Backlog 2021

All other video games not related to the main farming series - Pokemon, Stardew Valley, My Time at Portia, and other indie-developed games.
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Bluie
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Right you are! I went to check my email and there was my backer key! Thanks for the heads up!
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Mikodesu
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Hope you had fun if you got the chance to play today, Bluie!


--
And that's Subnautica: Below Zero. I'm having a lot of thoughts, mostly just floating in that pensive soup that gets you after a good game.

I think after watching a bit of a streamer play the game and after my time with it, I think the general consensus with the series is you're going to like the game YOU play first the most. I still see problems with Below Zero, I see where the focus went and where it didn't, but I think that balance was better for me.

It seems to be less scary than the first game, I personally prefer the environments, and there's cuter creatures (imo). The environments aren't all as filled out as the first game, but what is there is notably more polished.

I also felt like the story was really well balanced. I could see someone who didn't have ANY experience with the first game and played this being pretty disconnected from it, because it references the first game HEAVILY, but...it's still good. Open world, hands off story telling done well. There are cutscenes, you don't have to hit them (save for the beginning and ending). There are story beats you can completely miss! More people on Steam have beaten the game than have gotten this really crucial story beat!

But that's okay. You can come back and play again and find what you missed. Fill out parts of the story you don't fully understand.

I'll have to think more on why this seemed to work but something like Breath of the Wild failed. Because honestly it's fairly similar. Piecing together what happened to people while you weren't there, while doing things in the present that are, themselves, a story. :/ Huh.

Mildly spoilery schtuff:
Spoiler:
Had another "negative" interaction with a Sea Monkey on my victory tour. Wanted a screenshot of it for a phone wallpaper I want to make, and it stole my sea glide. It flashed the light on the ceiling of the cave until I took it back. Silly buggar. When you have more air their antics are just cute. :)

I'm KINDA...KINDA salty that the ending was a cliffhanger. To be fair the first game was too. Just...this feels more...unfair isn't right. More like I just wanted it more. AL-AN is a good boy.
TLDR: I loved it. If you don't have a paralyzing fear of deep water and love explorey/crafty games, it's excellent. Below Zero is also substantially better optimized. My rig is not that powerful and it's kind of a lemon and I still got a steady 60fps out of it with minimal pop-in.

Since Subnautica is done...tomorrow I'll start Chicory! Gives me a little time to ruminate, too, which I think is good after you finish something.
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Kikki
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Mikodesu wrote:I'll have to think more on why this seemed to work but something like Breath of the Wild failed. Because honestly it's fairly similar. Piecing together what happened to people while you weren't there, while doing things in the present that are, themselves, a story. :/ Huh.
This was baffling to read, and then I figured out what you meant and laughed, lol. At first I'm thinking 'but BotW was a huge critical and financial success!' Thinking too literally. Took me longer than it should have to realize that you meant a failure for you.

With nothing else to do, game-wise, I've been watching Deebeegeek play BotW. I saw his first video months ago but didn't continue with it...I've only ever tuned into his XC1 stuff, since then. But like I said...nothing to do! So I since I've already over-played BotW myself, and I like DBG (well, as much as I like any YouTuber or Live-streamer, since I'm not really a fan of Let's Plays or anything like that, in general) since his personality is light and goofy (though he swears way too much for my tastes! At least he's laughing when he does it, so it doesn't feel so aggressive), so I've been watching.
Spoiler:
Funny thing...the story feels much heavier, watching him. Much bigger. I guess it's the perfect amount of gameplay to story. It's so condensed on YouTube...you see him explore a little, because BotW is just that kind of game, plus he always shows when he does derpy stuff like accidentally strand his horse on the side of a cliff...but a lot of the time he's getting towers for the regions he has to go through, searching out memories, and he goes through the divine beasts relatively quickly, too. So you've got this really good balance between gameplay and story...there feels like there's lots of story when you watch him play, as opposed to when you play for yourself and you may spend 50 hours between cutscenes because you kept doing shrines or finding treasure or harvesting flowers and shrooms.

Now that I've seen it in this format, I can't really think of what BotW is missing, story-wise. What the story is, is fully fleshed-out. We fully come to understand Zelda in particular, imo, and with Zelda's one journal entry in particular, we get a lot of insight into Link, as well. I loved the bit about the reason why he's always silent. Who the Champions each are is well established, too. Of course, we don't get everything. After all, Link's memory is gone and he's recovering shards of it here and there...they don't fit together seamlessly.

