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!
Recently, I’ve finally been playing Persona 3 Reload. I’ve been my bad habits self lately and put aside Infinite Wealth before finishing it, having played for anywhere between 85 and 100 hours. I needed a break and a nostalgic fave sounded like just the thing to jump into next. At the moment, I’m in June and I just finished up the latest section of Tartarus. I believe I’ve dealt with two full moon bosses already, outside of the initial one you fight at the start, when you show up to the dorm for the first time. I haven’t gotten too far in yet, but I’m enjoying most of the new additions, such as being able to hang out with the guys on the team periodically when they ask you to, and having study sessions with everyone before an exam week.
There are also some other changes which I don’t enjoy as much, being a longtime fan of Persona 3. Mostly however, it’s minor nitpicks. For one, that “I’m minding my biz, so mind your own biz,” line in the dorm song lyrics starts to become quite annoying after a while. It really stands out more than the rest of the song and it gets old fast. I wish this game had the option to use the old soundtrack, or even better, something more like what the Atelier games have and let you pick between both soundtracks for various situations or places. Also, it’s disappointing they give you a whole little intro/forewarning about the Reaper and Fuka doesn’t get to say, “I sense death.” It was cooler in my opinion, when the chains just randomly start and Fuka mentions death. Overall though, I’m enjoying myself so far and I appreciate the added time spent with the guys on the team. I didn’t realize until I just barely started a Persona 3 Portable replay on my Switch last year, how much that version of the game was truly missing in comparison to FES. I mean I loved it back in the day on PSP, I love getting to hang out with all the guys and being able to date Shinji. It’s just weird you don’t get to do anything with half the team in PS2 versions of Persona 3. But otherwise yeah, P3 always needed a significant update. It sucks we didn’t get a remade FeMC route, but at least the game got some extra content regardless. It definitely needed this refresh. – Jenae
In our neverending quest to defeat our backlog and play a bunch of games we missed out on growing up, my sister and I completed Lufia II. Much like Ys and Lagoon before it, this was a nice romp through some nostalgic, old-school RPG gameplay, and was overall a lot of fun. The characters were charming if one dimensional, with that very specific style of 90s localization that is fun and bouncy but not necessarily the most accurate. (Considering Lufia II isn’t even the game’s original title, this all tracks.) You can definitely feel the beginnings of what would later be deeper, more fleshed out narratives and characters as developers iterated on the concepts laid down here and in its contemporaries, but what I found refreshing was the game wasn’t bogged down by a lot of the more frustrating aspects of 90s RPGs. It wasn’t overly grindy. There weren’t a lot of obtuse directions to follow. It was a straightforward, breezy affair where we never felt like we needed to focus on leveling up or needing money. Gear upgrades were frequent and impactful. I really liked the IP system attached to gear, which would grant your character certain abilities based on their equipment that could only be accessed by a separate resource bar that filled when you took damage. Some of these abilities were straight up game breaking, but it also meant there was some give and take between whether you wanted to keep a piece of gear that had a good IP trait or had better raw stats. It was nice.
That said, the game was also substantially easier than a lot of its contemporaries. Magic felt overall weak and I spent most battles just hitting enemies with melee attacks or IP skills. The capsule monsters were a fun idea that had no teeth and ended up being glorified punching bags that would, at most, save me a round of healing. They were a great way to unload excess armor and weapons when I filled my inventory though. There were also several bugs, including a persistent text bug in the equip menu, as well as several bits of untranslated text and one entire area that was completely glitched but thankfully navigable. Item, spell and IP descriptions were unhelpful at best, misleading at worst, with some items being translated in two different ways (at least one of which was definitely for censorship purposes). Even characters would randomly change names, such as when Guy was suddenly Gai. It made for an uneven experience in terms of quality, but the fun if easy combat, charming characters, gorgeous sprite work, impeccable soundtrack and overall comfy feeling of the game was enough to outweigh a lot of the negatives, which were more humorous than detrimental for the most part. For folks who like old school RPGs, you honestly can’t go wrong giving this one a try. As for me and my sister, we’re moving on to Lufia I, so I’ll let you all know how that goes!
I’ve also been gearing up for the launch of Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail (and you can read fellow Warrior of Light Quentin’s excellent Media Tour coverage here, here, here and here!). The end of expansion lull always gives me a lot of little things to catch up on, so I’ve been finishing up my sorely neglected tribe quests and FATE grinding, as well as crafting to get me through the opening levels of the expac with as little hassle as possible. The developers also released an updated benchmark that fixed several lighting issues and tweaked the upcoming graphics update. The best part is that they fixed the missing tarutaru nose smudge for lalafells! This graphics update is long overdue and very much welcome, but I cannot express how upset I was that I might have lost my nose smudge in the process. Thankfully, that’s been averted, and my lalafell is as adorable and perfect as ever. The end of June is jam-packed with stuff I want to play alongside Dawntrail as well (looking at you, Shadow of the Erdtree), so I’m sure to have more thoughts of those going forward~ – Leah
What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!
You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!
