[Game Journal] The upward spiral of videogames

It didn't take that long for me to finish another game - Cat Café Manager. I got it as a Christmas gift from my friend and it had been on my wishlist for a while. It was fun, pretty much what I expected. Let's talk about it.

Cat Café Manager
Last year, when I was in Bratislava, I noticed a cat café near my hotel. Unfortunately, I couldn't visit it because of my tight schedule. So, this game is compensation for it.

In Cat Café Manager, you are given a cat café to take care of from your nanny. You start with empty lot and some resources, you pick your first Pokémon starter cat and start meeting the locals.

The gameplay loop is simple. You have to take orders, cook dishes or prepare drinks, serve them and chat with customers. Each of these tasks are simple mouseclick on one hand, but also have a nice system build around them. You have to get new recipes and ingredients, new furniture and toys.

And there is one huge problem I had with the game. You can get various resources, each linked with one type of customers, but each of them is used in different amount. I was constantly running out of nectar, because it was the currency for ingredients and recipes and as I said earlier, you'll always be out of some ingredients. I could also barely afford new furniture, because it was way too expensive for how much gold you get. Not to mention that gold is also needed to get toys and other stuff for cats. You can advertise for certain types of customers, but that will also negatively affects your gains.

Each type of customer is represented by one regular, who chats with you and presents their personal story. I quite enjoy all of them. They all have cool design, backstory and it's just fun to watch their interactions with each other. You can get special kinds of furniture that unlocks special interactions and activities. For example, you can get a tabletop game and play it with other regulars. Leveling up your relationship with them also levels up the customer types, rewarding more resources, but having bigger requirements on your café.

The main point of the game is renovating an old cat shrine, which unlocks new options of furniture, recipes, cat stuff and even an option of getting your own staff. And to be honest, it felt a little bit grindy by the end, since I already had everything I wanted and just wanted to get the last few updates that I skipped until that moment.

Overall, this was a great cozy game to get lost in. I'm looking forward the sequel. 8/10.

Next up, it's Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 time! It's releasing in a few hours and you can be sure that I'll be playing it! But with my schedule, it will probably take me until summer to beat it. And because one huge RPG is not enough, I got Chrono Trigger as my Game-Along game, so I'll also be playing that. And because two huge games are not enough, I also started The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD that I got as a Christmas gift from my wife. Which also brings me to Metroid Prime: Remastered that I started back in autumn, which I could also beat in the near future.
 
If my list of games I started this month isn't enough, I also realized I barely touched itch.io last year. So, I spent few hours right before Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 got released exploring Itch.io's new interesting games.

The Dark Queen of Mortholme
The Dark Queen of Mortholme is a short experience about what it means to be a Dark Souls boss.

You play as the titular Dark Queen, and you're the final boss of the dungeon. The player just beat everyone else there and is coming for you now. You say your line, and the clash begins. And it ends quickly because the player doesn't know your moveset, so one hit is enough to beat him. You're about to sit back on your throne, when... the player returns. You say your line, and the fight begins again. The player can now dodge your basic attack but is still defeated quickly. You're about to sit back on your throne when the player returns again. And he's better at dodging your attacks again. But it's still not enough to beat you. He returns again, this time with better gear. Eventually, he'll beat your first phase and maybe, just maybe, even your second phase.

In between your fights, you have an option to talk with the player. You can encourage him to get better, discuss the never-ending loop of fighting, and much more. I like that the dialogue branches and changes a little bit based on your attittude towards the player. If you're cold and mean, he won't talk to you much; he usually just throws an insult in your direction. On the other hand, if you open up a little bit, he might even feel bad about fighting you.

And while I like the idea behind the game, there is one glaring problem. The moment I noticed it, it completely shattered any illusion about the player's AI. The game tries to present the player as getting better, dodging your attacks and combos. But in reality, the game cheats and makes the player invincible. So even when you hit the player, he won't be hit. The game actually makes a good attempt at hiding it, making the player invincible when it needs to move the story forward but making him hit-able in other attempts. There is even a joke when the player gets obliterated by the Queen after a few successful (ish) attempts, with the Queen asking if the player is okay.

