Backlog 2020

All other video games not related to the main farming series - Pokemon, Stardew Valley, My Time at Portia, and other indie-developed games.
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Bluie
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I played through three indie games today. Just felt like spending some time on my Switch today.

The first was A Short Hike and I liked it a lot. The DS-era graphics were such a treat and the gameplay itself was a fun experience. We really need more games that let you climb and glide anywhere. It was a short but very enjoyable experience that I'd recommend to pretty much anyone.

The second game was Opus: The Day We Found Earth and it was just ok? I guess? It didn't wear out its welcome, but it did get slightly tiresome looking for planets in the right area and you don't get the right one until you've exhausted every freaking star in the area. Music was really good tho, especially right at the very end. It has a sequel I'll probs pick up next time it's on sale, because why not?

The last one was The World Next Door and uhhh, it was... a thing. Well, first I'll state that the background art was *chef's kiss* wonderful to look at, but it's the only thing I liked about the game. The story was rushed and never wrapped up properly, the battle system is was the best example I could ever give to the word 'cluster-« Snuggly Bunny »', and the character art, sweet mercy, the character art. I have never been fond of the term 'tumblr art', because it paints the entire art community on the platform with a negative light, but this game's character designs were the epitome of what people mean when they use said term. Some were ok, simple but popped, but then there's a unicorn girl with wings coming out of her hair and pink crystals growing from her shoulders and has an anime eyepatch to top it all off. Some of the enemies also looked overdesigned to the point of ridiculousness. I'm probably being a tad too harsh on it, because it's colored really well and the character's expressions were fine, but it was a huuuge turn off for me. Glad I only spent $2 on it.

Wasn't able to get my copy of Age of Calamity today, so I'll be picking it up tomorrow after myself and the hubbo are both done work. I have a ton of other shorter indies I may do another minor marathon with soon, but it'll all depend~
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Kikki
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Done Steam Prison, and not currently willing to fork over $11 just for Fin's route. It's a very weird game. Some of it is extraordinarily well-written, but it's set in a steaming heap of garbage when it comes to major plot elements. Moments of the sublime mixed with buckets of tawdriness. It's bewildering. I don't regret buying it, because I wasn't bored while playing it like I was while playing Cafe Enchante, but it'd be very hard to review. I got all the endings for the first two characters (Eltcreed and Ulrik) but after that I gave up on anything but each guy's happy ending, cuz the nonsensical drama was high enough in that route alone. Though of course at the end I had to do the Grand Ending to see if it was any more sensible.

And it was. The story was cohesive, though overly-convenient in how smooth it was...like a version of the story where nothing went wrong and everything simply fell into place for every member of the main cast. Maybe it was more cohesive because they didn't have to weave the already weird story around an unnaturally placed love-affair? (To me the only romance that could have developed in a natural, unsensational way was Fin's, and I didn't get to see his route cuz it's DLC.)

It's very strange to me that I could sum one of the game's big secrets in one route up as 'all for the love of a mineral'. That's a spoiler, and yet knowing it will do you NO GOOD in figuring anything out, because it makes no sense and is a plot device that doesn't really fit...it wasn't put in place in a world where any groundwork had been lain for it, it's dropped in out of the sky. So even if you know the context, it still doesn't make sense. (You might guess that it has something to do with material greed, like a lust for diamonds or gold, which would be a very sensible guess...but it does not.)

Maybe it boils down to them not being able to craft a great story and a great romance at the same time, let alone 6 great romances, each man with his own backstory, so they messed it all up when they tried to stick them together and make each one somehow fit into the others. It's like they took really cheap tactics to explain things that didn't quite work. If you look at each thing individually, they're all pretty good, imo, but once you take everything as a whole, it's just a huge mess.

But not boring. :)
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Bluie
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Got Age of Calamity last night and played an hour or so before falling asleep. It surprisingly came with a cute lil egg-guardian keychain. I don't know if I'm gonna take it out of the packaging because I have no more room for keychains. I've pretty much taken up every set of keys, purse straps, and anything else with a zipper with keychains. I'll just hold onto it for now and keep it somewhere safe.

One thing I am very glad the game has is basically my favorite feature from Samurai Warriors 4. IIRC, it was called 'rush' moves that pushed your characters forward with a push of a button and you could run through giant group of enemies and kill them at the same time. Link pretty much has this with shield surfing and I am SO HAPPY it's here. Playing other Warriors (or warriors-like) games and not having that option there honestly kills a lot of the fun for me. I love rushing through crowds and watching mooks fly out of the way while I'm traveling from point a-b.

