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[Aoi]

Unless you can directly read some of the source material... wow, (simplified) Chinese MTL is awful compared to some other languages.

I'm of the mind that they probably hired some company to pump out positive reviews, and said company just scraped for reviews and replaced keywords instead of having some poor kid write up new ones. Can't read them myself, but screenshots of reviews allegedly mention names of characters in GI and not ToF, which is pretty damning evidence (if true). Wouldn't be the first time that kind of thing has happened.

Since it doesn't really sound like it'll be my thing (thanks for the review, Folly), I'll be bowing out.

[delphonso]

Edit: thought I had scrapped my previous reply.

[Iduno]

They've pretty much copied Genshin Impact's formula, to be honest. Action combat with hot-swappable weapons, each with different combos and cooldowns. Landscape that is vast but largely unremarkable. Lots of collectables scattered around. Missions in the daily, weekly, and story varieties. Dungeons and World Bosses that are pretty straightforward grinds for upgrade materials.

I'm a bit turned off by the overwhelming 'free stuff'. Every few minutes of gameplay I look over to see a dozen tabs with little dots indicating that I need to click through the menus to claim rewards for something I did, and it very quickly became tedious.

Still, the exciting action and consistent progress are keeping me engaged and enjoying myself for now.

Yeah, my feelings as well. I'll play it for now, but hopefully something better comes along soon.

Edit: I think the main reason the red "check this thing now" dots everywhere is so bad, is because there are half a dozen menus, each with several (or like a dozen for the main menu) sub-menus. I'm going to go do my dailies. I can find a list of them in Main Menu (esc) > Terminal > missions > choose which one I want to track, but I can't get information about my progress in them or turn them in there. I think I have to be at a bounty location for that. Same with daily trainings (which are moderately interesting minigames or kill 3 waves combat training which is always boring).

I'll add that here in China, paying for reviews isn't just common - it's an accepted, common-place practice. Some even would say it's necessary, equivalent to paying for ad placement.

It's the same in the US. Most or all of the review sites let you pay to remove (or hide, so they can claim they aren't removed) negative reviews, there are entire companies who will provide good reviews, etc.

[sambojin]

Played a bit more of Virexian, for a blast from the past.

Damn, this is still an amazing twin-stick shooter. Hasn't had an update since 2017, doesn't really need one. Just does its thing, unapologetically. You're a mech, you have a gun, you fight your way through 12-infinity levels of enemies in a randomised dungeon, with a double-tap dash button and twin-stick shooting (no auto-aim). And it's fun to have a quick bash at.

From the era of "neon every f'ing thing" retro 8-bit-that-shit Indy games. It's hardcore, but it's easy. It's fast, but it gives you that adrenaline kick. It's build-y, but just in the "best gun for my playstyle" kinda thing. It's roguelike, because there's no meta-progression, but it's better for all that. It's slow, because you can just do a run when you want, and the sounds and chip-tune music and graphics and play speed, gives you the brain-drugs you want, but it's not too addictive.

It has a free version. And the $2-3 full version is a shit-tonne better.

Umm, play it. It's really good. It's like a breath of fresh air, to just have a game, that does its thing, and does it well.

(Virexian is probably the reason that I'm ok at twin-stick shooters on mobile. It just gets you better at them, regardless of your previous skill level)


On vaguely "I wish I knew this ages ago" news, there's an unofficial port of Nuclear Throne on android as well. I actually don't really like the UI on this one, but hey. You can't have everything, for an otherwise amazing game. I don't know, search for it, or something.

[delphonso]

Just thought I'd share the utility "scrcpy" - it allows (with just a little fiddling with your developer mode settings on your phone) to run android stuff in a window and control it with mouse + keyboard.

I've been playing a bit of Pokemon TCG Online, which doesn't have a Linux port, but with this, I can just sit at my computer and play tournaments and such (something that's just a bit too long for me to do while inches away from my phone, also I can browse the forums in the background while I wait, which logs you out of the app, normally.)

[sambojin]

Still playing Catalyst Black on a semi-daily basis.

They released some patches. My favourite sniper rifle got *way worse* (ie, it's probably balanced now. No super-quick primal form. Maybe a little underpowered actually, it's been merged to hell), a new double shot rocket launcher with a smallish AoE (it doesn't *really* compare to the other two, where the large magazine one is probably the best weapon in the game now), and a new primal-form.

The new primal-form is a quick/ dodgy archer with piercing attacks.

The matchmaking is slightly better. So I figured I'd game the hell out of that, because I want more tooled people on my team.

