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What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
I dropped CrossCode. I rarely do that, but the game didn't speak to me even after 25 hours. It has its pros - I like the looks, I like the vibe, I like puzzles.
But it has cons as well - Fighting can be trickier here and there, skilltree seems huge and you have to utilize it to be efficient. And the story was very slow to unfold and while it cpuld be good, I didn't get to the part where it would pull me in. SPOILER: I got to know what is with me in the real world, but the pacing is really slow.
I will probably never get back to this game.
I played a bit of American Truck Simulator, but that was just to relax a bit.
And I finally started playing Breath of the Wild on Steam Deck. I played and finished it on Switch Lite six years ago and wanted to replay it one day. And that day came yesterday. Since I know what I went for, I'm ready to play this game deep into Q2 of 2027. And I'm looking forward to it!
I use Eden to run the game. It seems like Yuzu continuation or built upon its foundations. It runs the game fairly well - 30fps most of the time, but it eats battery doing so!
My battery is around 60% of its original capacity and I have the Steam Deck since it came out and played probably 1500-2000 hours on it lasting say 3 hours each time, which means the battery was charhed 500 times and is four amdna half years old.
With that in mind, I think I can do like 1:30 hours of BotW, which is fine by me.
The game is extraordinary! I love the open world, the ouzzles, the small things, the characters and their stories! And contrary to the popular opinion, I love breakable weapons! This game was the reason I bought Switch Lite in the first place. And I consider all the money well spent!
I felt the same way about CrossCode. I really wanted to like it as it seemed to check all the right boxes. Ultimately I just did not enjoy the combat at all and gave up on it.
I like CrossCode but it's really 150% too long and too much. It may be the very first time I wish a game was smaller.
I almost finished CrossCode years ago and I loved the experience. I stopped moving forward at the "point of no return" to do sidequests but then life happened and stopped playing altogether. I tried to restart again years later to see the ending and I'm having the same issues with the game being too much. I'm playing more sporadically now and I'm constantly forgetting combat mechanics, or how to fight a specific enemy, or how an element/weapon combo interacts with the puzzles.
The game expects a lot of commitment from the player.
The thing is I am able to commit. My first playthrough through the Witcher 3 was at the highest difficulty and with enemies levelling up to your level (so even basic ones can kill you late in the game quite easily). I loved the game and finished it after sinking probably 150+ hours into it.
I just couldn't get the enjoyment from CrossCode. I'm not saying it's bad game, just that it isn't for me, clearly. I lack the drive. The story part is infrequent and while sidequests are there and not bad, they take all the timebfrom the story. And you have to do them to keep getting strong enough. I like the gameplay, I like solving "how to get to that edge through those other four areas", but it just can't keep me in for another 50 hours. I stopped playing when I entered Fa'iro temple (or whatever) - that is start of another puzzle part of the game with probably boss at the end. And I just didn't want to bother anymore.
Good game, not for me.
I did enjoy doing the sidequests on my first playthrough. I remember stopping after completing a temple to do all the missing sidequests in the area before moving on. I was always strong enough and I never felt the game pushing be back. Now I'm playing faster to see the main story and I'm always weak and I'm constantly stopped by random quests that I need to do in order to progress. In the jungle temple I got a "you need your gear to be at least XXX strong, go back and do sidequests" that slowed me down for a while.
I think this is a general issue with EA games that are built piecemeal. the game is made for the people playing during the development, who play the current content, then do all the sidequests and exploration, and then wait for the next update.
I'm so glad you came back with this update. I've been quietly reading along and wondering if I needed to pick up Crosscode again but I feel relieved that my memory of it crawling at such a slow pace wasn't false.
Man, I wish I loved that game.
I'm so glad I'm not the only one who dropped Cross Code. I love the art style, and it feels like such a lively world with all the NPCs, and I didn't even mind the combat, it was just so loooooong as people pointed out. That, and I failed to see where the story was going so I ultimately dropped it. Tried to return one or two times a few years later and I have no idea what to do or how to progress the story, so it'll likely be a DNF for me forever :/
I really wanted to enjoy CrossCode, but I just didn't. I know the puzzles are a selling point, but there is just too much of them and too much repetition. I gave it a good 20-30 hours like you and I just wasn't wanting to play it more.
**Star Wars: Galactic Racer **
Loved the original game back in the day. Very happy with the new one too. I love how they built a sort of rogue-like approach to a racing game! I am a fan of rogue-likes. I set the difficulty to challenging from the start, not knowing about the roguelike elements, and I’m glad I did. I can see the story ending too fast on Easy or Medium. Challenging feels good. I did/do die often enough to experience the roguelike part of it and reap the benefits incrementally.
Coming from recently replaying Need for Speed Unbound, I see similarities. The other racers (the computer controlled characters) have their own personalities and interactions with your character. Very cool. I loved that about Unbound. Made the single player story less lonely if that makes sense.
I also saw some similarities to the anime movie Redline. The old man mechanic has 6 limbs, so does your mechanic in the Galactic Racer.
All that to say, it’s a win for me as a racing game fan, even if I don’t care much about Star Wars in general.
I love that the game feels fast. They really captured the essence of it really well.
Yes! Agreed!
Still playing Trackmania. Still solo only, tried playing against other and its just stressful and no fun for me. Slowly going through all TOD (track of the day) tracks trying to capture silver medals or at least make PB (personal best) on each track. I have something like 70~100 hours and can get silver on like 95-97% of TOD tracks. Ice is familiar, but tech especially slow short tech is really hard for me. To get silver on some tracks I basically need to play something like kacky because of changes of physics of Trackmania between years and some tracks I'm not even able to finish because of it. But it still fun.
Apart from Trackmania having a really great time with Moonlight Peaks. Super cozy Stardew Valley in gothic settings with Animall Crossing elements. Really love aesthetic, gameplay and interacting with different characters. Game oriented on younglings so its definitely not a serious game, but super fan, and really cozy. I tried and liked the demo of Moonlight Peaks after finishing Fields Of Mistria (another cozy Stardew Valley inspired game) and really love it. One things tho: I recommend to not read reviews (at least read with caution) or engage in subreddit of MP before playing, not sure of reasons but community around feels quite toxic. Definitely can recommend Moonlight Peaks and Fields of Mistria as unique, alternative and more cozy Stardew Valley inspired games.
If you are on PC, I can't recommend you enough to install the OpenPlanet community addon, and search for the ManiaPlanet plugin in its menus to find tracks from trackmania.exchange.
In particular I love practically all the maps from Aries__90.
I am kinda jaded at this point on most of the TOTD maps because of their style which feels a little bit too monotonous, even when the scenery is sometimes special. And Aries__90 constantly deliver in fresh experiences.
