Sento – Ultimate Arcade Fighter

Holy shit, I want to own this game.

There are a lot of games at a PAX, and honestly, many of them do not click for me. There are things that can be fun when played with other people, but might not transfer to a single player experience, and there are things that just don’t grab me.

I personally don’t really like writing about things that very much, because making things is hard, and going “Hey, you know that thing you poured a decent portion of the finite time, the only truly real and limited thing that is yours on this planet, into? I think it’s trash.” has the all the tact and moral generosity of stomping on a puppy. Most people I know who make things have started by making a lot of very bad things, and then moved on to making better things. I know that for the things I currently make, many of them are either garbage, or “Shows promise, needs improvement” stage of creation.

So yeah, unless you directly ask me for feedback on whether I think something is good or not, anything I say will be more in the “I like it/I don’t like” sphere.

I don’t have to do anything of that shit with Senko fighter, because I mostly just want to play more of it.

Senko is a puzzle matching, fighter game. It’s a board game, which is also kinda weird, and honestly, you could make it into a video game, but I’m not sure if it would actually improve it. Pulling rows of marbles of the board, and dropping them back in to the randomizer is deeply satisfying. (Someone told me “Oh, like Potion Explosion?” but I’ve never played it, so I have no idea if that’s accurate.)

I think the big thing for me though, is that Senko really gets at the heart of what fighting games feel like if you’re good at them. Each turn, you’re making several decisions, all in one simple action. Do I want to attack, or build up for another turn? Am I going to try to trigger my characters feature, or set stuff up? Am I trying to go for a knockout, or just chip you down? Do I need to try to block something big you can set up next turn, and if so, can I even do it?

And the way you decide all of these things is simple, reach down a pull out a bunch of marbles, then do your attack. Different marbles correspond to different attacks, with combos at 1, 3, and 4 chains. There are three colors of marble, and each size chain is a specific attack, except your health is also tied to these marbles to an extent, and if one of your three bars gets knocked down, you can’t use those color marbles, locking out an entire set of attacks, EXCEPT now you can use those marbles you can’t use as part of an even bigger chain of other colors, so now, even though you’re “weaker” it just got much easier to pull off some of those bigger attacks, which is one of the coolest catch up mechanics I’ve ever seen.

I’m sure that as it gets more coverage in the coming months, and Kickstarter launches and whatnot, we’ll get more articles and stuff about it, but I’ll just finish by saying the following:

One thing I feel a lot in video games, but almost never do in board games, is the sense of having MY guy. In Smash Bros, it’s Ike or Ganondorf. In Pokken, it’s Chandalure, and in Pokemon in general, it’s Kyogre, my fat happy blue murder whale. But board games very rarely give me that feeling, even with things like Scythe, and it’s fairly distinct pieces and characters.

The DJ in Sento Fighter already feels like she’s MY dude, nailing the asymmetric options without watering them down so much they become more then just a random starting objective or something. And when this game comes out, I’m looking forward to playing it with friends, and dropping sick, sweet beats, directly onto their exposed, fragile cranium.

Here’s the link to their depressingly empty page, but at least you can sign up for their newsletter about when the Kickstarter is coming. And you should, if you like GOOD THINGS.

PAX 3: The Third Part

That’s right, it’s time for Part Three, the part where I talk about everything I didn’t already review. It’s time for more

VIDYA GAMES

MAGIC: LEGENDS

Another one I got in line for because they were giving out a free pin, except they didn’t actually end up giving it out. Pretty bummed about that, gonna try to get it at another PAX I suppose.

With that said, actual gameplay was pretty decent. I wouldn’t consider myself a huge ARPG person, but Path of Exile is my second most played game, and I’ve played a decent amount of D3 on switch.

Overall, it seemed pretty fun. I’m not sure I would play for the story, as it was pretty “eh” or get into end game, but I can see it being something fun to pick up and play with friends. The whole Magic: The Gathering theme thing is reflected in the fact that you have a deck and your abilities are constantly switching. In theory, this sounds cool, in practice, I more or less just spammed whatever was off cooldown.

But like, show floor demo. You can find more about it here.

DRAGON FANG: Drahn’s Mystery Dungeon

For me, when I think the mystery dungeon games, I mostly think of the Pokemon ones. I know there are some others, but I really loved the first few of the Pokemon ones, and so every time I see a mystery dungeon game, I really want it to be good.

