Although I haven’t quite gotten out of the “Play all the games!” mindset yet, it has abated quite considerably. Part of the reason is because my passion for the games I was playing has cooled considerably for now. The other part is because I’ve been immersing myself a lot into tabletop RPG. It isn’t even because of the campaigns I am playing, it is just my usual madness taking over.
Anyway, March has brought some interesting new incursions in gaming as well as some retreats. Yet my mind still desires to finish a bunch of half- or almost-finished games, but my heart just wasn’t in there. Maybe in April it will be different.
Regardless of all that, here is what I have been up to.
Gundam Breakers 3 Break Edition
I decided to get back to this game a bit in a whim. I wanted to play something in the console but I didn’t want anything that required much in any form of commitment. Gundam Breakers 3 is excellent for that since I can launch the game, get some missions done, doing some mindless fighting against mobs and then turn it off.
Before launching the game I even forgot it actually has a story! Granted, it is a pretty simple, silly story but it is there. Even there story has a kind of mindlessly simplicity to it.
All this combined makes this game the perfect casual fun time for me.
Balan Wonderland Demo
On paper this game should be perfect for me. It is whimsical, colorful and the mechanics aren’t too hard to learn. Yet when I played the demo I just didn’t find it fun.
Worse is I can’t even put my finger on why. The demo at least was very polished, without any bugs, at least none that I could find. It also didn’t have any section or game mechanic that I found infuriating or frustrating.
It somehow just felt… bland. Which kind feels like an achievement considering the setting. Whatever happened with it I just didn’t feel like finishing the demo. It is a shame because the trailer really made it look like it could be a fun journey.
Fate/Stay Night
I know I am just repeating myself by saying how glad I am for finally playing this game. But it is true. It has added a lot of context and information that all the adaptations couldn’t quite get in. It even answered to me something that never made any sense considering how the whole summoning system works in the Fate universe.
As you can probably guess from the image above I finally finished the first route, Fate. There is still the Unlimited Bladeworks and the Heaven’s Feel route to go but as much as I want to see them I need a bit of a break from this game. Not too long of a break, I hope, as I still have many questions that I hope that those routes can answer.
Nurse Love Addiction
I first heard about this game through Moe Gamer, thought it was interesting and decided to buy it during one of Steam’s many sales.
Then it sat down in my library waiting for the moment when I thought it was time to play it. Well, that time was when I decided to take a break from Fate/Stay Night but still wanted to play a Visual Novel.
That was a pretty good decision too because after the brutal urban fantasy of Fate/Stay Night I wanted something more relaxing.
Not that training to be a nurse is a garden of roses, and the game shows that to a certain extent. But at least there aren’t any horrible deaths and bad ends every time I make a poor decision. :p
I also love the voice actresses, the sound track and sound effects on this game so much that I would probably be happy even if it was just an audio drama. Well, if I could understand japanese that is.
Ramblings aside, I just finished the Nao route yesterday. I still got the other routes to go, which I will probably be doing for the next few days. After that I might just go for the other game in the series, Nurse Love Syndrome which I bought at the same time.
That is assuming of course I don’t feel like jumping into a completely different Visual Novel by then! :p
Civilization VI
Besides doing my turn for the Long Live the Queen! succession game, I also decided to play for a bit to check out all the game modes that came with the Frontier Pass that I missed.
The ones I tested out were the Dramatic Ages, Heroes & Legends, Monopolies and Corporations and Barbarian Clans. I didn’t try Zombie Defense since by the time it released I already got my fill of Civilization VI for the time being. I also didn’t test any of the new civilizations because there is still a bunch from the base game whose achievements I didn’t get yet and those get priority.
Anyway, Dramatic Ages felt like a more extreme version of the Great Ages from Rise and Fall. Your civilization is either doing great, getting an Heroic Age in the process, or it is in a Dark Age and it is falling apart. There is no middle ground.
I saw whole rival civilizations just disappearing because all of their cities, including their capitals, decided to become independent cities due to Dark Ages. That was actually pretty scary and it is probably not a mode I will play with in the future. Well, at least as I long as I remember how much it changes the whole Great Ages system, that is.
Heroes & Legends were interesting… They feel a bit OP, making it easy to do a lot of damage in a war against rival civilizations. Specially in the early game where there isn’t much of a way to fight against them except with a hero of your own.
Because I was playing in a very easy difficult I didn’t have to fight an enemy hero so I can only imagine how painful it is. But I did use some to help in wars and they did a lot of damage against my enemies.
Monopolies and Corporations was kind of disappointing. I don’t know what I was expecting but it felt a bit too passive for me. Most of the others modes felt like they added some new interesting decisions to the game or new challenges. But this one felt more like just another passive way to earn gold.
Maybe it was because I was playing at an easy difficult so I didn’t feel how much impact it does. Whatever the case I was hoping for more.
The Barbarian Clans mode was a nice one though. It allows to keep that classical feel of having to deal with barbarians at the early ages without having to deal with their nuisance at the later ages. This is probably one of the modes I will keep with every game going forward!
Even though I haven’t tried the Zombie Defense mode yet, I think these new modes for Civilization VI have been a nice addition. They can add small different ways to spice things up in a Civilization VI game. Even better is that we can pick and choose which ones we want to enable.
Fate Grand Order
The first half of the month I was still bitter about the bug that prevented me from progressing in the C.C.C. event. This unfortunately diminished my enjoyment of “An Old Spider Spins Webs of Memory” event.
Fortunately there were no bugs on this one. It was a pretty short one too which probably helped. Plus any event that can make Moriarty look like a cool, old gentleman while still remaining an unrepentant villain gets a thumbs up from me.
It also had the easiest challenge quest I’ve seem so far. I was able to finish it in three turns. Seriously, it barely qualified as a challenge.
The event after that, the Tokugawa Restoration Labyrinth almost made me quit the game. Not because of any difficulty of the event, since it was pretty easy. But because I was afraid I got some weird bug again.
It was all because at the event shop, one of the tabs had a grayed out ??? that said it would be unlocked at a certain point. That was exactly what happened to me with the C.C.C. event.
Granted, in the Tokugawa Restoration Labyrinth we didn’t need anything from the event shop to progress. But I thought that was a bug and I was about to quit. Then I read it was actually intentional and it was like that for everyone.
So I kept playing and it indeed unlocked during the appropriate part in the story.
There was another thing that I don’t know if it was a bug or not though. When I finished the event’s story the Challenge Quest didn’t appear immediately. All I got was the option to grind again on the repeatable nodes for event currency or do a repeat of the last boss fight.
This is the first event where we got to do a repeat of the last boss fight so I thought that maybe something got bugged and I got that instead of the Challenge Quest.
Then last night the Challenge Quest actually showed up, I was able to complete it normally and get my reward from it. Not sure how intentional all of that was but it was weird and it left me anxious.
Despite all that I really enjoyed the story. I would have enjoyed it more since Sessyoin Kiara is a big part of this event. The only other one she was also an important character was, you guessed it, the C.C.C. event. This is specially a bummer for me because from what I read we see a different side of Kiara in the Tokugawa event.
I suppose I could always watch the story parts of the C.C.C. event on YouTube and might even do that one day. But for now I will just keep moving forward in FGO, hopefully without any more bugs! *knocks on wood*
Honorable mentions: Minecraft, Dragon Age: Inquisition
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