Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=1https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8029After a bunch of good/easy runs I got into a streak of bad runs...all the cats dying and that sort of thing. Which makes me wonder if this wasn't designed - as in, I got an easy run in the beginning before the (invisible) training wheels came off? The longer I played though, the more grating the crass humor became. To a point that I'm happier just playing something else now, which is a bit of a shame because there's interesting stuff here and I was enjoying discovering new combos and interactions and such. But, it also feels like the game is a bit grindy in ways I'm not too excited for...I need to "dump" a lot of cats to get more upgrades so, is it really worth it? It doesn't seem like it, so I'm putting this back on the metaphorical shelf...Tue, 03 Nov 2026 17:19:24 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8029&iddiary=13572https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8033Finished this last night and it was... well, less interesting than I had hoped? The interesting parts of the story sort of got lost along the way, and the interesting things about this cyberpunk universe (one on which psychic abilities and gene-manipulation such that people can acquire certain animal traits exist!) were also downplayed to focus on a story that's loosely about memories/reality and...sort of a ghost(?) (as in Ghost in the Shell, not as in scary ghost stories). Also, the "puzzly" moments - picking which pictures from your inventory to drag into slots on a fuzzy picture that needs solving were...mostly nonsensical to me - as in, I never felt really confident as to why I had to pick certain things and not others. The logic behind the correct solutions was unclear at best...which was annoying. I even looked up a video playthrough for one part - and the person who did the video ran into the same problem with the puzzle I was stymied by. And they did what I did - scoured the other places for something they may have missed before going back and trying combinations until one worked. At least I did confirm that the order of selection did not matter. A relief that made the trial and error a lot easier to manage. Thankfully.Tue, 03 Nov 2026 17:16:11 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8033&iddiary=13571https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8035I'm really digging this so far. It's a lot more involved than I imagined, but also seems a little bit familiar...from playing the mobile f2p game of all things. I'm only a few missions in, just getting started, but I've been having fun exploring and learning about all the things the game has. Which is a lot! Crafting and cooking and inventory and stuff management. And lots of different weapon types, I've only tried two...but it's also been weird... 1. I started out with a full plate armor set equipped - I think this might have been a promo of some sort? But, it's super good - like, way above level...so I don' really take damage when fighting monsters so I feel like I'm cheesing it. But, this wasn't my choice - I just started like that. 2. From reading reviews over the years and stuff others had said, I sort of had the idea that the spaces in this game were huge, and it took time to track down and hunt a monster...and that it was all really involved.. but so far I feel like the spaces are really small. And tight. I've fought the "big" monsters 3 times - and they're not that big nor that remote...which feels strange. Perhaps I'm just getting the easy-peasy low level "big" monsters that sort of slum it in the starter areas? It's happened to me twice that I'm "tracking" a monster and then it's just there...wandering around and I tart to attack it. It's neat how their animations when they're wounded, and then try to run away...felt bad too.They make different noises (more "I'm dying and in pain" than "amgry roar be scared".Fri, 30 Oct 2026 13:18:58 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8035&iddiary=13570https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8033It feels weird to say that I almost bailed on a visual novel because I couldn't solve a puzzle. But it's true! I don't actually know what happened, but this was a scene where you have to place items from your inventory...and I had three items, did it, got it wrong, tried all the combinations and it still didn't work. Then I spent 20 minutes scouring the environments in case I had missed something, did not find anything new and was about to go "ugh, I'm done". Went back, tried again, and now it worked. What? I think I might have misunderstood how the interface worked or was supposed to work? Maybe I did it differently the 2nd time? I don't know. We'll see what happens the next time I get to a "puzzle" (I mean, they're not really puzzles, but hey...) So far I'm intrigued, but I've only played what I assume is the prologue - so, we'll see how much longer I can maintain interest. The problem I sometimes have with games like this where you have to do lots of reading is that, if I'm playing at night in bed, I'll just get sleepy five minutes in. So, it's really hard to make progress.Fri, 30 Oct 2026 13:11:04 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8033&iddiary=13569https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8027Made it to level 9, did a few more quests and...yeah, I