It feels like a tall order with everything else on my plate. So I'll aim for these 2 posts to be simple check-ins, little notes on what I'm playing.
Primordia is my new favorite point-and-click. It's set in a drab future where Man is extinct, and only his creations—robots great and small—have survived a chemical war.
I love it like I love Dune. Philosophical, political, and yet unpretentious. Full review here.
Loop Hero. A gem of a roguelite. Some call it an idle game, others a deckbuilder. The developer calls it an "endless RPG". Whatever it is, Loop Hero is a unique fusion of gothic pixel goodness.
At 15 hours, I've barely scratched the surface of possibilities. So I'll say no more for now.
Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, the Switch versions, tempted me when this bundle went on sale. Only $10 for two of the greatest Western RPGs of all time?!
But I had stopped buying RPGs for good reason. I already had both titles on Steam and never got around to them. Surely they were much too epic for this season of my life. What a joy to hear they were ported to the Switch, with an excellent controller scheme to boot. But would I actually spend more than 5 hours revisiting the Forgotten Realms? Turns out I would!
Sure, it took awhile to warm up to the clunky old systems. Felt like cranking up a manual transmission after 20 years of smooth auto sailing. It has, literally, been 20 years since I played the Baldur's Gate series.
The secret to enjoying this big old tome of stories was choosing "Easy" difficulty. I'm breezing through maps upon maps of forested wilderness, which are larger than I remember. I'm now 15 hours into Baldur's Gate 1, smiling at familiar voices and hacking through gibberlings.
I picked the classic goody-goody party: crazy Minsc and his hamster Boo, married couple Khalid and Jaheira, childhood friend Imoen, and invoker Dynaheir (who's actually voiced by Jennifer Hale, which is hard to believe). They aren't very interesting, except Minsc. But I didn't want to deal with party members going at each other's throats.
Spiritfarer, I regret to announce, has been retired. The game lost steam around the 50% mark, but I kept chugging along the high seas until the 75% mark.
With more and more passengers delivered to death's door, the ship now feels like a lonely place. With fewer passengers to serve, chores like watering, blacksmithing, and weaving now feel meaningless. Jackie the hyena had me running around like a ER doctor on call, but it got old.
Spiritfarer is generous with content, but I would have been satisfied with half the amount. Saying that makes me feel like an ungrateful wretch ("You gave me too much of a good thing!"). Maybe what I'm trying to say is that the game felt like an unevenly paced novel. At first, not much is happening. Then a great deal happens: Crazy! Exciting! I'm burning the candle at both ends to keep up with requests for favorite foods and better rooms! Then it gets all quiet again, long before the game is over. Otherwise, I did enjoy this charming management game.
Lastly, I just started on...
Final Fantasy VII Remake! Listening to the Japanese voice-over while reading English subtitles has been interesting; there are clear differences between the two language versions. Just 1 hour in, I have little else to say for now except that the game is pretty and I like the expanded dialogue.
So much for not embarking on epic RPGs!