For the past few months, I’ve been fortunate to have had a whole lot to write about. It has been so consistent that I haven’t felt the need to write blog posts on any games that I’ve been in progress on. But it’s time for that to change. Over the past few months, I have been game hopping around as usual, and I just have too many takes that I’ve been holding inside that need to be released out into the wild.
With that said, here are three paragraphs or less on SEVEN different games that are either still in progress for me or that I probably won’t be going back to anytime soon.
Dungeons of Hinterberg
I’m hesitant to say a lot about this game because at the rate I’m going, I might be reviewing this game later this week. But I’m so excited about it, I have to write something. I’m currently about halfway through Dungeons of Hinterberg, and I am absolutely in love. This is a crazy mix of Persona style social elements, old school Zelda dungeons, Animal Crossing vacation/relaxation vibes, and maybe even some bite sized Breath of the Wild when it comes to exploring its worlds.
The gameplay loop is so incredibly satisfying. You explore the world and find dungeons that have a wonderful balance between combat and puzzle solving. The puzzles aren’t usually serious brain benders, but they are a satisfying level of engaging where you do have to think a little, but at least thus far, nothing has tripped me up or felt frustrating. I like that flow in a game like this where it is about way more than just the puzzles. Combat isn’t perfect, but you get a nice array of spells and skills that are pretty fun to use. The basic attacks and dodge aren’t anything special, and I find the “perfect dodge” mechanic to be a bit awkward, but I still have had cool moments with it, and I like it overall.
After doing some dungeon diving, you can go back into town to upgrade your character and gear and hang out with the locals, which also gives you some stat boosts just like Persona. It all works together so well. I’m enjoying a lot of the characters. The story has a few interesting elements, and the world and vibe as a whole are so perfect. There are only two games this year that I played start to finish without touching anything else. Dungeons of Hinterberg feels on pace to be the third. If you understand anything about the way I play video games, that is incredible. You can anticipate a review of this one very soon. I feel like I’m at a 9.5/10 right now, which is a fair bit higher than the critic consensus. I really hope it continues this momentum.
Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door
I have been plugging away at this game for over a month. It has been my go-to game on work breaks or for a short stretch in bed before I go to sleep. After being pretty disappointed with the Super Mario RPG remake last year, I was very on guard, and not sure if I was going to love this game. This is also a remake of an older Mario RPG, except this one was originally released 8 years after Super Mario RPG. That was also two consoles after the Super Nintendo, as it was on the Gamecube. Right off the bat, it was pretty apparent that there was a much better infrastructure to work with here, and I’m actually having a very good time with it.
While this is an RPG, every combat encounter in TTYD feels almost more like a light puzzler over a standard RPG battle. Mario has two main types of attacks, his jump and a hammer. Different enemies tend to be more vulnerable to one of these over the other. Spiky enemies obviously shouldn’t be jumped on, and other enemies can be resistant to the hammer. Some enemies are so tricky that an item or one of the “special” moves are the way to go to eliminate them. TTYD keeps you thinking in a breezy way that is fun and satisfying. The action commands in battle are relatively varied, too, which also keeps that aspect of combat engaging.
Outside of combat, the game throws a fairly robust amount of extra platforming skills at you, which are fun to use to navigate the world. There are tons of secret collectibles to find, as you’d hope from any Mario game. Each chapter so far seems to go pretty hard on a gimmick that makes it stand out. One chapter had a bit of a Pikmin gimmick, which I found very unwieldly and annoying. This was easily when I was the lowest on the game. Since then, I’ve enjoyed everything the game has thrown at me, including a tournament arc that I found really fun. There are still some small annoyances, like some overly long story interludes in spots and a decent amount of backtracking, but I’m really enjoying it overall. Hopefully, I will wrap it up next month. I think I’d be around an 8/10 right now.