Overall, the game has a great idea, and I think the execution is good, but it could be a little bit better, especially the cheating part. I like the visuals, which reminded me that I wanted to play Blasphemous and other Souls-like Metroidvanias for years now but never found the courage to do so. 7.5/10.

I also beat Chrono Trigger, which was my Game-Along game. I'll write my thoughts on it soon.
 
Let's talk about my Game-Along game from this month. I let Explorer of Time to pick my game and ended up with Chrono Trigger.

Chrono Trigger
I have to say I was a little scared of playing Chrono Trigger, because old JRPGs can be pretty uncompromising and full of grind. But I was pleasantly surprised by Chrono Trigger in this regard. There's not a lot of grind, the classic random encounters are basically gone. Instead, there are encounters at pre-determined locations that reappear each time you visit the location. In fact, I didn't even need to grind in the game, leveling up as I progressed through the story was quite enough. On the other hand, I felt that some bosses had unnecessarily too much HP. It often happened that the boss couldn't give me enough damage to kill me before I got healed, but on the other hand, I gave him relatively little and it took quite a while before he fell.

Otherwise, I enjoyed the combat system. It's that kind of a turn-based system with a timer that determines when can a character attack. Those systems aren't one of my favorites, but they're fun to play with. Besides the basic attack, each character has special skills and magic. And those skills can be combined by two or even three characters into super-powerful attacks. I had a lot of fun exploring and trying out these skills.

Which brings me to the cast of characters. A nice surprise was the number of companions. There were only a few, but the game went to great lengths to make sure I remembered each one. In some parts of the game, certain characters are a mandatory part of the party, so my bad habit of picking a party at the beginning of the game and finishing the rest of the game with them fell away. It helped a lot with getting team attacks, since characters have to level together to get them. It also gave everyone their few minutes of fame.

The story was interesting enough in my opinion, though not the best. What it lost in quality it made up for in originality. I liked a lot that the player can go to the main boss at pretty much any point in the story and the game reacts accordingly. On the other hand, it makes a good portion of the story feel like a glorified side quest. And it is one huge side quest towards the end. What keeps it afloat, though, are the characters and their interactions both with each other and with the outside world. Bringing a prehistoric woman among the medieval elite isn't something that's in every game, after all. Generally the time travel was cool and the side activities outside of the main story were built on it. The player also gets complete control of space-time towards the end, so completing side quests goes quickly.

The audio-visual aspect kind of matched what I would expect from the game. It reminds me of Dragon Ball, but to me everything from that era reminds me of Dragon Ball. The animated cutscenes were a nice extra touch. Although then it was weird that the same thing happened in the cutscene, and then again in the game.

Overall, it was a very good RPG and I totally understand its cult status. 8.5/10.

And that wraps up February. I made a nice progress in Skyward Sword. I'm enjoying it despite the horrendous controls. And Lanayru Desert must be the most annoying location in any Zelda game. I also played Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. I finally started the main quest after 20 hours of gameplay. I'm loving it!
 
We are halfway through March, so let's talk about The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD
I have played quite a few Zelda games throughout the years I'm talking about games in this journal. I loved some, hated some, and I think I finally found the Zelda game that is "just alright".

Skyward Sword follows the classic Zelda plot of Link going around the world, clearing dungeons, getting new gear, and fighting evil reincarnated. And I really liked this aspect. Each dungeon and location has its own vibe and style and presents a new challenge for the player. I like that each of the three main areas is built in a way that allows the story to return there and still lets you explore new areas without it feeling like you were forcefully stopped from exploring early in the game. I think my favourite was the Faron Woods. It felt like a cozy place for an afternoon picnic. Actually, now that I think about it, my favourite was probably the hub area—the flying city of Skyloft. It had a Ghibli vibe to it and was always fun to go back and interact with its citizens. The desert region, on the other hand, was one of the most annoying and boring places I ever visited in any game. It was way too huge and slow, had long trivial puzzles, was annoying to traverse, and every time I had to go there, I was considering dropping the game altogether. The awful minecart minigame was a sole reason I haven't touched a game for a week. And that wasn't even the worst part of this location (that award goes to the hunting of the invisible ship). I have no idea who thought this area was okay.