think I'm tired now. Strangely, it feels like there isn't much/enough story for me to continue to want to play, and I got a bit tired of always being under-health? Well, that got a bit better because I "discovered" (figured out) the cooking part of the game - I was finally able to put all these animal/critter parts and learned that lots of the stuff you cook then gets rid of the rads (all the food items I had healed, but also added rads - and I didn't have a way to mitigate that, so it seemed like a negative downward spiral). The no-rads healing food was really a game changer in that way, so that was a big improvement. Oh, every now and then there's a weird storm - and it was a super cool experience - it sounds and looks incredible and I was genuinely worried...rads going up, lightning noises and stuff. Great ambience! Maybe I should have gotten to the city I was supposed to visit for the story...but Ilooked at the shelf of over games to play and though..meh.Mon, 26 Oct 2026 15:08:51 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8027&iddiary=13568https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8034This is probably the lamest log I'll write for a game - but I just wanted to document my experience, even when it did not involve playing the game. I out the disc in, it starts reading and then shows the name of the game in Japanese/Chinese. Huh, that's weird. It happens around the same time I see a little popup notification that an update has been downloaded. Weird, whatever, it should be fine. I load the game, watch the intro - looks fun. And then I get a UI alert. It's in Japanese/Chinese... weird. I get past that...and get to the game's main menu. Everything is in English. Oh, nice! But I go into the config menu...and oops, it's all in Japanese/Chinese again...and I try toggling things to see if I can switch language to English. No luck. I go online, "why did my game switch to another language". Everyone says to set the console region language to what I want, and that the game should change. It's already in English. No luck. I try a bunch of things...still no luck. I look at the game case. Maybe this was a European version of the game and the language got borked somehow. Nope. ESRB rating, so it's US. I pop the disc, to try a re-install and stuff. The disc is all in English..but it does say "MADE IN JAPAN FOR HOME USE ONLY". I wonder if the disc is Japanese? (in a US case, weird). It also has a code.. PLAS 05251. Online sleuthing reveals it's a Chinese disc. Whut? Sigh. I guess someone duped Gamestop and now...me.Mon, 26 Oct 2026 15:01:25 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8034&iddiary=13567https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8026I'm putting this back no the shelf now - mostly because I started to get a little tired of it. As I think about it, it's abit of a tricky design space and I can see how the design team was trying to keep things fresh and mix things up. They've added a little mechanic where you can tap on some objects that get highlighted to see what's inside. THere's also a "follow the musical pattern" in which you click on things on the map in the right order...following a musical script. It's all "ok" - not particularly compelling, but I've started to get tired because the also isn't much I find interesting in the story. Each mission feels like "oh, here's a thing that happened, let's fix it" but the characters and the world aren't that compelling, and while there are neat things in the images - they're not really woven into the storytelling. So, I don't feel like I'm learning cool things about this weird/interesting world from the missions themselves - at most I pick things up from the artwork. It's a weird "miss" - because the artwork is super fun and neat to explore, there's cool details and characters - but it falls flat after that. Also, playing on the Switch is more annoying than it should - I feel the controls are really imprecise - I need to move the cursor to a specific location and I overshoot/undershoot tweak and adjust and it's just...annoying.Thu, 22 Oct 2026 08:43:00 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8026&iddiary=13566https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8027Ugh. I'm not sure I want to continue playing. We'll see. I've hit level 7 and I would say that the experience so far is really mixed. The game seems to want to encourage scavenging all the things. But, you hit a weight limit super fast - and it becomes really annoying to manage that, especially since you can't fast travel when you're encumbered. So, why bother? I've also picked up all kinds of things that...I can't do anything with? Tings have "value" but I've yet to run into a store or any place where I can sell. So far everything has involved killing all the raiders/enemies - and the towns I've been setting up/helping out (two so far) don't have shops. Though I think I can build one if I get the materials? (something to try out the next time I play). I also nearly worked myself into an unrecoverable position - I left a car manufacturing plant (running away from enemies) only to load immediately into 4 enemies right there. I don't know how I was able to survive them - a lot of luck I think, and more than a few tries. But it was really bad. I might have quit there if a few more tries hadn't worked out... Also, so far at least, there's surprisingly little in the way