What are you currently playing?

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

  Does anyone have suggestions for fast-paced RPGs on the Switch?  (Super Nintendo style RPGs are close to what I'm looking for.)  For now, I might do another Pokemon solo or something. . .

Don't know whether you already played it or isn't interested in it, but For The King game which already has a thread here at realms beyond, also do have a switch version besides PC (at least in my country).
It is fairly fastpaced, after being used to it, it usually takes 3 hours to finish one game of FTK and you can replay it with different team setups or solo games.

Never played For The King, but I might try it someday if it goes on sale or something.

[El Grillo]

I've been enjoying the latest DLC for Monster Train, which introduced a mechanic where you can get very strong upgrades at the cost of making all future enemies deadlier. The game was already about trying to find ways to break the rules and go way over the top of the enemy scaling, and this doubles down on that premise in a fun way. That's one of the nice parts about the game's relatively short run length compared to something like Slay the Spire or Griftlands: you might pull off something incredibly overpowered, but you usually win the run shortly after, before it wears out its welcome and becomes tedious. I've reset the difficulty modifier back to 0 from 25 and have been trying out the new faction in each of its combinations, fun times so far.

   

EDIT: Case in point, this latest run of mine. Doubling spikes/regen almost every turn with Symphony of the Soul adds up pretty darn quickly 

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Finished Ni No Kuni--for real this time!  This afternoon, I decided to give it one more try on Normal difficulty at the same character levels.  (No "Hard" mode exists in this game.)  The trick to beating The Zodiarchy was to spend much of the fight with the "everybody defend" command active.  This let Cassiopeia the AI guest character cast Nix to interrupt The Zodiarchy before it could cast its ultimate spell Chaos.


To get rid of the other enemies The Zodiarchy summoned, I cast Evenstar with Oliver like on other attempts.  A Mornstar cast provided a suitable finisher.  So my playthrough ended with a more positive mood than yesterday.  Don't expect to see any variants for Ni No Kuni for a long time, if ever.

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Ys Origin is fun so far.  It's an action RPG that plays like a 3D platformer with beat em up combat.  They say the game is short for an RPG, but there are 3 characters to play as.  It's too simple for a Realms Beyond style text Let's Play as there aren't any strategic or tactical choices to be made.


My Ni No Kuni playthrough may have been an unintentional variant.  According to a list on The Gamer by Meg Pelliccio, I've used 3 of the 10 worst monster families on my team:  Mite, Hurly, and Sunshine.  Mite was one of my most reliable familiars. 


Players are right about Hurly:  it's slow and has horrible accuracy in melee.  The only reason I had Hurly was because Swaine started with one. 


Sunshine has to be recruited, and I gave mine to Esther.  Sunshine's issue is that it can't equip weapons, yet the game seems to expect you to use it as a physical attacker.  At least it had fire spells when Esther had some MP to spare.

[Alhazard]

MTGA

DFFOO. You can see end game content vids on my channel. FFRK showed me that there is hope in mobile gaming but DFFOO really takes it further.

Gordian Quest. Think of Diablo 2 + Slay the spire. Maybe I should make a forum thread once I have some idea of what I am doing in this game.

Fights in Tight Spaces. Deck builder/Slay the spire like game in a fist fight environment. I do like that this game and Gordian Quest are heavily position dependent since most attacks have limited range so it does add more depth to this genre.

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Finished Ys Origin with Yunica on Hard today, but had to level to 52 and acquire all the blessings from the save statues to win.  Even then, Yunica only survived with 11/365 HP according to a Switch video clip.  Don't plan on playing with the other characters for a while.  Ys Origin is competent, but not remarkable enough to make me want to replay immediately.


Final Fantasy Legend games are weird enough to intrigue me, however. . .

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Super Mario Odyssey didn't arrive on time, so for now I'm playing Double Dragon and Kunio-Kun Retro Brawler Bundle which should still be on sale in the Switch Eshop.


River City Ransom is as good as I remembered it on the Wii Virtual Console.  You increase your stats the same way a Human does in Final Fantasy Legend 1:  beat up enemies for pocket change and go to the store to buy stat increases.  Did Kawazu secretly work on this game?  They both came out in 1989. . .


(It's funnier in River City Ransom when you imagine Kunio going to the store to buy out the entire selection of R & B CDs to increase his Strength. . .)


The stats in River City Ransom are suspiciously similar to Pokemon "effort values" because they cap at 63.


If you're having trouble on Advanced, be sure to use height advantage.  The AI doesn't know what to do if you're above them, and they just stand around most of the time.  Drop down, attack, then jump back up.


