Wuthering Waves Gacha’d Me Back

Posted on by Nimgimli

Yeah that there is a tortured title.

Last month I caught up in Neverness to Everness but playing it had given me the gacha itch, leading me back to Wuthering Waves, which I played while I waited for NTE version 1.2 to drop. It was a pleasant enough interlude and I enjoyed refamiliarizing myself with the characters and gameplay.

Then NTE 1.2 dropped, and even though it added a whole game-within-a-game (999 Nights) it didn’t take too long to get through it all. I finished it on “Story Mode” and started a second playthrough, played that enough to get all the limited Event rewards and then I was ready to set that game mode aside for a bit. And the ‘real’ game didn’t have much new content, leaving me with not much to do other than grind bosses to level up characters I’m not really using. Oh and I already have the “battle pass” beyond level 50 which is where the interesting rewards end (battle pass levels 51-70 just give currency for every level).

Landscape image of a battlefield in Wuthering Waves
This is from a cut scene because most of my gaming session was cutscene after cutscene. Here, things weren’t going well

So again, it was back to Wuthering Waves. I am WAY behind on the story content of WW so I’m playing it as if it was a narrative game, not a gacha. I’m using my standard max-level team that I was using when I last played, and I’m focused on just the main story quests (which means often I’m using characters the quest provides anyway).

Playing this way, Wuthering Waves is barely a game. It’s more like a long and intricate anime series with some interactive sections. Wednesday night I started a new quest and played for about an hour. I was still locked into that quest when I had to quit for the night. Thursday when I logged in I was standing next to a portal that took me back to the same quest. I played for just shy of two hours, finally completing the quest. Let that sink in… almost 3 hours on a single quest, nearly all of which took place ‘outside’ of the game world. And most of that 3 hours — I’m going to guestimate at 2.5 hours of it — was basically passive watching. Clicking through dialog, running towards quest markers. Very little combat.

The strange part is: I was totally OK with this. The story was that good. The artwork is that good. The characters are that likable. It maybe helped that I was playing on PC in a dark room, on a wide screen monitor and with my govee lights projecting the colors on-screen across the wall behind my monitor. It was all very immersive!

This was the Rinascita quest (“Dawn Breaks on Dark Tides”) and it came out last October, so I have 9 months of content (I’m guessing that’s 3 or 4 updates) worth of content still to go. I’m psyched. Heck if I catch this up maybe I’ll go try to catch up in Genshin Impact next!

This is why I love these Genshin-like gacha games. They’re my new MMO, essentially. Big, open worlds with tons of things to do, everything from epic questlines to exploration and ‘hobby’ tasks like fishing. Combat of course. Characters to collect and improve on. You can play these games for a LONG time once they’re up and established. I love ’em!

Granted, it’d be nice if we could get a bigger variety of art styles. They’re all pretty heavily anime influenced. Fortunately I still am enjoying that style; I know some friends who are getting rather tired of it, though. But… Galbrena…

Portrait of Galbrena from Wuthering Waves
Not gonna lie, I became a little obsessed with Galbrena.

I’m sure this is also exactly what other folks don’t like about these games. “If I wanted to watch a TV show, I’d be watching a TV show” is a perfectly valid and justified complaint one might aim at them. Or at Wuthering Waves, anyway. I do think it takes storytelling to extremes that most other games don’t reach.

We still have a few weeks before NTE version 1.3 is expected, so we’ll see if that’s enough time for me to get caught up in Wuthering Waves. Of course I’ve also been giving Diablo IV another go. I finished the base campaign last night.. it was quite a gaming night, defeating both Lilith and Leviathan in the same evening!

Yeah, I don’t have any real point to make other than Wuthering Waves has a great story and just basically… I’m in the mood to express my love of video games. Oh, did I mention I’m still enjoying Solarpunk, too? 🙂

[Notes on AI used in this post: I used AI to remove some subtitling from the portrait of Galbrena]

Has Souls-Like Killed Action Games For Me?

Posted on by Nimgimli

Late at night while I’m trying hard to get my brain to shut down so I can sleep (if I wasn’t employed my awake hours would probably be something like 11 AM to 3 AM; I’m most awake and alert after the sun sets) I often turn to YouTube and specifically videos that don’t make me think too much, like “Top upcoming games!” videos. Last night was no different and I watched this video:

These are the kinds of games I used to really enjoy, but as I was watching the video I kept muttering “Souls-like, souls-like, souls-like” under my breath. I do NOT like games with a high reflex difficulty level. My eyes are old, I have arthritis in my hands, and my time is limited compared to the number of games that look worth playing.

