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!
With the release of Patch 6.3, I’ve been spending most of my time this week in Eorzea enjoying the game’s newest raid and trial, as well as trying my hand at beating up Sophia again in the Unreal trial. I’d forgotten half her mechanics but that’s okay, because so did the rest of my party. We definitely did not restore balance. The story for this patch series has been so good, especially if you’re a fan of Final Fantasy IV, and I love the way XIV incorporates these characters but also makes them their own entities. It’s the best kind of fanservice, honestly. Zero as a character is one of my favorite new NPCs to the game and I find her struggles fascinating. I know she’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I think she’s neat. The Alliance Raid is incredibly fun, and I am particularly thankful for the dev team making all of our wishes about being dominated by beautiful women come true.
When I’m not getting curbstomped by four flavors of goddess in XIV, I’m otherwise spending time playing through more Collar x Malice. I’ve finished three routes and finally started on the route I wanted to do the most. As a general rule, anyone who is as rude and cruel as Sasazuka is in real life would be a no-go, but in otome? You’re damn right he’s my fave. I’m enjoying the way the overarching mystery of the game unfolds with each route, but I want just one that isn’t plagued by typos. I love otome games but the Western releases are so shoddily proofread and there’s no real alternative. (There might be better options on PC but I mostly stick to Switch.) It’s frustrating! Still, they aren’t so bad I don’t know what’s happening, they’re just a thorn in my editor side, but I’m willing to trudge through it for My Boys. – Leah
As expected, I continued playing Tales of Arise this past week. I made quite a bit of progress, yet again I’ve finished another whole area. I explored and finished all of Mahag Saar. I really like this region. It was a drastic change from the liveliness of Menancia, but there was still some nice scenery and it had this mysterious air about it. Also, after Mahag Saar a big twist was revealed, which is the part I had my suspicions about a few weeks ago. So, I wasn’t exactly accurate and fortunately this time it was an actual surprise. But the fact that something was up and it had Renan connections, was sort of around what I was guessing. I won’t go into detail on that though, spoilers and whatnot. I’m now at the seaside hidden village, getting ready to go off in the latest area.
Tales of Arise wasn’t the only game I played, but I didn’t play a whole lot else. I recently bought Chained Echoes for Switch because I would periodically read about it on Twitter and it sounded like it’s one of the best indie games to take inspiration from various SNES RPGs. I only got around 2 hours into the game, but I have a couple of thoughts on it. Well first of all, I am extremely nitpicky about sound balance in games. I want to hear the footsteps for example and all the other little sound effects. I also want to really hear the depth of the music, but I don’t want it to overpower everything else. So far, Chained Echoes is kinda iffy on the sound levels. It’s already defaulted at the top of a small range of 10 levels, both the music and sound effects on their separate meters. Also, not all the sound effects sound like they’re at the same level. Like I really enjoy hearing my footsteps in a game, but they’re a bit muffled in Chained Echoes. And then there are other sounds that are plenty loud enough and just fine. The music can start a tad quiet and then later into a song gets a bit overpowering. It’s simply not my ideal game in relation to sound balance at least and therefore, isn’t as immersive as it could be. I had to fiddle with my TV’s equalizer when I was playing docked to raise the footsteps sound a bit. But even then it’s not perfect and undocked with earbuds it’s iffy as well. Story wise, it definitely seems like something I could get into, I’m not nearly far enough to judge that however. I was a little skeptical about there being no experience or traditional leveling up. Plus, I’m having a hard time being able to tell how many skill points I even have on hand and what each skill costs. Ultimately, I’m starting to question all of all the glowing reviews it got, but it does seem like an RPG I could get sucked into eventually, so we’ll have to see. I’m probably much pickier about things at the start when I’m first figuring everything out. – Jenae
What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!
You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!
