coprime

Thing the First: I'm not planning to do snowflake_challenge this year, but I was pondering Day 1 and came up with something.

In your own space, talk about your Happy Place—the things that give you joy, calms you or keeps you sane. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

CrunchyRoll recently put up two Haikyuu!! two movies that it said I hadn't watched, so I did! And it turned out the movies are just the third season repackaged, which I had watched, but I watched them again because I was enjoying revisiting the Karasuno boys. And then I was thinking about this question, and the thing that brings me joy is fandoms, especially revisiting old ones. Rewatching Haikyuu!! was like, "Ahh, what sweet volleyball-obsesses idiots. Noya! ♥ ♥." Then I came across links to a couple new-to-me Bashir/Garak fics, and it was like, "Ahh, yes, Bashir/Garak, so good and banter-y ♥ ♥." And I was reminded how I'll sometimes get hit by nostalgia and go searching for old beloved pairings or fandoms I don't frequent much anymore and how delightful it is to find something new-to-me or even something old that I enjoy just as much this time around as the first.

(Thinking about this made me go see if Chrome & Gunmetal and File 40 were still around. Chrome & Gunmetal, yes; File 40, not so much! So then I had to do my best to update any links in my bookmarks or coprime_recs that linked to File 40, and "Ahh, Napolean and Illya ♥.")

So I think that's my happy place? I love adding new fandoms, but there's something so nice about revisiting an old one somehow, like snuggling down in a warm blanket with something relaxing playing while wearing your fuzziest jammies.

Thing the Second: A couple friends came over today, and we played Takenoko, which was a Christmas present for me from Husband. He thought I would like it because of cute pandas, and he was totally right. We played a couple times ourselves after the friends left too. You and the other players build a garden and grow bamboo in it while the panda goes around eating the bamboo you just grew, and along the way you are trying to complete different card objectives (like, have the panda eat two green bamboo or grow three pink bamboo that are three units high), and whoever has the most points at the end wins. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Playing a game does not feel like it takes as much time as it does, which is good, and there didn't seem to be a ton of time between turns even with four people, which is also good. And it's just fun going around growing bamboo and then having the panda eat it.

Thing the Third: I feel like there is a different thing the third I was intending to blather about, but I can't remember what it was, so instead I'll blather about something that I keep intending to blather about but haven't yet: Pokemon Go.

( Cut for talk of health/weight stuff )

I really enjoy Pokemon Go! It's gotten me walking nearly every day. (The past couple weeks have been rough with the holidays and then immediately getting sick after.) And I really enjoy getting the fresh air even when it's cold. I've rediscovered the bundling techniques to stay warm outside I used to use for my college job. I'm like a serious casual player? I try to put myself in situations where I can join people doing raids or maybe get an EX pass, but I don't raid every day or go out because someone posted on Discord. (Although I will say I'm in if I happen to be out and someone else says something.) But it's so much fun for me to go out and see what I'll find. Maybe it'll be something new, or maybe it'll be another Hoppip! I have found many Hoppips, but Hoppips are cute and fun to throw pokeballs at, so it's all good. I do not think I would enjoy this game so much if I did not like pokemon designs in general. Husband is like, "Oh, you hatched another Trapinch? I'm sorry," and I am like, "Trapinch, yay, Trapinch is so cute!" It probably helps that several of my friends also play it turns out, so I had people to answer questions when I first started. And the community where I live is pretty friendly. Or at least, if there is drama, I am far enough removed from it to not know it exists, haha.

The BF and I had a couple people over last weekend for a board game day, which is always a ton of fun. And also means we get to play a bunch of new-to-us games!

( Six Games Behind the Cut )

We also played a couple games of Codenames, which is still a lot of fun.

I attended Gen Con this past weekend along with the BF and had a lot of fun! We also played several new-to-me games, of course. (But not too many because I can get scheduling overload easily.)

( Six Games Behind the Cut )

So those are my thoughts on the games I played at Gen Con this year: several really fun games plus one big dud.

I completely and utterly adored Secret of Mana right from the beginning when I saw how brightly colored everything was. The Boy's outfit is bright blue with a hot pink bandana, cape, and belt! It is all so cheery-looking. (The three PCs all have canonical names, but the English version of the game gives you zero way of knowing what they are. So the Boy got named after the BF, the Girl got named after me, and we named the Sprite child Coke because who can resist a lame pun. It is most certainly not me.) The backgrounds, the character sprites, and the enemy sprites are all just lots of fun visually.

