madbuk

#417 - Persona 4: Dancing All Night Here is a game I had never expected to be able to play. The UI on this game is atrocious, and the fact that my vision on my left side is limited, it made playing the demo of Persona 3 Dancing practically impossible because I simply wouldn't see any notes on the left side and thus couldn't press them. Some advice I got recently made me go back to that demo, and made the game far more playable - the notes aren't random, they work in a clockwise/anti-clockwise fashion, so that lets me know when to swap my attention to the other side. Unfortunately, this rule isn't always the case - the one song I tried to play on All Night difficulty was all over the place, and some of the songs on hard had double hold notes that I just had no idea I was supposed to press, but for the most part it's correct and the plat never makes you play All Night, so I didn't have to worry about that. I might try practicing it in the future for fun, like how I regularly return to Miku despite having 100%, but I don't expect to ever clear a song on the highest difficulty. Initially I was cautiously excited for this game for the story mode - I had heard bad things, but I still liked the idea of there being a story connecting the rhythm gameplay, but now that I've played it... nah. Now I'm excited for Persona 5 which doesn't have that at all - it's so poorly paced (takes at least an hour to get to the first song), very predictable, and just not engaging at all. Some of the voice actors also changed from Golden and this game has taught me that Ashley Burch only has one anime voice, because she sounded identical to Mayurii in Steins;Gate lol. I'll probably play Persona 5 Royal before diving into 5 Dancing, but vision/UI gripes aside this was still a very enjoyable plat and I'm eager to play more with, imo, a better OST. I'll be skipping 3 because I hear that has spoilers.

Progress Update: #417 - Persona 4: Dancing All Night Here is a game I had never expected to be able to play. The UI on this game is atrocious, and the fact that my vision on my left side is limited, it made playing the demo of Persona 3 Dancing practically impossible because I simply wouldn't see any notes on the left side and thus couldn't press them. Some advice I got recently made me go back to that demo, and made the game far more playable - the notes aren't random, they work in a clockwise/anti-clockwise fashion, so that lets me know when to swap my attention to the other side. Unfortunately, this rule isn't always the case - the one song I tried to play on All Night difficulty was all over the place, and some of the songs on hard had double hold notes that I just had no idea I was supposed to press, but for the most part it's correct and the plat never makes you play All Night, so I didn't have to worry about that. I might try practicing it in the future for fun, like how I regularly return to Miku despite having 100%, but I don't expect to ever clear a song on the highest difficulty. Initially I was cautiously excited for this game for the story mode - I had heard bad things, but I still liked the idea of there being a story connecting the rhythm gameplay, but now that I've played it... nah. Now I'm excited for Persona 5 which doesn't have that at all - it's so poorly paced (takes at least an hour to get to the first song), very predictable, and just not engaging at all. Some of the voice actors also changed from Golden and this game has taught me that Ashley Burch only has one anime voice, because she sounded identical to Mayurii in Steins;Gate lol. I'll probably play Persona 5 Royal before diving into 5 Dancing, but vision/UI gripes aside this was still a very enjoyable plat and I'm eager to play more with, imo, a better OST. I'll be skipping 3 because I hear that has spoilers.

#416 - Dynasty Warriors 6 Empires After playing multiple Warriors spin-offs (One Piece 1/2, DQH1/2, Persona 5 Strikers), I figured it was about time to finally try out a main entry, and this one was the earliest with trophies so I figured it'd be the best starting point. A short way into it, someone told me that... Empires was not in fact a great representation of the regular DW games, because it has a heavy emphasis on strategy and simulation and making your own story, whereas apparently the normal ones are more linear and more story-focused. So perhaps I'll try 7 sometime in the future as well. This game does an awful job at being approachable for complete newcomers. There were no tutorials anywhere to be found, and I had no idea what I was doing for the first few hours, even with the trophy guides. Eventually I figured out how simulating it works, and someone taught me that the game has a block button - would've been nice if the game had told me that - so the early missions became so much easier once armed with that knowledge. After the initial hurdle of the first few events you become so overpowered that blocking becomes a waste of time though. One big thing I liked about this game compared to One Piece and Dragon Quest is that there was nothing literally gating your progress through a stage. So many times in DQH/OPPW (especially OPPW) you'd be standing still in front of a door waiting for all the dialogue to end just so it'll open and let you advance. Overall I wasn't a fan of the strategy/simulation/random events nature of this game, so I don't think I'll ever be playing 7 Empires or 8 Empires, because that seems to be the main core of the Empires games. I hope regular 7 will be more to my tastes.

