>>790791 I have beaten DUSK and the First Golden Souls. Lately I play games which don't really have an ending like CDDA though.

>>790791 Starsector. Finally conquered the entire galaxy with my allies. 10/10 will play again probably dozes of times. Dragon's Dogma. Finished Hard Mod +. After you get lvl 3 bitterback gear shit just gets too easy. 9/10 will never touch it again. Encased. Russian(?) RPG about being stuck in an enclosed space. Quite decent till you get to Act II. Then things get kind of barebones with the lack of sidequests. 7/10 maye a replay with another wing (wings are the factions in the game). Phoenix Point. NUCOM except with AP and not as good. Still quite decent. My main issue is how all the DLC feels disjointed, not quite integrated with the main game. It feels like a different director made each one. 7/10 will play again on harder difficulties. Rimworld, I guess? I built the ship and left but it keeps going? Strange but very fun and horribly unoptimized. Game started shitting itself after 30 colonists even on a 12600k. 9/10 will definitely play it again with mods, as I've read here it's the main attraction to the game. I finished all these last year, this year I'm still waiting for my new graphics card to arrive since my trusty 580 died.

Most recent games I've finished were Void Scrappers and Potion Permit.

I've finished Kult, back when it only existed as a cracked copy in English. GoG has it now as Heretic Kingdoms, and I'm playing it again. Interesting mechanics, reasonable storyline albeit Eastern-bloc rather than a more timeless idea but that's fine too. I finished the new xcom, but not xcom2 though I've played it a ways in. I've also played far enough into the Bureau that I had to pick some NPC to replace me, or not. I felt best about picking no one, which ends the game. So I'm going to say I finished the Bureau too. Have I mentioned I suck at turn-based strategies? I enjoy them greatly but I still suck so there's only so many I can play through to completion without godmode, which is the only way I know the Warcraft-III storyline, or starcraft for that matter.

>>790833 You should have played NuCom on Classic difficulty, you would have loved it!

>>790791 The last game I finished was Kingdom Come and that was 2 months ago. I've been grinding in OSRS and hoping into Splatoon 3 every now and again since. Honestly I've gotten kind if tired of playing new things all the time, it's overwhelming. I just need to stomp around in familiar territory for a little bit until my hunger for something new comes back.

To be fair, most of the games I play don't really have a definite ending. The last game I beat, though, was REmake two weeks ago. I finished that with Jill, so I do want to go and finish the game with Chris.

>>790908 Do it fag, chris's ending is the harem ending.

>>790911 I'll do it just for you, fag. Then I'll do RE 2.

Retardedly easy, specially when you start exploiting the magic powers. I went with the good karma playthrough thinking in replaying it with bad karma but its one of those "your choices matter (not)" type of rpg, so no. Its also quite shitty you can't continue the game after the ending regarding if you got the good or bad one. I liked the art direction, the music, the overall feeling of the game is quite comfy, specially those early 00's graphics. I finished all quest and side quest in 21 hours which is nice. I'll probably be playing 2 in a couple of months.

>>790791 Patapon 3, really fun but the game leaned hard to be played online, so things like player teams, customization, multiplayer dungeons, and playing as the dark heroes are obsolete, though, i saw you can play online with mods and joining a discord but no way i'm doing that, and just when i finished the game, i discovered you can patch it with the remasters' graphics so i might replay the saga again some day with that. also i went to the fandom page and found trannies screeching about a character in the comments, and i know that it was my mistake going there in the first place but God, this faggots are everywhere, like a fucking plague, i'm so sick of them.

>>791094 >Hollow Knight >Patapon small bug things are bery kute I really don't like how people lewd the Protagonist and Hornet together, he's her little brother.

>>791112 Cute bugs indeed.

I just finished a run of the 2016 reboot of MOO. Well, actually I finished it a few days ago, but my race has unraveled all the secrets to the universe and have transcended to beings of pure energy - and now I sit back with my handful of colony worlds watching the lesser races empires clash against each other - alooft from their petty politics, but sympathetic to their struggles, while I arrange long-obsolete production facilities and travel the starlanes transforming random gas giants into gaia paradises that I never intend to colonize. That said, the game is pretty shit. It's a low-budget "safe" MOO/MOO2 mash-up remaster which doesn't really do anything appreciably new that feels in spirit with the series, while also being buggy as fuck. I'd say Endless Space 2 is the real MOO/MOO2 spiritual successor in that it's complex enough to be satisfying, but casual enough that a dummy like me can jump into easily and have fun without getting bogged down in too many subsystems.

Over the past few weeks I've beaten Legend of Grimrock, Just Cause 2 and Devil Spire. My definition of "finish" used to be 100% as a kid but that's become both impractical and incredibly boring as I've gotten older, so as long as I enjoy a game fully completing the campaign/getting an ending counts in my book (barring some games with like 1/3 of the content hidden behind another ending). >Legend of Grimrock Fun dungeon crawler and really well paced, never feeling like it drags on super long. Of the couple times I previously played it I got far closer to the end of the game than I'd imagined, so it was nice to finally complete the game. >Just Cause 2 Cheesy international espionage starring not-Antonio Banderas and co-starring lots of explosions. Addictive but has really started to show its age in light of newer technology. Still massive and really well detailed for an old game. Only wanted to beat this since it's another game I've tried finishing in the past but always ended up spending way too much time just fucking around. You could feasibly beat the Agency Missions in like 8 hours if you only do the bare minimum of side content, which while fun does get incredibly repetitive after you've unlocked the entire map. >Devil Spire Surprisingly fun Roguelite dungeon crawler (randomly generated floors and weapons, potions you need to memorize the function of, but mostly consistent in all other ways). Has some pretty nice spritework and decently challenging until you get the ball rolling with certain abilities and weapons/spells. >>790795 Would you say Phoenix Point is worth a try for someone who's a fan of the NuCom games? >>790833 XCOM 2 is really fun, especially with the DLC.

i finished ryuu ga gotoku 0 it was fun, finally getting the ability to change styles, but having played the first five main games before that, majima's character is all over the place

> The Legend of Zelda: a Link to the Past (SNES) Beat Ganon today. I could have beaten him on my first try, but I kept falling into the stupid pit at the edge of the arena. Falling down there might as well be an instant Game Over because I have to walk out, refresh my health and magic and start the fight all over again. I hate it when a game has these instant death traps. Other than that a great game that I have replayed many times already.

>>791058 i tried playing Fable and i got to this part where i had to watch some barrels or boxes and i have the choice of breaking them to see what is inside for the evil option and the good option was watching them for the owner, all while some kid taunted me to break them, it's was like it was designed by an obnoxious child.

>>791281 lol yeah that is your first good/bad karma choice I don't know why the franchise got so popular but even by the mid 00's standards its quite a shallow rpg with nigh to none real options that affect the world or your playthrough. The fucking game stands at a 9/10 on steam that is fucking retarded. I'm guessing it was baby's first western action rpg.

>>791267 What's your opinion on the dark world?

Recently finished Ace Combat 7. I played Assault Horizon a bunch of years ago and it was eh. But 7 was pretty good. I hope they will continue making them. I had some difficulty at the beginning but it was due to me playing on controller and had to fiddle with the stick response to square instead of round and adjusting threshold so that the corners would send max input. So I'm replaying it in higher difficulty to compensate for this change.

Quick question: how long does it take you to complete a game, on average? I tend to be the kind that takes a little longer on average, depending on how much content there is, how many times I die, or how much time I spend shitpostan when I could have spent it playan.

I beat 20XX multiple times on both Normal and Defiant. They did a nice job copying the feel of Mega Man X controls, and the armors were fun to mess around with, but I was disappointed that they obviously had more love for classic Mega Man aesthetic and themes than they did for X. I beat God Eater 2: Rage Burst. The game was very lengthy, and the story had anime pacing at times, but it felt like they successfully made it a potentially satisfying conclusion to the series, in case the 3rd game hadn't been greenlit. I also beat God Eater Resurrection. The Predator Styles added an extra layer of variety to the moveset, I had a bunch that combo'd into each other and doubled as movement options. There was a bunch of content (Garm, alt characters, the lounge and all its associated NPCs) that they left out, they made a few errors that weren't in previous iterations (Abandoned City having its battle-scarred alt before A Moon in Welkin, Tsubaki's Operator lines getting completely mixed up and poorly directed), and they nerfed Arda Nova to death, but at least I got to see Shio grab Alissa's boobs.

>>791314 >I'm guessing it was baby's first western action rpg. It was baby's first western action rpg on console. It and Morrowind were the first ones to make it off PC and get people saying "OMG, it's the reason to buy an XBAWKS"

I just beat Valkyria Chronicles 1 for the second time. The first was back when the PS3 was new. >Gameplay still fantastic >Graphics still beautiful, like watercolor >Alicia still a good girl I did get really sick of the hamhanded "power is evil and only evil people want it or use it" faggot morality though. I didn't remember how hard they tried to beat that into you via the story and I got sick of it real fast. Still a great game though. #Faldiodidnothingwrong Next game in the backlog is either going to be VC4 or KOTOR, neither of which I have ever played.

>>791567 >story is trash >gameplay is poorly designed and easily broken >major character dies, the guy is just like "oh well that's too bad" >cringe ending The anime was much better

>Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna The Golden Country Pretty good in spite of playing it before playing the main game. Didn't really feel like I didn't understand what was going on until the shenanigans that start happening during the final boss. Enjoyable RPG on its own with good characters, good music, and great gameplay. Lore is also interesting regarding the whole bonds between humans and blades thing and related stuff. Not much else to say, and I'll be starting the main game as soon as I finish another game I'm playing through right now. Jin is a pretty good lad. >Nier Replicant Remake Need to write something up proper for the review thread on this one. Superb game even with the repeated playthroughs stuff for the differing endings, though I didn't get to ending E the original game ends at ending D so I'll consider it completed for now. Gave me a sense of adventure that you get in games like Okami or the 3D Zelda games. Characters were fucking amazing and the story and presentation were wonderful. Don't want to spoil anything though, so that's all I'll say on it. Would recommend if you don't want to emulate the original for one reason or another. >Dark Souls 2 SotFS (Replayed) Technically a re-completion, was just as enjoyable as I remembered, really. Still consider it my favorite in the series and my current playthrough of DS3 is further cementing that stance. >Pokemon Scarlet Worst fucking pokemon game I've played, second worst switch game I've played (Touhou Kobuto Burst Battle holds that #1 spot). Buggy, glitchy, horrid mess, only bought it because of goodwill from Arceus being a sign of them turning things around for the series by actually making good fucking games again, only to put out this buggy, stuttery, confused piece of shit. It mystifies me how people can consider this game's story good, or the world design, or the character design. The music is passable and the new 'mon designs were mostly good, that's about it, but people go and praise this as "best game since gen 5 if not for the bugs" and it just confuses me, has to be some kind of astroturf/shill campaign and I refuse to believe otherwise.

>>791579 Impressive levels of retardation anon

>>793726 >Touhou Kobuto Burst Battle holds that #1 spot Why though? From trailers the idea seems fine, not as fast-paced as I would expect a bullet hell fight to go but fine, can't say about the execution or how the battles actually play out.

>>793731 Controls and plays like shit in execution, and has piss-poor tutorials. I still have the game as a memento of sorts but it's a horrible game even by fangame standards.

I finished Fire Emblem Engage on Switch a while back. While it's the first time I have ever completed a FE title so I cannot exactly compare it to others, I found it to be a pretty solid game on its own. I'm currently doing Three Houses as a follow-up and the pace by comparison is much slower (only in chapter 5 within 15 hours of gameplay, while I was already in chapter 10 in Engage with that same amount of playtime) and the graphics/animations are definitely a downgrade.

Screenshots are not mine. Completed Sin & Punishment: Star Successor little over a week ago with eight hours clocked in. The plot of the game is that, in the far future, a couple of kids, Isa and Kachi, crash land a space ship onto a seemingly abandoned island of Japan, and have to fight their way through the island in order to escape in other ship. However, hindering their quest are the biomechincal defenses that "guards" Earth from outsiders, and a group of advanced humans who are hunting down Kachi because she isn't human and some grand master ordered her death. Sadly, as the game progresses, it doesn't answer very many of the questions the plot presents, aside from trying to answer the most obvious ones, and sort of just ends after the final battle. There's no conclusion or implications of what happens after the game's events, and it left me feeling like the story was just unfulfilled. However, that may be due to the fact that the game's plot exists more as an excuse for the gameplay. The gameplay of the title is what some people have referred to as a "3D shmup", in that you control an actual character along a fixed plane on the screen, that can deflect some objects with a lazer sword, in addition pointing the Wiimote at objects to blow them up with your gun. As you get further into the game, the title keeps increasing the amount of hazards and enemies that you need to be paying attention to, and it does have some really creative ways that the player ranks up the most points in each of the game's eight levels, with each level having about 2-3 mini-bosses and one main boss. The biggest catch to the game is figuring out each of the little tricks you need to perform in order to survive, however it leaves the game feeling a little hollow once you end it all as there's very little experimentation that can be taken places. Each of the game's eight levels takes about 20-30 minutes to complete, so the best player should be able to complete the game in under four hours. However, after my completing it after six, and playing a little more just to see if I missed anything, I didn't really see any reason to continue the game unless I was interested in getting the "highest score" (For a non-existent leaderboard as the Wii's Wifi was shut down eons ago). The graphics for the game, I want to say, look excellent, but it depends on what you're focusing on. Each of the game's levels, with zero drop in frames, take place across huge grand and complex vistas, which do look nice, however the individual characters don't look up to par when compared to games from prior consoles. As for the audio, it has a really upbeat feel, but much of the music can get lost with all of the blaring of the sound effects from the player, the enemies, the environment, etc. Overall, Sin & Punishment: Star Successor is a very good arcade experience game, and I can recommend it as a good game, however I advise that people be aware that the game lack much to do after you finish it. Sadly, it's one of those games that you play once and never play again and you already saw everything it has to show.

I haven't beaten them just now, but I did go thru (almost) every single Metal Gear Solid game a little while back. See pic related, I only played the first three MGS games up until this point so everything else was new. Shame this thread wasn't made sooner, or I would have posted some of my takes in here

Something older I did, Fallout is my favorite franchise so I figured I would see how much I actually have to say about it after 20+ years of playing it. All but one of those games I have beaten before tho, so not sure if on topic Right now I am similarly playing thru several Serious Sam games since I got the itch, but honestly they are all pretty much the same aside from the gimmicks and locales: You played one Sam game, you played them all. Doesn't mean I am not enjoying them, I still have my original TFE/TSE discs that I must not have touched in over a decade and it was a blast to install something from a disc for once instead of getting everything digitally

I just finished jewcy wilds

Just finished The Simpson's Road Rage. It was a very repetitive game yet very fun and funny. the emulator says i played for 16 hours. The ending was so janky that i thought something was wrong with the emulator, but i looked it up and that is how odd looking the ending is. Spoilers! Here is the ending if you want to see https://yewtu.be/watch?v=tx1t0GgJ7VM As the ending shows, it's implied that Burns throws you down a trap door, but it looks so unfinished with the black void, it makes it look like it's a glitch or something. I also don't know why the video shows the aliens, i have no idea how to get that ending, the walkthroughs said nothing about different ending

>>791058 >upgrade accuracy and bow skills immediately >upgrade multiple arrows spell >obtain Skorm's Bow on game day 7 Literally unstoppable with this combo, the boss fights take like two hits to complete. Sadly, the game's story falls off a cliff after the arena quest though.

>>790791 The last game I have finished in a while is Dragon Quest Treasures on an emulator. I was holding off talking about it until I could post a proper review in its thread but it's been like a month since I last played it, I didn't even 100% it as I'm missing like twelve treasures and they all either require a guide or sheer dumb luck to get. I feel the game is about a 6/10, the sort of title that you would have hidden away in your stash of games as a child and remember fondly now but going back to it you'd notice how bland or poor in quality it actually was. The kind that gets like a hundred people commenting on it on youtube videos about how it was their childhood despite the longplay having views in the low thousands. It has some good points though but I want to cover them more accurately later on.

Just finished crysis 3 remastered. I never played the original. Fun game, although like crysis 2 it's still not as good crysis 1, that looks great today and is shockingly well optimized in terms of both fps and file size. It ironically feels a lot more like a tech demo than crysis 1 did because it's so short.

>>790791 I just finished the first Silent Hill game on the original Playstation.

>>810380 The psone was such an horrendous looking design compared to the original Playstation. The only time they got it right for the re design was the ps4 but that was a piece of shit system through and through

>>791058 Somewhat unpopular opinion, 2 is the better Fable game despite the combat turning into absolute dog shit. The world reacts to your actions and the economy system is a lot of fun. It's a fun landlord/harem simulator which is basically all 13 year old me wanted from an RPG at the time.

>Stick of Truth Ironically for the series that would coin the term, this game is really memberberry heavy. Gameplay is really unbalanced with abilities being either totally useless or massively OP with few in between. Original humor is literally fart based. You'll get 12 hours of amusement out of it, but only if you're actually a serious fan of the show. >Akiba's Trip 1 remake Only play if you've beaten the sequel. Only change to the combat from the PSP original is camera control on second analog stick and the ability to increase the number of NPCs spawned at once, which can turn the scenes into a chaotic (but fun!) riot very quick if a few bystanders get hit. Story and writing and still amusing, and this is the first English release. >Dark Forces 2+Mysteries of the Sith OpenJKDF2 is great, and these games can finally be played on modern machines! Know what's not great? The level design in these two games! Most levels manage to be both linear, and confusing with illogical puzzles that are randomly placed in the world, and opaque switch hunts. Core gameplay is really good, and the rare straightforward level is very fun.

>>791358 >What's your opinion on the dark world? What opinion is there to be had? It's a cool twist that when you think you have rescued the Princess (again) the game starts for real. The mechanic itself is OK, I never found myself having to switch between worlds too often.

>>810712 Got some right here

I beat the .hack//G.U games and by god they have rather interesting stories but the most mediocre and boring ass combat and gameplay I have ever witnessed in an action game in my entire life. It's like as if I was playing DMC2, but with even less polished and more sluggish combat while playng in fucking 10 boring ugly drawn out copy/paste dungeon types throughout the entire fucking game it was miserable. The best part about it was the corny late 90's/early 2000's anime drama and really well done cutscenes, other than that the games are 100% a waste of your life and I wasted *60 hours of mine playing all 4 of the games.

Ace Combat 7. It's a shitty pastiche of the PS2 games with a wasted drone gimmick and dreadful mission design.

>Aquanox Cool lore (Democrats being lying power hungry faggots not above reviving the old ones to gain power, pretty good shit) Decent story Cool environment Cool Graphics for the era Inconsistent VAs Not very good gameplay though, very standard space shooter style but bad weapons and kinda shit mission and enemy design

>>810828 >that the games are 100% a waste of your life Doesn't this apply to any other game or piece of entertainment?

>>810831 I agree with your statement. Ace Combat 7 is a return to the ps2 style games or rather it follows 6s styles for better and worse. It has a ton of unique ideas in theory, but in execution they are all terrible. Wind blowing your aircraft around sounds cool but when you are actually playing the game, you cannot help but feel annoyance instead. Most of the weather effects are cool, but the sandstorm and lightning are annoying to the point of rage quitting. What moron decided to add mission timers for ranks like ace combat 3 but decided to add RNG Mechanics that prevent you from completing a mission in time. Lightning can strike you at random, and enemies love to stick around those areas including a mission in which you are forced to fly into them and what Lightning does when you are hit is that your hud gets all fucked and you cant lock onto enemies for about 10 or so seconds and stack that up onto RNG, time slowly draining, and the fact you can be hit multiple times a mission makes that hell on earth. Sandstorms makes you unable to see shit, and your missles lose accuracy, you also get blown all over the place with little ability to do anything about it and it prevents enemies from showing up on radar until you get within a certain range. Add that onto a tight time limit for a mission that was already short for time for S ranking and you get an even bigger pain in the ass to deal with. Another retarded mechanic was the clouds as they now cause your missles to lose tracking of enemies which is retarded, unrealistic, and annoying. I could see clouds being a way to lose visual on enemies but nothing more really. The best missions in the game, mission 6 and 10 dont even have the weather mechanics, well they have clouds, but you wont experience them too much. Really if you removed the entire weather mechanic the game would be a LOT better and I haven't checked if there is a mod that does that but it would fix probably half the problems with the game. Another problem is the drones which are annoying mosquitos, they arent particularly dangerous and go down quite easy if you know that firing missles when the enemy is at the edge of the top of your screen improves their tracking capability, but the problem is that there is so many of them and that mutlilock missles really cant deal with them fast enough because multilock missles got nerfed to hell and back in this game. That leads me onto the weapons problems, guns are fucking useless, after they were extremely good in Ace Combat 6 I thought they would be good in 7, but no they are almost as bad as Ace Combat 2. No range, No damage, and you being stupidly agile as well as your enemies makes using guns more of a hassle than a challenge, and all the upgrades for guns do jack to help . Multilock missles had a massive range nerf and accuracy making them almost completely useless and the upgrades do little to help. Just dont even bother using 6aam or 8aam. Semi active missles are nerfed as well since all the aircraft that get them arent agile, and they dont have range to compensate. The TLS also got nerfed to hell and back as its now got a tick timer for hitting enemies and that damage that happens is so little that there really isnt a point to using it. The two other laser weapons the plsl is extremely good and is probably one of the best special weapons in the game which is just a gun that has stupid range and speed and damage and its basically everything the guns should have been. Some aircraft even use it as its guns. The EML which is just a railgun has been nerfed from Ace Combat 6 but its still brokenly OP and can one shot nearly everything excluding bosses if you give it the right upgrades which makes it bullshit in multiplayer. Speaking of upgrades, Ace Combat 7 added upgrades from Ace Combat infinity, hell the aircraft progression system is also from Ace Combat infinity with the exception of leveling up planes. Most of the upgrades you get do little to help you and most of them are completely useless like the standard missle upgrade for damage doesnt even make a noticeable difference in damage and most enemies dont change the number of missles needed to down them, maybe bosses need one less missle but you are going to be using special weapons against those. There are also Much improved upgrades that are exclusive only to multiplayer and its a big fuck you to anyone grinding singleplayer to unlock everything. Using the mod that allows you to use the multiplayer exclusive upgrades in singleplayer is essential if you want to feel like your upgrades are doing anything, like the standard missle upgrade for damage in mutliplayer has a noticable up in damage, most jets that take 3 hits now only need 2 and tanks can now be one shot so you'll be wasting less time in the already time restricted missions making the game feel and play much better. The story is about as bad as 6 if not worse since now there is a woke globohomo dyke added in. There is too much going on and too not enough context for what is happening. One of the story plots was actually half decent and could have been actually good if focused on. Mr ex king that I dont want to bother trying to remember or look up how to spell his name is a man who wants to continue to fly in the sky, but is starting to lose himself in age, so he takes pretty much a deal with the devil to try to keep himself in the air, even if only mainly for drone development, but he still sees action and is one of the bosses. I can say some more stupid shit but none of my explainations are organized and I'm too much of a lazy nigger to fix it.

>>811003 And I forgot to mention that the game has built in Spyware too, which lead me to deleting the game from my steam account

>>811004 You mean Denuvo?

>>810831 The DLC missions chasing the sub I thought were good. A return to just fire and destroy everything.

>>811014 Not sure what it is, but in the EULA it says that it collects your data and stores it at some random company in japan. "2. PRIVACY. Data collected through this Game is held by BNEI in Japan. For more information, please refer to BNEI’s Privacy Policy (which will be shown after this Agreement) for information about how we collect, use, and disclose such data." From the EULA

>>811014 >>811085 Looking at it further it appears it may have not only Denuvo, but Ring 0 Denuvo "a) Denuvo. This Game is protected by Denuvo Anti-Tamper technology (“Anti-Tamper Technology”). By installing this Game, you acknowledge and consent that certain files of the Anti-Tamper Technology may remain even after the Game is uninstalled from your computer."

Just finished Ys Origin with Yunica. May go back and finish the game with Toal, since he's got a pretty interesting hook on the alternate events that happened in the tower - and will probably ignore Hugo. Beat the game on normal mode, but it took me a bit longer than I wanted because a cloud sync error set me back from the Zava boss fight to the Rado Annex. It's not a fantastic game, but enjoyable enough to keep me coming back to beat it. I'll probably finish Ys Chronicles I tonight since it's pretty easy - and I really miss the more complex level design and combat of Origins. But being a remake of a game from the 80's, I can't really fault it for that. Maybe I'll like Adol a little more as the series goes on and the storylines/gameplay gets more complex - but I kind of hate him as a character and I'm kind of dreading having to play... Christ... 9 or 10 more (?) games as him? I also finished the Vicn series of mods for Skyrim VR. Vigilant was fantastic, throwing a Dark Souls aesthetic onto a very TES lore heavy mod. Both Vigiliant and Glenmoril start off really slow and generic, but then quickly ramp up to bugnuts crazy in short order. Vigiliant had some really good scenarios, such as entering into Pelinals memories and slaughtering waves of hundreds of elves before a final showdown with Umaril. The "adaptation" of Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor to a scene between Inquisitor Pepe and an Avatar of Mara... not so much. Still, much better than Glenmoril - which isn't finished yet, and has no voice acting aside from machine translations fed into primitive AI voice bots. It makes the deep lore connections very hard to follow, has no real resolution, and the Bloodborne asthetic ends up having you fight a chapter of hunters and Thalmor using magical firearms that feel really out of place. Though there was a good scenario where I was having to dodge sniper fire from a guard tower and I had to keep using the Become Ethereal Shout as I sprinted from cover to keep from getting my head blown off. On the downside, because the mod is unfinished, I'm stuck carrying around a sack containing the bloody pulped remains of a cute little girl I couldn't save indefinitely until he (never ever) finishes the mod. Unslaad was ok - suffers the same problem of AI translations and robotic voices, but the overall mod is much shorter and acts as a capstone on the trilogy. Less deep-lore into TES and more tying up the lore of the mods themselves. Ja'cobe was a good cat.

Just beat Sonic Frontiers, or at least the parts of it that have actually been released. It's blatantly unfinished, and I knew that since they announced a ton of DLC/updates (it may be free, but still, they shouldn't release unfinished games). But I got it as a gift from someone who knows I'm autistic for Sonic. The physics are kind of fucked but they're serviceable. Giving you sliders for your own movement/turning speeds and things like that was dumb. It felt awful until I just turned them all all the way up. Then it was fine, but still not as good as Adventure. But it's fine. The open worlds are kind of neat, but allowing you so many different ways to get all the different items makes most of the items feel redundant. Even Koroks (they're called Kokos here, but are 100% ripoffs of Koroks) are infinite and respawn. Going around and getting all the memory tokens was a fine little side challenge, but since you could also get memory tokens as random enemy drops, and you could buy them from Big, they were really no reward at all. The reward was only in completing the challenge to get the ones that are actually deliberately placed on the map. The levels (which here are the equivalent of dungeons or shrines) being essentially ones from other games was weird but I could tolerate it, but the fact that they all only had like four visual themes (Green Hill, Chemical Plant, Sky Sanctuary, and Crisis City or maybe some city level from Forces) was very distracting. Clearly unfinished. As I'm sure anyone who has played the game noticed, World 4 is just blatantly unfinished, beyond discussion. he game takes its story much too seriously for a game with barely any story, and this is coming from someone who is majorly autistic for Sonic's story. I don't care about the new character because she doesn't really do anything. The new lore dump for backstory stuff doesn't feel fleshed out enough to mesh effectively with the old lore that it is trying to mesh with. If you're gonna imply Chaos was an Ancient or descendant of them, at least show how the surviving Ancients lost the Kocos inside them and became Chao. Or is Chaos not a Chao now? Because yes, that wasn't something that was explicitly said in Adventure, and was only implied. But the implications here aren't as well done, as they require more leaps to draw the conclusions they seem to want you to draw for yourself. The story for the last boss sucks because it isn't fleshed out enough for me to care about it like I would last bosses in the games this is trying to evoke. Ian Flynn is better at writing Sonic stories than Ken Penders, and maybe his hands were a little tied here since I'm sure the gameplay would come first, or at least it should, but I wish he would do more to evoke the shonen anime feel the series used to have, both in plot and characters. Yes, this is better than the story and characterization in any other Sonic thing since Unleashed or Black Knight, but since this game focuses on story more, it's more worth caring about. Basically, it's a mediocre game in every regard, but at least it was ambitious, even if it failed to reach any of the heights it was aiming for. I respect and enjoy that more than any Sonic game since Unleashed, and I still liked those other games enough to beat them. It's no Adventure 2, but as a fan, it gave me enough fun to see them testing all these ideas. I really hope the next sequel refines them greatly and leaves us with something that is perhaps less ambitious but more focused. That's basically what happened between Adventure 1 and 2, and I like both of those games. Maybe a similar pattern can be followed here.

>>811099 >Maybe I'll like Adol a little more as the series goes on and the storylines/gameplay gets more complex - but I kind of hate him as a character What do you hate about him anon?

>>812132 Nothing specifically in Ys I & II - there's nothing there to hate yet. He's just a blob of pixels - so the lore of the world he's in is far richer than what he's bringing to the game as a protagonist. If they don't expand on him by giving him a real personality and dialogue, then it's going to hold the games back I feel - but if they do, and from what little I've read about how the series develops, I get a sinking sensation that he's just going to end up being Kirito in a red suit. I'm about half-way though Ys II now, and I'm kind of wondering which game to pick up next. I heard after the Origins/I/II trilogy - they're all more or less stand-alone titles, loosely connected in chronology but not directly connected, so either Lamicrosa of Dana and Oath of Felghana.

>>811913 >I really hope the next sequel refines them greatly and leaves us with something that is perhaps less ambitious but more focused You know deep down that's not going to happen right.

>>811913 >I wish he would do more to evoke the shonen anime feel the series used to have, both in plot and characters. God damn, I couldn't agree more. One of the many reasons I've dropped Sonic altogether after all these years.

