Blogging the experience of gameplayhttp://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7896Started playing this the other day and I didn't have the box or manual with me so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. So far it seems like a pretty straightforward paranormal visual novel - there's more reading than playing/interacting though I found it interesting how the game wears the "trappings" of systemic stuff and gameplay. So, you get experience points for doing the (so far only "gameplay" sections) and you level up - and it says that stuff improves, but I can't tell if it really has and it doesn't seem to matter much either. I haven't tested to see if the game has a real fail state (game over) or not. It's kind of hard to explain what's going on because I think there are issues with the translation - there's lots of typos and stuff like that in the text, but the concepts/ideas in the story are also obfuscated to me somewhat. But, maybe it's just the way it is? The idea is that there's some sort of "entity" (demon? person possessed by a demon?) that can then infect others - and they end up killing themselves (while doing bad things along the way), and this infection is a problem in that it spreads sort of easily. You play as a character who's part of an organization that's trying to stop this, and the main task is to find the "main" (patient zero) baddie. You have a power - which sort of exists because of an artifact which lets you see people's bad thoughts - but they're also like these "lava lamp-like bubbles" that you have to locate in them (it's like they're the infection) and then you tag them and then you learn about the character... This is the most frequent way to get XP - if you tag the bubbles quickly you get bonus XP in addition for the tagging itself. The game takes place in a village and you're a transfer student at a school and so you spend time visiting locations and talking to people trying to track down the "baddies" - it's mostly on rails, so you can visit 3 locations in any order, but you end up seeing them all regardless. I would say I'm not particularly enthused - I'm maybe 3 hours in (bit less) and I've had one "boss fight" (you tap on a thing when it gets white to do damage) - but I'm guessing the rest of the game is sort of the same? I'm not sure what I'll do yet BUT... Again, the trappings of system (and RPG systems/mechanics) is interesting to me - it makes the game seem deeper than it is really. There's also a lot of busywork moments. Stuff that you need to tap on just to tap on really. In the beginning I though there was some gameplay/choice, but I was just wrong about that. For example, right after getting the "bubbles", you then drag them to the character and press "x". And then you get a scene you can skip (with text that floats in, and it's creepy and you read it to know about the character). I've been skipping them all because...it's a bit slow. But the prior step now just feels like busywork.jpWed, 21 May 2025 12:10:24 UTChttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7896&iddiary=13393http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7895Next up is a retirement (ooh, ahh!). I bounced right off of Monster Hunter: World. Never played a Monster Hunter game before and am surprised that I don't like it. But after playing a while, at least I understand why. My expectations were a bit different than the reality. I know that the name of the game is what you do, but I assumed there would be more narrative or more traditional, tight, RPG or action RPG elements. But I would characterize the game as a massive grind. I know that this is how it is described (kill monsters to get materials to improve equipment to kill bigger monsters to get more materials to improve equipment, etc.), but I just thought there would be something else to it. And I'm sure that the hunts get more exciting, but I also know that the game is long, and I don't feel like grinding my way there to begin enjoying it after 50 hours or whatever. Some things that made me bounce off include: 1. A gazillion items to pick up. What is all this stuff? If you walk around in the field, you are prompted every 2 feet to harvest an herb or mine some ore or something. 2. Inventory management. Inventory was full very quickly, which prompted me to sit there trying to learn what all the stuff does. Short answer: crafting. 3. I usually don't enjoy crafting a lot of stuff in games, so this was not good for me. 4. Annoying cat puns. 5. The map is so busy, and the first area was super confusing to navigate. 6. Boring story and characters. 7. "Tracking" monsters was a matter of clicking on enough footprints to "level up" your knowledge of it or something. Then, you follow some glowing flies around until you see it. This did not make me feel clever, like I was hunting. I was following a green path of fireflies the whole time and pressing B when prompted to "study tracks." 