Welcome to Puzzle & Dragons Tuesday! Sit back and either watch me play through, with no commentary, the cup or leave it running in the background as BGM!
I play and earn all the achievements from The Pixel Kali Revival! (2023/9/11 9:00～2023/9/18 8:59 JST) in Puzzle & Dragons: Nintendo Switch Edition whilst using a GamePad and a docked Nintendo Switch.
This week is the Pixel Kali Revival Cup. i have played this cup before, https://youtu.be/O755kjT9oWU, but that was very bad for me. it took nearly 3x as long as this video! even tho it went better the second time, i didn't really understand the gimmick or couldn't seem to activate as much as i wanted. i simply tried to make as many combos as possible whilst also making the longest connections. There were more players this week, nearly everyone i played against got a win! i also got a win but i couldn't beat the boss. it looked like most players i was playing against could beat it either.
Today's Cloud Monday is part 1 of playing For the King, streamed from PlayStation Plus Premium. This game was developed by IronOak Games and published on PS4 by Curve Digital Publishing. I wanted to try this game as the screenshots made it look very interesting and cool looking.
But, i had such a difficult time playing it. It's a shame, too, as this game is designed in such a way that it works well as a game being streamed from the cloud. It say's it saves after every turn, tho it doesn't define what it means by turn so i'm left to assume it saves after every character is finished with their turn. It's art style is unique and distinct but critically it doesn't rely on small intricate details, so if there is any macro blocking or resolution drops the impact on how things look would be lesser than other games. Plus it's slow pace and turn based system are less impacted by a poor connection.
So on paper it's a great game to be streamed from the PlayStation Plus Cloud, but in reality it's almost impenetrable for newcomers. And even when there is a tutorial it's either late, out of place, or tells the player to look it up. I would go so far as to say i found the tutorial to be so bad it's borderline rude. I have NEVER played a Table Top RPG before and after my experience with this game i'm not particularly keen on trying one in the future.
I had such a negative first impression from this game that i'm debating whether to do my regular Part 2 or not.
This weekend is the "Who would be the best leader?" Splatfest. Yesterday, Saturday, was the first day and i got in 15 games with 6 wins https://youtu.be/k9yyT8DdPVU. Today was the Tricolor event and it went just as well, again with 6 wins out of 15 games.
What didn't go well was the opposition. the idea with Tricolor games is that you're facing the other two teams. but out of the 15 games, i was only up against Fyre and Big Man teams 4 times! So this Tricolor day got a little boring by the end. it's a big reason why i changed from Bloblobber to the Gold Dynamo Roller. I don't typically play offensive with rollers so to make things interesting for myself i changed weapon and tried to be defensive and offensive. it was a nice challenge and it's not that bad. it is a bit too slow to fire so i'll probably change to something else.
It's a Splatfest weekend so today's video is on the "Who would be the best leader" Splatfest in Splatoon 3. our choices are between Fyre, Shiver, and Big Man. I chose to join team Shiver.
This Saturday's Splatfest went much better than the previous Saturday's did, https://youtu.be/wUTQmGapjWE. I wouldn't say any did was doing a lot better than the other, tho maybe Fyre's teams tended to get the bigger wins. i had a lot of fun and i'm thinking 15 games is the right amount for these Splatfests.
For Mobile Friday this week is i tried out Tailed Demon Slayer: RISE on my iPhone 14 Pro. This game from CookApps is also out on Android. i haven't played the original Tailed Demon Slayer so this was my first time playing in this game world.
The start of this game is great but also a little weird. It's great because it does a good job of telling a story, putting the game and the game world into context. it's simple approach to world building is effective. so much so that i was waiting for more all throughout this video. and that's the weird thing about this game, so much effort is put into creating context, telling a story, and then the game does nothing else with it. Early on, i was always expecting the game to slow, or even stop, to tell more about the story. but once i realised that it wasn't going to, i was a bit disappointed.