>>812657 Well it's what happened between Adventure 1 and Adventure 2. Adventure 1 just threw everything at the wall, and the sheer ambition made it impressive, but Adventure 2 trimmed the fat and then took what was left and refined it to be better, at least in most regards. Theoretically that could happen here. This game was trying a mostly new style for the series. That said, yes, Sega is even more incompetent now than they were during the Dreamcast era, so this hope may be in vain. But I would say Frontiers is better than the 13 years of Sonic games before it, so that still leaves me with some hope. And even though I repeatedly praised Unleashed, I like what they were going for here more than I like what Unleashed went for. The problem is that this game is very unpolished, and Unleashed was incredibly polished, so I'd overall still say Unleashed is better. But if they took Frontiers' formula and actually released a properly finished game, like Unleashed, I'd like it much better. >>812665 Yeah when Flynn started on the comics, it was impressive to see him take the absolute shit that was the Archie series and try to polish that turd as best he good. And he did actually take some concepts and characters are make them cool. I love the idea of Scourge, and how his appeal actually relies on him being a fucking stupid character for over a decade. So due to that, when he did stuff I didn't like, like continue focusing on non-game characters so much, or have characters act a bit out of character (as far as the game versions would be concerned), I chalked it up to him working in the continuity he was given. But then the Super Genesis Wave happened, and most of the stupid shit was gone, and he was given a chance to make everything better and jettison all the bad stuff all at once. And actually Worlds Collide, right before the Super Genesis Wave, kind of did that. But really he went right back to doing stories primarily about the OCs (though at least they were the SatAM OCs and not Penders' OCs), and making new OCs to replace the ones he wasn't allowed to use anymore. But still, he had the excuse of it still being a continuation, even if altered now, so there was an excuse for focusing on the Freedom Fighters and keeping the game characters acting like how they acted in the old comics instead of the games. But then the IDW comics happened, and while it's again a big improvement, and now it does fit in the game universe at least, Flynn, and later Stanley, just keep introducing and focusing on more OCs, many of which are just poor replacements for old OCs, but others are just plain old Deviantart-tier shit. And then Flynn gets a hold of the games, and he is definitely better than the other baka gaijin that have been writing the games since 2009, but he continues focusing on OCs (also, he seems to mostly love female OCs), and now that he does have to focus on game characters more, since he can only have one OC, and now the story has to actually follow Sonic, since you play as him, it becomes clear that he never really learned how to write the character's personalities. Not only should Sonic be a much more carefree dude, but it's very noticable that Amy isn't allowed to be the comedically obsessed fangirl she is supposed to be. Flynn also tried to turn her into a tough warrior in the comics, and it's stupid there too. She can be tough because she has comedy powers. Even when she does cool stuff, it's with the ultimate goal, or at least the highly important secondary goal, of impressing Sonic. But not anymore. Now the only sign she even loves him is that she hugs him once. I like that Flynn tried to address the fact that Tails shouldn't have acted like as much of a bitch as he was in Forces, but I would have just had him act much more confident, with the caveat that he still cracks when things don't go according to plan. Instead he has regressed to pre-Adventure, but at least that is addressed as part of the plot. But this is all a relatively minor complaint. It was an okay way to try to resolve previously inconsistent writing. But I didn't like how Sonic was acting like some sort of father figure. He was acting like in SatAM, I suppose. Again, Sonic shouldn't give a fuck, at least not outwardly. Instead of giving a low-toned reassuring speech, he should have just quickly and confidently said "It's cool. You'll do better next time," or some other quick thing that shows practically no concern at all. It's his confidence and carefree attitude that inspires Tails and others (including the player). Knuckles was fine. He had less going on than Tails, Amy, and Sonic, so there's less to complain about. Of course the game is still not primarily about the story, it is about the gameplay. And the story that's there is still an improvement over the previous 13 years. But since it does have more focus than the previous 13 years, it's more worth complaining about. But yeah, it should be shonen anime. Sonic is Goku. Tails is a sidekick who thinks Sonic is cool and therefore tries to act like him, but isn't quite as cool, because nobody can be (in other words, he's the audience avatar). Amy is a comedic obsessed fangirl and even when she uses her comedy powers to do cool stuff, it's so she can impress Sonic. Too bad Flynn is probably offended by that last one, and doesn't understand the first two.

I just finished Serious Sam: Next Encounter. Never played it before, so I might as well write up my experience here: I played thru Serious Sam 3, First Encounter and Second Encounter(in that order), and Next Encounter is the last stepping stone before I go back and finally finish that game(I believe I either clocked out at the ice planet or kleer planet, that was a long fucking game). Next Encounter is interesting, as it tries bridging that gap between classic TSE Sam and cartoony SS2 Sam in both gameplay and artstyle. Moreover, this is the only console exclusive Sam game, unless you count Serious Sam Advance, so right off the bad you got what is essentially a PC FPS sequel made from scratch for a console-only exclusive. I played the gamecube version on Dolphin with a 360 controller, game worked much better than I thought it would. The areas are much smaller, but the pace of the action is kept up from the classic titles on PC. Of course, you will never get as many enemies as in the PC titles, but the game is smart and makes up for it by keeping arenas small and constantly having you fight something, there is rarely any room for breathing. In fact, "bite sized Serious Sam experience" sums up what the game is going for: Each level is short and has very few secrets, but the action is almost non-stop and moment to moment gimmicks don't wear out their welcome. You also always start with 100 health at start of the level and armor/health keeps ticking down if they overflow 100, so you are encouraged to keep moving and not stock up too much for the next level. I played the game on normal, like I did with the previous titles, altho I noticed the game is easier on this difficulty. I recommend playing it on hard or serious if you want to play it yourself. TNE does a few things differently than the PC counterparts, for one this is the only game with alternative ammo types. They are mostly gimmicks, the most useful types are heat seeking variants and you can treat the rest as a second ammo pool. Speaking of the arsenal, there is a few changes from the standard formula: The pistols have been massively buffed, to the point where you can main them for most of the game with no issue. Same goes for the Shotgun, singular as the pump variant has been cut from the game and only the double barreled one remains. It's almost as if the two weapons fused, as the double barrel keeps the superior power and need to reload between each shot, but the reload is much quicker and the weapon has much more range, making it something of a power weapon this time around rather than a workhorse day-to-day, this role has been delegated to the machine gun(uzis in this game), which can often be found in the very first level of each chapter. There is one new addition to the arsenal, and that is the Sirian Power Gun/Ghostbuster, a weapon actually cut from the very first Serious Sam due to visual issues. Ghostbuster is the true BFG of the game, the laser gun isn't present so this is the only weapon that uses cells, and it uses them very slowly. It fires a continuous beam of energy that kills even the strongest enemies within seconds, it can easily become your main weapon by the time you find it as you will rarely run out of ammo. Other than that, this is the first game that introduced vehicles, however only one main vehicle is present(Humvee), the other two are found in secret levels, one instance of each. Speaking of game mechanics, there is one thing that makes this game stick apart from the others: the score. Your score means nothing in the other games, it's there because oldschool shooters were expected to have it. In this game, however, score is everything: You get a bronze, silver or gold medal at the end of each mission, depending on how much score you get. If you get enough gold medals, you unlock secret levels, so you're always encouraged to get thru the level quickly, while getting all the kills and secrets. Another layer of this puzzle is the combo system: When you get 20 kills, Sam enters the rampage mode, giving him super speed and increasing the amount of score from each kill for a few seconds. The entire game is build around this feature, many gunfights spawn just enough enemies so you can start a rampage at just the right time to get thru the level as quickly as possible or maximize the total amount of score you get, there is plenty of replayability if you're into this sort of thing. The game takes place in three different worlds: Ancient Rome, Feudal China and Atlantis, last one being a mix of best highlight levels from TSE within a sci-fi background, similar to that of the mothership from TFE or the Sirian power generators from SS3. Each world is unique and make for great additions to the franchise, I think TNE captures the same feeling that TSE did by making the whole thing really feel like a time-traveling adventure on a grand scale. The story is...nonexistent, which is disappointing considering the potential. MENTAL isn't your antagonist this time around, he's busy running errands. In his place, you get Sam's teenage clone that MENTAL created, he's using the timelock to jump thru time and build his own party and Sam has to chase after him. The first level does a great job of building intrigue, it seems sometime after TSE(if you consider this game canon) Sam went forward in time, back to around the time of SS4 or SS3 but with all the knowledge he has of the timelock, so now not only is EDF not on the backfoot with the war on MENTAL, they're actively researching and dealing with time travel science. The very first mission where Sam jumps into the timelock to investigate the anomaly(teenage Sam) is shown to be just another day, a by-the-books operation, which is more intriguing than any other part of the game's story. The other Sam...well, he's barely in the game. In fact, his whole plan to raise his own army by time traveling is treated almost like a brat breaking curfew rather than something interesting, Sam literally breaks the little Sam over his knee and spanks him at the very end like he caught him smoking weed rather than trying to destroy the world. Overall, I had a lot of time and I recommend this game to anyone who is a fan of Serious Sam or classic shooters. It is very blatantly a console shooter, but it works well within it's limitations, and takes Sam in places he's never been before, with the combo system giving the game a novel take instead of relegating the game to being an inferior console clone of the original. The game can be finished in a couple of afternoons, maybe more if you want to get a gold medal in every level or unlock all the secret levels, but it's definitely on the same level as the other games in the franchise. There are a few complaints I have with the game, such as inconsistent tone(we start to see the “writing” and jokes SS2 is rather infamous for here), rock-dumb AI, jankiness and glitches, but none of them take away too much from the game. You can easily emulate the game, but if you own SS3 there is also a mod that ports the entire game over, sans the combo system, so you can simply play the “HD Port” if you don’t care about it. Either way, I am looking forward to SS2. I am now more seasoned than ever to tackle it, after beating all the other entries in a short timeframe, and I'm ready to finally "finish the fight" if you will. I remember SS2 being really good, so I will see if that still stacks up by the time I am finished with it.

*I had a lot of fun, not time One thing I forgot to mention is that you should either do each world in one sitting or use save states: Game has no saving feature and instead uses a checkpoint system with infinite lives(you get deducted points for every death). The part that may not appeal to some players is that if you select a level, even if it's the newest one, you always pistol start. That means you don't carry over your equipment like in previous SS games, you either do the whole world in one go or you go back to an earlier level and collect everything you want before tackling a new one. This is particularly infuriating if you find a secret weapon, but again nothing that save states won't fix, even then the game is fine enough as is even with pistol starts, considering how powerful they are this time around.

>>828456 >>828462 Serious Sam 2 has alright gameplay, but compmetely fucks up the tone.

I just finished Cadence of Hyrule's Story Mode. I think I finished the Story Mode 100%, but I understand there are other modes. I got the physical edition which I understand comes with all the DLC, and from what I can tell the Skull Kid DLC incorporates into Story Mode, but you can also play it separately. I guess by beating Story Mode 100% I beat the DLC too though. I'll probably still do it separately as well though since I'm autistic. After starting Octavo's Ode, a second story mode where you play as the bad guy, I found it was the same shit over again. I'll still beat it, but I'm comfortable posting in this thread. I don't like procedurally generated stuff since its design can typically never be as good as a properly well designed game. I never played Crypt of the Necro Dancer since I'm not a tranny. But I am autistic for Zelda, and I saw the physical edition of this cheap, so I got it. It does a good job feeling like a proper Zelda game, but I wish the characters from the other game weren't as significant as they are. I guess I don't mind the villain filling the evil wizard role which is otherwise played by many other characters in different games, like Agahnim, Girahim, and Cia, but I don't like Cadence being treated on equal footing with Link and Zelda. Know your place, you wannabe. I also don't like that Zelda is treated as an equal "hero" to Link. They're different things and have different roles. Make her playable, cool, but note the difference between how Hyrule Warriors does this and how Cadence of Hyrule does it. Easy to tell which one is made by SJW western devs. But I suppose story isn't really the point of a Zelda game, and it's not like there is much of it here. The gameplay is more important and that's fine. As I was saying, it does a good job feeling like a regular 2D Zelda game, just with the rhythm element. It took some getting used to, but eventually I did get used to it. I found it much more difficult than I expected, since I normally consider myself pretty good at rhythm games. I can 100% all three Parappa/Lammy games, and I got so into Rock Band that I could 100% multiple songs on Expert with two instruments at the same time, but when I got to sections in Cadence of Hyrule where I had to clear a screen without getting hit or missing a beat, I found it really hard at first. But eventually I managed to 100% everything, so I guess it was ultimately my fault. I don't like how you can get charms that show on the map where all the important items are, so you can tell if you're missing anything, but sometimes purple chests, which usually have permanent items and upgrades, respawn with just a lot of Rupees, and they show up again on the map as purple chests again. Mini-dungeons they're inside will then show as uncleared again. If the Mini-dungeon has something that counts as a mini-boss, that will show as uncleared again too. Very annoying. When trying to go around and get the last few things I actually didn't get, I kept going back to places I had already cleared because of this. It could have been solved by having the purple chests respawn as red chests instead, which does happen to most of them, and when they do respawn as red chests, none of these problems happen. The procedural nature did result in a couple of secrets being absurdly tricky to reach, but none that ultimately proved impossible. But there really is no replacement for real level design. The most fun I had with the game was with a dungeon that I later found out was the DLC dungeon, and actually was the only one in the game that was properly designed and not randomly generated. Speaking of the DLC, it wasn't implemented into Story Mode very well. I happened to wander into the DLC area and unlock the DLC character very early into the game. It was basically the first thing I did. Though that area was harder than the rest of the game, it wasn't so hard that I realized I wasn't supposed to be there. The DLC character is very overpowered compared to the other characters, so I ended up using him through the whole game, even as I unlocked more and could switch at any time. The DLC area has a special portal that you can reach early in the game, but you also reach the area in a mandatory section right at the end of the game. They shouldn't have let you get there earlier. But then with the map being largely random, and them wanting it to be "open world," I guess logical progression and pacing just isn't on the table. Not part of the genre. There are other modes I haven't played, and I'll play them probably, but they sound like they aren't going to really be much different from story mode. If so, I'll reply again and correct myself, but so far, it's about what I expected. An okay Zelda game with some western pozz and an okay rhythm game mechanic and no real level design. The rhythm stuff is kind of fun but I don't know if it made me enjoy the game more. The lack of real level design made me enjoy the game less. Not as good as a real Zelda game, but for a big fan, worth playing. My story mode playthrough ended up taking almost 18 hours, so I suppose it kept me occupied for a long time, and the other modes will probably add significant time onto that, but I don't expect them to change my overall opinion about the game.

Oh yeah, I also beat Mario Odyssey a couple days ago. Excellent game. There is little more positive that I can add that hasn't been said. I heard some retards on here complaining that the game was bad because "moons were just lying out in the open." That's a blatant lie. In the post-game, a bunch of extra moons appear and some are basically just laying around, but that's the post-game. The main game moons aren't at all like that, and many of the post-game ones aren't either. To get to the post game, you have to get literally hundreds of stars that aren't like that. Unless you're some speedtranny trying to skip as much of the game as possible and doing a minimum moons run, that will take you a very, very long time. Most of the moons are hidden behind pretty fun challenges, and few are really too easy. Also, as everyone knows, the ending is pozzed, even if not as badly as the movie. And I don't just mean Peach rejecting Mario, though she should be thankful for that simp saving her life a thousand times. But then Peach left not just Bowser, but also Mario, to die on the moon. Stone cold bitch. But what bothers me a lot more is the pozz around Pauline. Not only is she mayor for no reason (well, we know the reason), but there are practically no references to her even knowing Mario, let alone being his girlfriend. There are references to her being captured by Donkey Kong, but none to her relationship with Mario. That combined with the forced insistence that she is some sort of hyper competent mayor that everyone in the city is crazy about and compliments all the time, really felt very unnatural. I'm surprised nobody complains about that. But the gameplay is all cool. Mario is always good, but this is up there with the rest of its great series. I like Cappy mechanics more than FLUDD mechanics, so I'd put this game above Sunshine.

>>828687 But Pauline was rescued by Jumpman.

>>828693 I want to think you're trolling but it's subtle enough to mix in with actual retards these days.

>>790791 The two XAK games. Pretty neat Ys clones, wish we could get some remakes of them, Ys Origins style. >>812665 >One of the many reasons I've dropped Sonic altogether after all these years. Ever since Black Knight, Sonic hasn't been the same. The character and tone I mean, Generations doesn't count due to it being an anniversary game.

>>828701 Generations still doesn't have the character and tone. It's very much in the style of Colors. Better, but it's clear they were trying to get away from everything to do with the Adventure-era games, aside from a few levels with the same names and themes. It's not like Generations had 1/3 of the levels play in Adventure-style gameplay. It's not like it actually had a story, even though it could have made for the coolest, most autistic story ever. Even the music that was intended to go on the Adventure-era levels was changed to sound more like Colors-era shit.

>>828707 >Generations still doesn't have the character and tone. I'm aware, I just don't include anniversary games or events since they're more of an excuse to celebrate the franchise as a whole, even at the cost of some characterization, see the tokusatsu crossovers for example; you wouldn't think half those guys have PTSD or are in the middle of fighting world-ending threats every time they cross over. I think it's also the fact that the guy who used to write Sonic ever since Adventure left after Black Knight and it's a shame since I loved his style, he was the Sonic I felt really gelled with me after seeing the Archie shit make their way to my country(my only exposure to Sonic was the games and their manuals and I could tell as a kid that Archie/tv Sanic was not game Sonic).

>>828715 An excuse to celebrate the franchise as a whole should have a story to match it. Something that actually ties into as many past events as possible, to better tie together the franchise as a whole. It wouldn't take much. Just give the Time Eater an actual backstory. Just say he's the remnant of Mephiles/Solaris, the smoke left over when Sonic blew out the Solaris candle at the end of Sonic '06. There. The decayed remnant of a super powerful time-related villain was left in an erased timeline, which just so happens to have come back in this game because of time shenanigans. Now there is another time related villain who made that timeline come back, but it's more monstrous than the other time-related villain. Come on. This shit writes itself. But instead they made a very deliberate effort to have no story at all. If that's how Kamen Rider or whatever does its crossovers, then Generations was the one time I would want Sonic to be more western style (and Generations was written by westerners). It should be like a massive capeshit crossover, where the autism is so immense that it makes a regular Sonic game look positively normalfag. Unfortunately, the Happy Tree Friends guys didn't get that, and Flynn doesn't seem to get it either. Flynn has gotten close to a proper level of autism, with a couple things like Eclipse, or Master Overlord, but most of what he does is just make more OCs in stories that are mostly unrelated to past events. Unless those events revolve around his own OCs. Now, his defenders will claim it's Sega "mandates" that stop him from doing anything cool. I'm sure that's the case sometimes, like when they wouldn't let him make Sonic Universe #50 a finale to Sonic Underground, but let's be honest here. As much as I want to see The Council of Four fight Perfect Chaos Dingo, I can't blame Sega for being nervous about ever referencing any of that retarded western shit ever again. But nobody forced him to make Tangle and Starline the main characters of the IDW comics. On the other hand, for a moment there, due to one of the Egg Memos in Frontiers, I almost thought he was implying that Sage's AI was based on Maria. Now that's the type of autism I want. If there can be a fake Gamma running around in Sonic Battle, who explicitly does not have the personality of their dead friend, but looks like him and thus feels extra creepy, then there can be a hologram Maria running around who looks and kind of acts like her, but when push comes to shove, is just a creepy AI clone. That would be cool as hell. Then again, when I think about it like that, maybe that is something Sega would say no to. That would be more of an edge case.

>>828697 I am.

>>790791 Years ago I actually meant to do this thread idea but offline in a text file just for me to keep, in order to practice writing and keep some memory of what I played instead of just forgetting. It sounds fun to compare subsequent playthroughts of a game after you've forgotten what your thoughts were previously. Anyway, I finished Mindustry some time ago so I'll start with what I remember of that. It's basically a resource production sim which incorporates tower defense gameplay. Very surprisingly, the game has two campaigns but they're not just a different set of maps, it's like two completely different games. I started playing the oldest campaign since I thought it was best to go in chronological order, however after being done with it and starting the second campaign I found out that the idea was for the second campaign to be easier, more accesible, and with less features, so it made more sense to play the second campaign first. In the oldest campaign, the tower defense part doesn't feel completely well thought out. Enemies do a ton of damage and receive a ton of damage, so rounds are eliminated super fast which isn't very satisfying in the long run and means that 99% of the time in the game you're dealing with building shit and scaling production instead of battling, which is normally the most fun part in a game. This is additionally frustrating because the battles themselves are rather satisfying, in the sense that the effects and sounds are engaging, but it all just lasts a few seconds. Continuing with the battles, the enemies can be pretty damn annoying. They would pick which route to take in ways which are difficult to predict. Sometimes you would add the smallest change to your lineup to prepare for the upcoming wave only to find that that small modification completely changed the pathfinding equation, making them go in a completely different direction and raping your base in unpredictable ways. This can be specially annoying with flying enemies which sometimes would target specific buildings, so instead of flying straight to your base they can take unpredictable detours if you build this or that that they are specifically interested in. The game itself is for the most part very repetitive, as you basically have to build the very same thing every map starting from scratch, with the only difference between maps being figuring out in the first moments how you're going to carry it out since the map layout and location and amount of resources is different, but otherwise it's the same every time. This changes slightly after the second half of a campaign, as the enemy starts trying to recapture some of the maps you've captured and pretty much forces to go outside of the mandatory campaign maps in order to be able progress since it's the only way to keep them away from the maps the game requires you to have captured in order to progress. The additional attack maps are pretty wild and can get quite difficult, so it feels engaging trying to figure them out, however it gets completely retarded because you start getting deep into enemy territory so the more you capture the more they push back, to the point it can force a stalemate basically. The game allows several maps to be played at the same time, so it can happen that you decide to attack and then since you're going to be playing the same map for a few hours until it's done you'll get several attacks going on against your domain at the same time.To make matters worse, when that happens all the maps play at the same time in real time, and the 'background' maps play a completely different algorithm to judge how successful your defense is against the attackers than what would happen if you were present in the map yourself, so the result is completely unpredictable. It's happened to me that I entered a map that was in good health, switched to a different map and literally 2 seconds later I was told the first map was lost. Holy shit that is fucking frustrating. The second campaign is like I said a lot more accesible. For some stupid reason they removed some of the more advanced options your pipes, conveyors, and power nodes allowed and the whole thing feels pretty dumbed down. The resources you can mine are for the most part completely different as are the blocks and units, so strategies aren't the same as in the older campaign. This campaign plays much more like a traditional RTS game, you have fog of war and need to build units to explore, attack, and defend territory. Units can withstand a bit more punishment and deal less damage, which addresses some of my previous complaints. Additionally they clearly improved some of the scripting in the maps so now there are more events and they feel more detailed. Overall it's was an interesting and refreshing change from the first campaign, however given that it's easier, simpler, doesn't have extra maps for you to do, doesn't allow multiple maps to play at the same time or allow the enemies to recapture sectors, it feels very short. In both campaigns the units you can build also feel very limited, and you're basically going to be using just one or two types of units for the offensive, and it probably couldn't be any other way because you have to produce and route the materials to the factories in order for units to be created and it gets super messy very fast. In general, I feel that this game is a huge time waster. It isn't such a great game, but you just get hooked and addicted to it due to all the building and the mild challenge and expectation the enemy waves create. would post webms but I'm torfagging.

>Sonic Rush I do not understand why people say the Sonic Advance/Rush games are so good. I have to suspect it's from Nintenyearolds who never owned a Sega and thus only had the experience of playing Sonic at a friend's house or something. Maybe they watched the tv shows too. Then Sonic was finally on Nintendo and they said the 2D ones were "like the old games" even though they weren't, while hating on the 3D ones for being "different" even though they actually feel way closer to the Genesis games than Advance and Rush do. Admittedly Rush has better level design than the Advance games, in my opinion, but it still has things that really irk me. Speed boosts that shoot you into things that crush you, for example. Speed boosts in general are bullshit and should only be in levels in rare and specific spots, but these games have them everywhere. But of course this is the game that introduced the Boost Button and fucked up the series forever. No more actually trying to build momentum. Just hit the Boost button. It's playable, but it's not as fun as what the series was before. The difficulty curve is also fucked because there are two playable characters and they play through the same levels but in different orders. If they played through different paths of the same levels, like Sonic & Knuckles, that would be cool, but that isn't what happens. Sonic and Blaze play almost exactly the same. They each have one barely unique move that isn't actually used to reach different paths or whatever. So basically no level can have the difficulty for "Level 6" or whatever because it might be Level 6 for one character and Level 5 for the other. That is until you get to the last level, when there's a massive difficulty spike. The end of this game, once you actually get to the levels designed to go right at the end for both characters, is one of the hardest sections in any Sonic game. I want to like that, because Sonic is mostly too easy, but some of this is just bullshit. The final boss (not true final boss)'s one hit KO attack tracks you too well and doesn't telegraph when it is actually going to hit you well enough. Since you're running on a closed platform, if you happen to be at one end and needing to turn around when he happens to attack, you're fucked. There is no get good here. It's effectively random. Better not be turning around when he decides to attack, but you will need to turn around no matter what. The last special stage is also one of the most insane difficulty spikes I've ever seen. The first six were super easy, then seven was immediately insane. But these are only done as Sonic, in a set order, so the reason for the other difficulty spike doesn't work here. They just decided to make the last one way harder than the one before it. I understand I could go back and get S Ranks on all levels. Now, in Sonic Adventure 2 I always say this is where the real meat of the game is. That's when that game becomes really great. Somehow I don't think it's gonna be the same here. I looked it up and you don't unlock anything for getting S Ranks, so fuck that. But after that I started playing Sonic Rivals, and that makes Sonic Rush look a lot better by comparison. I'll post about that once I beat it, probably soon. Though I doubt I'll get all the cards or whatever. But I've already almost beaten story mode. It got very repetitive very quickly, but it's short, so I'd better finish it.

>Sonic Rivals Just beat this game. It sucks. Well, fine, it's playable, if I was a kid and got this I'd 100% it. But I'm only playing it now, so I'm not gonna 100% it. I beat the story mode and tried a couple of the extra challenges. They don't feel different from regular gameplay. I looked online and they don't unlock anything. So I'm not gonna bother. It sounds like it makes a degree of sense to do a Sonic racing game that's a 2D platformer except you're racing someone to the end at the same time. It's always 1v1 races. But that's what the 2 Player mode in Sonic 2 was, and that's good fun with a friend. The problem is that this does not play nearly as well as Sonic 2. Instead of precise platforming in order to build momentum and reach a high top speed, there are instead boosts everywhere, sometimes regular boost pads, sometimes blocks on the road that stop you, ask you to press either X or O as a QTE, and if you do it right, you get a boost. This is the source of practically all your speed, and if you go too long without touching one of these boosts, you'll slow to a crawl, at least as far as Sonic games go. The other mechanic that the game revolves around is powerups. If you're in front, the powerup is defensive. Leaves something behind you that maybe your opponent will hit, or maybe gives you a shield, or a speed boost. If you're behind, it usually shoots something forward that homes in on the enemy, but can hit any obstacles in the way, so you have to try to use it when there won't be obstacles. There are also attacks that just plain always hit, but they can be pointless if your opponent is on one of many scripted sections, like grabbing onto a wrecking ball and riding it to the next section of a level. The rubberbanding is probably the worst in any racing game I've ever played. You're basically not racing the opponent until the very end. There were times when I fell behind and saw on the progress bar that the opponent just stopped and waited for me. On the other hand, you can forget about gaining any sizable lead. The opponent will always zip ahead and catch up to you in no time. You'll never be more than a couple of seconds from the opponent in either direction, in races that last typically 3-4 minutes. There are six zones with two acts and a boss, except for Zone 3, which doesn't have a boss. There are two problems, though. Sometimes you face Metal Sonic in Act 2, and when you do, you just repeat the last act that you played, which makes the game more repetitive than it already is. Now that's a problem because there are four playable characters and they each play through the same levels. They're all the same except for their special attack, which functions as a pickup you get like any other attack. They have their own stories, but the stories are just text between levels, no cutscenes, so you have nearly identical gameplay and not even cutscenes to really justify it. It becomes really repetitive. But I completed the game as all four characters anyway, because I thought that it would be like every other Sonic game since Sonic Adventure and that there would be a secret last level that is unlocked once you beat the game with every character. Nope. The endings for each individual character are underwhelming, but I thought this would be because there would be a Last Story where you play as everyone for one level or something like that, then get a real ending. Nope. And it's not because I didn't get the Chaos Emeralds either, because you don't even get those in story mode. You get them by beating sets of challenges in Challenge Mode, and they unlock Cups in Cup Mode. All that is is that you gotta beat three levels in a row without losing. You get nothing for that except for more cards which do nothing except let you know that you beat the game. Not worth it. Look, it's playable, beating Story Mode once might have been worth it, but I did it four times. That wasn't worth it, and doing Challenge Mode and Cup Mode don't seem worth it either. And oh yeah, even though they used the bad guy from Sonic Rush, Eggman Nega, they didn't care enough to make the story match, so as fans already know, in Rush, Nega is from another dimension, but in Rivals he is from the future. Sonic '06, which came out like a week before Rivals, did the same thing with Blaze. Only Blaze in '06 and Nega in Rivals are from different futures, because Blaze is from the bad future that gets erased at the end of '06, and Nega is from the good future that gets created. But even that is a bit of fan-canon since Silver appears in Rivals but everyone acts like they never met him before, but at least that's easy enough to make sense of since they erased his future at the end of '06. Look, neither Rush nor Rivals really has much of a story anyway, but come on. They couldn't even give enough of a shit to match this properly? And yes, fans already justify this by saying that Nega must originally be from the future and then have gone to Blaze's dimension and not natively be from there. That makes enough sense since he has barely any story in Rush, but it really doesn't seem intended. Blaze is still fucked though because even though fans say she must have gone back in time in '06 (the game does say she went to another dimension, though it's implied to be some sort of hell or purgatory shadow realm), that's a huge stretch and the game doesn't imply it at all even though it is about time travel. Also, her thing in Rush is that she doesn't trust anybody and thus has no friends, but Silver is her friend in '06. You could say there was character development, but it clearly wasn't intended. Also she's a princess in Rush, and becoming princess of a dimension she just got to is stupid. Basically, it's fitting that Rivals was basically a companion game to '06. It's not as fucked on a technical level, but it's also not as good on a conceptual level. At least '06 was trying to be ambitious and just fucked up majorly. Rivals had no ambition at all, and still fucked that up a little. >5/10. It's playable. Worth maybe beating once, if you're a fan. Not worth 100%ing.

