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 find I’m all of a sudden overwhelmed with the amount of games I have on hand to play. I’ve mentioned previously some of the stuff I got for Christmas, including a game I got my hands on after the fact. This past week, I got my hands on two additional games after the fact. Well first of all, I got my hands on a Fantasy Life i code for Switch, which I’ve been dying to play since I was a huge fan of the original game on 3DS. Then I also finally spent a smidgen of my Christmas Amazon cash and ordered a copy of Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, which should be here today. I loved what I played of Three Houses, but I only ever fully finished the Blue Lions route. Ultimately, I’ve now basically upped the priority on yet another partially played backlog game I have to go back to and fully complete. Well I don’t have to but I’d like to, to fully enjoy the new game and not be spoiled on anything I’ve missed. Technically, Three Hopes isn’t a sequel, but I still want to fully finish Three Houses first. And let’s not forget I also only barely started Pirate Yakuza before the holidays and want to go back to it at some point as well. Plus Suikoden, which I didn’t actually continue playing this week, but I’ve already started it and should return to that eventually as well.
Anyway, I suppose this year, despite my lack of current/new consoles, I have a lot of games to revisit and new ones to enjoy. I should be occupied for a while at the very least. Which is quite nice, it just sucks when there’s new stuff I don’t have the systems for and I end up feeling like I’m missing out seeing it all over my social media feeds. I already know, that with a reason to go back to Fire Emblem: Three Houses, I’m especially going to be majorly disappointed missing out on Fortune’s Weave. Not to mention, I’m not sure I’ll get the opportunity to review nearly as many brand new games this year, as I did last year. Well that aside, let’s get back to what I did play this past week. Just a few days ago, I checked out the Dragon Quest VII Reimagined demo. I won’t say too much on that however, since I decided for the first time in a while to write a first impressions article and I discussed my thoughts there already. I hope to have that published later this week as soon as it’s edited. Before and after playing the DQ7 demo, I continued to make progress on my replay of the first Bustafellows otome. I finished up the common route and afterwards ended up back on Helvetica’s route for my first love interest replay. I haven’t gotten too far into it yet, I’m on his Side A chunk of story currently.
I think I’ve decided that for now, whatever I was playing and put down recently is going to have to wait, and returning to Fire Emblem will also have to wait. Since Fantasy Life i is digital and all of my other new, and old connected games, are physical, I figured Fantasy Life is the perfect title to play on the side of whatever else. I plan to enjoy it as a break from the other games and also because I’ve heard Fantasy Life i has so much going on, it just seems like it’s a good long-term game to play off and on whenever I’m in the mood. So for right now I’m balancing Bustafellows alongside Fantasy Life. This past weekend I put a lot of time into Fantasy Life i since starting it. I definitely want to take my time with it, but I rushed the first few chapters to finally get to the point where I could change mainly my hairstyle and also some facial features. I just hit that point last night and it’s also the point where the game truly opens up and you’re free to do a number of different things. Now that I’ve gotten there, I want to slow down, grind a few different lives and simply enjoy my time with it.
Fantasy Life i is super nostalgic so far. According to the Nintendo Store app, I spent over 150 hours on the original 3DS game. This new one, reuses a lot of the same music and sound effects for different parts of the game and that alone is making it really nostalgic. Honestly, it’s hard to believe it’s already been a decade since I was putting all those hours into the first one. I can already tell the new title will be much grindier. Just the crafting lives alone, with having to craft to get skill points to make the crafting easier and also the crafting minigame being a bit longer, are definitely much more grindy and tedious than the original 3DS entry. Being grindier isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though I am anxious to improve my crafting lives to get better armor and outfits, and to make some furniture for decorating my home…and whatever else the game will let me decorate. I have a tiny idea of some of the extent of the game from what I’ve read online about it, but I avoided looking into it too much. Personally, I get super obsessive over my character looking good in games that let you customize them. I was very happy to see they added costume armor and you can even equip different outfits for different lives. Not only that, but now you can switch lives on the go depending on what you need.
