For the week of November 18 – 24
Check out what I played last week
November 18 – Learn Japanese RPG: Hiragana Forbidden Speech
A goal for me in 2025 is to command a better knowledge of Japanese. I’ve wanted to learn it for more than a decade. Unfortunately for me, learning languages is difficult. Over the last year or so I’ve tried learning a few languages. That includes Korean, Norwegian, German, and Swedish. Japanese is the language I’ve spent the most time on and my progress is slow. I thought that video games could help me, so I’ve come across a few that claim they can teach you the language. One such game is Learn Japanese RPG: Hiragana Forbidden Speech. It combines role-playing with language learning and thought it could be fun.
Of what I played, it does a good job of teaching you the first few characters. The game takes place in a world where people speak Japanese but they forbid hiragana. The hero starts seeing hiragana and begins to use it as a tool to combat spirits and other foes in the world. The early story isn’t anything spectacular but it does its intended job. You will see the Latin version of “A” and need to use its hiragana counterpart to attack a foe. Since you’ll do this many times, it helps you to better memorize them.
I’m not sure if I’ll continue with this one. There is another series that is similar but has games for Katakana and Kanji characters. It’s often on sale, so it might also be helpful in my quest to learn more Japanese.
November 20 – Persona 3 Reload
It’s been a good decade since I played Persona 3 Portable. I played it after falling in love with Persona 4 Golden. Unfortunately, I only played for six hours of the game before falling off. It’s not that I didn’t like the game, but I jumped into it immediately after P4G, which may have been a bad idea at the time. Persona 3 Reload launched earlier in the year and I held off on trying it out. Now that we’re approaching the end of the year, it’s a great time for me to catch up on some of the games from earlier in the year. After hearing how good this remake is, I needed to check it out for myself.
Reload is bringing back memories of P3P. This game takes full advantage of the hardware available to it. I love the look of both the environments and the cutscenes. But, like every Persona game, it’s taking time to get you into the main combat sections. I spent more than 90 minutes doing everything else but exploring the combat zone. As someone like me who has played previous Persona and Shin Megami Tensei games, I’m well versed in how to play. It would have been nice to have a skip tutorial feature but it’s not the end of the world.
This feels like the definitive version of a game that already had more than one release. While my PSP still works, I’d rather continue my experience with Reload and try to go the distance. I was mostly playing on my ROG Ally X, and this plays great on it. I will try to continue playing this and I will play it on a portable handheld.
November 20 – Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising
I am not familiar with the Granblue Fantasy series. With the nominations out for The Game Awards, I wanted to try a few of the games from this year that I missed. One nominee that I didn’t try was Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising. This feels like a surprise nomination in the Best Fighting Game category. There is a free version available on Steam, so I wanted to try it out. Even with no experience with the series, this is a fun fighting game.
After logging in for the time, I decided to try the game’s story mode. It’s a tutorial where it goes into detail about its core mechanics. Developed by Arc System Works, if you’re familiar with their style of fighting games, this is easy to grasp. The one downside to the story mode is that it starts with very little variety in combat. It also has some expectation that you are aware of the Granblue universe. I got bored fighting against generic soldiers, so I jumped into the Arcade mode.
Arcade only grants you access to four characters. You get the full arcade experience, with the entire cast available to fight against. I managed to complete arcade mode on easy without losing a single match. Because of that, I increased the difficulty. When I did that, I could only get through three fights before losing. Fighting fans should start at Hard for an actual challenge.
I was pleasantly surprised with Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising. It might be the long shot in the category for Best Fighting game, but an easy recommendation. The Free Version is worth it on its own and there are some nice characters worth paying for. I only wish this game did a better job of introducing you to the world of Granblue Fantasy.
November 21 – S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
Let me get straight to the point. I am very disappointed with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl. After about 30 minutes, I stopped playing. The start of this game isn’t fun. After enjoying the first game, I thought this would be more of that but with more polish. For now, this is a game I despise and I have no plans to give it a second chance.
My gripe is with its pacing. This game starts with a section that is linear but also lacks any sort of interesting moments. For a series that’s a decade between releases, there are going to be people who are playing for the first time. Are we playing as a known character? What exactly is going on? We see a cutscene where our character’s hand starts glowing but we’re not given an explanation.