Nier: Automata
This is such an odd game for me to write about. I’m roughly 10 hours in, and I am in a weird place where I’m not sure at all how I feel about the game right now. The first five hours or so of Automata absolutely blew me away. The story gets off to a fast start, and the game starts off with a completely balls to the wall sequence where you rotate from shoot em’ up (with multiple different perspectives thrown at you), to more standard 3rd person action game. While I’m not a huge fan of the standard action gameplay, there are some shoot em’ up elements integrated within that gameplay that at least made things a bit more interesting.
After some interesting story elements, the game transitions into an amusement park area that just has top tier level design, enemy design, art direction, and music. Despite a few qualms with the core combat, I felt like the game was close to a 10/10 for me at this point. It was consistently blowing me away.
From there, I feel like I have reached an extended lull. The open world isn’t the most fun to navigate, which is not helped by a very awkward map that is difficult to parse through. I started skipping the side quests because I kept finding them extremely boring. There has been TONS of backtracking. The big shoot em’ up segments haven’t reached the quality of the first one, and the plot pacing has slowed considerably. While I don’t hate the game at all, I have enough on my plate where I ended up deciding to put it on hiatus, with plans to try again later in the year. This game is considered one of the greatest of all time by many, and if I get through the part of the game I’m in, I could see myself getting engaged with it again. Unfortunately, after around 10 hours total, 5 of which I’ve felt kind of disinterested in, I’m just not feeling ready to power through. This would be an odd game for me to score at this point, but I’d probably give it a 7.5/10. I could see it ending up anywhere between a 7 and a 9, depending on how things went. I can’t state enough how cool the first five hours of the game are, and I really hope it can reach those levels again.
The Case of the Golden Idol
I loved Return of the Obra Dinn and Chants of Sennar, which are two games that allow you to truly feel like a detective in different ways. I’ve heard a lot of similar hype for The Case of the Golden Idol, so it has been on my radar, especially since a sequel is expected out this year. When it was released on Xbox and Xbox Game Pass this month, I knew it was finally time to give it a try. I’ve solved 5 cases so far and logged about an hour into the game. So far, so good.
The Case of the Golden Idol is a true detective game where you have to figure out who committed a murder and the method using the clues that are laid out before you. This is also a “point and click” game. So you generally only have a few screens to sift through to find all the evidence that you need. This ends up being a really cool design choice because it significantly increases the pacing of this game compared to most detective type games that you’ll see. There isn’t a lot of preamble, aimless walking, or cliche dialogue. You click on a room, and you can quickly select multiple notes, letters, and other pieces of evidence, and immediately start solving mysteries. I’ve really enjoyed the detective work so far, and I like the way it doesn’t hold your hand either. If you get stuck, there is a clever hint system that does a nice job of gently prodding you in the right direction.
These cases are all connected, and there is definitely an interesting story being told, once again in a way that is not holding your hand. Sometimes, that kind of design can lead to some minor frustration, though. For example, there is one case that tries to trick you and does something a bit unfair in my eyes in its attempt to do so. My only other complaint is that the game seems very clearly designed for usage with a mouse, and using the controller feels very finnicky in spots. I am constantly selecting things I don’t want to, and getting the right word into the right solution box seems way harder than it needs to be. Hopefully, a patch fixes some of my issues soon, but I’ve still really enjoyed my time with this and would probably give it an 8/10 thus far. I have reached a point where the cases are clearly getting more complex, though, and I wouldn’t be shocked if I end up around an 8.5/10.
Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus
If I wasn’t so obsessed with Dungeons of Hinterberg, this would probably be the game I was obsessed with instead. I played this for exactly one night, and I really loved the few hours I spent with it. This is another game with real potential to be in my top 10 at years end.
