November '21 Play Log

I can see why these games are popular, but at the same time in hindsight it’s not really my thing. I wasn’t a fan of the platforming sections, but I’ve certainly experienced worse.

Pros:

• I liked the graphics
• Well voice acted
• Great music
• The style system adds an extra element of challenge for those who want it
• The story is fairly decent, with plenty of good cutscenes (which can be skipped for subsequent playthroughs)
• Missions are always repeatable, and you’re encouraged by ‘secret’ areas that require weapons you don’t have on the first playthrough

Cons:

• Personally I found the speed at which you’re given new weapons too fast. I hadn’t had time to get used to one weapon and use it’s abilities before I was given another, then another. This resulted in me really never getting ‘good’ at one weapon.
• As much as the style system can be ignored, it means a lower score so less frequent upgrades, so you’re kind of pressured into it. This is made worse due to the above complaint since in order to get a good score you really need to know each weapon and it’s moves fairly well.
• Some of the smaller cutscenes (and opening sequences) are unskippable, which I found frustrating at times
• I found the ending sort of came out of left field. It wasn’t a huge deal, but if there were more hints it would have made more sense
• I extremely dislike that you are punished for using healing items, and that they get prohibitively expensive very quickly since buying one significantly increases the price of the next one. This effectively punishes people for being bad at the game, which is an all around awful practice.
• There are a lot of moves/combos - way too much to remember if you’re not a really dedicated fan. Personally as someone who wanted to enjoy the game but wasn’t interested in spending lots of time memorizing the huge list of moves, it seemed excessive. Of course, there’s nothing stopping you from ignoring a lot of them, but it may put SSS style rankings out of reach
• Achievement progress for number achievements (e.g. kill 1000 demons) is tracked in game and pops up every so often, but it’s not visible manually either in game or via Steam achievement page

This was a really great game that I highly recommend to anyone who enjoys atmospheric games. The story was good and it was incredibly cute.

Pros:

• Very atmospheric
• Great story with some interesting world-building background
• Great music
• The main character is very cute
• Not too much hand holding - you’re told what to do and that’s it, hopefully you were listening to the instructions
• If you have trouble finding something/solving a puzzle, you can always pay the blacksmith to help (and you won’t be short of money since this is it’s primary use)
• I liked having a real map you had to refer to instead of a mini-map

Cons:

• Numerous bugs. Fortunately only one caused me problems, and I had an earlier save I could load to get around it.
• The music tracks that start when you enter an area seem quite short and don’t play enough. I’d love them to play more often.

I thoroughly enjoyed this game. It’s very casual and laid back - a great way to relax.

Pros:

• Cute graphics
• Characters all have their own personality
• Well voice acted
• You can put some strategy into combat, or you can just button mash - it’s very casual
• As you advance and need more materials, you unlock material delivery through the story so you don’t have to spend huge amounts of time resource gathering
• Lots of characters have personal quests that trigger as you improve your relationship with them
• When events occur (story related, holidays, etc) NPCs often have interesting things to say about it
• I like how good relationships with characters can have side benefits (like discounts), and how prices for things fluctuate over time
• I found building system and how it got more complicated with more machines available and various other upgrades to make it easier very satisfying
• You can reset your skill points in-game at any time for a very reasonable price

Cons:

• Not all lines are voice acted
• Audio quality of voice acting is poor - lots of pops, sounds like they used very cheap audio equipment
• A lot of the mini game related achievements are grindy
• Talking to characters on dates/play dates quickly becomes repetitive
• No NPC reactions to having children was quite disappointing
• Given how NPC chatting quickly becomes repetitive due to having heard all lines, it was a strange decision to have NPC reactions to story, etc, not count as chatting (thus giving relationship points)
• Cooking could be improved. E.g. in a recipe that requires ‘any vegetable’, every vegetable counts as a different recipe, which gets annoying if you want to have someone cook a lot of a recipe and happen to have a different vegetable, it counts as not knowing the recipe.
• You reach a certain mission and it considers it ‘the end of the story’ and gives you a cutscene, credits, etc. You can keep playing but it implies there’s no more story. Strangely, there actually are quite a few story missions that take place after this though.

The trailer for this game gave me major Stanley Parable vibes so I was excited to play it. Unfortunately the trailer is pretty misleading. The narrator reads out your choices and the results in a normal voice. There’s no emotion (confusion, anger, exasperation, etc), and there’s no additional comments. The only similarities with Stanley Parable are that playthroughs can unlock additional options for the next playthrough. As far as humour goes, it had the odd funny moment but most of it was just stupid, and not in a funny way IMO. Humour is very subjective though so I can understand some people liking it.