RPG

Regularly Playing: June 2020 Edition

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I had one of those moments this morning, where I suddenly realized that it had been a really long time since I have done one of these topics. The intent is to use this opportunity to actually lock in what I have been spending my time playing and update the sidebar of my blog. The goal has traditionally been to do one of these each month, but I regularly fall short of this. The last one of these that I did was during the beginning weeks of Blapril, and prior to that… it was August of 2019. As with many things in my life I have failed to keep track of that goal.

It has been a weird few months for the world, and I think we can all agree that maybe goals deserve a little bit of slack right now. So this morning I am going to do the thing and talk about the games I am actively playing, an the ones that are getting removed from the list. Given that several months have passed I expect a significant amount of shake up.

To Those Remaining

Destiny 2 – PC

Hello Darkness, my old friend. Destiny and I have had a long tumultuous relationship since its original launch back in 2014, but it is never very far from my list of regularly played games. I had reached a point where I was deeply disillusioned about the seasonal system, and finding it really hard to muster the drive to grind out the content each time. Then recently I have found myself back in the orbit of this game and greatly enjoying my time. What changed? Well the Darkness has finally arrived and we are seeing some significant forward momentum in the story line. Additionally we have an event going on right now that is a farming bonanza that is a mix of Gambit and a Escalation Protocol. I am active and enjoying myself but time will tell how engaging the next expansion drop in September will be.

Diablo III – PC and Switch

Diablo you are so rarely very far from this list, but admittedly right now I am playing a lot more of you on the Switch than I am on the PC. A new season will be dropping very shortly, so I am sure that will change at least for a brief burst of activity. This has replaced Dragalia Lost as the thing I often play before falling asleep, because the length of time it takes to do a round of bounties or grind a handful of rifts is about how long I have before sleep claims me. My greatest wish however is that my Switch account was actually connecting to my PC account allowing me to farm real progress from the handheld. Cross play should be the rule of the land, and I am hoping as we enter this next general that it and cross save become more of a fixture.

To the New and Returning

Guild Wars 2 – PC

So recently Tam has been on a Guild Wars 2 kick and trying to upsell folks hard on playing it. As a result I have been back poking my head into the game and I still am not super happy with it. This is a title that I have had an extremely long and sordid past with, as we never could quite see eye to eye and still cannot. I’ve said it before, this is the first and only alpha program that I felt the need to actively resign from. It is doing something, and a lot of people love it… but it is a struggle for me to play it. I did however spend some time on the Revenant last night and had a significantly more enjoyable time than I do generally on my Warrior… but that seems like a mountain of horizontal progression that separates those two characters. This might get removed from the list as quickly as it was added, but for now I am throwing it on there.

Final Fantasy XIV – PC

I came back about a month or so ago and spend a significant amount of time grinding mounts and leveling the bard the rest of the way to 80. Now I find myself languishing a bit with not really being certain what I should be doing next. I leveled my three harvester classes to 70, with one of those being fishing that I leveled completely from scratch. The challenge I have with FFXIV is that I never seem to be able to find a rhythm of repeatable interactions. I show up… grind for awhile… burn out for awhile… and then return when more story drops to repeat the cycle. I wish I could find something more favorable to use as an engagement pattern, but I struggle for whatever reason to find it.

Phantasy Star Online 2 – PC

I gotta admit, this right now is the new hotness. This is the thing that I have probably poured more time in lately than anything else. I loved the original Phantasy Star Online back during the Dreamcast era, and previously went through the hell of playing on the Japanese servers. So of course when the game released to North America and on PC I would spend time playing it. As of right now my Ranger is sitting at 71 and I expect to keep grinding it up to 75. I spent a bunch of meseta to fix my previous transgressions with my mag and it is now a perfect 200 Ranged Power. Still deeply enjoying the game, but as I have said before it takes an awful lot to actually get through some of the nonsense systems. I need to sit down and push further into the story, but it is its own kind of slog. For now real happy to have Phantasy Star Online back in my life, and pretty much I am playing it and Destiny every evening at least for a bit.

