Cassylvania's Miserable Little Pile of Platinums

[Darling Baphomet]

I'm happy to see Ikenfell get mentioned by you! It was one of my favorite games of 2020 by a wide margin and it's a shame so few people know about it.

[Cassylvania]

On 1/7/2022 at 0:05 AM, Darling Baphomet said:

I'm happy to see Ikenfell get mentioned by you! It was one of my favorite games of 2020 by a wide margin and it's a shame so few people know about it.

 

It was a great game. It's not going to win my GOTY, but I think I'd put it in my top 10 from last year.

 

Okay, well... I was hoping to have my project done by now, but it's taking longer than expected, so let's just finish off these awards. Next year, I'm doing all this in January so I can actually include the December games!

 

Alright, guys. Now for the moment you've all been waiting for...

 

The 3rd Annual Best Games Played in 2021 But Not Necessarily Released in 2021 Awards

 

Game of the Year (1st Place)

 

Enough trolling! Time for the only award that actually matters. How close was the competition in 2021? Well, like I said, there were only four games I was considering for GOTY and about a dozen for worst GOTY, which is I guess what we should start with...

 

I don't think this is going to come as a surprise.

 

Worst Game of the Year (2021)

 

What makes a game bad? I guess that could be a lengthy discussion, but I want to discuss what makes some "bad" games better than other "bad" games. I've talked before about how I rate movies and why I think most rating scales tend to be too lenient. If you're giving everything a 6 or 7 out of 10, "5" isn't really your average -- 6.5 is. Why bother having a scale if you're not going to use all the numbers? Besides that, what point is there to having a 3 or 4 on that scale, when they're still considered below average? Is there really a difference between a 3 or 4? If there is, it doesn't seem as noticeable as the difference between a 9 or 10.

 

I point this out because when I go to rate movies, I use "3" as my basis. To me, 3 is an average movie. It's inoffensive but forgettable. If it's better than that, then I have a whole suite of numbers to choose from. It really allows me to differentiate from something I think is worth watching (say, a 6 or 7) to something great (8 or 9) or decent at best (4 or 5). Very rarely do I give a movie a 10, and for good reason. If you start showering everything with praise, that praise loses meaning.

 

So, what's a 1 or 2? On my scale, 2 is bad. I'm not kidding when I say about 60% of movies I watch fall into this category. I don't care that it throws off my average or whatever -- I do it because who really cares if a movie is slightly bad or really bad? I still wouldn't recommend either. It's only when a movie is TRULY PUTRID that I consider a 1. Much like 10, I feel like it really needs to be justified to belong there.

 

Deiland is an especially bad game for several reasons. For one, unlike a lot of games I play, this is a genre I know well, so I can look at it and say to the developers, "Yeah, you fucked up." I will always be more critical of farming sims because of this. Second, because I've played a lot of games in this genre, I've seen many of these concepts performed better and the mistakes stick out to me a lot more. Some of the decisions made in the design of this game baffle me. This goes way beyond giving it my Worst Graphics of the Year award. I've read several reviews about this game and nobody has mentioned feeling nauseous while playing, so I guess that's just me. It doesn't matter. They could pan the camera back and make the planet bigger and it still wouldn't stop this game from being fundamentally broken.

 

Why is this game garbage? Let me describe the gameplay loop to you. You are alone on this tiny planet. You have three plots of land on which you can grow crops. They take a certain amount of real world time to grow (let's say 8-15 minutes). You can speed this up by watering them or just put down your controller and wait out the clock. You can also grow trees and mine or fish for resources. These take time to replenish. Every few minutes, your planet gets invaded by monsters. I could be a little off here, but it seems to be about every 15-20 minutes and it spawns exactly three monsters. You must kill these monsters or your character will refuse to do other any work. Every now and then (probably just as often as the monsters), a visitor will stop by your planet and stay for exactly one minute. You can buy or sell items from these characters and they'll sometimes offer you side quests. The side quests usually involve gathering items (either from farming or killing monsters) or talking to another of the visitors when they stop by. That's...about it. You can technically upgrade your tools and character to get a little stronger, but it's as bare bones as it gets. I certainly wouldn't call it an RPG.

 

This may not sound so bad until you realize most of the game is waiting. No, I take that back -- the ENTIRE game is waiting. This is very different than something like Animal Crossing or Cozy Grove, where story progression is gated but there are enough gameplay elements to keep you busy while you wait. There is nothing "fun" to do while you wait in Deiland. Because you are alone, there are no NPCs to talk to, except the ones who occasionally visit. And instead of appearing on certain days or as a surprise, they announce their visits with an annoying "HEEEEY!" that breaks any immersion you could possibly have. Worst of all, you have to manually ALLOW them to land. If you don't click OK within the allotted time, they'll piss off until the next cycle. And because those cycles seem timed, it starts feeling very robotic because you'll know a visitor is coming or monsters are about to spawn because "enough time" has passed in your head. It's like a slowly dripping faucet. You know it's coming and you're just bracing yourself for the next PLOP.

 

The ideas here aren't bad. That's what makes this game so frustrating. If the monsters were always present and didn't prevent you from playing, it could be a decent tower defense game. Maybe they're always coming to wreck your shit and you have to keep adding fences and traps to keep them at bay. Maybe you can eventually take the fight to them and destroy their base, which stops them from spawning, but a few roamers can still exist if you need to farm them for resources. Or maybe you can build homes or workshops on your planet for the aliens that visit. Part of what makes sims fun is the ability to automate tasks as the story progresses. You guys always make fun of me for playing Atelier games (OK, you don't, but you probably think it!), but those games are fantastic at introducing concepts that seem overwhelming at first but eventually become trivial as you unlock new abilities and options. Deiland doesn't do any of this and the gameplay suffers greatly because of it.

 

And the thing is, with bad games, I generally forget about them. I played Deiland and Toren around the same time last year, but I only remember this one because it was just THAT bad. On my movie scale, Toren would probably be a 3, which means every game I played last year was at least tolerable...except Deiland. It would be a 2. But it's a very disappointing 2 because there are some promising things here. It just made me mad and I get madder the more I think about it, which is probably the worst thing a game can do, outside of being boring. Which it also was.

