fish on friday and human flesh every other day of the week! censorthulhu’s profile
33 year-old woman with an excess of dogs, queer rage, and Opinions on Narrative Devices Used in Games.
timestamps for the cheevos: completionist_me profile
i keep my lists maintained here but don't really have time to post. if you need to ping me, leave a comment on my profile and i'll get back to you.
January 3rd 2k23
whew, it’s been a while huh?
i’m one of those people who, when super stressed, tends to clam up and keep my head down because no one wants to hear about that shit. and hooray, the stress remains! but i still managed to finish 34 games in 2022 so i’m going to force myself to make a post at the start of this year anyway.
FAVORITE FINISH: Ghostwire: Tokyo
this was a gift from a steam friend, and a game i was hyped for but couldn’t afford to get on my own at the time of release. total surprise how good it was, given my hype was purely on aesthetics and not from knowing anything about gameplay or story. it’s approximately a 40-something hour game given you peek in all the nooks and crannies to find everything, and has a very satisfying combat system. can’t recommend it enough, 10/10.
LEAST FAVE FINISH: Persona 4 Golden
i had to return to this one because i got burnt out my first attempt, and boy howdy does this game drag. half of the stuff you won’t even find on your own without a walkthrough, and even though i did have one of the steam guides up my entire playtime just to catch as much as possible, it still felt too dense and chore-like to really be enjoyable. i know this sort of thing is right up the alley for various people, but i am not one of them. i don’t look back on my time in this game as “ah, a game i played,” i look back at it as “well, that’s over a hundred hours of my life i’ll never get back.”
BEST ZEN: PowerWash Simlator
got this one in early access because a steam friend was having a fun time with it, played for a few hours, then let it hang out on my hard drive while i waited for full release. it’s definitely worth your time and money now that it’s out of EA, it has a full story attached to the scenarios and a lovely array of nozzles and things to get the job done. good game to zone out on while you clean up some truly disgusting areas covered in muck.
here’s some random stats to pile on–
times i played through the Mass Effect Trilogy: once, but also i played Andromeda for the first time (and probably the last, lol).
number of games played with a cat theme: six! good year for kitties.
jrpgs finished: only two!
solitaire and puzzle/clicker games finished: thirteen!
if my stress levels lessen i might do a mid-year roundup, otherwise i’ll be back in 2k24 with another post. byyyyeeeeeeee~
March 26th 2k21
i finished 24 games in 2k20 since last update, and 25 so far this year, so. /sips at coffee/ yeeeeeeah, y’all KNOW i’m not gonna go through all that.
anyway i just finished the second Outer Worlds DLC and it was absolutely fab, great fun all around. i hope they make another game set in this universe, but it needs to have a different type of main character cos if we get the same MC but no Max or Nyoka i am gonna be pissed.
life is just super major stressful right now (no job yet! my state is reopening despite being one of the lowest rates of vaccinations cos Abbott is an ass! my mother had to go into a skilled nursing facility and now i have to deal with medical calls every other day for something new and unusual!!!) so all i’m able to focus on are puzzle games and solitaire while hockey games stream on my laptop and then i get twenty minutes here and there on other random games. great for finishing HOGs, not great for any prolonged narrative experiences, of which my backlog has many.
still poking at Yakuza Kiwami 2 for all the good it’s doing me. i’m probably three quarters of the way through at least? it’s fine! i just can’t enjoy it while real life is making me stress so any enjoyment is muted, even the normally overwhelming hilarity of Majima staggering around shirtless. hopefully in the next few days i’ll finish it tho and can move on to something else that might be more successful in distracting me.
eh, i’ll post again when i can remember. hopefully before the end of the year! lol.
