Blue Mage Al's Game Corner

Hey everybody! Blue Mage Al here! on this blog, I post about the games I played today. While I may occasionally talk about new games, I'm gonna focus on the games that I play via my Backloggery's Fortune Cookie feature.

[todayiplayed]

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (PS4)

Before this game, I had never touched the series. I recognized that they’re an iconic part of gaming culture today, and I’ve always heard that the series is good. So when the first three games were made free for PS4 users, I decided to jump on that train and give it a go. Little did I know, I was getting myself into a mess.

I can’t judge the story or the characters from the two hours I put into this game. That said, I do like Nathan Drake. He’s a smug asshole, but in a way that actually makes him come off as somewhat endearing. Meanwhile, Sully just comes off as an asshole in a not fun way, especially with constant references to either being old or having sex. And Elena didn’t exactly make a good impression on me for the small amount of screen time she has in the first couple of hours.

The gameplay is very...alright. I’m not exactly much for cover shooters, so the combat scenarios aren’t my cup of tea. But the puzzle solving and parkour sections are right up my alley, even if they are bare-bones in nature. Though I did think to myself while playing that I could just pick up something like Mirror’s Edge, or a similar game that has actual depth put into these gameplay segments instead of spreading them thin.

My main problem, however, is all of the glitches I’ve encountered. They’re mainly graphical; Drake’s punches sometimes don’t line up with his enemies, corpses will fly in strange directions, and so on. But during my stream, I did try and kick down a gate and wound up getting locked in a T-Pose until the enemies shot me to death. This leads me to believe that little effort was put into actually porting this game to the PS4 from the PS3, unless said glitches exist in that version too.

It might be inappropriate of me to judge this game based solely on this experience. At the very least I do also want to play the PS3 version someday. I do also want to play the later games as well to give them a chance. But as it stands, unless the Cookie demands otherwise, I don’t intend on playing this game again.

[todayiplayed]

Sonic the Hedgehog 1+2

Much like Metroid and Digimon, I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a Sonic fan. I played the games growing up, and I absolutely love them. But I’m not going to go out of my way to pick up the newest Sonic game. As such, when Backloggery gave me the original Sonic the Hedgehog for my game, I was moderately pleased. I own the game (and several more that I admittedly still need to catalog) via the Sonic Mega Collection+ on the PS2.

I don’t know if it’s the controller or just me having not played the game in so long, but I suck at Sonic. I’m admittedly terrible at a lot of 2D platforming games. I didn’t really grow up with the genre; I grew up with RPG’s, 3D platformers, and action-oriented games. 2D games are just sort of there for me. I can play them, but I’ll certainly admit I’m not good at them.

And just to confirm my suspicions of the above, I also opted to play Sonic 2 as well. And as much of a nostalgia bomb that was (having played it on the family’s Genesis before we got rid of it), I was just as awful at that game as I was at Sonic 1. Not to say they’re bad games, mind you. I’m just too bad at them to properly judge them for anything more than surface material.

[todayiplayed]

Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth (DSCS)

I’m not exactly what one would call a Digimon fan. I get the appeal, I even enjoy the anime. Heck, I watched Digimon Tamers all the way through back when I was younger. But most Digimon media I happen to pass up on because I just want to focus my media intake elsewhere. But this is one game that I made an exception for. Though the reasons for that are ones that I don’t want to get into right now, I do still love this game regardless!

Immediately, the game sets you in a very interesting world that’s perfect for Digimon; the game takes place in Tokyo, Japan, but the main focus of the game is the digital world of EDEN, a hub of sorts that can be used for many activities. Things like shopping, watching movies, and even more professional environments like business meetings and political advisement. The game explores these uses for EDEN while also making it very clear that the site is susceptible to hacking, especially in the lower-end areas of EDEN. The game does some amazing world building right out of the gate by allowing the player to talk with NPC’s to learn about EDEN. And while the dialogue isn’t exactly immersive or natural, the stuff that the player learns about from them is so interesting that I didn’t really mind.

And this excellent world is beautifully supplemented by the soundtrack. The composer for the score is Masafumi Takada, who is also well known for his work with the Danganronpa games. And if you’ve played those games, you’ll likely immediately pick up on his influence on the music in this game. The techno pop feel to the music matches this game’s aesthetics perfectly.

Of course, the gameplay is nothing to sneeze at earlier. It’s a happy mix between monster collecting and evolving as well as a Final Fantasy X-style combat system, where turn order is shown on the right side of the screen and certain moves can affect one’s placement on the turn order. While I haven’t gotten too far into the game, if it’s anything like FFX, then this can be used for a lot of excellent strategic gameplay. Plus, the Digimon themselves all range from very cute to awesome-looking, and their attack animations are delightful to watch as well.

Once again, Digimon isn’t usually my thing. But I made an exception for this game, and I’m glad I did. It’s been a delightful ride so far, and I intend on continuing to play this game to it’s ending.

[todayiplayed]

Animal Crossing New Horizons (ANCH)

Well, today kept me rather busy, so let’s pull up a game I’ve put 120+ hours into over the past couple months.

I’m in love with the Animal Crossing series. The peaceful aura around it all with the calming gameplay, colorful graphics, and plenty of customization options make it an excellent game to chill out to--especially for somebody with depression and anxiety, like me.

I’ve put so much time into my island, Wunderkind. I just recently got it to five-star status, but I have so much more I want to accomplish in the game. Getting all of the golden tools, breeding flowers together for rare hybrids, and getting my town to look just the way I want!

That said, as much as I absolutely adore this game, I’m not too sure on the matter of it dropping a large majority of the events in the game to be patched in later. Whether it was done for an earlier release time or to keep people playing the game for longer, it still prevents people without internet access to properly enjoy the game whenever updates drop. For that matter, I feel certain aspects of the game are lacking. The fact that the Nooklings’ shop only has three tiers, from selling in resident services to a moderately good-looking shop, is baffling to me since there have been several more upgrades in the past. And your home in particular feels too small in the three side rooms, whereas they could be much bigger in even New Leaf. These features could very well be patched in, but I don’t see why they couldn’t have been in the game from the beginning.

On the other hand, I’m very happy that the game came out when it did, at such a difficult time in our lives. It’s certainly helped to keep us all happy, at least it’s certainly been keeping me happy. And I can’t wait to experience everything else this game has to offer us in the future!

[todayiplayed]

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team (PMD:RRT)

Having been spurred on by a certain YouTuber that I like named Chuggaaconroy, I decided to get right back where I left off with this game. PMD has always been a favorite franchise of mine, and is actually a major reason as to why I’m a writer. I used to do roleplaying with friends set in the universe, and I don’t think I’d be where I am without that. That said, I never actually did beat this game. In fact, I only got it relatively recently, having purchased the game several months back (and later rebuying it digitally through the Wii U when the only thing I had that could play it broke). Most of my memories come from its sequel games, the Explorers titles. But even then, this game is such a well of happiness for me.

The story in particular is what does it for me. There’s such an upbeat, yet serious tone to it all. The Pokemon spinoffs aren’t always story-driven, but when they are, they do deliver! And while I haven’t gotten through the entirety of this game, it’s been an excellent ride so far!

And the gameplay is...just as difficult as I remember. Not that I find that to be a bad thing (though I do have my personal reservations about a game meant for kids being too hard). The challenge prompts the player to actually think and use the game’s mechanics effectively. Which I did by shoving as many Reviver Seeds into my bag before a major fight and hoping it’s enough. Oh, and I also Linked my moves. That may or may not have helped, too.

Admittedly, a part of me is dreading the future fights of the game. But that also ties in to the tone. Your characters are Explorers. The fights are supposed to be dangerous, because exploring and saving others is innately a dangerous and difficult task. Which does contradict my early statement, yes, but it’s more incidental in this case. While it may not be the case for everybody, in my eyes the difficulty of PMD lends to the tones and themes of the game; that even the most difficult of challenges can be overcome with perseverance. Even the partner character never gives up, and spurs the protagonist on to do the same.

And because some of you may be curious, I’m a Meowth, and my partner is a Pikachu. And as weird as the AI can be, Pikachu has been an absolute delight to have on my adventures, and being a Meowth has been great as well, both in a roleplaying sense and a gameplay sense.

I’m going to continue playing this game, all the way until I reach the end credits. PMD:RRT, as well as the PMD franchise as a whole, are games that I will treasure for all of my life, and I don’t think I will ever stop playing them. I just hope that we’ll get to see a new one for this current generation...

Or a new Ranger game. I liked those, too...

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Persona 4 Golden (P4G)

This is one of the games I decided to play for myself, without regard to the Fortune Cookie for today. Particularly because I actually want to try and beat it!

In a sense, I already did beat it. I played through almost the entirety of P4G in my younger teen days. I went through nearly 80 hours of the game, and loved every second of it. The amazing characters, charming events, fun gameplay, and unique dungeons were all a source of inspiration for me to love video games.

Just one problem though. P4G was my very first Persona game, and I went into it blind. As such, I didn’t know about the final dungeon in the game, especially since you can trigger what appears to be a good ending without ever doing it. And by the time that I had found out about the actual final dungeon, it was already too late. I had overwritten that save data with the new game+ file, which has also been deleted since then. And several attempts to play through it on the Very Easy or even Easy difficulties to speed things up were met with quick boredom.