 

Very deserving worst GOTY.

 

AJNA: So, are we not allowed to speak or...?

 

Now for the best game of the year! This was actually a pretty easy one for me, despite having to choose from four nominations. I think the harder part was keeping it a secret for this long. You would think the GOTY would win at least one other award, but it didn't because...again, graphics, story, and music don't make a good game. Good gameplay makes a good game. That said, every game that won an award would still probably be in my top 10 for 2021, but the #1 pick was always going to be this...

 

Best Game of the Year (2021)

 

I didn't praise this game enough in my initial review. Shadow Tactics: I Always Forget It Has a Subtitle was the most fun I had playing a game in 2021.

 

"But C-dawg, you hate stealth games."

 

I'd argue this a stealth game as much as Punch-Out!! is a boxing game. Sure, the coating is there, but they're both fundamentally puzzle games. In Shadow Tactics, you're given between one and five premade characters in each stage and have to complete a series of tasks -- generally without being discovered. Each of these characters has a particular set of skills that makes them a nightmare for the enemies you come across, but also weaknesses that the others can overcome. Yuki, for example, is very nimble, but she takes forever to move a body. Mugen can carry two bodies at once without losing any speed, but he's not sneaking up on anybody. So, if the situation calls for you to take out a patrol and quickly dispose of the corpse, you can have Yuki go in for the kill, make a hasty retreat, and then let Mugen throw the body down a nearby well. Due to the variety of skills, enemies, situations, and available characters, this never gets old. It's actually remarkable how many ways there are to clear a map -- or ignore enemies altogether. You generally have to do both, as every map will need to be played more than once in order to complete all the (often contradictory) objectives, but this is one of the few instances where I don't mind multiple playthroughs or speedruns. It's really neat to come up to a different solution to the same problem. For example, if the obvious solution to getting into the enemy base undetected is to destroy all the light sources but one of the objectives asks you not to do that, you might have to start thinking outside the box. That is such a breath of fresh air where the concept of NG+ is usually "do the same thing again, but your stats are higher and/or the enemies are stronger." (Note that I think the latter is significantly better than the former.)

 

I think each stage has nine objectives and requires at least two playthroughs, but sometimes combining objectives can make the map that much harder. I like that you can do them over as many playthroughs as you want.

 

Don't want to touch on the story here, but it's good. The characters are superb. I could have given Yuki best female character of the year, but the others were great too. I really liked their in-game interactions. 

 

That's...actually all I want to say. I guess gameplay is the hardest category to talk about because it's really something you need to experience firsthand, but don't be put off by this being a stealth game, having a terribly generic title, or probably better played with a keyboard and mouse. When I can compare a game to XCOM and Dark Souls -- and say how it does some things better than either of those -- you know I've stumbled into something special.

 

(If you're wondering, Sakuna was the fourth game I was considering for GOTY. I only put it on the outside because it got a little repetitive towards the end, whereas Obra Dinn, Oxenfree, and Shadow Tactics stayed fresh throughout.)

[realm722]

2 hours ago, Cassylvania said:

What makes a game bad? I guess that could be a lengthy discussion, but I want to discuss what makes some "bad" games better than other "bad" games. I've talked before about how I rate movies and why I think most rating scales tend to be too lenient. If you're giving everything a 6 or 7 out of 10, "5" isn't really your average -- 6.5 is. Why bother having a scale if you're not going to use all the numbers? Besides that, what point is there to having a 3 or 4 on that scale, when they're still considered below average? Is there really a difference between a 3 or 4? If there is, it doesn't seem as noticeable as the difference between a 9 or 10.

 

Great job with these! There's so much I went to comment on hah. First of all, your rating scale. I'm guilty of this. I say I use a 1-10 scale, but I don't really. I consider anything the 6's to be "that was something I played. It was fine. If it scores in the high 6's, there may have been some things I liked about it but I wouldn't prolly recommend it for most audiences." A 5 is something I didn't like. A 4 is something I actively disliked or borderline hated. A 3 is the lowest I've ever scored anything video games or movies wise and it's typically the worse of the worse. But I wouldn't feel comfortable still scoring it a 1 or a 2? There was still a product presented to me. I may have disliked the overwhelming majority of it but it's not like it was actively harmful to me. I'd almost feel cruel scoring something that low for the people who worked on it.

 

I agree with you that setting a good basis for ratings is important though. This has been ruined by the masses on Metacritic and the like who score everything an 8, 9, or 10/10. Sometimes I'll hear scores being thrown about and think "really? you genuinely think that's a 10/10?". Meanwhile, the game scored in the 7's for me (Marvel's Spider-Man). I think it's a good game. But that's putting it in an extra stratosphere. I don't think I will play a game that I consider a 10/10 in my entire life. It'd have to be the perfect game for me. If you're handing 10 out of 10's out like candy, it's hard for me to trust that perfect score recommendation. 

 

--- I think doing the reviews in January would be cool. I like to have a clean slate for entering the new year and wash away my thoughts of the previous year so I've settled on writing my reviews in mid-December and to prevent games from getting completed mid-Awards I've played mammoth JRPGs that I couldn't possibly finish in the 1-2 week gaps left.

 

--- Finally, super happy to see Shadow Tactics win GOTY! Your review made me buy the game on sale for $5 and it's been in my backlog. I'll get around to it some time this year and comeback to read your final entry  

[Darling Baphomet]

3 hours ago, Cassylvania said:

What makes a game bad? I guess that could be a lengthy discussion, but I want to discuss what makes some "bad" games better than other "bad" games. I've talked before about how I rate movies and why I think most rating scales tend to be too lenient. If you're giving everything a 6 or 7 out of 10, "5" isn't really your average -- 6.5 is. Why bother having a scale if you're not going to use all the numbers? Besides that, what point is there to having a 3 or 4 on that scale, when they're still considered below average? Is there really a difference between a 3 or 4? If there is, it doesn't seem as noticeable as the difference between a 9 or 10.

