Oh I’m late.

I wish  had a whole lot of games to talk about that I played in April, but I took it real easy on new games… and don’t have a PS5 to play Stellar Blade (fuck Sony). Most of my gaming time has been put into being good at Mahjong Soul (literally had ~25 matches with no 4th places… the game is taking its revenge right now though). There is one game I got from Kickstarter, Eiyuden, yjsy I haven’t played  yet (and am kinda dreading it based on how shit the localization is). I will play it soon probably. Not much else is planned for May since there’s just nothing coming out…. And that kinda goes for the rest of the year… Man I chose the wrong year to do monthly update posts 😀

I do have a few things I played in April, not much of huge note but there’s a few things here… And May ain’t  shaping up great either.

So anyways here’s a few things!

• Hebereke Enjoy Editio
• Dungeon Drafters
• Random-ass Atari remakes of old games
• Wanted: Dead
• SaGa Emerald Beyond
• Phantom Fury

Hebereke Enjoy Edition

A rare instance of a game being cheaper on Switch than on Steam, huh.

So last month I mentioned Ufouria 2, which is the sequel to this game. It was unfortunately not very good, but I had always heard good things about Ufouria. Hebereke is the original japanese title of it. Weirdly enough, this release is just the japanese version of the game despite having an official localization. But, any time you encounter a text box, you can go in the menu and see the translated english text… and the localized english text. Yeah it shows 2 translations, I assume the shittier one with the characters having different names is the original localization of it.

The game itself… WAY better than the sequel. It has actual level design, more interesting bosses and a map to explore. It has a few moments where I felt a bit lost even with the map item, but overall, very solid. I wouldn’t put it as one of the very top NES games, but it’s somewhere in the “pretty good” range.

Dungeon Drafters

I backed this on kickstarter, it came out last year but took a whole extra year to get released to Switch. I ended up kinda disappointed.

This is a roguelike-almost where you have turn-based battles in rooms but your attacks are randomly drawn cards in a deck. The overall gameplay is good, but there’s just something about it that’s not clicking for me and not making me want to keep playing it. It’s not that it’s bad, the progression just doesn’t feel good to me. It does have a demo though, so I at least recommend checking that out and maybe it will click better for you.

Random-ass Atari remakes of old games

So Atari has been giving away this shit, I think on Twitch Prime?

I don’t know if there are any more but these are the ones I got: Missile Command Recharged, Gravitar Recharged, Breakout Recharged, Yars Recharged, Asteroids Recharged, Caverns of Mars Recharged, Black Widow Recharged, Centipede Recharged.

These are all very similar to the Atari/Arcade originals. Several of them use the exact same UI so it’s weird that it’s not just one collection with all the games. They all have some extra elements compared to the originals like power-ups that may not have existed, and the graphics are… more modern (I prefer the original graphics). The one I was least happy with unfortunately was Yars, because the original is my favorite Atari 2600 game, and this changes it entirely to a twin-stick shooter with very minor bullet hell gameplay, and the Zorlon Cannon is really fucking boring to fire, while the original game requires skill… Since I got these all for free, I’m not disappointed, but I don’t think I’d recommend them. I think there’s a collection of like 50 classic Atari games, get that instead if you care.

Wanted: Dead

This is a game I really should get back to and finish, because it’s actually good. It came out last year to literally zero fanfare despite actually looking decent. Recently it was discounted a few times and apparently got a big update to its combat and skill system. This is a hack n’ slash action game where you play as a pretty lady who gets covered in gratuitous amounts of blood a lot. The combat itself is really fun, and smooth, there’s lots of cool execution moves and the bosses are fun to fight so far. And it loves to play around with its presentation, and it actually has pretty good voice acting which is a rarity for english VAs.

Where I had trouble with is that some of the levels have a weirdly low amount of checkpoints. Checkpoints are good since you get to restock all your stuff, and most levels put them between every few combat encounters. The level I’m at though, it doesn’t play nice. I thought once I passed 1 miniboss, 3 combat encounters and another miniboss, I’d maybe get a checkpoint, but there was no such luck. After many attempts at that section, I was just getting my ass kicked. So I took a break… Which I’m still in.

That said, the game is very good and I recommend it.

SaGa Emerald Beyond

I was kinda hyped for this because… It’s SaGa. These are always a bit weird as far as RPGs go. This looked pretty similar to Scarlet Grace, the previous game in the series. And a lot of it is pretty similar, with the combat having a lot of similarities but adding a combo system (if you make attacks while your character turn orders are touching each other in the turn timeline). Instead of leveling up normally, it’s random stats increases sometimes (though some character types might be different, like mechs only getting skill levels and their stats are determined by equipment entirely). The overall combat and character building and such is fine. There’s some interesting combat options like formations that entirely change how that works.

Where I have issues is the overall progression. Maybe it’s different with the other characters, I don’t know. Scarlet Grace basically had a big open world to explore that you could progress through but also find sidequests to do, but this just has a hub world, and then you go into doors to other worlds. Each world is either a main or side quest, and, once you’re in a world, you’re stuck there until you finish it. There’s no exploration in any of these worlds, not really any optional things to do (other than combat spaces where you can fight to grind). Some of the areas have multiple endings, or allow you to leave early if you choose, though that locks you out of doing everything there. Some worlds will enable you to recruit the main character from that world (which may be the playable characters from other stories), some might not.

The game has multiple stories, each with a different protagonist. I believe there’s a new scenario that opens up when you play as everyone, I obviously haven’t done that yet so I dunno. I believe different stories lead to some worlds other stories don’t, though the actual plot (may it be the protagonist’s main plot or the subplot of each world) is pretty lame and underdeveloped. There’s just not much going on. But the fact that you can get different endings in different worlds, get different characters to join you and of course that there seems to be something if you play through all the stories, means this game can last you a good long while.

Overall I’d put this at mildly recommended. I like the combat, I just wish the stuff outside of the combat was a bit more interesting.

Phantom Fury

This is a Half-Life 1-like. More specifically, it’s a lot like the never-released Duke Nukem Forever which was leaked recently. It’s a pretty decent classic-style FPS. It harkens back to a time when gave devs didn’t think the player was stupid and actually made you think to know where to go next. No markers or anything, just find what you need to progress, look for paths, find secrets… It’s pretty good. A few of the levels are a bit ass, but overall, this is actually pretty solid good shit.

I did get a few glitches, namely enemies spawning in walls and one time where I died and the reload brought me to a state of the game I couldn’t progress in (I just reloaded an auto-save, which worked out). But these glitches aren’t too bad or frequent.

Mild recommendation.