toxicitizen

The new Tactical Legacy Pack DLC is free for owners of this, so I figured it was about time to get it. I've already put something like 15 hours into it and I'm really enjoying it. It adds a ridiculous amount of stuff into the campaign, to the point where it almost feels like a completely different game. After playing like 150+ hours of Enemy Unknown, it always felt wrong that I only played through XCOM 2's campaign just once. I've been wanting to do a replay for a while now, so I'm really glad to finally be doing it.

Beat a few things in the last few weeks. Steins;Gate I had heard good things about the anime but I wanted to try the visual novel first, if only to compare and see which format was better. It wasn't quite how I expected it to be but I ended up enjoying it a lot. It starts out with more of a typical "anime high school science club" vibe but there's a pretty drastic shift in tone at some point and by the end of it all the early lighthearted stuff ends up being very effective at contrasting with the heavy shit that ends up going down. I liked it so much that now I just want to play the other VNs of the series and not bother with their anime adaptations. I watched some scenes from the Steins;Gate anime on youtube and the direction just didn't compare to how I pictured it in my mind, so I think it would ultimately be an inferior way to experience them. Especially if they end up cutting optional routes and focusing on the true ending. Devil May Cry HD DMC5 hype got me to finally start playing through the collection. It's been forever since I played these games, so it feels very good to revisit them. The first one is pretty short so I played through most of it in a single day. The cutscenes are god-tier cringe material but the gameplay has aged like the finest wine. I went right into hard after beating it, intending to go all the way to Dante Must Die before moving on but holy shit, that is one hell of a difficulty spike. I powered through normal with little to no difficulty but hard started kicking my ass very early on. Ended up skipping ahead to DMC3 and playing the first few missions but I haven't gone back to finish it yet. I'm also considering at some point buying some beer and hateplaying DMC2 because I hate myself. A Hat In Time This one I started kind of on a whim. I got it from Humble Monthly at some point (I think?) and they recently released some DLC that was free for 24h, so it was kind of a "why the hell not" decision in a moment of boredom. I wasn't really feeling it at first but after sticking with it for a couple hours it started really growing on me. I beat all the worlds and collected all the time pieces (DLC included) but the DLC also added something called Death Wish, which is basically a bunch of really hard challenges and uh... I don't know if I have the patience for it. I haven't given it a serious shot yet and I haven't given up on getting all the achievements either, so we'll see. Might get back to it in the near future.

JoJo premiere is out! That was pretty good, although getting only ~22mins a week is going to be pure torture. Also, what the shit? The episode had neither an OP nor an ED! Hearing the opening theme and finding out what song they licensed for the credits were like half the reasons I was looking forward to the premiere! edit: Oh and I guess MHA ended last week? TIme to start binging season 3!

Yeah, now that Sen IV is out I think we're definitely finding out within a year, at most. Today's news has me a little more optimistic but I'm still bracing myself for the worst.

It's cool that they'll patch it in, if only to shut up the "no JP voices, no buy!11!" morons. But personally I really love the english dub and the extra voiced lines in the PC version makes it the definitive way to play for me. Nothing bugs me quite like unvoiced lines showing up in the middle of a cutscene. It's what made me start playing games with JP voices in the first place, I think it was the first Neptunia on Vita that only had like 30% of the lines dubbed or something. It was super jarring. But anyway, you failed to mention the most important detail here. XSEED is releasing the PS4 ports, which means they haven't lost the license yet! Doesn't mean they're necessarily getting Sen III and IV but it's certainly a good sign. I would imagine that whoever gets them would want to release the PS4 ports of I and II as well.

Dragon Quest XI post-game done! Whew, that was a long one. And yeah, the post-game is pretty much mandatory. If the main game feels like it includes its own sequel, then the post-game feels like the end of the "trilogy" if that makes any sense. It actually expands on stuff only vaguely hinted at in the main game and wraps everything up in a neat little bow. It kinda sucks that the big post-game dungeon consists mostly of re-used maps but the quality of the story more than makes up for it. I really need to play the rest of the series at some point. DQVIII and now XI are both among the best JRPGs I've ever played and although I kinda lost interest in DQVII after 40 hours or so I'm still really curious about 1 through 6. Let's hope they get ported to PC sooner rather than later.

OH SHIT! Talk about out of nowhere. I fucking loved Va-11 Hall-A, so I'm definitely on board for more.

Well, that was a quick confirmation. Coming October 17. And still no sign that SEGA are behind it, I'm assuming they just gave Tri-Ace permission to do it. If only all publishers were this lenient with their IPs...