To be fair I’m making the assumption that most of these will be souls-likes but that does seem to be the trend these days. The only action-heavy games that feel safe are the ones from Sony or Microsoft; those companies cast the widest possible net so I feel safe buying a PS5 Spiderman or God of War game or on the MS side, a Gears of War game (well, that’s more a shooter but you get the idea).

I keep waiting for the “souls-like” fad to fade away, as gaming trends tend to do, but so far I’ve seen no sign of it. I guess this is what the gaming audience wants. Elden Ring sure sold well.

I do get the appeal and now I’m going to compare souls-like with a gacha game. When I’m playing Neverness to Everness or Wuthering Waves and I’m in a fight and pulling off parries and critical dodges and in doing so biting off huge chunks of an enemy’s health, it is SO satisfying. But it puzzles me that these gacha games can give me that experience without making the games hair-pullingly difficult, and this whole other genre of games seems unable or unwilling to make their products approachable for the widest possible audience.

For now, I’ll let go of my love of action games. I mean I still haven’t played Spiderman 2 or God of War: Ragnorak, so they’ll keep me busy for a while. But someone give me a shout if and when developers of hack and slash games go back to making titles all gamers can enjoy.

And yes, for this post I added a new “sour grapes” tag to the blog. 🙂

[ Featured image is from Bloodborne since it’s about the only souls-like I’ve played for any significant amount of time.]

Celebrating America’s Birthday with Three Days of Gaming

Posted on by Nimgimli

I really wanted to steal Tipa’s “I Know What I Did Last Weekend” title but that would be gauche.

I have fond memories of quite a few outdoorsy 4th of July celebrations from the days when I lived on Long Island. We’d get up early, set up a water smoker full of savory treats, then head to the beach for beer and surf. Late in the afternoon we’d come home to more beer, slow-cooked barbeque, and croquet matches that lasted until bedtime.

Life in the south is different. It is hot. Hotter than I can take for any length of time. This 4th in particular was brutal (actually more so up north than it was here). So I stayed indoors and played video games for all three days.

See, if AI wrote these posts it wouldn’t add all that superfluous prelminary junk. That’s how you can know I still write my own posts!

Anyway, yeah games. A LOT of games. Neverness to Everness is in a bit of a lull for me until the version 1.2 update (which is out this week). I still logged in and spent my daily ‘pixels’ and such, but with all the quests done and the ‘battle pass’ thingie completed there wasn’t a ton to do. I still had the gacha itch, though, so I patched up Wuthering Waves.

Screenshot for Neverness to Everness showing the main character and Hotori sitting in a movie theater
Having some downtime waiting for version 1.2 means I have time to go on dates with Hotori but… I feel like I should skooch over and get a little closer to her, eh?

Ohhh, they know how to getcha, these gacha folks. Now I have a whole “Returners” event in Wuthering Waves to work on. Daily login rewards and a mini battle pass thingie. It took a while to adjust back to WW after playing NTE. It helped to re-do key bindings to match (something I’m getting better about generally) and then a little help from Gemini to get my bearings, and WW was once more a fun time. Now how on earth can I balance two gachas at once? NTE is still my current darling and I am SUPER pumped for version 1.2 and the game-inside-the-game known as 999 Nights. (Which you’re supposed to verbalize it as “1000 Minus One Nights” for some reason.)

Meanwhile. progress is being made in Octopath Traveller. I beat that boss I had blogged about and found a shrine that lets me stack jobs. Apparently there’s a shrine for each job (each of the 8 characters has their own associated job) and once I started multiclassing everything got MUCH easier (and more interesting…figuring out the best pairings). Now I’ve found 3 shrines so I need to be on the lookout for the other 5. Game is getting more and more interesting though, even though the story beats are still far apart in terms of time played. It’s been a while since I stuck with a turn-based RPG for this long (I guess Persona 4 was the lat time) and its been a nice change.

I recently purchased an Ultimate GeForce Now subscription so I can stream games rather than running them locally. Why? Once again, heat. My office gets so warm and having a PC running hot to play games makes things worse. Plus a side-order of “My hard drives are full of large language models and I have no room for games.” Anyway, fired it up to test and what was the most popular game that I had in my library? Diablo IV. So I started it up. There’s a new expansion and new classes and they were offering a 7 day trial of the new classes. I picked a Warlock and started a new campaign (I TRIED to skip the campaign but my soul just wouldn’t let me.)

Screenshot of combat in Diablo IV, attempting to show the 'giant hand' skill mentioned in the text
I really tried to capture this giant hand skill but it’s fast and my screenshot reflexes are slow…

About 20 minutes later I was redeeming Microsoft Rewards points for a $50 gift card and buying the Diablo IV Expansion, Lord of Hate (or something…everything in Diablo IV seems to be called {something} of Hate which gets confusing). I never stick with D4 very long because the Seasons bug me. Because they exist it seems “wasteful” to play my Eternal (non-seasonal) characters even though I never come CLOSE to completing a season. I’m being my own worst enemy here and should embrace the Eternal since I’m not a die-hard player. With all that said, the Warlock is hella fun so far. GREAT skill effects. My favorite is a giant red etheral hand that comes out of the ground and drags baddies away from you.

