I've been playing a lot of Disgaea 4 recently. There's something really therapeutic about all the games in this series because they're very lighthearted and the gameplay is about grinding. The goal is to get all of your characters as ridiculously powerful as possible and unlock new abilities and skills. With enough diligence, you can upgrade just about every aspect of a character, like their damage, health, movement range, passive abilities, and number of counter attacks. There's a ton of classes to unlock and you can even reincarnate characters into new classes and class tiers. This can be done multiple times; you start over at level 1 but retain abilities previously learned. You can create characters with abilities from other classes in this way.
The storyline and characters are pretty cool (and humorous) but it's not the primary focus. I do appreciate that the game doesn't take itself very seriously, though. A lot of the item names and descriptions are hilarious, as they have been since the first game of the series. The characters are funny too, but sometimes it seems like the writers were trying a bit too hard. I'm pretty tired of hearing about Valvatorez's adoration for sardines. His fervor is less than subtle. Still, most of the time the humor hits the mark and the gameplay is what's keeping me interested. I just want to get to the point where I'm ridiculously strong and can take on level 9000 superbeasts.
I'm hoping to finish the main game within the next week or so, and then hopefully get back to Baldur's Gate II, which I've really been neglecting lately. It's such an amazing game but I think I've managed to burn myself out on the Infinity Engine. I shouldn't have tried to play Icewind Dale. It's not a bad game either, but it's definitely a step back from BGII. I think I've been shying away from games that are heavily narrative in nature--I just played through the entirety of Shadows of Amn at the same time as playing Katawa Shoujo. To follow that up, I played Digital: A Love Story and the oddly-titled sorry babe, but it just ain't your story. That's three visual novels and a heavily plot-driven RPG, so it's no wonder I'm a little burned out. I'll get back to Throne of Bhaal at some point. I really don't want it to wither away in my backlog again.
I'm in a state of mind right now where I'm not in the mood for immersing myself in a storyline. Right now I just want to destroy some enemies. After I'm finished with Disgaea 4, I'm sure I'll be burned out on that kind of gameplay again and want to switch over. If I'm not ready for Throne of Bhaal, then I guess I'll try to play something else. Something always seems to fall into my lap--or I pick up an old forgotten game to play. Story-heavy games are definitely a lot easier to write about, but I'm just not feeling it right now.
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