A little disappointed amiibos only give ingredients and basic weapons. It would've been nice if they unlocked costumes for characters other than Link, but oh well. I have two Daruk amiibos now with one in storage who knows where and the new one I picked up with the game. Gonna be funny when I finally unearth him lol.

---

I have decided to TRY and play through the games that have been sitting in my DL list and some of the games I dropped this year. I'm not going to force myself through them, but leave them on the Switch and come back to them when I'm ready. I have a lot of time before my first release next year and with nothing else coming out this year for me (that I'm getting immediately), I can see myself falling back to some titles. I just... don't like feeling that I wasted money. I'm even going to give YIIK a try, because apparently they're working on a patch that fixes the battle system and a good chunk of the story. Color me surprised. So, this is my Switch 'Backlog', but I'm prioritizing Age of Calamity(and Hades) over all of this FIRST;
Spoiler:
Sega Ages Phantasy Star
Plantera
The World Ends With You Final Remix
SaGa Scarlet Grace Ambitions
Super Dragonball Heroes World Mission
Snack World The Dungeon Crawl Gold
Heroland
Robotics;Notes Elite
Doraemon Story of Seasons
Chocobo's Mystery Dungeon Everybuddy
Anodyne
Va-11 Ha11-A
Wonderboy The Dragon's Trap
Legrand Legacy
Knights of Pen and Paper
Mercenaries Saga Chronicles
Yoku's Island Express
Save Me Mr. Tako!
Xeodrifter
Letter Quest Remastered
Snake Pass
Rainworld
YIIK
I am gonna try my darndest to finish them all, but not at all in any rush either. A lot of the indies I can finish in an afternoon, so I'll work on tackling those first, and then I'll see what i'm up for next.

---
I do have a bit of a backlog and neglected games on the PS4 as well, but I'll worry about them later, for now. I DID buy Yakuza Kiwami 1&2 because they were on sale for nothing and I've been told to play them after I'm finished 0. I'll get there, eventually. They are long freaking games. I think I'd like to get through all the PS4 games I have before we get the PS5, so that could be any time next year seeing as they're sold out everywhere and neither hubbo or I are in a rush to get one.

tl;dr - video games, lots of them.
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Kikki
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I have Hades, too, but am only working on it in bits and pieces (I can't remember precisely when I bought it and I didn't mention it here when I did. Shoulda, cuz then I'd be able to look back and see when I did it.) The trailer/video for it was just too good...the character personalities/voice acting just sound amazing, so I couldn't resist it even though the genre is definitely not one of my preferred ones. I also think Supergiant is faboo at creating charismatic characters/character narratives. I really like it for the characters/voices...I want to go back and play with Zagreus some more...but can't play it for long at once, due to the genre not being one that grabs me.

I saw on howlongtobeat.com that takes about 17-18 hours to 'beat', but that it's 'completionist' level is disproportionately long. 88+ hours. Completionist routes often double playtime, sometimes even triple it, but quadrupling it is unusual.

Do you know what makes the completionist route so long? It doesn't seem like a game that has stuff to collect. (Though I haven't played very much. Haven't even beaten Megara yet, since I suck, and because I failed to enable GodMode until today because I thought it was a harder mode.)

~

Also, I didn't even realize that the amiibos did anything with Age of Calamity. Which is mega dumb, cuz I think they mentioned it multiple times...I just never thought about what they'd do. I'd love to have ingredients drop, though, and reduce need for ingredient grinding (I was not able to unlock two of the stables in the demo since the ingredients never dropped even when I replayed several times.) I have several Link amiibos (wolf, smash, horse, archer, wind waker, ocarina, skyward sword...actually I have a lot of link amiibos, upon reflection), a guardian, a bokoblin, Urbosa, Ganon, and a Zelda one, so I guess I'll get use out of them again. :)

