Mint

Returnal is an extremely interesting first major release for the PlayStation 5 since its launch, because it’s definitely not going to be for everyone. It’s a strange beast, the first of its kind as a rougelike with a AAA budget attached to it. I’m almost certain some have purchased the game simply because they want something new and exclusive to the PS5 and are already unhappy with it, given its difficulty and unconventionality compared to the average AAA title.

I encourage those people to try and stick to Returnal though, because there’s a ton to love.

Edge of Tomorrow

Hades, the best rougelike ever created, treats death as a joke, because everyone in the underworld is either already dead or immortal. Zagreus, a God, comes back to his father’s palace after a death unfazed, ready to try and escape it yet again. You never really “kill” Megara, so much as you slow her down, and can have a chat with her in Hades’ cafeteria on your return down the River Styx.

In this sense, Returnal is Hades’ antithesis. Selene, the protagonist who crash-lands on a mysterious alien world, is slowly unwound with each of her deaths. She finds herself fraying as she stays trapped in the cycles of rebirth after getting killed any myriad of ways by the monsters on the planet.

The plot of Returnal is interesting to think about on a cerebral level, even though I wouldn’t say this game is worth playing exclusively for it. I’m intrigued by the mystery of the planet Selene has found herself on, especially after reaching the game’s midway point, but I don’t expect to be blown away by its reveals. Returnal seems comfortable enough with relaying its plot through atmosphere, and leaving you as the player to put the pieces together, Dark Souls-style. Luckily, the game has an incredible atmosphere, really putting its Alien inspiration on its sleeves. With a good pair of headphones you’ll find yourself fully immersed in the game, possibly to the point of exhaustion — the visual and sound design do a lot of heavy lifting in keeping you on edge as you explore and fight your way to solving the mystery of your cyclic death.

Pew Pew Brain Goo

Exploring and fighting, by the way, are the main highlights of Returnal. Housemarque has made a name for itself with games like Super Stardust and Resogun, which are mechanically engaging and get your pulse up. Returnal is no exception. It feels like an absolute dream to run and gun as Selene. Every weapon you can pick up is unique, and has great impact as you fire at hostile aliens. Dashing and platforming both feel tight. This was especially true after I adjusted the controls so that my dash and jump were on my L1 / R1 buttons, meaning I never had to take my thumbs off the control sticks unless I wanted to use a consumable or perform a melee attack. You’ll never feel like you don’t have any control over Selene, even when the game’s at its most hectic.

And phew does it get hectic. Returnal is essentially a 3D bullet-hell. You’ll find yourself dodging through and jumping over wave after wave of attacks as you fight enemies. The patterns for these attacks are all predefined and well-telegraphed, so nothing about combat is left to chance in this regard. As such, you're encouraged to never take damage in multiple ways. Killing multiple enemies without taking damage builds up your Adrenaline, which gives you a variety of buffs, like the ability to see enemies through walls, upping your melee damage, and widening the timing zone for your weapon's quick reload. On top of this, if your health is at max, items that would normally heal you instead turn into Resin, which increases your base HP pool during a run. In summation? Don’t get hit.

Given it’s a PS5 exclusive, Returnal makes tremendous use of the Dualsense controller, which continues to be the most revolutionary piece of tech in this new generation of videogames. You’ll feel the pitter patter of rain in your hands when it hits Selene’s suit, which is a neat trick for sure, but Returnal also turns the Dualsense’s capabilities into honest-to-god mechanics. For starters, every weapon in your arsenal has an Alt-Fire that can be used off cooldown. Pressing lightly on the L2 trigger will let you highlight enemy weaknesses and zoom in to fire, but pressing the L2 button all the way through switches your weapon to its Alt-Fire mode. It feels like a magic trick every time I use it, but it also feels like second nature at the same-time.

Even the rumble serves as a mechanic! The pulsing that comes off of the controller when you stand next to an item can immediately let you know if it’s safe to pick up, or afflicted with Malignancy (more on that in a bit). Not since the Nintendo DS’ second screen have I been so excited for the potential of videogame hardware, and I can’t wait to see what game devs do next with the controller.

Taking the Plunge - Or Not.

As I mentioned, Returnal is a roguelike, so a variety of aspects about the game change with each cycle of play. This of course includes the layout of the maps, but it also affects the items you can pick up throughout a play through. Much of Returnal is based on risk and reward, and it often works…until it doesn't.

Parasites, for example, are great! When you find one, you’ll see that attaching it to your suit will give you a buff, and cause a debuff in turn, all of which is randomized. You might get restore health to a certain threshold after reaching critical levels at the cost of enemies turning into pools of acid after being defeated, for example. I loved encountering Parasites because I always had a clear idea of what I was getting, and whether it was worth the sacrifice I would make to get it.

The other side of this coin, however, is Malignancy. You’ll often find chests, keys, and other objects inflicted with Malignancy. Interacting with them creates a change of getting a Malignant debuff, which sticks to you until you fulfill a random objective, which can range from picking up ooblites — the game’s per-run currency — to using a consumable or defeating enemies in specific ways. On paper this sort of risk / reward system is a lot of fun, and adds danger to any run. But in practice, I quickly realized that it was almost never worth it to interact with Malignant items. Opening a chest and getting a debuff only for a reward to be a garbage consumable like Ground Spikes felt terrible. I quickly found myself avoiding all malignant items, which felt like I was missing out on a piece of the game. I would love for a theoretical patch to buff up the rewards that come from malignant interactions, in the same way that opening a locked chest with a key almost always gives you a worthwhile reward.

Most roguelikes have meta-progression to them, letting you get stronger with each run so that subsequent runs get easier. Returnal isn’t an exception, although its definition of meta-progression is…very narrow, at least in the time I’ve spent with it. The only currency you keep that carries over after death is Ether, which you can spend to unlock items so that they show up permanently in the game’s item pool. That’s basically it. There are other permanent unlocks that help you maneuver around the world, but they don’t actually make you “stronger.” You’re not going to get an increased pool of health or strength upgrades. Returnal demands that you simply get better by practicing and having a little bit of luck. If that sort of level of challenge doesn’t sound appealing, this might not be the game for you.

Save Me

And now, for Returnal’s biggest flaw: the saving system. In a baffling decision, it’s not possible to keep your progress in the middle of a run in Returnal. If you quick the game, if you switch apps on your PS5, hell if the game crashes, you’ll haves to start all the way over back at your ship, the Helios.

I just gotta ask: why? What made you think this was a good idea? It’s not. It’s not a good idea. It makes no sense that the game doesn’t save your progress after you clear a room, or hell, even after you beat a boss. I don’t want a game to hold my time and my console hostage. It’s ridiculous, especially because runs can be an hour plus, if you fight every boss in each biome. Luckily this is the type of thing that can be patched in, and I assume it will be because it's the one aspect of Returnal that seems universally disliked — for good reason.

Also annoying: don’t use any of the alternate costumes if you’ve got them. They’re currently bugged, sometimes causing doors and items to not be obtainable, meaning you’ll have to restart your game to fix it, which — you guessed — will wipe your run. It’s almost like a saving system would make this issue negligible! Who’d have thought.

Dying to Go Back

Returnal is a fantastic game. Just writing about it has made me want to stop so I can go back and keep playing it. It’s a difficult game, but not an unfair one. Most importantly, it’s a game that feels fantastic to play, and that drives you forward with its haunting atmosphere. I've loved the time I’ve spent with it, and I’m excited to see where the second half of the game takes me.

This game is a recipient of the Goopy Goblin Gamer Brain award. The GGGB Badge is the highest honor you can receive from Mint’s Café. A game with the GGGB Badge is one that I recommend for its incredibly engaging, moment-to-moment gameplay and mechanics. It means that even if its story isn’t incredible, or it isn’t a technical marvel, it’s still worth playing based solely on the fact that it feels fantastic to play it.

That’s all for now! Have you picked up Returnal? Are you enjoying it? Let me know @mintmakesthings! And if you enjoy my work, please consider supporting me on Buy Me a Coffee! Till next time!

The 3DS is 10 years old as of last month! I figured it’d be fun to take a trip down memory lane and talk about one of the greatest consoles ever released, and the end of what I consider an important era for Nintendo.

I’m a sucker that got the original 3DS when I was a junior in high school, making me one of the enviously(?) regarded 3DS Ambassadors. I had always asked for every console Nintendo made day 1 for birthdays and holidays, with zero issues…up to that point.

The original 3DS launch was a disaster, which is impressive to think about considering how successful it ended up being by the end of its stretch. The base model felt like garbage, the launch line-up was abysmal outside of like, Street Fighter 4, and it felt like there was a drought of games for a long while after that. As a result, I barely touched the thing for quite a while, focusing on other games, and also getting into college, which took up most of my time anyways. But there was always an interesting core at the center of the 3DS, which was brought to the forefront for me when I got the significantly improved — and also much more of a mouthful — New Nintendo 3DS XL in college.

I love my Switch, you know? It’s a great system. But you know what it’s missing? Nintendo’s trademark weirdness. It’s easy to forget, but go back to the 3DS and look at the buffet of weird, unique features it has that were just never brought to the Switch. There’s Miiverse, which needs no explanation. But there was also Swapnote, which let you create cute art and animations. A much more thorough and fun Activity Log to keep track of the inhuman amount of hours you spent on Animal Crossing New Leaf. Themes, which are still not anywhere on the Switch’s horizon 4 years into its lifespan. And Street Pass, which let you connect with other people’s 3DSs and exchange info, collect puzzle pieces for 3D art, and more. Yes, that last one was kind of useless if you didn’t live in a place with a big population, but it was there! And it was unique as heck, even being implemented in some 3DS games.

That uniqueness stood out in the 3DS’ library as well, which grew to gargantuan levels after that slow start. Sure you had your mainstay Mario and Zelda games, which were fantastic, but the handheld’s cheap development costs allowed for all sorts of fun titles to get the spotlight. I was never big on the 3DS’ main feature, but the puzzle series Pushmo certainly made a believer for a while. The beginning of the indie surge that would later wash over the Switch began here, with heavy-hitters like Shovel Knight, Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse (still the best one, don’t @ me), and the SteamWorld series of games debuting on the system. The greatest game of all time — and this is barely a joke — Pocket Card Jockey, stole so much of my time I’m pretty sure I would have dropped out of University if I didn’t show any self-restraint. Square Enix dropped Theatrhythm, an incredible rhythm game that celebrated the company’s track-record for god-like music. And Nintendo even let Sakurai out of his Smash Bros. cage to make Kid Icarus: Uprising, which was a banger that I feel not enough people played because of its unfortunate control scheme.

One thing that really stood out to me about the 3DS was how quickly it became a haven for JRPGs. Again, thanks to the 3DS’ large install base, portability and easy development, there was room for all sorts of that kind of game from Japanese devs: Square Enix returned to their classic turn-based roots with Bravely Default and Bravely Second. The Etrian Odyssey games continued on the system, only getting better with pretty much every release, which is good, because we probably won’t get another one with the Switch’s lack of a second screen. 7th Dragon II Code: VFD was a sleeper hit, mixing JRPG combat with dungeon-crawling sensibilities along with a sick art-style and some banger tunes. Rune Factory 4 was so goddamn good that a sequel was announced for the Switch, despite the developers going bankrupt in 2013. Hell, even Capcom threw its hat into the ring with Monster Hunter Stories, which was adorable and super fun.

I realize I’m just gushing and reminiscing about the 3DS right now, but even just putting this retrospective together made me want to pull the thing out and get back to some old games. And this is just the tip of the iceberg! I could wax about how Fire Emblem finally got paid its dues on the system, Shin Megami Tensei IV being a masterpiece, how good Kirby: Planet Robobot was…but we’d be here all day. The point is that the 3DS was a special system for me. I got my first job a month into college, so it was the first console I got to buy games for myself. $40 — and sometimes even less, if I went used — was a lot more palatable to spend than $60 for major console releases. And while the Switch is certainly portable, the 3DS could fit in my pocket, letting me easily get some time in between classes or during lunch (or, uh, during class, if the lecture was boring enough, heh). Let’s also not forget that it was compatible with every DS game ever made, too, meaning you had a metric buttload of games at your disposal at all times.

So yeah. This isn’t exactly a mind-blowing revelation, but the 3DS absolutely slapped. And like I said, I love my Switch, but I couldn’t name 10 games I love on it off the top of my head like I could its predecessor. The 3DS was special, and we probably won’t ever get another console like it again. Which is a bummer, because it represents an era of uniqueness and weirdness that Nintendo seems to not be interested in bringing back. That’s fine! but I’ll miss going to the game store across from my dorm, cruising through the 3DS games on display, and finding another weird, interesting-looking game that I’d never heard of before.

