What I Played and Read This Week '26/01/04

Happy new year!

Games

Arisha to Kagami no Arisa popped up on my Twitter feed; it's a VN/spot-the-difference webgame in the vein of those spot-the-impostor games sweeping the market, with the big gimmicks being that (1) the impostor is a friendly mirror doppelganger who's pretending to be you; (2) you can only see your own appearance between rounds, so it's more like remember-the-difference; and (3) missed differences persist between rounds, so it doubles as a(n increasingly creepy) dress-up game. There are multiple endings; unfortunately, these are a bit predictable, and you'll most likely get the least interesting one on your first playthrough, but it's an enjoyable time and the art is very good. If you can read Japanese, you should check this out.

I underestimated Ninja Gaiden; the last two stages are brutal, and I'm currently stuck on the final boss. What's the deal with dying to a boss sending you back to the start of the subact at best and the start of the entire act at worst? Dying anywhere else lets you resume at the beginning of the screen, and even continues (which are infinite!) just restart the subact. In a game full of cruel but defensible decisions, this is actually just bullshit.

Midweek I took a break with some of Tecmo's other NESware: Mighty Bomb Jack, Solomon's Key, and Rygar. Mighty Bomb Jack is a bizarre masterpiece and I love it to pieces; Solomon's Key seems good but I played a clone too recently to want to go through it right now; and Rygar probably needs my full attention. 

Grim Dawn is really starting to lose me. I beat the main campaign; I wanted to do the DLC this time and get the 'full Grim Dawn experience', but I don't know if I'll bother. Hopefully it's more like the first couple of acts, which are intricate and full of little events and secrets and side quests, than the last one, which is completely linear and dull as dirt.

ARC Raiders is exactly as good as everyone says it is. I'm bemused by how peaceful the solo lobbies are; I've had more people actively help me than try to kill me. Last round, somebody tossed me three blueprints as we were extracting!

I'm greatly enjoying Samurai Warriors, save for the castle stages, where the player runs through a series of dungeon-like floors in a manner reminiscent of a more traditional action game. The strategy elements of the field stages are completely missing, and all that replaces them are easy-to-dodge, easier-to-spot traps. The first few were a cute novelty, but at this point I've spent maybe a third of my time in them and I'm completely sick of them. Also, compared to the field stages, they feel terribly sparse in objectives and events: whereas field stages serve up a constant series of petty officers, reinforcement gates, missions to prevent fire attacks, and so on, castle stages have perhaps one boss or gimmick (such as fake stairs) per floor. The linearity also hurts replayability; you have to climb through the same stages in the same order, whereas the wide-open field stages give you the option to beeline for the boss, wipe out all the enemy commanders, go for different missions, etc.

Books (0/52)

Anne of Green Gables is one of the most beautifully written books I've ever had the pleasure of reading; I'm closing in on the end, but I'll probably check out the rest of the series someday.

Having enjoyed the experience of reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms alongside playing Dynasty Warriors, I picked up The Chronicle of Lord Nobunaga to go with Samurai Warriors. It's an accurate history penned by one of Nobunaga's aides; what I really want is a mythic history along the lines of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but I'm not sure if one exists (perhaps because the Sengoku period was situated in the mid-late second millennium, rather than the early first). If you're reading this and you know of one, let me know!