The Backlog Check-in Vol. 294: 8/19/23: Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon Edition

[Phaseknox]

Played: Cyberpunk 2077, Dragon Age: Inquisition, PGA Tour 2K21, PGA Tour 2K23, Ys IX: Monstrum Nox

Finished: Nothing

Playing: Ys IX: Monstrum Nox

Added: Nothing

Games releasing this week
Alice Escaped!
Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon
Bee Island
Blasphemous II
Chicken Journey
Don Duality
Dust Fleet
Fire Shark
Firewall Ultra
Flying Shark
Fort Solis
Ghostpia Season 1
Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure
Hellfire
Icarus: New Frontiers
Immortals of Aveum
J-Jump Arena
Jumplight Odyssey
Kill the Crows
Kingdom Incremental
LogiKing
Norn9: Last Era
Little Devil: Foster Mayhem
Lost Eidolons
Paper Planet
Purr Purr Festival
Retro Mystery Club Vol. 1: The Ise-Shima Case
Retro Revengers
Ride 5
Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate
Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out
Slap Fight
Smurfs Kart
Stone Age Digital Edition
Truth
Virgo Versus the Zodiac
War and Peace
Whisker Squadron: Survivor
WitchSpring R
WrestleQuest
X Invader

[argyle]

Games added: Code of Princess EX (switch)

Last week: Finished nothing, played Souldiers & Ys IX

This week: Mostly Ys IX

Souldiers continues to be an incredible game, but the slowdown has gotten worse on the Switch version I'm playing to the point that it's seriously affecting my enjoyment. So I've decided I'm going to sell my copy & pick it up for the PS4 (I want it physical because it's such a great game). Starting over will not be a chore.

Still really enjoying Ys anyway, so I'll just be focussing on that until I get Souldiers swapped around.

[crimson_tide]

I liked Ys 9. It was cozy as hell.

Played: a lot. Couldn't find anything to play

This week: I am starting my crpg arc.

Beat: Nothing.

Bought: Nothing.

So Ishin is likely to be my action game for the moment. Since my racing arc died in like January and Midnight Suns was a tactical RPG, I think I want to get into more crpgs. You know, Divinity, Baldur's Gate, Shadowrun. That kind of thing. I am probably going to start with Wasteland 3, Divinity Original Sin or Shadowrun. We'll see.

Fam, I am having an issue that's driving me nuts. My PS Plus which I mostly pay for at this point for the 100gb of online storage is being extremely flaky as of late. Last night, it said the last 20 saves just didn't upload because it was full. Which is impossible because I have more than 92gb out of 100gb remaining. But the message says I don't have any space. Has anyone here ever had this happen? I can't find anything about it in Google searches which is strange. I can't be the only person this has ever happened to ...

[argyle]

Fam, I am having an issue that's driving me nuts. My PS Plus which I mostly pay for at this point for the 100gb of online storage is being extremely flaky as of late. Last night, it said the last 20 saves just didn't upload because it was full. Which is impossible because I have more than 92gb out of 100gb remaining. But the message says I don't have any space. Has anyone here ever had this happen? I can't find anything about it in Google searches which is strange. I can't be the only person this has ever happened to ...

I found this from a quick Google search:

"You can save up to 100 GB of PS4 saved data and 100 GB of PS5 saved data. The number of PS4 saved data files you can store is limited to 1000."

It seems unlikely, but you don't have 1000 saves stored do you?

[Phaseknox]

Still really enjoying Ys anyway, so I'll just be focussing on that until I get Souldiers swapped around.

I liked Ys 9. It was cozy as hell.

I’m liking Ys IX enough to currently have a Krysha/White Cat avatar (she’s adorable), but it hasn’t been appealing to me quite as much as Ys: Memories of Celceta and Ys VIII which are a couple of my favorite JRPGs. It lacks the same varied bright and colorful environments, and sense of adventure. I get that it’s a different game and that’s fine, but it’s a bit dark and gloomy with a somewhat repetitive game loop of running around a big city talking with NPCs and going into the Grimwald Nox fighting waves of enemies.

I think I want to get into more crpgs. You know, Divinity, Baldur's Gate, Shadowrun. That kind of thing. I am probably going to start with Wasteland 3, Divinity Original Sin or Shadowrun. We'll see.

I didn’t really like the Divinity Original Sin games, I found them to be too slow paced with too much lengthy dialogue that took forever to get to the point and they were also on the difficult side. The second is better than the first, but still suffers from the same issues. I have other CRPGs such as Pathfinder 1 and 2, Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2, Torment: Tides of Numenera and Wasteland 2 and 3, but I haven’t played them yet. I hope that I like them more than the Divinity Original Sin games, but there’s a chance that CRPGs just aren’t for me. We’ll see.

[crimson_tide]

Fam, I am having an issue that's driving me nuts. My PS Plus which I mostly pay for at this point for the 100gb of online storage is being extremely flaky as of late. Last night, it said the last 20 saves just didn't upload because it was full. Which is impossible because I have more than 92gb out of 100gb remaining. But the message says I don't have any space. Has anyone here ever had this happen? I can't find anything about it in Google searches which is strange. I can't be the only person this has ever happened to ...

I found this from a quick Google search:

"You can save up to 100 GB of PS4 saved data and 100 GB of PS5 saved data. The number of PS4 saved data files you can store is limited to 1000."

It seems unlikely, but you don't have 1000 saves stored do you?

Huh. I thought I could use Google, guess I was wrong . I just went in and deleted 200 things. I am a notorious dabbler so everytime I start a game, it creates a save. I also make WAY too many saves (I am the guy that sees the auto save then I immediately make a new save as soon as possible just in case). Hopefully that fixes the issue. If not, imma be real sad I deleted that Galak-z and Street Fighter 5 demo save .