Yakuza 0 I guess I forgot to post about it after finishing the story a couple weeks ago. My only experience with the series was playing the original on PS2 over a decade ago but I had been hearing so many great things about the series in recent years that I was pretty excited to get back to it. My expectations were probably unreasonably high and uh... yeah, the game completely destroyed them. This is a solid GOTY candidate for me. It's packed with content almost to a fault. I spent easily half my playtime just fucking around with mini-games and progressing through each character's management mode. To the point where it was actually distracting me from the main story and I had to force myself to get back to it and finish the game. And the crazy thing is that the main story is easily the best part of the game! Considering the more comedic tone of stuff I had seen posted online, I'm not sure what I expected to be honest. The vast majority of side-quests are played for laughs but the main story is played completely straight and is actually a really solid crime thriller full of twists and turns. The cutscene direction is also phenomenal and easily rivals something Kojima would do. It also really benefits from being used as an entry point into the series because then you don't know who's coming back in "future" games, so when people start dying left and right you have no idea who has time paradox invincibility. So yeah, I'm really glad they finally got around to porting this one and I really hope they keep them coming. I know it's supposed to be a step down from 0 due to being heavily based on the PS2 original, but I can't wait for Kiwami because I want more! The rumor is they're porting 6 next year but I hope we'll also get Kiwami 2 ASAP because I'm hearing really good things about it. And now the real reason I came here: Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age I wrapped up the main story last night. It took me around 75 hours (doing every side-quest and messing around with the forge and casino a lot) but I still have the post-game to do and apparently it's not optional like in the others. Not sure what that means just yet. This is a pretty damn good JRPG, all things considered. The fact that I'm actually eager to jump into the post-game and keep playing is probably the highest compliment I can give it. I'm honestly kind of amazed that a JRPG this freaking long without the name Trails attached to it has managed to keep me engaged all the way through. The story is fairly generic but it has its moments. The second half of the game isn't as good as the first one because you're mostly revisiting places you've already been and I thought the ending was a little underwhelming, but those are ultimately very minor nitpicks. This is very much a game about the journey and that part of it was thoroughly entertaining. I'm kind of excited to see what the post-game is about now, and since I'm already most of the way there I think I'll go for all the achievements. I have another week or so to kill until Valkyria Chronicles 4, anyway.

This is one of the titles that people had been asking SEGA to port since the very start along with VC, Bayo and Vanquish, so it's about time. What's interesting is that the listing only mentions Tri-Ace as publisher. These ports are usually a SEGA EU thing, so it makes me wonder if this one is different.

Dragon Quest XI. It is so freaking good, you guys! Last night I got to what felt like the halfway point of the story and I can't wait to jump back in today and see where things go next. I don't know if this is typical of the series because I haven't played too many of them but it went in a direction I honestly didn't expect. There's an obvious comparison to make (i.e. "It went full _____") but that would be pretty spoilerific, so I won't. I can't believe I almost didn't get this, though! That was easily the worst decision I made this year and I'm so glad I caved at the last second.

New IP from the Yakuza team. Basically Ace Attorney x Yakuza (with a little bit of Hitman) and this is now the thing I need the most in my life. Please get a PC release...

Apparently they've already confirmed it'll be the PS4 one, which is kind of a bummer since that means the 3DS version will probably remain exclusive to Japan. But hey, you'll get to enjoy your console experience on the go!* *At some abysmal resolution and framerate. Perfect for Switch!

Shit mods unite! Yeah, that seems like the most reasonable option. If only there was some other system made specifically to be convenient to take with you. Like some kind of gaming system but more... portable. Something you can just hold in your hands. Something you could just pull out of your bag and switch on...

Once again, I demonstrate my complete and utter lack of self-control. I came to the realization that if I just stopped wasting all my goddamn playtime on the real estate and cabaret club mini-games, I could probably get Yakuza 0 wrapped up this week-end. I figured if I could manage at least that much then I could justify buying Dragon Quest XI. Then I went ahead and bought Dragon Quest XI right away. Because again, I have no self-control.

I'm almost certain I never said that. Maybe I said it was the best stealth series? Or maybe you're just making shit up like you always do!!!