September 30th, 2k2k
my team lost in the final of the Stanley Cup Playoffs so i’m consoling myself with liquor and video games. yee….. yeehaw (cries piteously into drink)
despised this game. presentation was nice, so was the music, but the story and the "case" just makes my blood pressure spike. not going to rant about it because i'm sure i'm in the minority here, but i just really, REALLY take issue with men telling these kinds of stories. i also really, REALLY take issue with indie devs who pompously think they're the only ones on the freaking planet who've read in the genre they're working in-- in this case, detective fiction-- so they can steal plot shit without anyone noticing.
the banner image had me thinking the main character was a lawyer??? but lol i was way off the mark there! really should try reading the descriptions on these games before i start to play them.
except for my own issues with sitting still to watch things this was a an okay game. i could only play a couple chapters at a time, and had a guide open in my phone while playing so i would know what choices to make for the best experience, so it turned out to basically be a slightly interactive stage play. not bad for a bundle gain, don't feel like my time was wasted.
v addicting resource management mechanics, bit overwrought in places re: storyline but the waily waily didn't linger so i wasn't terribly bothered. some of the platforming sections are supposed to be brutal but i switched to a controller halfway through and my difficulties vanished, so be aware of this if you're a kbm user! i deffo recommend this as an alternative to Stardew Valley, My Time At Portia, et al.
vaporwave first person detective game with absolute agency, so! much! gore!, and some really amazing worldbuilding that you can only really get by asking certain questions of the characters or picking up the plethora of 'artifacts' strewn across the island. i absolutely loved this experience and very much recommend it to anyone who likes open world exploration mixed with their wild and woolly murder mystery.
DELIGHTFUL, absolutely delightful. easy mechanics to learn, cute story, likeable characters, and it doesn't overstay its welcome just to eek out the gameplay time. A+ absolutely recommend to all.
wasn't the worst thing i've ever played, but it was so far from the best i just was waiting for it to end. if you want post-apoc pandemic gameplay you can throw a rock and hit something else much better than this thing.
got others done like the first episode of the Space Pilgrim saga but eh, they exist, i played them, and that’s p much the end of that.
Next: playing :THE LONGING: because i am a fucking idiot. finishing up some started games so i can uninstall them. trying to figure out why my twitch stream replays have funky audio so i can resume terrorizing people in Untitled Goose Game for the amusement of my friends. waiting for The Outer Worlds to finally drop on steam so i can buy and play it like i’ve been desperately wanting to do since the first trailer dropped.
EDIT: ALSO HI, THIS IS CUNTHULHU. i didn’t realise my namechange synced here until i already posted, whoops! Steam started to censor my username so i had to change it, boo.
August 15th, 2k2k
going with three extremes for this post just to keep it short and sweet. also because my brain feels like a sponge saturated with blood right now! guuuuuh.
best game
really charming VN with picross puzzles. i had it on my wishlist because Hato Moa did the character designs, and my friend bought it for me cos that's just who she is, so i made an effort to install and finish it ASAP. glad i did, it was worth the full price of $14.99 USD seeing as i got 20+ hours out of it. music is by the same dude who did Phoenix Wright so you just know it's good, the art is great, and the story is engaging. A+, absolutely recommend to all who want an interactive murder mystery to go along with their picross.
meh game
it's an okay game. art is very Don Bluth which is very much my jam, music is appropriate and doesn't get annoying, good variety of characters, etc. but the story is a major weak point. whenever i fetch up against a story like this i think of the quote from Palahniuk's Invisible Monsters, "Don't expect this to be the kind of story that goes and then, and then, and then," because this game? totally does go "and then, and then, and then." it's not very engaging as a result, and i didn't care about the resolution at all.
disliked game
it was fine until the last two batches of story missions where it started to glitch out during major fights so i had to redo twenty plus minutes of work just to keep the checkpoint, and then the absolute last batch of missions where it was just waves upon waves of enemies that were completely at odds with how the game functioned up until that point. before you could reasonably clear out the enemies until they slowed or outright stopped then do whatever hacking you needed to do, but wow suddenly no enemy thinning at all, just hit the hacking UI and hope you don't get shot out of it before it's complete!!! god that was frustrating, and by the time i slogged through i was actively hating the game and wanted to jettison it into the sun.
playing as Johnny Gat was fun, at least. whole reason i wanted the game in the first place was cos Gat was a playable character. i am shallow and predictable, and in this case it came up to bite me in the ass.
other games were finished since…. April? but they’re all HOGs and solitaire and jigsaw puzzles so just assume a neutral rating on all of them and call it a day.
