As mentioned in my previous post, I’m planning on setting up a weekly routine of a more serious and in-depth article, and then a more casual article detailing my gaming experiences for the past week. This is the first of the latter! It made sense to name it the Backlog Battle Report given the name and aim of the page, and I’ll be getting these out every Monday night/Tuesday morning as time permits from here on if all goes well. As for the other article type, that will probably debut on Friday, so keep an eye out.
For now, let’s talk about the games I’ve played over the last week. I’ll also include a few things that reach a bit further back just because I’ve been inactive for so long. Let’s kick it off.
Heroes of the Storm — As always
I won’t be mentioning this much in the future reports unless something stands out, but Heroes of the Storm is still my primary go-to when I feel like playing a competitive multiplayer game or MOBA. I’m sure some of you may scoff at the thought of calling it “competitive”, but the game is as deep and competitive as you want it to be, and I like to push myself in it.
The latest ranked season will be ending in a matter of days, so there’s something of a mad scramble to get last minute rankings for the rewards, but I’ve been abstaining and keeping to the non-ranked modes for a while. This is mostly just due to queue times for ranked being considerably longer in Australia, or else it’s because I’m playing with friends who take the game much more casually. However, it’s also because I’ve already reached Diamond 5 rank after a couple of seasons coasting in high Platinum since tanking my MMR last year. I’ve got the rewards I sought, so I can hold off any further attempts until the next season kicks off.
Kel’thuzad is due to be the next hero release in just a couple of days, and his patch comes with a number of character reworks, so I’ll have a good amount of new things to learn and play shortly. Should be a good time.
The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt — Finally playing after too long abstaining
As a gamer who largely enjoys RPGs and strong narratives, it seems unthinkable that I could have gone so long without ever playing The Witcher 3. It’s not uncommon for it to be called the best RPG ever, if not the best game ever, so how could I call myself interested in RPGs without getting to it? Well, the reason I took so long was thus: I knew the game is massive, and I knew that once I got started that I would likely require a serious amount of time dedicated to it in order to fully experience and complete it.
So far, that seems to have held true, and this is likely to be the primary game I’ll play during the coming weeks. My initial impressions are extremely positive and so far align with most of the praise the game gets. There’s a hell of a lot to love here. I haven’t fully dived into the combat systems yet, but the need to constantly dodge and utilise my full toolkit is welcome compared to some simpler games. I also like how the game strongly encourages knowledge and preparation for key fights, making sure you have the right buffs and consumables on hand in order to best some of the tougher opponents. It makes me feel much more like I’m stepping into Geralt’s boots.
Speaking of Geralt, he is perhaps one of the best realised characters in video gaming in terms of delivery, regardless of whether you like that character or not. His voice acting and animations are spot on for how he comes across, and the dialogue options for him all paint the picture of a professional albeit world weary sort, who is less good or evil and more just doing the job that he’s adept at. Couple that with a number of interesting NPCs and a brutal, unforgiving world, and I’m sure I’ve got many fascinating hours of gameplay and discovery ahead of me.
One last observation before I move on: the sound design for this game is exceptional. The voice acting and music is one thing, but it’s the general sounds that are catching my ear in ways I’m not used to. When the wind is blowing in a wooded area that I was traveling through, it sounds like it should. You can hear the sticks and branches snapping and cracking, the wind moving and rustling through the gaps, and the distant din of monsters and animals if you listen closely enough.
Of the many things that have stood out so far, that was perhaps the most interesting. It speaks of a level of attention to detail that isn’t particularly common in video gaming, and it really feels like they’ve taking their time with just about every aspect of Witcher 3. Can’t wait to play more of it.
Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos — For old time’s sake
Having mentioned Kel’thuzad’s impending release in Heroes of the Storm, I was overcome with a strange compulsion to replay Warcraft 3’s campaigns. Given that I happened to find my old physical copies just recently, it seemed fated to happen, so happen it did. Currently I’m on the final level of the Undead campaign (the second of four) and largely enjoying myself. I’m definitely better at the game than I was as a kid, but I still lack the micromanagement to really be particularly good at RTS games.
For the most part though, the game holds up. The campaigns are interesting, the levels varied and well designed, the presentation quite good even if the graphics are dated, and the gameplay is as solid as ever. Ultimately though, the focus on smaller armies and hero units compared to Starcraft is not a style I prefer, so I’d much rather play the latter to scratch my RTS itch. Speaking of…
Starcraft 2 — ESSENCE
Legacy of the Void’s co-op mode continues to be perhaps my favourite addition to the Starcraft series. Shorter varied missions with a selection of commanders that differ greatly from the multiplayer armies that are allowed to break loose and try crazy, unbalanced ideas? A long-term progression system to keep the game fresh and rewarding, especially when combined with mutators for added chaos and challenge? Glorious.