Progress Update: #416 - Dynasty Warriors 6 Empires After playing multiple Warriors spin-offs (One Piece 1/2, DQH1/2, Persona 5 Strikers), I figured it was about time to finally try out a main entry, and this one was the earliest with trophies so I figured it'd be the best starting point. A short way into it, someone told me that... Empires was not in fact a great representation of the regular DW games, because it has a heavy emphasis on strategy and simulation and making your own story, whereas apparently the normal ones are more linear and more story-focused. So perhaps I'll try 7 sometime in the future as well. This game does an awful job at being approachable for complete newcomers. There were no tutorials anywhere to be found, and I had no idea what I was doing for the first few hours, even with the trophy guides. Eventually I figured out how simulating it works, and someone taught me that the game has a block button - would've been nice if the game had told me that - so the early missions became so much easier once armed with that knowledge. After the initial hurdle of the first few events you become so overpowered that blocking becomes a waste of time though. One big thing I liked about this game compared to One Piece and Dragon Quest is that there was nothing literally gating your progress through a stage. So many times in DQH/OPPW (especially OPPW) you'd be standing still in front of a door waiting for all the dialogue to end just so it'll open and let you advance. Overall I wasn't a fan of the strategy/simulation/random events nature of this game, so I don't think I'll ever be playing 7 Empires or 8 Empires, because that seems to be the main core of the Empires games. I hope regular 7 will be more to my tastes.

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#415 - Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two I have been interested in trying this game out for years, but never got around to it. PS Now has given me the opportunity, and... it's okay, I guess. The platforming is disappointingly easy, and having to follow a guide every step of the way because it's incredibly easy to take one wrong step and lock yourself out of quests and/or collectibles and thus necessitate an entirely new run from scratch, doing everything again, because there's a 100% trophy. Thankfully there are some good guides out there for this, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous the entire time that I'd mess something up and have to restart lol. The game is very pretty, with a nice variety of locations you visit, but that's really all it has going for it tbh. Everything else is so basic, and never really evolves throughout the game at all. If you've played one hour you know what to expect from the rest of the game pretty much, so it just gets repetitive. Some more challenge in the platforming may have kept it interesting, even if it did still remain generic. The AI being uncapable of performing certain actions and thus requiring a second controller to replace him is pretty bad, I'm not surprised the Vita version is below 1% rarity considering the amount of ad hoc it'd require. Other than the co-op stuff, I wouldn't really say anything else in this game is bad, maybe the way it handles missables, but nothing really stands out either. It's just average. I'm glad to have finally played this after being curious about it for years, but nothing would really have been lost if I had never played it either.

Progress Update: #415 - Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two I have been interested in trying this game out for years, but never got around to it. PS Now has given me the opportunity, and... it's okay, I guess. The platforming is disappointingly easy, and having to follow a guide every step of the way because it's incredibly easy to take one wrong step and lock yourself out of quests and/or collectibles and thus necessitate an entirely new run from scratch, doing everything again, because there's a 100% trophy. Thankfully there are some good guides out there for this, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous the entire time that I'd mess something up and have to restart lol. The game is very pretty, with a nice variety of locations you visit, but that's really all it has going for it tbh. Everything else is so basic, and never really evolves throughout the game at all. If you've played one hour you know what to expect from the rest of the game pretty much, so it just gets repetitive. Some more challenge in the platforming may have kept it interesting, even if it did still remain generic. The AI being uncapable of performing certain actions and thus requiring a second controller to replace him is pretty bad, I'm not surprised the Vita version is below 1% rarity considering the amount of ad hoc it'd require. Other than the co-op stuff, I wouldn't really say anything else in this game is bad, maybe the way it handles missables, but nothing really stands out either. It's just average. I'm glad to have finally played this after being curious about it for years, but nothing would really have been lost if I had never played it either.