Puzzle & Dragons Tuesday - Nintendo Switch Edition -Vajrabhairava Cup - Achievement Run

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 Vajrabhairava Cup! (2023/8/21 9:00～2023/8/28 8:59 JST) in Puzzle & Dragons: Nintendo Switch Edition whilst using a GamePad and a docked Nintendo Switch.

It was a very competitive cup this week. as you can see below, i played against many other players. I understood one of the gimmicks right away, making an "L" shape. but i took a little longer to realize that i could make a "+" shape, too. even tho i didn't fully get the gimmick, more scores were mostly competitive and i often finished in the top 3. But i didn't win many bonuses at the end. even playing it felt like i didn't have much Combo luck. I got to the boss several times, but i failed to do more than half damage and that's knowing what to do. maybe with another L or + the multiplier would've been enough to win. Thankfully, looking at the scores it was clear that i wasn't the only player having trouble. In the end, it was fun and i was soo relieved to get my Win. it's just a shame it was only 1 win this week.

This week i played against:

winstein - Rank 76

ころん - Rank 72

いのうえたかひろ - Rank 41

フウマ - Rank 67

あいすのけしん - Rank 67

コッペ - Rank 61

S.L.01 - Rank 87

たまねぎ - Rank 67

Elesia - Rank 66

ブロ: BR - Rank 68

しょうずにできました - Rank 45

みつるCH - Rank 70

Cloud Monday - Scarlet Nexus - Part 2 - Still Fun, But More Noticeable Streaming Issues

Today's Cloud Monday is part 2 of playing Scarlet Nexus on a launch model PS4. In part 1, https://youtu.be/z4pOFUlwWsg, streaming it via the PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming service went really well with only one or two noticeable issues. But in today's video, there were more issues to the point where i got a connection warning. thankfully, it wasn't throughout the video, but as it was more frequent it also was much more noticeable than in part 1.

The game was still fun to play. the combat is fast paced and i didn't notice any lag due to the game being streamed to me. that was true with part 1, so at least the feel of the game holds up across both days. The story is a little slow and the world feels empty, more so in this video. near the end it says i'm free to do what i want. but, as i show in the video, there was nothing i could do. none of the shops are buildings i can go in, it was more like i was at point A and the game wanted me to go to Point B. so, in a way, the game's own story got in the way of gameplay.

Across both parts, a typical thing streaming does is reduce the resolution and i didn't notice it happening. for a 1080p system, the game looks great. but i do worry that if there are streaming issues that the resolution will drop and the game will be greatly affected. the text on screen is small, but for me fine. this and the game's unique art style and way it draws the neon stuff are the most likely to be affected by a resolution drop. We didn't get it, but what we did get in this video was just as bad. there was macro blocking, where squares of color appear instead of fine detail, and even more noticeable were the stream tearing moments as it's just light grey on screen.

I think this is a good game, but i don't think it's a great game to be streamed. i mentioned in the first video how the save system is an auto save and only at specific points. it's a system not suited to a streaming service were you get a 20 second notice of being kicked off. it's unique art style is also susceptible to streaming issues. I have this on disc and if i had to chose between playing the game on disc or streaming it from the PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming service, i would chose to play it from disc.

Switch Funday - Pokémon Trading Card Game - My First Time - I Had Fun

Welcome to Switch Funday!

For today's game i wanted to try out the Game Boy Color game Pokémon Trading Card Game. I had a Game Boy Color growing up, the purple one, and i played Pokémon Blue, Yellow, Gold, and Pinball on it. but i never tried out Pokémon Trading Card Game. I didn't know much about it, other than guessing what happens by it's name. Now it's on the Nintendo Switch Online service, i was curious to give it a go and whether or not it would be worth playing in 2023.

I'll admit that i only won the tutorial battle. the other two battles i tried, i lost. but it didn't feel like i lost due to skill but rather i lost due to bad luck. The tutorial is good. it maybe a little too hand holdy for some people, but for me, someone who has never played the Card Game, it was what i needed. the only thing i would've liked is if the tutorial, or game, suggested where i should go with the deck i have. it felt like that it left it up to me, but i didn't know where to go. 

