<–The State of the Gamer: 6/12/18 The State of the Gamer: 7/24/18–>
A weekly post updated every other Tuesday detailing my current gaming projects. I have an account at Grouvee, which is a site you can use to keep track of your backlog, so please feel free to friend me there!
What I Didn’t Finish
Title: Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle
Series: Mario, Rabbids
System: Nintendo Switch
Date Started: May 14, 2018
Date DNF: June 26, 2018
There were definitely aspects of the game I enjoyed. I was pleasantly shocked at how well the Rabbids were incorporated into the Mario world. They always came off as a bit annoying to me (like the Minions seem to most people), but this crossover worked surprisingly well. Even the story that goes along with how it came about makes sense. I wasn’t too fond of the battle system, which isn’t a slight on its part. It’s just not for me. It’s also possible I wasn’t doing it in the most efficient way, but c’est la vie? I’m going to return the title to my coworker with thanks for lending it to me, and I think I’ll find a nice LP to watch since I am interested in where things go.
Title: Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth
Series: Etrian Odyssey
Genre: RPG/JRPG – Fantasy
Developer: Atlus
Release Date: August 4, 2016
Date Started: Unknown
Date DNF: June 26, 2018
I decided to do some house cleaning and declare the games I know I’m not planning on picking up again any time soon DNF. The last entry for this was in February where I was bemoaning the fact that leveling stopped at 70. That really pissed me off, because I’m maybe halfway through the game, and you can’t start gaining levels again until you beat it and defeat some dragon or dragons. I dislike when games have level caps like that, because if you don’t gain levels, you can’t learn any more abilities. I’m not axing the entire series though, because I greatly enjoyed what I played, and I’d still like to check out Millennium Girl, but I hope they’ve remedied that level cap.
Title: OPUS: The Day We Found Earth
Genre: Adventure
Release Date: April 22, 2016
Date Started: Unknown
Date DNF: June 26, 2018
This is a cute little game that I just never went back to. The gameplay was a bit repetitive, though I think the end might have had a payoff for it when you find out what happened to the humans aboard the spaceship, but I’ve seen enough sci-fi to hazard a guess.
What I Finished
Title: The Room: Old Sins
Series Title: The Room
System: iPhone (8)
Date Started: Unknown
Date Finished: June 18, 2018
I love this game series so hard. It just gets everything right from the eerie atmosphere with its hidden letters to its clever but not impossible puzzles. You want to feel like you’ve accomplished something, but you don’t want the solution to be completely out of left field. That was one of the issues I had with Thimbleweed Park. Old Sins thankfully did not suffer from anything like that. The solutions made perfect sense. The times I might become stuck had more to do with knowing whether or not I needed to look inside or outside the dollhouse, and because multiple rooms could be in play at one time, it could become somewhat confusing. Since solving something in one room might necessitate going to another, you had to keep your wits about you to keep up…or use a hint lol.
What I Played
Title: The House of Da Vinci
System: iPhone (8)
Date Started: June 25, 2018
More point & click goodness! After I finished Old Sins I desperately wanted another one to play, and this was the recommendation. I bought the demo first and liked it enough to spend $5.00. It’s very similar to The Room Series even down to the ocular device so if you liked that, you’ll like this.
Title: Final Fantasy VI
Series: Final Fantasy
System: PlayStation 3
Date Started: June 2, 2018
I may actually finish a Final Fantasy in less than a year! I’ve arrived on the continent with Vector after completing the opera (arguably the best scene in the game), and hoo boy has 20+ years of life experience changed my point of view on that, Locke, Setzer, and Celes’ general treatment from when I was a teenager. She’s a general. She’s declared this herself a number of times when people questioned her about Locke, and it’s not that I have an issue with her being an opera diva because of her rank, but in replay, no one even gave her a choice. Locke and the impressario decided that she’d take the place of Maria without any input from the Celes. What the fuck is that? I’m not even going to go into the Abduction as Romance trope right now (you can click on that link if you want an excellent examination of the motif). I have to save something for my review. None of this is to say I dislike Final Fantasy VI. Far from it! I still love it, and best believe I’ll have critiques just as harsh for my beloved FFVII.