Finally finished Serious Sam 2, and with that, the final Serious Sam game I am going to play for a little while. What a mixed bag, if you want a tl;dr check out this image I made, in the same vain as the ones I made from my Fallout and Metal Gear playthrus. I will divide this into two posts due to character limit. Let's start with the positives: The game is great. It's still just as much of a Serious Sam entry as every other, albeit it is this weird continuation of both Next Encounter and Second Encounter at the same time. This will come back to bite the game in the ass by the end, as it doesn’t really expand on the former nor does it provide a satisfying conclusion/evolution of ideas of the latter. Unlike in Next Encounter, for example, you don't get the combo system which balanced out the game around smaller arenas and enemy count anymore, instead the enemies deal a fuckton of damage, even on Normal(which I played the game on). I don't really have a problem with this, altho it does make it annoying to die at full health from one-two missiles from larger enemies even with armor. In fact, one of the hardest sections in the game takes place in the "Giant Junkyard" level, with a whimsical environment and wacky music. In fact, I will link that here now https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=2IXdEsMfVHw So, now imagine a tight, long corridor and a whole bunch of rocket spewing enemies, with quick and small melee enemies and flying projectile enemies mixed in. With armor being next to useless and rockets dealing a ton of damage, with splash damage making any exploding rocket nearly unavoidable damage, imagine my pain as I had to try this section over and over again while this music played. Definitely an experience, not sure if a pleasant one, and this wasn't even the final killzone made for me in that level. Dodging rockets is definitely a needed skill if you want to play this game, and it’s a bit harder than doing the sidestep tango with the Kleers So, with that said, the game definitely isn't hurting for difficulty even with shorter levels. I am looking forward to trying to complete this game on Hard or Serious one of those days. The game has a whole bunch of environments to fight in: A jungle planet somewhat similar to South America from Second Encounter, Swamp Planet, Chinatown planet similar to the Feudal levels from Next Encounter, Fantasy planet and two Sirius based worlds. That's right, you finally get to go there and kick Mental's ass, after much hype. The only one I downright hated was Planet Kleer, guess what that one is full of? Incidentally, this was also when I finally gave in around 2005 when I bought the game, boxed copy and all, and only finished the game for the first time now, 18 years later. One dud with a game of this much variety is hardly a dealbreaker. Speaking of nostalgia, the game is really bringing me back to that era of late 6th gen/early 7th gen. It is definitely a product of it's time, which the game will let you know right off the bat with it being overly excited over having physics based objects you can play around with. More than one secret in this game involves stacking boxes on top of one another, and it's exactly as awful as it sounds. I should mention that this is not the original copy of the game, it has actually received an unexpected update as of 2 years ago. Patch 2.90 introduced some really interesting changes, most important one being the ability to dual wield weapons, which was cut from original game. This changes everything, you can now have two of each weapons(including cannons and miniguns) or mix and match to your liking. I only used this with one handed weapons, as to not cheat too much, and it still made for a heavy difference: Uzis now use up ammo quicker than the minigun(which is funnily enough the ammo-saver this time around with it's balanced RoF) at the cost of dealing slightly less damage per shot, Double Barrel shotgun uses up 4 shots at once but deals HEAVY damage per shot, essentially making it even better than the double barrel in Next Encounter as I talked about here >>828456 and Clavdovic, one of the new weapons, let me use one of these weapons while another has a homing explosive projectile I can use on heavy enemies. This really makes for fun encounters, and I wish this bird was found more often outside of the first planet. Other than that, Ghostbuster is back from Next Encounter as of 2.90(sadly nerfed), and Sam gets another set of pistols when starting every world: Plasma Pistols. They behave similarly to ones from Halo, meaning single shots are nearly worthless but charging it up for a second sends a really powerful projectile with slight homing ability that fucks up weak and mid enemies. Dual wielding makes it an actually alright weapon, which is great considering that revolvers are now WORTHLESS. Damage might not be nerfed, but RoF is, meaning that even the weakest enemies in the game might as well be disposed of with Plasma Pistols or Chainsaw, never use the revolvers in this game. Really disappointing nerf considering how good Deagles were in Next Encounter, other than that, the game actually has a dedicated button for Grenades. This is a great evolution of Sam's arsenal, and it's a shame this was never elaborated upon further, especially since you always get grenade launchers so late into these games for some reason. Since I'm talking about combat, I should also mention that patch 2.90 also added enemy multipliers, which means you can fill the tiny arenas with much more enemies to make it feel like a more proper Serious Sam experience. I would not recommend that, due to the enemy damage issue I mentioned, my normal playthru was balanced enough and definitely was no pushover even with vanilla pre 2.90 settings.

All of this sounds alright, the game definitely is trying it's best to be this next gen sequel and a game that finally caps off the franchise. So, what's wrong with it? Well, in a word, it's tone. I have never seen a game, at least a good one, that took itself less seriously than this one. Now, previous SS games were silly, especially Next Encounter, but they were never downright slapstick. The game still had a deadly enemy that was always on Sam's tail and Humanity faced extinction at every turn. The occasional easter egg or joke was fine, it gave the game flavor. Serious Sam 2? It is nothing but jokes. There is no story, every cutscene is literally just another skit, right down to the ending. That's right, the game has no ending and mocks you for wanting to know who, or what, Mental even was. That's fine, I suppose, story is never a big concern in these games, right? Well, the "humor" is fucking awful as well, beyond childish. You can watch the cutscenes on youtube, I won't stop you, but I wouldn't recommend it. I only watched the intro and boss death/planet intro cinematics and I would say that's enough for me, I genuinely cringed more than once when seeing what little I did. Even the in-game humor is terrible, it's mostly things like poop jokes or seeing two simbas fucking each other in a bush when finding secrets, really low-brow stuff. This is what you get when you base the identity of your franchise on "being silly" and don't have a tard wrangler to tell you "no, you can't put this in", an unfortunate other side of the coin in contrast with soulless, made by committee triple AAA titles. Thankfully, the enemy designs are fine, even if they are all stupid cartoony versions of themselves(Werebulls are now wind up rhino toys, Major Mechanoids are now giant T-Rex heads on tiny robot legs smoking a cigar, Headless kamikazes are circus strongmen with cartoon bomb heads and tortured Sirian kamikazes aka MK2 kamikazes with more hitpoints from Next Encounters are just silly clowns on unicycles that explode on death). The bosses are also pretty fucking stupid, both design wise and how you fight them, we're back to the First Encounter method of "Only one way works" instead of just filling them with lead and letting you work out how you're going to do it based on your arsenal. One thing of note, while talking about the enemies, is that you finally get to meet Mental's main military. They are all generic sci-fi orks in Power Armor and Attack Helicopters, that sort of thing, but I am glad they included them: Not only does it make sense, since Mental has outposts on every planet you visit, but because it gives you feeling of progression. In classics and Next Encounter, you mostly fight Mental's weird failed experiments, where as now, closer(and by the end, within) to his homeland, you now see the prime military forces that see day-to-day fighting, going head on against Sam. It's a neat detail and I like it Lastly, I want to talk about something even worse than the tone and writing of this game: The bugs. Good lord, it's even worse than in Next Encounter, and I don't remember any of this from my initial playthru. This game has it all, so let me just greentext it: >Shitty physics that make the crate puzzles a pain in the ass >Missing script triggers, to the point where I had to use ghost command to get past a locked door and then unlock all levels command to progress further after enemy encounter stopped loading in after dying and loading in. Game calls me a cheater from here on out at the end of every level, despite it not being my fault Croteam cannot program for shit >Cannot pick up Serious Bombs at times, got around that by abusing "give all" command whenever this happened. I have no clue how something like this even happens, maybe one of the patches broke it as I watched youtube videos where others pick them up just fine >GAME CRASHES ON SAVES AND LOADS AT CERTAIN POINTS, AND THIS IS NOT AN ISOLATED INCIDENT. One level(Coast 2 Cost) had me crash at the very end, when finishing the level. I was able to continue from start of next level when restarting the game. Later, in the final level, when Mental was around halfway dead, the game started crashing every time I would save or load the game. Saving thankfully worked, but I had to restart the game every time I died from that point on. Beating Mental gave me no final cutscene As I mentioned, game has no proper ending, I know because I had to see the final cutscene on youtube. As I didn't get an ending to this game, I am going to make one of my own: Next Encounter shows Mental as a demon like figure, so he clearly exists. Sam blows his brains out, after disabling the MENTAL Institution. He fights back, of course, but the stupid medallion you are forced to rebuild in the earlier section of the game protects you from his magic and lets Sam's bullets penetrate his skull, everybody celebrates as the galaxy is saved. Sirians(those weird nerd guys you find in secrets) return to their home planet, which has been taken over by Mental long ago, hence why they came to Earth in the first place as refugees. Sam finally gets his much deserved rest and hangs up his guns... ...However, there is no true end to this story. The game is a timeloop, in Second Encounter you hear Future Sam in Downtown Siriusopolis telling him he's about to kick Mental's ass and vice versa in Serious Sam 2, you get a call from Younger Sam back in Medieval Poland. Uh-oh! I guess Sam is doomed to forever carry out his fight against Mental, with Earth being caught in a never ending cycle of destruction. There, I just wrote a better ending to this game, and franchise as a whole, and put more care than Croteam did when writing the entire script. So, my overall thoughts? Great game, if you are a Serious Sam fan, try it out. If you played it already, try it again, the 2.90 patch changes make it worth replaying. Just remember to skip all the cutscenes, including the final one, and write your own ending like I did. I don't really have a rating for these games, each one is great in it's own right and they all play the same to a degree. Serious Sam still remains one of my favorite FPS franchises, that hasn't changed. As for what I am doing next, I am thinking of doing Fallout again, in preparation for Starfield. I may review that one when I get around to it, but in the meantime I will play thru all the Fallout games again with a different build this time. I actually don't have it planned which build specifically, I haven't had time to think about it with all the things I have going on at the minute, and when I did have free time, I spend it playing Serious Sam. I outlined a few builds I am interested in trying out here >>826126 I got a couple of answers already, if you want to be a tiebreaker or choose something else, be my guest. It will be a little while before I actually make my choice and get started.

>Sonic Rush Adventure Why didn't anyone tell me this game is so much better than the first? Do I like it as much as the Genesis games? No. Do I like it better than Rush and all three Advance games? For sure. The World Map, going around on boats, having extra missions to do, having a little more of a story, it all goes a long way, even though the level design is honestly still quite similar to before. Maybe a bit better, though. Not as many moments that I found so annoying. It all felt a bit more natural. Now, some of it does feel like padding. There is way too much text at the beginning, especially for a damn Sonic game. The extra missions are frequently worth doing, but some of them are literally just "Get to the goal," but you don't unlock the mission until you already beat the level once, so it's just "beat the level again." I like sailing around on the map, but it is a little empty, to the degree that when you're exploring for all the islands, you'll get a bunch of times you sail as far as possible and not find anything, which feels like a waste and therefore padding. But overall all the little extras added a lot to me. A lot more than the little extras in the previous Dimps games. Best handheld Sonic game since Triple Trouble, which was over a decade earlier. Pretty cool.

>>835845 I never saw what was special about these games. I got bored after the second world/stage, Sonic's 2D gameplay is too simplistic to really engage with me. Plenty of better games for the DS, like New Super Mario Bros, Super Mario 64, Metroid Prime Hunters, various Pokemon games and that's not getting into homebrew or GBA/GBC games with the lite console

>>835906 Yeah I think the Sonic GBA/DS games are extremely overrated. If you want the 2D Sonic gameplay people actually rave about, just play Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Sonic Mania. Sonic 2 and Sonic CD are also very good. I wouldn't bother recommending others unless you already like those ones, and even then, it would be Sonic 1, then the Game Gear games (but not Blast, which sucks), then the GBA/DS games. But Rush Adventure is the best of the GBA/DS games.

Last game I finished was Gollum. Game wasn't as bad as they say it is, I'm assuming it's the console version that really sucks. The janky controls really get to you though later when the difficulty increases

Finished Doom Eternal for the second time, this time on Nightmare. I was very dismissive of the game when I played it a while ago, because of how the combat has changed and it's no longer a regular FPS like the previous game. I was fighting against the game mechanics back then. That said, after figuring out how the game actually works, I had a very good time with the game. It also doesn't help that I figured out some neat tech by the end of the game. It's a neat game all things considered. Final Boss is still ass anyway and it ends way too soon for my liking. Really well optimized game too.

I finished playing all of the Spark series I liked them all except the second one, the second one is pure ass. First one surprised me a lot, especially with the length it had for a Sonic fangame. The alternative story was also a nice touch, and fighting the extra bosses raised it quite highly for me. Spark 2 is just a shitty demo, non-existent level design, mechanics that are never used, enemies are a non-issue, and the hardest parts of the game rely on just spamming the parry button. The reuse of the previous' game music also made it feel more lackluster and just like an asset flip. Spark 3 is a very good expansion of the previous' game (if there were) mechanics, and it includes a more expanded and intricate level design. No longer the places where you are feel like just things mashed together, they feel like a proper place in which people may live. I know this may not mean much, but it makes the levels more interesting when you go from a street, to a protest, to a sewer, than if you go from blocks to other blocks. Combat is also ok but I think the issue with it is that it doesn't really use the movement mechanics as well as the first game did. What I mean by this is that the combat and the movement in the game are basically two separate games, while the combat in the first game was a tool to enhance your chances of survival. You can't use the homing attack on enemies that are meant for combat, for example, and you cannot boost your attacks by pulling off movement shenanigans. The attacks also take a bit of manual work to make them land, due to the lack of lock-on, and a non-existent dash also makes avoiding the unavoidable attacks a bit tricky. Personally speaking Frontiers pulled off a more interesting combat system because of the cyloop and how so many enemies are basically obstacle courses you gotta move your way through, which I found pretty innovative. Overall it's a decent series with a good fucking dud in the middle, but I don't think the 3d games reached their peak yet. And by that I mean something in the same level as the final boss of Spark 1 PS: Both 3d games are quite badly optimized if you want to put graphics on maximum, and the second games has some AWFUL visual glitches where it flickers constantly if you use anything that isn't the Power Armor suit. Something to take into consideration.

Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin This was my second Souls game, right after DS1. It's not as good as DS1, but I still enjoyed it enough to sink 70+ hours into it. What I did not like: > Turn-based combat You cannot cancel out of an animation, so usually what happens is you take two swings, then back off again so the enemy can take its swing, hence the "turn-based Dark Souls" meme. If you try taking a third shot you won't be able to cancel out of it and you will get hit. > Fragrant Branches of Yore There are these petrified people all over the map. You need to use an item to unpetrify them, but there are exactly as many statues as branches in the game. And some statues lead to nice secrets while some are essential for progress. This means if you wasted your last branch on a trivial statue you might get stuck until you find that one branch you missed somewhere in the world. > The penalty for dying Every time you die you go a little more hollow and you max HP is capped by an additional 10% until it is capped at 50%. There is a ring which limits the cap to 75%, but it's still bullshit to have to play the game with only three quarters of your total health. > The agility stat The number of iframes you get when dodging depends on your stats. So when you start out your doge rolls will be absolute dog shit and near useless until you have pumped enough points into adaptability. And there are diminishing returns, the higher the stat, the more points you need to pump into it until you get the one more frame. You need a wiki to know when to stop or you will be wasting points. There are also things DS2 did better: < The UI I don't think anyone would dispute this < Better late-game content DS1 was pretty rushed in the latter third of the game while the quality of DS2 stays consistent < Massive DLCs Granted, you had to pay almost like a full game for all three, but nowadays you can get the complete game with all the DLCs. < Warping from the start This saves so much time. But it also means the world is less interconnected. I absolutely love how the level design in DS1 keeps looping back upon itself all the time. There is probably more positive and negative to add, but this is all off the top of my head.

Last two games I finished that could be finished were Nier Replicant and Doom Eternal. I'd already watched a playthrough of Nier before, but getting to play it myself was nice for the most part. Having to go through those segments over and over again is a bit rough though. Definitely overkill in my opinion. That said, getting the other ending scenes was interesting enough. Nier was enjoyable even if it did overstay its welcome. Doom Eternal was alright. It wasn't great, and I think people overhyped it like crazy. I found Doom 2016 to be more enjoyable really, and that's a deeply flawed game too. Felt like Eternal was 80% flash for 20% substance, especially when I felt like I curbstomped their hard mode first time through. And sure, I've played plenty of FPS games, but I wouldn't say I'm especially good at them or anything. Game was just ridiculously easy. Even if you had serious co-ordination issues, I couldn't imagine wanting to play it at anything less than normal because of how it would become a glorified walking sim due to how easy it would become. Overall, I don't regret playing Eternal, but I am pretty disappointed. Doom was never the hardest of FPS titles out there, but it always felt better than Eternal did, which felt like it was chasing trends rather than setting them, and that's only further proven with that shitty collectible room in the space station. The vinyls and their covers were nice, but the funko crap is still funko crap.

>>853281 hello tehsnake

>>857469 I personally feel the opposite with 2016. I thought it was ok when I played it, but the additions to the moveset in Eternal made the game feel quite limited when I tried replaying it. Then again I last played Eternal with proper knowledge of the game on the hardest difficulty, so that made everything more of a challenge. I didn't find it that easy when I first played it, but then again I was playing it as if it was a Retro FPS and not as the game it actually is, with it's own set of rules that will punish you if you don't follow them.

Just finished Halo 1 and deleted it the master chief collection from my system. This is one of the reasons i don't listen to niggercattle when it comes to gaming. I'm guessing this was baby's first console FPS type of thing and it fucking shows. I'm glad this franchise has been raped and beaten to death.

>>865021 Very enlightening, I like the part where you said nothing about the game.

>>865021 It's a good FPS, but people who only owned an XBOX and never played any FPS games on PC overblow just how good it is. It's a solid 8/10 and the other 2 games are a 7/10 each in my opinion. Reach and ODST are good too

>>865021 That's a shame, you stopped before 2. Where every mission is reaching the end of the map and then backtracking the entire fucking thing

>Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood Some parts of this game were definitely hilariously awful, but overall, it's not as bad as I had been lead to believe. Maybe it's because I don't love turn based RPGs in the first place, but it didn't seem that bad an example of the genre. Not a very good one either, but not unplayable. The first thing you'll notice is that the animated cutscenes are awful. There are only a few, and they look like late '90s web cartoons, with terrible Flash style "movement." There are only a few scenes animated like this, and the rest of the game is just VN style talking heads, or text over the overworld models. It's a shame, because replacing some of those other dialogue bits with actually good animation would have been cool, but instead the actual animation is terrible, and it's the first thing you see, and it sets a terrible first impression. The overworld music in this game is infamous, and rightly so. It consists mostly of songs from the Genesis games but somehow butchered to sound like they came out of a toy keyboard from the early '80s. I know the DS can do good sound, there are freaking Guitar Hero games on DS and they're great. There's no excuse for this. The battle music actually sounds fine, so it's like they just deliberately fucked up the songs that were originally from classic games that people liked, then the tiny bit of original music was fine. The battles are fine, but at the beginning of the game especially, your accuracy is far too low, and you miss an absurd number of attacks, and you have no recourse except to grind or wait until you otherwise have a higher level and can put more skill points into Attack, which isn't actually your attack power, but your accuracy. You can later collect equippable items with effects like increasing accuracy, but but each character can only hold one at a time. The ones that increase accuracy the most are some of the most useful, but sometimes there are others you know you should be using (like ones that increase the drop rate of the best equip items). Basically, you miss too fucking much and it's all down to RNG and the odds for that RNG being way too low to be fun. But the Attack stat is only for your basic attacks, and most of what you'll want to be using are your special attacks, which make you do a touchscreen tap-the-targets minigame to execute them. This gets a bit annoying sometimes, but I suppose I like being a bit more active rather than just leaving it to RNG. Still, when it comes to characters with really useful or important skills, like refreshing MP, or a chance of a OHKO, you wanna equip the rare item that lets you skip the minigame and just land the attack every time. But sometimes you should be using another equip item, as mentioned, and missing one of these special attacks can be maddening. The overworld exploration is usually what I like in RPGs, but in this case the worlds are a bit small and there isn't all that much exploration to do. I like that you can see enemies on the map instead of just having random encounters, but the very fact that I want to skip enemies and not get into fights means the game isn't that fun, because I shouldn't be trying to avoid gameplay. I just wanna get across the map to pick up some rings or whatever, and I don't wanna waste three minutes in a fight because I bumped into some guy. The story is alright. As Sonic fans know, former comic writer Ken Penders got mad that the story is about the rival tribe of Knuckles' ancestors, who they were at war with. He claims he invented this for the comic, even though the rival tribe's existence is implied in Sonic 3's manual (before he worked on the comic), and actually its first on-screen/on-panel appearance is in a french Sonic comic. Their existence and their war with Knuckles' ancestors is also a key plot point in Sonic Adventure. Anyway they pick up on that here and I like that. They tie it into the story from Sonic Battle, and that's cool. They tried to introduce some original elements (or at least elaborate much more on things that were only very vaguely alluded to in Sonic 2's manual, namely the god that threw Angel Island into the sky), but then they banked so hard on this game getting a sequel that they never actually went anywhere with those original elements. The game has dialogue options, and most of the time they're nothing that special, but I do like Sonic's characterization. You can choose to give nice responses or mean ones, and when it comes to Amy in particular, you can just be fucking savage to her for no reason, and it's hilarious. I didn't know until too late that if you're nice to her through the whole game, near the end there's a scene where Sonic admits he does like her, and they are official boyfriend and girlfriend. But I was really goddamn mean to her, so instead the scene just plays out with Amy saying she knows Sonic doesn't like her, but begging him to just be civil so they can work together to save the multiverse. And he's just like "shut up, Amy. Nobody cares what you think." It's great. Best Sonic story. Ken Penders never did that. Right before playing this game, I played Sonic and the Secret Rings. Right after, I played Sonic Rivals 2. Both of those games are way, way worse than Sonic Chronicles. It's not great, but the worst parts about it are a couple of noticable but minor animated segments, and the music. The rest has problems but isn't that far below average. It's not very good, but it's not at all deserving of its reputation as one of the worst Sonic games, let alone one of the worst games ever.

>>865028 >>865029 I do not know what to say. I was sold on the premise of amazing gameplay but i have played older FPS that are better at it. I didn’t judge it with current standards. It’s a game from 2001 so there are things I was expecting. I enjoyed the beginning. The world looks really good and you immediately sense the scale of the world you just crashed in. The atmosphere it creates paired with its soundtrack are the best thing about it. The start of the game, first chapter, the truth and reconciliation and the silent cartographer chapters are my favorites. The game is challenging enough on hard (not so much on normal)Blowing enemies with grenades is the most satisfactory aspect of the gameplay. I'm not expecting to play another Halo again.

>>865112 The game went thru development hell, first it was an RTS, then an open world third person shooter, then just a linear third person shooter, and shortly before release they settled on the FPS premise. It's a game that didn't know what it wanted to be, and accidentally revolutionized the console FPS market. I suggest you play Halo 2 and 3 because at that point, the franchise knew exactly what it wanted to do and it played to it's strength. The annoying thing is that Halo 3 is basically Halo 2.5, the devs didn't have the time or disc space to finish the game so they basically split it in half and hoped the next generation of consoles and their extra power would make up for it.

So I finished up Evenicle 2 last night, which was a decent enough break from the Ys series before I jump back into Oath in Felghana and Memories of Celestia. A lot of complaints about the first game have been addressed, at least in regards the the lewd content. There's very few rape scenes, very few NTR scenarios (and when they are, they're disparaged by the main character), and much less grotesque monster sex. A few more fetishes have been added - there's a bit of clang between two giant mechas piloted by cute girls, a shortstack - but the MC refuses to bang her so she has to use drugs or build a sex-doll to pilot and trick him into fucking her. There's references to futanari, but it's never shown - though in a side-scene QD turns Arthur into a girl and knocks him up, so that'll probably kill most people's interest. The loli content is a bit too much for my tastes. Guragura in Evenicle 1 was portrayed as and acted child-like, but Platina is treated more like an actual child - including a scene where you finger bang her over a child's potty chair in order to get her to stop wetting the bed. Yeah. Not my thing. As a whole, it's far more tame than Evenicle 1 - but it casts a wide net, so be prepared to see some shit you'd rather not. The UI has seen a major upgrade, with more information available to you on the screen and more intuitive layout. I don't recall if the first game allowed you to have multiple battle skill equip layouts, but this one does - allowing you to customize roles for characters differently depending on what elemental weaknesses enemies have or strategies to get around enemy attacks. You only have so many Battle Points to draw from when equipping skills, and your Battle Card has limited space, so it's nice to have multiple presets - though you can't change them out on the fly. They can only be swapped between battles from what I saw. I also found the game had some pacing issues. I don't really recall having to grind much in Evenicle 1, but was required to in this game. Partially this is also due to money being an issue, even with loot boosts, and you're probably going to want to skip buying entire tiers of weapons just to afford the best stuff at the end of each chapter. I also wasn't a fan of the healing system. You only have a set number of Medica Points to use before either needing to find a replenishment point (which only give 1 or 2 MP, and are rare enough to not be reliable). So if you only have three MP, and you get hit by some AoE attacks (and enemies love their AoEs here) - you only cast one healing spell at 2 MP for 35% health - then you're fucked as you can only afford 1 MP for a 50% restore on a single character. To restore MP you need to sleep at an Inn, so this creates a lot of back-tracking. You get a chance to grind, but it's also boring and discourages exploration - at least until you get Platina's teleport ability. There's also the Hero Syndrome mechanic. After each battle, a gauge fills at the top of the screen by a set amount. Once that fills, one of your girls will contract a disease that gives them a semi-permenant debuff of some variety. You can clear these up in the Hospitals at town, but they will return after a few more battles. This makes mid-chapter dungeons kind of a pain in the ass. You can permanently cure these diseases by finding some ingredient in the overworld and then having sex with her, so what it amounts to is a bunch of mandatory fetch-quests to keep from crippling your party. Thankfully there's only a set amount of diseases available per chapter, and once you cure them all then you can get back to grinding and exploring unimpeded. Otherwise, there's a ton of the expected collectables, flirtation scenes, interest points that give humorous little side-skits or activities to enjoy. Hunting Gal-Monsters is one of the better collectable side activities as they have cute art and you can equip them for stat bonuses. Side Quests are there, but only two or three per chapter and they usually give no rewards - so they're highly skippable. Mega-Monsters, optional tough boss fights, are there too - but are a lot more powerful and annoying this time around I think. A good chunk of them are end-game encounters, and do provide a decent challenge that will require you to change up your strategies and equipment to even stand a chance - but I was thoroughly done with the game so I doubt I'll hunt them all down. Plot-wise, it's fine. It's porn, so I wasn't expecting much. Some light comedy, a basic plot with a few obvious hooks. It's serviceable, but it's no Rance or Utawarerumono. I wasn't a fan of the "sexual healing" theme of the game, but it was serviceable as an excuse to acquire a harem of wives. Speaking of which they're nowhere near as good as the cast from Evenicle 1, though they did grow on me a bit by the end. The best wife ended up being Emilia, a manipulative tsundere NEET shut-in who is introduced as a villain, and as a punishment for her actions is forced by her sister to become your cocksleeve. She's presented as a voice of normalcy, and there's a lot of comedic foil there as she's screaming at people for being such perverted weirdos, or at Alex for being "a shitty rape demon". She's also related to Charl, so she shares a body-type with the best looking girl in the game (IMO). Kano as a good runner-up. As a MC, Alex is nowhere near as likable as Asterisk since he more or less just comes across a good-hearted pervert - while Asterisk was a bit more of a loveable asshole with a chivalrous streak. All in all, as far as porn games go, it's still pretty decent. Not Alicesoft's best work by far, but if you just want something to kill time and see some lewd art, you could do worse. Unfortunately, Alicesoft released this themselves so the lewd scenes are mosaic censored, while Evenicle 1 was published by MangaGamer and did the work of decensoring it. It's available on GOG, so at least pirating a copy shouldn't be an issue. Best girl from Evenicle 1 makes a few cameo returns that tie into the meta-plot of her mother slipping between worlds and helping to stir up problems

About a week ago, I finished off The Last Airbender video game for the Wii. It's an okay game with some decent ideas. The premise for the game is the same premise of the movie, which is the first season of the Nickelodeon cartoon. The game's plot is entirely told from Zuko's perspective and only covers an extremely condensed version of the already shortened story, with the only actual plot beats being Aang's awakening, Zuko posing as the Blue Spirit, and the invasion of the Northern Water Tribe. To be quite honest, it does hit all of the "important" parts of the story, but it does feel irritating knowing how much more could have been added to the game. It takes about six hours to finish, and, given the game was made by the same developer as every other Avatar game up to that point, it makes me wonder why this wasn't done. The gameplay of TLA is split between three "main" styles. The first is a 3D beat-em up, with levels alternating between Zuko and Aang being the playable character. You simply navigate from room to room, defeat all the enemies, move on, occasionally solve an environmental puzzle, and that's it. The fighting mechanics are rather simple. You point the control stick in the direction of the enemy you want to hit, which the game locks on, and then you mash the A button until an arrow appears on screen, where you swing the Wiimote in the direction indicated for a heavy attack. There is an alternate attack triggered by pressing the Z button, but you'll almost never use. In addition, the only way to avoid enemy attacks is jumping out of the way with the B button, which becomes irritating with the buff enemies. There are additional attacks that use up an "energy" meter, but there's nothing really to note about them except being last-ditch efforts. Nothing too complicated, but rather shallow in itself, with Zuko and Aang playing the exact same. The remaining styles of gameplay are restricted only to Zuko's levels. The second style is where the game literally turns into a shooting gallery, with Zuko throwing fire balls at whatever you point the Wiimote at. However only three story chapters actually use it, and, of those three, one is literally nothing but the shooting gallery (Which you complete within five minutes). The last style is a Prince of Persia style of environmental navigation. This is perhaps the best gameplay in the title, however all the paths are straight forward and simple. As I said, it takes about six hours to complete the story, but 100% completion takes about another two to three. Each level has a hidden number of tokens that unlocks images in the game's art gallary, and a series of "achievements" that you complete by doing certain actions. To be quite honest, it does feel like the gameplay is just a bunch of things thrown into the title that could have been better used had they developed a title solely based around each individual gameplay aspect. The graphics for TLA are okay. Thee game looks good enough, but that's honestly rather poor of a statement to make when the Wii is capable of so much more. The only part of the graphics that really "wowed" me was unironically the snow drifts you walk through in the Northern Water Tribe levels because it's something I honestly have seen another game do. As for the game's audio, it's decent. Perhaps the "worst" part about it is the flat delivery the voice actors give during the actual levels, compared to Zuko's monologues during the cinematics, but I've heard some other Anons enjoying for just how bad the delivery is. Overall, The Last Airbender feels like a sorely missed opportunity. Had the development team deepened the actual depth of the gameplay and expanded the story's content, this probably would have been an absolutely stellar game, despite being attached to the terrible movie. However, as it is, I really cannot recommend it as being something worth playing because of how shallow it is.

>>790791 >guilt all the other Anons into doing the same Fuck you. My backlog will blot out the sun and make the gods weep.

>>791058 The game is only challenging if you manage to beat it before growing old

>>868466 I heard the same thing said about factorio once

>>868466 You mean in game or in life itself?

>>868662 In game obviously since your character ages like warm softcheese and especially if you use magic. More so since they steal some years from you with forced intermezzos like the prison.

>>868401 I played through that game once, some of the jank was enjoyable. You can use Aang's airbending to levitate enemies out of bounds, I almost softlocked the first level doing that. The enemies will lose track of you if you're not on the same vertical plane as them, so you can stand on top of a barrel, and their AI will just shut off until you drop back down. You can almost use this to cheese the first boss, but he's scripted to jump out of bounds at certain HP thresholds and throw explosive barrels for about 30 seconds, and for some reason it won't end if you don't play along and run around like a headless chicken. I also encountered a bug where the Fire Nation Tank boss didn't spawn until I reloaded from the checkpoint, so I spent 15 minutes trying to platform my way out of an obvious boss arena, before realizing something was wrong. I can't remember why, but I had a lot of trouble with the Admiral Zhao fight. I remember having to retry it a bunch of times over, and my thumb getting sore from too much mashing, but when I look up gameplay footage of the fight, it's only about 5 minutes long if you get in there and just combo him. I must've been unlucky and gotten countered repeatedly, because he can just randomly decide to break out of a combo.

>>868791 >I can't remember why, but I had a lot of trouble with the Admiral Zhao fight. I remember having to retry it a bunch of times over, and my thumb getting sore from too much mashing, but when I look up gameplay footage of the fight, it's only about 5 minutes long if you get in there and just combo him. I must've been unlucky and gotten countered repeatedly, because he can just randomly decide to break out of a combo. A lot of it is a timing issue. If you start attacking him a second too late, Zhao can break your combo.

