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    Dorfromantik (PC)    by   dkirschner       (Mar 24th, 2024 at 19:54:36)

    Got this for free at some point and decided to give it a shot since it is well-reviewed and seemed like something outside of my usual. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. It looks like a casual city-builder and mobile game. It’s definitely casual and definitely a builder of sorts, but it’s more of a puzzle game than anything.

    Your goal is to place various sorts of hexagonal tiles to build a landscape. Tiles can have, on any of their six sides, water, trees, grassland, fields, houses, and railroad tracks. You can rotate tiles and, ideally, match like sides. This nets you points. Not matching sides doesn’t net you points. You need points in order to get more tiles. If you run out of tiles, it’s game over. So, you have to strategically place tiles such that you maximize aligning edges with the same properties.

    To complicate this, some tiles have “quests,” which require you to string together x number of trees, houses, railroads, etc. So then you’re not simply matching sides, but you’re also trying to cluster certain types together in certain places depending on which quests you get.

    I found myself lost in it before realizing that I was almost out of tiles. I refocused and hit a stride, getting achievement after achievement for making long railroads, villages with tons of houses, etc., and built my stack of tiles back up. However, I have realized that if you don’t match like tiles early on, you’ll be disadvantaged later because you are “missing out” on points that you would have earned had you been more careful, and it will be difficult to “fill in” gaps that you’ve created. Another thing I realized is that you can’t “branch out” too much. You’ve got to remain clustered. If you branch out too much, then each tile you place can’t generate many points. It’s 10 points per matched side, so if you’re just like building a river straight out, each tile is only netting 10 points. If you are more clustered and placing each tile next to two or three others, then you’re getting 20 or 30 points per tile, and generating more tiles. It’s an interesting balancing act.

    There is no story; it’s a sandbox. There is infinite replayability to chase high scores and achievements. I’d be interested in giving it another shot and doing better, but I think I did really well for my first try. Maybe I’ll keep it on hand for a relaxing puzzle game. But I’ve got other stuff to get to!

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    Trials of Fire (PC)    by   dkirschner       (Mar 24th, 2024 at 16:38:43)

    I shouldn’t have purchased this. I must have been on a card battler kick, probably when I was playing Slay the Spire and Monster Train last year. There’s nothing wrong with Trials of Fire; it just doesn’t have the personality or the pizzazz that better card battlers have. In fact, playing it after Wildermyth, it comes off as a way less interesting take on the card battler/tactical RPG genre, and I can’t help but compare the two. The main difference, of course, is that Wildermyth has no cards; it’s a tactics RPG with procedural storytelling and character development that was really, really cool. Trials of Fire doesn’t have anything that is really, really cool. Trials of Fire has:

    - An overworld that manages to be duller than Wildermyth’s. The landscape is drab, and you just move around following a quest arrow, stopping on whatever blue question marks are around to try and find crafting supplies, food, obsidian (money), equipment, followers, battles (which is how you level up), and so on.
    - A stamina bar that means you have to rest and eat food. Resting or dragging food onto a character is also how you recover health lost in battle or through random events. As your stamina drops, your characters get stuck with debuff cards in battle, so you have to stop to restore stamina.
    - Time management that is not as interesting as Wildermyth’s. You have to make progress toward the golden quest arrow on the edge of the map, and if you are too slow, then your morale drops. If it drops all the way, it’s game over. So you are basically balancing your morale with your stamina and trying to keep your characters’ level high enough to win combat encounters (i.e., since combat is how you gain XP, you have to stop and fight to level up, but can’t stop too much lest you spend too much time fighting and your morale drops). This was less interesting than the incursion and enemy strength timers in Wildermyth.
    - Cards to collect and upgrade. Upon each level up, you can replace one of your existing class cards with another one, or choose to upgrade an existing class card.
    - Equipment to wear and upgrade. Equipment can be upgraded with crafting supplies when resting. Each piece of equipment bestows various cards on the wearer, and upgrading the equipment upgrades its cards, which is cool.
    - Unlockable character classes that can level up to award more class cards. The classes level up after a campaign, and I suppose that newly unlocked cards are available in future campaigns.
    - A bare bones story, random and generic events, simple quests, all of which totally pale in comparison to Wildermyth’s (and most other games).
    - Characters with no personality whatsoever, such a stark contrast to Wildermyth.
    - Bosses that pose a real threat!

