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!
The last couple weeks I’ve been pretty busy, but that’s why I love demos. They let me get a bite-sized taste of a game in one or two quick sessions, and so far the two demos I checked out recently have me very curious for the full meal.
First up is PRAGMATA. To be fair, I expected to pick this game up even before playing the Sketchbook demo, but getting a hands-on feel for it only cemented that desire. I played on the PlayStation 5 (yes I know it was available on Steam significantly earlier), and while the controls took a little getting used to, the learning curve wasn’t excessive. The demo opens with a typical combat tutorial, but in a game where you control both protagonists at once, it was one of the few combat tutorials I really appreciated. You use the left trigger to aim and the right trigger to shoot — pretty standard in a third-person action game. The twist comes that you aim simultaneously with both Hugh and Diana. When you aim at an enemy, Diana’s hack prompt appears in the upper right of the screen. Using the face buttons will move your cursor through the hacking field, where you can trigger extra damage or defense depending on which nodes you pass through. Reaching the goal will temporarily disable an enemy’s armor, allowing Hugh to shoot them. You still need to dodge attacks while Diana hacks, so there’s a lot of micromanaging of the battle happening, and it’s a bit tricky to get used to, but by the time I finished my third run I felt pretty old hat at it.
In the demo, Hugh can use four different weapon types: A standard pistol, a shotgun, an energy net, and an armor-piercing rifle. These are pretty self-explanatory weapons. The pistol is weak but quick; the shotgun is powerful but short range; the energy net paralyzes enemies for a short period of time; and the armor-piercing rifle wrecks shit but has a massive cooldown. The pistol has unlimited ammo, while the others you will need to replenish as you explore the lunar base. I found my favorite combination was the energy net and shotgun. Because the energy net paralyzes enemies, it makes it easier for Diana to hack them, and if she has the multihack node, you can open multiple enemy armors at once, which is ideal for a spread weapon. It helped make short work of lesser robots. The rifle was great against the demo’s final boss, but felt wasted against weaker enemies. It’s also only available from the second run onward, and in my experience had the least ammo refills. You cannot have both the rifle and the shotgun active at the same time, so sticking with old faithful was a no brainer. The biggest issue with the combat is a lack of a lock-on function, which I really, really hope they implement for the final product.
Running around the lunar base was a joy. I love the slick, shiny feel of it, with the sterile surfaces and future tech creating a cold, unfeeling backdrop for the core mystery of the game. What happened to the people on the base? Where are all of Hugh’s comrades who came to rescue the inhabitants? Why is the AI attacking him and Diana? It’s the cool sci-fi shit I live for. Navigating the base is fun since Hugh’s suit comes with thrusters that let him rush through corridors or jump across large gaps between ledges. Diana can hack into security nodes and activate platforms to help Hugh on his journey. I do wish Hugh’s default speed was just a little bit faster, since he feels really heavy to move, but he’s also wearing a heavy power suit so I can’t really knock points. The Sketchbook demo takes roughly 25-30 minutes on the first go if you explore everywhere and find all the data logs from the base’s previous inhabitants. Subsequent runthroughs take significantly less time, and my third run ended around 13 minutes. It’s a tightly paced, neat little package. I’m excited for the full release. Hugh and Diana are definitely gonna make me cry.
The other demo I played was Dark Auction, also on the PlayStation 5. This one was not on my radar until I saw it in the PlayStation store. It’s a murder mystery visual novel with a real sense for aesthetics. The art is gorgeous, with some truly stunning character designs and a moody, gothic atmosphere. The premise is that several people are invited to a mysterious auction somewhere in Europe circa 1981. Included in that group is Leonard Crawford, father of our protagonist Noah. When Leonard doesn’t return after several days, Noah goes in search of his father, infiltrating the castle where the auction is being held. There, he find the Auctioneer, a mysterious man with the head of a parrot, as well as the other invitees and the castle’s enigmatic caretaker. Noah will need to learn about the other attendees and assist them in their auctions, or he may never be able to leave the castle again.