There is also some special map from other makers like this one: https://trackmania.exchange/mapshow/174273
Or the NFS 3 imported track from the_random_one: https://trackmania.exchange/mapshow/186465
Oh, thanks! Tracks definitely looks interesting, will try them.
I’ve played a little Trackmania, I’m definitely very bad at it, but will periodically try again for like 5-10 hours. I was never really into racing games (aside from Mario Kart or Lego Racers as a kid) so the general style is pretty unfamiliar to me. I think I had a need for speed game on the PS3, but did not play a lot.
Got into Trackmania content from Wirtual’s “documentaries” on YouTube a couple years back, and have periodically watched some of his videos here and there (mostly around Kacky or Deep Dip. I did end up watching some of his Deep Dip 2 and Deep Slip streams).
Trackmania is such a different game than it used to be. Before the current live service version, it was pretty straight forward. It was all about precision with very few tricks and special techniques, at least regarding the stadium environment car. It has of course always been an arcade racing game, and there was always wallrides, loops, and jumps. But that was more or less the extent of it. Now though they've added so much stuff it's crazy, like I'm sure it's still fun but as someone that grew up on the old game it feels so weird to be turning the car around 90 degrees to drift on the ice and then go underwater and then go bouncing around on plastic haha
And then they added 3 new cars each with new physics for each surface :) yeah.
Yeah and then you go back to TMUF which had 7 and yet the new stuff is way harder to learn because of so many types of surfaces too! It was basically asphalt, dirt, and grass, nothing else. I can't count how much there is nowadays. Not to mention what happens when your tires get wet or icy or both @_@
Yeah, for me too Wirtual documentaries is a reason why I started playing.
There something very satisfying when you "got" the track and instead of bumpy and uncomfortable it became quick and smooth and highspeed.
I started playing Mina the Hollower I have bought most of the other stuff by yatchclub, and really enjoyed most of it, so I decided to pull the trigger, even though Zelda type games are not really my favourite. I have played it for ~5 hours or something now, and fixed up one of the towers. I’m having a lot of fun with it, it feels kind of like a metroidvania disguised as a zelda game, it’s more about fighting and getting through the screens rather than puzzles, and I like it. It’s very hard for someone who’s not really good at the zelda kind of games, a lot of the time I keep swinging my whip-mace in the wrong direction, and get a comical death because of that. I’m slowly getting better though. Just up to fixing up the first tower I already have 94 deaths, so I guess that says something about how much I don’t really find this easy. The graphics are extremely charming, and feel so good, like a gameboy color + kind of style, they have managed to really make it feel right for that style, it feels like real sprites and the pixel art, the color use and everything has just the right feel. The music is also awesome, like the shovel knight games, they are composed by Jake Kaufman, and it feels like the gb colour kind of sound, which is one of my favorites, the sound chip in the gameboy is what I grew up with, and it has this kind of crunchy sound that I really enjoy. There are a lot of pretty well signposted secrets to find, and gathering stuff is just fun, so so far at least this has been an excellent game for me, hard, but decently fair, and I can feel that I’m getting less shit at it as well, which is nice.
I’ve gotten back into Elite Dangerous hard. Last time I really played, engineering was random, the thargoids didn’t exist, and getting to colonia was a week long endeavor. Oh boy, the power creep now is real.
When I set up my old thrustmaster t16000m hotas, I noticed some drift on the yaw axis. After some research, I got a vkb gladiator joystick. And I absolutely loved it. So much that I did a bunch more research and got a second one for a HOSAS setup. Very excellent, and not expensive compared to some setups.
In Elite, I decided to work my way up the financial ladder with trading. I started with some PTN trade routes that made me enough to get some better ships. I started in my old jump anaconda (I never made enough before to properly outfit it) with some cargo racks thrown in. Worked my way to a type something, then a panther clipper. Made a bunch with FREIGHT missions, which is a player group that allows players to pay other players a good fee to haul.
With that first billion made, I started doing some serious engineering. Holy hell is it easier than old random engineering. And at one point, they made materials get 3x per item picked up. That plus material traders makes it so much simpler to get a bunch of materials. I had a fully engineered fer de lance (FDL) from before, but it was random engineering, so I refitted that with a huge multi cannon and 4 medium lasers, and got it fully engineered. I think I might need to do grades 2-4 on the shield cell banks since I didn’t have that engineer unlocked, but it’s already unstoppable.
I grabbed a caspian explorer and engineered the FSD and took the neutron highway to colonia to unlock those engineers. I made the colonia trip back in my asp explorer back in the day, and I remember it being like 3 full days of neutron jumping each way. With the caspian, it took me like 1.5 hours. Insane. And after I got back, I finished a railgun anaconda build that is super fun to fly with. Shields never go down, packs quite a punch, and has a high skill ceiling with my dual stick setup.
Somewhere in there, I did the community goal to get a bunch of pre engineered FSD. Just this last weekend, I got my first stack of wing mining missions which bumped me from 1.7b to 4.5b. I think I want to do one or two more stacks, grab a fleet carrier, and start grinding to engineer all the ships I want to. I picked up a nice eagle paint job, so I want to make an eagle racing ship. I also want to kit out some more combat ships of different combat styles. I also want to grind federation rank to get a federal corvette. Seems like a very fun ship.
It’s far from a perfect game, but I am having such a good time with it right now.
I love my VKBs, use them for Star Citizen. Did you just get one, or dual space sticks?
I started out with one, but got a second almost immediately. I got the gladiator evo space combat edition. The one with the analog stick in the hat area. I absolutely love these things too. I did have to get some cheap desk mounts, and those themselves were a pretty nice upgrade, just because the placement was better. I’m still getting my keybinds worked out, but I think I have it set up pretty well now.
I bought Nintendo Switch Sports Resort for my family. My wife (who hates games) loved playing it with the kids.
The game is a vast improvements over Switch Sports. It seems to have a lot more content, but most importantly, the controls are more responsive than Switch Sports. Feels closer to Wii Sports Resort.
I've been playing the crap out of Neon Abyss 2. I loved the first one and it's more of the same: standard side-scrolling rogue-like shooter but with a high level of polish, generous progression, and fast pacing. I almost always end up overpowered, even on the rare runs where I lose, and that's fun to me. The sheer number of power ups is staggering. I nearly have all the achievements and only one boss remaining and I still haven't seen half the power ups and even several of the special rooms.
I've also been playing FTL: Faster Than Light because I missed it 15 years ago and it's a ton of fun but also incredibly difficult. It's on the opposite end of the rogue-like spectrum from NA2 because gameplay is very slow and methodical with lots of pausing, I never feel powerful enough, and the meta-progression is almost non-existent. I'll keep trying for a bit longer at least.
