We’re heading into a 3 day weekend for most folks in the US celebrating Juneteenth next Monday. So, whatcha playin!?
Newest releases:
- Dordogne (6/13) [PS5, XSX, Switch, PC]
- Crome Boss: Rockay City (6/15) [PS5, XSX]
- Fall of Porcupine (6/15) [PS5, XSX, Switch, PC]
- Layers of Fear (6/15) [PS5, XSX, PC]
- ProtoCorgi (6/15) [Switch, PC]
- F1 23 (6/16) [PS5, XSX, PC]
- Park Beyond (6/16) [PS5, XSX, PC]
Playing a combination of Trails in the Sky: SC on Steam Deck, and Path of Exile on my PC.
Path of Exile is pretty good for a free game for sure, but I don’t like the sound of the endgame. I’m not there yet, but apparently you can potentially lose hours of progress via a single death. I’ll probably get to the end of the story and call it quits. Still, worth the $0.
Trails in the Sky: SC has me frustrated. JRPGs used to be my favorite genre, but I generally don’t like the direction they’ve taken since the end of the PSX era. This one kind of sits somewhere between the things I love, and the things I hate. There were about 50 hours of preamble before it got to the good stuff. I almost quit more than once in that time. I am glad I stuck with it, because it did get really good, but 50 hours to get there is a huge ask. Also, I really had to check my completionist tendencies at the title screen. 100%ing it either requires meticulously following a guide, or spending ~200 hours with it scouring every single NPC for hidden quests or dialog between every single story beat. No thank you. Thankfully, most of it is entirely optional, provided you don’t mind not getting the best armor or weapons in the game: something I’d normally want to do.
I have tried to play Trails FC on Vita a couple of times and not got into it. I am sure it’s amazing but it’s one of those cases where the internet hypes it a lot, but that doesn’t mean everyone is going to like it. I am one of those people who talks to every NPC in the town so I thought I’d love it, but the beginning is slow, and the grid-based combat is pretty slow too. It doesn’t help that I’m 37 and kind of past playing 50 hours of a game I don’t like.
Idk abou the vita version, but on the PC version there is a button that makes the game run faster. I pretty much have it held down all the time, and it makes the game a lot more playable.
I actually appreciate the slow, methodical nature of JRPGs, but I am glad that the developers recognize that as time goes on the repetitive nature of them really wears on more modern players. But that has been a pretty consistent movement in JRPGs to automate and speed up gameplay. It’s an interesting meta for fans of the genre.
That’s good to know. I wanted Japanese script and voice acting so I was trying Vita. Maybe I’ll wait for the Vita to be easily emulated…
Im pretty sure you can mod in the Japanese vo to the pc editions if that makes a difference to you.
My experience with the trails games is that Falcom puts the huge replay the game final level in them. It’s even worse in the third chapter, but it is par for the course for Japanese game design of that era. I’m hoping the cross bell arc shakes out a little bit differently.
Yeah, I’m finishing up SC right now, and never mind I’m going into grave peril to save the country, I forgot to save someone’s missing cat in chapter 3, so no, the bracer guild will not be giving me that shiny set of the best armor in the game they have lying around.