Ray Gigant – For dungeon-crawler newbies

ray-gigant-opening-screenOr for anyone who likes easy games. If you liked the bland, straightforward, unchallenging dungeons in games like Conception I & II or Mind=Zero, Ray Gigant will be right up your alley. If you’re looking for the tougher, less-forgiving dungeon RPGs that Experience Inc. is known for – especially if you’re just coming off Stranger of Sword City – this really isn’t the same sort of game.

Too many careless errors in the text.

Spot the careless error, one of hundreds in the game.

I should clear up a little misconception though. I was a little reluctant to start Ray Gigant because I read in a few places that it had a lot of text and reading in it. They made it sound like some kind of Tokyo Majin-like game, i.e. 90% anime high school visual novel with some monsters and brief battles thrown in. It’s nowhere near that bad and not even as talkative as narrative-heavy RPGs like Xenosaga. Every chapter has a brief skit or two, then a dungeon, then another brief skit, then the monster of the day, and on and on till the end of the chapter. As at the 7-hour mark I’d say it’s 20% talking to 80% exploring, but that might change towards the end of the game. In any case if you’re worried you’ll be forced to read when you just want to go out and fight, worry no more. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Recovered the 3DS!

nintendo 3dsYay! The 3DS is back in my hands! Happy days are here again! A big thank you to all those who encouraged me not to lose heart!

But… you’ll notice I said I “recovered” the Nintendo 3DS, not “found” it. That’s because as I had begun to suspect, it had in fact been stolen from me. I’d rather not say any more than that because of certain… family… circumstances… but rest assured the right fingers have been pointed, the necessary uncomfortable conversations have been had and we’re all ready to put this incident behind us.

And I’m all ready to jump back into 3DS gaming too, but unfortunately I was only able to recover the handheld itself. The games and the SD card have all been lost forever. So for the time being my gaming schedule will remain the same. As I’d thought I don’t have time to start Ray Gigant this weekend, but maybe during the week. Preferably once I set up my nice new desktop and figure out a way to replace yucky Windows 8 with Windows 7. I just don’t like that OS. It’ll probably be late September or early October before I get round to buying Stella Glow and 7th Dragon III and all the other things I was looking forward to.

Still it’s nice to have closure on this little matter. I’m only exaggerating a bit when I say it was eating me up inside for the past couple of months. I knew I wasn’t crazy. I knew I wasn’t that careless with stuff. All’s well that ends well. The end.

Reached level 80 in Granblue Fantasy – Good time to stop

granblue fantasy final screenshotI’ll just preface this by saying I still really like Granblue Fantasy. In fact I’m stopping now while I still like it so I have some motivation to pick it up again one day. For now though, I need a break from the grind. And luckily I’m in a place where skipping one event or a hundred won’t make a difference to my strength so this is a good time to stop.

Are you perchance familiar with the term “diminishing returns”? I’m too lazy to define it, but it applies very much to progression in Granblue Fantasy. In the beginning anything and everything you throw into your pool only makes you stronger. Any crappy R, any HP-up SR weapon, anything and everything makes a big difference. Then as you go along it slows down. More effort, less reward. Even more effort, even less reward. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Kaiyou Resutoran Uminekotei – A “Sit on your butt and do nothing” sim

kaiyouWhee, my first free weekend in forever! I’m so happy! >_< Ahem! Let’s get on with it.

Kaiyou Resutoran Uminekotei (trans. “The Uminekotei Seaside Restaurant”) is an indie game from a group (company?) known as inutoneko, the same people who made Lemuore no Renkinjutsushi and Haretari Kumottari N, both of which I have reviewed on this blog in the past. As a matter of fact, Uminekotei is just a fleshed out version of Lemuore, so it would help me out tremendously if you would just read the review for that game and save me the trouble of explaining the gameplay.

Back? Thanks. Now on to the story. The main character of Uminekotei is spoiled rich girl Eve who just lounges around the house all day and all night until her mother finally snaps and sets her up with her own restaurant to manage and a £100,000 debt to pay off [update: turns out I read it wrong and it’s actually £1 million]. My own mother would have just kicked me out of house with £0 to my name, so I don’t know whether Eve has it good or not. …Actually she does have it good, because she owes that £100,000 to her mother, meaning she can get away with not paying it forever, basically. I’ve been playing about 6 in-game months and haven’t repaid a single penny to mommy dearest yet. Nyaa nyaah! Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Mind Zero: Mind-numbingly boring

mind zero some random guys just showed upApologies for the long delay between posts. I was trying to force myself to play more Mind Zero so I could write a more concrete progress report, but the game is even more boring than the reviews made it out to be. It is frightfully boring and I just can’t bring myself to play any more. I actually get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when I think about playing it. That kind of feeling should be reserved for surgery and root canals, not turn-based RPGs. So for my own sanity I’m going to put it on permanent hiatus. If I find myself missing it I’ll go back, if not, I’m out. Do please go on, this is most interesting →