The co-op is effectively the essence of the campaign’s gameplay distilled into a mode that is far more casual and less demanding than the primary multiplayer. It’s simply a case of pick up, grab a friend, play around for a bit and put it down again without having to commit to ladder grinds. It’s also continually being updated with new maps and commanders, which is what drew me back recently.
Dehaka, a character introduced in Heart of the Swarm (and one of my favourite Heroes of the Storm characters) is the latest co-op commander, and boy is he a doozy. He’ll almost certainly be nerfed in the coming days because he’s preeeetty strong, but regardless of any tuning his army and abilities are massively entertaining. Dehaka himself plays like a Warcraft 3 hero unit, with a similar slew of abilities that level up as he absorbs the dropped essence of enemies. By the end of the match, he is a literal Godzilla standing tall over my army and destroying everything in his path.
I mean a literal Godzilla, too, as there’s a brief soundbite that plays when he reaches max level that sounds like it’s straight from a kaiju film.
Aside from Dehaka himself, his army consists of a large variety of Zerg units with interesting upgrades and the ability to fight one another to the death in order to evolve into an advanced form. It’s a pretty neat system. I look forward to playing more of him in the future, that’s for sure.
Dawn of War: Soulstorm — Because you can’t go back to classic RTS games without playing this one
To round out the RTS kick I’ve been on, I found myself returning to the original Dawn of War. Again, it still holds up quite well to this day, with a variety of different races. Mixing squad based units with take and hold gameplay without eschewing base building like later RTS games did, I still find it quite satisfying to revisit. Soulstorm felt like a fan-made mod or map pack rather than an official release after Dark Crusade, it’s true, but I’m still enjoying myself with it all the same.
The campaign mode effectively presents a large map of a planetary system split into multiple regions, and each faction takes turns moving their army around to take control of them. Be the last race standing and congrats, you win the campaign. Each faction has a pretty challenging and interesting set-piece level for their stronghold, so getting through all of them is a lot of fun. I’ve been chipping away at a campaign here and there for the last couple of weeks, and before long I’m sure the system will be awash with Orks. Good times.
Dragon Quest Heroes 2 — For when you have to mow down thousands of monsters
For those not in the know, Dragon Quest Heroes is one of the many iterations of musou game that Koei Tecmo has been producing over the years in the vein of Dynasty Warriors. Whoever in that company decided to start applying that gameplay concept to various other series and franchises is a genius, quite frankly. Whether it’s anime series like Berserk or Attack on Titan, or else video games like Zelda or (obviously) Dragon Quest, there’s a lot of these games and they usually are pretty good times.
While the basic gameplay systems are fairly similar for each — square for basic attacks, triangle for combo attacks that change depending on how far in your basic attack string you are, and circle for super moves, rinse and repeat — they all have their own personal touches and systems that keep them interesting. Hyrule Warriors Legends, for example, had an Adventure Map reminiscent of the old 2D Zelda world maps that broke the game up into smaller missions and provided a huge amount of unlockable power-ups and content.
Dragon Quest Heroes 2, by contrast, is closer to an open world action RPG than any other musou game. With large overworld zones filled with monsters to carve up in between more focused missions, it almost feels like this game is a prototype of the upcoming open world Dynasty Warriors 9, and it makes me feel a bit better about my initial doubt of that idea.
For the most part, the core gameplay loop is simple: run to the next battle, doing sidequests and killing monsters for upgrade materials along the way, complete the set-piece battles, and repeat. The KO counts are high, the combos are simple but varied and satisfying, and overall it’s a good game for just chipping away at every so often. There’s nothing to write home about in terms of story, but then that’s fairly standard of the Dragon Quest series as a whole, really. Even with original characters in the mix, it’s just an excuse plot to bring a number of previous DQ game characters together, but at least they’re varied and interesting to play.
My biggest complaint about the game is that the bosses and some enemies are serious damage sponges. While not exactly challenging, there has been at least one or two bosses that take so long to kill that it becomes a war of attrition where I hope I’m able to minimise incoming damage long enough to actually kill them. Hopefully it’s just a one off thing, but… well, I foresee grinding in my future is all.
Yakuza Kiwami — Brawl later, minigame now!
Prior to this week, I’d never played a Yakuza game before. However, given that 6 is on its way and 0 was released not long ago, I thought that Kiwami a — remake of the first game — was a good place for me to acquaint myself with it. A series that has gone that long and earned itself a full remake can’t be too bad, and it seems to have been well-received throughout its lifespan, so why not?
So far, I’m quite enjoying myself. The game presents a fairly serious and dramatic story of the Japanese crime world, and I’m quite taken with the concept of weaving through the politics and machinations of turf wars and clan struggles. It’s still a little too early to see how well it executes over the long run, but the concept is enough to keep me wanting to play.