8. The UI is really cluttered and could be improved in so many ways. 9. You have to play online (though you can set your game to 1 player). I didn't know there was such an online multiplayer focus. In the end, Monster Hunter: World feels like a single-player(ish) MMORPG. My days of World of Warcraft are far, far behind me, and this brought back all the memories of years of grinding in that game. I can't do it! And now I know that Monster Hunter isn't for me! dkirschnerWed, 21 May 2025 11:13:31 UTChttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7895&iddiary=13392http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7863Been playing this with Patrick for most of the semester and we finally beat it last night. It's a mixed bag, but overall positive. It absolutely rides the coattails of Portal, and we read that it was directed by the lead designer on Portal, so no surprise at the similarities. I'll get the negative things out of the way first: 1. It tries to be funny, but it falls mostly flat. The funniest things were Ike (this little imp creature that makes silly faces at you) and the way that the paintings change when you use the abilities (often funny and surprising!). What was supposed to carry the game's humor--the narrator/uncle--didn't. He delivered his lines just fine, but they didn't land. Given that you play as a child, he can't be as sarcastic as GlaDOS in Portal. Given the more family-friendly aesthetic, the jokes were sillier. Given that he and the child actually don't seem to have much of a relationship, nor is it developed throughout the game, there's little relational history and context to draw from. And he usually only pipes up in between puzzles to make brief comments that don't add much. 2. The level of precision required for the first-person platforming was rough. Many puzzles require excellent timing and precision for jumping, throwing and catching objects, and so on, and the game just didn't handle that well. The movement controls are oddly both too tight and too floaty at the same time (I'm sure I'm mischaracterizing this in my description, but this is what it felt like). We OFTEN fell off flying objects, jumped too far or not far enough, missed catching things because of the camera, and so on. Actually, it was irritating for the first half of the game, and it became funny to us as the levels became more complicated. Like last night, Patrick tried for 15 minutes to execute the moves on a puzzle before handing it to me to finish. It would take 1 minute to figure out what you need to do and 14 minutes to accomplish the task. I felt bad watching Patrick sometimes because he's not great at precision controls, so he would fail and fail and fail, hand me the controller, and I'd do on the first try what he'd tried 20 times (though I certainly failed my fair share of times because of the controls!). 3. The ending was uninspired and happened quickly. I'm not entirely sure why what happened happened and I don't care. It obviously set up a sequel that never came. That's it! Those are the negatives. The positive, though, is the puzzles. They are great, consistently fun and challenging. You're in your uncle's crazy science mansion, and there are four ways that you manipulate objects to solve puzzles by swapping to different "dimensions." First, you can make objects "heavy." Second, you can make objects "fluffy." Third, you can slow time. Fourth, you can reverse gravity. Only one dimension can be active at a time, but by choosing sequences of dimensions, you do some cool things. For example, one common object is a big safe. You normally can't pick up a safe (or other large objects), but activate the fluffy dimension and it becomes light as a feather. This way, you can move safes around to toss them through windows (throw and change to "heavy" before it hits the glass), depress buttons (place them them change to "heavy"), or fly through the air using a combination of dimensions. For example, carry the safe with fluffy, throw it and quickly slow time, jump on top of the safe you just threw, use reverse gravity to travel upward, and (voila!) you've used a safe to get to a ledge above you. Puzzles utilize various combinations of dimensions, and often you have to find these little capsules to trigger the dimensions in the first place. So task 1 will be acquiring the capsules for dimensions in a puzzle area, then you can start solving the harder puzzles in an area. It is totally linear though, so it's not like you'll be trying puzzles you can't complete. Unlike something like The Witness, you're always at a puzzle you can solve. So if you can't figure it out, then it's you. Like Portal, there are various obstacles and death traps, including deadly pools of "science juice" (like acid), lasers, robots that push you off ledges, and so on. I do recall getting bored and sleepy earlier on, but to be fair, we were always playing Quantum Conundrum at night after work, and I have learned that puzzle games are a genre not best suited to play while exhausted at night. Nevertheless, it held our attention, and by at least halfway through, we were thoroughly enjoying the puzzling. So, the short version is: Portal is better by far, but Quantum Conundrum scratches the itch. dkirschnerWed, 21 May 2025 10:48:42 UTChttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7863&iddiary=13391http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7893Excellent narrative adventure/mystery game. You play as an archaeologist and basically-a-PhD-student named Aliya who gets sent by her professor / university head / potential Empress (my, don't we believe university administrators have a lot of power!) to find out what happened to a roboticist colleague who may have uncovered some troubling