toxicitizen

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past + A Link Between Worlds. And so my mini Zelda marathon comes to an end. My worries that playing both games back to back would result in burnout turned out to be completely unfounded. Replaying LttP was a blast and then LBW followed it up nicely by completely blowing it out of the water. This and Super Mario 3D Land weren't even factors in my wanting a 3DS but holy shit, they should've been. They're two of the best games I've played in quite a while. There's not much to say about Link to the past. We've all played it before and it's still every bit as great as we remember. One thing to mention is that the SNES emulation on 3DS is a bit dodgy. I encountered slowdown fairly often, usually when more than 3-4 enemies were coming at me at the same time. Nothing game-breaking and it certainly won't put me off of buying more SNES VC games in the future but still kind of an annoyance. Then there's Link Between Worlds. Man, this game is great! I'm coming from a weird place where I haven't played any Zelda since like.. Wind Waker, I think? So, I have no idea how it holds against more recent titles like Twilight Princess or whatever. But looking at it purely as a follow-up to Link to the Past, it's pretty goddamn good. It takes everything that was great about LttP and improves on it. It was pretty neat to see the same world map recreated so faithfully in 3D, too. Other than that, when the game first came out and people were talking about the whole item rental thing, I remember thinking it sounded awful. I've said it before that I'm not a fan of unnecessary non-linearity and opening the game up in that way just didn't seem very interesting to me. Well, I don't think the game was particularly better for it but it certainly didn't get in my way or anything. I rented pretty much all the items right away and ended up buying them all as soon as I could. I guess having everything on me from the very start made it less annoying to walk around the game world since I didn't have to make as many mental notes to "come back to x when I'll have y". Being able to tackle the dungeons in whatever order I wanted was fine but at first I didn't really know where I should go and, honestly, I prefer the forced order from LttP. I'm kinda meh on that whole aspect of the game but it didn't really impact my enjoyment of the game one way or the other. So, that was a much needed palate cleanser after Persona Q. I really need to play both Shin Megami Tensei IV and Trails of Cold Steel before their respective sequels come out in a few months but getting into either of those right after PQ seemed like asking for JRPG burnout. But now I'm ready to tackle one of them, I think! Oh and I guess I can make a bonus entry: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. I technically beat this one back in January but it looks like I forgot to post about it. Anyway, I'm bringing it up now because when you beat the 4 main cases you unlock a fifth bonus case that's mostly unrelated to the main story. I didn't really feel like playing it at the time and mostly just wanted to move on to another game. So I needed to come back and do it before I could play the sequels. It was alright but not quite as good as the main cases. The overall game is as good I remembered, though. It had been so long since I first played it that I'd forgotten most of the plot, so it was pretty enjoyable to replay it. One thing this series has going for it is that it's not predictable at all. Even when you think you've figured something out ahead of time, the game almost always ends up throwing some kind of curve ball at you. Compared to Danganronpa where it's almost always immediately obvious what happened and who did it, you have to appreciate how much better the writing is. It doesn't have any crazy mind fuck twists, though. Anyway, really looking forward to playing the sequels soon. I beat the second one back in the day but I'm pretty sure I never finished the third one. So, that should be fun.

Wrapped up Link to the Past late last night and went straight into Link Between Worlds. I'm like 3 hours in and really digging it so far. Doing a replay of LttP was the right move, I think. I still remembered most of the game but a lot of the details would've been fuzzy whereas now I'm having a blast playing LBW and noticing all the similarities and differences on the world map. I kinda want to play some more but it's past 10AM right now and I'm pretty close to passing out in my chair. I should probably get some sleep...

That was my understanding as well. The founders edition card is sold at a premium price for a while and is essentially the same card everyone else will get later for 100$ less.

Yeah, I'll probably try to do it in one sitting. Maybe later tonight, if I don't have anything better to do.

I heard there was a flash sale on PSN, so I had a look to see if there was anything good on sale for Vita. Ended up buying this for PS3 instead Better late than never, I suppose. Couldn't say no at five bucks. No idea when I'll play it, though, as that would require actually turning on my PS3.

Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past. I wanna play Link Between Worlds and felt like I should give LttP a replay first. I played the shit out of that game as a kid, so I was worried replaying it would be a little tedious and might even put me off of LBW a bit, but that's not the case at all. The game holds up incredibly well. It's also going much faster than I expected it to, I only started it last night and I'm already almost halfway through the Dark World (3 temples done). The dungeons are much shorter than I remembered, so I usually end up completing 2-3 back to back. I have to say, it's pretty awesome replaying a game like this on my 3DS. The emulation isn't perfect (there's some slowdown at times, usually when 3-4 enemies come at me at once) but it's not a big deal for me. I still have Earthbound and Super Metroid to play but I really hope Nintendo will release more of these. Super Mario RPG would be an instabuy.

Yeah, Space Marine was pretty great. It was a surprisingly solid third-person action game coming from a studio most known for their RTS games. I'm still hoping we get a sequel someday. 40K is way too awesome of a setting to not get another big-budget action game. I mean, Dawn of War is great and I'm glad we're finally getting a third one but Space Marine really brought that universe to life on a scale and level of presentation that top-down strategy games simply can't match.

I wouldn't necessarily rule it out just yet. That one is likely handled by XSEED and we all know how they love announcing shit at the very last minute. Hell, when they don't it seems to backfire. TitS SC is now infamous for its delays and even caused delays for Corpse Party PC. And then last fall they announced a bunch of games for Spring/Summer 2016 and not a word about any of them since. At the very least, Xanadu Next should've been out by now.

Phantom Brave coming to Steam in July. Never actually played this one but it's a Nippon Ichi SRPG, so if it's anything like Disgaea it's probably excellent. I know I'll be getting it. Also, that's another confirmation for that leaked list from a few months back. At this point, I feel like pretty much everything major on it has either already released or been confirmed to be coming.

Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth. Finally finished it at like 4AM last night and holy shit, that was a long one! Took me way longer than I ever expected it to, at least. My clear save says about 76h but according to the 3DS' Activity Log it was actually a little over 90h when accounting for deaths and reloads. I did the P3 route so I'll have to come back and do the P4 route at some point but I really don't see myself doing that anytime soon. Not with the 3DS backlog I have right now. Anyway, so, this was definitely different than what I expected going in. It was the last Persona spin-off I needed to play and so far none of them had been particularly good when it came to story. I expected this one would be different and, well, to be fair, it was certainly better than the shitty VNs in Arena and Dancing All Night. But as I came to realize over the course of my playthrough, this is much more Etrian Odyssey than Persona. The story isn't awful or anything like that, it's just not the main focus. There's the setup at the beginning, some more stuff after the first dungeon and then basically nothing until right before the final dungeon. There's little vignettes throughout the game but most of it is basically just fan-service interactions between the P3 and P4 casts. It can be funny but there's not much substance to it. So the game is like 20% story and 80% gameplay. But how good is that gameplay? Well, I ended up buying Etrian Odyssey Untold before I was even done with this game, so that should tell you something. Like I said, this is very much an Etrian Odyssey game with a Persona coat of paint. There's the characters you know and love, the great music and even all the Velvet Room stuff like fusions and what not. But the meat of the gameplay is very much exploring dungeons and mapping them out carefully. Even the combat system is a far cry from the regular Persona combat. Because of "reasons", everyone gets the ability to equip a secondary Persona and you can have up to five characters in your party. Even stuff like weaknesses and all-out attacks don't work quite the same. It just has a completely different flow to it. That's not to say it's bad, though. But someone who loves Persona and doesn't like Etrian Odyssey could be massively disappointed here. Overall, I didn't enjoy it as much as I would have a regular Persona game but I still loved the hell out of it. It's by far the best of the spin-offs and if they ever make a sequel I'll be there day one. What little disappointment there was at finding out the true nature of the game was completely overshadowed by the discovery of an awesome new series. Basically, the main thing I got out of it is that Etrian Odyssey is fucking rad and I really need to get into that series proper. I guess using the Persona series as a gateway to the EO gameplay wasn't the worst idea ever. I mean, it worked for me.

New info on IGN. They're changing the art deco style of the UI to an Age of Exploration theme. Think compass, astrolab, etc. Also the fog of war is no longer clouds. Instead, in keeping with the UI theme, it's a blank parchment with longitudes and latitudes lines on it. And for stuff that's partially uncovered, instead of just being darker than the rest of the map, they have a shader that simulates a pen-and-ink drawn map. Pretty cool stuff!