Not that I have it yet. Still is not shown as shipped. But I feel okay with that. After all, I still have Hades to chip away at in small bits, and I also feel like this is a good time for me to be spending less time gaming, more time walking, cooking, doing chores...or at least reading or writing. Just feels a bit more mentally uplifting, atm, so I don't want to layer any games. (Though I really want Pikmin 3 Deluxe. I can't get it until I have no other games on hand.)
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Bluie
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I think the Hades completionist route is more towards filling out the journal (giving multiple gifts to all the NPCs+gods) and getting ALL the encounters, which is really RNG based. Different gods have different dialog depending on who's blessing you already have AND there's all the special abilities that come with them too. There's also a lot of different bosses depending on how often you delve into the dungeons. Plus there's base upgrades that need materials from the dungeons to fund. Seeing and recording EVERYTHING would no doubt take close to 90 hours, especially with RNG involved. It feels very Hollow Knight with it being 'yes, you finished the story, but there's still 50 hours of content left!'. It's defs not required, but a nice perk for those who don't want it to end too fast!
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Simply Unknown
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Kikki wrote:I have Hades, too, but am only working on it in bits and pieces (I can't remember precisely when I bought it and I didn't mention it here when I did. Shoulda, cuz then I'd be able to look back and see when I did it.) The trailer/video for it was just too good...the character personalities/voice acting just sound amazing, so I couldn't resist it even though the genre is definitely not one of my preferred ones. I also think Supergiant is faboo at creating charismatic characters/character narratives. I really like it for the characters/voices...I want to go back and play with Zagreus some more...but can't play it for long at once, due to the genre not being one that grabs me.

I saw on howlongtobeat.com that takes about 17-18 hours to 'beat', but that it's 'completionist' level is disproportionately long. 88+ hours. Completionist routes often double playtime, sometimes even triple it, but quadrupling it is unusual.

Do you know what makes the completionist route so long? It doesn't seem like a game that has stuff to collect. (Though I haven't played very much. Haven't even beaten Megara yet, since I suck, and because I failed to enable GodMode until today because I thought it was a harder mode.)
Bluie wrote:I think the Hades completionist route is more towards filling out the journal (giving multiple gifts to all the NPCs+gods) and getting ALL the encounters, which is really RNG based. Different gods have different dialog depending on who's blessing you already have AND there's all the special abilities that come with them too. There's also a lot of different bosses depending on how often you delve into the dungeons. Plus there's base upgrades that need materials from the dungeons to fund. Seeing and recording EVERYTHING would no doubt take close to 90 hours, especially with RNG involved. It feels very Hollow Knight with it being 'yes, you finished the story, but there's still 50 hours of content left!'. It's defs not required, but a nice perk for those who don't want it to end too fast!
Completionist mode is based a lot on filling out the journal and completing all the quests. But there's also the fact that triggering them, as well as post-game portion, can be a tad...random at times was well. I have over a hundred hours on this game and I still have one annoying sidequest that won't trigger for me. Sometimes RNG just doesn't smile on you.

As for Meg, she's hard until she isn't. « Harvest Goddess »-mode is a definite aid and eventually, you'll become more accustomed to how the game moves. If I could recommend something, it would be getting Athena's Divine Dash boon as that helps make the game a lot more forgiving, especially when you're first starting out. If you give her Nectar, that gets you her Owl Pendant if you don't already have it and equipping makes the first boon you get one of hers, and Divine Dash is likely to be there. As long as you do that and keep upgrading using the mirror, you'll beat her, Kikki. Don't give up! :heart:
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Ah, okay, that makes sense, and it would definitely take forever. I've seen entries get added to my journal regularly, though I've never opened it to look. But collecting dialogue seems worthwhile, if you have the patience...that stuff is gold, in Hades. (Doesn't hurt that I love Zagreus' voice, but Hades and Achilles and all...everybody has some good stuff.)

~

Thanks, Simply :) I'm not feeling discouraged yet, thankfully; I've only fought Meg twice. (Though I've died 5 times now, in all. I tend to be good at avoiding direct enemy attacks and bombs and explosions via the ordinary dash...I use dash a lot...but bad at dodging the projectiles that I don't destroy or deflect, so dumb enemies like the skulls and the witches end up killing me when there are a lot of them in a room at the same time.) I actually nearly beat Meg on my first go-through, before I even knew to turn on GodMode, and I nearly beat her on my 4th play, too, once I had the bow, which lets me stay far away from my enemies but still do damage in a big spray. So now that I have the easy mode activated and my damage reduced by a big chunk, I think I can make it on my next go, as long as I get a health boost before going in. I don't choose my boons all that carefully since I only sort of get them, lol...I can never tell which is the best to choose, so I generally just pick whichever one seems to add the most damage to my most frequently used attacks; I only ever had one gift to give and had no idea what it was or what I should do with it, so I gave it to the first guy I came across. (Charon.)

~

EDIT: Surprise! My game must genuinely not have been shipped yet, because I managed to have my cancellation of Age of Calamity go through! I deliberately went out and looked for a specific spoiler, and managed to find a very simple one that only gave away the specific thing I wanted to know, which was whether *I* would believe it to be a true prequel or not. And I definitely can't think of AoC as a true prequel, now, so I cancelled the order, cuz believing it to be a prequel was my reason for wanting the game.