 

I think the reason so many games get scores above 5 is that most games today are decent. Even if they're not particularly memorable and even frustrating at times, it's not like we have major game companies pumping out shit like ET on a regular basis. Cyberpunk was one of the buggiest games released in years, but it still had a lot of fans because under all the brokenness there's a decent enough story and open world to explore. Certainly not the most fleshed out open world game, but it'd still make the original GTA shit itself out of every orifice.

 

I'd personally only put a game at 5 or below if the game was unfun to play more often than it was fun. We'd be looking at a game that is uninspired, controls terribly, and probably at least a little bit broken. Even most of the games I don't particularly like these days have a decent enough core concept, and redeeming moments to balance out the awfulness - yes, even you, Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 1. As a medium I think gaming has just evolved to the point where the vast majority of games pass the threshold for "decent". Even when Ubisoft throws out the most buggy, uninspired garbage, there's still competent enough systems and a wealth (perhaps too much wealth) of content available, and it'd still probably blow the mind of anyone who'd only ever played or seen NES games.

[Together_Comic]

12 hours ago, Cassylvania said:

What makes a game bad? I guess that could be a lengthy discussion, but I want to discuss what makes some "bad" games better than other "bad" games. I've talked before about how I rate movies and why I think most rating scales tend to be too lenient. If you're giving everything a 6 or 7 out of 10, "5" isn't really your average -- 6.5 is. Why bother having a scale if you're not going to use all the numbers? Besides that, what point is there to having a 3 or 4 on that scale, when they're still considered below average? Is there really a difference between a 3 or 4? If there is, it doesn't seem as noticeable as the difference between a 9 or 10.

 

Cassy out here making me rethink my entire rating system.  lol.  Looking back at the scores that I've given games, similar to what Realm said, the lowest I've given a game is a 3/10 with the honor going to Jump Force.  Which has the major problem of being boring, but is otherwise a functional video game.  It got me thinking, what what it take for me to give a game a 1/10?  I guess its similar to a 10/10 in that a game would have to be all time good, so for a 1/10 it would have to be all time bad and I feel like typically most gamers are going to avoid all time bad and then boring on top of it (because in the words of jello apocalypse "sometimes a bad movie, is better than a boring one."  same applies to games.) and those types of games are typically avoided.  I guess when you play the indie lottery like Cass though, you sometimes hit on some real stinkers. 

[Rally-Vincent---]

Is a numbers system really useful? I never found numbers decisive. If I read a review, tell me what's important. I can decide for myself if a battle system sounds boring or not. I put games in one of five simplified categories:   Great fun > I like it > it's okay > meh > put away.

 

Either it's fun to play/watch, or it isn't. I don't need more.

[Together_Comic]

26 minutes ago, Rally-Vincent--- said:

Is a numbers system really useful? I never found numbers decisive. If I read a review, tell me what's important. I can decide for myself if a battle system sounds boring or not. I put games in one of five simplified categories:   Great fun > I like it > it's okay > meh > put away.

 

Either it's fun to play/watch, or it isn't. I don't need more.

 

I mean... in a way, isn't that just a number system that doesn't use numbers?

 

5 - Great Fun

4 - I like it

3 - It's Ok

2 - Meh

1 - Put Away

 

? That being said, I think your metric is probably more useful than trying to figure out what someone means when they rate something a 3 or what have you.

 

[Rally-Vincent---]

1 minute ago, Together_Comic said:

I mean... in a way, isn't that just a number system that doesn't use numbers?

 

I would say mine is not a system, because enjoyment is the only criterium. I wouldn't even know what else to tie it to. Ask me why I rank a game somewhere within, and my answer would be a shrug. Some games I like, and others I have to force myself to stop playing because tomorrow is a work day. That's as "deep" as it goes. It's really not a system with certain criteria to judge it against.

[DrBloodmoney]

I like how a small part of your Deiland write up about the numbering system has given rise to a real consideration about the value of numerical ratings on games!

 

For my part, I’ve never liked using numbers as qualitative metrics on games, simply because I suspect they end up overriding the actual points of interest in a review.

 

Back in the magazine days (when I would read reviews with numerical ratings of quality most often), I did tend to find that I would read a review of a game, and think “this sounds like something I’d like”…

…but then I’d get to the end, and see a 6/10, and my dumb brain (which had been conditioned by years of hyperbolic ratings already) would second guess what I had read, and go “well, guess it isn’t good after all.”

 

So silly of me - 1000 nuanced words someone took the time to compose and write, and I took the time to read and parse, describing the game and making me think I’d like it, and it was all undone by a single numerical assignment!

 

 

I generally steer away from them when writing about games myself - (that’s why all I do in my write-ups is an absolutist ranking) - as I don’t think they tell enough story, or cover enough ground at all - and can actually undercut it. They are purely qualitative, whereas actually liking a game is something much more ephemeral.

 

For example, my current No.14 ranked game is This War of Mine.
That game, I think, is marvellous in a number of ways, but if push comes to shove, and I was forced to assign it a qualitative value based on the gameplay / music / visuals etc, it would probably be an 8/10.

Bioshock is 3 places lower, but it would almost certainly  be a 9/10 or a 10/10…

…some people might think that simply shows my ranking list is bullshit (and maybe they’re right ?,)… but I disagree.

 

It’s just that, as far as I’m concerned, there are aspects of games that cannot be qualitatively assessed by a simply number, but matter a great deal - and only discussion in a long-form narrative can hope to break down the impact and effect of such things.

 

I reckon if I did assign every game on that ranking a numerical rating, then it would run roughly from 10/10’s at the top to 1/10’s at the bottom, of course… but to me, there is just too many special cases, anomalies, outliers and interesting exceptions, that having any game be considered ‘merely’ the sum of it’s parts is too narrow a lens through which to view a medium I love way too much not to view every facet of, and consider the whole spectrum of ?

 

…Just my unsolicited two cents!  ?

