That’s great to hear. I don’t mind a hard challenge now and then, but it’s also nice to just have an easygoing narrative and more cinematic experience in between so you don’t get exhausted.

If you want another roguelike deckbuilder addiction to substitute (or tide you over until StS 2 drops) I can’t recommend Chrono Ark enough.

Sounds good to me! Is it difficult or just a “going along with the ride” type of experience? Trying to get a feel for when to schedule it in.

How are you liking A Plague Tale? I have it on my docket for sometime this year.

That’s super cool. Hopefully this can be a nice boost.

Chrono Ark

I’m at the “end” of the story. I have one more run to get the first ending, and then an uncertain amount of optional grind to get the true ending. I will probably reserve my final thoughts for when I see the endings, but overall this game has been fantastic. Regardless of what you think of the story I’d say the gameplay is solid enough to be worth giving it a shot if you enjoy the genre, and if the story interests you then that is just a cherry on top. Despite not really being that into anime I found myself enjoying several of the characters and getting pretty interested in the plot once it got going, and I’m intrigued to see how it closes out. Mechanically I think it’s just really great, with both solid core gameplay and some really fun and interesting boss designs.

Ninja Gaiden 4

I haven’t played a whole lot this week, but I finished another chapter. Still very early on in the game. It’s very good. I have some issues with it (and it’s one of the most egregious offenders of “yellow paint” in recent years) but overall it’s a great Character Action Game. In some ways it feels more like a cousin to the earlier entries than a core family member - removal of specific combo strings combined with addition of parrying and stance switching has altered the DNA quite a bit. That being said it’s fantastic in its own way and really fun and fluid. Plus the bosses are actually good in this game (so far), which is… not really something you can say about previous games.

Ninja Gaiden 2 Black

The fantastic “White” mod is about to get a huge update with more or less 1:1 recreated spawns of the original NG2, and at the same time a Modified Moveset Mod released, so I had to to back and play some of the best chapters. NG2 combat still is really something special, and the moveset mod really makes it even better.

Totally agree with you about the Alan/Saga stories: Saga’s side is a very competent survival horror with great gameplay, but Alan’s side is just so brilliant - especially the reality re-writing with scenes and light shifts.

Also surprised this was the first time you watched the short film!

I think this is prime for a Netflix animated show. Would definitely watch that.

Huh, had no idea that game existed but that does look pretty different from what we usually see.

Thunder was still not quite what I was looking for last time I tried it. I am very happy with Summit now, personally.

I’m glad to hear it’s in a good spot, at least. I will always have a soft spot for EVE and how unique it is, and all the emergent stories and player-driven action it creates. So I want it to thrive again.

For me though, I am not sure I have another EVE stint in me. It’s not so much a game as it is a hobby, and I am content these days with being able to actually play and finish concrete narrative games that have a beginning and end, you know?

Plus the social aspect of getting to know new people is daunting, and my old crew has all quit and disbanded sadly. Large wars are always fun though, and I do miss gatecrashing battles and doing bombing runs…

This is longer than he’s ever been MIA for before, this time I think it’s about 2 years since the last update, and there are several literally critical bugs. But this is the downside with absentee developers like that, you never know for sure whether it’s abandonware or not. But he seems to be actively working on other stuff still so I just don’t think Lemmy took off enough in popularity for him to feel like it’s worth his time monetarily. Makes sense if this was always more of a business than a passion project, which is the way it appears to be to me.

Well no, I’m mostly interested in games with a side of romance. I would expect to be able to hold actual romance games and visual novels etc to a higher standard. Though actually it would be interesting to compare the best romance game/visual novel romance to the best “video game romance”.

This brings me to an interesting question, only briefly touched upon in the article (and with too few examples): which is the best video game romance so far?

I love Sync but be aware that it is no longer being actively developed. It has some bugs that will never be fixed, and might break entirely in the future.

Yes. If you can play it maxed out it’s one of the best looking games ever, still. Hell, even on medium settings it will look good. Not only a phenomenal graphics engine with great ray tracing and visual fidelity but also a superb HDR implementation. And on top of all that the art direction is absolutely top shelf stuff.

Plus, of course, one of the best narrative experiences ever while simultaneously playing like a really tight and solid survival horror.

It’s in my top 3 games of all time.

How is it, these days? Playerbase healthy? Game balance any better lately? It went downhill for a few years after the change of ownership, but I haven’t been plugged in for a few years now.

I’m pretty sure OD Diner is meant to be both. Doesn’t it say Alan has “various addictions under his belt” in one of the manuscript pages somewhere?

They saw the porn was gone and decided “nah, fuck it”.

Chrono Ark

I’m decently deep into it now, and I keep enjoying it immensely. The only unfortunate thing about it (depending on how you look at it) is that it’s really rather long. I had for some reason thought this could be a medium-length game I could get through in a reasonable time frame and feel good about finishing. Instead it’s probably something of a 100-hour affair if you want the true ending - which is on par for the JRPG influences I suppose. I am also in finding that each run being around 3 hours in total is maybe a tad long: if you ever fail against the end boss it’s easy to get frustrated as you need to beat it every time in order to progress the story. And the story is quite important to the game, while the meta progression (which happens even on failed runs) is rather limited. So it can sometimes feel like you wasted 3 hours if you experimented with a new team and didn’t get there.

In the end though, this is more telling of the fact that the story is actually quite interesting, since the frustration is more stemming from the fact that I want to progress further in it and get impatient at a failed run. Otherwise not much to say about gameplay, it’s a really solid and fun roguelike deckbuilder. Every character is very well designed and unique, there are many combos and synergies and there is a lot of variety in every run with various unlocks, card upgrades and so on. If you like the genre, you would love this. Really can’t recommend it enough.

Ninja Gaiden 4

Played a couple of chapters so far, still on the Hard difficulty. Really liking the bosses so far, this has previously been a weak point in the series but have delivered here so far. I am pushing myself a bit playing on Hard, but I have been able to manage it thus far. I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of adding parrying and deflecting to a Ninja Gaiden game, but it really does make the bosses a lot more fun.

The general combat (outside of bosses) feels really good, but it’s still somewhat weird to not have fighting game style specific strings to work with, and I don’t know how to feel about that. On the one hand it’s much more dynamic and free flowing than ever, but I still miss memorising specific strings like “okay, XX->XY with the dual katanas is a guaranteed decapitation against humanoids, I’ll use it here” etc.

Overall though it’s the best Character Action Game in years and if you like the genre you should definitely play it.