I’m now playing through it once again, on Normal mode, right off the heels of me having beat Persona 5 Royal. The character’s name is Senchi Tazumi, I just got done with the first dungeon, and I’m well on my way to experience my love for this game all over again.

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Metroid

The NES Metroid made me realize that I should probably add in a rule for NES and older games that they’ll be given a 15 minute minimum whenever I roll for them. Because that’s what I did for this game.

I’m not necessarily a Metroid fan, but I do love the games a lot. But the original Metroid makes me thankful for modern game design.

I get it, older games weren’t very long, so to make up for that game devs needed to make the games harder, without much sense of direction. The same design philosophy can be seen in the original Legend of Zelda. But I still like Zelda over Metroid tenfold. Why is that? I feel like a part of it is because I grew up with the Zelda franchise, having played multiple games before the original, whereas I’ve only played a small handful of Metroid games.

Or it could be because Metroid doesn’t really have any charm to it. Everything in the game just feels like the same thing over and over again for multiple rooms at a time. In fact, a part of me swears that I did go through the exact same hallway two times in a row. Whereas in Zelda, every screen is different in the overworld, and the dungeons have unique layouts that can be seen on the map. And maybe if I did see a whole map of Metroid I’d be persuaded otherwise, but without it everything feels very bland.

There may be a time where I do sit down with a guide and play through Metroid in its entirety, just to get it out of the way. But right now, I just finished my sophomore year of university. I’ve been writing multiple papers for the past month. I need a break, and Metroid is not what I wanted. I’m probably gonna play Animal Crossing or something now.

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Tales of Symphonia (ToS)

I first got this game back on the Gamecube after watching one too many videos on it. My child self was enamored with the cartoony visuals, the Smash Bros.-esque gameplay, the characters, and the fact that it came on two discs! Mind you, I was too young for the older Final Fantasy games on PS1, so this was my first game with multiple discs for one game. And playing it again on PS3, I’m reminded of how true all of those points are! Well, except for the multiple discs part. In fact, I specifically played the Tales of Symphonia: Chronicles collection, featuring both the original and its sequel. But this isn’t about the sequel.

I played from the beginning up to about an hour and a half in, after the first encounter at the Desian Ranch. Mind you, I’ve beaten this game before when I owned it for the Gamecube, which brings me to my first point. A lot of this game is really satisfying on a subsequent playthrough. A lot of the dialogue that seemed out of place the first time around makes perfect sense on the second time. Obviously I’m not going to include spoilers, but the plot twists throughout the game are really good to say the least.

For that matter, the characters are just as excellent. The main character, Lloyd, is immature in many ways. But he’s also the epitome of the multiple intelligence theory--Lloyd is shown throughout the game as being a philosophist, and he’s also well-acquainted with Dwarven crafts, something even his genius friend Genis (get the pun?) isn’t familiar with. At the same time, he’s absolutely played off as a stupid character, but in a charming way that doesn’t get in the way of the plot at all. He’s also very kind to those around him, even if he can be a bit frustrating at times. This excellent characterization follows through to every major character. 70-80 hours of gameplay leaves a lot of time for character development, especially for the nine party members you’ll encounter throughout the game.

That said, one of the game’s lead appeals is its gameplay. As I brought up earlier, the game (as well as the rest of the Tales games) are very similar to a customization-driven Smash Bros. You have standard attacks with the A/X button, and special “tech” attacks with the B/O button assigned as you want to Up, Down, Left/Right, and Neutral. This allows for a lot of experimentation in combat in the later sections, especially with the ability to chain techs of sequentially rising ranks together to form especially bulky combos. It becomes really fun and hectic against all kinds of foes. Switching up your strategy when going against differently-sized enemies is a fun thing in this game, all things considered!

Obviously though, this game has its faults. While I did say I love the cartoony graphics, their age is showing. For that matter, some of the animations in cutscenes seem out of place. Character animations will have a different tone from the way they’re speaking, such as a neutral face and generic pose coinciding a voice of wonder or worry. Additionally, there are some oddly-placed invisibly walls in several areas. Just going through the first couple of dungeons alone I’ve encountered at least five instances of me moving around a staircase and just getting stopped by nothing.

But those are very minute problems. The game overall is amazing, and if you want a game with an excellent story, deep characters, and engaging gameplay, I would highly recommend this game in particular!

As a side note at the end here, the game does have a co-op system as well. That said, I’m not entirely sure on it. The original had problems with the camera always focusing on player 1, meaning if another player is a caster, then they’ll be off-camera the entire time. I’m not sure if this problem is fixed in this remaster, however.

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Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light (FF:4HoL)

This is going to be the first in a long line of games in which I have plenty of experience with the game from previous times playing it. As such, I will focus on the play experience from this time specifically, but I’ll also use personal anecdotes from those other times playing it.