I've been very addicted to Deadlock again. I first got into the alpha in August 2024, but I didn't play much from around last summer until this spring when I got pretty heavy into it again for a couple of months. Around June I stopped playing again but I've been playing tons since the City That Never Sleeps update and it's so much fun. I'm not sure why, it's probably the game that makes me angrier than any other I've played, but when games go well or even just okay it's such a blast. The lore is fun, the movement is fun, the guns are fun, the abilities are... sometimes awful to play against but amazing to use. 🤷
I started Echo Weaver, after a couple of podcasts referred to it as an Outer Wilds-esque "metroid-brainia".
It's a platformer, where all your abilities are available straight from the start, but none are explained or revealed to you until later on in the game. There's some clever mechanics and a few pretty good "I wonder if- ooohhhhhh!" moments that I've quite enjoyed.
The actual writing isn't as good as OW, IMO, but it's serviceable. The art is ok, but nothing spectacular; the biggest strength is in the platforming and level design. Being able to piece together the story from logs scattered around as you learn how to traverse more different areas is pretty rewarding. My biggest annoyance right now is the kinda stiff/wimpy combat mechanics that feel unsatisfying to me, but I'm hoping that there'll be a mechanic reveal that makes those areas less of a pain.
I've unlocked one route to what I think would be an ending, but don't feel like I understand enough of the narrative context to pull the trigger on it yet.
I’m not sure if it really fits in this theme, but my wife is a mental health professional, and one of the games she’s brought home has been delve deck and tales both have been fantastic for us. They are question based cards that kind of force you to think about things that you sometimes I’m always think about. There’s different varieties, but it allows us to spend time without electronics and learn more about each other. Obviously, it’s much more fun when it’s not just you and your partner, so we’ve been using it a lot with friends and family more so with friends. Even amongst just the two of us, it does spark some interesting conversation but there’s no points winners losers, etc. it’s really more just conversation starters so it’s really fun or good when with groups of people or even just couples start communication.
Normally I try to post my Next Fest demo picks on the week of, but being ill for the previous week (and currently still, but at least I've seen a doctor and gotten medicine today) means missing last week's weekly and having a lot more entries that I didn't get to spend enough time on. Might've dulled my experience a bit too since I saw some cool stuff for my top 6, but didn't feel "I need this day 1" energy.
Rain of Lead: 2D sidescrolling sword-and-gun action or rather, Katana Zero with a gun replacing the slowmo and with yuri. Same kinda run in and slash while reflecting bullets gameplay along with the steam page advertising conversation choices between loyalty to the queen/wife or listening for the truth. You get to fight a tank as the demo boss.
ALTEREDBLOOD+ [AB+]: Boomer Shooter with schmovement. Pop enemies, slide through their splattered blood for HP/ammo and self-buffs, and keep chaining knife dash parries/executions to reset its cooldown.
RATSHOT: 2D Speed Platformer. You get 2 upward diagonal boosts per jump and it's kinda got that Newgrounds feel to it.
Knuckle Paradise: Character Action game with an isometric pixel view. Aside from all those indefinite air juggles, you get to build up meter to use one of your fighting chicken partner's supers to break enemy armor.
ANOMALITH: 3rd person action horror shooter. Mostly reminded me of Resident Evil 4 with the grid inventory, the shoot enemy to stun and action command them, and the sustainable ammo drops to just kill everything in sight. Where it differentiates is having anime girls delving into glitched out reality zones instead of zombies, needing to juggle your inventory with bringing back upgrade materials, and having a parry/melee on MP system and refilling it via shooting or passively restoring it by being at half health.
Ladder Lad: 2D Platformer, but you carry around a ladder to get around without jumping. I always like these games that go all in on a basic concept and the narrators match my sense of humor.
Aesthetic picks
Evil Moon: Unspoken: Metroidvania FPS with optional enemy lock-on. I just like the aesthetics and vibes I'm getting from this, though I can barely figure out the map here.
Home Paige: 3D Platformer. Also an aesthetics pick, though I like the movement and grappling points.
El Paso, Elsewhere 2: Definitely plays like Max Payne in the slowmo dive-and-shoot way, though it's mostly caught my interest cause they're the same devs behind I Am Your Beast (and I need to play the first game).
Interesting, but not enough time to fully judge
Muri: Wildwoods: Cozy game about cleaning up nature with a watergun. I didn't finish the demo, but I liked finding the hidden side areas and just cleaning up each area bit by bit.
Sil and the Fading World: Advertises itself as Solo Raid Bosses. It's got a DPS tracker on the bottom left, all the skill customization and equipment slots, and all that ARPG optimization/grind. The end of the tutorial dungeon forces you to lose against its boss though. Tried out the spirit summoner class, though I got blown up on the first real mission.
Father, Son and Holy Guns: Seems like a smaller-scale Ravenswatch insofar as being an isometric roguelite and having points of interest to run towards on the map and a timer before having to fight the boss.
MR. RECORDS: It's a rhythm game. An old man decides to open up a records shop and the gameplay shifts between the rhythm portions for each song at night and the store elements of figuring out which record the customers are looking for during the day. Played to the 2nd night, perfected each song on normal, but hard mode is well, hard (for me at least).
Our Life: Now & Forever: VN about your MC growing up with two of the neighboring kids after moving in. Mostly impressed that yes, there's quite a few dialogue options and tones for each choice. Left off after the prologue relationship chart decisions though.
Teamcrafter: Gather resources by spending stamina, craft gear out of it, and distribute to the autobattling party.
GrimKeep: Dice poker roguelike with higher hands either dealing more damage when used or providing more shielding when left in hand. Seems to do the Balatro score multiplier and 5 relics limit, and shops require money and HP which rewards maximizing the dice score for damage. I don't feel experienced enough to enjoy this.
Medium Rare: RPG Extraction Roguelite. Each turn has a dice roll for AP per weapon, the resource management of ammo/upgrade loot/meat, and human meat needed for healing/hunger/base upgrades.
Touhou Infinite Nocturne: RPG with horror elements, but the art really looks really stylish to me.
Seasons of Books and Keys: VN about 2 guys in the library committee just chilling and remembering. It does do something interesting with past memories being in the save slots area and unlocking when relevant so I hope that has something important behind it. I think I can also feel the yaoi energy radiating from here.
Lelu: Has a 2D Zelda feel in black and white color. It got my attention in the beginning where each individual movement direction needs to unlocked by picking up the upgrade for it.
Spellogger: First Person tree cutting game, as in the world is entirely focused on tree cutting. Mostly interested in the game advertising a small, but very dense world to explore, though I couldn't really find my footing in the beginning.
Dumbfire: Fly a rocket and hit the target. Has a get good element in actually learning the controls and being able to competently pilot the thing.
Curse of Resthaven: Timeloop roguelite with time management, town upgrades, and trade haggling. Didn't get far, but the eldritch aspect interests me.