    Regarding the latter, at the end of each quest stage (there were three stages in the quest campaign I played), there is a boss battle. The first two of these were easy enough, but the last one just about killed me. It was a dragon with 90 health (double the previous boss). It killed two of my characters, and only my hunter remained. My hunter had like 13 health and 11 armor, and the dragon was at about the same. My hunter was also backed into a corner, and in one more turn, the dragon would have moved in melee range and my hunter would have been stuck (you can’t use ranged attacks in melee range of your target). But I drew like the perfect combination of cards, did double damage with my first attack and then my last card did x damage, and if the target was then below y HP, it automatically died. Well, the math was perfect, and I killed the dragon. If I had drawn different cards, the dragon would have killed me. Intense for sure, but what the hell! The difficulty came out of nowhere in the last battle. Battles are not repeatable, by the way. If your party wipes, it’s game over and you start the whole campaign over. I would have been pissed, because, like Wildermyth, these campaigns are not short.

    Upon winning, your classes level up and you unlock some new cards for each of them. I unlocked a new class for achieving something or other. Then you just go back to the menu and start over with another quest. Wildermyth has that cool Legacy system with persistent characters that grow over time, but there’s nothing like that here. Given that the storyline for the quest campaign I did was so generic, I’m not motivated to play another one (and there is only one more story quest, then the others are like roguelike situations where you just play with daily modifiers or create custom campaigns or do a seasonal challenge or whatever). There are surely a bunch more cards to unlock, and there are 9 classes in total to unlock (for completing x quests, for killing y bosses, for spending z crafting materials, etc.), so there is more to do in terms of progression. But it’s just not that compelling! Again though, nothing is bad about the game, but man, I guess it’s just rare that I play something that is so disappointlingly generic.

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    Galactic Quest + Atlantic Quest (DS)    by   jp       (Mar 24th, 2024 at 13:19:19)

    This is a 2-in-1 game collection of match 3 games that, as far as I've played each, are exactly the same in terms of gameplay even though the story and art is completely different.

    The one notable thing about these is that it's a match-3 game that supports three different types of matching which you can switch between whenever you want. It's interesting because it means it's a lot harder to get stuck, and that you have to think in a few more ways in order to identify matches and such.

    The three ways to match are:
    1. Typical swap two tiles to make a match
    2. Connect three tiles orthogonally to make a match
    3. Tap on group of tiles that are orthogonally adjacent to each other to make a match.

    There's overlap between the three modes, of course, and in the 3rd one matches don't happen automatically when new tiles drop to fill in the space of tiles that were removed due to a match. So, there's an interesting effect that happens when you've made a match in the 3rd mode and then switch to the 1st mode! You can get a lot of tiles to auto-match and disappear if you've left the board with lots of groups of 3-in-a-row.

    Other than this little wrinkle, which was interesting to be fair, there wasn't much else to note in either game. There's trophies and interstitial puzzles to play between every 10 or so match-3 levels, but it's pretty light on everything.

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    Super Princess Peach (DS)    by   jp       (Mar 24th, 2024 at 13:12:25)

    Made it all the way to the final boss fight - against Bowser, obviously? - but I've struggled enough with it that I decided to call it a day. It's a multi-stage battle that, as far as I can tell, requires you to use your rage ability. That's ok, except that it's hard for me to recharge it during the battle so it's a bit more frustrating than simply having to learn attack patterns and dodge attacks.

