So about a week ago I wrote how I should play more games. More weird small games. For a long time, I had just been rotating the same three games, with two of them being live-service so I practically won't even be able to "beat" them, and it's about time I spread my wings out a bit further.
Anyway, cut one month later and I'm practically overwhelmed. With... seven games. Which isn't a lot, but with my full-time job I only have maybe an hour of free time a day before I will plop over on the bed exhausted. Weekends are freer, but I also have like a dozen side projects I want to give some love and hours to and by the way, how's that Chinese and Japanese study going? Nowhere? Figures.
I'm also cursed with affliction where I'm hyper-aware of the time that I'm using, so if I play a game for, maybe an hour and a half straight? Something in my brain will gently tell me to stop. Gently, because unlike my usual chronic issues it's mostly harmless, but it does make me feel too guilty to enjoy playing at which point, what's the point?
Anyway, been a while since my last playlist post, where I can ramble on about the things that I'm playing and projects I'm into. This is my personal blog, after all! I blog here!
So. Games.
My Live-Service Beloveds
(I am yelling and hollering about this scene in Arknights)
Genshin Impact and Arknights. Practically unchanged from the last playlist eh?
My Genshin habits have been scaled back, recently. I stopped playing everyday, I've started skipping limited-time quests. It helps that I'm pretty satisfied with that I've got, so I don't really look forward to new characters or updates anymore (but it's still a source of joy to see what's new). It's got plenty enough to sink my teeth into, and I'm happy taking my time with it.
Arknights, I'm a bit more excited about. There's just so much here. So many stories to read, so many stages to get skill issue playing, so many characters I want to learn more about (and help get stronger). It definitely helps that it can be bite-sized, if I want it to be. Twenty minutes is enough to read a chapter and beat a level (after failing miserably a few times) and maybe scroll through the menu for longer than is necessary (I enjoy scrolling through menus and looking at the pretty pictures and occasionally reading the lore bits). When I'm sick of working, I can open my phone for a minute to click around at the lil base-caretaking part of the game. It's nice. Like having a picture of your loved ones in your wallet and taking a moment to look at it.
(I'm in love with a carp. Please make fun of me as much as you like)
There's also a story event I'm super stoked to see, but that'll have to wait another half a year. Alas. I will be waiting patiently for you, Chongyue (and more content about my carp-dragon husband).
Chained Echoes and Octopath Traveler II
Feels a bit mean to put these two games next to each other. One is an indie game with a small budget made by a small team, the other is funded by Square bleeding Enix. It feels extra mean too, because I'm about to say that the smaller indie game is tedious and I wish I can get it over with it already, while the bigger-budget bigger-team budget I'm super excited to play, please can I hold it in my had today instead of waiting a week for it to be released?
But honestly it's incredible that a small-team JRPG can hold its own against juggernauts, and my attention span, for that matter. Chained Echoes does a lot of super interesting things, the way it reiterate on classic JRPG formulas and try to solve the issues that its developers find annoying. Your characters get stronger and learn new skills through progression in the story, so there's no push to "grind", but you can and should upgrade your equipments so there's still that element of elasticity, making the hard battles easier if you put a little effort elsewhere. There's an "Overdrive" mechanic, so you aren't just spamming the same skills over and over again. The story puts little twists and turns in the classic JRPG evil-empire wartorn-continent save-the-world-from-godlike-calamity plot beats, but not in a mean-spirited way. It pokes fun (a lot) at its inspirations, but from a place of love. It's genuinely quite good and I do highly recommend this to JRPG fans.
Except. Upgrading equipments also means engaging with its harebrained "crafting" and "enhancement" mechanic which, I cannot give two shits about. It, what, give like +5 bonus damage to specific enemy types or something? Too much to track down with not much to hold it together. The "Overdrive" mechanic, while it makes the battle spicier, eventually just feel tedious. I'm not making interesting decisions here, I'm just trying to appease its system. "I want to heal this turn but if I don't use this skill that's currently useless, the enemy will hit me for double damage" shit like that. The characters are interesting, but somehow I'm just not as attached to them as I do, say, Octopath Traveler's textbook-archetype characters. I'm not sure why. They feel like they're just trying to fit in the slots of "protagonists that haven't been done before" instead of just organically building a character from the grounds up? I dunno.
I started playing Octopath Traveler II's demo and I fell in love all over again. God but this combat system is so good. So satisfying! And I know from the first game that it holds up over its, what 40 hours of playthrough? (If you're asking me how that postgame grinding goes, I did not do the postgame, I love myself enough to not subject myself to that, thank you for asking) The soundtrack! Chained Echoes has a good soundtrack, but I'm so sorry, it's still no match for Yasunori Nishiki. Octopath II's story continues in its predecessor's footstep: it reads like Greatest Hits of classic tropes. There's nothing new here, but it's so familiar that it just falls straight into comfortable.
I really am looking forward to the full release next week!
Cook, Serve, Delicious 3?!
Listen. I bought this as a jape. I was going to buy Wildermyth and then I realise, oh, there's a CSD 3? I enjoyed CSD 1 and 2 but found the two of them too inherently flawed to really engage with, maybe this game will fix it? Am I just being too hopeful?
Lo and behold, the third game solves practically every problem I ever had with the earlier two games. Gone were the dead hours between rush hours, CSD 3 features a comfortable transition between quiet moments and heavy moments and even the quiet moments can be pretty heavy too if that's what you want. Gone was the choice paralysis as I decide what to put on my menu, CSD 3 limits your choice while still giving you variety and also gives you a handy dandy difficulty number so you get to decide yourself whether you want to be exhausted or chill.
