Gnats' Gacha Trip Report: 11/4/2018

Hey everyone! Back with another update on the (probably too many) gachas I play in my free time, with a bit of a side note that with my getting a fancy new job with pretty long hours I expect that free time to be cut significantly and these posts may or may not show up less often. We'll see! I got some mixed reviews last time because I tend to lean towards Japanese games, and though that isn't likely to change there's some good news regarding a couple of the games I mentioned in the past getting English releases, so read on!

Another Eden ( アナザーエデン )

 

Still currently my favourite gacha and android game in general, I recently cleared the first story arc of Another Eden and am on to the second. As I said in my last post, the game sports gorgeous art and music and plays more like a traditional RPG than a gacha 90% of the time. While there is a gacha, and higher starred characters will naturally be better than lower, I feel like the game is very generous about letting you use who you want if you're just looking to clear the story line, and it gives a constant stream of the premium currency for getting achievements and clearing side quests and such. The further I get in it the more references to games like Chrono Trigger I see, which is unsurprising given the people who worked on this and entirely welcome as a fan.

I mentioned that there were rumors of a Switch version of this game in the works and they have been confirmed! At some point in 2019 expect to see an English version of this game appear on the Switch, and hopefully also android if we're lucky.

Language: Japanese

Gameplay: https://youtu.be/GS90JJKeVN4 (Uploaded by myself.)

Grab it on Qooapp!

SINoALICE

 

Similarly, I'm into the second story arc of SINoALICE as well! Not much new to say about the game except that along with Another Eden it was announced for a 2019 English release! I really didn't see this coming given how long ago the game came out in Japan, but I know a lot of people will be excited. It's a fairly typical gacha, but the art and general aesthetic really push it above and beyond the competition for me.

Language: Japanese

Gameplay: https://youtu.be/EEIIpTx7rKc (Uploaded by myself)

Grab it on Qooapp!

Tales of Erin

One of the few English games I tried recently, and also probably one of the first altogether negative experiences I've had with a gacha. From the logo that looks suspiciously like a Tales console game's to just about everything else, Tales of Erin feels supremely lazy. The translation is shoddy enough to take me out of it (which is saying a lot), the UI goes from bland to just outright bad, the story is cliche and generic, and outside of a few very specific cases the graphics of the game itself are unimpressive. I was excited to try this one because screenshots I'd seen made the combat look kinda good, but in motion everything feels cheap and unfinished.

The highlight was probably encountering a villain who was literally named 'Darklord'. Like, that was his name.. not even a title, his name. I couldn't take the game serio0usly from there and whether or not I actually keep playing it is anyone's guess.

Language: English

Gameplay: https://youtu.be/HXB86KChp-k (Uploaded by me!)

Available on Google Play!

Seikimatsu Days: Our Era's End ( 世紀末デイズ)

I didn't expect to like this one as much as I did, not exactly being a fan of dungeon crawlers or roguelites, but the music and overall presentation along with a very smart AI/auto battle won me over in the end. The setting is post-apocalyptic but doesn't have any issues being bright and flashy, and most of the characters are pretty unique and have a lot of personality to them. Game play consists of guiding your party through the ruins of Japan in a top-down dungeon crawler style, picking up treasure and battling enemies as you go.

Perhaps most unusual is that the game offers a rerollable initial gacha, so if you're super desperate to min-max you can just keep rolling til you get the absolute best result. I was at it for about 45 minutes before I decided to give it a rest and actually get into the game. xD I adore the auto-battle in this one, as it almost seems like it's smarter than me at times and will diligently clear out each room and floor of a dungeon of treasures and enemies before moving on, so you don't have to worry about it bee lining through a dungeon and losing you precious money and exp.

Definitely check it out if you're into this style of game, and enjoy that weird pop-y soundtrack!

Language: Japanese

Gameplay: https://youtu.be/0jEe9icG2qQ (Uploaded by myself)

Grab it on Qooapp!