truths about the history of the Nebula. You have a robot companion named Six (so named because you've gotten all your previous numerically named robots destroyed, which is understandably alarming to Six) and a ship. The gist of the gameplay is that you "sail" between moons from site to site (some ancient, some modern), exploring them, finding artifacts, translating ancient inscribed text, as you piece together the long and complicated history of the rise and fall of the Nebula’s various ages and empires. Your choices have implications for the Nebula’s future and everyone's survival. The obvious comparisons here are to 80 Days (a previous non-linear narrative game from these devs) and Chants of Sennaar (which also involves deciphering ancient languages). The difference between this and Chants of Sennaar (and Tunic, now that I think about it) is that you don't have to correctly figure out the language. Like, it's helpful to understand the story, but you can progress fine by making total guesses at what symbols mean. This makes Heaven’s Vault an easy game, whereas Chants of Sennaar and Tunic were quite challenging. That’s fine because of the constant feeling of discovery, which motivated me to keep going. I loved finding new artifacts in the dirt, trying to puzzle out inscriptions, the satisfaction of confirming correct translations, discovering new moons and ancient sites, and going deeper into the history of this game world. The constant sense of discovery counterbalanced what may otherwise have felt like a slower game. There is no “run” button; you slowly walk everywhere. There is a lot of dialogue, especially optional context-specific dialogue (e.g., you can press “Q” or “R” when prompted to ask a question or reply outside of any formal scene, which supplies extra personality to Aliya and Six and supplies deeper insight into what’s going on). The “sailing” involves slowly watching your ship move along a path, with you occasionally having to check the map and guide it left or right and having to press the right mouse button for a burst of speed. The sailing is meant to be relaxing and contemplative. It’s pretty sailing through the Nebula, but that was absolutely my least favorite part of the game. The distances between moons can be large, and the sailing speed is slow. You can occasionally “rest” and have Six take over for you, but I found that sometimes Six would annoyingly divert me from my path, and Aliya would wake farther away from her destination than when she went to sleep. Minor gripes in the grand scheme of things. The writing is top-notch. I really enjoyed Aliya and Six; their banter is great, often funny. The art and sound are nice too. This gets two thumbs up from me. dkirschnerSun, 18 May 2025 10:48:06 UTChttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7893&iddiary=13390http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7892I think I first heard about this game from an internet games website "list" article - probably something like "10 best ds games you never heard about" or something like that. I didn't research it much, and got it as a present for a birthday a few years ago. I've since played it and finished it and really enjoyed it. It's very kid-friendly (the story is even about kids trapped in this other world by themselves and they sort of turn into jerks, but you get them to change their mind) and, surprisingly (to me) is a bonafide metroidvania with all the backtracking that entails. You pick up new abilities that you use to unlock progress on the map, and backtrack as well. The game's key "gimmick" is the titular monster - a sort of "virtual pet" that accompanies you and can help out during fights and such. Enemies you defeat often drop "loot" that you can send the monster to play with (the monster area is on the bottom screen, which is where the monster also rests to heal up and recharge it's power meter). Over the course of the game you unlock new mutations/variations of the monster and it also grows into "older" forms (think baby, kid, juvenile, etc.) that each have their own mutations. It's an interesting system but the game isn't hard enough (or wasn't hard enough for me) for it to really matter all that much. There were a few places that had me spend some extra time before I could clear them. But, I didn't mind because the core experience of exploring, dodging enemies and such was engaging enough - especially when I started to more deliberately make use of the creatures powers and abilities. In keeping with genre canon, the game even has boss fights (each of the kids, they all have monsters that they basically oppress, but when you defeat them they change their mind). The game came out in 2011 though...does this predate with metroidvania indie game boom? I think so?jpFri, 09 May 2025 17:47:05 UTChttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7892&iddiary=13389http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7890Eliza is a commentary on Big Tech through the lens of a character, Evelyn, who created a “listening machine,” which became monetized as an AI therapist after she left the game’s tech company three years earlier. She has been rather aimless since leaving, and at the beginning of this game, takes a part-time job as a “proxy.” Proxies are people who mediate between Eliza (the AI therapist) and the clients. Proxies