Finished Eternights an hour ago and have to say, I’m a bit disappointed. It was more Indy than I was expecting, it being featured in 2 PS State of Plays.

The Game itself was fluid and I encountered no bugs, but it felt like the whole thing was unpolished or not given enough time (and if I remember correctly they already pushed back the launch date at the time).

The Game world itself gave a strange vibe to me (pictured itself in the current time, but had futuristic devices or design elements in it), the characters felt a little distant, unrealistic and not fully worked out. The game pacing was off too, with it being kinda stop and go, sometimes I felt rushed and sometimes it lingered too long in one place…
And I haven’t even talked about the most disappointing part: The Combat System
Again, I can see where they wanted to go with it, but it’s neither deep enough nor varied enough nor any fun. It gives the illusion that the attacks matter but that very soon wears off.

On to the good parts:
The Animation in the more important cutscenes looks great, the voice acting from the girls and guys is mostly good (why didn’t they voice the main protagonist though?) and the dating sim elements were character specific, too. (But again, I wish they would’ve included 1 or 2 more acts so that you could have more of those to get to know everyone better)

All in all, it was an okayisch game, not great but I didn’t feel like I wasted my time with it. I would recommend getting it on a sale though, full price feels hard to justify.

Ryu ga Gotoku Studio has announced their next Yakuza Game, it’s like Like a Dragon: Gaiden a shorter Sidegame, set in Ichibans Hawaii and focuses on my favorite Character: Goro Majima

The Name: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii

You can find the first trailer and the Collectors Edition Contents here: Yakuza Pirates

It comes out End of February next Year already and I looks like it’s as much fun as you’d imagine a Majima Game to be.
Can’t wait to play it🙌

Totally forgot to keep up with my Games here so here’s a short summary what I’ve been playing the last few weeks:

• finished the Ace Attorney Trilogy and enjoyed it VERY much, such great music and stories, still have the Steel Samurai Theme in my head and I can’t wait to continue with Apollo Justice
• finished The Liar Princess and the blind Prince, such a sweet and deep story (feels like a child fairy tale) with a unique art style. It’s a bit on the short side but that’s not a nock against it and definitely worth a play
• finished Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man who erased his Name and my god, such a great Kiryu Story and interesting to see what he was up to during Like a Dragon and Ichiban’s rise up. CLASSIC Yakuza, the Minigames are such fun (totally forgot how difficult Pocket Circuit Racing is) and the different fighting styles of Kiryu give Combat a nice but not too stressful deepness.
• somewhat finished Hades, this one really was a surprise to me. I’m not that much into rouge-likes, but as this was recommended to me by a friend I decided to give it a spin… And what do you know, I totally got hooked on it :D The music really adds to the atmosphere and it’s fun upgrading your character and the different weapons. Finished the main story, still have to do the epilog, but as it involves collecting a ton of stuff I will continue doing this on the side from time to time

My next Game will be one that sat on my Backlog for far too long and I’m very intrigued about it as the showcases last year looked quite good: Eternights

Finished Dave the Diver on Monday, great game with a cool and unconventional story. I really dig the dive and collect sections versus the manage the Sushi Shop sections, interspersed with a few side quests for special guests.
The Art Style is also very fitting and the BGM never got on my nerves (which is worthy of a trophy!)

It can get a bit repetitive at times and a bit frustrating when there’s a shark right next to your objective, but at least the bosses are managable to beat.

Looking forward to playing the free Kaiju DLC that just came out a little bit later!

In case you also will get this error someday “cannot read properties of undefined” in the Steamdeck UI when you try to go into a Game, let me spare you the headache and tell you: It’s probably due to an old decky plugin manager😅 I managed to fix it going into the desktop, loading the decky installer again from the github page and running it, then when it asks you just tell it to “update to current stable version”. After returning into Steamdeck Mode it now works again and you can update specific plugins if necessary.🎮

Started FFVII: Remake and my god, it looks so good on the PS5… And as someone who played the OG one on the PSone, it’s very interesting to hear the gang have voices :D

I’m very interested how it continues and where it goes differently than the original. But so far, from what I’ve seen, I really like it what they did. Makes me excited for Rebirth that I also have sitting here already😅🎮

The Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation

Finished the Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation as my first Spooktober Game and was positively impressed, the story was quite good and the asian horror elements that I expected were there as well (more than the usual jump scares in western horror)
Also, it was short with around 5h playtime (which is great)

Things I liked:

• The English Voice Acting was (except a one or 2 scenes) surprisingly good
• The Environment Graphics conveid the eery feeling quite well, i.E. the fog that sometimes comes up
• Was a nice mix of story with occasional puzzles interspersed
• No unnesecary inventory management
• Characters came out mostly well defined and felt different

Things I didn’t like:

• The leveldesign could’ve been more optimised, I often died because I couldn’t figure out the way to go at first and needed a few tries
• …while the voice acting was good, the speak animations were not optimised to english and so the mouth kept moving long after the words were spoken and didn’t match up good in general
• I wish sprinting really would’ve meant what it says, sprinting…I could barely make out a difference to walking to I did mostly the latter as that didn’t attract ghosts so much
• I would’ve liked if the main characters would’ve explained more about what was going on, you needed to read all the little bits and pieces that you picked up on the side to pick up more about them and about the curse