Anyway, this has given me new appreciation of BotW's story. I no longer feel like it needs more. That's been interesting. When I first played it myself it felt unsatisfying because story bits were so few and far between. I find watching content creators a bit aggravating because it tends to get repetitive and silly, but this was worth doing, imo. I haven't watched all of them yet, and I don't know if I will, but I've seen him free 3 of 4 divine beasts, at this point.
I haven't decided whether or not I want to play my free copy of (the original) Subnautica. It sounds stressy, which puts me off. Guess I should at least TRY it before deciding it's too stressy, though!

Probably won't play anything today unless it's a little XCX. The side of me that really hates quitting is currently being tormented by the Cozy Grove icon, but I honestly think it's irresponsible to continue to play a game that makes you so mad your bad mood actually carries over into real life. I have to delete it now. For the sake of the sister whom I live with, at the least!
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Mikodesu
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Oh no, I meant that Breath of the Wild's story was a failure. Everyone who plays the game seems to come out with at least a couple of characters they love but I've seen VERY few people defend its storytelling structurally speaking. The argument always comes back to Nintendo needing to return to traditional, linear storytelling, which I think my experience with Below Zero shows isn't the issue.

All I've really come up with that seems to be the problem is the time period. 100 years was always a little ridiculous. I don't think the game even represents that gap well, but...my point is the disconnect it leaves, so I'll stick to that.

Mildly spoilery and the game's only 4 years old at this point so:
Spoiler:
Imo the only successful part of the overall narrative is the zora's. Entirely because there are some characters with SOME living memory of the overall story, of the events that matter to you the player. Having 3/4 of the 'regional stories' so totally disconnected from the world/time you the player are trying to uncover and essentially connect to diminishes their impact on the overall narrative.
Whereas the events of Below Zero are all still very recent. There's physical evidence of every struggle strewn about the land and sea. It's just up to you to gather evidence, environmental and audio logs, to put the whole thing together.

That's all I've got for now. :lol: Open World story telling is never going to be the same as structured, I'm just glad I've seen a more successful example of it so I don't write it off entirely.
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Panda Parfait
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Kikki wrote:I haven't decided whether or not I want to play my free copy of (the original) Subnautica. It sounds stressy, which puts me off. Guess I should at least TRY it before deciding it's too stressy, though!
The stress level varies a lot between players, so it's definitely something you'd have to try for yourself! A lot of people find it relaxing. I did not. I don't think any other game has ever made me feel as stressed out as Subnautica did lol.

Anyway, I've mostly been too exhausted to care about playing video games, but I have been plugging away at Mass Effect Legendary Edition little by little and finally finished Mass Effect 1. This has always been my least liked game in the series and I don't see that changing, but the changes to combat in the LE did make it a lot less frustrating to play, which I very much appreciate. Its been a looong time since I last played it, so it was a nice little nostalgia trip. On to Mass Effect 2!

I also need to get around to catching up on FFXIV eventually. I didn't even get any of the event items :(
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Kikki
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The guy I've been watching lately loooooooves the story of BotW, and he's rubbed off on me. I always liked what was there, but the vast amount of gameplay dividing the shards of story made it feel very 'lite' to me, before. I have a new appreciation for it now, though. I don't mind that it's a story that was put on hold for 100 years, though I'm not sure why they went with that particular time interval. I guess for the 'wild' feature, of being able to have the world be mostly reclaimed by nature? To have let Hyrule go back to seed, with very little civilization left, more or less. That couldn't have happened in only a year or two...or if it did, the damage would be so bad that it'd just be a wasteland. Not that they couldn't have tried it multiple ways. Ten or twenty years probably would have been better but maybe it just sounded too insignificant or something. Or...maybe this is going to be another Ocarina of Time split dealio. Maybe BotW2 is another timeline or something. Not sure how I'd feel about that.

~

Yeah, I'm going to have to try Subnautica, cuz I can't tell. If the bad fishes can be beat up relatively easily, then no problem, but I'm betting that's not the case. Or if you can turn that feature off...but I assume you can't. I have to look up if there's some kind of sandbox mode or something.

EDIT: Fulfilled my civic duty as a gamer who must occasionally interact with actual human beings and officially deleted Cozy Grove from my Switch this morning.
Daikon boy
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Reached chapter five in ikenfell. Maybe in the next few days I'll beat the chapter?
I also turned my switch on and played through a section of persona 5 strikers and then played some digimon after I was done with that. I'm excited for monster hunter stories 2, but, that's obviously still going to be a bit before I can play.

Might put disgaea on pause until I beat some other games and know if I'll have enough time to play it or not. I'm still early enough that it wouldn't be a huge deal to just start it over at a later date if I wanted to, and I don't want to get too far in and then run out of time to finish it, or not be able to finish one of the other games I've put some time into already. (Crosscode would be a great game to be able to pick up and play as I want with the puzzles making me want to break for it around the rest of the game, but I'm far enough in that I wouldn't want to have to do everything all over again so I'm better off just beating it now.) So I might just not play disgaea anymore? Until I know if I can beat everything I want to.

