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chuckroThe problem with all of these games is fairly similar: None of them are bad games, and on paper, they were all games that appealed to me. But on each of them, I played an hour or so and couldn’t convince myself to go back and play more. Some combination of not being in the mood or the specific quirks of that game just weren’t working for me. There’s always the potential that I’ll be more in the mood and return to them in my Steam library at some other point, but I’m going ahead and declaring them culled for now.
Cosmic Star Heroine - From the makers of Cthulhu Saves the World comes a more serious 16-bit-style jrpg with a bunch of fun twists. It’s a cyberpunk future setting where you’re an elite agent working for the government, but there are elements in said government who clearly don’t have the people’s best interests at heart. The battle system is based around single-use skills that you recharge by defending; and both you and the enemies hit harder as the battle goes on, so you’re encouraged to wrap things up fast. Items are single-use in battle but recharge after every fight. There’s no MP, and your HP refills after battle, too. (There’s no challenge from repeated battles at all—each fight is its own challenge.) The fact that one of your characters doesn’t have a reusable attack ability means that, even if you wanted to spam the weakest fight command, you can’t—you need to apply at least some thought to each fight. By mid-game, I was feeling there were too many options and too many characters with too little explanation of useful strategy; and I felt the thread of the plot got lost in the sidequesting.
Valdis Story: Abyssal City - A fun little Metroidvania that was clearly going for replay value (there are four characters with different playstyles, two of who are locked at the outset. There are four difficulty levels. There are lots of secrets.) The story revolves around the mother goddess' city, which sank into the ocean after one daughter betrayed her and the other sought revenge. A complicated mythology of humans, angels, demons and ferals rolls out as you search through the city for answers. Again, though, I think you need to be in the mood to blast through a multi-hour play through in basically one go if you want to have any hope of remembering where you are or what’s going on.
The Swords of Ditto – A roguelike Zelda-like. A sword-wielding legendary hero, guided by an annoying magic insect, must gather various toys and destroy anchor dungeons (within a time limit) and then defeat the evil sorceress who has taken over the land. Multiple vendortrash currencies; apparently they removed permadeath in one of the updates before I started playing. (Dying still costs you money, time and progress.) It feels like something that would be very appealing to the randomizer Zelda speedrunners, but I found the roguelike elements and high difficulty curve more intimidating than fun.
Moonlighter – Clearly inspired by Reccettear and also early Zelda games, you play a budding shopkeeper who spends days trying to determine the perfect price for goods, and nights spelunking in the local dungeons for things to sell. The overabundance of vendortrash items are used for crafting better equipment and items, in addition to being your shop’s sale fodder; and equipment seems to be your only source of upgrades. I found the dungeons to be difficult without actually being terribly interesting and wasn’t wild about the shop setup (though I do prefer “putting out price stickers and gauging reactions” to “haggling every goddamn item”).
Cosmic Star Heroine - From the makers of Cthulhu Saves the World comes a more serious 16-bit-style jrpg with a bunch of fun twists. It’s a cyberpunk future setting where you’re an elite agent working for the government, but there are elements in said government who clearly don’t have the people’s best interests at heart. The battle system is based around single-use skills that you recharge by defending; and both you and the enemies hit harder as the battle goes on, so you’re encouraged to wrap things up fast. Items are single-use in battle but recharge after every fight. There’s no MP, and your HP refills after battle, too. (There’s no challenge from repeated battles at all—each fight is its own challenge.) The fact that one of your characters doesn’t have a reusable attack ability means that, even if you wanted to spam the weakest fight command, you can’t—you need to apply at least some thought to each fight. By mid-game, I was feeling there were too many options and too many characters with too little explanation of useful strategy; and I felt the thread of the plot got lost in the sidequesting.
Valdis Story: Abyssal City - A fun little Metroidvania that was clearly going for replay value (there are four characters with different playstyles, two of who are locked at the outset. There are four difficulty levels. There are lots of secrets.) The story revolves around the mother goddess' city, which sank into the ocean after one daughter betrayed her and the other sought revenge. A complicated mythology of humans, angels, demons and ferals rolls out as you search through the city for answers. Again, though, I think you need to be in the mood to blast through a multi-hour play through in basically one go if you want to have any hope of remembering where you are or what’s going on.
The Swords of Ditto – A roguelike Zelda-like. A sword-wielding legendary hero, guided by an annoying magic insect, must gather various toys and destroy anchor dungeons (within a time limit) and then defeat the evil sorceress who has taken over the land. Multiple vendortrash currencies; apparently they removed permadeath in one of the updates before I started playing. (Dying still costs you money, time and progress.) It feels like something that would be very appealing to the randomizer Zelda speedrunners, but I found the roguelike elements and high difficulty curve more intimidating than fun.
Moonlighter – Clearly inspired by Reccettear and also early Zelda games, you play a budding shopkeeper who spends days trying to determine the perfect price for goods, and nights spelunking in the local dungeons for things to sell. The overabundance of vendortrash items are used for crafting better equipment and items, in addition to being your shop’s sale fodder; and equipment seems to be your only source of upgrades. I found the dungeons to be difficult without actually being terribly interesting and wasn’t wild about the shop setup (though I do prefer “putting out price stickers and gauging reactions” to “haggling every goddamn item”).
