So, a bunch of games I played and finished last month:
Resonance of Fate:
This is to me a very strange game. I absolutely loved its combat. It's the first sensible JRPG that does away with all the weird weapons, like swords and sticks or whatever, and just gives everyone guns. And instead of the normal turn-based affair, where you tell your characters what do do, and let them worry about how to move around, in RoF it's all about positioning and movement. While your character moves around, they can target various enemies. They need some time to aim before they can get a shot in, and the farther away you are from the target, the longer this takes. Thus you want to move towards your enemy. Of course, you also need to consider where you come to a stop, as you don't want to stop right next to a dangerous foe. That's one level of strategic thinking. The next level is how the path of your characters cross. Each such cross point gives you resonance points, which enable attacks where all your characters move at the same time, which can be quite devastating if used correctly.
There's a bunch of other stuff on top of this, but choosing how your characters move in combat is the main thing.
I absolutely fell in love with that combat system initially. I do think the game kinda wears out its welcome, since there's only so many times the same encounter can lead to different outcomes. But overall, the gameplay itself was great. What really confused and bored me was the story, and the characters. I have no idea who these people are, even after playing the game. Vasheron makes some lewd jokes, but he's clearly got some pretty complex history, but what precisely happened is left completely open, just until the ending of the game, and by then I just stopped caring long ago. The actual story cutscenes feel so out of place and random.
It really reminded me a lot of Star Ocean 4, which was also a Tri-Ace game. Just weird, and boring writing overall.
Overall the game is a mixed-bag to me. I wouldn't have minded a much shorter game, focused just on dungeon crawling. As it stands, the game just gets way to tedious near the end.
Yakuza 3
This one felt very weird coming in from Kiwami 2. First there's the PS3 level graphics and especially animations that just take a long while to get used. I think it's ultimately the pretty bad animations that bother me more. The character model of Kiryu in the Remaster isn't half-bad for what was originally a PS3 game.
The other big thing about this game is the pacing. It's incredibly sloooooooow. It takes ages for things to happen. Thing is, I didn't mind this initially. I am a Trails fan. I dig slow starts to a story. Issue is, at some fucking point, things should speed up. If hour 1 of your game has the same pacing as hour 40, then maybe you should think about editing down the plot and story to get to the point. This game honestly doesn't have a much more complex plot than Kiwami 1 did. But where that game had the decency to finish its main story in maybe 20 hours, this one took me nearly 40. Way too much padding. Aside from the padding, the actual events are pretty great. Even if I wonder how the Tojo clan continues to be in any way a functioning organisation, given how it seem to face the brink of annihilation like every 5 minutes.
My biggest let down in Yakuza 3 is the side content. The hostess minigame in this one is just abysmally boring, and most side quests are incredibly simple and hardly ever rewarding, the way they were in Yakuza 0. Honestly, this seems like a trend at this point. Even Kiwami 2 was a major step down from the consistently amazing substories you had in Yakuza 0. I really hope future games improve in this respect and at least reach the level in Kiwami 2.
So far my second Yakuza game that just felt ok, and not particularly great, after Kiwami 1. Wonder how Yakuza 4 will turn out.
Halo 3
The last of the original trilogy. Definitely a step up from Halo 2, which I also ended up liking actually. The campaign starts out very strong, but gets bogged down a bit in its second half. Fighting the Flood just never gets very interesting, and this game is probably the worst about this, maybe just a bit better than Halo 1 was. I liked the additions to the overall world building and the final level was good fun, a nice callback to the first game.
Overall a decent, if unremarkable game. Which honestly, is probably my overall verdict for the Franchise, after having played Reach ,CE, 2 and 3. of course, I am just speaking about the single player games, I'm sure the multiplayer aspect is more interesting. And arguably Halo 2 was essentially the first popular online FPS game.
Metroid : Samus Returns (replayed in preparation for Dread)
Still as good as I remember. The only issue I have with it, is that the overall plot of Metroid 2 (which Samus Returns is a remake of) is incredibly boring. You kill some Metroids, then you kill more Metroids, and more Metroids, yada, yada, yada.
The exploration is very well done, and the addition of the counter mechanic is great . This time I played it emulated on Citra, instead of a real 3DS, and god is it nice to finally have a decent thumbstick to play it with. Citra also allows to nicely map the touch controls to individual gamepad inputs, I mapped the 3 points on the touchscreen to three axis of the right thumbstick, which ended up working very nicely.
The final boss still feels very over the top. Took me a few trieds, and by then I had memorised almost the entire fight. Do not think this ends up making it more interesting, honestly. The appearance of mecha Ridley feels unnecessary, though it did make for a nice combat sequence.
Overall, I'd only recommend this to people who already like the series, though. Metroid Zero Mission, and Super Metroid make for far better introductions to the series.
Next I'll be playing Metroid Fusion, as Dread is a direct sequel to it.