Also unlikely that I'll beat monster sanctuary in time, but that's only unfortunate in that I'm basically playing it for free and don't really see myself buying it anytime soon. Someday probably/maybe, but, not for a long time.
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greensara
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I'm still working on DQ11. While I am still indifferent to a lot of the story, (afraid DQB2 may likely be the only game in that franchise to lay claim to a chunk of my heart, lol) there have been a couple of instances now that have actually threatened the gut-punch of onion ninjas and some have genuinely made me angry too.
Spoiler:
Especially that pervert Booga! Bleck!!! Yes, I get that's a trope, but man, I hated that portion so bad I considered just quitting the game without finishing it. Jade's revenge was justified, but didn't completely get the bad taste out of my mouth.
In Stardew Valley, I made another farmhand in my main file and moved Krobus onto the farm too! I also found out about a chair sitting glitch that lets you go into the forest and quarry early and tested it out in my beach farm file. Unfortunately you get stuck over in the quarry until you pass out, but you can come back out of the forest.
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Bluie
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Finished all of World End Economica Complete, but also not because I think my game glitched out? Like, the story got resolved and everything was fine, but then I was booted back to the title screen with no credits and the CG gallery unlocked. There's a whole two pages of CGs that I never saw that are definitely 'after party' CGs that probably ran over the credits. I looked through all of them and didn't feel like I lost any context because they all really spoke for themselves. Anyways, I'm marking it as done. Sekai Project should really playtest their games more and this is definitely going to make me shy away from buying anything from them in the future. Looking forward to the anime adaption down the line.

I'm now torn on if I want to focus on Everyday Today's Menu for Emiya Family or start Chicory. I kinda sorta want to finish all my Switch 'backlog' (which is only the above said game) and then play my PS4 for a bit. The next big release for me is Monster Hunter Stories 2, which I am very excited for and is my last big purchase of the year until Pokemon/Endwalker in November (side note: I am buying the Legend of Mana remaster, but I have already played the ever loving heck out of it on Vita, so it's mostly going into the pile of 'old favorites' instead of being backlog material). I'm gonna hit my Switch HARD once MHS2 comes out and even after I finish it. Unless Genshin drops the Inazuma update, I really have no reason to boot the PS4 up unless there's a seasonal even in FFXIV or I want to use Crunchyroll. So, in finishing Chicory (and the current Genshin content) after TMfEF, I would rather go back to my Switch with nothing hanging, I guess. I'll have to see what my mood is tomorrow/the next day anyhow. I'm busy with work until the middle of next week and I'm being dragged to an escape room with the family tomorrow in which I will most likely not get to bed at a reasonable time, and therefore be a gump-a-lump at work and so on.

I'm still upsetti that I'm working on the day of Nintendo's E3 presentation. Could I get someone to send me a link to the video (I guess the one they upload after the fact?) so that when I get home I can watch it without being bombarded by spoilers. I'd prefer not YT due to it's asinine recommendation system, but if there's not other choice, ah well.

Also, on the topic of E3, don't we usually have a thread around here by now? I don't remember who's made it in the past.
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Kikki
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Bluie wrote:I'm still upsetti that I'm working on the day of Nintendo's E3 presentation. Could I get someone to send me a link to the video (I guess the one they upload after the fact?) so that when I get home I can watch it without being bombarded by spoilers. I'd prefer not YT due to it's asinine recommendation system, but if there's not other choice, ah well.

Also, on the topic of E3, don't we usually have a thread around here by now? I don't remember who's made it in the past.
Sure, Bluie :) I can do that again the same as last time (sending you a direct link to the presentation, I mean.)

I don't remember who made the thread either. I thought it was either you or Kirie. Obviously it wasn't you, then...
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Ronin19
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So I managed to fight my computer to the end of Mass Effect Legendary Edition. I managed to get 110/127 achievements (would have been 111, but one of them is glitched and I'll have to get that on another playthrough, which won't be until I upgrade my computer)

I think I'll play another PC game just to test and see if it's my PC as a whole though, just in case. I'll head back to Crosscode soon after.
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Harvest Moon kawaii
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Currently playing:

Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir (Switch)
Alba: A Wildlife Adventure (Switch)

Up next:

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney Trilogy (Switch) ((Currently on the first game out of the three included))


So, I played the tutorial of Carnivores: Dinosaur Hunt. It brought back childhood memories. A bit too afraid to play more of it and get to the more dangerous dinosaurs. Because, those scared me as a child. :lol:

Also, played a bit of that Dot Connect. That's pretty fun, but you can only play it in handheld mode, which makes your arm tired.

