Finished a few ones:
- Leap of Love: An adult visual novel with choices that matters. Not bad.
- Orwell - Ignorance is Strength: A visual novel very linear. It was ok.
- Life is Strange: True Colors: I really liked this one, more than Life is Strange 2. Story, characters, music, graphics... everything is really good. I bought the novel that tells Steph's story instead of the DLC, it should be a good read :)

Full list here

Flashback

Another game that was given away by GOG, this time it was in 2022 Summer Sale. So this is why I redeem those freebies, to have something to play when I'm too broke to buy those games myself. Except for those Whale Rock Games, I refuse to get them. I still have some standard for my GOG library

I can't really remember the last platformer game that I've finished, especially using Keyboard. Lumo perhaps a couple of years ago? Anyway I have some difficulty in executing some action keyboard combos in this one, a combination of rust and aging hands XD. During my playtime I sometimes wonder how the hell I could finished Prince of Persia using only keyboards in my childhood.

I know the background of Flashback, as I also have finished my GOG copy of Another World (shutout to maxleod for the 2023 gift). Finished it on modern style game on normal difficulty, this game still held up well. I could see why this game is so well regarded Even if it's a tad difficult especially on the last Alien chapter where the difficulty really spiked. The Blue Morphing Alien is such a pain, especially if you stuck in a tiny space or you have to deal with 3 of them at the same time. The new Rewind feature helped me a lot in those combats and the jumpy-jumpy parts that I sucked at. I honesty don't think I could finished the Classic Mode though haha.

Haven Park

This one was a freebie from 2023 GOG New Year Sale.

For me this game is both tackling a freebie and also finally completing a game that was installed and abandoned. I first try it around June last year and only play around 1/2 hour of it. Only now after a year and 3 months later I finished it with around 6 hours of total gameplay. Thankfully I still remember the mechanics and basic premise so I don't really have to start all over again.

This game often compares with A Short Hike with park management in it. Pretty basic management actually, build some stuff and repair things. Wish we have more variety in buildings as build the same things over and over again can be boring. But if you actually manage your own park and have to build things on your own you have to content with what you got. And the repair of Park's assets is where I spend quite some time figuring out where the hell is that broken thing that I missed.

There are some puzzles and quests. The Heart of The Mountain was satisfying and the choose your adventure on the Tower is a good one also. Wish there were more though. Also fireflies. Back in my childhood I can find them easily and there are plenty of them on open fields. Today with artificial lights and houses replacing empty lots and fields in the overtly populated city I don't know if I ever see them lately.

Just beat Earth Defense Force 5 on PS5. It's awesome!

I beat the previous one, EDF 4.1 (the updated version of EDF 2025), a couple of years ago. It got me utterly hooked because its blend of Serious Sam style crowd control action, horror / disaster B-movies and a very Japanese take on Starship Troopers, combined with a ridiculously addictive progression system and largely open-ended mission design, was in a way gaming perfection to me.

EDF 5 failed to blow me away quite as much because it's basically just a remix of EDF 4 with a few updates and additions and I can't even point out with certainty which elements are new and what has been removed. Unless I'm mistaken, the biggest change is that instead of fighting just a random assortment bugs, UFOs, robots and a wannabe Godzilla, there's now a sentient alien species behind the entire invasion, called "Primers", and their origins and motivations are actually explored and discussed quite a bit in the dialogue. And they do appear in the form of huge humanoid enemies who have tons of health, wield weapons and even demonstrate some tactical behaviour. At first this felt really off to me, as it kind of clashed with the EDF formula of just laying waste to hordes of mindless insects, but I soon appreciated how they mix things up in terms of tactics, pacing and tone.

Speaking of tone: on the one hand it's again "Starship Troopers but written by an eight-year-old". It's intentionally silly and childish. Everyone is delivering the stupidest lines with utmost seriousness, they are shocked when they learn that the giant ants dig tunnels or that bees can fly and have a queen. They won't shut up about how cool it is to be a soldier, crowds of soldiers yell "EDF!" or sing the EDF anthem while charging into battle and overly optimistic and heroic music celebrates even the smallest (and questionable) victory with great fanfare.

