What are you playing?

I am currently in another "the games I want to play aren't out yet" phase (in this case, it's Fate Extella Link on Switch and Kingdom Hearts: The Story so Far on PS4, at least for this month) so I am flitting aimlessly between games to idle away the time.

On Switch I am still playing FFIX...honestly, if it weren't for the mods included with it I wouldn't be bothering. It doesn't make me want to play it - the plot is hardly inspiring, the cast ranges from kinda likeable (Eiko, Vivi) to downright irritating (Zidane, Steiner) and...ugh, it plods. It's bad, but half the time I just turn on the battle assist and 9999 damage mods and just speed through boss encounters, and turn regular encounters off...selective use of the speed enhancer, because it turns Zidane into freakin' Sonic the Hedgehog. In short, it's BORING. But it does look pretty good for a PS1 game - I think the visuals really worked in its favour here, it definitely aged more gracefully than VII and even VIII in terms of character models - and...yeah, I've played worse. Think I'm about halfway through what would be Disc 3 at this point.

...and I started Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky again a couple of days ago, because waiting for Chocobo Mystery Dungeon on Switch is too long a wait apparently. It's been 9 years (!) since I played it though, so it's a nice trip down memory lane, and I don't think I ever DID recruit everything in it, so that's something to do. I am a Shinx, with a Vulpix partner (that's caused a couple of problems already...every time something uses Magnitude or Earthquake we're screwed) and am currently on Chapter 12, although by the end of the day I will probably be further along than that, because I'm playing this more than anything else.

Also playing Outland on PC, which I believe I got for free some time ago...I can't imagine myself buying it, anyway. The visual style is quite appealing but it feels a little barren and bland for a Metroidvania title, and the soundtrack isn't good enough, frankly. But I'll see where it goes.

 

Lets Go Eevee
I need to return to Kirby 64 but haven't felt like it for a while.

 

I am attempting to get into Nelke & The Legendary Alchemists ~Ateliers of the New World~ right now. It's...not what I expected, to say the least. I've been with the Atelier franchise for a while now - I played the Iris games briefly, but Rorona was my real jumping-on point - but I don't know a lot of these characters very well/at all, and I've not played the Mysterious trilogy yet either after Sophie bored me to death and Lydie/Suelle wasn't dubbed because KT are a bunch of lazy good for nothing c--ompany. Company. Yeah. That's what I was going to say. Aaaaaaanywho. It's surprisingly addicting, although I feel somewhat pressured by the deadlines to do stuff. I get the feeling this is a game that needs to be played through multiple times, but whether it's good enough to warrant it or not remains to be seen.

I am still kinda playing PMD Sky but Chocobo Mystery Dungeon - which I finished earlier this week, THANK GOD - has kinda put me off roguelikes for a bit. It wasn't great.

Replaying the original Kingdom Hearts on PS4...oddly motivated to go through all of them, now that 3 is finally out. It's been a couple of years and this story is a train wreck so I need to brush-up on it. Currently at Halloween Town, which does nothing for me since I haven't seen The Nightmare Before Christmas...and don't like stop-motion animation either so I have no desire to. Still better than Atlantica, though. This game is really showing its age now. Should be done with it by the end of the week; I'm not going for completion or anything. For one, I hate the Gummi Ship minigames, the Hundred Acre Wood is the stuff my nightmares are made of, and Sephiroth requires waaaaaay too much preparation. This is a story playthrough and I'm sticking to that. Maybe.

 

I mentioned this in another thread but my roommate and I both split the $10 (I know, a lot of money right) purchase of Need for Speed Payback (a racing game) and I watched him play for a couple days and decided to give it a try. Not a bad, arcade-y style racing game though drifting is a pain in the butt like in most driving games. Another thing is we're playing with a controller rather than a playable steering wheel which is kinda meh but for $10, who am I to complain

 

Right now, I am juggling three JRPGs for some reason.

First one is The Caligula Effect: Overdose on Switch. I desperately wanted to play Caligula on the Vita when it was first announced, but it was digital-only in the West - and I had a real thing about digital-only on the Vita where memory cards were painfully expensive - and I just never got around to it. I'm glad I didn't, because I've been enjoying Overdose on Switch and a very large part of that has come from playing through the traitor route. I always enjoy villains more than heroes, so it's been pretty great. Whilst the combat is simple and the visuals are oddly blurry, the music is pretty great...and this surprises me, because normally I wouldn't enjoy it. But I love Lucid's theme. Shame about the lack of dub, but I muted the voices, so no harm done. The narrative is interesting enough to keep me going, and I only hate two of the cast, so that's a definite plus when it's a pretty big cast. No regrets so far and 20 hours in.

Second one is Kingdom Hearts II on PS4. This game is...aggravating. The aggravation comes from the Disney worlds I don't like - Port Royal, Space Paranoids, Atlantica, and Halloween Town. I am just not engaged in worlds I do not like the movies of, and Atlantica in particular is nothing short of hell. It's also very frustrating because it's moving at a snail's pace and I am much more interested in Organization XIII than I am in the irrelevant dilemmas the various Disney worlds are facing...or Maleficent and Pete, my god, who came up with THAT pairing. I can't believe this game is try to push Pete as a credible antagonist...or Goofy as the smart and perceptive one of the trio, what even. I mean, I've seen the Goofy Movie and I know he's got more depth to him than is first apparent, but...come on, it's GOOFY. Combat in the game doesn't feel as technical either, which is weird...but eh. I'll keep going with it because I still have something like 6 games in the series to play after it.

