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.
There is only one hard requirement if you want to see everything and get a ‘true’ ending of Persona 5 Royal. Depending on your other choices, some additional scenes may vary. The requirement is a confidant you need to level:
Muraki / rank 9 / before 11/17
To get the most out of royal, you should level these 2 as well:
Kasumi / rank 5 / before 12/22
Akechi / rank 8 / before 11/17
Everything else doesn’t matter. You cannot complete all confidants, so don’t stress about them. Just do what’s interesting to you. Just meet these three characters whenever they are available.
Oh and don’t wait until the last day of a deadline to finishes Palaces. Until after a Palace is done you cannot level you party member confidants.
It’s been a while, but my gaming progress has been at a snails pace.
I’ve finished SMT V:Vengeace! Overall, I still really like the game, but it didn’t leave as big of an impression as the vanilla version did. I’d still recommend Vengeance over Vanilla, I’ve just played so many SMT games that I eventually hit a bit of a fatigue.
Now, ironically, since then, I’ve been playing another SMT game: Persona 5 Tactica. Unlike with the main games, I don’t care about completely filling my demon compendium in this one, which is the thing I got actually fatigued about.
Tactica has a lot of similarities to the Mario & Rabbits games, which I did enjoy. These aren’t proper SRPGs in my book, but rather puzzles with light SRPG mechanics. Often times side-quests even want you to do them in a single turn. The one new mechanic added to the formula is the main thing you’re trying to do as much as possible: All out attacks. Basically, under certain conditions, your characters get another turn and you deal massive damage to all enemies within the triangle created by the 3 characters you play with. All you other options just serve to set these up.
The gameplay can get a bit samey. To counteract this, maps themselves are movement puzzles with switches to stand on and similar things.
I like the new story and characters, although the game is unexptedly wordy. If you’re good at the ganeplay, half the playtime is cutscenes.
Lastly, I finished Ai: The Somnium Files and started the sequel: nirvanA Initiative. Still a really good time, but this time around, you don’t play as Date and there are less branching paths. You know, the best things about the first game. I’m close to the end, I think, and my overall opinion is heavily dependant on the resolution. The mystery is fun, but it only stays fun if the explanation is both good and had a lot of foreshadowing - once again, like the first game.
Some free Silksong DLC, maybe?
Instead of learning skills individually, learn them as you go! Just pick an engine - I’d recommend Godot - and get to work.
Here’s a nice challange about building increasingly difficult games: The 20 games challange.
You start with Pong, which is super easy to get the hang of. You could even follow a tutorial for that one and then try to use less and less tutorials as you go down the list.
Just get going instead of watching endless how-to videos, which is an easy trap for beginners. Actually starting a project and finishing one are two of the most important skills. You’ll quickly learn which parts come naturally to you and which ones you need to focus on.
As for creativity, once you’re done with each game, try to think of a twist to spice it up and add it to the game. It can be a simple thing, like e.g. with Pong using multiple balls or maybe adding obstacles - just test what’s fun and what’s not!
Still working through Shin Megami V Vengeance!
Finished the second main area, out of 4, I presume. By now the story has established the new group of antagonists and gave more screen time to the previously underused cast. There are enough new demons that I can barely keep up with fusing them all! But I always feel to need to collected them all in SMT/Persona. (Funnily enough, I never did in Pkmn.)
Finished the first route of AI: The somnium files!
Got Ota’s ending, which didn’t actually solve the case. Luckily, the game tells you about each branching path and you can freely jump to them.
The humor is hit or miss, but it did land with me and my partner. The mystery is fun and the characters are all around fun, too. We’ll do the other routes and then jump right into the sequel!
Thanks for asking, but there isn’t yet. I’ve dabbled around quite a bit and wan’t to focus on actually finishing something this year. Maybe for the next one.
Over the last two years, I’ve often lost my drive to continue since there are always new shiny ideas that are far more interesting than doing a lot of the menial work game dev involves. Kinda the opposite of your problem, really.
Didn’t game too much this holiday season and I want to focus more on making games instead of playing them this year - let’s see how that one is working out.
Anyhow, got in a good chunk of SMT V Vengeance! The QoL stuff is awesome, but it’s still pretty similar to the original - just with more quests and demons along the way . I don’t mind since I loved the original game, but if you didn’t it likely not worth it.
Started Ai: The Somnium Files! Decided to play through some detective games with my partner. This one is a great start! I like the characters, it’s both fun and has a good mystery. I’ll probably go through the entire series + rain code, then do the Ace Attorney games. Are there other games like this?
It’s in a similar vein. There are new demons, quests, QoL stuff and some rebalancing changes just like in P5R. However, instead of a new chapter, Vengence added a new route through the game - revamping most of the story. (Or fixing the lack thereof.)
Currently, it’s still quite similar to vanilla SMT V, but I’ve been told it will diverge a lot more quite early. Don’t know if or how many new locations there are.
Probably Alaska then, but I have no clue which episode. These types of episodes are all jumbled together in my mind.
I think it’s the one future episode with Lisa as the POTUS, ‘the president wore pearls’.
The joke was Maggie writing a card from Antarctica, which now is a beach paradise due to global warming. If memory seerves right, there are even some penguins sonewhere in there.
Finished up Harvestella.
Overall, I really like the game. The farming and combat are both somewhat simple and the story does start out generic. However, then it speedruns a complete JRPG story within a single chapter and then throws another 5 chapters at you. The characters are fun, the world is interesting and I felt engaged throughout. Even did some more farming after I already bought everything until I hit the money cap at 999,999.
Finished Pokemon Legends Arceus!
My initial impression stands. The first area was some of thr best Pokemon I ever played. Afterwards the entire thing kind of fell apart. Too many repeated Pokemon per area; most things didn’t even reach half my level and fhe story never hooked me. The final fight against the hidden antagonist, I guess, was somewhat challanging, but I don’t think the battle system is all that fun. Sometimes, you defeat a Pokemon and the next one just gets 4 turns in before you move again (even using my fast moves!). But still, I really enjoyed that initial catching of Pokemon and think it’s woth trying.
Just yesterday, I started Shin Megami Tensei V Vengence.
I love the original SMT V, it’s one of my favorite Switch games. Having played some more SMT games since then, it does show some cracks, but I’m still having a great time and enjoy the new stuff. It’s probably best coming of Persona and I still prefer it over SMT 3 Nocturne, which I think is somewhat uncommon. (Although that’s mostly due to Nocturnes save system. On the highest difficulty, not being able to save for sometimes hours at a time really does suck when you could die from a single random encouter at any time. At full health. Without getting a turn in.)
This may not necessarily apply to you, but those 30 minutes of walking would do wonders for the overall health of your average American.
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.