Torchlight III – PC

I’ve been an alpha and beta tester of this game for quite some time, since it was originally called Torchlight Frontiers. However all of that time was covered by an NDA and as a result I have not really been able to talk about the game until recently when it shadow dropped on Steam Early Access. The game is very “early access” right now, but I am playing it intermittently while dealing the various bugs that are cropping up and the issues they seem to be having with the server infrastructure. I expect great things for this game, and expect it to be on the list for awhile as I play it every so often until it officially releases.

World of Warcraft – Retail – PC

World of Warcraft makes the list, but is kinda hanging by a thread right now. I am not actively playing it at this very moment… but I VERY actively played it since the last time I wrote about the game. WoW will always be comfort gaming, and as we adjusted to our new lives in the pandemic, I clung pretty hard to this game. It doesn’t hurt that there is a massive XP buff going on and I could abuse it as a way of catching up a bunch of characters. I started this recent run only having a Warrior and a Demon Hunter at level 120 horde side… and I closed it with having my first Alliance 120 with my Paladin, along with another Paladin, a Warlock, a Hunter, a Druid, a Death Knight, and a Mage horde side at 120. However the grinding ground to a halt and I have not been actively logging in much lately. That said I know I am never very far away from logging back in to World of Warcraft.

To Those Departing

Animal Crossing: New Horizon – Switch

Animal Crossing New Horizons was effectively my first Animal Crossing game, having only ever played the mobile title before. It was an interesting ride, and one that helped me to get through those first few covid tinged days. However the grind reached a point where I decided I just didn’t want to keep up with it anymore. Were I to play this again I would absolutely join team cheater and start time travelling, because the engagement pattern of ACNH is such that after awhile I felt chained to it. I felt like I had to log in every day because I was wasting potential progress time. Were it the sort of thing that I could play hard for a weekend and then walk away for another couple of weeks, it would probably still be in the rotation. I realize this is exactly how you can play if you time jump, so I might dust this off and figure out how exactly that works at some point soon. For now however I am going to be honest and remove it from the list.

Atom RPG – PC

You were a really cool game Atom but I never quite got around to finishing you off, and I am not exactly sure why I added you to the list of games I was actively playing and not just the “ships passing in the night” thing that I tend to do for more single player experiences. In the time since adding it to the list, they have released a sequel so I figure at some point I will return and finish this off. For now however it is getting bumped from the list.

Wolcen – PC

I can’t honestly tell you why I stopped playing, but it happened. I’ve heard there are a lot of issues going on with the game, and that in itself has kept me from returning. I had a lot of fun, but there were some issues that I had, namely that group play felt less valuable than single player play. The few times that Grace and I attempted to group up, it felt miserable. I hope they sort some of this out, and I am absolutely down with returning at some point in the future. However for now, it gets removed from the list.

Summary

During the time since the last post I have shifted further back into my MMORPG roots and away from the Single Player game sequence that I was on over the holidays. Destiny 2 and Phantasy Star Online 2 have more or less become my primary games, with occasional jaunts off into other titles. I will be curious to see if I find my roots again in Guild Wars 2 or not, but the external pressure isn’t exactly helping that desire. I have a few side projects that I am working on, and I hope to get to the stage of being able to unveil them soon… which might completely change the mix of titles. For now however we are back up to date, and hopefully I can get back in the habit of doing these as a monthly thing.

Chunky Robo Ranger

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Phantasy Star Online 2 – Original Xbox One

This weekend was one where I was all over the place on my gaming. There is a huge part of me that wants to be playing Phantasy Star Online 2 since several of the AggroChat crew are currently enthralled by it. The biggest problem I have is that I know how good this game looks on a PC and as a result I am constantly confronted by how awful it looks on my base Xbox One. I know at some point on the near horizon it will be releasing for PC and that the characters will be cross compatible. In theory I should be able to catch up without much issue, and all of this means that my desire to actually play is severely diminished. I did get to level 10 however before ultimately “noping out” of its chunky graphics.