wear smart glasses, which run the Eliza program. Proxies are fed a script from Eliza to read to the client. As the client talks, Eliza analyzes the conversation and spits out prompts for the proxies to read, based on its algorithm. Proxies are only to read the script, never to deviate. The idea is that clients find speaking to an AI too impersonal, and so the proxy provides a façade of real human interaction such that the therapy can be successful. I’ve been talking with people for weeks about this game because AI always comes up. And I run a Human Services program with a Social Work concentration; half my students want to become social workers or therapists. It’s highly relevant. At the same time, the game is dated. Why? Because this was made in 2019, pre-generative AI. Eliza is algorithmic. It’s scripted. It essentially selects from dialogue options based on how the conversation is going. If the game were made just three years later after ChatGPT dropped, I don’t think that Eliza would require proxies. Most people now cannot tell the difference between speaking to a generative AI chatbot or a human online. Although, even in Eliza, the need for a proxy is questionable. Imagine sitting in front of a person who you know is just reading Eliza’s script. You know you’re really talking to a computer, even if there is a person sitting in front of you saying the words. You would have to delude yourself into thinking that the person made the interaction much different. And, in the game, most of the clients make comments like, “I know you’re just a computer, but…” So, despite the proxy, they are aware that they are talking with Eliza, an AI. Perhaps that’s part of the critique. Tech products promise a lot, but often fail to live up to their promises, despite the people who make the products feel alive. There are generative AI therapy chatbots today. Even the large commercial chatbots like ChatGPT can be used for this purpose. They are far more sophisticated than Eliza. I don’t think the main point of the game is the therapy chatbot, but the big tech ethics stuff. The chatbot is just an example to generate ethical questions. Do people need human interaction for effective therapy, or does just talking to something human-like help? Can AI chatbots do harm? Is it ethical to use a chatbot to monetize mental health services? What about the proxy: do they become alienated? What are the impacts on proxies when they cannot respond to the client, but must observe the client’s suffering and simply convey an algorithmic prompt? Do proxies have an ethical obligation to help if they can offer better advice than Eliza? What if such deviation from the script gets them fired? The game raises questions about surveillance and privacy (the tech company develops a new service where Eliza can provide more detailed evaluations if the client lets Eliza access their texts and emails), the effects of technology on emotions, the possibility of resistance to technological development, and so on. The game was thought-provoking for me, not necessarily in its self-contained story, but because I was able to connect it to so much else. The game itself is not terribly captivating. But that may be the point. Evelyn is something of a blank canvas. She has a history, of course, and there are other static characters. But the player gets to decide how Evelyn thinks about the big tech company, about Eliza, about experimental technologies, about ownership and control, about privacy and surveillance, and ultimately about her own purpose and goals. In the end, I had her abandon the tech world and leave the city to go find her father (where I hope she will find some meaning in understanding her family and herself, if not develop a good relationship with them). As one of Evelyn’s last lines of monologue says, “There is no message, no point, no overarching story here.” dkirschnerWed, 07 May 2025 23:30:46 UTChttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7890&iddiary=13388http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7869I’ve been playing Sekiro on and off for most of this semester and have gone back and forth between liking it and disliking it. It’s a great game, really focused and tightly designed, no doubt about it, but it is so, so difficult, and I find myself questioning if I am having fun or if I am driven by the desire to not let the game beat me, to prove that I can beat another notoriously difficult game. FromSoftware context: I tried and quit Dark Souls years ago because I thought it was too hard and frustrating, though admittedly I didn’t give it a lot of time. Then I picked up Bloodborne, enjoyed it a lot, and ultimately beat it. Sekiro is my third FromSoftware game. My first impressions were positive. Sekiro’s atmosphere pulled me right in. It’s dark and gritty and violent, something I liked about both Dark Souls and Bloodborne. I explored around one of the first areas, the Ashina Outskirts, and discovered my first mini-boss (some general or another), though I didn’t know it at the time. Mini-bosses have two health bars instead of one. I got my ass handed to me a few times before thinking, “What the hell is this enemy?!” and changing direction. I found another area, Hirata Estate, where I stayed for many hours of gameplay. This is where I learned about how death works system works. When you die, you