A shorter update this time! Just reiterating my latest review, discussing the next ones I have planned, and possible social media thoughts. Let’s get into it!
The Grand Return of Shiren!
Ah, I am pretty pleased to see this review make it out on time. Having to crunch a little bit to get this out between my full time job and having to work away at the main story, I was very pleased to have completed that main quest just in time to get it out on embargo lift.
Of course, it might be easy to assume and go “oh he gave it a 10/10 due to MD bias”, so I’m pretty much here to state that no, that score wasn’t an easy slam dunk and in fact I wobbled a bit between 9 and 10 for most of the drafting period. Having played prior Shiren games before and during my review period, I made internal notes on how I’d treat those compare to 6, and even my prior favorites (1, GB2, and NETSAL) had something that would impede me from really getting as addicted as I’d like, despite having something else in it that was really, really good.
But Shiren 6? No, that gameplay loop honestly is as good as I make it out to be and then some. The crazy big post game is just an extra layer of fun to the mix which makes it a must-recommend and easiest in the series to do so. Shiren 5 is cheaper, yeah, but i felt the gimmicks in that one made the earlier parts of it rather boring. Shiren 6 kicks things off running and I adore that so much, and I seriously do not see myself running out of enjoyment for this game anytime soon. Hell, when I finish my review queue, I’ll likely binge the crap out of the post-game even more and dive into the post-story, which I hear gets even crazier with all the gimmicks. Meanwhile though, I’ve just been enjoying the Peach Dungeon to an unhealthy degree, for my post-game fix.
This seriously is a must-own game and while Super had a similar engaging mechanic for me with Emeras, Shiren 6 basically is just as addictive as those moments were, and then some, without the usual early-game story bloat PSMD is critiqued from. (as much as I adore that game personally) I really don’t know if it’ll overtake PSMD as my all time favorite video game in history, but the entire package is easily no 2 on my favorite MD game list, and that’s not something I do lightly. It was a close call and a good fight to reach the top, but Shiren 6 is well deserving of my 10/10, just the same way Gravity Circuit would have been if I reviewed that game normally. Sometimes a good gameplay loop is the best thing you can do for your game.
Future Reviews!
RCG2 is done, yay! Another more recent game that took a bit longer due to waiting on patches to come, and it was pretty OK in the end. I’d still recommend it on any other platform though. As for what’s next, I’m currently dabbling in Neo Atlas on the queue, and also planning to focus on RICO/Lost in Harmony alongside it for Switch stuff, so those should hopefully be out in March. In terms of bigger, newer stuff, I wanna write my thoughts on the Analogue Duo system at somepoint soon, since my Super Pocket review is doing gangbusters and people seem to find my feedback for these retro systems helpful.
Having spent a long amount of time on the Duo, I absolutely have a few things to say about it both good and bad, and considering the gap in firmware updates I wouldn’t be shocked if I managed to finish this review before any key bugfixes come (though it did get a jailbreak recently)
PS4 is pretty much on pause again; I still feel that’s a system I’m gonna just binge the most due to the longest games being on it, so I wanna do it all back to back as much as I can. We’ll start with Omensight and Crystar when we do get back to it, though.
Xbox is just Full Quiet at the moment, which I plan to cover in March as well. An interesting take on a NES Metroidvania, but so far it hasn’t clicked with me… Hopefully it will soonish.
Steam is still all caught up save for some newer things! Two games I plan to cover around their embargo lifts next month, while my current focus there is the Tomb Raider remaster trilogy. Playing through the first game right now, and I plan to dabble in each of the three games plus their expansion episodes before giving my thoughts, since I’m coming in this as a complete newcomer to the IP. Pretty cool remasters so far! If I get a smaller indie offered or see something appealing I’ll add it to the queue, but otherwise XSX/Steam should continue to be stable queues and the ones I recommend publishers consider sending me stuff for if they still really want me to consider covering something. PS4 is a system I just flat out refuse to accept review requests for anymore, so don’t even think about that one.
Nearing Five Years
Around the middle of march, 2019, one of my internet besties passed away and that whole hit on my mental state derailed the queue to the point I’m still catching up on stuff I got around that time or was working on then even now. I’ve gotten way better at getting newer stuff out in a timely manner and i’ve slowly caught up on my backlog and avoiding asking the pubs for new stuff when I’m dealing with their old.
But man, five years since the worst year of my post-adoption life already. I still can’t even believe it came by so fast. First I find out in April I lost a close writing buddy to Type 1 Diabetes (a horrid disease), then I lose my own grandfather in August and continue to spiral. 2020 comes in with just a poor, poor world to deal with, and it took me until 2021 when I started to get back on my feet; the Tomie Interview in 2022 and the big video I crunched on then is proof that my passion was reignited around then!
I can’t promise something horrible won’t ever happen to me and make me feel as hopeless and bad as I did then, but nowadays I have a bigger, wider support group and tons of friends… So I feel that if anything tough did come my way, I could still power through it and continue offering the good writing you all expect from me. The fact I chose to continue my queue and cover every last thing I accepted regardless of the wait instead of just ignoring those obligations should be proof of my resolve. And afterward? Well, still waiting to hear back on a certain something I’m hoping to accomplish, but even if that falls through, I have fun plans for the post-queue period of SFG, not even counting the evercade reviews I plan to start doing to give the site some content when all is caught up.
Social Media plans…?
As of now the only places you can find me, as SFG, are Reddit, Twitch (SFGConnor), Youtube and Cohost, along with a few forums here and there. I still will never log back into twitter again unless some miracle saves that website, nor will I ever use Bluesky. That being said, due to Cohost’s suspect financial situation, I am getting a little bit worried I may be on shaky ground once again soon.
Thus, I’ve been considering making accounts on other sites, but not actively using them, just to have the SFG brand expand and used when needed to share big reviews/interviews/etc. If I go ahead with any of these, I’ll mention it in the next update post. Still, Twitch is likely to be the next place I start using more often, once the queue slims enough that is to be able to feel less bad about having free time to play my backlog of games I bought.
Well, that about does it. A simple update mostly repeating a lot of what I said before, but the Switch queue continues to be worked on! It hasn’t grown much and I’ve continued to be smart on taking games I can handle, such as Shiren and Cosmic Fantasy. Thus, I hope you continue to enjoy the flow of new and old games I’ll be writing about here on SFG! Also keep an eye out for our upcoming brand/logo revision… Until next time.