I feel sad, because I wanted to play it and be moved by it and the opportunity to experience more BotW, but hey, let's look on the bright side: I'm glad I managed to find it out in time to cancel the order, or I'd have felt ripped off. And now I can get Pikmin 3 Deluxe this year :) After I finish Hades, which probably won't happen all that quickly.

I hope all of you enjoy Age of Calamity. :) Well, those of you who are going to play it, that is!
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Panda Parfait
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Oh hey, I just picked up Hades a week or two ago and I've been obsessed! I'm a fan of Supergiant's games in general, but this one might be my favorite. It took me a while to clear my first escape attempt, but I've recently reached a point where I can semi-consistently win and it feels great. Still a loooot left to do, though.

In my experience, knowledge about boons and what you should take or what you prefer to take will come naturally, but I'd say the boon that puts a deflect on your dash, Divine Dash, is a huge help on any build. Even if you don't really use it to actively deflect, if you dash like a maniac you'll inevitably be deflecting attacks that would have otherwise hit you. Athena's boons in general are really good for defense, and are probably the main reason my first win happened.

I assume I'll end up buying some games during holiday sales, but Cyberpunk 2077 will probably be my last big release of this year. I'll have to reflect on my backlog and decide what games I actually want to finish, even though I can't play a large chunk of them until I get a PS5.
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Kikki
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Everyone seems super in favour of the Divine Dash boon :) I don't think I've ever been offered it, but I'll try it as soon as I see it, since I already do, indeed, dash like a maniac, lol.

Supergiant is so crazy good at writing charismatic characters that I feel like I should go back and take a serious look at both Transistor and Pyre as soon as I have a game gap, even though their games never have a gameplay style that I'm really into. I don't enjoy brawling as main component. I feel like they do their combat very well, but even so, combat-heavy games aren't my thing. I still really love their narrative style, though, which makes me want to play everything they make.

I need to cheer myself up today. Can't decide if playing some Hades will do that or not. Some days playing games is just not constructive. I should probably either write, or bake something my family would like. Or at least go out and clean off my sister's snow-laden car.

EDIT: If I can get Hades done...or close enough to done...I'm going to by 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim by December 1, because I'm definitely buying it sooner or later, and it's on 30% off right now. (Until Dec 1.) So I'll put Pikmin 3 off instead and go with Aegis Rim if I can make enough progress on Hades to be sure I can completely finish both games before 2020 is over.
Last edited by Kikki on Nov 23, 2020 1:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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The holidays makes me want to binge buy several games, but I have over five Switch games I haven’t even touched yet. I heard that the Mario collection is a limited time release, so maybe I’ll buy that at least.
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Spoiler:
Recently beat:

Piczle Lines DX (Story Mode) (Switch)

Backlog:

(3DS, Nintendo Switch, and PC) = A lot (over 136 games)

Currently playing:

Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin (Nintendo Switch)
Animal Crossing: New Horizons (winter update) (Nintendo Switch)

Games I have pre-ordered:

Digimon Survive (2021)
New Pokemon Snap (2020/TBA)
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury (February 12, 2021)
Balan Wonderworld (Switch) March 26, 2021)

Games I want:

Rune Factory 5 (Switch; 2021; Japanese release date confirmed to be May 20, 2021)
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Hou (Switch) (Japanese only)
Detective Pikachu 2 (Switch; release date unknown)
Yo-kai Watch 4 (Switch; confirmed for the West)
Rewrite+ (PC)
Story of Seasons - Pioneers Of Olive Town- (March 23, 2021) (Switch)

Games beat in 2020: 9

Games bought in 2020: A ton
So, I started Sakuna of Rice and Ruin today. I played for an hour. I'm right before planting my first rice crop. I can see why all of the reviews I saw and read glowed about this game. I'm really excited to try the farming aspect of it. I'm glad that the combat isn't that hard even on normal/default difficulty.

I played the new Winter update of Animal Crossing and really enjoy the game still. I can't wait for Turkey Day and Toy day.

