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Red Dead Redemption 2 (PS5) by dkirschner (Mar 9th, 2026 at 09:45:05) |
Yeah, this was incredible, as expected. The story, the character development, the historical setting, all incredible. My brother and another friend (especially the friend) were highly invested in me playing the game, so I was keeping them updated while playing. Another friend was supposed to be playing it at the same time as me, but I paused a couple months ago and he defected to Mass Effect for a break and never returned. I need to be like, "Dude, I beat it. Hurry up so we can talk about it!"
There are so many memorable missions, from the night out with Lenny (the game explores race and racism during this time and place, which was neat) to going to get the kid from the Italian guy to an epic train robbery to the final showdown, and even to the side missions, like collecting debts for Strauss (which seems so mundane), but realizing the damage that Strauss's money lending causes to individuals and families and then eventually kicking him out of camp. The characters are all flawed, and the main character arc of Arthur about made me cry throughout the last chapter (though I had a MAJOR plot point spoiled for me by a John Green book!). Truly, it is a story about redemption, with some characters growing and others succumbing to their flaws. Very human, very emotional.
Two main activities in the game are riding your horse and shooting people. Riding your horse could have gotten boring fast, but you have good control over movement and how fast you go, and have to manage horse stamina. You also encounter things along the road, from Strangers (capital "S") to meet (aka side characters with their own story arcs), to strangers (small "s") whom I usually ignored (aka random events to random NPCs like passing someone calling for help because he's getting chased by bandits, passing a person begging for money, passing a hunter stuck in a bear trap [I felt bad that I never helped the hunter]), to ambushes, etc.
There is a handy auto-ride system, where you can set a cinematic camera to take over as you go from one place to another. Arthur will actually ride the horse the whole way, but you can put the controller down and watch the beautiful landscape and bathe in the ambient music. You can also fast-travel using wagons or trains between towns, but I hardly ever did that.
Shooting people is pretty basic. You have a weapon wheel and an inventory wheel, and during combat you basically duck behind cover (R1), pop out and target someone (L2), which uses handy aim assist, flick the left control stick up to the target's head (because aim assist always centers on their chest), and pull the trigger (R2) for a headshot. Duck again, line up your next headshot, kill. Move forward to the next cover. Repeat until mission cleared. This did get repetitive by the end. I hardly ever used "dead eye," a slow time ability that allows you to shoot multiple enemies at once, and I hardly ever used items, including healing items, because you just don't need them. Weapons are just regular pistols and rifles and knives, whatever they had in the late 1800s. Combat was spiced up by the various contexts in which you fight (e.g., raiding a mansion, robbing a train, shooting on horseback, etc.), and it was engaging, but like I said, it did get repetitive.
Another thing that got repetitive, and that I quit doing after too long, was looting corpses and searching places for loot. Each "search" animation is way too long, and like I said, you don't end up needing health items, or any other items. You can always pick up new guns from the ground and ammo is plentiful. You can also buy guns and ammo too if you want. There is a "camp upgrade" element to the game in the earlier chapters, and I collected money and items to sell until I had upgraded everything, but that was a small portion of the game. Once I'd upgraded everything, first of all, the camp moves and you don't even have access to all the upgraded stuff for a chunk of the game (I don't think), and second of all, you don't need all the stuff anyway. So once camp was upgraded (by like chapter 2? of 6 + epilogues!), I basically had no use for money for the rest of the game. Sure, you can buy outfits and new guns and whatever, but none of that is necessary.
This made me feel like I went pretty straight through the main game, plus most of the Stranger missions, but didn't touch much else. I didn't mess with mini games, I didn't spend time in towns going to the theaters and whatever, I didn't mess with cosmetic things like giving myself haircuts or trying on outfits, I didn't do optional legendary hunts (those wild animals will kill you so fast!) or search for special gear or do the treasure maps, etc. That all sounds nice if you want to spend more time in the game and do everything that the Wild West has to offer, but I didn't. The main story was fantastic, so that was my focus, and I've played so many open world games and MMOs that I felt no need to hunt extra legendary creatures or collect special item sets.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was an epic tale. I can see why my brother and my friend were so excited for me to play it. Now I will be the one harassing other people: "Did you play RDR 2 yet?! Let me know when you start it! Keep me updated!" Next up from Rockstar later this year: GTA 6!