    Now that I think about it, I might be "underpowered" for the end? There's lots of things I could have purchased but have not and I don't really feel like returning to old levels to "farm" them, so I feel it's better to simply move on.

    And this is a strange thing to say about a Nintendo game! (that it's grindy...)

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    Flower (PS4)    by   dkirschner       (Mar 21st, 2024 at 13:13:56)

    Played this after Journey, knowing that it was the same studio’s former game. I see the DNA in the aesthetics. It’s visually striking, with an emphasis on the musical score, which harmonizes as the player guides their flower petals through other flowers in the levels. Basically, you control flower petals, first a single petal in each level, and then a “swarm” of them by the end of each level.

    Early levels are really peaceful and serene. You’re floating through grasslands, intrigued by the beauty of the surroundings and the fact that you’re bringing life and color. At the end of one early level, you “enliven” a big old tree, which grows and blooms. It’s all very majestic. The first half was the best.

    Later levels change the tone significantly, as you float through areas that are like cold, dead, electrical grids or something. There are lots of power lines and electrical towers. It’s all very grey and drab. Gone is the color of the first half of the game. Touching towers can shock you, so you have to slow down and navigate between the metal to touch the flowers beneath them. Navigating the petals could be tedious, like when you miss a flower and keep circling around trying to get it, or in this later level when you’re trying to slowly creep through electrical towers. I was often unclear as to the “hit boxes,” for lack of a better word, of my petals and the other objects, which is why I’d miss flowers I thought I touched, or get shocked when I thought I’d avoided a tower.

    Anyway, the last level is like a triumphant return of nature to the gray city-scape, smashing through the electrical towers now. Take that, cities! Take this, industry! Eat dirt, electricity! Flowers rule! I did enjoy the revenge of destroying electrical towers. Interesting game for sure, and haven’t played anything quite like it, but the experience itself wasn’t as captivating as Journey’s was.

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    The Banner Saga (PC)    by   dkirschner

    This is amazing. It's like The Walking Dead games, but with some SRPG combat. Bleak setting. ------------- So intense, much decisions.
    most recent entry:   Thursday 31 December, 2015
    I didn't quite know what to expect from The Banner Saga. It looked like some sort of viking themed strategy RPG also consisting of leading a caravan from one place to another. I guess that's a decent description in actuality. The caravan gives it a distinct Oregon Trail feel. There's no dysentery, but some of my rations were poisoned, there were fights among caravan members, I ran into bandits, I did ford a river (chose that option as a nod to good ole Oregon Trail!), found lots of cities and ruins, and tons of other events. In that sense it reminded me also of Faster Than Light, or other roguelikes with various events that can happen on the journey. So...Oregon Trail + Faster Than Light + narrative Telltale Games + Shining Force II. If you like all those games, then The Banner Saga will gel with you.

    The setting is distinctly bleak. It's set in a viking/Norse inspired fantasy world with rich history that you can explore by reading location descriptions on the map. There have been two great wars. Humans and varl (like viking giants) allied with each other against the dredge (a heavily armored race of humanoids who reminded me of white walkers). Like white walkers, the dredge invade from the frozen north and are relentless. They've got a leader like Night's King (Bellower). Bellower has a key weakness, just as the white walkers (not sure about Night's King), and I haven't read far enough in the Game of Thrones books to know if there are more big similarities. They're different enough, but I got a familiar feeling from the dredge.

    You play as several different characters in the first chunk of the game, then it settles you into the role of a human named Rook for most of it. Simply put, the dredge are invading (supposedly) and you are trying to make it from A to B, and then when things go inevitably wrong, to C to D to E, etc. The flow of the game is nowhere as simple or predictable as "go from A to B, event happens, go from B to C, event happens, go from C to D..." You might pass through a town on the way to your main destination and find that there is a little civil war going on within its walls. Will you deal with that or leave them to their fighting? Depending on your choices, you'll gain or lose followers, gain/lose rations, morale, renown, etc. So you eventually leave, and are quickly set upon by a faction from that town who, for example, is pissed off that you intervened. Do you fight them, convince them to come with you, run away? Again, more consequences. Then maybe your scouts spot a huge dredge force ahead. Do you charge, go around, camp out for a while to see what they are doing, try to split their forces, lead them back to the other town? Again, consequences. And so on.

