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« on: February 26, 2026, 10:32:13 PM »
I hope you're all ready for HOT TAKES.
I started my extended snow day weekend with giving Ultra Age a try. It made a bit of waves as a shockingly good-looking action game for a relatively small developer/studio back around its release, and the Switch version... looks like the Switch version of any good-looking modern action game. That is to say, it runs, but it doesn't look wonderful. I guess I'm always looking for that action game that is going to make me feel the way people say that DMC3 makes them feel, but Ultra Age certainly isn't it. I've come to understand a bit of the game's mechanics as I sunk about four-ish hours into it, but without some deepening of the mechanics and customization, I worry it will lose its luster. It also has a roguelike mode, which I'm a bit more interested in and will report on after having sunk some time into it.
Then I played Crow Country, and while I do like games that emulate visuals from the early polygonal days, I'm not so sure I love games that are slavish in their commitment to 90s game design. This is a survival horror game with tongue in cheek dialogue, but its core gameplay design is "here's an esoteric puzzle to solve while you're stressed about dying." The map system sucks and the game has a hint system that is actually pretty unhelpful, with some puzzles being absolutely absurd in their design- the special puzzles being mercifully optional but ridiculously obscure. Then, the game commits the cardinal sin of most throwback survival horror games: it tells you that you have to conserve ammo and resources due to a small inventory and then has a sequence where you need to go in guns blazing. After playing this and Signalis, which was another moody and punishing survival horror game, I worry that this genre isn't for me, though I have previously enjoyed some Resident Evils and Evil Tonight. The puzzles are always a bit frustrating when they are too lock-and-key focused, and while the combat in this game in particular is more imprecise due its super puffy character models, I can at least accept the poor controls when its not asking me to throw its previous notion of careful, considered resource management to the wind.
Lastly, I finally booted up Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven after having conspired to play it long ago (and having picked up the Nintendo Switch 2 upgrade pack). SaGa games are a big swing due to their incredibly obscure game mechanics, but I've dipped my toes in the pool with SaGa-lites like The Legend of Legacy and The Alliance Alive. In short: what the hell, I think I love SaGa! The presentation and some quality of life features are definitely helping with the whole experience, but it's been very positive even when I see myself making very rookie mistakes. I have several save files backed up, which makes me appreciate a game complex and weird enough to justify making several save files. You progress through generations of characters in this game, some of which you can lose from fainting too often in battle or by missing a side quest, and while that might be frustrating for some, it actually makes me incredibly excited to play around with the game's systems and try to find a proper solution to my issues. Sure, I've "lost" some progress by accidentally advancing the game-clock and generations, but those multiple save files have helped me reconsider what choices I could make in a certain generation. I want a mermaid dancer, dammit, and I'm gonna get my mermaid dancer.
I can see how this game had a marked positive reception in Japan that might have contributed to the decision for a remake, particularly in how I see several of its narrative beats being echoed in later games. Maybe this game is also referencing some earlier work, but it does feel like the origin point for some of these side quest narratives I've found in later JRPGs, which makes me excited to see what the future holds.
...I'll be ranking these in my other thread.
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