There is a lot I loved about this game, but the biggest has to be that it works really well as a 2-player RPG. You can even do 3-player if you have the right equipment. It has a real-time battle system, no random encounters, and all the PCs walk across the map. So rather than having the Boy stand in for the entire party while in towns or traveling between locations and then just getting to control your character during battles, you get to control your character all the time (with just a few exceptions). You want to go talk to that townsperson? Go talk to them! You think it's a good time to visit the inn but your partner wants to visit the weapons shop next door? Now it's a race to see who gets to their door first. Or you can stun a monster then push it over to where your partner's fighting and then both of you can whale on the monsters at the same time.

Secret of Mana is super fun to play as a multiplayer game. Occasionally there's the problem of someone getting stuck because the party is too far apart but it happened much less than I would have thought and mostly to the computer-controlled third party member. Coke would get distracted trying to kill things and we'd have to backtrack half a screen to get him moving forward again.

The characters seem well-balanced to me, so no one's stuck playing the useless character. The Boy is the fighter, the Girl is the white mage and healer but also is decent at hitting things, and the Sprite is the black mage who is good at offensive magic but bad at hitting things. The BF says the game is a little broken in that the Sprite's magic is super-powerful when leveled, but the BF and I managed pretty well without using Coke's black magic ever. The BF ended up pretty leveled in all the weapons, I leveled the whip to maximum as well as getting very good at healing magic, and that strategy worked well and was more fun because we both contributed.

I really liked the magic system too. You learn new spells when you encounter an elemental creature that gives you their magic. So when you find Undine you learn water magic and you get fire magic from Salamando. Each set of spells has its own level (so I ended the game with very high Undine magic from curing everyone all the time but low everything else because I rarely used it), and the maximum level for all the elements depends on how far you are in the game. The weapons system is similar, but each weapon's maximum level depends on whether you have forged the weapon to that level. I liked the whip because I could hit things without having to get too close; the BF rotated weapons depending on the situation. (And because, as the Boy, his weapon skill for the individual weapons increased faster than mine did, he was pretty handy with all the weapons despite rotating.)

I could go on and on about various things I enjoyed while playing Secret of Mana because there are a lots of them, but but mostly it was the sense of fun pervading the game while still having a serious plot. The three PCs are all very expressive, the Sprite especially. The game does some unique things like letting you travel between continents via being shot out of a cannon and opening treasure chests by throwing them on the ground. The music is unique and fun and included a couple tracks that I just wanted to sit and listen to whenever they came on. The plot is fairly simple and not super unique but I found it engaging. (And, honestly, I find a lot of RPG plots pretty similar. Oh no, there are a lot more monsters than there used to be! Here, young boy, use this sword to go on a quest to find out why and save the world! But first, assemble a party of fellow adventurers and friends to help you with this task. And go fetch some special MacGuffins in order to advance the plot. Oh and don't forget to turn your boat into an airship at some point.)

So yeah, I found a lot to love in Secret of Mana. But mostly how awesomely it works with two people.

Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom is an odd little text adventure game. There's a still image of what's in front of you and you have fourteen commands at your disposal for interaction. The basic plot is fairly standard - someone evil has captured the princess and you have to rescue her - but there are a lot of gameplay hoops you have to jump through in order to save her.

I played it because I thought it'd be cute since all the characters are anthropomorphic fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately, the graphics are so simplified and pixely that any charm they might have had is lost on me. (The graphics for the original, computer version have a lot more personality than the NES version, but on the other hand the NES version is the longer game.) Also, the game is nearly impossible to lose unless you give up because it won't allow you to proceed until you've done everything you need to do in an area. I say nearly impossible because there is exactly one point in the game where you can die, and I managed to find it. Go me! The downside of that style gameplay is that I often ended up stuck and trying every vaguely relevant command I could over and over in the hope of doing whatever the game wanted me to do.

And it is so rarely obvious what you need to do in order to move on. Either you need to talk to someone three times in a row in order to get more information from someone else, or you have to ( slight spoilers for Level 6. ) And those are some of the less complicated sequences you have to do. Needless to say, I often got stuck and would then pass the controller to the BF who tooled around checking stuff until one of us had an idea. We managed to get by with only checking the walkthrough twice in the first seven levels. Level 8 required extensive checking of the walkthrough because ughhh.

