New week, new thread! What are you playing?
I beat Kirara Route in Yumina the Ethereal. Now I fully understand how the story composition works, so here's a quick rundown:
Bonkers story development and composition but somehow the whole package works (inevitably with a lot of deus ex machina moments). The two opening movies show the difference in vibe between Act 1 and 2.
Now, the progress:
Gameplay-wise, I managed to complete the required main and side quests in Ordacle, which made my party overleveled a fair bit. Thus, the final boss fight in the main story became piss-easy. Not a problem, of course. I enjoyed the power play.
I have already started NG+ at Hard difficulty for Ai route. Most of the story can be skipped so progression should be much quicker.
In addition to Yumina, I have a crave for older games lately, so I installed and started The Saboteur, Dark Sector and Killer is Dead. As mentioned in the steam thread, I am not enjoying The Saboteur so it is already uninstalled. On the other hand, Dark Sector is pretty dated, buggy and janky so I stopped playing it as well.
Meanwhile, Killer is Dead is way more enjoyable than I remembered. Yes, this is a replay because I beat the game on console 10 years ago. The PC port is notoriously bad because it only supports up to 1080p and has a 30fps lock. It also crashes in one place but I applied a fix on PCGW so no crash. Once again Lossless Scaling saves the day - I use it to upscale the game to 1440p and frame-gen it to 90fps. Looks crazy sharp as far as I can see and runs really smooth without noticeable input latency. I took a lot of screenshots (sadly they are in 1080p) so you can check out some of them in the screenshot thread. Suda 51 is such a talent. I will likely play through this one to the ending.
I beat Kirara Route in Yumina the Ethereal. Now I fully understand how the story composition works, so here's a quick rundown:
Act 1 (Ch. 1 to 4) - Fighting to get Yumina elected as the student council president
Intermission (Ch. 5) - The school turns out to be a training ground for kids with special power. Since Yumina won the election, she was deemed to be the strongest so she got captured by the military. The protagonist Ayumu and friends set out to free her from capture and thus learning the truth.
Act 2 (Ch 6 to 8) - Fighting against space monsters to save the universe
In-between - Teleport into an isekai world called Ordacle to train special power through dungeon-diving. There is a story narrative in Ordacle separate from the main story, featuring several characters and main / side quests. After a certain point of progression the game asks you to turn up the difficulty in NG+ to further progress, meaning that the narrative in Ordacle takes all three playthroughs to complete.
Intermission (Ch. 5) - The school turns out to be a training ground for kids with special power. Since Yumina won the election, she was deemed to be the strongest so she got captured by the military. The protagonist Ayumu and friends set out to free her from capture and thus learning the truth.
Act 2 (Ch 6 to 8) - Fighting against space monsters to save the universe
In-between - Teleport into an isekai world called Ordacle to train special power through dungeon-diving. There is a story narrative in Ordacle separate from the main story, featuring several characters and main / side quests. After a certain point of progression the game asks you to turn up the difficulty in NG+ to further progress, meaning that the narrative in Ordacle takes all three playthroughs to complete.
Bonkers story development and composition but somehow the whole package works (inevitably with a lot of deus ex machina moments). The two opening movies show the difference in vibe between Act 1 and 2.
Now, the progress:
Act 1 Bad EndingMain Route: Kurokawa Kirara- Main Route: Okitsu Ai - WIP. Chapter 2
- Main Route: Midorishita Yumina
- True Ending Epilogue
- Marane's Maw - 30/120
- Mezelt Tomb - 30/120
- Key to Heaven Irukaruo - 30/120
- Path of Cracks- 30/120
Gameplay-wise, I managed to complete the required main and side quests in Ordacle, which made my party overleveled a fair bit. Thus, the final boss fight in the main story became piss-easy. Not a problem, of course. I enjoyed the power play.
I have already started NG+ at Hard difficulty for Ai route. Most of the story can be skipped so progression should be much quicker.
In addition to Yumina, I have a crave for older games lately, so I installed and started The Saboteur, Dark Sector and Killer is Dead. As mentioned in the steam thread, I am not enjoying The Saboteur so it is already uninstalled. On the other hand, Dark Sector is pretty dated, buggy and janky so I stopped playing it as well.
Meanwhile, Killer is Dead is way more enjoyable than I remembered. Yes, this is a replay because I beat the game on console 10 years ago. The PC port is notoriously bad because it only supports up to 1080p and has a 30fps lock. It also crashes in one place but I applied a fix on PCGW so no crash. Once again Lossless Scaling saves the day - I use it to upscale the game to 1440p and frame-gen it to 90fps. Looks crazy sharp as far as I can see and runs really smooth without noticeable input latency. I took a lot of screenshots (sadly they are in 1080p) so you can check out some of them in the screenshot thread. Suda 51 is such a talent. I will likely play through this one to the ending.
