So kinda been lingering between stuff that is super long making minimal progress. I guess I'll play XB3 for real in a few weeks unless it sucks like XB2 and then maybe I'll give Soul Hackers 2 a try a month later or Saints Row.
SRW 30 - Still solid, 111 stages in now (DLC1-4 included). Just play a map a day or so. Should finish it in another 3-5 months at this rate before the next Super Robot Wars is announced. Game is a mostly uninteresting, but not bad at all, anniversary title with a million units so you can't even make a base team to field consistently. I use different units every map depending on the map theme. Like a Gundam stage I use all gundams, a super robot stage I use all super robots. It's comfort food and a very solid 7-8/10, but hopefully next SRW is smaller and tighter focused.
But goddamn do the Gundam Iron-Blood Orphans mechs have the best animation/sprites in the game. Given that they were a DLC add-on, with that quality it's almost assured the next licensed SRW is gonna do the entire IBO storyline with all the mechs in great animation.
AC Valhalla - Like 90 hours in. Tried started the Jorvik arc after watching The Northman and in the mood for more Vikings, but not feeling it right now. This game is hard to play outside occasionally because the gameplay itself is so nothing. The world is ok and the writing is ok, but there gameplay is post-Origins in AC is the lightest there is. I have little faith or expectations for the next AC as a GAAS title, but if they at least reboot the gameplay to have more to it I'll appreciate that. Unity/Syndicate have their problems but they were headed in the right direction and the open world was a step back imo.
TWEWY 2 - I like this. The writing, art, music and style clicks with me, but it's also long and gameplay shallow just like AC Valhalla and SRW (the only gameplay is repetitive simple combat). That's one of the problems I have with my current lineup of stuff I'm playing. It's all shallow gameplay go around and talk to people, read dialogue games that are 30-150 hours long. Basically like 3 books instead of 3 games, but I'm also reading real books and GNs at the same time so hard to get excited about this stuff.
Probably one of the reasons I'm still playing FF14 a bit each day even though I'm all caught up. At least there it's just pure gameplay of dungeon/boss run replays since I'm not questing at this point.
I also started on Steam Deck the other day
Opus: Echo of a Starsong - This Taiwanese game has ridiculously high reviews so I gave it a shot after checking and seeing it's only about 8 hours long. It reminds me a bit of 13 Sentinels. It's a beautiful game that is a mix of 2.5D cell-shaded light exploration light puzzle sections and like Star Control II universe map making choices with dice rolls through great 2d art and menus. Cities are just still art and dialogues. Like you pick to go to the bazaar and you get a brief text describing the bazaar with a generic bazaar picture and then there will be some dialogue with an NPC and a choice usually. You have some survival elements like fuel/armor/exploration kits, which give the gameplay and dice rolls some gameplay, but if you die you just restart from the last save so it's not a big deal.
Opus is mainly a game about it's story, like 13 sentinels, and about 2.5 hours in I'm pretty impressed by the world building. The reviews talk that up and yeah it's like Mass Effect or better quality space hard sci-fi world building of a section of the universe post-mining wars. The characters are anime, but good anime and it has Japanese VA now which is good. Liking it so far, though gameplay is very light and best to treat it like a VN with some gameplay like 13 Sentinels. Though fyi game is not like 13 Sentinels in that it's not full of a million twists and turns. It's a more typical anime story.
But yeah, coming from these I really need a game that's actually meaty gameplay focused. Hope XB3 has good gameplay and isn't just a talky shallow game. Basically one of the reasons I'm skipping Live-A-Live HD since the demo just seemed pretty talky with slow simple battles.
