Apparently I last played years ago but my save was fine so I’m just picking up where I left off, having forgotten how to use most of the mechanics sort of compensates for being a god king in terms of my level. I’d never done the DLCs or the final quest of the actual game. So I did Hearts of Stone and the final quest and am currently in Blood and Wine. Christ I forgot how broke you are in this game. The good armor ran me out of money making just the chest piece. 2 swords and 3 other pieces to go.
The GrandMaster crafted level gear in Blood & Wine and the Oferi crafting in Hearts of Stone are both meant to be large money/crafting sinks since you can get a fair bit of coin looting and selling weapons and armor throughout the game. Don’t worry though there’s plenty of big money quests and sidequests in Toussaint for you to get the crowns you need to craft more stuff.
If you forgot since you are coming back to it later a lot of crafting components can be made from junk you find in the world by breaking it down at a blacksmith (pears to pearl dust, leather scraps from belts, etc.) so check that out when you are trying to make the big expensive things.
Mega Man Zero/ZX collection came out on Switch and assumedly on everything else today. Some of the best Mega Man games on one big pile. Played few stages of Zero 1 and still feels good to play.
There is now casual mode that makes the games easier and optional added checkpoints which means you don’t need to care about lives in the Zero games and generally have to replay sections less.
But yea, the Zero games especially are a challenge.
Thing I had forgotten about Mega Man Zero, but experienced just now. Losing all lives during a mission doesn’t mean “re-do the whole thing”, it means Mission Failed and you can just keep going not doing that mission with assumption that anyone counting on you for that mission is now dead.
I reloaded a save at that point, but I wonder if there is limit to it. Can you screw up everything until final boss or will the game eventually just give you permanent game over. Or might that affect the ending somehow. At least the stages are pretty short in this so replaying stuff hasn’t really been too much pain, for my tolerances.
Indivisible is an incredibly gorgeous, but also incredibly hard, Metroidvania.
Actually, I don’t know if it’s technically a Metroidvania. While you do go around exploring, gaining new abilities that let you go back and discover new areas, combat is more like a real-time RPG. So I guess it’s a Metroidvania/RPG hybrid. Either way, it’s really good.
I’m generally bad at platformers, so it’s not really the battle system that I’m having problems with, it’s the Metroidvania/jumping aspect of the game that sometimes makes me want to chuck my controller against the wall.
I’ve been playing The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. It’s far from the best Zelda game but does have a whale with baller eyebrows, which makes it my favorite game I’ve played this year.
In high school I didn’t have a PlayStation, but a friend had the PC CD-ROM version. I played it, but there was a scratch on one of the CDs. This meant I couldn’t get past an early cutscene where the characters swing off of an exploding tower. At that time in my life, I probably could have tolerated and beaten the game.
Later on I tried with some Playstation emulator, but I didn’t get far. I think I played it a bunch for one session, but forgot to pick it back up the next day.
Later on I bought it on Steam when it was new/cheap. Steam says I’ve owned it for many years. I played it up until the part where you’re no longer in the central town and the big wide world opens up. At that point I was like “well fuck, too much to do. I don’t got time for this.”
Now I’m stuck at home with more free time. Also, someone told me that the newer versions have built-in cheating so you can avoid grinding. I confirmed that it’s true. The Steam version includes a way to cheat so you don’t have to grind. I figure I can finally get through this game. I’ll give it one more shot.
So I go to load up the game. It seems to work. Controller doesn’t work well. I can’t customize the controls, but it works. The game plays.
And then I press alt-tab to go check discord on the other monitor. I go back and the first monitor is black. I can hear the game sound, but can’t see anything. I can’t get any other window to appear on top of the black. I can’t even kill it with task manager because the task manager is hiding behind it.
And that’s how I gave up ever trying to play FFVII before the retirement home.
Probably not worth playing at that point. I think FF7 stands out for a lot of people because the type of story it told in the medium at that time plus their age at the time.
While a speedrun is cool, that’s not what I want to play the game for. I want to actually talk to all the people in the towns, read all the dialogue, that sort of thing. If it takes a speedrunner eight hours when skipping all that stuff…
There is a setting in task manager to “always display on top”. You can’t change that setting if you can’t see task manager, but next time you start your Pc, go find that setting!
