Board 8 > July Game of the Month Club ft. Cassette Beasts, Danganronpa, and Journey

(+) Yeah! (+)

Cassette Beasts is on sale for $16 USD on Switch for only a few more days
https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/cassette-beasts-switch/

Near the end of Chapter 3 in Danganronpa.

A few silly moments, but enjoying it for the most part. Gonna try my damnedest to finish before Tuesday, but we shall see!

Will definitely finish before the month's end

Case 4 the only decent case in the first game imo. Still a better game overall than 2 on account of the cast. (Unpopular opinion)

I think I'm fully done with Cassette Beasts now. I did enough of the post-game grind to finish Frankie and Vin's sidequests, unlock the Here Comes the Sun quest, and beat the two bonus bosses.

Unfortunately this post-game stuff is... not great, even aside from the grind needed to unlock most of it. Frankie really kinda sucks as a character. Shame that the worst character in the game is trans rep, especially because we already had really good trans rep in Kayleigh. Helia is a straight-up slugfest in a way the other bosses weren't. Lenna is a good bonus boss but cross-over cameos are always kinda iffy. And the rest was just answering questions that didn't really need answers or were already pretty obvious.

It's not enough to sour me on the game but if they do future updates I hope they significantly reduce the grind and add content that's closer to the quality of the main game.

Kenri posted...

especially because we already had really good trans rep in Kayleigh

Wait, what?

It's not stated outright (so I think it's open to interpretation) but there's a couple lines that felt like really obvious hints:

-There's one conversation (I think around 4 hearts, or maybe after 5 but before starting a relationship) where she awkwardly tells you that she has a different body in New Wirral than she did on Earth, that it's closer to the body she has when she's dreaming, and that she's worried it'll change back when she goes back home.
-(post-game) If she's in your party when you beat Lenna, Lenna will talk about how she's an archangel who lives as a human now, and that it doesn't matter how you were born but rather how you choose to live, and Kayleigh enthusiastically agrees.

So again nothing explicit but these (especially the first) stuck out to me as fairly trans-specific experiences. Unlike Frankie though I don't think it's intended be canon per se, but rather one possible way for certain players to relate to the character.

Journey beated!

Aw yeah, Zelda finished and I'm back on GotM! First time I've played Journey in 12 years (i.e. since it's original release). Apparently the PS4 version gets different trophies than PS3. A very different experience this time around, as I did not encounter a single other player. Took about 45 minutes and...didn't hit the same way as it did originally, which is not a surprise.

Also started on Cassette Beasts. Not sure it's really my type of game but we'll give it a go and see if I can finish it in a week.

Please tell me you guys turned off the music vocals in Cassette Beasts. I've only played maybe an hour and it was driving me nuts! Thank fuck there was a setting for that.

I'm sorry but the music in that game is incredible, can't imagine wanting to turn it off

Some vocals worked for me and some didn't. I didn't realize there was a setting for that, but I probably wouldn't have done it.

I was pretty disappointed with the musical direction of CB. Like, at first, I thought the idea was great, but once I got to the second song with the same dubious singing, I was like, this is no longer just early-90's nostalgia any more. I really liked some of the music in Lenna's Inception, so I was curious to see what Baylis would do when he wasn't working within retraux limitations, but I think he went a little too all-in on "art."

On the settings menu you could press RB (I believe) to get to Sound options and one of those was the ability to turn the vocals off.

To be clear, it was driving me nuts because I'm trying to read text (with those little vocal interjections...) at the same time and hearing song lyrics was messing with my concentration. No judgement on the quality of the music.

Seanchan posted...

To be clear, it was driving me nuts because I'm trying to read text (with those little vocal interjections...) at the same time and hearing song lyrics was messing with my concentration. No judgement on the quality of the music.

Oh, yeah this would be annoying. None of the text in the game is dense enough for it to bother me but this has definitely bugged me in the past when I've tried to e.g. study at a cafe.

Monthly Progress
Cassette - KCF, Ark, Kenri
Dangan - Paul, KCF
Journey - Mauron, KCF, Sean

Nominations
Ark - Citizen Sleeper, ANNO: Mutation
MMX - Carto
KCF - Mafia, Scott Pilgrim, Bookwalker, Alwa's Legacy
Kenri - Astalon, Klonoa 2
Paul - Crisis Core, Kena

Supports
MZero - Alwa, Kena
KCF - Astalon

Drawing tomorrow

Nominate Magical Drop 2, Hylics, and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Support Klonoa 2

I'll nominate Awesome Pea.