That’s all for now! How do you feel about the 3DS? Got any games you miss on it? Let me know @mintmakesthings! And if you enjoy my work, please consider supporting me on Buy Me a Coffee! Till next time!

It feels like I keep saying “it’s been a while” because it usually has been, but that’s especially true as of late. I haven’t been feeling much in the way of creative drive and real life has been incredibly stressful, so the café has been closed for a while now. Oops. Regardless, it’s time for me to get back in the saddle, so I figured we’d start with a warm-up and go over some games I’ve been playing lately!

Fantasian

This Sakaguchi-directed endeavor is an Apple Arcade exclusive, and joins the likes of a bunch of other Apple Arcade games that I’ll be going over and recommending in their own post. One thing I should stress since people seem to not realize this is that a game being on Apple Arcade doesn’t mean it’s relegated to iPhones and iPads. You can play any of them on Apple TVs and Macbooks too. All that said, Fantasian actually works great on touch-devices because the combat is built around them. Your plucky JRPG protagonists can curve their attacks to catch multiple enemies or to bypass defenses. It’s a cute little system, bolstered further by the Dimengeon, a device that lets you stock random encounters before fighting all the enemies at once for bonuses. One wonders why modern JRPGs constantly find ways to bypass common JRPG conventions, because it begs the question why they’re there in the first place, but the Dimengeon is convenient the same way games like Bravely Default are.

I haven’t gotten too far into this game’s plot so I can’t speak for it, but it’s firing on all cylinders in terms of presentation; it looks and sounds gorgeous. Each environment is a handcrafted diorama, which gives the game a life-like appearance that harkens back to the pre-rendered JRPGs that Sakaguchi pioneered in the first place. And the soundtrack is powered by the legend Nobou Uematsu himself, who really feels like he's given his all for what may very well be his last leading project. If you've got Apple Arcade, definitely check this game out.

Knockout City

Also known as the game with the weird as hell Videogame Awards commercial, Knockout City is probably the most surprising game I’ve seen this year so far. It feels like Splatoon-flavored dodgeball, with a similarly bright, energetic art-style coupled with mechanics that are easy to learn but come with an ocean’s worth of depth. It didn’t take long for me to get captured by the core loop. At first I was throwing my dodgeball and hoping for the best. Then I learned I could fake out throws to bait catches. Then I learned I could curve and lob shots, pass my ball to a teammate to power up their throw, and more. Even the game's level design is surprisingly high-quality, and I quickly found myself utilizing the environment to land some sick plays. The feedback from jumps and throws feel great, and the entire experience has been stable on the network-front as well. I’m genuinely sad that this is just a beta and I'll have to wait until May to play more — that’s how good Knockout City is.

OUTRIDERS

I don’t really have much to say about Outriders to be honest, other than that it taps into my goopy goblin gamer brain, which you probably know I’m a sucker for. I did not like this game on my first go around, and I frankly feel like $60 is still too much to pay for it. But if you liked Mass Effect’s multiplayer you might find yourself at home here, surprisingly enough. It’s basically Diablo mixed with cover-based shooting and super-powers. I play as a Trickster, who can teleport behind enemies and use a spiffy energy sword to cut down enemies. It’s a very aggressive game, which is a nice change of pace from the sit-in-cover style games like Gears of War / the Division. I’m enjoying it a lot more on a second pass, and will probably finish it, which I can’t say I’ve done for most of the new releases this year…yeesh.

Monster Hunter Rise

I was going to write a separate Thoughts On post about Monster Hunter Rise, but what can I even say? It’s Monster Hunter. It’s obtuse and complicated and addicting and beautiful. Rise is probably the best starting point for a would-be hunter yet. Yes, I know people say that about every new Monster Hunter, but I mean it this time. Not because it's been any more streamlined (although it has been, in some ways), but because being a hunter in this game is OP as hell. I've never felt so bad for the monsters in this series in my life. Every attack just feels overtuned for the first 20 hours or so of the game, and the wirebug gives you even more options to attack and evade your prey. You feel like a badass more in Monster Hunter Rise than any previous game, and feeling like a badass is a good way to encourage a newcomer to keep playing your game. The palamutts are another great addition, making navigating the maps and even sharpening your weapon feel better than older Monster Hunters. Every time a new game gets announced, I question how this series could continue to innovate, but Capcom knocks it out of the park without fail, while always maintaining the beautiful core that sits at the center of every Monster Hunter title. Just play it! Play it right now!

That’s all for now! What have you been playing lately? Let me know @mintmakesthings! And if you enjoy my work, please consider supporting me on Buy Me a Coffee! Till next time!

What’s up, I hope y’all are doing well. I’m alright myself. This post is probably a surprise seeing as I’ve never really done a review of tech hardware before, outside of the PS5. But as you know whenever I choose to write something so random, it usually stems from the fact that the games aren’t hitting at the moment, which is once again the case. I’m slowly but surely trudging my way through Bravely Default 2, but I won’t lie that it’s been a bit of a slog. Lately all I’ve been doing is playing Apex, Destiny 2, and FFXIV, all of which you have my thoughts on already! So here we are.

Fam Why Do You Have an iPad?

Good question! Four reasons:

1. I am a flawed human being that likes to buy expensive tech toys when he’s depressed.

2. My old iPad is 5000 years old and I wanted to see how it’s been updated.

3. I wanted to draw on something now that I gave my mom my Surface Pro.

4. My laptop’s in the shop and I needed something to work on while it gets repaired.

I didn’t think I’d be using it as much as I currently am, but one week later I’m already smitten with the thing.

As I mentioned before, the last iPad I had was from 2015, and it’s barely been upgraded with any of the OS updates, so the iPad Air 4 and iOS 14 has basically been a brand new experience for me. Let’s start from the top.

Hardware

The iPad is pretty solidly built out of the box, but I was eager to get it into a case as soon as possible. Without one, it’s hard to hold with one hand, and I cringed whenever I put it on a table, worried that its camera would get scuffed. In a good case though, it feels great to carry around, and just the right size to carry a round from room to room.

Instead of using facial recognition, the iPad uses TouchID to unlock. Considering the pain of unlocking my phone with a mask on, I actually hope that TouchID makes a comeback. It can be a bit finicky at times, but slowing down usually gets it to work on a second go. I let the iPad recognize my two index fingers and thumbs so that I can unlock it whether it’s in portrait or landscape mode.

My old iPad had a headphone jack. The new one does not. I will forever be annoyed by this trend, but at least I have high-quality headphones to match.

Software

Somewhere between now and 2015, the iPad seems to have picked up a bunch of tricks for its OS. This thing is a lot more powerful than it first appears. Multitasking works very welll now. I was super impressed by how I could swipe the right side of the screen to access a list of apps that could overlay on top of whatever I was already looking at. It works with some apps better than others, but a week it already feels natural to swipe, write a tweet or send a message, and get back to whatever I was doing.

When I need a little more space, split-screen lets me go a bit further, letting me pick get enough space for both apps.

The main issue I have with this multitasking is that it almost always works better in horizontal mode. Also, swiping right works well enough, but swiping back to close the drawer of apps can be really finicky and distracting. I dunno if I’m just not getting the positioning right, but it was downright annoying at times.

Another aspect I was very fond of is Picture-in-Picture, which is an bad name for a pretty good feature. Getting to pull up HBO Max to watch a show while I play a game at the same time felt great, even though I sometimes found myself sliding the video around sometimes so I could access buttons on whatever app I was in.

As far as battery goes, I am once again impressed. Even when using all these aspects in conjunction with one another, I found that I wasn’t nervously glancing at the top-right corner of the screen, like I sometimes do when I’m doing extensive work with my phone. After an 8 hour day, I’d be sitting in the 50% range well into the rest of the night. Not bad at all.

By virtue of Apple owning each of my buttcheeks, my iPad quickly sat in well with the rest of my family of hardware. It synced up immediately with my photos and files, and I’ve actually come to find myself using iCloud for once, which I used to avoid because of how cumbersome it used to be. Airdropping stuff to my family or to one of my other devices is pretty snappy too.

Apps

I think it’d be hard to do any real work on an iPad without a keyboard of some kind, but with one, it becomes a tiny little work-horse. In fact, I’m writing this very piece on my iPad right now, in Craft! I’m able to chat with my coworkers on Slack without much issue, and even managed to make a whole presentation in Keynote. I would be lying if I said it went effortlessly, though. Part of it is the adjustment period, but I also found myself yearning for the ability to right click, or have a bit more space on my screen to manipulate things. For example in Keynote a lot of the aspects I normally work with are hidden behind sub menus, where they’d usually just be hanging out on the right side of the screen on my laptop.

One of my favorite things to do on the iPad has been reading. The big, crystal-clear screen and long-battery life has let me tear through multiple series of manga with the Shonen Jump app. I still think an eReader is better for novel/long-term reading, but for stuff like manga, comics, and the news, the iPad’s a great fit. It’s nice to be able to go through my RSS feed while draped on my couch, instead of sitting at my desk like always.

Then there are the games. I am not one of those people who think games shouldn’t be on the phone/iPad. As you already probably know, I have always been gatcha trash, so I’m not remiss to the idea, and there are interesting methods of interaction that can come strictly from touch. That said, some games definitely worked, while others didn’t. Slay the Spire, for example, is a perfect, and I mean PERFECT fit for the iPad. Moving cards around with my finger felt as natural as breathing. In fact, most turn-based and strategy games worked really well on the iPad, and none of them had much of an impact on the battery either, which is a nice plus.

Action games were another story. I tried out The Pathless and the new Samurai Jack game, and they didn’t feel nearly as smooth. Controlling the camera while performing actions at the same time just felt off. Granted, you could use a controller, but at that point...why not just play on a console, you know?

The iPad came with 3 months of Apple Arcade, which was a nice bonus. I will probably do a separate post with all the stuff I’ve played on it and my thoughts, but my general feeling is that while there are some great games, I don’t know how worth it it is to pay a sub every month to be able to access them. Sorry Grindstone. That said, I can see myself paying for a month every now and then to try out new games.

Apple Pencil

As I mentioned, I also got an Apple Pencil thrown into the deal, and it’s also pretty great. I actually much prefer hand-writing for a lot of things, and it supplements those aspects well. Apparently the first iteration of the Apple Pencil was garbage in a lot of ways? No problems with this one, though. It attaches magnetically to the side of the iPad, which serves as its method of charging as well. It feels good to draw on the iPad’s screen. I was worried it would feel like I was scratching the screen of the iPad if I pressed too hard on it with the nub, but that proved to not be a problem, at least so far. I bought Procreate, and while I’ll never quit my day job to be a full-time artist, it feels great to draw on. The pencil can take on all types of brush sensitivities, and Procreate itself is intuitive to work with.

I normally draw all my design thumbnails in my notebook, but I could myself doing it on my iPad from now on. It’ll make the transfer process to my other software smoother as well.

Final Thoughts

Tablets have always fascinated me on a fundamental level. First mocked as an “extra large phone,” you now see them everywhere, from doctor’s offices to ordering kiosks at restaurants. I think tablets have a place in the technological sphere, but it comes down to who you are and what you need from your tech.

If you don’t use a computer for much beyond minor office work, web-browsing/media consumption, or art, an iPad might be the perfect choice for you. It’s light-weight, easy to use, has great battery life, and paired with a keyboard, can replace a lot of what you might need doing on a computer. It’d save you money in the long-run. But if you’re like me, and are an intense multitasker, coder, designer, or musician/videographer, than an iPad probably isn’t going to be enough. Even then, though, it’s a great supplement for your existing workstation — although it’s most certainly going to be a luxury to get one as an addition.

As for me, I’ll probably be using my iPad all the time from now on, when I’ve got downtime away from my computer. And if we’re ever allowed to free ourselves from the shackles of quarantine, I could see it being the thing I put in my backpack instead of my laptop.

That’s all for now! How do you feel about the iPad? Let me know @mintmakesthings! And if you enjoy my work, please consider supporting me on Buy Me a Coffee! Till next time!

I miss my friends.

I mean, they’re still around — I can pick up my phone and call them, or play games with them online. But this pandemic is now almost a year old, and America has done less than zero to curtail it. I’m lucky that I haven’t been deeply affected by it as many others have, but I still can’t see my friends in person, and it’s starting to grate even on me, your resident local shut-in. I miss going out to eat with them, going to movies and concerts with them, getting to laugh with them in person…it’s rough.