of story/narrative. I'm surprised because it's a Bethesda game - so I was expecting a lot more. I'm ignoring the wonky glitches and weird graphical things because that would be a bit unfair at this point (old game and all that, and I don't think it downloaded an update because I think the game's content servers are offline by now?) Anyways, we'll see how much further I go... Oh! The other thing that's really annoying is how hard/rare it is to find the item that decontaminates you such that you can heal back up. Every rad lowers your max health, but getting rid of rad has been SUPER hard/rare. Most of my time I'm running around with 1/2 health just because of the rad capping it.Sat, 17 Oct 2026 17:37:02 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8027&iddiary=13563https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8030I played this enough to complete a full run with the starter character (this unlocked new characters - but I haven't gone back to play since). And WOW, the final boss fight was super stressful and cool. I'm feeling kind of lucky that I beat it on my first try actually. First try at the boss, not first run. I might have been 3 or four runs before I got that far... ..it's an interesting game! There's a new element in the "safe areas" where you also have a (separate) deck of cards that lets you do things in the safe areas - find new cards, upgrade stuff, and that sort of thing. When you get new cards they can either be for the combat part of the game or for the safe zones, and there's some neat interactions there. Interestingly, when you rest at a safe zone it can have negative consequences - but you only want to do it to draw a new hand of safe zone cards. I'm not sure I entirely understood how everything here worked - lots of card play reduces the "danger rating", but I don't know if it matters at all other than resting there. As in, does leaving a safe zone with a high danger rating mean harder combat later? A less safe state for the next safe zone? All of this I couldn't figure out from what I've played so far. There was some stuff I thought was a bit unfair - there are some things in the safe zone that you can play a card to unlock, but some require multiple cards - and more than once I left a safe zone without having unlocked the thing. It felt like I had wasted those cards on a thing I didn't know I couldn't unlock - and as far as I could tell, the progress towards unlocking is reset when you leave. Visually, the game is so cool - it's like a slicker version of Inscryption.Sat, 17 Oct 2026 17:02:29 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8030&iddiary=13562https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8029I've been enjoying this a lot more than I expected. It's crass and adolescent in ways I no longer find funny or even charming or endearing - but the game's design is really interesting to me. So, I've just been ignoring the representational aspects to focus on gameplay. So, it's a turn-based tactical rogue-like game. You have a squad of max 4 cats and must fight enemies while staying healthy and alive during a "run" - basically a series of fights with some treasure and shopping and "narrative" encounters. So far I've been unlocking new locations that let you go "deeper" (it also branches) and I'm curious how "deep" (i.e. long) each run can get. It's getting longer such that I cannot play a run over lunch break any more - having to save, stop, and resume the next day. But...here's some fun/clever game design: 1. The cats are random in their stats and so on - BUT the game layers "classes" on top of that, that really help you shape what your team can do. The classes are basically "tags" (like dog tabs, but for cats) than mod the cat - give them random within-class abilities, and off you go. I was worried that the game would be too random, but here you can adapt the roles to the cats you have and try to have a well-balanced team for the runs. I've unlocked two new classes so far (it's vanilla fantasy in this sense: fighter, mage, archer,etc.): the cleric and the thief. I'd be surprised if there aren't a ton more. We'll see. 2. Once you finish a run. That's it for those cats. You've levelled them up and so on, but they can never venture out again. Sure, you can have them stick around for breeding (I can't tell if levelled up cats with good stats because they've levelled up have kittens with higher stats)...but that's it. So, you can't stick to a team - it really forces you to experiment with new cats (with different skills, etc. - while still giving you some control, see above). 3. There's durability on all the gear you find. Again, you can use stuff a few times before it breaks/runs out - but mostly you'll be using new things and such. Again, encourages experimentation. I don't think I've seen a duplicate item yet? Things I'm not so sure about... 1. There's base building, but it seems REALLY slow and grindy. Mostly it involves donating cats to NPS, but the 2nd round of donations all need at least 10 cats...which seems like a lot to me. 2. You also have to provide for "happiness" in your base - happier cats breed more often, unhappy ones get into fights - and they can (and do) kill each other! (winner gets a buff - but if it's a veteran, the buff doesn't matter? or maybe it does for breeding)Sat, 17 Oct 2026 16:52:57 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8029&iddiary=13561