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My Hero: Doctor (DS) by jp (Mar 6th, 2026 at 18:01:32) |
From the back of the box this game looks like a "western realistic" Trauma Team game - use the touchscreen to do medical stuff like bandage a patient's arm or give them an injection. And it is...sort of? Weirdly every single "case" (mission) I played began with (and sometimes also ended with) a driving section - an ambulance of course. Here you have to dodge other vehicles and obstacles to avoid damage as you travel to a location where something happened or back to the hospital. Roads are full of other vehicles that have no qualms with suddenly changing lanes in front of you and such. You can collect "energy" (not what it's called in the game, but I don't remember the name in the game), and when you have enough you can turn on the siren - and this causes other vehicles to get out of the way (sometimes not fast enough). It's kind of a bizarre gameplay addition - and it doesn't help that the controls are kind of wonky and, from my experience, it really out stayed it's welcome even as the background locations you're driving through change.
I even unlocked a better ambulance (better driving stats)...and there's more to (eventually) choose from. I mean, the game's basic structure is pretty standard, there's cut-scenes with stories (everything so far seems to involve college kids of some sort). It makes me really wonder who the intended audience/age group for this game was. The name of the game would imply children (it's aspirational!) but the story seemed a bit more "grown up" - i.e. adolescent, but the gameplay was also quite simple..skewing younger again in my mind.
The more games of this kind I play (not top-tier first-party DS games), the more I wonder about the conditions in which they were made. Was this a game that was knocked out by a small studio in 6 months?
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Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom (PS4) by jp (Mar 2nd, 2026 at 19:08:07) |
Decided to quit suddenly because I realized I was just starting to grind for achievements and not actually having fun or enjoying the game. Which, in the grand scheme of things sounds like a bad thing other than I think that I quit in time BEFORE I got super tired and bored. So, leaving on a (little past) the high of the fun experience.
I was grinding the Dream Doors - and apparently there's a nice monster at the end that can be a real challenge - but, I didn't have a sense of WHY I'd want to do that. Here I mean motivation within the game's story. I was hoping for a nice story payoff if anything? It seems like there isn't, it's just a grind for resources and stuff and so...time to bail!
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Vampire Survivors (PC) by dkirschner (Mar 2nd, 2026 at 15:38:02) |
I first played this a few years ago on Game Pass and loved it. I rebought it on Steam because there was so much extra content. (I have since learned to avoid long games, roguelikes, and stuff with tons of replayability on subscription services; buy those instead!). Last summer, I replayed the game and started to dig into the DLC. There is practically an infinite amount of stuff to do in Vampire Survivors. I still feel this after sinking another 30 hours into it. The achievements and unlocks are extremely compelling and I could chase them all day. But it has finally started to feel repetitive. Longer 30-minute runs that result in like one unlock or just some progress through a map feel more and more like a time sink, especially as I have other games to get to, including newer games in this genre.
The DLCs (so many!!) have been interesting in that they alter the base game in interesting ways. The maps have rooms, islands, and more geographical features; they are not just massive plains with the occasional obstacle. Contra has a different kind of boss fight. They have new characters, weapons, evolutions, and secrets. The Ode to Castlevania DLC is massive, about the same size as the entire base game! It also has unique boss fights, and an even bigger map to explore, including different spawn points so you don't start over every time. I mean, really, I could just keep playing this forever...but I can't keep playing this forever! I must delete it. Maybe one day there will be another DLC that really piques my interest and the game will rise like a vampire from the coffin of my Steam library! I did see that they are releasing a first-person card battler roguelike, so I am sure I will get sucked into that too!
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Fabledom (PC) by jp (Feb 28th, 2026 at 18:37:25) |
This one is in the "sim" sub-group "city building" bucket for this semester's critical game design class. I'm generally not a fan of city building games since I find that the simulation part often runs away from me. I think I'm doing well, but then everything falls apart.