The actual gameplay is a fairly involving beat-em-up system with slight RPG elements to unlock new moves. Otherwise, it involves juggling four fighting styles that you can switch between quickly in order to capitalise on enemy weaknesses and adapt to the situation. There’s a reasonable amount of diversity, though it too suffers from the occasional damage sponge enemy or boss just for the sake of it. Good play and learning patterns and enemy attacks will smooth that out quickly, however.
In addition to this primary aspect, Yakuza is somewhat infamous for having a huge array of distractions and minigames to fill time in between missions. Set in a decent-sized city area, you’re able to wander around in between story to find side missions and events, or else browse shops and entertainment venues for all sorts of distractions. There are offerings such as billiards, darts, karaoke, and a miniature car racing system that all serve to add a lot of time and variety to the game.
So far, I came for the brawling, stayed for the story, and further dabbled in the slew of filler content. There’s a hell of a lot of fun to be had here, so I’m looking forward to seeing how the rest pans out. With a Yakuza Kiwami 2 announced and 0 to go back and play once I’m finished here, I should have plenty in the series to keep me entertained without having to go back and dig up the next few entries for a while.
Grim Dawn — Grim is accurate, but it doesn’t describe the gameplay
It wasn’t just RTS games that I’ve been craving recently, as I felt the need to go through the catalogue of ARPGs at my disposal and start clearing through them. I don’t really have an interesting in playing Diablo 3 ever again, but there are plenty of other alternatives out there that are more my speed. Path of Exile is the common go-to, and I did actually play that (and will likely do so again) too, but ultimately much more of my time wound up being spent in Grim Dawn.
I’m still not sure what it is about this game that enthralls me more than other games in the genre, but I’ve been playing a lot of Grim Dawn recently. As the title would suggest, it’s a very grim and dark game world, set more or less immediately after an apocalypse that has wrecked the better part of civilisation and seen it beset on all sides by horrific fiends and monsters.
There’s a Lovecraftian cult hard at work in places, assuming that the cult was worshipping the Blood God Khorne from Warhammer. There’s a race of spirit creatures that have invaded by possessing countless key figures and undermining society before unleashing a wave of hideous abominations and twisted undead on what remains. There’s ancient necromancers scheming, there’s a second cult running around trying to purify everything in flame, and all in the middle are what’s left of the ordinary humans just trying to survive and doing a pretty bad job of it. It’s all a mess, and naturally it’s your job to try and keep things in check long enough for people to get by.
Gameplay wise, Grim Dawn is still fairly standard for the genre as popularised by Diablo. You roam the map, fighting hordes of monsters with plenty of mouse clicks, you level up, and you find better gear to help you progress. There’s a lot of customisation available to you however, as there are six skill trees or classes but you get to pick two on each character. This allows for a lot of combinations, and there’s some synergy to be had between just about all of them to suit your playstyle. It’s hardly as massive as the passive skill tree from Path of Exile (which makes FFX’s Sphere Grid look minimalist), but it’s still entertaining to find good combos and chain together your stuff.
As well as tailoring your skills to suit, there’s also a sea of gear available to farm by slaying hordes of enemies and killing bosses. You can also supplement this by crafting your own gear from recipes found in the world or from various NPC factions that you curry favour with. Said factions also have a number of repeatable bounty quests to keep you occupied with things to do if you prefer a focused approach.
Just following the main quest won’t get you as far as it will in other ARPGs, though. I’ve stumbled upon all sorts of hidden areas, small dungeons off the beaten path, and entire quest hubs that can be easily missed, so it really encourages exploration. Also unlike other ARPGs, the world of Grim Dawn is actually a structured map rather than being largely randomised. While there are a handful of random dungeons and plenty of random spawns, the overall map is constant from one game to another. It’s also a fairly large map, with the entire thing feeling more continuous and connected than Diablo 2 or 3 taking you across continents in between acts.
If you like this kind of game and haven’t given Grim Dawn a whirl yet, I’d highly recommend it. I believe I’m right at the end of the base game now, but there’s still lots of side parts that I’ve yet to clear, and an expansion isn’t too far from release.
Okay, I think that’s more than enough for a first entry in this installment. Future updates aren’t likely to cover quite as many games all at once, but then who knows? I also didn’t mention any of my FF14 gameplay, nor the freemium gacha game I’ve taken to playing on my mobile during queue times or downtime… still, I’m sure that’s enough for now.
If all goes well, I’ll have an update and a new article here on Friday, so stay tuned for that. In the meantime, if you happen to end up reading this, I’d love to strike up conversation with you on this. What games have you been playing? Did you like or dislike any of the games on this list when you played? Any recommendations or suggestions for me? Leave a message and I’ll try to answer. Until next time~
Delfeir vs. the Backlog 