Other games I've been playing casually include:

• Arc the Lad R
• Crystal Hearts
• Kurokishi to Shiro no Maou
• Project Tokyo Dolls
• Sdorica
• Ordinal Strata
• Destiny Child

So feel free to ask about any of the games listed there and I'll do my best to answer. Like I said, I recently started a new job so this may stop being a monthly thing, but we'll see how I feel once my body's adjusted to the new schedule. xD What are some games you guys are playing and looking forward to? I'm always eager to learn of new ones that I may enjoy (look at what I already play to get an idea of what I'm into!), especially if they're polished and have good story quests/gachas that don't make you want to rip your hair out.

Hope everyone had a good Halloween! See you next time!

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified

I've been wanting to play the new XCOM games since they were released, but until very recently I haven't had a good enough PC to run them at anything even close to playable. I now have a decent GPU, however, and The Bureau happened to be the game I chose when I got to the X section of my A-Z backlog challenge. I knew full well what to expect from the game, and given it was a 3rd-person shooter with RPG-lite elements ala Mass Effect I figured it suited me perfect, though now having finished it I'm left with mixed feelings.

Story:

The Bureau follows William Carter and an organization known as 'The Bureau' as they attempt to repel an alien invasion of Earth sometime in the 1962, at the height of the Cold War. The plot moves about how you'd expect just by reading that one line, with no real surprises until literally the very last mission of the game.

I thought the setting was fairly unique and neat, and I did enjoy wandering around the base/quest hub listening to all of the filler dialogue and looking for notes and such with bits of lore in them. Sadly, most of the characters were generally unrelatable or just plain unlikeable, with the one big exception essentially getting killed off early on in the game. The main character himself starts out reasonable, but due to a plot bit that I won't spoil turns out to be the worst character in the game.

 

Gameplay:

Gameplay in The Bureau handles quite similarly to Mass Effect, with the player splitting their time between cover based action sequences and exploring a central hub with NPCs who all have dialogue wheels to go through between missions. As I said, the combat and mission structure is downright identical to Mass Effect: Pick your team, get dropped off, move from setpiece to setpiece while engaging groups of enemies at points between that are conveniently peppered with chest-high walls for cover. This isn't bad, mind you, I had a good deal of fun with the missions until they startted throwing shielded-armored-super enemies at me in groups at the end.

However! There were waaay too few optional missions considering how short they are. I think there were maybe 5 or 6 in total, when there should have been at -least- twice as many. The game felt short, really short. Add on to this that the dialogue segments did little more than flesh out the lore (whereas in Mass Effect or Dragon Age they may have opened up new side missions, etc.) and I had reached the final mission and the aliens were leaving Earth before I knew it.

Summary:

Given how much this game apes one of my favourite franchises in gaming history (Mass Effect), I should have adored it. It ended up being only average due to the strange pacing of the game and the fact that I didn't really like any of the characters at all. If you, like me, enjoy a good 3rd Person Action RPG, there's no reason not to at least give it a try, just don't expect it to be up to snuff when compared to some of the better ones.
 

Gaming Progress Report - March 28, 2014

First, let me apologize for the lack of updates recently. I'd been having issues with my extracted teeth and then I landed a new job that's kept me busy and also exhausted. That said, I'm going to at least make an effort to keep this thing alive, just don't be surprised if updates stay slower during the week.
 

World of Warcraft:

Yes, I know. I only decided to reinstall this because an acquaintance gave me 30 days free he had laying around, but even so. I'm looking forward to the new expansion and even though it's not coming out for quite some time, it's not as if there are any other MMOs out right now that I'd rather be playing at this point. I'm really just messing around with leveling, anyway, no major commitments like raiding.

If anyone is interested in chatting me up, the characters I spend most of my time on right now are Magicpierre on Wyrmrest Accord Horde, and Milhaust and Aihm on Wyrmrest Accord Alliance.

