Once I fixed that, I found out I had another problem.
I had let An pursue too many interests, meaning she didn't have any single image for what she wanted to be when she became human, and instead she just melted away to nothing.
So, uh, yeah I currently need to start over... Having fun, though.
The raising sim part is a bit less successful. The game doesn't surface enough information about what effect each action has on your stats. There's also a hidden forest development stat, and if you haven't raised it enough at the end of the year, Sius gets fired. Guess how my first run ended...
The game boasts around 400 events fully voiced events.
Whatever path you take, it's cool watching An become more human as she learns, and she has lots of questions about the world and humanity.
The frequent, and fairly substantive, novel events are definitely Neues's strong point.
Sius adopts the android, who he names An, and she helps him out with his forestry work at first, before being asked to help out at the inn, the church, the hospital, and taking up a number of artistic pursuits of her own.
There's not enough time in a week, so you have to manage both your schedules.
Day 186 of posting games I own.
This time, Neues for Playstation.
In this raising sim/novel game, the unsociable Sius, who works in forestry management, finds a bio-android girl who has been promised by a goat-unicorn in her dreams that the next time she awakens she will become human.
I've finished the main plot, which unlocked a secret Tower of Druaga themed dungeon that's...another 60 floors?
Okay, no, to heck with that. I've had a (mostly) good time, but I think I'm happy to move on at this point.
Honestly, while I'm grumbling a bit, I'm actually pretty eager to try out Narikiri Dungeon X at some point to see to what degree they managed to refine what there is here, because parts of it are pretty compelling.
Just, uh, not right away, because this thing ate 60 hours...
Anyway, once you finish visiting the elementals, you start to get the twins' backstory, which is actually pretty cool, though told in a very minimalistic way.
I felt it tied back into the plot and themes of the original game really well, and helped flesh out Dhaos's backstory a bit more.
The costumes you wear affect the twins' personalities, and their personalities affect the form that their pet takes.
It you want to get a specific personality/pet form, though, it can take 50-100 battles to fully shift it... (It's not a great system!)
(That bakyura costume there came in handy for cheesing the final boss when I got tired of its "act 2-3 times for every turn I get, and two-shot my entire party" nonsense.)
The game does give you a ton of different costumes to master while grinding, which is fun, even if many of them are completely unviable, and used purely as a prerequisite for one of the game's 30 side-quests.
There are some good bits. I enjoyed meeting the heroes from the original game (including Suzu, since this came after the PSX port) and seeing where they are now. But there is a LOT of grinding to get from bit to bit.
How bad is the grind, you ask? Well, here's how many battles I fought...
The twins go on a journey with their transforming pet, facing a trial where they have to meet the 12 elementals, each of which just give a few lines of dialog about some personality trait.
At one randomly generated dungeon per elemental, and 10-20 floors each... It's a real slog!
Day 185 of posting games I own.
This time, Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon for Game Boy Color.
Two babies with a dark past, and possibly headed for a dark future, fall from the heavens and are adopted by you, the player, in this sequel to the first Tales game.
Konohana: True Report is fun.
The mystery's not terribly complicated, but the main characters are likable, and it's pretty short. I should get back to playing the third one sometime.
Bookmarking this for no particular reason... <_< >_>
Well, I picked up New Horizons with a Switch 2 earlier this year, and the first song that played when I put down the radio?
K.K. Faire. It was like coming home.
I'm in a different place now, and playing the game solitary is definitely a very different experience, but I still had fun.
Played a whole bunch of the GC version as a kid.
Favorite piece of music was K.K. Faire, which my sister LOATHED with a passion, and would physically attack me, demanding I turn it off. (I had it set as my house music too.)
Eh, sure, why not.
Probably not a good score, but I got there.
You're still on track to finish one a month!
(Hoping you'll find time somewhere for the second half of Twilight Syndrome as well.)
Definitely prefer the direction he took with 5 and 6's character designs over the excessively horny ones he'd turned in for 4.
Growlanser II is kind of an engine test that's also a fan disc for the first game. Really weird choice to be the first one they put out in English.
Will be interested to see how you enjoy them.
Ooh, it's a nice hit of nostalgia seeing some coverage of Chronomaster. One of the few point-and-click adventure games that I actually managed to finish as a kid.
Normal difficulty was very generous with checkpoints and continues, making it easy for someone (like me!) who's not great at platformers (and suffering a Gamecube d-pad) to complete. Some boss fights took a little practice to learn, but I had a good time, one mildly sore thumb notwithstanding.
Did not take a whole lot of screenshots while playing the game itself, because wouldn't you know, action-y games are not so conducive to pulling out my cellphone camera, but here are some boss designs from the end credits.
Anyway, onto the game I'm actually here for.
Ristar was a joy to play. The colors pop, the animations are charming, and each level has its own gimmick. I liked some stages more than others, but I don't think any of them really overstayed their welcome.
I think if I decide to play the Sonic games included here, I'll buy them on original hardware for the better Mega Drive controller, but there IS one other game in this collection that has decided to "seek its own level" in secondhand games market pricing...
It took a few hours of opening and closing every other game in the collection something like 30 times each, but I got through it.
This was probably not the way to go about it, but I wasn't going to let that stop me from staying committed to a bad plan!
Day 184 of posting games I own.
This time, Sonic Mega Collection for Gamecube.
I picked this up semi-recently for for my 12for12. Was definitely more affordable than a Mega Drive copy of Ristar, but, uh, my poor aching thumb informs me the Gamecube controller d-pad was not built for this.
Definitely a game where you'll benefit from being able to easily search unfamiliar terms.
Many Hokkaido place names are just "we threw some similar sounding kanji at the original Ainu name," so I ended up looking up a lot of those readings.