Trials of Mana – Nintendo Switch

I also played a bit of Trials of Mana and progressed the story to the point of being able to my make very first class change choice. On Duran I went light side and became a Knight, on Riesz I went Dark to eventually become a crazy dragoon, and on Angela I went light to go Sorceress because the Dark “blood magic” route seemed like a trap. Still greatly enjoying this game but I am only really playing it before bed, and even then only until sleep claims me. The prolific appearance of golden angel statues seems to help me out in this mission as it never feels like I have to make it much further to get to a save point.

Final Fantasy XIV – PC – Cactuar Server

I’ve also been trying to ease my way back into Final Fantasy XIV, with minimal success. This is in part because my friends Bells and Zuu are now playing, and I want to be able to hang with them and run content as they get to various dungeons. The other side of this point is that an event is about to start today where you can farm moogle widgets and earn older mounts. I like mounts so it might be fun to poke around and farm up a bunch while the event is going on. Thalen in theory says he can craft a lot of the gear pieces that would potentially make my viable again, so here is hoping I can actually get back in the swing of things. I have no clue what the struggle is with this game, but it is real.

World of Warcraft – PC – The Scryers Server

On the World of Warcraft front, I managed to finish the Death Knight and am in the process of gearing him out. This makes my seventh character to level 120 since the Winds of Wisdom buff went active, and I went from having only a couple of characters horde side to play around to a pretty sizable stable of options. I am still not quite certain what I plan on “maining” come Shadowlands, but ultimately I have narrowed it down to a handful of options.

  • Warrior – This is my OG love as far as classes go, but ultimately it all depends upon how good tanking feels on it. Last expansion at the start tanking felt like I was being completely ineffective. The positive here is that I really do love Fury as well and gives me an enjoyable DPS alt for running content and raiding.
  • Demon Hunter – Once the Warrior failed out after getting it to 120, I rapidly leveled a Demon Hunter because tanking felt extremely strong. Over the course of the Battle For Azeroth expansion, I have come to really enjoy it.. but I do not really love DPSing on it.
  • Paladin – After leveling a Paladin on both Alliance and Horde sides, I have really come to love the class. Tanking feels great and I have always loved Ret as a dps spec. This even would give me the option of healing… which admittedly will probably never happen but of the WoW options this was the only healer I could actually stand playing.
  • Death Knight – When I finally hung up my Warrior shield at the tail end of Wrath of the Lich king it was for playing the Death Knight and I “mained” this all through Cataclysm. Playing the Death Knight has made me remember what I loved about it, so it now is in the running as well.
World of Warcraft – PC – The Scryers Server

I legitimately have no clue what I am going to choose for a class, but at least for now I am somewhat leaning in the Paladin direction. As far as World of Warcraft projects going forward I will be working on finishing off the Monk since he is in his 80s. That would give me a 120 for every class but Priest, Shaman and Rogue which are not exactly favorites of mine. However I like playing all of them more than a Mage, so that is ultimately why I chose to boost that . Monk is fun, but not nearly as fun as leveling some of the other classes I have had in my stable so far. I should give Brewmaster another shot, but so far leveling as Windwalker has had a pretty high time to kill.

I am all over the place right now when it comes to my gaming habits and I guess for now that is perfectly fine. What have you all been up to over the last few weeks? What games do you find yourself drawn to? Leave me a note in the comments below.

