Here are a few of my first impressions in convient bullet-point fashion:

✄ The game is very open-ended, with a number of quests and goals to complete, but it never feels like it’s forcing you to do anything. Love kayaking out into the open sea to see what you can catch? You can do that to your heart’s content! All fish you catch can be exchanged for points at the end of the day which are then used to purchase items such as new rods and lures, so you’ll never run out of supplies to fish away without a care in the world, if that’s what you so choose.

I may or may not have spent a whole day paddling around in a kayak

✄ Perhaps the most irritating thing about the game, however, is the day/night cycle. Every day, without fail, the game will spirit you back to your hotel promptly at 7 pm. While this isn’t the end of the world, it gets annoying having your marathon fishing sessions interrupted.

✄ There are a number of different areas in the game that you can travel to as you unlock the option to stay at different hotels. The first area is nice, but I’m already looking forward to seeing new locations and catching different kinds of fish! The prospect of new locations is a great way to motivate players to  complete quests and progress in the game.

✄ Of course, all of the best games have customizable clothing options, and Fishing Resort definitely fulfills that line on the checklist. It’s totally superficial, but I love saving up for silly items to clothe my avatar in!

The real question is whether or not I will stick with Fishing Resort longer than I did Harvest Moon: A New Beginning. Right now I’m confident that I will, as it’s proving to be a lot of fun and I’m getting a big kick out of the motion controls. Be sure to check back in about a week’s time to see how I’m faring!

Wish I could say I was having as much fun as these gals are! (source)

That’s not to say the game isn’t fun – the environments have become exponentially more interesting as I’ve progressed through the game, and the characters and dialogue continue to be an adorable treat. Actually playing it doesn’t quite live up to the idea of playing it, but I’ve gotten to the point where I just won’t feel satisfied until I can say “yeah, I beat it.”

Does this mean my February BBC pick, Harvest Moon: A New Beginning, will suffer? I have to admit, it already has. What little time I’ve spent away from Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Ni no Kuni has generally gone to The Legendary Starfy, mostly because it’s much easier to get through a quick level of that than trudge through more boring tutorials Harvest Moon: A New Beginning (that should make it glaringly obvious how early in the game I still am…). I’m not sure what this will mean for my Beat the Backlog Club project, but I’m not ready to give up now!

Anyway, let’s get back to The Legendary Starfy. Here are a few reasons why I just can’t stop playing it:

absurdly adorable takoyaki minigame

collectable Starfy costumes

everything just keeps getting cuter…

… Correct me if I’m wrong, but Starfy is starting to sound eerily like a significant other you really don’t have anything in common with but can’t leave because they’re just too good looking (or heart-meltingly cute, in this case). Regardless of the moral implications of my sojourn with Starfy, I’m content to see the game through to the end, but I won’t be sticking around for any sidequests or 100% completion nonsense. Will I finish it before the end of February? Time will tell…

Bonus photos:

Starfy’s idle animation is him whipping out a sleeping bag and going to bed right in the middle of the level!

Pretty much what the screen looks like 100% of the time I’m playing the takoyaki minigame.

So, we’re nearly two weeks into February and I’m only just now getting around to announcing what game from my backlog I’ll be tackling over the course of the month… My efforts for the Beat the Backlog Club are off to a great start, eh? In fact, I’m still hard at work on my January pick, The Legendary Starfy! (more on that in a future post… I’m determined to finish it!)

But the show must go on, and it’s my hope that as the months go by I’ll eventually start adhering to some semblance of a schedule and complete my target of 12 games by January 1, 2014. So, what lucky game will be the focus of my attention this month? It’s actually a relatively recent addition to my backlog… Harvest Moon: A New Beginning!

I was very much looking for a low-key game for the month, as I’ve also been tasked with reviewing Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, so I did an informal poll on Twitter to see what people would like to see more: Harvest Moon: A New Beginning or Fishing Resort. I honestly wasn’t very surprised to see Harvest Moon smash Fishing Resort out of the water, so I happily picked it up and began farming away on my pink x white 3DS XL (by the way, I’ll still be doing Fishing Resort later this year, so the three of you who voted for it have something to look forward to).

In all honesty, I haven’t gotten much farther than creating my character and going through the initial tutorials, but I do have a few initial impressions to share:

✄ It’s very satisfying to finally be able to make your own customized character! This is the first time players have been able to choose what their character looks like in a Harvest Moon game, and I have to say I’ll be disappointed if the option doesn’t return in future titles.

✄ I know this is a very individual thing, but I’m not very fond of the game’s art style. Not only do I not really like any of the character designs (okay, some of them, especially the animals, are pretty cute), but the 3D models of both the characters and the scenery look very blah, in my opinion. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been playing too much Animal Crossing: New Leaf, but the color scheme doesn’t gel with me very well, and I keep wishing the whole thing just, well, looked nicer.

✄ Gameplay-wise, it’s very standard Harvest Moon fare, so I know I will enjoy that aspect. I can’t wait to be able to customize my character’s clothing and house and get an adorable llama!

The llama’s the one with the pompador!

For the curious, I’m playing as a girl named Appi with a very trendy cropped pink haircut who owns Yumyum Farm. As for my bachelor of choice (because we all know marriage is the most important thing in Harvest Moon), I might go for Amir or Soseki… Depending on how I go I might even swing for that jerk Allen, just because the things he says are so hilariously awful!

Stay tuned for another update in approximately a week’s time, and let me know what game you’re playing from your backlog in the comments!

As I mentioned in my Beat the Backlog Club announcement post, I’m cheating a little this month since I didn’t get the ball rolling for the BBC project until mid-January. As such, I’m plaything through The Legendary Starfy, a quirky platformer for the Nintendo DS that, admittedly, I started in December. Given that I only played a level or two in 2012, I figured it would serve as a good title to ease me into the idea of playing a game a month.

The Legendary Starfy is a relatively basic platformer, albiet a little easier than the likes of Mario or Rayman, as apparently it’s intended for a slightly younger audince. In addition, much of the gameplay takes place under water, which is generally a source of much frustration in other platformers. Gameplay is relatively straightforward, however, with Starfy using his star powers to glide effortlessly through the water and companion Bunston occassionally lending costumes that serve as power-ups.

While Starfy‘s cuteness hooked me from the start, the rest of the game has been a bit of a mixed bag. I don’t play many platformers and as such don’t think I can really articulate what I think makes some better over others, but something about Starfy‘s level design leaves much to be desired. Simply playing through them becomes a bit of a chore, especially since it’s all quite easy and the game makes it extremely clear where it wants you to go and how you should go about getting there. The kind of fun and excitement I had playing through Rayman Origins is, unfortunately, not to be found here.

Almost everything can be forgiven in a game this adorable.

In addition, the music is mind-numbingly awful. You can tell the developers wanted to go the “super-cute” route here, too, but it just comes off as being too sugary-sweet and overdone. As a result, I’ve been playing the game on mute virtually the whole time.

That’s not to say Starfy is horrible and that it shouldn’t be experienced, but I don’t think its charm lies in what traditionally makes platformers fun to play. So far, my favorite aspects of Starfy have actually been in the game’s characters and dialogue! We’ll see if that’s what gets me through the game, or if the gameplay actually gets better later on…

Are you playing a game from your backlog this month? Feel free to share what title you picked and chat about your progress in the comments!