<–The State of the Gamer: 7/16/20           The State of the Gamer: 8/13/20–>

A weekly post updated every other Thursday 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!

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What I Purchased

• Tales of Vesperia – $14.99 @ PlayStation Store

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What I’m Playing

Title: Broken Age
System: Nintendo Switch

Date Started: 7/4/20

This has gotten really interesting, and yes, the stories do and have connected, which I suspected all along.  There have also been so really big reveals on both sides.  I have had to use a guide for some parts.  In some situations because I was too lazy/tired to figure it out; in others because I never would’ve remembered something.  You have to recall someone a character named “Alex” sang, and I literally do not remember who the hell that is lol.  I’m pretty sure you can still go back and see it, but I’m honestly not sure.  The puzzles are still by and large intuitive without relying on the dreaded “game logic.”  Many of my issues come from my ability to get lost in a round room and being in a gigantic spaceship for the second chapter.  You need to know how to find your way around, and you’re not afforded a map.  It’s easy initially because they game just takes you to the places, but then later you have to navigate around yourself.  It’s hard to remember where everything is.

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What I Played

• Picross 4 – I really love the megapuzzles for this series.  They’re a bit more challenging than the regular ones because you have to contend with two columns instead of one for some of the clues.  I still suck at counting the spaces, which is what often gets me in trouble lol.

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What I Watched

• Paper Mario: The Origami King (Olizandri) – This game is so much fun.  I’m probably going to pick it up myself at some point.  The music is freaking fire; I’m enjoying the battle system, and of course the dialogue is cute, punny, and hilarious.
• Shin Megami Tensei IV (Olizandri) – This one’s not holding my interest quite as much.  The beginning had a good hook, but I’ve sort of gotten a bit bored with it.  I’ve watched about one and a half videos (an hour each), and it’s good when I’m at work and just need something in the background or if I’m playing Picross.
• Grandia HD (Olizandri) – I have this on my backlog because I’ve never played the original Grandia, only Grandia II, which I really liked.  This one is…much different lol.  It has a far less serious and direct plot to it, and tbh I find the main character Justin annoying AF.  I just don’t like characters that are naive and overenthused in their naivete.  I know he’s just a kid and still has the optimism and bright outlook that my unhappy ass lost years ago, but idk…it’s just irritating to me.  When he’s more serious I like him more.  That probably says more about me than him lol.  I almost got in trouble on a friend’s page for talking about how much Zack from FFVII annoys TF out of me, too, but I’ll leave that unpopular opinion for another time :p
• The Last of Us: Part II (Christopher Odd) – This just gets better and better the more I watch.  Dina is such an awesome ride or die chick, and I have so many feels that the deuteragonist is a queer, Jewish girl like yassss.  She and Ellie like each other and the game is not afraid to show this.  It also shows how people are still bigoted assholes after the apocalypse, which doesn’t surprise me at all especially when it comes to white boomers ugh.  I fully support Ellie not being okay with the apology.  You are not required to forgive people *shrug*
• Final Fantasy VII Remake – I haven’t watched any more of this.  I really want to because I’m sure I’ll pick up more things to talk about near the end.  I have been writing a lot of notes about time loops and other time loop narratives because that’s seriously a huge deal.  Honestly, if you have any interest in that paradigm, you should watch Russian Doll and read The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North.  I cannot like cannot recommend them enough, because the implications in those narratives could be highly indicative of what might happen in FFVIIR.  I have to be careful going down that path, though, because it can lead to some pretty troubling thoughts.  Oh!  Just remembered.  I did start reading the fan translation of a story by Nojima  that’s apparently coming out in an art book I pre-ordered thanks to the fan who translated it (that…was a sentence).  It’s called “The Investigation Unit Within the Painting,” and I’ve read the first two chapters.  It’s…really interesting.  Like I’m very curious about who the narrator is.  FFVII is all about the haunting and haunted past and how it’s impossible to divest what’s happening currently from what happened then.  it’s a lesson I wish the world would learn.

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I wanted Tales of Vesperia for my Switch, but the price was too good to turn it down on the PS4, and I could always set it up to play on my Vita if I wanted to do it handheld.  I wound up pre-ordering the art book I mentioned above with the Nojima story.  It’ll be translated in there, but for once I’d like to get ahead of something.  I really hope the FFVIIR vinyls will be available for pre-order soon.  I missed the window on them, and even my pre-order OST through Amazon has been pushed back.  They were supposed to release in June, but everything is delayed now.  I do have a small sample of the soundtrack that came with the Deluxe version of the game, but I haven’t even listened to it yet.

Have you picked anything up in the summer sales?

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<–The State of the Gamer: 7/16/20           The State of the Gamer: 8/13/20–>