Games of 2020
I have graduated back on July 15, 2020 and have yet to find employment. With the pandemic and theater vacation it's hard to get invited to interviews but hopefully, September will turn things around.
I have received a job offer but declined it as I decided I did not want to move out of state. I regret it somewhat but I would rather wait it out and be jobless than force myself into a job I clearly do not want.
As an avid gamer, I now finally have time to play games but can't find the energy to do so. Hilariously, I played far more during lockdown even though I was supposed to use that time to study and work on my finals project.
During the lockdown in Germany I spent two weeks on playing Persona 5 Royal and the other 3-4 weeks on Animal Crossing New Horizons.
I would like to say I regret buying AC:NH. The game is mindless and has no goal, one ends ups playing without any thoughts. Some find it joyful and relaxing but with my personality this game is absolute hell. I already spent over 400 hours on this game by now and I regret every single one. If i could turn back time, I would tell my self from April to not buy this thing and spend it on a more worthwhile thing.
In the beginning AC:NH seems like a fun, cute game but every single day you have to do the same thing. You check the stores, pick your fruit to sell, talk to your villagers, maybe fish, maybe dive in the waters, chase insects. You decorate your island, your house, make your own thing. Unfortunately, I am a collector to the core so I ended up powering through the game to get everything and anything in a short time. The drive to collect things had me spend time going back and forth in time to get all the things quick and just be done with it. Eventually I took a break because I just hated myself with every hour I played this game. Hours I could have used playing something that actually makes me feel joy. Animal Crossing had me straight facing through the game. All the dialogues with the villagers are repetetive, there is no excitement. You just feel accomplished as you get the goods you want and decorate your place in the way you want. I guess there are people out there who believe that to be fun and relaxing. For me, it was a tool to hate myself more than I already do.
I also recently bought Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town. The game is fun but as it's very repetetive it ends up becoming as much a mindless game like Animal Crossing. In the game you have a trophy list that you can work through but one of the trophies has you play through 50 in-game years which is A LOT of game hours. The plus point in the game though is that you can marry, even go through same sex marriage and eventually get a kid. The kid doesn't grow beyond it's infant years though and time basically stands still even if you play through 50 years. The dialogues are also all the same but to keep friendships up or level up love-wise you have to talk to everyone every day and give them presents, triggering the same conversations every time. Getting to marry your favorite character serves as great motivation but once you are done with that, all you can do is keep going or redo the whole thing and try to marry someone else. But as I said, nothing really changes.
On the other hand, a game I really loved playing was Persona 5 Royal. P5R still follows the same plotline as Persona 5 but for this game Atlus changed up some of the gameplay, making it more fun, added new characters and added a new final storyline. The characters are still as charming as in P5 but with the new added story line, it is now possible to properly get to know Akechi Goro as you can spend time with him. When I played Persona 5 I had hardly any interest in him as he was solely another victim that directed his sorrow into becoming a villain character but in the new game, we got more insight to his personality and his story, making him much more interesting. Especially when he gave up his facade in the last three months of the game, he became a favorite character of mine. He is trashy to the core and I love it.
The plot is basically still the same, the palace run through have been changed up a slight bit but it was not hard to get through. The only thing I cannot remember being that hard was the Fifth Palace runthrough. When I played it back in Persona 5, I did use assitance from walkthrough for the puzzles as I did not want to waste my time on figuring out how to get through the transit area. But i feel like it was much harder in the P5R and the walkthroughs I had on hand did not seem fairly accurate. What made it worse though was that once you got through and decide to send in your calling card, you first have to run through to the port with Shadows on the way that were fairly hard to avoid (in comparison to the Fourht Palace). But getting through that is not hard either. The boss battle of that Palace though was no joke. A 30 minute limit and a row of Enemies that self destruct and resurrect unless you manage to take them out before that? Yeah, 30 minutes time limite but I spent over 3 hours on it before I decided to go to sleep and come back to finally manage to get it after an hour. As I was usually defeated before hitting the 30 minute mark, you can do the math on how many times I had to redo this boss battle. I even had to set the difficulty to easy, I was really that frustrated. In comparison the actual last boss battle was an absolute joke.
I still find it creepy that the adult women in the game (apart from Sae) are romantic options while homosexual relationships are off the table which is ridiculous as Ryuji and the protagonist have a great relationship and Yusuke and Akechi seem fairly gay-coded. Some point during the bonding with Akechi, he even makes a half-way confession. I feel robbed like Persona 4 fans felt robbed of a love line between the protagonist and Yosuke.
What's great is that outside the game, you can enter the Phantom Thieves den where you can play the Daifugo game against the Phantom Thieves or use the points you collected through in-game achievements to decorate the Phantom Thieves den. At the den you can also review videos or images you unlocked. It's very sad that you can screenshot during the game up to the Mementos Palace but once you reach January it's not possible anymore. But all-in all, I l o v e this game. With the second playthrough you can unlock a secret battle, so I want to get with that but one playthrough takes about 150 hours and I don't find the energy. I spent two weeks on that.
Other than these three games I didn't particularly played much despite buying a few games. I recently bought Final Fantasy 7 Remake and should get to that as it takes about 40 hours of gaming. Additionally, I also bought Persona 4 Golden for steam and pre-ordered Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory. There are plenty other games I want/need to play but I just don't feel the energy for it. The desire is there, the motivation less so.
Hopefully, I will manage to play through another few games before getting employed and then not being able to play as much anymore.