I’m gonna just get this out of the way. I don’t think Dragon Fang is very good. It has a very nice art style and whatnot, but unfortunately, it’s also a port of a Japanese mobile game. So yeah, while the actual game play could be good, and there are some neat ideas, it’s mostly just a very watered down dungeon crawler, where most of the enemies get more interesting powers then you do. Additionally, a lot of the good monsters are locked behind Gacha.

So yeah, skip this one, but if you really want to try it, it’s free on Steam here.

AREA MAN LIVES

Didn’t play this one, did check it out, but it was a neat VR title. it seemed weird enough for me to mention it. I’ll be honest, I’d really like to play it when it comes out.

Find out more about it here.

KEMONO HEROS

This was at the NIS booth, and since theey made Disgea 4, which has been my go to game on the switch the last few months since I got it around Christmas.

Not too much I have to say on it, it seems cute, just didn’t also seem like it did anything fascinatingly new for me to spend more then a few minutes playing it, and then mention it. Find out more about it here.

One more PAX post to go, mostly just about Sento Fighter, and how I don’t own it yet, and why can’t I buy it yet. Until then, see you next time.

PAX EAST – Part 2

Okay, let’s talk about some more stuff to cover. That’s right, it’s time for more

VIDYA GAMES

RELIC HUNTERS LEGEND

This is a sequel to Relic Hunters Zero, a free game that according to steam, I played for about 2 hours. I’m gonna be honest, I don’t remember it at all. I played a bit of the new one, and it was… fine. However, at a PAX, fine doesn’t keep my attention, and so I wandered on. Here’s a link if you’re curious though. If a cartoonish Destiny/Diablo mashup sounds like your sort of thing, you might enjoy it.

MAQUETTE

Maquette is published by Annapurna Interactive, the people who also published What Remains of Edith Finch. I’m gonna be honest here, I got in the Maquette line because they were giving out a free pin.

Clearly the moral of this story is that I do way too much book judging by covers, because Maquette was one of my top three games at the show. It’s a really cool puzzler where you move objects around to solve puzzles, except that your central point of interaction is a small model of the much larger world outside you, and you can move things in the small world, or the big world, to make them exist in the other.

There also seems to be as story about a relationship falling apart that’s also told in the game, and I’m gonna be honest, it felt a bit too real for me, but that’s a story for another day.

Just go play Maquette. If you looked at it and thought “Oh, someone made another artsy walking simulator” you’re dead wrong. There’s a really cool game here, with some big ideas, and I’m honestly really excited to see more of it.

You can learn more about it here, on it’s Steam Page.

RISING HELL

I was gonna write a bit about this, but it looks like it has a demo on steam? And the demo comes out in like two days? So yeah, I’m just gonna wait two days, play the demo for probs longer then 15 minutes I played it at the show, then write about it. That just seems like a better policy.

WUNDERLING

I have been trying to figure out what to say about Wunderling for a while, and have been failing, so I’m just gonna type things and post them. Wunderling is small and cute, and as a result, I want it to succeed. Wunderling’s primary game play mechanic is simply that you can’t actually control your character, you can only control your jump. And while that seems really simple, there were some moments in the demo that were really clever, and made me want to see what the rest of the game could include. For example, one of the secondary mechanics is that if you don’t pick up a collectible every now and then, you die. In the opening levels, this was really simple, but one area had a hidden chest that required you to skip collecting some of these earlier, so you could grab the chest later, and if you picked them all up, you would actually starve to death.

I dunno, I just want to see it work.

That’s all for now I think. This took longer to write then I was expecting, but I think I’ll be able to wrap the rest of this up in part 3, and finish giving my thoughts on the stuff I saw at PAX East.

Dungeon Defenders Awakened: Early Access

The Basics

Dungeon Defenders Awakened is the next iteration of the Dungeon Defenders series and the newest creation of the re-branded Chromatic Games. Dungeon Defenders Awakened is a return to the beginning that was the first Dungeon Defenders game, while retaining some of the good that came from Dungeon Defenders 2. At its heart it is a niche third person tower defense game with a lot to offer but with a core flaw that keeps a lot of people away. Like Dungeon Defenders 1 and 2 Dungeon defenders suffers from repetitive and afk’ble game-play. I use the term suffer lightly though as the “issue” is more of a matter of a core game-play style that defines the game. Once you clear the initial campaign you will be playing the same maps over and over to try to push past your limit to get better gear and climb higher. There is of course a limit to the amount of content chromatic games can put out(they have to sleep sometimes) and so if you put in enough time you will find yourself repeating the same map trying to get a slightly better pair of boots. That is not to say it is not enjoyable, I have 92 hours on Awakened and 500+ hours on 1 and 2, so I can say for sure that the play-style appeals to some people. It is definitely limited though, steamspy puts the peak concurrent user(CCU) count for dungeon defenders 1 pulling between 300 and 500 while dungeons defenders 2 has a CCU of between 750 and 1000. Respectable numbers to be sure, and although the stats only show an approximation it’s clear that the dungeon defenders series isn’t drowning in users. At the end of the day most of the people who are going to enjoy Dungeon Defenders are probably already a member of the community, although we always welcome new faces.

