What Did We Play Yesterday?

Years ago, when I first got seriously into shmups, I got a sweet deal on an arcade stick. I did the research and modded it for shmups specifically. Got a Seimitsu stick and everything. And honestly, I NEVER took to it. Not for lack of trying, either. I ended up repurposing it for my poor man's arcade, and enjoy using it for classic arcade games a lot more.

I tried to use it once again with this game, and I give up. I'm just a D-pad guy. Nothing else gives me the precision I want. A controller doesn't feel arcadey and that's okay. I also broke out my 8BitDo M30, which I bought specifically for shmups and never got around to really using. I don't know that it's necessarily an improvement over my tried 'n trusty X-Box 360 controller, which has been My Controller for over a decade, but I'm gonna give it a real chance.

Another thing I tried was expanding Spolous 2 to full screen on my wide monitor. I "flow" and play shmups peripherally, which means I rarely actually look at my ship. I focus on the center of the screen and navigate most obstacles through peripheral vision. This is harder to do with a larger screen, and I definitely noticed the difference, so it's back to tiny window for me.

More Spolous yaay. I unlocked a few ships, and kinda dig the D and E versions, which have a vertical and 45 angled front double shot. Stage 3 is proving a consistent grave, and this was the first time I made it to the boss.

This is a fun stage that requires planning ahead due to Lifeforce-esque barriers that must be destroyed to pass through. I've found it useful to stick to the right side of the screen as much as possible, and try to push through areas that don't have lots of barriers (the trade-off being these areas have enemy clusters that get triggered when you pass through). There is an ESPECIALLY tight squeeze toward the end on the upper route that I'm not sure you can get out of if you don't have some sort of angled or upper beam shot. Since the levels are multi-screen height, and The Squeeze is up top, I'll explore the bottom and see if it's easier to get through.

I was starting to think I'd burned out on this game, and then I remembered in addition to expanding the farms from 7x7 to 9x9, they also expanded the speed of farmhands, and increased the range from 18x18 to 24x24. So I spent the afternoon reworking all my farmhands. Most just needed a few tweaks here and there. By necessity, they cannot plant more than 4 different crops, so there's some strategy there.

I've been using the extra plots to try silly things, like that ridiculous fish farm. I've also been playing around with the cyber DLC which was a day one for me on principal. It has extra fences and bridges, always welcome, and a bunch of fish and a new kind of apple tree. It's an interesting package all around, though the style is so different from everything else I might have to get creative about mixing it in.

I've been having a great time with the doujin shmup Spolous 2 by suppon. It's a Gradiuslike with great music and graphics, and some pretty gnarly Lifeforce/Salamander-esque level design later on. The pics are Ship B I think but I really enjoyed Ship C's backwards shot.

The game is not yet finished, but it's been making the rounds the rounds on the indie game blog/site circuit, and for good reason. This is a very well designed shmup that is fun and approachable, but unafraid to kick your ass around Stage 3 or so. The slowdown segments are perfectly balanced. This is a great shmup, made with love. I highly recommend it.

Well, Zelda fatigue has hit me, and not quite a month in this time. The marbled roast stuff just bums me out, man. I noticed an area on my map that has 2 lakes that look like lizards. I thought, lizards must be there, and so I went. ALAS. There were not lizards there. I solved a few more shrines, and I'm calling it for now. Next time I play, I will finally traverse the Mount Doom area. Maybe. We'll see.

I spent the past few days helping rebuild the coastal village. It's a nice questline, even though rebuilding is pretty samey for most of it. After, Link is rewarded (limited) free hospitality. Sounds good to me! Wandering around on the coastline is fun, but it may be time to get back to main game stuff which means returning to Mount Doom to get the last sage.

Crushed koroks: 2

Turns out exploring the desert kinda sucks. It's pretty boring. I found a secret cave filled with breakable rock, and broke rocks until I couldn't break rock no more due to lack of tools. I've been stockpiling hammers since and I'll go back there soon. In the meantime, I hopped back to Lookout Landing and started exploring areas on the map where I didn't have location names. I found Satori Mountain.

This place was amazing. There are multiple resource-rich groves filled with animals and foraging stuff, a cherry tree, and two caves. Foraging in forest areas is one of my favorite things in this game and I got my fill here, for sure. The mountain is also home to a maze-like cave filled with satori. These don't vanish as quickly as the others, and I managed to beat one like a pinata for rupees. After all that, I wandered back to the giant fairy and upgraded a good bit of armor.

New rule: I can't run from baddies (well, except Lynels, I still run from those). So I picked up some new monster bits. I've figured out how to dispatch Hinox easily, I just wish I could do it a little more efficiently. Riju's lightning boost is useful.

While I was up there, I found this really strange tree with 4 branches and no leaves. It stuck out, I've never seen one like that before, but I couldn't interact with it. I figured out just now it's a damned korok puzzle, you're supposed to put a boulder on the prongs. I'll get it next time.

All of the kingdoms have environmental issues caused by bosses, but the sand shroud in the desert is by far the most annoying. It makes it difficult to see and messes with Link's navigation tablet, so you're truly flying blind. I really wanted to get rid of the sand shroud, and get decent weather protection, so I had to do the gerudo questline first.

There's an honestly annoying tower-defense section where Riju's highly-trained, ultra-deadly guards have ONE JOB, keep her alive, and they're terrible at it. But otherwise, I liked this questline. The lightning temple has a lot of light/mirror puzzles and old-school vibes, and was pretty darn enjoyable. Also, I guess I'm getting better at this game, because I was able to take down Queen Gibdo my first try although I got really tired of Riju asking, "Are you okay?" Girl, I will be okay when you stop getting knocked over and active that lightning field.

