Alexander is really good, one of my favorites. I prefer to make it with Brandy/Cognac like the recipe I linked, but you can also make it with Gin for a different, stronger flavor.

Grasshopper looks and tastes like chocolate mint ice cream. If you like that flavor enough to want an alcoholic version then go for it.

Playing The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak!

This may sound kinda random, but one of my hobbies is mixing cocktails.

Why am I saying this? Because it’s fun seeing the adult cast of this game going out for drinks and actually recognizing what they are asking for 😄. Van’s sweet tooth definitely affects his taste for alcohol since he keeps asking for cocoa drinks like Alexander or Grasshopper.

Anyway, back to the game, I’m now on Chapter 5.

Chapter 4 and the Intermission were a huge boost in my interest in the playable cast. I’ve gotten very curious about Risette’s backstory, and Aaron’s chat with Van during the intermission was excellent and gave me a much better view on him. Also, Judith who was one of my favorite characters so far has officially joined the party.

The story escalated really quick after that, and right now I’ve reached a section where you can align with different factions depending on your choices during the game. I experiented a bit with the options I had available and they all seemed fairly similar in structure, but liked the idea overall.

Not going to read any of that, to stay from any spoilery content.

FYI, I’m trying to avoid story discussion and talking mainly about characters, gameplay, and overall setting of the game. So hopefully no significant spoilers in there in case you read it by accident.

In summary, are you enjoying it?

Definitely. Can’t praise the MC enough (my favorite since the Sky trilogy) interesting gameplay ideas that are also good QOL improvements, darker tone that pushes some boundaries from the series.

The main thing I’m not “sold” is the new team, maybe because the MC set a high bar? But side-characters in general are excellent and memorable, so I’m hoping the other party members will get more development over the game.

Playing The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak!

Finished Chapter 3 yesterday.

Van is really great, one of my favorite MCs in the series. He’s this hard-boiled investigator with the perfect amount of silliness mixed in, I love the gag of him getting “bribed” into troublesome jobs by expensive sweets.

But the rest of the playable cast so far has been… kinda mid? Agnes is the demure, prim and proper female lead that I’d usually rank very low in preferences, yet she’s probably my favorite of the playable cast because Feri and Risette are just there, and while Aaron does have more personality his constant rudeness really irritates me. I’m hoping they’ll improve over the game, because there’s plenty of room for that.

What makes this extra weird is that the secondary cast in this game is fantastic, I’m really interested in Elaine and René’s relationships with Van, recurring side characters like the informers Dingo and Bermotti have plenty of personality, there’s Judith being absolutely hilarious every time she’s on the screen, and even some minor characters like the film director from Chapter 3 are memorable.

Another thing that I’m positively surprised is how they’re trying to push some boundaries for this series, this game is significantly bloodier with named character deaths happening often, and there’s even some raunchier scenes like the one where Van visits a nightclub - all of which fits very well with the “underworld” theme of Daybreak.

🥲

Finished Unicorn Overlord!

What an amazing game. The storyline lacks depth, but everything else shines - gameplay is great, the amount of customization you have is staggering, the visuals and soundtrack are beautiful, and the world is big and full of places to explore.

I was also extremely impressed on how polished and optimized the Switch version is. Loading screens are non-existent, everything is clean, fast and fluid.

Can’t recommend this one enough, it’s a must-play for strategy game fans.

Playing The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak!

Another arc with a new cast and location is something this series desperately needed after all those games in the Cold Steel saga and I’m glad this day has finally arrived. I’m still early in the game, finished the Prologue and early into Chapter 1, but I can already see why people say so many good things about this one.

Van is an excellent main character. He’s smart, experienced, and I like how he’s more morally “gray”, willing go get his hands dirty if necessary - the whole idea of having the main characters working on shadier jobs is a nice contrast to the previous games. I’m less thrilled about Agnes, she feels too much like a “generic main heroine”, but she does a good job as the audience surrogate and I expect she’ll get more development during the game.

One thing I’m finding surprisingly enjoyable is the “dual” battle system - when you meet an enemy you start in a “action” style battle, and you can at any time press a button to transition to turn-based. The idea is that you can use the “action” part of the battle to stun the enemies and get an advantage, but when fighting weaker enemies you can often finish the battle without going into turn-based, which makes this a really nice time-saving/QOL feature.

Hey, Nintendo, this sounds like a nice timing to finally give us a physical edition of the first two Famicom Detective games.

I didn’t have that willpower. 😀 I remember I was planning on playing something else between FC and SC, but had to change my plans…

How many continents are there total?

Unless the game pulls up some surprise hidden continent thing, there should be five total. And since I had a lot of free time yesterday I’m almost done with the 4th one now.

I am thinking about finally starting Trails in the Sky SC

Didn’t remember you had already finished FC!