Last but not least, I’m still playing Solarpunk. I’ve gone from burning wood to burning wax briquets to using solar power. Now I’m building batteries to store excess power, and I’ve researched windmills though haven’t built any yet. I’ve also unlocked switches and some logic tools which I’m just beginning to experiment with. All these fancy items require silicon and cobalt which are the latest resources to get unlocked and I’m also still working on getting production of those up and running. Solarpunk has been one of the more pleasant gaming surprises I’ve had recently. When I first booted it up I never would’ve dreamed I’d still be playing it weeks later.

Screenshot showing some of the tech I'm using. Solar panels, battery, switch, status panel...
Some of the tech I’ve researched. Solar panels, in the background is a battery. On the right is a switch to turn off the Advanced Dock since there’s no reason to power it while the airship is docked. And finally a panel to monitor power draw.

I ALSO fired up Star Wars Outlaws, liked what I saw, but realized this was NOT the time to add yet another game into my ‘currently playing’ list, so I quickly bailed on it so it would feel ‘fresh’ when I eventually circle back to it.

And now it’s Monday and back to work and no extra time off until Labor Day in September. How am I going to manage to keep up with all these games? Something is going to have to fall away. Probably Wuthering Waves since, again, two gachas is probably one too many.

I guess if nothing else, spending 4th of July weekend playing games in the A/C is better for my waistline and my liver than those lost weekends of beer and barbeque that we used to enjoy. [I DID manage a morning walk each day just to get SOME exercise in.]Cheaper too, come to think of it.

Octopath Traveler and the Temptation of the Internet

Posted on by Nimgimli

I think I’ve mentioned that I bought a Switch 2. I’m liking it a lot and have been using it pretty much every day. Rather than running out and buying new games I’m trying to play the handful I own from the Switch 1 days. One of those games is Octopath Traveller.

This is an old game but in case you’ve never heard of it, it’s a turn-based JRPG. The hook is that there are 8 playable characters in the game. Each character has their own “main story”. You start by picking one of the 8 and doing their first quest and then the world opens up. Chapter 2 of their quest requires a much higher level character so what most people do (and what I did) is travel around the world and ‘meet’ the other seven characters, after which you can add them to your party. Of the eight, four can be in your party at any one time, and your initial “main” character you picked is locked in. So you have 3 slots to fill.

So I did that, and then set out to do the 2nd chapter of my main character’s story. It culminated in a tough boss fight that took me a few tries to make it past, but I completed it. Chapter 3 once again requires a much higher level character than I have. So I switched to work on Chapter 2 of one of the other characters. This meant that this second character was also locked into the party. So now I have two slots open to swap characters in and out of.

Generic combat screenshot from Octopath Traveller
NOT the boss I’m having trouble with!

The boss at the end of Chapter 2 of this character is wiping the floor with me even though my levels are high enough that I should be able to take it on. I’m sure it’s a matter of getting the right characters on the team to combat this particular boss and it’s minions. What to do, what to do…

I know what old me would have done: gone to the Internet for a walk-through. As this is an old game I am confident that out there on the web is a guide telling me exactly which characters I should use, and which weapons and gear they should have equipped, to make this boss fight easy-peasy.

Instead of doing that, new me reached for a notebook. I made a list of the weapons and skills that my characters use, and a list of the weaknesses of the boss and his minions. Then I had a think about what the best combo should be. I came up with a plan but now I have to level up the characters I’ve swapped into my party before I have another go. This is going to take some time and if my plan fails I’ll have to loop through this process again.

It’s REALLY tempting to look up the solution but I’m holding strong for now. The analogy I’ve been using to convince myself is that this way of playing is like building a nice chair out of a pile of lumber, whereas looking up the best party online is like building a flatpack chair kit from Ikea. Both are fun, both get you a place to park your backside, but these days I personally am finding the former is more satisfying.

Character Sheet from Octopath Traveller

What I would be willing to research online, if I could do it without spoilers, is how some of the game systems work. For example I have a character who has a spell that does Wind Damage which is something I need in this battle. But the damage she does is tiny compared to how expensive the spell is in mana cost. I know that certain spells scale based on certain stats, but I’m not sure what influences what. I COULD, I guess, puzzle that out through lengthy trial and error but, as much as I like Octopath Traveller, I don’t really want to spend 2 years finishing it. So there’s a balancing act there.

