I just beat Scarlet Nexus, and it kinda sucks? I haven’t fully formulated my thoughts on it yet, but it’s probably one of the weirdest action and RPG blends I’ve played.

Like, you get that soulslike thing where enemies can two-shot you if you’re not careful, and you take damage while you’re stunned and lying face down (maybe this one is not a soulslike thing, but it belongs to the same absurd family tree) but you also get a lot of attacks and abilities, which kind of gives combat a somewhat DMC-like feel—mechanic like juggling, quick recovery, slammers, air dashing, and mix of ranged and melee abilities.

The story is kinda ass, so the combat is simultaneously its selling point AND its undoing.

The by-the-numbers enemy encounters and levels don’t help, and neither does the length. That fucking final level felt endless, long corridor after corridor stuffed with enemies, then a 4-phase boss fight, then a bunch more corridors reusing environments from previous levels, then a drawn out boss fight that’s probably like 3 long phases sandwiched between a bunch of weird short phases and cutscenes.

Combat has innovative and cool ideas, but the whole package is too messy. I may come back to get the 100% at some point because there’s another character to play with, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

I’ve been playing through Jedi: Survivor. It runs poorly on PC, but is sometimes tolerable enough. It sucks to have that drawback, because the core game is expansive and a lot of fun once it gets going, with tons of exploration, tricky platforming, a variety of bosses, etc. I especially like that they managed to give one Jedi an even more bizarre set of combat stances even after the last game gave both double-edged and dual blade modes.

I’m also planning to pick up the Trails in the Sky remake. I played that game long after it came out and it somehow instilled a late sense of nostalgia in me. I tried recapturing that feeling with other JRPGs but few were living up to the story highs.

I went through a fucking spree earlier this week. Finished Metaphor: ReFantazio last weekend. It’s an RPG from Atlus, basically a fantasy Persona. Would recommend if you like those games. I also played through Lunistice, which is a short little platformer game. Only has a handful of levels, but fun and worth it for $5. Then I went into Mouthwashing blind and finished it in a single night. I knew absolutely nothing about that one except that I had only heard good things about it. Very good, but holy fucking shit is it heavy. Wanna recommend it, but it’s one of those games where you need to stare at a wall for a couple of hours to process everything it throws at you. And I’ve since started Shapez 2. An automation game like Factorio or Satisfactory, but it’s just Shapez. It makes the good chemicals in the brain go brrrrr. Would also recommend.

The Wandering Villiage. I just got it a couple days ago, absolutely loving it.

I’ve been playing Borderlands 4 with a friend. It might not be the best comparison to compare late game BL3 with early game BL4, but some of the things they changed may have been a step back. For instance, now that the game is open world and surprisingly denser with enemy mobs than the old games, it can be harder to tell when you’ve finished off a group of enemies. My opinion on it might change by the end of the game though.

I started Citizen Sleeper at the recommendation of a friend. It’s a pretty simple management game loop with only a few RPG trappings thus far, and I wonder if or when they will start to put the squeeze on my resources.

I also got back into Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and I think I’m about halfway through. The combat is excellent when you nail it and land your parries, but it lacks the equivalent of a Souls game where you spend the beginning of the fight hanging back and learning an enemy’s patterns, and that can sometimes be frustrating.

Trying No Man’s Sky for probably the third time. It’s clicked a bit better this time. I jumped back in because of the Corvette building, took me probably a week of evenings to finally be able to build one. It’s pretty darn good, I think it finally clicked. The storyline still feels like the longest checklist tutorial ever, 30+ hours in.

I’ve been playing Noita, it is difficult but great fun so far. I don’t think I’ve really even scratched the surface of what there is either.

Cronos: The new Dawn, it has a great Dead Space feeling. I’m not far yet, but i like what i’ve seen so far.

and Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor has hit 1.0, so if i’m looking for something to play without having to think that’s my goto this week.

Decided to pick up Final Fantasy VIII on sale for Xbox last weeiend, no I’m just getting started on that. The difference in character models from VII to VIII is crazy and almost hard to believe that it was the same hardware.

I know I owned this on PS1 at some point, but hell if I remember anything about it other than the frigging gun-sword.

Trying to 100% re3 on the ps5

Unnamed Space Idle, kinda seems like I’m pretty much at the end of currently available content. Haven’t maxed out all the things, but it doesn’t seem like there’s much left after this. Though I do suspect that unlocking/maxing out the thingies I’m working on might take quite a while, could be the game gets some content update before that happens.

Rogue Trader. No idea really how far I’m into the game, I enjoy the setting, story… it’s just that the gameplay is maybe a bit tedious-ish. At first it seemed awesome when I got my ship and was let loose in the nearby systems, but I can’t help but to feel it’s the “Mass Effect’s planet scanning” again… at least there’s no Mako. I am playing on pretty much baby-mode just to get around the combat, as I’ve felt that’s been pretty tedious in other games from the same company.