currently playing Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Observer for the “play six HB Monthly/Choice games in a month to qualify for a giveaway” challenge that’s running on the SG forums. DEMD is annoying me terribly and i have no idea why since i really enjoyed the last one, and Observer can only be played in small doses because it’s freaking me out a lot more than i expected it to. at this rate i might just buy Horizon Zero Dawn on my own since with the Humble discount it’s only $40 anyway and then i can go finish Death Stranding like the Kojima Shill i am, lol.
april 29st, 2k2k
life has been a legit shitshow since December 31st for me and it got REALLY interesting in the month of March. but i survived it and since for distraction during the bullshit i had decided that this plague quarantine time should be used to finish as many in-prog games as possible so i can finally uninstall them, you get to behold the fruits of my labors.
BEHOLD THESE FRUITS!
BEHOLD THEM!!!!
i am not the market for these sort of games, because i kept asking wtf the point was and wishing it was over already.
it's a HOG game, but fairly different presentation from the Artifex Mundi fare. voice acting and story was eye-roll inducing but the puzzles had decent logic to follow and it didn't overstay its metaphorical welcome.
same dev as sonya, but for some reason the way it was put together irritated me. might be due to no indicator on usable items and scenes, so there's a lot of spam-clicking involved?
THIS IS BASICALLY "SELFCEST: THE GAME" AND I LOVE IT.
lots of worldbuilding, and so long as you use a judicious amount of saves according to a guide you can see all the endings without a lot of backtracking. good for two hours of selfcesty times, plus a couple of explosions. A+, do reccomend.
bought this one during the winter sale cos it was the third rpg i ever completed on my own as a kid (yay, Dreamcast!!), but holy hell i must've been a dumbass kid to totally miss how sexist Ryudo is. they tried to make him yandare and went way too hard, basically.
the game still holds up, but they just released an HD Remaster that i absolutely could not get to work, so if you try this and the game does the same to you go into the settings through the steam client and roll back the install to Anniversary Edition. kinda amazing that they managed to kill a game with a so-called upgrade, but it takes all kinds to make a world!
as for story, once you get over Ryudo being an oficious prick it's stood the test of time and is still decent. typical jRPG stuff with a v anime message of EVIL WILL BE VANQUISHED BY HEART etc etc etc., nothing mindblowing, but the boss artwork is hilariously Hammer Horror-style and even when playing on hard difficulty it doesn't get terribly grindy. worth the ten bucks i spent on it, good nostalgia trip, A+.
Thirty Flights of Loving 
one of those pointless things. i thought it might be like another Jazzpunk from the way the steam page is presented so i was interested but eh, not really. glad it came in a bundle somewhere cos i'd be annoyed if i'd paid legit money for it.
another nostalgia trip. game is so unique that it hasn't aged badly at all. music is on point, Manny Calvera is delightful as the reluctant hero, and the story is classic without being grossly overwhelmed by heavy-handed cliches.
little too Twin Peaks-y for my tastes (i like Twin Peaks atmosphere when it's actually Twin Peaks and take all others on an extremely judgemental case-by-base basis) but it was a decent point and click game regardless. exceptionally good voice acting, didn't get bogged down with exposition, and the logic was easy to follow. i'll play a sequel if they make one.
love the story, but the puzzles are nigh incomprehensible so you gotta consult a guide or else yer not getting ANYwhere.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. i don't need a lit degree to understand when i'm being Hispter'd at, so BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. if i want to read The Divine Comedy But With Navel-Gazing then that's what i'll fucking do, not play this piece of crap, BOOOOOOOOOO! how could this be actually worse than the first one?! how?!?!?!
the game has a helluva lot of bugs otherwise the rating would be higher. also they're really shitty towards indiginous people in this one, which made me clench my jaw a lot. barring those two factors it's a perfectly coherent and bland HOG game with a doozy of a knight's tour puzzle until you realize there's a fucking undo button in the center of the thing. i wasted almost an hour on that fucking mess until i figured out that the center tile was an undo, i am so freaking mad.
