I'm back at this all too familiar crossroads again. I stumble upon a game that I end up absolutely loving in Octopath Traveler 2, play it for nearly 90 hours, complete almost all things that there is to complete in the game, explore every inch of the map, figure out any and all puzzles that I have seen and as far as I know, conquered every single optional area in the game at least twice. Then while the credits roll, I watch all of it, reminiscing about the excellence of the game that I just played.
All in all that game kept me up at least a couple of nights as I tried to devise strategy in my mind. One night I was playing it for so long I looked at my watch and saw that it was "close enough to being tomorrow" that there was no reason to go to sleep and coffee was a better solution. That was not a good idea and the next day was torture but the fact of the matter is that it happened because the game was that damn amazing.
But after I am done I am faced with a familiar situation that I think all gamers are faced with at one point or another: What do I do now?
I have looked through my catalog of games and it's a long list, but nothing really catches my eye. I want to do another Switch game because I did just buy another cradle / docking station for the thing because of Traveler and I stumbled upon an highly rated game called Luigi's Mansion 3.
I fired it up and within minutes I could already tell that this might not be the game that is going to take my interest the same way that the last game I played did. It is graphically impressive and very "Nintendo-ey" in that way that only they make games. I tooled around with the controls and explored a bit with the mansion and had a few fights with some ghosts but well, even though the puzzles were somewhat inventive and the graphics are definitely really good especially compared to Octopath everything just seemed kind of same-same.
I sat through the silly story and eventually get given control of Luigi and get chased down a hallway by King Boo and then plummet to the basement where I am reunited by my friendly ghost dog and first off, I guess I am supposed to know something about this but I actually never played Luigi's Mansion 1 or 2 so this is all totally new stuff to me.
It's cute, it isn't difficult at all and they did a pretty good job with making this title unique and kind of its own thing separate from all the Mario stuff but for some reason it just feels like I am forcing myself to play this. I will carry on playing of course because I am no stranger to this situation. When you finish a game that you absolutely love, it is tough to jump on the bandwagon of something new and this is especially true of the two games have absolutely nothing in common.
The graphics are much better of course, the music is good and the story is pretty silly more than anything else. I know that everything is going to be rated G in a game of this sort and that is fine. This is what Nintendo is kind of famous for especially when it comes to the Mario games.
You aren't in the game for very long before you are faced with your first boss fight, and this was expected. This was kind of fun and really easy the way that initial boss encounters should be in my mind but it did kind of open my eyes to something that I think will end up being a problem for me in this game: All of the combat already seems very generic and same-ey whenever I do it. There aren't really a ton of moved that Luigi has and since he moves so slow I think the game, by design, isn't supposed to pose much of a challenge.
You flash ghosts with your flashlight to stop them from moving and then you vacuum them up. That's all there is to it really.
I guess there is nothing inherently wrong with this. Not everything needs to be super involved and I am one of those players that doesn't actually like it when things are super complicated. I'm just happy there isn't a "parry" button.
The objective in this game is going to be to conquer the entire Mansion that you find yourself in which in this case is a giant hotel. You find buttons to the hotel's elevator and that is how they mark your progress through the game. I haven't even been playing very long and I already have 6 out of what looks like 15 buttons to the elevator, so I don't think this game is going to be terribly long. Maybe that is a good thing.
I already have Octopath Traveler 0 in my library, but before I jump straight back into the exact same game I think I would like to branch out a bit.
Luigi's Mansion 3 is ok I guess, but it was always going to be anti-climatic after playing a game that I would consider to be one of the top RPG's that has ever been made. I guess I'll stick with it for now especially seeing as how at my current pace anyway, I appear to almost be a third of the way through the game already.
It is disappointing though, when you finish a game that captivated you for a while and no matter what you play next, it is going to be disappointing. I suppose this is why games that never end such as MMO's are so popular if the publisher can pull it off. In that case when you find something that you really like, you don't actually ever have to stop playing it.
But since I swore off MMO's after one of them played a big part in me ruining many important IRL aspects of my life, I won't even touch games that seem remotely MMO-ish anymore.
I'll give Luigi probably another 10 hours max, but after Octopath, this honestly seems kind of lame.