From there, we proceed into the containment zone. We see a person get zapped to death, but our character acts like that’s a normal thing. We get a few combat sections but these feel out of place. When I thought I was about to get into an interesting combat sequence, they took control out of my hands. You’re left watching the scene play out and you wake up to start the main game.
I didn’t bother to continue after that. This game feels like it wasn’t playtested ahead of launch. This entire section isn’t why this franchise is popular. A lot of reviewers have complained about the start of the game. They claim you have to get past this section to get the proper experience. But if you’re new to the series and you play this section, there isn’t enough here to encourage you to play past it.
November 22 – Drill Dozer
It wasn’t my intention to try Drill Dozer. I thought this was a spinoff/sequel to the Mr. Driller franchise. I’m pretty certain I’ve played Mr. Driller before, so I thought this was a follow-up. Sometimes it is a smart idea to double-check ahead of time. That’s not to say that I’m disappointed with Drill Dozer. This is a pretty impressive Nintendo-published game for the Game Boy Advance.
There isn’t too much to share about the game, but that’s not to say this game lacks content. Your character uses fight foes, get past areas, and uncover secrets. The game does a great job of giving you a taste of how useful your drill is. As you progress through a stage, you find upgrades that make your drill more powerful. Like a manual transmission engine, you can increase your gears to gain more power. You need this extra power to fight certain foes and to break through stronger barriers.
The only downside to the upgrades is that they don’t carry over. When you finish a stage, you lose the power upgrades. You can find them again in each stage, but I was hoping that your power would increase the further you got in the game. On the flip side, the second stage starts with a “goo” that you can use to help you slingshot up hard-to-reach spots. If there are more quirky gameplay aspects, I can look past the lack of upgrades.
Although Nintendo published Drill Dozer, this is a Game Freak property. While they might be too busy with Pokemon, it would be nice if they considered reviving this series. This would be great on the Switch successor. If this is not already part of the GBA library on Nintendo Switch Online, it should be.
November 23 – Slay the Princess
If I had played Slay the Princess last year, it would have made my Top 10 without question. I started this up and played nonstop until I saw the credits. There might be a limited amount of gameplay but the experience is hard to compare.
Slay the Princess is a game where your task is to slay a princess being held captive in a cabin in the woods. Killing her isn’t a problem. You can kill her immediately, but all that does is open up a whole can of worms. From there, you repeat the same request. Try to kill her. But then starts the moral conundrum: what if letting her go is the right thing to do?
Talking too much about the game only spoils the experience. Sure, there is a lot of repetition. You replay the first two chapters many times. But, every time you play these sequences, different things happen. It might be a small difference like the knife is no longer available to you. It could be something major like the cabin now looks and feels like a castle. This game features a lot of fourth wall breaking, and how it’s implemented is impressive.
It took me less than two hours to see the credits. This seems quick since How Long To Beat lists the main story taking around 3.5 hours to complete. But, I know I didn’t see all the possible sequences since you unlock a gallery after finishing the game. Also, I’m playing the “Pristine Cut” version, which includes more content. So, I don’t know how different my experience is with last year’s original release. Nonetheless, I loved Slay the Princess and hope more people can try it out.
November 24 – Top Goal: Football Champion
I still remember some of the odd Facebook-developed games that I played back around 2012. One of the ones I spent the most time with was Top Eleven. This was a football management game developed by a Serbian company, Noredeus. It was a huge success that they then ported to mobile devices and it’s still quite popular. Unfortunately, they haven’t been able to replicate that success. One of the first blogs I wrote here was about their now-defunct mobile game: Heroic: Magic Duel. Their latest release is Top Goal: Football Champions. Unfortunately, this is not a fun soccer game.
Top Goal is a soccer game where you’re playing attacking and defending scenarios. You have three chances to score a goal and three situations where you need to prevent the AI from scoring. This is almost identical to Domination Mode in FIFA Mobile in 2017. I was the Community Manager for FIFA Mobile, so I remember the mode. The only difference was that you had more chances and variety in Domination. Plus, FIFA Mobile included licensed players, which Top Goal does not.
There isn’t much to say about this game. After a few matches, I was already bored. It’s too easy to score because they made the shooting easy to pull off. The game slows down and you’re able to aim your shot. You then need to hit a “sweet spot” on the kicking meter and you will score a goal. Meanwhile, on defense the touch controls suck and it’s easy to intercept a pass and end the play. Only once did the AI get a shot on target. Because of how easy it is to score, they did.
