#gonna. not tag the ones i didn't like

[itsbenedict]

Games I Played In 2023 And Whether Or Not I Thought They Were Good (Part 2/4)

Yup, there's more! Lot of 'em this year.

[1] - 2 - [3] - [4]

Trails into Reverie

Sad to say, a... nightmarishly bad finale to the Erebonia/Crossbell saga of Trails.

The one thing I'll give it is that the core combat gameplay remains super fun, and carries the experience- they're always finding new ways to expand and iterate on the battle system, and this time is no exception.

Otherwise... man, where do I start? The story is just... such a mess. They clearly intended this to be, like... the big climax to the Crossbell games, where the people fight to reclaim their independence from Erebonian occupation- but, uh, whoops, they obviated that entire conflict with the end of Cold Steel, so they pull ridiculous Ouroboros shenanigans out of their ass to recreate that conflict as if the previous resolution never happened. Feels like they developed half the game with a specific set of antagonists in mind, and then whatever hack writer they have running the show over there changed their mind about how Cold Steel would resolve and they had to bend over backwards to make up a new antagonist who just happened to be using the same occupying army and main badguy they just dealt with already.

And structure aside, it's just... wow. Just playing the hits of awful hand-wavey writing decisions, villain motivations that make no sense, anime-ass fanservice, and sucking its own dick over how cool the cast is despite most of them doing nothing and existing only as action figures for the combat. It started stupid, threatened to become halfway interesting as it set up the intrigue, and then shat the bed in the finale by revealing that absolutely none of the intrigue mattered and that the villain was like dogs and just sort of did things arbitrarily. Never hated Trails writing more than this one. What an embarrassing display.

also like half the game's runtime is padded out with level grinding in an inexplicable magic cyber-dungeon like in Sky 3rd, which keeps acting like it's going to be important to the plot but then manages to somehow not come up even a little bit at all. and it's got a gacha in it even though it's all in-game currency and there's no real money shop so why would you bother doing that? does someone at Falcom think that gachas are actually intrinsically fun and not a shitty tactic to get people addicted to gambling? what's even wrong with them???

DREDGE

This is a fun fishing game! Except you're fishing for Lovecraftian nightmares! You're a fisherman on a fishing boat and the locals will pay extra for fish that have been horribly mutated by the unholy energies of the depths, so you have to keep finding weirder and weirder fish to finance the boat upgrades you need to find weirder and weirder fish.

I'd say... it works very well in the first half, as you're upgrading your boat and being slow-rolled on the eldritch horror, and kind of falls apart towards the end. The first couple areas are full of various NPCs and sidequests and things to do, and you always have something to do with your resources...

...but later on, the game's economy gets a little lopsided and a lot of the stuff you're hauling up just wastes space in your inventory because you're past the point where it matters but the game keeps throwing it at you. Areas are also a lot more sparse and lonely, and it ends up getting kind of repetitive.

Still, it's not too long, it has some really good atmosphere, and that first stretch is really engaging and tightly designed.

Wildfrost

This is one of them roguelike deckbuilders that are all the rage lately! And it is a difficult one. Even when you're good at it, you probably don't win most runs. Enemies are strong, you only get to play one card per turn, and you have to be really careful managing the action economy to make sure you don't get hit. You are a unit on the map, a unit without that much more health than normal summons, and if you die it's game over. Enemies hit hard and have various triggered abilities that punish you for playing sloppy- you'll frequently find yourself in no-win scenarios out of nowhere because you didn't sequence your moves right.

The other crazy thing is... the final boss? When you beat it, your hero gets possessed and becomes the final boss of the next run. Find some crazy broken synergy that steamrolls the boss? Great! Good luck finding a way to beat it next time around! The final fight's difficulty starts to scale out of control, and forces you to keep one-upping your own strategy with clever tricks.

The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog

This was released on April Fools, and... it's not that great, honestly. The title's basically clickbait- it's a murder mystery-themed party, and Sonic's not actually dead and no one thinks Sonic is actually dead. That wouldn't really be a problem (just kind of a missed opportunity), but...

I mean, this game is for babies. I guess I'm spoiled by real mystery games, but like... it's this completely linear sequence of rooms with one or two suspects to interrogate each, hiding precisely one secret that you uncover via the most dead-obvious deductions in the world. The core mystery works but doesn't really make you feel clever or anything.

