Lith's Diary - July

Dear Diary,
It's kinda weird, looking back, that I took the time to play all the way through a game I'd already finished before. That was pretty common when I was a kid, but these days I keep buying more games on sale than I can possibly play, and replaying stuff feels really silly at this point. I guess... it can be nice to play something that you know can be fun right from the start. The trouble with playing lots of new games is, a lot of them can... well, disappoint you. And they demand a lot of attention and energy and engagement from you to really get started with them, and it's really hard to say when they might have some funky issue come up in them that just... suddenly makes them not fun anymore. And it feels like all the work you put in to getting going with the game just goes to waste...

That's probably one of the big downsides to gaming, compared to other forms of entertainment. It's great how games get you to engage with new concepts in new ways all the time, but that takes a lot more energy than just... sitting back with a movie or a book and trying to passively understand what's going on. You don't really get rated for how you enjoy those, besides like... if you can't predict things as quickly as your friends can, or you didn't pick up some subtler element that comes up in conversation later. You can worry about that less with games, at least, since the experience also tends to be more unique to you.

Anyway, I've still been trying to try lots of new stuff when I can. I did mention a couple last time: Yakuza and Winkeltje. That's the name I couldn't remember at the time-- I'm pretty sure? Yakuza is a pretty popular series I guess, and I could kinda get into it. I tried Yakuza Zero, which is apparently a prequel, so I'm probably missing a lot of "ohhh! That's the guy that's gonna die later!" Or "oh man, it's so weird seeing this badass back when he was all
scrawny and knew nothing!" But it was still pretty fun, in a... very strange way.

I don't wanna talk about it too long, there are lots of neat reviews that'll do a better job of framing just how weird and fascinating the game can be, but the short version of my experiences was: the story was pretty engaging, the silliness was fun, most of the minigames seemed completely unappealing to me, and the combat was actually pretty satisfying, if occasionally infuriating. I've been looking for a decent beat 'em up type game for a while, I end up not really seeing that many that I'm interested in, but this one felt about right for me. Some of the smaller design choices really annoyed me, though, and there's a lot of "in-between" to get through that's not the funny stuff, the cool stuff, or the combat, and that all slowed it down enough for me that when a giant bully literally beat me up and took all my money, I lost interest. Maybe I'll get back into it someday, but I just couldn't bring myself to want to play after I'd already been getting frustrated with a lot of aspects of the game.

Winkeltje, on the other hand, was a very nice find that I played through a bunch, and am now waiting for more updates on. I've talked a lot about how I like "boring" games focused on trading and such, but there are so few that really scratch that itch. This game is an absolute gem in that respect: it's not embarrassed to be a game about running a shop. If you played Recettear, that was similar, but it tried to gussy up the shop gameplay with lots of cute characters and story elements, and a whole ton of focus thrown at just doing plain old dungeon crawling to get more items to sell... when the game is literally easier if you just ignore that entire half of the gameplay. And the rapidfire haggling mechanic was really annoying after a while as well.

But this game? It's not trying to throw lots of gimmicks and weird alternatives to actually running a shop at you. The main gameplay is basically a loop between open and closed: you order supplies, craft, level up your proficiency with recipes, and stock all your shelves with a blend of merchandise skewed toward making a better profit while meeting the variety of demands people have. You have to wrestle with a lot of limitations with space and saving money for the daytime and trying to work around trends in prices for the seasons and events. Then, the day starts, and people start pouring in and emptying out your shelves. You run around filling them all again as they go, filling special requests as they pop up, and meeting traveling merchants when they come by to offer you good deals on more stock you can sell. It's basically a big scramble to make as much money as you can off the crowds of people tromping around your tiny, crowded store before they all get impatient and tromp right out. And it's fun!

Well, maybe not for everyone. But I feel like this game finally nails what trading games "should" be, or at least makes a huge step forward in saying "yes, a game really can get by on just being about being a merchant." You don't need to raid dungeons or whatever to run a successful business, and playing the market for profit is fun and satisfying, at least to some of us. I'm still hoping for some more depth later, and maybe some tweaking to the seasons to be less ridiculous, but I absolutely intend to come back and play this again.

Those were my new games earlier this month. I also got back into Slay the Spire for a while! I finally "beat" the game by getting all the endings, though I think the achievement I got implied there might still be a little more, I dunno. Still, the game has a lot of staying power as a fun, challenging, tactical experience, and I've only just started poking around at mods, but I feel like they might be "too much," or "too weird," or just "too fan creation" to really satisfy in the same way. Consistency of design can be important! So it's hard to say how far the mods will take me when this is already pretty well-designed.

My big game this month, though, was both an old one and a new one: XCOM 2. I finally got the expansion, and it makes the game a ton more enjoyable-- I'd had a lot of issues that turned me off the sequel and I never even finished the campaign, which really bummed me out, since I've always heavily enjoyed the original XCOM. Now, the game is... very complicated, and doesn't explain a LOT of things you really need to know to make competent decisions, and it's still crazy frustrating at times, cause it's XCOM I guess... but it's engaging! I'm really wrapped up in perfecting my base and kitting out my main troops to be absolutely broken, and... and I spend a lot of the time I'm playing it angry.

The game has a lot of aspects to its design that basically are only there to screw you over and make everything snowball into disaster. I know that that can make it feel very intense and meaningful, and some people really enjoy that, but... I don't need that. I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that... while I really enjoy the core gameplay style of xcom, I just... I really want some other company to take those basic mechanics and build a game that's not a dick with it? Attack of the Earthlings (again, haha) was a strong example of that, and I've got one or two others lined up to try later, but just... I wish I could actually enjoy XCOM? I do, but I also hate it. I want to have engaging, challenging tactics without feeling like the game is trying to brutalize me. I know it can be done. I know it can be fun and satisfying. But that's not XCOM, I guess.

So now I'm playing tons of XCOM 2 (and I might play it again just to see if it's closer to what I want with a few different options checked I've heard about) even though I've come to understand I have a lot of problems with it. Maybe part of that is because I want to "get my X worth" out of it? Whether X is my money, or all the time and effort I've put into learning the labyrinthine mechanics of the game on every level. I don't know.

Gaming is weird. Actually enjoying the game tends to be a difficult thing to judge, and how much enjoyment you get has a weird relationship with how the game works, how you play it, and how much work you put in before you give up. And it's a gamble every time. But... sometimes you find something really great, and that's not always in the games "everyone else" likes. Some of my favorite games have pretty low ratings, sadly, and I can kinda understand why. I guess in a way, a game can be... a very personal experience for each of us, moreso than any other medium.

Phew. Going pretty long again this time, but I had a lot of, uh... nerding out to do, I guess. I still rushed through a lot of it! Sorry to talk your ear off with all this silly stuff. But I hope you've been enjoying yourself as well, and that you've got both some old, familiar pleasures, and some new things to try now and then. Comfort and challenge are both important to maintaining ourselves, whether you find them in games or movies or whatever.

...Heh. Comfort and challenge. Those are certainly, um... Well. Things are certainly... happening in the void now, and comfort and challenge are definitely... commodities of note in what's going on, I'd say. It's... well. It's too early to say, I guess. But this is... what everything has been building up to. Right? I just... I really hope we can find our way... together. Thank you for... being part of this with me. It's gonna be hard on you... and for that, I'm sorry. But... I'm hoping... it'll be worth it. Somehow.

Take comfort where you can... and accept challenge where you have to. That's all we can do.
-Lith