I have the large-clip machine-gun rocket launcher (pretty levelled on damage, but not infused that well, but not bad). I will never level another thing in my gear loadout, because my "normal form" is a dps monster, so the weaker my "primal form" is, the less it'll add to my "gear score". So having a new primal form that starts with lvl1 stats is a boon, because it doesn't add much to my gear score. Whereby allowing better geared teammates to randomly join in on the conflagration of death I cause. I think it works that way.

So, yep. Still got my basic mortar (it's levelled and infused to hell, but is so good), now running a heal-over-time item (about lvl11, Catalytic Heal?), a shield-over time item (lvl11 or so, Empathy Band?), and whatever weapon I want to run.

It's still a support build. Blibbits of shield and life, rather than full heals and massive shield dodges. But not having zero-gear mooks/ bots in your match is worth it, on not going ultimate-primal or being super-tanky. It's not like it's harder to kill people, it's just harder to heal them and not die yourself.

(Still works fine with miniguns etc. I tested it. Some of the fastest Hydra matches I've ever played. So yeah, trying to keep my "gear score" under 190-200, where it can easily balloon to 295-300 with the stuff I've got, whereby killing off about 50 "gear score" to two of my teammates. It's gamey, but it seems to be how it works)

((You kinda start at about 150'ish gear score in this game, so freeing up 100 gear score for your team is pretty big, especially with a support + dps build. Matchmaking is weird. You're not as unkillable, but you can jank it that your entire team is. And, in theory, you're pretty good at the game yourself by the time you can gear down, to add better stuff to your team. You'll still have to 1-man-army it sometimes, it's just a lot more reliable when you do or don't have to))

[Iduno]

Anyone find any good time-wasters lately?

Gachas seem to be getting even worse about their "if you haven't played constantly since the beginning, don't even bother" design, and everything else seems to be also some super-competitive FPS/MOBA that I don't care about even if I was good at that type of game.

Am I best off finding a way to play FFTA or similar again? I want something new, but I don't know what.

[Uristides]

Paragon Pioneers: pretty decent idle town builder. One time purchase, no mtx, just mowing down hordes of native inhabitants, it's ok, they are orcs, in order to fuel your military-industrial complex for the glory of your priestly caste.

Octopath Traveller: Champions of the Continent: the good part is that it feels like they had a pitch for an actual single player game before deciding it was going to be for mobile and needed to have gacha skinner box elements. The bad part is that they eventually decided to turn it into a gacha skinner box anyway. It's not that the game is P2W or anything, but simply that having to perform bunch of daily rituals to get free stuff, and then managing a dozen plus roster of characters together with their gear, really gets in the way of actually playing it.

Arknights: gacha tower defence game. I have barely been able to do anything yet because there's so much text to plow through before they let you play on you own. While the actual gameplay looks simple and fun enough, I just can't get past how awfully overcrowded the main interface looks.

[Dostoevsky]

I've been playing Friends and Dragons, which is... well, I like the core mechanics (a bit like Terra Battle of yore), but the game pushes spending on you too hard for me to actually recommend it.

Arknights really loves its characters and stories - if they're your jam, then great, but I got pretty tired of it after a while. Also realized that it my interaction with it was increasingly becoming 'leave phone on while you autofight a level a hundred times to grind, then maybe actually play the game a bit every few days' like so many gacha games.

[notquitethere]

Advanced Wars, Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy 6, Pokemon Emerald, and Tactics Ogre are the best things I've ever played on my phone, and they're all available using a gameboy advanced emulator (I use Gameboid).

I've also used a glulx interpreter on my phone to play through the entirety of Anchorhead, an amazing lovecraftian text adventure, but I generally recommend using a computer to play those.

[sambojin]

ChillyRoom (the makers of Soul Knight and Otherworld Legends) has released a mini-rts in the Starcraft vein, called Xeno Command.

I don't know if it's any good or not, only just finished the tutorial, but it promises roguelite'ish progression, the controls are easy to use, and the cool downs etc don't seem too bad.

Sort of somewhere between an auto-battler, a base defender, and an actual RTS. Since they tend to put plenty of work into their games, and plenty more content after release, this might be worth checking out.

Controls are more "move your entire troop blob" with hero power cooldowns etc, not actual RTS (which is good on mobile), but there may be some deeper strategy than blob composition and timing. Worthwhile finding out.

Graphics are cutesy/ cartoony, sort of a Starcrafts vibe (a well-loved YouTube series based on blizzards game) with a bit more realism. Tiny, cartoony, but recognisable on what's what.

