Weekend Gaming Playlist

The weekend has returned, and along with it comes a couple of games that I hope to jump into over the next few days!

The Lost Child

When this game was first announced for the Switch, it came alongside a trailer that showed little to no actual gameplay, which had me concerned. Later on, I discovered that it had first-person dungeon crawling and Pokemon collect-a-thon-like mechanics in it, and I was intrigued quite a bit. Shining in the Darkness on Genesis and Deja Vu were some of my favorite games as a kid, both of which were first-person. And of course, what child of the 90s didn’t love Pokemon?

Luckily, the game ended up being pretty sound mechanically, although the story is not that great (at least so far). Stay tuned in the coming weeks for a full SwitchRPG review, where I will go into much more detail than revealed here.

Tales of Berseria

Recently, I’ve been trying to broaden my RPG palette by dipping my toes into some series that I’ve neglected over the years. Now to be clear, I haven’t had anything against these series specifically, but time and personal priorities have never worked in their favor. Tales of Berseria is the first game that I’ve played in almost 15 years from the Tales series, with the first being Tales of Phantasia during High School. I decided to give Berseria a try a few days ago and, boy, am I hooked!

The story thus far has been intrigued, the combat and supporting mechanics are satisfying, and the English voice acting is surprisingly good despite being a common complaint of mine when it comes to modern JRPGs. In the case of Berseria, I have yet to run into a genuinely annoying character, though I’m not counting such an occurrence completely out just yet. Either way, Berseria has me excited for what is to come from the Tales series (hopefully) on the Nintendo Switch.

BONUS: ELEX

I’m actually not going to be playing this game; instead, I wanted to give you a quick update on my thoughts of it. In past Weekend Gaming Playlists, I have really talked ELEX up because, at first glance, it looked like something right up my alley. An open-world RPG, janky or not, is something that tends to sit well with me and my tastes. But, after playing it last weekend, I instantly regretted the purchase.

Character movement is floaty, combat is awkward, and the main character’s voice acting is so cringy that even Tidus is laughing all the way from Besaid. You could say that I just described all Pirahnabytes games, and that is true to an extent. But, I found a way to look past the shortcomings of many of their previous games, whereas I was itching to set ELEX down for good almost immediately. I can take meh mechanics in a game if the story is strong or the characters are interesting, just like I can tolerate a mediocre story if the supplemental systems are sound. ELEX kind of failed for me in both ways, so I’m really bummed about buying it outright without a sale. Oh well, you can’t win them all.

That should be it for me this weekend. What are your gaming plans?