Many Welps

I left the Steam sale this year with less games than the last few. I scoured through my wishlist to see if there was a burning desire to buy anything, and low and behold there wasn’t much. My wallet was happy.

There were 3 games that I’ve wanted for a while that I always tell myself the next time their on sale I’ll pick them up. I finally pulled the trigger last week and am now the proud owner of 3 JRPGS: Tales of Zestiria, Tales of Bersaria, and Legend of Hero’s Trails in the Sky. That last one is a mouthful. I used to play JRPGs all the time, I guess I was feeling a little nostalgic.

For some reason I decided I also wanted to play a pure puzzle game too. So now I own the Witness. We’ll see how long that desire lasts

I haven’t sat down to play a game by myself in a long time. Gaming is usually a social activity for me and my friends and even when I play games alone online there is still that social aspect.

I can’t tell you the last time I played an offline single player game. It’s nice to have a game just to yourself without worrying about getting people together to play with.

But these last two weeks I’ve been sucked into Tales of Zestiria. I can’t tell if it’s actually good or I’ve been away from single player RPGs for so long that it just seems that way. I find when I step away from something for a while, wethter it be books, tv, or movies, the first one back always seems like the best thing ever. Nevertheless, I’ve been enjoying it, racking up 20 hours so far.

The story is pretty simple, cliche even. Our hero, Sorey, sets out on an adventure with his best friend to stop the Lord of Calamity from taking over the world. Along the way you gather a menagerie of characters to join your party to defeat evil. It’s all really light-hearted  which is a nice change. It’s not overly dramatic or grim. None of the characters take themselves that seriously. It got a lot of charm .

Then there’s the battle system. This being my first Tales game, I’m not sure if the system has always been this confusing, but I’m still grateful for the tutorial messages that pop up from time to time even after 20 hours of gameplay. It’s a action battle system based around skill combos.  You control one character at a time and can switch between them if need be. Each character has it’s own set of skills and it’s been fun testing out which characters work best with each other.

I’ve been enjoying myself and I definitely feel like I’ll see this one through to the end. This might also be the first time I’ll beat a steam sale game so soon after purchase!