Of course, once the sand shroud is cleared you have to actually find the damn shop, which is hidden because it sells men's clothing and men aren't allowed in Gerudo Town. It was some hassle but I'm happy to report I now have a full set of desert gear--but NOT sand shoes, unfortunately, because I didn't have enough money.

The best way to get money I know of is to cook up a bunch of meat and sell it, or sell ingredients that I have massive quantities of (bright bloom seeds, etc). I already cooked up/sold a lot just to get the desert duds, so IDK when I'll rustle up the rupees for sand boots but that's the next goal.

Crushed koroks: 1

Spent most of my time wandering the desert, where I activated another sky tower and unexpectedly met an old friend. Koltin is probably my favorite character in the whole game. I unloaded a bunch of bubbl gems but he didn't change. :( Very sad. Maybe next time?

I was also rejected by the Yiga clan, presumably because I don't have the full armor set to wear as a disguise. I was able to buy and partly upgrade the desert voe headband, so I have a little sun protection now. There's a major sandstorm making it difficult to travel the area, and that's the next challenge to tackle.

Crushed koroks: 2

Clearly, this will be my gaming life for the next month. I opened a partly-buried sky tower (now 2 remain) and discovered the most chaotic shrine EVER, which basically hands you a tank and says, "Go get 'em." I set myself on fire no less than 3 times, but I walked away with a better understanding of the zonai weapons and a bigger heart, thanks to all the charred robots left along the way.

I finally made a list of ingredients to find to upgrade my armor, and set off south to find warm safflina. I did not find any! However, I did find some swift violet, which I hadn't discovered yet and will need a crapton of, and farmed a nice number of fire-breath lizalfos horns.

Up until this point I've generally avoided enemies because if you're a button-mashing whack-a-moler, and I am such a person, the battles just slow you down. On a whim, I fused a ice lizalfos tail to a sword, and it one-shots those bastards like you would not believe. Simply incredible. Fighting those guys is a lot less tedious when you don't have to wack them 2343 times and switch up weapons twice because they break, so I'm gonna do a better job of experimenting with fusion and exploiting weaknesses. I already figured out attaching dazzle fruits to arrows made taking down a Hinox so much easier. I know this is super basic strategy for this game, but my ratio of picking mushrooms+climbing hills to fighting has historically been like 99 to 1 percent.

(I now know lizalfos tails have a TERRIBLE drop rate, so I won't be using those anymore. This dude Zeldas.)

Crushed koroks: 2

Yesterday, I glanced over my previous posts and confirmed I did IN FACT get the Zora armor. I have been playing THE WRONG SAVE FILE. As you can see, the correct file has much better stats. Fortunately, I only spent a few days doing that.

Once reunited with the proper Link, I promptly re-did a few shrine and korok things I missed on this file, and built the things much more competently this time. I got about 6 koroks but was only able to crush 2. I decided to start nabbing falling stars when I see them. I also found a Yiga hideout that was way scarier on the outside than it was inside, which granted me some Yiga pants and a map showing where the rest of the bits are. Finally, I rounded out the play session with some treasure hunting. Didn't really find anything particularly good but it's the thought that counts. I think I'm finally starting to embrace the building aspects of this game.

Koroks: 5. Continuing to hit up shrines and scope out areas that aren't well defined on my map. I found a bunch of koroks but only ONE was crushable (proof attached). I was also reminded of my two favorite quests, the satori/bubbl gems, and Misko's treasure. I did not find a Misko cave but I DID find a satori cave so yay. I had to do some building, which I'm terrible at, but I managed.I also managed to kill a Hinox by filling it with bombs and dazzle fruit. It was not an efficient kill, but it worked.

Obligatory random screenshot since I forgot to take any others. I'm still visiting unfinished shrines, but I've expanded my efforts to include exploring sections of the map that don't have an adequate number of place labels and therefore weren't properly explored. I'm especially keeping an eye out for wells.

Memories of my previous playthroughs, both of this game and the first one, are starting to blur in my mind so I keep having the craziest deja vu. Didn't I already meet the person who transforms dubious food? (I guess not, because talking to her started a questline.) Didn't I already get the swim armor? (I guess not, because it's not in my inventory.) Did I SERIOUSLY not finish all these familiar-looking shrines? (You know the answer...)

I've been meaning to get back to TOTK but it's always a bit daunting to jump back into a game like this somewhere in the middle. In the past, I've started a new game, but this time I set the goal of completing shrines beginning at the Hyrule Field area and working outward. This worked really well, as some of them were tutorial shrines I'd skipped for whatever reason and I was able to brush up on the mechanics.

After completing 5 or 6 of these I decided to pick mushrooms and explore wells, as one does. I found this big skeleton guy buried under a bunch of rocks. Gosh, I wonder if I'll regret digging him out? (I did regret it.)

Simulcra is a lost phone horror game with creepy elements and jump scares. I haven't played a lost phone game in a long time and I was in the mood for a horror game, so I yoinked this one off my backlog. The mobile interface is fun to navigate, and you have to dig through phone calls, texts, emails, and other stuff to solve the mystery. The voice acting is a little over the top, and the language is a little stiff sometimes, but overall it's been an interesting experience so far with some nicely creepy effects.

There is some weirdness with text input. It took MANY tries to come up with a saddest moment the game would actually accept. I tried some serious things and some silly things and it ended up taking something like, "Filling out this prompt is my saddest moment," because by then it really was.

Things got a little hectic in Nodebuster. There's a sweet spot in the beginning and middle of the progression where the updates notably improve the experience, but once you unlock the upgrades that allow you to gain permanent HP increases with each kill things get a little silly. I thought I was on the verge of beating the game when I unlocked the lab, which is a massive resource sink. You have to grind out red resources (bits), convert them to green resources (netcoin), and dump them in the maw. I lost interest at that point.