October felt like it flew by for me! Work was busy, I’m still working hard towards getting my driver’s license and I’ve been dealing with a few health things, but I still found time to get stuck in to some new games this month. I downloaded a few demos to find my next obsession, and started a new otome which I’ve been meaning to check out for years!
October is, of course, the spookiest month of the year. This meant that I had to try out a game to fit the creepy vibes! I’m not a huge horror fan, and I jump at even tiny noises so I don’t find super scary games enjoyable, but I wanted something to fit the atmosphere of October. I decided to pick up 7’Scarlet, an otome title which originally released in Japan 10 years ago and was brought over to the US and Europe in 2018. It follows a girl who travels to a small town where her brother was last seen before he disappeared, and not everything is as it seems. She must team up with a group of guys to uncover the mysteries of the town and find out the truth of what happened to her beloved older brother.
This game started out slow for me, and I actually came dangerously close to dropping it, especially as I couldn’t play the route I wanted to choose without playing another route I was less interested in first. But as 7’Scarlet progressed, it actually had really good tense moments and I found myself desperately wanting to connect the dots to figure out what is going on in the town of Okunezato. I actually haven’t finished it yet; I’ve got a couple of routes left to go, but it was the perfect game for those dark autumn evenings and it really got my brain working. I’ll see if I can write a review of it once I’ve finished!
As you may know if you read this blog, I’m a huge Dragon Quest fan. I primarily play the mainline Dragon Quest titles; I dabbled a bit in Monsters: Joker back in 2010 on the DS, but I ended up just using cheats to break the game in weird ways. Maybe I’ll write an article about that sometime? That aside, I’ve never really tried Dragon Quest‘s newer spinoff titles like Builders or the newer Monsters games. That’s why I decided to download a demo of Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince, which follows DQ4‘s antagonist Psaro in his younger years as he becomes a top tier monster wrangler. Think Pokemon meets Dragon Quest!
I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about this one, but I ended up having a bit of fun once I got the hang of it. I spent a fair while running around with all of the monsters rejecting me, but once I had a good party going, I ended up really enjoying the scenery and the seasons system. It was so fun to return to the world of Dragon Quest IV as well; Psaro is one of my favourite antagonists so it was great to see another side to him and I loved hearing the updated DQIV music and seeing the Dragon Quest IV locations remade for modern consoles. Please give us a Dragon Quest IV remake; I’d love it!
I spent a fair while taking a look at different demos I could download and got a bit overwhelmed by the choices. I chose to stay close to the genres I knew I enjoyed and downloaded a demo for Sea of Stars, a turn-based indie RPG which I’ve heard many good things about. I wish I could give you a better synopsis of what goes on in the game, but the demo actually dropped me into a scenario which must take place past the beginning of the game, as it actually had redacted bits in the dialogue for spoilers! The demo has you choose a protagonist and venture to the workshop of an ancient wizard to uncover a treasure for a group of pirates in exchange for travel to a new area.
I’ve heard so many good things about Sea of Stars, and maybe I need to give it a second chance, because I really struggled to get into this one. I love turn-based RPGs dearly and the artwork in this game is absolutely stunning, but I think the issue was that I didn’t start from the beginning. I’m not sure if there’s a reason why the Sea of Stars demo starts in the middle of a story, but having areas of town blocked off and even dialogue redacted for spoiler reasons didn’t give me much to get excited about. It also didn’t really give me a chance to get to know the characters or form attachments to them; they were just kinda… there. I ended up dropping the demo, but maybe I should give it another shot?
I’m looking forward to what November brings! I’m actually going away on a trip, so maybe I’ll look for something to play while I travel. I also want to check out some of the great suggestions I’ve had for my next cosy game, so I might take a look at some of those this month. Stay tuned!
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