scoons
2013
I played The Silent Age initially when it was released for iOS back in 2014 and remember liking it. Turns out, it's still good! Simple, short, atmospheric, and just tricky enough to make me feel like a puzzle champion without ever being frustrating.
The newly added voice acting doesn't really work for me, but it's not terrible either. Owen Thomas plays Joe with more of a youthful pep, whereas I'd always thought of him as weary and beleaguered. Oh well, at least it's easy to turn off.
The newly added voice acting doesn't really work for me, but it's not terrible either. Owen Thomas plays Joe with more of a youthful pep, whereas I'd always thought of him as weary and beleaguered. Oh well, at least it's easy to turn off.
2023
Visually Planet of Lana is very beautiful. The way the painterly textures give way to flat colors and smooth edges as Lana comes across more “industrial” areas is an inspired choice. The puzzles, platforming and narrative aren’t anything to write home about, but they mostly get the job done. The story lacks the propulsive inertia and mysterious ambiance of Inside, and occasionally puzzles can be more tedious than satisfying, but fortunately Lana doesn’t overstay its welcome.
2023
Octopath Traveler II is a massive adventure packed to the gills with juicy, delicious SYSTEMS. Its deep turn-based RPG mechanics practically beg you to break them and build your little guys into single turn boss-killing machines. If you’re the kind of person that gets a dopamine hit from seeing the numbers go up, then get excited. You’ll be unlocking new weapons and skills and abilities left and right until you’re dealing just dumb amounts of damage. There is always some new synergy or strategy to unlock, and Octopath has a billion different bosses with their own unique mechanics to put your skills to the test, including a post game superboss that basically requires you to break the game to survive.
Where Octopath Traveler 2 doesn’t quite shine (for me anyway) is in its narrative and characters. By all accounts it's an improvement on the original (though I haven't played it), but the protagonists are just so shallow. Everyone has their one character trait, and they talk about it all the time. Osvald is stoic and gruff and out for revenge, Castii can’t remember anything, Temenos is a sassy crime-fighting detective, Ochette is hungry, Partitio loves making fat stacks, Throné wants to NOT be a slave, Hikari hates any bloodshed that he’s not personally committing, and Agnea just wants to dance. Seriously, what are you doing here, Agnea? Go. Go dance. Be free. This all goes doubly for the bad guys, who are generally so cartoonishly evil they’re impossible to take seriously.
To be fair, this seems to be the vibe the game is going for, emulating the simple tales of good vs evil from JRPGs of old. The characters aren’t shallow, they’re archetypal. Mythic figures standing (dancing?) against impossible odds. But when the characters are so one-note it can be difficult to become invested in their journeys. It doesn’t help that the interactions between party members are limited to brief text exchanges and a few crossover chapters that make up a vanishingly small percentage of the game’s overall length (though the final chapter IS very cool).
That’s not to say that the stories being told here are bad. They’re just kind of... there. They give the characters reasons to collect new skills and swords to make their numbers go up so they can kill bigger guys. And at the end of the day maybe that’s all Octopath Traveler II needs to be. The mechanics and systems at play are so good and satisfying that I was more than happy to spend 100+ hours defeating ancient evils and brokering business deals and collecting pokemon and dancing and whatever else.
Where Octopath Traveler 2 doesn’t quite shine (for me anyway) is in its narrative and characters. By all accounts it's an improvement on the original (though I haven't played it), but the protagonists are just so shallow. Everyone has their one character trait, and they talk about it all the time. Osvald is stoic and gruff and out for revenge, Castii can’t remember anything, Temenos is a sassy crime-fighting detective, Ochette is hungry, Partitio loves making fat stacks, Throné wants to NOT be a slave, Hikari hates any bloodshed that he’s not personally committing, and Agnea just wants to dance. Seriously, what are you doing here, Agnea? Go. Go dance. Be free. This all goes doubly for the bad guys, who are generally so cartoonishly evil they’re impossible to take seriously.
To be fair, this seems to be the vibe the game is going for, emulating the simple tales of good vs evil from JRPGs of old. The characters aren’t shallow, they’re archetypal. Mythic figures standing (dancing?) against impossible odds. But when the characters are so one-note it can be difficult to become invested in their journeys. It doesn’t help that the interactions between party members are limited to brief text exchanges and a few crossover chapters that make up a vanishingly small percentage of the game’s overall length (though the final chapter IS very cool).
That’s not to say that the stories being told here are bad. They’re just kind of... there. They give the characters reasons to collect new skills and swords to make their numbers go up so they can kill bigger guys. And at the end of the day maybe that’s all Octopath Traveler II needs to be. The mechanics and systems at play are so good and satisfying that I was more than happy to spend 100+ hours defeating ancient evils and brokering business deals and collecting pokemon and dancing and whatever else.
2019
Short, sweet, mind bending, and visually enthralling.
Love the little clinks and clunks all the doors and cubes make.
Reminded me of Antichamber, but way less obtuse.
Love the little clinks and clunks all the doors and cubes make.
Reminded me of Antichamber, but way less obtuse.
2024
Simple, creative, enjoyable little game. Nothing here exactly wowed me, but it did elicit a few small chuckles. And you can't argue with that price! (Free!) Not one I'll be revisiting in the future or anything, but a decent enough way to spend half an hour.