she/her, 20+,🇩🇪

doing some gamedev with renpy

Interests: FFXIV and games in general, art, anime, and books

You can find my games in itch.io, and I’m also on Mastodon !

  • 11 Posts
  • 14 Comments
Joined 5 months ago
Cake day: May 28th, 2024
  • Berin@discuss.tchncs.detoGaming@beehaw.org•Let's discuss: Nintendo DS
    24·
    1 month ago

    The DS series was the peak handheld generation for me. I like that the console’s design encouraged creative game mechanics, and it has some of my favourite games of all time. I have a DS Lite, a 3DS and a new 3DS, though I think the original DS line had the better game library compared to the 3DS. The camera and 3D effect were rather gimmicky and didn’t add much value for me.

    I think the game that best encapsulates what I love about the DS is The World Ends With You, a JRPG set in modern Tokyo that used both screens at once in its action combat system - to control two different characters. The character on the bottom screen would have you use touch gestures to trigger attacks, while you needed to do button combos to control the character on the top. It was insanely fun!

    Other games I liked from the early DS era are Hotel Dusk, a detective game that is played in “vertical mode” so you hold the console like a book - and Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!, the original Japanese version of Elite Beat Angels, a rhythm game.

    I also played all romance/otome games that were available in English for the DS, my favourite was Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side.

    The DS figured out touch-based interactions way better than smartphones which are like the main touch-based “handheld” nowadays. That is because you could dedicate the entire touchscreen to gameplay input, since you still had the top screen to show relevant game information. Smartphones on the other hand need to utilize the entire screen both for input and displaying stuff, which just doesn’t work as well imo.

  • Berin@discuss.tchncs.deOPtoFFXIV Online@possumpat.io•Final Fantasy 14's Yoshi-P says 'if the question is whether I was shocked' by the mixed reception to Dawntrail's story, 'the answer is no, not really'English
    3·
    2 months ago

    Here’s my two cents

    spoiler

    The plot suffered greatly by overly focusing on Wuk Lamat in the first half while not fleshing out the side characters. Her character development arc definitely took longer than it should have, and really the player’s enjoyment of the story in the first half of MSQ completely hinges on whether you like her as a character or not, since you are literally glued to her hip for most of it. (Some of my FC mates were dying to finally spend some time for Erenville, for example. It was more or less a running joke since whenever the group was about to split up, the WOL always went with Wuk Lamat)

    Zoraal Ja had more or less zero build-up for his eventual villain-reveal, and you couldn’t really sympathize with him. All you knew beforehand was that his entire existence is extremely rare among Mamool Ja and that the people’s expectations were high. And, that for some reason, he wants to engulf the world in war which like, you must have some deep-seated resentment or something to want that, why? But later he drops that he was treated differently from his siblings by Gulool Ja Ja which, like, how were we supposed to know that? Until then, Gulool Ja Ja was presented to us as the perfect hero-turned-king and a pretty chill guy. Just…Zoraal Ja’s entire plot fell flat because we didn’t really get to know him before he became king. (Also, the whole Gulool Ja plot just doesn’t sit right with me)

    Koana had his own little arc in the first half, but I wish we could have seen him interact with Wuk Lamat a bit more. We get told by Erenville that they tend to bicker with each other like proper siblings, but we never see it on-screen :/

    Same thing with Krile, Erenville and the Scions. Krile had it worst, since she was hyped up as a main character in this expac, but basically did nothing except chime in with a question once or twice and eat ice cream with her parents.

    The Scions took a complete backseat this time, only offering Koana and Wuk Lamat some advice here and there, I expected a little more of that supposed rivalry :/

    On top of all that, the plot just…didn’t make sense a lot of the time. I’m surprised that Bakool Ja Ja got away with all the stuff he did. Sometimes, rules that were established before were ignored completely not long after. Hey, remember when we were told that contestants who attack or kill the judge for a challenge will be disqualified? Never mind, have BJJ kidnap and threaten one, whatever.