Tag Gaming

My Time At Portia: A Review

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[Yes, I’m alive. Too busy playing games to write, but now I’m back. For a bit anyhow.]

Did you ever want to play Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons/Rune Factory, but were put off by the mobile nature of many of those games? Well, there’s Stardew Valley for you. But if you want a game like the console versions of those games (specifically Rune Factory), there’s this game. My Time At Portia definitely fits in the niche with those games: live a daily life of solving problems for the local townsfolk while wooing one of them to start a family with.

I don’t know how I came upon this game. It certainly doesn’t look like a game I’d like. By look I mean look, in particular the character designs. They just look weird, no cute anime girls here. They are like the stylized western cartoons of the 90’s and 00’s on cable. There’s one particular cartoon I’m thinking of, I’m sure, but I just can’t grab it off the top of my head. Anyhow, not really my speed.

I mean, look at these weirdos.

But that game description? Exactly the sort of thing I like. I’ve played all of the Rune Factory games, and loved them. Well, most of them, for a while. I mostly like the concept, at any rate – they eventually become a grind and slog, after the marriage part at least. Romancing a bachelor/ette is a core part of the game: gathering materials, doing housework, completing quests, fighting monsters, all of that is in large part in service to getting the girl (or boy) of your dreams.

Or maybe I’m just very, very lonely. Nah, can’t be that.

My Time At Portia (MTAP) is no different, that I’ve found. Sure, there’s a main story. Sure, there is nothing pushing you to get a romance. But it’s there, in the background, driving everything. At least for me. In the Rune Factory games, you would finish the main quest long before you’d finish a romance, at least if you weren’t laser-focused on getting your beau. Here, I was able to marry one of the hardest candidates (Ginger) well before the story finished. Which kinda killed my motivation for driving as hard forward as I was going (I’ve got 70-ish hours in the game, which I started on 20 Dec) – and why I’m writing this review now instead of the nebulous “later” (see: my not-extant-but-still-planned AssCreed: Odyssey review).

Anyhow, I keep comparing this to Harvest Moon and Rune Factory, but what exactly does that mean? And what makes this game different?

Basically, the PC is a new kid in town, coming for some reason (often because a family member used to live there, and you’re taking their mantle: generally, their farm). You get started at your basic house with a basic plot of land, and over time work to improve it. In the Harvest Moon games, you start with a farm, and thus are a farmer (in the Rune Factory games, add in “badass monster slayer”). In this game, you start as a Builder: you build things that the townsfolk need; in other words, a crafter. Essentially, those are basically the same thing, just with a different flavor. (Indeed, in later games in the Rune Factory and Harvest Moon series, you spend a lot of time getting crafting materials to do a lot more than farm.) In MTAP, you can still farm a bit: “building” includes “building food” apparently, and it’s a lot cheaper to grow your own and have it on-hand.

Along the way you can talk to the various NPC townfolk, building up relationships with them from stranger on through soulmate, if that’s your thing. And it should be, because becoming friendlier to these folks gets you material benefits, like shop discounts or increased stamina. You do this in the usual, realistic way of talking to them once every day, and giving them trinkets that they kinda like (also every day, if you can hack it), as well as doing the occasional chore for them. Get them to like you enough, and you can ask them out, in a romantic kind of way. In this game, it doesn’t matter if you’re a guy or girl: everyone is very open-minded about their dating partner, as long as they aren’t (or haven’t been) already married. You can even be lovers with multiple people at once, though for some reason they don’t like it if they see you with some other lover on a date (or kissing, I suppose). The various characters often have quests associated with their friendship level and relationship status, which can help you increase said status faster than just doing the daily chores.

(Incidentally, I think this is where I messed up my fun: I went all-in on Ginger, ie., one girl, instead of going for the lot of them. Once you get married, your romance options are all gone, down to just doing the daily interactions with your spouse. At least there are a few post-marriage quests, depending on who you marry, but otherwise that’s it. I don’t know why I rushed it (“rushed,” he says, after taking over 65 hours to do it), but now I’m stuck.)

I didn’t just pick her because she’s the most normal-looking freak.

