The Caligula Effect: Overdose – Too slow, couldn’t play

It is enough to play a little bit of The Caligula Effect: Overdose. It’s another game that would have ended up as “the one that got away” in my mind if I hadn’t tried it. The ideas are great, I love the publisher (Furyu) and I usually enjoy high school RPG shenanigans, but the battle system is just too sluggish and drawn out to be fun.

The story about people trapped in a fantasy world by a well-meaning AI is interesting enough. I can think of few things more nightmarish than being trapped in high school again, ew, ew. So I’m definitely rooting for the main characters to make it out of there and back to their normal lives, whatever those may have been. I’m just not rooting hard enough to fight those endless battles.

This is where I would normally explain the system, try to find some screenshots, maybe even a video to prove my point. But I’m beyond that point now. Now I realize  I ain’t gotta explain diddly. Though I suppose it would be helpful to explain exactly what bothered me: too much time is spent entering commands and seeing how they play out via a simulation before actually committing to that course of action. You essentially play every turn twice in a turn-based RPG. Intriguing idea, horrible to actually play.

Turn-based SRPGs often have something similar where they show you your chance of success and the expected damage, but that’s a quick series of numbers, not a full-on animation. All that faffing about every single turn of combat killed my motivation. It wasn’t so bad in the first half-hour because I only had one party member to control. But they quickly added two more and now I’m expected to simulate every single turn to make sure everyone attacks with the right timing to launch or knock down enemies and avoid or counter attacks. Every battle takes forever, and that’s not even factoring in the unnecessarily long attacking and “roaring” motions the enemies make. It’s only been an hour and I’m already tired.

Now then, I’ve been playing games for a long time. So I know it’s possible, nay, likely that things will get faster and more interesting as you get more characters, stronger equipment and more powerful attacks. However I’m too old and impatient for that “gets better after 30 hours” thing. Get better after 30 minutes or get out.

That said, the idea is great and I have good memories of a more basic type of this system in the Grandia games (especially cancelling enemy’s telegraphed attacks). So this isn’t a blanket condemnation of The Caligula Effect: Overdose‘s battle system. It’s just not for me at this point in time.

The story also lost me a little bit when it turned out that those 500 school mates you can befriend and add to your party are faceless with barely any personality. I’m so naive I actually thought they would create 500 individual character portraits and stories, but even Suikoden struggles with 108 so my expectations were too high.

TL;DR I’m too lazy to play The Caligula Effect: Overdose. Gotta find something easier for my hamster brain to process. Right now that something is Dissidia: Final Fantasy – Opera Omnia coupled with a little Genshin Impact here and there. I want to start Tokyo Xanadu eX+ again and run it through properly, but I promise this is the last time I will mention it on this blog until/unless I finish it.

45 days until Xenoblade Chronicles 3!

Disliked Shining Resonance Refrain and Labyrinth of Refrain demos

Going 2 for 4 on Switch RPG demos now. The first batch was good, this second batch was a disappointment. Thank God for demos is all I can say, because Shining Resonance Refrain and Labyrinth of Refrain are the games I was more likely to shell out for sight-unseen, the former because I liked previous Shining games and the latter because I like first-person dungeon crawlers.

Shining Resonance Refrain – Very short demo that didn’t tell much about the story but did introduce the three boobies beauties the game is probably going to revolve around, as well as the worthless sap main character Yuma who they are all going to fall in love with because that’s what girls in Shining games do. I don’t mind harem RPGs at all as long as the gameplay is fun. Which sadly isn’t the case for Shining Resonance. I fought a few battles with three different party members and the controls are sluggish, clunky and unresponsive. After those few minutes I didn’t want to play any more, which is very rare for me and ARPGs. That said, SRR has gone on sale for as low as $9.99 before. At that price, it would be worth continuing to play and seeing if the combat picks up. Until then, I have no interest.

Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk – I was a bit cautious going into this one. I don’t have a good history with Nippon Ichi, because IMO they have a habit of taking basic systems and mucking them up with too many complications. E.g. their Disgaea stuff overcomplicates SRPGs and Zettai Hero Project went overboard for a roguelite. All IMO of course, but nevertheless it keeps me away from their games.

All that said, however, initially Labyrinth of Refrain far exceeded my expectations. Exploration was a bit annoying because I’m used to auto-travel from Experience Inc. games, but I got on great. The demo was meaty and I got to explore a lot of territory, create several party members and equip and level them as well. There’s quite a bit of customization involved in creating characters too. Combat wasn’t bad – nothing exciting, just the usual dungeon-crawler fare. The Game Over/Escape penalty wasn’t too harsh and even the roving enemies that initially gave me pause weren’t very F.O.E.-like.