 

 

[Together_Comic]

1 hour ago, Rally-Vincent--- said:

 

I would say mine is not a system, because enjoyment is the only criterium. I wouldn't even know what else to tie it to. Ask me why I rank a game somewhere within, and my answer would be a shrug. Some games I like, and others I have to force myself to stop playing because tomorrow is a work day. That's as "deep" as it goes. It's really not a system with certain criteria to judge it against.

 

Fair enough,  It was just funny to me that my brain immediately assigned the a number value to each of the ways that you mentioned you could possibly feel about the game.  It probably says more about me than it does anything else.  

 

1 hour ago, DrBloodmoney said:

I like how a small part of your Deiland write up about the numbering system has given rise to a real consideration about the value of numerical ratings on games!

 

For my part, I’ve never liked using numbers as qualitative metrics on games, simply because I suspect they end up overriding the actual points of interest in a review

 

Doc really wants to get me started on my soap box about the American Education system with this comment ?.  Maybe not super relevant to you, but I could definitely go on and on about how the grading and marking system overrides the actual point of student evaluation, but I'll get back on topic since I absolutely don't want to derail Cass's thread.  

 

In other news, I think Cass might just be my own personal backlog gremlin.  Gonna have to look into Shadow Tactics for sure. 

[Grotz99]

I personally don't like how the numbering system can be so broad and based on personal preference unless you have solid metrics behind what calculates the rating. What I prefer to see is games being stacked up to other similar games with the differences pointed out, either good or bad. If there is a chance I've played any of those games, I can get an idea right away if it would be something I'm interested in.

 

For instance with Deiland, I went back to look at the review again and immediately I can tell that out of all the farming sims Cassy has played, this was going to the be the worse one from the first 2 lines in the review. Could have listed some other games that this was closest to in order to give a better idea, but honestly I don't know anyone who has played more of that genre on this forum. Didn't need a number to tell me that I should skip that one already, especially since those type of games aren't my cup of tea anyways. This of course is more difficult if you are putting your toes into the type of game for a first time and would be hard pressed to find some context.

 

I still remember when someone told me that Danganronpa was like Phoenix Wright mashed with the darkness of the Nonary games. That was all I needed to make that purchase as I played both games and was absolutely not disappointed.

[Cassylvania]

Well, I certainly didn't expect my Deiland hate to begin a debate about the validity of numerical rating systems...

 

I guess, to bring it full circle, I only use a numerical system for movies because that's the format on iMDb. But just like with games, I tend to think in terms of tiers. For a movie to get a 10 for me, it has to be in that top tier. The more 10's I give out, the less meaningful they become, so I try really hard to find faults in movies that would otherwise be considered very good. Many of the highest ranking movies on my list are Disney movies, not necessarily because they're my favorite or I have a personal bias towards animated features (but they are and I do), but because Disney tends to make extremely high-quality films. It's hard to find fault with stuff like Inside Out and Zootopia.

 

When it comes to video games...yeah, I think you all made good points. I know a lot of people in these checklist threads use a standardized rating system, and I think that's a good thing. I tend to be harsher with my ratings because I like to think that all of the entries in a single tier are in competition with each other. If I give two games the same rating, I'm essentially saying they're on par with each other, so I find it much easier to give myself many tiers to choose from instead of lumping everything into those mid-tier categories.

 

Of course, for the purposes of this thread, I just give to give you my overall thoughts of the game. You have a list of my favorite games I've played so far in the OP, and I try to sum up every game by telling you whether or not I'd recommend it and/or what would be a good price point. But you know that already. I lead you to the water and you decide if you want to take a drink.

 

Let's see if you want to drink some of this.

 

Platinum #291 - Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights

 

I want to hit the person who came up with that title with the thesaurus they were clearly using. There are six words and every one of them is bad. "Ender" and "Quietus" are not words. Not in the vernacular sense anyway. "Lilies" and "Knights" should not be pluralized. There are clearly only one of each in the game. And "of the ___" is the single most overused prepositional phrase you can use in a subtitle, which shouldn't exist anyway because THIS IS THE FIRST ENTRY IN A SERIES, WHERE SUBTITLES ARE NOT NEEDED. I'm sorry, devs, but I'm going to have to give you an F for making a mockery of the English language. Please see me after class.

 

From here on, we're just going to refer to this game as Lily, as I'm pretty sure that's what we're supposed to call the main character.

 

I usually start with the plot, but this is a Souls-like game, so you know they're going to be very vague about that. For our purposes, all you need to know is there are monsters and you have to kill them and stuff.

 

Now, before you start rolling your eyes about me comparing a game to Dark Souls for the 291st time, let me just say this game actually does something better than any Souls game I've ever played. You see, I've always found it a bit paradoxical (I can use a thesaurus too) that Souls-like games want you to be both a badass and a weakling at the same time. Am I supposed to feel like a god because I'm taking on a horrible monstrosity that can level an entire civilization with a single tentacle, or am I supposed to feel like trash because I keep dying on the first phase? Obviously, you're supposed to feel like trash until you win, and then you feel like a god, but I've always wondered if a Souls-like game would feel more natural if you were playing as a character who actually felt mortal. How would you even accomplish that?

 

These guys found a way.

 

What I like about Lily is that you don't expect her to be a badass. And she's not. She's a little girl. She can run, jump, and do an adorable belly-flop that killed me more times than I'd like to admit, but that's about it. All of her strength comes from the spirits she rescues and the relics she finds throughout the game. When she "attacks," it's not her doing the animation -- it's the spirit. Fundamentally, it works like it would in any other action game, but aesthetically it's a nice touch. It's actually kind of cute seeing Lily brace herself while a crazed swordsman emerges from the shadows and hacks away at the demon in front of her.

 

You can have up to six spirits equipped at a time. There are probably more than two dozen in the game, so that's plenty to choose from. There were some I never even tried. You'll end up with your favorites, but there are some that are notably more useful than others (such as the crow that follows you around) and a few that are invaluable in certain boss fights or for accessing secret areas. You can enhance these spirits to make them more powerful, but I found there aren't enough resources to max out everything, so you'll have to be a bit selective.

