#25 - Persona 4
What happens when you mix a social simulator with a role playing game? You get Persona. A series about teenagers who summon personas to fight various monsters. The game's enemies and personas are heavily linked to mythology, and Jungian psychology. The game has kind of like two different modes so to say. The social simulation mode you spend the day going around Inaba, talking to the people there or doing certain jobs or quests to upgrade your social links. The better social links you have, it allows you to unlock new arcanas and create more powerful personas. You can also do activities to increase certain skills like reading, studying or playing basketball. Our hero still needs to live their daily lives but you're also limited by time. You can only do so many activies per day and going dungeon crawling takes up a day, on top of that you need to complete certain quests before a certain date or else it's game over and the game will go back 7 days so you can try again. The 2nd mode of the game is your traditional RPG dungeon crawler. Explore the randomised dungeons, fight turn based battles and your personas essentially act as your "magic". There's quite a few dungeons in the game although the dungeons themselves are only one theme per each so large dungeons can get a bit repetitive. Once you reach the final floor you fight a boss and beating the boss will complete the dungeon, although you can always revisit the dungeons. The bosses are really great, all unique and interesting in their own ways. Final note on the RPG aspect if your main hero is KO'd it's game over, unless you have an item which can revive them automatically so it is best to always keep that in mind.
#24 - The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
The Wind Waker happens to be the first Zelda game I ever completed, although not the first I played. It wasn't a game I played new, it was a game I played after the Wii came out, somewhere around 2007 or 2008. But Wind Waker is also my favourite Zelda game. Something about the charming cell shaded graphics and marine theme really attracted me to the game. I love exploring the wide open sea and finding treasures, and new islands to explore. Because the world is so big it's kind of magical to just sail in this endless blue and see a tiny speck of land appear and wonder what is there. The music and sound design is great and the gameplay is faster, Link is the most agile he has ever been and can preform some pretty acrobatic counter moves. The plot is also a lot more humble this time around and it slowly builds up as the game goes on which not only keeps the story somewhat relatable but keeps the player interested with what is going to happen next. The task at hand is serious but the game has a lot of funny and wacky moments which definitely builds up quite a bit of contrast and juxtaposition.
#23 - Metal Gear Solid
Enter Shadow Moses Island. A remote island off the coast of Alaska. Your job is to rescue the DARPA Chief and the Arms Tech President along with preventing the terrorists from launching a nuke. Desptie the name, Metal Gear Solid, the game is the 3rd in the Metal Gear series and it takes place 6 years after the events of the 2nd game, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. You play as Snake in one of the craziest plots in a Playstation 1 game, I don't even know what to say without spoiling something but things get kind of wacky and awesome. The game itself is a stealth game which is important to note since Snake himself can't take a lot of damage and his aim is not the best. You have various tools and options to go sneaking around and the game is usually pretty forgiving if you die. The controls are a bit clunky and acutally I find they control better with the dpad along with that the design of some areas is pretty BS. Like an instant kill room full of poison gas. It's also a pretty short game, only around 5 hours or so in length. The graphics look quite primitive now but the atmosphere really keeps it together along with the stealth gameplay and boss fights. So why not, if you have a few hours one afternoon and want to play a classic stealth game with a pretty crazy campy plot which oddly enough also states some pretty important message, check it out!
With that I am finally caught up.
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