Hope you enjoy SC, I think it’s one of the best in the series.

Playing Unicorn Overlord!

The addiction is real, can’t stop playing this one.

Just finished the third continent and now trying to choose the main character’s partner, with the childhood friend priestess and the flirty dark elf as the two main candidates.

Been crushing the game fairly easily which makes me think I overdid with grinding, but I just can’t avoid it due to the “kingdom building” aspect of the game - I NEED to rebuild every single town before moving forward.

Hopefully I can finish this one soon because my copy of “Trails Through Daybreak” is arriving next week and it’ll be difficult to resist playing that one.

Not sure if this will make sense for people who haven’t played the game, but I when I say “grindy” it’s less “keep repeating the same stages to gain XP/Money” and more in the lines of “there’s a lot of small optional stages that look similar and you’re not required to do… but probably want to because it unlocks extra portions of the map and makes life easier”.

These shorts stages are somewhat repetitive so it’s annoying if you try to play them at all at once, but they are optional and their compact nature make them a good option as a break between longer stages or when you only have time for a short gaming session.

Playing Senren * Banka!

Slow progress, still going through the second chapter of the “common” route.

Playing Unicorn Overlord!

I’ve been bouncing from game to game the past few weeks trying to find something that catches my attention and helps me relax because my usual RPGs and VNs haven’t been working, I’m having a hard time focusing on them due to real life problems.

I think this one is the best candidate so far. Battles are usually short so it’s good game to play in quick bursts (and you can save mid-battle in case you hit a longer one), there’s plenty of story but it’s fairly standard fantasy stuff so you don’t need to pay too much attention.

It’s a bit grindy, which could be a problem on other moments but works well right now, just going around doing short missions and unlocking more characters and sections of the map has been really fun so far.

A couple things to comment: First, as usual for a Vanillaware game it looks beautiful and it’s generally well polished. I think a few menus are a bit clunky, but nothing you can’t get used to after a couple hours playing.

Second, the game has an absurd amount of customization, so much that it’s almost overwhelming:

• You can have up to 10 active battle parties
• Each battle party can have up to 5 characters, so you can have up to 50(!) characters active at once
• There’s a ridiculous amount of classes (more than 60 IIRC), all with different strenghts and weaknesses
• Each character has multiple equipment slots, and those not only can provide status boots but also add new skills
• You can configure the skills and its usage for each character, similar to the Gambit system in Final Fantasy 12

As you can see above, that’s a LOT of stuff to fiddle with. So far I’ve been only doing basic stuff, balancing the parties and keeping everyone minimally equipped and it’s been working, but I can see myself at some point later in the game just sitting down and spending a whole afternoon tuning everything to the max.

Another crazy week, this time both at work and personal life, but at least this time I managed to sneak some gaming progress.

Playing Senren * Banka!

Completed the first chapter, but I imagine I’m still quite early in the game since I haven’t even met the last of the main heroines.

Story continues to be fun slice-of-life mixed with some supernatural elements. Favorite character is definitely Mako, the mischievous ninja bodyguard.

Playing Sea of Stars!

I usually avoid playing two longer story-driven games at the same time, but needed something with a bit more gameplay to help me get through this week, so I decided to start this one as well.

Loving the pixel art and the Mario-RPG style battle system with timed attacks. Too early to comment on the story asides from the fact that the flashback near the beginning dragged at bit too much for my tastes.

As for characters, the “Warrior Cook” Garl is great but the two main protagonists still feel kinda bland, let’s hope we see more of them as the game progresses.

Crazy week at work so no gaming progress.

I’d like to resume Senren * Banka during the weekend but we’ll see how it goes. Want to get a couple games out of my way ASAP because Trails through Daybreak is coming soon and it’ll definitely eat all my free time.

Hyped to play AAI2, it’s one of the highest rated games on the franchise on VNDB, only below PW3 and GAA2 which were both fantastic.

There’s 4 of them on the Switch/PS4, and all of them have an Asian/English version.

• Super Robot Wars V
• Super Robot Wars X
• Super Robot Wars T
• Super Robot Wars 30

I personally rank them in this order: V > T > X> 30, but I always recommend people trying these games to look into which anime/mecha series are included on each and get whichever has more series you like.

You can find this information (along with a lot more) on the Akurasu Wiki.

Replaying Super Robot Wars V!

The original plan for the week was to continue Senren * Banka, but I got this game on the mail during the week, decided to try it for a just a bit… and remembered how I’m hopelessly addicted to this series.

For those unfamiliar with the series, Super Robot Wars games are turn-based strategy RPGs where units from several mecha anime band together, so you can have the Evangelions teaming with Gundams and Daitarn 3 against common foes, with really cool attack animations and a crazy crossover plot mixing elements of all the series involved.

