I basically have a spreadsheet to tackle my backlog, I add 10 - 20 games to my list of games that I’ve bought (mostly on discount, some from bundles, and some from PS+, some emulated games, etc), then I’d just stream them.
If I don’t feel like the game is resonating with me, I’d just stop, assign Not Resonating tag and move on.
I do admit that when I see a big backlog, I tend to exhibit these behaviors:
Guilt in buying new games, which is not bad, now I only buy full priced game once or twice a year, and mostly buying discounted stuff
The need to power thru games that I don’t like, until I started using Not Resonating tag, which I give games that don’t click with me two tries, before giving up
I played Super Mario Galaxy, and was having difficulties with motion control and aiming the stomp (even after doing the spinning stomp move), then I reached a place with underwater level, I bailed out. Personally for me, it’s probably better suited for short bursts of gameplay than longer period of streaming the game.
Right now I am replaying Zero Time Dilemma. I am still enjoying it.
Yeah, vocal animations for side quests are off, some are saying this is the aftereffect of the pandemic. They also didn’t lipsync for Japanese dub, so you might want to stick with that
As per overworld map, it’s similar to FFX
Side quests are very sparse around the beginning of the game, by the end of the game I was complaining at how unevenly distributed they are that they just drop large number of them before endgame. They are there to flesh out the side characters
Not sure about graphics, but the music is by same composer Masayoshi Soken
Is it really Kingdom Heart’s combat? I played 90% of KH games and DMC games, and I’d definitely say that it’s more DMC combat than KH, considering they hired Ryota Suzuki who designed the combat system for DMCV and Dragon’s Dogma as the combat director
If you’ve played FFX, XIII, 7Remake, Crisis Core, then you’d be less shocked by how linear it is.
I’ve been using it for a week, and I’ve also been using Obsidian for a couple of months.
It’s quite different from Obsidian.
Obsidian:
is great in writing notes / markdown, very text heavy
there are dataview that could tie relations between notes, but it’s not user friendly to set it up. Also table creation is still not user friendly.
has great community plugin support
very keyboard friendly
Anytype:
is great in creating relations between objects, you define objects and relations all the time, e.g. Movie object has a Director relation that ties to a Director object, etc.
it’s good for drag & drop / mouse heavy interactions, the keyboard navigation is still clunky (hard to select some sections just by using keyboard)
no community plugins
I use Obsidian to write my language grammar notes, it’s very fast, and I could do most stuff on keyboard without switching to mouse.
I use Anytype to setup kanban boards, information of my video games backlog, I use it for planning tasks that I wanna do later, set the status to in-progress, and watch it show up on the dashboard. It’s very linkage heavy.
Anytype is probably more of a replacement of Notion, instead of Obsidian, albeit it’s still in alpha, thus it doesn’t have enough features to go against Notion yet. But I am enjoying it thoroughly, the UI is clean and not bloated, although it requires you to define Objects and Relations if you want to fully utilize it.
Steam Deck seems to be a good fit. If you wanna get a gaming laptop, maybe wait until there’s one where you can easily swap out the batteries / components. I’ve seen videos about Framework laptop, and that does sound like a good investment for longer period.
I heard there were issues with ROG Ally, the device gets too hot, and the fan exhaust was near the SD card slot. So it frequently dislodges the SD cards from the slot because of the heat.
All the mainline games are not interconnected at all, they are pretty much very separate in terms of story / settings / characters. So you can jump into any one of the games. Also, their turn-based systems, aka Active Time Battle, aren’t anything interesting, compared to say Shin Megami Tensei’s Press Turn system. All FF games have very linear / streamlined experience compared to other games, i.e. choices don’t matter much, you don’t choose the stats, equipments are streamlined.
Here’s some overview:
First 6 games were 2D games, the best of those bunches are Final Fantasy 6. Great story, great villain, great music
original FF7 is the one popularized the JRPG genre, and probably broke the base between older 2D fans and newcomers. It has memorable characters, music, story about eco-terrorism. The gameplay revolves around materia system, it’s like logic system where say if you connect Fire magic with All-effect and 2x-effect, you can casts double Fire magic that hits every enemies, etc. FF7 Crisis Core is one of the best FF spinoffs out there, while FF7 Remake is a ‘remake’. It’s advised that you finished the original FF7 before playing those two.
FF8 also broke the base. The game is more romance-centric in some way, but still sci-fi. The gameplay revolves around junction / draw system, where you draw magic from enemies to junction it to your stats.
FF9 is kinda back to original game. It’s more high-fantasy setting, and was released during the end of PS1. It wasn’t as popular as FF7 or FF8, but there are definitely fans. I had hard time getting into it, because the animation is kinda slow, but maybe I should replay the HD version
FFX is very well received, it’s a sci-fi romance story that takes place in south east Asian-like tropical islands. The first FF game on PS2. FFX has a sequel, FFX-2, which is also well received
FF11 is MMO, I don’t play MMO, so I have no idea about it.