Memoria Wake: Isometric Soulslike in a dreamlike world. I think I got decently far, but got lost figuring out how to get into the cave with the warning sign in front and I can't seem to get the parry timing down.
13Z: The Zodiac Trials 3rd person action roguelite with Hades-style boons. Has the usual jump/parry/dodge/special etc etc.
Logic Arrows: One of those set up the manufacturing path games.
Might keep an eye on, might not
Mortuus: COD Zombies but with blocky enemies. Melee expert seems like a busted perk for tripling melee damage. Lost my run cause I tried upgrading my gun in the middle of the wave instead of waiting at the end for a straggler.
KILLSEC: Top down roguelike. Moving slowly slows time, moving fast gives momentum to thrown weapons making for a risk reward. I just stuck to melee since no ammo, deflects bullets, and they cut through enemy guards just fine.
OPERATIVES: Revolve: 3 energy roguelike, no discard. Enemy attacks come from either the left or right and cards can be moved around and left in hand to passively block if not used.
Beastfolk Barber: There are beastfolk. You play as a barber with a magic mirror that can show the customer 3 previews of style combinations you think might work for them and gauging their reaction. Demo doesn't get far, but it's setting up the world.
The False Alice -Retold Tale-: VN where "fake"/imperfect fairytale characters kill off others of their namesake so they can claim the right to be the true aspect. Amnesiac MC gets caught up in the war of Alices (the Alice in Wonderland kind) and turns 3 of them revive-immortal somehow in his attempts to have them stop fighting. Now they have a truce while they go hunt down the other Alices. Yay for MC only saving the first 3 he came across?
Reshine: Another one of those chill clean up the old object games.
Ehhhh
Dungeon Automata: The concept of programming the RPG party logic sounds really really cool and the game's style looks fantastic, but the party only starts off with Attack -> Highest HP target which makes it feel like an absolute grind to just get started with basic skills in the demo.
Tavern Maid's Daily Life: VN about playing as a maid in a developing adventurer city. It's about the customers' lives and remembering their orders, though the writing style doesn't have my attention.
Netherwyn: ARPG roguelite with skill customization, etc etc. Mostly caught by how big the maps are while the horse is on 15 second cooldown and no i-frames when mounting while the dash feels like a 3-5 second cooldown.
Inferno Cafe: Not really a roguelike. Got through the demo just picking whatever the biggest boost is and using the special on epic+ cards. This is just for people into monster girls eating the MC who was turned into a reviving cupcake.
Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave
Deep into Part 1. Started with Leda's Route. Finished it and did Cai's route. Now I'm playing through Theodora. I really like that there's difference in both the story and mechanics for each character. So far I'm way more invested in the whole story than in Three Houses.
Leda's Route
Honestly I went with her first because of vibes. Red is my favorite color and the whole dancer/music speciality appeals to my former musician life.
She has this huge obsession with revenge and justifiably so. It calms a bit by the end, but she still wants to kill her dad's murderer. So some subtle development, but not too much in part 1. Her most interesting aspect is her public face vs her personal one. She can play cute and friendly, but that trauma and rage is still inside her.
Her mechanics seem more focused on exploring the map. Building her Renown by performing in various towns. Playing her first unlocked most of the map for me. I ended up making her dancer class. She played well as a distance player for me.
Cai
He definitely seem like the route that they want you to start with. I went with him second because him and his crew made me laugh during their small appearance in Leda's Route.
The boons I unlocked with Leda helped a lot here. Leveling became so much easier. At least compared to Leda. I was able to recruit a bigger crew and got them all to advanced by the end.
His story is definitely that of a typical shonen anime teen hero. I enjoyed playing through it. It was very interesting see how his route played after playing his paralogue. So this is how his story is supposed to play versus when he's not successful.
His mechanics focused on recruiting animals and growing vegetables. I found this very surprising. I was aware of stables, but Leda didn't do anything with it. It's cool unlocking bonuses for riders when you take care of their animals. He was also not able to travel the map much. I ended up making him a dragon rider class. It's just cooler to me than him riding an ostrich 😆
Theodora
I'm only part of the way through her route. I like getting to know about the kingdom of Saramis. By now I've heard a lot. So far this is the most interesting introduction with all the politics.
I'm only about halfway through her story in this part, but I'm liking where it's going.
Mechanic wise, I was surprised to use the battalions. I've seen that, but thought it was just something enemies used. So that adds another layer to gameplay. Also she has the best Blaze Art. Throwing giant boulders across the map is so fun and not that costly. After facing it in other routes, it's fun to be on this side of it.
I was also surprised to be able to sail around the map. That makes so much sense since they came from across the water. So they have a boat. Fighting pirates is a cool change of pace.
I've been playing Probably Stolen, a dystopian shopkeeper sim. It's well done, with a good bit of complexity to it that unfurls at the player's preferred pace. You start out buying low and selling high, and then you get a furnace so you can turn scrap metal into shoddy but slightly more valuable ingots of metal, and then you get a battery recharger so you're not having to buy new batteries all the time, and then the demand for fresh water rises, so you buy some basic water filters to buy ditchwater and make it barely potable, and then you turn your profits into better water purification and analysis sensors so you can sell your water at a mark-up, and then you've got so much water you can't sell it, so you branch out into hydroponics and aquaculture, and then you've got more raw food than you can sell so you start cooking, and start growing some recreational plants, and then start making various refined recreational drugs, but security doesn't like that, and so you've got to manage their opinion of you and balance it against the opinions of the other factions, and all of this while the rent is going up, and power is getting more expensive, and the local janitorial mafia is turning the screws on you because you tried to save money by scrubbing your own storefront... and... and... and...
The systems are so interconnected and reinforcing, the mechanics enjoyable, and the art style and UI solid. It would be overwhelming if not for the fact that there's no time pressure. If you want to spend 10 minutes rearranging your water purification setup while someone waits to buy a bottle of water, you can do that.
I highly recommend it.
Maplestory Classic World had its free grand launch last Thursday and as somebody that first started playing Maplestory some 20 years ago naturally I had to join for the nostalgia.
For those that don't know what Maplestory is, it's a 2d Korean MMORPG published by Nexon that launched in 2005 and has gone through quite a few different versions and changes since then. It's more or less a cultural cornerstone in the Asian gaming community and it was also one of, if not the first game to introduce gachapon (chance based lootboxes) to gaming.
Classic World is a new version of the game that tries to recapture the gameplay and pacing of the MS from the late 2000's, and by that I mean it's notoriously grindy and brutally slow to level or accrue in-game money compared to modern MS, which lets you blitz past all of the early-mid game content to grind endgame and more recent content, as is the trend with most long-running MMORPGs.
