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!
Lately, I’ve been extremely burnt out. I don’t seem to know what to do with myself now, without a new review game to play. There was still something I was hoping to get my hands on for my last review of the year but it didn’t end up happening, much to my disappointment. I do have some untouched games on hand still in my backlog, but nothing really sounded all that exciting to start playing. After watching random shows instead and being incredibly bored recently, I finally decided it was time for a new game plus run in Xenoblade Chronicles 3. The last time I played XC3 I was working on the DLC prequel story, not long after the final bit of DLC released. Back then though, I either got burnt out or distracted by something else and didn’t fully finish it. I always seem to have that reaction to these DLC stories, same thing with XC2’s Torna prequel, I didn’t finish it the first time I played and went back to it later as well. However, this time I hadn’t actually touched the main game in XC3 again, since getting the DLC. So I haven’t gotten to try out the alternate colored outfits, the DLC Challenge Mode, nor the additional DLC added Classes from the new Hero characters.
I could’ve gone back and finished the prequel story first, but since I hadn’t done even a single new game plus run in XC3 yet, I figured it was a good idea to start that and enjoy all the new content. Not to mention, one thing I had a huge issue with in XC3 back when I reviewed it, was how stupidly easy it was to level up. Fortunately, new game plus finally lets you manually lower everyone’s level. The first time around, it just felt difficult to enjoy fully exploring and sidequesting when the game was so stupidly easy and I kept leveling up far beyond where I wanted to be. And sure, I could’ve raised the difficulty to hard the first time and maybe made that less of an issue, but since I was already doing a post-launch review, I didn’t want to take all eternity to get my review out. Anyway, I’m now enjoying replaying the game and being able to manually lower my level whenever I feel like I’ve leveled too high. Also, now that I’m simply replaying for fun, I’ve finally raised the difficulty.
Even if XC3 wasn’t a super easy game to breeze through, I never 100% games to begin with. I get burnt out far too soon for that. So there’s plenty of side content I didn’t complete the first time, in addition to the new DLC content. For example, I barely did any of the additional Hero quests to unlock levels 11 through 20 for each Class. Also, I didn’t unlock every single Class for every character. Some of them are still missing a few. Currently, I’m quite enjoying using Royal Summoner on Sena. I always loved playing as Melia in the first game, so even though there are way less Arts now, it’s still fun to summon elements and do major damage attacking with them. Plus, there’s an AOE topple skill this time around. Though I do wish the DLC or new game plus somehow allowed for me to customize outfit bottoms and not just their tops. It really is dumb to me that they made the costumes so limited with the inability to mix and match parts of different outfits. For some reason I thought the initial alternate colored outfit DLC would let me use their alternate colored bottoms with any top, along with having the original defaults as a choice still. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Nonetheless, for now I’m enjoying replaying XC3. Even though it’s my least favorite of the main three games, Xenoblade in general is always fun for me to revisit and play when nothing else seems to hook me. – Jenae
Spooky season might be long done, but I’m still trucking along with Silent Hill f. I’m currently on my new game+ run and having a great time re-exploring the village of Ebisugaoka and uncovering more pieces of Hinako’s story. SHf is interesting to me. It doesn’t feel like a Silent Hill — it lacks the oppressive atmosphere and suffocating sound design from the first three games — but in story, character and mood it hits every button. The game is unnerving and sometimes genuinely scary, but I constantly find myself wanting to brave the abandoned streets and homes to unravel more of the story. Unlike previous Silent Hills, f plays out more like a visual novel, with each playthrough peeling back the layers of the story and providing more or re-contextualized information from previous playthroughs. SH games have always had multiple endings, but getting those were determined by in-game actions as you replayed the same story. Silent Hill f tweaks this and it’s honestly more engaging for me. The game isn’t terribly long — my first run was roughly 18 hours or so, and the game informs you which cutscenes contain new scenes so you can easily skip ones you’ve seen before, reducing the time for each new playthrough. You can also carry stats into new game+, retaining any enhanced stamina, health, or sanity you’ve accumulated through ema at the hokora, as well as additional omamori. It makes combat easier while giving the story a chance to ramp up intensity.