FF12 is great, it’s more political than usual FF games, because it’s written by Matsuno, who made Tactics Ogre and FF Tactics. The gameplay is bit weird, bit MMO like.
FF13 was not well received, the only mainline FF game on PS3. It spawned two other games FFX-2 and FFX Lightning Returns. The main complaint about FF13 was that the story was incomprehensible, the game is very linear, and the battle mechanics is very confusing. I think what happened is that
they used tons of opaque in-game terms (Fal’ Cie, La’ Cie), that’s barely explained until very late in the game.
the game also opens up very late, there’s a one large wide region for you to roam around and engage in enemy encounters, but they only give it to you very late in the game
the combat wasn’t explained clearly, the paradigm shift system is actually fun, and a step up from ATB
annoying characters, they focused too much on Hope and Snow. Hope is a whiny child, but he’s a child, so it’s ok. Snow on the other hand, is just an annoying character who likes to talk about himself.
FF14 is another MMO, I don’t touch MMO
FF15 is kind of a mess, it was in development hell. I like the roadtrip story, where you just drive around. The open world is bit sparse and serves mostly for enemy encounters. One of the main issue is that some of the stories are gated behind DLCs. The gameplay is bit more weirder than normal ATBs. I like this game, but not as much as others.
FF16 is great. Devil May Cry combat, very streamlined and nicely paced story, those huge spectacle Asura’s Wrath-esque battles, etc. This game is my current GOTY.
There are other spinoff games, e.g. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, World of Final Fantasy, but they are mostly spinoffs, mostly for fans who want more after playing the mainline.
But there’s one that I want to recommend, and that’s Final Fantasy Tactics. It’s a strategy RPG and it’s amazing. There’s an updated version released on PSP, called Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, which is probably the one you should play.
There are rumor swirling around about FF9 and FF Tactics remakes, but can’t say anything until we see it.
Nintendo Switch is great for 1st party games and some exclusives, but frame rate / resolution might not be able to compete with other consoles, plus the MSRP of many games on e-shop can be 1 - 3 bucks more expensive compared to, say PSN.
If this is your only gaming device, then maybe consider Crisis Core, Hollow Knight, Octopath Traveler 2, Live a Live. If it’s not, then stick to 1st party games, exclusives, and graphically less taxing games.
As for discounts, I use DekuDeals to keep track of the price drops. Most 1st party Nintendo games only have discount up to 33%, and those discounts happen like 2 - 3 times a year. While 3rd party games… I swear to god I’ve seen games that are on sale every month or so.
Super Mario Galaxy, I didn’t own a Wii, and not much of platformer gamer.
There’s some really fun parts, but the motion control is annoying for the surfing section, and I still have problems aiming my stomps at enemies.
Deleted the game after a frustrating fight with that giant mandibug boss (can’t aim my stomp), came back, reinstalled the game, and defeated it after watching YT video on the timing. I will give it another try later.
I tried remastered Mario 64, and quit since I have issues with the flying control. Tried sunshine but somehow it doesn’t stick.
My favorite was 1997, I only owned a PS1 at the time, and here’s some really good games that was released that year:
Gran Turismo
Final Fantasy 7
Castlevania Symphony of the Night
Crash Bandicoot 2
Final Fantasy Tactics
Parappa the Rapper
Vandal Hearts
Mega Man X4
Breath of Fire 3
Mega Man Legends
MDK
Oddworld Abe’s Oddysse
Tomb Raider II
Grand Theft Auto
Klonoa
MK Mythologies Sub Zero
Some other non PS1, but notable games that came out that year:
Diablo
Mario Kart 64
Turok
Goldeneye 007
Star Fox 64
Fallout
Panzer General II
Age of Empires
Mortal Kombat 4
1998 was also very good
It’s harder and harder to get a year that can produce a large number of hits, especially since AAA has become so expensive and time consuming. Even great indies take longer than usual now. The explosions of hits released between late 2022 and this year, is probably caused by Covid delaying multiple projects.
With more game devs consolidation, and Embracer stumbling, I’m not too sure about the near future.
I’m not a “make my own fun” gamer, and now when I think about it, because all of my “make my own fun” is done outside of gaming, e.g. playing music, coding, 3d printing, drawing, etc.
Every time when people talk about game soundtracks, they should include Chrono Cross
For recent games, FFXVI has an amazing soundtrack, I think the OST will be released on July 19th
I recently replayed Persona PSP, and that game has amazing soundtrack, but kinda marred by the fact that there’s only one non-boss battle them, and the encounter rate is too high, so you ended up listening to the same song all the time.
None, I wrote a terminal UI (just to clean things up and customized to suit my need) that was originally for youtube-dl and switched to yt-dlp
Basically I have a Keyboard Maestro that reads my clipboard and automatically inserts any youtube links into a text file, so that I can run my script which downloads all the links and rename them accordingly.