Finished a few ones:
- Leap of Love: An adult visual novel with choices that matters. Not bad.
- Orwell - Ignorance is Strength: A visual novel very linear. It was ok.
- Life is Strange: True Colors: I really liked this one, more than Life is Strange 2. Story, characters, music, graphics... everything is really good. I bought the novel that tells Steph's story instead of the DLC, it should be a good read :)

Full list here

Flashback

Another game that was given away by GOG, this time it was in 2022 Summer Sale. So this is why I redeem those freebies, to have something to play when I'm too broke to buy those games myself. Except for those Whale Rock Games, I refuse to get them. I still have some standard for my GOG library

I can't really remember the last platformer game that I've finished, especially using Keyboard. Lumo perhaps a couple of years ago? Anyway I have some difficulty in executing some action keyboard combos in this one, a combination of rust and aging hands XD. During my playtime I sometimes wonder how the hell I could finished Prince of Persia using only keyboards in my childhood.

I know the background of Flashback, as I also have finished my GOG copy of Another World (shutout to maxleod for the 2023 gift). Finished it on modern style game on normal difficulty, this game still held up well. I could see why this game is so well regarded Even if it's a tad difficult especially on the last Alien chapter where the difficulty really spiked. The Blue Morphing Alien is such a pain, especially if you stuck in a tiny space or you have to deal with 3 of them at the same time. The new Rewind feature helped me a lot in those combats and the jumpy-jumpy parts that I sucked at. I honesty don't think I could finished the Classic Mode though haha.

Haven Park

This one was a freebie from 2023 GOG New Year Sale.

For me this game is both tackling a freebie and also finally completing a game that was installed and abandoned. I first try it around June last year and only play around 1/2 hour of it. Only now after a year and 3 months later I finished it with around 6 hours of total gameplay. Thankfully I still remember the mechanics and basic premise so I don't really have to start all over again.

This game often compares with A Short Hike with park management in it. Pretty basic management actually, build some stuff and repair things. Wish we have more variety in buildings as build the same things over and over again can be boring. But if you actually manage your own park and have to build things on your own you have to content with what you got. And the repair of Park's assets is where I spend quite some time figuring out where the hell is that broken thing that I missed.

There are some puzzles and quests. The Heart of The Mountain was satisfying and the choose your adventure on the Tower is a good one also. Wish there were more though. Also fireflies. Back in my childhood I can find them easily and there are plenty of them on open fields. Today with artificial lights and houses replacing empty lots and fields in the overtly populated city I don't know if I ever see them lately.

Just beat Earth Defense Force 5 on PS5. It's awesome!

I beat the previous one, EDF 4.1 (the updated version of EDF 2025), a couple of years ago. It got me utterly hooked because its blend of Serious Sam style crowd control action, horror / disaster B-movies and a very Japanese take on Starship Troopers, combined with a ridiculously addictive progression system and largely open-ended mission design, was in a way gaming perfection to me.

EDF 5 failed to blow me away quite as much because it's basically just a remix of EDF 4 with a few updates and additions and I can't even point out with certainty which elements are new and what has been removed. Unless I'm mistaken, the biggest change is that instead of fighting just a random assortment bugs, UFOs, robots and a wannabe Godzilla, there's now a sentient alien species behind the entire invasion, called "Primers", and their origins and motivations are actually explored and discussed quite a bit in the dialogue. And they do appear in the form of huge humanoid enemies who have tons of health, wield weapons and even demonstrate some tactical behaviour. At first this felt really off to me, as it kind of clashed with the EDF formula of just laying waste to hordes of mindless insects, but I soon appreciated how they mix things up in terms of tactics, pacing and tone.

Speaking of tone: on the one hand it's again "Starship Troopers but written by an eight-year-old". It's intentionally silly and childish. Everyone is delivering the stupidest lines with utmost seriousness, they are shocked when they learn that the giant ants dig tunnels or that bees can fly and have a queen. They won't shut up about how cool it is to be a soldier, crowds of soldiers yell "EDF!" or sing the EDF anthem while charging into battle and overly optimistic and heroic music celebrates even the smallest (and questionable) victory with great fanfare.

I think that the tone has also gotten much more grim, though. If memory serves, in EDF 4 it felt like everyone's endearing optimism was justified because in the EDF universe that's all it takes for the good guys to win. Here the narration never lets you forget how much is at stake, how much has already been lost and you always know in advance that every plan that is definitely going to turn the tide, is in fact destined to end in disaster. Heck, some moments downright sent shivers down my spine because the characters' despair clashed so hard with the innocence of the entire premise. I went into this expecting that I'd just have fun while singlehandedly saving mankind from giant ants but I gradually got dragged into Neon Genesis Evangelion instead!