Which brings me to another aspect that I have no idea how it could have ended up in the finished product—the motion controls and whatever the hell is supposed to be the HD's solution to it. I was expecting bad controls, but this is beyond bad. I don't think there is a single aspect of controls that would feel intuitive or good. Controlling the camera and fighting is almost impossible at the same time. Lock-on system usually turns your camera away from the enemy, and since you can't move the camera and prepare your attack at once, it's annoying to get everything in the right angle again. Controlling some items like a whip was also a pain.

Luckily, I had fun with the game despite the controls. I love this game's dungeons. Both in their visual design and in the way they incorporate their respective items. The first time I got to the water dungeon and saw the roots coming out of the walls, I thought that if this was the Indiana Jones game, I would use a whip to get across. And a few moments later, I actually got the whip! I also had fun using the Beetle, especially after upgrading it a little bit so it was flying faster.

Speaking of upgrades and crafting... it was there. It felt completely unnecessary, and the game can be completed without it. I think the thing that kind of hinders the whole system is the drop rate of necessary items. After finishing the first dungeon, I was excited to check the system but quickly found out that I barely had enough of any required material. And since all upgrades were mostly useless, bar a few QoL upgrades on the Beetle, I basically just ignored them. There was no reason to upgrade shields when I never used one anyway. There was no reason to get the ammo upgrade, since I never run out of it anyway.

I'm kind of jumping from what I like and don't like about Skyward Sword here, so let's talk about the last aspect that I liked and enjoyed—characters! I mentioned them a little bit, but I love the cast of characters in this game. All of them are so fun to interact with. I like all new races found on the surface. Again, my favourites are the Kiwis; no competition here. I'm kind of glad the game didn't default to the regular Zelda races. I don't like repeating enemies, but bosses were fun to fight. Most of them anyway. But I don't think there was any need to fight some bosses multiple times. Fighting The Imprisoned thrice won't suddenly make the boring fight fun.

Overall, this was a fun Zelda game that is dragged down by the controls immensely and doesn't know when to end. 7/10.

Next up, I want to talk about Professor Layton and the Curious Village HD in my next post. Meanwhile, I think I'll return to Metroid Prime Remastered and hopefully beat it quickly, since I'm taking my sweet time with it.
 
Let's talk about my Game-Along game from this month. A puzzle game Professor Layton and the Curious Village. I was interested in the series for a while, so this was a nice excuse to finally try it. I played the HD remaster for smartphones, but I don't think it's different gameplay-wise from the DS version.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village HD
I'm a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes and puzzle games, so I was excited to finally try a Professor Layton game. But I'm leaving it with slightly mixed thoughts. Professor Layton and his own kid-Watson are invited to a titular village to find a mysterious Golden Apple left behind by the late baron. This setup is simple and quite nice. The mystery, or mysteries, since the Golden Apple is just a tip of an iceberg, are fun to solve, despite them being fairly obvious. I think I figured out both the Apple and one other mystery after a few minutes of gameplay in the second or third chapter of nine chapters. But I was still looking forward to the resolution.

What helped with keeping me interested were characters and the overall vibe the game has. I enjoy the atmosphere of this steampunk village. Straight out of a Sherlock Holmes short story. And animated cutscenes are a nice touch. I think characters were pretty colorful and fun to interact with. I like the premise that everyone in the village is obsessed with puzzles. It feels silly at the start but is indirectly explained by the end.

