The Backlog Check-in Vol. 212: 1/22/22: Pokémon Legends: Arceus Edition

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Phaseknox
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The Backlog Check-in Vol. 212: 1/22/22: Pokémon Legends: Arceus Edition

Post by Phaseknox »

Played: Alchemist Adventure, Light Fairytale Episode 1, Light Fairytale Episode 2

Finished: Light Fairytale Episode 1, Light Fairytale Episode 2

Playing: ?

Added: Just Cause 3, Unsighted

I finished Light Fairytale Episode 2, it took me 4 1/2 hours which was a little longer than Episode 1. While it was good, I liked Episode 1 a little more since it was a better balance of story, character interaction and combat. Episode 2 was more dungeon traversing and combat with a little story and character interaction mixed in. It was also a lot more serious lacking the comedic moments of Episode 1, and the majority of it didn’t focus on the main story but on a side story that almost felt like a long side quest. Of course it ended to be continued since it’s an episodic series, and I have no idea how long I will have to wait until I can play Episode 3.

Games releasing this week
Active Neurons
Cake Invaders
Calturin
Cannibal Cuisine
Circuit Superstars
Cogen: Sword of Rewind
Elasto Mania Remastered
Gav-Gav Odyssey
Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX 2
The Longest Road on Earth
Mortal Online 2
Pokémon Legends: Arceus
Reverie Knights Tactics
Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem
Summertime Madness
Super Onion Boy 2
S.W.A.N.: Chernobyl Unexplored
Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection
Vagante
Wanderer
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Phaseknox
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Re: The Backlog Check-in Vol. 212: 1/22/22: Pokémon Legends: Arceus Edition

Post by Phaseknox »

I started playing Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition, and based on what I’ve played of it so far I’m just not seeing why it’s such a highly praised RPG even for its time (1998). It’s overly complicated, confusing and cumbersome. I assume that its open design structure has something to do with its popularity since RPGs were usually more linear back then, but everything is fairly unintuitive and lacking fun factor. It has some good ideas, but they’re executed rather poorly IMO.

When you first start the game you’re given a wall of text stating something along the lines that you’re an orphan that was raised by a mage at a magic academy/library near a small peaceful town where you have lived most of your uneventful life up until now when your foster father has uncharacteristically out of nowhere told you that you have to escape with him immediately without explanation. He’s given you some money to buy armor/weapons/supplies at the town’s inn for your travels. Then the game abruptly starts with you standing in front of the town’s inn. In a JRPG this text backstory would be the actual beginning of the game fully playable with gameplay and character interaction, not just hastily told via a wall of text with no accompanying story images to go along with it.

The intro story states that you’re 20 years old, and the NPCs in the town treat you as if you’re young even often referring to you as a kid to emphasize your youth. Yet when you create your character most of the character portraits and voices (except one) that you can choose from are older adults, and your actual character model looks like an older adult as well. Your friend in town is supposed to be young too, but also looks like an older adult but has the one young voice that you can choose. So if you choose that voice, you both have the same voice. As you continue to play the game after leaving the town, you’re continuously referred to as young by NPCs that you come across and interact with. This is similar to a lot of JRPGs where you often play as a young protagonist in their teens or early adulthood, but the difference in JRPGs is that the characters and their voices look and sound like teens/young adults and not like older adults like in this game. It pulls me out of the experience when I’m playing a character that looks and sounds old that’s supposed to be young.

I want to like this game since it’s a fantasy RPG with a decent story and cast of characters so far, but there’s a lot going against it that’s making it difficult to get fully engrossed into. The complicated and confusing menus and mechanics that it has don’t help matters any. Some things are easy to understand, while others aren’t.

There’s a lot of content offered here including both Baldur’s Gate games and their expansions, so I want to give it a chance without writing it off too soon. But while there’s things that I like about it, there’s unfortunately things that I don’t as well.
Last edited by Phaseknox on Sun Jan 23, 2022 10:32 am, edited 2 times in total.
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crimson_tide
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Re: The Backlog Check-in Vol. 212: 1/22/22: Pokémon Legends: Arceus Edition

Post by crimson_tide »

I looked at that Phase, seemed a little to old school pc rpg for me so I didn't bite.