The elephant in the room is, of course, that Silent Hill f does not take place in the titular Silent Hill; instead, the game takes place in 1960’s Japan in a village nestled amongst the mountains where the locals worship a fox spirit and there’s only one road into town. Hinako is a young woman with a tumultuous relationship with her family and very few friends. She’s hot-headed and stubborn, struggling with her place in society and what she wants from her future. When Ebisugaoka is plunged into darkness, Hinako has to fight her way through grotesque doll-like monsters and gross, fleshy abominations. She can dodge, perform light and heavy attacks, and counters. Each action uses stamina, and once she’s out of stamina Hinako is stunned and unable to perform any actions for a short period of time. Some enemies and scenarios will drain Hinako’s sanity, and once she’s out of sanity it will begin draining her health. Unlike previous games, you only have a limited inventory which has to be juggled between healing items and Faith items to be donated at the hokora. With enough Faith, Hinako can either heal her health and sanity (this is exempt in Story mode), or buy stat upgrades and omamori. These are accessories that grant certain perks, like higher stamina. Finally, weapons will deteriorate the more you use them, so you have to either make sure you have extra weapons or carry around toolkits, which take up an inventory slot. It’s a lot more in-depth than previous games but I found it didn’t bother me all that much. Certain areas can get tedious with fighting, but I found the actual combat to be perfectly serviceable.
I also really like the Dark Temple sequences that replace the Other World from previous games. Not only do I get to see Fox Mask, but I find the atmosphere a lot more stifling, and the puzzle solving ramps up significantly. The biggest issue with these sequences is actually the combat, which I otherwise don’t mind, but you can’t avoid here like you can around most of the village. It’s annoying to have to stop puzzle solving to deal with yet another enemy and slows down the pacing. Otherwise, the vibes are immaculate, and some of the most twisted parts of the story take place here, pushing the psychological horror to greater heights. It’s fantastic.
On the complete other end of the spectrum, my sister and I finished our Parasite Eve playthrough and jumped into Ys IV: Mask of the Sun. It’s been a while since we last hung out with Adol and crew, so returning to the series has been a ton of fun. We opted to play the SNES version of IV this time around, instead of the TurboGrafx or modern ones, diving into his exploits in Celceta with gusto. It’s always a bit of whiplash playing old action RPGs. The story-telling is a bit clunkier, the plots a bit shallower, and the quality of life a bit more frustrating, but they’re so charming it’s easy to look past a lot of it. This time around, Adol is on an adventure to find the mysterious writer of a message in a bottle requesting help for Celceta before it’s consumed by evil. Ever the hero, Adol jumps at the chance to discover what’s happening, eventually finding himself embroiled in a conflict centuries in the making. The story isn’t particularly nuanced, but it evokes such a sense of adventure as Adol scurries between continents, finds new friends and makes new enemies, and decimates local monster populations.
I really like a lot of the environments here, especially the Ice Mountain. The reflections look so good. The encounter design leaves a lot to be desired, though, with enemies spawning constantly and often trapping you in narrow corridors where you cannot bump combat your way out to safety. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention: bump combat is back. Yay. (Please be sure to read with dripping sarcasm.) The level scaling is also back, but I am not ashamed to admit we’ve cheated a couple levels when we didn’t want to grind them out. I don’t actually think grinding for the sake of grinding adds anything to a game outside tedium, and so long as there’s no skill involved in obtaining those levels, I have zero qualms inputting a code to bump it up a couple. We’ve never out-leveled an area or boss, because that would defeat the purpose, but I don’t have the time or patience to walk back and forth for an hour just to hit the minimum level needed to damage an enemy. That being said, I’ve actually really liked each boss encounter and design so far. They’re punishing if you don’t pay attention or get too greedy, but have clear patterns, and even when you fail you can jump back in immediately thanks to being able to save anywhere. They’re visually appealing, too. And as always, the music is just banger after banger. Ys games never fail to get my blood pumping when it comes to battle themes, and this entry is no different. My sister and I will probably finish this one up the next time we play, and then after that it’s who knows which retro game, but I’m definitely looking forward to whichever it ends up being. Feel free to rec some of your faves. – Leah
What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!
You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!