Persona 5: Strikers does not help me miss my friends less. It doesn’t know it, but it’s rubbing my face in with its road-tripping energy. Until I can see my friends in person, I’ll just have to vicariously live through the Phantom Thieves.

Don’t Take Your Time

Returning to the streets of Shibuya with Joker and Morgana felt like coming home, in a sense. Despite my…tumultuous relationship with the game — and don’t worry, we’ll get to that — I still felt a sense of nostalgia as the Phantom Thieves reunited with their former leader a year after the events of the first game to go on a road trip. This being a videogame, things don’t exactly go according to plan, and the Phantom Thieves are forced to travel across Japan to save the country once again.

You’d be forgiven to think that Strikers is a spin-off, given the subtitle and the fact that it’s a Koei Tecmo production, but that couldn’t be any further from the truth. This game is Persona 5: The Direct Sequel in all but name and genre. The characters have a year of history between them, so there’s little in the way of set-up. I wouldn’t recommend playing this game if you haven’t played the original already.

Where Persona 5 was about methodically taking out enemies in turn-based encounters, Strikers has Joker and friends slashing and dashing through tons of shadows. It’s almost like Dynasty Warriors…except, not really. Hyrule Warriors and Fire Emblem Warriors were effectively Dynasty Warriors reskins, but Persona 5: Strikers eschews the formula, with the Phantom Thieves progressing through dungeons instead of defending bases or fighting literal thousands of foes. It’s the most blended game Koei Tecmo has made, with every action mechanic being given a Persona-flavored coat of paint. You’re able to exploit enemy weaknesses by using your Personas, which open them up for stylish All-Out-Attacks that do big damage to your target and surrounding foes. You’ll go nowhere fast if you don’t capitalize on these mechanics, especially when fighting more powerful enemies. These have staunch defenses that, when broken down, let you do even more stylish All-Out-Attacks that are ripped straight out of the original game.

Combat is fun, flashy, and punchy, with actions feeling responsive at all times. Joker is objectively the best character, thanks to the fact that he can fuse Personas to give him access to tons of powerful spells. But I loved how much the rest of the Phantom Thieves shine in Strikers. Each of them feels entirely different to play, while demonstrating their personalities through their mechanics. Ryuji can charge up his specials to do big damage, for example, while Yusuke can calmly counter enemy attacks. Mysterious newcomer Sophie can time her attacks to increase their damage and range, and Haru can hold a button to do big AOE damage for a period of time. They were all, frankly, more fun to play than the protagonist himself.

However, it’s a bit difficult to stay engaged for the entire 30+ hours of playtime, for a few reasons. Exploiting weaknesses is far and away the best way to get through most encounters, so you’ll find yourself spending more time sitting in a menu spamming your persona’s effective spells to stun-lock and damage them than actually engaging in action combat. It still feels great! But there’s one spoiler-y fight in particular that really showcases the game’s physical, moment-to-moment combat, and I wish there were more situations where that would be the best course of action. Because spells are most effective, you’ll find yourself drained of SP all the time, forcing you to go to a checkpoint to leave the dungeon and get your SP back, before immediately reentering to continue making progress. It’s very choppy, and while I’m on the PS5 so load-times are quick, it could have easily been circumvented by checkpoints automatically restoring your HP and SP. Not huge issues by a long shot, but worth considering.

All Grown-Up

I did not like Persona 5 very much. The high of its ending carried me for a while, but my thoughts have heavily soured since. It had too much gross content in it, and its overarching conclusion was basically “keeping the status quo is actually really cool!” It fell short of the things it was trying to achieve, especially as the game went on (for way too long, I might add). Persona 5: Strikers does not have most of these issues. It has more depth, and writing that makes its characters infinitely more likable.

This time around, the Phantom Thieves are infiltrating Jails, which form as manifestations of their target’s trauma. These Jails let their Monarchs take control of people and bend them to their will. The antagonists of Strikers aren’t nearly as cartoonishly evil as they were in Persona 5. The Phantom Thieves are forced to come to terms with the fact that trauma isn’t an excuse for doing bad things to other people, along with the fact that even good people can do bad things. Their never-ending optimism is curtailed by an excellent addition to the cast, Zenkichi Hasegawa, a world-weary adult who reminds this troublesome bunch of kids that the world is not nearly as black and white as they’d like it to be. It’s incredibly refreshing in comparison to the weak efforts from Persona 5, and it’s delivered in half the time as its predecessor — even though just like that game, it overstays its welcome by the end.

That said, there’s one instance of fat-phobia in this game that I simply can’t ignore. It slapped me in the face, not only because it showed up in the first place, but because it showed up in a way that makes no sense at all for the character it’s attributed to. I’m being purposefully vague because of spoilers, but a game that’s about the physical manifestation of Id should know better than to so carelessly shoehorn in this ridiculous disdain for fat bodies out of what can only be described as laziness. Moreover, this game keeps sexualizing Ann and I have absolutely had enough. Her animations are ridiculous, the breast physics on her character are ridiculous, and the way the game’s camera frames her in and out of combat drives me feral. It’s not nearly as egregious as Persona 5, but I am getting older and less patient for this garbage as a result. Do better, I am begging you.

We Fight For Our Friends

Replacing Social Links is the Bond system, and surprise surprise, I like it more too. Battles and social events alike will level up your Bond with your friends, which gives you points that you can spend on upgrading the various systems of the game, from upping your team’s stats, to increasing the range of items you’re allowed to cook, to even restoring health and SP after battles.

I love the Bond system because, like the Social Link system, it marries the themes of the game with its mechanics. However, unlike Social Links, it’s not predicated on picking the “right answer” to make someone happy regardless of how you feel (or to get in their pants). The Bond system is about sharing in friendship, no matter what’s happening, and it makes sense for a series that should be about the relationships between all of these characters, not just how each of them feels about Joker. It will never happen, but I wish that the Bond system is what we’d end up getting in the inevitable Persona 6.

Together Again Someday

By the time I was finished with Persona 5: Strikers, I was filled with happiness, as well as a deep, deep sadness. It’s a sunny game about a group of friends that love each other, going on a road trip to save the world and eat a lot of delicious food while great music plays in the background. As the credits rolled, I could only scream into the void: I miss my friends! I miss going on trips! I miss the summer! Get me out of this hell! Strikers unfortunately can’t save me from this pandemic, but it did something almost more impressive: it restored my faith in Persona 5. It’s better than the original game by multiple miles — so good, in fact, that it retroactively makes me feel good about owning Persona 5 merchandise again. If you were a fan of the original, I can’t even imagine how much you’ll love this game. But even if you didn’t, you might find something to love about it anyway. At the very least, it’ll probably make you think about how great your friends are, and that’s worth the price of admission alone.

That’s all for now! Have you played Persona 5: Strikers? Do you have a deep pit in your heart because you miss your friends too? Let me know @mintmakesthings! And if you enjoy my work, please consider supporting me on Buy Me a Coffee! Till next time!

Ys is one of my favorite unknown series. I’ve played pretty much every entry available, and have been extremely fond of them all. They’re games that know exactly what they want to be: lightning-fast Action JRPGs that feel SNES-like in their simplicity, but simply feel amazing to play. It should come as no surprise that I was excited to finally get my hands on Ys IX when it released in the west, more than a year after its Japanese release. So, was the wait worth it?

…Well…

Grimwald? More Like Grimacewald. Ooh. Got’em.

Ys IX should have been a slam-dunk. My expectations for Ys games aren’t very high, if we’re being honest. All I need is for Adol to have an excuse to explore some ruins, fight some monsters, and probably save the world in the process (or at least whatever continent he’s currently visiting). As long as the battles feel good and the plot doesn’t get in the way, then Falcom has succeeded in giving me what I wanted. Until Ys IX, it has always succeeded in giving me what I wanted.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Ys IX is a terrible game, by any means. But it’s by far the most mediocre Ys game I’ve played. It makes Ys VII look like East of Eden in comparison.

Ys IX has Adol getting trapped in the prison city of Balduq, located in Gllia, which is under Roman control. Normally, it’s easy to let the geopolitical politics of the Ys games fall off the wayside, but in IX, they take center stage, and guess what: it sucks! If the Trails games are any indication, Falcom does not have a strong track record when it comes to political writing, and that continues to be the case in Monstrum Nox. The game attempts to give gravitas to the turmoil between the Gllians and the Romans, but it ends up giving a half-hearted approach every step of the way. Particularly disappointing is the game’s handling of the revolutionaries who want to take back their homeland, with the proposed solution being that “fighting isn’t the answer,” which makes no sense whatsoever.

There’s also the plot-line for one of the party characters, White Cat, which I just can’t let go. White Cat, upset by the plight of the poor residents that live in the slums of Balduq, takes it upon herself to take money from the coffers of her wealthy merchant father to give to them. This results in said poor residents “relying too much” on the charity of White Cat, refusing to work for themselves and spending all their money on gambling. White Cat decides that simply giving the money away doesn’t help these citizens after all, so she decides to…open a Flower Shop that will make people happy.

Typing all this out is just making me disappointed all over again. Obviously, a game released in 2019 couldn’t have predicted a COVID-19 Pandemic. Nor could it have predicted that the USA still hasn’t given its citizens any sort of help with this pandemic, as of this blog post’s publishing. But even despite all that, it comes off as an embarrassing understanding of people with low-income, and not the kind of stuff I want to engage with at all in a Ys game.

Hey speaking of Party Members: they’re not great! None of the main cast is very engaging and their personalities are incredibly one-note. I can’t touch on it too much because of spoilers, but for plot reasons, each member of your party has basically the same backstory, making them all much too similar to each other. The only time they ever differ is their reaction to whatever the plot is at the moment, where they all give a line based on whatever anime archetype they’re comprised of. I had to look up their names in the middle of writing this to remember who was who, and the members of the team that join your base — now an undercover bar instead of a shipwrecked cove — are equally uninteresting.

None of this would matter if the plot didn’t take up so much of Ys IX, but it does, and it’s also a negative. Each character is given their own chapter before they enter your party, making the pacing of the plot feel like molasses. Cutscenes constantly interrupt the gameplay, which would be fine if they were well-written or interesting in any way, neither of which is true. It takes forever for the actual plot to get anywhere meaningful, and I was completely checked out by the time it did.

Also, I couldn’t find a good-way to segue into this, but I was particularly disappointed in the gross outfit one of the characters in the game wears, who is 9 years old. And the game has some disappointing opinions regarding the disabled. It’s hard to talk about without spoiling the plot, but basically, Ys IX thinks that a disabled person would rather be trapped in a prison city with nowhere to go so that they can walk than checks notes not have usage of their legs. And they magically regain their ability to walk anyway. I’ll leave the deeper unpacking of that particular thesis to someone smarter than me, especially because that’s not a disability I have, but I can pretty confidently say after discussing with a disabled friend that the resulting implication is Not Great.

“Fair play, Mint,” you’re probably thinking. “But the combat has to be good at least, right? That’s what makes a Ys game a Ys game!”

…Well…

Hardcore Parkour!!

To be fair, besides the music, combat is still the best part of Monstrum Nox. Attacks give great feedback, skills are fun to throw out, and flash dodges and guards feel incredible to pull off back-to-back. I’m also very pleased with the parkour abilities Adol and the Monstrums have through their “gifts.” Wall-running, dash-teleporting, and gliding through Balduq was a blast, and I spent a good chunk of my time simply using these abilities to explore the city and find treasure chests and exploration points.

That’s about where the praise ends, though. Ys IX maintains the same Rock-Paper-Scissors style of combat applied to the last few games, where each character has a particular attack type that’s strong against particular enemies. Despite this, the game rarely — if ever — gives you a reason to switch out. About 70% of the enemies have no particular weakness at all, so there’s rarely a point to switching unless the character you’re currently playing as is low on health. Because of this, I had no reason to use Adol, who naturally becomes the strongest character in the game, and spam his gigantic, area-of-effect sword skill, which is the best one in the game, and which you will unlock about halfway through playing it. Ys VIII had an incredible combat loop, where you were constantly bobbing and weaving between attacks, swapping to whichever character was most useful on-hand to crush mobs of enemies. The energy just wasn’t there.

That same lack of energy can be found in the game’s setting. While the prison city is a cool, dense local, it’s also extremely grey. Actually, all of Barduq is grey. Because the game takes place in this central location, there’s not much room for interesting or colorful locals. It won’t be long until you find yourself in your forth grey and greenish-brown ruins, wondering if you’re experiencing some extreme déjà vu. Normally, that sort of thing doesn’t bother me as much if a game’s loop is entertaining, but Ys IX’s is not.