Anyway, I got utterly hooked again and racked up well over 80 hours of playtime in what felt like an instant. How Long to Beat says that the game takes 30 hours to finish but I again chose to (mostly) play the game on hard difficulty, which resulted in repeated approaches with different gear and tactics to many missions + I also replayed numerous missions with different classes which use completely different gear and have very different playstyles. And I was very well-entertained almost the entire time, excluding a few missions which had some insane difficulty spikes (and in several cases I ultimately gave up and chose to only beat them on Normal difficulty instead).

The core experience of obliterating hordes of monsters in varied and largely open-ended missions in huge landscapes is still just a pure joy to me and I don't mind at all that it's utterly janky - in a way that only adds to the game's charm. I just love how the series blends intense run and gun action with such an epic scale and frankly also a substantial tactical aspect that reminds me of the space combat sims and other vehicular combat games of old. As a matter of fact I kind of wish that you could also give some commands to your allies (and perhaps even also choose troops and equip them) because the gameplay lends itself perfectly to this - far more than most games that have actually had this kind of stuff! Sadly your control over allies is limited to approaching them, which will automatically make them follow you around (which is not always the wisest tactical choice).

And it throws in a loot system that is as addictive as collecting trading cards. After almost every mission (usually even if you fail) you're presented with a list of new or upgraded weapons and other gear (even including vehicle drops and in the case of one class artillery strikes and whatnot) and I honestly had trouble putting the controller down because I constantly felt this urge to immediately check out my new stuff in action. And even after failing a mission several times in a row I usually felt determined to keep trying again with different gear and tactics until I finally beat it, which only made the victory so much more rewarding and satisfying.

I'm very glad that after reaching the credits, the game abruptly released its cruel hold. Even with so many remaining unlocks from higher difficulty levels and for the other classes, I don't feel that uncontrollable urge to just keep going anymore.

The bad news is that I have already installed and started playing EDF 6. Dear God, what have I done...

Fire Emblem Engage (Switch)

Fire Emblem Three Houses is still my favorite game on the Switch and Fire Emblem is the best Nintendo franchise. Engage isn't the series at its best though. No aspect of this one is the equal of the previous Three Houses. All of the characters are annoying and juvenile, the dialogue is long winded and way too much of it.

The team building stuff between battles is a real slog. The battles are sort of okay...but are like a one trick pony. The only tactic the game ever throws at you is the scripted reinforcements from off map- from all edges of the map. They come in waves. After a few battles you realize that this is what the game just does and so you just cautiously inch your team forward until you trigger the next wave of reinforcements out of no-where. Then you pull you team back into a defensive line and wait it out. Repeat over and over. For 60 hours. It's the games only difficulty- trying to stay sane after the 10th wave of enemies coming out of nowhere from off map. It's sort of like a horror game that keeps trying to jump scare you until it no longer scares you because you're expecting it. Even leaving that aside, I still feel the battles are way below three Houses.

I suppose the music and art is still quite good. I's say to anyone with a Switch that wants a Japanese Strategy RPG, play something else. Even that Chinese Fire Emblem copy "Banner of the Maid" is way better...actually that was a pretty good game TBH.

WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers (PC Game Pass)

Straight off, this is by far the best game released this year that I've played. Remarkable considering its mostly negative launch period on Steam. It's now up to mixed on Steam. Apparently, it launched with performance issues. If that's the case then they must have fixed them, because I had no issues with this game all- it was rock solid.

It's a Souls-like set in the Ming dynasty period of China. It's made by a Chinese team and the world they've made is stunning and atmospheric. Apart from its period feel, it embraces Chinese mythology and fantasy elements. It has a similar feel to Team Ninja's Wo Long Fallen Dynasty- but Wo Long was based heavily around the Three Kingdoms setting whilst Wuchang is not.

The world design is one of the few games that can rival From Software, the way the areas all interconnect is masterfully done to the point that sometimes you open a gate and are literally shocked to find where you suddenly know exactly where you are. This makes exploration really satisfying. For me the tense exploration is really what makes Souls like games- not the boss fights. In fact, I've often wondered how a game with the level design and tension filled exploration of Dark Souls, but without the boss fights, would fare. Personally, I'd love a game like that- since the achievement of reaching somewhere and fully exploring is enough.