Yakuza: Black Panther:

Honestly, I've never given the Yakuza series a second glance over the years. Not necessarily because the games don't suit me, they've just never done anything to catch my eye. I picked this oneup because I was looking for an import title that was different that my youtube viewers might enjoy, and I'll be darned if the game isn't growing on me.

I only had a basic idea of what the series was like, and was surprised when this particular entry turned out to be something like God Hand crossed with a JRPG in a modern day setting. The cutscene art style is also excellent, and I'm finding myself excited to see more of them. I expect to post a full review of this when I finish it up.

Valkyria Chronicles 3

When I'd heard that Valkyria Chronicles 3 was almost finished being fan translated I was stoked as all get out. I've never had a chance to play the first one, and the second felt like more of an anime high school drama than a war epic, so this promised to be something truly excellent. Thankfully it lived up to almost all of my expectations, and more than made up for the lukewarm entry into the series that was VC2.

Story:

Valkyria Chronicles 3 takes place during the same war as the first game in the series, though this time you're not following a celebrated group of soldiers, instead taking the role of the captain of a penal unit that takes on impossible missions in exchange for pardons. The tone is a bit darker than the previous games, with the story emphasizing the corruption on either side of the war and the lengths to which some people will go to do what in their minds is the right thing. This brings us to one of my two complaints on the game.

 As much as I liked the story and the setting I felt as if the game started to drag on after a while, with some of the plot points being needlessly stretched out, at least in my opinion. If the game had been maybe five chapters shorter it would have been damn near perfect. Up until the halfway point I had been doing all the missions, optional or otherwise, but at that point it all felt so filler-y I stopped and just rushed through the rest of the game. There's even a whole bunch of post-game stuff with even more story that I've yet to touch.

Gameplay:

Having played Valkyria Chronicles 2, I had a good idea of what to expect from this before even picking it up. The player gets a certain number of moves per turn to maneuver squad members across the battlefield, putting them into cover and firing on enemies or capturing points. While you're moving you're constantly being shot at by the enemy, so you need to minimize time spent out in the open and be as quick as you can.

Now, here's where my second complaint about the (and really the series as a whole) comes in, because despite really enjoying the gameplay style, I always felt as if I was playing the game "wrong". I'll be the first guy to admit that I'm not the pro gamer I was when I was younger, I prefer to take my time in games, play defensively and deliberately. Unfortunately, you get punished for doing just that in the VC series.

See, the ranking you get at the end of each mission (and by extension how much money you get because it's directly tied to your rank) is based on how many turns it took you to complete it in. What this means is that if you don't rush rush rush through every mission, you get ranked very low, and thus end up starved for war funds. It's frustrating, and it honestly doesn't make sense for soldiers to be dashing right past lines of enemy soldiers, tanks and turrets as fast as they can instead of slowly advancing and taking advantage of cover. Maybe it's just me, but I just found it hard to feel immersed because of this.

Summary:

Those two issues aside, I had fun with Valkyria Chronicles 3 and am thankful for the team who fan translated it for going to the trouble. If you liked either of the other games and are hungry for more, there's honestly no reason not to try this out now, and even if you're new to the series the game is isolated enough from the overarching plot of the first game even though they take place parallel to each other that you can easily understand what's going on.

You can pick up the translation patch here:

http://vc3translationproject.wordpress.com/

Gaming Progress Report - March 19, 2014

Castlevania - Lords of Shadow:

Been playing this on and off for weeks now, mainly basing my playtimes on whether or not my PC wants to recognize that my PS3 controller is plugged in or not. As a rule I tend to dislike spectacle fighter action games like this, stuff like God of War and Darksiders have always bored or frustrated me to the point that I don't finish them, but somehow this one held onto me til the end and then some.

I think it must have been a combination of the setting and the incredible music, but I powered through and finished not only the main game, but both DLCs. Unfortunately, the DLCs were kind of weak with the 2nd one being downright infuriating (I died more in the first 10 minutes of the 2nd DLC than I did throughout the whole of the main game), but they were important top finish to see the whole story.