Played Gundam Federation vs Zeon for the PS2 but emulated on my PS3. Just finished the campaign. Positives >fun but really simple >lots of levels >persistent damage that repairs in between levels so you can't just keep playing the same MS >enough mobile suits to swap around with to keep you entertained >space battles were present, not the best, but I appreciate the fact that they tried >underwater suits and levels >you can pick and choose what missions to take and usually with what MS you use Negatives >lock on frequently fucks you Expect it to lose/change your target at all the worst times and give your enemies a free chunk of your HP while you try to get it to lock on correctly >enemies spawn on your head at random Many levels have suits falling straight down on ya and before you can lock on they may hit you which is cheap. >framerate dips Not often, but the few that happened brought it into slideshow mode for around 5-10 seconds at a time. >enemy dodge bs Enemies will randomly become incredibly evasive to the point where it becomes a chore to hit them outside of the few small windows where they can't move after firing. Other times the same enemies will just let you blast the shit out of them instead which is just adding to the inconsistent feeling of fighting them. >not all controls are listed The game doesn't tell you how to dash in the control menu so I only found out that was a thing by watching the AI do it first and then trying to figure out the combo for it (it wasn't hard, I just dislike that they don't tell you). Some suits have special moves that are not explained at all. Like the Guncannon being able to kneel for a mortar fire mode or underwater suits being able to do special movement skills while in water. >lots of escort missions, some of which have the enemy spawning directly on top of what you need to protect Overall, I enjoyed it more than I found myself annoyed with it. A fun game in the small doses that I played it over the course of a week. I might still go back and do the other side of the campaign just to see how that faction differs.

Quake III Revolution for PS2. Controls suck, but game is good. Was fun.

>>870668 Ah yeah, a lot of the awkwardness you're feeling with the game is because it was one of the earliest games in the Gundam Vs. series. Likely Capcom was also trying to figure out what to do with controls and such too. It took decades of game releases in the series in arcades and console to refine it. Later entries on PS4 like Gundam Vs. Extreme Maxi Boost On are much more palatable and have extensive wikis detailing the mobile suits.

I went back to the Mega Man Zero Collection (DS) after a long break, and I just beat Zero 2. I got all the elves, all the forms, and all the EXskills in one playthrough. The Zero series seems to be full of stupid shit and half-baked ideas that fans only let slide because they liked the premise, and I'm starting to agree with the anon who said Zero is just Inafune's forced OC. The ranking system is worse than X5's ranking system, because X5 actually makes you want to do multiple playthroughs, while New Game + in Zero 2 makes you go right back to grinding for the privilege of getting half your moveset back. Speaking of moveset, having no airdash feels crappy in a game where you get less onscreen visibility, and while the Chain Rod sounds cool on paper, its grappling abilities are treated as a gimmick at best, with few uses outside the designated swinging segments. And the EXskills aren't a very good reward when barely half of them are even useful. The uppercut is nice (for the few times it doesn't get you hit with contact damage instead), the slash wave can penetrate shields (which is something the game never tells you), the E. Chain can leech health (at the same speed as the head chip from X3), and the laser can also penetrate shields (while not doing enough damage to kill most things that have shields). The rest are either complete shit, like the downward stab from X4, or so situational they're only useful once, like the extremely nerfed plasma shot on the ladder crab miniboss. And then there's the forms, which straight up lie to you on their stat screen, and change so little that they might as well not exist. Active Form only upgrades your walk speed, and the rolling slash has been severely nerfed. X Form only upgrades your uncharged buster pellets, which is only good for stuff with no I-frames (and the Space Invaders minigame in the Power Room stage). Energy Form increases the spawn rate for health pickups, while taking away your 3-hit combo for no reason. Power Form only gives you the 3rd hit of the saber combo, which means you do less damage than the full combo. Defense Form gives you some pitiful fraction of a defense buff (I think it was something stupid like +0.22) in exchange for halving your attack, which makes it only useful for lasting slightly longer while memorizing a new boss' patterns. Erase Form just gives you shot eraser on your saber, which is arguably better than the shield boomerang, but you're still better off just dodging. Even the Rise Form, that's supposed to have a slightly faster 3-hit combo, has just enough of a delay on the second slash that it probably adds up to the same number of frames as the default combo. The levels are somewhere between X6 and X7 in quality, which means they're a combination of annoying and boring. They do a little bit of that obnoxious Sonic Advance thing, where you have take a blind leap of faith into an offscreen pit and have a split-second to react to instant death. It's easy enough to get the jump right on your second try, but it feels like the devs being cheeky for the hell of it. I'd say the Bombardment level was my favorite, if only for their attempt at a platforming challenge at the start. The bosses are the best part of the game, but whether you win or lose, fights are over with too fast. I like that they give you 2 subtanks to find and use without any elf involvement. I didn't use any elves in my first playthrough, because I wanted all the EXskills and I didn't want to risk getting locked out of Ultimate Form. Using them on a second playthough, they give you tons of health to mess around with, and the bee elves are funny, but half the time I just forget to use them. I think when I play Zero 3 I'll just grab a couple EXskills, then ignore rank and use whatever elves I feel like. I have no idea why they'd thought to penalize the player so thoroughly for them when they're just a somehow worse version of the Limited Parts mechanic from X6. Segueing into other aspects that are worse than X6, the writing is abysmal. Marketability aside, everything would've been better off as its own new property, rather than being attached to the X series in any way. Zero has no personality beyond scowl.png, and I can't take him seriously when he both looks and sounds like a 12-year-old boy. I don't know how consistent the original Japanese voice acting is, because Capcom was too cheap to pay the overseas royalties for it, but I'd say it was a huge mistake to make half his ingame sounds a stifled effeminate sneeze. You need to unlock the saber EXskills to get his balls to drop. Ciel only exists to be kawaii uguu, because who'd want to protect the ugly assortment of Resistance goons otherwise. The "Guardians who don't guard anything" being recurring bossfights was stupid, because they immediately overused them, and there's no good excuse for them to be able to just teleport away like that, beyond Zero trying to look stoic. It looks really stupid when their sprites inflate for dramatic effect, and the fact that they'll be back after digivolving and exploding just feels lazy. Elpiantissimo was such an obvious villain, the only surprise was that he wasn't a Neo Arcadia mole. Him killing X's husk had no emotional impact, because Mr. Zero Personality who is once again thwarted by a tiny net still has his token amnesia, and felt nothing but mild discontentment. You could tell Inafune was drooling over this scene. And the ending was nothing but a cliffhanger for Zero 3, with no substance of its own. It turns out the real curse that Dr. Wheelo put on the Dark Elf was the power to revive the Nutshack theme song. I'm already sick of hearing characters talk about the Dark Elf mommy and Baby Elf cum, so I don't have high hopes for Zero 3.

>>870736 >and I can't take him seriously when he both looks and sounds like a 12-year-old boy. The guy who did the art for MMZ made scat and urethral insertion hentai under a pseudonym. I wouldn't be shocked if that was how they found out about him.

>>870789 >The guy who did the art for MMZ made scat and urethral insertion hentai under a pseudonym Can you prove that?

>>870704 >it was one of the earliest games in the Gundam Vs. series Oh I had no idea it was part of that. I will have to try those later too as I did have fun with this.

>>870789 That explains a lot, from the Medabot looking boss designs, to the grotesque fanart the Zero Series seems to attract. >>870858 I found this. https://archive.ph/yhx7X >Dōjinshi under the Peach Class circle and "Tetsuno Kyojin" penname

Just finished off Red Steel 2, on the Wii and had a lot of fun playing it. The premise of the game is that, in the Red West (A combination of the American Wild West with Japanese elements, both modern and traditional), the thugs and outlaws of the region have combined their power for the purposes wiping out the Kusigari Clan of gun-kata samurais. However, one samurai of the clan survives the massacre by the virtue of having been exiled some years prior. After being captured and literally dragged back to the city, he is now on a quest of revenge against the marauders that killed his clan. And, that's pretty much the gist of the story. Nothing else to talk about as it's a straight shot from beginning to end on what's going on and where things are going. The protagonist, the exiled Kusigari, is on a quest for revenge and he accomplishes by the very end. It works as the barebones nature of the story doesn't bog down the game's flow. The visual design of the game is very similar to Borderlands in all honesty, with the cel-shaded art style of the characters and world, and the technology in use. It looks very clean in actually playing the game and doesn't slow down the pacing. In some regards, the world it doesn't best reflect the game being some "combination" of the Wild West with Japanese themes as as everything seems to either be regular Wild West designs or literal Japanese architecture made to look like the Old West. It's a similar situation with the music, where you can tell how the audio is distinctly Japanese or Western in style rather than being a proper combination of the two. To get to the point, the game doesn't do the best job combining both styles, but it's more just me nitpicking. Red Steel 2 is a combination first person shooter and hack-and-slash game. The game takes place across four large hub worlds, where the player is assigned missions to accomplish across the hub before moving onto the next. Majority of these quests are linear in nature, however there are some addition side-quests such as destroying wanted posters or activating communication towers. It does get a little repetitive, but it exists for the purposes of forcing the player into the meat of the gameplay. As I said, it's a combination hack-and-slash and shooter game, however it becomes increasingly apparent that the shooter aspect of Red Steel 2 is actually the weaker of the two. The player has constant access to switch between their sword and revolver (With the later addition of a shotgun, tommy gun, and carbine), but you'll be sticking to the sword majority of the time because that's what majority of the special and takedown moves are centered around, enemies are capable of withstanding/blocking bullets just like you can, and you'll constantly be searching for ammo across the hub itself. Yeah, the biggest fault of the game being a shooter is that the ammo for the damn guns is so damn scarce to the point that you'll avoid using them. Which is an crying shame as the carbine and the shotgun are absolute thrills to fire. The sword attacks are accomplished by the player swinging the Wiimote, with the game being rather accurate towards the start as you're running around Caldera, but begins to start having detection issues towards the end of the game. This may lead to the question of how you can switch between the guns and sword without losing track of enemies. RS2 has a lock on system in a similar vein to the Metroid Prime games, where the game will lock onto the nearest enemy so that the player doesn't lose track between switching weapons. The default scheme for the game is to have this be automatic, but it does allow the player to manually activate it, which is the method I chose. However, the only problem with this manual option is that holding down the Z button to lock on will result the player strafing the area until the game finally recognizes than an enemy has appeared. The game also gives the player the ability to upgrade all of your weapons and abilities by spending the money you have earned through accomplishing missions, destroying debris around the hubs, finding the hidden medals around each area, and defeating groups of enemies in the flashiest way possible. The last part being the biggest reason behind using all the specials and takedowns. While you can defeat groups with the most basic attacks and shooting them, you earn more money and defeat them quicker if you use the specials attacks. Overall, I can very much recommend that Red Steel 2 is an absolute gem to play. Despite the problems I had with the game not cohesively combining the Old West with the Old East, and how weak the shooter aspect is, I had a lot of fun playing through the game. I would have loved to see a follow-up to this game, but I don't really see how when the protagonist, and literal hero, of the story is a white man surrounded by slant eyes. Also, it's worth noting that I think Red Steel 2 is actually the originator of the "first-person character action" style of gameplay that people attribute to having begun with nuDoom and nuShadow Warrior.

>>880937 One of my favorite Wii games. I have played through it quite a lot of times. I always set the Wii Motion Plus sensitivity to its least sensitive to its least sensitive setting so I can really feel the swings. The setting is basically not Star Wars with the not Jedi extinct after not Anakin has joined the not Sith in a weeaboo wild west. It is quite flawed as you have touched upon, but it doesn't really matter because the meat of the game is just that good. It's a first-person brawler rather than a shooter, so I don't really mind that guns are not as good as the sword. It would be great if we got a similar follow up game. I would not even need to be real sequel, it could be a different name in a different setting. Red Steel 2 does not have anything to do with the first one, so why even bother with a continuity? Imagine an actual Star Wars game that played like this instead of whatever the Kinect Star Wars shit was. It would have been really cool if the game had a New Game+ mode where you start out with all your powers and the enemies are stronger. You get really cool powers near the end, but you barely get an opportunity to use them before the game is over.

Just finished up Ys Memories in Celceta, am almost finished with Ys Seven, and will be starting Monstrum Nox here shortly. I'd like to get through all the mainline western releases before Nordics comes out. Though I might take a break and try Tales of Arise next - but I'm really not that excited about it with the new art style. I keep hearing it's decent, though, so what the hell. Also finished up Quake II Remaster and all the expansions, which are pretty good - though the new Call of the Machine modules are garbage IMO. Yeah, it looks impressive - but IMO that breaks continuity, and even Quake it seems isn't immune to current year political messaging. One of the missions has a marine with a pride flag on his pod, and I'm pretty sure another had a reference to trans bullshit, but I can't remember exactly where. Other than that I found the level design really uninspired despite the more complex geometry and scenery - and largely it's just an excuse to give you power weapons and throw masses of enemies at you. On the higher difficulties it becomes just more of a slog than a challenge. I also finished the first episode of Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders on GZDoom, which doesn't really count since I haven't beaten the full game - but I'm counting it anyhow because episodic bullshit and I saw an ending screen.

>>881030 >One of the missions has a marine with a pride flag on his pod For the record, this is what I'm talking about.

>>881030 >One of the missions has a marine with a pride flag on his pod That's why it crashed.

Nearly finished TOTK. I'm vidya-edging by trying to complete all the armor sets and getting the kill badges before going to the endgame.

>>881030 >On the higher difficulties it becomes just more of a slog than a challenge. It's fucking Quake 2 instead of 1, what did you expect? Even Quake 2 OG was a fucking slog, just with pink tint glasses, it was 1 who was the good one, while 3 was the sweaty tryhard ome for autists

>>881066 It almost looks like it's not brown.

I just beat Mega Man Zero 3, and I can see why most consider it their favorite Zero game. The chips and the reworked cyber elves mean you can have actual abilities and customization again, and the ranking system was lenient enough that I got all the EX Skills without really going for them. The buster got massively buffed, with Flizzard's EX Skill being busted enough to carry you through the entire game. The Recoil Rod is kinda neat to mess around with, and so much of the levels encouraged its use, that I mostly only brought out the saber for boss fights. This is also the only time I've ever found auto-charge to be useful, mostly because of how small the DS Lite's face buttons are. The Cyberspace mechanic was kinda pointless, I guess it's there to give you a boost through a difficult level, but the lava dumpster surfing in Flizzard's stage was the only time I had trouble, and an extra 8 HP doesn't make a difference there. The Phantom boss fight makes up for it though. The level design is also an improvement over the previous two games, there's not quite as many screen crunch hazards, only the Rabbit's stage was particularly annoying. Enemies seemed less spongy, but the mod cards I had on might've had something to do with that. The final boss was even more of a cakewalk than 2, even with a 3rd phase, it also helped that I already beat Omega in ZX on 3 separate playthroughs. In terms of writing, it was somehow even worse than Z2. Dr. Wheelo is just edgy Wily, but with even less justification for his continued existence. He directly caused the most deadly war in recorded history purely out of spite, and his punishment of being banished into space where he can eventually U-turn back to Earth with all of his evil works intact and waiting for him, only makes sense in the context of these being the exact same people that kept taking Wily's word whenever he said he'd turn over a new leaf. And Harpuia believing that a brain-damaged Copy X built by Dr. Wheelo is still trustworthy and in command is completely retarded. No Mega Man plot should get away with being this stupid, and this is coming from a guy who enjoyed Sigma being the villain of nearly every X game. The baby elves were a nothing but an obnoxious red herring, with Foxtar even telling you that Dr. Wheelo doesn't need them, but at least they're dead now. The loli that cared about them didn't even get a line of dialogue mentioning them after you kill them. And the climactic reveal of Omega being Zero's original body just plain doesn't work. He spends nearly the entire game just growling and groaning like an animal, and once he's somehow back in his base form, he's crazy now I guess? I was listening to the remastered soundtrack on YouTube and there were dozens of comments saying they cried at this ending. He doesn't look or act anything like Zero, and the copy body is functionally the same, so how is anyone emotionally invested in this? Motherfucker doesn't even have his memories back, as far as I can tell, so should Zero even care either? And I really don't get the obsession with heroes in MMZ, as if that's something that anyone cared about in the X series. I really wouldn't be surprised if you told me that the Zero series is just a bunch of unrelated Tokusatsu plots stitched together into one inconsistent story, Harmony Gold Robotech style.

>>881333 Are you going to play the ZX series afterwards? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VRUBV7ccsw

>>881409 ZX is gay.

I just finished Prey 2017, in an autism quest for its platinum trophy. I am boycotting every Bethesda game out of butthurt for Zenimax's suit against Oculus seemingly killing PC VR for the past six years, so I checked it out of a library. My best guess as to "what was wrong with Prey" is that there are too few characters and too few windows into whatever happiness they enjoyed in space. BioShock makes you give a shit about Andrew Ryan and then forces you to murder him, and I remember that, but all I remember from my first playthrough is "Wong from Doctor Strange misses his [INSERT SELECTED SIBLING GENDER HERE]." The majestic-yet-completely-degenerated-Art Deco-shithole is there, but there's not much to find inside it. It would be better to avoid a Ken Levine-style dickbite of an ending when there was no thrill or joy or anything to leave a stronger memory with the player. This might be a problem Bethesda has in general. Every video I've ever seen of a Bethesda game felt to me like an autism simulator made by autists who don't know how to evoke a human emotion from their audience. Sad!

Got around to playing Nightdives remaster of Powerslave, and it's quite good. The comparison to Metroid is far closer then you'd expect, quite close to 2D Metroid as a mater of fact, since obviously it predates Prime. The game's upgrades have near direct parallels to the High Jump, the Varia suit, Missiles opening secret areas, and the super hidden power ups you get for finding the Developer secret areas give you the Gravity suit, and the Space Jump, there is grenade jumping, but Once you get the ability to levitate you can use it to imitate power bomb jumping. now putting aside the Metroid comparisons, and looking at the game on it's own merits, there is a nice focus on verticality in the level design, the jumping is very generous likely due to the game being designed for a controller, so it feels that much better when played on M&K. After beating the game once, I did another playthough on Hard going for the no health upgrades challenge the extra danger enemies posed really highlighted the versatility of your arsenal, the homing properties of the staff projectiles, or the bouncing projectiles of the Ring became that much more useful. The game manages to set itself part from other classic FPS games quite well.

>>790791 I just finished Code Vein It's pretty good. The visuals are cool, I like the Build Variety even if stacking buffs like Bridge to Glory + Swift Destruction + Final Journey + makes any Bosses bar Cannoneer and Blade Bearer a joke. It's good that they put those gifts in the Final Dungeon to not break the game entirely. Customization is cool even if there's no Breast Slider (yet they have an ass slider), and the outfits are tacky as hell (they don't have a Seifuku?? wtf) but overall an enjoyable experience. People say that this is Anime Dark Souls but it felt more like Anime Dark Souls II with writing from a shonen series. I really thought this will be longer since i blitzed it in less than 20 hours, only to find out that the DLCs are just bonus bosses unlike Dark Souls. I don't play God Eater so i don't feel anything upon the reveal. Here's hoping that there will be a sequel and they won't fuck it up.

>>870736 >>881333 (3xc3ll3nt digits) Zero 3 is weird for all the supposed emotional shit but it's only from X's side; Zero is just some tired guy that is too fed up with ripping and tearing at this point. The guardians being retards shouldn't even be a surprise, have you seen Copy X? Dr.Wheelo is the most hilarious villain with how utterly edgy he is. He's no Willy though, considering how cartoonisly evil Willy is and how his schemes of the week usually end. Omega was always insane, he's basically the Broly of Megaman. Zero just fucked him up, tore his body into pieces and thought he killed him, then the switcheroo happens to ""explain"" Zero's in-game "weakness" of not being able to one tap everything like X, Zero and Axl should at this point and you have Omega using parts of his previous body as the "sealing armour" and his personality chip inserted in Zero's original body. And then you beat his ass like nothing happened. I get what they were going for, at least. >I really wouldn't be surprised if you told me that the Zero series is just a bunch of unrelated Tokusatsu plots stitched together into one inconsistent story, Harmony Gold Robotech style. Close, it's three unrelated toku stories with these characters, re-written at the last minute to cockblock Inafune's wet dreams from becoming a reality and saving whatever dignity X had left in him. >>881432 I still can't believe it. >>871179 Never search for OG or X artwork from the 90s, especially not from the years where eroguro was trendy it's also extremely gay Still highly disappointed but it's to be expected, the fandoms around toku and transformers in Japan are somehow extremely degenerate when they do hentai to the point where I'm sure the allusions from Lilith's Taimanin series are admisions of the publisher about the things they aren't going to do** until one of their artists publishes a doujin of the characters they drew doing that stuff* Thankfully Maidol and Aoi Nagisa still haven't gone that far with their fanbox/doujins >>881452 >Here's hoping that there will be a sequel and they won't fuck it up. A year after its release, shift went totally dark, not even with news for a new God Eater or anything. It's up to Bamco but it seems they restructured shift's already skeleton crew and put them as sweatslaves on Scarlet Nexus. That same crew also helped with the combat programming of Tales of Arise while the executive producer of God Eater 2 and CV IIRC? handled Scarlet Nexus and is ready for more games like it. Make of that what you will.

>>881452 The two main issues I had with Code Vein were those stupid fucking walking-talking segments, and the fact that it didn't feel like you could play YOUR build but instead were forced to counter bosses.

>>881492 >Scarlet Nexus Welp, looks like i'm adding it to the backlog then >>881494 >The two main issues I had with Code Vein were those stupid fucking walking-talking segments Just skip it like i do >it didn't feel like you could play YOUR build but instead were forced to counter bosses I mean that's sort of the point with the blood code system. You can change stats on the fly to counter the shit out of bosses. The Blood Code system is the logical endpoint of rerolling your character. Why bother spending hours just to grind a specific playstyle when you can change it on the fly?

>>881492 >I still can't believe it. Yeah, I never expected a mainstream company to include a yuri option to a popular franchise that never had a female playable character before (outside of spinoffs with multiple character options) in 2006. It's not even being lazy and reusing content for the male hero: The ending is totally different for the male PC, and the audio drama is totally original and would make no sense with the male protag. Too bad the duology didn't sell all that well and Capcom burned bridges with the dev studio.

>>882032 >The Blood Code system is the logical endpoint of rerolling your character. It's closer to the Job system from Final Fantasy if anything, the Blood Codes and the Gifts are like the mastered Jobs and mixing and matching them around while your main character only increases his overal stats by just 2(I think, it might be just 1 point) every level and the Blood Codes just manipulate them in percentile fashion while also adding a unique dodge, some unique passives etc. The real fumble of Code Vein is not allowing you to have a main and sub Blood Code like in FF's jobs. Before SN's news, I was hoping a CV2 would have that feature along with a dual wielding of some sort. >>882162 >Too bad the duology didn't sell all that well and Capcom burned bridges with the dev studio. The first sold well, well enough to warrant a sequel that nobody had to make; it's why it has a timeskip and two new characters in the first place alongside new antagonists and a semi-reboot of >Muh Light and Muh Wily rivalry but reversed and due to ZXA's systems it flopped. Still, that wasn't enough to kill it, the real reason Capcom killed it is the same reasons they killed the original plans for Shooting Star 3's full plot(it didn't end quite like that originally) and scrapped the Ryusei no Rockman 4 game they had, instead going for a limp-dicked Megaman BN1 but with occasional Geo Stellar segments. The reason was the over saturation of the brand that ended up costing them more in the long run, the bleeding funds for the Megaman Universe game and the other online game they wanted to make but the studio fucked them, like every good gook/chink MMO studio, the fucking XOVER dscourse and predatory mobage practices and the rage it triggered if you remember any of that, and the dscource within Capcom surrounding Inafune. So, everything was dropped until purposefully they could make X DiVe to recapture the Megaman audience.

>>790791 Just finished Monster Hunters Generations Ultimate a two days ago. After spending almost three hundred hours I overall all have to say this game really is a Hunting Game Fanatic's dream. Man appeal is not only a large ass roster of multiple monsters and armor sets but the freedom of customizing your move set with hunter arts gives you the freedom fight how you damn well please at least that would be the case if were some styles were straight up better for weapons such as Greatsword and Longswords with Valor, Striker for SnS and DB with anything else outside of guild being gimmicks as best but you're free to try. Any other gripe I have is that Dash Juices are a bitch to get outside of meowster hunters and Farming Gypceros and Royal Ludroth. I could've hunted and farm them with the Palicos but I'm not always lucky and I don't use it all that often. I'm glad I managed to not only Reach G rank but even managed beat the "final" boss of G rank Athal-Ka with a considerably Mediocre set utilizing Glavenus G Armor and Astalos SnS at LV 8 since I'm not all too caught up with meta options. Sorry if it sounds a bit like an automated review. I'm just happy to finish a hard game I spent so much time in and reached the end after so long. I might return to farm Silver Rathalos and finish the rest of the game (maybe) so I can farm more weapons and Armor like I did with Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity.

Here are the games I played the last month First of all I went through all games and dlc from half-life series except the VR game Alyx. I don't have a good pc or a vr set to play those so sadly I'll have to either watch a walkthrough or wait a few months of neetbux. I absolutely loved everything about all of these games, my favorite being the original half-life game. It has good story telling and fun gameplay. To me that's how story telling should be, not 20minutes of boring cinematics or hours of text to read, or audio recorders to collect. Even if I discover this game over 20 years I had a lot of fun, reminded me of max payne in some parts of the gameplay even though I find max payne better as a fps. Having never played a FF game (only played a bit of ff6 on snes). I tried my luck on the new ff7 remake game on ps4. The ps4 is the only console I actually buy games on and I had a lot of good surprises buying games without spoiling myself. Kind of mixed feelings. The music is great and I somewhat got attached to some character despite their design. The gameplay is poor on some sides but it sometimes got me during actual fights. The main problem to me was so story that was incomplete. The closer I got to the end the more I told myself "hey what about this guy? why are they not finishing the story" until I beat sephiroth and read on the internet that apparently, I'll have to wait for a new game. Which I probably won't buy before at least 2 years where I'll be able to find it at a good price. It just kind of made me feel like I shouldn't have played this game, even if the experience wasn't all that bad. If I am to give another try to FF it probably will give another try to ff6 because I remember liking it a lot. The other good experience with half life series I had was vanquish. Now I KNEW I would love this 3ps since I spoiled myself with clips a while ago. I loved the gameplay even if the story was hilarously horrendous. The only problem is the lack of content. I finished it within two days so I guess I'll play it through another time, maybe go autistic and platinum that game. Finally I started OOT on 3ds, and plan playing wind waker too later on. >>870736 >>881333 >>881492 As a megaman fan it's cool to see those opinions and critics. I went through zx and zxa series twice, once when I was a kid with the collection and the ds games and later on the collection on which I got the platinum trophy. Over the years I learnt about everything behind this game and its relationship with Inafune, but when I first played ZXA as a kid it never occured why the two characters had different ending, to me it was just a feature to go through the game another time.

Beat Baldur's Gate 3. Shit was pretty meh. Too many bugs, too much gay, too much unfinished content, too easy, bad characters, bad writing, bad story. Armored Core 6 was ok. It didn't really feel like a mech game. No real customization, no need to worry about funds, too easy, missions were pretty bland. Finished a second playthrough of Symphony of War: Nephilim Saga and its new DLC. New DLC doesn't add a staggering amount of content, but the patch that came with it greatly improved combat. Prior to this, the combat was the game's biggest flaw: it just felt cheesy. Now the game has an updated morale system, and enemy cavalry can finally make hit and run attacks. >>882440 The numbered Final Fantasy games worth playing are 4-5-6-7. The earlier ones are dated as fuck, the later ones just don't have the same magical adventure. Play the original versions, on their original systems, with the original translations. Although FF7 on PC has some decent QOL from what I hear, another anon could weight in on that.

>>882552 I liked FF3 on the DS, even if the ending section was brutally long with no saves inbetween https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwjYE7PhCz4

I have finished Soldier of Fortune 1 and 2. The games are so different, it's almost like playing another game. The first one is very action packed, less realistic than one might think from a game based around the Soldier of Fortune magazine. It had a laser gun, sci-fi labs and bases, and a final boss with some power armor that can apparently tank 20 rockets who wanted to bomb the UN, with all the nukes and Japanese prototype weapons imaginable. The gameplay is pretty fast on normal, the guns all worked fine, even the .44 pistol can do well on its own, you basically kill and gore every bunch of bad guy stereotype imaginable, from white supremacists to Iraqi soldiers or Sudanese butchers, there's even a Saddam Hussein cameo. It's pretty much a 90's action flick that you play like Quake II. Then Soldier of Fortune II comes in, and it's nothing like the first. I played on hard this time, and now leaning has a meaning, getting out of cover is very dangerous, as every encounter is brutal on both sides, all the guns are real ones, and while you had fun guns like the USAS-12 or the Micro-Uzi, you only use anything else but your M4 because you don't have it, ran out or are going CQC with the shotgun. You can dual wield pistols and uzis, but I didn't find a Deagle in the campaign, grenades one-shot no matter your health and armor, but the enemy has the courtesy to not use noob tubes like you can. The most "advanced" firearm available in the campaign is the OICW prototype, "but it's not shit" (the grenade laucher is very shit, but the rifle part is a better M4). The terrorists now just have a bio-weapon, that they'll use and sell for money, but no sci-fi shit, power armor, or obvious "I'm so evil" vibes, the game has much longer cinematics and more writing, and the gore is more "realistic", as you can still tear a limb off with one shotgun shell, but you'll need around ten 5.56 rounds instead of one from the LMG like in the first game to do the same. There also was a "random mission generator" but I never tried it. Overall, it's a fun series to try once, though I prefer the first simply for the .44 magnum. That doesn't mean SoF II was bad, but it's extremely different from the first, less action packed, less crazy and slower, almost like playing Medal of Honor Allied Assault, but with gore and modern guns.

>>790791 Mana Khemia and boy the ending made me wonder why i liked that game on the first place >MC: Thank you For trying to kill me through the whole game, thank you for killing my only living surrogate family, thank you for killing one of my friends, thank you for driving me into commiting suicide and almost causing the end of the world Hell at the last part a lot of characters just become shit >The whole party talking to the other MC: Hey, we know that you dealt with as much suffering as MC and that you going haywire is the MC's fault rather that yours, but you technically didn't hanged around with us on your free time so... DIE BITCH, FUCKING DIE!!! The only one that i didn't hate was the vice-principal since she's not retarded and she's also the only level-headed character who is not a spitful piece of shit. I also hate that the crafting system is a lesser version of Atelier Iris 2 >Can't pick and choose effects >Can't give end-game effects to early-game items >Can't mass produce crafted items on a very crafting-intensive game >>810828 I love how some of the innovations in their games are a thing now and some of the situations in-game happened in real life like the outdoor introvers becoming a thing

>>882552 >Armored Core 6 It followed Fromsoft's trend of making their games more action game orientated with each sequel at the cost of other things. Also not shocked about the difficulty. AC games always got that complaint from fags about being too hard, so it makes sense as to why they would ease it up for the first AC game in some time even if I don't like it. Honestly, I haven't really enjoyed the direction they have taken the series since 4. Early games will always be my go to AC games when I need my fix. >Symphony of War I am still at the beginning of the game since I started recently. I really like customizing the squads in this. Glad to hear you have a positive review. Hopefully that means I won't do my usual bit for games like this and stop playing at around the 80% mark.