The game also attempts to repurpose the base attacks from Ys VIII, and while their importance to the plot is better weaved, they’re also not fun in any way. They start out fine enough, but there’s a painful difficulty spike two-thirds into the game where you’ll be forced to grind materials to upgrade your defenses, slowing the game’s already glacial pacing to a complete halt. I would have been happy for them to be removed entirely.

Tenth Time’s the Charm

By the time I was done with Ys IX, I was happy for it to be over. Not because I was satisfied with my time, but because playing it felt like a chore. This hit me like a punch in the gut because Ys games have always pleased my Goopy Goblin Gamer Brain. They’ve always felt like the opposite of a chore. But I realized near the end of the game that I simply wasn’t having any fun. And that sucks.

I don’t think Ys is a lost cause after this disappointing entry in the franchise. But I sorely hope that Ys X shakes the formula up once again, and gets a bit more time in the oven. Retune the combat, or make a new loop entirely. Let Adol stretch his legs and go adventuring again! And please, for the love of God, keep the story simple. Let my Thoughts On: Ys X, which will probably launch in 2025, be more positive than this one. My heart can’t take another hit!

That’s all I can take! Have you played Ys IX? Let me know @mintmakesthings! And if you enjoy my work, please consider supporting me on Buy Me a Coffee! Till next time!

Happy new year y’all. I’m ready to leave 2020 behind, and while I’ve certainly done that mentally, December and January are the most quiet months when it comes to videogame releases, so I’m playing a bunch of stuff from last year. That’s fine though: it’s easy on my wallet and lets me chill out with the games I have in hand right now. On that note, here’s what I’ve been playing lately:

Destiny 2

I don’t have much more to say about it that I haven’t already in my Destiny 2 post from a few weeks ago, but yes, it's still in my rotation and it's still a lot of fun. Contrary to what many fans seem to feel, I appreciate that I don't have to play the game forever. On reset day I can do a whole bunch of my weeklies to get some gear that pushes my ilvl up at a decent pace, and then I can chill and boot it up whenever I'm in the mood. Playing more is always an option, but I don’t have to, especially because I'm not in a rush to Raid weekly. I still think the Stasis grind is terrible, especially in the very specific things the game wants you to do, but I've largely been able to ignore those quests because I like my Fire Knives and I'm keeping them.

Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla

I bounced off this game hard the first time I tried to play it, but I'm enjoying it a lot more on the second go-around. Assassin's Creed games are great gap-fillers when there's nothing new coming out that you're not interested in, because their loops tend to be just engaging enough, and they're stuffed to the brim with content. One thing I appreciate about Valhalla is that it separates activities by “Wealth,” “Mysteries,” and “Artifacts,” on the world map. Wealth tends to give loot, and Mysteries are usually World Events, little vignettes that let Eivor participate in small stories in whatever region she’s currently in. Artifacts are most often collectables and the like.

This system is cool because I don’t have to run from spot to spot, worried I might miss something. I care most about loot and world events, so I can see which Gold and Blue dots are on the map and prioritize those. The other cool thing is that the size of the dot on the map represents how much weight you should give it — so a big Gold dot might be armor or a new weapon, while a smaller one usually has lesser treasure. The combat in the game is pretty good, though I think I’ll enjoy it more when I have more Adrenaline bars unlocked. Adrenaline is what allows you to use your special moves, and I’d like to do that more often. Otherwise it’s just light and heavy attacks, with parrying and dodging sprinkled in-between. Even on Hard mode I don’t feel like I’m engaging with the combat systems much. But that’s fine, not everything needs to be a Platinum game (or maybe they do, check back with me). I don’t like it as much as Gods & Monsters, which I found to be quite entertaining, and I’m sure I’ll fall off the game without finishing it once something I care about more comes along, but until then I’ll make do with AC:V as my story-driven game for now.

Should also mention that I got a review code of this game. Just a disclosure because there's no way I'm willingly paying for anything that Ubisoft makes anymore.

Final Fantasy XIV (Patch 5.4)

How shocked are you really? If you spend 5 minutes on my Twitter you’ll see at least one shitpost about the misadventures of the Sailers. The 5.4 patch brought with it the final tier of Eden raids before the expansion comes out later this year, and they’re a lot of fun (except for E10, which sucks ass). I’ve gotten my full Eden set, missing only the accessories, so we’ve been cleaning up some old content, like the Warring Triad Extremes and doing the Byakko Savage trial unsynced. The more Sailers that join and reach end-game, the more content we can play that I normally wouldn’t be all that into, which is cool. My goal this year is to prog at least one current Savage raid — we’ll see if it ends up happening.

A Bunch of Playstation Plus Collection Games I Fell off of Hard

Here’s the rapid bonus round:

Days Gone

It’s just boring. The plot isn’t very good, the protagonist is actively unlikeable, and the zombies — excuse me, freakers — are spooky the first few times you see them, but lose their edge after a few hours. Literally nothing new or interesting here besides the setting and I guess Deacon's bike. Pass.

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

NakeyJakey mentions the concept of the Goopy Goblin Gamer Brain and it's a good descriptor for how I like to play games. Basically, the less gameplay there is, the more impatient I get, because most games don't have a story that can carry boring gameplay mechanics. Uncharted 4 does not break the mold here. After 2 hours pressing X to climb pre-scripted structures in what can only be described as “fake gameplay," I threw in the the towel. It also doesn't help that the shooting mechanics feel super sloppy in my new, post-Destiny 2 world.

God of War (2018)

This game is actually not that bad? It has that horrible “I just had a kid and I need to tell you about in a game” energy to it, but as far as big budget, AAA games go it’s the most game-y and pleases my goopy goblin brain. That said, I still feel like the game peaks with the very first fight with Baulder and kinda goes down-hill from there as far as pacing goes. The environmental puzzles were generally just…okay. I'm sure I'll finish it one day but for now I'm not really in the mood.

That’s all for now! What have you been playing lately? Let me know on Twitter @mintplaysthings! And if you like my writing, please consider donating to my Patreon or Ko-Fi. Thank you!

I don’t know if I’d call Destiny 2 the best game I played this year. Hell, I don’t know if I’d even call it one of the best games I played this year (if I had to make an amendment to my GOTY list, I’d add Astro’s Playroom, which was delightful).

Despite all this, I finally understand Destiny 2, and it’s given me some of the most fun I’ve had this year.

Grim(oire) Beginnings

I was interested in Destiny when it was first announced in 2014. I wasn’t that much of an FPS guy, but I did enjoy Halo, and the idea of an MMO Shooter sounded appealing to me — even if this technically wasn’t what we’d end up getting. I picked it up for the PS3, played through the campaign, and then dropped off.

The main reason for this is that I had no idea what the hell was going on. Destiny purportedly had a very interesting story, but I didn’t see any of it. It was all locked behind a grimoire, where one would have to log into a separate website to read all the interesting lore within the game. This is probably the most baffling thing I’ve ever seen in a game, and I’ve played Kingdom Hearts. I quickly learned that when it comes to my playing habits, I require a why for what I’m doing to enjoy it. Killing for plot is what separates us from the beasts. Destiny did not seem interested in telling me why in a way that didn’t give me a headache, and thusly I was uninterested in playing it.

Time passed and Destiny 2 launched, and I decided to pick it up again. I got a little further this go-around, but now I had a different problem: I felt like I was left behind. It turns out some stuff happened in the Destiny expansions I never picked up. Events and characters were being referenced that I didn’t know. Who the hell is Mara Sov and why is she so hot? What the heck is a Crota? These were questions I was expected to know the answer to, but didn’t have. Moreover, while the Red War was a better campaign experience than Destiny 1’s, it still felt like a slog. No access to my Sparrow and a rushed plot left me cold. I played through it and the campaigns for Osiris and Warmind, but didn’t stick around after being overwhelmed with plot and things to do.

This was…disappointing for me. I was a Kingdom Hearts and Metal Gear Solid fan, and I love MMOs and loot. Destiny’s esoteric lore and constant rising numbers should have been a match made in heaven for me, but it wasn’t.

Beyond Lore

Obviously, that changed, or you wouldn’t be reading this. But why? Really, it was just a slew of luck. The stars aligned in multiple ways:

Tech Upgrades

The PS5 version of Destiny is the one that let me stick around, and there’s little wonder why. It plays like an absolute dream on the new system. The game runs at a constant 60FPS. Menu loads are snappy. Fast travel and planet hopping is quicker than ever. And there’s an FOV slider! These QOL upgrades make the whole experience more pleasant. It really felt like I was able to take in the game’s universe for the first time.

Onboarding Improved

Beyond Light’s New Player introduction is miles better than vanilla D2’s, or New Light. It’s a bit of a soft reboot, and it slowly introduces you to the available activities in the game, and how one is expected to progress. It feels more like an extended demo more than anything else once you’re done with it — there’s nothing to do but chase exotics or do strike playlists if you don’t buy the expansions — but by the time you’re done, you’ll actually be able to make an informed choice on whether you’d be interested in what the game has to offer.

I Watched a 4-Hour Lore Video

Okay. Yeah. Listen, I know this isn’t the ideal way to experience a game’s story. I am mad that Destiny made me do this because it has made piecing its story together so frustratingly difficult when it didn’t have to be. But for me personally, it was the final piece I needed to get into Destiny. I felt caught up, and I finally understand why I was doing what I was doing. I am incapable of enjoying things unless I can understand and consume them in their entirety, and Bif’s video let me do that. Which is rad. My hyper-fixation demons are pleased.

It’s Like a Ferrari

So, now that I have all the pieces put together, what’s so great about Destiny? Why have I been talking about it non-stop on Twitter for days?

I would honestly say that the most important thing is that this game handles like God. It is the best feeling FPS I have ever played in my entire life. You could strip Destiny of all its other parts and turn it into a simulator where I shoot targets in a dark empty room and I would still play it for hours. Every ounce of feedback when lining up your gun sights is serotonin for my poisoned brain.

The story is also really enthralling and gripping when you sacrifice your sanity by basically doing homework to understand it. Yes, it’s basically just Kingdom Hearts for Jocks (these people love to talk about the battle between Light and Darkness), but the stuffing feels more realized with tons of interesting factions and characters within them that are well-written and come with motivations that I care about. Really, it’s like Kingdom Hearts and Metal Gear Solid had a plot baby that also happens to be much gayer than either of those games — or at least, gay on purpose (Osiris is gay and also my dad).

All that said, Destiny 2 is probably most interesting to me on a mechanical level, specifically in its end-game. I created a Hunter and focused on the Solar ability tree, and found that I really liked throwing flame knives at people because throwing knives are cool. Knife throwing has a cool-down tied to the Strength stat, but as a Hunter, I can reset that cool-down by dodging next to enemies. I had found myself with a bunch of gear that was tied to the Mobility stat, which lowered my dodge cool-down to about 15 seconds. And thanks to my bud Ishiku, I got tipped off about an Exotic chest piece that let me have two dodges available to me at a time. With that, I could throw cool fire knives as much as I wanted!

It was extremely cool to come up with a build like that almost entirely on my own, and the level of flexibility isn’t something I’m used to when you consider that the only other game I’ve reached end-game in is FFXIV. There, your build is just whatever the most powerful piece of gear is, and then the materia you need to use which you can find through a quick google search (it’s usually Direct Hit and Critical Hit, just an FYI). Which is fine! But Destiny allowed me to basically completely change my play style, making my Hunter different from someone else’s. And I’m still theory-crafting, with my next target being an Exotic Auto-Rifle that will let me throw knives even more by regenerating my cool-down faster.

On top of this, despite Destiny 2 sometimes feeling like busy-work (we’ll get to that), it allows for a bit of freedom in how you approach objectives. One mission to unlock a gun allowed me to choose between using it in Strikes, Crucible (PvP), or Gambit. I don’t care for PvP that much and Gambit unfortunately gets me into big Heated Gamer Moment mode, so I went with Strikes instead. Weekly loot drops can also be obtained all sorts of ways, and while it’s probably optimal from a min-max perspective to do all of them, I can ignore one or the other when I’m not in the mood and still feel like I’m making some progress.

Are Ya Winning, Sunset?