Warhammer 40000 - Dawn of War II Gold Edition:

I'd been wanting to play this game for ages now, after getting a hell of a lot of enjoyment out of the original Dawn of War and its expansions. I was somewhat wary when I heard that they'd removed the base building aspects of the game (that being probably my favourite part of any RTS), but so far it's been fun enough and I've cleared the main game and moved on to the expansion. I've heard that the 2nd expansion helps a bit with the whole being locked to a squad for an entire mission thing, so we'll see when I decide to pick that one up.

The way the missions are handled is kind of cool, sort of a mix between the two styles of the original Dawn of War, but I'm not big on the infinitely repeating defensive missions, and the whole corruption system in Chaos Rising seems more like a pain in the ass than anything else. So far I've managed to keep my entire team pure, but so few decent weapons and armor drop, and it feels like whenever a really good upgrade does appear it's always corrupted.

Lost Planet - Colonies

I finished this a couple days ago, and I'm honestly not sure how to feel about the game. I started off disliking it pretty profusely, but as I played more it began to grow on me. By no means is it a great game, and I'd hesitate to even call it a better than average game, but it was clearly engaging enough to keep me playing til the end.

Story:

Honestly, the game doesn't have a whole lot of story. The basic premise is that colonists on this planet EDN-something-something came under attack by insect like creatures (called Akrid), and upon killing them discovered that they produced thermal energy inside their bodies which was important due to the planets frigid climate. Unfortunately, humanity has been unable to set up any real permanent colonies on the planet due to attacks by these creatures, and are also making very little progress towards terraforming the world to be more suitable for habitation.

The game starts off with the main character, Wayne, getting caught in a bungled raid of some sort which ends up with his father being killed and Wayve being the lone survivor of the group. He's found by a group of three people working to eliminate the Akrid and decides to stay with them for whatever reason and help. Eventually the group gets tangled up fighting with snow pirates and a corporation called NEVEC along with the Akrid, and there's the usual save the world arc towards the end.

The story is campy and hard to take seriously, and throughout the game I was reminded of Zone of the Enders repeatedly with the way they went about progressing the plot, but maybe that was just me. Anyway, the game's story is lukewarm at best, and the main character is downright boring.

Gameplay:

Lost Planet is a third person shooter, which I like. Unfortunately, it almost feels as if the game isn't sure what kind of shooter it wants to be because it drops you in these expansive areas but your mission goals are always extremely specific. There's no multiple routes to accomplish something, just literally go from point A to point B and kill everything in between. I get that they wanted to make it almost Monster Hunter-y for the multiplayer (which is even more pronounced in the sequel), but I feel as if the campaign is just needlessly large in scope when really they could have lowered the scale and polished the experience a lot more.

The shooting itself is pretty standard, handling more like Earth Defense Force than Gears of War in that there's very little aim assist involved. The weapon variety is pretty lackluster, and I found that the regular rifle was the best weapon in most situations. I had most of my fun when the mechs were involved, and to be fair they did quite a good job of making the various suits feel and look different. I think I'd have enjoyed the game more if it had just been the mech combat, honestly.

Visually the game is pretty damned gorgeous, especially when you consider it came out in what, 2008? The snow physics and the fur on the characters' coats was rendered beautifully, so the devs should be applauded for that much. The audio is another story. The soundtrack was essentially non-existant, I can't remember a single track from the game and it's only been a couple days since I finished it. You've gotta have a memorable soundtrack if you want people to think back fondly on your games, developers!

Summary:

I'm not sure what I expected coming into this game. It's got two sequels, so it had to have been well received, right? To me it just feels that instead of going for this weird hybrid of traditional third-person shooter and Monster Hunter style multiplayer they should have focused on one or the other. The game isn't awful, it's just confused. I suppose it's worth playing if you wanted to get the backstory before moving onto the other two.