(no subject)

[estirose]

It looks like my Unbirthday Ficspam is going to take longer than expected, because of uncooperative muses. (Hi, Koutarou!) I also have to do my Remix Redux fic. And I have nasty muses on top of that.

Also, I am eventually going to pick up a Nintendo 3DS, anybody have game recommendations?

Comments

[reka]

I'm glad that you're not pushing yourself too much.

When you get a 3DS, I definitely want your friend code.

I'm not a huge gamer, and you already know my major recommendation (the Zero Escape series). I've been playing Fire Emblem: Awakening, which is very very good if you like fantasy strategy. My guilty pleasure game is Style Savvy: Trendsetters, which is a silly tongue-in-cheek fashion game. Both of them currently have free demos up, so you can see.

3DS, woo!

[angel_negra]

Boo to uncooperative and nasty muses. :(

On the 3DS side, I have some recs:

- Fantasy Life: it's like a cross between World of Warcraft and Animal Crossing, with a lean towards the cute side. There's a lot of character design (though while not too many pants options for non armour clothes, you can dye some of the pants at least.). The plot itself is fun and had enough twists that it kept me entertained though the whole thing.

And while you have to choose one walk of life to start the game with, the game actually encourages you to eventually take up all the lives, which not only gives you a lot more gameplay, but lets you make higher quality stuff than what you can buy. (for example, as your skills as a Blacksmith increase, it allows you to build superior versions of the weapons, armour and tools, so you do more damage in fights, take less hit point loss and are more effective at resource gathering.)

- Zelda: A Link to the Past. While the game nods to an older Zelda game, there's a really cool mechanic in this game where you can flatten yourself into a painting to crawl along walls/enter the dark dimension. The plot itself is standard Zelda, but with a neat twist and while you technically unlock all the weapons early and not through the dungeons, I still find it kept my interest. Unlike Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask - which were redone for the 3DS and I highly recommend those as well - this is essentially a brand new game in the franchise and it's a lot of fun.

- Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon. It's the least Mario Bros game of the Mario Bros franchise, which was interesting on its own. They did a good job with Luigi's personality in this. It's your basic 'take out X baddies to get the Thing that unlocks stuff until you finally rescue everyone', but I find it really cute. The boss transition battles can be tough though. I'm actually currently stuck on one that I'm starting to hate and am debating hunting Arrow down and making him beat it for me. But on the whole, it's a great game.

- Pokemon X/Y. While I like the Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby games for the PokeNav (lets you know if you're missing some of the pokemon of a given route and lets you track specials/already caught ones.) I actually prefer X/Y for the support characters story (if you play as a girl, it gets very femslashy at some points and it's awesome) and that this was the first time you're able to actually customize your character. The battling feels more dynamic (though AS/OR's pokeball tossing is also pretty awesome, I prefer the interface of X/Y) and I loved the rollerblade option so much that I almost never touched my bike. (AS/OR goes back to the Sapphire/Ruby era where there's two bikes that have different skills to get into different areas, which I find really clunky and annoying at times. Though the special flying option Latios is pretty cool.)

- SteamWorld: Dig. This one's download only. It's a very fast game, but so much fun. You're a robot in the robot wild west who's come to a three robot town at the request of your old uncle Joe who seems to have passed away and left you his mine. You mine for treasure to bring life to the town and to help you unlock features that will help you solve the mystery of what happened to Joe.

That's all I can think of right now. *hugs* Let me know if you need more.

Re: 3DS, woo!

[reka]

ROLLERBLADES YES. I agree that your friends are one of the best parts of X/Y. I think the other good reason for playing as a girl is having more clothing/hair options-- I don't regret my choice of gender, but man I wish boys had more options. Pokémon doesn't usually have super-strong plots, but X/Y has a good one I think. (I'm really partial to B/W's story and Unova in general, but the graphics are much more traditional and I'm biased because it's inspired by the NYC metro area.)

I have a friend who is really interested in Fantasy Life, and the AC comparison makes me see why.

Speaking of download-only games: I haven't gotten around to buying the full version, but I really enjoyed the demo of Quell: Reflect. I found it lived up to the calming logic game description.

Re: 3DS, woo!

[angel_negra]

Yeah, the friends in AS/OR were almost a step back after playing X/Y to me. They felt more like random trainer events than developed characters and I have to wonder if it's because the game's a remix of Sapphire/Ruby.

I hadn't known about the limits to the boy's clothing options though. As much as I sometimes want to play the male version to see the differences, I can never resist the option to play as a girl if it's there. The novelty of being able to play a character that looks more like me is just too awesome to give up, even if it's just for one run through of a game.

Yeah, I haven't played much of Animal Crossing. I got New Leaf, got as far as becoming Mayor and choosing my house site then tried Fantasy Life and logged 100 hours in it before I came up for air.

Oh, I hadn't heard of Quell: Reflect before, but I love logic games. I'm totally checking that one out now.

Re: 3DS, woo!

[reka]

Yeah, probably because of the remake thing.

Playing as a girl is great, but the boy characters in Pokémon sometimes look more like me. I might've chosen to play as a girl in X/Y if I'd known about the haircut option, though. I don't think you're missing anything in Pokémon except being a Grand Duke instead of a Duchess.

I haven't played Animal Crossing at all, to be honest. It's not a game style that I have a lot of patience for, unfortunately.

I mostly took the "logic" part from the eShop description-- I personally would call it a puzzle game first. There is logic to reducing your number of moves, though.

Re: 3DS, woo!

[angel_negra]

I'm glad the boy characters work well for you. I think my favourite thing with the girls in X/Y was that I could make them wear pants. I still chose the girl in OR/AS and Black/White, but I'd kill to get out of those damn short shorts and mini skirts.

I think I originally tried it because one of my friends is a fan and zero punctuation did an amazing review of New Leaf. I find Fantasy Life more engaging. They'll both have unavoidable dialogue scenes, but I feel like at least the ones in Fantasy Life will advance the plot - either the main storyline one, or a smaller character specific one - while the ones I'd encountered so far in New Leaf were more info dumps than anything else.

Well, I've already powered through the first three levels and this is totally a game right up my alley, so thank you. :)

Re: 3DS, woo!

[reka]

I need to buy the full version sometime. I love those kinds of puzzles too, and not being timed is really comforting to me. I have slow reaction times, so a lot of games end up being frustrating and stressful.

B/W was the first game where I decided on the boy for appearance reasons, and I really loved it. You mostly see his back, so the short brown hair thing delighted me every time. It also was relieving that I knew N was just being weird and not hitting on me for some reason. I also did the boy in Soul Silver because the girl not being Kris was tragic and upsetting. tl;dr sorry for talking at length about my gender choices.

Re: 3DS, woo!

[angel_negra]

If you have an iPad/iPad mini, you should check out Brain Yoga. It's a bunch of different puzzles, like a path game, a colour/shape type of sudoku, simple 'fit this into a box' puzzles, memory match, all with no time limits and no penalties for skipping a round/giving up. It also gives you the option to change the difficulty setting for each game to either higher or lower.

Don't be sorry, I find it very interesting and I totally get why you'd want to play the boy option.