A bit slower with games these last couple weeks since I started on a new job and I’m still adjusting to the new routine.

Playing Hades 2!

I’ve gotten used to the “underworld” path and I’m succeeding more than I fail now, even managed three wins in a row.

The “surface” path is much harder, I got to the final boss a few times but haven’t beatem him yet. I’d like to pratice this path more, but I’m trying to unlock the remaining aspects of the weapons and the items I need are all from the “underworld” path so I still have to do a couple more runs there before I can move on.

Playing Witch on the Holy Night!

Slowed down a bit in Hades 2 in the last couple days put more time on this one again. Reached Chapter 8.

Playing Earthion and R-Type Delta!

I got a couple old-style shmups in my mailbox recently. Earthion is a game from Yuzo Koshiro, the composer of classic soundtracks like Streets of Rage, and it’s a love letter to the Mega Drive/Genesis era of this genre. It’s on the easy side due to its very forgining shield system so might be a good pick for people who don’t have much experience with these games, I got a clear on the Easy difficulty on my first attempt.

R-Type Delta is a game that is seen as one of the best in the series but only had only a PS1 release until now. I briefly tried it on an emulator a long time ago and enjoyed, so I’m happy to finally own a proper copy. First impression after a long time without playing it is “this game is hard”. It’s a very unforgiving, old-school arcade, and even on the easier “Kids” difficulty I’ve only gotten to Stage 3. But it feels like I just need a bit more practice, like learning some tricky spots where you have enemies coming from multiple directions and you need to shift the force device to the back of the ship to help.

Interesting timing for this post since I just got my copy of R-Type Delta HD.

The “Dimensions” remasters of R-Type 1 and 2 are excellent, if this keeps the same quality I’m definitely purchasing.

Ah, I don’t really watch much trailers when I am sure I’ll play the game, so didn’t know about Chronos.

“Death to Chronos” is also the first thing Melinoe says when you start the game, so it’s only a spoiler for the first few seconds of gameplay. :)

Chronos is the final boss?

I mean, the trailers all say “Death to Chronos” so I figured that was not a spoiler. But yes, he’s the final boss of the initial path (Underworld).

There are multiple paths? 😲

Yes! After a while you also unlock the option to go to the Surface path, which is much harder and has completely different areas and bosses. Adds a lot more variety to the game.

You also have to keep alternating between the two paths to unlock things as most are done as “spells” in the witch’s cauldron, and each requires ingredients from specific areas.

One neat thing are some tweaks they added to make you less susceptible to RNG when trying to get a specific ingredients - you can recruit “familiar” animals and can bring one with you each run. Each has different benefits, one of them being “higher change of finding ingredients of a specific type”. So you need seeds? Bring the Hecuba the dog familiar and he’ll find and dig them for you.

Still liking Witch on the Holy Night?

Quite a bit. I’m taking my time with it but I expect my final rating will be at least an 8 out of 10, maybe higher depending on how the second half goes.

Playing Hades 2!

Huge progress this week. Managed to beat Chronos a few times, but I’m still having trouble with the final boss on the other path.

Playing Witch on the Holy Night!

Still on Chapter 7. It’s partially due to Hades 2 eating most of my gaming time, but also because this Chapter is fairly long.

I’ll probably play these games with basic knowledge of a couple of animes I have watched

Knowing/liking the original animes series helps, but it’s not mandatory. You may get a bit overloaded due to the huge amount of characters, but they are introduced gradually and the game has a big encyclopedia to help remember who is who.

Do you think they will still be fun for me?

Will you like it for the first 10-20h? Almost certainly yes if you like strategy games and big robots.

Will you like it enough to play the whole 80h+ (assuming you go for Y)? That’s a much harder question to answer, it will depend a lot on how much you enjoy the gameplay loop.

Started Ys IX: Monstrum Nox on PS5. Switch is generally my preferred platform for all RPGs but all reviews recommend to play it on another platform, if you have access to it.

Monstrum Nox performance is quite bad on the Switch. It’s “playable” but there’s some nasty framerate drops in some parts, in particular during the tower defense segments, though according to this video this is fixed if you’re playing on a Switch 2.

At least the they moved to a new engine in the following game, which runs miles better even on Switch 1.

Finished Super Robot Taisen Y!

The previous game in the series (SRT30) is seen by most as the weakest entry on recent years. It had some interesting ideas, in particular with its approach with the mission structure - older games had linear missions with occasional “branches”, while 30 (and now Y) give you a big list of mandatory and optional missions and you can tackle them in any order you want. However, the first attempt at this structure in 30 turned out bad - story felt disjointed, character interactions were limited, and they completely failed in balancing difficulty, that game was so ridiculously easy that it became mind-numbing boring. It also had some other issues (like weak story and uninspired “original” characters/mechs), but I think the ones I mentioned above are the biggest problems.

So I’m happy to say that Y drastically improved in almost all aspects over its predecessor. Story is much better, provides enough challenge to make veterans like me play carefully, “original” units are great. I have a ton of praise for the characters interactions, they really nailed them in this game - having the story revolve around a “flying city” was a brilliant touch, the characters are no longer just members of the same army but also neighbors and friends living in the same city. This added a lot of options for cross-series interactions and they made good use of it.

As for negatives, there’s two: First is the the UI - it’s not bad, and if this is your first game in the series you might not even notice it, but they re-did it for this game and it’s significantly lacking compared to the old ones. I heard they migrated just to a new engine so this may be a temporary setback, but I really hope they do review and improve it for future games.