Going back to my analogy, learning what attribute impacts which spells is like learning how to use the tools you’re going to use to build the chair.

I probably need to let go of absolutes, too. Right now I want to solve the puzzle of how to beat this boss. On the other hand I also want to experience the story and eventually finish the game. If this boss fight holds me back for days and days I know my patience will erode and I guess at that point I should let go and find a guide. For right now, though, figuring out how to beat this boss feels rewarding. It feels like learning. Sure, very specific learning that I’ll never use again (unless maybe in Octopath Traveller 2) but at my age learning ANYTHING is good for keeping the old brain sharp. And that alone seems worth the effort.

Neverness to Everness Just Blew My Mind

Posted on by Nimgimli

This is going to be really short and is basically for Bhagpuss and Mailvaltar.

I watched the Neverness to Everness v1.2 preview show [that’s a YouTube link; Hotta labs doesn’t let us embed their videos, I guess… I get an error when I try] today and they announced the next two upcoming characters. One of them is a dragon-person named Shinku, the other is Iroi who we met on the Island in 1.1.

So that was cool and all and I’d already decided I’ll probably pull for Shinku when the time comes.

After watching the show I of course logged in to play. I was farming the Headless Rider to Ascend Zero when all of a sudden, towards the end of the battle, I get a cut scene and Shinku shows up to save the day and finishes the fight (not that I was going to lose, darn it).

I don’t know if this is just a crazy coincidence or not. I’d never seen her in game before and I’d never had another character finish that fight before. I am assuming it was a way to introduce the character and get us hyped for her. To me, it was brilliant! I can’t wait to play her.

Of course I was so stunned I forgot to take screenshots.

There was some other really interesting news in the preview. They kept talking about a Tabletop Game and I assumed it was literally a physical tabletop game that you would buy from some physical vendor to play offline with your family or something. But no. It’s a tabletop game that your character and their friends get together to play in-game. It’s a fantasy game within the NTE game, with it’s own progression paths and gear gathering and so on. I can’t wait to try it!

There’s also a system where you can get a fish tank for your apartment to display the fish you catch. You have to make sure the water is right for the fish (temperature, PH level, and whether it is a freshwater or saltwater fish) as well as choose the right fish to be sure they get along. Apparently you can automate this stuff if you want something simpler. I guess in the same way you can shop for your Cafe recipe ingredients yourself, or automate that.

Anyway version 1.2 is looking pretty good, though a little light on story content. We’re going to have to wait until 1.3 for the next and final chapter of the fight with The Scarlet Letter, I guess.

Anyway I’d love to know if everyone gets a taste of Shinku in their next boss battle!

I’m Still a Solarpunk

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’m surprised to be here reporting to you all that I am still playing Solarpunk. It has managed to wriggle its way into my ‘currently playing’ queue somehow.

I can’t even articulate why. It’s in so many ways your standard crafting game. You collect materials, build things, and those things lead to you building better things, or researching better things to build. And that cycle just repeats. There’s no clear goal or anything here, other than ‘advance the tech’.

Solarpunk screenshot showing a small house and a garden with automated sprinklers
First base, first island.

Despite the name of the game, the real hook here is the floating island aspect. You start on an island floating in mid-air. Your first big goal is to build an airship dock, which comes with an airship included. Then you can fly to other islands that are within range of your starter island. One of these islands is actually a hovering air ship inhabited by a robot who will trade you some of your crafted items for either blueprints or airship upgrades.

Solarpunk screenshot showing a bridge suspended in mid-air
Physics aren’t a major concern when building in Solarpunk

Blueprints are used to unlock new tech, and the airship upgrades expand the range of your ship. This is the gating system. Your first island has Iron Ore. Once you get your airship you can fly to another island that has Copper. With the next airship you can reach an island that has Quartz, and so on. The range you can cover seems to be based on some arbitrary point on the map (it might be the robot’s airship/shop). In other words the gate is a ‘hard’ gate; you can’t, for example, build a second airship dock on the peripherary of your current range and then extend the range from that dock. It’s a very videogame system but I get it…

Solarpunk screenshot of a bridge
Same bridge, different point of view. Whats a little jank as long as it gets you across the chasm!

At this point I’m 10 hours in, or thereabouts. I have researched solar panels, sprinklers to keep the crops going, automated drills for bringing up ores, and so forth. I’ve start caring for animals (chickens only, so far). My most recent ship upgrade required me to trade 6 eggs so I had to find a chicken, plop down a house for it, and a water and food bin. Once the chicken was happy it conveniently started placing eggs in a basket outside its house. Then it vanished, but eggs keep appearing so I dunno if that’s a bug or what.