As a standard murder mystery visual novel, Dark Auction has everything I could want. A stellar voice cast, beautiful character illustrations, a mellow soundtrack. The initial hook is honestly pretty strong, and I’m just as curious to know what’s going on with this auction as Noah is. I’m less excited about the frankly abysmal character models whenever the game decides they need to walk around instead of being static sprites. They are janky and ugly to look it, and don’t do the gorgeous designs justice. Thankfully whenever Noah is exploring the castle it’s through a first-person lens, and the bad animation is relegated to a few fleeting scenes here and there, but they sure do stick out when they pop up. As for exploration, I wish there were more things to examine at a more granular level, instead of Noah looking over whole sections of the environment and only being able to click on one or two objects. When I play these kinds of games, I go in with a “no stone unturned” mindset, and that’s just not mechanically possible here. Still, the conversations are engaging, and I do like Noah’s review sessions where you need to recall the information you’ve gathered to answer questions. There’s a very robust journal system and I can already imagine how far out it will web in the final game. It definitely has me wanting to come back for more.
Lastly, in non-demo games, my sister and I started Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure, because we wanted something a little more casual than Castlevania. And Rhapsody is most definitely casual, as it feels like My First Tactical RPG ™. That’s not a bad thing, honestly, since I think all genres should have easy on-ramps designed for younger or more casual audiences, but it’s definitely a bit of whiplash after Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night back-to-back. But it’s also hella charming. You play as Cornet, a young girl who can talk to puppets and one day dreams of meeting her prince charming. During an outing in the woods to gather some inotium for her grandfather, she’s attacked by a witch, and wouldn’t you know it? A prince appears and saves her! Not only that, he’s the one she’s been seeing in her dreams! What luck! One thing then leads to another and Cornet finds herself competing for the chance to marry said prince, and things just get a little crazier from there in typical RPG fashion.
The actual tactical RPG element is straightforward. Cornet commands a variety of puppets and beasts she recruits to her party, and they can move only so many tiles across the battlefield. They also have a basic attack that only hits their direct cardinals, or specials that range from healing abilities to buffs to attacks. You can play your trumpet to buff your puppets, which in turn builds up Cornet’s music meter that acts as her magic. The more music bars she accumulates, the stronger the spell she can cast. It’s a decently designed system with just enough depth to be engaging without being complicated. This is made mostly moot by the very first puppet you recruit, Sharte. Unfortunate name aside, she is an overpowered behemoth, especially once she unlocks Holy and you give her the half-MP accessory. The game was easy beforehand, but now I just destroy the entire playfield in one go. We’re playing on Normal difficulty and it is clearly skewed toward a less experienced audience. It makes for a breezy but laughably easy playthrough.
Being an older game, it suffers a lot of my least favorite design decisions, including labyrinthine dungeons with no in-game map, a complete unwillingness to explain its status effects, and constant back and forth fetch quests. I put up with them because of the cast. I love this cast so much. Cornet and her puppet Kururu are like bickering sisters who always have each others’ backs. Etoile is the haughty, stuck up debutante with a secret heart of gold. The main bad guys are the witch Marjoly and her three lackeys: Myao, Crowdia and Gao. Prince Ferdinand is there too, I guess. One of the things I love about female-centric casts like this is that the girls are allowed to be girls, warts and all, and it’s very refreshing to have Cornet be stubborn and bratty, or Kururu playing tricks on Cornet at her expense. Etoile gets the room to be a stuck-up piece of shit while also showing her softer side, and it’s things like these you don’t usually get to see when female characters take a secondary role. The game also has a lot of really positive messaging about being yourself and that looks don’t matter, though it has the frustrating habit of undermining that message two minutes later by calling Cornet chubby at 100 pounds or making relentless fat jokes. The translation is also a bit fast and loose at times with dated references, though so far only two have made me roll my eyes. The biggest annoyance about playing this is that, at least in the Prinny Presents version, you are either listening to the in-game songs in English with English subtitles, or you’re listening in Japanese with romaji karaoke lyrics. If you want to listen to the Japanese version and still understand what’s being sung, you might want to start studying Japanese. Otherwise, I’m really enjoying this incredibly charming, impossibly cute story of friendship, perseverance, and following your dreams. – Leah