As crafting is the main gameplay loop, you need to get your crafting materials. You can buy them, if you’re a chump. You can grow some of them. You can smash rocks and cut down trees out in the field. You can also go into abandoned ruins to mine stuff (as well as get artifacts). And, sometimes, there are devious critters that are holding things you need. Thus, you need to kill them. With combat, which consists of mashing the attack button and dodge-rolling. (Incidentally, one of the daily interactions with most NPC’s is to spar with them; I guess beating each other senseless is one way to get closer.) As you do these various things, you get XP, which lets you level up and pick perks, most of which have something to do with increasing the efficiency of material gain (though increasing combat ability, gathering efficiency, or social interactions).

Since you saw XP, you know this is a RPG, so that means there’s a story. And there is! At the start, you come to replace your father (who’s been gone quite a while on an adventure) as a builder in this sleepy little town. But the mayor has big plans, and you’re just the person to put them into motion. He wants to turn this boring berg into a major hub city for all the free cities in the region. Oh, yah, this is a post-post-apocalyptic setting; the abandoned ruins are what remains of the old highly advanced civilization that apparently completely destroyed itself. There’s even a church, which is mostly about how advanced tech is bad because that’s what caused the temptations for evil and destruction and whatnot. Of course, not everyone belongs to this church – there are some very helpful researchers that study the old tech to teach you how to make all these things the mayor wants you to make. It starts out small: make some signs for a haunted house, make a few street lights. But eventually it’s: create supports for a tunnel to the next city, completely renovate the harbor so it can support large ships, and so on. There’s also some stuff about finding an ancient AI that may or may not have had a hand in destroying the world back then.

As far as graphics and the like go…it’s serviceable. Small indie devs, pls understand. This isn’t a feast for the eyes, but that’s not what the game’s about, so I can forgive it. The sound, on the other hand, that’s just plain bad. Music is fine, nothing fancy, but it works. Voice acting is, again, fine. There are some parts that aren’t voiced for some reason, as is usual in these sort of games. Some (named) NPC’s aren’t even voiced at all, which is odd. Accents are all over the place, but that’s not bad in itself. The sfx, on the other hand, are straight out of the N64. Very jarring to have such low-quality things in a game that’s otherwise much better than that. And since you’re going to do a lot of things with those sfx, it grates.

One thing that’s odd, though not wholly out-of-place: the save system. The only time to save is when you go to bed. So, if you screw up, or the game crashes, or whatever, you have to do the whole last day over again. And if you want to stop for the day, you have to go to bed. I think there is more than one save slot, but until you load from another one, you are stuck using the one you’re on. It’s very old-fashioned, taking directly from the older Harvest Moon games.

Besides the above, I only have one major complaint: the marriage. No, not the fact that marriage ends a big part of the game; I’m not too fond of that, but it’s the same as every other game in the genre, so I can’t really complain about that here. No, it’s the marriage itself. After you propose, and fulfill all the other marriage requirements (some characters have quests associated with getting married), the start of the next day is the ceremony. As in, as soon as you wake up, you are transported to the church. You walk down the aisle with your promised, the priest says some words…and that’s it. A short cutscene. None of the NPC’s at the ceremony (which isn’t even the whole town, not even close) even acknowledge what just happened, nor does the spouse! Except that they head back to your house at the end of the day, after going back to their old house. For all intents and purposes, you basically just start the day at the church instead of your house. Very disappointing, very anti-climactic.

This review might sound a little negative, but I don’t mean it to be so. It’s a fun game. Remember, 70+ hours, and I’m not even done with it. (Nor am I finished, obviously.) It really scratches that Rune Factory itch, one I haven’t been able to scratch for a long time – and one I won’t be able to until much later this year, if not the next, when Rune Factory 5 comes to these forsaken shores. In fact, aside from a few niggles, I’d say I like this game better than most of the Rune Factory games. The building focus over the farming really suits me, and I love how the things you build for the town are permanent, major additions to the landscape. In short, I really recommend this game, especially if you are a fan of Rune Factory, Harvest Moon, or Stardew Valley.

Craftopia: A First Look

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I was really excited for this game when it first was announced. A survival/crafting game, but anime? Sign me up!