Solarpunk screenshot showing a chicken coop, a water trough and a feed trough
This is where Swoosh lives. I never see Swoosh these days, but eggs still appear in the basket.

On my ‘home island’ I plopped down a chicken coop in a random spot and it had a nametag on it, but there’s no chicken that I can see. I’ve put down food and water and I’ll see if I get phantom chicken eggs here, too.

This is not a game I play for hours. It’s like a mellow 20-30 minutes then I start getting a little bored. Flying between islands is fun at first but after a bit it becomes a dull routine. Imagine I need glass, iron and copper to build something (a solar panel, for example). I have to fly to the island with the copper mine, then fly to the island with the sand ‘mine’, then fly home to the island with the iron mine. Between the limited capacity of the drills and your limited inventory space, you’re not hauling huge amounts or ore. Generally it feels like enough for one project or so. I’ve been working on doubling the drills at each location, but it takes 2 solar powers to power a drill. In other words installing a 2nd drill in a mining spot requires the drill itself, two solar panels, and two cables to connect them. So it’s taking a while.

Solarpunk screenshot showing two drills working side by side
Two drills gets you ore twice as fast, of course but….
Solarpunk screenshot showing the 2 drill set up and an array of solar panels powering them
Two drills also means twice as many solar panels and connectors

I will be very surprised if I don’t eventually research a way to do automated mining runs or something, but until then it’s lots of flying back and forth. There’s also no fast travel. I did upgrade one of my airship docks which lets me ‘boost’ to it, assuming it is powered. I haven’t quite figured that process out yet and I’m afraid of crashing into the dock and damaging/destroying my ship.

Solarpunk is the ideal game to play after work and before dinner. I have a small-ish segment of free time and a load of stress on my shoulders from work. Piddling around in my Solarpunk world, gathering some crops, building a couple items, building houses and bridges and such…it’s a really relaxing way to transition out of work mode. As I mentioned in my first post, I am playing it via Game Pass but I almost wish I’d bought it on the Switch 2 as it feels like something that would just fit really well on that platform.

Punk As Heck! A Few Hours With Solarpunk

Posted on by Nimgimli

I probably wouldn’t have bothered with Solarpunk if it hadn’t been for my buddy Scopique talking about his low-key annoyance with -punk being added to the end of random words these days. It became a kind of running joke. So when Solarpunk hit Game Pass I knew I had to take it for a spin.

A screenshot of a bunch of flat rocks
Took me longer than it should have to realize this was iron ore.

Solarpunk is a survivalbox-like [how’s that for convoluted] game that is about as un-punk as a game can get. It’s a “cozy” game with (as far as I know) no combat and not even a narrative, really. The first 1 to 2 hours is bog-standard crafting game. Find sticks and rocks to make rudimentary tools. Use them to harvest more sticks and rocks and make a workbench. Use the workbench to make more complicated things. We’ve done it a thousand times. Solarpunk handles this fine; in particular I like that you don’t have to pick stuff up. You chop down a tree and it falls over then poofs into wood that teleports into your inventory. Makes harvesting quick and easy.

The hook in Solarpunk is that you’re on a floating island and ‘your’ island doesn’t have all the materials you’ll need. So you build a Research table and start researching new technologies and pretty soon you’ll have an air ship that you can fly to other floating islands to collect different resources. The range of your first air ship is pretty limited but presumably you’ll expand that over time, or maybe build a series of “Air Ship Docks” on islands that you can then hop across.

Screenshot showing a gardening setup with crops, a well, sprinkler and bee hive
The backyard: plots of berries, cotton and watermelons. A well to fill my watering can. My first sprinkler system (traded it for some watermelons at a robot’s trading post) and finally a beehive. Which gives me wax but I like to pretend their polinating my crops. And finally 2 rain catchers for my potable water supply

There’s also, apparently, a heavy emphasis on automation as you get a little further in. There are drills to bring up ore, sprinklers to water crops and… I dunno what else. Watering crops is a major hassle until you get that sprinkler, but on the other hand they grow really quickly. Every time you harvest you get seeds so you can replant. Similarly felled trees yield saplings that you can (and should) replant.

There’a a food and water system and the game throws a lot of hints at you early to start growing berries, which I did. Berries fill your food meter and a little of your thirst meter. Water comes from rain catchers that you build. There’s a pond on my starting island but the water isn’t safe to drink. I dug a well but it, too, yielded water not save to drink. Eventually I think I’ll learn how to boil water (why would I have to LEARN that? I have fires!) to make it safe, but so far rainwater and berry hydration has been plenty for me. I honestly don’t know what happens if your food or water runs out since it hasn’t happened to me yet.

There’s also a nice building system so you can build yourself a house and all that, and there are lots of decorating blueprints and such. If you’re into that sort of thing.

