The new story is Underworld Office: Ghost Story. i'm playing this on iPhone 14 pro.
Now i've played it, i understand how it works. so each video from this one going forward will be it's own chapter in the game. i will continue to blur out the advert at the bottom of the screen. there are full screen adverts during my playthrough and i will edit them out. this will mean that occasionally the music will skip or go from on to off abruptly where i've made the edit.
The result of Chapter 2 was great for the ghost and the human. in this chapter, Sean, i feel that i didn't get a result for the human character and even though the game said i got a result for the ghost character it felt like a light result, more by accident than what i was aiming for. i'm very interested in knowing what happens if i took the other branching story option, so let me know in the chat if you took it.
This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 2 of playing the PS4 version of the emulated PS2 game Tomb Raider: Anniversary via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.
In Part 1 it was clear that the ability to save at any point by using the emulators save feature was great. in this part i made use of another emulator exclusive feature that isn't in the game itself and that's the Rewind feature.
In some respects, Tomb Raider: Anniversary is a little difficult in that there are times jumps are a little unclear and there are other times when you're ambushed by predators. i can imagine back in the day the complaints about the game's difficulty were accurate. apparently the game gets more tough towards the end with puzzles as well as gameplay. having the ability to rewind was very nice. i was able to make the mistakes and immediately learn from them. at times, this lead to some really nice flowing platforming sequences. i think i remarked in the game it's like the Sands of Time from Prince of Persia. if anyone tried Tomb Raider: Anniversary back on PS2, or even PSP, but put it down 'cause it was a challenge then playing it this way via emulation is a revelation.
The streaming experience in this part was much more consistent than in Part 1. only once did a warning appear in the top right. but even if was better, the lag in the controls was still noticeable. i think what helps is having to do the tutorial with the lag. if you watch Part 1 you'll see i immediately have trouble but quite quickly adjust to the lag. without playing the game on PS2 it's hard to say if it's solely down to the game being streamed. in my experience, these emulated games do seem to suffer from lag more than the native PS3 and PS4 games i've played via the cloud. i wonder if this is down to the PS1, PS2, and PSP controls being directly tied to the console and the PS3 and PS4 being wireless. Like, the lag i'm feeling is because the controls are wireless and the games aren't built around the lag from these controls. the games are built with quicker responses in-mind, maybe 2-6ms instead of the 10+ that modern consoles have.
After two Parts, i can say that i think Tomb Raider: Anniversary is well worth playing from the Cloud. because of how the emulator save features work and the bonus of the Rewind features, it'd make a great game for PlayStation Portal too.
For this week's iPhone Friday i tried FAIRY TAIL Wizard Chronicle from developers GooDRoiD on my iPhone 14 Pro.
I used to watch the FAIRY TAIL and i really enjoyed it. i haven't seen it lately but after playing this i'm interested in checking out what i've missed. I've not played a FAIRY TAIL game before, tho i think in the video i say i've played a PS4 game and i think i mistook a Black Clover game i played for FAIRY TAIL.
At the beginning, there was a bug or two. an error message would appear on screen and most of the time i could clear it, but there was one occasion where i couldn't and i had to restart the game. since i recorded this video the game has been patched but this bug still remains. it's much less frequent now but i have had to exit the game because i couldn't clear the error message and access the screen. as for the the missing apostrophes, they haven't been patched into the game.
There is a data download before you start the game, so it's best to start FAIRY TAIL Wizard Chronicle on Wi-fi before playing it. The video that plays seems to be taken from the anime but because the anime is horizontal and the game is vertical, it doesn't look the best and is often awkward looking.
I enjoyed the character art, it looks HD in quality. it's a shame none of it seems to be animated and that each character maybe only has 1 picture each. the rest of the game's graphics aren't too impressive but it's fine. I did enjoy the game's tutorial. it's simple without being patronising and uses an in-game character smartly to explain things. it's a pretty comprehensive tutorial that's paced to match what's happening in the game until things with red dots start appearing on the main screen. it's at this point the tutorial slows down and we're left to work things out ourselves. What helps with this pacing is that game modes and features are also locked and not accessible until they should be. this helps with us not being overwhelmed in the beginning.
One of the risks of an Idle game is it's grind. at their worst, i've played games which have hit the grind in less than 30 minutes. with FAIRY TAIL Wizard Chronicle i only just starting hitting it at the end of the video. there are some game mechanics that can delay this grind a little, but for the most part it's a traditional idle game. the gacha and RPG mechanics are more tied together. often, the reward from the gacha has a benefit to our team. you collect characters to unlock them, and collect more of them to increase their star rating, their character rpg stats. these and levelling up characters are tied into missions/quests. so it does feel cohesive and well thought out. it may seem a little much at the start but because it all flows together it's really easy to understand. another thing that helps is that if you touch the current mission, a hand will appear showing where to go to complete it.
