I dunno why I keep feeling the need to start my "Stuff I played/read/watched" posts with a disclaimer that it's not a proper review and just some slightly-organized and edited stuff for fun to get my thoughts together. I guess it's a defense mechanism after getting used to hostility on other sites, even though that's not as much of a thing here?
Well, anyway, I played a bunch of stuff this month, too. Mostly Persona 3 Reload (which I didn't finish yet and will write about once I do), but also a bunch of other, smaller games I played on the side, that I had been meaning to play for a long while. I avoid mentioning specific spoilers, so don't worry about not having played the stuff yourself before.
Higurashi 1: Onikakushi
I already played about 2½ of the eight main episodes of Higurashi before, about five years ago, and always wanted to come back to it, to the point where I gave myself a rule that "I won't start any other old visual novels from my backlog until after Higurashi"... which I broke when starting Fate/Stay Night last year. Probably a good thing - Fate got me excited about VNs, and I played through Higurashi 1 in about four days.
I mostly feel the same as five years ago - the first half is fine but too slow slice of life to get you acquainted with the characters, and is necessary but could have been sped up. When the story began shifting to mystery and suspense, though, I got really into it - and as an effect of having already finished H1 but forgotten the details, I had this great, torturous experience where I knew of bad things that would happen, but not exactly how or when. The paranoia as Keiichi no longer knows who to trust or what to believe was very reminiscent of the best parts of Chaos;Head. Good stuff, and I'm excited to continue with H2.
Rhythm Tengoku
This was the first "side game" I picked up after P3R had come out. I had already started but not finished Rhythm Tengoku last year, so it was an obvious choice.
Some minigames are really hard, and honestly probably too hard - particularly the two Polyrhythm games, which had me doubting I even had it in me to beat them - but I ended up finishing this up in about a week. I absolutely loved it - the music, the art direction, the gameplay, the humor all was fun, and worked well for me. I ended up starting the DS Rhythm Heaven next, which I'm still playing at the time of writing this.
HarmoKnight
The Rhythm Heaven games reminded me of this demo I played on my 3DS a decade ago, so I decided to return to it. My main memory was that the 2D promo art was nice and that I had trouble swinging Tempo's staff to the beat, but I figured I just wasn't used rhythm games at the time. Well...
I still had trouble. The swing animation constantly tricks me into tapping too late, expecting the target to have to be closer than the game wants. It was so counter-intuitive that I still did this at the final stage unless actively thinking about tapping "one beat early". It wasn't the only misleading visual clue, either - some parts were easier when not looking. Couldn't do that all the time, though, as many obstacles don't have audio cues, and only get visible just before I need to hit them due to bad camera angles.
Not a great time, especially with how long some stages are (like the boss and rollercoaster levels), without any checkpoints. The insta-game over pits were the worst in these, since the ledges often had this design where they end in a slight slope, making it look like you could stand on them for one beat longer than you actually could.
I should mention the music. It's Fine I Guess but uninteresting, and there are way fewer tracks than stages, so you hear the same few over and over. Despite the other problems, the game does noticeably improve in the unlockable stages with Pokémon music, kind of making me wish this had been a Pokémon rhythm game instead. Unfortunately, I was fed up with the main game at this point, so I watched these stages on Youtube.
As for the story... I didn't expect much of a focus on it when I started the game, so I guess it's fine that it's just basic "the princess is kidnapped" stuff, but man, the writing is bad. Extremely uninteresting, long-winded stuff where each scene could've been like three dialogue boxes but takes a minute to get through. I just started tuning out whenever characters started speaking.
Spare Parts 1: Little Ribbon of Smoke
So I was staying at my parents' place for about a week this month, and I realized that it made it difficult to play games that I can't put down at a moment's notice, so I took a break from P3R to play a short visual novel instead. I had been meaning to play Spare Parts for a while, and several of my friends have been talking about it, so ended up going for that!
This first entry mostly serves as an introduction to Lucy and the folks in the Spare Parts shop, while also setting things up for future parts. Aside from a couple technical issues (probably due to playing on my Steam Deck), I had a really good time. The characters are well-written and relatable, and their dynamics and developing relationships are great. I think my favorite so far is Unit 03, although it's hard to just pick one.
Maybe this is due to playing Higurashi 1 recently, and maybe it makes me come off as "getting Boss Baby vibes from this", but... I'm getting Higurashi vibes from this. And not just from the SP Radio sequence where characters discuss the episode and what might happen next, or the letterboxing bars rolling in to end a scene. Compared to Higurashi 1, I appreciated the much better pacing, and stayed engaged all the way. If there's something to criticize, I guess it's that it's just a bit too unbelievable to me that Lucy would just accept some of the stuff she sees without realizing what's going on, but I guess that's how it had to go. Very excited to see where this goes from here.
...I realize I'm just tagging this on at the end, but I also want to mention that I love the art direction, with strong, solid colors and thick outlines for characters, that contrast well against the backgrounds - it reminded me of Ghost Trick's character portraits, and really worked for me.
Shin Megami Tensei If... (Akira's route)
SMTV Vengeance had just been announced, and I was thinking about Megami Tensei more than usual, if you can believe it. That was when I learned that SMT If... has a whole second campaign with new dungeons and bosses, that unlocks after finishing the game once. I thought I had already completed all the mainline Megaten games on Famicom/Super Famicom years ago, so I excitedly started it despite still being in the middle of P3R.
Unfortunately, this was the worst Megaten experience I've had - worse than the sort-of-charmingly simplistic Megami Tensei 1 and the mechanically tedious Persona 1. It was a little nostalgic to walk around in that old grid-based, first-person SMT engine again, and I still had hope this would be fun for the first 40 minutes or so. Turns out Akira's route is one long trek through a huge, multi-floor, entirely-indoors dungeon, with minimal story, setting, and NPCs, though. Just a slog. There are some pit stops along the way, with shops, save points, etc., but they're few, and almost entirely just for mechanical reasons, not to enrich the setting or break up the monotony.
If this had been ten years ago, I would've felt bad about this, especially since I also mentioned doing it with FF2 and HarmoKnight, but: I got so fed up around the halfway point that I stopped and watched the rest on youtube, skipping parts where nothing much was happening. I'm willing to give a game a shot, but I just don't see the point anymore in spending time on video games I don't want to play. I should replay SMT1 or 2 sometime, instead.
2/29
This game is only supposed to be playable on February 29 every year, but I played it on March 1 at 2am... which in my night owl heart is just an extension of February 29. So there, I'm fine.
2/29 is very short, and is a cute little experience where you explore a few locations by clicking to choose which direction to go - it felt sort of like a cross between a picture book and a Zork-style adventure game, without puzzles. Had a good time! The perfect level of committment needed for something played on a whim at 2am.
Originally posted on Cohost.