Apart from the setting the main area Wuchang sets itself apart slightly is the levelling system. It took a while for me to get a handle on it, but once I did, I came to really like it. It's a skill tree-based system but, unlike most games the skills and stats upgrades are all incorporated into the tree. The closest I can think of is the system used in Path of Exile. Most people will divide their levelling between the common tree which incorporates upgrades to your health flasks and such, and a main weapon type (I chose long swords). Levelling happens often enough to make it feel like you're always getting something. You can respec at any time (though I never did), so there's no harm in experimenting with builds and different weapon combinations.

The bosses are the area where the game drops its standard, but only a little. They fall into two types, beasts and humanoid. The beasts were easy, the humans were fast and brutal. Most bosses were not actually damage sponges like is common for the genre. They hit hard but go down fast if you pile the damage on. So, when you lose, you lose fast and likewise when you win. The longest it took for me to defeat any boss was 1 hour and about 20 tries. That was Bo Magus- the hardest boss for me. Most bosses I defeated within only 3 tries. So not that hard a game really. My issue with the bosses is that they were too similar overall- all of the humanoid bosses were "thrashers" they just relentlessly thrashed around the arena with only very small windows of opportunity to actually put a hit on them. Once I learnt my tactics to deal with them, the same applied to pretty much every boss.

Anyway, this is my favorite AAA game since Lies of P. With games like these and Black Myth Wukong and Stellerblade it shows that the AAA industry isn't dying like everyone loves to say. It's just the Western AAA industry that has lost its way...the Korean and Chinese studios are rising and some of the Japanese (like CAPCOM) are still holding their own. We are just seeing a shift in where the good games are coming from, that's all.

Ys: The Oath in Felghana. The remake of Ys III using the Ys VI engine. I actually can't recall the story of Ys III in detail but I got the sense that this was pretty faithful to it. They simply expanded on it with more characters - who, being in a Falcom game, all have quite a lot to say - and more boss fights. It's also more difficult than most of the series. Most of that difficulty
can be reduced through more grinding. Basically, everything true of Ys VI is also true here, although even so some of the bosses are real bastards, especially toward the end. There were a couple of fights I won with literally like 2 HP remaining.

I'm generally not really into game remakes, but this is probably one of the better ones I've played.

Eternal Strands, Sep 15 (Xbox Game Pass)-Beat this last night. I've got mixed feelings on it but overall I think it was good. It reminded me a bit of Immortals Fenyx Rising. The story was interesting. The voice acting was excellent which was good because there is hours of dialog in this game. My play time was about 25 hours and no exaggeration there was probably 20 hours of voiced dialog during my play. The gameplay was a bit of a letdown. There is a ton of combat against random enemies but there's no XP, all you get are crafting materials. I generally dislike crafting and the crafting in this game felt underwhelming. So I mostly ran away from combat since they were just wastes of time. I did like the flow of the boss battles. The character can climb on almost everything which was both good and bad. This allowed you to explore almost anywhere but the game frequently got confused if there was a small obstacle in your way or if the climbable surface wasn't completely flat. It also resulted in some awkward camera angles when trying to fight some of the bosses which were also climbable. So a lot of good dialog, kinda subpar mechanics, but overall fun and not too long.

Full List

I finished the first Homeworld (Classic) game. I’ve got on CD the 1.0 version and I was amazed that it worked (on WinXP SP2 compatibility)! Generally, I have mixed feelings about the game. On one hand, true strategic tactics are required to beat it, since the game is harsh, resources are very little in each map, you’ll be always outnumbered, and I can’t stress enough the value of Formations (delta, wall, etc.) and Tactics (evasive, neutral, aggressive) in the game. Especially the tactics made for me the difference between decent victories, pyrrhic victories, or utter defeats!

Also, repair units do the job very slowly, which enhances the difficulty, so it’s best if you dock the smaller fighter units in your Mothership, for them to be repaired (though that means that you won’t have them available for maybe a minute). The bigger units can’t dock to be repaired. You’ll have to manufacture a Repair Corvette for them, but it does the job VERY slowly. I had one created only in the last mission, to keep repairing the Mothership with it.