I enjoyed my time with FAIRY TAIL Wizard Chronicle. it doesn't do much revolutionary but it certainly is a good solid example of an idle rpg. there's enough here for fans of the series but i'd say it's very playable for those who don't know much about it. because it's an idle game it encourages pick up and play so for commuters it's a good one to play and as it's a vertical game it's fine to play one handed. i'd recommend giving it a go.
For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the PlayStation 4 version of Octopath Traveler 0 Prologue DEMO from DokiDoki Groove Works and Square Enix.
The Octopath Traveler 0 Prologue DEMO is a timed demo. as players, we only get to play for three hours. before i started playing i had no idea why we seemed to be arbitrarily limited, but now i've played it i can see why they did it. the game's pace changes depending on what happens. at the beginning, there's a focus on community and the town you live in. you get to meet many of the people, get to interact with them and learn about them. there's an engagement reveal between two of your friends. for my first hour and twenty minutes, the game is just normal life in a village with some tutorials.
This means what comes next has more of an impact because very quickly village life as we know it is gone and so are our friends. as the sadness takes over things slow down and there's a time skip to when the grief has passed enough for us start moving on. with this desire to move forward, the pace of the game increases and in the last 30 minutes of this demo, or so, we're introduced to town building and set off on two quests. so the 3 hour limit doesn't act as much of a restriction as it provides a push forward.
On PS4, Octopath Traveler 0 Prologue DEMO looks and sounds fantastic. when the village gets attacked, the fire effects look almost too good against the pixel art world. when we're in battle, some effects look simple and effective and then there's the Rage Attacks which go over the top by enrobing the characters in a Super Saiyan light. Sun light and moon light look, much like the fire, too realistic in this pixel world. The music was also very nice. there wasn't a theme that disappointed me.
Octopath Traveler 0 Prologue DEMO is well worth trying out. having now played it, i'm much more interested in the full game, it's world, and it's story. 3 hours may seem like a long time but it went quite quickly as i played it. at no point did i feel bored or that the game was taking it's time. But for those looking for a more action orientated RPG i can see why it may come across as slow or even old fashioned.
Welcome to Backlog Conquering. This is a series were i play a game from my backlog that i may or may not have played before. the goal isn't necessarily to finish the game, the goal is to play it. that way, i can have an opinion about it.
Our new game is the PlayStation 4 version of Anthem. i have previously played around 5 hours of this game back in 2019, but i stopped playing once EA announced they weren't going to update the game. The main reason for picking up Anthem now is that the game servers are going to be turned off on January 12th 2026. With the servers turned off, the game will be unplayable as there's no offline mode.
At the end of Part 1 we were assigned a mission to find someone so we start this part with that mission. what was fun was someone joining our game. they were quick and dealt with the enemies faster than us. After that i did a mission from an NPC, and also explored the local area whilst doing it. This Part ends with us getting a brand new assignment.
The new story is Underworld Office: Ghost Story. i'm playing this on iPhone 14 pro.
Now i've played it, i understand how it works. so each video from this one going forward will be it's own chapter in the game. i will continue to blur out the advert at the bottom of the screen. there are full screen adverts during my playthrough and i will edit them out. this will mean that occasionally the music will skip or go from on to off abruptly where i've made the edit.
This Chapter focused on Luke and it can be quite sad at times. i really liked it and i'm glad that any comic relief there was didn't detract from the main sad story. Our character, Eugene, had some personality growth in a positive direction.
For this week's Mobile Friday i tried Where Winds Meet from developers Everstone Studio on my iPhone 14 Pro.
When you start Where Winds Meet you really have to play it on Wi-Fi as the game will, without any warning, immediately start downloading extra content. Even when you start playing, there's extra content that can be downloaded at the character creation section and you even have the option to download the 12GB+ data for other regions in the game. it might be worth spending the time now to install everything rather than using up your data as you go.
For me, the other annoying thing about this extended look at the game is it's story. it starts with a great cinematic intro where we're able to join in with, and then it's over and we're with 2 other characters. it's never mentioned, or if it is i completely missed it, who exactly we are in relation to the two other characters we were just playing as. Is the girl we're with the baby from the previous sequence? the story progressed so slowly in this video. our initial goal of getting home wasn't completed. I didn't even finish the side goal we were to do before that. this slow progress really felt slow whilst playing it. i could feel how slow it was. it wasn't helped by how annoying the girl was. i found no redeeming qualities of her and every interaction with her pretty grating.
The developers did a great job of bringing a console like combat experience to phones. it feels smooth, fluid, and is a spectacle to be hold. But there are soo many icons on the screen that my phone's screen felt really crowded and throughout this video, when i had unlocked it, i was accidentally pressing the tai-chi button.
