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Gamescom 2022 Opening Night Highlights

 Video games  No Responses »
Aug 242022
 

Yesterday was the Gamescom Opening Night live stream, and none of my hopes/predictions came true.

There weren’t any huge surprises, either.

But it still had some good trailers, so here are a few of the highlights that stood out to me.

I’ve never played Lords of the Fallen, but about a year ago, the first details came out about the in-development Lords of the Fallen 2. So when a trailer dropped the phrase “the lords of the fallen” partway through, I knew we were seeing a trailer for Lords of the Fallen 2.

Except that’s not what it’s titled now. It’s titled The Lords of the Fallen.

Yes, they dropped the 2. No, it’s not a remake. It’s confirmed to be a soft reboot, but also a sequel, set 1000 years after the first game.

So now we have Lords of the Fallen and its sequel, THE Lords of the Fallen. I assume they want to make it clear that you can start with this one, but I expect it to cause a lot of confusion instead.

Now, I really got excited when Brandon Sanderson appeared ahead of a game’s announcement, since he’s one of my favorite writers. The game itself, Moonbreaker, is a turn-based tactics game with digital mini-figures like for a tabletop game, which you can digitally paint and everything.

It’s not my typical sort of game, but since Brandon Sanderson is involved, maybe I’ll check it out.

Meanwhile, a new trailer was revealed for Lies of P, the steampunk Souls-like based on Pinocchio. Yes, Pinocchio. I was interested in it when it was first announced, and this newest trailer makes it look even more intriguing. I love the dark fairytale vibe it has going.

Another new game announcement that caught my attention was Atlas Fallen, a semi-open world action RPG that I wasn’t too sure about at first, but became more interested in as time went on.

Wyrdsong and Where Winds Meet also look interesting, although since they’re both open world, I’m not sure if I’d enjoy them.

Other Gamescom highlights include Hideo Kojima making an appearance, at which point I thought my Death Stranding 2 prediction was about to come true, only for him to announce a podcast.

A car was also announced. A car. It has a Pokémon theme. I sat through the whole presentation and I still don’t understand what that was about.

Anyway, these are a few things that stood out to me from the Gamescom 2022 Opening Night live stream. What games are you most interested in?

Birushana is a Thrilling Historical Fantasy Otome

 Reviews, Video games  No Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Aug 222022
 

Birushana: Rising Flower of Genpei is an otome I was practically counting down the days to.

It’s a historical fantasy visual novel set during the time of the Genpei War, with a twist: Shanao, the youngest son of the Genji, is actually a woman, disguised as a man to fight.

Now, I know very little about this period of history, so I can’t speak to how many liberties it took with the historical setting aside from the obvious fantasy elements that show up in the form of a mysterious power Shanao possesses.

But this sort of setting, with a war going on and love interests on both sides, caught my attention as soon as I heard about it, and I was so excited to get started.

I knew I was in for quite a ride when I finished my first route, which had some unexpectedly intense situations and moments where I thought I’d gotten a bad ending until the story kept going, and then saw that a lot of fans considered it to be the boring one. I disagree on that, but Birushana is filled with high-stakes situations and intense confrontations.

There are five love interests, and I ended up liking them all, more or less. One I found a little boring, and another I thought needed a bit more of a gradual development in his route, but I didn’t dislike any of them.

Click for Birushana spoilers
I’m talking about Tomomori with that second comment. I love him as a creepy obsessive villain, and I also love that he ends up being surprisingly sweet and devoted, but the shift from one to the other felt too abrupt for me. I needed creepy and sweet to intersect a little more before Shanao started caring for him.

The shining star of this story for me is Yoritomo, whom I started off feeling lukewarm toward but ended up adoring, as his route spoke directly to my kuudere-loving heart. Meanwhile, Noritsune’s route isn’t far behind, since it features some of my favorite romance tropes.

Birushana also does something wonderful. Like many otome games, it has a number of side characters whom I immediately wished were love interests. But instead of just sidelining them, four of the side characters have short mini-routes of their own, unlocked upon completing a main route.

These were delightful, a perfect touch.

Click for Birushana spoilers
Especially Shigehira, what the heck?? He’s even crazier than his brother, so I was amazed at how fun his story was.

The common route is deceptively short, because there are a handful of common scenes that occur within the routes themselves. Fortunately, the game recognizes most of these as read if you’ve already seen them once. On the other hand, there are a couple of scenes that show up nearly word-for-word in multiple scenes and yet the game always treated them as unread text, which was slightly annoying. The dictionary also bugged me, because it notifies you of entries even if you’ve already scene them before.

But those are minor complaints about what was overall a wonderful experience. There are also some grammar issues (Birushana does not like commas), but not enough to bother me too much.

Shanao is a great protagonist, and I love how Birushana handled fight scenes. Although it’s a visual novel, the characters clash with one another convincingly enough (especially as they all have both front and back view sprites) to bring the action to life.

Birushana was a delight. I read each route slowly at first, but once I’d reach the later chapters, I’d find myself unable to put it down as the stakes rose higher and higher. If you like historical fantasy and otome, I highly recommend it. Meanwhile, I’ll be waiting in the hopes that they decide to localize the fandisc (which gives those side characters full routes) as well!

Gamescom 2022 Hopes and Dreams

 Video games  3 Responses »
Aug 192022
 

Gamescom is fast approaching, with the opening night broadcast set for August 23 at 11 AM PT / 2 PM ET.

I, of course, have my hopes set on TGS for potential Ace Attorney news (please), but that doesn’t mean I don’t have hopes for Gamescom.

Last year, Gamescom Opening Night included a new trailer for Lost Judgment, so I’m hoping RGG Studio will have a presence there once again.

Maybe a Yakuza 8 trailer is too much to expect – that’s another one I’d expect to be announced at a Japanese event first – but I haven’t given up on hoping they’ll reveal Kenzan and Ishin localizations in the works. Or maybe they’ll shock everyone with a Judgment PC port, since a lot of people are hoping for that.

Sega is among the companies confirmed to be there, so there’s hope.

Another company that will be at Gamescom is Bandai Namco. Last year, they announced the short-lived Tales of Luminaria, so I can’t help but wish for the announcement of a new Tales game or a remaster of one of the older ones. My heart is still set on the games that were never translated before, but I’d be happy with anything besides another doomed mobile game.

Finally, I think they’ll announce a Death Stranding sequel, which has been widely rumored because of stuff like Norman Reedus saying he worked on Death Stranding 2. Death Stranding: Director’s Cut was announced at last year’s Gamescom, 505 Games is confirmed to be there, and they just announced that Death Stranding (base game) is coming to Game Pass for PC, with perfect timing if they want to build up to something.

So there are my hopes and dreams for Gamescom this year, while I continue to pin even more hopes on TGS. What do you think (or hope) will be announced?

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