Magpie Gamer

Review based on patch 1.06. After burning out on master rank Monster Hunter World, I decided to try a different kind of hunting game. One in a genre I have never actually tried before. Most hunting games seem to be "arcady" like Duck Hunt, or whatever Cabela's Dangerous Hunts 2013 is suppose to be. But Hunting Simulator 2 actually tries to simulate real-world hunting and hunting ethics. The graphics could look better, but are fine for what they are; about what I expected from a niche hunting game. There is a good amount of visual variation and elevation between the various environments. Occasionally it will rain when you visit a map, but otherwise there is no dynamic day/night or weather cycle. The same handful of animals also appear in nearly every location because North America and Europe share a Holarctic realm, so there is a lot of overlap in the types of animals present. It would have been nice to have South American, Australian, African, or Asian regions wi...

Review based on patch 1.01. My first foray into the original Harvest Moon series (now called Story of Seasons) was a title called Friends of Mineral Town - a remake of a 20+ year old game. It stayed faithful to the original, to the point that it was basically the same game with a new coat of paint. That is all well and good for nostalgia seekers, but for me it was too dated and bare-bones compared to what you expect from the genre today. After being let down by Mineral Town I never thought I would touch another Story of Seasons game, but then Pioneers of Olive Town went on sale. Unlike Mineral Town, Pioneers of Olive Town is a completely new entry in the series, so it includes many of the quality of life improvements pioneered by other games in the genre, most notably Stardew Valley. The player's farm is now highly customizable, and there is better automation and ways to grow plants out of season. You no longer need shears or a bucket taking up precious inventory space to m...

I don't know much about musical theory, nor am I a musically inclined person. However, I do love to listen to video game soundtracks. They can be a powerful listening experiences in their own right, or be as evocative as the scores composed for film. Each of these posts will feature a sampling of music tracks from a single game title, or series/franchise in some rare cases. A complete list of these can be found on the Video Game Music page. Composer: Miwako Chinone North American Release Date: February 2025 A guild of Hunters is surveying an area thought to be uninhabited when they discover a boy lost in the wastelands. The boy was separated from his people when a monster known only as the "White Wraith" attacked the village. This event prompts the Hunter's Guild to launch an investigation into the region. The Nature Of A Beautiful World | (Main Theme) The Lord of Ice | (Jin Dahaad Theme) Earth-Piercing Bolt | (Rey Dau Theme) Ebon Hellfire | (...

Harvestella is a visual novel-RPG hybrid with strong thematic influences from Nier: Automata and a tiny bit of the farming sim genre mixed in. The storyline isn't terribly complex, but is an odd mix of fantasy, science, and religion whose logic can be hard to follow, particularly near the end when several plot threads come together. Adding to the confusion is inconsistent wording, such as referring to the planets archaically as stars and at other times just as planets. For those interested in how strange the lore can get and don't mind spoilers, here is a summary of the plot, or at least the best I could make of it: AI (called Seth or Omens) were entrusted with the salvation of the dying human race (because humans couldn't figure out how to save themselves or something). All the humans were put into hibernation aboard a space-station while the AI abandoned Earth (called Lost Gaia in-game) to focus on terraforming the moon (called ReGaia) using four Seaslight (giant ...

Review based on patch 2.18 In 1274 a Mongol fleet led by Khotun Khan invades the Japanese island of Tsushima. Lord Shimura and his nephew Jin Sakai, lead five noble clans against the invaders, but all fall to the Mongols superior weaponry. Shimura is taken captive, and Jin is rescued by the thief Yuna, who teaches him her ways. To save Tsushima, Jin must choose between following the samurai code to fight honorably, leading to countless deaths, or by using practical but dishonorable methods that will minimize the casualties. The narrative is a straightforward tale that is fairly compelling, but not terribly deep. I'd be hard pressed to recall the names of any of the main cast. Too often it falls into the trap of having someone die in almost every mission - whether it makes sense or not, so you just start expecting it and emotionally distancing yourself from the characters. This made 'shock events' like the deaths of Taka and the horse fall flat. The story does a fairl...

Review based on patch 1.4. The focus of this 'cozy' ranching game is more about dinosaur collecting than farming, which is done primarily to earn money. To tame a dinosaur the player needs to lure it near by playing its 'Friend Song' - a series of colored bubbles. Not only does the order of the colors need to be right but the 'loudness' of each note as well. The player then needs to move the needle on a 'Friend meter' into the green zone by feeding and soothing. Too far in either direction and the tame will fail. Once in the green, the player then needs to feed the preferred Poppin (cake) type or the tame will fail. Even feeding the correct Poppin will not always result in an immediate tame, so the process may need to be repeated several times. I imagine children may struggle with this system. Every animal has two skills: wild (Sprinter, Slasher, Discoverer, Smasher, Stomper) and farm (Waterer, Tiller, Clearer, Harvester, Tender) - that will assi...