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LOK Digital (PC) by jp (Sep 1st, 2025 at 12:29:20) |
Really enjoyed it, got to the end - only to learn, there's MORE!
So, I've been slowly whittling away at the game - I still don't have the 8 keys, so who knows what THAT will unlock, but I've been doing the red birds.
I think what's so amazing - especially in the context of the red birds, is that the carefully tuned puzzles sometimes serve more than one purpose! So, tuned for the puzzle within it's world/area, but there's a 2nd puzzle on top (is there a secret red bird here?). I think that's pretty wild!
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Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (PS4) by jp (Sep 1st, 2025 at 12:25:34) |
Really, really enjoyed it. So much that I decided to go for the "all items and secrets" trophy just because that would scratch the exploration itch this game had been scratching for me. I'm also thankful for the "easy mode" - which was, as advertised, easy - but like I said, I was really into exploring the levels, finding secret stuff and just enjoying the places.
I was reminded of Bungie's level design for Destiny - more precisely Bungie's art direction for its levels. Destiny levels tend to be super, super linear (which is fine) even if they twist around in interesting ways. This games' levels are much less linear - Zeffo in particular is a nice version of a contained sprawl... I even had fun trying to remember how to get to different parts of the level I wanted to re-visit because I was missing a chest or secret.
The only thing I wish I had was, once you've finished it, some indicator of whether you had all the Jedi memory things - I'd sometimes stumble across ones I'd missed (and some were secrets) - but a counter for that would have been nice. I get that you may want to hide them away - since many are about the game's story - but once you beat the main story, why not give people the chance to know what things were missed where? (you know which ones you're missing, because of counters in the encyclopedia thingie - but you don't know in which parts of which map if that makes sense).
I'm now genuinely excited and interested to play the next one!
(not so much for the story/characters to be honest - the addition of the night sister at the end felt odd and forced, but the action was great, and the environments as well)
(ok, now that I think about it, and because of the surprise appearance of one Lord at the end...what happens in the sequel? I also forget when in the Star Wars timeline the game takes place? I mean, I know it's before Return of the Jedi...but is it before A New Hope? I think so?)
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Chrono Trigger (PC) by dkirschner (Aug 29th, 2025 at 08:02:10) |
A classic, completed! I never had an SNES or a DS, so I never found my way to Chrono Trigger. It's one of Sasha's favorites, and a classic JRPG, so I found the Steam port and played over the past several months, most of which was concentrated in the past few weeks. I know it's 30 years old and was revolutionary at the time for the multiple endings, time travel, side character-focused side quests, detailed sprite work, and so on.
I'm playing in 2025 around the time I'm playing JRPGs like Clair Obscur and Persona 5. Chrono Trigger doesn't hold a candle to those games, but those games wouldn't be possible without decades old games like Chrono Trigger paving the way. So, my playthrough of Chrono Trigger was one of trying to appreciate something classic rather than thinking, "This is going to be a great [by today's standards] game!" Indeed, I was often frustrated or bored, going through the motions of leveling up or grinding, making liberal use of the auto battle option, and following occasional walkthroughs to speed things up.
The story and characters were less serious than I thought they would be. I was thinking that this would be more on par with FFVII, but the "silliness level" of this was a middle ground between FFVII (which could be profound) and Earthbound (which was often funny). The characters and story weren't that interesting to me. Chrono could have been a jug of milk. The 65,000,000 BC cave woman (whom I so creatively named "Wolfy" because she wore animal skins) made me laugh because of how dumb she talked, and at the end because she basically says she's ready to have a lot of sex with her boyfriend. The frog was over-dramatic. I named him Queen (I don't remember why), which became really confusing because there are actual queens in the story. Characters also often referred to the frog with his original name instead of what I selected for him.
But what was cool was the centrality of Lavos, this ever-looming threat across time. I liked that you could challenge Lavos whenever you wanted. By the time I was ready to give him a serious attempt, I was around level 50 and he annihilated me with a magic attack right off the bat. I changed my party composition and used the three characters with the highest magic defense, which worked like a charm...until he used a massive physical damage attack. Turns out characters with high magic defense often have low physical defense. I only had two characters who were fairly balanced with defense (Chrono and the frog), so I figured I should do some of the side quests that the game offered me. That would get me some more levels and probably some better gear. Turns out I had done a few of those side quests already, and I did almost all the rest. Yes, better gear and a few more levels. Now we're around level 55 and have significantly improved defense and attack, having gotten ultimate weapons for most characters.
I annihilated Lavos and saved the world. Hooray!
This is something very "classic JRPG" about Chrono Trigger. If a boss defeats you, you can just go grind away for a while, come back, and smack it to death. I did this two or three times during the game. And given that you can turn on auto battle, the grinding feels almost automated. I would just sit by Sasha, watch an episode of something, and run back and forth through whatever area auto-battling my way to higher levels. It took no thought. I think that's a larger critique of this game for me, is that I didn't have to think much. Sure, some enemies have strengths and weaknesses, and bosses often had a trick to figure out, but that was such a small percentage of battles. I'm comparing it to something like Clair Obscur where EVERY battle could go horribly wrong, where you could parry and dodge. Or something like Persona 5 where the combat system is predicated on enemy strengths and weaknesses that you need to pay attention to (plus 10 other combat mechanics).