My main complaint of this game is that it rushes itself very much. It rushes things very much. While in other strategy games you are given ample time, in each mission, to get to know the map, gather adequate resources, create more units (to replenish those which were lost at the previous mission) before the enemies come, in Homeworld 1 Classic (at least in most missions/maps) after a few minutes into a map, something happens and you’re on the defensive, with your surviving units of the previous mission! Only after defeating all enemies, and thus you are allowed to leave for the next mission, you can postpone that (you can choose manually when to end each mission) and gather resources and create more units, to prepare yourself for the next mission! That’s why I’ve read on the internet that the best strategy is to save just before you leave the previous mission. Then enter the next mission, to see what will happen (i.e. what you will be up against), and then reload your save of the previous mission’s ending and prepare your fleet accordingly! To me, this is a wrong strategy approach by the game developers (in this specific aspect, I mean). Maybe this happened because most maps are empty. In most maps there are just scattered clusters of resources, and then the enemies come! There are no planets or stars, as in other games of the genre (e.g. Haegemonia, Conquest: Frontier Wars). In many missions things are frantic. They could let things flow in a more fluent way.

Of course, I liked the story very much, as well as the ambient music in the missions.

I'd argue that it's an entirely different game than a remake.

Among other things, the rings that were in the original game, and the resource needed to benefit from them, were removed. The bracelets aren't a replacement for them, but rather are something completely different. (Ys 3's rings are passive effects like increasing attack, regenerating health, or invulnerability, while the bracelets are active attack/movement abilities that you're likely using constantly.)

One other interesting thing about OinF is that it has more platforming than any other Ys game I've played. Even the original Ys 3, despite being a side scroller, didn't have much platforming in it, except for one particular late-game area.

Far Cry 4

Another entry in Ubisoft's open bloat series, that poses the question "What if Commando was made in the 2010s, starring Colin Farrel facing Not-the-Joker instead of everybody's favorite Power Ranger villain Ranzik?"

The game is at its best when you're out in the map, finding outposts, towers, and fortresses, and liberating them. As usual with Ubisoft's games, there's an overabundance of activities spread throughout the map, with a bunch of semi random quick ones popping up around you all the time while travelling around the map.

There's a lot of verticality in the map, and you have a small helicopter thingy to help you travel around it. What is terribly frustrating about it is that whenever you're too high or too close to somewhere the game doesn't want to reach flying, the helicopter becomes unstable and you lose control over it. There's also a wingsuit, but it's terribly easy to kill yourself while using it.

The story tries its best to be a serious tale of revolution and all, with the option to side with either of the revolutionaries leaders, but the thing is, both end up being corrupt and evil. Pagan Min, the villain, a character so gay coded that he has to literaly call you mid game to tell you he's not gay, is an attempt at replicating Far Cry 3s memorable chaotic villain, Vas, and it is somewhat successfull, even if just because everyone else is boring as hell. As I mentioned before, a lot of his chaotic persona seems to mimic that of the Joker from Batman, which diminishes his effectiveness.

The game does give you the opportunity to kill everyone, Pagan and both revolutionary leaders, and, though I missed the rocket aimed at Pagan's helicopter in the end (the game doesn't give you enough time for a second shot), I did kill the leader I sided with after the end.

As usual, there are a few dream missions and "high as hell" missions in the game, but I tend to find them terribly boring and I ended up not doing all of them.

There are still the couple of DLCs to go through, but I'm not sure I'm too excited to play them.

EDIT: It's been a few days, but I wanted to add that the whole plot of the game is based on main character's mother's dying wish being based on a past she clearly never told him about. Which is incredibly dumb, frankly.

Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders (Steam)

Got this one recently for only A1.70, since I've always been curious to try one of the series. I've never read any of the books or seen any of the movies. So, it was a completely blank slate for me and no real expectations.

It's okay. I've played a couple of the modern Sherlock Holmes games like Crimes and Punishment and liked them a bit better I'd say. But The ABC Murders has great art style, and the story was interesting for someone that hasn't read the book it's based on. I liked how it tries to mislead you deliberately by pointing towards a certain culprit even though you can tell it obviously wasn't them if you actually use the knowledge you've gathered. Everything is right there for you to come up with who really dunnit before the game takes you there in the finale. It was definitely worth the small price I paid, and it was fun enough that I'd consider others in the series if the price is right.

Cat Quest 3

I'm really super happy that it got released here, and I got to play it! This is not the original 1.0 release of the game as it the Mew Content Update and Tavern Tales Update. Although the Purribean is somewhere outside of Felingard, it really is a direct sequel to the prior games. I do recommend playing them all.