Backloggin’ the Year – Paws’ Pilgrimage, September 2021

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Welcome to Backloggin’ the Year, a feature that discusses the challenges and excitement that comes with working through your backlog. Site owner Anna Marie Privitere looks at where she’s at in terms of her backlogging goals.

September was extremely busy work-wise, as I spent the month handing off all my gaming clients over to new hands; it’s a little bittersweet leaving the video games industry professionally, but it does mean I’ll have a lot more time and freedom to work on RPGamer content.  September is also another month where I didn’t make any progress on my backlog, but I at least finished four of the six titles I began this month.  On to the full report!

The Streams: Final Fantasy IV Pixel Remaster / Actraiser Renaissance / Nina Aquila: Legal Eagle / Hades


It was a mix of multiple games on our Twitch channel through the month.  As a stream team, we’ve all selected one of the Pixel Remaster titles, and despite being a lot of the Final Fantasy IV Free Enterprise randomizer, I’d never actually finished the base game, until this month!  A lot of my speedrun experience helped get me through the normal pain points of the story, though I occasionally got stuck and needed help from the chat on how to proceed.  I want to take some time in the near future diving into the other entries in the Pixel Remaster releases!

I also picked up Actraiser Renaissance, and couldn’t put it down.  I streamed it twice, and then put down my thoughts in a review here.  Hades made a few appearances on Sunday morning streams, and the month ended on a high note with Nina Aquila: Legal Eagle, a hybrid visual novel / RPG.  There’s so many good games coming out in October (and so many good games in my backlog) I’m starting to have choice paralysis around what to stream next…

New But Not New: Wanderlust Travel Stories / Raging Loop / Neko Atsume

Reporting in on the other two visual novels I picked up!  First is Wanderlust Travel Stories, which mixes together both fiction and non fiction accounts of travel with some interesting choice mechanics; as I progressed through each story, I was managing each character’s moods, money, and more.  It was fun and easy to pick up and play whenever I had a few minutes.  Raging Loop is another visual novel that falls under the usual refrain: I wanted to pick it up at a decent discount, and it finally went on sale, so I snapped it up.  This game is definitely not for the feint of heart, and might make a good spooktober title for those looking to play something a little darker in October.  Lastly, Neko Atsume arrived on Apple Arcade, and I love watching the kitties play.

The 5-Hour Rule: Dark Deity?

I picked up Dark Deity, a Fire-Emblem style TRPG, in June when it was announced during an E3 presentation; I typically wait to pick up a multi-platform game until it arrives on Switch, but I gave in this time, and ended up regretting it.  Not because the game is bad — honestly, it’s amazing — but because at launch, there was no mid-fight save, and maps can be long, sometimes topping 90 minutes in length.  A lot of my gameplay time comes in the “hurry up and wait” periods of my job, such as sending out a document and then waiting for revisions to be returned to me, or an approval for posting, or just waiting for a swell in activity on social media or Discord; I typically don’t have a single hour-plus period of downtime to commit to a game without being able to temporarily stop.  Though I did find out recently they added a mid-fight save system (which isn’t acknowledged at all in game!) so perhaps it’ll make a leap back to the active game pile.

New Releases: Legends of Talia: Arcadia / NEO: The World Ends With You

I’m not sure what happened – I went the whole month without playing any NEO:TWEWY. I’m still sitting at Week 3, Day 2 and I’m not sure I could pin down a reason for dodging the last few hours of gameplay.  I do plan on finishing it up this month, either way. One game I did manage to complete was the third of August’s three purchases, Legends of Talia: Arcadia.  The reviews for this one were pretty bang on: it feels like just when things are getting started, the story ends!  Here’s hoping we get a Legends of Talia: Chapter 2 at some point in the future, as the characters were great and could definitely stand up to another couple hours of storyline.

THE FINAL TALLY

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Anna Marie Privitere

I like writing reviews and impressions. Co-Owner of RPGamer.

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