Category: video games

• 

  maegamisama 5:22 pm on August 24, 2023 Permalink  
  Categories: video games ( 8 )

  I know I posted a video two weeks ago of me rolling in a gacha, but I’m here today to say I’ve quit gacha. Well, for the most part at least.

  At first my decision was to quit Fate Grand Order on the JP server. Reason being is I had gave in a moment of weakness and spent money on the game. The bad news is that it was a lot and I wasn’t able to actually spend it on the game (due to me attempting to do it through google play cards) The good news (kind of) is that I potentially can get a refund, but I have to wait until someone else purchases that card

  Regardless, I felt like I was out of control and needed to take away what was tempting me.

  Then I chose to quit Honkai Star Rail. Not because I feared being tempted, but more because I haven’t found the time to play a lot lately. Plus, getting Kafka had been my ultimate goal since starting the game, and now that was finished, it felt like there was nothing left to shoot for (and I didn’t feel like getting sucked in by another character) It’s a shame that while I really enjoyed the story, it was still a bit of a chore to keep up with everything they throw at you (Kind of what happened with Genshin too)

  That leaves the only gacha game I’m playing right now as Fate Grand Order English server. I contemplated quitting that too, but in comparison to the other two titles, there’s a huge difference in terms of play time investment and danger of spending money. That is in FGO English’s case I have all the servants I want for at least 2 years and it takes me no more than 10 minutes every day.

  Part of me wants to quit that too to make things feel complete, but it’s harder to cut oneself off completely when the community (anime/videogames) is probably going to keep exposing me to Fate for the forseeable future. I know I’m probably going to be tempted back. Thus, for a while at least, I think the best thing to do would be to hold off. Considering there’s no pressing need to spend money and it wastes no time, it’s shouldn’t be a problem I have to deal with right now.

   
• 

  maegamisama 2:19 am on August 11, 2023 Permalink
  Tags: Honkai Star Rail   
  Categories: video games ( 8 )

  I forgot to post it yesterday, but one of the gacha games I play, Honkai Star Rail, debuted the banner I’ve wanted to pull since starting the game. You can see the results here.

  This is mostly all f2p with a scattering of battle pass and the other pass.

  Hoping to get another copy of Kafka before the banner ends

   
• 

  maegamisama 12:07 am on August 5, 2023 Permalink
  Tags: Suikoden IV ( 4 )   
  Categories: video games ( 8 )

  I’ve been playing bits and pieces of Suikoden IV every night, and I’m amazed at how terrible of a game it really is. I would say I remember this happening when I initially tried playing it, but I honestly don’t. Here I’m going to write down some of the complaints I have so far.

  #1: The Hero has no personality, or background. He’s just there at the start to fill as your proxy.

  The hero of Suikoden games (except for 3) is always silent. However Suikoden IV is the only game where the silence feels like a detriment. Normally the other games do a good job at showing you the protagonist reactions or how other characters interact with him. IV though, there’s none of that. He feels pretty emotionless and just kind of accepts things. The choices you’re given don’t allow you to give him much character either (at least so far)

  #2: Fuck the enemy encounters

  Okay, to explain how annoying enemies are, I have to explain some other stuff first.

  A lot of the early game, so far, has been spent sailing on this boat in this WIIIIDE ocean. To give you an idea of how wide, imagine it taking you a solid 5 minutes to get from one place you’re at to another. If that doesn’t sound like much, keep in mind there’s almost nothing in modern games that takes a person 5 minutes. You could get from one end of a map in Fallout 4 to the other in that time if you booked it (heck even less I think)

  That alone wouldn’t be so bad, but ontop of that 5 minutes it takes you (keep in mind I haven’t timed this) imagine random encounters every 15 seconds or so the whole way. Also imagine that these random encounters are not only pretty rough but after a certain level fail to provide worthwhile exp. So imagine you’re at a fairly high level, can’t get exp, and are forced into these somewhat harder than they should be battles every 15 seconds of a 5 minute boat trip

  If that doesn’t sound annoying yet, well let me just tell you of something that happened in my game.

  I went to this island to recruit some guy for my army (that took me about 5 minutes to get there and another 5 to get back to where i was supposed to be) Then the plot said I needed to go to that very same island and recruit another character there. So imagine I’ve already spent close to half an hour just travelling.. Not a very fun thing (especially when I’m already playing this in small bursts)

  #3: Plot?
  In other Suikoden games, it doesn’t take much to get caught up on what’s going on. 4 I have absolutely no idea what’s going on. Sometimes that can be an appealing thing, but with the first 2 complaints, it’s more like “why am I even bothering with this game?” At which point, I can’t even really give a good answer other than I need to finish it to feel like I’ve experienced all of Suikoden

   
• 

  maegamisama 1:06 am on July 31, 2023 Permalink
  Tags: FGO JP, FGO NA   
  Categories: video games ( 8 )

  For those that aren’t aware, I play Fate Grand Order on a daily basis. I play on both NA and JP. My NA account is about 6 years old now, while my JP is a little over a year (I used to have other JP account I played that are older, but I don’t have access to them anymore) My NA is a bit of a whale account (where I’ve been known to spend more than I should) whereas my JP is more of a dolphin.