SHENZHEN I/O Holy fucking shit, I did it! This was much harder than EXAPUNKS. No wonder I got stuck and stopped the first time around. I was stuck on some puzzles for freaking days! In EXAPUNKS, I could mostly just write my code normally without having to worry about limitations too much. Here, I'd constantly run out of space, both on the chips and in the microcontrollers. So many times I had an almost working solution but needed to find a way to squeeze in another instruction or two. So frustrating! But that just makes it all the more satisfying when you finally figure it out. There was one particular puzzle near the end that seemed impossible at first glance. So I got a pen and paper and started trying to find a pattern of some kind that I could exploit. It felt pretty great when my first idea worked flawlessly and I ended up solving the puzzle in like half an hour. Especially after being stuck on the previous one for like two days. I still have the bonus campaign to do but that can wait. It's made up of user-submitted puzzles, so it kinda feels optional. Now I'm really tempted to go back to TIS-100 and try to finish that one too, though.

Any first-person cyberpunk game is inevitably going to give me Deus Ex vibes because Deus Ex is my favorite game series. That doesn't mean their similarities aren't superficial. Deus Ex isn't open-world and is nowhere near as ambitious. If Cyberpunk lives up to its promise, it might actually make me forget that Deus Ex is dead. And even if they were identical, I don't see how that would make either of them generic considering there aren't anywhere near enough games like them that exist! Also, this is generic but Witcher 3 isn't? Wut? There's some folklore elements in there that might seem fresh to us but it's otherwise a fairly typical fantasy setting. Your criteria for what qualifies as generic is pretty inconsistent there, buddy!!! And I brought up Uncharted 3 because 1) it amuses me to mock your obsession with that mediocre game and 2) Uncharted is literally the most generic thing ever, so it was funny to see you going there. Speaking of which, is anything you say not a blatant lie?!?

Do you mean the visuals or the gameplay? The visuals I can kinda get? I mean, I don't necessarily agree (like my artist friend said, the art direction is basically visual porn) but they're still admittedly adhering very closely to a setting that was created in the 80s. They're not exactly reinventing the visual aesthetics of a cyberpunk world. Although the heavy use of daytime certainly helps make it stand apart from other cyberpunk settings. But calling this a "generic first person shooter" is just batshit insane to me. Imo, there's nowhere near enough games that play like what we see in the demo. You have to be looking at it with the most reductive eye imaginable to see nothing but a "generic first person shooter" there.

It's hilarious that you would call this generic after all the Uncharted 3 stuff. I think your brain might have a few wires firing the wrong way, might wanna have someone take a look at that. The other stuff is... yeah. I'm willing to chalk it up to stupidity/ignorance until they give me a good reason to assume malice.

Finally!! Welp, that looked fucking sick. Can't remember the last time I've seen such a long gameplay demo for an upcoming game, let alone managed to sit through the entire thing without skipping ahead even once. Gives pretty strong Deus Ex vibes, which I'm always happy to see.

EXAPUNKS Yeah, this is definitely my favorite Zachtronics game so far. I've always preferred their actual programming games over the abstracted ones but this one has the others beat in basically every single way. More interesting story, better soundtrack, cooler setting (gotta love those 90s hacker aesthetics!) and even production values! It still looks like a Zachtronics game but there's actually voice acting this time as well as some very basic "cutscenes" for some story moments. My only complaint would be the lack of a gif maker like in Opus Magnum but it really wouldn't make sense in a game like this. I think this might also be the fastest I ever beat one of these (less than a week, I think?). Most of them remain unfinished (planning to rectify that very soon, starting with Shenzhen I/O) but I basically powered through more than half the game in just a couple days. I only had the final puzzle left to do today. I think it's probably easier than the others because I didn't get stuck very often. The final level was big spike in complexity but other than that there were only two others that I got really stuck on. And both times I solved my problem by going through the zines and realizing that I was missing something obvious. Speaking of, I'm realizing now that having a physical version of the manual is definitely the optimal way to play these games. It's not just that it's more immersive, there's also something kinda tedious about alt-tabbing out of the game to read a pdf and I think I found myself not doing it as often as I should have in previous games because of it. Being able to pick them up and start leafing through them without ever having to leave the game meant I did it way more often in EXAPUNKS. Now I'm really glad I ordered that Shenzhen I/O binder and assembled it for my replay/attempt to finally beat it!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! Coming March 8!

It's a weird thing to complain about but I have too many great games to play right now! I put like 60h in Yakuza 0 last week but I screwed around with optional stuff so much that I'm only about 2/3 of the way through the story. Then Monster Hunter World came out and that also turned out to be excellent. I got so into it that I've barely touched Yakuza this past week. I just wrapped up the story quests and started getting into the High Rank stuff, so I'm nowhere near done with it. And today my EXAPUNKS Limited Edition arrived, so I finally tried it. It's still way too early to say for sure but I think it might be my favorite Zachtronics game yet. It definitely made a very good first impression. So yeah, right now I'm like a kid in a candy store because I want to play everything and I don't know what to prioritize.