Despite finding myself suddenly falling in love with Destiny these past two weeks, all is not well in the land of Nessus. I was lucky enough to play through Red War, Osiris, and Warmind before they got put in “the Destiny Vault,” but someone who’s new and might want to experience that story will now have to watch it on YouTube instead. I’ve seen a lot of attempted justification for this, and there just isn’t any good one. If Destiny 2 wants to be Destiny 3, then Bungie should just make Destiny 3. What we’ve gotten instead is this weird half-measured Destiny 2.5. Legacy content is important. I think Final Fantasy XIV’s ARR content is boring as sin, and I’m glad a chunk of the useless stuff was cut down, but imagine if it was all gone. The good plot we’re getting now would make zero sense because of the lack of context. I can’t comment on the sunsetting of guns because I don’t know much about this game’s gun meta, but getting rid of 1/3rd of your game’s plot is just. Not good! Sorry.

Moreover, I feel like most people are aware that Destiny 2 can be a chore simulator. I would and have argued that every game’s loop can feel like busy-work at a certain point, and Destiny’s loop is so good that I can usually ignore how chore-like some tasks can feel. But my God, sometimes I can’t. Progressing my Stasis powers, for example, has been a ridiculous grid. Yesterday I saw that I had to do more things in every specific ways to progress and just yawned before shutting my console off. I know I’ll get back to it soon — probably as soon as I’m done writing this piece — because the allure of loot is simply too strong, but yeah, would love it if you toned some of this down, Bungie.

Eyes Up Guardian

So yes. I had some qualms with Destiny 2, and I have a few more that have stuck around. But when my cute, cool as hell Hunter lines up a bow shot and lets it fly into a Hive Thrall’s head, making it explode into a confetti of loot and ammo, I forget every issue I might have had. Maybe I’m just in the honeymoon phase, and soon I’ll be complaining on the Destiny subreddit like half the game’s population seems to do. But for now, I’m very content to fly around Europa and help my hot robot girlfriend deal with her family trauma by blowing up a bunch of shit. Because I finally understand Destiny 2, and I’m having a blast.

Well, it only took 500 years but it finally showed up! I got my PS5 this past Friday and played it all weekend, and now I have some thoughts that I’ll be sharing. Unlike games, which have an artistic quality to them, hardware is a lot more defined, so I’ll be harkening to the old “GRAPHICS, AUDIO, GAMEPLAY” style of reviews this time around and split this piece into a few categories:

• The Console
• The Controller
• The UI
• The Experience
• Should I Get One?

Without further ado, let’s dive in!

The Console

I know it’s a meme, but it really does not hit how much of a damn chonker the PlayStation 5 is until you have to carry the box up a flight of stairs. Taking it out of the box was also difficult. Holding it was difficult. Moving it around was difficult. It is a gigantic piece of hardware that pictures do not do justice to. I don’t really care about how big the thing is because it’s now settled in the resting spot it’s going to be in for the next 11 months, but I’m going to curse about it again when I start packing for a move.

I have the PS5 lying on its side because I have never trusted a vertical console in my life, but I think it’s more aesthetically pleasing vertically to be honest. Getting it onto its stand was relatively easy, but I regret not getting it plugged in first — it’s very slippy-slidey and clearly not meant to be jostled about too much when on the stand, lest you risk it getting pushed off.

I know some people think it looks hideous, I get that, really. But I love it. I love how hopelessly weird this thing looks. My sister keeps saying that the aliens will be breaking into my house to get it back soon. I’m lucky in that all of my furniture is white, so it doesn’t actually stand out that much in my room, but I can see why people don’t like the color. Sadly, I can’t ignore how dusty it’ll get, so I’ll be wiping it down weekly.

The second best part of the console is that the buttons are physical, so I don’t have to go on a Dora the Explorer adventure just to find the Disc Eject button. The best part of the console is that it’s quiet. Honestly, if that was the only upgrade the PS5 brought to the table I’d still be happy. The PS5 might look like it’s about to take off, but the PS4 sounds like it’s about to take off, and that is significantly more annoying. I actually didn’t realize how much space the PS4’s fan occupied in my brain. I can never go back after the beautiful silence that comes with the PS5.

The Controller

So no joke, this thing slaps. It is already my favorite controller ever. You might have a different first opinion if you have small paws but I have big meaty claws and the DualSense fits very snug in my hands. The whole thing is wider, so my giant thumbs don’t knock together like they used to on the PS4 (and even more-so with the PS3) controller. The buttons are all satisfyingly clacky without being too loud, and the triggers feel nice. The light-bar is a lot less intrusive in the way it shines as well. Also, I for one am still happy that the trackpad stuck around because it’s useful for Final Fantasy XIV.

Also, the grips have little Xs and Os on them, which is cute.

The coolest part about the new controller is the titular DualSense feature. This is some real next-gen stuff, more than anything else I mention in this post, to be honest. Astro’s Playroom, the delightful game that comes bundled with the Playstation 5, shows off everything it’s capable of, and what it’s capable of is a lot! The feedback that comes from the triggers when aiming Astro’s bow, the way the controller vibrates to stimulate rain and Astro’s footsteps is all incredibly cool. I very much hope that games take good advantage of this feature if it’s easy to develop for because I’m a huge fan of it.

My main two worries, though, are that the DualSense will have, like, an hour of charge in it with all this fancy wizardry going on, and that the adaptive triggers won’t last for very long. Only time will tell!

The UI

I miss themes. I know they’ll probably come back eventually, but still. I don’t care about seeing a splash screen for whatever game I want to play. I want to see Tifa hanging out on the water tower in Nibelheim!!! Bring her back, Sony!

Anyway, other than that (and one other flaw that we’ll get to) I’m pretty fine with the PS5 UI, mostly because it’s extremely snappy and every loads up fast. I love that I can trim and upload videos through the share button without having to completely suspend a game now, which was a pet peeve of mine. Everything is butter smooth in comparison to the PS4, which is a huge plus.

It took a moment to get my footing, but once I did I was cruising along without much trouble. I do think some things take way too many button presses, like when trying to put the PS5 in rest mode. I also miss being able to use the Home button as a quick way to “pause” games. Now it takes you to Cards, which are nice enough, but most of the information doesn’t pertain to me that much, seeing as I’m not a trophy hunter. I liked how games on the PS4 would often be suspended. Very specific to my weird habits, though, so not a dealbreaker.

What is a dealbreaker is that the PS5 does not have folders. At launch. Again. All due respect but what the hell Sony. Here you can see that they were rushing to get this thing out before the holidays because that’s just inexcusable from a UI perspective in 2021. Get it together, and bring those back ASAP.

The Experience

That brings us to actually playing games on the thing. As I mentioned, Astro’s Playroom was a delight to go through, but one thing I immediately noticed is that load times were basically non-existent. From launch to start everything loaded in at lightning speed, 3 seconds or less, and that even included fast-traveling between areas. This doesn’t seem like a huge deal at first, but the main reason I was even willing to get a Platinum Trophy for Astro was because zipping around to complete all the stuff I missed after my play-through was quick. Not having to sit through loading screens is a feature that I hope the PS5 maintains as the generation goes on because I love it. The same is true for PS4 backwards compatible games like FFXIV: a trip to Eulmore used to take 55 seconds for me to load on the PS4, but now only takes 12. I’ve become less prone to pulling out my phone after a few hours of playing the Demon’s Souls remake because the time from a death to a restart is ridiculously fast. The more time I get to spend playing, the better.

One thing that I was surprised to enjoy in particular is Game Help. I fully believe this to be a feature that only First Party titles will really use, but the ability to look up a missing trophy or secret item after struggling to find it without having to pull out my phone to scrub through a 10-minute YouTube video is extremely cool. I was worried it’d be a clunky feature, but the snappiness of the PS5’s UI made the whole process super easy to pull off.

The next generation’s graphical prowess means nothing to me, even if Demon’s Souls is breathtakingly beautiful. What I find myself most impressed by is the quality-of-life that comes reduced load-times that let you spend more time in the game and less time waiting around. That time really starts to add up, and makes the idea of playing a huge open-world game or games where you expect to have to restart often a lot more palatable.

So Should I Get One?

Ehhhhh.

I got a PS5 because I got a new job and it was my gift to myself. But even putting aside the fact that it’s hell to get one right now, I don’t know how worth it it is.

If you’re a person with a base PS4, I’d consider it. You’re going to be making a 7-year upgrade, and you’re going to feel it. But if you have, say, a PS4 Pro, I don’t see the reason to get one just yet. It’s nice to be able to play all my old games with faster load-times and more stable frame-rates. But as of now that’s pretty much all you’re getting. The PS5 line-up is currently non-existent beyond Demon’s Souls, a remake of a game you might have played already with a sort of niche fan-base, and Godfall, a game that is not worth the $70 price-tag.

Overall, I like the PS5 quite a lot, and I’m excited to spend more time with it and for its roster to expand. But as it stands, it’s not a can’t-miss piece of hardware. Maybe it will be in six months — and hey, maybe there’ll actually be stock six months from now too.

That’s all for now! Do you have/want a PS5? Tired of Sony’s pathetic inability to handle stock? Let me know on Twitter @mintplaysthings! And if you like my writing, please consider donating to my Patreon or Ko-Fi. Thank you!

Do I even have to give a summary on what this year was like? I don’t think so, right? Well, maybe a little. On a global, grand scale, 2020 was pretty damn awful, but on a personal level, I’ve made a lot of pretty big, important strides. I got diagnosed for my ADHD for one: you can tell because this blog is the most content-filled it has ever been. And on top of that, after a year of busting my butt, I got accepted into Grad School, and started a new job. So yeah, 2020 was definitely a hell year in a lot of ways, but it was also a year for me that was filled with personal growth and some nice things. I’m very grateful for that, and for the people who have been along for the ride with me.

Below you will find the twelve games I played and loved the most this year. They are not ranked in any sort of order, as usual. I would also like to thank @sailorjubs for providing this year’s Game of the Year art — it is adorable, like all the art they make, so go check it out!

And with that: on to the games!

Final Fantasy VII Remake

I had little faith that Final Fantasy VII Remake would reach the astronomically high bar that was set for it the minute it was announced. I’m very glad I was wrong. Other than Final Fantasy XIV, FF7R is the greatest title Square Enix has put out in at least a decade. It has a perfect blend of Action-RPG combat, fills in the holes that the original couldn’t give time to, and adds some fascinating new surprises. I have never been so excited for the future of a Square Enix series since I watched the secret ending that came at the end of the first Kingdom Hearts, and I can’t wait to see how Cloud and Co.’s party fare in the sequel.

Also, I want Tifa to bench-press me.

Nioh 2

Nioh 2 is the best Souls game ever made. This is barely hyperbole. It’s incredible, and not just because it lets me create a buff green-haired lady with sick tattoos. Its combat has that shine-polished Ninja Theory design, with a plethora of weapons that all feel incredible, and a myriad of combat options that make every encounter as engaging and exciting as the last. And on top of all that, it tells a story that was much more affecting than the original. In fact, Nioh 2 improves on the original in pretty much every single way, so if that game turned you away, I implore you to try Nioh 2: I highly doubt you’ll be disappointed.

CrossCode

I have come to learn that outside of some specific instances, I’m a pretty mechanically driven person when it comes to videoed james. CrossCode is a mechanical delight. It is a smorgasbord of interlocking systems that all work in tandem to create a beautiful medley of gameplay, overlaid on top of a fun .hack-esque MMO world. Lea is a delightful protagonist, and her growth as the game progressed tied it all together for this solid little Puzzle-Action-JRPG. Definitely give it a shot.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon

RGG Studios never misses. Like a Dragon continues Yakuza’s charm, but brings it together with a lovable party and an emotionally charged story that left me breathless by its end. Kasuga Ichiban, full of heart and dumb of ass, is a fantastic foil to Yakuza’s legendary protagonist, and his unique perspective gives the series a breath of fresh air. This is also true of Like a Dragon’s turn-based combat, which was engaging from the beginning of the game to its end. I can’t wait to see where Yakuza goes next from here.

Trials of Mana

This game probably won’t be on many people’s GOTY lists, but I predicted it would be on mine last year. This is because, as I said then, Trials of Mana is one of my favorite games ever. The remake improves on everything I already loved about it. Yes, it’s absolutely a deluge of nostalgia-bait. I won’t deny that. But it’s nostalgia-bait for me, and thus, it gets my adoration. Even then, I do believe Trials of Mana is an extremely fun and cute AA Action-JRPG, and I hope we get more work like this from Square Enix — Chrono Trigger next, please?

Spider-Man: Miles Morales

Insomniac could release the same Spider-Man game with a new story for the rest of my life and I’d still love it. The fact that Miles Morales adds a bit of spice on top of what we already got just makes things even better. Beyond the already picture-perfect gameplay that we get from Insomniac’s Spider-Man, Miles Morales gives us a sense of community and heart that lets it stand apart from the game that came before it. I cannot explain to you the noise that came from my mouth and the way my heart swelled seeing a character that looked like me throw on his suit and swing through the streets of Harlem. Anyone who tells you representation doesn’t matter is a damn liar.

