9th May 2018, 9:10 PM
(This post was last modified: 20th June 2018, 8:17 PM by A Black Falcon.)
While I've played some Vita, I've gone back already to mostly playing the 3DS for handheld games. There are basically two categories of games I've been playing -- first, the two digital-download puzzle games I've been playing in recent months, and second a couple of cartridge games.
The puzzle games are Picross e7 and SubaraCity. Picross e7 is pretty good, a solid traditional picross game. It's no Picross DS in either featureset or puzzles, as the images here are just generic stuff and not anything related to Nintedo and there is no puzzle editor or freely downloadable addon puzzles, instead you have to buy the other Picross e-series titles to get more puzzles, but otherwise it's good. That absence of a puzzle editor is disappointing though, and it is shared by all 3DS Picross games I know of, even Picross 3D Round 2 for no good reason, considering that that game doesn't have DLC or additional titles to buy or anything. It's really unfortunate that all of the 3DS Picross games *lock you to only playing the puzzles included and don't let you make your own, it makes them worse games than their DS forbears. Still, Picross e7 and Picross 3D Round 2, as well as the The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Picross title that I have also been playing here and there, are great and really addictive puzzle games. Picross has a fantastic balance of strategy and fun, and usually puzzles are solvable with skill and not luck which is fantastic. e7 has a lot of puzzles in it too, impressively for a cheap game.
SubaraCity - I mentioned this in the 'games I bought' thread when I got it, but this simple puzzler is one I've been oddly addicted to. I mean, it's a very simple game with a high luck component, and it's a mobile port too! And you can't win either, it's just a score-attack game where you play until you lose. And while skill matters, luck often matters more. Why have I been playing it so much over a better game like Puzzles & Dragons Z / SMB, or something? I'm not entirely sure, but I do like its simplicity. This is a good game to chill out with for a few minutes, as you tap the city squares and build your city.
So, in this game you've got a 5x5 grid. Each space on the grid has a building on it, and they come in several colors. When you tap a square, all tiles touching it in the four cardinal directions only that are the same color as that square will all combine into that one space, and its building level will go up. Then, new tiles will drop in from the top of the screen, each with random colors attached. This is the games' luck component -- what colors will drop, the one you need to keep going, or one which blocks off that area? Chance determines it. There are strategies I've learned of course, but luck definitely matters a lot. In the default mode you can do one thing to keep a game going once things block up though, and that's destroy buildings. You start with two building destructions allowed, and then get one more for each 100 years (aka turns) you survive. You also are gifted destruction counts for getting particularly high level-10 buildings, as I will soon describe. Additionally, you can also use these for taking back your last turn. This only goes back one turn though, and costs one of your precious building-destroy points, so you need to be really sure you want to go back... but the option is there. Overall it's a good system which works pretty well.
As you combine more and more tiles, eventually some will reach level ten. Once a tile reaches level ten it can't improve anymore on its own, and turns white. Your goal is to get as many level-ten buildings as you can, all contiguous together. Once you can't get any more level ten buildings and have to combine them into one, just as with anything else, if you touch the block of lv. 10 buildings they will combine into a building on that space. The catch is, these buildings themselves CANNOT be combined into anything! Instead, they block off spaces on the not-too-large board. The resulting special buildings come in many forms, with fancier and bigger ones for getting larger blocks of lv.10 buildings, and there is a list in the menu of all the buildings you have unlocked, so the game does reward you for good games in this way even once your game ends. There are a few other things like that as well, including a list of achievement-style goals.
Visually, the game looks very simple but nice enough. The music's good too, I like it. It's not what I'd expect from this kind game in a good way.
So the game is simple and fun, and I like it because of that. It's really cheap, too. However, it has some issues. For the price, I can't complain about the simplicity or repetition; those are acceptable things, particularly considering how fun I find the game. However, the randomness is frustrating sometimes, first. Getting the higher tiers of above-lv-10 buildings is nearly impossible without insane luck, because even if I use good strategy the luck of the draw dooms efforts to get the entire screen filled with level-10 buildings. Ah well. Additionally, though, this game has two modes, a simple mode with only three different space colors but no destroy tokens allowed, and the main normal mode with four colors and the destroy things option. However, there are NOT separate leaderboards for the two, which is dumb. The game doesn't even mark which one a high score came from, sadly! It really should, as it's easier to get high scores in the simple mode than normal. That's probably my main complaint with the game though, otherwise it's good for what it is.
As for regular games, I finally got around to starting Fire Emblem Fates, so I've been playing that. So far (in mission 8 or 9) it's been very easy even though I've been playing on Hard. I wonder, will it get tougher, or should I have played on Lunatic? It's fun enough otherwise, with that classic FE gameplay I like a lot, but I've been breezing most of it so far.