It is, like... funny, though. Sorta. I mean, as funny as it can be with the totally toothless premise and a cast that's...

...I'm gonna be honest, I've never understood why people have so much love for the Sonic cast. They all feel so one-dimensional and tedious, and they're typically unmoored from any consistent world or setting that could give them something interesting to do. They have to get by on the strength of their personalities, which are a little flat since there's only so far they can push the bit in a kids' game.

The other thing that bugs me is... y'know ProZD's Danganronpa video? This game has a bad case of "BUT CAN YOU SPELL THE WORD KNIFE?", where in between every bit of deduction or progression, you have to play a completely unrelated minigame where you play as Sonic running along a course where you have to pick up X rings by the end or else restart it, which serves as a loose metaphor for the process of Thinking Really Hard. It's got a wonky isometric perspective and the levels are all both boring and difficult and it felt like a huge waste of time. And they get harder and longer over time, until you're spending longer on the bad minigame than on the actual game game.

Touhou: Lost Branch of Legend

This is a Slay the Spire clone, but it's Touhou.

...That's about all there is to say on the matter. It has a couple unique mechanics- colored manabases, "Teammate" cards that act kind of like planeswalkers, a chargeable super instead of potions... but it's Slay the Spire. You know what the deal is.

That said- I find it a lot more fun than Slay the Spire, honestly. The colored mana thing adds some depth to deckbuilding, boss relics give you unique buffs instead of debuffs, and a lot of the archetypes are crammed with explosive synergies that make it really fun to go off. Plus there's Touhou music through the whole thing, and it's generally better-produced and prettier despite being in early access. Only point where it loses to STS is the lack of a robust modding scene.

Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk

I did not finish this game! It was very bad!

I saw my cousin playing the sequel to this game on his Steam Deck at an engagement party, and I was dazzled by the screens and screens of party members and stats and mechanics all over the place, and thought- this has to be fun, right? I'll check it out- oh, hey, it's a sequel, I guess I'll play the first one.

This game is... very much an Etrian Odyssey clone, except they kinda make everything worse. You have have a ton of party members, but the thing is they don't learn active skills when they level up- there's no build choices to make, just Number Increasage. The only way to customize your skills is to assign units to covens, which have preset lists of abilities and drop randomly as loot. There's the appearance of customization, but in practice there's not a lot of options. Throw in "at any time an enemy might crit and unhealably disable one of your party members until you return to town, ruining your run", and it just feels like a slog.

The other thing is that it is completely repugnant. Like it's just deeply unpleasantly anime horny in the worst ways. The main character (sorta- you play as her mute faceless magic book, not her) is the worst. She's introduced beating a child and murdering her pets, and pretty much maintains that tenor throughout. And this is not an isolated incident! This game has some kind of fucked-up child abuse fetish- there's a significant number of child characters and all of them are physically assaulted by the nearest authority figure within seconds of being introduced. And it's not a problem, or even a theme- it's just a thing that happens all the time, practically as a gag. Also used as a funny gag: sexual assault! Wow! I couldn't stomach it!

PowerWash Simulator

This game seems like a giant shitpost- and to be clear, it absolutely is a giant shitpost- but it's shockingly cathartic and satisfying. There's just you, some levels implausibly caked in a ridiculous amount of grime, and a power-washer with various nozzles and soaps you use to hose off every inch of the place. There's something about it that just feels so nice! Objects flash and go ding when you fully clean them, there's a checklist of stuff and how clean it is, there's lots of fun little details in the levels...

...and it has a story campaign, which is very silly. You start off taking normal jobs washing normal things, but as you accrue Fame, you unlock weirder and weirder clients that wanted bigger and stranger things powerwashed. Without spoiling anything, it gets pretty wacky towards the end.

It's a fun game to play in the background when you're watching a show or listening to a podcast or something and want something mindless for your hands to do. (At least, at first. Some of the later levels are multi-hour behemoths, and it never feels good to stop in the middle.)

-

I still have... fourteen more games to write about. It's like they say...... the work of a gamer.......... is never done.......................

[1] - 2 - [3] - [4]

[thelilylav]

He ain't heavy, he's my brother.

