One of the issues with me and any kind of pop culture is that I’m never sure what I will like. I am very sure about things I won’t like, and I am rarely wrong on that front. This is me in a nutshell, though. I know what I don’t like/don’t want much more than what I do like/do want. I have told people that I won’t like something, and then they have been offended when I went on to, indeed, not like that thing. It’s gotten to the point where I rarely talk about it in the general/casual population because I know how outraged/upset people get when I don’t like what they do.
Side note: I have a friend whose husband takes it as a personal insult if she doesn’t like something he’s passionate about. Even if she’s very gentle about how she says it, he takes offense. It’s gotten to the point where she just doesn’t bother, and while I feel bad for her because she has to constantly stifle her opinions around him, I also understand why she does it.
It’s a people-pleasing tendency, and it’s really hard to break. In addition, I rarely find it worth it to voice my opinion and try to defend it when it’s unpopular. Not because it’s a worthless opinion, but because I just don’t have the patience or the fortitude.
Back to the actual post. Yesterday, I wrote my three most important ‘do not wants’ in a cozy game. Those are the biggest things, but there are other ones as well.
4. Don’t make the scope too narrow. I like games in which you can do a plethora of things. This is a hard one, though, because I don’t like having too much to do, either. I can’t tell you exactly where that line is drawn, but I know it when a game crosses over it.
One of my favorite indie games (which eventually became a cozy game, but did not start out that way) is Hades (Supergiant Games). It’s a roguelite/like with procedurally-generated rooms and rewards, a ton of dialogue (I was seeing new dialogue even after I officially beat the game (which takes multiple runs), vivid characters based on Greek mythology, and a ton more. Every run was fresh and diffreent, and even though there were not that many weapons, each had several ways to use them.
I will admit, I did not gel with the game for the first few hours. Then at some point, the game clicked, and I inhaled it for the next few months. As is typical of me, I was obsessed with it. By the time I finished, I was half-a-dozen achievements away from 100%ing it. The remaining achievements were mostly things that could be done without fiddling too much with the game (setting up ridiculous runs and such weren’t needed. Mostly). It was a surprisingly painless hundo chievo, which I really appreciated.
Let’s put it this way. I have done All the Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring. With the exception of Elden Ring, the rest were horrendous to achieve. My theory is that Miyazaki did not want to put in achievements, but he had to beacuse that’s the way modern games are these days. (These days meaning a decade-and-a-half ago or so until now.) Therefore, he made them as painful as possible as a way of protesting.
Anyway. Hades is chock-full of so much goodness. I will say that personally, my favorite part was the storyline and the characters. There were little nods to From Soft games, which I always appreciate. I love mythology, so I was so happy to have so many of them in this game. Each god offered different boons, and there were other perks as well. The on-ramp was steep in the beginning of the game, and it didn’t really level off until after beating the final boss for the first time (which was only the beginning of the game, really).
One of the best accessibility options in the game (which I did not use, but was glad was there) was something called God Mode. Every time you die, you get 2% added to your defense. It goes up to 80%, and you become basically a god at that point. I thought that was really clever because it doesn’t change the gameplay at all, and in the end, you can turn it off at any point. As I said, I did not use it, but I was severely tempted at a few points.
5. On the other hand, don’t branch out too much, either. I am a contrary witch, and I know that about myself. I can frustrate people because I will state seemingly contrary points of view with equal fervor. It makes sense, though, beacuse very few things are black and white. I see nuance moreso than most people, and I’m comfortable with that.
I’m still playing Wylde Flowers (Studio Drydock). I’m still having much frustration with it, and yet, I cannot quit it. I’m still in the first season because there is just too much to do. In this game, you get to choose when you want to change the season, and I feel like I’ll never be ready to do that. I have so much shit that I need to do, and here’s a big issue with the game. There are too many micro-systems to deal with.
Not only am I doing a bunch of farming, some of which has to do with other systems as well, I’m fishing, mining, and foraging. That’s just the resource-gathering I’m doing. I also have to nurture my relationships with roughly a dozen villagers (and a cat). Now, I have animals, and they each have their own preferred foods as well. I have taken to writing notes on what the humans like and don’t like, but I am NOT going to do that with the animals, too.
I have read that there are spells that will help with that, but not in this season. I have a feeling that the witch stuff doesn’t really get going until then, which is another negative in my opinion. I have a few spells, and they are useful, but they are very basic.
Ever since I learned the money trick (apparently, it’s a deliberate thing the devs put in or at least did not get rid of because you can embargo selling this item in the settings if you don’t want to be tempted to make mad money easily. I now have nearly 400,000 gold, I think), I have been rolling in it. I don’t even feel bad about it because there is too much to do in the game to worry about making a dollar here and there. The only thing is that it makes a lot of the little chores pointless because why bother selling a diamond necklace far a thousand when you need three or four more ingredients than you do for the trick way to make money?
I know that games want you to keep going back to them over and over again, even if they are not live-service games. And I can see how you can put hundreds of hours into this game, but I’m flagging. I get overwhelmed with choices in real life, and I feel it doubly so in a game like this.