And I’m still excited for it, when it comes out. Because it isn’t here yet. Sure, you can play it, but…let’s just say the game puts the “early” in “early access”. I’ve played some early access games, and they usually weren’t this incomplete. Buggy, sure, but there was more to them than this. Still, it’s a good introduction to the game, and it was still several hours of fun – and I’ve not yet completed what’s there to be seen.

The game begins with the above: Earth blows up, and apparently you are responsible. But the gods decide to give humanity – and more importantly, you – a second chance. This time, you have the responsibility to make things work.

Just in case you didn’t get it the first time. You will be reminded again, just to make you extra guilty.

And that’s it. That’s the story. As I said, early access – they don’t even have any quests put in. The game is very up-front with this though – as soon as you open the game, the devs are quick to point out that things are missing – including some translations (it’s a Japanese game) that are either just not there, or have machine-translated placeholders.

As far as the gameplay goes, if you’ve played a survival game, you know how it works. Get materials to make things to get more materials to make more things. It has a fantasy RPG aspect to it, unlike many of the more realistic settings. I’d say it’s most similar to Conan Exiles, of the games I’ve played. The only real survival aspect at this time, though, is hunger. You don’t need to sleep or any of that. Most of the crafting right now, at least for early game, seems focused towards food production, and combat (RPG, remember).

More healthy than raw meat.

Essentially, what’s in the game right now is the tutorial, or perhaps a demo. You get the first few stages of crafting, which basically lets you do what’s in the trailers. You get machinery in the third tier of crating, which seems a bit soon – it goes along with the loom and swords. I’m guessing those were made available just as proof of concept, to see if the players could get them to work. I’m not quite there yet, in terms of materials, but I have access to hoverboards and motorcycles.

All in all, this is a game to look forward to. I can see what they’re doing here, and expect good things. It’s just the wait that’s disappointing, but it isn’t like I have a lack of good games to play right now, and in the near future.

I look forward to the dragon balls.

September to October

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Too lazy to turn this; I thought google drive had an editing option, but I guess not.

As far as this month goes, it’s been pretty boring, at least to talk about. I’ve been playing basically the same games the entire time. Not much has happened in my life. Though there are a couple things to discuss, at least in brief, so I’m making this post.

First, an update on a post from wayy back in April. Thus, the picture of the scale above. As of yesterday, I hit my weight goal! I haven’t been this light since I was 20, if not earlier. Feels good, man. Sure, it took the better part of six months to make the half of progress, but I’ve lost 40-45 lbs with basically no exercise. Now, to be fair, I look it – my arms and legs might as well be those of a child, if it weren’t for the excessive hair on them. And I’ve still got too much of a gut. But my face looks good (well…not fat, at least), and I’m just chubbster now. Of course I celebrated by going out to eat (with a milkshake!).

So, what next? Well, the diet shall mostly continue. I see no reason to change much now; it works for me. I will change the “no snacking” rule to “no buying snacks from the store.” Meaning, I can snack, if I make them myself (or if I go to an actual baker and something really stands out). Which I don’t see myself doing much. I don’t even have the cooking implements to do so. I looked at a stand mixer a couple of weeks ago (kinda want to get into baking), and yah, that’s not happening right now.

Also, I need to exercise more. I know that’s not a goal, it’s an idea. But I’m too lazy to set up something concrete. I have weights in my office now, presumably to use while I’m watching videos on my lunch break, but I barely use them. (Doesn’t help that I hurt my right arm, and am in pain doing much of anything – it almost certainly wan’t caused by me using my mouse at an 80-90-degree angle to the right instead of in front of me; no sir, couldn’t be that.) Could also, like walk or whatever before work instead of grazing Twitter. But yah, that’s something to be doing.

I’m pretty sure the voiceover said “you look cuter without your glasses,” which is absolutely correct.

In game news, I’ve been keeping up with the usual daily stuff. Granblue had its X-million accounts celebration, which meant more things to do. That’s over now, so I mostly just do some daily things. Dragalia Lost is having its second anniversary, just after a major gameplay update. It’s pretty good stuff. The even added sparking, right before a big limited rush. Very nice. Getting better at Bandori, to the point where I can clear almost any Hard song on first try without heals. ESO and STO are back on the backburner, though I’m still doing their events too.