Played: DQ...Heroes? Warriors? The DW based one, Toki, Renegade, Steam World Dig 2, DBZ Kakarot...Lego DC Supervillains and Earthbound. I think that's it...

Bought: Mini Phase haul incoming: Steam World Dig 2, Double Dragon 4, DD/RCR Collection, Cars 3, Aiwa's Awakening, Super Bomberman R, Chasm (thanks Izzy and Phase :) )

This week: DBZ Kakarot

So I am currently enamored with the milquetoast spectacle that is DBZ Kakarot. I started playing on a whim on Friday and it just finally clicked. The mundane sidequests are actually simple but touch on a lot of dumb old Dragon Ball stuff. It mixes well with the large scale button mashing spectacle. I get why people don't particularly love this game. But it's scratching an itch right now with the familiarity of the story but wondering what will be playable (they had some strange but good cuts with Frieza's arc this far) and the relative simplicity that I am absolutely here for at the moment :) .

Playing Earthbound is...playing Earthbound. Trying to get more smaller and retro stuff in too. Steam World Dig 2 is pretty fun too. Might save it for Vita after Earthbound.
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isthatallyougot
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Re: The Backlog Check-in Vol. 212: 1/22/22: Pokémon Legends: Arceus Edition

Post by isthatallyougot »

I've been tempted to get in to the old school CRPGs phase, including the Baldur's. I already have the idea going in that there will be an acclimation period. Whether I'll ending liking them or not, who knows, but I know I'll have to be patient and give them a bit of room to breathe, given their age and my inexperience with the genre.
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Dragon kick your a$$ into the Milky Way!
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Phaseknox
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Re: The Backlog Check-in Vol. 212: 1/22/22: Pokémon Legends: Arceus Edition

Post by Phaseknox »

crimson_tide wrote: Sun Jan 23, 2022 9:17 amI looked at that Phase, seemed a little to old school pc rpg for me so I didn't bite.
isthatallyougot wrote: Sun Jan 23, 2022 10:41 amI've been tempted to get in to the old school CRPGs phase, including the Baldur's. I already have the idea going in that there will be an acclimation period. Whether I'll ending liking them or not, who knows, but I know I'll have to be patient and give them a bit of room to breathe, given their age and my inexperience with the genre.
I’ve always been a console gamer except for a couple of brief periods in the past when I dabbled in PC gaming, but despite somewhat liking it I didn’t stick with it for very long for some reason.

I was born and bred in the arcades, and my gaming interests have always leaned more that way when I was in my youth. I didn’t really like RPGs until the SNES, and even then I preferred action ones to turn-based ones. I didn’t really get into turn-based RPGs until the PS1.

I never really had an interest in Western developed computer RPGs, I always found them to be overcomplicated and dull. Also, I didn’t usually care for their aesthetics either. I was a big anime fan, and always preferred Japanese games to Western ones.

During the 80s and 90s Japanese games were by far the most dominant on consoles which is part of why I preferred console gaming to PC gaming. I always found JRPGs to be colorful, cute and fun unlike their more dark, dry and serious PC counterparts.

I didn’t really start to like WRPGs until on the Xbox and more so on the Xbox 360, that’s when they started to be less stuffy and more streamlined. And of course I was older as well, and was more interested in dark and serious stuff at that time as opposed to colorful, comical and cute.

I still liked JRPGs, but not as much as when I was younger. So the tables had basically turned, I started becoming a bigger fan of WRPGs than JRPGs. And that’s kind of how it’s been ever since. But even so, I still don’t think that old school PC RPGs like Baldur’s Gate are really my thing. I can appreciate them more now than when I was younger, but they’re still more complex, complicated, confusing and unintuitive than I would like.