>>791094 I find that the Hatapon dying without any Tatepon class to be unbalanced. It might make a lot more sense if Hatapon's vulnerable without the Uberhero regardless of class. It'll encourage playing the Yumiyacha and Yarida classes a lot more over just the Tate class. I remember just going through some of the multiplayer sections alone with only Tondenga. That's my favorite for getting through the game easily.

I just finished Mega Man Zero 4. My first impression of the game killed a lot of the good will Zero 3 had built up, but it's not the worst game in the series. The Z Knuckle is just a ghetto version of Axl's A-Trans, which was poorly fleshed out to begin with. Most of the weapons you can mug off of enemies are crap, immediately outclassed by the saber and the buster. Might be good for a self imposed challenge, but it'd probably get old fast. I didn't pay super close attention, but it didn't seem like you could bring anything all that useful into a boss room. Speaking of not useful, all the saber EX Skills got nerfed, as most can't even reach the bosses they have an elemental advantage over. The fire uppercut lost some of its height, the down stab is still worthless, the dash thrust still gets no i-frames, and the slash wave now disappears if there's no ground beneath it. There also seems to be some additional lag between the third saber swing and your EX Skills, like they wanted combos to be less safe. The buster got some decent EX Skills, though the Tractor Shot seems like it was built entirely for minibosses, since none of the fire bosses use projectiles compatible with it. I do at least appreciate that they made EX Skills easy to get, and made the ranking system irrelevant. The weather effects can be annoying, but they're not on par with the Nightmare System from X6. The Artificial Sun level and the Underwater Maze sucked, but the other levels were pretty good. The new Elf system is somewhat less customizable than Z3's Elves, I ended up sticking with Nurse Elf at lvl 1 until I unlocked lvl 6, because your early options don't do much. There's a hidden mechanic that gives your Elf a buff depending on who you let name it, and I'm kinda glad I picked the default Elf name from the loli, because satelite health drops got nerfed to one every 20 seconds, and that's with the name buff. The E-crystal requirements start off reasonable, but the grind gets ridiculous by the time you reach lvl 5 or 6. If it wasn't for Pegasus Eclair's stage and the double item effect Elf, I wouldn't have bothered to max out the Elf lvl. The Chip crafting system was a neat idea on paper, but it's complete shit in practice, having to grind random drops in a Mega Man game has never been fun, and without an online guide for all the secret recipes, it'd be ass cancer. Once I had my final build, I was invincible, but with how much the Zero series revolved around poverty, it felt almost out of character to be that strong. There were actually some pretty cool moments, like running down the barrel of the Particle Cannon even if it was just a nerfed X5 Volcano, and a lot of the Ragnarok stuff even if it was very similar to the X4 Final Weapon. It's kinda funny how most of the boss designs I liked this time around were just recycled Mavericks from X4 and X5, just like how the surprise beetle team-up in Z2 were just a reimagined Boomer Kuwanger and Gravity Beetle. The fights against Craft were the best part of the game, I wish the Z Knuckle could've been replaced with something half as interesting as his ridiculous swiss army chainsaw. The timer on the final boss fight was a nice touch, adding urgency to an otherwise underwhelming boss. Story wise, I can tell they put more effort into the writing and presentation. It was interesting that they highlighted some of the consequences of killing Copy X, but I didn't really care much for Neige and the refugees. I wonder if the reason they avoided having any human main characters in the X series besides the inevitable scientists, Dr. Cain and the Light & Wily AI entities was because of how awkward it comes across here. The lines they gave Ciel after each mission were charming, reminds me of Aila's debriefings, and even though I didn't care about Craft's romance, him taking over Ragnarok's cannon and nuking Neo Arcadia was a cool moment. It's also kinda funny that for all the shit I gave the guardians, they all died on the way to their home planet, like they just had no idea what to do with them anymore. I chuckled when it turned out that all the hero talk throughout the Zero series was just a buildup to Zero saying that he never claimed to be an hero, and that he always just fought for those he believed in. On one hand, there weren't many present to know of Zero's "Shut up and fight" attitude, and a 200 year gap where humanity gets dragged to near extinction a second time may cause X and Zero's adventures to fade into legend, so Zero's "..." treatment to every Resistance member calling him a Legendary Hero could've just been him not wanting to dash their fragile hopes, but the amnesia makes that a completely null point. I don't know why they even bothered with the whole amnesia angle, obviously he wouldn't remember things he wasn't conscious for, but all the "this X guy sounds familiar" moments just came off as snubbing their friendship, and there was never any payoff where gaining or losing his memories made any difference. Dr. Wheelo didn't really get any surprise reveal, it's almost like they would've ended the series with Z3, but figured it was too jam-packed to fit both Omega and the final Wheelo confrontation. The ending was the kind of bittersweet that I really like, with how Ciel put on a brave face in front of everyone, then cried in private. Showing the helmet would've hit harder if he didn't get wished back by the Dragon Balls fanboyism so many times, but it's still a good endpoint for the Zero series. I'm sure there's plenty of supplementary material that makes a lot of things less dumb in hindsight, as the Mega Man series usually has good supplementary writing to beef up the lore, but I feel like the Zero timeline had the most fanfic-tier writing of the series, at least until they came out with those mobile game cashgrabs. I'm probably gonna start up a fresh save in ZX next, with my eyes opened to all the rich lore of the Zero series, but I'm gonna need a week or two to rest my wrist first. Playing these on the DS Lite is giving me carpal tunnel. >>881492 >Dr.Wheelo is the most hilarious villain with how utterly edgy he is. He's no Willy though, considering how cartoonisly evil Willy is and how his schemes of the week usually end. I'd say it's more that Wily and Wheelo are two different generations of cartoon villain. Dr. Wily is 60s/70s villainy, right down to fooling everyone with a costume shop disguise, while Dr. Wheelo is 80s villainy, with him trying specifically to destroy nature out of spite. >Close, it's three unrelated toku stories with these characters, re-written at the last minute to cockblock Inafune's wet dreams from becoming a reality and saving whatever dignity X had left in him. I do appreciate all the tard wrangling that took place behind the scenes. Apparently in Z1's internal files, Rainbow Devil is listed as "Fake Ciel", because it was originally going to shapeshift Terminator 2 style. We would've gotten a filler arc in Z1 where a kidnapped Ciel is replaced by a fake, who gives you missions designed to set the Resistance back, and refuses to let you save your game. Thankfully someone realized that it wouldn't be fun and that Ciel didn't have enough characterization in Z1 for anyone to spot the fake anyway. >>882440 I'll admit that the Inafune stuff biased my opinion on the Zero series, knowing just how disposable X was to him. It also doesn't help that Inti didn't have much experience with making games like this, and that the dire dystopian setting is used as a cover for their loose grasp of what made the X series great.

>>883344 >Playing these on the DS Lite is giving me carpal tunnel. The PC version of the Zero/ZX collection is actually the best way to play ZX and ZXA. The ZX games are fully voiced in Japanese, but horribly compressed to fit on a DS cartridge, and it's all cut from the English release. The collection's audio and anime cutscenes were actually remastered (as in, taken from master files), and modding the PC version of the collection to "undub" the English version of the collection is relatively trivial. The save assist option really is just culling the the vestigial lives system and fixing the horrible checkpoint pacing of ZX/ZXA while making perfect clears on the bosses not a horrible pain in the ass.

>>883344 (Insane) >Might be good for a self imposed challenge, but it'd probably get old fast. It does. Not worth the recoil rod variants nor the shield. >Speaking of not useful, all the saber EX Skills got nerfed, as most can't even reach the bosses they have an elemental advantage over. They did as well, made it so that compared to previous games where the elemental chips enhanced the effects and "broke" the balance, here they wanted to reduce the stagger game for boss encounters and make them more difficult. >The fights against Craft were the best part of the game, Did you notice how he seemed like a gruffer Barrel from BN5 mixed with Searchman.exe? Like it was a completely different artist than Nakayama responsible for him. >like they just had no idea what to do with them anymore. They didn't, I dunno whose idea was to keep them alive, their role was to job and get melted in front of you the moment Omega appears. >pun You cheeky bastard 8^) Given Zero's propensity to also die all the time, having it count for once while claiming he never meant to be a hero, despite being an SA Class Hunter is kinda funny but it's a shame this is his last moments. Especially when the entire Zero series paints him as some ultra tired guy who regrets not dying after the first game and people kept reviving him. <Amnesia That stops being a plot point by the second game though, after that it's treated as if Zero is too tired to even argue beyond answering to Ciel and Cerveau, who he may consider a friend based on him being essentially his doctor. > I don't know why they even bothered with the whole amnesia angle, obviously he wouldn't remember things he wasn't conscious for, but all the "this X guy sounds familiar" moments just came off as snubbing their friendship, and there was never any payoff where gaining or losing his memories made any difference. Because Inafune and Zero being Hakaider but all that is lost since it's not X but Copy X who's the final boss and the full story of Zero as games is meant to be the games and the exclusive Drama CDs available only in Japan, with moments like Zero taking massive shits on Copy X at their final confrontation in Z1, talking down on C-X for daring to compare himself to X to the point where you have to wonder when did Zero stop thinking about Iris and turned gay for X instead 2000s multimedia projects Capcom is really fucked. From what I could find : https://yewtu.be/watch?v=8Kx2o9RTrq8&list=PLHf3qzP0DHpcP9n2UfPKTG5FUoXysgOuz&index=3 https://yewtu.be/watch?v=w8S5pD-7IYs&list=PLHf3qzP0DHpcP9n2UfPKTG5FUoXysgOuz&index=4 Also the amnesia plot was a ""nice"" "storytelling device" in order for the star system to exist and why it was phased out after the second game which I find stupid, every game should have featured it and built up on it; Z1 should have reduced the EXP to get your skills back faster, Z2 should have expanded your combos instead of re-learning everything from scratch, Z3 should have added new tricks like faster rolling slashes etc It's also pretty morbid how Japan's idea of marketing Zero to the local market were what could be described as "the best looking commercials of the last 20 years" : https://yewtu.be/watch?v=bxqPII0j5bg given how fluid their animation still is, even after a crappy upscale. This is 90s yakuza money OVA-tier quality. >Showing the helmet would've hit harder if he didn't get wished back by the Dragon Balls fanboyism so many times, but it's still a good endpoint for the Zero series. Well, if it's any consolation, he's dead. For real. And IntiCrates has a bit of a "revenge" against Inafune by having a character in ZX named "Gyro" resemble Zero and even have his voice actor from the Zero series...and killing him in the tutorial. Take of that, as you will. And no, the "Biometals" aren't the characters returning as chibi mascots. >>883345 I have the ZX japanese version on the DS but admittedly I don't remember that at all. I remember the ZXA having a japanese dub for nip copies and an english dub for western copies though, even touted as a first for the series? Or was it solely western marketing?

>>790791 Some games are just not worth finishing. Like for example i replayed Dragon Age Inquisition and Witcher 3 a lot of times, but never stomached cinematic stories of them till the end. Not to mention finishing some of them wouldnt return me to them in the first place, like for example i just finished Bloodstained and dont feel at all like returning to it except for Classic/Random modes. Fuck, even Doom that i finished i replay only Knee-Deep in the Dead or few other chapter later with mods but never replay entire thing up to icon of sin. And some megawads are good but not worth playing entirely (especially knowing mods kill balance to shit compared to vanilla "just kill hitscan enemies first and then run around like an idiot with doubleshotgun until everything else dies and search for keys" loop) So no, "finishing" games is not always the wisest choice.

Also good thing to add, i noticed i never reinstalled DA:O and Mass Effect games because i finished each 2-3 times. And same with Kotor. Difficult to return to big ass rpgs if you mentally consider you're done with them.

>>883456 Every time I consider reinstalling Origins, I remember the mage tower exists and it just immediately saps any enthusiasm to replay it . I know there is that mod that removes it but I can't even be arsed getting that to do another play through these days.

I remembered that I bought Fear and Hunger a year ago and ran through it in three days on Terror and Starvation mode with the only info being what I remembered from rants on other sites. It absolutely did not feel fair at all, but with the atmosphere being hopeless and enemies prone to actually rape you I think it's one of the games where bullshit fits right in. You have the main gimmick of coinflips for getting decent items, learning certain spells, triggering a trap, and getting insta-killed. With some bones thrown your way being an item that lets you add another coin to the toss and guarding on the same turn as the insta-kill negating it. It's the first time in a decade where I was writing down things as I was playing and the first time since Noita that I played a game till morning. I can't say I'm unsatisfied.

>>883650 <Ghost Trick With this game having received a few new ports, I took this as my opportunity to finally get around to playing it. Like Ace Attorney and Hotel Dusk, this one is revered as a really great mystery game from the DS era. Like all HD remakes, I had to approach this with a quizzical eye and see if I could tell the HD part was really merited. >Gameplay The gameplay was simple enough though I have a few gripes. For one, the speech parts were really obfuscating at times and made the experience slower than it probably should have been. Also, on at least one occasion, the ghost trick I was meant to do didn't exactly follow the expected train of logic and caused me to waste more time than was necessary. Specifically, it was during that prison break mission. There was at least two more times it behaved this way but I can't remember specifically what. I also disliked that there was no option to view the 'dialogue history'. Or if there was such an option, I couldn't find it. Every other aspect of the gameplay was easy to understand and enjoyable. >Soundtrack A few soundtracks were good, which is typically more than I expect for your average DS game. The "4 minutes before death", "fate changed", and the prison themes were all great. Every other track ranged from mediocre to tolerable. I went back and compared the HD soundtrack to the soundtrack from the original DS game. There is definitely improvement and more than simply increasing the quality. Some tracks had a few instruments added for more depth (as I imagine it would sound quite flat with the improved sound quality but with the same amount of instrumentality as the DS sound font offered). >Graphics Another aspect improved greatly by the HD remake. The "style" of the game is incredibly unique and they take full advantage of it. I have to wonder if any bits of animation were accomplished via rotoscoping or some kind of 3D tracking. In any case, it looks good and is smooth as hell. >Replayability Sadly this game doesn't really have much in the way of replayability, at least in my eyes. Knowing the twist at the end would kind of suck the air out of the game if you played it after that, and the gameplay on its own isn't substantive enough to warrant playing through it if you already know the story front-to-back. But for a story-driven game, that's kind of to be expected. I'm not disappointed. >Story The story was given great focus seeing as how it's a story-focused game. I went into this game blind so I had no idea of any twists or turns the story would take. The twist did surprise me and I actually did not suspect it until the truth was told. The characters were shockingly all likeable, which is hard to do for most writers. The designs were wacky enough but also serviceable so that I didn't have to suspend my disbelief too much. There weren't any major plotholes nor were there any questions I was left with at the end though I found it a tad contrived that Yomiel did such a 180 so quickly on wanting revenge >Overall Overall the game was very good, memorable, and simply fun to play. It didn't overstay its welcome but also wasn't too short. All I can really ask for from a game of its era on the DS. I give it an 8/10 conservatively, but I could easily give it an 8.5/10 if I were being generous. I would recommend it to any mystery fan.

>>888829 >I would recommend it I'll have to give it a go some time. I keep forgetting about it.

Just finished up Ys Monstrum Nox, and I'm not going to do a full write-up, but I went into it expecting a below-average Ys game... and while it's certainly not one of my favorites, it was pretty damned good for what it did. The number one issue I hear most people complain about is the restriction to a single city and it's immediate surrounding area - which absolutely does kill the sense of exploration. Sort of. The thing is, the Monstrum powers are extremely fun to use as navigation tools, and there are plenty of collectables and side-content that's hidden away in hard to reach areas that can only be accessed with Monstrum powers - so you really get this kind of Metroidvania feel to the game's progression. Except instead of finding power-ups at the end of a map, you unlock them as new characters join your party as the chapters progress. These power really need the more claustrophobic (and vertical) environments of a city to really shine. Combat is fast and kinetic as ever, and while most of the Monstrum powers are kind of useless in combat - there's a few that add some spice. Disappearing into the floor using Renegade's power is a great way to dodge AoE attacks, Doll's Third Eye can help identify weak spots (though you won't need to use it too much) - and Adol's Crimson Line can help to very quickly close the distance or reach out of the way weak spot. Monstrum powers all draw from the same pool, which drains - and refills - very quickly. If you drain it completely, you'll have to wait for the meter to be completely refilled to use your powers again - but if you moderate your usage, there is no cool-down cycle. It's a nice way to give you an advantage, but also punishing you for not paying attention or leaning on it too heavily. The characters and story are probably the strongest the series has ever seen - but not necessarily the best. With the more claustrophobic setting, you'll be spending a lot of time in more intimate contact with your companions and it really helps flesh them out. Still, even as fleshed out as they are - they're not quite as strong as previous characters and stories which didn't have as much padding to them. The final boss was also a huge let-down coming off of Seven. Not only is the main protagonist a character you have very little contact with before the final chapters, the crux of the conflict revolves around alchemy - a throw back to Kefin which released back on the SNES and never received a english translation. The final boss, much like the rest of the game, is a neat concept - but didn't quite meet the threat level of Napishtim or Lacrimosa, nor was it as difficult as Dark Fact or The Root. Your party isn't split up like it was in Seven and Lacrimosa - so there's really no penalty for just choosing your three favorite characters and focus on building up their skills and equipment alone. I'd whole-heartedly recommend it, just be aware that it's going to start off a bit slow as you're collecting Monstrum powers - and it's way too easy on the lower difficulties. Start at the highest difficulty you can, then adjust down from there if you need to. Starting Ys Lost Kefin, which will be the last game I need to finish in order to have beaten the entire canonical series, and Tales of Arise. Started Lies of P as well, but I'm not really feeling it - so I may drop that to play some Klonoa. Wahoo.

>>889077 >Not only is the main protagonist a character you have very little contact with Main antagonist, I mean.

Signalis. Yuri silent hill set in a commie dystopia. Gameplay wise it's a deliberate throwback to early SH/RE games and it has the same flow of running past various monsters (physically corrupted androids rather than psychological projections) to grab puzzle pieces. Inventory space is very (too) limited and enemies will revive quickly on subsequent visits to an area if you don't know how to manipulate the system - they only get back up if you walk too close to them, so killing them in corners or side paths is ideal. In spite of that it's not especially difficult since you get a lot of healing items and ammo and most enemies are easily dodged, until the final hub. The story is the strongest part of the game, it's presented in a very visually unique style (sometimes even pretentious, with monogatari style intentional blank frames), and it's spread around ingame books and visual clues rather than spelled out with a lot of deliberately unanswered questions and more or less subtle literary references in the general arc of the plot. A good deal of story is revealed in the various endings, but these are kind of a weakness because which ending you receive depends on your gameplay stats and there are enough variables at play that the ending you receive is pretty much random chance, unless you metagame by either speedrunning or deliberately taking a long time to finish the game. The yuri, not shown outright for a while, is pretty integral to the plot, which revolves around the promise that the player character made to her girlfriend but cannot remember. It also has a cool soundtrack, that varies from sharp industrial tones used for combat music to classical waltz music.

>>895919 >Signalis. Yuri God fucking damn it, I was going to play that because I liked the visuals. Fuck this shit.

>>895933 Poor little Dykecuck.

>>895933 What's wrong with yuri?

StarCraft 2 Wings of Mengsk mod It's just the SC2 Wings of Liberty campaign but you play as the Mengsk coop commander. It really highlights how terrible the single player factions are. There's at least 4 different enemy Terran factions in the game, and they're all identical. The story is atrociously lazy in so many places that if they had just thought about what the characters and how the enemies would react, then it would be a 100 times more sensible. tl;dr 2010 Blizzard was lazy in all aspects

Gundam Crossfire. On paper it is something I really wanted out of a gundam game. Destructible limbs, MS/pilot customization, and squad focused. In practice though it is an incredibly frustrating experience. Difficulty is fucked. When you first start out, do not pick anything other than easy. You die and lose limbs/weapons very quickly even on easy. Especially so if you choose to play zeon where most suits are made of paper mache. Federation side felt easier both in MS stats and missions so I'd suggest starting there. The bright side is that it does a NG+ deal when the war ends so you can try again with all your previous stuff unlocked. Gameplay is janky. Squadmates AI bounces between seek and destroy terminator and a chicken with its head cut off. You have squad orders that you can do but they have to be unlocked. Some maps will regularly see your allies stuck running into walls or enemies repeatedly shooting walls due to having aimbot and focusing on whoever is on the other side. There was a number of times where I was forced to restart due to last enemy not spawning. The lock on system is also kind of shit. Hitting moving enemies from certain angles is almost impossible at times, even with the strange amounts of projectile tracking they have. You can manually aim but this locks you in place and if you stop moving in range of enemies they are going to tear you up. You'd think a game about limb destruction would at least let you shift the lock on focus to various body parts, but no it just focuses the chest. One of the worst parts is the lack of ammo. Most MSs have a criminally low amount of ammo until you invest heavily in increasing it, so until then you have to keep doing laps between fighting and refilling back at a supply vehicle (which can be destroyed). Some weapons are worthless even with the added ammo because it is just too low for the type of missions you have to face. Melee feels awkward and hitting certain targets is more of a pain than it needs to be, but at least it usually shreds fuckers to make up for it. Movement in general is slow, and boosting + dashing doesn't reliably work when I want it to which I think was due to the framerate tanking and fugging up inputs. If you take too many hits, you can get quickly stunlocked and killed so never stop moving. Management side of the gameplay has you hiring pilots, upgrading MSs, choosing when to take missions, and buying MSs as well. Pilots level up from combat, and can get tired and require rest. Repairing is also a thing, so if your favorite MS got fucked, you would have to go without it for several days. You had a limited time before missions and if you weren't ready and miss the deadline, the mission is deleted. You really need the points in this as well (late game MSs are really expensive) so missing/failing them is a big mistake. There is a good variety of MSs, even if most are not all that useful. Like the Marine types not really having a purpose when most levels don't have anything more than ankle height water that is easily avoided. Also disappointing that the missions miss out on most of the big battles from the OYW story, but I understand why given how few units this engine can handle. Performance trends on average towards awful. Framerate tanks regularly on certain maps. The MSs look fine-ish for the time, but the levels are incredibly ugly/plain. There is some destructibility to the buildings and such, but that usually hurts the framerate so I tried to avoid it. Honestly, this really is a game where I can see the potential so I kept playing despite all the shit. I like the ideas behind it, but the execution is so poor to middling that I don't fault anyone for saying the game is a mess of garbage. 5 out 10 for me. I don't regret my time with it, but I also don't think I will be revisiting it anytime soon.

Legends of Amberland: The Forgotten Crown Fun little game, nothing too special. Just an old-school first person dungeon crawler inspired by the classics. Presentation is very minimal on purpose but a bit too minimalist for my taste, with zero animation for movement or enemies. The music was nice but forgettable, can't think of any tunes that stood out but everything fit the mood whether it was town music, castle music, dungeon music, etc. Gameplay-wise it's a throwback for sure. You make a party of seven characters and the character in the middle (position 4) is the character that's going to be attacked the most, so your tank goes there. Positions to the side of the tank (3 and 5) get attacked more than positions 2 and 6, and they get attacked more than 1 and 7, which is where you put your weaker casters, at the "back" or in the case the flanks. Initiative and turn order is influenced by position in the party too, with the tank going first followed by the characters flanking him, and so on, so there's a bit of strategy to play with there. The story is fairly bare. There is a crown that everyone has forgotten about, and you have to find it. Doing so involves traversing the world and entering the dungeons and slaying a lot of monsters and finding some cool loot to equip to your party. The writing is basic and does the job, like everything else, and doesn't really stand out. Character creation is pretty typical with races and classes, elves and dwarves, knights and rangers and healers and casters, etc. I went with the vanilla default party for my playthrough and had everything I needed and it was fairly balanced on the normal difficulty. I haven't tried custom parties on higher difficulties and I'm not sure I'm going to. I got what I wanted from the game and I'm not a completionist who needs to 100% a game and get achievements (not that there are any on Switch). If you're going to play it, play with a notepad handy. There is a map system with co-ordinates but you'll want to map down which quest giver/node is in which location because you'll lose track of where shit is after a while. Or at least I did. YMMV. Overall I enjoyed it. And I feel like I got my money's worth, though I did buy it on sale for only $6.

>>897568 It's a Might and Magic clone from what I played a little while back but it's good, I saw the dev's shilling on the usual site.

As part of a little experiment, I'll be saving everyone's reviews ITT and compiling them into a compendium of sorts. It won't be fancified or anything it'll just be for archival purposes so that future generation will know what 8/v/ thought of the various games played. Don't worry too much about putting extreme essay-level effort into your reviews for my sake, just act naturally. The moment you try to force a certain behavior is when your natural/candid feelings on a game starts to change artificially. Before someone makes the OP for the next thread of this kind, I ask that you make note of my archive. I might put it up online at some point for others to peruse and save at will.

And now time for my review... Fate/Samurai Remnant I'll include courtesy spoilers for those who want to enjoy it for themselves. Spoilers are a big deal for Type Moon fans, after all. As a bit of a prologue note, I'll say I played through this on the highest difficulty offered at the start, and upon finishing one playthrough, you unlock the 'Sword Demon' difficulty which is the hardest the game has to offer, and that's the one I played on for my second playthrough >Gameplay The most criticisms I have to say about FSR is actually regarding the gameplay, which I suppose is just as well. Mainly the issue is that this game plays quite similarly to DmC or MGR. Not quite exactly like those games but as close an approximation as I could give. Except it's not quite as good as those series' gameplay elements. For one, the most striking problem you'll notice is that you can't cancel out of your heavy attack animations, which is a big deal especially on the higher difficulties. Now of course as I played further, I got used to this flaw and was able to work around it, but some of the heavy attacks take FOREVER to execute (which in-game translates to about a second or two). Which is a huge problem because on the harder difficulties, the 'weak point' or 'openings' for enemy attacks get significantly shorter. On the Sword Demon (shortened to SD for the duration of my review) difficulty, these openings can open and close in a matter of milliseconds. Sometimes they are a little longer but the counter openings are always super quick. As the game progresses, you unlock different fighting styles for the protagonist, but I think most people will find that the most useful bar none is the Void stance which comes with a drawback of being severely weakened if you take any damage. What you may use in its place is the water stance or the wind stance for monsters. But generally speaking, the Void stance is all you need if you are good at dodging attacks. Now, unless you've got Flash-speed reflexes, you'll probably still have trouble with some of the later bosses and especially the 'giant bosses' especially on SD. For the giant bosses, I decided to skip the izumi one since it was, in my estimation, fucking impossible without a heavy amount of consumables. That brings me to my next point, some of these bosses are damn-near impossible without an ample amount of pickups. In particular the giant bosses and the special battle reminiscences. Even if you have excellent reflexes, there are some enemy attacks which you simply can't dodge UNLESS you disrupt them with a spell or skill. And these spells take energy to use, which you can restore by attacking (slowly) or instantly through consumable items, but the latter is VERY limited and the former isn't as easy as you'd think. And some bosses totally spam these deadly attacks, you WILL eventually run out of consumables to counter these with, the ones you can't dodge anyways. Iori's spells are another problem, you can only use them via consumable gems, but these gems are also limited until you get the workshop upgrade and even then, they aren't easy to stack up on and you're limited to only carrying 99 of them at any one time (wtf?). Just a really sloppy design on that if you ask me. But luckily, these reminiscences and giant bosses are 100% NOT required to get all the game's endings or CGs. It's just for money, powerups, and items as far as I can tell, which seems kinda pointless. Of what use are these items if you're already a beast at the game? Whatever. >Soundtrack Surprisingly there were a few tracks I really liked, such as some of the battle themes and also some of the town themes. This is more than I expect for a game that focuses on story and gameplay. The other songs range from forgettable to OK. There were no songs I hated, at least. No songs that made me wish I could leave whatever area was causing me to listen to it. >Graphics/Design I think this game really excelled on the graphics and UI. One thing I absolutely love about it are the dynamic character sprites, i.e. when a character is talking, you see their mouths move on the sprite/icon, as well as on the in-game model. This makes the conversations much easier to listen to and watch. It's like how they had it in Stein's Gate, which I also loved. The game's art is done almost entirely by Rei Wataru, and his style is very easy on the eyes. He has a really great theme to his art, and I love his takes on characters typically drawn by others, such as Gilgamesh, Cu, and Circe. Takeuchi apparently designed Saber, but the art itself is done by Rei thank God. >Replayability It has replayability to a point, like how you'd want to see all the images/routes/story. But beyond that I don't think anyone would be itching to suffer the gameplay any longer. It's a hell of a lot more serviceable than previous Fate games (not including the VNs obviously) but it has a habit of overstaying its welcome, even on lower difficulties. >Story This seems to be a point of contention for some people but I really liked it. I say this as someone who has read pretty much every mainline Fate work, unless you count Strange Fake or Prototype because I didn't read those at all. The characters are all pretty good though I think Jeanne Alter got shafted and wasn't really ever able to glow. If I had a nitpick, I'd say I don't like how so many 're-occurring' characters appeared, such as some of the rogues. What are the odds that the same servants we'd seen plenty of times before got summoned 'again'? Out of all the ones to choose from? Just a nitpick because I actually like the rehashes, just wish they were someone else for a change. I'm really satisfied with how they did Samson as Rogue Berserker and Yoshinaka as Rogue Saber in particular, they had great designs though i don't know why samson is brown and also were very fun in the story to play as and talk to. In the story, Iori kills Berserker Musashi at the end even though she's not injured at all and is powered by three command spells, and some people say that just wouldn't happen considering how much stronger a servant typically is over a human, but in this case I forgive it since Iori was a student of Musashi originally and then later became a student of Musashi's rival Kojirou, plus Iori is a mage in a way, so he's several degrees surpassed most humans of his era Caster was done well, too. He had some bullshit NPs at the end but in his defense, he was powered by the faux-grail and also command spells. In the other route, he died very easily to Chiemon with his hellfire powers, so it's not like Caster is normally supposed to be very powerful without tons of buffs covering his ass . The true ending was also regarded as bad but I liked it, it seemed to be a fitting end for Iori considering his whole dilemma since the beginning. You'll know it if you've played through it. I'm also glad he wasn't able to kill Takeru which adds on to my previous point of him being able to defeat Musashi, his old master in a berserk saint graph >Overall I liked it, I enjoyed 100%ing it and I'm also glad it's over. It wasn't the best gameplay-wise but where the gameplay failed, everything else was able to make up for it comfortably. I give this game an 8.5/10 for Fate fans. If you're not a Fate fan, that might drop down to 6.5 or 7 out of 10.

