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Friday Fun Thread for March 29, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Been playing "Reverse Collapse - Code Name Bakery" lately. It's 20% asian VN , 80% turn-based tactics game similar to xcom. The graphics style is very cute chibi with some really impressive (and gruesome) animations.

I would describe the story as "grimdark post-apocalyptic dystopian hard sci-fi with a dash of time-travel shenanigans". The themes and events contrast sharply with the moe artstyle.

In terms of gameplay, it's mostly excellent, with the exception of the occasional mandatory stealth section. I chose the hardest difficulty mode and I can only describe it as "sadistically cruel". I'm talking "3 hours for a single bossfight", 2 hours for the typical level. And almost all of that is thinking and changing tactics. The UI and camera are clearer, easier to understand and more informative than the ones in Xcom. The "two 90% misses in a row" meme still exists but it's nowhere near as bad. And you can tell exactly where enemy LoS and shooting range end, which I can only applaud.
There are some RPG elements of the "choose which talents to buy and which items to craft" type but they're very minor.

I do recommend it to VN and Xcom enjoyers out there. If you're curious why the steam score is mixed, there was apparently some drama with the fans of a different game and typical brigade shenanigans ensued.

Looking at it, it's imo clearly in the tradition of Fire Emblem and Advance Wars, not XCOM. Though the artstyle is still a bit overly cute for my taste, it seems not as bad as some other games.

Yeah, I haven't had the opportunity to play any of the Fire Emblems because of lack of hardware but those would have been an even better example.

I strongly recommend trying them on an emulator. There's even quite a few good emulators for Android, I used to constantly play these games back in college classes with mandatory attendance.

Okay, I'll look into it, thanks for the recommendation!