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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 wasnt quite sure what to expect. It looks like a casual city-builder and mobile game. Its definitely casual and definitely a builder of sorts, but its 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 doesnt net you points. You need points in order to get more tiles. If you run out of tiles, its 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 youre not simply matching sides, but youre 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 dont match like tiles early on, youll 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 youve created. Another thing I realized is that you cant branch out too much. Youve got to remain clustered. If you branch out too much, then each tile you place cant generate many points. Its 10 points per matched side, so if youre 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 youre getting 20 or 30 points per tile, and generating more tiles. Its an interesting balancing act.

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

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

    I shouldnt 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. Theres nothing wrong with Trials of Fire; it just doesnt 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 cant help but compare the two. The main difference, of course, is that Wildermyth has no cards; its a tactics RPG with procedural storytelling and character development that was really, really cool. Trials of Fire doesnt have anything that is really, really cool. Trials of Fire has:

    - An overworld that manages to be duller than Wildermyths. 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 Wildermyths. 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, its 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 cant 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 Wildermyths (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 cant 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, its 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 theres nothing like that here. Given that the storyline for the quest campaign I did was so generic, Im 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 its just not that compelling! Again though, nothing is bad about the game, but man, I guess its 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 studios former game. I see the DNA in the aesthetics. Its 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. Youre floating through grasslands, intrigued by the beauty of the surroundings and the fact that youre bringing life and color. At the end of one early level, you enliven a big old tree, which grows and blooms. Its 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. Its 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 youre 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 Id miss flowers I thought I touched, or get shocked when I thought Id 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 havent played anything quite like it, but the experience itself wasnt as captivating as Journeys was.

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    1 : dkirschner's Dorfromantik (PC)
    2 : jp's Galactic Quest + Atlantic Quest (DS)
    3 : dkirschner's Trials of Fire (PC)
    4 : dkirschner's Wandersong (PC)
    5 : dkirschner's Rez Infinite (PS4)
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    5 : Oliverqinhao at 2020-01-23 05:11:59
    6 : dkirschner at 2019-10-15 06:47:26
    7 : jp at 2019-04-02 18:53:34
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    Dynasty Warriors Gundam (360)    by   Trinity Dragon

    Logged. An excellent combination of accurate battlefield imitation and the Gundam series. Great for anyone who likes Gundam and massive open battlefields.
    most recent entry:   Wednesday 5 March, 2008
    Gameplay
    The game allows the player to move freely through several different environments including desert, city, cave, space, and ice. The terrains differ in size and natural obstacles and space gives the illusions of terrain and altitude change by making units float upwards as you approach. Some items lodged in the ground can be destroyed but larger objects cannot be damaged and only a few can be affected directly. Beyond that the player can fight all enemies without damaging allies and it is often up to the player to actively push the attack on enemy bases and conquer territories.

    The game is broken into campaigns by pilot and each pilot in turn has a set of missions that they set out to beat. The levels are one continuous set of events that the player must react to as they occur and act to prevent a loss. The player and subsequent pilot are locked into a single mobile suit, which they must maintain in order to continue fighting and prevent a loss. At each of the levels the pilot will be arbitrarily given a mobile suit except that once the player completes all of the missions for the pilot they can choose which mobile suit to use.

    The main hook that grabs the player’s interest in a game that takes the better part of an hour to do one level is the variable point of view for each pilot. Different pilots in the same mission can have completely different objectives because they have different motives as defined by their personality from the anime series. This variable personality and motivation combined with the alternating levels for different pilots ensures that no matter where the player starts they will discover new features as they continue to play.

    The game holds the player’s interest by pitting them against other mobile suits that can be unlocked as they continue to play. In addition to locking the player with the promise of new mobile suits the player can unlock pilot abilities and equipment modifications that open new pathways at every turn. Some of the suits even promote themselves by demonstrating amazing and powerful techniques to the player. Many of the equipment and skill modifications only become available at later levels, which drives the player to continue exploring and fighting. The game eve drives the player by increasing the difficulty between levels and in the later mobile suits (such as the one with no ranged techniques).

    Design
    The gameworld consists of independent, open-territory levels, strung together to facilitate the illusion of a real battlefield where the only boundaries are natural ones. This often includes tactical objectives, retreats and advances, surprise attacks and mass numbers of both allies and enemies. The game is designed to imitate the Dynasty Warriors saga with the template of the Gundam universe and as such everything is scaled to show the difference in scale between a human and a mobile suit. For instance, an expansive temple with enough space and buildings to make any human feel insignificant gets the walls and smaller buildings trampled by the mobile suit forces.

    The level designs are based around tactical arrangement of allies and enemies in order to permit any of the three possible sides to take complete control of the battlefield or lose everything. Allies and enemies navigate the terrain and obstacles to try and conquer and hold strategic points and defend key areas. Every level includes a set of units that carry names and pilot stronger suits. In most cases these are recurring protagonists/antagonists from the different Gundam shows that are represented in the game.

    The rewards are given in three conditions: mid-level, end-of-level, and end-of-campaign. Mid-level rewards are items that give the player temporary upgrades to attack, defense and speed or health and special attack gauge. End-of-level rewards are given for leveling up the pilot and mobile suit during the battle and usually include items to improve the mobile suit and special skills that the pilot can use to improve their performance in combat. End-of-campaign rewards are only given once a player has completed all the missions for their selected pilot and are only presented once for each pilot. They include unlocking new pilots and mobile suits as well as granting the pilot the ability to choose from the available roster of mobile suits when they revisit old levels.

    Battle for this game is conducted as if the player was engaged in a real war. Enemies consist mostly of minions, which pose no real threat to the player, and bosses/leaders, which force the player to use defenses and special techniques more frequently. The player always takes the role of a leader and can coordinate special attacks with allied leaders to release more powerful techniques. Enemy minions act as units of health for the different territories and most mobile suits have a “field clearing” button combination attack that make it more efficient to group enemies around you.

    While most of the conflict for the official mode is designated by the original series and not explained very well in the game the shifting allegiances in the four-faction power struggle of the original mode are only explained by the in-game dialogue and for the most part seem to revolve around misunderstandings and sheer stubbornness. The reason for conflict usually boils down to “I live to fight,” “Fighting is a way of life for me,” or “There is someone/something/some event that I must kill/destroy/stop.” As often as not allies from original series are broken up and rivals are teamed up with each other. There is one case of interesting alliances where a protagonist of one series is partnered with the antagonist of another series and vice versa.

    [read this GameLog]

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