Operation Backlog Completion 2026

Luigi’s Mansion 3 is a Middle Ground Between Its Predecessors

 Reviews, Video games  No Responses »  Tagged with:
Dec 232019
 

After playing Nier, I also went on to finish Luigi’s Mansion 3

When Luigi’s Mansion 3 was announced, I had one major hope: that it would be more like the original than like Dark Moon.

After that, I saw a lot of things that convinced me it would be, and so Luigi’s Mansion 3 became a game I was truly looking forward to. Now that I’ve completed it, I can say I definitely enjoyed it… but it still didn’t quite reach the heights of the first game for me.

Luigi’s Mansion 3 begins with Luigi, Mario, Peach, and a few Toads traveling to a luxury hotel for a vacation. Once there, they’re trapped by ghosts, and it’s up to Luigi to stop the ghosts and free them all.

First of all, the mission system is gone! The mission-based structure was one of my least favorite parts of Dark Moon, and it thankfully was removed for the next game. You’re free to go back and forth in the hotel as you please, and there’s an auto-save feature instead of only saving at the end of each level.

It is still somewhat segmented, since each floor effectively acts as a distinct level, and I was disappointed that there are not puzzles that make use of multiple floors like an interview had said.

(In fact, since only the first few floors really feel like a standard hotel, being a hotel doesn’t really have much to do with the layout or puzzle structure.)

Nevertheless, it was enough of a compromise that I enjoyed it much more. The hotel felt like an important location I got to know as I progressed through the game, and I enjoyed my time with it.

Luigi’s Mansion 3 also has boss ghosts with personalities again, helping them to stand out more from the generic ghosts you fight around the hotel. Some of them were great, with one ghost in particular being my favorite both for his personality and for having one of the best floors.

The atmosphere leans more toward comedy than spookiness again, but while it isn’t as atmospheric as the original, it’s a lot of fun to play.

So many things in the hotel can be vacuumed up, and there are secrets to discover and puzzles to solve all over the place. The cutscenes are also great, and there is a decent amount of optional stuff you can do if you want, with Boos to catch and hidden gems to collect.

While Luigi’s Mansion 3 didn’t surpass the original for me, it’s still a fun game I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend. And maybe I ought to pick up the 3DS remake of the original to see if it really is as excellent as I remember…

Nier is a Sad, Beautiful Game

 Reviews, Video games  6 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Dec 202019
 

Now that we’ve gotten this week’s exciting news out of the way, it’s time to discuss the game I finished over the weekend: Nier.

Yes, I finally played the original Nier, which I’d always intended to play ahead of Automata.

I barely knew anything about Nier going into it except that it was an action JRPG and everyone said it was depressing, so I didn’t quite know what to expect. I was rather surprised to find myself accepting little side quests from villages and planting seeds in my garden; somehow I expected Nier to be structured differently.

Nier has four endings. Originally I intended to get ending A, play the New Game+ for ending B, and then watch C and D online, but in the end I decided to get all four endings myself anyway.

As you might guess from that, I enjoyed Nier quite a bit.

Now, a lot of the side quests were fetch quests, and some got annoyingly grindy due to the items they required, and I gave up on one side quest completely, but the rest of the game made up for it. The story was interesting, especially in how it came together across the different playthroughs (particularly A and B), but the characters were what I liked the best about Nier.

I loved the cast of characters, their banter, and the way they grew closer over time. I did a lot of those grindy side quests solely to hear more banter between Nier and Weiss.

And as a result… I didn’t find Nier as depressing as I expected to from what I’d heard about it.

Don’t get me wrong. Nier is not a happy game. Some points on subsequent playthroughs are upsetting to the point where I felt like the game was deliberately trying to hurt me.

Click for major Nier spoilers
I know how this is going to end, so stop showing me how cute Kalil and “Beepy” are together! Stop it! T_T

But when someone describes a story as “depressing,” I think about some of the things we had to read in school where the major point seemed to be that nothing good ever happens to anyone. I think about someone I once talked to who thought characters were only realistic if their motivations were completely selfish. There’s a soul-crushing sense of hopelessness I associate with these types of stories, and I never got that from Nier no matter how distressing its story became.

I’ve thought about this a lot since I finished, and I think it’s really because of the characters.

The characters in Nier generally have sympathetic motivations. They’re likable. I wanted things to work out for them, and they had a lot of nice interactions with one another.

Click for major Nier spoilers
They don’t know they’re killing innocent people when they fight Shades, and that makes a world of difference when it comes to my feelings about them.

Even Kaine, whom I expected to be too dark and edgy for me, ended up being pretty cool.

Ending D was also so wild I was almost too excited to be sad.

Nier definitely is a sad game, but it’s also a beautiful one with a lot of good moments, and I definitely recommend giving it a chance if you haven’t played it.

Exciting Trails Announcements and Potential Resident Evil News

 Video games  No Responses »  Tagged with: , , ,
Dec 182019
 

Remember earlier this year when Falcom president Toshihiro Kondo said he was confident NIS America would localize the Crossbell arc if they were brought to newer consoles?

Well, buckle up, because Falcom has now revealed Zero no Kiseki Kai and Ao no Kiseki Kai, upgraded remasters of Zero and Ao for the PlayStation 4.

They will be out in Japan in spring 2020.

No localization news has been announced at this point, but this feels like our best chance to finally get official translations of these two unlocalized Trails games. NISA will be at PAX South on January 17 with new announcements, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet.

Falcom also announced Hajimari no Kiseki, or Trails of the Beginning for summer 2020 in Japan. Although I haven’t read too much about it since I’m avoiding spoilers for the series, it sounds like this will be a bridge to the next Trails arc.

(Maybe this is the spark I need to finally get back to Trails in the Sky SC!)

This is pretty exciting for Trails fans, but before I wrap up this blog post, I want to shift gears entirely and talk about Resident Evil for a minute. RE3make has been announced, Resistance is part of it as its multiplayer component, and… Capcom might have another Resident Evil game in development?

Resident Evil Ambassadors got a new email today, mainly detailing a new ranking feature coming to the program. However, the email also included an unexpected detail:

Also, as limited offers to Ambassadors, we have invitations to a play test session of our unannounced title*, and priority seats at our game show booth**.”

Either that’s poor wording and it’s meant to indicate that Ambassadors will be invited to play tests of unannounced titles in the future, or it’s quiet confirmation that they have an as-yet-unannounced game in development. The footnote only clarifies that you need to actually sign up for the play test to be eligible for selection.

Some people think it might not be a Resident Evil title at all, but this time my bet’s on Resident Evil 8.

So, when do you think we’ll hear more about Trails localizations? What do you think the Resident Evil email is referencing? Share your thoughts in the comments!

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