My next stop is going to be Albrook. I’m trying to hit all of the towns on Vector’s continent. I actually didn’t realize you could visit them *spoiler* in the World of Balance *end spoiler* so I’m taking advantage of it. I may need to grind for GP, but I’m probably over-leveled at this point, which is just the way I like it before the Magitek Research Facility 🙂
Title: Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius
Series: Final Fantasy
System: iPhone (8)
Date Started: March 27, 2017
I’m wondering if I can actually catch up to the story. I’m trying to play a little bit of that every day. It’s so much easier now that I have access to it on my iPhone since I can play before bed, and I don’t have to worry about the app crashing now. I keep dying trying to upgrade my Espers to three stars and looking up how to defeat any of them is not yielding any viable results. I need characters and abilities far beyond what I have like at least 150% fire absorption for Ifrit. I don’t know where to find that or what characters might have it lol. I guess this is what comes of being a more casual player lol.
What I Watched
Title: Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar
Series: Ultima
Let’s Player: Hungry Goriya
What an arduous quest. I’ve never seen a game like this before. It’s not about defeating some great evil; it’s about bettering yourself by becoming the avatar and boy is it complicated! I’m so tempted by the need to use a spreadsheet, because I love that shit lol. I use spreadsheets quite a bit with Final Fantasies, but that’s more to keep track of who might have what magic (especially in FFVIII). This game requires you to keep detailed notes if you want to make any progress, and Hungry Goriya is an expert at that (it’s bleeding over into her stream of Illusion of Gaia, but we’ll discuss that below lol). I own this game as well as several other Ultimas through Gog.com. They were just too cheap to pass up (literally $0.89 a piece), so hopefully I’ll be taking my own avatar question soon.
What I’m Watching
Title: Final Fantasy V
Series: Final Fantasy
Let’s Player: Chronos
Date Started: May 27, 2018
The valley girl accent with Krile is getting really fucking annoying, but I’m almost done with the Let’s Play. I think there are only a few more side quests to do before the end game.
I think after this I want to watch an LP of Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, because I never finished the game myself. Chronos has one…but I might see if I can find someone else. He’s okay, but (and I’m going to sound like an ass) he doesn’t always read the dialogue correctly, which is fine, but he kind of brushes it off as NBD. It’s not as bad as the complete lack of caring from another and much larger LPer, but…I don’t know. I think dialogue is important, and while of course the pronunciations in these games can be tricky, it is something you could look up 
Title: The Illusion of Gaia
Series Title: Soul Blazer
Let’s Player: Hungry Goriya
I’m already watching the stream (live when I can) that HG posts to YouTube, and I’m also going to watch the Let’s Play. I forgot how much I enjoyed this game, though there are parts that definitely creep me out hard core. There’s this eerie music that plays at certain points that only heightens the scare factor. It’s one of the few action RPGs I really enjoyed, probably because of Freedan ♥
Look at bae’s flowing golden locks ♥
I never beat it, because I never got past Mu, but I have fond memories of the game; it was certainly enjoyable and watching HG play it brightens my day.
What I Bought
- Tales of Berseria – $19.40 @ Amazon: I actually didn’t spend any money at all on this game. Because Amazon damaged the furniture I ordered from them and had to send it back to the warehouse, I received a $100 gift card from them so I wound up getting this for free.