The biggest problem I had with the game was in its puzzles. The game calls them brainteasers, which, according to Wikipedia, could fit the type of puzzles presented in the game, but I feel like they rely way too much on reading comprehension and not on any kind of thinking. For example, many puzzles give you the answer in the first sentence and then drown the player in useless information that only seems like it matters. After a while, I just skipped to the question and only then read the task. Usually, I didn't even have to finish reading before getting the answer. And when you remove these tasks, you are left with the most basic puzzles and riddles involving math and logic. Maybe it's just me being experienced in this regard, but I don't think there was a single puzzle I wouldn't already see somewhere. I also wasn't satisfied with the way puzzles are incorporated in the game. They feel so random. Like a character will talk with you about your investigation and then randomly bring up a puzzle they are trying to solve. Or you click an item, and Layton says it reminds him of a puzzle. It never felt like solving puzzles brought me closer to figuring out the mystery. They felt like an unnecessary roadblock. It feels like all the main mysteries are solved without players actively solving them.

Overall, I think I'll give a chance to the following Layton games in the future, when I don't have anything else to play, because the series premise is fun but fails to deliver on puzzles, which is something a sequel could deal with. But aside from the visual charm, there isn't really much to praise about the game. 6/10.
 
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
And it's done! The biggest and the longest game I think I'll play this year - Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. I can't believe the game got released after the long 7 years. Just like I couldn't believe the first one got released. I'm one of the original Kickstarter backers, so it's nice to finally see the final product.

But where to start with my review? The game is a better, bigger and more optimised and streamlined sequel. And it's awesome. The game picks up right after the first game. Henry and Hans just arrived at the Trosky region, three days after departing from Rattay. But their trip is cut short by an attack of local bandits. Both are hurt badly and lose their letter for Trosky's lord. And so starts the adventure that takes them all around the Trosky region and to Kuttenberg, one of the biggest cities in mediaeval Bohemia. They take part in events that lead to the Hussite Wars and meet several important historical figures. Yet, while the story is more epic than the story in the first one, there is still time for Henry to pursue his personal vendetta against Tóth and soldiers who raided Skalitz. I have mixed feelings about the story. It certainly has its moments, but there was also a lot I didn't like about it. For once, there are way too many characters involved in the story, meaning most of them just stand in the background and do nothing. It boiled down to me straight up not caring when the game kills some of them in an emotional scene. That's an accomplishment. Even the Henry's personal storyline has some problems. The game tries way too hard to make you feel bad about what Henry does in the story and outright says Henry and Thóth are basically the same. And while I like the more grey-ish area of morality the game tackles here, the scenes with Tóth are so bad. Especially when you compare it to Henry's scenes with Žižka and his band of bastards and his final encounter with von Aulitz. Tóth's scenes are really underwhelming, given that he's supposed to be a big bad of the first part of the game.

Just like in the first game, KCD2 has an extraordinary and realistic world. I think I mentioned it a few years ago, but it's incredible how close to the reality the game's world is. I could go out of my house right now and would see exactly what you can see in the game. Albeit more modern. While both game maps are huge, they are fun to explore. And it doesn't have to rely on the classic boring mechanics of open-world games. The roads and forests are mostly empty, yet atmospheric. It's not a bloated open world, and it's nice to see a game actually successfully attempting to make a realistic and fun map to explore.

The game has a little bit of a straightforward battle system. It's still direction-based, but instead of 7 directions, there are only 4, making the battles easier. Weapons were also rebalanced. Heavy weapons lost their iconic Nutcracker skill from the first game, which is a shame, because that made them unique and fun to use. Swords, on the other hand, got a huge buff. Master Strike got reworked and only works with swords, making them pretty much the only weapon type worth levelling up, since Master Strike is now even easier to pull off and deals tremendous amounts of damage. There are also polearms as a new type of weapon, but to be honest, they felt really undercooked, and I barely used them in the end. As for the ranged weapons, crossbows were added to the game, alongside handgonnes. And I barely used any of them. I defaulted to bows since I knew how they worked from the first game but found myself not really using ranged weapons at all since I could easily take on 10 or more enemies at once in melee and win. I have a funny story with handgonnes. The game introduced them to me, and Godwin challenged me to a competition. I literally scored 0 and put the handgonne in the chest, never to pick it up again (until a quest where I was forced to pick up one again).

