Blog: Games of April 2021

April was a pretty good month. I did better at striking the balance between enjoying playing games and getting other stuff done too. I didn't play as few games as I did last month, but I was pretty focused and enjoyed what I played.

My top five games (by play time) for April were:

1. Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn - The Wii sequel to Path of Radiance. It feels like the developers got to take all of the things that worked well in Path of Radiance and build on them. Unlike pretty much any other Fire Emblem game I can think of, it's divided into several parts where you run totally different armies with a lot of different characters. That's been interesting from a story perspective and it does let you make better use of all of the characters. I'm pretty sure I played this all the way through when it came out, but I really don't remember any of it any more.
   
   


2. Battle Brothers - It's still a ton of fun, but the game does seem to require some good decisions (and luck) early in the game to succeed later on. I think the heavy world randomness is also making the game a little bit harder than it needs to be. I find that interesting because in the battles, the game does a very good job of allowing you to manage and mitigate bad randomness (certainly compared to the Fire Emblem games, for example) but it feels like some worlds are just less winnable than others. Still, overall, I'm really enjoying the moment-to-moment gameplay and learning about the ways to do better later in the game.
   
   


3. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance - Compared to Radiant Dawn, I do remember this one pretty well. I think some of my enjoyment stems from nostalgia, but it seems like a very balanced Fire Emblem game both in terms of difficulty and in terms of gameplay and story. I think every aspect of the game gets improved on in later sequels, but it feels like this has a lot of seeds for what went well in the later games.
   
   


4. Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - I am bad at this game and I would like to be not quite so bad. I picked it up thanks to watching Play Frame's Let's Play of the Link to the Past / Super Metroid randomizer. I've enjoyed it and I want to keep playing to some extent just to get to the point where I can play through mostly knowing what I'm doing and not getting myself into stupid situations. Playing this also left me really wanting to replay Ocarina of Time, particularly thinking about how OoT built out so many things that are hinted at in A Link to the Past, but aren't really included.
   
   


5. New Pokemon Snap - I suppose I played the original game, but I don't really remember doing it. I feel a bit like I was mostly interested in New Pokemon Snap because it's a new game that I could pick up day one, during a pandemic where I'm feeling a little cabinfevery. It's bright and sparkly and pretty fun. I think it also has quite a bit of depth and replay, although I'm not sure I'm interested in mastering it.
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for April:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month: