Dark Deity, after 40 hours i beat the game. It is a clone of Fire Emblem titles so you take as expected. The story is so so and in fourty hours i had several bugs but it is a good game and worth to play it if you like these games, on pc there is not much more.

I've finished a few games recently with a few more getting close..

Blasphemous
This year is shaping up to have a metroidvania focus for me as I have several other titles on the upcoming backlog that I'm looking forward to but in any case first up was Blasphemous.

I went into this one a little apprehensive and it took me a couple of hours for it to truly hook me but once it did it was a great ride. Some people say it is more of a soulslike than a true metroidvania as it doesn't have any ability gating however that doesn't stop it being a fun time. The different areas are all interesting to explore and work your way through with them all interconnecting in one way or another.

Enemies are varied as are the boss fights which range in difficulty. I found some of the later ones to be a bit tricky but ultimately satisfying when overcome. It has had a number of updates and free DLC since launch which expands the game and also added new bosses and a true ending. For the moment I have only completed the base game endings and have left the true ending for my next playthrough.

Monster Crown
A little monster taming game where you breed your monsters. As I loved Dragon Warrior Monsters on the GBC while growing up this one immediately caught my interest. It has undergone a number of patches for performance along with a some additional content however despite this it still felt a bit clunky at times.

In general terms you have 5 types which each have an advantage/disadvantage over another type in a Pokemon style. Monster come in a base form of one of the five types and then can be bred with other monsters to become any of the five types along with learning different moves and changing stat growth patterns. Each type of monster has a distinct form so there is plenty of variety to be had in customising your team and by the end of the game more options open up to influence the way breeding works.

Despite that I did have some issues with the game; the story was fairly bland and didn't really capture my interest all that much, certain features available in the overworld were never really introduced or explained which made some puzzles not clear at first and despite a focus on breeding I did find that some of my better monsters were simply bosses that were caught along the way.

All in all, it was fairly short and scratched an itch. It has some interesting ideas however there are a number of issues that have to be slogged through.

Pyre
I went back and forth at some point about whether or not to try this game as I loved Bastion but wasn't too keen on Transistor however I have no regrets about Pyre (other than it ended maybe).

Pyre plays out like a visual novel with the occasional sports game (rites). It has a rich cast of characters, both your companions and your opponents, and great music to accompany them.

You help guide a group of exiles through the Downside as you compete in the rites with the aim of granting freedom to return to the Commonwealth to a number of your allies (or your opponents if you lose to them at key moments). By helping to free your companions they can assist with a revolution and ultimately the ending will be tailored to choices you make during the playthrough which allows for replayability.

The rites consist of 3v3 team based ball game where you try to get the ball into the other teams pyre. Each character has their own set of quirks and abilities which makes them different to play around with. Each match lasts maybe 5 minutes or so meaning they do not drag on too much and the game will progress whether you win or loss (sometimes you may even try to lose on purpose for narrative reasons)

All in all I had a good time with Pyre and would definitely recommend it if you enjoy reading with sprinkles of gameplay.

Octopath Traveler, Apr 2 (Xbox Game Pass)-I think the second game is superior in every way but this is still a lot of fun if you liked that one. The lack of save in the post game dungeon was a poor decision. Overall the game dragged on a bit too long.

Full List

Atomfall (PC Game Pass)

From the makers of the Sniper Elite games. This is more along the lines of a simple immersion sim like Prey (2017), though the systems are not as deep. It's a great game- it is a semi open first-person game where investigation through exploration of 5 small open hub zones is the main gameplay. There are 6 endings based around NPC's, and you can play it one of two ways. The lazy way is to simply choose you NPC and only do their requests and ignoring all else. That will get you a game around 15 hours. Or you can play the way I did. I explored fully and did everything for everyone right up until their quests become exclusive towards the end. That way you can simply choose your preferred ending close to the end, then reload and see the others. Unfortunately, I messed up and went too far with one quest line and got an NPC killed and I didn't have a save to go back far enough- hence I only did 5 of the 6 endings and would have to replay full for the 6th.

I loved the game, and it pains me to see why many people are critical of it. The first reason is technically the game is not cutting edge. I still think it looks excellent- basically it uses Rebellions in house engine- the same one as the Sniper Elite series. It looks sharp and clear and runs like a champion. At ultra settings and 4K (no scaling), the game was locked to 120fps- my TV's refresh rate, and it was still only using around 80% of the GPU. I much prefer this type of look vs performance over all the new Unreal 5 games. I hope the dev's don't listen to the clowns at Digital Foundry and change their style. Also, the game has no gameplay cutscenes at all and countless ways and different orders to get things done.

Of course, the game is set in the early 60's around a small remote English village, and the characters reflect that setting. Hence, the other complaint I've seen a few times...the dreaded "lack of diversity". Good! Make a game set in modern London and you can a game with diversity until it's coming out of your asshole, but in 50's/60's rural England...I think the game nails it.

Excellent game, put it on your list for whenever it comes to a sale price that you can tolerate (I never advocate buying games at full price) or play on Game Pass if you ever find yourself with a subscription. It's going to be one of the years GOTY contenders in my opinion.