The Tales of the Djungarian Hamster is pretty cute. Really easy.

I don't think I like Piczle Cells very much, because it reminds me of 2048, I think it is.

I love playing Alba: A Wildlife Adventure because it's really cute, fun, and relaxing, and I would recommend it to anyone who hasn't played it yet. I think I'm close to beating it.

I also, believe it or not, picked Chinese Parents back up for the first time in a few months. I made it to Generation 10. :)

Also, in Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir, I made it to the very beginning of Chapter 5. :)

Projected backlog (things I will but tomorrow or Sunday):

Game Builder Garage (Switch) (physical)

A new (4th) micro SD card.

More Nintendo e-shop/Steam cards.
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The mail sure has been different since covid. I got Age of Calamity last night at 7:30 PM, dropped off at the front door. It used to be that only Canada Post delivered anything, and always around noon, here. Of course, it should go at the SIDE door, which has a little roof over is otherwise protected, too (though entirely openly accessible). Anyone with common sense would instantly see that that door is where you deliver. Not only is the mailbox there, it's protected from rain, and if you set a package on the ground in front of that door, it's also hidden from view of the street as long as it isn't taller than your waist.

Drivers from this Intelcom place always plunk it on the front door, though. They don't have two atoms of common sense to rub together, I guess.

Woke up in the middle of the night for Reasons and couldn't go back to sleep. Played a bit instead, because: might as well! AoC definitely cannot become a main game for me. It's cool in little spurts, but it's too messy and chaotic and just not my type of gameplay, so I can't 'main' it. I mostly like gathering materials to unlock different spots on the map. The combat is just...well honestly I need to go back and do a tutorial again, probably. I've forgotten how to do most stuff. But even if I were really good at the combat I don't think I could 'main' AoC. But my next thing-to-do in gaming is definitely refresh my memory on the mechanics of this game, so that I don't suck quite so mightily.

I do really like the idea of cleaning rust right now in Haven...but it's too short for a main. I'm back to debating over Sakuna and Ys IX as a main. Legend of Mana will be out on June 24...but it doesn't feel very 'main', either, even if I decide to get it on or close to release. Guess since I'm certain I'll get Ys IX some day and not certain I'll get Sakuna, that's my answer right there. Right? That sounds sensible. I can't convince myself, lol.

I really should try to go back to sleep now, though. It's been a couple hours since I woke up but it's still only quarter after four...pretty sure I could go back to sleep for two hours. Weird body, don't you want to sleep? (I think it mostly wants heavenly hash ice cream, tbh. Fortunately, I don't have any.)
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Bluie
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Kikki wrote:
Bluie wrote:I'm still upsetti that I'm working on the day of Nintendo's E3 presentation. Could I get someone to send me a link to the video (I guess the one they upload after the fact?) so that when I get home I can watch it without being bombarded by spoilers. I'd prefer not YT due to it's asinine recommendation system, but if there's not other choice, ah well.

Also, on the topic of E3, don't we usually have a thread around here by now? I don't remember who's made it in the past.
Sure, Bluie :) I can do that again the same as last time (sending you a direct link to the presentation, I mean.)

I don't remember who made the thread either. I thought it was either you or Kirie. Obviously it wasn't you, then...
Thank you friendo~

I guess I could make the E3 thread? If there isn't one by the time I get home from work, I'm sure I could whip it up. We're certainly going to need it to have a place to sort out all our thoughts + have a place to collect info.
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Kikki
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You're welcome :) I have direct links to the LIVE presentations already, though those will change after the live is over. I'll send you the, er....'dead' links?...as soon as I can get them :)

I went ahead and made the thread since E3 starts in 3 hours, which is probably long before you're back...you seem to work quite a bit so I doubt they let you off after only a couple hours.

~

Ys IX: Monstrum Nox releases on Nintendo Switch on July 6th, and I can't help but think it'd be shortsighted of me not to get it on Switch so that both of my sisters (and bro-in-law) can try it. The sis I live with loved Ys VIII, but she mostly liked building the base and finding survivors, which won't be in this one. (One reason I also am not as interested in IX as I was in VIII.) So on that hand, she'll probably never play it. And my baby sis will vom if she tries to play a game with that type of camera motion, since she's considerably worse than me and I'm reasonably sensitive to VGMS. But her husband would play it! And he'd play on PS4. LOL. Argh, that makes me unsure of what to do, again. Probably PS4 is better, then? Since we talked about it and we're both pretty sure she won't be interested in Monstrum Nox.

Come to think of it...that was not helpful.
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