    All of these choices and consequences feel very significant. You have a lot of resources to think about when making decisions. You have some number of regular caravan travelers (like normal townsfolk), human fighters, and varl. These can fluctuate. Have a lot, and you go through rations faster. Don't have enough, and some of the larger "war" fights will be tough and you'll incur more losses. Did you run out of rations? Great, then every day people in your caravan will die and morale will drop faster. But hopefully that next town has a market with some rations. Or oh! I'm stumbled upon a small farm with some animals. Do I pillage it or be nice and leave the farmers alone and starve until the next town. When I get to town, I can spend renown (global experience points basically) on rations, on promoting my warriors, or on purchasing equippable items. Which is more important? Should I starve more to promote that varl to level 5? Is not starving and having higher morale better for the caravan than promoting my warriors? If I have high morale, then all my units in combat get willpower bonuses (essentially more extra attack power or actions). Or I can let morale drop so they get no bonuses or even take penalties, but purchase a nice new item or promote a character or two. AAAAAAAAAAAH!

    I would literally sit in front of the screen for 10 minutes at a time weighing options. These decisions are brutal because there isn't enough of any resource to go around. You will starve. Your morale will drop. You will not promote all your warriors as much as you wish you could. You will not buy many of the items. It is a fact of life in The Banner Saga.

    Combat is of course a huge part of the game. It's familiar grid-style strategy RPG combat like your Shining Force II, Final Fantasy Tactics, Disgaea, etc., but is fresh too. Every character has 5 stats: armor, strength, willpower, exertion, and break, plus one passive ability and one active special ability. Strength doubles as attack power and health. So the more strength you lose, you are not only closer to death, but you don't hit as hard. Losing strength can severely weaken a character and make things difficult. So to counter that, get armor! Usually, you have to whittle down an enemy's armor to do much strength damage. So for example, I have 12 armor and 12 strength, and an enemy has 10 armor and 10 strength. If I make a strength attack against him, I will do 2 by default (my 12 strength - his 10 armor = 2). If he attacks me at full strength, he will do 1 (10 strength - 12 armor = a base damage of 1; you'll always do 1). Or will you? If I have more armor than he has strength, he gets a 10% penalty on chance to hit (which is otherwise always 100%). So really, he has an 80% chance to hit me for 1 strength damage.

    So what you do is get their armor down by choosing an armor break attack (modified by your armor break stat). So if you're only going to do 1 damage to an enemy's strength, you might want to hit him for 3 armor instead, which will make it easier to do more strength damage later. This all makes perfect sense once you are playing! Willpower comes into effect because it allows you to modify damage. If I have one willpower, I can use a special attack (costs 1 for each level, up to 3), or I can add a damage to a regular attack. To add damage though, I need points in the exertion stat, which determines how much willpower I can use during an action. So if a character has 3 exertion, and has the available willpower, he can really clobber an enemy. If he would only do 1 strength damage normally, for example, he can use willpower to do 4. Yay! Exertion and willpower will save you a lot and are very useful. All the stats are very useful and, like the other resources, you will not be able to max out all the stats even if you promote the character all the way. You always have to choose wisely!

    Finally, the art and music are fantastic, and I enjoyed the story, even though it didn't really resolve. Apparently there is another Banner Saga game in development and these will be just parts of a larger story or something. I dunno. I could have kept playing this for a long time so I was a little bummed when it ended. It doesn't end abruptly or anything. It is very climactic. But it is obvious that the story isn't finished. I really want a sequel.

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