A Green Mushroom

I replayed FFXV.  I waited until they patched in the New Game Plus mode so I could pick up with all my levels, skills, post game content, and items. This time through the game I only did the critical path, no side questing at all.  With my character levels this meant I got through the story really fast, which is exactly what I wanted.  Although, Chapter 13 still feels slow even with super high level characters and the patch they put in to make the magic faster. But, I think I appreciate the story more the second time.  I still like the surface level stuff going on and the relationships between the main party, but this second time I understood the story better between the main protagonist and antagonist.  And that story between Noctis and Ardyn is probably one of my favorite Final Fantasy stories ever.  I wish it were explained better the first time through instead of having a big info dump at the end.  It had a much bigger impact on me when I k...

I've been trying tons of Gamefly games lately and writing about them.  I intend to keep do so, but I just had a run of RPGs show up from Gamefly that just didn't click with me at all. Oh, by the way, we set up a Gamefly offer for listeners/readers to get you a free trial if you're interested.  I still love the service so if it's intrigued you at all while I've been talking and writing about it for the last month or so go check it out . But anyway I'm realizing it takes a lot for an RPG to impress me these days.  One has to grab me with it's setting, story, characters, battle, and progression systems.  It has to do it quickly too. The amount of RPGs without "Final Fantasy" in the title that have held my attention over the past few years is slim.  Persona 4 Golden is the most notable exception, followed by Bioware games, and then games like Bravely Default which might as well be called Final Fantasy. I keep hoping something else will break t...

Persona 4 Dancing All Night is the latest entry in games I'm sampling via Gamefly.  It's basically turning into my Autumn of Gamefly around here. It's a rhythm game set in the same world as Persona 4 with the same characters.  Persona 4 Golden is now one of my favorite games ever so I really just wanted to see what this had to offer. It turns out it has a whole new story and some decent rhythm gameplay.  Symbols fly at the edges of the screen and you hit buttons in time with the music.  It works well enough and Persona 4 has great music to draw from.  My only nitpick with it is that the visuals on screen are so busy that it's often hard to see the notes coming.  I adapted to it fairly quickly but it still threw me off occasionally. I played it for a day or two but the reason I ultimately sent it back is because the story failed to engage me.  It's about idol culture in Japan (pop star idols) and an upcoming concert.  It turns out that to...

Bravely Second was the last game in my gaming backlog.  I picked it up for a trip a few month ago and just never got around to playing it.  Now I have! I have to say, the underlying systems in this game are great.  Everything I loved about Bravely Default is here and most of it has actually been improved upon.  The old systems have been tweaked in good ways and the new systems just add to the game.  I love everything they're doing from a mechanics standpoint. But... after five or six hours with Bravely Second the story still failed to grab me.  It's set in the same world with a bunch of the same characters and I think that's a major stumbling point.  They all had a complete story arc and now they feel shoehorned into another adventure.  The new characters interact with the old characters and I just fail to care.  Maybe if I buckled down and pushed on further it would change. For now I just need to set this game down and know I'll co...

My latest Gamefly game was Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE.  If you haven't heard of it I'm not too surprised.  It's a Fire Emblem and Shin Megami Tensai (SMT) crossover game that's exclusive to Wii U and the localization is text only so all the voices are still in Japanese.  Talk about having a narrow niche for your game. I found that I loved Persona last year, which is also a spin off of the SMT series, and I've really enjoyed the last few Fire Emblem games so I thought there might be something here for me. And I did!  Kind of. The core gameplay mechanics are really solid.  I was having fun with the combat, progression, dungeons, and little touches like the texting mechanic in the game.  I loved the style of the game, very bright and with colors that pop.  It has a cool style to it.  And the fact that it's definitely based in some anime influences didn't bug me too much either.  It's kind of quirky. A minor complaint, which isn't ...

I recently resubscribed to Gamefly since I made it to the end of my gaming backlog for the first time ever.  This is going to let me rapidly try out games that have kind of been on my radar as B tier games for awhile.  This is stuff I would maybe buy when it eventually falls to $5 or $10, but I think this is going to be a better way to approach it. The first game I was sent was Star Ocean Integrity and Faithlessness.  I liked the style of the visuals and I was looking forward to a Sci Fi JRPG since most of them are fantasy. What I found was a generic fantasy JRPG with generic action RPG combat.  Nothing about it stood out at all and the amount of the game I played was super exposition heavy.  I never once felt interested in the world or characters. I looked it up and apparently the game doesn't open up and become a Sci Fi JRPG until later in the game.  For me, I don't want to grind through the generic fantasy setting to get to that. So, back to ...

I'm finally completely finished with Fire Emblem Fates.  This game is definitely in the running for my game of the year pick. The Revelation campaign is the third and final campaign in the game.  It's highly recommended that you finish both of the other campaigns first to get the most out of it and I can see why.  Revelation pulls from both of the other stories and gives you the details about what's happening behind the scenes.  It's the middle path, and the one I think I would have chosen if given the option initially. It's super cool to see all these main characters that had to fight and kill each other in the other two campaigns finally meet as allies.  It allows for all sorts of interesting conversations.  Pairing up troops from opposite sides of the war was especially fun. Not to mention that the ending of this campaign felt like the true ending of the game.  Both of the others were satisfying but incomplete.  Playing through all th...