I was all set to wishlist it and buy it at the next opportunity when the story destroyed everything with a scene of a lesbian nun sexually assaulting the witch main character. It would be hard to express in words just how repulsed and disgusted I was, so I’m not going to try. Yes the game did have a “Mature” label, but not like this NIS, not like this. Someone actually proposed that scene, someone wrote it, someone programmed it, someone recorded the voice lines, someone translated it and all along no one ever thought to scream, “WHAT THE HELL IS THIS GARBAGE?!” All right, then I won’t say anything either. I deleted the demo and we will never speak of it again.

Back to Picross. Good old Picross. Casual games are the best!

Really liked the demos of Oninaki and Monark

I almost wish I hadn’t played the demos, because now I really want both full games but I don’t want to pay $49.99 (Oninaki) and $59.99 (Monark). They were nice but not that nice, and I’ll kick myself if they go on sale later.

Oninaki – Dark and dreary game about Watchers who guide the souls of lost dead people. Seems to be heavily influenced by Hindu beliefs, but it’s not clear what direction the writers are going in. On one hand there’s a blithe attitude towards death, on the other hand unauthorized suicide is a crime? The worldview and story are a bit confusing, but I just started out so it’s too soon to say.

The combat is action RPG-ish, with skills that can be used off cooldown. There’s also stuff about Daemon possession, which is basically a switchable party member kind of thing. Think Pokemon or personae except not as easily switchable. I’m really liking the solo nature of my party so far, and I’d like to keep it that way if possible. The enemy density is high too, which I always enjoy in an ARPG.

In keeping with the theme of living and dead, you can switch between the Living World and the Beyond at set points (or at random if you like Game Overs) to cross roadblocks, solve mysteries, kill bosses, etc. I thought it would be an annoying gimmick, but it’s pretty clear when and where you’re supposed to switch. I hope they do more with the two worlds later, otherwise it’s going to feel very tacked on and “trying too hard to be different.”

TL;DR – I’m enjoying the combat and the story is vaguely interesting, but the mood and colors are too dreary for me to pay full price for this. Luckily I noticed that it occasionally goes on sale and even went as low as $19.99 recently.

Monark – Now this one I’m really tempted by. It’s a modern high-school occult RPG in the vein of the Persona games or Tokyo Xanadu eX+. The combat is a free-moving SRPG like… hmm, Shining Force Feather? Where there’s a circular range you can move in instead of a grid, but really it boils down to the same thing. And you have back attacks, side attacks, counter attacks, etc. Same as typical SRPGs. I thought I was done with SRPGs, but this ain’t half bad. Maybe because it doesn’t come with the typical grid format so it doesn’t trigger bad memories.

In the early game I’m playing, the main character and his companion have to venture into a spooky mist to rescue people and defeat monsters. There’s a lot of walking and talking and not much fighting, so at this stage I consider it more of a Tokyo Majin-like. I hope the ratio improves significantly as the game moves along, though. Balance is important in this kind of game. (BTW it turns out there’s a semi-official term for “majin-like” coined by the developer of the Tokyo Majin series. He calls them “gakuen juvenile denki” but it’s a mouthful so I’ll call them what I want).

Why I want it – I like the Majin-like / high school occult RPG genre a lot, actually. There are only so many Persona games out there, so any game “inspired” by the series is likely to get played by me. The characters aren’t annoying, the story is moving along at a pretty fast pace and the Madness gimmick isn’t as frustrating as I’d expected.

Plus Monark was developed by Lancarse, who also developed WiZman’s World, a game I have fond but bittersweet memories of. Also it’s published by Furyu, which has made a lot of games I really enjoyed.

Unlike Oninaki, I’m quite tempted to buy Monark straight up regardless of the price, because I’m about 80% sure I’ll like the whole thing. Plus since it just came out two months ago vs. 3 years ago for Oninaki, it will take some time for the price to drop significantly. Still I’m nothing if not patient when it comes to new releases that aren’t called Xenoblade 3, so I’ll find other things to play while waiting for the inevitable drop.

Important finding

What I realized from this demo-playing experience is that I can still enjoy JRPGs. They just need to be handheld so I can start them on my bed. Starting is the hurdle, after that it’s not hard to keep playing if I like the game. That means I should give some thought to getting a Steam Deck or other handheld PC if I really want to make a dent in my gaming backlog. And I should get the Switch version of more games instead of the PC version. Food for thought, for sure.

