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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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    World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria (PC)    by   dkirschner

    Still fun. Looking forward to exploring and taking it easy this time around. -------------- Think I'm tapped out for good. Besides writing about the game.
    most recent entry:   Wednesday 5 December, 2012
    Bought MoP on Cyber Monday, not really because I wanted to, but because it seemed stupid not to. P started a trial, and I figured what the hell, I'll check it out. I played one day and that was cool. Then P bought it and I didn't follow him. Then I opened my WoW account to see how much time I had on the free trial and my 6-month subscription had auto-renewed a few days earlier. Woops. I canceled it already so no more auto-renewing. Then it turns out, on Cyber Monday, that P's purchase didn't go through somehow the week before. I commented that it was half off for Cyber Monday and he bought it immediately. Then I figured, oh well, I might as well cough up $20 since I just accidentally paid for 6 more months. I'll see how Panda-land is, level one character, and PvP at 90 very casually. How is it so far?

    I haven't leveled all the way yet. I'm just into 89. I picked Nachtluz, my paladin, since he's been my general favorite. It took me a little while to remember how to play, even after playing so long before. They completely redid talents, which I think suck now. They stripped away nearly all choice you had in customizing skills. There used to be the typical RPG talent trees. Now, every 15 levels, you pick 1 of three talents. All three on any of the levels are sometimes functionally equivalent so there really is no choice. For example, the level 15 talents for paladins are all movement speed talents. Do you want a very high movement speed bonus for a short time? A medium movement speed bonus for a longer time? Or a slower movement speed bonus permanently? You see what this means? By level 30, you've essentially made 0 choices and your character is the exact same as all others of your class, except for spec. Basically they rolled most of the old talents into the specializations, so you do get several more things from the beginning. But there's nothing *new.* I couldn't imagine my character being static for 30 levels. Actually I'm looking at them now and the talents are just so boring. The level 30 ones are all variants of a stun/slow. The rationale I've read for this from players is that "everyone used cookie-cutter builds anyway." Bullshit. There were many tough decisions to be made and that made it fun. *Now* there are cookie-cutter builds. One build for each spec and PvE/PvP. Because players have no choice otherwise. Glad I only have to go 85-90. On the one hand, I'm happy because I have a spec that works, but on the other I'm annoyed that I can't tweak much.

    Ok so fair enough. Changes. It's more accessible overall, also with the cute panda bears. I thought it was stupid when I first heard about it, and it's still a little silly for me, but they've done an excellent job with the expansion's content. The Pandarens, as they're called, are drawn up from Chinese culture. They are monks, beer-brewers, do martial arts, and the entire of Pandaria looks like Chinese mythology. The quests are more or less the same thing they've always been in terms of what you have to do. There have been a couple amazing stand-outs though. When Mists of Pandaria is telling stories, they are excellent. This is when quests shine, when they are supported by really good storylines. When quests don't shine it's because the killing x enemies / collecting x things overshadows the story. The fighting is basic, dull, easy, repetitive, etc. by this point. So I appreciate the quests that are more story heavy, and there are more of those in this expansion. Unfortunately Mists of Pandaria dropped a lot of the awesome quests, and the best storyline (so far) in the first zone. There was one quest chain where you had to listen to 3 of your allies recount this mission they went on and why one came back nearly dead. So you talk to the first, and as the NPC narrates with voice, the game puts you in that character's shoes to act out the events s/he is narrating. Then the next NPC takes over the story, and the next, and you play this really cool tale of their expedition and learn what happened to them and what dangers are out there. It was *awesome* but it was right near the beginning and the only time there has been anything deviating so much from the typical quests. I feel like they thought it was a risk to innovate their quests and storytelling and probably didn't want to take it too far, but they really should have.

    There are other cool things now with regards to quests and storylines. First of all, there's a good amount of voice acting now, so for main events you get that instead of just text. Quest chains are more organized and interrelated. At the end of chains now there is sometimes a cinematic! Sometimes too there are what I call "raid training" boss fights at the end that are pretty fun. Some of these spread over multiple quests and are much more involved than anything solo in the past. I like these. They are like unexpected rewards.

    The rest of Pandaria is nice enough. The music is excellent. It's all Eastern and sounds great. The architecture is awesome too. All the buildings are all Chinese-flavored. I mean, I live here in Singapore. There are lots of temples and old Chinese-style buildings. Pandaria's buildings look like them. Really good job nailing the style. The lay of the land isn't as exciting. I haven't found any great zones particularly. There's a cool spot here and there. I think again the first zone was my favorite. It had lots of cool trees...

    I played all the dungeons I could so far. They're fun enough. One takes place in a brewery and I thought was really dumb. But they're just dungeons, same as always. More streamlined, but that's this whole expansion. Everything is simpler, streamlined, quicker. Crafting also got a makeover and is super fast. I maxed out mining almost immediately and learned all the blacksmithing recipes I can really quick.

    That's about it I think. I've just been playing out of rest experience every day. I suppose I'll hit 90 in another week and see what the new battlegrounds are like. I've had some good open world PvP battles while questing. I can't imagine anymore playing on a PvE or RP server. I'd be bored out of my mind just questing. I like that horde try to kill me because I usually kick the crap out of anyone who touches me at my level. There was one hunter though who I couldn't touch. But my best grudge matches were with another paladin and with a warlock. Both of them we went at it for like an hour, across multiple zones, while doing quests, camping one another, trying to aggro enemies onto one another. In the end the warlock whispered me from an Alliance character, added me as a friend, and said I made his day. We talked for a little bit.

    Oh, there's this website called openraid.org that P had been using to do cross-server raids last time he was playing. They're having a fun-run on Monday which we signed up to do. I've never done one before and am excited. Everyone makes a level 1 human on a particular server, and there going to be event organizers there taking names for registration. They'll tell us where we have to run to, and you just have this level 1 human death race to see who can make it to the goal first. I expect to die a lot, but also have this strange notion that I think I can win. New ways to play an old game!

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