The skill system was also polished a little bit, merging some skills from the first game together. For example, herbalism and hunting are now one skill levelled up by doing both activities. Going back to battle skills, Henry's skills with axes and maces are merged into one skill. And I think that's one reason why the game feels unbalanced. There are fewer skills to level up, but more time to do so. By the time I was ready to leave the first region, I was an undefeatable knight who could sneak even in full plate armour and could lockpick even the hardest locks, who could also smite god-tier weapons and brew god-tier potions. And finishing that region took place in about a third of the game. When I got to Kuttenberg, I basically just bought nicer gear and barely felt a difference until the end of the game. Actually, playing Fashion Come: Deliverance 2 was quite fun. It took me some time to settle on the final few pieces (I kept finding better-looking legs all the time), but in the end, I think my Henry ended up looking hot.

Now, while the game was slightly unbalanced, there is also another factor that I think played a role in me getting overpowered quickly. I am a KCD1 veteran. I know all its tricks; I know what to focus on and how to level up quickly. And since this is a sequel, I had a rough idea about what to do. I spent some time picking up herbs, brewing potions and blacksmithing to get some gold and passive bonuses from levelling up related skills. I quickly found someone to train and learnt master strike. I can imagine someone who never played the first game would have a harder time with the game.

And while I already talked a lot about the game, there is one last thing I have to mention. It managed to make WANT to play it. I couldn't wait to play it. When I wasn't playing it, I was looking forward to getting some time to play it. I was exploring its wiki to find stuff I still haven't done or to get my best equipment. I was browsing its Reddit and other socials all the time. Not many games managed to do this. Maybe Baldur's Gate 3 last year.

Overall, this was exactly what I was hoping for and even better in almost every regard. 9.5.

This update took me longer to post than I expected. I managed to beat Hacknet in the meantime, which I'll write about next time. I also started yet another run of Baldur's Gate 3. This time, I'm playing solo HM using Astarion. And to make things challenging, I also limit myself to playing as a Thief. Right now, I'm on my second try (the first one ended in about an hour with those bandits outside Withers' tomb), and I'm almost done with clearing Goblin Camp. I think I got the hang of playing stealthily and solo, so this might be faster than I expected.
 
Okay, final update (not that there were any significant number of them) of this month. My game-along game for this month was Hacknet. To be honest, I have no idea how it got in my library. I'm pretty sure I didn't buy it. I think it was free for some time, and I claimed it.

Hacknet
Hacknet, as you can probably guess, is a hacking simulator game. I encountered a little bit of cybersecurity during my university studies and took part in one capture-the-flag hacking race, so I'm not a complete stranger to this topic. And I can say that the game keeps hacking as realistic as possible while also keeping it as interesting and enjoyable as possible. But it also relies on the player knowing a thing or two about using the terminal/command line.

The gameplay loop is simple. You get a contract with instructions, including some IP addresses you can use as a starting position. Throughout the game, you have to obtain new tools for hacking, usually by downloading them from hacked computers. This works both as a soft barrier for you not to go after the biggest targets straight away and also as a nice way to introduce new mechanics. Some systems are also protected by a proxy server, firewall and timed tracing system that shuts down your computer, forcing you to be prepared for everything. On the other hand, the game throws most mechanics at you early, meaning the game can get stale a little bit in the middle.

There is also a story, but it's certainly not the main focus of the game. A huge part of the game is just joining different factions and climbing up their ladder to obtain harder and harder contracts. And while these contracts have some flavour to them, most of the main story is told through chatlogs and files you find on computers of your targets. It's nice, but since there usually aren't other files on the computer, it kind of feels staged. It seems as though you're expected to locate these files, rather than discovering them by chance and expanding your knowledge.

Overall, I think this is a solid hacking simulator. 8/10.

And that's all for this month. Kind of a slow month. I also played Paper Mario: The Origami King and I think I'm almost done with it. Similarly, I also finally returned to Ori and the Blind Forest and I think I'm close to the ending. I'll have to look for new games soon.
 
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