buggy mess, gotta redo HOG scenes until you get an assortment of items you can actually locate and click on (i am serious, they give you stuff you cannot find! what the hell?!), the story is inane to the point of causing brain damage, and it crashes on the reg. avoid avoid avoid avoid avoid--
point taken off cos they REALLY needed a better tutorial on how the logic worked for one section of puzzles, but otherwise this is a delightful number puzzle with bright colors and p okay music amazingly enough. worth the time spent on it, thank you Iocaio for the gift!
i got moons of madness from this thing, but wouldn't have bothered with it otherwise. the second "puzzle" i made a little progress on myself cos i used to be obsessed with quantum physics shit so i chanced on a decent line of keywords to make the thing react, but the rest of it was incomprehensible to me and idk, man, but it just didn't seem worth it in the end.
got moons of madness, tho. i get my tentacles at least. mmmm, tentacles.
i finally got approved for unemployment (thanks so much, Texas Workforce Commission, for driving us gig workers TOTALLY FUCKING INSANE in these trying times) so i should be better about posting here. have had this post ready to go for….. a while, but going nuts cos the bills are piling up meant i just didn’t give a shit about it.
ANYWAY, next is finishing Dishonored 2 for the first time and continuing my decent into Fallout 4’s settlement building timesink. Yakuza Kiwami 2 is downloaded so might play that once Dishonored 2/DOTO is done with. also have Call of Cthulhu ready to go! so not running out of things to play in this pandemic, is what i’m saying here. i have a 69 year old mother with stage four kidney disease who i’m the primary caregiver for so yeeeeeah, no way in hell am i breaking isolation when one whiff of the virus would one-shot her immediately. sorry, Texas, i know you want to reopen and all but my mother isn’t expendable!!! (i’ve been raging at lot in the direction of our Governor these last few weeks, can you tell? :D)
february 19th, 2k2k
puzzles were p decent, but the humor is only funny for the first ten minutes and then transforms into this hideous swap to drag yourself through.
cute, easy to play, jokes landed for the most part. i got stuck in the environments a few times that prompted a restart otherwise it would be a full 10/10. be careful skirting around the walls in this one.
lol the voice acting was hilariously bad. puzzles typical HOG-fare, plot predictable, but the voice acting!!! ahahahahahahaha oh lawd.
parts of the story didn't sit well with me. their depiction of mental illness is….. somewhat insulting. otherwise it's a typical HOG, play it for an easy 100% i guess.
so many collectibles to squint at the screen for. this is one of the series that puts a little indicator up so you can see if you got them all in each screen though, so it's not a big deal outside of the eye-strain. puzzles were really easy, i was surprised cos normally i struggle with the more intricate bits of logic they attempt to employ. oh well!
beat the main story, all that is left is the grinding for further cheevos. overall i enjoyed it, the mission pacing remained consistent and it wasn't too much of a grind until the last mission. that last mission went on forever, holy crap.
can see how in a few places it was definitely designed to be played multiplayer, but my internet won't support co-op and i hate interaction anyway, so just gonna go it alone regardless of what the devs intended!
struggling through Cosmic Express and Quell Zen right now. just not in the mood for puzzles, but not really interested in getting involved in a new story either? idk, it’s a phase, it’ll pass.
february catchup the 9th, 2k2k
games completed in 2019: 48
number done at 100%: 37
number left at just beaten: 23
i finished more games since my last update in November but i am tired of being cranky all the time so i didn’t write reviews or even record a number rating as i watched each respective end credits roll, so. gonna try something different in 2k2k. probably too much of a stretch to aim for being! more!! positive!!! but i can reign in the outrage a bit. hopefully. probably. maybe.
anyway here’s a year retrospective.
favourite finished game in 2k19:
i haven't even replayed this on legacy yet, i'm just dicking around while slowly leveling up Majima in that weird fighting ring and playing Mahjong with my now near-unlimited funds. cannot recommend this gem of a game enough; it's worth everyone's time, forever and ever and ever.
favourite unfinished game in 2k19:
Got stuck on a level and felt like i'd be a failure if i looked up the solution, so haven't finished this yet despite REALLY enjoying the puzzles and the narrative laid out as you progress. will eventually get over myself and look up a guide for that one puzzle in 2k2k, but this year just wasn't it.
