Thanksgaming + Winter controller break

Final Fantasy Type-0 HD was on sale for $10, and I have almost no experience with fringe FF games. It's definitely a relic of its time, with cutscenes upon cutscenes of emotionless dolls that pepper little bits of action. The game was originally a PSP title and is structured for short play sessions. I might be used to new games that tell you everything about where to go and what to do, but I keep getting lost in the middle of missions because I have a short attention span, and this game is just not sucking me in. There's a main cast of 13 characters, all named after poker cards, and you can swap them in and out in groups of three. I might eventually develop a taste for this, but there are more pressing games to complete.

My wife has been plugging away at the Kingdom Hearts: The Story So Far, which is a 9-game anthology. She's beaten two of nine so far: Kingdom Hearts and Chain of Memories, which has shuffled cards into the action RPG mechanics. Weird. She's now onto KH 2. This one has lots of Disney IP including Tron, Pirates of the Caribbean, and 1950's Mickey Mouse Land (or whatever you call it) . The characters have more variety to the sounds they make during combat, so hearing Wifey play while I do other things is a lot less annoying.

I have slowed down a bit on my favorite smaller-developer game of the year: Dead Cells. I'm not sure yet if the hardest trophy is the no-hit boss trophies, or beating the game on the hardest difficulty. I'm trying to do as many as I can because the game is about to have an overhaul patch that will make profound changes to gameplay. UPDATE: you can quit out in the middle of boss fights and the game will save, so I cheesed 3 of the 4 no-hit boss kills. I can definitely say that the harder difficulties are the harder trophies.

Dead Cells also came to the Switch, along with no other original titles. I think I'm mostly underwhelmed by the Switch because I have the Wii U and PS4. I think someone who missed out on the last 5 years of games has every reason in the world to get one. Me? Call me when Metroid Prime 4 rears it's gorgeous blonde head. No, really. I emailed a distress beacon to Samus Aran. One of my coworkers brought her Switch and Smash Bros Ultimate to the holiday party, and it was off the chain, so there's that!

Moving on, I started Gravity Rush 2, which has quite an amazing color palette. I don't know what to call it, but it uses magenta as its reference point and it's gorgeous. The game's maps used to feature several connected cities that you could fly/fall through, and in this sequel, they've added another axis. The result is that cities are now in different levels of the atmosphere, and it makes exploration vertical and horizontal.

Yall couldna added a brotha in this?

December was pretty much the month of Dragon Quest XI, which is the epitome of a JRPG. Silent protagonist to save the world plot, eventually ending up at a boss in space that takes up more than the whole screen? Check. Overcoming battles via brute force grinding? Darkness as the protagonist without explaining what's so bad about darkness? No black characters? Triple check.

JRPG/anime tropes aside, the game delivered on everything I wanted with one exception: the music is sub par. Instead of recorded orchestra with a proper punch and full range, you're treated to some corny synthesized trumpets and boring percussion that all has a childish feel to it, and it's all super repetitive over this 100-hour journey. Most games have the decency to have a few regular battle themes, a sub-boss theme and a boss theme, at the very least. This game has that count, but it's also almost three times as long as your average, and the boss music is bad.

Even nuns gotta get loose in Lonalulu

There's some variety in the towns, which are each based on a real-world culture. The beachtown, Lonalulu, has a kahuna and NPCs greet you with mahalo. Hotto, at the foot of Mt Huji, has citizens that all speak in haiku. Citizens of Gondolia all speak broken English that is peppered with ma bella, ciao and bene. Also, characters drink and are drunk, including nuns, and there are some side stories of loss and grief that are well done.

Visually, DQ XI is playing in a living, breathing anime world designed and colored by Akira Toriyama. It is absolutely gorgeous, and both this and Dragon Ball Fighterz are two strong entries for best art direction of 2018, both from the same original artist. Toriyama likes to put characters' eyes close together, and I'm not sure what the intended effect is, but it's hard to take the game's more mature plots seriously. All the men look like their names are Cody, and I'm sorry but a cross-eyed dragon isn't scary. The women in this game, however, are all ridiculously hot. Like, problematically gorgeous. There's something in the water in the world of Erdrea. There's a subquest to 'get puff-puff' in every town from a beautiful woman, and one of your characters gets multiple suits of questionably-effective bikini-style armor. I think the cherry on top was that to get the game's true ending, you beat a dungeon and are granted a choice of boons, one of which is to marry your best friend. Like...a genie has to make that happen?

Krystalinda, cast your spell on me!

To its credit, DQ XI doesn't waste your time with clumsy romance, and there are at least as many...dudesels...as there are damsels in distress. Also, the two top damage dealers in your party are women, so there's that.