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« Last post by Evan_B on July 21, 2026, 09:39:17 PM »
I’ve spent the better part of my summer vacation chipping away at two games in particular, as well as one fairly brisk completion. The quick finish was Detention from Red Candle Studios, who is probably better known for the incredibly ambitious and brutal Nine Sols. Detention is a fairly straightforward horror/stealth game with a much more poignant and political message. I appreciated that aspect of the game even if I found the horror to be somewhat nonsensical. The puzzles were effective, though fairly straightforward, as the game limits the amount of interactive elements so that you really only have a few ways to solve roadblocks and particular things to set your sights on.
The first of my steady progressions is Possessor(s), of which I have not yet progressed deep enough into to understand the parenthetical “s” in the title. It is a platform fighter-inspired Metroidvania by Hyper Light Drifter’s Heart Machine, whose works I have a passing interest and respect for. Hyper Light Drifter is a game that feels decent to play on controller and has lovely aesthetics, and although I have played a portion of Solar Ash, I never invested enough time into the game to feel competent in its systems or confident in my enjoyment. The less that might be said about the Early Access purgatoral Hyper Light Breaker, the better.
Possessor(s) does feel somewhat different from the studio’s previous works in aesthetics, with a very clean 2D art style that does evoke their pixel and 3D color palettes. The game does the things that Metroidvania soulslikes do fairly competently, though there are some platforming challenge rooms and sequences that feel tedious upon re-run and/or backtracking. When your movement does click and you’re performing all of the action commands the way that you need to, the game is very satisfying to look at and move through, but some of its mechanics feel a bit inscrutable and undercooked. In the vein of the platform fighter, you have basic and tilted attack inputs that also work while airborne, while “special” command inputs have a vague retro theme, inventively using a computer mouse or cell phone (...or a baseball, which isn’t that inventive) to execute unique moves. You have a dodge-roll button that is also tied to sprinting, which is a choice that works for the very specific sorts of platforming that the game wants done- there’s no directional air dodge, per se, but rather a “falling dodge” that is used to bypass LASER WALLS.
What’s a bit more frustrating to utilize is the game’s parry mechanic, which seems to have a punishing
“fail state mode” that will stop you from utilizing it again in quick succession if you’ve already failed a parry. I hope this makes sense, but if not, maybe some mathspeak will clarify: Enemy attack + mistimed parry = damage taken + fail state parry that cannot parry. You have to “burn” the fail state parry before you can execute a normal parry again, which just feels… spiteful, I suppose. Having played other games with similar systems and better telegraphed hit and hurt boxes, I find myself a bit frustrated. However, the general narrative and vibe of the game in addition to its more customizable movesets and weapon types have my attention, for the time being. I don’t understand what qualifies it as a Switch 2 exclusive, but I’m not going to harp on it too much.
I’ve also been playing Digimon Story: Time Stranger, which is a game that was reviewed succinctly by NWR, though I feel still warrants a bit of my general verbosity. Having played Digimon World Dawn and Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, I feel a bit more prepared for the general mechanics of this game than someone who is perhaps more familiar with other monster collecting games, but even so, there are some design choices and a lack of transparency in tutorials that surprised me a bit. I’m going to elaborate on these mechanical choices a bit more in another thread/essay, but I do find that dealing with the general art style and themes of this series means you sometimes aren’t always aware of the type of monster you’ll be encountering, which can make team building a bit frustrating. You may wish to try to capitalize on weaknesses, or you might want to try making sure that you’re always capable of dealing with any threat, but either solution means you are putting yourself at a potential advantage, with the former having far more severe consequences. In any case, this is a game that is built for its protracted boss encounters, and the very generous battle speed and auto battle features are surely proof of this. However, this does mean you might a fair amount of time prepping and crafting proper team builds to combat these major encounters more than anything, and since you are almost always squaring off against heretofore-unseen foes, you may spend two or three bouts simply figuring out the enemy’s weaknesses before you can overcome them. There is a spell called Reverse that is able to literally change the weaknesses and attributes of an opponent, but it feels highly niche and a bit silly to run that on a team member when elemental access allows for more coverage. I’ve yet to see an opponent use Reverse on me, but I can imagine that is will be a likelihood. In contrast to Pokemon, enemies in Digimon games are far more likely to effectively implement specific strategies… though they lack sophistication in moving forward when properly countered.
The game certainly goes places, though its particular acts are segmented into smaller, formulaic scenes that become predictable in their layout, even if the narrative content is pretty unhinged (as one might expect from a game about time travel). Still, this familiarity of structure allows you to anticipate for future encounters by devoting most of your energy to the team-building and monster-raising aspects of the game. These are fairly straightforward, themselves, but can be made more effective through thorough systems and material investments. There are so many Digimon to add to your roster that attempting to “catch them all” can feel daunting, especially when the requirements for making them can feel a bit inscrutable. However, each system has its place and rewards a great deal of patience, and taking the time to raise a Digimon often yields an extremely effective party member. Often enough, that is.
There is one strange quirk of the game, which is that, upon traveling eight years forward in time, "that guy with the shield" is mentioned many times to explain your circumstances, which is so silly. I guess that's one way to avoid IP infringement... but it feels like the only pertinent pop culture reference I've noted from the game. How odd.
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