Whatcha all playing?

Sorry for the late thread! I’ve been playing the Talos principal reawakened. I never played the original and I’m having a really good time!

  • _Lory98_@discuss.tchncs.de
    3·
    3 days ago

    I played a bit of Phantasy Star Portable, but my PSP’s battery is half dead and I’m waiting for a replacement so I didn’t play long. Seems like a fun game tho.

    I finished Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and I have a few thoughts about it.

    The gameplay starts slow, too slow to be interesting, but after around 20 hours you unlock all the main systems and it gets really fun. It is however dragged down a bit by how bad the blade gacha and how grindy other secondary mechanics are (affinity charts and region development/mercenary missions).

    The story was fine, it was pretty standard for a JRPG. I felt like the main characters were more interesting than the ones in the first game, but the overall plot and themes were a bit weak.

    Various (minor) XC2 story spoilers

    I did find the theme of death and remembrance interesting in this setting, but I didn’t feel like it was explored deeply enough.

    Same for the ethical issues of using blades, which the story acknowledges, but never really deals with it.

    The blade gacha system also goes against what the story is trying to say, as it forces you to treat common blades as expendable or just workforce for mercenary missions.

    The story feels overall a bit rushed towards the end (especially the ending comes abruptly, I was expecting it to be a fakeout) and weirdly unfocused before that, but still engaging enough.