Also, 7th Dragon III: Code VFD is oddly compelling. It's a somewhat average game in a lot of ways, but I've been having quite a bit of fun with it despite that and I'll definitely be going back to it a lot more.
The puzzle games are Picross e7 and SubaraCity. Picross e7 is pretty good, a solid traditional picross game. It's no Picross DS in either featureset or puzzles, as the images here are just generic stuff and not anything related to Nintedo and there is no puzzle editor or freely downloadable addon puzzles, instead you have to buy the other Picross e-series titles to get more puzzles, but otherwise it's good. That absence of a puzzle editor is disappointing though, and it is shared by all 3DS Picross games I know of, even Picross 3D Round 2 for no good reason, considering that that game doesn't have DLC or additional titles to buy or anything. It's really unfortunate that all of the 3DS Picross games *lock you to only playing the puzzles included and don't let you make your own, it makes them worse games than their DS forbears. Still, Picross e7 and Picross 3D Round 2, as well as the The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Picross title that I have also been playing here and there, are great and really addictive puzzle games. Picross has a fantastic balance of strategy and fun, and usually puzzles are solvable with skill and not luck which is fantastic. e7 has a lot of puzzles in it too, impressively for a cheap game.
SubaraCity - I mentioned this in the 'games I bought' thread when I got it, but this simple puzzler is one I've been oddly addicted to. I mean, it's a very simple game with a high luck component, and it's a mobile port too! And you can't win either, it's just a score-attack game where you play until you lose. And while skill matters, luck often matters more. Why have I been playing it so much over a better game like Puzzles & Dragons Z / SMB, or something? I'm not entirely sure, but I do like its simplicity. This is a good game to chill out with for a few minutes, as you tap the city squares and build your city.
So, in this game you've got a 5x5 grid. Each space on the grid has a building on it, and they come in several colors. When you tap a square, all tiles touching it in the four cardinal directions only that are the same color as that square will all combine into that one space, and its building level will go up. Then, new tiles will drop in from the top of the screen, each with random colors attached. This is the games' luck component -- what colors will drop, the one you need to keep going, or one which blocks off that area? Chance determines it. There are strategies I've learned of course, but luck definitely matters a lot. In the default mode you can do one thing to keep a game going once things block up though, and that's destroy buildings. You start with two building destructions allowed, and then get one more for each 100 years (aka turns) you survive. You also are gifted destruction counts for getting particularly high level-10 buildings, as I will soon describe. Additionally, you can also use these for taking back your last turn. This only goes back one turn though, and costs one of your precious building-destroy points, so you need to be really sure you want to go back... but the option is there. Overall it's a good system which works pretty well.
As you combine more and more tiles, eventually some will reach level ten. Once a tile reaches level ten it can't improve anymore on its own, and turns white. Your goal is to get as many level-ten buildings as you can, all contiguous together. Once you can't get any more level ten buildings and have to combine them into one, just as with anything else, if you touch the block of lv. 10 buildings they will combine into a building on that space. The catch is, these buildings themselves CANNOT be combined into anything! Instead, they block off spaces on the not-too-large board. The resulting special buildings come in many forms, with fancier and bigger ones for getting larger blocks of lv.10 buildings, and there is a list in the menu of all the buildings you have unlocked, so the game does reward you for good games in this way even once your game ends. There are a few other things like that as well, including a list of achievement-style goals.
Visually, the game looks very simple but nice enough. The music's good too, I like it. It's not what I'd expect from this kind game in a good way.
So the game is simple and fun, and I like it because of that. It's really cheap, too. However, it has some issues. For the price, I can't complain about the simplicity or repetition; those are acceptable things, particularly considering how fun I find the game. However, the randomness is frustrating sometimes, first. Getting the higher tiers of above-lv-10 buildings is nearly impossible without insane luck, because even if I use good strategy the luck of the draw dooms efforts to get the entire screen filled with level-10 buildings. Ah well. Additionally, though, this game has two modes, a simple mode with only three different space colors but no destroy tokens allowed, and the main normal mode with four colors and the destroy things option. However, there are NOT separate leaderboards for the two, which is dumb. The game doesn't even mark which one a high score came from, sadly! It really should, as it's easier to get high scores in the simple mode than normal. That's probably my main complaint with the game though, otherwise it's good for what it is.
As for regular games, I finally got around to starting Fire Emblem Fates, so I've been playing that. So far (in mission 8 or 9) it's been very easy even though I've been playing on Hard. I wonder, will it get tougher, or should I have played on Lunatic? It's fun enough otherwise, with that classic FE gameplay I like a lot, but I've been breezing most of it so far.
Also, 7th Dragon III: Code VFD is oddly compelling. It's a somewhat average game in a lot of ways, but I've been having quite a bit of fun with it despite that and I'll definitely be going back to it a lot more.