It's bloggy time again!

As the number one authority on all things Resident Evil ( I know I know, other people will/can/do claim that title just as much.) It’s about time I break my legendary silence on the seventh title on the series.

I may have said this before, but I was very hesitant on this game when it was first announced. The original reveal during a VR segment at Sony’s Presser at E3, left me worried about it’s focus. A virtual reality trip to spooky town isn’t really up my alley at all, but that detail was a moot point in the grand scheme of things.

This is what happens when you play through the evolution of a series (or even de-evolution if you prefer). Regardless of how you felt, it seemed to be going into a specific direction, and for them to say “we’re gonna focus on the horror part this time.” The immediate reaction is to go, “we’ll obviously they’re going to fuck it up.”

But the more of RE7 I played, and I’m sure a lot of people echo this sentiment, the more it felt like a de facto Resident Evil game. It’s like they put you in a room and tell you nothing to surprise you at every corner, but the more corners you turned the more of those typical RE tropes appeared.

Which is by no means a bad thing, but there’s a weird placebo effect happening at the beginning that goes away once you realize that, yeah, this has always been a Resident Evil game. It’s just that they’ve finally managed to find a balance of what that is, in a world where Shinji Mikami is no longer there to guide it.

This is what happens when they take a step back and think about other stories they can tell in the world inhabited by Bio-weapons. They can finally create a game with brand new characters and not treat it like a side story. (Which on the subject, the Revelations games are a great thing to throw characters into but as long as they keep that bizarre Syfy channel mystery of the week motif.)

And you know… this has probably been the first game in the series with the strongest story telling.

The only thing now, is that I'm skeptic about how they're going to fit this game into the franchise. It works beautifully on it's own, but then they introduce things that already exist in a way that makes you question exactly what is going on and why.

I guess Capcom's plan for the series is to make you on edge to see if they're still going to make it go bad some how.

I guess we'll find out in spring?

Fire Emblem Heroes, now marking the third game in the line of Nintendo-attempted phone games, is a fine way to pass the time. At least for me it has been. I don’t know if I’m supposed to be mad that it’s not Fire Emblem-y enough, or not enough of a phone game.

Sure, it’s got a fair amount of different currencies and items or whatever. But the gacha style dump for collecting other heroes in the series is ultimately not what I ended up staying for.

Frankly, it’s good to pop in and do a match or two to pass the time, as there’s not much of a game to hunker down and play the hell out of. If I had to play the long game of collecting every single character I’d be exhausted at the notion that I’m not collecting orbs fast enough, and the orbs just feel too damn pricy.

I mean, I also got a 5 star Marth, so didn’t I technically beat the game?If anything, FE Heroes has reminded me to continue playing through the Fuller FE experience that is Fates, which hasn’t grabbed me as much as Awakening has, but I’m near the end of Birthright and I might as well see it through (At this point also not feeling like playing through Conquest, but If I felt absolutely necessary, will play Revelations). I have to ask though, for those of you that have played Fates, have you played ALL of Fates? Or just one out of the three?

As good as I find these games to be, the fatigue can really set in quickly because I have to send so much time grinding levels. Interestingly enough, I only purchased the dlc map that rewards extra experience points. The story map that I’m in right now I feel a little under leveled, and I’ve made it too far to feel like I should dumb down the difficulty.

The big thing I told myself I’m going to try this year, is Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIII. It actually caught my attention a long time ago, around when Austin left Giant Bomb and Alex tweeted at him saying they had a copy.

I sat there for a long time, hoping that they would do a quick look of it.

Over the weekend there was a Koei/Tecmo weekend sale on Steam, and much to my surprised RTK13 was sitting there at 50% off. What was a boy to do but spend a little money. And I recently played it for a bit on the appropriate occasion that is Valentine's day.

I don’t really have the time, but I had the urge to play something a little more complicated.

For those that do not know about Romance of the Three Kingdoms might be more aware of the Dynasty Warriors series that is also based off of the same story. You know, the tales as old as time that is the Historical Period in which three kingdoms inhabited China. Then it all becomes a blur to me, and I’ll be inaccurate about a lot of details I’m sure (I certainly butcher a lot of pronunciations in the video above.)

From my time with it so far, I appreciate the Hero mode being a tutorial of sorts to help me get a grasp on the game. There’s a lot of stats to pay attention to, that would be very overwhelming with the regular mode.

But you know, it’s very becoming of a tactical sim. You build up the economy and military of your area, and then wage war against others. Raising your renown, and then spreading your Dynasties name.

Sometimes you debate, sometimes you duel. Both are done the exact same way. (It’s hilarious to watch a debate play out the way it does though) You build up your troops and you push them along the play field up against the other troops, and hope you have the better stats.

So far it’s not as intimidating as I originally thought it would be, but once I’m done with Hero mode, all bets could be off. If it’s something that you could be interested in, give the video a watch. I don’t know if I do a good enough job representing the game, but I can at least assure you’ll spend a lot more time on menus and maps then actually going to war with everyone.