  Most recently on the NA server I got the last support servant that I wanted for my account (Oberon) and decided to go F2P (free to play) It wasn’t a hard decision (there’s not much I feel I want for it) but it was a decision I probably should have made sooner given my financial situation (I’m not in trouble, it just makes it hard to save) JP too, by extension needs to be free to play too (or else nothing really changes)

  Last night I stayed up until 3:30 AM watching JP’s anniversary stream. Normally, I don’t want JP streams and just wait until tomorrow to find out what’s been added. However there were posts from the NA side that seemed to suggest something big was going to happen, and because of that, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to sleep that night.

  I wont deny that I was hoping they would announce a speed-up of the NA server (for those that don’t know NA is two years behind in content compared to JP) Even though I know it would fuck with my plans to be F2P in terms of being able to save, I’ve never liked the fact that I have to wait 2 years for translations of story content (which is the main reason I play FGO)

  Sure, I could use other translations or even put some effort into reading JP myself, but I’m also pretty lazy. Not to mention I’ve become attached to my NA account more due to all the time and money I’ve put into it. I feel like if I start reading story on JP it has to be my main account (which may seem like a weird hang-up but oh well)

  Unfortunately, there was no announced plans of a speed up, but I could have forgiven that if only NA had announced something worth the time I spent staying awake.. NA however announced a fat load of nothing

  Okay they technically announced some stuff we knew coming and there was a character upgrade that was coming early.. But that was really about it. Majorly disappointing

  On JP’s side of things, it was also kind of a let-down. Sure there was some cool stuff like a new kind of special paid summoning and teases of things to come. But there didn’t seem to be anything major. No coin fix, no pity adjustments, no quick fix. It was all bog-standard “here’s a bunch of quartz and a smidgen of QOL updates”

  The only part I really liked about JP’s anniversary was the anni servant. After recently reading LB6 (latest chapter of NA’s story) I’ve started to really like the character of Morgan more than Castoria. The new character being Morgan pre-LB6 version made me want her bad.

  I tossed about 300 SQ into the banner. First ten spin I get a 5 star caster spook (spook means instead of the rate-up servant you get an off rate-up of the same rarity) Second spin I get a 5 star lancer spook. Last multi I got a 5 star rider spook. I was not very pleased.

  My special anniversary summons (ones that guarantee you a 5 star that you need to pay a little bit for) were not quite great either.

  I’d post some pictures, but I forgot to actually take some. If I roll gacha in the future, I’ll be sure to show any time I get 5 stars or anything noteworthy. Don’t expect much though since I am trying hard to be F2P now (Even more so since I haven’t been able to get to anni servant… hopefully I can get her with free quartz I can scrounge together)

   
• 

  maegamisama 2:18 am on July 29, 2023 Permalink
  Tags: Suikoden IV ( 4 )   
  Categories: video games ( 8 )

  Yeah, I’m making slow progress in Suikoden 4, but the game has not been doing a stellar job at really making it engaging. There’s literally a segment where you wash up on a deserted island and have to spend 3 days doing chores that made me want to drop the game right there. I pray that there’s some good characters to liven up the story soon, or I’m not going to be happy

   
• 

  maegamisama 12:27 am on July 28, 2023 Permalink
  Tags: Suikoden IV ( 4 )   
  Categories: video games ( 8 )

  I think I’m starting to remember some of my distaste for Suikoden IV. Everything at the start has felt really low budget (big empty areas) and the controls are just really bad (the triangle is cancel and you need to hold r1 to move fast)

  What gets my the most is the story though. It’s not uncommon for the MC to go through betrayal early on, but I feel like it’s this game that takes the cake for you feeling absolutely no sympathy towards the person who betrays you. I wont spoil who that is, but I imagine anyone who starts playing the game will immediately be able to tell who it is.

   
• 

  maegamisama 4:44 pm on July 24, 2023 Permalink
  Tags: Suikoden IV ( 4 )   
  Categories: video games ( 8 )

  When it comes to Suikoden, I’m a fanatic. Played most of the games multiple times and will shill the hell out of 1,2, and 5 to whoever will listen to me. Yet for a decade plus there’s been one major blemish on my Suikoden experience. Something that might be forgivable by other Suikoden fans, but to an outsiders perspective probably looks a bit weird.

  I have never finished Suikoden IV. I bought it on release and played a good deal of it, but I found myself feeling frustrated with the experience and quitting. Never to touch the game again.

  Aside from terrible boat controls, I can’t, at this point, remember what it was I disliked about the game. I do know that in the years afterward fans weren’t too kind to the game as a whole either, and that is why I think they would forgive me not playing it. It’s not a game that most people must play.

  However, I’m not most people. I’m a fanatic. Since Konami isn’t making any more of them (hopefully the remaster changes that) I think I owe it to the franchise to check out both IV and Tactics (I never played Tactics either but that’s due to it being connected to IV) I need to finish it before I consider playing Suikoden 1 and 2 again for the bajillionth time in the remaster (considering doing them in Japanese too) Otherwise, how can I call myself an expert of Suikoden?

  One positive thing I can say is Suikoden IV has the best intro music imo (III is better for the anime cinematics)

  Biggest complaint in the first hour is that the camera controls are dog shit. You can’t do anything to change them either :/

   
• 

  maegamisama 9:20 pm on April 20, 2023 Permalink
  Tags: Resident Evil 4, videogame impressions   
  Categories: video games ( 8 )

  Resident Evil 4 

  I went back and forth on whether I should talk about my experiences with Resident Evil 4 remake in my monthly post or in its own post. Originally I was going to make it its own post, but there is an aspect of it that ties to something kind of big that I want to talk about in April’s post. Ultimately though I felt that it would not only be easier to write separately, but it would also be a more comfortable read spread apart.

  (More …)