You may be thinking, "wow that sounds a lot like what Blizzard is doing with WoW Forever", and you would be almost exactly right except Nexon is a Korean game company so they're, how to put this, conservative with content releases. WoW Forever is releasing with a pretty solid amount of content because it's already in the game files, Blizzard just needs to adjust pacing to match how it was before while maintaining modern QoL features. MSCW on the other hand is a fair bit more limited in current offerings, with additional regions for higher levels already in the files (they were in the closed beta tests) but locked until next year, supposedly to try and stretch user retention so they don't blitz all the content again. As a result, the well over 100,000 players that surged in have packed the current playable space beyond absolute capacity, even with 40 channels, and it's a struggle to find a map that doesn't have at least 4 other people on it. On top of that there's already a rampant and growing botting problem of throwaway accounts farming mesos (in-game cash) for RMT purposes, which is only making the overcrowding issue even worse since they usually take up all the space in the most convenient low level training areas.
Despite all that, I'm still having a good time. The much slower pace is actually refreshing and reaching the 2nd job advancement feels like a proper accomplishment again rather than being a 15 minute speed bump that it is in modern MS. I actually need to manage my mesos and potions, and player-run shops are thriving with stuff other than real-money cosmetics (though there's a ton of that too, naturally). Going to take my time with it once I hit 2nd job (bowman 1st job is rough) and enjoy it at a steady, leisurely pace to avoid burnout. Happy mapling!
I was 12 when I started playing Maplestory back in the day! I played it on and off even throughout the many updates that vastly changed the game (Big Bang and everything afterwards) and even got back into playing on the modern era via their seasonal catch-up progression servers.
It is ridiculously nostalgic, probably the most nostalgia has ever flavored a game’s appeal for me. I don’t even like the amount of grinding and the early game economics, and I feel so incentivized to pick “the right class” because it’s such a time sink to grind one up to higher levels. I guess I’m having fun? Not sure how long that will last - I do appreciate I can play it on my Steam Deck!
What I've been playing the most is Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney the first game, on PC. I've played it before, but I don't remember a lot of it and it's been nice to have something very casual that is mostly reading and isn't something I need to sit up straight and intensely focus on. I've been playing it on a smallish handheld via PC emulation and it's been great so far. I just finished the....second case? I think. Turnabout Samurai or something like that. Looking forward to playing some more and eventually getting distracted and putting it down for years again. But that's just the nature of my gaming life.
In between, I've been playing Stalker 2 an hour here and an hour there. I really like it, not much else to say. Though one thing I do find interesting is that the Bloodsucker creatures are far less scary than they were in the original game. I'm not sure if this is due to the fact that I'm almost 20-years older than I was when I played thef first game or if something changed, but they just feel a lot more obnoxious than scary.
I also put down Monsters & Memories. I quite like the game, but it's maybe a little too faithful to Everquest. I would love to keep playing, but unfortunately, I do not have the time to try and find a group for an hour and then sit in the same spot for an hour or more and kill the same creatures over and over, even if the social interaction is fun. I often need to be able to set a game aside at the drop of a hat and this MMO is just no conducive to that at this point in my life and it's not terribly fun or interesting to go off and try to solo stuff. I think there's a lot to love about it, but I just don't have the kind of time or energy for gaming I did as a teenager.
What'd you think of the characters in Phoenix Wright so far?
They're fun. I've always loved/hated Edgeworth, Phoenix is fun, in so far as he kind of reminds me of myself; constantly questioning himself and his competency, but is actually quite capable.
Maya is fun, Mia has giant boobs and I've always had a soft spot for Gumshoe.
I continue to play an unhealthy amount of Heroes of the Storm, and have been enjoying seeing my stats on Heroes Profile as I upload my replays and see just how good, or more often not good, I am.
However, I've had a run of not enjoying it as much recently:
I tend to play solo QM, which is a grab bag on any given day, you win some you lose some. But recently, there's a 5-stack premade party I've been encountering, who are obnoxiously try-hard in their game play, and it's ruined any element of fun when I see I'm up against them in the loading screen. If I were a part of a 5-stack premade and (presumably) also on voice chat, perhaps I could play a reasonable game against them. But in a mixed-to-none party QM lobby, it's usually us getting shitrolled until the game ends with something like 32 deaths on our side, and 3 on theirs.
It tends to tilt me, but I've started just waiting in the post-game score screen until I see them as either offline, or back in game, and then I'll re-queue up. I guess on the bright side, at least they usually shitroll in 10-15 minutes, they're quick losses? The party has some cocky B steppers in it though, which is obnoxious.
For the HotS uninitiated:
You can't chat with the enemy team at all in HotS, it's been disabled in an effort to prevent toxicity. So when people want to be a dick to someone on the other team, they'll spam B step, as
Bis the hotkey to return to base.Example one, 42 second clip. The enemy Murky started B stepping me when he thought he escaped me at 34 seconds. He forgot I have an AoE melee attack, I hit the gate he was standing behind, and got him anyway.
Example two, 39 second clip. The enemy Nova spent the whole game B stepping us any time she was getting away, so our whole team started B stepping back as we were slapping the core to win/end the game at 16 seconds, because we are mature adults who know how to handle our emotions.
Edit: Random and recent bonus clip for your viewing pleasure. 41 seconds long. Me winning a (mostly) 4v1.
I've been playing a bunch of things (and meaning to post here, but continuously forgetting), but I got sucked into Outcast Tales this weekend. It's an excellent roguelike strategy / RPG. It plays a lot like a D&D game with friends, since there's equal parts combat and non-combat stuff. Each character gets a personality each run (which affects their demeanor and abilities) so there are a ton of combinations. Just a very nicely put together game. And it's free!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2551970/Outcast_Tales/
Alright, folks, I've done it, I've beaten Xenosaga Episode III. Aside from Xenosaga for the DS (I eagerly await the Vector translation for that game), I've now beaten all Xenosaga games. Spent the next two days not playing anything, just thinking about it. FULL SPOILERS AHEAD.
I had heard before that 3 was the best game in terms of gameplay and art style, and while I agree with that, it's also the fame where you see the most cut content, which is sad. T-elos is barely used. You don't even see the facea of the two midgame bosses you end up killing. Pellegri doesn't get very much. Doctus disappears from the story. There were obviously so many more plans that had to be dropped in favour of that boss gauntlet at the end.
I ended up really really liking that Allen confession scene I had been dreading since episode 1. I liked how he doesn't really 'win' Shion over so much as snaps her out of Kevin's grasp.
I really like the character of Shion, and how she gets a bit worse before she gets better. I don't really see in the community how Kevin wasn't just being a dick. He groomed her into a relationship from the day he met her, when she was like 8 years old and he was a teeenager. The plan was, from the very beginning, bond with Shion as the Maiden, give her the key, die to KOS-MOS and then become a Testament. That Kevin grew to genuinely care about her was incidental, she was Kevin's tool from the word go. She goes from tragedy to tragedy, so I'm a bit surprised that the community seems a bit mixed in her. She goes through this game thinking that she was her mom's condition and is going to die, and only Kevin can save her (who she loves).