The big one is Assassins Creed Odyssey. I’ve been playing that basically every day, yet still am not close to done. I’ve played well over 100 hours at this point. At this point I want it to be done, just so I can play other games! But this one is too fun to just drop, and the story is surprisingly compelling too (at least the Greek parts – the Assassin’s Creed stuff is lame, though barely there at this point so whatever). I haven’t discussed it much, because I want to make one big review post. But who knows when I’ll actually finish, so that might be in a while.

HOWEVER, there is a new contender: Genshin Impact. This is another really fun one. I finally got out of reroll hell, on account 8. Got two SSR at once, though they were both Jean. Also got Fish, so that’s a really good account. As I was breezing through for rerolling, last night I just went to play for a few minutes before getting on other games, going over those areas I ran through. Ended up playing for over an hour. Fun, fun game.

As for next month…I basically want to do what I was going to do last month before ACO took way longer than I expected: finish ACO, get into Craftopia and Genshin Impact. Play more vidya!

Genshin Impact: Initial Impressions

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Another week, another new gacha game. But this time, people are actually anticipating it. I’ve never seen initial hype for a new mobile game so high, or a new Chinese game. But there’s good reason for it: it looks good. And not just graphically, but actual gameplay. This game looks like it has soul.

Now granted, a lot of that soul comes from the very obvious Breath of the Wild inspiration in graphics and gameplay. But that’s what people want apparently. BotW is hugely popular, so why not go with a more anime version of that game?

I’ve been able to play this game for a bit, about the first hour or so. Of course, I’ve played that first hour several times now. I’ll give my first impressions in terms of the good and the bad.

The Good:

  • Gameplay: It’s basically Breath of the Wild. You run around an open world, climbing on things, jumping off things, gliding to places, beating up enemies, and so on. The big difference here is that, instead of Link, you use one of several characters. Each character has an elemental affinity, which you use as you’d expect, and which also give different elemental status effects. The main gimmick here is switching out characters on the fly to synergize those status and elemental effects. It’s pretty cool making a fire tornado, or freezing a wet enemy.
  • Art: The art is pretty good. Even on mobile this game just looks good, and from what I’ve seen from actual systems, it looks fantastic with some power behind it. This is the first game that I’ve played that has felt like an anime come to life. Which is weird, because it’s Chinese, not Japanese. But whatever, it’s cool. The character designs are also pretty cool. This might not be the game for you if you’re into big buff manly men, because I haven’t seen any, but if you like any other character archetype, there’s something for you.
  • Translation: There are no translation issues that I can see. I’m honestly shocked. I don’t know Chinese, but I do know a little bit of Japanese, and the English translations match that at least. The English dub is pretty bad, but the Japanese dub is fine. You can also listen in Korean or Chinese, depending on your preference. (And you don’t need to download additional data to do so, which is nice.)

