Sometime around 2 July, my gaming fatigue disappeared. The Steam Summer sale and an increase of mood allowed me to get into my favourite hobby again. Moreover, while I wrote about how demoralised I was over Tango Gameworks’s closure, a factor in the fatigue, some great news happened since - they have been bought and re-opened by Krafton (a South Korean game studio) and brought the Hi-Fi Rush IP with them! Now the spark has really come back. Here is what I’ve been playing since:

Shin Megami Tensei V - Vengeance

I was a bit hasty on purchasing this. The original SMT5, while very fun, was a disappointment - unfinished story, awful performance due to it being a Switch exclusive, and baffling gameplay decisions like level scaling and locking bossfights behind level caps really ruined what could have been a great game. This re-release, now on Steam and other platforms, promised to solve that with its new Chaos of Vengeance story, but I thought that wasn’t enough before going into it. I’ll give Atlus credit - Chaos of Vengeance is much better than the original pitiful excuse for a story. The game is also well optimised - 90FPS on Steam Deck on high settings. You can tell that the years spent trying to get this damn game running on a Switch resulted in a super efficient game engine, one that really shines on actually decent hardware.

The gameplay is still as good as ever, although the amount of QoL additions was perhaps a bit excessive - I’m finding this instalment MUCH easier than the original. SMT5 was already far more streamlined compared to its predecessors like Nocturne, so I’m not sure if they had to go so far in this direction. Still, I’ve almost finished and I’m satisfied with the efforts Atlus has gone to improve it.

Persona 3 Reload

Another Atlus game. What can I say, these games are truly addictive - I love Atlus RPG combat so much that I never lose interest in it. Persona 3 is a game I have good memories with, having played Portable (both male and female routes) ages ago back on the good ol’ PSP. Having been introduced to the genre thanks to EarthBound, I wanted something on the same wavelength - a modern say setting, no random encounters, etc. And while it was a lot more different and ‘anime’, it’s still a special game to me. But enough about my nostalgia, what about Reload? I was also hesitant on picking it up because I didn’t want to replay a game I’ve already beaten twice, especially considering that the FES content is pay-walled behind a season pass expansion coming out next month. None the less, I bit the bullet. Playing at the same time as SMT5V, the actual combat can’t compare - it’s way to easy and slow-paced - but the presentation of Reload is outstanding (as I expected). I’m enjoying this one, but I think I’ll stick to an 8/10 unless the endgame - and Episode Aigis - can blow my expectations.

Outer Wilds

As well as buying these new games, I decided to explore my backlog. Outer Wilds is a game that is endlessly praised by every corner of the gaming community, but usually accompanied by an important recommendation - “go into it blind”. And that’s exactly what I did - the only thing I knew about Outer Wilds is that it had space exploration and a time loop. And acoustic guitars. And that the guy from Heroes produced it. I’m only a few hours in, but I’m definitely interested in what I’m playing. So far, it feels like 2001 - A Space Odyssey in video game form, complete with mysterious reality-altering monoliths, but I need to delve in further to see the narrative curveballs that I’ve been hyped up about. Also, the lack of voice acting is a bummer, considering how immersive it is in every other aspect.

Street Fighter 6 and Guilty Gear Strive

Of course, I just couldn’t leave out my favourite game genre out of this. My 75 hours of SF6 in 2023 is now 110 - I just couldn’t pass Akuma (and soon, Terry and Mai) up. It’s still peak, although I’m still not in Diamond yet. As for Strive, I’m not quite sure why I got back into, as I’ve always thought it was a step down from Xrd. I guess I wanted to try out the plenty of DLC that came out since I last picked it up. I was actually quite surprised to see all the mechanics they introduced, even updating movesets and adding game modes. They also fixed the online! Netcode was always great, but Strive’s actual connectivity was dogshit last I played it - lobbies straight up didn’t work. It’s much better, although I’m noticing more dropped matches than before - that might be because of Linux/Proton, though.

Overall, I’m happy. There is nothing quite like fighting games, and. I also want to get back into Tekken 8, but its 97GB install size (and increasing) always daunts me.

Baldur’s Gate 3

I’ll be honest, having never played D&D and not jiving with isometric-style WRPGs (unless you count Disco Elysium), I was a bit lost with this one. But I’ll definitely go back to it. How can I not, everybody sucks BG3 off to no end.