October 2017 Catchup

So, technically I finished the first part of The Walking Dead: Season One at the end of September, but I didn't finish the entire thing until a few days later. Come to think of it, I didn't realize I'd actually managed to get through the whole season in such a short period of time. I think if I'd played through the episodes as they released I would have had a much more scattered reception to the game because I would have started missing a lot of important details. The first season is pretty interesting. It actually wasn't my first experience with TellTale, but the only other game of theirs I'd ever played as the hilariously titled Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People which of course has a wildly different theme.

I played both this and The Walking Dead: Season Two back to back. I think I liked the first one a little better because I felt more invested in Lee as a character than I did in a lot of the folks left over in the second season. I was left with a neutral enough reception to the second season that I didn't feel particularly motivated to continue, particularly since I've heard the reception to that was pretty mixed. I'm kind of okay with not knowing what else happens since I can pretty much guess that you'll make choices, people will die, and life moves on. Just like with the show and comic book series the game is based on, the outcome is pretty bleak.

I also finished The Banner Saga for PC in October, which is of course a grim and vaguely Nordic strategy RPG in which you command an army comprised of a group of humans and bearded giants who don't always get along particularly well. I really enjoyed it for a lot of reasons, but the hand-drawn art style and simple but engaging tactical combat were big parts of it. It's also a very bleak game in which your choices matter. There are always sacrifices to be made in pretty much any decision and it's easy to end up in rough situations due to making a string of bad choices. I think I only spent 10-12 hours on this game, which is definitely on the shorter side for a game of this type, but it's helpful that it continues pretty seamlessly into The Banner Saga 2, which I didn't quite finish! However, I did end up buying The Banner Saga Trilogy on PS4 so I think I'll continue it there one of these days.

I also randomly played through Soul Blazer a few days after that. I think the reason I decided to do it was because I was searching for a game I could play on PC (through emulation) while I was away from my console games. I had a weird setup at the time where my computer was completely separate from everything else and I don't completely remember why. I chose Soul Blazer because I'd already played through Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma in the past, which are part of a loosely connected trilogy. I could definitely see how it influenced those games but I enjoyed it even as a standalone experience. It almost has a classic arcade game vibe at times, but it's loosely an action RPG in which you wander an overworld Legend of Zelda style and defeat waves of enemies as well as the lairs at which they generate. In doing so, you resurrect the souls of former occupants of a town and gradually restore life to it. You progress through the game resurrecting these towns that you are then able to visit and interact with the NPCs therein. Even though the games following it improved on this format, I still thought it was a really interesting and fun game to play even to this day.

I finished Soul Blazer on around October 11th. Looking ahead, I see I didn't finish anything else until near the end of November! It looks like during this time I ended up starting a lot of games that I either didn't finish until much later or ended up falling off completely. I mentioned earlier that I'd started Banner Saga 2, but there was also Half-Minute Hero 2 which is a really weird and interesting game that I might actually revisit someday. I also tried Shantae and the Pirate's Curse, which struck me as a passable platformer but not particularly memorable. That was disappointing because I'd always wanted to try out the series.

I also started Nier: Automata which to this day I've only played up to the end of the first "route." I have such weird feelings about this game. I enjoyed playing what I did for the most part and I understand from a lot of reading online that that first route is not emblematic of what the game is as a whole. To me, it was a decent action RPG with a really nice soundtrack, but from what I've heard it gets a lot better after you've played through the game three times? That seems like such an ask for me to invest that amount of time into a game to get the full experience. I started the second route which puts you in control of former support character 9S but because the experience the second time through is so similar to the first, I became discouraged and eventually fell off. I think one day I'd really like to revisit it, but every time I try to do so, I have trouble sticking with it.