The Bad

  • Gacha System: The gacha system was going to rub people the wrong way regardless, since they’re all kinda predatory. But this is the worst gacha system I’ve ever seen. First, the rates are terrible: 0.6% for 5*, the highest rarity. That’s not for rate-ups; no, that’s for ANY 5*. Next, the 5* are the best characters and weapons. This is mostly normal, but from what the Chinese testers have reported, it’s rather insane in this game: whales won’t even play higher-difficulty content with f2p’ers, it’s that bad. And to make matters worse, you need multiple copies of characters to make them stronger. Oh, and as you see above, you get equipment from the same pool, which dilutes things insanely. No one wants to draw weapons, they want characters, and this just adds insult to injury. At 0.6%, you need to roll about 120 times to get better than even odds of getting at least one 5*. But you’d better pull out your wallet for that, because the game is very stingy with free currency. For this reason, and this reason alone, no matter how good the rest of the game is, I can’t recommend it to normal people. And if you’re into gachas, I still can only recommend it with reservations.
  • Rerolling: Given the above, you’ll want to re-roll so you can at least get a decent start. Most of these gacha games give you a big up-front currency bonus to get you excited, and this game is no exception. At first glance, rerolling is easy: you just make a new account at game load, which is super easy. No registry edits, diving into files, or even having to salt emails for new accounts. However, that’s the only easy part. You have to sit through the entire opening sequence, which is full of unskippable cutscenes and dialog. It takes quite a bit of time to get to the first point you can roll – about a half-hour on mobile, but a lot less on PC (load times and control issues). That gets you your first ten rolls. But, play for another half-hour or so (again, significantly shorter on PC, if you know what you’re doing), and you can get 20 more rolls when you hit account level 7. So, either ten or thirty rolls, for either a half-hour or hour, depending on load times and how much you know what you’re doing. And, considering what I said above about how much you’re going to be rolling for a 5* (ANY 5*, not even a specific one you want), you’re going to be doing this a bunch. I’ve done four so far, and want to throw my tablet all the way to China.
  • Controls: This is mostly a mobile thing, but the controls suck. The menus and stuff are fine, obviously crafted for mobile, but, as is the case with all 3D games, it doesn’t do well with mobile. It’s obviously made for console first (it would be almost perfect on Switch, using the touch screen for menus and such, while having the sticks for movement), and even the PC controls are a bit wonky. But controlling this game with the virtual stick is most un-fun.
  • China: This is a Chinese game. That goes on your PC, potentially. That should be enough, which tells you why I’m playing on my tablet. Every piece of Chinese software is suspect: if not from the devs, or the publisher, then from the government. It doesn’t help that this comes on PC with anti-cheat at the kernel level that doesn’t turn off when the game does, nor goes away when you uninstall the game (sounds like some other (non-Chinese) game that had a lot of controversy recently). The publisher says this is “unintended behavior” and says they will fix it, but don’t worry for now it’s perfectly fine. Yah, I sure believe that.

So yah, fun game with some really bad, glaring flaws that don’t have much to do with gameplay itself. I can’t really recommend it, but I want to play it more myself. I just hope I can actually get to playing before I claw out my eyes rerolling. Time for account #5…

Hypeless

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You might have heard recently that there are a couple of new consoles coming out. I know that’s a shocker, but it’s true! Moreover, you can even pre-order them!

Well, you could, for a few minutes a week or so ago. If you missed out on that, there’s always the scalpers who actually got them.

I didn’t get one. Not that I tried. Not that I’m trying to sound cool or above it all or anything, but I just have no hype for these machines. Like, none. I don’t see myself ever getting one, from either company.

It’s not that I’m not a console guy. I don’t have anything against consoles. In fact, I have several in my room. Sure, I’m primarily a PC gamer, but consoles have their place too.

Their place is to play games only they can play. Trouble is, these newer consoles don’t do that. Microsoft has all but flat-out said they’re not even going to try for any exclusives for the new XBox. Playstation might get some, but it’s doubtful it’ll be more than a handful, no matter how Sony tries to spin the reveals from their own stream.

So, if there are no exclusives (that I want to play), why even bother getting a new machine? All of the supposed advantages of console gaming apply to PC gaming as well. None of these guys are Nintendo, bringing gimmicks to their systems (for good and ill). Thus, no hype. Again, not trying to be cool or hard or whatever, just something I thought I should talk about.

Poppin’ Party: The Music

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I realized, far too late, that in my post about Poppin’ Party (from BangDream!) I mentioned the musical style, but didn’t give any examples! I mean, “it’s basically K-On” doesn’t exactly say a whole lot to people that haven’t watched that show. So I’m going to give several examples, because this band in particular has such a varied style (within the bounds of pop rock, at least).

I also should mention that the vocals are as varied as the style. With every other band, you pretty much know who’s singing – the vocals match the character. But Kasumi is apparently extremely skilled, for a girl that just decided on a whim to form a band. Of course, this is a consequence of the voice actor being a singer first, actor second. But it’s still confusing, all the same – I’ll often be playing a song, wondering which band it belongs to, and being surprised its a PP song.

Anyways, on to it. We’ll start with the “original” songs, since that’s obviously what the story’s about (and they also tend to be the ones where Kasumi sounds the most Kasumi). I’ll try to find the full-length songs, where possible (the in-game songs generally are only a single verse or two):

This is the first BangDream song, as you’d imagine. The K-On influences are most apparent here as well.

