Operation Backlog Completion 2026

The Stellar Blade Demo Was Fun (and I Need to Practice Parrying)

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Apr 082024
 

I’ve had a chance to play the Stellar Blade now, and I had quite a bit of fun with it.

Now, it’s definitely not the Bayonetta-like I expected when I first saw footage. Combat is much slower, despite still having some stylish elements.

You have light and heavy attacks you can string together into combos, as well as some special attacks. You can also parry enemy attacks if you block with perfect timing, and that’s very important.

Parrying attacks not only protects you, but enough parries will break an enemy’s stance and let you use a powerful “Retribution” attack.

The game is forgiving enough that you won’t be dying all the time, but it still taught me that I’ll need to get better at parrying. Regular enemies were fine, but the bosses really needed me to know what I was doing.

Technically you can also dodge attacks, but the window felt much narrower to me. There are also skills you can learn to improve some of these elements, though.

The demo covers the start of the game, and I can’t tell how the story will be yet. I’m intrigued enough by the world, though. It seems like it will have light exploration, with items and lore documents found when I looked around, and you can fast-travel between major locations.

Oh, and you can swim. It’s such a minor thing, but it took me by surprise. When I first saw water, I expected to either be blocked or damaged, so I was impressed when I could not only swim, but even dive and swim underwater to find an item there.

After the story portion of the demo, you unlock a later boss fight with more skills available to you. You also have a handful of costumes for that section. Costumes are just for aesthetics, and I love that. Too few games have unlockable costumes.

In short, I had a lot of fun with the Stellar Blade demo, and I’m looking forward to the full game.

Sympathy Kiss Has Some Great Routes Despite Mixed First Impressions

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Apr 052024
 

Like every other game, the otome game Sympathy Kiss came out earlier this year.

And unlike all those other games, I’ve already finished it.

Sympathy Kiss gives some weird impressions when you first start playing. The main character has no eyes in CGs and no spoken dialogue, which is normally used for self-inserts.

However, the narration describes her dialogue, and instead of being very vague for self-insert purposes, it’s often specific enough that I wished she just had regular spoken dialogue. For example, “I told him that although I had just started, I found myself awed by the complexity of the role.” At that point, why not just give her dialogue?

The game begins with the main character being moved from her current office job in design to a special team dedicated to revitalizing the company’s struggling app.

After a short common route to introduce the characters, you pick a character to work with to start their route (although there are also a couple of secret routes that branch off from the others). From then on, you have two main types of choices.

The major choices, which occur once per chapter, determine which ending you get by giving you points toward either Work or Love. Each route has three endings: one if the love stat is highest, one if the work stat is highest, and the best ending if they’re balanced. The difference between choices sometimes feels incredibly arbitrary, but fortunately you can set the stats manually and replay the last chapter to quickly get all endings if you don’t want to go through the whole thing again.

Minor choices also pop up that have you respond with an emotion. For example, if a character offered you black coffee, you could choose to be either happy or sad about that. Later on in the route, the character will remember you choice and proceed accordingly.

Little details like that, along with the beautiful art, make Sympathy Kiss feel high-quality despite the off-putting impressions from the eyeless, voiceless protagonist.

The first route I followed was for the character who appealed most to me (Kobase, the intimidating yet kindhearted boss)… but unfortunately, I ended his route with mixed feelings. Certain aspects of their dynamic felt off, and the route’s conflict was annoying. The game wasn’t off to a good start.

But I liked the next route (Minato, who would prefer to work alone) much better, and several others after that were also enjoyable to play through. Sympathy Kiss has a total of 8 routes, 6 main routes and 2 secret routes, and while some felt rushed or annoying, others were incredibly good. Even one of the last routes I did (Tainaka, who has no home and just crashes with random women), which I expected to dislike, actually was a joy from start to finish.

Sympathy Kiss has some low points for sure, but it ended up being a game I enjoyed a lot. You won’t find high-stakes action or mind-bending plots here, but if office romance with character drama sounds like your cup of tea, it’s worth taking a look for some genuinely heartwarming and enjoyable romances.

Final Fantasy VII Remake: Episode Intermission Was a Fun Return to FF7R

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Apr 032024
 

Back when I played the Final Fantasy VII Remake, I quite enjoyed it, so I was disappointed when the DLC released in 2021 was PS5-exclusive.

Since I didn’t have a PS5 until late last year, it’s taken me a while to get around to it.

But after finishing Crisis Core a few weeks ago, I decided the other thing to do before moving on to Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was to finally get the DLC.

Final Fantasy VII Remake: Episode Intermission is a new story starring Yuffie, in which she heads to Midgar in order to steal materia from Shinra.

Joining her is a young man from Wutai named Sonon, and they team up with members of Avalanche (the larger group, not our primary Avalanche characters from the main game) to get the information they need.

Although Sonon joins you in battles, you only play directly as Yuffie, although you can issue commands to Sonon to have him use abilities or magic. Yuffie’s combat style took a little bit for me to get used to, with sort of a mixed melee/ranged approach, but eventually I enjoyed it. The combat system itself is similar to that in Remake, but with a new “synergy” feature that lets both characters attack together.

There are a handful of side quests, as well as a new mini-game called Fort Condor that I tried a handful of times and then vowed to never touch again. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there are people who love Fort Condor. It’s not the mini-game’s fault. But it’s real-time strategy, and that’s a genre I’m rarely able to enjoy.

So that was a whole aspect of the DLC I ignored, but I still managed to play for nearly 8 hours. My time would probably be a lot longer if I’d gotten into Fort Condor, so there’s a respectable amount of content here for the DLC’s $20 asking price.

The story is fine. While it doesn’t cover a whole lot, it was a nice look at Yuffie’s character and gave a lot more screentime to Scarlet as the DLC’s main villain.

Click for FFVII Intermission spoilers
It also gave a good role to Nero, from Dirge of Cerberus. Although he didn’t have much in the way of story content here, he was a tough and seriously intimidating final boss. My memories of Dirge are kind of fuzzy, but I didn’t expect Nero to come across like he wandered in from a horror game. I enjoyed his creepy portrayal here.

Meanwhile, the most interesting part of the DLC’s story was the very last scene, which showed Zack, seemingly alive. That scene made me lean more toward the multiple timelines theory, but I’m curious to see where Rebirth takes it.

Overall, playing Intermission reminded me of how much I enjoy Final Fantasy VII and its remake. Now that I’ve completed it, I’m more excited than ever about diving into Rebirth!

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