This game was surprisingly chill - it almost feels like the game you'd just keep on playing? As in, you start - and then just continue. I'm 6 hours in and I've just hit the point where I should be building palaces and having nobles prancing around. The game is basically a "Sim-City FairyTale Edition", but I've really liked the pace of it. At times things were going wonky, but I just kept going and slowly things have recovered (I took too long to build the hospital, so people died - once it was finally built it was funny to see a huge swarm of sick people mob it).
The economy is rather complicated with lots of different resources and I find it really hard to know if things are going well/poorly - there's time delays on everything of course, I just don't notice when "production" happens and whether or not it is sufficient for the demans of my populace. Basically though, it's always "make numbers go up" and then you run out of people to work - so make houses for them, and so on.
Here's the things I've particularly appreciated in this game's design (or that I thought were neat).
a. People live in houses (and bigger residential buildings), but there's always ONE person who is the head of household. That's their job.
b. When you pay for a new building you basically pay money, and decide where it's going. But you then have to wait for the resources for the building to be delivered/transported there. I often ran into an issue where I paid for a bunch of stuff, but no construction was happening because I didn't have enough planks or something.
c. My village has a cyclops that wanders around making people happy. So much better than terrorizing.
d. In winter, lots of things shut-down, this felt like a "vacation" for the farmers, which I let them have/enjoy.
e. I thought it was funny that Commoner's really don't like living next to peasant homes. So, a peasant home could be super desirable - but only for other peasants. It's the complete opposite for commoner's (highly undesirable). Basically, there's a class system and they don't like each other when it comes to living close by. (I'm assuming the same will apply for nobles, but I don't have any of those yet).
f. A common driver of unhappiness in the people is how far they have to walk to work (you can manually assign different people to different buildings). It makes sense - but this is all walking anyways...but still - distance from home-to-work matters! Apparently this is because workers go home to eat!
g. I liked how you could chop down trees but also have a little add-on forester hut so they grow back.
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Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii) by dkirschner |
| Good lord, this game is amazing. Feels very MMORPG-ish. ------- It has its lagging moments, but in general, very satisfying JRPG. |
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most recent entry: Sunday 3 May, 2020
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It is done! According to HowLongToBeat.com, this is the 9th longest game I've ever played: 67 hours and 30 minutes. That's right around average for the main story. I maintain that this game's side quests are garbage and the "social" affinity content is pointless. Apparently all that pushes the gameplay time to upwards of 100 hours. The game could have wrapped up earlier, but kudos to the writers for making a story that keeps on going deeper and deeper. There's always another bad guy after the current bad guy, and this story traces all the way to the beginning of the universe. They really covered all their bases.
In the one other angsty entry for this, I had been slogging through the biggest, worst designed town full of the most annoying creatures, and I was struggling with remembering all the combat controls (mostly when to use all the various Monado skills and getting overwhelmed by the fact that all the characters play differently). I was ready to hang it up. Then I think I played for 8 hours straight and the game was redeemed.
Regarding my previous gripes:
1. The "kid" is special, as I should have imagined. His friends, however, are another story. How they wind up strong enough to fight gods, I don't know.
4. Regarding "too many skills," it doesn't matter. I realized that there are better and worse skill and party combinations, but as long as you have some basics covered (a tank, someone who can heal), then most skill and party combinations are valid.
5. The party AI is awful through the entire game. It does an okay job with tanks, but characters with healing abilities will inexplicably not use them until someone is almost dead, and some of the characters the AI seems to not know how to control at all (looking at you Melia). In my last session tonight, as an example, I was in a banquet hall with tables and chairs. Sharla (ranged DPS and healer) was between a table and a wall. The enemy I was fighting killed me and Reyn (tank). Sharla needed to come resurrect either of us. The enemy came toward her and blocked her from one direction. Instead of turning to go around the table, I watched as she futilely ran against the monster trying to go through the way it was blocking. She ran in place until she died and we wiped. Go around the table! Actually that's not an example of the AI not knowing how to play a character. That's just an example of the AI having bad pathfinding, which is unfortunately a more general problem.
6. I never became enamored with the controls, but I got used to them. One thing that sucked is if I played for a long time, my left hand would start cramping because of constantly holding the joystick up while pressing C to rotate the camera and move at the same time. Regarding the action bar, on a PC you would have had abilities assigned to 1-8. With the Wiimote though, you scroll, constantly scroll. Left left left left A. Right Right Right Right Right A. Forever.