Trials of Mana Thoughts

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Cannon Based Travel Systems are a Bad Idea

The game that everyone seems to be talking about right now is Final Fantasy VII Remake, and based on everything I am hearing it is a pretty great game. While I own it… I just haven’t been able to bring myself to booting it up and playing it. The truth is, Final Fantasy VII just isn’t that important of a game for me personally. At the time it came out I was super heavy into PC gaming and as a result I was playing Fallout instead. I did not get to play seven until it eventually got a PC release, and while it sounded amazing on my Yamaha based wavetable soundcard it already looked dated compared to the graphics I had been experience on the PC. Later on I got a PlayStation and the very first Final Fantasy game that I played on it was VIII, which probably holds that same game changing place that seven does for a lot of players.

The Secret of Mana series for me personally holds an equal place in my memory as Final Fantasy, and once I found out there was a third game in the Seiken Densetsu series I desperately wanted it to see localization. The Mana series blended two games that I absolutely loved… The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy and rolled them into an extremely engaging package. I even liked the not-officially-in-the-series-but-possibly-should-be Secret of Evermore, which effectively used all of the same mechanics but more like if the Mana series had a weird love child with Earthbound. I was never really a handheld player, so I completely missed the release of Trials of Mana until it recently came out as part of the Collection of Mana. However at the same time that was announced we got a glimpse of a proper remake of the game, and ultimately I held out playing it until now.

Trials of Mana has become my new main Switch game since I more or less fell off the Animal Crossing bandwagon. I’ve been playing this before bed and as a result I am not super far into the game, but absolutely loving it so far. It is a seamless blend again of two genres that I adore, the Zelda-like and the Final Fantasy style RPG. There are so many weird in jokes for those who have loved the original Mana series and some cross pollination with Final Fantasy as well. I had to look this up to make sure, but they absolutely substituted Final Fantasy IV/Shadowbringers style dwarves in place of what apparently were mostly skull faced guys in the original. I’ve not encountered a Lali-ho yet, but I am absolutely inserting them in my mind.

Some time ago I wrote about the demo, and I opted to load those save files but also still create a brand new game just in case copying the save does anything. Originally I went with a team of Duran, Charlotte and Reisz which was fine… but I did find Charlotte to be a little annoying. So in the reboot I am mixing things up a bit and choosing at Ash’s suggestion the diametrically opposed character to Duran, aka the moody space princess Angela. I kept Reisz because she looks badass and I am hoping if rumor is true I can turn her into effectively a dragoon later in the game. Mostly it was a toss up between Duran and Kevin… but it largely came down to me not really liking Kevin’s default outfit and wanting to swing a big sword. Duran also reminds me of the hero from the first Mana game I played, so there is an awful lot of nostalgia there as well.

As I said I am not terribly far into the game, having only gone through a few scenarios, but I am really enjoying what I have played so far. The demo takes you up to a specific point and I have played through a couple of different sequences that occur after that and have collected my second element. It sounds like there are six different elements that I need to collect, so I still have quite a long ways to go considering I figure there is a final act that probably occurs after having collected them all. The hardest part to get used to is that you the character level up abilities rather than having weapons that holy weapons that gain experience. So far I have upgraded my gear twice, but it has all been purchased through shops and I have yet to see any world drops.

I definitely suggest checking out the demo, which is probably a post I have in me at some later date talking about this new golden age of try before you buy. After getting my hands on and playing through the final released game, the Demo should give you a really good idea if the game is for you or not. The combat gets a bit more nuanced but for the most part it is a very fluid Zelda-like with jump attacks. The game feels like I remember feeling while playing Secret of Mana. While I have played through Final Fantasy Adventure which is actually the mislabeled first game in the series, I feel like I need to dig up the Gameboy Advance Sword of Mana remake and play it at some point on my RG350 emulation handheld.

Rg350 Emulation Handheld Thoughts

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taking a photo with my phone of me playing Final Fantasy V on RG350

Yesterday’s post spawned a whole slew of interesting comments. First off I don’t want it to ever sound like my view of grinding is the penultimate view and that everyone should adopt it. In fact I think Bhagpuss has it right, that when I am talking about grinding I am actually talking about playing while in a “flow state”. Folks enter this in so many different ways, but for me I find it deeply relaxing to just do mildly enjoyable repetitive tasks while watching the numbers go up. Proof in point, what did I do last night while laying in bed? Well I started a new game in Final Fantasy V on my rg350 handheld emulator console and ground my level to 13… with a party that is multi-classed with level 3 of two different jobs. In theory you should be around level 6 when you arrive at the Ship Graveyard… so I mostly just did a bunch of repetitive nonsense while listening to the evening news and the late night shows.