I think that the tone has also gotten much more grim, though. If memory serves, in EDF 4 it felt like everyone's endearing optimism was justified because in the EDF universe that's all it takes for the good guys to win. Here the narration never lets you forget how much is at stake, how much has already been lost and you always know in advance that every plan that is definitely going to turn the tide, is in fact destined to end in disaster. Heck, some moments downright sent shivers down my spine because the characters' despair clashed so hard with the innocence of the entire premise. I went into this expecting that I'd just have fun while singlehandedly saving mankind from giant ants but I gradually got dragged into Neon Genesis Evangelion instead!

Anyway, I got utterly hooked again and racked up well over 80 hours of playtime in what felt like an instant. How Long to Beat says that the game takes 30 hours to finish but I again chose to (mostly) play the game on hard difficulty, which resulted in repeated approaches with different gear and tactics to many missions + I also replayed numerous missions with different classes which use completely different gear and have very different playstyles. And I was very well-entertained almost the entire time, excluding a few missions which had some insane difficulty spikes (and in several cases I ultimately gave up and chose to only beat them on Normal difficulty instead).

The core experience of obliterating hordes of monsters in varied and largely open-ended missions in huge landscapes is still just a pure joy to me and I don't mind at all that it's utterly janky - in a way that only adds to the game's charm. I just love how the series blends intense run and gun action with such an epic scale and frankly also a substantial tactical aspect that reminds me of the space combat sims and other vehicular combat games of old. As a matter of fact I kind of wish that you could also give some commands to your allies (and perhaps even also choose troops and equip them) because the gameplay lends itself perfectly to this - far more than most games that have actually had this kind of stuff! Sadly your control over allies is limited to approaching them, which will automatically make them follow you around (which is not always the wisest tactical choice).

And it throws in a loot system that is as addictive as collecting trading cards. After almost every mission (usually even if you fail) you're presented with a list of new or upgraded weapons and other gear (even including vehicle drops and in the case of one class artillery strikes and whatnot) and I honestly had trouble putting the controller down because I constantly felt this urge to immediately check out my new stuff in action. And even after failing a mission several times in a row I usually felt determined to keep trying again with different gear and tactics until I finally beat it, which only made the victory so much more rewarding and satisfying.

I'm very glad that after reaching the credits, the game abruptly released its cruel hold. Even with so many remaining unlocks from higher difficulty levels and for the other classes, I don't feel that uncontrollable urge to just keep going anymore.

The bad news is that I have already installed and started playing EDF 6. Dear God, what have I done...

Fire Emblem Engage (Switch)

Fire Emblem Three Houses is still my favorite game on the Switch and Fire Emblem is the best Nintendo franchise. Engage isn't the series at its best though. No aspect of this one is the equal of the previous Three Houses. All of the characters are annoying and juvenile, the dialogue is long winded and way too much of it.

The team building stuff between battles is a real slog. The battles are sort of okay...but are like a one trick pony. The only tactic the game ever throws at you is the scripted reinforcements from off map- from all edges of the map. They come in waves. After a few battles you realize that this is what the game just does and so you just cautiously inch your team forward until you trigger the next wave of reinforcements out of no-where. Then you pull you team back into a defensive line and wait it out. Repeat over and over. For 60 hours. It's the games only difficulty- trying to stay sane after the 10th wave of enemies coming out of nowhere from off map. It's sort of like a horror game that keeps trying to jump scare you until it no longer scares you because you're expecting it. Even leaving that aside, I still feel the battles are way below three Houses.

I suppose the music and art is still quite good. I's say to anyone with a Switch that wants a Japanese Strategy RPG, play something else. Even that Chinese Fire Emblem copy "Banner of the Maid" is way better...actually that was a pretty good game TBH.