On the topic of demos, it seems the Nintendo EU eShop has a lot of demos that other regions don’t have. I wonder why? EU gamers are a harder sell? Stingier? Broker? Hmm, so curious. I’m not complaining though, since I’ll be trying the demos for Shining Resonance Refrain (really hope I like it) and Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk next. 11 more weeks to Xenoblade 3!

Bought a Nintendo Switch

Buying the Nintendo Switch was long overdue, because I’ve been playing my brother’s since 2018-ish. Not only have I completed two games on it (Xenoblade 2 and Octopath Traveler) but I’ve also identified at least five other JRPGs I could play on it.

“Identified” doesn’t mean I’m actually playing those games, though. Heh heh. Naturally I’m playing Picross S3, S4, S5 and S6 and Picross Lord of Nazarick. First I worked my way through all the Color Picross sections and now I’m doing the Mega Picross sections. All without hints or auto-correction. I feel so hardcore, not gonna lie 😀 I’d almost go so far as to say the cost of the Switch was worth it for Picross alone. I’ve been trying other nonogram games like Hana’s Story on Android, but nothing beats the slickness of Jupiter’s Picross games.

Well enough about that. I’ve gushed enough about Picross over the years. In other Switch news, I also started The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles and made it some way into the second case. Ace Attorney fans, please don’t take offence but I’m not enjoying this game AT ALL. There is just too much talking, too much blatant perjury, too much frustration when all the characters overlook the most blatant evidence… I want to spoil, but I will save it for its own post once I finish the second case and have more to discuss. My bro tells me the final payoff is incredible, but I don’t know if I can hold on that long.

Other games I’m eyeing: Ys VIII and Dragon Quest XI. The former I want to buy a Pro Controller before tackling for real. The latter, sometimes I want to play it, sometimes I really don’t want to touch a DQ game ever again. I have the same mix of complicated feelings towards Triangle Strategy. It sounds good, but I’ve gone off I’m taking a break from SRPGs in recently so I can’t bring myself to hit that button and start it. Especially since according to rumor, it takes 2 hours for the first battle to take place. What is this I don’t even…

In any case, dabbling with other RPGs is just my way of marking time until Xenoblade Chronicles 3 comes out on July 29th. I dutifully watched the trailer Nintendo released, but honestly they had me at “Xenoblade.” There needs to be a setting for Nintendo to send all Xenoblade games to my Switch automatically and debit my account instead of releasing promos and trailers when I’ve already made up my mind.

BTW, speaking of promos, I also downloaded the demos for Oninaki and Monark from the EU eShop. I don’t care much for the latter, but I remember being curious about Oninaki when it was first announced. Then, nothing. I didn’t even know it was out. Did it flop? Am I just out of the loop? Anyway, a demo costs nothing but time to play so I’ll check them out… eventually.

I haven’t forgotten my list of games to play in the first half of 2022 either. This month I’m supposed to be playing FFXIII and Tokyo Xanadu eX+, but I haven’t even touched the PC folders they’re in. The hold up is actually Undernauts, which I feel like I’ve played enough of, but which I can’t let go of at the same time. So it’s not being played and it’s not letting other games get played either, what a sinful game. IIRC the problem was the game’s story interrupted my exploring flow with some quest about saving a girl I don’t care about, and my interest hasn’t recovered since.

While I screw up the courage to continue or drop Undernauts for sure, I’ll be catching up with Genshin Impact and exploring more of the Chasm. I quite enjoyed the lore update this time. Genshin has some good stories here and there, scattered through the endless talking. It should be a great game for people who pick it up… in 2025. <_< The Chasm is great though, and I still haven’t tackled Enkanomiya so that should keep me busy for a couple of days.

But really all the above is mostly lies and the only games I really really want to play are Picross and Xenoblade 3. Everything else… we’ll see.

Glad I tried Dragalia Lost before it shut down, but it’s not very good.

Dragalia Lost is one of those games I’d always meant to play but never got round to it. It’s 90% because the game doesn’t run on emulators, and I’ve said ad nauseam that I don’t like gaming on my smartphone. Still, when I heard the game was ending service soon, I knew I had to give it a try or regret it forever.Or at least for a little while before I forget all about it.

I would have regretted it because Dragalia Lost is from Cygames, makers of my ex-favorite Granblue Fantasy. It has a reputation for bright colours and generous gacha giveaways (it’s not that great but I wouldn’t have known without playing it). Plus it has action RPG combat… sort of. If I had let the game die without trying it after hearing all that, it might have become a great game in my fevered imagination, and I would have gone through life thinking of “What might have been.” It’s good to try hyped things sometimes, if only to destroy the myth in your mind.