(He Ain't Heavy He's My Brother, The Hollies)

My art, The World at Its Beginning (Dustin Pearson), The Tyrant's Tomb (Rick Riordan), The Fall of the House of Usher (Steven Berkoff), The Tower of Nero (Rick Riordan), Leto and her Children (William Henry Rinehart), The Moon Had No Light of its Own (Imaginary Future), My Love Mine All Mine (Mitski), Untitled (Lyra Wren), The Tyrant's Tomb (Rick Riordan), Electra (Sophocles), To Forgive (The Smashing Pumpkins), Unknown, The Tower of Nero (Rick Riordan), The Sun is Also a Star (Nicola Yoon), Doomed From the Beginning (@/veniennes on tiktok), On learning to write professionally (Interview with Jazmine Hughes by The Creative Independent), The Tower of Nero (Rick Riordan), My art

[achillean-knight]

Jumpscares you with more attempted Undertale pixel art LOL

[fiepige]

Who did Hobie make watches for?

Going through the movie and pausing at every scene with Hobie to look for more details for the 100th time and I just wanted to share something I noticed:

We know that Hobie made a watch for Gwen but not everyone in the new spider-gang are wearing watches made by Hobie in the end as far as I can tell:

We see Pav wearing a watch, it's a bit hard to see in detail (especially since he isn't wearing one in his own dimension to compare it to) but I'm assuming that Hobie made this one since it doesn't look at smooth as the spider-society watches. Also:

Pav's watch doesn't appear to have the lines around it like Hobie's does when he's wearing his HQ watch.

It's kinda hard to tell if Noir is even wearing a watch due to his coat but since we didn't see him at the society when the other members of the old spider gang (Peter B. and Penni) showed up I'm assuming he maybe wasn't even part of the spider-society (or maybe he just didn't want to help stop Miles from preventing his canon event). So my guess is Hobie made a watch for him too.

Both Ham and Margo appear to be wearing HQ watches (which means that maybe Noir is too since Ham apparently was a member of HQ even though he didn't show up earlier so maybe it's the same with Noir, what do you guys think?)

This makes me wonder if Hobie didn't have the time/resources to make more watches since I feel like them wearing HQ watches might be a disadvantage as Miguel might be able to track them (though maybe Hobie has disabled the tracking in their watches, it wouldn't suprise me if that was the case.)

Hobie is obviously wearing a watch he made since he ditched his old one when he left HQ.

I honestly couldn't get a close enough look at Peni to tell which watch she's wearing lol.

Peter B appears to still be wearing his HQ watch but it's kinda hard to tell for sure, it just looks kinda smooth to me.

But a cute detail I noticed is that Hobie might have made a day-pass for MayDay! It could also just be the one from HQ BUT she's not wearing it in the scene where Gwen shows up:

(To the left we see that she's only wearing a bracelet when she's home, to the right we see her wearing a day-pass at spider HQ)

It could just be the lighting but it looks like the one she's wearing at the end is a lighter shade of blue than the one from HQ)

So until we're told otherwise I headcanon that Hobie made a special day-pass for MayDay (which is super adorable if you ask me <3)

[redbootsindoriath]

Apparently in my absence this post had its 1000-notes-iversary.

This time we get to see the culprit responsible for ruining our heroes' lives as well.

I've really missed you guys, by the way. I know I've said that already, but I'm serious. Once or twice this year I've been right on the brink of coming back but schedule stuff always keeps me from letting myself commit to that again, and that in turn has kept me from posting anything at all. But I've been in an unexpected drawing mood lately and so if I can get enough stuff to set up a queue we might pretend I'm back for a month or so sometime this year. Maybe. Hopefully. We'll see. No promises though. That's why I'm hiding this paragraph under the cut.

Transcription:

[Beren:] "Uhhh...barkeep...I think he's had enough now..." [Tolkien:] "No, I don't think he has...!"

[raiiny-bay]

some kel sketches i'm working on

[coquelicoq]

what i love about the Famous Actor Natori Shuuichi of it all is that...it's not just that he's famous and therefore widely recognizable wherever he goes. like yes that is very funny because he was an exorcist before he became a famous actor, which means he CHOSE, on purpose, a day job that would make it harder to hide his double life/secret identity from the hordes of his adoring public, but it's more than that. it's not just that he's famous, it's that he's famous specifically for being an ACTOR, aka a person whose job it is to dissimulate, to make believe, to inhabit roles and emotions other than his own. like he decided he was going to become as visible as possible (which again was literally not necessary! he could have gone into any other career for his day job!!) but in such a way that everyone would see him but no one would see him - they would just see his various made-up personas, including the Famous Actor Natori Shuuichi persona. i can't decide if he's a genius or if he just made so many absurd decisions that they canceled each other out and circled back around to working out. he's either playing 9-dimensional chess or he's eating the pieces. too soon to say.

