What Video Game Did I Play Recently?

Late March

Technically I'm not quite done with Paper Perjury yet, but I'm so near the end that I'll cover it now. You can really tell that the people who grew up playing the Ace Attorney games are now old enough to be game developers themselves, because we're starting to see a lot of indie titles enter the market that follow the same formula (for another example, see my Playdate review of Trickle Greenweed). And you can't blame anybody for it, because what's not to love about piecing together clues and calling out fun characters on the discrepancies in their stories?

The twist in this game is that, this time, you're not playing a defense attorney; you're playing as a detective (well, technically you're playing as a police clerk who... basically becomes a detective. I'm not sure why you would set the protagonist up as a clerk if you're not going to let me do any paperwork, but I digress). This doesn't really have an impact on the Ace Attorney-style gameplay, because you're still investigating crime scenes, collecting clues, questioning witnesses and potential suspects, everything you'd expect from this type of game. It always felt a little silly to me that the defense team was expected to do this legwork in similar games, and playing a detective makes so much more sense.

I think the only downside in this approach is that the "courtroom scenes" no longer take place in a courtroom, but instead play out in the interrogation room, where you are questioning the suspect and their lawyer and challenging their statements with your clues in order to draw out a confession. Again, no difference in the gameplay that you're used to, except the interrogation room definitely lacks a lot of the drama that you would get from a courtroom battle. You don't really get any of those satisfying "turnabout" moments that come from catching the prosecution's witness in a lie and going on the attack, simply because the nature of an interrogation sees the suspect in a defensive position from the get-go. On top of that, the lawyer character who sits in to represent the suspects—essentially occupying the role typically filled by the rival prosecutor—doesn't have a strong or remarkable personality, and she's generally portrayed as fairly sympathetic, so there's not really any satisfaction in taking her down.

In fact, some of the suspects she represents are themselves sympathetic individuals who found themselves caught in a rough situation, but the nature of working alongside the police force means some shrugged shoulders and "sorry, but a petty crime is still a crime" excuses for pressing charges on these people. Maybe something positive comes of it at the end of the game and I just haven't reached it yet, but it seems discordant when compared with the punny names and gimmicky characters. Perhaps this is why the protagonist isn't technically a detective, her hands can stay clean from all that mess. Well, fuck the police anyway I guess.

Still, these complaints are ultimately minor. It's Ace Attorney with a different coat of paint! What the heck else do I need to say about it?

Early March

I started following Aerial_Knight on Bluesky, and one of the things I learned from his posts that struck me is that he has a Patreon to fund his game development. I'm sure there's a lot of indie developers following this strategy, but this is the first one I've seen in the wild, and I get the feeling it's going to be something we'll be seeing a lot more of going forward. Securing funding for game development is incredibly difficult, and even small games require huge hours of work, typically from multiple people; and then you release the product into an increasingly-populated catalog and say "well I hope the past three years was worth it". So I understand why developers and studios would be open to methods of securing a regular monthly income, and I think directly supporting the devs you like makes sense.

Anyway, Aerial_Knight's Never Yield is a runner game where you press the right direction at the right time to jump over or slide under obstacles. It's simple, sure... but you remember when you were riding in the car as a kid, and you looked out the window and imagined a person running alongside the road and dodging all the objects you passed? This is pretty much the game version of that, so if you miss that form of childhood nostalgia, might be worth looking into.

Late February

I played Toem! You take pictures to solve quests! It's fun! It's lighthearted! I liked it!

January - February

Go-Go Town! was a cute little town builder that, despite billing itself as a "cozy" game, made me feel like I was constantly running around doing something, even though this was entirely self-imposed and I absolutely did not have to. Overall, it's pretty simple: you collect resources (although fairly early on, you gain the ability to automate resource collection), build buildings for tourists to spend their money on, and convince some of those tourists to move in to work at your buildings. I like that the game is very forgiving—you can rearrange your entire town at any time for basically free if you want. Also, everything is so HAPPY. The music is energetic, you can get a high-five from anybody... hell, even the materials in your backpack bounce around jauntily as you move. The only downside is that there is nothing besides the town building, so eventually I ran out of steam. Still cute though.