 

There are two types of spirits that you'll come across. I don't know what their names are, so I'm just going to call them pink spirits and orange spirits. Because that's what color they are. Pink spirits are what you get from bosses and seem to be more powerful and (usually?) have an unlimited number of uses (or a significantly higher number). They also grant you new abilities since this is a Metroidvania. Orange spirits have a limited number of uses, but can be handy. The crow I mentioned, for example, will fly around and shoot enemies. Another lets you hide in a pot, which I guess could be good for countering or blocking attacks. Another sprays poisonous gas in front of you. Many of these are situational, but it's fun trying out new combinations or realizing a specific spirit can just annihilate one of the bosses.

 

Relics, on the other hand, upgrade your abilities. It's the usual standard fare -- more heals, more healing per heal, less time it takes to heal, etc. -- but you can only equip a certain number at a time. Very Hollow Knight-y. Fortunately, your map is NOT tied to one of the relics, so you'll always have access to that. (And you'll need it. The map is bigger than I would've guessed.)

 

Difficulty-wise, I'd say it's about average for this kind of game. You'll die a lot, but you'll come back stronger. Most bosses only have a few attacks, and eventually your muscle memory will start to kick in. I found most bosses could be beat by spamming spirits that persist/attack for you or attacking from a distance. Healing windows are surprisingly generous. Most of your deaths will probably come from running out of spirit uses or heals. There are lots of checkpoint rooms in this game and no real penalty to dying, other than having to get back to the area you were just in.

 

I like the music and graphics a lot. It doesn't have the charm of Hollow Knight, but in many ways I preferred this.

 

This is an easy recommendation for the new year. I was worried about the length, but I put in 30 hours (only using a guide once or twice), so I wouldn't even shy away from full price, which is generally not my stance for indie titles. For $25 or whatever it's going for, you get a very polished title that offers a decent challenge and could easily rival some of the top Metroidvanias out there.

Edited January 15, 2022 by Cassylvania

[winter_bird_22]

On 1/11/2022 at 8:24 AM, Together_Comic said:

It got me thinking, what what it take for me to give a game a 1/10?

 

Oh, I can think of a few factors:

1. Insane difficulty with no checkpoints
2. Boring dialogue and almost no plot or plot that is so disgusting you run away in the first few seconds(like having a ton of NSFW sex content, but then again that wouldn't get pas the ESRB )
3. Stupid mechanics that make you want to slit your wrists out of frustration
4. Let's just make Mugen Souls(the original) have a love baby with Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus's Mein Leiben mode and call it a day.

That's my opinion of what would make a game be Montezuma's Revenge and get 1/10. In other words, a game that is no fun to play for anyone.

10 hours ago, Cassylvania said:

Platinum #291 - Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights

I saw someone popular in Games Done Quick do a speedrun of this game, it looks interesting.

[Cassylvania]

4 hours ago, winter_bird_22 said:

I saw someone popular in Games Done Quick do a speedrun of this game, it looks interesting.

 

I could see it being a good game to speedrun. I'd have a hard time remembering where to go and what to do because there's so much backtracking after you get each upgrade.

 

You guys up for a twofer this weekend?

 

Platinum #292 - UnderMine

 

A carryover from 2021 and a surprisingly low number of game owners (<1150). Guess I gotta do my due diligence on this one.

 

What is UnderMine? Well, besides a pun on an already existing word that doesn't need random capitalization in the middle, UnderMine is a rogue-like (don't kill me, I don't know the difference between that and a rogue-lite and I honestly don't care) where you play as a peasant and try to delve ever deeper into a mine full of monsters in search of gold. You start every run in this hub area, which is barren in the beginning but grows over time as you free prisoners from the mine. Each "level" of the mine has four floors, followed by a boss, but you always begin the run at the very top floor. Once you beat a boss, you can skip him on subsequent runs (but you will eventually need to kill all of them on a single run for a trophy and to unlock the final boss). I think there are five levels in the mine, so you can do the math. Each level has its own gimmick and theme, but they're more or less the same. I think the biggest differences are the variety the monsters that will spawn, the kinds of traps you encounter, and the amount of gold you can potentially collect.

 

Gold drops from ores and chests and sometimes veins in the walls, so you have to keep your eyes peeled -- particularly because these little green goobers called Pilfers will come and steal your gold if you don't pick it up in time. This is actually a really neat mechanic because it keeps the action going even after you kill all of the monsters in the room. The Pilfers don't hurt you and you can recover your gold from them if you manage to hit them before they run away, but they're fast and you'll probably take some damage if you get greedy and accidentally run into a trap or pit while trying to grab every nugget.

 

There are two ways to directly attack in this game. The first is to swing your pickaxe in melee range. Don't do this. The second is to throw your pickaxe, which flies forward and back to you boomerang-style. This is much safer and can allow you to focus on dodging, which is critical because you don't have a lot of HP and the rooms are generally very tight with a lot of baddies attacking you at once.

 

You can also attack using bombs, but you probably won't do this often because (1) bombs are usually hard to come by, (2) bombs will hurt you if you're caught in the blast, and (3) bombs are better used for unlocking secret areas or items. These are usually visible to the player, as you can often see a doorway or chest hidden behind some blocks, but some of them are more concealed. Sometimes enemies will throw bombs or run into blocks to reveal them to you.

 

So, yeah. You're looking at procedurally-generated dungeons for the most part. The game auto-saves at the start of each floor, so you can technically quit out and load back in if you take too much damage, but it also auto-saves the moment you die, so don't wait until the last second. Or don't save scum at all because it's a bit finnicky in this game. I found certain secret rooms will only spawn if it's your first "attempt" on that floor, and killing the same boss multiple times to try to get different loot stops working after about three or four attempts. (Plus, most items and loot seem to be "locked," so you can't just enter a relic room and hope to get a different relic than the one that was there last time. Whatever relic is next in the relic pool will always be the next relic you encounter, although I guess you COULD enter a shop first, where that relic might appear for a price, and then enter the relic room to get the second relic in the relic pool...without having to pay for it. Good way to filter out the shitty relics.)

