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Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Although I don’t really have any affinity for Fire Emblem, that hasn’t put me off getting hooked by series spinoffs in the past – Tokyo Mirage Sessions and the first Fire Emblem Warriors are two of my favourite games, but the old strategy titles I could take or leave. Not because they’re bad, just because they’re not Advance Wars and permadeath (which I know can be turned off these days) is scary.

Three Hopes is a musou Warriors-style reimagining of the story from mainline Fire Emblem game Three Houses, which of course I didn’t play. The plot is presumably similar – you’re a mercenary and you join one of three originally-at-peace houses, all of whom have a future leader at the same school, run by the Church of Seiros. Then, they’re no longer at peace for reasons which don’t really make sense.

For my first run through the game, I chose to join Edelgard of the Adrestian Empire, and it turned out she was keen to “create peace across the whole of Fodlan”, mostly by declaring war on both the church and her former school chums because someone who worked at the church but wasn’t part of the church turned out to be possessed by evil? Or something? Seems a bit extreme.

Ultimately, this means loads of smacking millions of baddies with swords and axes and magic in the same way all the other Warriors games work. And this bit of the game is really good. Levelling up, improving skills and weapons, building up your base to unlock new skills, items and abilities – lots of higher-number-chasing, but it’s a great gameplay loop. However, between all that there’s so much chat. Oh god is there a lot.

Each of your “team” has a relationship indicator with not just you, but everyone else in your team. You can converse with them, do activities with small groups, training and fight together, and take them out on dates. In itself, that’s not a problem and it builds backstories and stuff, but there’s so much of it I’ve found myself spending sometimes upwards of an hour chatting and managing relationships between fights. It’s probably mostly skippable, but there’s a FOMO element to it that I daren’t.

I’ve played much of the game in two-player with my daughter. It’s even better this way!

The smacking though, is so wonderfully fast and mindless and satisfying, that these betweentimes events just kill the momentum a bit. And they’re a little bit creepy. Overall though, the game is great. And now I have two more runs with the other colours…

Hue Flowing (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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This is a very simple platformer concept: explore, collect icons that allow you one additional air jump, then reach the area you can only get to once you’ve collected them all.

But, it’s the way it is presented that is absolutely beautiful. The area you explore is blank, but as you move around you sort of slosh watercolour paint everywhere to colour it in. Like, if de Blob and The Unfinished Swan had a 2D platformer baby.

You can wall jump, and slide down walls, and have to get the upgrades in a particular order as each requires one more jump than the previous one. It’s not a long or difficult game, but it is incredibly well put together with slick, responsive controls and a unique aesthetic. Oh, and it’s free!

Cave Buster (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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Cave Buster is a short retro-style platformer which perhaps could be classed as a Metroidvania if it was a bit longer. You get a few upgrades that let you reach other areas, but there aren’t many areas (or many upgrades) so it doesn’t feel like you get to use them enough to consider it as that sort of game.

It is fun while it lasts, however. I’m assuming it was the result of a Game Jam or something, with the possibility of using the engine to create a larger game? Certainly, all it needs is more of the same and it’d be well worth a purchase. As it is, for free, it’s nice enough for a quick run through, it just ends (with the collection of a burger for… reasons?) leaving you wanting more.

Songbird Symphony (Switch): COMPLETED!

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You know, I’ve often wondered what Guitar Hero would be like if it was a cute platformer full of birds. Well, actually I never have. But clearly, someone did because here it is.

Songbird Symphony stars Birb, a little bird of unknown origin, who sets out to find his family and where he came from. This involves some Metroidvania-lite platforming but instead of unlocking new skills to reach new areas, you unlock new musical notes which you tweet at locked doors and stuff to progress. In fact, apart from jumping around and sometimes pushing blocks, the main gameplay is tweeting.

And here’s the Guitar Hero bit. You have to sing along with various characters to “beat” them, using your unlocked notes. To start with, you just have one, but by the end you have six, mapped to left, up and right on the d-pad, and Y, X and A on the face buttons. Each “foe” gives you tunes to repeat, but in different ways. Sometimes it’ll be notes falling from the ceiling very much like Guitar Hero. Sometimes it’ll be coming in from the sides or in a pattern, like Gitaroo Man. In fact, it borrows from Ouendan, Taiko no Tatsujin, Dance Dance Revolution, and pretty much every other rhythm action game you can think of for these sections.

The platforming bits are really simple, with a bit of exploring and a handful of puzzles (block pushing, switch pressing, that sort of thing), nothing taxing at all. The singing though? Completely impossible. There’s no way I could complete most of them with an A or B rank, but luckily it seems you can’t fail no matter how bad you do.

The story has a big twist which I did see coming, and your identity is pretty obvious from early on, but if you don’t get it then I suppose that’s a big “ohhh!” moment for you.

It’s not the best game in the world, and the “variable pixel sizes” (where different things seem to have different sized pixels – a real turn-off for me) annoys, but it’s cute and unusual and does have great – if impossible to perform – music.

About An Elf (Switch): COMPLETED!

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It was only a few days ago when I was saying about playing baffling games, and, well, here’s another one! About An Elf is somewhere between a visual novel and an RPG, where you play an elf trying to rediscover Elftopia or something. The plot is nonsense and, frankly, not what you’re going to be focussing on if you play it because that art style.

Are the characters real people dressed up? Are they CGI? Models? Some combination of all three? Is Dam, the elf you play as, really a woman who wiggles back and forth, in PVC and with presumably very cold legs? Are the “magiballs” you attack with actually marbles or drawings of marbles? IS THAT A REAL CAT?

As you chat away, you have to fight ridiculous baddies like clowns and shark clowns and space clowns and some things which probably aren’t clowns, and this is done by discovering their elemental weakness and using the corresponding magiball on them. And how do you discover their weakness? Why, with a fish-eye lens affected bit of looping video of a dog having a wash or a sunset or something unrecognisably abstract of course! Of course. A cat’s nose? Why, that means attack with your water ball, obviously! Baffling.

Thankfully, it’s near impossible to fail, as if you chose the wrong one you lose a gummi bear and get to try again, and since there’s only a maximum of five possible balls to choose, and gummi bears are plentiful, you’re not going to die.

Look, I know this sounds like I’m describing a cheese dream, but that’s probably not far from how this thing got made in the first place. Is it good? No. Is it fun? No. Is it one of the most bizarre things you’re likely to ever play? Well, duh. Essential purchase.