Tag: ys viii

#oneaday Day 842: Quick catch-up

I forgot to write something on here yesterday! In my defence, I wrote nearly 4,000 words on Ys VIII over on MoeGamer so I think you can probably cut me a bit of slack. I'm still going to take this post to "catch up" though.

I really enjoyed Ys VIII overall. It still feels a bit odd to play an Ys game that is 50+ hours long, but the game didn't drag at any point. It consistently sends you to new and interesting locales, and the story develops in some thoroughly intriguing directions as you progress. I successfully got the "true" ending, which isn't all that difficult to get (you just need more than 198 reputation points, which are easily acquired through just normal gameplay) and everything wrapped up in a most satisfying manner.

After writing my piece on Ys, I went back to the excellent Nighthawks, which is a spectacularly good game. As you might expect, I will be writing a more substantial piece on this once I've finished it, but suffice to say for now that if you have enjoyed any of the relatively recent crop of what I like to call "storytelling RPGs" (Disco Elysium, Esoteric Ebb), then you will definitely get a kick out of Nighthawks.

I think one of the things that always impresses me the most about a good quality game like this is how it can truly create a sense of a world without having an actual 3D space you can freely wander around. For me, the primarily text-based world of Nighthawks is considerably more compelling than a fully 3D modelled but ultimately bland and personality-free "open world", particularly because of the colourful characters that inhabit that world. It's funny, because this is exactly what the capital-A "Adventure" snobs were talking about in the early days of the medium; if you have a suitably compatible brain, the imagery conjured up by your mind from reading text will always be more vivid than anything even a powerful video card can render. (Of course, the fact that Nighthawks has beautiful art and excellent voice acting also helps a lot.)

Once I've finished Nighthawks, I'm going to play Silent Hill Townfall, which looks like it's going to be thoroughly interesting. I'm oddly excited to play a game with such accurate-looking renditions of a British (well, Scottish) town, and I'm intrigued to see how the game differentiates itself from other Silent Hill games. I didn't love Silent Hill f, although I didn't hate it either; from what I understand, Silent Hill Townfall is quite a different beast anyway, so I'm excited to explore it.

After that, I think it's going to have to be Ace Combat 8. I love Ace Combat, and this new one has been getting excellent reviews. I'm happy about that. The series deserves to do well, and it's nice to have a game like this on modern hardware. I mean, the PS2 Ace Combat games still look surprisingly great, but it's even better to have something in full HD-o-vision.

There we go, all caught up. Now watch me forget to write something later today.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 834: Gaming update

One of the things I was originally thinking about doing with MoeGamer was doing more regular "updates" on what I've been playing recently. I still haven't actually done that — at least partly because I haven't determined a good way to do it; perhaps a weekly "What I've Been Playing" column? — so for now, today, I am going to provide that update in the form of a blog post here. Strap yourself in!

I've had several games on the go recently. My Final Fantasy XI playthrough stalled when Oliver went missing and I haven't picked it up again since that; I've got to a point in that game where it feels quite demanding to play in terms of attention span and patience, and I haven't quite felt up to that yet. That's not a criticism — I think one of the best things about Final Fantasy XI is its depth and complexity — but I do very much have to be in the mood for it. I also have the issue that I finished the bit of the game that I was most interested in playing — the Chains of Promathia expansion — and thus I'm early in Treasures of Aht Urhgan and it hasn't quite "hooked" me in the same way just yet.

I have, however, started a few other games. Probably the "main" one of these I'm playing at the moment is Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana, which I've been meaning to have a look at for pretty much the last ten years. I did start it one evening when we had some friends over, we all got a little tipsy and one of them wanted to see an RPG, but I set it aside after that because I was already playing some other things. This time around, I started over (again) and have been thoroughly enraptured by it; it's an excellent game, with speedy combat and progression, a real, genuine sense of adventure, and a compelling story. It's very long for an Ys game — I'm 40 hours in and only just getting hints that we might be getting towards an ending, but my map exploration rate is only about 75% — but I think it works. "What Ys is" has changed a great deal over the years, and it seems that this one is (quite rightly) regarded as one of the best of the "modern Ys" titles.

I've also been playing Suikoden as part of the HD Remaster collection, and I've been mostly enjoying that. It's another game that I feel like I have to be in the right mood for, although this is less to do with its complexity and more to do with its relatively sedate pace of proceedings. I need to get back to it and finish it, because I was enjoying it a lot (aside from the army battles, which suck) and I would like to see how it ends. I also believe it's quite short, and I'm a good way through it, so it would be nice to cross it off the list sooner rather than later. Perhaps I'll play some of that today.

The next "big game" I have on my radar to play is Wadjet Eye Games' Nighthawks, a text-based RPG which is heavily inspired by (but not licensed from) the White Wolf Vampire: The Masquerade setting — with some notable differences, such as "no Masquerade". I played the demo of this a while back and it looks like being something incredibly special. Beautiful art, excellent voice acting, a well-crafted script with memorable characters — I'm looking forward to giving it a good amount of attention, and almost certainly writing something about it once I've spent some time with it.

I was hoping to get both Ys VIII and Suikoden finished before Nighthawks came out, but I don't think that's going to happen, given that Nighthawks is out early next week. I should be able to polish off at least one of them, though; at the rate I'm going, I think Ys VIII is likely to be down for the count first, but we'll see.

On the non-narrative game front, I have been playing Super Mario Galaxy 2 after really enjoying (and completing) the first one while we were away on holiday. I've also been playing Kirby and the Forgotten Land, which is a game I like a lot, but for some reason find it difficult to focus on for long periods of time.

I think part of the issue with Kirby is that each level has a bunch of optional objectives to complete, and it doesn't reveal them until you've either already done them, made progress on one that has multiple steps, or just completed the level without achieving them. In the latter case, it only reveals one of the optional objectives at a time, so if you have absolutely no idea what they are, it takes up to four playthroughs of a single level to get all the Stuff. This feels a bit like padding, but the game as a whole is so charming (and the levels so relatively quick to play through) that I should probably just get over myself and get on with it. I've actually been doing just that at lunchtimes this week.

Finally, this afternoon a group of friends and I will be playing some Big Walk, which we've been working our way through at the weekends. We finished it a few weeks back, but we're going back in to try and clean up some of the puzzles we didn't complete prior to heading for the ending. It's been a really good time; I was worried that it would be another Blue Prince kind of situation, where a bunch of critics lost their shit over how "good" it supposedly was, but I'd end up hating it, but no; I've been really enjoying it.

Anyway, that's where I am. I think some Ys for a few hours, then Big Walk later. Then tomorrow I'll do some video recording. Sounds like a plan to me!

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.