Path of the Teal Lotus is a Metroidvania. The art style screams that this is going to be like Hollow Knight (with some Okami flair as well), and of course, the basic Metroidvania structure is there. The gameplay is very different, however. The big key to Path of the Teal Lotus is that each time you hit an enemy or certain objects, you can jump again. This means you can stay airborne for a very long time if you figure things out. In my short time with the game, everything seems to be very built around this. You face tons of flying enemies, so the goal is to stay in the air to fight them. Even grounded enemies can have difficult attacks to dodge if you stay on the ground, so keeping yourself in the air is still important. The platforming challenges are also almost completely built around this so far. It has been unique and very fun to play. My only minor complaint is that the combat doesn’t have a whole lot of options to this point, with the main hook being the aforementioned jumping mechanics. That is cool, but I know I’m going to need a bit more to feel satisfied as the game progresses.
In general, my only concern with this game is that it keeps adding new tricks and doesn’t solely rely on the pogo mechanics to be interesting. Path of the Teal Lotus adds a cool baseball counterattack early on that is also utilized for puzzles, so the signs so far are that it will have more tricks up its sleeve. Once I’m done with Hinterberg, this will surely be the next game I jump on in order to find out if it can live up to its strong start.
Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes
Eiyuden Chronicles is another one that is a bit weird for me to write about. I feel like I could spend these entire three paragraphs just nitpicking this game to death. I do not find the combat to be super engaging, and there are several small design decisions that end up being kind of annoying. There are some weird elements of jank in the game as well, like a running animation where they just took the jog and sped the legs up to a degree that looks absolutely ridiculous. Some of the voice acting is really good, but a fair bit is pretty cringe, too.
I could go on and on, but in the end, this game still manages to capture a lot of the spirit of the original Suikoden games. This makes it charming in a lot of ways. Recruiting new characters and updating your base is extremely fun. There are a lot of entertaining characters in this huge cast. The story is filled with politics and intrigue. And the highlight, the music is absolutely top notch. This is easily one of the best soundtracks this year. There is A LOT to like here, too.
This creates a weird game flow where I’ll spend an hour or two absolutely engaged with everything going on, and then 30 minutes where I feel a bit annoyed or disinterested. It’s odd. I think if you love the original Suikoden games, you will find a lot to like here, but you will probably also recognize that they were not able to reach the level that those games did. I think I’m roughly halfway through the game, and I hope to play it a bit more often once I’m done with a few of these newer releases. I’d probably give it a 7.5/10 right now.
Persona 3 Reload
I’ve debated whether I should even write about this game, as my hope was to pick it back up at some point later this year. But upon reflection, I think the odds are that this is just going to be a game I fully abandon, so I might as well get a few thoughts out there. I spent about 12 hours with Persona 3 Reload. I made the very dumb decision to play through something like 2/3rd of Persona 3 Portable last year, and I think that killed most of my drive to play this game.
There are a lot of cool elements to this game. The art and UI are incredible. They made me realize that Persona 5 came out close to 8 years ago because these visuals are way more detailed and appealing now. I know that sounds obvious, but I guess I didn’t realize how much a more timeless art style like Persona 5’s could be improved upon. The battle system and social links are classic Persona. If you love this series and are jumping into this for the first time, or for the first time in a long time, I think you’ll enjoy all of this a lot.
But the downsides are also all still there from the original, mostly, and it is all exacerbated by the fact that I just played the original not too long ago. The game gets off to a very slow start (such a stark difference when looking back at the super fun and stylish Persona 5 opening), it is a bit grindy, and the dungeon design is as boring as it gets, even with a few minor improvements from the original. It took a while for these elements to bore me when I played the game last year since I was very into the story and some of the characters. But now that I know more about what is going to happen, I’m just not as engaged where I can overlook the flaws. But most importantly, I am very excited for Metaphor: ReFantazio in a few months. That game will have a lot of similar systems to Persona 3 Reload. I’m afraid that if I try and dive back into this game, I will get burnt out on this sort of gameplay, and it will affect my enjoyment of ReFantazio. I do not want that to happen, so I’m not going to take an unnecessary risk and get too invested in this game. Maybe I’ll try again in a few years.
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