Ikenfell

Sometimes I worry my heart doesn’t work. I finished Ikenfell and put it away for the night, going to sleep without much thought. It wasn’t until 8 hours later, listening to the game’s soundtrack, did I finally burst into tears thinking about its cast of characters. I guess my emotions are just on dial-up. Ikenfell is a wonderful, gay little game. Playing it feels like wrapping up in a blanket with a cup of hot chocolate on a cozy Autumn day. And its impressive diversity and accessibility options put pretty much every AAA game to shame. You owe it to yourself to play it.

Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers

No, Shadowbringers didn’t come out this year. Yes, it was on last year’s list. The next expansion probably will be too. I could go on and on about how each expansion for FFXIV raises the bar higher than the last, or how incredibly fun the raids have been. And that’s all very true. But Shadowbringers earns a spot on the list this particular year because it’s given me something we all desperately crave in 2020: connection. Logging on every Friday night with my merry band of Sailers, laughing with them, celebrating victories over new content…it’s an experience I don’t think I’ll ever forget. It’s become a vehicle for my friends and I to enjoy ourselves in the hellscape that is 2020. I realize it’s a property owned by a multimillion dollar company, but I’ll say it anyway: I’m grateful for Final Fantasy XIV’s existence, and I hope it gets to remain a part of my life for a very long time.

Hades

There are very few games that I would call “perfect,” or near-that, but I truly believe Hades fits the bill. Every single thing about it is polished beyond belief, and blends to serve both its narrative and gameplay systems in a way no other game I can think ever has. Even hours after playing it, I still find myself uncovering new mechanics and new dialogue. I loved every single minute I spent with Hades, and its colorful cast of characters. And best of all, I love that the entire game was made ethically, with its developers in mind every step of the way. It’s hands-down the best rogue-like game ever made, and I’m not just saying that because I want Nyx to DM me.

Apex Legends

Apex is the other game that didn’t release this year or even do anything that special, but still appears on this list for what it did for me, personally. After the lockdown occurred, it became the game my buddy Flynn and I would turn to whenever we wanted to cool down for the day and talk about work and life. I mean, it helps that it’s the most entertaining and well-designed Battle Royal I’ve ever played, but that’s not the main reason why it has a spot on my list there. I have never been much of a social type when it comes to playing games — I’ve never been much of a social type in general — but the pandemic forced me out of my comfort zone, and I can see myself doing it a lot more often from now on.

Gun Rounds

Gun Rounds is the best game of the year no one played, and for this I am deeply disappointed. It’s a game with a basic premise — turn-based bullet rogue-like — but executes it so flawlessly that it defies description. This singular mechanic is perfect in every single way, and I got hours of enjoyment out of it. Moreover, it’s a perfect game specifically for phones: rather than try to put a console experience on your doom-scrolling device, Gun Rounds is content with giving you an experience that makes sense to be played with one hand. You’re probably reading this on a phone right now. If you are, and you haven’t played Gun Rounds, go to your designated App Store and download it right now. Go on, git! You’re at the end of this list anyway, I won’t be mad.

That’s it! Those are my games of the year. Frankly, this was a pretty great year for games, at least for me. What were your favorites? Let me know on Twitter @mintplaysthings! And if you like my writing, please consider donating to my Patreon or Ko-Fi. Thank you!

I finished Ikenfell yesterday. It’s an indie game about a bunch of very gay witches that go on an adventure in their magical school. It was very cute and fun, and again, very very gay. If you’re looking for an in-depth look at the game, you won’t find that here, because other people better than me have already done that — like this guy.

What I am here to talk about is the feature that makes Ikenfell one of the greatest JRPGs ever made by default. It is so good, so perfect, so important that I don’t think I’ll be able to live without it in games of its ilk going forward. I’m talking about the Instant Victory button.

Ikenfell is a tactical-ish turn-based game, where your party and enemies navigate a grid during combat, pick a spell, then cast it. As actions in battle occur, the better your timed button presses, the more damage you do / stronger buffs you get / less damage you take.

I really enjoyed Ikenfell’s combat. But as I mentioned in my article on Yakuza: Like a Dragon, JRPG battles exist on a sort of bell curve: The beginnings tend to start off slow, with limited options. Then the game picks up, with you learning more abilities, gaining new party members, and being given freedom to experiment with your toolkit. Finally by the end, you have a set strategy in place, you’ve found the characters you enjoy using the most, and there’s little in the way of change through to the game’s credits.

I started to feel this with Ikenfell. I thought I wouldn’t use the Instant Victory button, but after fighting the same four or five enemy types in a dungeon, I felt myself getting exhausted and activated it. Instant Victory can be used during a character’s turn, meaning you can press it whenever you want during a fight. Do so, and your enemies poof into EXP, letting you go on your merry way.

Pressing that button let me feel freer than I ever have playing a JRPG before. It became as much a part of my flow through the game as swapping equipment and solving puzzles. With each new dungeon, I would fight enemies a few times. Once I felt satisfied that I had gotten the “full experience” combating them, I would simply Instant Victory my way to the end until I reached that dungeon’s boss, which I would fight, rather than skip. I also used it to grind up levels when I was struggling during boss fights, skipping out on the tedious repeated battles that can come with leveling up to make my party of extremely gay witches stronger.

Was I denying myself the satisfaction of overcoming the challenge of combat by using the Instant Victory button? Not really: I wasn’t playing Ikenfell for the combat. I was more interested in the story, unraveling the mysteries of the titularly named school and praying that the characters I was getting to know would be happy by the game’s end. The combat was secondary, and while I enjoyed it, there came a point where I simply wanted to move on once I experienced everything the game’s loop had to offer.

Having finished the game, Instant Victory is the part of Ikenfell that will stick with me after the fact (well, that and the fact that I will never be in an emotionally fulfilling relationship). It just makes sense from both a gameplay and accessibility perspective. More choice is never a bad thing when it comes to games, and being able to choose how much I want to engage with particular systems in a game is extremely cool. It’s the natural evolution to Bravely Second’s ability to turn off random encounters, and the ability to instantly solve puzzles in games like 2017’s Spider-Man. And while ports of Square Enix’s Final Fantasy games have come with “cheats” that let you max out all your characters stats and have an infinite amount of money, they don’t allow for the same level of choice — you are either an overpowered God, or you have to play the game “normally,” with no in-between. Frankly, every JRPG should have an Instant Victory button, and I will not be satisfied until they do.

That’s all for now! How do you feel about Instant Victory buttons? Let me know on Twitter @mintplaysthings! And if you like my writing, please consider donating to my Patreon or Ko-Fi. Thank you!

I’ve been playing a large variety of games while I wait for my PS5 to come back from the war and land on my doorstep sometime in the next two years (seriously where are you?? come home, please. I’m worried). Let’s talk about them.

Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin

Sakuna is a very interesting game. It’s a farming simulator crossed with Muramasa: Demon Blade, but if you’re expecting something like Rune Factory when it comes to the fighting + farming shtick, you’re going to be surprised. This is a game that takes farming to near Euro Truck Simulator levels of realism. Are the rice seeds properly aligned? Have you allowed the water to fill to your ankles after planting? How’s the fertilizer looking? These are questions you’ll find yourself asking in Sakuna, and the game does very little in the way of handholding. This can be a bit aggravating at first, but as time goes on you’ll be proud of the progress you’ve made with each subsequent year of crops, which serve to power up Sakuna’s stats.

This set-up makes sense narratively as well, because Sakuna is a big spoiled brat of a baby, who finds herself thrust into an island to farm and solve a mystery about a swarm of demons, despite having never done a lick of work in her entire life as the child of a harvest goddess and warrior god. She and her team of similarly crappy human farming mates must work together to survive. You learn to harvest with them, and along the way, come to see the cast grow and be less garbage to each other over time. It’s pleasant to see.

Sakuna is a very meditative game, despite its bursts of well-paced action-combat. The two skews of combat and farming go well together, but when I walk away from the game, I’ll be more likely to remember the moments where Sakuna and her friends sing farming songs as they plant one seed of rice at a time. This is a cutscene you can watch to the end. It’s skippable, and you gain nothing from watching it, but it’s there. And that’s what sets Sakuna apart from other farming games: it has a deep respect for the process of planting rice, and now, so do I.

Judgment

Yakuza: Like a Dragon has me craving more from the developers, and my buddy Flynn was nice enough to shoot me a tip about Judgment going on sale. So I grabbed it and it was worth it! Judgment is set within the same universe as the Yakuza games, but stars a disgraced Lawyer-turned Detective on the hunt for a serial killer in Kamurocho. It plays like Yakuza 6 on the Dragon Engine, but is a lot more refined in terms of combat. The game has a much decreased scale — a feat given how small-scale Yakuza games are already — with a more intimate story in contrast to most Yakuza games and a smaller cast of characters. This works in its favor, although I find that the Reputation System to unlock side-cases is a little grindy.

The investigation aspects are mostly good and a nice change of pace, but the find-a-pixel nonsense can be a drag sometimes. On the other hand, tailing missions are unequivocally bad, and should be removed from every game posthaste.

Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise

The OTHER Ryo Ga Gotoku game I’m playing, FotNS is also a blast so far. It doesn’t have the budget of Judgment and even feels like a PS2 game at times in its scale, but it feels real good to come back to the Yakuza 0 engine. Kiryu’s VA voicing Kenshiro is just chef’s kiss so damn good. I was hooked on my very first “Omae Wa Mou.” I’m not as far as I am in Judgement, simply because the story in the former is gripping me more, but I can’t wait to play further. One thing I can say though is that I’m worried the quick-time events will grate as time goes on, and I’m hoping Ken gets some secret techniques that take out groups of enemies to mitigate that fatigue. Right now I’m moving from enemy to enemy to do them and it’s getting just a tad on my nerves, depending on how long the sequence is for the technique I’m doing.

Even saying all of that though, FotNS is far and above better than most Anime game adaptations. At least it's not another goddamn Arena Fighter. Namco, please take notes. Or better yet, give all your IPs to RGG Studios. Sure they work for SEGA, but it'd be better for everyone.

That’s all for now! What are you playing lately? Let me know on Twitter @mintplaysthings! And if you like my writing, please consider donating to my Patreon or Ko-Fi. Thank you!

Yakuza: Like a Dragon is what I wish more JRPGs could be.

When the game was first announced, fans were worried. Would this be the same level of quality that they’ve come to expect from Yakuza games? What about the grind? Won’t it get repetitive and boring?

After a breathless 35 hours spread across a week of play, I can comfortably say that Like a Dragon doesn’t just meet the expectations the Yakuza series has created — it exceeds, standing shoulder to shoulder with Yakuza 0 as the best in the series.

It makes sense that I rank those two games together because I think Like a Dragon owes its existence as a JRPG to Yakuza 0. That game was the pinnacle of the series’ beat’ em up combat, to the point that 6, Kiwami and Kiwami 2 felt boring in comparison. Yakuza needed a change, and a JRPG was more perfect of a fit than I was expecting.

The game takes the genre-shift in stride, incorporating itself in every aspect of its themes and characterization. Kiryu Kazuma is replaced by new series protagonist Ichiban Kasuga, a Yakuza grunt with a love of Dragon Quest and an inability to watch his mouth. It didn’t take long for me to love Ichiban — he’s a clown and a himbo that has never learned what subtlety means. He also emotes in a way that Kiryu never would, and it allows for new, impactful storytelling opportunities as a result. He acts a bit like a shonen protagonist you’d see in an anime, but, you know, written well. Said protagonist is dumped in the town of Yokohama after jail time and a betrayal, and just like a JRPG lead, he has to start from level 1 and climb the way to the top to find answers.

Ichiban is also unlike Kiryu in that while he’s strong, he can’t just effortlessly beat anyone’s ass by himself. His strength comes from his friends (see what I mean by shonen protagonist?). Luckily, Kasuga’s pals, whom make up his party, are all extremely likable. They play out like a grown-up Persona cast, and their interactions are always heartwarming — or, in the case of the skits you can listen to around town, often hilarious. You can level up your relationships with your party by participating in battle and interacting with them in the bar that serves as your home-base. This is another parallel to Persona, but the conversations you have here feel more real, with the characters interacting like people instead of mouthpieces for several ideologies or romance options.

