Game Thoughts: Incomplete 12-2024
I'm really having trouble finding something that sticks this year in terms of games. I've been grapling with my inability to play any legacy JRPGs lately (a genre I dearly love, and of which I have MANY remakes on my to-play list) and looking for other shorter-term solutions to scratch my gaming itch, but nothing seems to do it.
The first shot I took was something on my to-play list for ages: Solatorobo for the DS: a 3rd person action game featuring anthropomorphic animal charatures and mechs with lots of dialogue.
This game shows up on basically every "DS Hidden Gems" list available, and for good reason. It's terribly unique and tries a lot of things -- it feels like a game from the N64 era where everyone was trying new things that may or may not have been a great idea. The combat is definitely one-of-a-kind, and consists mainly of grabbing and throwing your enemies into one another.
There's a lot of charm here -- the characters are distinct and have personality, the story's there, and technically it's quite impressive for the DS.
I got to a spot about 1/4 of the way through, I think, where there was a mario-kart style race, and called it quits after that. While there's plenty to love about the game I figured I'd call it quits while the aftertaste was still pleasant, as the combat was getting annoyingly janky and the sidequests repetative.
The second game I recently put down was Caves of Qud. Suprisingly this one's been in development for 9 years, and despite being an avid Dwarf Fortess and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup fan in the early-to-mid 2010's I'd never heard of it.
Version 1.0 just dropped so I picked it up to have a go, and wow! It's a great roguelike with way more going on than I expected. It mixes the random world gen with some stable points around which it builds a storyline, and it's got tonnes of options for character builds. I don't think I even got to try all the menus available by the time I hit the 10 hour mark.
The game also ships with RPG and Wanderer modes if perma-death aren't your cup of tea, and it works great (with a few bugs still) on the SteamDeck. I played through a couple characters before giving RPG mode a try before realizing I prefer classic mode, but don't have the time in my life anymore to truly enjoy a roguelike. In the same way that grinding in JRPGs has been grating lately, the idea of wasting my time on a randomly generated dungeon is a little upsetting, and I find myself regretting having lost the weekend to the game.
So I'll put this one down for now, and maybe pick at it in the wee hours of the night if sleep eludes me.