Backloggin’ the Year – May 2018 Edition

Unlike last month, May was surprisingly not a bust. I had a lot of milestones this month in selling my mother’s house (finally), finding a new place to live that is pet friendly (have you all met Bru and Ko? If not you should!), and realizing that things are potentially changing for the better. My stress levels are still on the high side, if only because now it’s time to pack, organize, and ready myself for a new adventure.

I am excited, but also absolutely terrified.

To keep myself sane when I wasn’t stressing, panicking or organizing important information, I gamed. I finished three games: two RPGs and one visual novel. Since the majority of my physical backlog is packed away (and won’t be accessible until August), I am pushing myself to work through the digital backlog and seeing where it takes me. Let’s chat about what I completed in May, shall we?

Galaxy of Pen & Paper

Completion Time: 11 hours.

As my full review stated, I should have finished this game last year. It fell by the wayside in a way that made me feel somewhat disappointed with myself. My full thoughts are in the review, but I want to say how much I really liked going back to this game. It’s not one of those RPGs where you play it, put it away for months, and then wonder where the heck it was you left off. It’s such an open-ended experience where you can choose how you want to complete missions and you can put as much or as little time into it and still feel like you’re making progress. I think Behold Studios has a fun franchise in its midst, and I am curious to see where the Pen & Paper verse goes from here.

Dragon’s Crown Pro

Completion Time: 10ish hours.

Confession: I still need to write an actual review for this game, but I did finish it, so that’s a start! I reviewed the vanilla version of this years ago with staff member Adriaan den Ouden and we loved this game. Truth be told, I still love this game. In my original playthrough I was an Amazon, and I maintain that I still feel it’s the best overall class in the game. For Pro, however, I thought it would be great to work through the game as a different class, so I went with the Fighter, giving him the saying “Buy me Bonestorm or go to hell!” (If you know the reference, you get a cookie). Online is still very smooth and I really did enjoy having people jump into my game to lend a hand when things got crazy.

I liked playing the Fighter, though he lacked the frenzy and insanity that was playing the Amazon. He’s a great character for beginners who aren’t as familiar with hack n’ slash titles, but his skills didn’t entirely gel with me the way I was hoping. I think during this year’s Extra Life I may have to see if my husband and roommate want to play this with me and let me tell you: it’s going to be Dwarf time.

Odds & Ends

The last game I want to talk about that I managed to knock out of my backlog was Collar x Malice. This otome game looks at the events of a terrorist organization known as Adonis, and its desire to cleanse Japanese society. The heroine is a police officer investigating Adonis’ activities, and the event only known as “X-Day.” This game was gripping, and I really liked the cast of characters and the love interests. I felt for the Adonis crew, if only because while their actions are reprehensible, I had some empathy because I found myself understanding where a lot of their actions were coming from.

I totally came out of the game on team Mineo Enomoto, which surprised me since he’s not entirely my type. I think he was just adorkable to say the least. Overall, I really enjoyed digging into the different paths throughout the game and I am looking forward to trying some of the other otome games I have soon.

Backlog Tally:

Number of RPGs completed: 7

Number of Non-RPGs completed: 6

Total Games Beaten: 12