I also can’t wait to see where the story goes. It’s already been super charming with the personality of the different characters and little bits of humor being added in now and then. I just got to where you have somewhat of this home base area to place houses, can decorate your own house and I can now add NPCs to my party. I’m also free to pick any life and raise them to a certain extent, I think I can explore Ginormosia as much as I want and I can overall, simply enjoy the charm of a new Fantasy Life game. I waited so long for this. It was disappointing that what sounded like it was supposed to be Fantasy Life 2, ended up simply being some Fantasy Life Online mobile game. To be honest, until looking it up right now to verify my facts, I didn’t even know that it had been available in the West. Regardless, I wouldn’t have been all that interested in a mobile game version.
I’m really excited to keep playing Fantasy Life i. I started off with the Magician life so I could level up a good combat life, which obviously is a must. That was my favorite life in the original game for combat at least. I’ve also unlocked and gotten started on both Tailor and Carpenter as well, since I’ll need to be able to make good magic armor, and I for sure want to make lots of furniture for decorating my house as well. Then I also got started on Woodcutter so I’d have one gathering class going and clearly I’ll now need the wood for Carpenter too. I can already tell though as I said, that the crafting lives will take a lot of work. I forgot to mention, a big part of that is simply having to collect all the materials you need. I’ll also have to craft a bunch of easy to craft materials too. I’ve already failed a lot and wasted materials trying to craft both armor and furniture that I suppose is still a bit above my level. I realized I may need to earn a lot of skill points to make crafting easier, simply by crafting basic materials like cloth and lumber. – Jenae
It’s a new year, but my sister and I continue our never-ending quest to play a whole bunch of games we never got around to growing up. This time around, we chose to step outside our wheelhouse of RPGs and adventure games to play Castlevania: Rondo of Blood — specifically, the Dracula X Chronicles PSP remake. We aren’t unfamiliar with the series: as kids, we played quite a bit of Simon’s Quest on the NES, since it was one of the few games we owned. But it wasn’t a series we felt driven to play, and their difficulty kept us both from making any real effort, either. I did play a tiny bit of Super Castlevania and Symphony of the Night, but tackling Rondo this time was our first actual attempt at playing through one of these start to finish. Considering we immediately booted up Symphony after, I think it turned out we rather enjoyed it.
To actually talk about the game, though, we chose to go with the PSP version for a very simple reason: It’s prettier. Between the updated character portraits by Ayami Kojima and the gorgeously remade character models and environments, it was hard to pass up. (Also, I will die on the hill that this version of Richter is better than the original, fight me.) The game has a very deliberate pace that took some getting used to, since I expected Richter to move more like how I remembered Alucard moving. Once I did get used to it though, I really liked it. It gives the game an inevitable trudge toward Dracula feeling, with every step Richter takes feeling heavy but impactful. Timing was a bit more annoying, especially since you have to commit to whatever action you’re doing with Richter. I cannot count how many times I chose to attack and paid for it because I timed it wrong. It created a frustrating but ultimately satisfying combat rhythm. Some of this is mitigated when playing as Maria, since she has much faster movement and can run while attacking, which made the platforming sequences significantly less annoying.
My sister and I played through the game twice: Once mostly as Maria, the second time a mix of Maria and Richter as we looked for the maidens to unlock the “true” ending. Since we were swapping on and off, we both took on about half the bosses, and I cannot stress enough how much I loved the Death fight. Not only did it look cool as shit, but he offered a decent challenge, even when playing as Maria. The Shaft fight was really neat in how it recontextualized fights from the original game, though he drove my sister insane. His shade was also a ton of fun to figure out and beat. We played at least half the game as intended, but once we hit the Annette fight, we caved and gave ourselves 99 Rests so we could actually learn it and not have to run through the entire stage every time. All in all, it took us about eight hours to finish both playthroughs, and at least an hour and a half of that playtime was just on final form Dracula, because he’s an asshole and I hate him. We had to swap on and off constantly to get through the frustration and hand pain, but in the end, I was the one to take him down with a literal sliver of life left (see above). I have never felt so accomplished. Playing through Rondo of Blood was challenging and aggravating but also a hell of a lot of fun, and I’m glad we gave it a go. Hopefully next time I can report some decent progress with Symphony of the Night. – Leah
What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!
You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!
