Finished Last Window the other day. Really mixed feelings, mostly hinging on how it all played out in the end, despite generally really enjoying my time with it. Just that it can’t really be helped, comparing a lot of it to Hotel Dusk.
I do feel it is a bit more “adult”, not necessarily more mature in the same sense most people mean, but just the way in which Kyle is characterized, how he develops, and some of the themes and how events in the story take place. Those kinds of things, and the great music, are what I enjoyed most about the game.
Now, I won’t say the characters are bad, but, I just don’t find any of them near about as compelling as most of the cast from the first game, unfortunately. That kind of went hand in hand with making some reveals a bit too obvious, and in turn that made it feel like the game was dragging on much longer than it really needed to be. Coupled with the fact that Cape West is just more boring to explore, not much added on as you go and without as much sense of mystery, it was a bit difficult to stay motivated the whole way through.
Something I’m a bit more mixed on: the ratio of puzzles to evidence gathering or interrogation. I can appreciate we spend more time talking to the characters than doing often kind of absurd puzzles all the time - but then, that also kind of ****s with the pacing. There ought to have been a bit more to break up the constant back and forth of finding who to talk to next.
Despite my issues, I’m still glad to have experienced it. Still hoping if the Another Code Recollection does well, it could mean some sort of remaster for these two games, too.
Also did a playthrough of A Link to the Past again, amazed at just how short it felt even with getting everything. Having gone through the Link’s Awakening remake within the past few years, as well as the Oracles this past one, well…it still has that irrefutable feel of a classic, but I just did not enjoy it as much. Stylistically it’s great, would love for the pink hair to return one day too. But as far as the gameplay goes, maybe I’m just rusty but later into the game it feels like the two invincibility items are almost a necessity - and that’s coming from someone who found things like Nayru’s love and magic armor in later games entirely useless. It just doesn’t feel good to me to play anymore. That being said, I think this was the first time I’ve managed to defeat the final boss without using all my bottles somehow. 16 deaths overall according to the credits, not my best but not bad.
So then I decided to pick up Majora’s Mask again as well, after a bit of fumbling around with where I’d left off. Seemingly pretty early in I guess. Right now I’ve got near everything done up to getting Epona back. Always dread doing the aliens bit, it’s the one thing I just can’t shake off the nerves for whenever I do it for some reason. Maybe it’s the fact that aiming kind of sucks lol. So I got both quiver upgrades at least…thank god I realized there’s save states on the Switch version, guess it makes up for lack of C buttons. I’ve done pretty much everything in this game multiple times except for the annoying octorok archery, so I’ve finally managed to do that now.
Lastly I’ve been playing Earthbound. Tried it once before on the WiiU VC, think I kept dying to Frank’s robot. I’ve seen plenty of playthroughs and speedruns but have never beaten it before, so I want to at least try. I’ve just got the first melody thing, so now the police want to see me. My understanding is it’s a bit of a gauntlet so I’m trying to grind off of mooks in the caves a bit.
Hopefully I can at least get most of it done before the part 2 DLC for pokemon comes out. Part 1, I enjoyed the story, characters, and music, but I feel the exploration was just not as good. Hopefully it’s better in this next one. After that I guess I’ll get around to figuring out my top 10 games of this year before it ends.