This is one of the more poppy songs. Indeed, every time I get this confused with a Pastel Pallets song, though at this point I really shouldn’t.

Even more poppy, but it’s about choco cornets, which can only be Rimi, and thus Poppin Party.

And then there’s this, which is a lot harder. Also, it’s the S3 OP for the anime, so that’s something I suppose.

And now a few covers. I guess writing original songs for five (seven soon) bands is a little much for the devs, so there are a bunch of covers too. Oddly, none of the K-On songs are covered by Poppin’ Party.

But Haruhi Suzumiya is pretty close to K-On, right?

I just like the original, and this is a pretty decent version. Hard to do it justice while pretending to just have a five-piece band, but they mostly manage.

Just to finish this off, we have a vidya song. I like this better than the original, and the original’s pretty great. Too bad there’s no full version.

Crusader Kings III: A First Look

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As mentioned yesterday, Crusader Kings III came out. I had seen a few previews for it, and it looked fun enough, so I decided to pre-order whatever the deluxe version was. I normally wouldn’t do this, but I found a good discount, which made the whole thing the price of a single new game – fair, as I figured the base game game plus the first expansion would be about the level of a proper new game. So last night after work I booted this up.

I figured I’d start with the tutorial. I am experienced with CKII, but I wanted to see what was different, and if the tutorial would be any good. (CKII’s tutorial was the best that company had done to that point, but it still wasn’t that great.) Plus, I had a bit of nostalgia for good ol’ Tutorial Island (aka Ireland).

As a tutorial, I don’t know how good this would be for people who hadn’t played CKII. It seems like it’s holding your hand, as is proper, but it leaves a lot out. It works quite well for CKII players, though, effectively illustrating the early-game differences between the two. However, it leaves some later-game (not late-game) differences off.

I won’t talk too much about the aesthetic differences between the two games. I’m not sure how I feel about the 3d models, but they do have a charm of their own I suppose. I must admit they make the clothing pack dlc’s more enticing – well, more enticing than zero, with CKII’s 2d portraits where clothes really don’t matter in the slightest. The map is fine, too.

Surprisingly easy and quick to unify Ireland

I was going into this trying to find what was going to be left out from the previous game. These sort of games always seem to take away things from previous games, to sell them back to you as dlc. I can’t see too much of that here. The plague system seems to be gone, and the council system seems more bare-bones than CKII with all expansions, but those were expansions I didn’t personally apply anyways, so not much difference to me. Seems most of what’s missing in the base game are a bunch of flavor-type events.

There are a couple of important differences between this game and its predecessor.

  • You can, right from the start, raise up a proper army. Levies work, but they aren’t that good.
  • You don’t need to have transports to move your armies across water. This is convenient, though also takes away from idea of oceans as obstacles (not that they made that much of a difference for ai anyways).
  • Marriages of children automatically form alliances (if both spouses are landholders), instead of just making them more likely, so doom stacks are a lot bigger of an issue earlier in the game (ask me how I know this); so it pays to have alliances closer in, rather than spread all over the world.
  • The perk system that is rather important here, and can give additional options. There’s one perk in particular, which allows you to extort money from people you’re blackmailing (after you’ve found out a secret sin of theirs), that really can bring in the money.
  • Factions seem to be a lot easier, or perhaps simpler, and thus are much more important to pay attention to (ask me who I know this).

There are other differences, but I didn’t get too much into them in the short time I played.

All in all, this isn’t a game I need to play RIGHT NOW. Which isn’t a slight against it: it’s a game I can come back to and play whenever I feel like it. Which is good, because a lot of games aren’t like that. Like Assassins Creed: Odyssey, which I will go back to before I lose the plot. But CKIII, for the first time in modern Paradox history, seems to be a complete, good, game right out the box, vanilla, and not bugged to hell or anything.

Hardspace: Shipbreakers – A Review

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Here we’ve got an early-access game that actually seems pretty good. The early-access part seems to be mainly just lack of content – the polish is pretty good, even at this stage. If you’re looking for a work simulator, but IN SPACE, this might be the game for you.