As I mentioned, Yakuza: Like a Dragon swaps out its punchfests for a JRPG combat system, and the result feels like an M-rated Earthbound. Ichiban and his pals use baseball bats, hand bags and batons to beat up yakuza, men in trash bags, otaku, and even stranger enemies that are best left as a surprise. Combat is semi-active, in that you can use timed button-presses to deal extra damage and reduce damage done to you, à la the Mario and Luigi RPGs. Each character has a set of jobs they have access to as well, which they can swap at a literal Job Center.

I’m going to be honest: Like a Dragon doesn’t really reinvent the JRPG wheel. But I honestly don’t think it needed to. My issue with JRPGs has never been that they’re boring or repetitive. Games have loops, and every loop can get boring with enough time — play 6 Yakuza games that involving pressing Square and Triangle, and you’ll start to get exhausted there too. In my mind what has sucked about JRPGs for so long isn’t its loop, but what’s built around it. JRPGs are inundated with spiky-haired protagonists, chosen ones, gross fan-service, terrible pacing, plots with too many Proper Nouns…the list goes on and on. They’re played out aesthetically. Like a Dragon takes that core of JRPGs and places it in a candy coating that I can’t get enough of. It stars characters that are adults, in a plot that’s engaging and human. It replaces The Kingdom of Who Cares with a city that you could walk around in real life. And the story it tells touches on things I care about, like immigration and society’s inability to help the “outcasts” that have fallen through the cracks of its system.

Any game can get stale 15, 20, or 30 hours in because every game reaches a point where it has nothing new to show you mechanically. At that point, it’s up to whatever game you’re playing to engage you in other ways. With Like a Dragon, that engagement comes from the story it tells, the characters it lets you interact with, the side-quests that will make you laugh and tear-up, and the mini-games that let you take a break from beating up stylists brandishing scissors on the streets of Ijincho. The combat doesn’t change that much from the beginning of the game to its conclusion, but I never stopped wanting to keep playing to see what would come next.

Except, that is, for one particular section, which is probably my biggest issue with Like a Dragon. Until this section, I would argue that the game’s difficulty curve is naturally sloped, not demanding much in the way of grinding for experience. But one spoilerific boss stopped me dead in my tracks and slapped me upside the head for taking it easy for so long. I had to grind quite a bit to power up my team enough to win, and it was close even then. Thankfully there’s nothing else after that section that’s nearly as painful in terms of difficulty, but it did leave a sour taste in my mouth. I also am not a fan of JRPGs where you automatically get a Game Over if your protagonist dies, which Like a Dragon sadly emulates. And while most of the Dragon Quest-based inspiration was welcome, it sucks that Saeko, one of your only female party members, is objectively the best healer in the game. We could have left that particular trope behind.

But these are minor bumps in the road for a game that did nothing but impress me in my time playing it. Yakuza: Like a Dragon is one of the best games I’ve played this year, and an incredible note to somewhat play this console generation out. As a fresh start to the series, I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone that wants to learn why I love Yakuza so damn much.

That’s all for now! Can you tell me how to get to the station? If you can, let me know on Twitter @mintplaysthings! And if you like my writing, please consider donating to my Patreon or Ko-Fi. Thank you!

Here's a trash post where I tell you how I feel about all the Fire Emblem Three Houses characters despite not remembering any of them because I didn't like Fire Emblem Three Houses ready set go

Boring

Boring but girl, stockings will rip on the battlefield

Twitter hates her. Horse girl. Heard she committed a war crime.

"Is he bothering you Queen"

"I am bothering the Queen"

Played guitar to impress girls in college. DMs you his favorite Wes Anderson films

Shonen Protagonist

Self-Esteem issues, super popular on tumblr

The hot girl that was nice to you in high-school despite hanging out in polar opposite social circles

Hot girl that's intimidating at first glance but actually very nice

Listens to Linken Park

Rejected Jojo character design

My FATHEr will be hearing about this

Extremely powerful when he cries

Himbo, despite looking like a jock he's extremely good at yugioh

I dunno, a nun?

Baby

Also a horse girl. Mean

Fetishized by white women

Is she bothering you, King

He seems sweet. Probably knows how to cook.

Permanant resident in his bully's locker.

Fujoshi, runs the anime club

Vice president of the anime club, A+ student, needs more sleep

All I know is that there's too much porn of this girl

Jock, bad at math

I don't like him but I don't know why

Baby, would break your phone if you gave it to her

Pip pip cheerio

Someone on the team had a teacher fetish, probably thinks she's too old despite looking in her 20s

Rando tank that you'd kill in any other Fire Emblem game

Probably has an extremely dedicated fan-base despite having that facial hair.

You wanna date her but she demands you go to a church service

My wife,

Anna

Wait is this actually a main character? Seriously?

He goes to hot topic and probably smells

No one's dumb like Gaston, does good crits like Gaston

Horse girl, racist

Dunno but she has big gay energy

There ya go, sorry if I insulted your favorite Fire Emblem Three Houses character but it's your own fault for playing Fire Emblem Three Houses in the first place, byyyyye–

No More Heroes and No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle surprise dropped onto the Switch recently and I immediately bought them, both to support the series, and to play No More Heroes 2 for the very first time. You see, both games came out when I was a much younger Mint, and while I was able to sneak my way through playing the first game without the maternal unit realizing, I never could get around to the second game. Now that I’ve played both, I’ve some quick thoughts. Spoilers for both games, kinda!

No More Heroes is about a stinky-looking otaku man named Travis Touchdown, who has a beam katana and the desire to become the number one assassin. To do so he has to climb the rankings by killing the top ten assassins, one at a time. NMH still slaps, frankly, and the port for the game is solid. The game was revolutionary when it first released, and it has mostly aged with grace. The only issue from a gameplay perspective is that driving around Santa Destroy can be kind of annoying, especially in the late game, when you have to grind out tasks for cash to get some of the more expensive upgrades. That said, the clash of menial labor vs high-octane murdering is still as stark and hilarious as it was 13 years ago. Nothing like de-stressing with some lawn-mowing after a tough assassination mission.

The high/low/grab aspect of beam katana combat works well, and though not complex, it never really feels like it overstays its welcome considering the game’s short length (about 8 hours if you know some of the cheesier money-making strategies). There’s also a great sense of satisfaction lining up as many goons as possible before flicking a joy con to slice four or five of them in half. That said, the last boss is annoying in the way that games from 2007 tend to be — even having beaten the game before, that fight was still a huge pain in the ass.

Now onto No More Heroes 2. It might seem like I’m rushing to talk about this game, but No More Heroes is a classic that doesn’t need much in the way of explanation. NMH2 is the one that I’m more interested in talking about because my feelings on it are…well, mixed, to say the least.

Let’s get the good out of the way: NMH2 forgoes open-world traversal for an interactive map. Pick an activity off the list, and you’re there. No more monotonous travel or accidental crashes on Travis’ bike. Thank god for that. The graphical upgrades in the sequel are nice as well.

I also love love loved that I got to play as Shinobu in the sequel, because she’s cool as hell. She plays just differently enough from Travis to feel like a fresh experience. I was very pleased to see she got some time in the spotlight, especially because I had no idea she was playable.

Combat feels tighter, and I don’t really have complaints about it, but I do actually prefer how the first game plays. It was more deliberate, whereas NMH2 is more button-mashy in comparison, at least on the standard difficulty. That’s fine, though, not everything needs to be a character action game, and it was still satisfying to pull off the assassination QTEs.

The part-time jobs being pixelated mini-games were a nice change of pace, although the economy of the game makes it so that you never really need money like you did in the first game, outside of one very expensive beam katana purchase, and cosmetics, if you care about that sort of thing.

All that said, my main issue with No More Heroes 2 is its plot. This might sound like a weird thing to say, but it’s true. At first glance No More Heroes seems like a nonsensical cluster, that kinda touches on violence in videogames and our obsession with enacting it as players. And you’d be right, mostly! But what makes Travis’ exploits memorable outside of that is that each assassin he fights on his way to the top has a point to their existence. Number 10 is the ultimate embodiment of the glamours life of an assassin, Number 9 represents what Travis stands to lose in his quest for power, Number 8 a reflection of the impact we can have on the generation that comes after us, and so on and so forth. It was wacky and zany, sure, but there was a through line about the consequence of violence.

No More Heroes 2 tries to maintain that momentum by demonstrating the futility of revenge…kind of? It’s messy and loose in comparison. For starters — spoiler alert — Travis gets his revenge, and loses nothing in exchange. There’s also this unspoken resolution where Travis disbands the UAA because he’s…tired of assassins being seen as tools, I suppose? Which is kind of out of left field and doesn’t come to any neat conclusion either. And on top of all that,the bosses in the sequel are ultimately not meaningful outside of being amusing to fight, and it’s disappointing in comparison.

Oh, and on top of that, the port of the sequel feels messy as well. I experienced a weird glitch with the bike sections that could only be fixed by switching from my Pro Controller to my Joy Cons. I also got a hard crash in the middle of a twenty minute combat segment near the end of the game that I had to start over from the beginning, and I was not pleased about that at all.

It’s still a fantastic game, and the fact that I decided to beat both games back to back instead of play through Watch Dogs: Legion for review speaks volumes to the quality of both games. But in the end, I wasn’t as satisfied with No More Heroes 2 as I’d have liked. I’m playing Travis Strikes Again next, and maybe I’ll have even more thoughts on that game that I’ll put down here!

That’s all for now! Did you pick up the No More Heroes ports? How’d you feel about them? Let me know on Twitter @mintplaysthings! And if you like my writing, please consider donating to my Patreon or Ko-Fi. Thank you!

A very exciting post today, by the first ever contributor for Mint's Café! Today Ghost is providing a guide on FFXIV's Bozjan Southern Front. Enjoy!

Hello i'm ghost!! Yehn'ir Mhollu on Zalera, and I really like the Bozjan Southern Front.

Running around with a bunch of other random lvl 80 and destroying what are basically 48-man raid level boss fights is the most fun in FFXIV I've had in a while and I wanna see more players have fun too!!

So I wanted to write a casual guide for folk just getting in there of what we can do to help make it not so hard because so many 'guides' at the top of internet searches just list questlines from the patch notes and like, c'mon, really...

And I wanna help folk that might’ve gotten discouraged from dying too much because maybe they ran in head-first day one and missed some good tips,

But mostly cause of that search thing I’m petty.

I won't tell you how to get there, this guide assumes you've already unlocked your resistance weapon quests and such so let's GOOO–

Step 1: We're gonna want a lot of fancy stat boost potions

Okay so if you’ve sped through the quest text in excitement to run in and fight with everyone you might’ve noticed that these mobs hit Hard!!

And those critical engagements? Basically 1hit KOs.

That's where these handy potions come in!

All mobs that aren't "4th Legion" mobs drop these Fragments that we can trade in to the appraiser at base camp for what basically turn us into GODS.

Turning those in will get us our very first stat potions, each tailored to what class your playing as! Some boost damage output while others boost HP and Defense. My white mage is a tank now 😈

Another neat thing you can collect from fragments are Lost Actions — basically duty actions that act as spells you can cast to buff yourself, or raise an ally, or cast Death???

You can combine actions as you like, maybe be a dps who can shield and heal themselves 🤔 ?  (this probably sounds snarky but it's a great solo strategy imo lol)

Step 2: have fun and don't die!

From here it's all on you babey do what you want!! Gather clusters, gain mettle and rank up! Become broken by opening lockboxes.

Remember this basic survival routine: kill mobs > get fragments to trade in for potions and actions > THEN go for the big hard hitting bosses. Don't feel rushed, these are constantly popping off on the map, so take your time ^^

My personal fave gameplay loop goes something like:

1. Destroy some mobs — the higher the rank mob, the higher chance to drop fragments we can trade in for more potions or duty actions.

• The ones right outside the first gate are perfect; they're all passive and easily solo-able.
• As you move up in rank and area, mobs will drop cooler and more broken potions and duty actions.
• If you kill "4th Legion" mobs, they have a chance to drop Bozjan Clusters that you can trade in for that sweet /guard emote and other things.

2. Join in on any skirmishes that break out near you — gain mettle to rank up! You can maybe collect memories for your resistance weapon in that other quest, this isn't a resistance weapon guide there are many of those already.

3. Join any Critical Engagement you qualify for — do you love Trial bosses? But with mechanics you have to actually pay attention to??? Every CE is a unique boss on it's own, and they drop lockboxes you open for a chance at that cool flight suit mount.

4. Remember to turn mettle in at rank up lol (editor's note: you can also lose mettle if you die, so make sure you're turning stuff in so you don't waste mettle after that Red Chocobo from hell destroys you with meteors!)