 

What are relics? These are what make your run unique. Every relic gives you a power of varying degrees of usefulness, very much like Ender Lilies. More HP? Yes, please. More ranged damage? Absolutely! A wet blanket that will prevent you from fire damage but only has three charges and must be refilled by standing in water? Um, OK... Two pickaxes at once? A chance to drop a bomb or key every time you use one? Stomp your enemies? Float on air? Jump twice? Turn food into gold? Turn rocks into gold? Reflect attacks? Chain lightning? Duplicate items/gold/food?! MAKE GOLD EXPLODE UPON LANDING!? RICOCHET YOUR PICKAXE BETWEEN ENEMIES SO THAT IT FLIES AROUND THE SCREEN IN A SPINNING BLUR AND MURDERS EVERYTHING AT ONCE!?!? GALOSHES!?!?

 

No to that last one.

 

The point is, there are some really overpowered relics and some really fun synergies you can end up with. Some relics can even be combined. For example, if you find both an Adventurer's Hat and Adventurer's Whip (both clearly paying homage to Indiana Jones), they combine to form the Golden Idol -- which gives you the same powers as both relics, plus 10k gold to boot. And as with Ender Lilies, there were many relics I never even tried because I never unlocked them. I'm looking at the full list now on the Wiki pages and there are several I never even heard of.

 

Generally speaking, relics (as well as potions and spirits, which we'll get to in a minute) are "unlocked" by finding schematics -- usually from killing bosses or sometimes opening cursed chests. You have to purchase them from the appropriate NPC in the hub world in order for them to appear in future runs, though, so you could technically ignore all the shitty relics if you knew what you were doing at the start of the game. I personally wish I had never encountered Bombushka. But having a good variety of relics makes the runs much more fun and interesting, so you might as well unlock them all.

 

Now, curses are the opposite of relics. They make the run more difficult. Some of them are what you'd expect, like less HP or damage, but others fundamentally change how you play the game. For example, one relic makes stalactites fall from the ceiling. Not for a few seconds or for that one floor -- for the rest of your run. Another makes spiders burst from the bodies of the enemies you kill. (Not in a disgusting way -- just in an annoying, "Oh shit, now I gotta deal with these jumpy bastards" way.) There are ways to cure curses, but the game randomly decides which curse will be removed...and there may be some benefits to being cursed. That's all I'll say about that.

 

Finally, spirits make your run unique. These are like little pets that follow you, but only one can be used per run. The default spirit is a canary, who will collect gold nuggets for you. As you advance deeper into the mine, he'll level up a couple times, allowing him to fly faster. Other spirits will attack or block damage for you. I don't know if RNG was against me, but I only unlocked about six of these throughout the entire game, but I think there's at least double that. Canary served me just fine.

 

When you die, you lost everything you were carrying that run, except for some of your gold. You can then use that gold back in the hub area to purchase permanent upgrades or craft recipes. Eventually, you'll have no problem reaching the bottom floor of the mine and killing all of the bosses in your way.

 

...That's where the Othermine comes in. This is the game's hard mode. Gold and other items are much harder to come by, there are less floors between bosses, and the bosses you face are in a random order. My first successful run came thanks to the Obsidian Knife relic, which makes you do obscene amounts of damage -- but breaks as soon as you get hit. You can bet I save-scummed my way to victory.

 

 But the TRUE hard mode comes from transforming Siegfried's Aegis, which requires clearing the Othermine while holding an item that adds one random major curse every floor. I feel like this is very RNG-dependent. The major curse Negate, for example, disables two of the relics you're carrying. If it disables one of the relics that has been carrying you (usually Guidance or Tortoise Shell for me), you're kinda screwed. And some combinations are just deadly. Imagine getting a curse that makes gold hurt you combined with a relic that attracts gold. Again, if I were playing the game again, I'd be very selective about what relics I'd allow in the pool...

 

Another easy recommendation for me. A much harder game than I was expecting, but I liked it more than Rogue Legacy, which I know is a very popular rogue-li...game.

 

I got a good 38 hours out of this.

[gruffiiti]

Thanks for your latest reviews @Cassylvania. I have both of these games on the short list to do this year so nice to hear they are easy recommends from you. I was also drawn to the way Ender Lilies does the combat with Spirits as its unique and the devs pulled it off beautifully. The little Ive played so far has been great.

 

Happy to see you are playing Little Nightmares II as well. I finally got to it this January too and loved every minute of it!

[Cassylvania]

6 hours ago, gruffiiti said:

Thanks for your latest reviews @Cassylvania. I have both of these games on the short list to do this year so nice to hear they are easy recommends from you. I was also drawn to the way Ender Lilies does the combat with Spirits as its unique and the devs pulled it off beautifully. The little Ive played so far has been great.

 

Happy to see you are playing Little Nightmares II as well. I finally got to it this January too and loved every minute of it!

 

I really liked it too. Finished the main story, but I'm saving the plat juuust in case I need a milestone for the big 3-0-0. Don't have any other ideas lined up.

 

I'm going to try hard this year to chip away at my backlog. That means forcing myself to start new games, even when I have other things going or don't feel like it. I think that's the only way I'm ever going to get around to some of these games. So far, my theme seems to be starting a new game every Saturday...and every other Sunday. I might actually keep a calendar going for this.

 

I think you'll enjoy those games. UnderMine takes a little longer to get into than Ender Lilies, I think. I remember thinking, "Oh, I'm probably almost done with this game" when I was about 14 hours into UM... I wasn't even halfway there. Beating the boss at the bottom of the mine is probably 1/3 of the way to the plat. But I didn't really mind the grind. There are enough things to do in the game that I never felt like I was wasting my time. (I recommend not crafting relics unless you're absolutely sure you want that relic appearing in the pool for the rest of the game.)

 

And don't think I forgot about Big Game January, guys! It's still happening. It just so happens that Genshin is this year's BGJ... I really need to figure out this game or at least learn what I'm supposed to be doing daily.

 

2022 is all about efficiency. Let's get it done.

