Xander
@xanderhworks
Very tired furry who makes art and rambles about video games. 🔞 Sometimes NSFW. 27 🏳️🌈 He/Him Art commissions open! Follow me on Twitch: Header image by emdeejaydraws.tumblr.com PFP by @cobalt2112.bsky.social
Damn...what a fucking game. I absolutely loved Live A Live. A structure that still feels fresh. Simple but compelling combat. One of Shimomura's slept on OSTs, across a charming genre-mashup that builds to a genuinely fantastic finale. The remake is very well done too.
All the optional dungeons complete. All the ultimate weapons acquired. And we have our final team for the endgame. Let’s. Fucking. Go.
And that's the Distant Future. Yeah, narrative wise, this one is definitely the strongest. I wasn't expecting a cabin fever space horror flick with hardly any combat. But it works surprisingly well.
I can basically sum up my thoughts with this meme. “We’re simplifying rotations even further.” “That’s bad.” “But we’re making jobs play more distinctly again!” “That’s good.” For now I’m in wait and see mode cause this could go a lot of different ways.
Join me an hour and a half from now at 10:30pm GMT when @bandanadog.bsky.social and I will be playing more Slay the Princess! With 3 routes down, we should be able to make it through to the end this time. www.twitch.tv/alstar_hworks
And that's the Near Future, Definitely the longest and most substantial chapter. Though truthfully, while the mecha/Shounen anime influence was very charming, I found the cast of this one a bit grating (maybe it's the voice acting). Still, the vocal theme song was hype.
Present Day might be my favourite chapter so far. Not only is the framework and aesthetic a lovely Street Fighter homage but this makes full use of the game's battle system. With no level ups, this requires genuine tactical use of buffs, debuffs and weaknesses. It's super satisfying.
That's Old West down. Yeah this one was solid. It was very short and I kinda wanted a bit more from the siege preparation, but it told a cute little story, the cast is fairly well defined for how little they’re around. And Sundown’s a lead with fun dialogue options.
Edo Japan chapter complete, did the pacifist run too. This is a really creative chapter with a gorgeous aesthetic, but I'm a bit torn on the way it plays. The choice to kill or spare enemies makes me really see where Toby Fox took inspiration but it's somewhat cryptic to go full pacifist.
Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is still excellent. This really is THE Zelda game. Everything we know about the series in terms of lore and design is iterating on what this game established. And they did it so well that it still holds up after all this time.
Shout out to this scene for being some of the best voice work I’ve heard in a while.
And so Koudelka comes to a close... Thank you to everyone who came to watch my streams. I genuinely loved playing this game. The blending of survival horror and JRPG elements is novel. It's a refreshingly snappily paced for a JRPG, with some of the best cutscenes and voicework of the PS1.
@cobalt2112.bsky.social made this delightful GBA Fire emblem themed portrait of my fursona! She does awesome work, go check her out!
Was thinking about Third Birthday and rewatching Woolie’s old streams. It got me thinking about how Hajime Tabata clearly had an eye for interesting direction, and storytelling through gameplay mechanics. But the illusion quickly falls away because he over-relied on the same tricks.
Imperial China chapter complete. While this one suffers hard from structural repetition, it's honestly kind of brilliant in storytelling through gameplay.
Prehistory chapter complete. Well...I can't think of many JRPGs which let you overhear the protag cum.
grids.fun/t/about-me-v... Why not? Reach kinda stands in for any Halo game. And either Adastra or Echo could go in that slot but they only had one of them. 😅
Oh. So apparently I softlocked myself into notorious difficulty spike at far too low a level to beat it. And the only way the get out of it might be to restart the entire chapter. Fuckin' hell...