>>898034 That's a good idea anon. Someone could even turn it into a quarterly 'zine that compiles our reviews into a .PDF or something. >>898050 Would you recommend the game for someone new to Fate? Personally I'm looking for a bit of a mindless action game to play while watching anime, and the last great game I had for that was Hyrule Warriors. Do you think it would scratch that itch?

>>898121 >Would you recommend the game for someone new to Fate? It does an OK job of describing the basics of a holy grail war, sure. You may naturally still have a few questions on how things work but if you gain a liking for the setting, I suggest going straight to Fate/Stay Night (the visual novel) It's not a mindless game however, you need to pay attention to the story to get the full enjoyment, and the fighting segments aren't too long unless you keep dying over and over.

I 100%ed both versions of Demon's Souls. I don't like swords and sorcery settings, but I did like this, and I can see why you faggots and others have been all over Souls games for the past fifteen years. The combination of show-not-tell storytelling, fun difficulty, New Game Plus, and a complete lack of modern game industry bullshit leaves little reason for anyone to get mad at either game. Playing the PS3 and PS5 versions back-to-back made me miss the original music, and that might be my only sticking point. The loudness and silliness of the timpani in the midst of a tiny orchestra almost made it seem like Japan was calling medieval Europe a primitive shithole, so the Texans increasing the size of the orchestra spoiled some of my fun, especially at the Tower Knight fight. I might have to skip the RE4 remake since Capcom cut out most of the original cheese.

Super Mario Wonder This game was fun. It doesn't reinvent the wheel, and doesn't quite manage to stand as tall as SMB3 and SMW but it is a very fun game and each level feels fairly distinct. This is because every level contains a Wonder Flower which causes all sorts of crazy shit to start happening. Finding the Wonder Flower is a puzzle in itself half the time, and when activated will turn the game into a silhouette adventure, or have you floating through space like it's Balloon Fight, or running on the walls top-down in a maze, or swimming through anti-gravity water, or playing an endless runner on the back of a stampeding herd of dino-looking-things, even a rhythm mini-game where jumping in time to the beat collects you coins. Some gimmicks are used more than once but they never feel over-used, it's more like there's a beginner course in the early worlds and a more advanced course in the later worlds. That said, Super Mario Wonder isn't hard or super challenging but it's fun and that's something Nintendo does well. Presentation wise the game plays it safe. Mario has a new VA and it's noticeable but it doesn't detract from the game too much, probably because I played as best Princess Daisy for most of it. The music bops along though I'm not humming any of the tunes when I'm not playing, unlike previous Mario OSTs (I was humming Bob-Omb Battlefield last night when I switched Super Mario Wonder off because I was in a Mario mood). Perhaps the music will grow on me as I 100% the game but for now the soundtrack is good but forgettable, and that could sum up the game unless you're a die-hard Nintendo fan. Visually the game is smooth as butter. Everything is clearly defined and cleanly animated and easily distinguished even when you're floating through space with a bunch of giant hippos collecting technicoloured flowers. It runs smoothly with no frame hiccups or resolution changes that I noticed, even when things got crazy. Crazy visually, not difficulty-wise. It's a fun game, not a hard game, and it has some longevity thanks to the "achievement" badges you earn for your profile if you want to 100% complete the game. Getting 100% is tricky because there are some devious environmental puzzles and some tricky jumps to pull off for all the Flower Coins and Wonder Seeds, as well as reaching the top of every flagpole (you get a little stamp on your profile if you hit the top of every flagpole). Then there are the secret levels which can be difficult to even find, and they provide a nice bonus challenge if the standard game is just too easy. There's only a handful of them though. Storywise? It's the cast of Mario versus Bowser who this time turns into a castle after touching a magic flower. Mario and friends romp through the new Flower Kingdom collecting seeds to open the path forward in some non-linear world-map sections. Being able to play as a variety of characters is fun too, from Mario himself or Luigi, to the princesses and the toads, to various coloured yoshis or even Nabbit. Nabbit and the yoshis don't take damage when hit by enemies, but neither do they power-up. There's the classic fire flower power-up, but the three new abilities are the bubble flower (which traps enemies in bubbles but you can also jump on the bubbles that you throw out for an extra bounce), there's the drill hat which allows your character to burrow into the roof or floor of a level as well as break certain blocks, and the elephant power-up which turns your character into a fat fucking elephant who can break blocks with its trunk or spray water on desiccated flowers for hidden goodies. Nabbit and the yoshis don't power-up so there is a trade-off to playing as the invincible characters, that's if you want an even easier way of playing or you've got a younger friend who wants to play along with you. Also, there's no player collision in multiplayer so you can't knock each other into pits, removing that frustration from the NSMB series. If the lack of new power-ups bums you out then you'll be happy with the badge system. Badges give Mario and friends a little boost in various ways, from granting extra coins when you kill an enemy, to a plant-vine-like-hookshot that can be used to cross gaps, to a free save if you fall into spikes or lava, to making your character run faster and giving them some "coyote time" to delay your jump after running off a ledge, there are a lot of different badges to collect and augment your gameplay. And with the online component you can place little wooden character standees around in levels which act as rescue points which are handy in some of the slightly-tricky bits in later levels. At least that's what the game explained to me, I never used the online features. Super Mario Wonder is Mario down to the finest detail, and nothing but. This isn't a critique, you get what you get when Nintendo makes a 2D Mario game. Anybody expecting anything else is going to be disappointed but at this point I have to wonder who doesn't know what to expect from Mario in the Current Year of our Lord 2023.

>Killer7 Intending to play this for over ten years and only just now gotten around to it, the Steam release has a few specific issues but nothing that hampered gameplay (outside of strange mouse jitter during some sections of Alter Ego). Quite an interesting spectacle and plays mostly well, though using the Fire Ring on the water tank seems completely random compared to how every other puzzle in the game works, my only regret is giving NISA money and not sitting down and playing it sooner. >Armed and Dangerous Funny, but technologically impaired and mechanically basic. 60FPS lock is required to avoid gameplay bugs, alt tabbing freezes the game & 4:3 only by default with limited resolution options(unless using a d3d9 wrapper), bugs with some shadows on certain levels, etc. The gameplay is serviceable enough to carry you from gag to gag but there's too many turret segments(one of which is the final fucking level for some reason, what were they thinking!?) and the Sacred Lamb level is a bit of a bitch to throw at the player so early in the game.

Etrian Odyssey 2 HD is a good time. I would not rate it as highly as the first or the third game in the series, but it's still a satisfying blobber. Etrian Odyssey 2 HD is a game about exploration and mapping a labyrinth. There is a thin plot but it doesn't drive the story, curiosity is what will compel you through the various levels of this dungeon. The characters in town help prop up the threadbare narrative and talking to them is a nice break from dungeon crawling. The town is merely a menu and not an actual location, that's how thin the game is outside the dungeon, but it's a very well done menu all the same. The controls take some getting used to as they aren't as intuitive as on the DS/3DS, which had a separate touchscreen for mapping dungeons. It's familiar enough, with the touchscreen controls relegated to the right stick and the shoulder triggers, and you can choose to ignore the mapping stuff and see the dungeon full-screen if that's your preference. The d-pad moves your party through the dungeon, the left stick moves your mini-map view of the current area, the right stick moves your mapping tool, and ZL/ZR uses the mapping tool. You can get the game to automatically mark in floors and walls as you move through the dungeons, which helps immensely, but making notes about enemy position, item locations, and events, is all up to the player to do as little or as much as they like of it. That's the core appeal of the game. If you did not grow up making maps of dungeons on grid paper, or the idea doesn't appeal to you, you won't get a lot out of Etrian Odyssey. Then again, this is a sequel, so you should know by now what you're in for. Changes from the first game include some minor changes to classes, a few new classes altogether, and of course a whole new 30 level dungeon and new weapons and armour. Class changes include nerfs to the Troubadour that made it possible to regenerate TP for the whole party, which made staying in the dungeon indefinitely quite possible. This I didn't like, even if I do understand why they did it. The Medic can slowly regenerate TP as a passive ability but it takes a substantial point investment to get to that ability. New classes include Beasts and Gunners, which allow you to change up your party composition. Each new class has an interesting skill tree that allows them to be built in a variety of ways. Another minor change in EO2HD is that FOEs, the big enemies that haunt each floor of the dungeon, no longer give XP which makes fighting them a bit more pointless, though they still drop quality materials that sell for a lot. Graphically the game is not very impressive. The UI is clean and mostly fine, aside from a niggle regarding trying to assess the best armour accessories. The character portraits are all big and boldly done, though some don't look that great in HD. The final boss in particular doesn't look great. There are no character or enemy animations during combat, just some weapon/elemental effects. This is not a game you play for its amazing graphics. Audially the game is great. The FM synth OST from Yuzo Koshiro still rocks, with each strata of the dungeon having its own theme. Battle music ranges from upbeat action against smaller enemies to intimidating terrorising tracks against bosses and FOEs. Sound effects are crisp and impactful. Overall, as a dungeon crawler EO2 delivers more of the same from the first game, with largely similar classes and balance. If you've never played a party-based first-person dungeon crawler before, I would recommend starting with the first game in the series.

Just finished off Mindjack on the PS3 and I had a lot of fun with it despite being a very flawed game. Premise The story of the game begins eight years from now. FBI agent (Excuse me) FIA agent Jim Corbijn picks up and escorts a major anti-government activist from an airport by the name of Rebecca Weiss (Pronounced "Vice”). On their way out, they're both attacked by an unknown police force and branded as public enemy #1. While trying to survive the manhunt across the city, Rebecca is busy putting the pieces together behind a conspiracy involving the multi-national tech company Nerkas, who's effectively in control of the world. And, what's especially important to the plot, have been hiding am extremely high body count that's all happened in the wake of recently launched Nerkas tech that allows people to control household appliances with their mind. While in uncovering this conspiracy, James briefly partners with his old army friend Lyle Fernandez, who soon betrays him as it quickly becomes apparent that Lyle is a part of the conspiracy and working with/for Nerkas. Also Weiss turns out to be FIA who, on top of investigating Nerkas, suspects corruption from within the agency and went undercover. This all leads up to the third act of the game being an assault on Nerkas Tower for the purposes of bringing down Nerkas CEO Gardner. To be quite honest, the story for Mindjack is really bad. If you've seen any sci-fi conspiracy film in a hi-tech future released during the early Aughts, such as The Minority Report or I, Robot, that's exactly the type of flair that Mindjack is going for. However, the actual game does such a terrible job delivering it's story that it's actually very laughable. Especially when, half-way through the game, it throws bio-mechanical gorillas at the player as enemies because...reasons. It's like they took the ideas of what could have been a decent story, cut out half of the script, and tried to fill in the blanks with either implication or leaving the player to figure it out. That's not to mention that the promotion material and even the damn manual doesn't reflect the game's story as they open with the idea that "mind hacking" is rampant throughout the world, meanwhile the game's story never brings up the subject until you're halfway through. What also adds to the amount of intrigue regarding the game's story is that the developers of the game, feelplus Inc. (Also made for Moon Diver, Ju-on: The Grudge, and co-developed Lost Odyssey and N3II), proudly announced that the story was written by a company in the U.K. (The Mustard Corporation, Known for writing the story for Emergency Heroes', Unsolved Crimes, and The Shoot'') to appeal to Western players: https://archive.ph/PyUf1 But, I get the feeling that, somewhere along the way, the type of story the devs were aiming for either got lost in translation or didn't align with the "grand epic" that Marek Walton (His most recent work is being the narrative director for Marvel's Avengers. Yes, THAT one.) wanted to do. I'm just going to spoil the game's ending for those curious as to how wild this shit gets: Turns out that Nerkas CEO Gardner was dead all along. Lyle killed him because Gardner, who found the ability to "mind hack" in the process of trying to technologically revive his dead daughter, wanted to destroy the technology when he realized what it could be used for. However, the secret of how to "mind hack" was locked away so Lyle couldn't access. In addition, Lyle somehow(?) figured out that while CEO Gardner was "dead" in body, his "soul" still existed in the technological plane. So, in order to lure out Not-Dead Gardner for the purposes of unlocking the computer, Lyle orchestrated an entire fake conspiracy about Nerkas and the FIA for the purposes of the FIA eventually sending someone to investigate the conspiracy he created. Unintentionally, however, Jim got involved and became Gardner's "avatar", with Gardner secretly helping and guiding him along from the start. After defeating Lyle, and the security system protecting the main computer, Gardner (Fully possessing Jim) destroys the computer, supposedly destroying all the secrets behind "mind hacking" and committing suicide in the process. However, everything is not over as destroying the Nerkas computer was just the "tip of the iceberg". As Jim and Rebecca walk away, Jim suffers a mind hack seizure and finds Lyle still alive. Lyle lectures Jim about how he just wanted to make a world a "safer place" before jumping off the top of Nerkas Tower to the horror of Jim. All things considered, the story actually got better in the second half. Audio/Visual When I said that the game was ripping from The Minority Report and I, Robot, I wasn't exaggerating. All the game's environments look like set-pieces ripped straight from those movies. Everything in the game has this extremely blue/white sheen to it, that I have to admit hurts the eyes unless you have your monitor properly calibarated. That being said, the game does actually look rather appealing. The developers did a really good job crafting the game's world. The only really complaints I can make about the art (Aside from being so bright that you may want to wear shades) is that the ground textures for areas such as the construction site look off with how flat they are. All that being said, the game's actually graphical performance definately could have used a lot more work. The game's frame rate will noticeably dips to the point of being a slideshow, from things as simple as a scene transition in a cutscene to moments when you have too many allied NPCs. In fact, I had the frame dip so bad on a couple of occasions that it actually caused the game's speed to slow to a crawl because of too much going on. The game's audio performance is serviceable. I found the guns to be a little too loud compared to the rest of the environment, and didn't care for how they all sounded like someone was beating various objects against an oil drum. I liked the music, with the various "tech rock" sounds going on in the background during the various action sequences throughout the game. Some of the audio queues, such as when Jim/Rebecca loose to much health become rather annoying awfully quick. However, I would have to say that the worst part of the game's audio is just how bad the acting is. The actors only ever deliver their lines in a straight manner or a sarcastic manner, which really adds to the "B-movie" vibe the game's story ended up creating.

>>908893 Gameplay This is actually the reason why I really like Mindjack. The game opens as being a standard third-person shooter, with cover mechanics and a two weapon limit. However, the game's big gimmick is the ability that you can leave Jim's body and "mind hack" into any NPC on the battlefield. Almost every area has 2-5 civilian NPCs that you can jump into that allow you to flank the enemy, outnumber them, or be a distraction. In addition, you also have the ability to "mind slave" enemy NPCs, turning them into allies and potential "mind hack" hosts as well. Emphasizing this point further, every time your lose too much health, the player is removed from Jim or the NPC that the player is currently occupying so that you can jump into someone else. However, there are limits with this system in place. First of all, if a player is kicked out of a body from a loss of health, then you're penalized by the game and have to wait for a timer to finish counting down before you can retake another host. In addition, "mind slaving" an enemy NPC uses up some of your energy, which slowly recharges during battles. All this being said, there are several very apparent problems with the game's system. The first is that the player cannot allow both Rebecca and Jim to lose too much health otherwise it is “Game Over”. And, I encountered too many time where the loss of one character quickly resulted in the loss of another because of how restricted some of the game's arenas are or how overpowered the enemies were. You do have a 10 second countdown to revive at least of them, which gives you a chance to survive, but the penalty for losing health is also 5-10 seconds or a "Mind hackable" NPC is so far away that the countdown will end long before you even reach them. That's not to mention that your abilities are limited in regards to whoever you host. The health of civilian NPCs are either equal to or worse than Jim/Rebecca, enemy NPCs cannot regenerate health, and mind hacking into robots and primates remove your ability mind slave enemies and heal Jim/Rebecca. Then there's also the fact you try to be very careful when harming enemy NPCs if you want to "mind slave" them because you can very easily kill them in the process by accident (Or another "Mind slaved" enemy kills them). In addition, you can only “mind slave” and heal characters only within a certain distance. And even when you do “mind slave” enemies, they seem to lose a couple IQ points from the process. Like I said, Mindjack is a third-person shooter, so a major element of the game should of course be the guns, but the balance of these are all over the place. Enemies with shotguns, sniper rifles, and RPGs are hilarious over-powered; the pistol is useful if it wasn't for it's one bullet per second fire rate, and the "Stutter" machinegun is one of the WORST guns I have ever used in a video game but it's littered everywhere. Whenever you have a chance, always grab and use the Midas. Speaking of which, I didn't mention this earlier, Mindjack also loves to throw bulletsponge enemies at the player the further into the game you get. These typically result in the enemy NPCs that look like astronauts, that can take EVERYTHING short of a shotgun to the face and walk it off, but there was one level later on where I spent over an hour trying to figure out how to take down a fucking Battlemech because of how the damn thing just kept shrugging off rockets I threw at it. Also, I just remembered that the game has the ability to beat opponents with melee attacks, or use them as a human shield, but the game’s detection of this is so bad that it’s hardly worth noting. It should be mentioned that Mindjack was also developed in mind with the story being the multiplayer as well. Apparently, other players, over the internet, can jump into your game, possess any of the enemy NPCs, and make it their sole job to to ruin your day. However I have no idea if anyone is even still playing this game 12 years later, and I'm not able to test it since I disabled my PS3's ability to phone home. Overall It may sound like I'm absolutely ridiculing Mindjack because of how many problems the game has. Bat-shit insane story, hilarious dialogue, and extremely unbalanced gameplay. All that being said, I had a lot of fun with game. The ability to turn enemies into allies to outnumber opponents, jumping into an NPC anywhere on the map and flank them, this does have the basis for what could have been an absolutely stellar game. At it's best, Mindjack could best be described as a proof-of-concept. I would put it right alongside the first Watch_Dogs as being one of the few games showing how much fun “hacking” into environments can be. And I would like to see this concept taken much further, as the gameplay for Mindjack could very easily evolve to suit multi-player game modes like capture the flag or even something as grand as an RTS. Where you have one player hopping in an out of NPCs, turning enemy NPCs into allies and your opponent doing the same, this is the type of game Mindjack proves as being a possibility that could work. However, as the game exists today, I feel like Mindjack belongs to the same category as Sin & Punishment: Star Successor. It's a great game to play through once. However, when you do so, Mindjack pretty much showed everything it had to offer, so there's little reason to play it after completing the game. There's some DLC maps that you can download, but they're just singular arena built using assets from the main game. If anything I said makes it sound interesting, definitely give Mindjack a look.

I finally finished Fallout New Vegas. I played it several times over the years but never managed to get past finding Benny due to getting sidetracked by quests, mods, and DLCs. This time I finally made it to the end and played all possible endings. I liked it overall. Desert and western atmosphere are very nice. There is unarguably more creativity in it than in Bethesda's Fallouts. Combat is serviceable but decent dialogue, quality vs quantity approach to quests, and faction reputation system with disguises make up for it. More games should adapt make use of the latter two. While writing is good all through and through, everything is much more polished in the beginning. It's very obvious that New Vegas was rushed, and that a lot of Caesar's Legion and late game parts got cut to make the Bethesda's deadline. Expansions are pretty good overall. More of the same but they story of Father Elijah linking them to the main game and to each other. It's another good idea. Game play wise, some of them felt padded. Old World Blue was probably the worst about it. Swarms of robot scorpions that could eat a whole mags of MF Cells got old fast. Definitely a fun game overall. Doubly so if you live in the Vegas area or had a chance to visit and see some locations recreated in the game.

COCOON I finished this short, artistic, and simple type of puzzle game by a new studio called Geometric Interactive whose founders used to be a part of Playdead Studios (Jeppe Carlsen, Jakob Schmid). This is the winner for The Game Award 2023's BEST DEBUT INDIE GAME. The game was also nominated for BEST INDEPENDENT GAME. After completing it 100%, this game does NOT deserve to be nominated at all (except maybe "best puzzle game"), even though there's almost no pozz. The game consists playing a buglike alien that can jump within and outside different worlds and can literally carry the orbs that contain them. Controlling is simple, as there's only analog stick movement and an interaction button. There's only four of these orbs, and getting through them all was mostly a cakewalk. They all have certain abilities depending on what orb you're carrying. Here's all of them in order: 1. Orange - reveals some hidden paths 2. Green - shifts certain objects to reach higher or lower spots 3. Purple - (difficult to explain in words) allows to be picked up at spots where balloon-shaped flowers are growing 4. White - shoots a ball of light at certain spots These are all used to make for some nicely made puzzles, but most of them ended up becoming easy to solve partly because the whole game is linear and not open-ended (plus the controls are simple). There's some skippable puzzles involving finding a "moon ancestor," but they're really just finding that one spot with those floating black stars hiding within each world. There were some challenging parts. There were boss fights involving some giant alien within each world that'll kick you out of the world that they likely own; I don't think your bug alien character gets killed at all from whatever. No "GAME OVER" nor "YOU LOSE" screen, either. There's some variation for every hit against the boss, which might've made the game monotonous. It took about 5-6 hours to complete it all easily, and not just finishing it through with some optional stuff missing. The ending was just you becoming the big alien taking over everything and also creating newer planets and worlds within worlds (and some fractals) - nothing else. It's another pretty artistic work mostly by Jeppe Carlsen (like 140 and THOTH) that was just short, but it looks suitable in a museum exhibit. It's also alright for testing if Proton or SteamOS runs smoothly on your computer, since the game itself isn't too heavy on resources (the game runs on Unity). Just don't pay money for it at all because The Game Awards insists that this game is worth more than Pizza Tower. The game reminded me a lot of another indie game called Hob because of the top-down layout, ambient music, and the wordless narrative involved. The difference was the lack of combat abilities, no hostile enemies (except the bosses), and the length. However, I could easily remember enough of Hob, while Cocoon is gonna be easily forgotten over time. Maybe the game needs some kind of tense stakes like in LIMBO.

Blood West I just beat this game, I've been following it for a while but only decided to play it since it left early access earlier this month. It's a Hyperstrange game, the guys who put out Postal: Brain Damaged, aka a better Postal 4 than Postal 4. Let me say just right off the bat: I love this fucking game. I think it's fantastic and you should definitely try it if it looks even remotely interesting. Fit"""girl""" has a repack that you can pirate and it's also on GOG if you can find one of those copies. Give the game at least 2 hours, after that I was hooked. >Performance I'm on Linux and the game runs pretty much perfectly through proton, use either Proton 8 or a GE version of 7 otherwise you won't be able to see cutscenes. Overall ran great, I found that it's pretty much necessary to turn on VSync in the in-game settings otherwise you get constant stuttering. >Visuals It's going for the slightly higher poly Quake/Unreal look that all of these "boomer shooters" go for these days. They work fine, fidelity-wise. Human faces are a bit goofy which is especially noticeable in dialogue but it's forgiveable. As far as designs and art direction goes I love it. Enemy designs are great and fit perfectly into the weird west theme: bird-man gunslingers, wendigos with their former human head protruding from their chest, a giant Lovecraftian worm-tongued giant, and a big titty zombie hooker with a shotgun are just a few examples. On that last note, every woman in this game is fucking stacked. They all have big ass titties and wear those old west corsets, and at least some effort was put into making them somewhat attractive. Even in an indie game I feel like this is an important point to make. Each episode of the game are punctuated by an animated cutscene and they're all pretty good. They're in that barely-animated comic book style that really works for the game, and somewhat apropos since they're reminiscent of how Thief did its cutscenes. Overall, even when the visuals don't add much good to the game they certainly don't take away from it. Generally good, definitely hopping on a trend but they're fine. >Sound The music, though sparse, is great. It's all very blues-y country rock. The main menu theme is fantastic, and there's a music video at the end of the game (webm related) for an original song made for the game by the band Ghoultown which is a real treat. You really don't hear the soundtrack a lot though, there's some ambient tracks that I think play when you haven't encountered enemies for a while but in-game music is very few and far between. Sound effects for guns especially are great and emit very satisfying sounds to fire. Bows and crossbows are appropriately reserved and the melee weapon sounds are fine I guess. Enemies all make very distinct sounds that allow you to identify them by sound alone if you're astute. Voice acting, however, is a bit of a mixed bag. Your character is voiced by the same guy that voiced Garrett in the Thief games and of course that's pretty nice. He only talks when you pick up items, kill enemies or take damage, but he's given a good handful of lines. In this game he sounds a bit sadistic and VERY pissed off. Imagine Garrett with less snark combined with Caleb from Blood and that's pretty much the player character. A few other standouts include the Soul Totem that directs you throughout the game and a woman named Annabelle who you meet in chapter 2. I haven't looked this up, but I think the Soul Totem might be voiced by the same guy that voiced the demon inside your head in the Shadow Warrior 2013 reboot. If it's not him then it sounds a hell of a lot like him since that's the first thing I thought of when I heard his voice. >Story The main narrative is not very developed and not that important. Some thought was definitely put into it but it's clear that this wasn't the priority. However, throughout the game you'll come across notes that, aside from giving you hints on how to defeat specific enemies and occasionally lead you to secrets, do a pretty good job worldbuilding. All the enemies are either cursed or undead, and you get a little bit of fluff about what type of person they were before they turned into monsters. The Prodigial Daughter enemies, for example, were former tavern whores who wear masks to conceal their now hideous faces. Blow off her mask with your gun and she gets way more aggressive and starts unloading both barrels of her shotgun at you. Since you really want to read these notes so that you know how to deal with each individual enemy optimally it was nice to get a little extra fluff text about their backstory/behavior. >Structure The game is divided into 3 episodes with 3 different giant maps. The general gist is that you get quests that require you to fetch various macguffins from all over the map in order to progress. Trust me when I say that with this game it's more about the journey than the destination. Also important to note is that all quest items are spawned into the map from the very beginning, so you're encouraged to explore and find stuff early. There's very little wasted space in each of the maps which is great and works to the game's benefit. Pick a direction you haven't gone before and run towards it, within 30 seconds you'll find an obvious landmark that's always worth exploring. Each episode ends with what is obviously a boss fight so it's very unlikely that you'll be surprised by the end of an episode.

>>920302 >Gameplay Now here's where this game really shines. The store page for the game mentions Thief and STALKER as inspirations and while there are obvious aspects of those games in this it doesn't quite feel like a clone of either of those. At its core, this is a stealth shooter. However, don't expect Thief-tier stealth complexity. You get a bar at the bottom of the screen with icons above it denoting enemy sound/sight. Sight is self-explanatory, if you're in the enemy's eye-line they see you. Sound is purely dependent on if you're moving and within a certain radius of the enemy. Both contribute to the stealth bar and if it's full they see you and attack. However, the simplicity of the stealth system works as, once you're noticed, it's up to your twitch reflexes to survive. You can get yourself out of any situation as long as you can pop heads fast enough. As you can expect, direct attacks from from enemies lead to a very quick death without skill upgrades/artifacts. An emphasis is put on headshots, which are insanely fucking satisfying. The feedback sound and visuals for them are great, most enemies go down in one or two and getting several in a row is incredibly cathartic. There's several different weapon types, mid-range pistols, short to mid-range shotguns, long-range rifles, longbows, crossbows, melee weapons, there a small but diverse variety of basic and unique weapons depending on your playstyle and chosen skills. This is where the STALKER comparison comes in for me. Aside from the grid inventory/loot system, I found that you end up choosing your weapon loadout based on what feels best to shoot for you and you end up looking for upgrades to those while building up related skills through level-ups. <exploration I definitely have to point this out, within the first hour or so of the game you can tell how much fun the devs had just hand-placing shit around the various maps. There's shit hidden everywhere, attics, broken crates, bookshelves, under beds, you really need to keep your eyes open to scavenge everything that there is to be found. That's one of the main draws of the gameplay really, is being able to constantly find hidden resources and weapons all around the maps. I could go on an on rambling about descriptions of how the gunplay actually plays but I'm shit at describing that kind of thing so from here I'll just say play it for yourself. I was pleasantly surprised by this game and how compelled I was by it, especially within the current glut of both "boomer shooters" and "weird west" games that we've been getting recently. The game's $25 right now but I got it on sale early for like $15, and as I said there's pirate copies out there to try it out. I feel like I can't articulate what makes it especially good properly so give it a try, it really is a unique stealth game.

>>908900 Hopefully PS3 emulation keeps getting better so more people around here can play these hidden gems.

>>920316 I think most anons would be surprised at the state of PS3 emulation if they have decent PCs, plenty of games are more than playable in RPCS3's current state if you have the CPU to handle the emulator.

>>920324 I'm just waiting for better performance to play most games at 40-60 FPS.

I finished this. Neat Quake clone but the 3rd chapter makes the game feel like a 9gag joke. Dev ran out of ideas is my best guess.

It's alright. The aesthetics and setting were very cool and rebuilding Camelot as well micromanaging knights and sending them off to do random events was pretty cool. As for the gameplay, it is the same boring tedious shit as any other turn-based RPG. You get four party members, five sometimes if the mission allows it, you start a mission, walk for a bit, get into fight you are near always outnumbered in meaning you get railroaded into being a AOE/cleave focused party or you can get fucked, kill all the melee cunts,spend the next three turns running down the ranged cunts,kill them, get loot from chests around the map, same old, same old. A nice feature is that they allow you to fast forward the combat when the enemy is having their turn so you aren't sitting with your dick in your hand waiting for 20 enemies to slowly finish their turn. It would be nice if more turn-based RPG's let you do that instead of wasting your fucking time.

Cotton Reboot, 1CC (Normal) I guess you could say that managing to 1CC the game can count as "beating" it. I have now beaten it on normal difficulty after many trials. The funny thing is that I wasn't even trying particularly hard and I was actually quite exhausted from the day, so in the end I was actually quite surprised that I pulled this off. The game itself is fun, it's a modern remix of the Sharp X86000 version, which in itself is a remix of the arcade game. The reboot is sufficiently different from the Sharp version (which is also included), it's not just a reskin. And cotton is such a cutie, I want a daughter like her and cuddle her and feed her candy.

Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader Part of me was disappointed to hear that Space Marine 2 was delayed and that the only 40k game to look forward to before that releases would be yet another tactical/strategy turn-based game, Rogue Trader. I feel like the 40k series is oversaturated with these types of games, but I was happily surprised to see that this game managed to set itself apart from all of those other turn-based cookie cutter games in many important ways. <Story I consider this the most important thing in this particular game. I'll talk about it later, but I think the story overshadows the gameplay, so it ought to be scrutinized a lot more. I'll start by saying that Rogue Trader is an epic game. And I don't use the E word very lightly. It has a lot of content, a lot of dialogue, a lot of story. It's not just forgettable tripe, either. One very noteworthy thing imo is the colony system. You can colonize a planet and certain events will happen to each one (these events are unique to that colony) and I was fascinated to find out that each dilemma/event was very carefully created and heavily nuanced. It wasn't just some BS like "your subjects want more food and less taxes, wat do?" There are actually pretty cool moral dilemmas at stake here which effects later events and also the rewards you get from that colony. Of course, when I later found out you could see what each colony event decision rewards you with, I kind of let go of the idea of picking what I felt was morally/logically the best and just going with whatever decision gave me the best reward, usually an item or a permanent buff on my player character But regardless of that, I still felt the weight each decision had and the circumstances were all believable. It required thought. This brings me on another topic, the partners/companions in the game who will follow you were all with the exception of Idira in my opinion very likeable and had their own 3-dimensional personality. I was one of the guys who picked his companions more for likeability rather than practical/combat use, but it was difficult since I liked everyone. Heinrix, Cassia, Pasqal, Ulric, the eldar - I loved them all. Shoutout to Rogue Trader for being the first 40k game I know of to really go in-depth with lots of Dark Eldar representation. The only other one being Soulstorm, but DE sucked dick in that game. Not literally. Well, maybe literally, but the point is they weren't a big aspect of Soulstorm. Certain aspects of the game were kind of Ludo narrative in the sense that not even a rogue trader and his retinue would have much of a chance in combat against a CSM, let alone a full squad of them, let alone some of the enemies you face later, but I am willing to forgive this for the sake of having interesting gameplay. Hell, having an eldar in your retinue EVEN AS a rogue trader is unheard of in 40k, but a fucking Dark Eldar? Out of the fucking question. But that's what makes this game so great, you can do it and in the end you get punished for letting him on your ship, because he just makes your life and the life of your companions hell unless you kill him or hand him over to the Inquisition The main story is pretty good although I feel the last act is kind of rushed. That's a nitpick though. It's a fucking crime that Argenta is not romanceable but fucking Yrliet is. Maybe DLC will add that later, who knows. Another thing I loved about the story and the dialogue choices in particular is how 40k it all is. What I mean is that while some of the actions of the rogue trader like romancing an eldar are out-of-character for a 40k story, the dialogue and other elements tend to be very 40k. Like I could decide to kill an entire compartment of people who had a brief interaction with the warp/chaos and in so doing I'm complimented by my retinue and people treat me like a hero. The dogmatic choices are totally realistic, as are the heretic choices. The iconoclast choices in comparison aren't very common to see in 40k proper (and honestly I'd like it if some iconoclast choices had more downsides or situations where your friendliness bites you in the ass) but I suppose it's a good middle-ground for most normalfags new to the series who aren't quite used to the spirit of 40k. Chances are they may fix this in a later update, I can't really say. Now on to.. <Gameplay I will make it no secret, the game is quite buggy even now. The combat is messy and imbalanced. There are many paths that lead to you and your whole retinue becoming unstoppable by anything, not even save the final bosses. I played this on the second-hardest difficulty, by the way, and I only had to restart some of the boss fights once at most. Granted, I read a lot into the skills and talents so I had a pretty good build (I never looked at a guide or watched a youtube video on this) but even my experience was light compared to some other people who could kill end-game bosses within a single round. Allegedly. Some bugs still remaining in this game can result in a soft-lock, which I'd say is normally reason enough to give the devs death sentences, but luckily there is a mod called the Toybox which allows you to use several cheats and unfuck your saves, just in case the worst case scenario occurs. According to many anons, this is merely the owlcat games experience, and by the time a 'complete edition' comes out for the game, these bugs should be a thing of the past. I'm not defending owlcat, but it is a good sign that they're actively trying to fix shit. Many devs don't even go that far. <Soundtrack The soundtrack was surprisingly competent. I didn't expect a TRPG to have as many great tracks as this game did, and I gotta say that some of them really knock it out of the park. A few are unnoteworthy, of course. I've attached just two that I found really good, but there are many more. <Art/Style The in-game graphics do leave something to be desired but the overall style and the art for portraits/books is phenomenal. I especially love the book parts which, in game, are little portions where you pass several characteristic tests in order to proceed, and these are usually accompanied by several illustrations like I am posting here. They remind me a bit of Adrian Smith's art which is generally regarded as the best 40k/Fantasy art ever drawn. I really wish there was more of it and I also wish it was available online somewhere, I could only find these screenshots. <Overall Overall I think the game is good enough to excuse the many bugs and shortcomings of the experience. If you're a 40k fan or looking to get into it, you'll absolutely love it. My advice to someone who has other games ahead in their backlog is - you can afford to sleep on Rogue Trader. It's buggy right now and there may be an "Ultimate/Definitive Edition" that comes out later, so take advantage of that when it happens. If you do decide to play it now, you probably still won't regret it, but you'll have a better guarantee of unblemished fun if you wait.

I just finished Super Mario Land 2, it was alright but pretty short and easy up until I reached Mario's Castle, I think I spent more time trying to beat it than I did with the rest of the game. >>926861 I'm glad you enjoyed it , the Cotton games are some of my all time favorite shmups, also Cotton is absolutely cute, CUTE!!!

>>932753 Never forget what they took from you. I have over 60 hours in the game and im still nowhere near completion, if anything, you gotta give it to owlcat that they padded the game alot.

>>932920 Though the Sisters have romantic relationships, they'd never settle down with a fucking rogue trader. There's a good reason you can't romance Sister Argenta.

>>932939 Say that shit to my fully dogmatic rogue trader and see what happens, heretic.

>>932939 I could say the same about an eldar never settling with a rogue trader human. That's less likely than an SoB marrying an RT

>>790791 Finished Void Stranger, as in I got to the end of it, but it looks like you have to beat it again but get all of the extra crystals to unlock other stuff. Pretty fun puzzle game, but I'd get annoyed at having to kill myself or restart the whole game just to redo a puzzle because I made one mistake since there's no retry option. I'm too spoiled with the undo button that Baba Is You provided.

Trepang^2 I pirated this game when it released but only just now got around to playing it. Forgive me if I am leaving out any details for content that they added in later builds, I can only comment on what they had upon release >Gameplay Starting with the most obvious thing is gameplay. This game does excel at the shooter gameplay aspect of it and manages to allow for very versatile playing methods. I never once found it "unwieldy" or "hard to control" even though it did take me a bit to get used to Q and E being abilities rather than leaning options in an FPS. The game itself looks very visually appealing and from what I could tell was pretty well optimized except for smoke grenades/flares tending to lag up the game whenever there were more than one in the area, luckily that didn't happen very often. I should note that I started playing every mission on Very Hard and ended playing everything on Extreme once I learned some "high value targets" were locked behind those difficulties. I liked this sort of added challenge. There was one difficulty above extreme but it seemed way too masochistic for me to choose that when Extreme was already pretty painful. My only gripe with those challenges is that the flak armored enemies tended to be bullet sponges even with perfect aim, unless I was doing something wrong that whole time. Some of the boss fights in the game ranged from piss-easy to holy-shit-hard. The final mission and "End the Cycle" missions in particular were really hard, but never did I feel like it was artificially difficult. I feel like the game would have been cheapened had I played it on easier difficulties. To be honest it was very refreshing playing this, most singleplayer FPS games these days are pretty shallow or boring. I actually only realized at the end of the game after I already beat the final boss that there was a "backwards slide" action, which would have made the whole game a hell of a lot easier for me if I realized that sooner Only complain I have regarding the gameplay is that the weapon parts can only be found in certain missions, and if you miss them, you don't get them unless you replay that mission over again. Many who play this will feel similarities to F.E.A.R. and I believe that's what the devs were attempting to do. The lighting wasn't quite as well done as FEAR did it unfortunately and the horror aspects weren't that good (although I am jaded to horror now unlike when I first played FEAR so maybe that's on me) but the horror was never meant to overtake the FPS aspect of the game, which is a good thing. It does FPS better than it does horror. >Soundtrack There were, surprisingly, some good tracks here. All of them are metal/djent/techno metal sort of stuff, no vocals. Similar to Killing Floor, I suppose. There were no bad tracks and they were all sufficiently high-octane enough to keep me engaged in the gameplay and also not tire of the tracks themselves. They sell the OST separately so apparently I'm not the only one who enjoyed the soundtrack. >Story They had a lot of lore for this game but to be honest I didn't read any of it. It just didn't interest me as much as the shooting. Mea culpa. Someone ITT can let me know if the story was worth reading through. They had intel hidden on every map but I couldn't be arsed to find every one. >Voice acting The voice acting ranged from meh to bland. I feel that if they wanted to truly replicate F.E.A.R. they should have paid more attention to this aspect since one of the major advantaged FEAR had was that the enemies reacted realistically and fearfully of your (the protagonist) actions accomplishing superhuman feats. It adds just a bit more realism to the game and also makes it feel very good when you clear a room full of fully-armed spec ops types. <Overall Overall this is definitely a great game, I'd recommend it to any FPS fan. It's worth about $20 in my eyes and I think that's how much it goes for on sale often enough, so try it out. The game has a difficulty preset for everyone. Unsure if there's DLC or modding planned for the game, but both could increase the game's lifespan.

FINAL FANTASY XVI: ELECTRIC CHOCOBO >Gameplay Boring as shit. I got excited when I heard the Dragon's Dogma guy was working on this but my excitement was of course misplaced. The combat is better than XV or VIIR no mistake, but it's still barely average. Combos are simple and skills are all on lengthy cooldowns, so you can't use them more than once unless it's an enemy with a stagger meter. Yes, stagger makes a return and it still fucking sucks, giving the enemy a second health bar that you have to whittle down before you can properly hurt them. And that's without going into the QTE eikon "fights" that are basically Asura's Wrath but less interesting. There are helper items that make the combat even more braindead, allowing you to auto-combo by mashing square, auto dodge attacks, auto-assist your pet dog Torgal, and a second dodge ring that slows time before an enemy attack giving you a window to dodge it. I ended up using this ring upon coming back to the game after a six month break because I'd dropped it at the end-game content and it's all dodge-heavy bullet hell and I just didn't care anymore, I just wanted it to be over. >Story There was a story, yes. >Audio Soundtrack was middling to decent. There are some good tunes in here, and some forgettable ones. Nothing outright offensive to the ears. The VA's were also decent. I heard quite a few familiar voices from other titles like The Witcher 3. Again, no one was offensively bad, but Clive's VA sounded bored most of the time which isn't surprising given the script. >Graphics The performance mode ran like stuttery shit, so I put it on Quality mode for a stable 30fps. Character models were nice and detailed and well-rigged and animated, environments were OK, there were some nice set-pieces and some scenery, but nothing truly memorable. Just your typical forests and deserts for the most part. >Overall FFXVI is an average game. It was certainly better than XV in that this is a complete and finished product with combat that isn't floaty Kingdom Hearts bullshit. I can't say anything bad about it, but there's nothing really here to praise either. Like I said, by the end I just wanted it to be over. And now that I've finished it I doubt I will ever get the platinum trophy for it, as it involves playing through the game a second time on a harder difficulty. It's not the difficulty that bothers me, it's that I just don't care enough to play it again.

>Phantom Rose Sapphire Roguelike deckbuilder. Game mechanics are decent but the developer seems to have issue with balancing - The original PC Phantom Rose was too difficult while Phantom Rose Scarlet and Sapphire are both extremely easy. Most of the items you get aren't very useful. It has a strong and distinctive art direction, but there's a large dissonance between the cute aesthetic and how dark the story (which is kind of confusing) is. >Shanghai.exe Touhou game based on Megaman Battle Network, gameplay is mostly identical, but it borrows and combines some of the mechanics that were unique to other games. The navicust is replaced by a capacity system similar to Star Force, the style system is a mix of Battle Network 2-3 and Battle Network 6 minus beast mode, dark chips exist but there's no downside to using them, chip limits are based entirely on their MB, and you can capture and summon viruses. The writing is mostly a mix of what you'd expect a Battle Network game, except for Shanghai and Reisen who both have extreme anti-heroine traits.

Dark Souls 3 This concludes the trilogy. I bought a set of all three games a bit over a year ago and I have played all game in order and beaten them 100% including the DLCs. DS3 left a bad first impression because it runs at 30FPS on PS4 while the other two games (being ports from the previous gen) ran at a smooth 60FPS. There is a patch if you have a jailbroken PS4 and it help a lot, but the non-Pro hardware just cannot reach 60FPS in this game. Maybe the Pro would have been better, but I don't have one. As for the game, it was clearly the hardest of them all for me. For some reason the queuing of actions was just off and I always ended up performing one more attack than I intended. I did not like how morbid the entire world design was; in DS1 and DS2 it felt like a normal world that happened to be dying, but normal people used to live there. In DS3 I cannot imagine how anyone could have lived there even before the events, there are skulls and bones and corpses and coffins all over the place. Maybe that's what the designers were going for, but it gets really tiresome. Other than that it was a good but though game. It took me 70 hours, which is much more than the previous games. Maybe it is because it's harder, or maybe the game really is larger than the previous ones. By the end I was getting really tired of it and in a way I'm glad it is over. After DS1 and DS2 I was really looking forward to the next game, but for now I have had my fill of Dark Souls.

>>808981 So I finally finished my second marathon* of Fallout games. I am going to repost this image since I noticed part of it is cropped. The second marathon consisted of the same games with a different character build, plus one game. That was the New California mod, originally planned to do Starfield in this template but that didn't work out. The asteriks is that that might also cover Fallout London when that comes out in a few months with this character build

>>936997 Here are the images for this current build, due to filesize limit: There second one is done in the Friday Night posting format, usually forcing me to limit my weekly updates to about 8000 characters or less. I pretty much said everything I wanted about the games in the first image, minus New California of course, so the second one was mostly just for flavor, how I done things differently with the new build ect. First image is Fallout Nevada-TTW, second image has Fallout 4/Outer Worlds and New California after I returned from a break I was planning to compare my playstyle and how these games worked mechanically with Starfield when I finished off the series with that game, but to be perfectly honest, that game just looks...bad, so even if I did get it working it would likely just be a waste of my time. I assume the big change would be spaceship combat and star shouts, everything else is a derivative of Fallout 4 or a downgrade from that game. I likely would have done a stealth-pacifist playthru(as much as I am allowed to, anyways) with the several companions mod to let them do most of the fighting if it came to that. I was planning to do Neon story and ignore most other content(altho it seems that Emil made the worst faction, Constellation, the actual main quest so doing it unavoidable for all characters), that includes planet exploration and spaceship combat/building since my character wasn't specced into that. Playthrough looked fun on paper, but not fun enough to justify spending all the extra time to get it working and to mod it, I had much more fun with New California anyways, which was similar to New Vegas(console) and TTW playthru in spirit and mechanics/events. The images here are basically a year worth of my weekly blogposts, plus relevant replies if there were any. For actual analysis, check out the first image. The skinny on New California is that it is a mixed bag: Feels like a proper 2D oldschool Fallout title in the New Vegas engine, but it fizzles out after the first half and is very unoptimized. Story and writing also take a turn to the fanfic side of things, so if you're a lore stickler you should prepare yourself. I still recommend it if you want a new Fallout experience, as parts of the mod genuinely look like something that could have came out of a major studio, but be aware that it runs like shit and has a lot of empty space once you get in the main exploration side of things, with little side quests. Biggest plus(or minus, depending on your view) is that this mod finally provides your character in NV with some backstory and it ties everything rather well no matter which faction you side with, it also feels like a proper midway point between ending of Fallout 2 and a prequel to New Vegas, so it might be worth playing for that alone. You can also carry over gear and companions to New Vegas proper if you took any, altho you will have to look for them, companions each have their own spots where they settled in the Mojave and your gear is stashed in different places depending on the ending you chose.

Finished playing Touken Ranbu Warriors. I thought it was going to be your average musou game except gayer. instead i got a play the same 5 mini games to get bond conversations with like 5 lines of dialogue. still enjoyed it even though the bug bosses were piss easy and spammed the same 3 attacks that didnt even matter when you could just spam dash to get i-frames. gameplay was alright with pretty unique animations for each character great ost, good cast of characters, and it hit the storybeats at times especially during the finale. mikazuki munechika is my boyfu

I finished this piece of shit

>>938583 As a fellow completer I'm sorry for the loss of your time and braincells

>>938591 It sucks so bad The game is incredibly well designed, but Why Why. In the name. Of all Verboten

>>938594 Ehhhh..., it's not the worst designed game but it needed more/better gimmicks like the castle or make environment puzzles more key to progressing or something. Too many elements of that game can be replicated on a mobile phone game and you'd lose fuck all. And since it's a linear puzzle game with fixed answers, there's only two real reasons to replay at most The bonus challenge and randomizers. >Why Because Johnathan Blow is shoulder deep up his own ass and is one of the more obnoxious "ART"-ists in gaming

I haven't got much to say, but I bought this game even though it's singleplayer to support the devs since they did a passing good job with DRG. It's not bad, clearly it's a unique take on the Vampire Survivor gameplay loop. It's still in EA so I expect many changes to be made but at the moment, it's pretty competent. I have no reason to believe the devs will give up on it like that faggot Edmund gave up on The Legend of Bumbo.

>>939259 I mean technically the DRG devs are only publishing it, and it's being developed by a different studio who's first game is STILL in EA.

>>939259 I play DRG pretty regularly and didn't even have any idea this was being made. Neat.

Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore This game is clearly meant to mimic the style of the Nintendo CD-i games, and for the most part it does that well but at certain points I can see it kind of missing the mark. If you put one of these cutscenes next to a CD-i games' cutscene, I could easily tell which one is which, and I guess I can't blame them for not getting it perfect, after all they couldn't all be so used to the look and feel of those cutscenes like I can since I watched endless youtube poops in my youth. The gameplay is passable but it feels way too easy, especially later on when you get weapons that kill in one hit. The main problem being that you can retry a whole room after dying rather than having to start at the beginning of the map. The story is so-so and really takes a back-seat to the gameplay. I noted a bit of "poz" in this game in that the protagonist, Arzette, is a feminist dream and upstages the blonde white guy who is the King's bard or something at every moment, and she even seems to have some kind of a relationship with a busty baker woman. Nothing outright but clearly there's some form of attraction. Not to mention the fact Arzette herself is modestly dressed like a modern capeshit cartoon girl, but also the fact she's brown. But I am willing to forgive this since it wasn't shoved down my throat. The music was alright, nothing disgusting and a few tracks were actually pretty good, although I don't care enough to download the soundtrack or anything like that. What I will say is that the soundtrack, much like the cutscenes, tried to touch on the style of a game back then, using similar soundfonts and such. My complaint is that the game is so pitifully short. Took me about 4 hours to 100% it in a blind playthrough. I suppose that's definitely in the spirit of the games it was trying to mimic? It's presently priced at $20.00 but I'd say a fairer price is about $5. Definitely give it a try once it goes on sale for about that price. For what it is, it's an enjoyable game.

>>939619 >I noted a bit of "poz" in this game... But I am willing to forgive this since it wasn't shoved down my throat. Yes it was. You've just had your standards beaten down by a decade of shit, so now you're willing to accept what would have been way too much for you a decade ago. Don't be a cuck. Stand up for yourself and ignore pozzed games. It's not like there aren't plenty of great games out there to play. Have you even played the Zelda CDi remakes? I bet they're better than this. And you know Zelda's Adventure? The one that is live action and didn't get a remake like the others? It actually did get a remake on Game Boy. Check that out. It's not going for faithfulness like the other two, but it actually is surprisingly faithful, or at least as faithful as it could possibly be on Game Boy.

>>939904 No I assure you the actual CD-i games are far, far worse.

>Little Goody Two Shoes I've finished the Rozenmarine route and got three endings, the Rozenmarine bad ending, the Rozenmarine good ending and the Church Cellar one. There are a few points that I really liked and a few that I really disliked that I would like to talk about. >First of all, the game looks absolutely beautiful, with a 90's shoujo inspired artstyle >The music is absolutely great with some of the tracks I still listen to even right now >The gameplay is servicable, it's your standard top-down horror adventure fair but it also has some life sim survival elements that are incredibly easy. >The Story It is really good, nice if you like /u/faggotry although has some depth I didn't expect. The story is about your character being an outsider to a German village who wants to live a better life while romancing one of the three girls and either deciding to settle for living in them or (Actual spoiler)sacrificing them to the devil, meanwhile villagers start suspecting you over being a witch and you have to manage your suspicion levels. The thing is, that you actually ARE a witch kind of and every night you go to the woods to explore it and gather parts for a ritual you will have to either do or not at the end of the game. I was surprised with how gray the villagers were portrayed as, I was thinking that it would be a typical witch hunt story where the villagers are dick to the main character for no reason or that the paranormal will be portrayed as a good alternative to the standoffish villagers. Instead, they were presented as really flawed but in the end good-hearted people who give in to paranoia too easily and your character as a good-hearted but ultimately selfish and flawed person who is blinded by dreams of fortune to see what actually matters. Unless you go for the good endings in which she realizes it at the very end It's actually a prequel to an RPG maker game by the name of Pocket Mirror, there is an issue with it in a way: It follows from the Rozenmarine bad ending which makes the good endings feel a bit less canonical but I choose to take the good ending as canon The biggest problem I had with the game is that some of the damaging puzzles and enemies were a bit bullshit the bird tree segment will often hit you even if you choose the correct tree because it's overly precise. Overall a fun, simple game and very nice if you like yurishit. I will go for the Lebkuchen route next.

>Illusion of Gaia After owning the game for the better part of 2 decades, I finally managed to bother beating it. The best way I can describe it in short is, it's good overall, but has plenty of head-scratching design decisions. >Graphics were good for the era, and still hold up >Solid OST >The dungeon designs were generally good. Puzzles generally weren't babby mode, but also weren't impossibly frustrating >The story is kinda forgettable, probably in large part due to taking a months-long break mid-game. It does have some solid moments, though, such as the raft sequence, and Hamlet's sacrifice <Healing items are limited-supply. There's only one kind, and they can't be bought, so once you use them up, you can't get em back <The difficulty curve is all over the place. The first boss (pic related) is arguably the hardest boss in the game, while the twin Vampire fight in Mu is also up there. The final boss is only difficult until you realize you can just block some of its projectiles <The game loves its anti-backtracing, and most of the game becomes quickly walled off as you progress <Not only that, but there's collectables in the form of Red Jewels, and you have to collect every single one to access a secret dungeon. If you miss even one from the first 2/3rds of the game, you're fucked <The secret dungeon also explains why there's labor camps all over the game world, which are a fairly large subplot throughout the game. So if you don't 100% the jewels, that whole plot point just goes completely unexplained <The game largely features instant text. This becomes an issue when walking to an area triggers dialogue, since pressing any button will advance the dialogue, so I had multiple instances of skipping potentially-important dialogue that doesn't play again I feel like I'm overselling its issues, though. It's not a top brass SNES title by any means, but it still is a respectable overall product.

Finished off Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on the Wii. Had a really fun time with the gameplay, but wish the cutscenes were far better than the are. Story The plot for TFU begins several years after Episode 3: RotS and opens with Anakin continuing his hunt for the remaining Jedi order. Landing on Kashyyk, he fights against the exiled Jedi hiding on the planet, and discovers that the guy has a son. Killing his dad, Anakin takes the kid under his wing as his "secret apprentice" and begins training the kid. Fast forward several years, Vader begins sends his apprentice, named "Starkiller", on several missions to hunt down remaining Jedi and "complete his training" so that they can team up and kill Emperor Palpatine. It's at this point that the game really begins as Starkiller's "first" mission is to hunt down and defeat a Jedi by the name of Master Kota, who becomes relevant to the game's story from the second act onward. After defeating Kota and two other Jedi (Kazdan Paratus and Shaak Ti), Starkiller returns to Vader's flagship only to be "betrayed" because the Emperor found out about Starkiller and orders his death in order for Vader to prove his loyalty. But it's all a trick as Vader saves Starkiller, and orders him to create a rebel army for the purposes of weakening the Emperor so that they can both kill him. There's a couple more twists along the way and an ending that gives you the choice between fighting Vader or fighting Palpatine, but the short of it is that Starkiller doesn't really get a "happy" ending no matter what decision you choose. Overall, it could have made for a great story. However, the problem with the game is that the cinematics absolutely suck. It has nothing to do with any of the acting or the line delivers. It mostly has to do with the fact that ALL of the characters, with zero exceptions, either move like they're animatronics from a theme park or action figures from a stop motion movie. It just doesn't look right and brings the entire package down. Audiovisual The graphics for TFU are give and take in some areas. There are some levels (Like the Jedi Temple, Kashyyk, and Felucia) that are absolutely massive in their scope and filled with content, but then there's others (Primarily Raxus Prime) that are just so cramped and empty that it feels like they're lacking something (Especially when you double jump and can clip through the ceiling to see that there's nothing there). The character designs I'd say are the worst part of the graphics because they just look they have not progressed from early sixth gen games. I know that the Wii version is just a port of the PSP/PS2 version, but I’ve seen character models on the PSP and the PS2 that looked better than this. But this may also just me harping further on the matter that the character movements are just that offputting. It's not that things look bad, in fact all of the characters based on the actors from the movies do look rather good, but I just expect better since this is nearly a decade after something like Shenmue and you can see how good that game look and was animated. In some ways, the default animations for characters are actually better than the cutscene specific animations in the same cutscene. The audio design is rather good. It's Star Wars, what do you expect? All the trademark sound effects and music are all there. As I stated, the character deliver and acting are all decent and I have zero issue with it. Gameplay Now here's the actual meat of the game and where I say I'm rather divided because the gameplay for TFU is absolutely awesome. Swing the Wiimote to use your lightsaber, and use the Nunchuk for your Force abilities. It's all rather simple and easy to pick up, and it's an absolutely blast to shock a group of enemies, send them flying into their friends, pick up the survivor with the force, pummel them with every object in the vicinity (Including other NPCs), and then finish them with with skewering them with your lightsaber (Or throw them into an abyss). However, you won't actually get to experience much of this until you're a couple hours into the game. For God knows why, TFU locks about half of your force powers behind story progression, so you don't really open up to using most of them until you're about a third of the way through the game. And you don't actually use them to their fullest extent until your second playthrough as your unlocked/upgraded abilities carry over each time you beat the game. But the problem quickly becomes that you start mowing down enemies too quickly, which leaves the final level as the only stage that really tests how well you know the game. It really makes me wish that there were "bonus levels" that I could play through, or at least a chapter select are you cannot individually select which level you want to play. You have to play the entire campaign through and cannot repeat a level. This especially becomes annoying with the collectibles. TFU has three types of collectibles hidden across the levels. Holocrons that unlock pictures in the game's art gallery, Jedi crystals that change the color of your lightsaber, and a few lightsaber hilts. In addition, as you progress through the game, you automatically unlock different costumes that Starkiller can wear, which will be reflected in the game’s cutscenes. The only thing left to really talk about is the boss fights, which are split into two categories. The first is giant creatures/machines and the second is boss NPCs. With the giants, the easiest tactics is to throw objects at them or shock them with lightening. There's occasionally instances where a QTE will pop up, which will require you to shake the Wiimote or the Nunchuk at a specific time, but I find these to be less satisfying that actually killing the giant by depleting it's health bar. Meanwhile with the regular NPC bosses, they're mostly not that different from the regular "tank" NPCs you fight, except that they can withstand most of your force attacks and have specific QTEs for dealing saber/lighting deflection. Overall I did have fun with The Force Unleashed. The gameplay for the title was absolutely stellar and is one of the few games where you do "Feel like a Jedi" as the motion controls are implemented rather well. However, the cutscenes are a real letdown and ruin much of the tone and "epicness" the game's story has going for it. If you want an example, need look no further than how the infamous "Bringing down the Star Destroy" scene just feels cheap. Perhaps the cutscenes are better in the HD version, but I won't know until I play that.

Dark Summit only for Gamecube Which is what I naturally assumed for years because it said so on my Gamecube version cover, but it's not and has never been exclusive... so who knows what's up with that printing error? Anyway this was one of the few games I needed to get revenge on, I played it a fair amount back in the gamecube days, but I never beat it. I knew I was right before the final level too, I just couldn't find that last bomb. This time I pretty much played the game in one sitting, and didn't have any trouble beating it, younger me just didn't take a right turn into a smaller area to find that last mission in the game. As for the game itself, It's no SSX Tricky the gameplay is fairly simple, and maybe it's the nostalgia talking, but there is something comfy about this game. It's this small time capsule of that early 2000's attitude. "We're snowboarders and we're gonna shred this mountain and uncover a government conspiracy, about aliens or something, and do a terrorist bombing because fuck the military and authority." This game somehow has you staring as what's essentially a domestic terrorist but it's also not afraid to be a little silly and doesn't take itself too seriously. The characters have almost nothing going except their designs yet their still enjoyable. The only real criticism I have is there isn't a satisfying ending, it's literally just explosion cut to credits. There is no detailed explanation for anything, the plot is as deep as the premise, it's style over substance, but at least it's got good style, and the atmosphere is cool too. The game isn't long so it doesn't over stay its welcome. Kind of odd you need to beat the game, to play as the other 5 characters, and it's nearly the same as a new game save for it just being a character swap.

>>941913 It has a sequel called Terranigma that only got an EU and JP release. It was released in English, just not in USA. A lot of people don't even know it exists. Give it a try if you liked IoG.