January - March

Well, Zenless Zone Zero wasn't the game I expected to be engrossed in for months, but... here we are. This game is from MiHoYo, the developer that does Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. I hadn't played them, but I knew a little going in about their reputation as "gacha games" and how heavy-handed the developer is toward monetization. I'm pleased to start out by saying: I haven't spent all my money. Just a little.

I will say this. If MiHoYo puts the same amount of effort into its other games as it does into ZZZ, I understand why people like them. ZZZ doesn't feel like a cheap cash grab; there is so much to do and so many thoughtful ideas that I still don't know when I'm going to finish it all, damn the new events that seem to come out every couple days. Meanwhile, the art and animation teams are pure fire; this game looks GOOD (with the exception of certain elements that may have directly inspired a particular blog post).

On the other hand... I have also never seen a game so deliberately designed to make increasing character strength as tedious and convoluted a process as possible, pushing players to purchase a variety of different resources to help ease the process. And that's to say nothing about actually obtaining characters, which... hoo boy. It's bad. It's so discouragingly bad that I can't think about it for too long or I'll want to stop playing altogether. The whole thing feels like "Hey, hope you like playing as who you randomly unlocked early on, because that's who you're mostly going to be stuck using. Maybe you want to pay $15 for 10 tries at unlocking a new character at a 0.6% chance per go? Even if you beat the odds though you're still not guaranteed to get the character you want. Anyway, have fun!" I dunno, I knew it would be aggressive, but DAMN. Seems like you would make more money if your pricing was more "tempting" and less "outright hostile", but they seem to be doing pretty well for themselves so what do I know.

They do have a couple premium options for resources that rely on you logging in and playing the game regularly, and these are a lot better value if you're actually doing those things.

I still think it's a well-made game. It's just a shame that some of its leveling and unlocking systems require so much investment that I end up thinking "well why the hell bother then".

December

Okay, I, um... I really did think I was going to play Metaphor: ReFantazio, but I actually haven't touched it since December. I know everybody says it's really good. Maybe it is. But I have zero desire to play it.

Because when I'm playing this game, all I'm thinking is "I like Persona 5's combat better," "I like Persona 5's setting better," "I like Persona 5's characters better," "I like Persona 5's tone better," "I like Persona 5's dungeons better," "I like Persona 5's music better," "I like Persona 5's visual design better."

Meanwhile I'm over here falling into the same pitfalls I did when I went back and played Persona 4, where I'm trying so hard to optimize my playthrough (and constantly feeling anxiety about everything I'm doing) that the game just sucks the life out of me. I don't want to spend the entire 80-120 hour experience worrying about how many characters I'm not going to be able to max out my relationship with by the time I reach the end.

Which isn't a problem I had at all with Persona 5. Admittedly, this may partly be because it was my first Atlus game and I just didn't know what to expect from the time management element; but I think a large part of it is that Persona 5 is just dripping with so much damn fun that I actually want to go back and spend more time with it. Every aspect of Persona 5 works in unison: The story and visual design paints your team as stylish thieves, each member embodying the traits and values of a beloved rebellious hero that feels appropriate to them. Because you are thieves, when you are in dungeons, you are encouraged to use the stealth mechanic to ambush enemies, which also gives you the advantage of a free turn in battle. Because you have this huge advantage, you have time to set up the Baton Pass mechanic to pass turns over to other characters and boost their attacks, meaning there's a good chance you mop the floor with your foes before they even get a chance to act, justifying the sheer swagger your team is exuding. Meanwhile, when you use the Baton Pass mechanic, the characters are high-fiving and encouraging each other, reinforcing the feeling that they're having just as much fun with this whole process—which is further propped up by the funky, boppy battle themes with less-than-subtle lyrics about pulling one over on your adversaries. The execution is brilliant, I will never get tired of this game.

Metaphor has none of that. It's boring, generic oppressive fantasy tripe with a protagonist who I guess is supposed to be an inspiring figure but has all the presence of a Victorian schoolboy; meanwhile, any character can be any archetype so in combat they're effectively interchangeable, and now I hate doing battles because they have zero flair and feel more convoluted than they need to be.

Possibly at some point I'll grab a guide and play through on casual difficulty just to say I played it, but I dunno. I think I'd rather get my money back if I still had the option.