To coincide with the announcement that Ace Attorney 6 is being localized, all the Ace Attorney games are on sale on the eShop. I'm still a few games behind but fuck it, I plan on being caught up in time for AA6's release in September so I might as well grab Dual Destinies now. edit: When I found out it would be 30$, I figured it'd end up being like 40$ over here and that I'd have to skip it for now. Turns out it's much cheaper than that and has a 20% launch discount, which brings it down to almost half the price I actually expected, so I couldn't resist. I'm glad this should be the last major FF release on Steam for a while, though. I can't help myself and buy them all as soon as they come out but I haven't actually played any of them since XIII-2. So, I kinda have a bit of a Final Fantasy backlog here. I should probably play this one or IX soon...

Vanilla or with the expansion? I mean, from what I heard vanilla was underwhelming but I would expect it to get better with expansions. I remember back when Civ V had just come out, most people were complaining that it was shit and I was just sitting there enjoying the hell out of my first Civ game and wondering wtf they were talking about. Nowadays it seems almost everyone thinks it's the best Civ yet.

Man, I was kind of hoping the rumor wasn't true. I still haven't touched Beyond Earth. Also, yeah, I wonder if they're planing to support both games concurrently or if that means Beyond Earth will have a shorter lifespan and no more expansions.

They're bound to announce the FFXII remaster sooner rather than later. They've pretty much run out of mainline FFs to dump on Steam and FFXV is almost out the door. They'll probably go back and bring I and II at some point but what after that? Considering how well most of their releases have done, I don't expect they'll just stop. This is where things could get interesting. For example, an obvious one is the mobile port of Final Fantasy Tactics. They could easily port that over. Most of the mainline Dragon Quest games are also on mobile. That could provide them with another steady stream of releases that would last them at least a couple years.

Well, it was a bit of a grind but I'm finally done! Think I've had my fill of Souls for a little while, though. Don't think I'll touch the game again until the first DLC pack comes out. Hell, I don't even feel like going back to finish Scholar of the First Sin. And now I can finally go back to Persona Q!

Final Fantasy X | X-2 HD Remaster hitting Steam May 12th. That's surprisingly fast after FFIX's release. I guess the assumption that they had been sitting on a completed port for a while was true. That's now FFIII through XI + XIII and XIV we have on Steam. All that's missing is I and II as well as XII, which is rumored to be the next one to get the remaster treatment.

Shadow Complex Remastered. Solid metroidvania. Well, more Metroid than Vania, really. It didn't really click with me right away, I played the first few hours in short bursts over a couple of days. But once it started opening up and I was able to really explore for items and power-ups, it was a blast. At first I thought it suffered a little from being an early last-gen game (mostly visually) but by the time I was done with it I didn't really care anymore. Also, it's probably the first game I've played that actually justified being 2.5D. I was never a fan of that visual style, always thought games using it ended up looking more bland than if they had went with a proper 2D look. But this one makes pretty good use of the style. Enemies are constantly showing up in/coming from the background and even though the action takes place on a 2D plane you really get a sense of depth that adds to the experience. So yeah, if you like the genre definitely consider picking it up.

That's actually an interesting point. Reminds me of Ready at Dawn. Spent most of their existence developing decent PSP entries for existing Sony franchises like God of War and Jak and Daxter. Then they got their shot at a new IP and we got The Order: 1886...

Yeah, I guess I can see it coming out this year if they announce it at E3. It just seems kinda weird to still not have anything official if it's only ~6 months away.

Eh, if P5 isn't coming out in NA until 2017 and I still don't have a job by then, I'll have bigger things to worry about than being unable to play Persona 5.

It occurred to me that the PS3 version could potentially be a Japan-only thing but we'll see. If it doesn't come out over here, there's nothing I can do about it. :/ Also, what makes you think the NEO will be out by then? It hasn't even been officially announced. But anyway, at this point I'd probably just go for the NEO, to be honest. Assuming I have a job by then, there'll be no reason not to get the newest model. So, yeah, hopefully you're right. It would suck if P5 came out way before the NEO lol.

Aaaaa man, that trailer! Playing this on PS3 is going to be such a bittersweet experience.