Souls Like Strings

Pretty but no personality

Why

• Much more realistic graphics than most (any?) Metroidvanias
• Tries to differentiate itself with combos/multiple weapons

Why Not

• Combat is going for weighty but lands on clunky
• Story/characters do nothing for me
• Never felt any desire to play it

Impressions

FIST (what a name) stands out with its impressively realistic graphics compared to others in the genre, but falls down more or less everywhere else. Despite being fully voice-acted the story is ham-fisted and formulaic, exploration is there but basic and the combat just feels bad. There are plenty...

• I really need to stop asking Claude how to mock stuff in Vitest and actually learn it; I've asked for it about 20 times and never remember which approach to use
• Hard refresh on Mac is cmd+shift+r
  • And it can reveal bugs a regular refresh wouldn't
• Make backups before doing ANYTHING with your game saves
  • Otherwise you might lose 40 hours of Dark Souls 3
  • Luckily there's some saint on NexusMods who created a save repo with saves before each boss
  • Careful if you wanna play online though, I have suspicions about how vanilla some...

Games

Despite intending to 100% it someday I reviewed Axyz this month as I approached the end of the final (A-side) floppy disk; great as either a second screen game or main focus due to its immaculate vibes. It may have missed as a way to get The Wife into gaming through Kula World nostalgia but it hit me head on.

Another nostalgia trigger (even if it's other people's; I never played Zelda before BoTW) was Mina the Hollower, Yacht Club's first non-Shovel Knight game and apparently one the fate of their studio rested on. It turned out...

Chained to (uneven) mediocrity

Why

• Overdrive adds enough to keep combat engaging
• No grinding required
• The bones of an interesting plot
• Some cool enemy designs, and GIANT MECHS

Why Not

• Dialogue ruins the plot with its unbearable clunkiness
• Little opportunity for build customisation
• Nothing about it wowed me

Impressions

Chained Echoes made a strong first impression and was never really bad (other than the dialogue), but also failed to live up to the game it probably could have been.

Its opening has you jumping between the characters who'll make up your party for...

• Team lunch days are rarely productive
  • This is perhaps not ideal when working on a support ticket with production impact
  • Though I was working on it with the senior on my team in purpose for a couple hours with no luck
• Staring at logs all day is enough to make a person go slowly insane
  • Took a break while staring at logs to solve an easier ticket in the morning
  • Then joined senior in fruitlessly staring at logs from many different sources for the harder ticket
• Fun side note from the easier ticket,...