Some anime I like! Two old classics, and one newer one I saw recently.
Castlevania (the show)
I’d really recommend this. I found it really enjoyable, though not without its flaws.
Category: Recommendations
Christmas Steam Games 2018: QuickRecs
Our sacred holiday tradition continues! I got so many this year that we get to divide this into recs and pans. Most of these are puzzle games; I suppose those are the ones that go for cheap.
Inside: Hollow Knight, Recursed, Ittle Dew 2, The Dweller, Zasa: An AI Story, NO THING, Quell, Qbik, Reveal the Deep.
I also got Hue, which Act already reviewed. It is wonderful and I second her recommendation.
Iron Dragon’s Daughter: A Murder of the Isekai Genre
“It is good to be a cynic–it is better to be a contented cat–and it is best not to exist at all. Universal suicide is the most logical thing in the world–we reject it only because of our primitive cowardice and childish fear of the dark. If we were sensible we would seek death–the same blissful blank which we enjoyed before we existed.”
– H.P. Lovecraft, the original edgelord
Kill la Kill
I watched Kill la Kill, or, that anime where the magical girl costumes involve stripper gear.
Note neither character is transformed here, because their actual outfits are Not Safe For Work.
Here is what I can tell you about it:
1) I watched all of it in a few days.
2) I almost never had the slightest clue what would happen next.
3) Fight scenes.
4) Really loved the female characters.
5) Japan why must you be so rapey.
So! When I say I would recommend it, definitely consider that last bit. (more…)
Coromon Demo
Hey everyone! A game I’ve been following for a while just got a demo release, so check it out maybe.
Coromon is a shameless Pokemon clone, warts and all. Random encounters? Yes. Glassy characters combined with lasting damage combined with those random encounters making every dungeon a grueling slog you have to level grind your way through? Yep. IVs? For some reason they made them not just a core gameplay mechanic but a central plot point as well. Does none of that bother you? Then you’ll like this.
I’d say this can best be described as “Pokemon lite” — the type system is severely flattened to a mere 7 types, only 5 of which are true elemental types, and there is no dual-typing. Only one of them has more than one weakness, so battles are almost always solved games with one possible counter to any opponent. I found this very disappointing, but I’m willing to see how it plays out in the full game.
Also, it has a non-silent protagonist! I know that is something that’s been discussed on this blog before, so you can see how that shakes out in practice.
Twelve Forever
Twelve Forever is a cartoon about a girl who wants to be, you guessed it, twelve forever. This desire manifests through the ability to transport herself to an alternate dimension, the aptly-named Endless. In this world, she is granted the powers of a superhero and is able to play and indulge her childish fantasies to her heart’s content; however, on her twelfth birthday, Endless becomes haunted by the Buttwitch, a demon representing her fears of puberty and adulthood who seeks to destroy her and her paradise.
Unsurprisingly, like most of the story-based cartoons we get these days, this is a coming-of-age story about the fear of growing up. I therefore did not expect much of it, as I always feel a disconnect with the genre. I am an adult who has already come of age, and many of the typical coming-of-age stories hold little to no relation to my own experience, with many of them being uncomfortably normative in their push of heterosexual and neurotypical life experiences. (Can we please stop having stories about extremely flirtatious tweens finding their soulmates at age 12, it’s deeply creepy.) I can enjoy them as a narrative and even as a good message for kids, but I often feel at a very far remove on a personal level.
That was not the case in this show. The characters all felt devastatingly real and relatable to my own childhood and life outlooks.
There will be some vague spoilers here, so you should probably watch it yourself. It’s only one season because it was tragically canceled, but I think it still holds up well as a complete product.
WORLD OF HORROR
Yes, this is the proper spelling.
Anyway, this is a cute little horror pastiche. You should play it. That’s my take.
Flawed Crystals
Flawed Crystal is a Steven Universe fangame made by our very own member of the hivemind, Guest Reviewer Roarke Mini-Farla St. Elmo’s Fire. You can find it here. I finally got around to playing the game, and figured I’d share my thoughts with this blog.
Before I begin, it should be noted that this is very much a fangame in a sense that it doesn’t explain concepts or introduce characters featured in the show. If you aren’t already familiar with the cartoon, it’s impossible to engage with this game. It’s not a flaw per se, one of the greatest strengths of fanfiction is that the core elements were already established for you, so you can skip exposition and focus on things you actually want to talk about. It is, however, something to keep in mind if you think about checking out this game.
With that out of the way, let’s begin.
Christmas Steam Games (2019)
Another year, another crop. I put this off for a while because I was hoping to be able to rejigger a few games that had trouble playing on my computer, but no such luck. You’ll have to wait for reviews of Fez, Mages of Mystralia, and The Talos Principle when (if) I upgrade my hardware.
Inside: Hexcells, Her Story, Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight, Gravitas, Disoriented, OVIVO.
Games For Racial Justice and Equality (Part 1)
So, itch.io ran a bundle to fundraise for Black Lives Matter, offering over a thousand games for only $5. As a fundraiser, I found the ethos… questionable (“Give us money so we can do actual activism while you play video games”), but it was a good deal, so I got it.
A good chunk of the items included aren’t actual games; they are either assets or tabletop RPGs. There are still a ton, though. Here are my thoughts on the games I’ve gotten through in the first half of the year:
Games for Racial Justice and Equality (Part 2)
Continuing where we left off. A much weaker showing this time, with a lot of games I couldn’t even finish.
Games for Racial Justice and Equality (Part 3)
N through P. I got distracted splitting my time with my Christmas games, so this is shorter than the previous posts. Some interesting RPGs in this one.
Trash Planet
Trash Planet is a game by the creator of HELLBOUND. It’s a very different game, taking a hard shift into post-apocalyptic science fiction and more difficult, resource-management gameplay. Much like HELLBOUND, I enjoyed a lot of it, but the gameplay was very janky and ran into a lot of standard RPG design pitfalls.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Finally got around to this, 4 years late. It’s good!
I think my most important takeaway from this game is that it’s very different from other Zelda games. It’s good at what it is, but it scratches a different itch. I wouldn’t want all Zelda games to be like this one going forward.