Third one is Final Fantasy V, on Steam. Kind of. Truth be told I played this on the GBA a looooong time ago but I don't recall if I ever finished it. I'm not playing it very much and I don't know how long I'll persevere with it. Not that I dislike it, it's just...not really the Final Fantasy I want to play right now. xD

 

My Kingdom Hearts Odyssey of Suffering and DARKNESS continues with Dream Drop Distance...which I am not overly fond of already and it's only been half an hour. Zipping around with the whole Flowmotion thing feels imprecise and awkward, the Dream Eaters remind me of nothing more than poorly-implemented Pokémon - although I suppose they had to do SOMETHING to make it appealing to 3DS players - and...god, I am so burned out with this series. This is the seventh game in a row I've played now. Recoded was a complete and utter waste of time, and Birth by Sleep was a bit of a grind for needing to play through it 3 times and then grind out 9999 Unversed kills at the end for the secret episode because I didn't want to play on Proud or Critical. I still have 3 games to go after this one.

...and probably the mobile game, because hey, I have a smartphone now! I am thoroughly obsessed with Plants vs. Zombies, which I bought waaaaaaaay back in 2011 or so when I first got my iPod Touch to see me through University and I forgot all about it. Turns out I bought the sequel too! I also kinda started Pokémon Go and urgh it's Let's Go Pikachu on my smartphone, complete with awful flicking catching mechanics that I just cannot get used to. I missed a Flareon and I am not happy about that. I also can't do any raid battles because there is nobody to do them with, which makes me very sad.

On Vita I am playing Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward. Finally. Now that people have stopped badgering me to play it. I finished 999 the other day and...eh...it was OKAY I guess but honestly it didn't really grab me the same way other VNs have in the past. It didn't mess up its core plot twist. Which is more than a lot of books, films, and other video games can say. Yeah. So VLR is bothersome for it's ridiculously convoluted route to the true ending - which I had to look up and plan out, which is ridiculous - its excessive puzzles (RNG number guessing game, WHY) and bizarre use of ugly character models instead of clean hand-drawn animations the previous game used. Also Clover is in this one and why couldn't they have picked someone who wasn't annoying, jeez. But it's not that bad, the voice acting is much appreciated - although Sigma not having a voice is either a massive giveaway plot-wise or it's just plain lazy - and...yeah, I'll see where it goes. I love the bunny to pieces.

 

I'm currently playing Megaman Zero 3 which I'm doing a lot better at than that I thought I was going to since I haven't played anything megaman related for a couple of months

 

My Kingdom Hearts Odyssey of Suffering and DARKNESS is finally coming to an end, as I have started Kingdom Hearts III...and would you believe that thus far I'm actually quite enjoying it? I loved the Symphony of Sorcery world in Dream Drop Distance - it FINALLY felt like how I imagined KH would always feel until I played the first game - and Thebes/Olympus in KHIII came very close to topping it, and that was just the opening world. After dozens of rubbish Coliseum worlds for Hercules, it was nice to finally experience a world that actually felt like the movie...with Titan battles! A showdown with Hades at the end would have been nice, but you know what, I'll take what I can get. The combat is still a bit messy and I hate the attraction ride special moves already (well, the train was pretty cool, but the pirate ship is awful) and enduring 45 minutes of cutscenes before I could save is an issue, but this is shaping up be more fun than previous games in the series. Although I am dreading going back to the Pirates world, and the Big Hero 6 world...there always has to be one or two rubbish worlds in every KH game, doesn't there.

Also playing Zero Time Dilemma on Vita...finished Virtue's Last Reward yesterday. I am still struggling to see the appeal of these games...they don't hold a candle to a lot of other VN series I've played, like Danganronpa or Ace Attorney. They're not unenjoyable, but they're hardly masterpieces.

 

A lot of GTA Online ._.

 

Still playing Kingdom Hearts III...just cleared Arendelle. Which was basically the Ninth Circle of Hell. I don't like Frozen, and being forced to endure the songs was not much fun...nor was putting Olaf back together. It took me AGES to find his torso. Now I have worlds from 2 franchies I dislike left - Pirates of the Caribbean, and Big Hero Six. Yay. Toybox was disappointingly bad, too. That said, Corona and Olympus were both great. Not Symphony of Sorcery great, but pretty good nonetheless.

Given up with Zero Time Dilemma because it's bad. Basically. Spike Chunsoft clearly have no idea how to get third games right - Danganronpa V3 was terrible too. SO I have started playing Dragon Quest V: The Hand of the Heavenly Bride on my 3DS. I am really in the mood for DQ right now for some reason, and with XI probably not coming out on Switch before August I don't really want to wait. Managed to get myself a Slime Knight and just ditched Harry. Not sure where I'm going from here.

 

My brother got me a copy of 20XX so I've been playing that a lot. I might even make a review of it soon.

 

Dead Cells. Since I beat it the first time I've been trying to beat it on the next difficulty, since it unlocks more difficulties the more you beat. Only problem is that they start limiting my options for survival immediately, but at least its a fast game so even if I die and have to restart it isn't too much time lost.

 

I spent some time today playing NBA 2k18 at a friends house. It's a pretty decent sportsball game and the 2k19 version is on sale for like $20 right now new at target so I might just go and buy that. The 2k20 version sadly costs like $2000 $60