Just finished Danganronpa. I thought it was great, but my partner wasn’t really invested - which is why we finished it in one go this weekend and will be starting something new next week. I’ll probably get the next one during the next sale.

How is Shiren the Wanderer a roguelike without any meta progression, aren’t they part of the genre?

The original game Rogue didn’t have any meta progression, that’s been tacked onto the genre later. Back then, people tried to establish ‘roguelike’ for games without meta progression and ‘roguelite’ for ones who do. Didn’t stick apparently.

Shiren ist actually quite faithful to Rogue as a whole.

There are ways to keep gear between runs to force some meta progression, but most dungeons don’t allow you to bring items in anyways. It’s mostly a thing for the story dungeon.

Any recommendation to try? To see if the genre is for me or not.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is generally the most popular sub-series. Especially the first two games - with Explorers of Sky being the best one overall. There is also a Switch remake of the first game.

These games aren’t roguelikes at all, you keep your level and everything and there’s an actual story.

If you don’t care for that, Shiren has the most depth instead but can be quite overwhelming. Unlike Pokemon you can get these games for like 2 bucks during sales.

Started 13 Sentinel Aegis Rim!

It’s a weird mix of a strategy game and an adventure/visual novel. It didn’t grip me immediately, but I’m really starting to get into it. There are 13 different perspectives you can follow - they all overlap, but they are not told in order. There’s giant mechs and time travel shenanigans involved. The biggest hurdle thus far was simply starting it. From the get-go, the story gets told like you already know most things, and it’s on you to make sense of it all. I like this approach, but I’m not always in the mood for it.

Dabbled in some rougelikes this week.

Played some Ball x Pit while it was free. I did really enjoy the game, it has a certain addictive quality to it. At the same time, I don’t feel like there’s enough player agency outside of picking upgrades. Most of the time, I basically just needed to walk left - right to collect EXP. It’s one of those game I can see myself putting a lot of time in really fast and then kinda regretting it. Every blue moon, that happens with an idle game.

Also played some Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate. This one is quite the opposite. There’s little to no meta progression and it’s choke-full of decisions to make. I simply love Mystery Dungeon games and this is no exception, even though I specifically avoided it for so long because I prefer the story based ones like Chobo or Pokemon. But that makes it perfect while I only have Visual Novels going on and sometimes need a burst of pure gameplay.

Just did the 4th trial of Danganronpa.

Seeing how slimerancher finished the game, chances are I’ll finish the game over the weekend. If so, I’ll add another post about it here while it’s fresh in my memory.

Finished Octopath Traveler II!

The final stretch using all characters together within the story and allowing you to swap them at any time was the best part of the game by far. The final boss was quite epic and even had a cool new mechanic!

Sadly, the hidden final boss was none of that. It’s one of those ‘wiki bosses’ you’ll usually only beat by looking up either just a guide or lists of all available abilities and pieces of equipment and where to find them. I didn’t feel like doing hours of prep work.

Overall, I did enjoy the game a fair bit more than the first one, but Octopath is still leagues behind Triangle Strategy and Bravely Default in my personal ranking. Still, anything by Team Asano is at least good. (Well, maybe except for Various Daylife, but I never played it myself. Someday on sale, perhaps.)

More Danganronpa!

Still enjoying the game, but I think the class trials could be a tad shorter. They can also be somewhat frustrating, I died twice testing every single combination in an argument, simply because I didn’t know or forgot about being able to carry absorbed arguments into the next cycle. Luckily, you don’t have to repeat the whole thing when running out of hearts.

Next up is 13 Sentinels! Actually my last game on the backlog, discounting Nioh 2 (lent out my PS4) and stuff on Steam I’ve had for almost a decade (I was waiting for the crypto craze to die down before buying a modern PC, then AI happened…).

Almost finished Octopath Traveler II.

Finished my run through with the 3 character team, finished most side stories and am almost done with Hikaris solo run. From what I’ve heard, the post-game isn’t very long, although it does require a lot of annoying grinding. Normal content only goes up to level ~50, but the final boss seems to require level ~80. You can only reasonably reach this level by hitting a 7% chance for 100x EXP from a certain (expensive) recruitable NPC within a fight with a rare monster encounter. Think metal slimes. I don’t have a number for that one, but I’ve seen 2 during my ~65 hours. Rinse and repeat for multiple teams.

…yeah, not really feeling that one. I’ll try fighting him low level. I’m not good with resetting for random stuff.

Did the second chapter of Danganronpa. Just an hour ago, actually.

The status quo changed so much, I feel like any semblance of normalcy or trust are gone.

Did a lot less than gaming than I originally planned. Still on Octopath Traveler II.

My B team, consisting of Castti, Agnea and Partitio feels a lot weaker than the other one, even accounting for the missing fourth character. I probably need to rethink their classes before finishing their final chapters. However, it’s hard to beat the automatic buff and debuff at night in combination with the automatic weakness revealed. I did finish up a lot of other things, like collecting all rusty weapons (all of which are equipped to Hikari for his solo run attempt) or the Commerce chapters from Partitio.