Moving on to Ziggy, boy am I fucking glad I played Pied Piper before this, because the Voyager and Lactis stuff would've meant absolutely nothing emotionally without it. Knowing that Ziggy is fighting the guy who killed his wife and daughter in front of him adds a lot to their interactions. If anything, I wished I played the game before Episode 2, tbh. Also, I ship Jan with Juli.
chaos is Jesus, but the game is weird about it. Nah nah, he's Yeshua, who helped the Messiah, who is actually Jesus. But... Jesus is just the latinisation of the name Yeshua. So what was his name them?? It feels like they backed out at the last minute, because why would would you call him Yeshua? But you kept Mary Magdalene?
MOMO didn't get very much for this one, which is a bit sad. I like MOMO.
Jr got some because of his family, but Albedo is much less compelling as a reasonable tsundere. Albedo was at his absolute best when a completely insane sociopath. I do not enjoy how calm Jr and MOMO are about him, given how directly paralleled to rape the way he treated MOMO was. I was ok with Jr mourning having to kill his twin brother. Less ok with them smiling whenever Albedo shows up.
I have a lot more thoughts, but I'll probably stop here, don't want to turn this into a personal blog.
Oh, and now I've started playing Fire Emblem 4: Genealogy of the Holy War.
Ive been playing Old School Runescape.
They just released a new end game raid, the Fractured Archive, but I havent touched it, because I am an ironman and dont have the gear to do end game content and also I am bad at it.
However I am doing some boss fights. I have been farming Kril Tsutsaroth, which is tough to do solo. I have been using the Scorching bow to snare and kite, but without the lightbearer Im just doing 1 kill and teleporting out.
I also am doing Moons of Peril runs. So far I only got the blue moon trousers, but Im hoping to get the blood moon set so I can fight Phosanis nightmare.
I'd say I'm either about 90% or 40% through Castlevania: Belmonts Curse. I say that because it consistently feels like the game is on the verge of throwing something nuts at you and revealing that everything to this point was tutorial.
I was just chatting to someone about the game and they genuinely only know Castlevania as the Netflix Show. Besides getting to feel my age for a second, it's pretty clear that Konami needs to rehabilitate their IPs.
The Netflix show definitely played a role here and it seems to have set the tone and style template for the series going forward. Every character had a massive chip on their shoulder and theres enough personal baggage in play to fill a large passenger plane. The playable character is also Trevor and Syphas kid so she has a mix of wielding every weapon she gets her hand on while amassing a considerable spellbook through the game.
Theres so many options available that it actually becomes a bit of a pain to manage everything. To the developers credit, there's no shortage of options available between weapons, spells and relics to cater to almost any playstyle. It actually feels a lot like Silksong with the bonus of no limits to when and where you can change your gear. Fully upgrading a spell have little lore drops about how every major characters/bosses got caught up with Dracula. Max level weapons have very powerful abilities and require completing explicit questlines or secret puzzles. But there's no seamless way to use all these things.
You need to go through 3 menu screens for each item. Quick-swap loadouts would have made it so much easier to use the right tool for the job.
Beside that, what seems like very limited enemy veriety and a few boss room run-backs (thank god there's no currency or corpse runs), I really like everything I've seen so far. The entire game takes place in one city but there is a surprising variety of very expansive areas. Each area also has its own gimmicks and the detailed backgrounds make everything seem like environmental storytelling or a clue to a greater mystery.
You also get the satisfaction of solving some of those mysteries before getting the exact clues. A ton of bosses dotted through the map and you have what feels like plenty of flexibility to how you can tackle the main quest. And grinding up to tackle a bad area often involves completing spesific challenges, not running the same loops for exp.
But there's plenty here that feels decisively not like traditional Castlevania and inspired by newer games. Platforming can become brutal and has a very Celeste feel with how precise the movement rules are(there's also a charm that mitigates environmental damage by 75%). Your character also plays a lot more like Hornet, with significant movement tech and detailed animations.
What I enjoy most here is the storytelling. All characters are very emotive and it shows in their dialog, animations and VO. Theres a clear through line of managing ones emotions and the main character is very angry. What seperates the good and bad endings isn't just the hero amassing power, but also learning lessons about how Dracula leveraged powerful people's insecurities. Would have liked to see this play out a bit more in gameplay for the main character, but I guess the whole "easy power" system has been done to death already.
Overall, very fun game. I really hope to see more from the series and for the Dev team to make their own original concepts.
Still playing The Witcher 3 (Remastered) on the Switch 2. For those who say my post last week, I did make it to Skellige and am now wandering around the islands.
Really enjoying the change of scenery from the swampier Velen areas. Though I’m very bad at the boating so I’ve just been doing a lot of fast travel, so I feel like I’m missing quite a bit I could be finding.
We visited Seattle's Museum of Pop Culture, and they had an exhibit on recent indie games, so my kids and I have been getting into Loddlenaut, Biped, and Henry Halfhead. Still early in all of those, but they are fun so far.
I've started playing Deadlock, and I really like it. While I doubt I'll ever get to Ranked, because just a match a day feels like a lot, it is so cool to for the first time play a MOBA where the characters and style of gameplay are both actually interesting!
Like, those were the two big things preventing me from getting into the genre - for a genre all about characters, the characters are normally super boring looking and have nothing on any random Hero Shooter, and the camera and general vibes are normally very detached from the action, making it feel like I'm being tricked into playing StarCraft instead of a fun game.
Deadlock actually has a fun concept for its world, and absolutely truckloads of charm in every corner. It's harder to find characters I don't love - everyone is vibrant and shown to be someone who'd actually be lovely to hang out with and wouldn't call you slurs despite it being the 20th century. Hell, one is even non-binary! And some would definitely kill me for no reason but at least it wouldn't be a hate crime, so that's nice. In the few cases I don't vibe with a design at all, it's usually because they use blatant placeholder assets.
Which brings up how the game is invite-only pre-alpha no-it-doesnt-count-leave-us-alone mode, despite having existed for years. I have nothing to say about that except, like, A, it's weird, and B, it might actually be a smart marketing strategy, since it can build the community slowly instead of asking everyone to jump ship for a new toy and running into the collective action problem.
Also, wow, I can't believe that as a kid I could play multiple rounds of high-engagement unpausable strategy games one after another and it was normal to me. In my thirties, it feels downright rude to even take the 45 minutes for one game away from the world. What if someone needs me? 😮💨
I just finished Onimusha Way of the Sword, loved it but wow did they re-use the bosses in that lead up to the final boss. I enjoyed it so much im going to keep the disc and maybe try the carnage difficulty at some point.
