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Demo of Balan Wonderworld. Its technical performance (on portable Switch) isn't the best, and the character animations didn't look great in the trailers, but in actual play it's okay. And while I don't know how large the demo is, the setting is at least quite charming. Meanwhile, Gems of War...

Welp, I just unlocked the final boss in MH3U, Dire Miralis. Deviljho and Ivory Lagiacrus put up quite the fight beforehand (Ivory's super attack can hit up to 4 times at close range, DO NOT attempt to guard that without Constitution+2).

Microtransaction-based design is its own web of problems. On the plus side, these games usually also double as their own free demos, but on the downside, what kind of progression grind do they expect from you, what kind of limitations might they impose on your play sessions or game modes? It's...

As always, rotating between a few things. In Gems of War's daily challenges, one of them featured gnomes from The Vault and had four levels ranging all the way up to "Ultimate" (cpu scaled to Lv.125!). Levels and stats start to lose all meaning once the cpu is above Lv.50 or so, so I put...

Monster Sanctuary is definitely NOT Pokemon. Trying to play it with a "collect them all" mindset is actually becoming a handicap, because the more monsters you rotate in and out of your team, the slower your team as a whole levels up, ad this game seems to be designed with a difficulty curve of...

Well, apparently the level scaling in Monster Sanctuary isn't 100% realtime like I had an impression of -- backtracking across earlier areas revealed wild monsters still at lower levels. Hmm. That trainer battle against the enemy Alchemist was still pretty rough ... but somehow I prevailed in...

I played the demo for Monster Hunter Rise -- Great Izuchi is a nice early monster, and it's lovely to see Mizutsune again. They changed bubble-blight, and Mizutsune has new moves (including its side tackle which was previously only seen in G-rank). In other news, made a little more progress in...

I couldn't name the software we used in school (junior high and highschool) if I tried, but I do remember (from some location, probably an OMSI exhibition) one touch-typing game themed after the Wizard of Id comic strip. You played the wizard and had to calm his resident ghost spirit by...

I'm not really into console modding, especially being raised on PC games in the (pre-standardized) late 80s-early 90s era where the hardware was evolving so fast it was a nightmare to keep up with. Modding has crossed my mind on a few occasions (with platforms I'm not actively using currently...

I played it too, back in the day it released; didn't make it very far (I got lost on one of the Underworld puzzles, and legitimately think I broke/glitched something to leave my file more or less softlocked) but indeed it was just boring to play. It's hard to have a good narrative with only one...

If by "VIII" you mean Mask of Eternity ... don't bother. In retrospect you can absolutely tell how it's designed from the same underlying engine. Adventure games tend to really only have two things going for them: setting/narrative, and puzzles.

Just reached the latter half of G2 in MH3U today. Green Nargacuga was the semi-urgent (not an actual urgent quest, just gatekeeper for the second round of new quests), and while I made a few mistakes early in the hunt I caught on (and caught up) quickly and captured it without further hassle...

In Gems of War, this week there was a new creature (Wyrmling, a baby dragon) available in the "Pet Rescue" event and I actually farmed it to completion.

I like Sword & Shield on average ... but I don't "love it". I haven't really seen much of a "wow factor" in the game's systems, and found relatively little trouble making progress through the storyline (even purposely trying to keep my team about level-matched to the next Trainer battle). Ah...

I'm just doing some basic searches, but it looks like the entry point (for pre-assembled desktops) is about $800, with a more common average around $1200.

So in Gems of War I've now completed every kingdom on the map (and unlocked all classes); this didn't unlock a super final area or anything, but whatevs ... for now.

If that doesn't work out, Rivals of Aether has an official workshop build specifically for creating custom characters...

Are they not? I would have made this exact argument myself -- Pokemon battles on the Game Boy were abstractions of actual battles, but somewhere along the way began a trend (an evolution?) away from abstractions towards depictions of actual battles. Which, not coincidentally, leaves...

If you want the biggest example of an "IP" being jeopardized in the court of public opinion, look no further than the MPAA's old "X" rating. No, really. When the MPAA invented their rating system, they trademarked every label except "X", assuming at the time there couldn't possibly be any...

My thoughts: Yes, some of the hate for it is absolutely unfair but some criticism of it is well-deserved. And you can't compare Sword & Shield only to previous Pokemon games, you also have to compare it to non-Pokemon contemporaries on the market too. One of the big criticisms is the limited...