Recently Played #1

Sometimes I just start playing a game randomly and get so into it that I just forget to write about it at the time. It’s not very often I do that since I try and pick the games I know i’ll enjoy. But this last week I started two games and one of them was not what I expected it would be.

Luigi’s Mansion 3

Man oh man. I’ve had Luigi’s Mansion on the Switch since it came out. I never was in the mood or found the time to start it up. I watched a few minutes of gameplay but nothing significant. My history with Luigi’s Mansion was only playing the first one on the Gamecube. I remember making it to the final boss but never beating it. The 3DS version I bought on release but never played it. In my mind I had a lot of fun with the original Luigi’s Mansion so I was going into the third installment ready to love it. The game starts off like any other generic Mario/Luigi game. The story is basic which was fine. I don’t think many people play Mario games for the premise. After the intro you start to explore the hotel as Luigi. This is where I started to realize the game was not going to be fun. Although I have a standard Switch hooked up to my TV I play on the Switch Lite. I prefer playing on a screen 9/10 times. I figured the game has cloud saves. So after a few hours and some eye fatigue I looked it up and it turns out Nintendo’s first party game does not support cloud saves. Shocker that Nintendo is so behind on the times. I was stuck playing it on the Switch Lite. The second thing that stood out was how bad the controls were. Initially I wanted to blame it on the Lite but later in the game realized it was just bad control in the game. Playing the game and sucking up ghosts with the bad controls isn’t bad but there are a handful of sections that require precise control over your character and it’s extremely frustrating. The game is laid out in floors. So to move on to the next level/floor you need to find the button for the elevator. That’s pretty simple and at first the game is fun. But after maybe floor 4-5 the game begins to get repetitive and boring. It falls into the usual tropes. Here’s a ton of enemies to fight. Oh back track and do stuff you already did all over again. You got the button, oops watch out this guy got it. Now you have to track the button down again. It adds segments that require you to do things again when it’s not necessary at all. It’s the developers attempt to make the game longer. Which is sad because each floor has a unique design and some stages have satisfying puzzles to solve. The charm of the game alone would have been enough. The bad controls and repetitive gameplay really just made the game not fun. Some of the boss fights are pretty straight forward and others make no sense. I had to google two fights because there was no indication of what to do in game. By the time I hit floor 8-9 I was over the game. I just wanted to finish it and get it over with and mark another game off my backlog. I finished the game at about 14 hours. I didn’t touch on the collectibles but there are tons of them in the game. I was only able to complete one set of collectibles in a stage and that was by luck. Overall I was surprised by how I couldn’t click with Luigi’s Mansion 3. I genuinely thought it would be a home run in my book but I couldn’t get invested in it.

A King’s Tale: Final Fantasy XV

A King’s Tale was a game I had in my library for a very long time and never considered playing it. I started it up after reading it was a short and straight forward game. It’s meant to be a free to play prequel to Final Fantasy XV. Final Fantasy XV was a game I only put maybe 2-3 hours into and never went back to it. Unlike FFXV, A King’s Tale is a 16-bit style hack and slash. The whole game took me maybe two days to beat but I played it in bursts. Most of that time was spent in the Dream Battle Challenges. The main story itself can probably be beat in about two hours. Your character has a few melee attacks and can use three different types of magic. In the course of the short campaign you also come upon three companions that can help you in battle. The entire game plays like a hack and slash. There are waves of enemies to defeat and some mini bosses that need to be defeated to move on. The entirety of A King’s Tale is pretty mindless. It makes for a great time killer that requires very little attention. The story is tied into Final Fantasy XV but i don’t think it really has much value to it. If I ever go back and play FFXV maybe I’ll see the connection to A King’s Tale.