gaming plans – Riulyn's Blog (2024)

2018 – What will I be playing (from mybacklog)?

Posted in video games tagged 2018 gaming plans, 2018 goals, backlog, gaming plans at 10:00 am by riulyn

I realize I’m pretty terrible at predicting what new games I’m going to play the next year unless they all have announcements well in advance. As for new games in 2018, I think my list so far is Valkyria Chronicles 4 and maybe some indies?

But I definitely have a better idea what I’ll be working on from my backlog.

1. 2017 holdovers. Tokyo Xanadu eX+ will probably take me a few days into next year. I didn’t make it to the .hack collection so that will also happen next year. I have my eye possibly on Horizon: Zero Dawn the complete version. Though I guess technically I don’t own it yet…
2. Sequels/Prequels. I only got to Chapter 3 of Cold Steel 1 so I have that and Cold Steel 2 on my list next year. I guess I got a bit tired of the Trails formula after Ao? Also maybe I just want to replay Ao? Who knows. Also, I was supposed to replay Baten Kaitos this year. That needs to happen and then I can get to Baten Kaitos Origins, which I have never played. I’ve forgotten most of the original game’s plot so I need to do that. I finished Persona 4 Golden with the true ending, so I’m ready for Persona 4 Arena. And then there is Mass Effect 2. I really suck at it…
3. Japanese games.I still have a bunch of Japanese PSP games to play, but I also want to finally play through the PS3 version of Tales of Vesperia. I don’t have any other Tales games lined up for next year; are they going to announce something? I also have tactical games Valkyria Chronicles 3 and Growlanser. And Atelier Elie on PS1 to at least have one Atelier game for next year (still on the fence about Atelier Firis and Atelier Lydie & Suelle). I guess I tore through those other Atelier games too quickly…

2018’s goal is to beat 18+ games. I know I keep lowering this goal recently, but times are getting busier and I want to replay some games. Let me know if there are major 2018 releases you are waiting for or major backlog items you plan to take care of in 2018.

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What I’m playing – FFXVupdate

Posted in video games tagged final fantasy xv, gaming plans, gaming update at 9:44 pm by riulyn

Well, I beat Tales of Berseria this morning (as in 1 AM) so I will be writing up about that soon. Now I will be focusing mostly on Final Fantasy XV when I want to take breaks from working on my grant. Which is like all the time, but I will restrain myself…sort of.

I feel like I’ve spent about half of my current play-time in FFXV doing sidequests and hunts and half on the actual plot, and yet I’m already into Chapter 8. A lot of the quests are pretty easy to fulfill so I guess I do it because of that? And because I want money and items and EXP. The game isn’t hard but I like playing button-mashing a bit too much, so Noctis “dies” kind of a lot, even if I have high enough levels… Whoops.

Overall I do enjoy the game, but it’s really because I like the characters and their banter. The main plot is not really pulling me in, though. Like I don’t mind just running around doing random things and listening to the quad say whatever they feel. Maybe I don’t feel this drive to find out what happens next because I’m not that interested in it yet and I will be soon? Right now it feels like a set of Final Fantasy concepts as a background to a cross-country road trip. With lots of speed bumps. Interestingly, main story segments can be quite short. But at least it isn’t necessarily forced padding through really long and boring dungeons, at least so far. Driving isn’t too long and when they drive to story parts, there is dialogue in the car. I’m just thinking about those dungeons in Tales of Berseria…boring!

I kind of wish music was a bit more featured in the game, considering Yoko Shimomura was in charge of the soundtrack. The snippets I get that aren’t remixes seem quite good. But I guess maybe it doesn’t fit with FFXV’s style.

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What I’m playing –#JRPGJULY

Posted in video games tagged final fantasy xv, gaming plans, jrpgjuly, tales of berseria, tales of destiny 2 at 8:00 pm by riulyn

I’m in the mood to blab on about the games I’m playing, so I’m going to probably start this off pretty regularly. We’ll see if I’m still doing this regularly in a few months.

July is here and so is #jrpgjuly. This is when I can actually join many others in the gaming world instead of being in my corner of ~almost always playing JRPGs because I fail at playing other stuff~. Yay for actually being part of something? So what am I playing?

Not Ar nosurge anymore, since I just finished that. But I still have plenty of JRPGs for July.

Read the rest of this entry »

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2015 Gaming Plans/Goals

Posted in video games tagged 2015 games, 2015 rpgs, gaming plans, top 5 at 8:53 pm by riulyn

2014 was a pretty good personal gaming year, even if I only bought 4games released in 2014: Bravely Default, Drakengard 3, Tales of Xillia 2, and Child of Light. Smash Brothers 3DS also came out this year, but I didn’t buy it – my brother did for me. I beat more games than I acquired this year,and the numbers look even better if I don’t count the random Steam games I got via the Humble Bundle. I think what was also good about this year was playing a decent variety of games. I played visual novels, action RPGs, tactical RPGs, Japan-only RPGs, western indie RPGs.

