Games

I’m almost finished playing Zelda: Wind Waker for the first time in about 10 years.

Firstly it feels crazy to me that its now been as long since the HD Wii U version was released as it was from that release to the original.

Great game though, amazed I still remember where almost everything is. Exploring the ocean in the first half of the game has always been one of my favorite parts. It does a great job of capturing a whimsical sense of adventure for me.

My biggest criticism of the game is that it feels like its about 2 dungeons light. There should have been one on the Great Fish Island for the last pearl before you get the Master Sword and there should have been one more after that with a 3rd sage.

I remember this being commonly held belief back in the day that the game was probably a bit rushed, but it definitely sticks out more to me now than I had recalled.

Overall still one of my favorite Zelda games, I hope one day they go back to making this sort of style of 3D Zelda because the new ones just don’t do it for me.

going through yakuza 0, awesome game

I’ve been playing a game called Wayfinder recently and been having a blast. The game has been on a long journey, it started out as a MMO-lite dungeon crawling action RPG, but the publisher, Digital Extremes of Warframe fame, pulled out as the publisher and left the devs Airship Syndicate high and dry. So Airship Syndicate went back to the drawing board and dropped all the MMO aspects and just released the game as a offline action RPG that can do up to three player co-op via P2P so no servers involved. The developers, Airship Syndicate, are refugees from Vigil and a lot of the team that made Darksiders 1 & 2. They made the LoL Ruined King game, Battle Chasers, and Darksiders 3.

Also since they dropped the MMO aspects there are no microtransactions! You can unlock everything by just playing the game, which is filled with all sorts of cosmetics and things to unlock. They have a supporter pack up that they did in partnership with Critical Role if you feel like throwing some extra support at the devs, but that’s the only MTX other than an old founder pack that you can’t buy anymore. But since they dropped the MMO aspect game is totally offline now you can use a save editor to get all the founders pack stuff if you want.

I’ve been quite hooked so far. The art style is wonderful, this glitzy neon drenched steampunk-ish fantasy that takes some obvious inspiration from LoL/Arcane and WoW but really has its own flair that makes it distinct.

Combat is pretty straightforward third-person action RPG. There are big outdoor zones with lots of little secrets and puzzles to find, but most of the game is running randomized dungeons or killing bosses. The dungeons have a surprising amount of secrets in them so you’re rewarded for looking around and exploring instead of just plowing through and ignoring everything. You choose from characters with 4 abilities and a pretty wide range of weapons with their own ability. There are lots of stats customization which makes it play a lot more RPG than you’d think at first the more things you unlock.

Story is pretty good. Good voice acting with funny and serious side quests and NPCs that aren’t just pop culture references really give it some heart and soul. Some clichés, but little to no action/horror movie logic where characters act like idiots for no reason.

It’s got a lot of legs if you like the combat and enjoy collecting new cosmetics and gear. Personally I love games like this when I’m listening to podcasts or audiobooks.

It’s not without its issues. It plays on Steam Deck, but is pretty choppy ant times and I sometimes get frame rate drops on PC, but my rig is starting to show its age. I’ve heard the PS5 version has more performance issues, but I play on PC so I can’t confirm. The occasional bug crops up, but I haven’t run across anything game breaking. At worst I’ve had to come back to a quest later, but usually a reload fixes things.

Anyways that’s a big rambly pitch for my surprise favorite game this year. I haven’t given much thought to TGA yet, but I am super excited for Monster Hunter Wilds next year.

I have been playing a Wabbajack installed Fallout 4 mod list Wasteland reborn. Its very fun and really does a good job expanding on the game to make it feel more like older games, but man is the combat brutal. I had to give myself more health with commands so i wasnt just getting 1 shot by everything lol.

I’m finishing Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow probably either tonight or tomorrow, another really fun game! I don’t know if I like it more or less than Symphony of the Night yet. I think it did some stuff better, like I think the soul system is a lot more enjoyable than having to hunt around the castle for sub-weapons if you want a specific one. I like that there’s more types of weapons too, but I ended up just using the normal swords the whole time because I liked being able to cancel the attack by landing too much lol.

I’m not sure what’s next yet! I really wanted to play Dark Souls II, but I’d like to play the vanilla version, and I don’t have $40 to spend on a game right now. I’d usually just pirate it, but I want to be able to play online too so I guess I have to be patient. Hopefully it goes on sale sometime soon. Otherwise I don’t have anything specific in mind. Maybe I can finally get around to Final Fantasy VI? I’ve been wanting to give Metal Gear Solid 2 another try as well now that I can emulate the PS3 version.

Currently playing Gurumin and Ys 1.

For 2025, I'm anticipating for Showa American Story to get released.

I'm all about the [mostly] lighthearted games now.

I'm playing Final Fantasy 15 A New Empire. It's a shitty kingdom-building mobile game with guilds and sieges and endless timers. It's got nothing to do with FFXV, but in my headcanon this is what Noctis was doing during the timeskip.

If anyone knows where to download either King's Knight or War for Eos, then I'm all ears! I want to play everything related to FFXV out there.

Yes, I've had both on PlayStation for a while. Both are a ton of fun!

Hades 2 has made me realize that I'm not good at Rogue-lite games. I finished the original Far Cry (meh). I intend to play far cry 4 and maybe 5.

Resident Evil Village again and I finished SH2 Remake. RDR2 next.

Witcher 3. Nearly done with it.

Been playing Deadlock as my main game since I started back in August and been enjoying it. Looking forward to Monster Hunter Wilds in February. Really enjoyed the beta but worried about performance in the full game, cuz it wasn't great in the beta.