Some look to gaming for a sense of adventure and discovery, and I absolutely love that at times. However there are a lot of times when I am playing, especially with MMORPGs that I am playing for comfort. My life is often times a little crazy, especially on the work side and what I am needing is some control. Repetitive and predictable gaming helps me feel like I am taming that chaos and that sense of calm allows me to weather uncertain times in other aspects of my life. I find myself needing it more than usual because during the pandemic my home life seems to be in not so much a state of chaos but more a state of forced stasis. My work life however is absolute chaos as we are trying to adapt to doing everything remotely. So the reaction to the upset balance in both of those spheres has lead me to crave something like leveling all of the alts in World of Warcraft because it gives me a sense of calm that I can use to shield me against the things that are otherwise unbalanced in my life.

Retro Emulator Handhelds

Random sampling of Emulator Handhelds on AliExpress

Over the last several years there has been a constant flood of relatively well designed emulator handhelds coming out of China. In the past these were blatant knock offs attempting to look like other systems, but something changed. Instead what we are getting are attempts at unique gaming experiences of their own and with them some pretty interesting developments on the software front. For the most part all of these handhelds run on a Linux Distribution called OpenDingux. This got its start as being a Linux operating system designed to extend the functionality of the Dingoo series of handhelds, which were for years effectively the best possible handhelds you could get out of China for emulation purposes.

What OpenDingux buys this current generation of hardware are some much needed standards and with that a certain measure of community and mod support. The handhelds function in a similar manner and because of that it makes them fairly easy to contrast and compare. While the emulator is generally the same regardless of the handheld, the hardware ultimately dictates how well the various games run on it. If for example you only care about Game Boy Advance games, then you have a wide variety of options and price points that will support those titles. If you want to start dipping into newer Arcade emulation or the Sony PlayStation, then you are going to need a bit more horsepower to back that demand up. I embedded the above video by YouTuber Taki Udon which gives a pretty solid rundown of the various options. His channel has been useful because he seems to review every one of these new handhelds as they release, however if you prefer the printed word here is a decent rundown by Retro Dodo of 16 handhelds.

The Original Pocket Go Release

I started down this rabbit hole originally because of the above unit. I’ve wanted something to play Gameboy Advance games on for awhile other than my Sony PSP, because for the life of me I never can seem to keep track of that console and or keep it charged. I wanted something that had good battery life and that I could more or less just chuck in my pocket for gaming on the go in those various moments where I am stuck waiting around. This is a fantasy I often have but never seem to actually make good on since when I am idle I tend to just keep scrolling twitter. The Pocket Go effectively was a handheld that was good at 8 bit and 16 bit era consoles as well as the Gameboy series of handhelds. The price however was ultimately what attracted me because you can pick one of these up for in the neighborhood of $30. So on a whim I decided to order one.

The RG350

Shortly after placing my order I was informed by the company selling it out of China, that they were currently out of stock of the Pocket Go, but for $5 more I could upgrade to the RG350, which admittedly was another option I had been looking for. I however largely ignored it because traditionally these are more in the range of $80-$100 which is out of the range of my normal “whim” purchases. Effectively I think in order to close out the books they were willing to sell me one at closer to their unit cost, which is entirely fine by me. I accepted and opted for the above color scheme… which in person looks more Gameboy as those buttons are actually maroon rather than fuchsia. The RG350 has considerably better hardware and with it comes two analog thumbsticks which in theory extended the sorts of games I could play on it.