Those were things that stood out a month ago. After continuing, I realize that the game’s tone is really hit-or-miss. For example, when it aims for light-heartedness, it’s really cheesy. When it aims for seriousness, the feeling is evident but it’s often marred by voice acting and repetitive dialogue. The game is not funny at all, though it tries. The requisite JRPG cute comic relief character, Riki, sucks so much. Characters, while possessing plenty of backstory, typically have a single-minded reason for fighting from which they never waver. The connections between all the characters, races, worlds, and so on make the story complex, but characters themselves are simple. Over this long of a game, that gets tiring. Shulk (main character), for example, is motivated to fight for the girl in his village who he had a budding romance with. There’s love in the air. After they save the freaking universe, the two of them sit on the beach, she makes a comment about her haircut, he awkwardly compliments it and stutters over his words and they don’t bring up the fact that they like one another. The scene should have faded with them holding hands or literally anything except them social distancing in front of a beautiful sunset. Apparently even after you save the world, you aren’t mature enough to express a romantic notion.
The environments in this game are top notch. I was left with my jaw on the floor many times, and this is a 2010 Wii game. They’re fun to run through and have branching paths, optional areas, mini-bosses, (shitty) side quests, and more. One of the final areas had me pulling my hair out though. You have to go inside the Bionis (old god) and reach its heart. It’s a vertical level so you’re walking up narrow paths. The problem is that there are a lot of enemies with knockback who will shove you off the path to the poison water far below. There’s no way to get up from the poison water, so you die. This happened to me about 20 times. If your NPC allies get knocked off, they materialize back at you and continue fighting, but if you get knocked off, it’s a wipe. The paths are so narrow that it’s really hard to avoid being knocked off. You just have to do your best to avoid engaging enemies on the paths. The level boss did the same thing. You fight her in a room with these poison pools, and she had an awful tendency to shove my tank into the pools. After a few tries at this though, I realized I could make smart use of the “focus attack” and “come to me!” commands. If my NPC allies got shoved into the poison pools, I’d run to the center of the room and use “come to me!” Sometimes it would take them a minute and they might still die (see “bad pathfinding” above), but it did the job.
That boss fight and numerous others (including minibosses and even regular enemies in the world, especially if you pull a lot of them) are tough and can last a long time (~10-15 minutes). Sometimes, boss fights just last until you realize you’re woefully under-leveled. After playing a while, I learned that this is 5 levels under the boss. In MMO fashion, if the enemy’s name icon is gray, they are too easy; blue = easy; white = about your level; yellow = 3-4 levels above you; red = 5+ levels above you and certain doom). Especially toward the end of the game, you will have to grind. Out of the 67 hours, I bet 7 were grinding, roughly 10% of my play time. Even if you explore everywhere, you’ll still have to grind. Take the Bionis level I mentioned. I entered there at level 69. Enemies in the previous area were in the high 60s and low 70s. Enemies in this area were 72-76, and I saw some minibosses wandering up to 78. I gained a level on the way to the boss, but she was red. Great. Even her little trash mobs were yellow, level 73. She was probably 75 or 76. So back I went to grind out, at minimum, 2 levels. I got up to 73 and tried again. Still a challenging fight, but I beat her at that level. This kind of thing happened several times in the latter half of the game. I wound up just muting the volume and putting headphones on to listen to music.
That is it! The last Wii game I own too. I have a few more Wii U games to play and then I can sell it all (but these are shelved until I exhaust the Microsoft Game Pass). I’m glad to have played this epic JRPG. It’s been a while since I’ve played one. It was long and it has its faults, but it was endearing, the combat was sublime, music and environments were stunning, and it pushed my RPG progression and loot buttons. I wouldn’t play it again, but I’d recommend it if you’re hankering for something in the genre. I’m also not sure I would call it one of the greatest RPGs ever—the thing got rave reviews—but I could just be playing too late to be as impressed. I have the sequel sitting here and suppose I’ll delve into it with some idea of what to expect in the future!
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