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Hopefully starting the new year off right
Since I spent the bulk of last year roasting one of the worst Fire Emblem: Three Houses fanfics I've ever read (and maybe the worst long-form fanfic I've ever read, period), I'm taking it easy to start 2024 to ensure I begin the year in a good mood.
The first game I played in 2024, Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless, fixed the ridiculous stat scaling from Disgaea 6 that made leveling and grinding feel somewhat pointless (no doubt inspired by the mobile game Disgaea RPG, which I think ended service in North America last year), and it feels a lot smoother since I'm playing it on PC instead of my Switch. It's too bad it got rid of the series' long-running "Bonus Meter" in favor of mission-based rewards (finish the stage in X turns, finish a stage while only deploying X unit types, etc.). I guess it was a way to push players away from farming a single level and setting off a screen-clearing Geo Panel explosion and maxing out the meter every time to get all the rewards. Eh...I'll live with it.
And while Super Mario Bros. Wonder is crazy fun, I almost forgot that Nintendo continued its quest a few years ago to wean people off the dead Wii U by rereleasing Super Mario 3D World in 2021. I've yet to try the Bowser's Fury side of the game, but the Cat Suit is one of my favorite Mario power-ups since the rare Hammer Suit in Super Mario Bros. 3 (which was so OP that I was surprised the New Game+ mode didn't fill your inventory with that instead of a whole complement of P-Wings, which turned you into Raccoon Mario/Luigi and let you fly throughout an entire stage without needing to get a running start first).
I'm not sold on the first volume of Ragna Crimson, though, one of a bunch of manga series I picked up in one of the last Humble Bundle book sales of last year. I'm all for stories about dragon slaying, and the artwork and designs of the dragons is nice, but the protagonist, Ragna, doesn't really do it for me. I've only read the first two chapters, and in the first one he meets his future self who'd spent at least two decades becoming an all-powerful dragon killer, steals those powers (because he starts out as a weakling who looks up to another dragon hunter who's two years younger than him and wants to be strong enough to be useful to her) and defeated a dragon that was about to swallow him whole literally in his sleep. Maybe it's just personal preference, but I expected a little bit more buildup. Now that the bar's been set so high so soon, I feel like the story will either need to start throwing dragon gods at Ragna to give him some sort of a challenge, or set up fights that allow the side characters to shine to keep things interesting.
The first game I played in 2024, Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless, fixed the ridiculous stat scaling from Disgaea 6 that made leveling and grinding feel somewhat pointless (no doubt inspired by the mobile game Disgaea RPG, which I think ended service in North America last year), and it feels a lot smoother since I'm playing it on PC instead of my Switch. It's too bad it got rid of the series' long-running "Bonus Meter" in favor of mission-based rewards (finish the stage in X turns, finish a stage while only deploying X unit types, etc.). I guess it was a way to push players away from farming a single level and setting off a screen-clearing Geo Panel explosion and maxing out the meter every time to get all the rewards. Eh...I'll live with it.
And while Super Mario Bros. Wonder is crazy fun, I almost forgot that Nintendo continued its quest a few years ago to wean people off the dead Wii U by rereleasing Super Mario 3D World in 2021. I've yet to try the Bowser's Fury side of the game, but the Cat Suit is one of my favorite Mario power-ups since the rare Hammer Suit in Super Mario Bros. 3 (which was so OP that I was surprised the New Game+ mode didn't fill your inventory with that instead of a whole complement of P-Wings, which turned you into Raccoon Mario/Luigi and let you fly throughout an entire stage without needing to get a running start first).
I'm not sold on the first volume of Ragna Crimson, though, one of a bunch of manga series I picked up in one of the last Humble Bundle book sales of last year. I'm all for stories about dragon slaying, and the artwork and designs of the dragons is nice, but the protagonist, Ragna, doesn't really do it for me. I've only read the first two chapters, and in the first one he meets his future self who'd spent at least two decades becoming an all-powerful dragon killer, steals those powers (because he starts out as a weakling who looks up to another dragon hunter who's two years younger than him and wants to be strong enough to be useful to her) and defeated a dragon that was about to swallow him whole literally in his sleep. Maybe it's just personal preference, but I expected a little bit more buildup. Now that the bar's been set so high so soon, I feel like the story will either need to start throwing dragon gods at Ragna to give him some sort of a challenge, or set up fights that allow the side characters to shine to keep things interesting.