[quarks-pussy]

[Images description: Twelve pictures of Star Trek actors. The phrase "thank you for being both amazing actors and amazing people" is written across most of the images one word at a time, except for the two images in the middle. The middle images are of William Shatner, reading "not you!" and Robert Beltran, reading "or you for that matter". The actors in the other images are George Takei, René Auberjonois, DeForest Kelley, Gates McFadden, Wil Wheaton, Kate Mulgrew, Patrick Stewart, Siddig El Fadil (aka Alexander Siddig), Nichelle Nichols and Leonard Nimoy. End image description.]

Non exhaustive list of course. Many more such cases, in fact feel free to add

(insp)

[itsahotminuteinbetween]

i went out the other day and ran across some nice dresses so ofc i had to draw @sunnyys-jarss's roommate au boys in them! (If you haven't checked out their au, do so, they've got a fun blog at @ask-the-atwr-au!) Forgive me for the poor form of dresses and poses; I'm not very used to drawing people in formal clothing, so this was good practice!

(without color under the cut)

[baifengxis]

i don't like being negative about things but this is really just constructive criticism (that no people who make the show will see so it might be useless but anyway ksdkfsdg) i love 23.5 very very much but they tried to fit too many storylines into only 12 (so far 10) episodes and some resolutions just feel so...underwhelming...and it'd be much better to just not do them, for example, this whole thing with aylin and ton was just...not it, it wasn't really addressed and it just left a bitter taste for everyone, plus aylin had trouble talking anyway, we could've had her opening up anyway and use the extra time for aylinluna scenes that for whatever reason went missing today (bcs there was basically nothing and they went to eat in luna's house but we never see that? okay plus no make up scene or anything), also don't get me wrong but there's kinda too much time focusing on supporting boys, it's fine for them to exist and have cute little stories (even tho at this point i really don't know why ton exists but anyway) but i felt like they had so much time and lines in this episode, time and lines that were taken from the MAIN girls but anyway that's gmmtv i guess, so anyway all of this plus how fast the ongsasun conflict escalated and i get it, they're teenagers they do dumb things, i guess the conflict is eventually ongsa being insecure anyway but...we could've spent more time on those things rather than extra storylines that went nowhere and i just felt this issue a lot in this episode

so anyway my love for the show remains and i still believe it's the best thai gl we have so far, but i wanted to share my thoughts that i guess other people share too

[front-facing-pokemon]

[kitas-cleaning-supplies]

sakuatsu fic recs

ace-spec recs for @bbyboyakaashi

into the tides by ftld

completed | E | 16,657 words

“I’m not that into sex,” Sakusa says without regard for the public setting or the strangled noise that erupts from Atsumu’s throat. He hooks a finger through the handle of a delicately patterned teacup, arches an eyebrow, and waits. // this whole series >>> i'm love them

build me up by kromotriga

part 7/? | E | 37,100 words

Atsumu’s fingers involuntarily twitch as he types ‘strap on harness’ in the search bar of a favorite sex toy site while he waits, wondering what Kiyoomi has in store for him. He has his own toys he likes and is used to but he’s never seriously thought about the harness part before, about what a hypothetical partner might wear. Then Kiyoomi emerges from the bathroom and he doesn’t have to wonder anymore, phone slipping from his hand to be lost in the sheets. // fem omi fucks atsumu for most of this series, as she should <3

anytime, omi omi. by deliriious

completed | E | 2,156 words

what's better than fucking your boyfriend's thighs, or between his cheeks while he sleeps? kiyoomi thinks for a long moment. reaaally gives it some thought, before coming to an irrefutable conclusion. nothing, that's what. // consensual somno is like. catnip for me

