otaku

Chaos;Head – The story of a Whiny;Loser

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There’s a scene in Wayne’s World, which you’ve seen 9 times if you’re in this site’s target demographic (American, mid-40s, name starting with J) where Wayne laments his misfortune directly to the audience in an unappealing way. “I’m being shit on. Shit on,” he says. The camera begins to pan away from him, the joke being that the audience doesn’t want to waste time with a whining loser. This is my short review for this game – I am the audience and Chaos;Head is Wayne Campbell in the brief moment he is uncool. But I will add some more words for people who demand actual information in their game reviews. You know, nerds.

I started Steins;Gate because it has a reputation as a great visual novel and after Looping Rage, that’s what I needed. But about 3 minutes in I realized that S;G was not the first in its series, so I checked Wikipedia and then my list of ‘eShop games bought on sale I don’t remember I have’ and discovered Chaos; Head on both (the version I played has the word ‘Noah’ appended to the title to designate it as the rerelease with improved graphics, rounder letters, twice the punctuation, etc.). →  Just read it.

Review – Ys IX: Monstrum Nox

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So I just beat Ys IX. It was… better than I was expecting, but not as good as it could be. It takes nearly every feature and system from Ys VIII – features and systems, mind you, that were new and specifically built to work in that game’s very particular setting – and brings them whole hog into this new game, with a very different setting. Suffice to say that it doesn’t really work.

For example, in Ys VIII it made sense to earn rewards for mapping out the island, since it was literally uncharted. But it seems insane to be rewarded for mapping out a centuries old city (under the guise of “finding the places that tourists would be most interested in”).

Similarly, it made sense to have a crafting system on an island with no shops, and a bartering system that allows you to refine low grade crafting materials by essentially trading for them. But Ys IX has so many different shops – with so much good gear – that forging your own weapons usually isn’t worth it (meanwhile, you refine items by interacting with a magic lantern. →  Readius III and IV