Started Danganronpa and also completed the first chapter with my partner. The first case was super obvious, but I really enjoyed the courtroom gameplay anyway. I expect the others to become increasingly more difficult. I hope nothing bad ever happens to Sakura.

Careful with the spoiler section, I don’t know if the game play out the same each time or if murders differ between playthroughs.

That’s right, I almost forgot about him! While I can remove Ochette now, I think the extra challange of using only 3 characters and then a single one is a welcome one.

More Octopath Traveler II.

I may just finish the game in the coming week. I wrapped up several stories this past week and can gladly report that the final bosses are a difficulty spike. At least the first one. I needed to devise an actual strategy and think about my builds for the first time. Looking forward to doing the same with my B team and probably for the secret boss as well.

It’s been a while since I played the first one, it was my very first Switch game and OT II is probably one of my last ones before I get a Switch 2 (…assuming Monolith announces anything). Overall, I feel I enjoy them roughly the same. OT II improved on almost every front, except for the most glaring issues I had with the first one. I still think both are good games, though.

Continued with Octopath Traveler II.

By now my Ochette pretty much one shots most random encounters, her whole kit of monsters is just a collection of strong multi target attacks. Since these don’t even cost mana, there’s not much reason to switch it up. Once I’ve fully levelled her Merchant job, it will be her latent power AOE every fight instead.

Funnily enough, I’m not even that much overlevelled. I’ve done all stories up to Lv 30 (Well, almost - since the first character is fixed until their story is done, I’ve got 2 teams of 3 I rotate between. Hikari will be a solo run afterwards.) and I’m level 34 with Ochette. About 31 with the other three I took along.

Also watched my partner play a ton more Tomodatchi Life. One they had enough of it, we’ve also got Danganronpa THHAE from the recent sale lined up. I don’t know much about it, but seems like a big jump in terms of atmosphere coming from AI: Somnium Files.

Been working through Octopath Traveler II.

I’ve done all chapter 1 and most chapter 2 stories for all 8 characters. I’ve come to accept that any attempt to prevent overlevelling for the main story is fruitless as my Ochette just cuts through any boss. Instead I’ve done some optional high level stuff to get challanging boss fights, which were great.

Also watched my partner play a ridiculous amount of Tomodachi Life. It seems like a lot of fun, but the pool of random events seems quite small. Also, a few things from the original game were cut, like the option to create custom songs.

Started Octopath Traveler 2 this week.

Didn’t play too much, only did the introduction for 4 of the characters. Initially, I really struggled with myself on how to approach this game. Just go with one character for the challange, do everything for 4 characters and then do the other 4 or just everyone at once. In the end, I’ll probably juggle all 8, but it’s really annoying that I can’t remove my starting character (which is why I considered the solo run, you can remove them after their story is done).

No matter what I do, I’ll proabbly end up overleveled for a lot of stuff, which sucks.

Otherwise the game is great, but I still think the main gimmick - 8 more or less independant characters and stories - just doesn’t work all that great on a fundamental level. Maybe I’ll think otherwise after finishing it, supposedly it does it better than the first one.

I’m no expert, but I think Santa Claus isn’t exactly a biblical figure and neither is the Easter Bunny. These are normal holidays around here, but you’d be hard-pressed to find many children who know any of the christian stuff.

Also, I think Christmas was actually built on top of the prior winter solstice celebrations. It’s not like anyone knew the exact date of birth for a random guy from hundreds of years ago.

The existence of a queue sparks the follow-up question: What happens if something is born while the queue is empty?

Same. Haven’t seen anything about the movie yet and this post spoiled it.

Finished Persona 5 Tactica. Overall, I like the story and new characters, but the gameplay remained too easy. Until the final boss, which took well over an hour, I didn’t even bother healing once. Of course, it’s the best battle in the game.

I think it is better than Strikers, which I thought didn’t work at all.

On the final stretch of AI Somnium Files: nirvanA Initiative, likely in the final psynch.

Almost all beans have been spilled, and the big revelation was explained. I still prefer the first games resolution, but this one is growing on me. It went from “That’s total bullshit” to “Wait a minute…” and finally “Shit, it’s actually somehow coming together”. To fully appreciate it, I think you’d have to play it twice.

Up next is likely Octopath 2, but maybe I’ll go for Nioh 2 or 13 Sentinels instead. Those 3 are my entire backlog atm.

It definitely works if you haven’t played much S1 or care about the performance upgrade. Especially in handheld mode.

Those two things just don’t apply to me. They need some new RPGs on there I can’t get on S1 to catch my interest. (Although, FF7 remake is a good start, but I’m not playing those until the series is complete.)

Almost a year in and there are like 3 games: Bananza, Pokopia and a Mario Kart game people seem quite divided about. I’ll probably get one eventually, but there is just no reason as of yet.

I don’t know about other people, but I think they really dropped the ball by mostly releasing Upgrade Packs. I couldn’t care less about them. I mean, they had years to prepare proper games instead.

Playing on merciless, I completed them all in the minimun amount of days possible. You are forced to leave palaces before their respective boss or at certain breakpoints for the story to continue.

I often got to these points by the skin of my teeth, but I love resource management in dungeons and think they are best enjoyed this way. But no shame in leaving more often if that’s more fun to you.