There’s not really a lot to summarize about 2014 otherwise (also I am too lazy to do so), so instead I will talk about 2015. 2015 should be an interesting year as my main gaming genre, JRPGs, will start having PS4 entries. However personally I see it being another rather light year for purchases. I already posted on my 2015 anticipated games here. I’m still not in a good employment situationso I’m probably not going to gamble on unknown quantities when I have 2014 and earlier goodies to still pick up. I see my 2015 purchases as mostly the following:

1. Anticipated 2015 games aka Xenoblade Chronicles X and whatever else I really die for
2. 2014 games that I think I want to get like Demon Gaze
3. Atelier games. Have to decide whether to get the cheaper PS3 or the Vita ones with DLC included but then they are only digital…
4. PSOne/PS2 classics when they have awesome deals. Though I might get Grandia for the list price of $6 anyway.
5. Maybe getting the Sora no Kiseki games in Japanese? I have to figure out just how much I want to wait for English localization and how much I want them now. Especially since I still have this urge to buy Ys vs Sora no Kiseki Alternative Saga and I don’t want to run into Sora no Kiseki spoilers there…

My overall gaming goal for 2015 is obviously to continue to whittle away at my backlog. I’ve actually done a decent job at playing through the games I bought in Japan, but my PS2 and Gamecube/Wii backlog are decent sized. In addition, I have some huge RPGs on my Steam list such as Mass Effect and the Last Remnant. I’d say my top 5 gaming goals would be

1. Play Mass Effect games
2. Continue to play Japanese games. I just bought Valkyria Chronicles 3 so I have some hardcore stuff to work with.
3. Play and finish the well-loved Skies of Arcadia Legends
4. Finally finish Disgaea and then borrow my brother’s copy of Disgaea D2
5. Finish Shadow Hearts Covenant and From the New World

This year was pretty fail in terms of a Xenosaga replay, as I struggled with having interest in the battle system. Playing Ys Origin really sparked my desire for Ys games, so I bought and quickly got through Ys VI. Still, my fingers are still itching for Ys action, so I think I will actually replay the Ys series entries I own instead of just declaring my intent to replay them. Otherwise, I really want to replay Xenogears at some point.

Anyway, happy end of 2014 and hope 2015 is awesome!

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2 weeks to slack or freakout

Posted in life, video games tagged ar tonelico, atelier iris: eternal mana, bravely default, gaming plans, hana ki sou, tales of hearts 2, valkyria chronicles, wild arms 2 at 1:24 pm by riulyn

2 weeks until my scheduled dissertation defense. I’m starting to get a bit nervous now, but I’ve also never had so much time to work on one thing (started work on it 2 weeks ago) so I don’t exactly know what to do with myself. Therefore I’ve been slacking and playing games.

Still, I’m guessing I’m going to freak out the day or two before the presentation, so that means I have some 12 days of decent video gaming. Or rather, I’ll probably spend 12 days doing some decent video game playing instead of becoming absolutely perfect at my talk and applying to all the jobs and such. I just need to relax, right?

So what will I be up to, gaming-wise? After a Sunday marathon gaming session with Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana in the day and Valkyria Chronicles in the evening/night, I think those two will be the focus as I got end-game sounding music in Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana (love the fact that they changed the normal battle music) and reached Chapter 11 of Valkyria Chronicles. Of course, my PS2 needs to cooperate; it still sometimes decides not to load discs that have worked the past 3 days. So if Atelier Iris is out, I can continue on in Ar tonelico where I am about 10 hours in, though with levels of stuff I feel like I’m already halfway? It’ll probably be better if I’m not halfway through, though, so I hope I’m wrong. I’m already at level 4 with Aurica and level 5 with Misha. It’s enough info that I should be leaning towards one girl over another, but I find both girls to be a good mix of good and bad. I guess I need to commend the game for making me conflicted like this 🙂

I guess I could ramp up the time I spend playing Bravely Default and not just spend most of the time rebuilding the village and wandering (I am auto-battling when I am cooking or waiting for saves to load as I fail in Valkyria Chronicles, which is very often). I’m probably going to make the game too easy but I am getting more mastery of jobs which is really the big reason we all are playing the game. The story as of Chapter 2 isn’t great but not bad. I do wish I liked the characters better.

I was trying to run Xenosaga on an emulator but for some reason the emulator kept glitching on me. The hard drive with the emulators installed seem to be having some issues, though running a playstation 1 emulator was fine. Thus I am slowly working through Wild ARMs 2. Ashley and Lilka are pretty meh so far but Brad seems to be at least somewhat interesting. A lot of people don’t like Wild ARMs 2 so I guess I’ll get to see why once I actually get further than 5 hours in the game.