Screenshot of the inside of a small cottage
Crafting table, research table, bed, storage chest and a torch. What more does a Solarpunk like me need?

I’ve only put maybe three hours into Solarpunk so far. I have done nothing solar-related, punk or otherwise, so far. I’ve been burning wood for energy. Is that punk?

But so far, I’m enjoying it as a chill crafting game. I guess I need to start calling these crafting/building games instead of survivalboxes since there’re no enemies and no combat. Solarpunk is available pretty much everywhere, I think. It’s $22.99 on Steam and on the Playstation, Switch 2 and Xbox stores. On Steam it is sitting at Very Positive with almost 1,900 reviews.

A view of my first base from my air ship hovering overhead
Looking down at the base before heading off to another island in my air ship

Outbound, Neverness to Everness, and Nintendo Switch

Posted on by Nimgimli

This is one of those ‘grab bag’ posts we do when we have a little to say about a few things.

First, progress in Neverness to Everness was going great but look at what happened!

Screenshot from Neverness to Everness showing I have no quests in my quest log

I’ve also pushed the ‘battle pass’ thingie to level 50 which is where the interesting rewards end. After that every level just gives you some in-game currency, which is useful but not exciting.

There are, I’m sure, a few quests I’ve missed and I know I have some character micro-quests floating around, but in terms of narrative for now I’m tapped out on NTE. So I’ve just been fighting bosses to get materials to level up characters that I’m not using and basically biding my time waiting for the next content patch to drop.

Nintendo Switch 2

The other day after the “Summer Game Fest”-adjacent Nintendo Showcase, I bought myself a Switch 2. This was weird becuase I barely use my Switch 1, but we’d gotten PartPurple a Switch 2 back when Nintendo announced the price would be going up. When she games, she games on Switch so I’ll call it her main gaming platform; made sense to get her the upgrade in case, for example, a Switch 2 exclusive Animal Crossing ever comes out. Normally we’d wait for that to happen but with the price increase coming we took the plunge. Anyway I of course checked it out when she got hers and I was impressed. I didn’t realize how much bigger the screen was.

One of my issues with the original Switch is that I found it pretty hard to read text on the screen with my bad old eyes. I could of course play on the TV but there it had to compete with PS5 and Xbox Series X and it just couldn’t. It wasn’t powerful enough. The Switch 2 solves both of those issues. The screen is bigger and higher res and much more comfortable for me to read, and the device iself is light enough to be enjoyable to use in handheld mode. I mention the weight because I also have a Steam Deck which has a nice big screen but I find it to be a little too heavy and bulky to play for very long. The Switch 2 is 1080P on the device and does 4K on the TV. I don’t think it is as powerful as the other consoles, still, [honestly I may be wrong] but it is powerful enough to at least be a comparable experience.

Bottom line, I’m actually really happy with the Switch 2 and have been using it a lot. Right now I’m trying, for the 3rd or 4th time, to play Octopath Traveler. I’d originally purchased it on Switch but abandoned it because, well, see above re: my issues with the original Switch. Then the game hit Game Pass and/or PS Plus and I’d started it but bounced off it, or it left the services. I can’t remember. Finally I bought it on PC so I could play it on the Steam Deck but, again, see above re: issues with the Steam Deck.

So now I’m back to the Switch version only playing on Switch 2 which is a joy. I’m only maybe 10 hours in but that’s at least twice as much time as I’d spent on it in the past. I’m still doing the initial loop where you go around and meet all the characters and get them to join you. But after splashing out for the console itself and a few accessories, including the VERY nice Switch 2 Pro Controller, I didn’t really have the $$ to spend on Switch 2 games. But I’m adding stuff to my wish list!

Partial screenshot from Outbound showing my RV parked at night next to a cheery campfilre

Outbound

When the Outbound demo came out last winter I tried it and I LOVED it. I couldn’t wait to play this cozy game about rambling around the countryside in a camper and… just exploring.

But when the full game came out I found it was pretty meh. I was so puzzled by this that I kept playing it just to try to understand what changed. Maybe it was just that I’d changed. Here’s what I’ve identified so far and it’s kind of a laundry list of little things