The very first game that I played for this blog, FF:4HoL is actually the predecessor for Bravely Default. Everything from aesthetics, character designs, gameplay mechanics, and even some of the songs are aspects that made their way into Bravely Default. That said, Bravely Default certainly ironed out a lot of what makes FF:4HoL the weird, debatably bad game that it is.

My play experience this time around started just a few minutes after the start of the game and ended nearly two-and-a-half hours in (which is considerable given my one hour minimum playing experience I have set for this blog). And just starting off, the game has major pop-up book aesthetics going on as you adventure as the first protagonist Brandt, who starts his journey in the village of Horne. He receives a request from the king to go save his princess from a witch’s castle in the north.

Going out into the open world to experience combat, one of my major gripes with the game comes to fruition here. You cannot select the target of spells and abilities your party members do. Rather, said ability will automatically target based on individual factors. For example, if you’re using an offensive spell, it will always target an enemy in the back row before anybody in the front. This back row only requirement also extends to several weapon types, including bows and spears. Additionally, healing automatically goes to whoever has the least amount of HP. You can’t target somebody who actually needs it, and while it’s not that big of a deal, you also can’t heal an undead enemy to deal damage to it.

This also ties in to the main gameplay mechanic, AP. This is similar to BP in Bravely Default, in that your characters can store up to 5 AP to use their commands. The difference here, however, is that all actions use AP, and certain ones use more than others. You can use the Boost command to give yourself more AP to use commands that need more, such as spells or special commands. This isn’t inherently a bad mechanic, but it does come with it the caveat that in a game this hard, you’ll inevitably need to constantly spam the Cure spell to get yourself out of a tight spot. And between taking heavy hits and needing to Boost to get more AP, it becomes somewhat frustrating in certain parts of the game.

Also, one weird focus of the game is on inventory management. Every party member can hold only 15 items at a time. While this was never an issue in my playthrough (nor do I recall it ever being a problem in any of my other playthroughs), I can easily see it being a problem down the road. Plus, in order for a magic user to cast spells, they must have the associated tome with said spell to let them cast it in the first place. This does allow anybody to have any spell regardless of their Job, but if you want a dedicated caster, their inventory is going to be cluttered with tomes in addition to any weapons, armor, accessories, and other miscellaneous items you may want them to have. I’ve easily had my caster reach 14 items multiple times before swapping items around.

Which leads me to my main, final problem, which makes itself apparent as soon as you beat the first boss after getting all four party members. Upon defeating the witch and returning to Horne, you discover that the town has been turned to stone, and the king has gone missing. Two of the party members decide to look for a cure, while the other two go off to a coastal town in the meantime. However, each party member keeps their respective inventory when they leave. As such, the squishy princess Aire kept her upgraded armor, which would’ve been helpful for me to have when she left, as the enemies in the desert get particularly difficult.

This was even more infuriating with the guest party member, Krinjh (yes, that is his name. And I’ll assume the pronunciation is as funny as it is). I give him my water-elemented dagger, as well as the valuable Aero and Cure tomes, and the game automatically gives the Earth Sword that I received from the boss to him. So what happens immediately after the fight ends? He leaves the party, with no opportunity to retrieve the equipment. It doesn’t get sent to storage, it doesn’t go into any party member’s inventory. As far as I know, it’s gone. Meaning to effectively keep his good stuff, you need to intentionally set him up with terrible equipment going into the fight.

But despite all of these problems, a small part of me can’t help but love the game. I don’t know if it’s nostalgia, the aesthetics, or my innate love for Final Fantasy, but the game really does make itself appealing in many ways despite its flaws.

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Introduction to this Blog

Hello everybody! My name is Al, and this is a blog simply titled Today I Played! As the name implies, this is where I talk about the games I’ve played. I’m gonna aim to update this blog semi-regularly with games both new and old!

To assist in this, I’m going to be utilizing a site called Backloggery, which keeps track of the games you own and which ones have been beaten, unbeaten, unplayed, completed, etc. Specifically I’ll be making use of the Fortune Cookie feature, which randomly selects one of your games from a preset criteria. For the sake of myself and this blog, I will exclusively keep it to select games that I have yet to beat.

Despite the above, I will still play games outside of the above criteria. While I love the games I already own, I’m constantly getting new games that I want to play! Whether it be the newest releases or games made free through sources like PS+ or Epic Games. If I play one of these games as well, I’ll make a point to talk about it. Though I’ll avoid talking about a single game multiple times unless the Backloggery dictates otherwise or it’s been a while since I’ve talked about a specific game on this blog.

Well, that’s it for this blog I think. Feel free to give me a follow and look forward to my regular posts on my taste in games!