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!
I’m kinda getting back to that point again where I’m a little burnt out and jumping between games on a whim. I’m still resisting the urge to start Harvestella, but we’ll see how long that lasts. It was actually delivered a little bit early, I got it a week ago, rather than having to wait until this past Friday. I put it in my Switch the other day simply to collect my gold coins and then took it out. Anyways, because I’m starting to kinda get burnt out, or maybe just overwhelmed with all the games I have on hand and still have to finish, I didn’t make as much progress this week on Tales of Arise. I left the seaside hidden village I ended up in, traveled up a mountain and brought my party to the capital of Ganath Haros. Currently I’m in the middle of fighting the numerous mobs of enemies in the castle to get to that last Master Core. They’re everywhere and I always seem to have a severe lack of CP restoration items in addition to the gald required to buy them; especially when I’m also regularly buying new equipment and HP items. They really make you pay a lot for orange gels in Tales of Arise.
One game I did spend a decent amount of time on this week was Chained Echoes. Now, I still think the sound is a little bit wonky, but that’s something I always nitpick when I start any new game. If the sound balance isn’t too out of whack and horrendous, I usually get past that eventually. Though that doesn’t stop me from saving pics of the in game sound settings and my TV’s equalizer settings for every single game I have to fix it for. I like to have those on hand for anytime I drop a game for some time and go back to it later. So like I was saying, I made a good amount of progress with this one. When I last updated you all, I was only just leaving Farnsport. Since then, I’ve gone all the way through Rohlan Fields, got past the Eternal Flame Temple, did the Kortara Mountain Range; went through all the separated party members’ dungeon and story bits at that point in the story, met back up with everyone at the White Rose Inn, dealt with everything there, traversed the Fiorwoods and I’m now safely in Tormund. I also just unlocked the Warrior Emblem so I now have both the Cleric and Warrior class skills available.
Thus far, I’m enjoying Chained Echoes for the most part. The early game does seem a bit overly tedious, every single battle is a little bit challenging and takes some time and effort, which can get annoying after a while, but I’m getting through it. Hoping I eventually have a strong enough party where regular battles are quick and easy and only boss battles take true effort. On another note, I’ve run into a few typo and/or grammar mistakes, but that’s understandable with a new indie game mostly made by only one person. Also, while the sound balance isn’t too too bad, there was one point at the beginning of the story stuff in Tormund, where the text scrolling sound went out. That might be because of the rain sound effects interfering, I’m not sure, but it’s something I noticed. I’m not super sucked into the story yet, it’s only just getting started on becoming interesting and pulling me in more. At times, the story kind of feels like the indie game that it is. I don’t know how to explain that better, it’s simply what I think at the moment. I’m mostly enjoying it for the exploration and the background music that goes along with it, but I am starting to want to see what happens next story wise as well.
One more thing I played this past week, was a smidgen of Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden. I’ve been saying I was going to buy those on Switch when they came out and I did. I used to think it didn’t matter that 3 Portable was getting ported instead of FES. I thought people were overreacting over the modifications made to fit the game on PSP, but I’ve since realized it is kind of lacking. I haven’t really played it since the very early 2010s, when PS2 and PSP games were the most recent RPGs I was enjoying. I never had my own PS3 and the 3DS wasn’t out quite yet. Still though, I also find FES a bit dated, mainly because the last time I played a few years ago, it just seemed lacking with no ability to hang out with and get to know half of your party better. I loved dating Shinji in Persona 3 Portable. Nonetheless, now I see the need for a true definitive remake even more, but I hope they wouldn’t change too much story and character wise. The game is great as is when you combine the two versions, it just needs a fresh coat of paint and all the little extras, like what Persona 4 got in it’s Golden re-release. Persona 4 Golden is what I expected, it was fortunate to not get remade until Vita. I used to not have much love for Persona 4, it was so bland and empty of content on PS2. When I first played it on my PSTV however, it was full of charm and loaded with everything it was lacking. I still think I prefer it to Persona 5 as far as the story and a lot of the characters are concerned. – Jenae
As you can probably guess I spent most of my time this week playing Neptunia: Sisters Vs. Sisters. I enjoyed the game quite a bit as you can tell from my full review. One thing I didn’t cover in great detail there was the fantastic photo mode included in the game. You can choose from several game locations and pose the girls in a ton of different ways, since you can freeze them during their actions frame by frame. The camera will let you get pretty close up to girls as well, unlike newer Koei Tecmo games where the models disappear when you get anywhere remotely near them. This means you can get some cute pics and some shots that are little more spicy as well. All in all this game was a lot a of fun and fans of the series should be quite pleased with this outing. – Steve
![Nier Re[in]carnation | oprainfall gaming](https://i0.wp.com/operationrainfall.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Nier-Reincarnation.jpg?ssl=1)
I’ve been really busy this week and didn’t get to anything new, so it’s just been my usual staples. But Nier: Re[in]carnation‘s latest chapter released, closing out the Sun & Moon storyline, and that was quite enjoyable. It also means we get two new EX characters – Yudil and Sarafa – so I’ve been grinding those out. It’s hard to put into words just how much their designs cater to my specific aesthetic tastes, so even if they aren’t the best characters, I want them in my roster. I don’t really play this game in any serious way, so just picking characters because I think they’re hot is my general ethos, and Yudil and Sarafa are both incredibly hot. I enjoy their storylines, as well. There’s something about Nier‘s melancholic narratives that really resonate with me, so even though I know none of these characters have a happy ending, I find it beautiful all the same. – Leah
What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!
You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!