  1.  I don’t remember my character having a voice. He does now and it isn’t good. It just feels super artificial and it bugs me. You can turn it off, mostly, and that helped.
  2.  The inventory system annoys me. You can carry 20 items. That’s fine. But when you go to 21 items my character starts groaning from the struggle and you’re told you’re carrying too much weight. What is silly is if you’re carrying 21 rocks, or 21 flower petals, you still groan from the exertion of it all. Don’t limit inventory by quantity but then call it weight because it just shatters the immersion, for me at least. I’m carrying a pack full of rocks, then I (literally) add a bottlecap to the pack and suddenly it’s too heavy!
  3. The world is basically dead. You never see another person, at least I haven’t. Everyone has gone to some festival. Yet trash and stuff pops up all over. Where is it coming from?
  4. Days go by really quickly, but nighttimes never end. Literally as far as I can tell. Night only ends when you go to sleep. I don’t know why the game counts the number of days you’ve been through but on the assumption there’s a reason, I do most of my stuff at night so as not to use up too many days. But nights are legit dark, too, so it’s a little frustrating stumbling around in the dark gathering things.
  5. Then there are a lot of little friction points: you can’t scroll the map while you drive. You can look at it, but you can’t scroll it. You have to stop and get out of the vehicle first. When you deposit stuff into the ‘stash’ in your van, EVERYTHING goes in at once unless you ‘lock’ an item first. Annoying. At some point you get a dog. There are 4 dogs at a shelter you find, and you can pick 1. You then leave the other 3 to starve because no one is there to feed them. The game doesn’t say this, but it was how I felt. The dog is just a beast of burden; it doesn’t even ride in the RV with you but has to chase you around. Cruelty to animals! The dog can carry 10 items so it’s basically an inventory upgrade.

There’re a lot of survivalbox systems here: you gather materials to make tools to get better materials to make better tools. You can research upgrades and stuff. This all works OK but at least at lower levels it feels rather rote. You craft an Axe. Then you craft Axe 2. Then Axe 3. It’s no different then crafting a shabby axe, then a decent axe, then a good axe, but it just feels lazy. Gear tiers seem to gate you between zones. At least between the first and second zone. I haven’t been to the 3rd one yet.

Maybe it is just me. Outbound has decent reviews on Steam but only a 64% on Metacritic. It might be a better game for folks who love to decorate as you unlock a lot of blueprints for nicer tables and chairs and stuff, all of which are just cosmetic.

I dunno. It’s a pretty game and it is definitely very chill. Your RV crawls along at a very low speed and there’s no other traffic or anything so driving is relaxing, I guess? I guess maybe I just need more of a goal or something? Sorry, Outbound!

And that’s about it for what I’ve been playing lately. I hope we get more NTE content soon because that’s what I WANT to be playing; it’s just that constant grinding for materials isn’t enough to hold me in that game for very long each day.

50 Hours of Neverness to Everness

Posted on by Nimgimli

My initial reaction to Neverness to Everness was fairly tepid but there was enough there to keep me playing. Since them my enjoyment has increased a lot and I’ve played every day since launch. Yesterday I noticed I was at 49 hours heading in, so it’ll be at 50 today if I didn’t get that far last night.

For once I’m staying caught up with the story in one of these Genshin-Likes which I think helps keep me engaged. I’m looking forward to the next update to see where the tale takes us. There are a LOT of quests in NTE but I focus on the main ones and do the little side ones when the mood takes me. I shouldn’t really call them “little” since some of them are fairly involved and interesting. Let’s say “Side Quests” instead. Less demeaning.

Like all these games, NTE has a battle-pass thingie and like all of them, the amount of exp you can earn in the battle pass each week is limited. So the early part of the week I spend pushing on that until I hit cap, then I just putter around. You can spend a LOT of time just puttering around in NTE. It’s fun (for me at least) just to cruise around the city to see what’s going on.

I’m still focused on one main team which is Zero (the ‘you’ character), Mint, Hathor and Hotori. Hotori was earned via the premium gacha system, though using currency that I earned via playing rather than via purchasing. Hotta (the developer) is pretty generous with the handouts when you’re new. We’ll see if that continues. I have also rolled a lot on the standard gacha and got Mint so many times her skills are fully unlocked. Again, all using currency I got just by playing.

I like Mint because she calls me Coco because she thinks I smell like cocoa (and I LOVE her voice actor). I like Hotori because she calls me Precious. (I guess I’m revealing how shallow I am, eh?) And I like Hathor because she’s a badass on a bike, though in truth she IS the weak link in my loadout. Zero and Mint are level 60 and the other two are level 50 until I farm the appropriate “Ascend” materials for them. I hope I have that right. 60 and 50. Or was it 50 and 40? They’re maxed for Hunter Level 40 anyway.

I’ve been semi-avoiding the “Industry” system which is one of the hooks here. I own all the Cafes and keep them stocked in order to generate income (and I always do my own shopping so as to get the choicest ingredients!), I own two apartments because I needed two to qualify to level up my Industry Level, and otherwise I’ve mostly ignored all these mini-games for now. Oh, I fish now and then, too. I WANT to get into all these things but time is not infinite and the other parts of the game have been keeping me busy!