lose half of your accumulated experience (at the level you are on; you can’t lose a level) and money. This means you can grind experience for skills by redoing areas over and over (and not dying!). Well, I was dying, and so I reasoned that more skills could help, so I grinded, redoing the same area numerous times, reaching the next experience level before flirting with the next mini-boss, the Shinobi Hunter, who attacks with a huge spear. I may have found another mini-boss in that area too (or just a hard enemy), but I pretty much explored everywhere I could until I determined that I had to pass the Shinobi Hunter to move forward. You can’t beat the Shinobi Hunter until you learn how to counter thrust attacks and sweep attacks. In Sekiro, success in combat is heavily dependent on your ability to parry, dodge, and counter thrust and sweep attacks. If you can’t read enemies and respond very quickly and precisely to their moves, you’re going to die. To counter a thrust attack (indicated by a red symbol), you press circle (dodge) just before it lands, and you’ll stomp on their weapon, causing a lot of posture damage. Posture damage is something like stamina. When you block attacks, you take posture damage. When your posture damage reaches max, then you can’t block anymore. The same is true for enemies. Dealing posture damage opens them up to health damage. Countering thrusts and sweeps is good because it’s a way to hammer their posture. To counter sweep attacks (indicated by the same red symbol), you jump as they sweep, then press x (jump) again in the air and you’ll kick the enemy in the head. The timing on these has to be impeccable, or else you’ll get nailed, and it only takes a couple hits to kill you in this game. Since thrust and sweep attacks are indicated by the same red symbol, you have to learn what the attack animations look like for each enemy. Usually, it’s pretty obvious, but occasionally something that looks like a thrust is actually a sweep. After many hours of learning the basics, grinding, and not feeling like I was accomplishing much of anything, I finally beat the Shinobi Hunter. I slowly bested a couple other mini-bosses over the next few weeks. Then one day, I sat down to play a long session, and I got in the deepest groove. Everything was clicking. I must have killed like 6 or 7 mini-bosses and one of the actual bosses, Gyoubo (the guy on horseback). I even one- or two-shot a couple. I was optimistic, like “Yeah, I can beat Sekiro!” But of course that was premature and naďve! I think that day I ended up stopping after getting killed about 20 times by Lady Butterfly, another main boss. I abandoned her and went elsewhere, eventually getting to a mini-boss called the Lone Shadow Longswordsman. I didn’t fight him so much as fight the camera. He (like Lady Butterfly) was fast, but unlike Lady Butterfly’s fight, his took place in a tiny, enclosed space. The camera constantly got stuck, I couldn’t see him, I’d lose him, I couldn’t see where I was going, etc. He killed me over and over, and I was getting irritated. Finally, I complained to Google and found that this fight is notorious for the bad camera, and learned how to cheese it a bit. There is a way to cheese a lot of the mini-bosses for some reason. I guess it’s strategy, like if you can figure out that there is a ledge you can jump from to impale the mini-boss and take off a chunk of his health bar, then more power to you. Anyway, I learned how to start the fight with him at 50% health, and ironically I missed the surprise attack one time and beat him normally. Fast forward to today, where I started in the Ashina Depths, stuck from last time on the Shichimen Warrior miniboss. This guy induces “terror” by shooting you with purple spirits. When your terror meter fills up, you die. So, you have to avoid the spirits and try to close in to attack the Warrior. This is hard because he’s constantly summoning and firing off spirits, and when he’s not doing that, he’s shooting flames from his staff. If you get close, he tends to teleport elsewhere, where he proceeds to summon and shoot more spirits. I abandoned him and pressed onward into the Depths until I got to another mini-boss called Snake Eyes. Snake Eyes carries a rifle that does tons of damage, sometimes one-shotting me. I did immediately figure out how to get behind him for a stealth attack that lopped off half his health. But I could never take him down. I tended to get myself backed into a corner, where the camera again killed me as much as he did. There are other enemies in the combat area, except if you attack them, then usually Snake Eyes triggers and shoots you dead from across the room. Eventually, I figured out how to kill some of the extras, then stealth attack Snake Eyes, but I could still never get his second health bar down. I haven’t figured out how to counter his thrust/sweep (not sure which it is, but I haven’t timed it right for whichever it might be, and if it hits me, I’m dead). So anyway, I was again getting irritated by the camera and just was not in the mood to consider spending my day dying to Snake Eyes, so I looked up how to beat him. I learned that you can cheese him too. There are pools of poisonous liquid in the combat area, and apparently you can kite him into a poison pool, then grapple out of his reach, and he’ll stand there