Not too long ago, I fully finished replaying the first Bustafellows. So this past week, I’ve been enjoying Bustafellows 2. I’ve actually already gone through quite a few routes. It felt a bit weird at first that I had to pick a guy beforehand and play through quite a bit, before I could tell what was the common route and where each guy’s individual route starts. But I eventually figured that out after finishing Limbo’s. I found a recommended order online of Limbo, Shu, Helvetica, Mozu and then Scarecrow. Although, it sounded like the middle order doesn’t really matter, so long as I start with Limbo and then do Scarecrow last. After finishing Limbo’s route, I went with Helvetica, one of my least favorites, to get it over with sooner rather than later. Then I did Mozu, who counts as my third favorite I suppose, and now I’m finally in the middle of Shu’s route. Shu is definitely still my favorite and I’m really enjoying his route. Limbo’s route I wasn’t a huge fan of. Even though he’s my second favorite of all the guys from the first game, I don’t think his route was quite as good this time. Most of his route involves him working and Teuta having challenges with her own career as well. Honestly, I just wish this whole game had a lot more Shu. I am enjoying the new characters so far though, who simply seem to be a new part of the story in each of the different sequel routes. Juno especially, is a nice addition.
Along with continuing to be sucked in by Bustafellows, I’m also still playing bit of Fantasy Life i on the side. I haven’t made any story progress recently. I’ve simply continued to grind and tried to work on raising the various lives. Now I also wanna start running Treasure Groves more, so I can collect the Goddess Fruit I need for unlocking new hairstyles and whatnot. I think I’m going to have to start doing those runs online, to get more fruit. However, I have just about raised my gathering lives high enough that I can now at least run the basic, lowest level Treasure Groves myself without too much trouble. I do think I might still be a bit weak at mining though, or simply need to craft a better pickaxe. – Jenae
In anticipation for the upcoming Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection, I’ve been slowly going through the second half of the Battle Network games. Last month, I completed Battle Network 4 Red Sun and now I’m playing Battle Network 5 Team Colonel. These games might not appear to be too different from each other at first glance, but Battle Network 5 perhaps stands out the most among them due to the divisive liberation missions. Throughout the game you will be thrust into scenarios where the game will play out as a light SRPG where you and your party have to liberate corrupted tiles in the over-world creating a path to the boss and main antagonist of that chapter.
During these missions, the combat system sees a couple changes, one of them being that you will need to defeat enemies within three turns, otherwise the liberate fails and you will need to try liberating that tile again. This also applies to bosses as well where each of your party members has three turns to defeat them should they engage with the boss. If the boss has not been defeated by the end of your team’s phase, they will regain about 300HP and have the ability to perform an attack on your party, potentially giving them less HP for the next battle they choose to engage in. It sounds like it would be annoying and it definitely can be inconvenient at times, but it really encourages you to play smart and build your folder to optimize for those “one turn Liberations” where you defeat the enemy in one turn and all the tiles around you get liberated at the same time. It’s incredibly satisfying to pull these off and build a load out that can lead to these epic moments in battle. I also love that you can play as other Navis who all have different play-styles and abilities. You may have to waste a turn or two getting used to them though.
The game does unfortunately have some annoying sections where you need to backtrack and those can sometimes be time consuming if you don’t take advantage of the various shortcuts in the world. I just finished the Cloud Man scenario and while I think the narrative is stronger than the last game, but I found the story lines in the first couple Battle Network games to be far more compelling. Still, what’s here mostly serves its purpose just fine and I can still say I’m having a great time revisiting it while jamming to the awesome OST. – Justin
What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!
You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!