I played the first few hours of Persona 3.  After loving Persona 4 Golden I was hoping I could take a step back to the previous entry in the series and still get a lot of enjoyment out of it. I don't think I can. There's nothing really bad with Persona 3 but there are just so many little things that Persona 4 Golden does well that it's hard to go back to this one.  Part of the problem might be that the version I have access to is P3P which is the portable version.  There are almost no 3D free roaming parts to the game except in dungeons.  It makes the whole world feel a more flat and makes it harder to connect with the characters since all you see are their anime portraits.  After reading up on it, apparently there are other versions out there that are better but they're hard to get a hold of. Anyway, the core concept of the plot is interesting and the gameplay has the core of what I liked about Persona 4 Golden.  I bet if I played this game first...

I followed up reading the D&D main three books by looking through the starter set I've had sitting on my shelf for awhile. It's a really well done adventure to kick things off and looks like it has enough content for a good 4-6 gaming sessions.  There are plenty of hooks and fleshed out encounters in the starter set.  I can see why it's such a good place to start. It's hard to know how good it is overall without actually running it with a group, but it's definitely something I'll hold onto and pull from some day. The thing that surprised me the most was actually how many combat encounters there were.  I feel like most of the D&D that I watch or listen to online is at it's best when players and NPCs are interacting to move the story forward.  Not necessarily when they're in combat.  I think if I were to run this for a group I would dial back the combat encounters by at least 50%, but that's all personal preference.  I know there are...

Coming off of reading the Player's Handbook and the Monster Manual it was really cool to dive into the Dungeon Master's Guide. It's basically a giant toolkit to help you create worlds and run the game.  Most of the actual rules for playing the game moment to moment live in the Player's Handbook so technically you don't need the DM's Guide, but it's still really cool. There are all sorts of tables to roll on to randomly generate loot, dungeons, situations, stories, and almost anything you can think of. But, the part I liked the most were the leading questions that make you think.  If you're trying to figure out your world or story or setting or whatever... this is the book you want to be scanning.  It has so many cool ideas and hooks that you can take and run with.  I see now why this is such a helpful tool for DMs. Now that I have a greater context through these books I think I'm going to look through the D&D starter kit adventure... ...

I finally got back around to my Fire Emblem Fates Conquest campaign and finished it off!  I really liked it! I was sitting at around 60% done with the campaign.  I had jumped into it right after finishing Birthright in the first week that Fates came out and just gave myself burnout on the game by playing so much.  Now, coming back to it, it only took me another two days to finish off the campaign and wrap it up. It's really cool to see the other side of the story.  Birthright covers siding with the Hoshido side and Conquest is about picking the Nohr side.  This is definitely the darker story.  Hoshido is more conventional and you get to be the "good guy" pretty clearly.  The Nohr side sees you trying to change things from within an evil kingdom even though you're trying your best to not be evil.  It's actually more interesting because of that. But, it's also the harder campaign by far.  Birthright has some challenges but most levels...

After writing about Dragon Quest 3 last week I followed it up by trying on Dragon Quest 8 on iOS since I already owned it anyway. It's better.  It changes up the exploration, look, and feel of the game a bit because of it's transition from 2D to 3D.  I thought because of this it might hold my attention for awhile and maybe it could even become the second Dragon Quest game I finished fully. But after only a few hours with it I was done.  It was quickly obvious that the same exact battle system and underlying mechanics are the same here as they are in every other Dragon Quest.  There's nothing new and exciting to switch things up outside of the jump to 3D graphics and that's just not enough for me. It looks like I'll mostly be sticking to Final Fantasy games when I want to go back to older JRPGs and not venture much more into Dragon Quest.  One of the core concepts of Final Fantasy that I've always loved is the constant reinvention of itself.  Somet...

After loving the Final Fantasy series so much I thought I should go back and check out another famous JRPG series with Dragon Quest. I played around with Dragon Quest 1 and 2 awhile ago and wrote about them.  While I liked DQ1 and finished it when I got to DQ2 it felt like more of the same, only paced much worse. Whenever it was that I bought these I also picked up Dragon Quest 3 and 8 since they're out for iOS too.  I finally got around to giving DQ3 a try and... it's ok I guess. It again feels like more of the same.  Nothing new or innovative.  Nothing close to the reimagining that Final Fantasy undergoes with every entry.  But it's ok I suppose.  I played it for a few nights, leveled up my party and completed some objectives... then set it down.  I probably won't pick it back up. Most people I've talked to about the series say that it doesn't change much from game to game and that's part of the appeal.  I need more variety than that...