why did i waste my time on this in 2k19:
don't remember what rating i gave this earlier in the year, but time and distance has only increased my disdain for this thing. i understand what they were trying to do! but for a video game, it just doesn't work!! bah.
favourite sg win in 2k19:
so, so good. will replay in 2k2k to eventually find that hidden boss i somehow missed, but i want some distance so i can properly enjoy it again.
least favourite sg win in sk19:
least fave because it's so freaking dark i can't see what is going on. i know this is an artistic choice, etc etc, and the concept is one i am interested in which is why i entered the gib in the first place, but holy fuck i had to give up after a while. it's still installed so i will eventually try again, but now i know to see how fucking dark games are before i consider acquiring them by any means. so frustrating!
favourite traded game in 2k19:
i have more time playing this offline than registered by steam-- my wifi was giving me shit during a rainstorm a few weeks ago and i decided to just try this one given there aren't any cheevos yet and not really a plot, either.
the driving is very calming, for me. i didn't run into many issues with the car breaking down which i assume happens later? the music is lovely. the graphics, even at potato level, are nice to look at. the given scenario and reasoning for the player character to embark on her journey is decent and so far enjoyable to experience.
this game is… nowhere near finished, i'm rather surprised it's even in early access with so little to the plot. but it shows promise and i very much hope the devs manage to finish this game over the next few years.
currently working on:
the solitaire is great and i wish there was a standalone cos i'd love to just dump hours into it.
the story so far is both unsettling and rage-inducing, but i haven't gotten far enough yet to really say what i think about it one way or the other. just note that whisper networks about sex pest bosses do not end with encouraging the woman who you just warned away from the aforementioned boss to go talk to him. seriously, what the hell were they thinking there??
handles like Enter the Gungeon-- i know there's a different term for this style of game, top-down shooter maybe? but this is what is in my limited lexicon at the mo-- and the aesthetics are very DOS-era retro. i'm liking it so far, but not terribly invested in the story so idk if i'll get to the end or not.
finished main story, got the Virgil's Downfall DLC so trying to get that done plus grind out the "kill X amount of enemies" and "spend X amount of red orbs" cheevos before i uninstall. will never 100% this game cos i have no interest in replaying all the levels on the varying difficulty modes.
the combat is pretty fluid and the environments are pretty as hell, but everything else about this game is a soulless exorcise in bigotry and nihilism masked as coolness so i….. really don't like this one and am glad i got it in the $1 tier of a humble bundle years ago. paying more money would've just added insult to injury.
November 14th, 2k19
whelp, that was certainly A Game!
i don’t advise anyone to play this without playing Yakuza 0 beforehand. if i hadn’t already experienced the context for the relationships and how everything fits together i wouldn’t have given a shit about any of this. granted, this is a remake of an old game, and the next one is supposed to be MUCH better– on par with 0 narrative, or surpasses it if the reviews are to go by– but on its own it’s a very blah experience that i wouldn’t have bothered to finish if not for three things:
- the aforementioned context from 0
- the Kiwami-added system of Majima Everywhere. very novel way to train you into the combat system if you just go for it. the combat is much more difficult than in 0, you actually have to learn to evade attacks else you’re not gonna make it far. but after i’d grinded it out on Majima (lol) to SSS rank i was having no issues.
- the story was relatively short. if this kind of blandness had gone on any longer i would have been sorely tested. as it was, despite things, it did not overstay its welcome which i greatly appreciate.
is this game worth the $20? if you go by the $1 for every hour spent then yes. if you go by exchanging money for an experience, then probably yes but only if you’re already invested. Sunk Cost Fallacy at its finest, folks.
i don’t feel like i wasted my time. the boss fights were a drag, i yelled at Kiryu a lot re: his life choices when i didn’t really feel the need to in the previous game, and if i never have to play a minigame that reuses the assets from the Japanese Catfight Club abomination again it would be appreciated, but my time was not tossed in the trash, it was worth it. only because i played the prequel first! but still, worth it.
now i get to eyeball Kiwami 2! i doubt my computer will run it cos apparently they’re using a new engine for the next remake and on, but if it shows up in a bundle you bet yer ass i’ll be snapping it up and installing it and then bitching to everyone who will listen about how it won’t even run so i won’t get another Majima fix oh woe is me.