I spend very little time around Taygedo, who was a bit part of why I wasn’t loving the game at first. I did uncover at some point that Taygedo is female. A female otter with a TV for a head who talks about eating sea urchins all the time, which implies she is a sea otter so why is she on land? [Update: According to the Internet, this was a translation error and Taygedo is in fact male.] And when your head is a TV how do you even eat? There’re still a LOT of kids in the game but they’re slowly, slowly growing on me, to the point where if I’m hanging out with one of them they don’t bug me that much. When two of them are with me and start their chatterbox routine then I start grinding my teeth again. Baby steps.

Haniel (I think, I mix up the names) standing next a cardboard cutout of her favorite manga character
Haniel (I think, I mix up the names) standing next a cardboard cutout of her favorite manga character

In terms of bugs and controller UI inconsistences, the former seem to be mostly eradicated and they’re making progress on the latter. Also I suppose I’m just learning that different parts of the UI use different “Do it” buttons.

So yeah, Neverness to Everness has become a hit for me, like Genshin Impact and Wuthering Waves before it. I guess I just love these big-world, always-changing games full of combat and quests and ‘getting more stuff’ and making lots of numbers go up. And as with GI and WW before it, I limit my spending to $15/month which is a number I’m comfortable with from all those years of MMO subs. I spend $5 on the “log in every day and collect currency” subscription, and another $10 for the “Premium” battle pass. Actually the latter lasts for longer than a month so it isn’t quite $15/month but I’m not going to bother to do the math. The important take-away is that these are optional and people can and frequently do play completely for free and don’t spend anything.

Bottom line? You should at least give it a try. What do you have to lose other than an hour or two of your time!

Cityscape shot showing our protagonist in the distance
Just an Appraisor out for an evening stroll

A Quick Dip into Tunic

Posted on by Nimgimli

Tunic is one of those indie games that I’ve always heard good things about, but that I also heard was quite difficult. Because of that I ignored it for a long time, but this week I decided to give it a shot (it’s on Xbox Game Pass so it was just sitting there, staring at me).

Here’s the elevator pitch. Tunic is a low-poly action-adventure starring a little fox who has to… do… something. It isn’t clear what your goal is. There is some souls-like DNA in the game; you can regain lost health by interacting with a shrine, but doing so respawns all the enemies except for bosses. You collect gold as you fight but if you die you drop it all. You can come back to your corpse to recover it. So that’s the combat challenge. There’s also a bit of rogue-like in there: you pick up items but the only way to figure out what they do is to use them and observe. There’s also a heavy puzzle element to the game. One of the things you collect are pages to the manual for the game which, over time, teach you how to play (presumably). There are also a lot of hidden passages; hidden in an honest way, like behind a stairwell or something. Not hidden in the sense of “There’s a door in front of you but it looks like a solid wall.” At least I didn’t encounter any of the later. Stuff is hidden via perspective instead (you can’t move the camera and you look at the game world from an isometric view).

Tunic pondering a gap in the road
Not a great example but see that ladder that isn’t immediately obvious if you’re running past this area. Those ‘stumps’ around it used to be trees that obscured it more until I hacked them down with my sword. There are better hidden pathways but… since you can’t see them I can’t show you an example!

Tunic seems really well made. It runs like a dream, combat feels fluid, and while the graphics are simple, they are also very pleasing.

But Tunic is not the game for me. It isn’t even the combat so much as the puzzles. I want a good map in games I play. I have a not-great sense of direction and while you do eventually find a 2d map, it isn’t super helpful. I also am not a fan of finding signs and even manual pages written in a language I don’t understand. These are NOT bad game design choices, they’re just not the kinds of things I personally enjoy.

The map for the game Tunic
Here’s the map that you eventually find in-game. Or at least part of the map.

What finally caused me to set it aside was the lack of understandable narrative. My sense is that if you play long enough and find enough of these manual pages you’ll learn why you are fighting all these baddies and what your goal is. But until you do, you’re just playing the game to play the game. At some point in my life I lost the joy in doing that. I need some kind of narrative hook to propel me forward. Fighting games, racing games, PVP shooters… all the genres of games that you play JUST to play and get better at…I’ve kind of lost interest in all of those. Maybe it’s because I’m old and acknowledge I’m never going to be really good at reflex-based games again.

So anyway, Tunic isn’t for me, but I do think it’s a really good game. On Steam it has almost 10K reviews with a “Very Positive” rating and it has an 85% rating on Open Critic. As I write this it is $30 on Steam which feels a little pricey for an indie that came out in 2022, but it’s been down at low as $15 in the past. And as mentioned it is on Game Pass, both PC and Xbox, and has been for a long time so it may be a permanent fixture there. It is also ‘play anywhere’ so you can use the same save file on PC and Xbox.