Ultima II. I've had an itch to replay the Ultima series, with a purist impulse to do the original "home" versions (which basically means the Apple II for the first five), but the one game that was really holding me up was this one. I strongly considered just skipping it, but I figured I'd go ahead and just get it out of the way relatively quickly. I think it's an impressive upgrade over the first game in terms of graphics and a much bigger world to explore. However, there's not much of interest going on in that world.

You can talk to everyone, but the vast majority have nothing interesting to say. The fighters all say "Ugh, me tough!", the clerics say "Believe!", and the thieves all say "Psst, wanna buy a watch?" There are dungeons and towers to explore, but you don't actually need to ever explore them. There's a whole solar system to explore, but the planets aren't really good for anything beyond sight-seeing (I wonder if the Computer Camp is laid out like the one Richard Garriott went to?). Only one of them is necessary to win the game. You can see how the game iterates on the design of the first game (and Akalabeth, if we count it), but that sort of design isn't sufficient to sustain a game of this size. I don't really mind replaying Ultima I because as repetitive as it is, the game is at least pretty short. This game is just...drudgery.

The only thing that really matters is grinding for gold for literally everything. The grindiest JRPGs ever made ain't got shit on this game for grinding. You need gold to buy food so you don't drop dead of starvation, but you also need gold to buy hit points from Lord British. You need gold to buy stat increases and plot important items. The game really could have used some kind of get rich quick mechanic like gambling to get around the grinding limitations.

You get experience points and levels, but they don't mean anything. The game also requires grinding to loot important items from monsters so you can explore. You need to kill thieves until you get a blue tassle, which allows you to commandeer pirate ships, but pirate ships spawn very rarely, so you wander around hoping a ship will appear (helps to kill sea serpents if they spawn, but they're not common either).

Once you get a ship, the game opens up a lot because you don't consume food as long as the ship is in motion, so grinding gets a lot faster, but a big part of this game's design is based around Garriott's love of Time Bandits, which means you have to enter time gates to visit other eras...and you need pirate ships to explore these places, too, so more grinding is needed for boats in each era. The time travel is a neat idea, but learning which gate goes where (and when) is a pain, especially when you just want to see one guy for something like buying stats. Everything feels far away. Eventually, when you're strong enough (really strong!), you need to start picking fights with town guards because they're the only source of keys in the game, and you need the keys to get the most important hints (unless you've already played before and know the main points) and unlock the doors to get access to airplanes and the space ships. Eventually you get all the stuff you need to confront Minax the end boss, and even then the fight requires you to go all the way across a big castle, hit her once, and then travel to the opposite end to hit her again, back and forth, while dodging an invincible balron stalking you, so even that's a chore. I think she took five hits before going down, and now I can say I'm done and will likely never play this game again. Onward to better things!

Doodle Kingdom (Android Main Game)
I picked up Doodle kingdom because it's free for Android on the Epic Store mobile app right now
Combined stuff until I made all the elements and I finished the main game
I could only get so far with the 3 extra quests because certain combination made the game quit completely without warning but I have since found an update on the Epic store and fingers crossed, so far it seems to have helped the stability
It's.. Doodle God, with a slight fantasy twist, nice skinner box dopamine rewards when you fine a new combo but towards the end when you have masses of elements and only a very few still to find it does get realty quite tedious trying everything possible and getting 'Ash' and 'Corpses' AGAIN more often than not!

Full List

Pathologic 3: Quarantine (Steam)

This is the free prologue for the upcoming full release later this year. It's about 3 hours long and gives a taste of what the new game is going to be. Based on this Prologue the full game is going to make a few people pissed off, as it is not the same sort of game as the Haruspex- he is an action man and the game plays like a survival sim for his story. For the Batchelor story it is more of a medical investigation game- but still with a different sort of survival trait (sanity) to monitor. Well, that's assuming this Prologue is an accurate reflection of the full game.

regardless, it looks to be the same weirdness as Pathologic 2 and even the first game. The map is totally familiar if you've played Pathologic 2...it's just different gameplay. I'm looking forward to playing the full release whenever I decide to get it.


Nymphomaniac- Sex Addict (Steam)

Great idea for a NSFW game. However, like the developer's other games the execution lets things down to some extent. Once you get the simple handful of endings...the rest is just a sandbox where the sandbox quickly becomes too small. Also, the graphics and animations are not up to task, it has to be said. Both criticisms probably stem from the dev's being quite a small studio with ambitions beyond their means maybe. So great idea, but not a great game.

Finished Syberia 2 and I still really like it. Puzzles are well thought and not too difficult (mostly :) ). Graphics are a bit dated but were great in their days. The story is great too. The main problem is that the developers were mostly (I think) in graphics so there are a lot of screens that are there only to be seen and enjoyed but that have no purpose gameplay-wise. It means that if you don't know what to do next, you will have quite a lot of walking/running around to do while searching for the next step.