I’m going to give Baldur’s Gate more of a chance today, but I have a feeling that it’s not going to stick. We’ll see.
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Phaseknox
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Re: The Backlog Check-in Vol. 212: 1/22/22: Pokémon Legends: Arceus Edition

Post by Phaseknox »

I played more Baldur’s Gate today, and I can see why it would have been appealing back in 1998. But playing it now it feels archaic and dated, and I was having a hard time really getting into it because of that. It’s not bad, but it looks and feels old which it is.

I started playing Romancing SaGa 2, and it clicked with me right away. The combination of colorful and cute anime style 2D pixel art graphics, and turn-based combat are always appealing to me and stand the test of time. Playing a classic JRPG always takes me back to my youth, and makes me feel nostalgic.

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canedaddy
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Re: The Backlog Check-in Vol. 212: 1/22/22: Pokémon Legends: Arceus Edition

Post by canedaddy »

I remember debates/wars about that game on the ol' IGN board. :lol:


Played recently: Donut County, Valkyria Chronicles 4

Finished: Donut County

Added to backlog: nothing

Current backlog: 21 (17 PS4, 4 Switch)


Donut County was a great time. Short but very sweet. Thanks for the recommendation, jfissel (and anybody else who mentioned it, I can't recall).

I decided to fire up Valkyria Chronicles 4. As you all may know, I love this series and was shocked we got another one... but somehow I hadn't gotten around to playing it before now. That is being remedied.
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argyle
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Re: The Backlog Check-in Vol. 212: 1/22/22: Pokémon Legends: Arceus Edition

Post by argyle »

Donut County is great, I actually played through it a second time last year. :D

Games added: ...nothing?

Last week: Finished nothing, played Like A Dragon, Bejeweled 3, Mortal Shell (very briefly)

This week: My focus is still LAD, need to wrap it up before next Friday (the 4th) when Dying Light 2 comes out - shouldn't be a problem.

I'm on chapter 9 I believe of LAD now, still hitting the side quests & part-time hero stuff heavy whenever it pops up. Awesome game. The Bejeweled is mainly because I haven't felt great for the past couple of weeks - got started on some new diabetic meds that have some nasty side effects up-front that supposedly taper off. Here's hoping... So Bejeweled is basically the digital version of twiddling your thumbs. :P

I had installed Mortal Shell from Gamepass a while back but never played it. Was cleaning up my drive and saw it so fired it up. It's more Dark Souls than Dark Souls. :P That's not to say it's BETTER, but it's just practically a carbon copy of the basic design of those games. So...yeah. Dunno why it exists, honestly. *shrug*
"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed
if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I
became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the
desire to be very grown up.” ― C.S. Lewis

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Phaseknox
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Re: The Backlog Check-in Vol. 212: 1/22/22: Pokémon Legends: Arceus Edition

Post by Phaseknox »

I stopped playing Romancing SaGa 2, it’s a good retro pixel art turn-based JRPG but there’s other games that I would rather be playing right now.

I started Watch Dogs: Legion and it seems pretty cool, it’s like an espionage version of the Ubisoft open world formula. But it’s too much game than I want to tackle right now. It’s kind of based around stealth and gadgetry which I’m just not really in the mood for at this time.

I started playing Iconoclasts, and it’s a cute and colorful 2D side scrolling action platformer with some environmental puzzle solving. It plays fast and responsive, and has charm. I plan on sticking with it because it’s fun.

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jfissel
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Re: The Backlog Check-in Vol. 212: 1/22/22: Pokémon Legends: Arceus Edition

Post by jfissel »

Finished: Nothing

Now Playing: Final Fantasy VII Remake, Dysmantle

Added to Backlog: Dysmantle

Current Backlog: 40 games

Decided to buy and start Dysmantle on PS5. I like it so far, but I'm really just trying to go around, gather materials, upgrade the items I have, and not get killed by zombies...rinse and repeat. The latest mission has me branching out to other areas, so hopefully it opens up a little bit. I can craft a fishing rod now, just need to find the materials!
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