Sea of Stars keeps doing that thing where you walk into a boss fight well-armed with a strategy in mind, and it quickly proceeds to dismantle said strategy and kick the shit out of you for a few minutes before you get your bearings. It's fucking great. 😆

I should say, I'm not facing truly difficult challenges anymore; I bought and turned on an EXP multiplier because I wanted a chiller experience. But if you do want difficult fights, this game can absolutely provide.

#KDplays

Ohhhh man. Sea of Stars kicked itself up a few gears in rapid succession tonight. (It's wearing its Chrono Trigger inspiration *very* proudly on its sleeve right now.) The combat continues to be a joy, challenging me to use my party makeup and relatively limited skill sets to find new ways around whatever it throws at me. It's also grown into the tone of its story over time; my quibbles about the writing style remain, but alongside everything else they matter a lot less to me now.

#KDplays

I'm still really enjoying Sea of Stars, but its writing keeps finding new and innovative ways to bewilder me.

This game has whimsical comedy pirates. One of them even has two eyepatches! Wonderful, no notes. These pirates have their dialogue spelled with an accent, because we're being whimsical. I actually don't mind that sort of thing! I'm on board. So if you were writing a pirate accent, how would you spell the word "of"? It would be "o'," right?

Sea of Stars went with "ov."

What.

#KDplays

I'm 4 or 5 hours into Sea of Stars so far, and I've gotten through a few major areas and bosses. The combat has its hooks deep in me — it's surprisingly complex right from the start without being overwhelming, and it's easy to see how to improve without being overly punishing if you don't get it right away. There aren't any random battles, and even the regular mob fights have all felt well-designed and worthwhile. It's the best I've felt about a turn-based system in a very long time!

#KDplays

These are the kinds of complaints that come out of me when I'm happy with everything else, though. I'm still very early in the game, but so far Sea of Stars is really endearing. The pixel art is gorgeous, and the general aesthetic vibe is strongly reminiscent of Golden Sun — some very potent catnip for me. The combat feels very polished — turn-based but with flexible party order, positioning mechanics, and Paper Mario-like action commands. I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.

#KDplays

This is the pettiest complaint of all but I can't get over it: in the first 20 minutes of Sea of Stars, the main characters complain that their magical warrior training includes sewing. They do this multiple times, and the word "sewing" gets repeated almost to the point of absurdity. Then when the game finally shows this part of their training onscreen...

They're not sewing. They're weaving. With beautifully pixel-drawn looms and shuttles, animated perfectly with no ambiguity.

WHY

#KDplays

It probably seems like a petty issue to some, but I hear character voices in my head from reading text very easily, and punctuation affects that, so things like missing commas after interjections ("Hey the sun will be setting soon.") end up mattering. And call me picky, but if your fantasy game refers to itself as a "tale of high adventure" in its own opening scene, you probably shouldn't refer to the introduction of two young children to their magical training as "onboarding."

#KDplays

I'm liking Sea of Stars so far, but man is it annoying to run across another game where everything is good except technical problems with the writing. It's not as bad in this regard as Stray was — that had some pretty blatant grammatical errors — but there are still some obnoxious style issues like sloppy punctuation and discordant word choices that even a halfway competent editor should have fixed.

#KDplays

I'm immediately enthralled by the pixel art and animations in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. They're so much nicer to look at than the mostly reused 3D models in the PS2 remake in my opinion.

Though I might have made a mistake picking up my GBA SP to play these things on. The not-actually-a-backlight washes things out in a blue tone, so the original DS's true backlight might lead to a better experience. #KDplays

I finally managed to find my Game Boy treasure trove (read: shoebox) at my parents' place! It had gotten shoved into the attic for some reason (luckily inside a larger plastic bin). Looking forward to diving into some of my favorites: every single Zelda released on a Game Boy is on the list, as are the Golden Sun games. But first up is going to be Chain of Memories! #KDplays

I might actually have to dig out one of my other DS models to play Spirit Tracks properly. The microphone on the 3DS XL is on the bottom right, right underneath the hand I'm holding the stylus in. 😬 An unfortunate design change that the game couldn't have foreseen...but it also could have thought about the wisdom of using the microphone so much in the first place. #KDplays

I finished Phantom Hourglass tonight. That last boss battle is real fun! I really doubt the game is ever getting ported as is, because it relies way to much on the DS's form and capabilities, but I hope it gets a ground-up remake someday.

I also started Spirit Tracks, and while I'm enjoying it and looking forward to playing more, I'd forgotten how much it takes on blowing into the DS microphone, including for one of the actual combat items. 😮‍💨 That's going to get old.

#KDplays

Incidentally I'm feeling better about FFXVI not having party members as actual consequential battle participants after putting up with Donald and Goofy's bullshit in Kingdom Hearts 1 again. Goddamn masochists, the both of them. #KDplays

Also, I managed it with only Cura, because I forgot you had to talk to Aerith TWO more times after she gives you a different reward to get Curaga, because Kingdom Hearts is a very special kind of jank. 🤬

At this point I've done most major things aside from the secret bosses. I'm gonna attempt Phantom to get the last top-tier spell, but I think I'm probably gonna skip the rest. Then it's more DS Zelda until I can find my GBA version of Chain of Memories. #KDplays

Not gonna lie: I've been sucking pretty bad at Kingdom Hearts. But last night I managed to clear the 50-round Hades Cup in only two tries (and if I'd bothered to attend to my item stock the first time, it might have been a one-shot.) Cerberus took me out the first time, and I used up all my items fighting it the second time (because that fight is hot steaming garbage), but I managed to barely scrape by through all the remaining rounds and bosses. 😤 #KDplays

The more I play of Kingdom Hearts 1, the more I feel like I need to skip a lot of the side content to avoid burning out early. I just don't have the ability to grind anymore that a game from that era requires to even get close to 100% completion. And it doesn't help that the Final Mix version is just flat-out worse in some ways, most notably the new item synthesis list which requires a bunch of drops from new Heartless varieties, each and every one of which is annoying as hell to fight. #KDplays

The more I play of Kingdom Hearts 1, the more I feel like I need to skip a lot of the side content to avoid burning out early. I just don't have the ability to grind anymore that a game from that era requires to even get close to 100% completion. And it doesn't help that the Final Mix version is just flat-out worse in some ways, most notably the new item synthesis list, which requires a bunch of drops from the new Heartless, each and every one of which is annoying as hell. #KDplays

I'm just gonna say it: I don't understand why some people have such a negative opinion of the Temple of the Ocean King in Phantom Hourglass. Even if you don't outright enjoy it, it's not like you're endlessly doing the same thing like sometimes gets said. You never have to pass through a given part more than 3 times (4 if you're being very completionist), and the items you get along the way let you do the earlier floors differently and faster. It's hardly worth the ire I've seen it get. #KDplays

Perhaps my spiciest Kingdom Hearts 1 take is that the Atlantica swimming control scheme is just fine. 🤷‍♂️ At worst, it's no jankier than the rest of the game's movement, and it actually seems to be a prototype of the way some modern games handle underwater movement.

(The real problem with Atlantica is being subjected to that far-too-short, far-too-peppy music loop. 😵‍💫) #KDplays #KingdomHearts

Perhaps my spiciest Kingdom Hearts 1 take is that the Atlantica swimming controls are just fine. 🤷‍♂️ At worst, they're no less janky than the movement controls in the rest of the game, and they actually seem to be a prototype of the way some modern games handle underwater movement.

(The real problem with Atlantica is being subjected to that far-too-short music loop. 😵‍💫) #KDplays #KingdomHearts