Chrono Trigger (understandably) feels basic in 2025. It was really cool getting to experience a classic, basic as it feels today. Next time I play a game with time travel, I'll compare it to Chrono Trigger! Next time the hero's mother steps through a time portal at the end of the game (cue laugh track), I'll also think of Chrono Trigger! And the next time someone refers to Chrono Trigger, I will confidently say that yes, I have played Chrono Trigger (instead of being shamed for having no gamer cred)!
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The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood (PC) by dkirschner (Aug 29th, 2025 at 06:56:47) |
Okay, this was REALLY good. It's from the people who made The Red Strings Club, which I also liked. Deconstructeam has a knack for thought-provoking philosophical narratives, strong writing, diverse characters, and novel mechanics for a point-and-click. I don't even know if I'd describe this as a point-and-click because most of it takes place in one two-story building and you don't really move your character anywhere in the sense of typical point-and-click adventures. It's more of an interactive visual novel with cards. But it's not a card game either. Let's back up...
In The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, you play as Fortuna, a witch with the power of divination. You've been exiled for reading in your Tarot deck that your coven will be destroyed. 200 years into your 1000-year exile, you summon a Behemoth (very illegal), who helps you reflect on your circumstances and regain power. Regaining your power involves learning to create your own (non-Tarot) deck of cards. As the story unfolds, you end up being allowed to get visitors whose futures you can read with your cards. So, depending on the cards you create, which are imbued with different elements that have different affinities (i.e., fire is fear, earth is power, water is emotion, etc.), your readings are flavored differently. For example, if you create a ton of fire-heavy cards, your readings will be related to fear, lust, violence, revenge, and so on.
Now, there is a huge and awesome narrative twist that I will not give away that makes the divination system so interesting and makes an already cool game even cooler. This is contextualized in the overarching story of your exile, regaining your powers, reconnecting with witches in your coven, meeting witches in other covens, and dealing with the political upheaval in your coven. Without discussing that twist, I really can't talk much more about the game, except just mechanics stuff. Suffice it to say, if you like playing politics, you'll be surprised.
The game does a lot of interesting things in its relatively short time and confined space. One interesting thing about this game is that it takes place wholly (except for some flashback sequences) in the place of Fortuna's exile, a two-story home in the middle of space. There are like four things you end up being able to click on in the house, so nearly all interaction happens via dialogue windows and the card creation and selection screens. Despite the simplicity, nothing ever got boring or repetitive. The game regularly changes up what you are doing and the story moves at a good pace.
At the end, I find myself curious about a second playthrough, or seeing if my girlfriend is interested in it so I can watch her play. It seems like your choices have massive impact on how the game unfolds, but sometimes this can be deceptive. I would like to see how much things change if you make different choices. HIGHLY recommend!
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LOK Digital (PC) by jp (Aug 25th, 2025 at 19:19:41) |
I heard people sing it's praises - but usually for a puzzle game I find that means that I think it's "fine" - and then move on. But, I must say that for a straight up mostly abstract puzzle game there's a lot of REALLY clever game design going on here!
This is a game where you need to "select" a word from a jumble of tiles - but the word is special (unique to the game), once selected the word provides a secondary selection, and then you have to select a new word until the tiles on each level have all been selected. It's pretty simple - but as you make progress new words are introduced with different secondary selection effects and the layout of the tiles changes such that the rules for selection also begin to open up (e.g. what counts as adjacent for selection purposes).
It's a clever game - and I even have the paper copy that I now really want to play.
The onboarding is really tight - with new things introduced such that you're both surprised (when you figure it out) and get a sense of the new thing and how it works. And then, there's new things that make you go "what? this can't possibly work" but it does.
I'm particularly appreciative of:
a. The endgame adds a new word, giving you a reason to go back to find it in order to unlock a bunch of bonus levels. I know there's more to find yet - but I'm still working through.
b. The hint system is basically the list of words you need to select - but it doesn't tell you WHAT you need to select after each word. So, it's helpful - but if you were really stuck you'd still be screwed. But it's helped me confirm that I figured out the solution without figuring out the full details. So, like I'm "on track" rather than barking up the wrong tree.
c. The undo system is wonderful - it's fast and easy to use - making it really smooth and easy to try out ideas as you're trying to solve each puzzle.
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2301 registered gamers and 3299 games. 7831 GameLogs with 13313 journal entries. 5112 games are currently being played.
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Mario Party (N64) by EX |
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most recent entry: Friday 19 January, 2007
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My final thoughts on Mario Party are that although it lacks a strong story or narrative, the gameplay is fairly well tuned and easy to pick up and learn while remaining difficult/challenging to master the mini-games that you play throughout the game. In this regard, the gameplay is well balanced (with the exception of the thumb-stick rotation mini-games which are outright). However, I dislike how time-consuming the game is; the main board game can only be played with 4 players (people or the computer) and requires a minimum of 20 turns, which can easily exceed an hour if not two or more for a single game of Mario Party; I would have hoped that Nintendo would try and streamline the game a bit more so it goes by a bit faster by cutting redundant/unnecessary dialog or cutscenes/animation. Also, the reward system of obtaining stars and coins for unlocking extra features is too much in favor of playing multi-player, making it all the more tedious and massively time-consuming to rack up a decent amount of coins if you don't have the people or controllers for 4 people to play at once.
The slow reward system and sheer time-consumption has discouraged me from wanting to pick up board-game type games for a while because of the lack of enthusiasm and time for getting people together to play such a game makes it a tough game to pick up and actually play through and enjoy it to its fullest potential. Thus, while an innovative idea, I think it takes 'too much effort' to actually enjoy it, giving it more shelf-space value than game-play value.
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