I know, I know, it’s criminal that I’ve never played this one. As a dirty european, I never had the chance until the SNES Mini came out.
It sure has a whole lot of personality. It’s one of the most off-beat, eccentric games I’ve played, but it manages to avoid the feeling of “lol so whacky and random” that a lot of kooky media has.
Early game seems to be a bit grindy, but I think that’ll change once I have more than one party member. Until then, though, taking four critical hits in a row is aggravating, and when I died to one I was about to call it quits until I saw I had kept all of my Exp to that point.
Fin or Bin:
Even though it’s a blatant Undertale rip-off, I can see why it’s such a cult fave. I think it’d be hard to recommend to people who weren’t around at the time, but I was- so I’m going to Finish it.
It’s time once more for the annual backloggening, and the root cause of why this blog exists in the first place- Steam Summer Sale is upon us for 2018. And, since the BBacklog Challenge is all about unearthing hidden gems and playing great games that might otherwise go unplayed, I wanted to share some BBLC faves that I would highly recommend you pick up if you can.
I can’t praise this one highly enough, and months later I still catch myself singing the final boss song in my head (YES MA’AM). You’ll be smiling ear to ear all the way through, and there’s a decent amount of content for completonists. If you only buy one game in this year’s sale, make it Tadpole Treble.
A dollar for Shuuten is a total steal already, and you’ll get 6 other interesting games along with it. Shuuten is a neat little STG that will take a couple of hours to get through (longer if you’re less STG-inclined). The other games might be of interest, but Shuuten is the star of the show personally.
It’s the second rhythm game on this short list, but it couldn’t be further removed from Tadpole Treble’s cute charms. Klang is stylish, rockin’, badass, and HARD. But once you get the rhythms down everything just seems to work and you’ll feel like the coolest tuning-fork-swordsmonkey that ever lived.
A short, free-to-play visual novel, Without Within tells a story about trying to pursue your passions while living in poverty. It took 11 minutes to read from start to finish, and although there are choices to make during the game there’s usually one obvious correct answer to choose (the other giving a Bad End). It’s worth a look, for sure.
Fin or Bin:
I guess I did already finish it, but I’ll mark it as a Fin anyway because I don’t regret doing so.
Here’s a game I tried to play a loooong time ago, accidentally messed up because I didn’t understand it, gave up and resolved to try again another day.
CTHCC is, I guess, a visual novel, but there’s a lot of grinding to do too. You have to increase your social skills in various topics to convince an array of misfits to join your comedy club. You can only talk to each potential member about a certain topic one time, so it’s best to save their favourite topics for later when you’ve had chance to develop your skill in that topic better. The game doesn’t give you any indication of what topics are best for each person, however (although some of them can be guessed on context- the girl with a dog loves talking about animals, eg) and if you accidentally use their best topic before you have any skill developed… too bad, try again in New Game Plus.
The micromanagement involved, along with having to manage fatigue, money, and homework levels along the way, is a little too much for me to be bothered with. None of the recruitable characters particularly excite me (with a couple of them actively repulsing me and I don’t WANT to recruit them)…
…And the biggest crime of all- the prissy rich blonde girl CAN’T be recruited!
Fin or Bin:
Didn’t you read that last sentence? The standout obvious best character can’t be recruited, so what’s even the POINT?????
(Side note: I also own the sequel, titled ‘I! My! Girls!’, which is apparently a far more straightforward visual novel without the management sim aspects. That said, it doesn’t really make much sense to play that if I don’t finish this one, so I’ll be taking that off the backlog too.)
Today I finished my play of Stardew Valley, earning every (main game) achievement along the way. 138 hours it took and I adored every second. There’s a frankly staggering amount to do. Highly recommeneded purchase if you haven’t tried it yet.