Nominate:
Half Life 2
Batman: Arkham Origins

I will also toss a support to Deus Ex: MD

Noms: Remi Lore ~Lost Girl in the Lands of Lore~
Spirit of the North

Last call for Noms, changes, and supports

Support: Scott Pilgrim, Klonoa 2, Kena

Nominate: Billy Hatcher

Everything's closed. I will draw momentarily

And your August Games of the Month are...

Half-Life 2 (PC/360/PS3/Xbox/Android)
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (PC/XB1/PS4)
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game (PC/Switch/XB1/PS4/360/PS3/Luna)

Congrats to Sean, Crispy, and myself for having their games selected!

I remembered that I forgot to mention that I beat Mass Effect 1 and have already started slightly on 2. Haven't done much, but at least progress has happened.

YEAH!

I love how one of the first games I'm going to (re)play on my new gaming PC is 2004's finest title.

I'll mention it again in the August topic, but I do have a free Steam gift of HL2 for PC, if someone is definitely going to play it (and somehow doesn't own it already).

Deus Ex: MD and Scott Pilgrim are available on PS+ Extra

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is $4.50 USD on Steam, GOG, Xbox, and Playstation
https://store.steampowered.com/app/337000/Deus_Ex_Mankind_Divided/
https://www.gog.com/en/game/deus_ex_mankind_divided
https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/store/deus-ex-mankind-divided/BQKSXQGJTN43
https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP0082-CUSA01799_00-DXMANKINDIVIDED0

Scott Pilgrim vs The World is on sale for $5 USD on Steam
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2215260/Scott_Pilgrim_vs_The_World_The_Game__Complete_Edition/

Definitely in for Scott Pilgrim, may be in for a replay of Half-Life.

Also own Mankind Divided, but have a problem playing stuff out of order.

On Chapter 6 of Danganronpa. Should be beat tomorrow at the latest

Probably nothing for me, though I do love Half-Life 2 and wouldn't mind replaying it.

In for Scott Pilgrim

I've been meaning to play Mankind Divided forever. Probably just that for me this month.

Dang one away from Billy Hatcher.

But Scott Pilgrim!

Ubisoft+, which includes Scott Pilgrim, is currently running a $1 for 1 month promo (remember to turn off auto-billing after unless you want to continue with the service) that you can choose for for PC or multi-access. Multi-access includes PC as well as a smaller library on Xbox and Amazon Luna.

There's almost no chance I finish Cassette Beasts in the next 3 days. I'm only like 8 hours and 2 archangels in. And I don't expect to have tremendous amounts of time the next few days.

It's kind of neat, at least with the puzzle-ish things in the overworld and getting new powers. I'm not big on the battles; there's too many combinations of types and effects for me to be super strategic. I feel like I'm mostly just brute forcing my way through. I should also probably invest more time in buying and setting up stickers but...I don't really want to do that for 6 characters...

Seanchan posted...

I'm not big on the battles; there's too many combinations of types and effects for me to be super strategic. I feel like I'm mostly just brute forcing my way through.

It feels that way at first for sure, but once you get used to it it's basically just "effective moves give debuffs, not very effective moves give buffs" and you don't have to worry too much about the particulars. Especially because brute forcing continues to work.

Not that this will help you finish in a couple days, but don't be intimidated if you keep playing it after the month is over.

I lowered the difficulty down a bit since I didnt feel like being super strategic. Basically Im just waiting for the point where I really NEED to engage more deeply with the sticker system.

I will likely still bother finishing it, since Im not the type to stop on a game unless its really terrible.

I lowered the difficulty down again because who cares! Still a good deal away from the end though.

I finish the month at Level 40, 8 Captains down, 3 Archangels down, 4 Landowners down. I've kind of settled into a particular rhythm and team with the starter (evolved twice into Wool...something) and Eugene's robot archer guy. It gets a little dicey if those 2 get taken down.

I WILL finish this, just unfortunately not in enough time for a GotM Cool Point. I'm not super digging it but I can see why it would be popular. It's obviously inspired by Pokemon and JRPGs but there's a bit of Paper Mario in there as well.

Finished Journey

eh I'm not super big on it like some people are. Most fun part was the sliding and the least fun part was the mountain (particularly since it still kept going way too long after it's obvious what it's going for)

I didn't even know that there was a difficulty setting for Cassette Beasts.

Cody has beaten Journey

That was shorter than I remembered, but still a pretty game. Sliding in the desert is my favorite.

KCF0107 posted...

I didn't even know that there was a difficulty setting for Cassette Beasts.

It's actually 2 settings. I forget exactly off the top of my head but I think it's one for "level scaling" and another for "enemy intelligence"