Oh hey, what's up? As promised, I've been busy with school and junk, and since finals are right around the corner, I figured I should probably write something about the things I've been playing in sporadic chunks before things get really crazy. Unsurprisingly, video games are still dumb. Know what else are still dumb? Lengthy research essays.

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

Guys, I have an apology to make. It has been months since the last blog about video games that weren't either bleeding-edge recent or only one or two years old. That has to be rectified. Thus, I will regale you with tales of another old-ish game, hearkening back to the far flung year of 2005. I was like 12 or 13. The newest console I owned was the hot commodity known as the Nintendo DS, though at that point in 2005 the best game for it was Advance Wars Dual Strike, probably the best Advance Wars game. It would be a few more years before Nintendo's fledgling handheld acquired a library rivaling that of its predecessor, the GBA, so people took what they could get. I imagine Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (a hilariously nonsensical subtitle, given that it's a sequel to Aria of Sorrow and not the dawn of anything. But hey, I guess the temptation to have a “DS” acronym was too strong) was one of those games. I actually borrowed this game from a friend when I was like 12, but I couldn't tell you a thing about my experience other than that I didn't finish it. Now, I have finished it. Actually I finished it a couple of weeks ago.

It's a... well-made Metroidvania Spacewhipper (to steal a term from @mento) that took me somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 hours. Nothing more, nothing less. The story is barely there, something about it being in the future, you being the reincarnation of Dracula and much like Symphony of the Night it's really easy to get the bad ending. It follows a formula that had already been done 3 times before, and would be done twice again, and being a direct sequel it seems to take even fewer risks than the average Igarashi Castlevania. The tactical soul system, the defining characteristic of both Aria and Dawn of Sorrow has a neat, pokemon-esque “collect 'em all” mentality that will most certainly drive completionists up the wall. Every enemy in the game has a power associated with them, be it throwing some variety of projectile, summoning familiars to clean up for you or just passively increasing your stats. Getting said souls is usually accomplished with MMO-style farming tactics, killing the same enemies over and over again until you get the drop, made more aggravating when the drop has a 3-star rarity. Get over that hump and the game does just fine for itself. There's plenty of hidden stuff to discover, but like all of these kinds of games, hidden stuff usually just makes you ridiculously powerful and turns the rest of the game into a breeze, which is sort of what happened to me. There isn't an inverted castle (there is an equivalent to Richter mode), so it's not nearly as massive as a SotN If there are any real grievances I have with Dawn of Sorrow, it's the sloppily implemented touch-screen garbage, forcing you to grab your stylus (or finger) and draw a symbol during the middle of a boss fight. Other than that unfortunate bit, it's a game that I enjoyed but wasn't blown away by.

Thief

I have not yet completed Eidos Montreal's ill-received reboot to those stealth games I really like, but I'm actually sort of enjoying myself thus far. If it were not for the other games on this list distracting me, this blog would probably be entirely about Thief, but as it stands I clearly wasn't compelled enough to not put it down for a bit. Thief is... a very conflicted, borderline schizophrenic game. On one hand, it clearly borrows a lot of cues from Dishonored (which in turn took its share of cues from the old Thief games, which makes this a “snake eating its own tail” sort of situation) and otherwise tries to be a modern-ass video game by throwing in a multitude of systems aimed at assisting (or perhaps coddling) the player, and on the other hand it's very much a straightforward, pure stealth game that would not be out of place in the early 2000s, where getting caught isn't a very good thing and you don't have a ton of options to fight back. I don't think it fills either role as well as other games have done in the past, but I've found it... surprisingly decent? It's not blowing my mind or anything, but it deserves more credit than some reviews have given it. The story deserves zero credit, for turning the neat little world of Thief into gritty Victorian England (did I mention gritty? It's soooooooo edgy maaaaaan.) and using the word “Fuck” instead of the word “Taffer”. That is all. Expect my full thoughts eventually.

Divinity Original Sin Beta

I've been rather clear about my pervasive dislike of Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga. I found it to dull action-RPG that tried too hard to punch above its weight with underwhelming results. That didn't stop me from backing Divinity Original Sin, which seems like a classically-inspired CRPG created for the sole purpose of encouraging the player to break it at any possible opportunity. I didn't get very far in my play of the Beta (I messed around with it a bit when it was in alpha, but not that much), but when I did, I did it cooperatively with a friend. That seems like a recipe for chaos, so when our team of Source-Hunting ladies weren't squabbling with one another about freeing chickens, we were constantly blowing things up, accidentally killing innocent people or otherwise making nuisances of ourselves. I'm not sure if that's the optimal way to play the game (like the idea of playing through Baldur's Gate cooperatively), but I'm glad that it exists. Like Wasteland 2, I've mostly had my fill of the beta and will probably only mess around with it a bit more before the full release.

Etrian Odyssey IV

It's still an Etrian Odyssey game. I like the tweaks they made to the skill system and the presence of multiple dungeons, the soundtrack is quite good, the some of the character designs are still sort of creepy and sometimes my party will get wiped out by enemies I had no business fighting. Sold.

Age of Wonders III

Age of Wonders III is a fantasy turn-based strategy game. So obviously I bought it. The series doesn't so much owe a lot to Heroes of Might and Magic (especially when compared to King's Bounty) as it does owe a lot to Master of Magic, an old DOS 4X game that you might have heard me wax eloquently about once or twice. You build up an empire of your particular race, research new spells, control territory, get war declared on you for no reason and then engage in tactical combat. You'll probably cast magic to mess other people up, and at one point my Elf Dreadnought (technology man) besieged an enemy town with a bunch of cannons and musketeers (that's right, Elf Musketeers). Unlike say... Heroes VI (which I thought was okay) or Disciples III (which I thought was very much not okay), it's a safe, iterative sequel, which I guess makes sense when you remember that the last one came out 10 years ago. I didn't play nearly enough Age of Wonders 1 or Shadow Magic to be able to make any sort of comparative qualitative judgments, but I will continue playing it because it's pretty great and it has also been a while since a game like this has grabbed my attention (that last time being Eador Genesis). It's a pity that online multiplayer seems to have some sort of issue with my college internet firewall, because I've always thought that Age of Wonders' simultaneous turns function made it a lot more attractive for playing with others and not devouring dozens of hours in the process.

FTL Advanced Edition

The new expansion for FTL is an expansion that revolves around adding more stuff, and it just so happens that more stuff is exactly what I wanted out of a FTL expansion. While I will still decry the game as occasionally being a little too luck-based, I've still had fun trying to unlock all of the new ship variants while silently cursing the fact that getting the Mantis and Slug cruisers is up to the whims of fate (or me beating the rebel flagship, which has happened all of 3 times. Somehow I have the crystal cruiser). I will continue to play more of this game, since it works well in hour-long bursts in-between me freaking out about whatever the heck this essay is going to be about. Speaking of that... I'm going to do some of that now. Bye!