My first battle was against someone in the Poké Lab, i thought that it would be an easy battle as it's right at the start of the game. but it felt like a challenge. i had picked the Bulbasaur Grass Deck so thought the best gym to head to would be the Rock one. But i didn't really have much of an advantage. this game seems to be just Gen 1 Pokémon, so there isn't a lot of choice and my deck had Pokémon of many different types.

I'm glad i tried it out. i do think it holds up today, but i can't compare it to the modern Card Game as i've never played it. but as a strategy card game, it played really well. it's not just the tutorial that was good, but all the information you need is there, too. most of it takes a while to get to, but it's there. this game is slow, but it's what i wanted for my first time, and i could make it go a little faster in the options by speeding up text speed. Even the graphics looked great on my TV. all the Pokémon were clear and some of the card arts i looked at were also cool. If you have the service, i'd recommend giving it a go. i feel that the tutorial is good enough for those unfamiliar with Pokémon, and if you know Pokémon then i feel it'll take less time to get up to speed. i hope you're lucky tho!

Online Saturday - Tower of Fantasy - A Few Too Many Issues On PS4

Today's Online Saturday game is Tower of Fantasy from Hotta Studio. This game is out on other platforms and has been for a little while now. The game is now out on PS4 and PS5. Today, i played this free to play game on PS4 and unfortunately, there were issues throughout the video.

After playing this game for an hour i feel like it's done very little to introduce me to the world or the characters. it's fine that i have amnesia, but the introduction before that was a lot of nothing. and when we meet other characters, the game tries to introduce them to us but everything feels soo shallow. almost as if i should already know a lot of the things they are saying even tho they already know i have amnesia. This means that there are also several conversations where the other characters say things that go against what's happened in the story so far. it leaves me wondering if i'm not the only one with amnesia or if it's just poor world building.

Then there are issues with the game itself. i was expecting my PS4 to be loud, and it is. i was expecting there to be loading times, and there are. but i wasn't prepared for the stuttering that happens a lot in this video. i can't say for sure whether it's the game itself or the connection to the server as in this video that connection is lost twice in an hour. It was easy for me to tell because my PS4 would go quiet before the game realizes what happened and ask to reconnect. what has to be the game is the pop-in. it's everywhere and i'm sure there are even textures just not loading at all. there was an instance early on where there were candles. some lit up as i got closer. some waited until i was on top of them, but some stayed strangely unlit.

The pop-in is frustrating and does take me out of the world, which is a shame because the world is bright, vibrant, and impressive. and yet, it also feels small. we were able to traverse the map much quicker than i thought and the biggest tower felt kinda small and not quite matching the description of what should be on top. Something else that became distracting was animations not finishing. i set the game to playout the conversations at it's own pace. i wasn't going to interfere with them. and yet, characters seemed to be missing animation frames, seemingly going from having an animated conversation to finished in an instant. That's not the only issue with the conversation system, as sometimes it forgets it's set to auto and just stops, waiting for me to press X to continue it on the controller.

There are a few other things you may see, and hear me complain about in this video, but it all boils down to a game that fails to tutorialise, fails to build a world, and fails to be stable. it's possible over the next few hours the story and world building will continue to improve. but it's hard to ignore the tech issues and poor tutorial to get there. so for now i won't be playing Tower of Fantasy and i don't recommend it on PS4. Yes, it's free, but there becomes a point when it's still a waste of your time.

(Version 1.10 Played)

Mobile Friday - DC Heroes & Villains: Match 3 - Fun But Feels Like A Work In Progress

For DC Heroes & Villains: Match 3 i'm going to focus on the game i played rather than what it might be like in the future. In my personal experience of playing a similar game like Marvel Puzzle Quest, the game i played could be different to the game now. for example, check out the video i did of the PS4 version of Marvel Puzzle Quest, https://youtu.be/LnnYjORtSEE, and check out what the mobile version of the game is now.

Another reason why i want to make this point is that this game feels like a work in progress. the core ideas, the current gameplay loop is there and it's fairly enjoyable. But, it doesn't quite work with an iPhone with Dynamic Island, there's wasted space, and many things are not clearly explained. I also imagine that some systems, like the various "currency's" may get simplified in the future as it has far too many and none of them are explained how to earn, or buy, them. You'll hear my complaints and suggestions throughout this video and hopefully i'm able to get across my thoughts somewhat clearly.