Value Proposition

With Dungeon Defenders being in early access and with a 40 dollar barrier to entry the key question is “Is it worth it?”, and like most things the answer is “It depends”. I would love to be able to give a clear answer as the bigger the community the better. However for many new people the game might not be worth the money in its current state. This is perfectly natural for a game in early access. From the games store page, the current contents of the early access is:

  • 12 Campaign maps playable
  • Four base heroes playable
  • Easy, Medium, Hard, and Insane difficulties available.
  • Four player online co-op.
  • Survival Mode available.
  • Session browser available.
  • Gear, accessory, and pets available to earn.
  • Quickmatch to play with other Defenders.

I believe the campaign has the widest appeal as it has the most opportunity for overcoming challenges and avoids most of the repetitive game-play that comes in once you begin to grind the survival game-mode. It took me around 20 hours until I “beat” the campaign, I did an entire run through on hard then beat a few maps on insane including the final map. Most of the time came from trial and error trying out different approaches to clear each map. This was by no means the fastest time, in fact I would imagine it is one of the slower times. At that point I was looking at about $2 and hour, which some people would find reasonable I believe most are looking for $1 an hour for their games. This however was from skipping the easy and medium difficulties in their entirety and so a new player might spend more time on the campaign. It is hard to say how much mileage any given person might squeeze out of the campaign because going up the four difficulties doesn’t change anything about the campaign itself it just makes the numbers bigger. Most, if not all, of the players will spend the most time in survival. The initial stage of survival is just as fun if not more fun than the campaign. Pushing higher, trying to find that next awesome piece of gear that will let you push higher, or trying to get to the end of wave 14 and 25 to get a new pet to boost you even higher. Sensing a theme? Struggling through the initial stages of the survival mode might earn you another 10 hours or more, but after that is pure unfiltered grind. This is where most people find out if the series is truly for them. This is where you play the same maps trying to find that next small upgrade, and the longer you play the less likely you are to find each upgrade as you approach the peak of what the rng can generate. Sometimes you will play for 1-2 hours and be rewarded with nothing but gold. For those who find out they love it, it is an amazing game that you can find yourself sinking hundreds or even thousands of hours into. It is definitively not for everyone though. For those of you who are on the fence about purchasing I would recommend waiting a few more weeks as Chromatic Game’s roadmap has them releasing a bunch more content this march. It might just be enough to push you over the edge even if you don’t see yourself enjoying the endgame grind.

MISBITS – Early Access

I got a free key for Misbits at PAX this year, and honestly, I’m not sure if the game is very good. At the time of writing this, I’ve played about 38 minutes. Before I publish this, I’ll try to play another 20 or so minutes so I can say I played it for at least an hour, but I really doubt the next 20 minutes are gonna change my opinion, because I’m simply not having fun at the moment with it.

I first went over to Misbits because it looked neat. It has a sorta nice toy box aesthetic, which makes sense given the game is based around the idea that you’re a toy head, and that the biggest game play element is that you can go around jumping onto different bodies, with different special attacks. You also have health on your bodies, so if you get hurt, you can jump to a different one. I think I’ve seen about 5 different bodies so far, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more.

So why am I not having fun? Well, simply put, everything feels really floaty and it feels really hard to actually connect with hits or attacks. It doesn’t help that everything is either a melee attack or a thrown weapon, the only ranged weapons I’ve seen are turrets. Also, it can be surprisingly difficult to figure out what to pay attention to. New bodies are constantly dropping down from the sky, as are items. Enemy players are marked sometimes with a sorta line, but it can still be hard to quickly and easily spot them.

There are two big features that are supposed to be added later to the game, a workshop for building your own levels and sharing them, and the creation tools for said levels. Right now they’re not just present.

For the moment, I wouldn’t recommend it.

You can find the Misbits website here, and you can find the game on steam.