I'm most of the way through Over the Hill, which im not digging as much. I played so much Snowrunner and Roadcraft and this game offers nothing that those games dont in heaps. Theres no variety in the terrain or anything, you almost instantly learn that theres just a grade that your truck can't climb and that's that. The rest is just visual differences in ground textures. The collectibles are pointless and getting to them boils down to "i have to drive around the structure until i find the ramp-ish part of it". Snowrunner always felt like a layered puzzle where you unlocked parts of the map by hauling stuff with the right equipment. Then you brought a truck to pull your other truck out because you decided to go the fast route instead of the good route. There's none of that here, you just hold the gas and go. The maps are extremely boring, and theres very few of them and the formula is just so mundane. You get in to a map, you find the hubs, you drive up paths to get to the cosmetic collectibles and rinse and repeat till you find the exit. I dunno, ive played some pointless games but this really takes the cake. Its so disappointing and theres no satisfaction for getting over said hill because you literally just floored it. For an indie game, i expected very snappy little maps that were jam packed with intentionally designed challenges. This does not feel like that. Its just.... lazy. Which is such a bummer because i love Absolute Drift and especially Art of Rally. I was excited for an indie snowrunner. I swear to god if this is just some scheme to release a buttload of dlc for the game ala snowrunner im gonna be furious.
Finally, i am a fair way through Penguin Colony and its silly. Im hoping the storytelling converges with the gameplay because im a bit lost. But its definitely an interesting little project and its got a really loose feel to the puzzles and objectives and everything. Almost like youre just like... a penguin thats stumbling across stuff. Ill start trying to traverse some seemingly random piece of architecture when it suddenly dawns on me that its intentionally built as a little platforming puzzle. Im digging the vibes.
That is the intention of the game, which is why I think it's not a singleplayer game whatsoever. Neither does funselektor, all their media around the game features about three players at once. There is little to do alone except run some hills (though even steep ones can be gamed a bit with the winch). You're not wrong in your assessment, I mostly agree, but I do think this game needs to be played together for it to click. It's a collective zen meditation using offroad cars rather than singing bowls as the relaxation method.
Even so, I'm enamored with the lighting and weather effects in the game. They're actively making me want to stop and look, something few games get me to do. Oddly enough, what took me out of the experience is the godawful animation they gave animals. Like, most of the car stuff looks fine and moves properly within the physics engine.. animals seem to have different rules while also being shortchanged on the effort they put in.
Regardless, compared to 'art of rally' and 'absolute drift' I find it a weak entry. Those all looked simple on the surface but had a lot going on under the surface when it came to skill expression. High-Low shift for offroading is simply not enough, and I think fans of the earlier games may find 'over the hill' lacking.
I'm running into a choice paralysis scenario, recently I finished all the Summon Night Swordcraft Story games. But the next things on my list are a combination of things, watching Hacka Doll, starting the Nia Liston anime vs waiting for it to end, continuing Otome Domain, go back to the King in Yellow(the first 4 stories at least), or playing more games where my options, despite narrowing them are
1-Do Swordcraft Story games post game
2-Finish FFTA
3-Signalis(King in Yellow reading is just a happy coincidence)
So I see what my options are and I find it hard to commit to one or choose one.
Anyway, as far as the Swordcraft Story games go, Summon Night is a popular(I believe) series in Japan where very few games actually got localized outside of it, we got 2 of the Swordcraft games localized and 1 recently got a fan Translation.
All three games have you pick the character from between male or female, and the 2nd and 3rd game also let you pick your companion/Summon Creature.
The first game involves your character being a new Craftknight, aspiring to be a Craftlord like their father, which is pretty much a "Wow this person is great at both making and using all their weapons", while on your quest to craft ever better weapons, your path and what your deceased father wanted to do at the end converge.
The second game is sort of similar, the whole your father is dead, but instead of doing tournaments, it's.... weird, you enter ruins where big evil is sealed at the start with your friend, your friend betrays you, everyone in the town suspects you so you try and look for 4 swords(something you eventually do in the first) to seal big evil guy for good, except going down 50 floors of a labyrinth/dungeon, you go to some weird temples where the swords are stored.
The third is the best one by far in both gameplay and plot(minus the endgame/final boss portion), still trying to be a craftknight, except of following in your father's steps, you just... do it for the sake of getting better, your mentor is dead though, and their summon creature is the one who takes care of teaching you. You get involved with a mysterious girl and another summon creature, being her guardian and helping her reach her goal.
Brief summary because I'm sort of in a hurry, and because it's been a month since I finished the first one, with my impression of it that the first is decent-ish for being a GBA game, but not outstanding, 2 being a step down, 3 being the best one overall and is actually good.
I was sick the past week and I spent it mostly playing Fallout 4, specifically the Magnum Opus modlist - highly recommend the list, it's really well put together! Link to the wabbajack gallery info: https://www.wabbajack.org/modlist/wj-featured/magnum_opus
This time I even managed to lock in and I finished the main quest! Now just a ton of other content and DLC stuff to do! Also Sim Settlements 2, I'm barely into chapter 2 of it... it's very fun
I'm playing through Doom 2 In Rural Only. It's a rural-themed community project WAD, one of the Cacowards winners of 2025. The difficulty is moderate at Ultra-Violence and some quicksaving between battles but there was definitely a hump at map02 as far as I'm concerned. The archviles and pain elementals are a menace. My favorite so far is map07 which is an open-ended sandbox where the keys are gated by three challenges you can take on in any order.
I scrolled through the Steam Nextfest demos and found few interesting titles. The False Echo demo was fun and engrossing, probably something for Papers, Please fans for being a narrative bureaucratic procedure simulator. Then there was the Prospice. Horror MudRunner-like. Promising, but I had to turn off the screen flickering effect!
Other than that, I played through another run of Desecrators. They updated the level generator so they can have more interesting topologies, with loops. I was surprised at how much more interesting the maps are now! It also seems to generate them a lot faster.
I also played through Vomitoreum for the second time. It's a good time, a short metroid-like FPS with a creepy, horrific atmosphere. I'd had enough time since last playing it to forget what to do. My main criticism is that none of the enemies respawn and there's a lot of looking back and forth for the path you've just unlocked, so by the end of the game there's a lot of wandering without anything meaningful to do if you're thorough on a first pass-through of an area. That said, the atmosphere is great and the map design is pretty cool to just look at. Nevertheless, I'd lost my patience near the end and looked up where the path to the end boss sequence.
The battles are also not very challenging. Most of the bosses can be beat by circle strafing and occasional jumping+dashing. I'm fine with that for a game like this, though.
My Castlevania kick has not stopped, and I'm currently playing a few different ones.
