While we here at Operation Rainfall love covering the latest in gaming news and sharing our reviews of titles new and classic, we also just enjoy playing games in our downtime. So with that, sit back, relax, and check out what the oprainfall gaming crew have been up to this week!
This week in gaming I was bit all over the place. I started the week with a bit of Trails in the Sky 3rd but I have since been way sidetracked with other things. The first thing that pulled me way was the latest release from Zeboyd Digital Entertainment, This Way Madness Lies. This was a decent release from them that mixes Shakespeare and Magical Girls in that classic RPG style they are known for. I later decided to try out Goddess of Victory: Nikke since Patrick and slew of my other friends online were playing it. I have to say I quite like it. The gun play is a lot of fun, the character drops seem very fair so far and the characters are fantastic. Aside from these things, I am working on a PlayStation title for review right now that has amazing gameplay, but one of the most shit stories I’ve seen in years; more on that next time. – Steve
I haven’t been doing a ton of gaming lately and have had a couple not so great weeks. I think a week or two ago I had still been making progress in Atelier Sophie 2, I defeated another dragon boss and some important story stuff was happening. However, in this latest Week in Gaming article, I mainly want to discuss my thoughts on Tactics Ogre: Reborn, which I’ve just started playing this past weekend. To be honest, I’ve only played a select handful of SRPGs, but I do find I quite enjoy the occasional modern SRPG. I never really got into the older, classic titles. I have attempted before to play Final Fantasy Tactics but I never got too far, mainly due to having trouble grinding just enough without over leveling and ranking up enemies, thus getting myself forever stuck. Not long before Tactics Ogre: Reborn came out this past Friday, I started researching it more and was happy to see they added in a new feature to prevent continually ranking up enemies and making the game even harder than it should be. I’m only about five hours into it, but I’m starting to get a little bit more absorbed. I like that it seems as if the story flows between combat much better than something newer, like Triangle Strategy, where it feels like every single main story battle is followed up by an endless amount of additional story content to get through and decisions to make, before you can keep going. Not that I didn’t love Triangle Strategy, but Tactics Ogre seems like it’ll be a nice change of pace. The only big issue I have at the moment is that I need to get used to the camera. Having only one main camera angle, in addition to two alternate views which flatten everything, can be a bit frustrating. Nonetheless, the game looks like it has a lot of charm. I love all the stuff included in the Warren Report menu, especially the music player I just unlocked, which even includes little notes about the songs from the composer. I’m not far enough to judge the game properly yet, these are merely some of my very early, first impressions. I look forward to getting further and seeing how the story opens up more later on. – Jenae
Team Water yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah!! I took part in this weekend’s Pokémon-themed Splatfest and we wiped the floor with the competition (though my contributions were often much less conclusive, as you can see above). For once I actually got into several Tri Color Turf Wars, which was a nice change of pace from previous Splatfests where I saw barely hide nor hair of the mode. Unfortunately, Nintendo still hasn’t worked out a better way to handle its online servers, so I had multiple connection errors along the way, which is honestly a frustrated gaming experience. Other than Splatoon 3, I finally finished Star Ocean: The Divine Force and will be writing up my review for that. It has by far my favorite cast of all the SOs (except Star Ocean 1, which I’ve still somehow not gotten around to playing), but the game is held back by some baffling design decisions. In the world of gacha, Nier Re[in]carnation started a SINoALICE crossover event, and I’m debating if I want to roll on the costumes or not. They’re all really cute and I love Akeha’s especially, but I also just rolled on the new guy recently so I’m at that “save gems or use them?” stage of free-to-play decision-making. This week I’m hoping to get back to some games I’ve had on the backburner, and I have Sonic Frontiers waiting to be played as well, so I’ll see you all next week! – Leah
What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!
You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!