I'm soooo tempted by the Cyber Deals on the Nintendo Switch that the have up in order to tie in with Black Friday. I just pre-ordered the Root Double Before Crime * After Days Xtend edition on my Switch for 20% off, and I was saving for another game releasing in December (either Fitness Boxing 2 or the double pack of the Don-chan rhythm RPGs). But, I really want Aviary Attorney. I've never seen it on sale and it's 30% off!
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I believe I'm about 2/3s done with Golden Sun The Lost Age. While I do like it, I don't think it's as good as the first game. Maybe it's because the story isn't as focused as before; nothing has really moved forward until you're about 2/3s in. Ah well, I'm still enjoying it. Not sure if I'll pick up Dark Dawn after I finish it though; Cyberpunk is close to releasing and I want all my attention on that.
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I fiiiiinally beat Meg. It was on my 4th or 5th try, though it was around my 9th death.
Spoiler:
I have double dash now, and I managed to secure Divine Dash as well, which does make it comparatively easy in every room cuz you can run around nearly impervious to all damage, while damaging everything you touch.

I also have to fight Meg with the bow. I tried it with the sword, but no...attacks from further away result in a lot less damage to Zagreus. This is all taking forever, tbh. I have no idea how the game is structured, but I assume beating Meg means I've barely started...she's my first proper boss battle. I can't see me getting this done in 18 hours. Not unless I hurry up and die 25 more times in succession to get my damage resistance up to the maximum 80%. At that level, I might be able to progress a bit faster, lol.

My first run on GodMode was actually much harder than any of the previous runs. So many more enemies spawned in every room, and a lot of them were those stupid crystals, and the floating skulls and witches. (-__-) Oh well, at least Meg is beaten. However, if I die again (which I obviously will, and soon!) I assume I have to battle through all the rooms and fight her yet again, so my sense of accomplishment is low.

There really is some fun to be had in dying and starting again, even many times, but...it does start to get wearing. I want to get to new content, not slight revisions of what I already know. I only managed to get something new by giving a gift to Nyx. (Or I think that's what did it.)

Workin' on it, anyway.
The Black Friday sales are surprising...not only was Hades up for sale (I so hate when a game goes on sale only a few weeks after I bought it!), so were a few other relatively newly-released games. I never expect games released in the last 3 or so months to get sales. It's tempting to scoop up Torchlight III, as I will definitely buy that sooner or later and it's 40% off right now. But I don't have time for it, and it'll probably go on sale again.

EDIT: Gotta say, I don't get why the Olympians are sending all this help down to Zagreus. The Greek gods weren't exactly known for their kindliness or charity, but they're all tripping over themselves to help a previously unknown nephew/cousin get out of his ugly, depressing homeland? Cuz they're all just so sweet? Doesn't sit right with me. I may just know too many stories about how selfish and back-stabby they are...typically it was only demi-gods and mortals who could be decent...maybe that's just not the idea of this game/world.

EDIT 2: Just beat a bone snake(s)? Was that thing a boss? I got to it so fast compared to Meg, I'm thinking it's not. Beat it on my first go, too. Can't be a boss... (Wait...it was! I got to a new area. Huh, it seemed too easy for a boss. Beat Megaera a second time just a few rooms before and she was still harder than the bone dealie.)

EDIT 3: I've now taken to dying on purpose...just running through a few rooms and not trying to protect myself while grabbing darkness and keys and whatever else I can get before my health runs out and my 'godhood' goes up another 2%.
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Well, I've stalled out on CSIV. I really need to get back to it, but instead I started Xenoblade Chronicles 2 again... I bought Torna because it was on sale, which means I also got the Expansion Pass. So I restarted... I'm sad because that means I had to give up on Ursula's progress, but oh well. I'll see how lucky I get this time. I got to Torigoth. Also it wasn't until I watched an LP that I realized... The tutorials in this game actually suck.
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Bluie
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I bought and played through Monster Prom today. Did two runs, one long, one short, and I was rejected the first time and the second I went to prom with my monstie of my choice! It is a gaff, if not a bit over crude at times. Anyways, gonna consider it finished until I ever feel the urge to play again.

Tried to play Anodyne and it was just not my thing. Only paid maybe a buck for it, so this isnt a big loss, honestly.

---

I've put almost 10 hours into Age of Calamity so far and really only scratched the surface, I think. I've only just gotten past recruiting all the champions, but I've done every single side quest offered so far, so that's kept me busy. I like playing as Daruk and Link the most, because they're both unstoppable forces whilst the rest of the party have a lot of their moves rely on gimmicks. I think my favourite thing about the game is that I'm getting to see all these characters interact with each other. In BotW, everything was from Link's perspective (or Zelda's if you played the DLC) and now seeing the champions talk to each other and bond, even when Zelda and Link arent in the picture, is just soooo nice. I am living for the battle dialog and look forward to every new cutscene. I'm also warming up to lil egg-with-legs, cause it's got such a fun personality. Gosh I just adore BotW's cast and I'm so jazzed to spend time with them again!
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