Long story short, I downloaded Dragalia Lost and played it for a couple of days. I think it was about 5 days because I still had free draws left from the 7 days of 10 pulls they give beginners. It was also the 3.5th anniversary celebration and Gala Dragalia (increased 5-star drop rate banner) so there were a lot of freebies to be gained. But none of them could entice me to play longer than a few days because the game itself is dull and grindy and nowhere near as pretty or exciting as I was expecting. There’s no point getting flashy new characters and dragons if there’s nowhere fun to use them.

Story

The hero Euden is looking for his kidnapped twin sister (what IS it with videogames and missing sisters?) while also roaming the world catching ’em all forming pacts with dragons who are the key to saving the world. Generic stuff with generic goody two-shoes hero who tries to save everybody, even if they were at his throat just five seconds ago. I hate those guys. I started skipping the dialogue after a few chapters and don’t feel I missed anything. Played up to chapter 10 and lost interest.

Dialogue skipping is something I want in other games, but it’s a two-edged sword. Your plot will have to be really intriguing or the writing will have to be very compelling to keep people reading it, and very few games can manage that. Of all the gacha games I tried recently, IIRC only Epic Seven has a skip option that I didn’t use, and even there I skipped a lot of the side stories. And actually it’s not because the story/writing is all that great but because the letters are huge and the dialogues are usually short and to the point.

I feel very slightly sorry for the writers because it’s a tough job coming up with so many ideas and witty one-liners only for gamers to ignore them all. But on the other hand, I can’t honestly get excited about saving yet another little sister en route to saving yet another world. Get some fresh material.

Not my screenshot. Somehow I didn’t feel very screen-shotty when I played this.

Combat

The much-vaunted action RPG combat turned out to be a whole lot of nothing. You tap frantically on the screen to attack and swipe to dodge or dash. It’s action all right, but it isn’t what I had in mind. Tiny characters racing around on my tiny phone screen where I can hardly see what I’m doing because my fat thumb is in the way. Unlike Guardian Tales, this isn’t something that could be improved by using a controller or an emulator, not that Dragalia Lost would allow it anyway. After a few battles I just started auto-battling, and that’s when I knew the writing was on the wall.

The game has a limited number of skip tickets, but if the core gameplay isn’t enticing, skip tickets aren’t going do to much. You use skip tickets to skip the grind for getting new weapons, then you get the new weapons, then you skip those battles as well? Unless the rest of the game is fantastic, it’s a quick step from there to not playing the game at all.

Speaking of weapons, that was the final nail in the coffin for me and Dragalia Lost. I opened the weapon/crafting screen and saw all the weapons I would have to grind for and decided to get out while the getting was good.

I’ve been through too much with Granblue Fantasy and its various types of weapons and weapon grids and damage calculations. And I’m going through the artifact grind in Genshin Impact and the endless gear grind in Epic Seven. There’s no room in my heart for another lengthy grind. Especially since this game will shut down long before I ever get strong enough to get the better stuff.

I made it to around 12,000 might in most elements without difficulty, but after that I felt like I hit a wall. Co-op is pretty dead outside of events, so there’s no question of getting carried by randoms, unlike in Granblue Fantasy. If I have to struggle to get already-outdated weapons so I can watch characters play themselves in an already-dead game, I’d rather quit and eat bonbons on my couch.

Gacha

Supposedly generous rates. I didn’t play long enough to find out. Dragalia Lost doesn’t front-load all the goodies like, say, Romancing Saga Re;Universe does. I got some draw tickets and a 7-day 10-draw that should have impressed me, but I’ve played so many mobile games in quick succession that it will take something reallyy over-the-top to wow me.

More importantly, as I already said, you have to care about what you’re getting before “generous” gacha rates mean anything to you. If you get several five-star characters but you don’t care about their story relevance and the combat is boring so you don’t know their skills and the game is shutting down in a few months anyway…

TL;DR

I thought if nothing else the action RPG aspect of Dragalia Lost would give me a few months of fun. Unfortunately that turned out to be the biggest disappointment. And once the gameplay failed, everything else felt pointless. But as I said in the title, I’m glad I tried it so I know for sure I’m not missing anything when the game goes down. It lacked popularity for a reason, let’s just leave it at that.

What else I’m playing

I went back to Epic Seven, which is why I haven’t touched any of the stuff on my To Play list from the beginning of the year. I’m fixing to drop E7 again until changes like the triple banner and the gear pity system take effect (supposedly at the end of April). In the meantime, patch 2.6 of Genshin Impact is out, and the Chasm along with it. Unfortunately my wifi has been unstable these past couple of days, so I haven’t been able to download it yet. Starting to think a Genshin-free life isn’t so bad… Well, I’ll figure something out. See you guys around!