Just about finished the new Saints Row game. I wanted to see how bad it was. I can sum it up as Painfully Average. To clarify a bit. A good game has you enjoying your time, an average game has you going through the motions without complaints, and a bad game has you being hindered by it. This game threads the needle between bad and average. It dips into bad and back up to average so often that it genuinely bothers me. Is the game going to cooperate or fuck me in the ass today? Who knows. Starting with gameplay. The bulk of side activities feel like busy work. As if you were doing chores in real life. Missions are forgettable, and I barely remember any. They have the talent/drive to do interestingish missions like the larp shit, but at the same time they clearly went all in on quantity of activities over the quality of those activities. Shooting bounces around depending on the gun, but very few ever feel satisfying because enemies are way too tanky. Aiming also feels poor with all the autoaim going on. I did like the nerf football that sent people flying into space, and the ghost rifle that creates helper undead on kills. Melee pisses me off though. Many weapons have neat kill effects like punting people with a homerun bat on heavy attack kills. The problem there is that the heavy attack does less damage than the light attacks and takes more time to be performed. It makes getting that fun moment a chore. Not to mention that you can do an infinite combo by doing kick into light melee and just looping that until they die. This makes the watered down fight club activity a fucking joke later btw. Special mention to the asshats who copied the glory kills = healing from nuDoom. You see auto healing no longer happens in combat and no food items either. You have some weapons with vampire upgrades and a skill but that is it. You have to go over and execute a special takedown that varies in length (most are way too fucking long). They should have taken a page from Eternal. They sped the ever loving fuck out of the lesser enemies glory kill animations for a reason. The animations for this look nice (when uneven terrain doesn't fuck the alignment), but how they let this be the final state of it is beyond me. Seeing all the enemies just watching me slowly pummel a guy to death is incredibly silly. Cars and driving in general is inconsistent as fuck. I could get over it being consistently bad as I could at least predict a reasonable outcome based on what I know. This game has none of that. Slam into a vehicle at full speed? Half damage to the enemy. Bump into an enemy at moderate speeds? 1 hit kills the vehicle. Full stop into a wall? You're fine. Bump a curb or rock at 10mph? Projectiled through the window. Bash a motorcycle guy with the hood of your truck? He just bounces harmlessly around and keeps driving in the jankiest way possible. Hover vehicles will just randomly stop despite hitting nothing on a flat road. Physics for cars is just so fucking random that you really don't know what to expect when collisions occur, and the HP damage is just as bad. Ramming is a new feature you can do but again the inconsistency is back. Half the vehicles I tried to ram with will spin out of control randomly if you try to use it. The other half have this bizarre damage calculation going on. Usually it takes two ramming hits to KO a vehicle, but sometimes you'll one hit shit for no reason. Finally, something I did like was the special abilities for vehicles. Sadly this was a per vehicle case which means you very rarely got to use them in missions which forced certain rides. Also a fuck you to whoever did the offroad driving in this. I hate it. Even in cars with the offroad upgrade, I still hate it. The wanted level stuff and chases are awful. Enemies have to call in reinforcements now, and if killed relatively quickly, you lose your wanted level. The problem is this is insanely easy to do. Waste one pile of cops and bam your max wanted level is done, which makes just goofing around at max wanted levels impossible unless you intentionally let them dial for help. Getting into car chases may honestly be the worst in the series here. Enemies visibly rubberband after you. Doesn't matter what you are driving or how fast, they will fling themselves at you from a mile back and ram your ass. Sometimes civilians will also join in unprovoked for reasons that made the getaway missions a joke when the entire city forms a barricade against you. Setting time. This is a game that is afraid of being a Saints Row game. For example, FreckleBitches is now just FB. The characters swear often in this game and yet they still refuse to call it by anything other than "FB". God forbid the poor cat ladies and danger hairs playing this game see that in their vidya. You also don't have a gang this time around, you instead get everyone driving home that this is a "criminal empire". Gangs are bad I guess. Drugs/alcohol are bad too so don't expect to see much of those. At one point when the Boss is asked for something to drink, they ask for a chocolate milk. What a badass gangster drink choice. The world itself is large but mostly feels dead due to the incredibly low population density they have it set to. I would have much rather that they shrank the world to cut down on the dead space + travel time. The collectables give you some reasons to go wandering, but outside of that, I never felt the need or want to do so again. Story time. The story is bad. The characters feel completely out of place for a Saints game. You start the game with 3 "friends" that your Boss is already best buds with. If you don't like those characters (and you won't), congrats on now disliking most of the plot. Gangs are more of a distraction in this one rather than the primary antagonists. You see those 3 friends are so damn great. Everybody loves 'em. I mean Kev doesn't wear a shirt! Nerdy non-threatening black guy! A girl who loves cars?! Student Debt! A CAT! What a crew! So great a crew that the main villain will betray you to steal this great group of friends. It fucking sucks and I hate it. Most games have character introductions + arcs and such to earn that love from the player, but in this one you are just expected to love them at the start. The writers are bad and should feel bad. Performance now. It was nothing terrible. Mostly stable, with one crash. A few missions would bug out though and force a reset to checkpoint as enemies would get stuck out of bounds or just stop reacting and stand motionless while I killed them. I also had some weather bugs that would occur anytime I played for too long. The world would be covered in silent hill levels of fog all the fuck over and never change to any other weather afterwards unless you quit. I should note that I have one final mission to do, but the niggers hide it behind a huge money grind. Having to idle for a few hours while I wait for enough cash to be generated to do a fucking mission is a dick move to prolong to run time on this awful game. Honestly glad Volition is fucking dead if this abortion is the best they could come up with. I probably have more complaints to list, but I'm tired of thinking about it. Final Score: I had to use cheat engine to increase the titty slider/10

Streets of Rage 4 (PS4) Well, technically this isn't my first time finishing the game, but I recently lost all my PS4 save files, so I might as well consider this game beaten anew. This time I went straight for the hard difficulty in Story Mode. I swear, the real final boss are all those fatsos in the final stage. Anyway, the game is fantastic. In fact, it's so good that I still cannot believe that it actually exists. Don't let any of the fags tell you that it's pozzed, it isn't. Is it the best Streets of Rage? I don't know, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. At this point it doesn't really matter, they are all great. It's just pure 2D side-scrolling beat 'em up fun. Lots of different enemies, good controls, fun weapons to pick up, varied stages, stage hazards, cool bosses and some of the best 2D graphics I have ever seen. There are really only two complaints I have with SoR4: > It's way too long for arcade mode, it takes like two hours straight to beat and you cannot save > Max is a total bullshit boss, none of hist attacks can be interrupted and he cannot be staggered Other than that it's pretty much a perfect SoR game. The versus battle mode is a bit lackluster, but no one buys SoR for that, this is no Street Fighter. I treat it more as a little bonus on top.

Contra: Operation Galuga It's essentially a Re-imagining of Contra 1 you'll be seeing familiar stuff from the original in one from or another, but it still keeps thinks fresh enough. Beat the game on Normal so far, using the 3 hit points mode "The Japanese version of Contra Hard Corps had the 3 hit points so it's not like this is new" The game felt easy during the first two levels, but the difficulty picked nicely after that point, There is still Hard mode and classic one hit deaths as an option so I'm sure there is a fair amount more challenge to the game still. The new additions to the series are picking up the same weapon twice will give you a more powerful level 2 version losing a hit point will bring you back down to level 1. You can also Overclock your weapon type and spend it on a power move, for example a really good one is the Laser overclock, You'll enter bullet time and have plenty of time to deal major damage to a boss with your secondary weapon type, depending on the character there is a double jump, Air dash, Grapple, Hover or slide, with the Double Jump and Air dash that Bill and Lance have you have nice feeling control over your character. Another big addition is the Perk system, you get credits from playing the game which can be spent on Perks which you can equip two at a time. Using the Konami code will give you acess to a perk to give you 30 lives, but it costs the most to buy out of all of them, so you'll need to play quite a bit before you can get it. There are cheaper perks which are only usable for one character Bill gets invulnerability during a Dash, Lance gets a higher Double Jump, the two Blue and Red Probotector robots get a Hover or Grapple hook etc... other cheap perks is starting a level with the you're weapon of choice There are some more power perks that cost more credits, One gets you instant level 2 from any weapon pick up, one lets you heal a hit point every time you overclock, one lets you keep a weapon type after losing a life, there is a decent number of perks to earn and think of loadouts with. The playable characters are mostly returning ones, Bill, Lance, Probotector M4D-0G (blue) and SC0RP1 (red), a human version of Lucia, you can buy Sheena, Brad Fang, and Browny from Hard corps after beating the game. The two new characters are Ariana who is a native of Galuga, and Stanley Ironside probably an intentional reference to War-machine, black guy in an iron man suit. Over all it's a solid enough Contra game nothing to really complain about aside form it basically being 2-3 hours long on a first playthough, but it does feel like it's on the playing it safe side. it's trying pretty hard to ride Contra 1 nostalgia, You won't be seeing any crazy ass gross bosses like in the PS2 games.

Touhou: Artificial Dream in Arcadia Picked this up since I was in the mood for an RPG and didn't feel like playing Persona 3 or SMT 4. This came out somewhat recently, too, so felt a bit of FOMO and moved this up to the front of my backlog! Here's what I discovered. >Gameplay Felt this was the most important. Obviously the whole game was trying to mimic the flavor of SMT1 and 2 specifically, and I feel it did pretty well with that. Starting with the problems - I had an issue with the phone battery system, which tried to be like the MAG system from SMT 1 and 2, except the phone battery has a max limit of 100% and could only be recharged by going to a save point or using handheld batteries - which you could only carry 5 max at any one time!!!!! Obviously this was a huge waste of time so I opted to using Cheat Engine to keep my battery at 100% at all times after I got to the final 80% of the game, as going back to recharge was super dull and felt like an oversight to me. My only other problem is with the secret final boss specifically, which may be a bit presumptuous of me, but wait till you hear what I have to say and let me know if it's on me or not. Basically, the secret final boss just felt way too hard, or I guess I should say felt way too annoying to fight than it should have been. The difficulty curve from the final boss to the secret superboss was like 300% of an increase. For perspective, the final boss has about 8000 HP and the superboss has 25000 HP. I wouldn't have much of an issue with this - after all, Lucifer from SMT 3 was similar I think. EXCEPT ONE FATAL FLAW, if you get particularly unlucky - not once in a blue moon unlucky but like 1/20 unlucky - the superboss can combo the fuck out of you and kill you! That means back to the fucking start. Even with a highly optimized build, you can still die this way, and the fight takes about half an hour with an unoptimized build. 6 minutes with optimized. This means you're taking this 1/20 chance multiple times, and it shouldn't be this way. Maybe this is on me since it IS a superboss that isn't required to complete the game, only for one particular ending. Oh, also there isn't any kind of bonus by filling out the Touhou pokedex, you just get a fucking discount on downloading existing 2hus. Waste of time. Fuck Nitori. Besides this nitpick, the gameplay actually felt pretty balanced to me. I didn't need to grind except for the superboss. I completed the rest of the bosses naturally. This was different from SMT2 where I distinctly remember needing to grind just to beat YHVH and some other bosses before him like Satan. Fuck those two in particular on a neutral path, but that's another story. I really LOVED the new hijack/recruit method, which unlike SMT was not luck based but totally skill based. You initiate a hijack by playing through a 2hu spellcard and doing some danmaku. Most of it was pretty easy for me and you do get an HP bar unlike the real 2hu. Only one or two spellcards ever gave me trouble, out of the 100+ spellcards the game offers. Might be difficult for others though, I actually played the mainline 2hu games and can 1CC on normal. This hijack feature actually made the game trivial for me since I could go into a high-difficulty area, recruit the toughest motherfucker there, then go back to where the game wants me to be and steamroll everyone. Some people might miss this though so I don't consider it a flaw. >Story Basically non-existent. Moving on. >Music To my absolute surprise, this game has quite a few nice tracks. To be fair, SMT 1 and 2 on the SNES had some great tracks but only 4~5 each, so I would not have complained if this game had one or none. I'll post some examples in the post proceeding this 'n >Graphics It does a pretty good job at replicating the SMT 1 + 2 style of pixel art and UI while still kind of modernizing things, like with the few cutscenes it has and the character interactions, take the picture of Yuuma here for instance. Otherwise every enemy looks like picture #4. The art never felt lazy to me. <Overall I would definitely recommend this game, but only to people familiar with the style of SMT 1 and 2. It is probably too bare-bones for any modern JRPG fan, and even if you're a touhou fan, the touhou elements probably aren't enough to hold your attention/favor. That said, it's a highly competent indie game and it did something very unique by mimicking the older SMT games which are, as some SMT fans today would realize, largely forgotten by Atlus and friends. I personally got the best of both worlds since I'm a Touhou fan and an SMT fan. All I can say is that this game put me in the mood to play the earlier Touhou games although I know I'll be disappointed, and there's a reason most people recommend starting with 6. <Rating 7.9/10 I felt an 8 would be too generous, but a 7 would be far too low for the amount of effort put into this game. If you see it on sale for the price of a sandwich, pick it up.

>>790791 Dropping a game means it wasn't worth it compared to other games, I don't see why you should be obligated to finish one, especially if you don't pay for it.

>>952857 It depends, some games that are worth it take a while to get going, so if you drop them you miss out.

>>952890 Said games are badly padded and you just play them for specific reasons.

>>952857 The older I get the more I've come to agree with this, if I can get some 20 or so hours out of a game and I don't finish feel like finishing it because I lost interest, it's completely fine.

>>952851 I still really need to get around to beating this. I guess I got burnt out and I had to deal with life and other gaems. I think my party is in the late 40's but things in Animal Realm are starting to get a bit fucking difficult for me. Not that thats a problem I beat SMT 1-5 + Strange Journey and Soul Hackers, I can beat that game as well.

So I finished off No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, and I was just not to impressed with the game. Premise NMH2 picks up three years after the previous game with Travis fighting the brother of Helter Skelter, the assassin Travis killed that "started" the events of the first game. After killing the brother, Sylvia comes back and uses her sex appeal to convince Travis to work his way back up the UAA assassin rankings again, to which Travis agrees. But not before the brother warns Travis that he's going to lose someone "special", that person being Bishop, one of the store NPCs from the first game. After someone tosses Bishop's head through the window of Travis' motel suite, he vows to get revenge against the person who ordered the hit on Bishop, who just so happens to be top-ranked assassin Batt Jr.. So Travis' goal is to now work his way up to kill Batt Jr. and get revenge for Bishop. To be quite honest, the story feels rather hallow with a lame ending. Half of the assassins Travis is suppose to kill end up getting offed by someone else, notably Shinobu and Henry, so the game doesn't really like a "desperate struggle" despite the game's title. In fact it almost comes across like the odds are rigged in Travis' favor this time around, which I'm honestly uncertain is the point the game is trying to make. Most of NMH2 is other characters fawning over Travis for being the "Crownless King" and want to fight him just so that he can “prove” that status. So the characters come across more as obstacles in the story rather than hard-ass foes searching for bloodlust. But I guess all this just rubs the wrong way due to how the entire point of the rankings battles in the first game was for the purposes of Travis training to fight his sister. Never to actually fuck Sylvia. Yeah, if you haven't played the first No More Heroes, I'm just going to give away the conclusion of my post and just tell you to play the first game and don't touch any of the sequels. The story of NMH2 just adds nothing to the experience and comes across like it was written by someone who heard about and saw some clips of the first game but never actually played the first game. Audiovisuals The graphics for NMH2 have a similar cel-shaded art style to the first game, where the characters look like paper-mache models with high quality textures. When you get down to it, it looks like a lot of the content from the first game was just copied and pasted into NMH2 because there's an obvious polygon count and texture resolution difference between everything carried over from the first game and the new content for this game. Same can be said about the audio, though this is even more bizarre because the new music for this game just isn't as catchy or memorable compared to the music from the first game (That they, again, use in this game). Gameplay This is where much of my problem with NMH2 stems from. I'm going to say it again, it feels like most of the work was just copy and pasted from the first NMH as it plays almost exactly the same, but there's just something off about the gameplay. For some reason, it doesn't feel as tight as the first game's controls despite there being almost no change in the actual combat. Hold the Wiimote upright for fast attacks, hold it down for strong attacks, press the B button for melee attacks and wrestling finishers, Z to lock on, and the D-pad to dodge. But the gameplay feels very tedious this time around. I remember playing through the first game and thinking that the combat was the best part, but now it feels like I’m just going through the motions with less responsive motion controls. Just charging the beam katana is an entire exercise routine itself. This is to say nothing about how terrible it is to play Shinobu for the two bosses she takes down midway through. And that’s also ignoring that the game actually tries to focus less on defeating random flunkies and more upon just going straight to fighting the bosses to work your way up the ranks as fast as possible. Unlike the first game, you are not required to do any of the side missions or part time jobs in order to participate in the next ranking fight as they’re always accessible right there in the game’s menu. In fact, NMH2 entirely trades out the open world of the first game for a list of activities that you can immediately zip to at any time. From the eight part-time jobs that are now 8-bit mini-games, to the in-game shops, to the motel, to the next fight/cutscene. It all just feels cheap with how much is removed that it makes me wonder why the game just isn’t a linear story? In some way, the most comparable title to the structure of the game's progression is the GameCube exclusive P.N. 03. But the difference there is that P.N. 03 had to be thrown together in under six months, NMH2 had two years. And the only quality features added to NMH2 (Aside from Naomi’s now massive jugs) is the mini-games included with it, which presents the primary problem that I had with Watch_Dogs when I played that. If you make the side-gigs and secondary aspects of the game more enjoyable than the main gameplay loop, you screwed up. And when you can finally tear yourself away from playing OutRun and Rush Hour, NMH2 doesn’t feel like it actually hits a flow with itself until Travis reaches rank 5, after wasting about four to five hours of the game’s nine hour stretch getting to that point, and then completely loses itself for the final hour and with a final boss that I can only describe as being outright lame. Overall I’ve seen someone compare the original NMH to original trashy punk clothing and NMH2 to being the “official punk style” clothing produced by big name clothing companies, but I think that comparison doesn’t feel quite right. Like I said earlier, NMH2 feels like a game designed by someone who was aware of the first NMH, probably heard some people talking about it or watched some clips of it, and then made the sequel based off those outside influences rather than the source material itself. It’s not a phenomenon that is exclusive to NMH as I’ve seen the same result elsewhere. The later Rambo films almost being a parody of First Blood, Samurai Flamenco becoming the very “Super Sentai” story it was deconstructing before episode 11, The Fast and the Furious no longer actually being about illegal street racing, Dragon Ball going from a stereotype of martial arts dramas to being an unironic superhero story, you get the idea. It’s material that keeps trying to up the stakes and ends up missing the point entirely. The story of the first NMH ultimately was Travis getting revenge, and the second game tries to up the stakes by having Travis...ultimately getting revenge. Then the third game, that I have zero interest in actually playing, tries to make the stakes even bigger with space aliens and time travel. To be quite honest, just stick to the first No More Heroes and leave it at that. If you absolutely “must” play against the new bosses, I assume you should get the remixed Heroes’ Paradise edition available on the 360/PS3.

>>957966 No More Heroes 2 was made without Suda in the director's chair. That's most likely why the game feels off. He was at the beginning of transitioning to the businessman phase, and some of the best people at Grasshopper were probably busy pitching and prototyping Lollipop Chainsaw at the time. NMH2 has probably one of my least favorite boss fight of all time - the motorcycle duel. Steering that bike was just terrible.

Phoenix Point. To say this game irritated me is an understatement. A big disappointment overall. It goes to show that even if the ideas and features of your game are sound, it doesn't mean jack shit if the execution is piss poor. I tried playing through vanilla then quit about half way through the game, but tried again with the Terror from the Void overhaul mod since it was highly recommended. The mod definitely improved things, but the game is still a chore to play and packed full of rough, repetitive, or just annoying features. Sadly the mod also requires the flier DLC which drags the game down considerably. I feel bad for the fags who paid for DLC that actively made the experience worse. I'm not going to list all my slight grievances with the game, but I will say there are many small things that quickly add up to make you dislike the experience. Every time you find yourself getting into it, the game remembers to start randomly jabbing you with the shitstick until you're annoyed again. I came into this somewhat hopeful, but I'm quitting again and not finishing this crap. It is so frustrating that for every good idea/feature there are 3 or more things they got wrong or just fucked up at some point in development. I looked around to see if my experience was common or if I just wasn't adopting well to the game and it seems like if you can tolerate the deluge of minor issues, there is a decent game buried below them. Though if you are like me, and your shit tolerance is low, I'd pass on this one.

Sword of the Vagrant (also know as just "The Vagrant" on PC) This is a side-scrolling 2D action RPG inspired very much by Vanillaware. Think of it like Odin Sphere with only one character. I have been binging it over the last couple of days and I really liked it. It does not have the polish of a Vanillaware game, but hardly any game does. You play as a cute amazon called Vivian who is on a quest to find her missing father. Her ship gets destroyed and she washes up on the shores of an island where she quickly gets tangled up in the machinations of a witch. The gameplay is pretty standard: light attack, heavy attack, combos, skills. It's tested and it works. You can unlock various abilities, upgrade and customize equipment and cook food at campsites for permanent buffs (I already said it is inspired by Vanillaware). It is quit a short game, it took me around 10 hours to beat without grinding and without the final dungeon. Add a few extra hours for the optional boss rush dungeon and then you have 100% finished the game. My mistake was playing on "Normal" difficulty, which is not very hard. I died a couple of times to some bosses, but I could definitely used a better challenge. It's a fun game that does not waste your time if you like this type. I will definitely be replaying it on a higher difficulty in the future.

>>973329 It has a painterly look, I might give it a shot.

>>790791 - The series is about Senua's shamanic journey to learn how people, including herself, may go on living with their burdens, including emotional and psychological ones. This is a process which pretty much everyone undergoes in life and it never fails to expand beyond oneself. People cope in a variety of ways, for example by becoming destructive or self-destructive or the victims and perpetrators of tyranny and tragedy. - Each act of Hellblade 2 personifies particular themes in the people, settings and giants. First giant/act: grief, change, loss. Second giant/act: guilt, shame, betrayal. Third giant/act: the chaoskampf; zero-sum life. - Across the series patriarchy is criticized, by way of demonization in the characters of Senua's father and Godi. Patriarchy is a psychological concept referring to increasing consciousness, awareness and planning. For example, it is central to modern political notions such as transhumanism and technological progress and (I think) is well explored in Eric Neumann's books but also no doubt by many other people. It is often characterized as "masculine". Typically, it is coupled in a zero-sum fashion with unconsciousness, instinct, and independence, which would be characterized as "feminine". - Senua's schizophrenia is the mechanism of her perceiving the world in a completely abnormal highly symbolic way. Her gravitation toward a leadership role as a result seems to be a strong reference to the evolutionary and psychological ideas of Julian Jaynes and the sociological implications he draws. - Hellblade 2's third act and final monologue offers a commentary on the nature of power in the chaoskampf. Senua gains insight into the motives of her father. Her journey has led her to the choice of whether to be a leader and what kind should she choose to be one. - The game itself though... Well, the pareidolia puzzles are cool. They are way better than the other symbol puzzles, which should not have been carried beyond the first game. The symbol puzzles might represent obsessive compulsion, but if I'm right about that let's just say they're doing it a little bit too well. The graphics are exceptional. Unreal Engine 5. - The first act is way too long. The combat is drawn out, as it was in the first game. Combat is simplistic. More than once fights seem to loop, making them feel like I was doing something wrong and failing to progress. For instance, the drauger are genuinely interesting and spectacular (especially the fire guy). Then you're forced to chop away at a dozen of them. Hellblade 2 offers only a handful of fight sequences and every one of them was boring to me. - Everything in the game takes much longer than it needs to, be it combat, dialogue, travel or puzzles. In some cases this might be dismissed as an attempt to create atmosphere, which the series relies upon intentionally and generally does a good job of cultivating. I am very cynical though, so I got the impression of a deliberate strategy to draw out the game's playtime to meet a quota. Production quotas, runtime for example (being also prominent in film), are typically a pre-condition of being published and/or of even being issued a loan in the first place with which to fund your project, especially nowadays. If anything it's too long, not too short. - It is very interesting that Hellblade 2 is afflicted by that, because in my opinion it would be a real life example of exactly the kind of power which the game sets out to provide insight into and criticism of especially in it's third act. - In my opinion, even though I think it is a good and necessary thing to do, Hellblade 2 is a case of casting pearls before swine. I think it's trying to explore stuff that is very heavy, relevant and (most significantly) which there are not any simple or unanimous answers about. - It seems like that's just not what people are in it for. A major element active in the world today: everything is expected to be universally and easily accessable, understandable and (most significantly) commodifiable. We strive for that and consider the goal and the pursuit inherently virtuous. Even though it had to have been tailored "by the numbers" to even get on the shelf, Hellblade 2 is none of those things.

The Mystery of Epstein Island I had the first part of this indie title saved to my hard drive years ago, but I never played it. Years later, it turns out that it's actually a decently high-effort point-and-click adventure game—definitely a game with more effort put into its development than you'd expect of something so steeped in imageboard memes and culture. Unfortunately, it seems that the dev has completely disappeared, so the ultimate fate of Apu and Kek will likely remain unknown.

>>973421 This is rather impressive indeed. Charming even. >unfinished imageboard game If I had a nickel...

>>973434 To be fair, releasing two episodes out of three in essentially complete (if slightly unpolished) states is much better than what one can usually expect to get out of an imageboard game project. Still, it was probably inevitable that part three would never release. There must be some sort of curse.

Recommend me some good games, i want to play something good, and i cant play nier and DS without a controller. Dunno, i fell like my brain is somewhat lagged or strained thanks to the wage life working at McDonalds.

>>973481 I give you a few random games of any genre. >Zombies Ate My Neighbors Top-down shooter on the SNES, very arcady. Use savestates because the game is really long and passwords don't track your items. >Ratchet and Clank 2 Often regarded as the best game in the series. Action-platformer third-person shooter with a huge arsenal of weapons and a lot of content. >Portal First-person puzzle game. Creative and very short, fun to speedrun. >Terranigma Action RPG, also on the SNES. Sequel to Illusion of Gaia but you don't need to have played it to enjoy it. Don't be afraid to use a guide if you want to 100% this one. >Saints Row 2 Over-the-top open-world action game themed around crime gangs, obviously inspired by GTA but different enough to not feel like a copy. Good pick if you ever want "dumb fun". >Patapon PSP rhythm-RPG hybrid with really an interesting art style and music. Very unique game. >Far Cry: Blood Dragon What if you took an early 2010s AAA title and made it a ridiculous neon-drenched satire of itself? It has some of the tedious aspects you'd expect from big AAA games like and hunting animals to craft gear, but it's still good. Great weapons and fun combat. Easily my favorite Far Cry game. >SuperHOT Hard to describe this one, a puzzle FPS? The entire game is in slow-motion, and only moves when you do. It's hard to explain, go look up footage and see if you're curious.

A very brief and unstructured review of Saints Row: Gat out of Hell I've never played a significant amount of any saints row game before, but I decided to play this one because I knew it was short. I beat it in one sitting (about 4 hours). >Satan kidnaps the president from Saints Row IV <You go to hell to save him >Its a typical open word, with most of the powers, weapons and the location recycled from previous games. As expected for an expandalone <To beat Satan you have to his attention first. You do this by causing mayhem, killing people, blowing things up etc. >You're given an actual reason to do all the petty open world sidequests/minigames since it's just an excuse to do cause more chaos. <One bizarre thing is that there's almost no music in the game. >You recruit Shakespeare, Blackbeard and Vlad the Impaler to your cause, it is extremely stupid. <Satan's daughter falls in love with Gat/The Player because you're that much of a gigachad >The game is incredibly easy, even on the harder difficulty <One of the cut scenes turns into a musical out of nowhere that goes on for way too long >Because of how short everything is, game spits upgrades at you non-stop to the point where its annoying. Every new ability should have been just given to you at full power. <Flying is by far the most fun thing to do in this game. Once you have a few upgrades, you can gain incredible amounts of momentum, turn on a dime in midair and rocket to the ground. Even doing the "fly through the rings" type mini games are fun. >Final boss fight against Satan isn't anything to write home about. Traditional 3 stage boss, shoot him until he dies. <Despite being a native linux game, it basically doesn't work at all on the penguin OS, had to run this one on the windows. >There are only 2 female characters of note, Kinzie and Jezebel and they're both relatively cute, so the game gets points for that. Overall, I enjoyed playing it. Shame this was the last decent game Volition ever made.

>>973481 Try a trad cozysim like the old Harvest Moon games before they started adding pozz.

>>941953 Force Unleashed apparently had a really horrible that wound up canning the original plan for a Shadows of the Empire style multi-media event to the EU fleshing out the fairly empty pre-Rebellion empire because there was no way to coordinate the launches. Basically the only remnants of this were in the Saga Edition RPG, where the "Force Unleashed" book is actually just the early Imperial era book and it has a long (and free) adventure set in the era. Also I can never forget that the GM advice for the WEG RPG (which TFU explicitly references by expanding its story of the Alliance's founding) that happens to use throwing around Star Destroyers as something that shouldn't be possible even if the player somehow tricks the rules into getting a high enough value for.

>>973879 I'd say Saints Row 1 is still worth playing, as an alternative to GTA, it did its job better than most copy cats. What Saints Row had over GTA is the cast. The Saints in the first game are all very likeable characters, so you care about what happens to them, Johnny Gat of course became the Fan Favorite because he and the Player were on the same page, they just wanted to go out and kill the enemy because it was a gangster video game, and that's what you do. And Gat is the only true connecting thread to all the series. He and the Player character are the only ones that have managed to make it though everything from beginning to end. They tried to Kill Gat off at the start of Saints Row 3, but nobody accepted it, because you can't just "Kill Gat" especially off-screen. Not a soul was surprised when he came back in Saints Row 4, and if it wasn't for Gat still being around, few would have stuck with the series all the way though. He reminded you of the series Roots, and Gat is actually the character who directly looks at Saints Row the 3rd and calls out that the game is a cash grab. Saints Row 3,4, and Gat out of Hell are fun enough to play casually, but it's clear the series lost the plot, the went for what was going to make them more money, instead of what was going to be a good story. Saints Row became a "Meme franchise" essentially not quite THAT cringy, but it was impossible to get invested in the stakes of the story for Saints Row 3 and onward. Saints Row 1 & 2 are beloved by the fans because you actually get invested in what is happening to the characters. I'll just recommend Saints Row 1 & 2 if you want some solid gangster stories with fun gameplay and activities, where Saints Row 3 and onward is "Fun" enough, but nothing much to get all that invested in.

Just finished pic related It was a fun campy ride, not too long but not so short I thought it was rushed. The mask of death was quite funny, and I think some of the phrases it said might have stuck >Dancing death princess! Hyurkhyurk ya rike it? It was fun.

>>985808 If only we lived in a world where more games like this were made instead of shitty lesbian walking simulators.

>>985816 How lesbian walking simulators do you find? I only know of Gone Home and that was over a decade ago.

>>985820 LiS, Lesbian Golfing Sim 2, Ass Creed Odyssey, the Snoot Game fangame, SSKTJL'' has lesbians but it isn't a walking sim.

>>985808 The game is short but i had more fun with it than the uncharted games. Specially 2. That shit dragged for waaaaaay to long. Chloe's ass is the only redeeming quality and reason to play that tripe. Marlow Briggs came out in 2013 riding off of the coattails of the 3 uncharted games and god of war 3 (and you can tell they were influenced either by infamous or prototype and maybe crash bandicoot). Just a fun action game.

>>985827 It's a bit weird how this game references both tentacle porn and KEEP ME POSTED. There are very parts where it's funny, but it doesn't want to hamfist anything like in Boredlands. Also found the ending neat with the whole spanish colonizers reaching the mayan settlemetns. There is a lot to like of the game even if it's silly as hell.

>>985827 >>985846 Do you know what's sad about the dev? It was bought by some MBA type fuck who merged it with a casino company and had them make slot machine type of shit afterwards. Probably the worst fate I've ever heard for a developer.

>>985848 Was he a Japanese businessman, by any chance?

>>985848 >>985854 IIR some of the original Team Silent devs ended up working in pachinko and mobile shit

>>985848 >>985854 >>985856 A LOT of veteran game devs left the industry and got involved in the casino business: https://odysee.com/@GTV-Japan:d/Arcade:9d

This game is still great even after 15 years. I decided to play as a dual-wielding warrior and after about 54 hours I finished both the base game, the awakening expansion, the golems of amgarrak, and Witch hunt. I also did the darkspawn DLC at one point but that one doesn't matter. The game it self is a lot more buggier than I remember. At first I thought that was just me running the game with proton causing issues but no, other people have the same bugs. One of them even affected the ending of awakening. Awakening in particular seems to have a lot of issues. Could have sworn people spoke quite highly of this expansion, It is good but it isn't ground breaking. Awakening was entirely new to me but the base game I had beaten before. Something rather embarrassing I can't believe I missed though, I thought up until now that Loghains first name was Teryn. Now I find out that is just a title. How in the fuck did I not notice that like 15 years ago? The game is still a fun role playing game with a lot of options and things to do. I just kinda wish it wasn't so linear. Later on in the game you really start to notice just how linear the dungeons are and how they love to re-use assets. I wonder if anyone ever went to orzammar as their first destination. I already started my second playthrough, Elven mage. She is going to do pretty much the opposite of what the first guy did (for the most part).