I also finished Beyond Good and Evil: 20th anniversary which is a great remaster for a great game. I even installed the original one to compare and the graphics are definitely much better in this version. Gameplay has not been changed but there is a new side mission which gives more backstory to make the link for its sequel and a few mini games have been added.

Full list here.

Return to Na Pali (Unreal Gold)

A little more than a year ago, when I had finished the original Unreal campaign and reviewed it, I felt I was quite done with the game and wasn't sure whether I would ever want to play this bonus campaign on top of it. But now that enough time has passed, I started it on a whim and got hooked. It was mostly more of the same, but this time I was able to enjoy it more. In part probably because I knew what to expect now and I was better prepared to deal with the enemies due to my previous experience with the game. But also because in this campaign the design is rather straightforward and, while still open, avoids becoming too confusing and frustrating. There are no more obscure 'puzzles' either and there is less to read with the translator. Instead, most of the story is told via audio logs at the end of levels (which I suppose also means that your character choice - male or female - is a bit more relevant now, as this time you will hear the character talk, not just grunt). The campaign didn't feel that short either, for a mission pack, but since it was fast-paced and I didn't dislike any of the levels, but was always motivated to continue, I managed to play through it in a few sessions.

The only problems I had with Return Na Pali was that later in the game, sometimes the audio logs between levels would not play. At first I thought maybe not all of the level endings have story bits, but then I replayed a section and noticed that the game remained silent where it had played an audio log before. At the very end, I also actually managed to 'overlook' the big boss and just finished the game without fighting him. And I wouldn't even have noticed, had the final audio log not spoken of a tough battle shortly before. I replayed the end and this time I encountered the boss, but I suspect the first time he had not been triggered. Or you can really bypass him this easy, but then it's weird for the audio log to mention him, if there's a good chance players might not even fight or see him.

Still, all in all I had fun with RtNP.

GTA V (PC)

This game is the first in the series that didn't imediately suck me in. In fact, I left it installed for years since I bought it in 2016, hoping that I would come back and finish it. Part of it was technical, I think: it took too long to load (until that mod turned official patch solved this problem), and it didn't run particularly well on my machine at the time (mostly due to me being lazy about configuring it properly, probably). But also, character movement is incredibly sluggish, and the story really takes it's time to pick up the pace.

Early on there's a focus in establishing Michael, Franklin, and their respective families and friends. These missions are long, full of dialogue and with very little in the way of interesting action going on. It doesn't help that despite being well writen, most of the characters surrounding both protagonists are narcisistic assholes, constantly berating the characters, while also being utterly dependent on them. It's most certainly a sympton of the game's universe being a parody of all things USA and its population, but taking it too far: things that should be funny, are so exagerated that they come off as simply mean.

Then, they introduce Trevor and his friends, the pace of the missions picks up, but Trevor is an insufferable psycho, surrounded by somewhat inocent idiots that he constantly abuses. Once again, it should be funny, but it's so exagerated that ends up being mean and unfunny. I think he also highlights why crazy characters are usually more zanny than trully psychotic: characters like the Joker and Sheogorath have plenty of fans, it's hard to imagine them being so popular being as chaotic and frequently evil as Trevor.

Still, the change of pace kept me moving forward until I reached the famed Assassination missions. Lester, a hacker that helps Michael and the others set up their heists, organizes a series of assassinations for Franklin to perform, incidentaly manipulating the stockmarket. So you look up on the internet what to buy, buy, do the mission, wait, sell, buy another different one, wait a lot, and sell.

It's not hard, but felt cumbersome.

So I dropped the game again for years until the Enhanced edition came out, recently. I got back, did the stockmarket thingy for the first assassination (you should only do the rest after finishing the story, when you're incredibly rich), and kept going forward until yesterday, when I finished it.

The story, in the end, is a bit all over the place, as it tries to be a about a bunch of thieves setting up "scores", while it also struggles to justify the heists, while balancing out each protagonist's intended arc. So your characters end up in the hands of corrupt federal agents, and their friends, doing their dirty work (that's always very vague about their true motivations), while also trying to solve whatever mess Trevor causes along the way, including his constant clashes with a mercenary group called Merrywheather. Every now and then, a third party enters the fray and causes some sort of temporary trouble for the protagonists, mostly so that one of the final mission options can have each member of the trio assassinating one of the other's nemesis (it's a great mission, but the nemesis status of a couple of the enemies felt unearned).

Talking about the missions, most of the main campaign ones have special gimmicks to keep things unique and interesting, though, whenever the game has any combat going on, it just throws huge waves of enemies one after another at your characters. It's fun, but sometimes goes on for a bit too long. Most heists also have setup missions and you can usually choose one of two approaches for them.

In the end, I really got into it, finally, despite the "all over the place" aspect of the story, and not really liking anyone besides Michael and Franklin. I was really excited while playing the final heist, the Big Score, and the mission after, where, as I said earlier, you assassinate all your enemies at once, Godfather style.

I still have the rest of the assassinations/stockmarket manipulations to go through, and a bunch of those weird side quests the game has in overabundance, but I can finally say I finished it.

Shadowrun returns.

another backlog game crossed. doing well.