October 31st, 2k19
my brain is too fried to write a coherent review, so please just know that i loved this game, i will be purchasing Kiwami as soon as i have the $20 USD (or the winter sale hits, whichever is first), and i am bereft that the story is over for now. absolutely amazing in every way.
October 17th, 2k19
it’s October, holy crap!!!!
my computer fried in mid-July and still no replacement. i am gaming on my mother’s comparable rig and am extremely uncomfortable with this set up but at least i can still make my eyeballs bleed for a few hours every night!!
before i get started with this catch-up post just wanna say thank fuuuuck for completionist.me cos it made it very easy for me to figure out what i’ve played and beaten since the travesty that was my motherboard frying and taking the cpu et al with it.
ANYWAY. here are the games i finished and thus can be considered removed from the backlog:
Very solid detective game that is oddly framed with a device of scary-faced children creeping around an attic and reading off of Watson's diaries. Ignore the monstrous children (and the eeeeehhhhh epilogue) and you're left with an excellent narrative puzzle that never takes unfollowable leaps of logic and kept me entertained from start to finish.
also, they clearly modeled Holmes after Mark Strong in this one, it's total hilar.
neutral rating cos i don't think i'm the audience for this sort of game. it wasn't creepy at all, just lots of pretending that David Lynch Presents: The Wickerman, a Family Film is an actual thing. i appreciated it when that dude got stuck in a loop of vomiting frogs down his own damn front and into his trousers until you stop the horror with a belt, but that was about it.
finally got around to this one despite owning it for years. i beat the main storyline but not the DLC content yet, but i'll get to it, i'll get to it.
spoilers follow
this game was fantastic, but i'm knocking off a point for having the Slave who is leading the rebellion in Colombia scalp people and nail the leavings on a notice board. i realize he needed to make the Revolutionaries attack Booker and Elizabeth, but they were already stuck in an alternate reality where they had the guns, just keep going with the "you're a fake Booker and so we're going to kill you" thing without having to both sides this crap. Levine already appropriated Wounded Knee for his plot purposes, he doesn't need to keep on keepin' on with something that white men encouraged the practice of in the recent history of that time frame. pretty shitty to hold that kind of brutality up as a stereotype of people going full on "uncivilized" evil upon being given a smidge of power when the Bookers in the world paid cash money to keep it going.
i sort of had a sour taste in my mouth for the rest of the game because of that one atmospheric set piece, was having a grand old time up to then. i'll replay it in 1999 mode at some point, and hopefully will be able to ignore it better, but for now i'm just ugh. feel gross.
THIS IS SUCH A GOOD GAME. doesn't overstay its welcome, keeps a delicate mix of action and side quests to flesh out the story without sacrificing pacing, and you auto-heal at the end of every battle so there's no frantic resource juggling that can bog down games like these all in the name of "difficulty." A+, do recommend to infinity.
ahahahaha. well, i was hankerin' for a HOG, and Playing Appreciated delivered!
there's this scene near the start where the MC tells a barkeep that her niece is captured by a creature in this vicious estate known for killing everyone around it, so of course he takes the opportunity to lament his missing cat Whiskers and then keep cleaning his glasses. i don't even know, man. whoever wrote this doesn't know how to write actual character reactions i guess.
other than that laughable misfire it's a pretty decent HOG for your time. some of the art is very pretty to look at, and none of the puzzles are terribly difficult. a couple of them i managed to complete so quickly i literally said "wait, that's it?" while the animation spun. so yeah, deffo worth it, just don't expect to be astounded.
and here are the games that i have put decent time into but haven’t beaten yet!
i need to get over myself and finally finish this game. my issues with it are pretty dumb, and really say more about me than they do about the game itself.
1) the voice of Lightening is the same as Liara in Mass Effect, and i really never liked Liara. she simpers, and i hate listening to simpering. Lightening doesn't simper, she's actually a decent character, but just the sound of the voice actress sets me off.