So far, I’ve done 21 hours in the game. I have ADD, and this is a work sim, so that should tell you something. If I didn’t have other exciting games to play, I’d be playing this every night. Sure, it doesn’t have any fighting, but there are layzors and splosions, so it’s still fun and exciting and manly and such.

As suggested on the cover, you play the role of a ship breaker – the person that takes apart ships for salvage. This is a real-life job, but naturally it’s not a space job, yet. In the normal game mode, you have 15-minute blocks of time to take a ship apart. As long as you do it in one sitting, you can pick at the same ship for multiple time blocks (logging out for some reason doesn’t save the ship). There is also another mode where you have an unlimited amount of time per block to work on a ship.

Regardless of the time taken, each block represents one day of work. After each shift you have to pay interest on your loans, as well as rent on your room and equipment, and any fees incurred during your last play session (if you die, you get charged for the cloning). Oh, yes, you have loans. You start the game with a billion-space-bucks debt, presumably the money the company spent to ship you up to space. It’s very much a company store situation. ‘Fortunately,’ you get a big chunk of money for each part you salvage, so your goal is to get more money from salvage than the costs you incur each day.

As can be seen from above, each item you salvage is itemized. There are three broad categories of salvage, based on where you put them. There’s stuff you put into the barge, which are things like chairs, computers, fuel, and reactors, that can be reused as-is. There are things that go to the processor, and then things that go to the furnace; I don’t know the logic of which goes where, here, but there apparently is a difference. The game helpfully tells you what item goes where as you hold it, so you don’t have to guess or memorize, though you get used to it pretty quick. If you put something in the wrong place, it is rejected and destroyed, and you don’t get any money from it (I don’t know if that gets taken out of your profits as well, or not).

Lucky for you, you don’t just have your hands and mass to move entire ship parts. You have a space magic tool to help you move those heavy objects contrary to Newton’s laws. You have a sort of tractor beam, which lets you directly manipulate objects. You can then push objects to…give them a push to where you want them to go. And then there are tethers, which basically pull two objects together like a rope that contracts on its own.

Conveniently, the ships you take apart are very modular. Parts are mostly just held together by some sort of space magic glue field, with a few structural joints that are easily cut with your laser (those yellow striped bars in the picture above). It’s only the rare part that you actually need to cut metal for (like the airlocks for some reason, or glass windows). After that, you just need to put the right parts in the right place, starting from the outside, then moving in.

I mentioned death earlier. Because you sure can die, in many terrible ways. You can fly into the furnace. You can get hit by any of the various parts your moving around. You can exploded by the reactor or fuel or coolant. You can run out of oxygen. You can get electrocuted. You can even somehow catch on fire. The main difference in the harder difficulties is how many lives you have – infinite on normal, 30 on hard, and one on the hardest.

There is some management and improvement possible. Every individual ship has certain items that you are assigned to salvage, via the Work Order system. Each work order you accomplish gets you xp (they call it LT in this game, but it’s xp). You can also recover lore bits (Logs), which give xp as well. You use this xp to upgrade your various gear, and you can even use it to buy it outright from the company (so you don’t have to rent it – your equipment rental is the main daily cost that eats into your profits). Your upgrades are limited by a level system, which is task-based, and thus independent of xp (though things that give xp often also accomplish those tasks as well).

That’s about it. Pretty simple game. The fun is in the execution. It does get repetitive, though. At this point there are only two classes of ships, with two basic variations each. As I said, I got 21 hours before I wanted to play different games. If you like work sims, or other games where fine-tuning the process is what you like, this is for you. I only have a certain amount of patience for that. But still, 21 hours is a good amount of time, and I didn’t even come close to completing everything (didn’t even get to trying the last major ship variation). If the devs just abandoned it right now, as-is, I’d say it’s worth the $25 price tag. But they haven’t, and are continually improving it (there was one major issue I had, but it was resolved in the last patch!).

Things To Look Forward To

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Today’s Blaugust prompt is from Utlrviolet at Engame Viable:

What are you looking forward to the most over the course of the next year?