[Rally-Vincent---]

20 minutes ago, Cassylvania said:

I'm going to try hard this year to chip away at my backlog. That means forcing myself to start new games, even when I have other things going or don't feel like it. I think that's the only way I'm ever going to get around to some of these games.

 

Why not just have fun instead of making it a chore? If you get three years of fun out of your backlog instead of two years of efficient chore, and one year of fun is worth two years of chore, you get four and a half years worth of chore for the amount of three years of chore, so you can have 1.5 times the chore, only that you have fun. Or something like that.

[Cassylvania]

14 minutes ago, Rally-Vincent--- said:

Why not just have fun instead of making it a chore? If you get three years of fun out of your backlog instead of two years of efficient chore, and one year of fun is worth two years of chore, you get four and a half years worth of chore for the amount of three years of chore, so you can have 1.5 times the chore, only that you have fun. Or something like that.

 

Oh, I'm still going to have fun with it! If it starts feeling like a chore, I'll stop and come up with something else. For now, it's just a way for me to get out of the habit of not starting new games because I feel I already have too much on my plate. I spend way too much time staring at my backlog and not getting anything done. By structuring my week such that I have a designated day to start a new game...I dunno, my hope is that it'll allow me to relax and just enjoy games during the rest of the week.

 

It's also kinda nice because it gives me the whole week to think about what new game I want to start.

 

We'll see how long it lasts. I'm not expecting to follow this religiously or anything.

[gruffiiti]

I decided to take an evening right at the end of Dec to pop 1 or 2 trophies in a dozen different games to give me a reason to actually play some of these games I have been wanting to get to.  So far I’ve completed a few of the easier ones and slowly working through the rest. Maybe I’ll have them all done in a few months.. maybe not. Either way it’s not too big a deal. Plan all along was to just make sure they get completed this year sometime.

[Cassylvania]

1 hour ago, gruffiiti said:

I decided to take an evening right at the end of Dec to pop 1 or 2 trophies in a dozen different games to give me a reason to actually play some of these games I have been wanting to get to.  So far I’ve completed a few of the easier ones and slowly working through the rest. Maybe I’ll have them all done in a few months.. maybe not. Either way it’s not too big a deal. Plan all along was to just make sure they get completed this year sometime.

 

I actually like that idea. My plan last year was to download any new game I bought, with the intention of playing it soon because it's already loaded on my PS5. I just ended up with a bunch of unplayed games in a separate folder by the end of the year. It probably would've worked better if the PS5 didn't have a limit to how many "recent" applications are shown on the home screen...

 

Other than Tomb Raider (which you know my opinion of -- although I didn't mind Rise), you picked a lot of solid titles. I think I've finished them all except L.A. Noire, which is right up there with The Witcher 3 as a game I really want to play but never seem to have time for. I'll be interested in your thoughts.

[James_Tonto]

On 19/01/2022 at 4:08 AM, Cassylvania said:

 

I actually like that idea. My plan last year was to download any new game I bought, with the intention of playing it soon because it's already loaded on my PS5. I just ended up with a bunch of unplayed games in a separate folder by the end of the year. It probably would've worked better if the PS5 didn't have a limit to how many "recent" applications are shown on the home screen...

 

Other than Tomb Raider (which you know my opinion of -- although I didn't mind Rise), you picked a lot of solid titles. I think I've finished them all except L.A. Noire, which is right up there with The Witcher 3 as a game I really want to play but never seem to have time for. I'll be interested in your thoughts.

I'm the same with the Witcher 3. I own it, I own the complete version to be specific. But I never got around to it. You should give the latest L.A Noire version a whirl, it seems to be the most complete version of the game with some content not features on the original PS3 release. I've beaten that version and that was a pretty good time, from what I recall.

[Cassylvania]

19 hours ago, James_Tonto said:

I'm the same with the Witcher 3. I own it, I own the complete version to be specific. But I never got around to it. You should give the latest L.A Noire version a whirl, it seems to be the most complete version of the game with some content not features on the original PS3 release. I've beaten that version and that was a pretty good time, from what I recall.

 

It's definitely on my list. I love that time period. I wish noir was as popular as medieval fantasy and futuristic sci-fi. Been actually watching old episodes of Starsky & Hutch just to get those vibes. (Yes, I know that was the 1970's.)

 

I think the bigger challenge this year than starting games will be finishing games. This is a single game weekend, so I can aggressively attack my backlog. I started Ryza 2 (if you haven't noticed already -- going for the full series completion before Sophie 2 drops next month) and some little indie game called Carto last weekend. I've also been playing Genshin a little more seriously. I wish there was a way to reroll my account on PS5. I feel like I don't really love the characters I've gotten and I'm worried that, as a F2P player, most of my best wishes are behind me. I lost the 50/50 on the Xiao banner (may be a blessing in disguise, as I've heard complaints that he gives people motion sickness and you know what Deiland did to me last year) and got Diluc instead (also may be a blessing, as I guess he's supposed to be pretty good), but now I'm wishing I had rolled anybody else.

 

I've also pulled Rosaria three times, so she's at C2 and I guess that's one of her best constellations. Kinda makes me feel like I have to use her. (And if all of this sounds like gibberish to you, I barely know what I'm talking about either.)

 

This year, I'm going to try to focus on getting to all the farming, survival, and TBS games I haven't played yet. It should be a fun one.

[gruffiiti]

21 hours ago, James_Tonto said:

I'm the same with the Witcher 3. I own it, I own the complete version to be specific. But I never got around to it.

 

I'm in the same boat as you. In fact I think I own the regular version and the complete version of The Witcher 3 for PS4 but at this point I think I'll wait till the PS5 version that's apparently coming this year to drop and play it then. No shortage of games to play in the meantime so waiting is easy.

[Cassylvania]

Platinum #293 - Carto

 

I did it, guys. I found a game that's impossible to hate.