This is the last of the games I picked up on the Steam Summer Sale that I've been sampling.  It's kind of a mixed bag for me. I typically like South Park's modern episodes and I thought Stick of Truth might be like them but instead it relies a lot on the crude humor and in-jokes of South Park which are kind of the weakest part of the show. The combat system is decent enough and the base of the game is structured like a typical RPG.  But, that's one of my problems... it's just typical.  It doesn't do a lot to break genre conventions or add something new to the game.  The only unique thing about it is that it has a South Park skin slapped on top of it. And that's just not enough for me right now.  Maybe some day I'll come back to this game but not right now.  That being said, if you're a huge fan of South Park I bet you would really like this game.  If you're more of a casual viewer like me... not so much.

After a talk with a friend the other day I realized that I've always wanted to get into tabletop RPGs.  D&D has been the front-runner in my mind and I've played a few sessions here or there with friends but I've never actually had a persistent RPG campaign... and that seems like where all the fun is. On a whim I bought the D&D starter set without actually having a group in mind.  But then I starting thinking about it and I realized that my kids my like to use their imaginations in an RPG setting.  At 3 and 5 they both have great imaginations and communications skills. "That's it!"  I thought, "I'll DM for my kids!" I got the starter set and immediately realized that there were too many numbers, stats, and violence to play D&D with kids their age.... so I started googling and found this gem .  It's a starting place and basic rules for non-violent D&D for kids.  It's super simplified and it gave me a good jumping of...

I beat Birthright within a week of picking up Fire Emblem Fates and I loved it! Fire Emblem Fates sees you taking on the role of Corrin, a prince or princess (you choose) who was raised by the Nohr royal family but then soon finds out that they were a member of the Hosido royal family that had been captured at a very young age. If you're unaware of the Fates situation, basically there are three campaigns but you don't buy them all together.  You purchase one version of the game and get that as your first campaign.  This is either Birthright (which I picked) or Conquest.  Birthright sees you siding with Hosido the family of your birth while Conquest will keep you with the family that raised you. Once you beat that campaign you get the choice to purchase either of the other two campaigns at half price and download them directly into your existing game.  The third campaign, Revelations, is a middle path that ties both of the other two together. All of the ca...

Persona 4 Golden is one of the greatest JRPGs that I've ever played.  It's amazing.  I was blown away.  I haven't had a game hook me like Persona 4 did in such a long time, it was absolutely a treat. The game is extremely story driven.  If you don't like story in your RPGs then this one isn't for you.  The whole game encompasses a year in the life of the unnamed protagonist (you) as you spend a year in a new town as a transfer student. You move in with your uncle and cousin in the small town of Inaba and start the school year.  You begin to make friends with other students when a series of murders happens in the local community and things take off from there. It turns out there's a whole other world that this one is connected to and inside of it are shadows (enemies) and Personas (positive super-powered versions of people).  A lot of the fun is the mystery of finding out what is going on with the connection between worlds as you and your w...

Yeah, ok, I'm late to the party. I went back and forth about picking up this game ever since it released.  I had tried the first two Witcher games and they didn't click with me, but I kept hearing rave reviews about the series.  Then this third game launched and it's ended up on so many game of the year lists that it's crazy. One of the biggest Witcher advocates I've seen is Syl .  She's a long time blogging and twitter friend of mine (she's awesome, you should follow her on twitter ) and I think she finally got sick enough of my indecision that she grabbed the game for me when it was on Steam sale. I have to say, thank you so much Syl!  This game is great! I didn't think I was in a mood for another open world game, but this game has been fantastic.  The story hooked me within the first hour and I went almost entirely critical path ever since then. Even going critical path through this game I could see the detail to worldbuilding and dedica...

This post obviously contains spoilers.  You have been warned. I have to say that I like Fallout 4's main story so much better than Fallout 3's.  I completed Fallout 3's main quest because I felt like I should.  I finished Fallout 4's because I was really excited to see what would happen.  The story actually drove me to complete it, which is super rare for a Bethesda game.  I still don't think I've actually seen an ending to any of their Elder Scrolls games that I've played. Fallout 4 is my favorite Bethesda mainline story so far. The intro to the game was super cool.  I loved seeing the world of Fallout before  it was destroyed.  That futuristic yet 50's style is so well done.  It's the first true glimpse of that world that they've ever let us see and I thought it was a big insight into the rest of the world of Fallout. Shortly after entering the Vault and narrowly avoiding death by nuclear war you are frozen for 200 years in a cr...

Let me pose a question.  Do you use the default character? Because a lot of the time I do. When I started up Fallout 4 last week I was so excited to get into the game but within the first minutes you are thrown into the character creator.  I know a lot of people who will spend hours creating their character... but I don't. All I did was change a couple of the scars and tweak the hair color slightly.  It took me less than a minute.  Basically, I'm just using the default character the game provided me.  And I'm completely fine with it. The best part was getting to the gameplay right away.  I didn't have to put my excitement on hold while I tweaked and modified and changed and tweaked some more.  I got to dive into Fallout 4 right away. As long as the default character isn't horribly ugly I do this in a lot of games.  I played through all of the Mass Effect series with the default male Commander Shepard. I'm extra glad I didn't spe...