shooting at you (which you dodge) taking poison damage until he dies. I tried it a few times with partial success. The last time, he was stuck behind a rock shooting into the rock, his life slowly ticking away. I went to brush my teeth, came back, and he was dead. Just kidding. I was dead. I guess he got unstuck and killed me. I sighed and turned it off. I am feeling very frustrated with Sekiro. Today’s session was not fun. Grinding was not fun. Dying 20 times each to Lady Butterfly or the Shichimen Warrior or the Blazing Bull or whoever was not fun. Dying itself is fine, but one expects to learn something, to do better next time, to make some incremental progress. I rarely feel that with Sekiro. On that day when I had a hot streak, I don’t know what I’d eaten for breakfast, but I was certainly enjoying watching the enemies fall like dominoes. It clicked on that day. But that was only one afternoon of gameplay out of many over the course of the last few months. Can it click again? Can I derive pleasure from trying and failing so many times, only to finally notice an attack pattern I hadn’t noticed before, or to try an item I hadn’t tried before? Probably. It’s weird thinking about quitting Sekiro because I do like it. It’s good. I’m just not having much fun. But the potential is there to have fun. Though even when I do beat a boss, it’s just like, “sigh, okay, here is the next one, who is probably going to be agonizing to learn and overcome.” That’s the thing. It’s definitely not a “come home from work and play” kind of game because it’s so brutal. On the other hand, I often don’t want to play it during my limited free time because I’d rather do something more rewarding. So, what’s its niche? Maybe when I have more time over the summer. I don’t want to give up quite yet. Maybe if I put it down and come back in a couple months, I’ll feel refreshed. Maybe if I try some other games with parry mechanics inspired by Sekiro, I’ll get some practice with this type of combat. Or maybe I’ll try Elden Ring! (And if I never make another Sekiro post, then I probably picked it up for another hour months from now and said “nope!”). dkirschnerWed, 07 May 2025 15:28:13 UTChttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7869&iddiary=13387http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7874This is a roguelite deckbuilder that’s neat in that you have two different decks and there is some interesting worldbuilding, with probably like 100 characters you can meet. It’s also narrative heavy. You play runs with one of three characters, each of whom has their own story. Unfortunately though, it never really clicked with me; I was always sort of bored. I played two runs with the first character, Sal, dying near the end of my first attempt. On my second attempt, I noticed “story difficulty,” set it to that, and steamrolled the second run. I left it on story difficulty and steamrolled the game with the second character, Rook, too. When I started the third character, I was sort of dreading learning his mechanics, the tedium of leveling up another set of cards (you can level up each card once by using it a specific number of times), the endless filler-feeling dialogue, and the tons and tons of negotiations and battles I would have to wade through to get to the end of another story that I didn’t care about. So, I played part of the first day for him to get a sense of the character and any new mechanics, then called it quits. Here's how the two types of decks/combat work. The first is “battle” and needs no explanation. This is normal deckbuilder stuff. Do lots of damage and kill stuff. Some mechanics include “prepare” (a card is “prepared” when it is in the leftmost spot in your hand and can activate special abilities), “gamble” (one character has a coin that he flips, and some of his cards do different things depending on heads or tails), “burn” (deals damage over time), and so on. Each character has a few unique mechanics. When you battle enemies, you can spare them or kill them. If you spare them, they might hate you (all the various characters you encounter can either hate, dislike, like, or love you). If you kill them, their friends might hate you. If you kill them in an isolated place, well, you got away with murder. It can be tempting to kill enemies because they drop items, and sometimes quite good ones, or maybe because they were real jerks and deserved it. But, when someone hates you, you get a debuff (e.g., status cards cost one extra action), which does go away if you kill that person later. When someone loves you, you get a buff (e.g., gain 4 defense and 2 power at the beginning of every battle). It’s obviously good to have a lot of people love you and few people hate you. I definitely had some hate debuffs that were pretty annoying to deal with. The second thing you can do is “negotiation,” and this one is different. It’s the same basic idea as battle, except think of it as the passive option. This second deck is full of cards that are meant to manipulate, persuade, and intimidate others. In a negotiation, you have “arguments.” Characters all have a “core argument.” Then, they can make other arguments that do various things. All arguments have “resolve” (HP). When an argument’s resolve reaches 0, it is defeated. No big deal for a regular argument; these come and go during a