The second is the big one, and it’s one of the issues from 30 that Y didn’t fix: The ballooning amount of missions. A play through of 30 or Y is at least double the length of older games, and this makes one of the biggest weaknesses of the series very visible: The lack of mission diversity. The large majority is simply “defeat all enemies” or “defeat the boss”, and with this many missions it’s easy to get bored or burned out from this game. Since I’m familiar with most of the anime series present the character interactions helped “carry” the game, but if you’re not in the same position you should consider playing it slowly to avoid this burnout.

Overall I had a ton of fun with the game and it got me a lot more hopeful about the future of the series after 30. I’ll also be coming back to it in the future when DLC2 is released since I already preordered it.

Finished Sheepo!

This was the first game released by Kyle Thompson, and the most unique of the three. It’s a “no weapons” metroidvania where you play as a small alien who goes around collecting eggs of different species and gains the ability to shapeshift into different forms. It’s more puzzle and platform focused than the other two and also significantly shorter (but also cheaper), taking less than 5h to finish.

Overall I prefer the other two (my ranking is Islets > Crypt Custodian > Sheepo), but I had a good time with all of his games and I’m now anxiously waiting for the release of Well Dweller.

Playing Witch on the Holy Night!

With SRTY finally done I’m now focusing more on this one, currently midway through Chapter 7. This chapter and the previous one slow down after the big battle and go back to more slice-of-life content as the three leads have to adjust to a new lifestyle.

Battletoads

Ninja Gaiden 2: The Dark Sword of Chaos

Nintendo is trying to give PTSD to a new generation of players with these.

Crazy that the CotND team still can’t get a dev kit, they are the guys who did a Zelda crossover game that was published by Nintendo itself.

I hadn’t tried running Towerfall since getting my Switch 2. What is not working with it?

Don’t have a Switch 2 yet so I don’t know, but it’s listed in the eShop as “unsupported”: https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/towerfall-switch/

I have a spreadsheet with all my games where I’ve been tracking what is still listed as having issues.

In my library, Crypt of the Necrodancer is still completely unplayable with latest firmware. Crashes during initial loading. Two firmware patches ago (before 21.0.0) it was briefly playable but you’d have to restart the Switch 2 (full power options restart) or you’d have major sound issues.

Interesting, I also have that game and I remember people commenting that one was fixed, and according to my spreadsheet was listed as “working fine” in the Nintendo website when I last checked.

At least they have it listed as unsupported again, which shows some commitment to have the proper information there: https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/crypt-of-the-necrodancer-nintendo-switch-edition-switch/

But I wish there was a changelog somewhere to make it easier to follow this. :/

Tokyo Xanadu Ex+ also moved to “compatible” with this update. Now the only game I have in my collection that is marked as “not working” on the Switch 2 is Towerfall.

Playing Super Robot Taisen Y!

Same update as last week, finished a few more missions but still in Chapter 6.

Playing Nine Sols!

Reached the final boss… and it’s kicking my ass. 😄 Really cool battle though, love the way they use some of the same moves your main character have.

I want to try to beat it without lowering difficulty, but I need time to sit down and have a good and long “practice session” to learn its patterns and could not do it during the week. But might be able to take that time tomorrow.

Playing Super Mario Galaxy 2!

I had finished the first game way back on the Wii, but had never played the second one properly. And what a great game, stages are very creative and unique, music is great, and despite its age still plays quite well.

One thing to notice is that these games originally made use of the pointer functionality on the Wii, which had to be adapted in the Switch port to use either use gyro controls or touchscreen. The former is a decent approximation and works well when playing docked, but both options felt somewhat clunky when playing handheld.

This game can be pretty damn hard at times, those optional “Prankster Comet” got me a few game overs already. But I’m having a blast with it, and just reached the World 3 castle.

All three metroidvania games from that developer are great. The other two are Touhou Luna Nights and Blade Chimera.

A fantastic game, and the remaster looks gorgeous.

I think the only recent re-release of that game was for the PS4, so unless you have that console it’s probably easier to emulate the original.

I fucking love the more “linear” first half of The Messenger, but didn’t enjoy the “metroidvania” second half nearly as much.

Still a great game though.

FYI Nine Sols has a “Story Mode” that lets you tweak damage numbers (and AFAIK only locks you out of a single achievement). Knowing that exists was one of the reasons I decided to try the game despite my PTSD from Silksong.

I ended absolutely loving it even though it was crazy hard, and haven’t lowered the difficulty yet. Though right now I’m stuck at the last boss and that may finally force me to do so. 😀

If you didn’t like Hollow Knight you probably won’t like Silksong either.

The game is good, and incredibly polished, but feels aimed at the people who 100% the first game and wanted more.

Played a lot of these in the last two years, with Ender Magnolia and Nine Sols being my favorites among them.

All-time I think I’d still go with Super Metroid, despite its age and having completed multiple playthroughs I still end up playing for hours anytime I boot it.

Honorable mentions for Rabi-Ribi (don’t let the cutesy anime artstyle fool you, this is a fantastic non-linear game with some of the best boss battles in the genre), the recent Momodora games and the Team Ladybug games (with Touhou Luna Nights being my favorite of the three).

I’ve migrated not too long ago from Win10 to Kubuntu which is very Windows-like, and the adaptation was quite easy.

However, I have to ask: Are you comfortable typing commands on a terminal or editing configuration files? I ask because while it’s gotten much easier to use Linux with just a graphical interface you’ll still bump into some annoyances here and there where you’ll Google how to fix and it will often tell you to ‘run command x in the terminal’