That's kinda true for other aspects of the game. there are times when so much effort has clearly been spent on something and then it stops. the tutorial is a good example of this. the start of the game does a good job slowly introducing the game right up until it stops doing that and as this video goes on i found myself asking more questions. For those who have watched my Mobile Friday videos, you'll know that i appreciate games that slowly introduce themselves even if it means stopping players from accessing parts of the game. and whilst this game did a good job of that, i was able to get clothes and equip them long before the game's clothes tutorial. there's also an instance later of the game starting a tutorial, then showing an advert for said item in the store, then finishing the tutorial. putting an advert half way through the tutorial made no sense.
Ultimately, this aren't huge complaints. they only stick out because of how well the rest of the game is designed. This is one of the better autobattler RPGs i have ever played. having a good start of the story helps, as does a good tutorial, but one of the smartest things the developers did was trying to hide the grind. it took around 45-50 minutes before the grind became noticeable and i applaud all the clever ways they designed the game to try and hide the grind. There is the main "story" battle, then there are dungeons, there's also improving the stats of your character, there's summoning equipment, and then improving your current equipment. there are also quests to aim for, and when you do you can collect the earned items. But if you want more rewards, you can watch adverts. you can also earn things from the Battle Pass, Season Pass, 7 day missions, Quests, Album, and the Advance System. all the while, the game is still progressing, you're still earning money and experience. Essentially, the game is grinding in the background but it's hidden by everything else there is to do in the game.
It was a little much at the start, but once i realized what was happening and that there's no rush to do things it did become easier. For example, the Repeat Quest keeps track of your progress. so if you've completed a quest a few times, you'll still get the correct amount of reward. By the end of this video, i still had a lot left to unlock so there could be other ways the developers have tried to hide the grind.
The core gameplay is good, the graphics are good, the music is good, and the tutorials are good. there is a lot to like in this game. it also doesn't force adverts upon us, nor where there any additional downloads before we could start playing. Oh, the music is also good too. there's soo much to like about this game that it's easy for me to recommend this game to fans of the genre, to those curious, and to those looking for a new game to play.
For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the PlayStation 4 version of Sea of Stars. For clarity, i did back this game on Kickstarter so i have a copy of this game already, as well as it's soundtrack, but i haven't played it as yet. This demo is my first experience playing this game.
I played through the whole of demo. it's a "slice" of the game that tries to not spoil the game's story. so at points, it stops your characters from exploring too much, and some parts of the story are redacted. it's a little weird as it feels less of a public demo and more of a demo for publications to play. Whilst i'm not against such a thing being available for the public, it does mean it's less accessible than people may expect. For example, there's no main tutorial. it meant that there are aspects of the gameplay that i didn't learn about until right at the end. some of the key battle mechanics are in the pause menu in the How to Play section. a simple splash screen of slide show before it began would've done more than than what the game does. Some characters are given dialogue that's just for the demo, one of them could've reminded the player to check out the How to Play section.
The reason why i highlight this is that the battle mechanics especially are deep and fun to play with. the basic battle stuff is fine and easy to understand. it's one reason why i didn't check out the How to Play section first. having played many RPG's in the past, i understood how it basically worked. but as i started to explore it, i grew to understand that it's much deeper than i anticipated. there are combo's, different ones between pairs of characters, there are power up moves, and the player can reduce damage taken and increase damage delt by pressing O at the right time.
The slice of the game this demo showed had been good. it shows the great pixel art, the beautiful locations, the music, and locations. i was already enjoying playing it. but by the end, once i learned how to take better advantage of the combat mechanics, i was excited to play the main game. ultimately, the demo did it's job. it made me want to play the full game after playing it. it's not the most accessible demo i've played, but it's good and if you're interested in Sea of Stars it's a good place to start. But as it's a couple of sections from early in the game, you can't carry on with the main game with your save.
Part 2 of playing Gunstar Heroes on #PS3 saw me struggle to complete The Underground Mine. It was very hard to complete what was a small boss rush mode. there were no health pick-ups after each boss either. So this video is mostly me failing again and again but ultimately i did stick at it and beat the stage. Whilst i don't have a rewind feature, i was able to use the save feature to my advantage.
I'll be honest, this felt unfair. Whilst it was interesting to go up against different bosses who act and look differently, it felt like it was designed in such a way that i was meant to fail. Gunstar Heroes was an #arcade game first, so it's designed to take money. In some respects, a modern equivalent would be a Souls Like style game. in those games you learn by failing, as did i in this video.
