least Amiguchi's.

I've mostly relied on Gen 4 mechs during the story. Quad Leg Spike and whatever Yakushiji's AoE skill is called did a lot of heavy lifting. Outside of Gen 4, Super Large Missile and Juro's unique piercing skill were probably the most helpful ones for the final encounter.

After the gladiators were introduced, I pretty much stopped using Demolisher Blade, since Ceramic Armor just absorbs it (at least in the rebalanced Switch release). I think I'll experiment some more with them in the postgame this week!

My partner was out of town, so I just finished 13 Sentinels this week.

In typical Vanillaware fashion, they ran out of budget and cut a lot of things. I've read something about up to 50%. At the very least, the game should have been 15 Sentinels. Despite that, the story is a wild ride and has a satisfying conclusion. Honestly, I've enjoyed it even more that Danganronpa previously. Some open questions remain and a few plot points seemingly get dropped, but in the end, I just like the entire cast and loved the structure. There's always a mystery, a twist or a new perspective and in the end everything kinda just clicks together.

There's one gaping hole in my understanding I couldn't find an answer to, maybe someone who've played game could answer this:

The RTS part of the game was also surprisingly engaging, although mostly on the easy side. But that's to be expected, as I did almost all the story segments first and could fully upgrade a lot of stuff before even starting it properly. There is even an endgame with an absurd amount of stages to dig your teeth in, but I'll probably only delve a little bit into them before starting the next game.