 

What is Carto? Well, for once, Carto is actually the name of the main character. It's not a real name, but a clever (?) pun on what the game is all about: cartography! You see, little Carto lives on this airship with her grandmother, who has the power to shift entire landmasses simply by rotating pieces of a map. Don't like that mountain in your way? BAM! Move that sucker to the other side of the continent. Bridge too long to cross? POOF! Toss the middle into the ocean and connect the two ends. Try not to think about all the earthquakes and tsunamis that you'd cause, the people you'd displace, or the entire ecosystems that you'd destroy because this is a kid's game, dammit, and we're here to have fun.

 

Naturally, Carto's curiosity gets the best of her and she decides to play with the map while Granny is napping. Carto's immediate instinct is to put their airship next to a raging storm, which causes Carto and the map to get cast out of the airship and Granny to go into a tailspin. Somehow, neither die (again, this a kid's game), and now it's up to you to reunite Carto with her grandmother. To do this, you'll have to navigate from island to island and recover the missing pieces of the map.

 

Now, this is entirely a puzzle game. You'll start on each island with a select number of square tiles that represent that island's geography. You can rotate these tiles and move them around freely, BUT you can only connect two tiles if their adjacent sides are the same type of biome. For example, if you have two tiles that have forests on three sides and a lake on the fourth, you could either connect forest to forest or lake to lake, but you can't stick a forest next to a lake. This is much easier in practice than I'm making it sound.

 

Each island also has a slight variation on how it uses this gimmick, so it doesn't really get old. The first island, for example, teaches you that sometimes you have to align tiles a certain way in order to make new locations appear. If a character says, "My house is in the forest north of the pier," then you are expected to put a forest north of the pier in order for it to actually exist. Yes, it makes absolutely no sense when you think about it, but...say it with me now...this is a kid's game. Dora got nothing on Carto.

 

Later puzzles get trickier as you have to start thinking in the fourth dimension. You might have to shift pieces on one plane of elevation in order to access a different section below or rotate the map piece you're on in order to change the direction of the wind. It never got to the point where I needed or wanted a guide (except for the trophies, but we'll get to that), but I did get stuck a few times and there are definitely some sections that could be frustrating. I think some of these are unintentional too, as the game doesn't always clearly define where you're supposed to go or what you're supposed to do next. There are NPCs on each island, but they don't have much to say. Come to think of it, Carto doesn't have much to say either. She's one of those "silent protagonists," but she does the Super Mario RPG thing of talking with her facial expressions and hand gestures. It's actually really cute.

 

In fact, this game's cuteness is its best quality. If I had to describe the game in one word, it'd be whimsical. It's very light-hearted and has bits of humor here and there, but I never felt the game was poking fun of itself or talking down to its audience. I really appreciated that. I feel this was a game that, yes, was probably targeted towards a younger crowd, but also has some heartfelt moments and a childlike wonder that is sadly missing from the medium today. I'm talking about stuff like Calvin & Hobbes, that captured that sense of adventure we all once had. I'd say there are probably even some life lessons here, although I'm not sure why Carto's disregard for her grandmother's safety wasn't a focal point...

 

The trophies aren't bad, but a guide is probably necessary. I think you could do most or maybe even all of them in the chapter select you unlock at the end of the game. I had to do that for two, but I think the game could be a bit tedious if you had to play through entire sections for a second time...

 

There are ten chapters and each one takes about an hour, I'd guess. They could take longer if you get stuck and some people obviously speedran this game to get sub-5 hours. The $20 asking price for this is too steep, but if you pick it up on a sale like I did, I think it could make for a good weekend game. Definitely worth playing if you just want to relax. The graphics are simple and very pleasing to the eye. The music is good, but maybe a bit repetitive. I liked the story, but it might be too innocent for you cold-heartened fiends out there. The puzzles are just challenging enough that I don't think any of you will breeze through this. At the very least, they're harder than any of "puzzles" in Skyrim...

 

My third easy recommendation for the year.

Edited January 27, 2022 by Cassylvania

[Cassylvania]

Did you think me dead? I only got bitten by the Genshin bug. That will be an interesting review when we get to it. For now, let's get something simple out of the way.

 

Platinum #294 - The Last Campfire

 

Not every game needs to be a 150+ hour action-adventure JRPG. The Last Campfire is a simple, story-driven puzzle game made by the same people who brought us No Man's Sky, and a more linear experience than Carto. You play as Ember, who...I dunno, I know you guys get annoyed by me comparing every game to Dark Souls, but it's thematically very similar. I think the game is trying to make a statement about death and loneliness. You end up lost in a mysterious forest and have to solve basic puzzles in order to save "the forlorn," who are little creatures that look like you. None of these puzzles are overly difficult, the game is not terribly long, and I'm pretty sure the platinum will come naturally from just finishing the game. I guess you'd probably want to stay in each area until you find all the forlorn, but there's a tracker for that and a guide at each campfire that will give you a hint of where to go next. Definitely no walkthrough required.

 

Aesthetically, the game is nice. It's a kid-friendly way to explore some rather dark concepts, but it's never belittling. I guess it's sorta like Journey in that sense. There are characters you interact with, but only one narrator to do all their voices, so it kinda comes across as somebody reading you a bedtime story. Very neat idea. I'm also pretty sure the voice actress they chose would right feel at home in a Souls game. I got Monumental vibes.

 

You're probably looking at a 5-10 hour game here, so let that determine whether or not it's worth the asking price. Personally, the older I get (I did just have a birthday after all), the more I appreciate bite-sized games. I like when I can start something new without feeling like I'm signing a loan.

 

If you're looking for a game like this, I'd probably recommend Carto over it because I think that game was a lot more memorable and innovative, but this was less aggravating to play. Some of the puzzles stumped me for a bit, but the solutions are usually straight-forward and can be solved with a little trial-and-error. You also can't die, which probably fits the theme of the game somewhere.

 

Clearly, we're going to scrap that whole idea of starting two new games every other weekend. I don't know what I was thinking. I still like the idea of starting one new game each week, because it is nice to add something fresh into the mix, but it's taking me longer to finish some of these games than I expected.

 

Probably doesn't help that I play Genshin 10 hours a day.