rpg Archives - Page 58 of 217 - Samantha Lienhard

Celebrating All Things Spooky: The Lost Night

Oct 242022

We cover all sorts of games during October that vaguely fall under the umbrella of “spooky,” but some games are perfectly suited for Halloween.

The Lost Night is an example, a short RPG that made me think I should have saved it for Halloween itself.

The basic idea is that you’re trying to find your way out of a spooky, Halloween-themed town filled with ghosts.

When a ghost attacks you, you fight in shoot ’em up style combat, dodging their projectiles while you shoot down miniature copies of the ghost to deal damage. Each type of ghost has its own movement pattern, which you’ll want to learn.

Combat rewards you with candy, which you can spend at vending machines scattered across the map to heal yourself and buy permanent stat upgrades. The ghosts get stronger as the game progresses, so those upgrades are definitely worthwhile.

Many obstacles block your path, and you’ll need to complete small tasks to proceed. For example, one NPC has lost a book, and will stand in your way until you find the book and it return it. In this way, it has you running back and forth across the map to unlock new areas.

Unfortunately, it starts to feel tedious after a while. Between the maze-like design of the town and the increasing difficulty of battles, I was tired by the time I reached the end even though it only takes a couple of hours to beat.

The Lost Night is cute, and I love its ideas. It also has a wonderful Halloween atmosphere that’s perfect for this time of year. It’s just a little too tedious for me to give it a wholehearted recommendation.

Thoughts on the Star Ocean: The Divine Force Demo

Video Games No Responses » Tagged with: rpg, star ocean, star ocean the divine force

Sep 302022

After playing the Harvestella demo, I moved on to the demo for another upcoming JRPG I’ve been interested in, Star Ocean: The Divine Force.

Despite having some mixed feelings about First Departure R, the only other Star Ocean game I’ve played so far, I’ve been intrigued by Divine Force (or Star Ocean 6) ever since it was announced.

And the demo… turned out to be really fun!

In the full game, you’ll be able to choose between the two lead characters, but the demo only features the first two hours of Raymond’s story. They spend most of the demo in the same party, though, so it’s not clear yet how much the two stories will diverge.

I loved the intro, when the characters are in space. Although they quickly end up on an “underdeveloped planet,” which leads to more of a fantasy approach, I hope there will be at least some space travel later in the game.

Anyway, I got used to the doll-like look of the character models quicker than I expected to. As far as their personalities go, Raymond could be slightly grating as a protagonist, but I found the other characters introduced here to be pretty entertaining.

(Especially Albaird. I love him and his grumpy complaints about everything.)

The D.U.M.A. system is a bit odd to control in the field, since what looked almost like a jetpack system in the trailers instead works by you shooting yourself a set distance into the air, after which you can climb up a short distance if you’ve hit an obstacle or use a very awkward glide to reach lower ground. You can’t aim very high, so it feels cumbersome.

In combat, I found it to be much more fun. You mix it up with your regular attacks to charge enemies from a distance and try to blindside them. Once I got into it, I had a great time doing that.

The world is beautiful, although the frame rate did struggle a bit in one of the large field areas. My biggest criticism, though, is that the party members talk way too much about where they are in the environment. I don’t mind party chatter, but this all seemed to be of the “We need to go south,” “We need to cross through this area” variety, which was an annoyance while I was having fun exploring.

It ended on a strange note, as if it was meant to be a cliffhanger cutscene, but didn’t hold any particular meaning for me. Nevertheless, I’m excited to play Star Ocean: The Divine Force!

Have you tried the new Star Ocean demo? What did you think?

Thoughts on the Harvestella Demo

Video Games 5 Responses » Tagged with: harvestella, rpg

Sep 282022

We’ve talked about Harvestella a few times now, and since there’s a demo out, I decided to give it a try.

I was intrigued by Harvestella before, but now I’m more interested than ever.

Going into the demo, I expected a farming sim where I’d be going out to fight monsters and gather materials, maybe with some story details related to Quietus (the season of death).

Instead, I got a lot more JRPG than farming.

Harvestella feels like it has a fairly strong emphasis on story. The story also went in some directions I didn’t expect even this early on, since I thought it was purely a fantasy story. I also found a note that made me wonder just how involved the lore of this game might be.

The farming aspect feels like it’s mainly there to earn money, with a nice little gameplay loop of buying or finding seeds to plant and grow more crops to sell. Progressing through the dungeon felt like the more important part of the gameplay – in part because the demo has a limited number of days and spends a lot of time gradually introducing new systems, so the balance might feel different once the game fully opens up.

Time passes quickly, and you need to get back home before midnight to rest for the next day. The quick passage of time bugged me a bit, but in general I felt the dungeon had shortcuts available readily enough that it wasn’t a big deal.

The one complaint I have is that you can’t dodge in combat. Combat feels somewhat basic in general, but the lack of a dodge button bothered me the most.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with the Harvestella demo and found the emphasis on story to be a pleasant surprise. I probably won’t pick up the game at launch, but it’s one I’ll definitely want to get eventually. Have you tried the Harvestella demo?

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