There is a lot to do in this game, but the main focus is the story mode. I focused on that mode in this video. i tried a couple of the side stuff, but my roster of characters was very small and very under leveled. it almost feels pointless to have been able to access it this early on. The story is clearly much bigger than what i played through in this hour and i'm genuinely curious as to whether the game will have just one story or grow into many. i found it engaging and mostly plausible, but i admit i don't know too much about DC Comics' stories. But the characters where clearly recognisable. they didn't feel too childish nor too extreme.

The frustrating thing is that i was having fun and enjoying myself, but almost in equal measure i was finding it frustrating. what ultimately made this game frustrating and why i stopped the video where i did was that i couldn't workout how to level up my characters. i had taken Batman to level 3 and just couldn't workout what to do next. i wanted him to get stronger, i need him a higher level to get more abilities. But i just couldn't work it out. it ended up being one frustration too many and honestly i haven't played it since. But i haven't deleted it either as it's clear from the version history, in the app store, that it's getting changed and adapted and filled out. so i may come back to it in the future personally, but also as a second look video at all the changes made to the game.

(Version 1.0.18 Played)

Demo Play Thursday - UFO: Unidentified Falling Objects

UFO: Unidentified Falling Objects is the first game in a new series called Demo Play Thursday. The goal is to play demos of upcoming, recently released, or older games. i chose to start with UFO: Unidentified Falling Objects as i wanted to play a puzzle game.

I'm familiar with with puzzle games where blocks come down from above, or up from below, and you need to match them together. What caught my eye was the robot with a lazer weapon. This demo let's you play through a tutorial and some of, if not all, the first world of the game. online multiplayer is not enabled and i couldn't try out local multiplayer. 

The goal with your robot is to destroy blocks. the more blocks of the same color together, the bigger the reward for destroying them. you only need to attack one of the blocks as damage will be shared with all the same colored touching blocks. But this is also true with enemies! Whilst it's not explained well, if at all, in the demo how to deal with all the different enemies, an enemy block only has to be touching a block or a chain of blocks to be damaged when said blocks are shot. unfortunately, you're not able to hurt the enemies directly. So with enemies shooting you, blocks falling down, and your attempts to make chains and destroy them, it's a fairly busy and frantic puzzler. One that i'm not good at at all! 

But even tho i wasn't good, i had a good time. i feel that this is a good demo, but it perhaps needs a better tutorial or more explanations for things. There were powerups that i didn't know what i wanted as i didn't know what they did, and there was an enemy i didn't work out how to kill.

Backlog Conquering - RiME - Part 7 - The Final Part

In part 6, https://youtu.be/1p_1m3GFPFE, i got stuck on a puzzle for around 30 minutes. if i solved it much sooner, i might've finished the game in that session. But as i didn't, i went into part 7 not really knowing how much of the game was left to play, and yet feeling like i was near the end of the game, that i was near the top of the tower i had been working my way up.

So part 7 is really short because there wasn't too much left to do in the game. I was lucky that the game, when it started, had moved me to where i needed to be. i finished Part 6 at the final statue i had awakened, but not where all 4 of their "spirits" had congregated. So when i started right where i needed to be, i did my scream, solved a light puzzle, and had to deal with the top of the tower being the bottom and then i got to the ending.

Ultimately, i don't get it. i say it in the video but the truth is i found it much more enjoyable tackling the puzzles and progressing through the world than what the conclusion ended up being. these puzzle parts of the game ended up being better than the game itself. The mystery of the king, the kingdom, the queen, and the other child were never explained, nor were the robots. if i had seen some sign of these at the end then i might've understood how or why they were in the world i had just played through. the story i had created in my own mind from my own experiences, which at times i say throughout this whole series, ended up being nothing like the actual ending. The ending i got didn't match the game i had just played. it's such a big disconnection that not only is it frustrating, it almost makes the game pointless to the point that i think of the game more as a series of puzzles than something with a story.

But that's just me and my interpretation of my own experiences. players from different cultures and backgrounds might have different feelings for the ending. I enjoyed the puzzles so much, especially that i was only stuck twice, that i would still recommend the game. probably best played on a PS5 because it really spun up the fans in my PS4!