I can see why Princess Tomato has a small cult following. There are some fun elements: battles are done via rock-paper-scissors followed by a staring contest, and the mazes are constructed so that hugging either the right or left wall doesn't always solve the maze. The "what do I do next" frustration is probably much lessened when you've played to game before, so that everything is quirky fun rather than nonsensical vexation. (I did enjoy playing when I was making progress and figuring stuff out, but I think it's far too easy to get stuck without a clue as to what you're missing.)

There are also some creepy sexist bits that I did not appreciate. The kidnapped Princess Tomato is being forced to marry one of the bad guys, so rescuing her from that is good. Except your reward for rescuing her is that she now has to marry you instead, which I feel defeats the point of rescuing her. There's also another point in the game where you walk into a bathroom that an orange lady is showering in and she rightly calls you a pervert. The BF and I ended up perving on her a lot because we kept getting stuck and hoping she would have some new information for us because she was the only person we could find to talk to.

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords is a Bejeweled-style RPG, which is all you need to know to decide whether you'd like this game or not. In my case, I like fantasy RPGs and can quite happily play Bejeweled (or mahjong or Boxspin or Fishdom...) for hours, so Puzzle Quest was the perfect game for me!

I played as a fire wizard named Aria. (The game suggested Ulmina for a name, so I chose my own, better name.) It was a lot of fun! Wizard is probably the easiest class to beat the game with because they get lots of offensive spells. I'll probably replay the game at some point using another class, after I've had a chance to forget the story a bit more. Aria was kind of mouthy, and I wonder if that was a deliberate character decision or if the game only has one set of dialogue for the PC. To be determined when I play through again, I suppose.

Gameplay was super repetitive, so I don't recommend this game to anyone who doesn't love playing tile-matching games. One thing I appreciated was the lack of a time element for virtually all the battles. (I believe there's a timed option in the preferences, and training a mount requires playing a game with a time limit.) I...honestly don't know if grinding is a necessary element of the game or not. I know I only deliberately repeated a quest in order to gain experience at two points during the game, both early in the story. On the other hand, there are lots of encounters while traveling and I did repeat quests in order to capture creatures. It never felt like grinding to me, but that probably has more to do with me than with whether or not I was grinding.

The plot is nothing special, although I feel like there is a dark version of the plot floating in the background of the game that never gets acknowledged. (You siege cities all over the land in order to collect tithes from them! You capture creatures, keep them in your dungeon, and force them to teach you any spells they know! You steal runes from every outpost you come across in order to make better equipment for yourself! By the end of the game Aria could have easily become the next Dark Lord, and no one would have been able to stop her.)

The computer AI seems like it's a cheaty-face because the AI seems to get way more cascading matches than you the human player do. This might be true because the computer loads several rows of tiles above what you can see for smooth playing and the AI picks the best move. It should only pick the best move based on the tiles on the board, but it sure feels like it picks the best move based on all the tiles. The game is still not very difficult even with the AI being a possible cheaty-face, so I guess whether it is or not doesn't matter. I just spent a fair bit of time insulting the game because of its cheating ways.

I really enjoyed playing this game! Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals is actually a prequel to Lufia & the Fortress of Doom, and the intro to Lufia & the Fortress of Doom is the end boss battle of Lufia 2. According to both the BF and the internet, Lufia 2 is easily the best game in the series.

The plot is fairly standard with some "chosen heroes" having to fight a rising darkness from taking over the world and destroying everything, but it's enjoyable enough. ( Generic spoilers for the ending ) However what was really fun for me was the gameplay in the dungeons.

( A Let's Play video showing part of the beginning of the game )

In the dungeons, the monsters all move according to a defined pattern (different patterns for different monsters) and only move when you move. No random encounters! Yes! There are random encounters when you walk across the map, but you really don't spend much time walking around the map unless you can't figure out where you're supposed to go. I love that you can avoid most monster fights if you're smart and careful.

And the even more awesome thing about the dungeons is you have to solve puzzles in order complete them! I can do puzzles! And puzzles are much more interesting to me than just fighting monsters and making sure you've walked everywhere.

Originally the BF played and I watched, except he more did the puzzles than solved them as he'd already played through the game a couple times. But that was boring to watch because he "solved" everything too quickly for me to try solving anything myself. So I convinced him to let me play instead, and that was a lot more fun, haha. And later in the game, we collaborated on the tougher puzzles. Good times, lots of fun!

This was the first RPG I've ever successfully played, and I would recommend it especially to people who like puzzles.