lay me down by kromotriga

part 3/? | E | 13,563 words

It’s been almost six years since she’s last heard him say her given name. Atsumu may not need memories, experience become muscle become memory instead, but memories of standing huddled together in a deserted hallway after their last high school match still flood through her all the same. Sakusa— Kiyoomi had tenderly cradled her face as gentle thumbs wiped away tears of frustration, over Inarizaki's loss to Itachiyama, over Kiyoomi's rejection after months of what she’d thought was mutual romantic build-up. "I want to kiss you but I can't, yet," he'd whispered, knocking his sweaty forehead into hers. "The next time we meet I'll be different, but if you still want to I'll kiss you then as much as you want." With that promise Kiyoomi had reluctantly pulled away and Atsumu hadn't understood what he meant until he'd made news a few months later by joining his collegiate men's team. He may have missed her, as she did him, but that doesn’t mean he wants anything more than friendship now. Atsumu still reaches out slowly, his eyes following her movement, to lay a hand over Kiyoomi’s, fingers brushing his wrist bone where another pair of symmetrical moles stand out on his pale skin. “I missed you, too.” // skts reunion fics my beloved, they're everythingg

part 1 | part 2 | part 3

[bumblingbabooshka]

Chakotay being a person who (while of course being willing to follow orders to a point) ultimately puts what's morally right and wrong in his eyes over Starfleet protocol while Tuvok is shown to be a person who will follow Starfleet protocol (and more accurately Janeway's word) over what he personally thinks is right is something that could have been so interesting if the three of them were actually shown as a triumvirate instead of it usually being Janeway-Chakotay and even then mostly just Janeway.

It would be an opportunity to explore more about the Maquis v Starfleet dynamic, about how Chakotay & Janeway's different leadership styles work and don't work with this new crew and with different people, to interrogate what exactly Voyager should look like - to incorporate more leniency and Maquis tactics into its operation so that they really do become a blended ship instead of the Maquis simply becoming subsumed into Starfleet. It'd also give more opportunities to let all three characters shine and introduce more moral quandaries that they can have differing ideas about and how does that affect them? At one point Tuvok is willing to go against Janeway's orders because she wants to do something but can't due to Starfleet protocol. In another episode he also follows Janeway's orders to assist in killing an entire ship of people despite that being against both Starfleet protocol and certain moral standards because she feels strongly that they should. He protests this but once she rebukes him he doesn't object again or attempt to stop her (like Chakotay - though they both know at that point that she's crossing lines). This sort of implies to me that he's much more loyal to Janeway herself than he is to Starfleet as a concept. Meanwhile Janeway is shown to be staunchly and strictly Starfleet - adopting the code AS her moral compass a lot of the time. She sometimes has to go off-script due to the nature of their situation but most of her decisions are made depending on how Starfleet would feel about it. If she wants to do something but Starfleet would disagree, she rarely if ever questions Starfleet protocol and instead will go with what it says is best even if it's painful on a personal level. She also tells Tuvok in the episode aforementioned that he is "Her advisor, her moral compass" and having a moral compass/advisor that's either a bunch of rules written by the space government or a person who is mostly just going to agree with you no matter what they actually think and not challenge you if you rebuke them isn't the best idea. Enter Chakotay. Chakotay's willingness to disagree with Janeway and not back down is something I wish had been shown more. When he says "I don't care about logs or reports or whatever - I care about person to person shit. I care about what's right and what you're doing is wrong." it's something that could be so interesting and so necessary when contrasted with the other two. A good example is of course 'Equinox' but also 'Manuevers' where he goes off against literally everyone's orders and friendly advice because he feels responsible. And that's important - he's doing it because he feels responsible. That's different from Tuvok (who doesn't feel) and Janeway (who would most likely try to find comfort in protocol) - because Chakotay feels he's responsible and that he needs to protect the crew since he (in his eyes) is the one who put them in danger. He's a person who's shown to be willing to go against everything anyone says in order to do what he feels is right if the wrong is too great to allow. Voyager if these three were actually allowed to argue and be equals and figure out how to work together as sort of a microcosm of how this new blended crew is going to be able to fight and work and band together.

[accirax]

Through the magic of an AU, Xander, Min, and Teruko make it through the night, avoid a Class Trial, and participate in the first motive alongside everyone else. Except, this time, the first motive is... a gift exhange?

(basically, if it wasn't clear, i'm drawing the drdt characters doing a secret santa exchange with each other, hopefully posting one interaction per day until christmas!)

[crossbackpoke-check]

Why I Am Not Coming In To Work Today [abridged], Jess Zimmerman

part one | part two

[smalltimidbean]

I finally finished Bugsnax