Saria Lemes

i can export wavs directly from the engine now, so we can have tracks with perfect timings. loving how this chip is coming along.

Saw A Short Hike was on Game Pass and I started replaying after a while and out of curiosity tried it in japanese and was delightfully surprised! This is a good game for language learning, checks most of the boxes for what I want playing a game for that purpose.

Most of the dialogue in the game is composed in simple sentences very easy to parse and normal day-to-day vocabulary, and the vocabulary that is more specific and I have to lookup are not usually one-offs, so it helps me retain the words I'm learning throughout the game. Plus the nice balance between dialogue and gameplay, feels really good and I never feel overwhelmed by what I have to read.

On the topic... I wonder if it might be worth making a post with recommendations of games I've played that I think fill that role nicely... There's lots of lists of "JP games for beginners" out there that felt so arbitrary in their choices when I went to check them out... I could at least make something I can explain properly why I'd recommend, and this one wouldn't try to aim at beginners but at people who've already been learning but hadn't tried playing videogames for that purpose yet...

As much as I advise against focusing solely on it, I like anki/SRS apps for language learning because it's a good tool to ensure a "bare minimum" progress everyday

Some days I might not have the time or mind to properly study or immerse like I wanted, but at least I can do my 20 mins of Anki effortlessly everyday to learn a couple new words and remember some I might have forgotten

Managed to get used to the controls on my wacky emulation setup, and now it doesn't feel bad at all, so I'll definitely keep going forward and beat the game because itkeeps reminding me that it's more amazing than I could ever remember it being.

The stages are all super fun, the level design keeping fresh on every chapter with all these amazing sights and secrets to find, the dialogue balances comedy and storytelling really well, and OH THE MUSIC. I already kept returning to the OST from time to time but I forget how the flight sequence tracks work with the action, it's crazy good stuff. Like- I already knew this track was a banger with Motoi Sakuraba and Masafumi Takada going all out on it, but it feels even crazier seeing reality bending around you, and it was even crazier with the 3d effect on (I really miss it)

And it's crazy the amount of subsystems the game have to push its replay value even before finishing the game, with the weapon and fusion system, spell equipment, difficulty betting which also can open secret rooms on the game. I've gone through chapter 9 but counting replays I've probably done around 20 or so already. Sakurai really went all out in this one