[ScreenShot Saturday] My Gaming Updates (Jun 27)

This week featuring Final Fantasy IX and Long Gone Days.

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Weekly updates on the games I play, fun stuff and the interesting screenshots I take. #ScreenshotSaturday is where I put a digest of my gaming through the week. (In GameDev scene, ScreenshotSaturday is a weekly event for developers to show their progress.)

Welcome to another #ScreenshotSaturday post in which I talk about my gaming week! This week was a big gaming week for me as I managed to play at least one game every day. I remembered Final Fantasy IX which I reached a bit far into a few months ago but never finished. I downloaded Sword Art Online Re:Hollow Fragment and tried the first hour or so of it. Lastly, I made a progress in Long Gone Days and I'm enjoying the game more the further I get in story.

Steam Sales have started and I was thinking about not buying any game. (I already have enough games to last me to the next Winter Sale after all.) I did get few things which I hope to write about in the future... Stay tuned.

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Long Gone Days

As I said in my article: "Bundled Games of [Itch.io] I'd Love to Try.", Long Gone Days is one of the main reasons I bought the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. It's a modern-day military RPG that hits many high notes.

I fell in love with the game from the art style and the description before I even got to play it. The character design blends perfectly with the pixel art and the theme of being lost between what you've been taught and doing the right thing is very relatable to me.

Long Gone Days is still in Early Access, and I'm not sure if the main story is complete yet. Regardless, I'm determined to see the currently released chapters to completion. Below are some of the screenshots that I've taken:

The Sniping sections of the games are great! No wonder this is a Unity, not RPG Maker game.

Look at the battle/characters design, so much effort went into this game!

Ummmm... Was there a door to knock?

"I wish I could understand what they're saying." -- Rourke (and Myself.)

The last image is from a section of the game in which the protagonist (Rourke) got stuck in a Russian town and couldn't make a conversation with the locals. The whole scenario hits hard when you finally realize what they were saying to him later. (Or if you just know Russian and could manage to read it the first time around.)

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Final Fantasy IX

So, I used to play Final Fantasy IX every day few months ago. I got far into the story and I cleared three of the four continents in Gaia. I stopped at some point where I needed to grind though. For the past three months, I've only played FFIX in short bursts where I either grind a bit or progress small steps in the story. The last two weeks were different. I played more than 10 hours of Final Fantasy IX, (possibly +15.)

SPOILER: In that time I got an airship which unlocked all of the remaining Gaia locations. Few hours later, I reached the other world: Terra, and learned about the origins of Zidane and how he's related to Kuja. It's at this time that many of the references to older Final Fantasy games started to appear one after another.

So, here are some screenshots. They're from late in the game but they hopefully won't Spoil the story for you:

Enemies I've been battling lately are tough. This one has a Death Roulette spell!comment

"That's because you think we're inside the ocean." -- Zidane

So, Genetic Memory then. (First saw the concept in Assassin's Creed. Years after FFIX's release.)

I fought a series of Bosses and I needed to play with the ability system to defeat them. That experience resulted in my article: "FFIX: The Subtle Yet Effective Ability System." I think I'm currently in one of the last dungeons of the game, if not the actual Final Dungeon. RPGs of that era often had the multiple last dungeon feel like the end of the game is near, which is admittedly not a bad thing. We'll see...

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So, that was my week!

So... I'm proud of the articles that I've published this week. Four articles with a better quality than usual! Writing the latest #ArcanaInPersona wasn't easy and because of that I had less time to write other articles, but I love the result!

On a side note, I'm glad that #STEEM is doing fine price-wise. After all the drama that happened since March. I was afraid that after many of the big players left the platform, the price of STEEM would drop dead by mid-2020. My fears didn't happen, and there seems to be a spark of a new life too. Hope the future is better.

How was your week?

Do you have some screenshots or stories to share? Please post them in comments. I didn't receive a lot of comments on this post series so I hope you tell me if you like it.