It’s a very old series, the first game was released in the 90’s for the original B&W Gameboy, but while there are over 50 games in the series almost none of them were released in the west due to the complex licensing involved. But luckily for the english-speaking audience since the PS4 they started released Asian “multi-language” versions of these games, so we can finally enjoy them properly.

I had already played this game on the PS4, but could not resist a recent sale and double-dipped so I now have the Switch version as well. Decided to use the female protagonist (Chitose) for this replay since I love her themes, and I’m currently around Stage 20.

There are three Confidant requirements you need to meet to have access to the true ending and Royal’s extra content.

You only need one for most of the extra content in Royal. The other two do add a bit more, but are not really essencial.

Finished 1000xRESIST!

This game was really good and one of my best surprises in recent years.

As I mentioned last week, this is a “walking simulator” taking place in a world where human race almost went extinct due to a plague and a new society was created from clones of the last survivor, a girl called Iris. The game has you play as “Watcher”, one of the clone sisters who goes through Iris’s memories and learns about the past and the history of this world.

The writing in this game is excellent, in particular for the main characters. The sci-fi backdrop works well, and I found the connections to the real-world very interesting - the developers describe themselves as a “group of majority Asian-Canadian diaspora creators”, and without going into spoilers it’s very clear they drew from their personal experiences when setting the tone and themes for this game.

Now, the bad parts: While the visual design is interesting, performance and resolution are underwhelming on the Switch, plus I got a couple crashes during gameplay. Also, navigating the main “hub” is horrible and you will get lost often (developers, please add a map or better waypoint system!), but despite those problems I still highly recommend this one to people who enjoy strong narratives.

Edit: The newest patch adds a map of the main hub. Definitely a good improvement.

Playing Senren * Banka!

First time playing a VN from Yuzusoft, a developer famous for lighthearted games leaning more on the slice-of-life/romance genre.

Still very early in the game (Chapter 1-3), but so far this has been quite fun. MC goes visit family who lives in a small montain village, and while there decides to try pulling a legendary sword stuck in a boulder.

Except when he tries it… the sword breaks in half. 😄 But that apparently still counts as becoming the “master” of the legendary blade, so he ends up tangled in a mess involving an arranged married, a priestess cursed with cat ears (?!), the spirit of the sword, ninjas, and even some creepy monsters. Quite curious to see where the story goes from here.

The production values and polish are great. Great art and voice work, clean interface including an excellent flowchart showing the choices you took and potential branches.

It’s getting pretty repetitive though, and I am getting a bit bored of it. Playing a single chapter of each character, and then for all intents and purposes, forgetting that character in any kind of narrative just feels like waste of time. And after going through the map, recruiting 7 characters, my highest level character is level 21. So, even if I hadn’t recruited them, I would’ve to grind a lot to reach chapter 2.

That’s exactly why I ended up dropping Octopah - the stories being too disconnected didn’t look good to me, and the game felt way too grindy. It’s interesting that I also dropped it on a similar timeframe, I finished all initial chapters but barely started the second batch.

Finished Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice, part of the Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy!

Case 5 was interesting but flawed. It’s broken into two halves, starting with a a civil trial where Apollo and Phoenix are defending different sides - a novel idea but the writing of this section was just bad. Feels like everyone except Apollo has an “act stupid” debuff applied (in particular Phoenix) which hurt a lot my enjoyment.

The second half as much better, and gave us a nice conclusion to the arc in Khura’in. However, while the stakes were supposed to be higher, it didn’t feel as impactful to me as the third case. I think one of the biggest problems is that we didn’t have enough time to get attached to the new characters from this side - Nahyuta is underdeveloped and boring, likely the weakest of the “main” prosecutors in the entire series, Dhurke was awesome but got wayyyy too little screentime, same with Inga and Ga’ran. The only character I got really attached was Rayfa, she had a nice development arc over the game.

Finally, the special case was a nice throwback for fans of the original trilogy - an old-school case set in Japan America with Phoenix and Maya teaming up against Edgeworth, and even the return of Larry. The dynamic of that trio was as good as I remember, and the case was solid.

Overall a good game, and I hope we see more of the series. Maybe Capcom will give us a package of the two Investigation games? Maybe we could even hope for a new entry? I’d take either option happily.

Playing 1000xRESIST!

A lot of people saying good things about this game combined with my love for sci-fi convinced me to give it a shot.

It’s an adventure/“walking simulator” game with an interesting setting: Humanity was destroyed by a plague, leaving behind a single survivor. All the main characters are clones of her, and you play as “Watcher”, one of the clone sisters whose role is to relieve and preserve the memories of their “mother”.

Finished Chapter 1, and it left me with an excellent impression. Let’s how it goes from here.