While I’m not as pessimistic as he is, I’ve got to say I’m not looking forward to much in the next year myself. I mean, this past year has been much the same for me as last year, despite all the craziness. The details might be a bit different, but the big picture is very much unchanged. The main thing is that I’m now on a diet. Even missing my gall bladder (having it removed 11 months ago) isn’t a big deal. I can aniticipate the same sort of anxieties over money, the same boredom at work, the same getting mad at twitter and Hollywood idiots, the same existential loneliness, the same disappointment in myself for not blogging consistently.

Even so, there are still a few things I do look forward to. As fitting this blog, most of them have to do with video games (seeing as how that’s a big part of my life). And conveniently, this goes well in list form:

  • Looks like some good games are on the horizon. We’ve got Cyberpunk and Atelier Ryza 2 coming out for sure in the next year. I hope BotW 2 comes out in that time frame as well. Hell, technically Crusader Kings 3 comes out in the next year, even if that is in the next four days.
  • I think, even considering those, I will still have time for more games. Like my whole backlog. Decreasing that is something to look forward to.
  • I look forward to work going back to normal. Not that I mind the incredibly slow pace – quite the contrary, I love it – but I would like to see this place boppin’ again. And, more importantly, I want to go back to my normal schedule. Moving from Tue-Sat to Mon-Fri doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it’s pretty much the worst thing that’s happened to me since I started working here – and that’s for my whole life, not just workaday stuff. It shouldn’t matter this much, but it does. No one understands why, least of all me.
  • I look forward to hitting my target weight. I wanted to hit it by the end of the year, and I’m sooooo close. I won’t be able to go back to the way things were after – that’s what made me fat in the first place – but I can ease up a little bit. Maybe allow a snack or dessert once in a while. Might even be able to start baking, once I can actually eat the stuff I make.

Granblue Fantasy: Collaborations in Canon

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Collaborations are a popular thing with long-running games, at least in Japan. They’re often used as a means of cross promotion with existing properties, or just plain promotion of new properties. They tend to be promotions of both sides: the players of the game the collab might check out the other thing, and fans of that other thing might come play this game. I say “thing” because they could be other games, or a movie, anime, or whatever (Final Fantasy Brave Exvious famously had a collaboration with…Adriana Grande).

That’s all well and good, but in an RPG of some sort, those collabs often come with a some sort of story. Since these collabs might not even be in the same genre, they might try to justify their inclusion into the RPG. The lazy way is just to use a dimensional portal, or some other use of Multiverse; for example, this is what is used in Dragalia Lost, though at least this is justified already from the game’s story (and Fire Emblem Heroes as well, which was actually used to some good effect in the last collab). But not all games use this, at least not exclusively.

Today we’re going to look at Granblue Fantasy’s inclusion of collabs into its story (or rather, have already looked at, because that’s what the image at top is). This game uses pretty much every way you might think to include characters from other franchises in a way that isn’t too crazy:

  • First, those franchises are considered already a part of its world. Some of these aren’t too jarring, since they are already medieval fantasies, like Princess Connect or Slayers. But Street Fighter (modern) or Attack on Titan (industrial fantasy)? At least GBF can justify this by saying it’s just another isolated island in the sky.
  • We do have one isolated example of merely being a different timeline. This is easy to do, since Gachapin and Mukku are just characters, rather than using an entire fictional work. Also, it’s from a comedy event, so things don’t need to make sense.
  • The next is same universe, but different worlds. As in, the characters could hop on a space ship and travel normally. This makes sense for Pretty Cure, since that’s a thing that happens in that show (though teleportation works faster, and is what is used here). For Persona, the GBF world is connected to the same collective unconscious as the Persona series. (This also has the implication that PreCure and Persona are the same world.)
  • This next one – same multiverse – is what I described previously. In GBF all of these examples use the same effect for how the characters get to the GBF world, so that implies that it’s the same mechanism. (I don’t know why the Shadowverse collab used this, but it did.)
  • The last one is a little more off. I used “different multiverse” just because it’s a different mechanism (in story). In those, the various characters don’t get physically transported to the GBF world. It’s basically a “it was just a dream” plot device. This is my least-favorite method – it just seems so cheap.