Whew! I had so much freaking house cleaning to do before posting this. I hadn’t updated my spreadsheet with what I’d been watching, playing, or buying, so I spent about an hour doing that. I also wanted to take those three games off my On Hold list, because I’m not going to play them again any time soon. I kept Assassin’s Creed: Origins, because I do plan to play that again though I have to start over since I began it on my husband’s PS4 and I now have my own. Plus he needed the room, and I told him to delete my file for the fore mentioned reason. I’m not sure when I’m going to get to it, because I want to keep up with my FF Project, but I might start it after I finish VI while I’m writing the review. I’m planning to watch The After Years, er, after I finish V because it just makes sense to watch ones I’m planning to watch while I’m playing. I’ll probably do the same thing with FFVII since I don’t have plans to play Dirge of Cerberus since it’s action based. Maybe I’ll prepare my ears and try to get through Crisis Core again. Gah…I wish they’d just re-release it with the option of Japanese subtitles so I wouldn’t have to be subjected to Aeris’s god awful voice acting.
What E3 game are you most looking forward to? I’m firmly in the Ori and the Will of the Wisps camp. I can’t wait for that to drop.
<–The State of the Gamer: 6/12/18 The State of the Gamer: 7/24/18–>
The Shameful Narcissist Speaks 
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Whoa! Lots of gaming stuff going on for you. I need to play the first Ori game soon (I have it on Steam). First comes Mass Effect Andromeda though (about 10-ish hours into that). I made my Ryder very Lightning-like so that has definitely made the game very enjoyable for me, haha.
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Yes!
My Mass Effect dude looked like a deranged lunatic. The cheekbones of a… well, it’s difficult to say. Not something from this realm, let’s put it like that. Bwaaahahahaha!
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I’ve been really keeping up with my playing! It’s much easier to hop on Brave Exvius now that it’s on my phone, and I actually look forward to playing Final Fantasy VI. That was one of my problems with V. I stopped looking forward to playing it, and whenever that happens, I know I’m probably not going to. Sometimes I can force myself to play something and it catches my interest again, but usually not. That’s where I am with Mario + Rabbids, too. I think I’ve played enough to satisfy me. I might watch a LP if the LPer is one of my go-tos.
I giggled at my husband’s Ryder. She was black with silver hair lol. It was much shorter than mine, but I still had to giggle. Hm, I’m sure I could make my Ryder pretty enough to look like a certain general…
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I have not finish Tales of Syphomia yet but I might check out Tales of Berseria
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That’s a great price for Berseria! I felt similarly about Mario + Rabbids — it had its moments but the combat system was exhausting when there wasn’t anything to do in between battles. Exploration was super unrewarding since it mainly just rewarded you with concept art. I gave up around chapter 3 and lent my copy to a friend.
When things settle down here I need to catch up on HG’s Gaia LP. I loved that game growing up.
As for E3, I also really liked the trailer for Ori and the Will of the Wisps. I wasn’t too wild about the original game’s combat, but it looks like they’ve refined it quite a bit in the sequel. Tales of Vesperia finally coming out on something other than the 360 is huge. I liked a lot of the stuff shown during the PlayStation conference, like Last of Us 2, Control, Resident Evil 2, and Ghost of Tsushima, and the Xbox presentation had a lot of neat stuff. I’m looking forward to Gears 5, for sure. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice looks rad too.
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I figured I might as well pick it up! I think I wound up paying that because I got this $100 credit from Amazon that only works in certain places because they were dump about my furniture lol. I’ll take it,
Yeah…I enjoyed finding treasures and stuff like that and upgrading to new weapons, but I never enjoyed combat. Still I’m happy for the indie dev, because it was a good crossover in concept and I’d definitely check out something similar in the future.
Omg my nostalgic circuits are loving it. I’ve caught a couple of live streams and it’s been tons of fun. The last time the game was being really ridiculous in not letting her advance, so she said the hell with it and played The Lost Levels lol. That…is a hard Mario game.
Ori was hard as hell and I’m only saying it after watching Cry play it. I could not have done that. I’m glad they’ve refined it. I did like that even if you did die, there were lots of checkpoints, so you were never put back too far.
I’m so ready for The Last of Us 2. I feel like the first one was damn near transcendent, and it makes me wish there wasn’t still some derision towards video game narratives, because if you want to have a serious argument about morality, right/wrong, good/evil, etc., TLOU is right where you can go.
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