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Recently I've been replaying Mass Effect 3. Holy ♥♥♥♥ it's good. I'm almost to the end

Started and stopped playing The Witcher 1. It was so goddamn boring.
I'm just gonna skip to Witcher 2.

decided to replay Borderlands 2 as a completely different class that I've never used before (Siren). Frankly, it's been a lot more fun than I expected

Recently replayed the first Ape Escape game. It was pretty good, I'm playing the 2nd one now and it's not disappointing.

So I've been busy with Danganronpa over the past week. Basically Phoenix Wright but anime. I liked it a lot, it's faster paced because of it's nonstop debates and other stuff. I found it pretty fun, mystery pretty interesting, fairly easy overall with presenting and figuring out, but sometimes it was tricky to figure out what to present due to several mechanics in the game. Some charcters were likeable, some forgettable or dumb. Monokuma might be my favourite character though. What a cliffhanger did the game end on too. I'm gonna look forward to the 2nd game now.

Now however I'm busy with Dark Souls 1 (3 would probably not run on my laptop >.>)

Been replaying Touhou Project (from 6 to 15), and holy ♥♥♥♥, I had forgotten how hard it is. It's some genuine difficulty though, so it's pretty rewarding. The music is pretty top notch too. It's one hell of a series. I reccomend for anybody willing to spend hours and hours dodging bullets, and be ready, because the game over screen is something you'll see quite often (Looking at you Clownpiece...)

Favorite game is the 11th one, Subterranean Animism, least favorite is the 6th one, Embodiment of Scarlet Devil.

Well, forget Dark Souls 1, in the past 2 days I've started and finished Ara Fell, an excellent RPG Maker game available on Steam for £7 (with -10% currently). It is a super good jRPG that also tries it's knack on Open world exploration. Of course being an RPG Maker enthusiast, I picked it up immediately, even though I was only following it for a short while.

The premise of the game is basically that you are in a land called Ara Fell, which is an expansive floating island with humans inhabiting it. You play as Lita LeCotta, who, together with Adrian, decide to explore one of many ancient ruins of Ara Fell in search of a magical ring. However, this is only an introduction to a much greater adventure. The story of the game is very good, maybe not the most original thing you've ever played, but it is not bad by any stretch of the imagination. It will have a few twists that you will not see coming. I think it's greatest point is the pacing. The game never leaves you wandering what to do, it always keep the action going and exciting with the villains or whatnot striking etc. It all keeps the game from getting stale, like some RPGs may make you feel (I certainly played my fair share jRPGs which drag their action for no apparent reason). However the game also doesn't take itself too seriously. You have your bickering within your colourful cast of characters, Lita likes to lampshade and poke fun at various RPG tropes whenever they happen which got a chuckle out of me more often than not. The writing in general in this game is very good, even with things such as average NPCs you wouldn't pay attention to, they usually have a funny line to say or maybe a little bit about the lore of Ara Fell. Made talking to everyone more fun

On the side of story, you also have sidequests and world exploration. The world is beautiful and pretty expansive too. You're able to crawl, jump and swim to explore all corners of the map. I wouldn't say it's used to the fullest of it's potential, but it's neat and makes you think of exploration in a different way. However the rewards that you might get for actually exploring are easily worth it. You'll find yourself jumping all over the place to get to caves, and you may even uncover a secret entrance in the wall where the really good stuff is stashed. The sidequests aren't too special in terms of lore, it's usually do this, get that, but it also isn't like you're going to be grinding for 2000 monster claws or something. They are usually short and sweet, and even without them you can enjoy the game fully as it's not exactly the hardest game in the world. The exploration also benefits from a Teleport Crystal system. After you discover one, you can teleport to in from another teleport crystal (unless a story thing is happening). And even when you get lost, you always have a handy-dandy map and quest reminders which tell you what to do when you're stuck.

In terms of battles, It's pretty much your average jRPG fair, buffs, debuffs, attacks, magic and healing. For what it's worth, the buffs and debuffs are actually worth a damn in this game which you can't say about many jRPGs out there, not to mention RPG Maker jRPGs. All of the spells which inflict statuses (besides from AOE elemental spells) have a 100% chance to inflict a status (except on bosses) and they're all gonna be useful when you're facing your enemies. MP conservation is not a problem in this game, as taking any action in battle will restore a little bit of MP (and even moreso when defending), which means you can use spells at your leisure. Similarly, out of combat your HP will heal (but not MP). You gain exp, blah blah blah, you level up. But you can actually distribute your stats how you want, you can dictate if your melee fighter should be more of a tank, more of a glass cannon or maybe more of a spell-caster. The game also doesn't really expect you to grind that much, which unfortunately makes majority of the fights fairly easy once you know what you're doing (but hey, I don't mind not-grinding either). Boss encounters are usually varied, incorporating their own little mechanics which cause you to shift gameplay a little, but not too much. Enemies drop crafting elements, which are used in the crafting system of the game (granted it's pretty minor part of the game, you can only craft a few Tier 1 potions, a couple of (pretty good) weapons and armour, and Elixirs).

And if you're not a fan of battles and would rather just enjoy the story, you can turn the story mode on which lets you win battles instantly.

Overall, on my first playthrough it took me ~14 hours to play through the story, along with all of the sidequests that I could find and exploring the map pretty thoroughly. While it may not seem like much, for the solid, well-paced and well crafted package that this game offered I'd say it's easily worth it's price. Everything and everyone is very lovable and interesting. I urge you to at least play the free demo that's available, you will not regret it.

recently I've been playing terraria

I started playing Final Fantasy IV: The After Years as a joke, but now I think I'm enjoying it more than I did the original game.

Lately been playing a bit of Stellaris and Cities Skylines. Both published by Paradox Interactive, apparently. Didn't even realize that until just now, lul.

Cities is basically Simcity with a lot more freedom, but somewhat less progression and depth. It's fun for a while (I played for 7 hours straight on accident and made this monstrosity. I'm pretty much an expert tbh), but at the end of the day there's really not much to do because there's not very much depth to the game. I'm sure the experience would be better with the expansions, but I don't own them and don't really plan on buying them right now. Plus they look like they're more designed to add challenge and features to early/mid-game experience anyway. I'm probably spoiled by Simcity and its expansions adding so much to mid/end-game. The humour in Cities is pretty good, though, so I'll give them that.

Stellaris is... interesting. I haven't played many of these types of strategy games (specifically real time strategy, but I haven't played any turn based ones either), so I didn't really know what I was getting myself into at the start, and I'm still trying to figure out what I'm doing. But it's a neat concept and I'm having fun with the game when I have time to play. Might report back with more once I get deeper into the game.