I did end up finishing one playthrough of Hana Ki Sou. Unfortunately I don’t think I really understood what happened in the game. I’m planning to replay it at least once (to get another ending) before moving to Sol Trigger. Of course that is nowhere close to completion as there are actually 16 endings and also lots of “special images” to collect. One playthrough seemed really, really short though – like 3 hours max? I was only spending 10-15 minutes a day on the game and looking up words I didn’t know. Thank goodness there is all that voice-acting, since the game likes to use kanji in words that most other games normally don’t use kanji for. Verbs like “to understand” (わかる) was written with at least 2 different kanji in this game. I don’t believe the kanji character used affects the meaning of this word in particular, but I have not verified that yet. Anyway, the voices in the game are great. The art is okay, only because I don’t like how skinny everyone is. The colors are nice though.

My vita is still in use, though with a console focus at the moment I haven’t been playing too much Tales of Hearts R. The MC seems like a typical JRPG protagonist with the most similarity to Asbel at the moment. It’s way too early in the game for me, however, to make any real judgments on him or the battle system or other things. I just got a second playable character after all. I think, though, it might already have one of the best starts to a Tales game. Does that mean I need to do a Tales marathon to refresh my memory? Probably…

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2014 Goals

Posted in life, video games tagged 2014 goals, backlog, buying games, gaming plans at 12:14 pm by riulyn

My 2014 goals are few but pretty major.

1. Graduate
2. Get a job
3. Beat more games than I buy
4. Make some more sheet music
5. Not allow my apartment to get as messy as it did last year

The world runs on money, so replacing my grad school income with something else is the major thing for the year. It’s good and bad to be graduating; there’s the potential for earning more money or doing something more interesting, but I also have to take more responsibility and there may also be a significant time between grad school and the next career thing. I’ve already ranted on this before, so I’ll stop here.

My game-buying plans are pretty modest at the moment. I plan to just preorder Bravely Default, Drakengard 3, Trails in the Sky 2, Tales of Xillia 2, and “X” (if that releases, but not getting a Wii U yet) this year if I don’t get a job this year. I don’t think Persona 5 will come out this year? I also have Sorcery Saga to order once I return to Seattle. Once I get a job I hope to return to buying 1-3 games/month. I have a pretty long list of games I’d still like to pick up. And one day I hope to buy games other than RPGs more regularly.

Because I plan to be somewhat light on the game buying side, I hope to make a decent dent in my backlog. I’ve just beaten Dragon Quest IX, reducing my backlog to 72 games at the moment (at least according to my Backloggery). There’s no way I’ll beat 72 games this year, but something around 20 should be doable. Oh wait, my brother just gifted me two more games for my laptop. It’s tough keeping track of digitally-purchased games… That reminds me that a good chunk of my backlog is Steam games…

I hope to replay a few games this year as well. Last year I did an okay job covering the Suikoden main series, just running out of steam after Suikoden IV so I didn’t end up playing Tactics. This year I hope to replay the Xenosaga trilogy and Xenogears. Also, I plan to replay some games while I participate in the RPGamer marathon (or whatever it is called). I don’t plan to buy any games in order to play along except maybe Legend of Dragoon off of PSN, but I will be replaying Chrono Cross this month, the Last Story in April (via New Game+), and The World Ends With You in December (also New Game+). I hope my Japanese is good enough for NieR Replicant (instead of NieR Gestallt which is what came over to the U.S.) in November. I’m currently doing okay with Tales of Innocence R, so combined with familiarity with NieR Replicant’s overall plot it should be fine.

In terms of backlogged games that I want to beat this year, the RPGamer challenge actually covers some games I really need to play like Radiant Historia, Radiata Stories, and Resonance of Fate (which all start with “R” haha). I also need to finally conquer Valkyria Chronicles (and possibly get to the sequel). Crap, I just realized I didn’t look for Valkyria Chronicles 3 in Japan…oh well. Anyway, I would also like to get through the Atelier Iris trilogy and maybe the Ar tonelico games. There’s enough similarity between the battle systems in those games for me to not want to be playing an Atelier and an Ar tonelico game at the same time. If I have extra money at some point this year I think I’d like to get some of the Atelier games for PS3. Just have to do that research when that time comes.

If I’m feeling tactical, I really should finish Disgaea and decide whether I get the others for portables at some point. I still have Tactics Ogre which is lost in my now sizeable PSP backlog and Growlanser 2 & 3 remakes on PS2. I personally don’t see myself making too much of a dent in my tactics game backlog, though.

As for non-RPGs, I should be starting up 999 soon. Otherwise, I’m more likely to pop in one of those visual novel romance games I got in Japan than the two Zelda games that I have or get to my non-RPG games on Steam. If I get a job then I’ll be highly tempted to buy the Ace Attorney games and marathon them. Otherwise this year will be light on the non-RPGs as well.

Anyway, I’m hoping that 2014 is a good year for all of us, both in gaming and in general 😀

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