And Phase, this crpg character creation ish is scaring the hell out of me! So many choices, such analysis paralysis ! I ran right back to the safety of Ishin. I need to be brave though, Midnight Suns taught me that this could be the genre for my old ass. I ain't good at none of these character action titles, I suck at beat em ups, I get clowned in fighting games...basic action RPG's and turned based is going to have to be my go to because I still want to see cool ish happen when I press buttons. I know Divinity Original Sin 2 has preset characters, maybe to start I will go with one of those. But Wasteland 3 had a great opening before I got scared by the character creator. And they want me to make TWO characters ?!? I gotta suck it up ...

[Phaseknox]

Phase, this crpg character creation ish is scaring the hell out of me! So many choices, such analysis paralysis ! I ran right back to the safety of Ishin. I need to be brave though, Midnight Suns taught me that this could be the genre for my old ass. I ain't good at none of these character action titles, I suck at beat em ups, I get clowned in fighting games...basic action RPG's and turned based is going to have to be my go to because I still want to see cool ish happen when I press buttons. I know Divinity Original Sin 2 has preset characters, maybe to start I will go with one of those. But Wasteland 3 had a great opening before I got scared by the character creator. And they want me to make TWO characters ?!? I gotta suck it up ...

Why did you start with Wasteland 3 instead of 2? I haven’t played either of them, so I don’t know what their character creators are like. As for the Divinity Original Sin games, the main problem that I had with them is that every single battle is long and drawn out even against weaker enemies. And almost all of the enemies including animals like alligators use magic attacks instead of melee attacks to the point of ridiculousness. There are no quick battles where you can just spam the attack command and wipe out the enemies to grind, every battle is methodical and tactical. Add in endless amounts of text dialogue to read, and I was finding everything to be too slow paced for my liking. Perhaps you’ll feel differently, but I just couldn’t stick with them for those reasons.

[jfissel]

Finished: The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

Now Playing: Mario Kart 7, ??

Added to Backlog: Nothing

Current Backlog: 42 games

Beat A Link Between Worlds - was pretty good, though I never played A Link to the Past. Starting Mario Kart 7 for 3DS.

[Phaseknox]

Ys IX really picks up in chapter 4, it starts to feel like the previous Ys games a little more with you finally getting to leave the city and traverse the more organic outskirts surrounding it. The dungeons also get better, and you get Anemona/Doll who is a great character who kind of reminds me of Aegis from Persona 3.

I’m on chapter 5 now, and I’m enjoying the game more than I originally was. I’m glad that I stuck with it, because I was thinking of quitting during chapter 3 because I didn’t really like that chapter because it’s mostly about the Credo/Hawk character which I don’t like very much.

The story is an interesting mystery, and the cast of characters are a colorful likable bunch. While the story is a little on the darker side, it includes a lot of anime tropes and humor which I find appealing. The game itself offers a pretty good variety of things to do in it, and it has a somewhat small scale open world feel to it where there’s collectibles/loot, quests and objectives all over the map. The combat is somewhat fun since each of the characters have some cool special attack moves, but it’s kind of button mash-y with no real weight to it. Traversal is fun since you can zip line to certain spots, run up walls and glide. It makes getting around fast and snappy.

My main issue with the game is that normal is a little harder than I would like, and easy is a little easier than I would like. From what I can tell the only difference between the two is how much damage that you take. On normal you take a fair amount of damage, and on easy you don’t take much at all. Enemies still seem to be the same difficulty taking the same amount of hits to defeat. I think that I’m going to try normal again, because easy really is easy. Usually I find easy to be normal in games which was the case with the previous Ys games, but in this game it’s pretty much a cakewalk to the point where the game has just been feeling like an interactive story presenting no challenge whatsoever. While I don’t like to be challenged to the point of frustration, I do like to be somewhat challenged where I have to do more than simply press the win button.

I also don’t really like the concept of different characters dealing more damage to specific enemies forcing you to constantly switch characters. I just want to play as the characters that I like, and not have to switch to characters that I don’t like just because they happen to deal more damage to certain enemies. Also, this concept is hindered by the fact that you can only have three characters in your party at a time. So you can’t access all of the party members while playing which means sometimes you can’t switch to the ones that deal more damage to the enemies that you’re fighting if they’re not in your party. I admit that in action RPGs such as this I prefer playing as one character instead of having a party of playable characters, I only really like having a party of playable characters in turn-based RPGs.

Another complaint that I have is with the graphics, they’re extremely dated. While they’re dated in the previous Ys games as well, I like their more colorful art design/direction better. Everything in this game has a flat look to it with simple low detailed textures, and no real visual effects such as lighting or weather. It’s all just kind of drab and plain looking. There’s really no excuse for a game as new as this to look as dated as it does when something like Ni no Kuni that came out back in 2011 for PS3 looks better.

Nitpicks aside, this is a pretty good anime style action RPG overall. Everything about it is fairly solid for the most part, and it’s different from the norm. It’s been holding my interest which is more than I can say about a lot of other games that I’ve played recently.

[isthatallyougot]

Still playing Animal Crossing WW on the DS and Max Curse of Brotherhood on PC.

Max is a really fun platformer. There are some good puzzles and the world has physics in play which make some of them a little more "organic" feeling, which I enjoy. The production values are top-notch for a smaller game. (I don't know what the budget was.) But overall, it's an easy recommend for anyone into the genre. I've still got a good way to go, but I've seen enough to know what it is.