2) Snow needs a good punch in the mouth, he's annoying and pushy and while i don't wish his death i certainly don't want to be around during his life either. so one of the strongest fighters stays out of my rotation just because i don't like him, hurrah.
3) while i normally enjoy grinding in JRPGs, the grinding in this one just got to me, eventually. probably because the main character's voice gets my hackles up. oh well.
like i said, the reasoning is stupid. the game is fine, and i should at least give a good go at finishing it. i just haven't yet :/
two reasons this is partially abandoned on my part:
1: this is the game i was trying to play on my mother's loaned Netbook so i could write and play super low-end games until i get a replacement computer. unfortunately that netbook is from 2010 and my mother wasn't very good to it, so the damn thing memleaks until it crashes regardless of whatever program i run. thusly, i didn't get very far with the machine i chose to play it on.
and 2: the game is tedious.
i hate using the word "tedious" for something made by Spiderweb Software, but i can't figure out anything else to say about it. there's no spark like in the Avernum series. you play a sell-out joining up with the Fascist Dictator playing genocidal maniac with the world. i mean, you get a choice to kill him and take his place apparently, but why even bother to pretend in the meantime? it just doesn't work for me, so i'm not terribly invested in finally finishing it.
i REALLY wanted to play this one cos a project lead or the head designer or whoever said that Sorey and Mikleo love each other romantically, and hey, i am all about supporting my fellow queers in gameland, but ldkjfslkfjsldkfjslkdfjsldkfjlsdk no. nooooooo.
this game features a battle system that is little more than controlled chaos until 20 hours in when you finally figure out a slight bit of strategy to turn it into controlled chaos that leans in your favor; a lot of preachy dialogue about man's inhumanity to man featuring MALEVOLENCE and such; and the fucking stuck-up asshole Zavied is back to make me grind my teeth down to powder.
i was spoiled by Berseria. i miss the cannibal demon girl who did not go quietly into that horrible night, she raged and raged and raged and ate some demons and then raged some more. with Zesteria we just got a lot of monologue about how people will always submit to their base evils and shit up the world. honestly, the funniest ("""""funniest"""""") thing about Zesteria is that for all that lecturing about evil, evil humans, they never address the absolute noncon that is Dezel taking over Rose's body when she's asleep without her consent for years and, i am not joking here, "creating a perfect vessel for seraphim".
that part make me shriek in rage, and just thinking about it makes my blood boil. holy SHIT. just hOLY SHIT.
anyway, play Berseria. only bother with this one if you're a completionist with masochistic tendencies.
i got all 100 From A Different Sky quests completed and just needed a freaking break. you know how hard it was to get some of those bastards?? i had to make my character learn magic. she's a freaking rogue-type class with daggers, but nooooo, gotta levitate cos the double vault will never ever catch that one particular ledge. pfnah. magic. MAGIC.
it's a very good game and if you like action-y RPGs that feel slightly off cos it's clearly made by a Japanese crew who got all their fantasy tropes from cult classic 80s films like Ladyhawke and Krull then you'll adore it, but you gotta take a break every now and again. too many times falling off cliffs and dying, too few wakestone shards.
fuck this battle system in the ear and DIE. die die DIEEEEEEE.
this is the one i'm currently playing. it's got violence, dancing, and a karaoke minigame that i suck at so i lost 10% of my real estate holdings last night and i didn't even mind, i'll just beat the snot out of the dude later and get it all back.
this is my introduction to the series and i think by hour 10 i was wishlisting the other two titles available on Steam. gonna be sad when this one is finished and i'll have to wait for a sale or bundle to get the next. i will miss Majima and his claw machine mastery ways. i will miss Kiryu's wise advice given freely to hesitant femdoms everywhere. i will miss Walking Erection-chan just in general.
i will miss them all.
| 2368 | games (+7 not categorized yet) |
| 60% | never played |
| 15% | unfinished |
| 5% | beaten |
| 19% | completed |
| 0% | won't play |
- won on steamgifts 64
- gifts from friends 86
- traded for 79
- finished in 2k19 48
- finished in 2k2k 109
- finished in 2k21 100
- finished in 2k22 34
- finished in 2k23 18
- finished in 2k24 5