negotiation. If your core argument loses its resolve, then you lose the negotiation. So, there are generally two ways out of a situation: battle or negotiate. Sometimes, negotiations make subsequent battles easier. As you think about building your decks, remember that if you lose a negotiation, you might still be able to battle, but if you lose a battle, you can’t then negotiate…because you’re dead. That means that, for me at least, negotiation was far more useful, and I chose that option far more. On the other hand, there are more mandatory battles than mandatory negotiations, and bosses are typically trying to kill you, not argue with you. So, you can’t rely on only one deck; you must figure out how to balance them. There are some other things to consider, such as the battle and negotiation grafts (like skills or perks you acquire each run), and then the various roguelite meta upgrades. You can unlock permanent upgrades for each character, perks that can be used on any character, as well as new cards that will appear in your runs. In the end, it feels strange to say, but I wish I had just stopped after the first run. I feel like I wasted my time with this one hoping that it would click. There are certainly things I enjoyed (like the negotiations and trying to get a ton of characters to love me), but like I said earlier, I just found Griftlands tedious and boring. dkirschnerTue, 29 Apr 2025 15:53:58 UTChttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7874&iddiary=13386http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7889I distinctly remember Gris getting a "meh" review score in Edge magazine. So, I was expecting to be underwhelmed gameplay-wise though wowed visually. And yes, I was wowed visually (and aurally too - playing the PS5 version that makes use of the speaker controller in a cool way)...and the gameplay was sort of meh - but, it got better and better the longer I played! Not counting the "hub" area, the game has four zones/levels that each introduce a mechanic, as well as some in-world things to interact with. And so, the game really goes from less to more as later levels incorporate more in-world mechanics as well as require use of the character mechanics you unlock. It also all makes sense with the game's theme and story and balblabla (ludonarrative harmony is what my students brought up). That being said, it's a pretty relaxing and flowing kind of game - nods to Journey in there as well - and there isn't really a fail state, though you can get stuck on puzzles and some dexterity-timing dependent puzzles. There's some swimming bits that are just glorious - as you dash from "water bubble" to "water bubble" (blocks of water in the air) - and I loved swimming up waterfalls. What impressed me the most though were two things: 1. I kept on trying to "go the wrong way" and most of the time, it was the right way. 2. The onboarding and tutorials are really, really well done. You notice a thing, or do a thing, and then that's the thing you have to do later to solve puzzles and so on. It feels very natural and very normal. So, I'm actually excited to try Neva now...jpSun, 20 Apr 2025 20:25:52 UTChttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7889&iddiary=13385http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7888Perhaps the strangest thing for me about this game is that it's a bona fide survival game on the DS. In my mind, the genre is more recent than 2006! I'm thinking of all the indie survival games (craft stuff, gather food, don't die of hunger or thirst) and then ones on Steam..and here's this game - a sequel no less - and it's straight up THAT. Survival. And there's two characters to boot - and you can die (I did, pretty soon it turns out). I guess I was surprised by how quickly I did die - and, from a novice perspective, it felt sudden and a bit unfair. As in, CLEARLY there was nothing I could have done differently to survive. I spent too much time exploring was probably the main problem, and I left the boy behind in a cave we found, and I'm not sure that's what you're supposed to do? You have to keep both of them feed, hydrated and energized, and I felt like I had my hands full with just the one character. I think my biggest mistake was probably not getting the spear for fishing made sooner? But then, I'm not even sure how you're supposed to use it - and all the other food I kept scavenging wasn't really doing much. Like, you'd eat it and not see a huge effect. I'm guessing there's something I'm not understanding and it makes me wonder if a full reset makes the most sense? (instead of loading into a saved game that's already doomed/too heavily stacked against success). Perhaps the strangest thing (for me) about the game is that there's a super simple mini-game for cooking! You collect stuff to cook and also stuff to use as spices and then need to sort of trial and error recipes - though I could set the boy (the character I was not controlling directly) to cook and he'd come up with his own stuff... it's weird. And it's a sequel? I guess I should look up if this is a port to DS from someplace else? It would make more sense in a way - the game is also low-poly 3D as you wander around the environment. Still...I might just put it on the shelf.jpFri, 18 Apr 2025 18:46:41 UTChttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7888&iddiary=13384