The Different Times in Valisthea

The story of the game is roughly divided into three parts of Clive’s life, and in the beginning, it jumps around them a bit. These are: Clive’s teens, his 20ties, and finally his 30ties, where most of the game takes place. I can understand that some might find the first two a waste of time, but I quite liked how they put some color into how the world existed before. In addition, I really liked to see the young Clive, Jill, and Joshua. The next part is in his 20s, where you start off in the game and continue after a short interlude in his teens. Without going too far into it, this sets everything up for the biggest part of the game: his 30s.

I’ve been thinking, you want to create a world where our people can die on their own terms…why don’t we create a world where they can LIVE on their own terms, with their own free will the only lord they adhere to?

The Graphic

A few sentences about the graphics of the game: This being a PS5-only game, the graphics could be better, for sure. But that doesn’t mean it’s bad by any stretch; it’s just that they are generally very good PS4 ones, or at least that’s what they feel like most of the time. You have to look a bit more closely to see the PS5 part, like the detail in the fabric that Jill’s wearing or the details in the different swords that Clive carries around (every sword that he finds or can get at the blacksmith is displayed on his character) or in the far distance on the open world maps. I played in the visual mode and never had any noticeable frame drops or problems, except once or twice.

The Music

The in-game music is sooo good; I really loved it! It matched perfectly with most of the encounters and story parts and underscored them to a T. I liked it so much that I grabbed the Limited Edition OST CD Pack from the store! It includes many new pieces, classics from old Final Fantasy titles, as well as classics that are rearranged to fit this new one.

Things I liked

I really enjoyed the character development of everyone over the course of the game. Though they might seem bland at first, they add depth and thought processes over time, and one really feels connected to them while cheering them on. The evolving closeness and friendships between the characters have been pulled off quite well, in my opinion. And can we please talk about how cute they are and how much life they brought to Torgal? That’s one of the best side companions anyone could wish for. Even in the hideout, when you just look around, all the NPCs add depth as they buzz around, getting water, carrying around a sack of earth for the garden, or repairing something that is broken. I really liked, as the game takes place over many years, how some little thing that is done in his 20s sets up something bigger or more deep in his 30s. This also carries over into the side quests as well… Of course, there are the usual “get me 10 sacks of goo and 15 crystals” without much impact but a few gil, but there are also many that have a bigger impact on the environment or the hideout and add things to it. (Especially in the later parts of the game, where every supporting party for the hideout has their own two-part side quests.)

Things I didn’t like

There are, of course, some things that could be handled better or changed entirely. For one, I would have loved to have at least a little more RPG elements in it; only outfitting Clive and never his companions or being able to give them commands (other than Torgal) is kind of boring. Talking about the fighting system, I know it’s an action game, but only mashing one button three times or three times and one other button is some pretty uninspired combo system. There are many action game examples where you could have made a lot more out of that. What I also didn’t like are the expressions and mimic of the characters, which were virtually nonexistent. In my opinion, the facial expressions of the characters don’t really exist, and the most you will get out of this is in a video sequence where someone has tears down their face, either of happiness or sadness. In normal in-game graphics, happy Clive, sad Clive, and smiling Clive mostly look the same.

I’m coming to one of my biggest pain points: running speed! OH MY GOD

Not only don’t you have the ability to run via a button, but as he begins to run after a minute by himself, he only does so when he can. Because, and I don’t know what they thought when Business Unit 3 implemented this, you can’t run everywhere! And even when you run, it’s not like the fast traversal speed you would need in a game this big; that only comes when you do a side quest and get a chocobo. Related thereto, I would’ve loved to have more quick-travel points; they are REALLY far apart, and most side quests put you squarely in the middle of nowhere in between two of them. I bet while I was doing all side quests, 1/3 of the time of those was only comprised of travel from point a to point b, and you don’t even have auto-travel like you did in Final Fantasy XV, so no moving there and slacking off until you get there.

A few words about change in Final Fantasy Games

For those people who say “This isn’t a Final Fantasy game”, you’re either wrong or you only have part of the sentence. Final Fantasy games have ALWAYS evolved and changed; 7 was not the same as 8 and 9 (anyone remember the collectible in-game card game?) and so on. So of course, 16 would not be the same as 15 or other, more RPG-type Final Fantasy games. If you don’t like an action RPG that’s fine, but saying it’s not Final Fantasy is plain wrong.

SUMMARY

All in all, there are some flaws, but in the end, I really enjoyed my time in Valestia and I hope they will come out with a dlc for one or some of the side companions of Clive (maybe Dion?) as there is still so much to tell about them. With the music, the story, and the whole group dynamic being a whole package, I had a lot of fun and got a lot out of this one (my playtime of over 100 hours shows this). But now it’s off to something else while I ponder what snacks Torgal is getting from Clive and why he is always so happy after getting them…