@efesell: I'll admit that grievance on my list was a little unfair. The game uses Suikoden-style scaled levelling, so you earn more XP the further behind you are and it takes very little time to catch up. Yet it did make for an awkward moment of being stuck between a zone you're already too strong to receive any benefit from and a zone that was still a little too high-level to be comfortable. (The constant farming was far more prevalent.)
The way the different elements work with the dungeon puzzles was mostly pretty cool, but if I never have to direct a slow-moving bullet around a maze of walls again I'll die a content man.
@whitegreyblack: I can't imagine playing horror games in that context, where you're already getting a little delirious and twitchy from sleep deprivation. Appropriate for the brainwashing theme, at least.
@magnetphonics: Yeah, these types of games are generally built a bit more like content "tours" and are best with slow-burn stories like this. I'll have to add Cellular Harvest to a wishlist of Indie photography games that seem neat, like that Umurangi Generation game Jan QLed a little while back.
@mtndoo: It's a famous Resident Evil quote and these are all Itch.io games I'm covering, is the general idea. I've no interest in blogging Res Evil itself though. What's even left to say about them at this point?
You've pre-empted two of the games I'd earmarked for next year's May Maturity playlist, though to be fair they were plucked from the remaining dregs in my Steam library and I wasn't too hot on either to begin with. Might still give Drakensang a spin, but I suspect I'll have already maxed out my German CRPG tolerance after an inevitable Gothic III playthrough. (Maybe instead I'll make next May's theme "CRPGs that only look like they're twenty years old" and put Eschalon III and a few other Indies on there...)
Anyway, my thanks as always for being the proverbial canary in the coal mine for these bad (and/or tedious) boys.
I hope you consider another run at the doll mansion with two more assistants in a future stream. Between the four of you, you should be able to take down the Shufflefoot Spectre and avoid any cross-dollination.
Sometimes I wonder if the only reason we don't have a Wizardry 9 is because Ultima 9 and Might & Magic 9 exist. Unless you're Final Fantasy or Tales, 9 is one too many.
Man, I hope Ys 9 is good...
(Dungeon Hack was a real weird, potentially fun idea but I wish they'd balanced it for a party. It does get a bit tedious just having one guy in a D&D setting, even if you make them a Fighter/Cleric/Mage.)
@thesquarepear: Maybe apropos of nothing, and I was going to mention it in the blog but didn't find a good place to squeeze it in, but I've noticed a few adventure games of this particular type (heavier on characterization/story, lighter on puzzles) adopt sort of a "serial drama" aspect where it takes place in the same location over a series of days, and you can observe various side-stories slowly move forward along with the main plot.
Night in the Woods follows this structure, hence why most of my time with the game has involved running/jumping around Possum Springs seeing how minor characters like Selmers or Germ are getting on after another day has passed, and it's also present in Firewatch (which builds upon the protagonist's dull routine and eventually subverts it, like another interesting narrative game I played recently called The White Door (it was in that Racial Equality Bundle, if you wanted to add to your list)) and Mutazione (which features a tight-knit community with various ongoing concurrent dramas).
I think this structure is an overall net gain in how it makes you care about these characters by spending a week or more with them and watching them evolve, but it also means a lot of repetition as you hit all the stops on each "daily constitutional." It's what's made NitW feel considerably more drawn out than other adventure games of a similar size and scope, though I do take some culpability due to the slightly OCD way I'm approaching it.
Mento's comments