Okay I think that's all there is to it??

It doesn't get any more complicated than that I think!!

Remember to say tyfp o/

A huge thank you to Ghost for writing this guide! You can find their work and all the Yehn screenshots you could ask for on Twitter @pocketghosts so give them a follow there! This piece's art was also done by them so maybe hit them with a commission! They are a Ghost with many talents!

Hey what’s up. I know you come to this blog to read my often terrible opinions on videogames, but unfortunately for you, there are no games I’m interested in talking about at the moment. I already wrote about Apex, which is about 50% of how I spend my game time lately, and the other 50% involves shutting my brain off and playing The Division 2 — although, it might be worth it to write about that game’s terrible politics at some point. The industry is basically waiting around for November to hit, with a bunch of heavy hitters and the next generation of consoles around the corner, so we’re sort of spinning our wheels here.

That said — and at the risk of sounding dismissive — this is my blog and I get to do what I want!! So today I’m gonna tell you about all the tools I use to do my work and why I like them. I have found that my ability to focus on and do work, creative or otherwise, is dependent on systems that provide a range of helpful features without being bogged down to the point that using them effectively requires me to have a PhD. This year I got a fresh start on my workspace that actually makes me feel good when I am in the process of creation, so I wanted to share it. Maybe you will find this interesting. Maybe you won’t! I don’t have any analytics set up for this blog, so I can’t actually check to confirm. Also, there are a lot of Mac apps here, so I’m sorry if I upset anyone with my garbage taste in electronics.

What does the Camping Mint art by @pocketghosts have to do with this? I just wanted a cute picture as the header. Let’s go!

Ulysses

Ulysses is the main app I use to write this blog! It’s a writing app that is powerful enough to do a lot of stuff I need, but stays out of the way when I want to just focus on writing. You can separate documents out based on what they’re for, so I have a tab for work, a tab for my blog, etc. And those tabs are further divided out based on my own organizational flow.

The editor is markdown-based, and has a nice full-screen mode that operates like a typewriter, keeping what you’re writing at the middle of the screen. You can choose to have your current sentence, word, or paragraph be the only thing that’s highlighted, to help you focus further, and there are lots of stats you can keep track of, and a grammar checker. Most importantly, Ulysses uploads directly into Ghost! Two clicks and this draft will be placed right in my blog, waiting to be fully published.

Notion

Notion is a fantastic second-brain app that’s basically as powerful as you want it to be. It holds a ton of data that I want to keep hold of, but don’t always need on hand. It can work as a wiki, a bookmarking tool, a place to write, set tasks, or all of the above. While incredibly comprehensive and powerful, it can be a little intimidating. Not quite as “get out of the way” as I normally like my apps, but it’s the one place I make an exception.

One nice thing is that Notion gives free personal plans to people with EDU email accounts!

Fantastical

I have burned through so, so many to-do apps ever the years, and none of them have worked for me the way I’d like. Not sure if it’s just because I’m picky, or bad at getting my organized, but that’s how it’s always been, until I found Fantastical. I downloaded the trial on a whim, thinking there’d be no way I spend actual money on a calendar app, but wow was I wrong. Fantastical has a fantastic UI that makes blocking out time almost enjoyable. It lets me add events and tasks as needed, letting me organize based on what makes sense. And now that I’m a working Mint, its ability to detect events on my calendar and allow a one-click button that sends me straight to whatever Zoom meeting I need to go to has been a god-send. I love this app.

Day One

Journaling has been important to me ever since I was a teenager. Being able to go back and see the kind of person I was when I was 17 has been an illuminating experience, and a solid reminder that I’ve grown a lot in the years since. Day One has made the journaling process seamless for me for years now. It’s another app with a fantastic user interface that’s cross-platform between macOS and iOS, and places an emphasis on capturing all the memories you want to retain. It can hold photos, videos, has a tagging system to filter posts when you want to look back at them, keeps track of everything from weather to location, and even lets you make multiple different journals if you want to separate things out even more. Perhaps most importantly, your Journal is not held hostage by Day One, with the option to export in a variety of formats and even order a physical book of your journal!

Postbox

I have four email addresses that I have to keep track of, with only one of them being based in Gmail, and I like to have them all consolidated in one space. I also like desktop apps more than stuff that’s web-based, so Postbox has been a great tool for me. I only really recommend it for email power-users, but if you’re the type of person that often has to live in their mailbox, it’s a great choice. It syncs with email servers quickly, and has a bunch of great filtering options and tagging features. You can set emails as reminders, color-code them however you’d like, and archive and delete tons of emails at a time — great for someone like me, who is obsessed with having a zero-inbox because I’m a weirdo.

Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo

I didn’t feel like posting all my UI/UX tools in this piece since those are very niche (although I might in a separate article, if people are interested), but I will throw in some kudos to the Affinity Suite. Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo are what most people will ever need, and they are fantastic alternatives to Adobe tools, which are garbage when it comes to price. They can take a bit to get used to, but the transition from Illustrator and Photoshop was painless for me, and I hardly miss any of the features from those former tools. Best of all, they’re one-time purchases that get you free updates until the next major release, which tends to come out every two years — far more manageable from a financial perspective.

Apple Music

A year ago I would have balked at the idea of using Apple Music as my primary listening tool, but then every Final Fantasy soundtrack dropped on streaming services, and suddenly Spotify told me that I was exceeding their completely arbitrary cloud library limit. So, I made the switch, and frankly, I couldn’t be happier. Obviously, it helps that I’m fully walled off in the Apple garden, but even then, it really is that good. Sure, the algorithm for recommendations isn’t amazing in comparison to Spotify, but that’s never really something I cared about, since I like to search out music myself. Moreover, adding my own personal albums to the ones that I add from the streaming service is a simple drag-and-drop, meaning my obscure albums of dance music from Japanese Rhythm Games don’t get left behind either.

Tweetbot

Okay, this isn’t technically a tool for work, but I want to recommend it anyway. Tweetbot is great because it’s Twitter with none of the fluff. I happily pay for it to remove garbage like ads, recommended posts, and all that other nonsense. Notifications are a little screwy in comparison, but frankly, not getting pinged by Twitter all day is a pro for me, not a con. It’s showing its age design-wise, and I don’t know if we’re gonna get another update for it, but as it stands, it’s currently the best way to experience Twitter.

Fidget Cube

My most important physical tool! Designed by Antsy Labs — and wow, just as I wrote this, I realized why they’re called that — my Fidget Cube is my personal savior during meetings. I can click and clack and spin and tap away for stimulation all day to stay focused and engaged while people talk. Plus, now that I work remotely, I can do it without worrying that anyone will hear! I love my fidget cube.

Anker Bluetooth Ergonomic Mouse

They’re a little unwieldy at first, but my ergonomic mouse has saved my hand and wrist from crippling pain over the years. They allow me to comfortably rest my hand on the mouse for hours without pain. Super useful if your meat prison is weak and wimpy, like mine. Throw some grip strengtheners and a lacrosse ball in there and you’ve got yourself a mini physical therapist office!

That’s pretty much everything! Hopefully, you’ll find something here that helps you too. If you do, tell me about it @mintplaysthings! And if you like my writing, please consider donating to my Patreon or Ko-Fi. Thank you!

I was idly checking my old posts and realized that Mint’s Café is officially two years old as of three days ago! That set me to reminiscing, so here we are.

I have started many, many blogs since I was a wee Mint, and they’ve all been based around videogames to some extent. Did you know? My very first attempt at reviewing a game came about when I was 12 years old. It was a video review of Okami, cut from video clips I was able to download off of IGN. It was very much based on the old-school “Graphics, Audio, Story, Gameplay” header video game reviews, put together on Windows Media Player. How simple things used to be. From there I would start and stop wordpress blogs, destructoid blogs, kotaku blogs, and even Atavist, which doesn’t exist anymore, all under different monikers I used to use. You can probably find some if you know any of my old usernames. I will not be sharing them with you, because they’re embarrassing. My interests have expanded far beyond videogames in the past 14 years, but they continue to be my favorite thing to talk about, and are a big part of why I have the friends I do.

I can pretty easily say that Mint’s Café is the longest I’ve ever maintained a blog, and there are a couple of good reasons for that. The first is that this is my first personally hosted blog, built on Ghost, with a URL I purchased myself and my blood, sweat, tears and pixels poured into making sure it worked and looked good. The difference having a job can make, heh. The second is that my Mint persona/mascot/whatever has been my most comfortable online identity, and that’s helped me with how I express myself online as a whole. And the blog has only picked up steam since I finally came to terms with my ADD diagnoses, allowing me to focus on the projects I want to work on.

Beyond that, though, what’s made writing on this blog so much fun and long-lasting for me is you, the reader. Whether you’re one of my close friends, indulging me as I talk about Gravity Rush or evil corporate-generated anime girls, a patron that supports the maintenance of both mints.cafe and sunset.camp, or just a person passing through, this place would not exist without you, and I thank you for that. I hope that you’ll continue to stick around as I eject these cursed thoughts from my brain and into the internet so that my head doesn’t explode.

So, with a new year of Mint’s Café comes a new look! You probably noticed it by clicking on this link, but I’ve redesigned the site a little bit. Hope you like it! If not, feel free to tell me — I can always revert back to the old one if enough people are disappointed in the new look. I also have some cool ideas in the pipeline that I hope to implement in the coming months, so stick around for that!

On top of that, I want to celebrate! So I’m holding a giveaway for a $60 gift card for the videogame shop of your choosing (Nintendo eShop, Playstation Store, Microsoft Store, or Steam)! All you have to do is follow me on Twitter and retweet the link to this celebratory post. I will be randomly selecting a winner in 48 hours. I am allowed a bit of marketing-based exposure after two years of work, as a treat. :)

Thank you again, everyone! May this Café continue to be your number one stop for thoughts on games and crying about the creative process!

-Mint

This is making me go absolutely feral, so I’m sorry that this is going to be less a structured blog post and more me screaming into the void, but real talk everybody: what in the actual hell.

So in case you aren’t aware there’s an account on Twitter (and Instagram, and Soundcloud) called @seradotwav. The creepy facsimile of a human being you just clicked on is a League of Legends character created by Riot “The Only Thing We Love More Than Money is Sexually Harassing Our Employees” Games, and I hate her more than I can possibly describe with words in this blog post.

I don’t hate Seraphine personally (although I guess she uses the souls of dead people to power her music, so she’s suss either way) but it doesn’t matter if I do or don’t because Seraphine isn’t real. She’s not a real person. Now you might think “why do you hate Seraphine, Mint? She’s just a vocaloid/vtuber, those are all the rage these days!” Except she’s not really that, either. Vocaloids like Hatsune Miku work because they’re blank slates that you can project yourself onto. Miku and Co. don’t have personalities beyond “plays music” (and “Made Minecraft”). You, the person that uses her voicebank, instill your creative energy into her. You dress her up in cute outfits, you make the songs she sings, you provide the “lore,” so to speak. Vtubers, on the other hand, are played by people, with such a razor-thin line of kayfabe that one sneeze will break the illusion.

Seraphine isn’t a vtuber, she’s the product of a company that wants to capitalize on the hype of vtubing. She’s a doll propped up by a group of marketers that exists to get you to buy her $25 skin in League of Legends.

That alone is gross as hell, but……my God. Folks, I’ll just let the tweets speak for themselves.

…This broke my brain. I have to spell it out clearly to fully come to terms with it, so here goes:

A game studio known for copious accounts of sexual harassment is running a social media account roleplaying one of its fictional characters……and then asking people to send it well-wishing messages because it is is having a depressive episode. A depressive episode that is not real, because Seraphine is not real.

So this is where we’re at! Corportations are now manipulating lonely and/or desperate people into developing parasocial relationships with virtual characters so that they can get them to buy some micro transaction packs. This isn’t even that abnormal, when you think about it. Remember when SunnyD was on suicide watch? Remember when Mr. Peanut died at the Super Bowl? Marketers don’t care anymore. They’ve realized that they can get away with anything they want, because regulation isn’t real, and “basic moral decency” is not a phrase in their vocabulary. I’d be almost impressed that companies have found another way to profit off the bodies and pain of women if it weren’t so revolting.

So: did it work? No! Because she’s just a retooling of an existing League of Legends character so everyone’s pissed!

Great job Riot, you really nailed it lmfaooooo

That’s all for now! Where will you be when the apocalypse comes in the form of an anime girl? Let me know in the comments or @ me on Twitter @mintplaysthings! And if you like my writing, please consider donating to my Patreon or Ko-Fi. Thank you!