Dracula X Chronicles is a remake of Rondo of Blood for the PSP, I'm playing it on my Vita. It makes me wish there were more games in the classic Castlevania style, since the original game is arguably the peak of that style, and the remake proves that it can still hold its own as a contemporary title. Multiple characters, tons of secrets, and a level of difficulty that demands focused attention give it a lot of replay value, even more so since it comes with both Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night as unlockables. A no-brainer for any handheld enjoyer, and a breath of fresh air after so many years of games like Symphony of the Night.
I finished Curse of Darkness and, after mildly enjoying the initial playthrough, decided to play it again as Trevor Belmont, who you unlock upon beating the main game. Biiiig mistake lol. It's maybe the most barebones secondary character I've ever seen: the game's RPG mechanics, monster familiar raising system, weapon crafting system, equipment system, and even the inventory in general are completely excised, and it turns the game into a series of mostly empty hallways and rooms and little else. Combat can still be enjoyable, but the lack of overall difficulty and only being able to use one weapon means it gets old very quickly. You don't even unlock anything for completing the game in this mode, so it was actually just a huge waste of time and made me dislike the game far more than I would have otherwise. If you ever play this game, try this mode for a few minutes and then drop it forever, you're missing nothing at all.
Stay tuned for my thoughts on Lords of Shadow 2, nearing the end of that (I think).
I try and I try, but I just can't get into Classicvania. I've played a good amount of Dracula X, as well as the first game on NES and I very much like them, but the Iggavania style just appeals to me so much more.
With caveats, I guess. I keep trying to play the first DS game and while I've made good progress, I just don't like it much. I get bored of exploring after awhile and the alternate castle these games always include makes me feel pretty bored.
I like the Igavania games as well, absolutely, but it seems a shame that that's ALL the series has to be, you know? The classic games have their own style that appeals to different players, and there aren't a lot of games made like them anymore. There's room for both, is all I mean by that.
By the way, if there's any classic style game you should try, it's Super Castlevania IV for SNES. Responsive controls, great music and visuals, branching paths, and a difficulty that feels just right. I don't know if you meant you've tried Dracula X for SNES, but I wouldn't recommend it; it's a pretty compromised port of Rondo of Blood, basically a different (vastly inferior) game.
For the DS games, I'm partial to Portrait of Ruin. If you need your DS fix, give that one a go maybe!
Yeah, that's a fair point.
I meant I tried whichever one is the remake on PSP. Made it as far as the boss on, I think it was like a ship or something? Kept trying and trying, but never really could beat him and ended-up giving up. I'll have to give Super Castlevania IV a try. I have played a bit of Bloodlines, but never did make it very far with it; I do feel like these games should appeal to me, but I also feel like it's a bit of memorization, which is not my forte.
And actually, thinking about it a little more now, I think I made it as far as a boss rush on the PSP game? Does that sound familiar? I actually kind of hate boss rushes, so that actually may be where I gave up at.
The one that I keep bashing my head against on DS is Dawn of Sorrow, with the DS fix. Maybe I should try a different one instead, given that that one just isn't taking for me.
The PSP one is Dracula X Chronicles, yeah. Between the Death fight and the boss rush in (I think) the next stage, the ending really ramps up in difficulty. I also tapped out around that point the first time I played it.
Maybe that's part of why I like it. It doesn't treat finishing the game as an inevitability, it's something you gotta work for. It's pretty short all things considered, but it's almost like you've got to clear a performance bar to beat it. Games like Elden Ring and Dark Souls have a bunch of tools you can use to give yourself an edge if you experiment enough, but Castlevania essentially demands you just nail your movement, timing, and spatial awareness in a way I found extremely engaging.
Memorisation is an interesting point, because it does play a part, but I don't think it's the end game. I think you're supposed to familiarize yourself with what enemies or bosses are capable of, and then use that information to plan a safe or effective route on the fly. If you know how to deal with specific enemies in isolation, you'll have to figure out how to deal with them in different combinations at a moment's notice. There's a chance it still won't be your thing, but it might click if you reframe it: I see the stages like a puzzle, and the enemies and hazards are pieces to put into place, for example.
I see what you're getting at, but I definitely think this a series that really relies heavily on memorization, which just isn't for me as a guy with an awful memory.
I've been playing Bloodlines periodically (mostly because I was a Sega kid) the past few days after conversing with you and I do really like it. It's a beautiful game and fun to play, but I find myself unable to get any further than Stage 2, where I end up burning pretty much all my lives and continues in the course of the stage.
Especially in the part with the rising water, where I can't see what's above me as I climb higher and higher, I feel like I need to memorize what's above me and where the enemies are in order to effectively navigate the level.
But I've also been thinking about the Igavanias after you mentioned them and I can absolutely see why someone might not find them super appealing. After playing the GBA series, I've found them largely pretty boring. The exploration can be fun, but it doesn't feel like there's a lot of meat or replayability to them, especially as someone like myself who came to them really only recently. Much as I loved Aria of Sorrow, I had to force myself to finish Symphony of the Night and haven't really been able to get through any of the other games later in the series.
But I also think in general and this applies to all of the Castlevania series, I'm just not big on 2d platformers. I like them alright, I grew up on them and there's several I still return to, but I also don't generally find them very interesting or fun on a personal level. So there's also a taste component of it for me.
Bloodlines is one of the only classic games I havent finished, just because of its baffling continue system. Every other classic series game has unlimited continues, so I have no idea why they ditched it for that one. It just makes it harder to appreciate, and more likely that folks will use save states these days rather than giving it a fair go (which I couldn't really blame anyone for). I'll probably see it through at some point, because otherwise it's a really great game, but it's just a shame.
The later entries are interesting to return to, since there's so many games using the blueprint of Symphony of the Night that have the benefit of decades of iteration. Obviously newer games have to do a lot more to stand out than when the formula was new and novel, so maybe some of those older ones don't hold up as well depending on your exposure. I still like most of them, but there's arguments to be made for either side; like you said, the taste component can be significant.
I do think that these games generally hold up best on their original platforms/contexts. A game like Dawn of Sorrow may not wow you if you're playing it on the Advance Collection on your TV, but it's a great game to have on a tiny system like the DS, where you can pull it out for a few minutes pretty much anywhere.
I really like hearing someone else's experience with games I love, especially when they're so different from mine, so it's been great to get your perspective on this. Curious to hear what some of the 2D platformers are that you mentioned still returning to.
Grail. think "Slay the Spire autobattler". It's not amazing, but fun enough. Some cards are really unclear, though, with what they do exactly. Combined with that you can't "step" through a battle it's sometimes a bit of a guessing game. But you can make nice broken builds, which is the fun part.
I just finished Valheim since they released the final 1.0 content and the game is essentially finished. My friends and I have played through it at every major content release, but I think this will be the last time we play for a long time.