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 spent the first part of the week playing Labyrinth of Galleria: The Moon Society. As you could probably tell from my review, I’ve been having a great time with this one. I’m still working through the second half of the game, and there is a lot more to do. The story has me hooked though, so I want to see how this all turns out.
The rest of the week I spent playing Grim Guardians: Demon Purge. I went into this not knowing how much Gal*Gun would actually be here, and I was quite pleased by the end. I will have a full review later in the week, but I will say here if you’re a fan of Castlevaina style games or Gal*Gun you’ll be very pleased if you pick this one up. – Steve
At the beginning of the week while I was still waiting for my copy of Like a Dragon: Ishin, I continued playing Theatrhythm Final Bar Line. I also kept playing it periodically later on in the week too. I really want to keep up with it, keep unlocking more content and practicing various songs. I’m still mostly playing on the Basic difficulty, but on some of the easier songs I’ve started upping the difficulty to Expert. I even tried out an Expert room in the online Multi-Battle mode. Although, that wasn’t the best idea. I did pretty terrible since tougher songs ended up getting picked and I haven’t memorized which are the easier ones, for me to add to the random draw as my choice. I’m glad I tried it out though. Overall, I’m having a lot of fun with Theatrhythm and am still quite happy I have a digital copy on hand to pick up and play for a few minutes whenever the mood strikes. Oh and I almost forgot, I ended up being able to upgrade to the Digital Deluxe Edition sooner than planned. I got to enjoy the more iconic songs this past week, that they included with the Digital Deluxe and I’m looking forward to new songs coming out in the first season pass in the future.
Now, on to my thoughts about Like a Dragon: Ishin. I’ve just gotten to the start of Chapter 4. While I was waiting for my game to arrive at the beginning of the week, I was a little worried because others at oprainfall who had played before or were playing early cause of Early Access, were talking about how Kiryu / Ryoma felt clunkier in this entry. That always freaks me out to hear, because when I was first getting into the Yakuza series and trying out Yakuza 0 for the very first time, I found Kiryu to be extremely clunky. I’m not very good with more slow and clunky characters in games. Fortunately though, I haven’t found him to be very clunky at all in Ishin, now that I’m finally playing it for myself. I mean, not anymore than in 0 or the first Kiwami game. It feels pretty similar. I have found that sometimes it’s a bit easy to get trapped between enemies and their katanas, but I haven’t had any significant trouble, I’m getting through battles okay and enjoying myself.
I’m not super far into the game yet, I’ve only played maybe around 12 hours so far and most of it was running around, seeing what there is to do, trying out minigames and that kinda thing. First of all, I’m loving the photo mode. It is a bit more limited than some other games with photo modes, like I can’t pick up and position Ryoma how I want to, he’s stuck wherever I was when I paused and entered photo mode, though you can turn him and pick a pose. But I love the abundance of filter options and I’ve been having fun inserting kanji to suit the scene, since there are so many kanji stamps with English labels when selecting them. I also like that there’s a full equipment system, though truly getting started on equipment crafting has been slow so far. I don’t have a lot of materials yet and I’ve found myself low on funds. However, speaking of lack of cash problems, I just unlocked the Another Life big sidequest feature of the game. I love getting invested in the main big side story things which are in many Yakuza / Like a Dragon games. Also, I already enjoy farming and life sims, so this Another Life thing, with running a farm and selling your crops and whatnot, is perfect for me. The cooking minigame is fun and I’m finally starting to slowly earn some more cash. As far as the main story in Ishin is concerned, it’s only just getting started. I won a tough boss fight; I was almost dead and went through all of my healing items, and I defeated the boss which resulted in Ryoma’s new position as the Third Division Captain. I look forward to seeing where the story goes, and eventually getting my farm life to a point where I can rake in cash much quicker. – Jenae
What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!
You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!