I bought this while I was taking a trip home, something which only happen once or twice a month these days, so I played the game with my sister (whom consequently I only met once or twice a month these days). Lemme tell you, CSD 3 is so fun multiplayer. I play on the controller (I've never played on the controller), her on the keyboard (she has never played), and we suffer together. It was fantastic.
I sometimes play a level or two when I'm burned out at work but man, single player just isn't the same.
Dishonored: Death of the Outsider
I tried this game to test how my laptop is doing (which lost 8GB of RAM thanks to service center mishap, long story). I browsed through all the free games I got on Epic Store and this didn't look like it'll take too long to download and it looked decently AAA-quality, so I figured it'll do. It runs beautifully, so beautifully I'm actually intrigued to play more. I also hear the game is pretty short? Bless.
I'm not much for AAA first-person games. I love the original Bioshock, but that was a decade ago. I like Portal and Portal 2, I guess! I was an Overwatch fan for a bit? I played Skyrim until it was tattered and bruised like a book I carry around and read even in the bathub. Not much aside from those, I think, but I'm familiar enough with the controls and genre trappings that it's not too foreign.
I felt bad about the first guy I killed. Pressing left mouse click is just so easy?? And then I got my ass handed to me by a whole room of gangsters after I "accidentally" stole a trinket within full view of them. So I can't just kill everyone in the room then! Good to know! I heard how good Dishonored's stealth system is and honestly, yeah, it's solid. I'd love to play some more with this.
Also, yo, the UI?? The menu transition?? It's so smooth??? Ah so that's what a big budget can get you.
Wildermyth
So thanks to my obsession with CSD 3 I only managed to play Wildermyth about a week after I bought it. I kinda wish I can enjoy it like a normal person, but instead I'm ooh and ahh-ing from like, a gamedev perspective, I guess? Wildermyth is fucking wild from that perspective. The characters are randomly-generated (or have traits you can pick and choose yourself) but the story is character-driven. Everyone has their own personality and the story somehow managed to roll with that. There's probably a set plot here, but it also feels like a tabletop game where the DM hand-crafted the campaign to fits your characters. How?? Probably thousand of manhours crafting dialogues and a very clever procedural system (that also took thousand of manhours to craft).
The gameplay is part party-management and part tactical grid-based battles. Here, it does things somewhat differently from how other games do it too, enough that I can tell they don't just select a genre and go with that, but actually think of how elements of the game influence each other.
And yet, despite my praises I can't say I jive with the game? I'm not sure if it's the somewhat snarky tone or the slow pace or just the feeling that the game isn't entirely hand-crafted. And maybe because I want to tinker with it, like it's the sort of game that'll probably be more fun to make than to play for me.
I downloaded a bunch of small games and demos from Itch and I haven't played a single one of them
About a week before I got my laptop back, I downloaded a bunch of small games and demos from Itch. All I had at the time was a potato laptop that has difficulty connecting to the internet at home, so my weekends was agonizing. So on one workday while I was in the office, I mass-downloaded all of these games thinking, well, hopefully these can run in my potato laptop and I won't be so bored.
I got my laptop back the next weekend though, so I never did get around to playing all these games. Maybe I'll do that eventually. Helltaker seems interesting in how quickly it amassed a fandom. Slay the Princess was made by one of my favourite webcomic artist. There's a few otome gaames here I've been meaning to play since forever.
Books
Want to do a quick shout-out here to Life of Pi by Yann Martel. I read it in my office's library, so it's a strictly 30-minutes-after-lunch-break-and-only-when-I'm-not-in-a-gaming-mood read. Imagine The Old Man and the Sea, but it's funny, it's got humours for days. The kind of humour that's like making the best of a terrible situation. It gets exhausting to read while he's trapped at sea but I think that's entirely deliberate and only make the meaningful parts more, well, meaningful. Cracking good read.
I recently finished A Memory Called Empire and I have so many thoughts about it but most of it can be just summarized as me, pointing at its main character, and going, she's just like meee, she's just like me fr!!! In love with a culture that's devouring your own? Feeling so comfortable with a language that's supposed to be foreign, only to go to where the language is from and realise you've always been and always will be alien to it? Wow!!! Me!!!!
Projects
I have a super silly Arknights fansite thing I'm working on. And I have an Arknights fic I'm working on, sort of. It's more in a "rotating around and around in my head" sort of phase instead of being written down, but I think it'll be written down eventually. Back in December I made a game in DragonRuby and I still want to chase the high of it... but alas doing game programming as your day work really saps the strength necessary for doing it in your downtime, huh. Even if it's two completely different engines.
Since having my full time job I've just been too tired to really work on anything (especially knowing that I will never have the time to work on them aside from the weekend, and there are five days between one weekend and the next). I... don't know how to solve this. Less work hour? Can I negotiate for that? I'm still haunted by the idea that I might get fired one day, that me being here is superfluous really.
(I keep having not much work to do. Is it because I work fast? Is it because whenever I'm on the team, things get done? Or is it because I'm not really needed here?)
I'm comfortable enough, having a day job that keep me alive (and my not-cheap hobbies going!) and not having to worry that any of my silly project is "good enough" but... Alas. Hopefully one day I'll be free from this self-doubt.