It's sort of "try chapter 1 for free, chapter 2-4 costs", but it's only $7.99 Aussie (~$6US?) and chapter 4 promises procedurally generated levels, so I don't mind a 1-off purchase from these developers. All techs etc unlock with that one hit, so it's not a cash-shop for progression (I have no idea if there's plenty of grind or timers or anything crap, I've just got enough faith in ChillyRoom that I'll probably get my $8 worth of fun out of it by the end).


((I actually like the mobile-shareware concept for stuff like this. Does this run on your hardware? Does it show potential? Do you like this sort of game, and how the controls are implemented and stuff like that? Did you like chapter 1? Cool, the rest of the game has a price tag, but it's pretty cheap. And ChillyRoom's stuff tends to get more zany and fun with stuff added to it, not half-assed content filler for the money))

[Iduno]

I think it's been mentioned before, but Realm Grinder has a mobile version. Some of the buttons are a bit small, but you usually aren't in a hurry, even with the few timing-based challenges.

It looks like a generic clicker game where you click to get money, then spend the money upgrading. But, as you play, you get 2 forms of passive income: buildings which give income per second based on their cost (cheaper buildings produce less, but it's not 1:1) but have an increasing cost the more you buy, and assistants which click for you each second. When you've earned a certain amount of money, you can ally with one of 2 (later 3) alignments, each with 3 factions. The factions each have their own spells and upgrades with a theme. You can also unlock trophies for doing specific things (sometimes playing well/fast, sometimes doing things very inefficiently, sometimes you have to be fast and inefficient in a particular way) that give a small permanent bonus or new upgrade you can buy each run. Because there is a new game+ like thing where you get more production (coins per second) or mana or whatever for having done well previously, and it snowballs.

It's fairly deep and interesting for a clicker, and you get some progress when you're not playing, which keeps you coming back. You *can* pay money, but you don't get enough that it's worth it (plus, you're paying to get less time out of a time-waster game, which isn't smart) or watch an ad to get a bonus. The ads may not work anymore, they no longer work on my phone, and haven't worked in the steam version in years.

[Jopax]

Let's talk Slice&Dice, first off it's also playable on PC, you can get it on itch.io for 7-ish bucks, the mobile version on the play store is essentially the demo that allows shorter, basic runs, and you can also pay 7-ish bucks to unlock the full thing. No ads or anything, really classic game approach with none of the mobile monetization shitfest that we have these days.

The game itself? Well, it's a party based dice rolling RPG rougelike of a sort. You basically run trough a series of combat encounters with your party of five, each a distinct class that comes with their own dice with distinct moves. You roll one or more times, pick the sides that you wanna keep, select targets and end the turn. Fairly simple and straightforward, but the system is so nicely tuned and well designed that there's a shitton of variety and depth possible. Add to that that after each encounter you get either an item (which do various things like modifying the dice, giving you spells or similar) or a level-up which generally completely changes how a class functions and you get a massive amount of replayability. And that's just the basic mode, there's stuff like randomly generated classes, extra difficulty runs where you select various penalties to make things more interesting and it gets fairly wild.
 What makes it even better for mobile play is that each encounter is turn based, usually lasts a couple of minutes and can be dropped or picked back up whenever. The regular run has 20 encounters which means you can either spend a couple of minutes or half an hour on the game, depending on time and mood.

One of the rare mobile games where I actually wanted to spend money on it, doubly so because it's a one time thing and not a continuous assault on your resolve to keep throwing money down the skinner box pit.

[sambojin]

Started playing a little bit more of BuriedBornes. And a little bit of deckDeDungeon2.

Did you know that BuriedBornes 2 is meant to be coming out this year? And apparently your saves may/may not be transferrable?

So yeah. They're giving out heaps of random in-game currency, and I finally grabbed the Moon Queen character, and snagged the Countless Tentacles amulet (so you start with it as a skill).

In my current run, it's actually my weakest skill.... Because I got one of those 999,999 damage isn't quite enough runs. Need another limit break.

Anyways, I'm hoping lab parts and contracts are transferrable to BB2. Because as a harvesting character, I have a heap of stuff. I mean, shit, I hope they do gatcha stuff, where if you have three if them, you can merge them into a new level. I have so much random crap now....

[sambojin]

Whilst not actually a life goal or anything, I played a bit more of Angel Saga. Haven't in months.

And now I have every level 1 special crafting cosmetic costume item! And they do cross into some other awesome stuff too.

So, yeah. Onward and upward in my bullet-hell archero-like stop'n'shoot action game. Some of the outfits are quite pretty. Best dress crafting game ever! Other than the ones that actually focus on that.... Lol