Despite the title, Retro Brawler Bundle also includes the sports games featuring Kunio.  I don't care about real hockey at all, but Go-Go! Nekketsu Hockey Club Slip-and-Slide Madness is fun.  It has what may be the funniest tutorial in video games:  Kunio's dodgeball team defeated Nekketsu's hockey team 43-2.  Then the next cutscene reveals that the home team is supposed to be that bad until Kunio trains them!


There's also a sequel to River City Ransom called Downtown Special Kunio-kun's Historical Period Drama.  Some of the mechanics are different, so I wonder how it'll compare to the earlier game.

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Played a little of Downtown Nekketsu Special Kunio-kun's Historical Period Drama.  A few first impressions, especially about differences from River City Ransom:


-Stats grow after using relevant abilities, like in Saga or Elder Scrolls.

EDIT:  Stats grow based on percentages you allocate in the BOOSTS menu after every 10 enemies defeated.


-At least two copies of the same item can be equipped, and possibly more.  If that's confirmed, then Kunio Historical Period Drama functions like a Final Fantasy Legend 2 Robot if it could gain stats from combat.


EDIT:  Yes, equipment really does work like FFL2 Robots!  Kunio currently has 10 Leggings equipped to increase Kick.


-Damage printouts are displayed above characters now.

-You start with an AI companion, and can recruit replacements by defeating them in battle.  This partner can be helpful, or can waste his time running into the same wall repeatedly.  

-A native save feature exists since it's a late NES game, though "Suspend Save" (i.e. save state) exists in all Retro Brawler Bundle games now.

-Jumping feels much less awkward.

-Enemies travel around Japan instead of respawning whenever you move to a new screen.  Wandering around the map until you find something to do is another trait Historical Period Drama shares with the Saga series (Romancing Saga more so than Final Fantasy Legend).

-Locations aren't always connected in a way that makes sense.  Sometimes you'll emerge on the left side of an area after going through the left side of the previous screen, for example.  Be sure to check the map often when you exit the pause menu.


EDIT:  Stats cap at 127 instead of 63.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Currently playing ARCANIUM: Rise of Akhan in early access.  It's a deck-building, rouge-lite which takes many cues from Monster Train and Slay Spire.  But it is INCREDIBLY polished for early access in my opinion, with a wonderful, intuitive interface and reasonable depth of gameplay.  I put about 10 hours into it over the weekend and I think I have already gotten my $16.99 worth out of it.

You move across an open world map and get to move to thirty "purple" tiles before the boss fight is queued.  You can backtrack across any previously visited tile.





You select three heroes (there will be 12 in the final build, there are 7 currently) with each using a completely unique card set.  You set them up to fight in three lanes, moving them around as you see fit.




If you're into this genre of game, I think it's a solid addition and should be worth the money once it reaches 1.0 release.  As per usual, the price is cheaper while in early access.

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

I finally managed to beat Historical Period Drama.  Kunio's final stats:


PUNCH:  15
KICK:  127 (With items)
WEAPON:  15
THROW:  15
SPEED:  127
JUMP:  51
DEF:  127
RES:  127


ENERGY:  75
STAMINA:  255


Equipment

LEGGING X7
2XBOOST


Most of the game seems to be "wander around on the map until you beat the color-coded gang needed to advance".  They wander around, so you can fight the final battle in various locations.  For me, it was the caves under Nagato.  (A hilly green region with water.)


2XBOOST can be purchased in a secret shop in an Ecchu waterfall.  It doubles stat gains, so grinding is much faster.  To get the money, I reset the 1000 yen gambling game in town until I won.


If the multiple maxed stats seem excessive to you, you haven't played Historical Period Drama.  Even on Normal difficulty, the final bosses will murder you the first few times.  Yamada (i.e. River City Ransom's final boss) will throw objects with his telekinesis while Todo staggers Kunio with his melee.  Todo is also the antagonist of the sports games Super Awesome Field Day and The Distant Gold Medal (Crash n the Boys Street Challenge).


In my version of the final boss, Yamada appeared to trip and die while Todo was whaling on Kunio.  Even when Kunio was only taking 1 damage per strike, Todo was so fast that he could have slowly stunned him to death.  SCREWATK was the main source of damage at 90 per hit.  They stopped pretending that Acro Circus from River City Ransom wasn't stolen from Metroid in this translation. 


Other River City Ransom references are in this game too, even if they're disguised with different names.  The Dragon Twins return as bosses, and you can even recruit one of them as a companion.


There was an achievement called "You Did It!" that appeared during the ending.  River City Ransom has different achievements than the retranslated version Downtown Nekketsu Story.


Historical Period Drama is worth checking out if you liked River City Ransom.  The gameplay is very similar, but the locations and skill system is different enough to make Historical Period Drama distinct.