I had not really talked much about this handheld up until this point other than randomly mentioning it one morning, because I wanted to spend some time with it before I ultimately decided if it was a good thing or not. At this point I have tested out all of the emulators that were installed on it and have some opinions of the handheld in general. First off lets start with a list of the platforms that are supported.

  • Nintendo
  • Super Nintendo
  • Genesis
  • Sega Master System
  • Sega Gamegear
  • Gameboy
  • Gameboy Color
  • Gameboy Advance
  • TurboGrafx 16/PC Engine
  • Wonder Swan
  • Neo Geo Pocket / Color
  • Sony Playstation
  • Mame
  • Final Burn Alpha
  • DosBox
  • Various Open Source game ports like FreeDoom

Of these I have played with everything but DosBox, only because I just never got around to it. The systems that I have spent the most time playing are Sony PlayStation, Super Nintendo and Gameboy Advance. I have to say while PlayStation games look pretty dated on a big screen, it feels amazing to play Legend of Dragoon on a handheld while laying in bed. The unit ships with 8 gb of onboard storage and the package I ended up getting shipped with a no name aftermarket 32 gb SD Card. When it comes to throwing multi-disc ISOs for the Sony PlayStation on a SD Card, you can eat up 32 gb really fast.

I opted to upgrade rapidly to a 256 gb card but ran into some initial problems. Firstly the unit comes with zero documentation, but thankfully the RG350 is fairly ubiquitous in emulation circles and there is even a Reddit devoted to the device. After some googling I figured out what the issue was. First off the card has to be formatted in FAT32… which in theory it already was but I wanted to reformat just to make sure. This lead me to have to find a third party formatter since Windows will not format a 256 gb drive in FAT32 by default. After doing this it still didn’t work, which lead to more research and finding out that the volume label for the drive must be “SDCARD” otherwise the Open Dingux installation will not mount the device. I share this anecdote not because it was difficult, but because you have to be willing to dig when you encounter friction when using a largely unsupported device like this.

After market thumbstick replacements for the RG350

As far as the games and gameplay goes, I am exceptionally happy with the handheld. I’ve heard tale that there are a few late release PS1 games that have slowdown problems like Bloody Roar 2, but these are the same games that generally have trouble in desktop emulators as well. The build quality of the unit feels solid and it has some heft to it, weighing about the same as a standard mobile phone. The only real complaint I have with it is the thumb sticks, which are unfortunately the dual analog sticks were one of the initial selling features. The sticks do not feel comfortable and there is something about the left stick that causes it to occasionally stick. The other issue is the fact that they stick up as far as the unit greatly hurts the whole “shove it in your pocket” aspect because they tend to hang on the fabric or pull random other things out of your pockets along with them.

There are a number of aftermarket mods available like these thumbsticks that I am showing you from Etsy. They are of course 3D Printed, but without a 3D printer or access to someone who has one I would have to ultimately order them online. I like the concept of having them sit flush with the device, so at some point I am probably going to order a set or try and find someone local to print them for me. I think I would also like to get a set of the Super Famicom colored buttons and maybe swap those out as well. However none of these complaints are really enough to detract from the function of the device. Since I am mostly playing JRPGs with the Sony PlayStation Emulator, it isn’t like I actually need the thumb sticks and have found it way more comfortable to just control everything with the dpad.

Would I recommend the RG350?

I guess at the end of the day it comes down to this question of whether or not I would recommend this device. If you only care about playing 8 bit, 16 bit and Gameboy era games, then I would probably go with something like what I was originally seeking out… the Pocket Go because it has an attractive price point at $30. Also the lack of the sticks makes the entire package more sleek and easy to toss around. For the price I got my RG350, which was ultimately around $40 I would absolutely recommend it. I am finding it way more enjoyable to play Sony PlayStation era titles on the device than I thought it would be. If you can find it for around $60-70 then I still think it is well worth the price to add better game support. However for the original release price of $100 I think I would probably pass and wait for newer devices to end up coming onto the market.