What Game/s are You Playing? Daily / Whenever Check :) (GAMEPLAY)

[celerystalker]

I beat Exile's End on my Vita with over seven hours on the clock, but I didn't manage 100% completion. I had 85% of the items and 3 out of 7 of the hidden messages. Around the time of my last post about the game, I started talking to my husband about it, which got him interested and then he blew through the whole thing. Since he was playing on a much bigger screen, he could more easily spot breakable walls. I noticed the obvious spots in the first mine, but I didn't realize there were much subtler tells in the other areas. So I started examining walls much more carefully from that point on, but I'm not surprised I missed some. I'll check out some online maps to pick off what little I missed and try to get that 100% completion trophy. I obviously didn't get remotely close to earning the Fast Mover trophy, which requires beating the game in under three hours. I hate speedrunning trophies, so I'm just gonna say to heck with that one. I get speedrunning is part of this genre, starting with Metroid's different endings depending on how much time you take, but it's not my thing at all.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised with the game. It's not amazing, but I never expected it to compete with the greats like Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night. I don't think it's fair to hold indie developers to the same standards as industry pros on top of their game. All the mixed reviews and criticism makes Exile's End sound a lot worse than it actually is, which is sad considering a lot of the criticism is straight up false. I guess it shows the difference between pretentious indie aficionados who want to pretend they're into retro games, even though they either haven't played old games since they were brand-new or are so young they never played them to begin with, and people like myself who still play decades-old games in the present day and have no problem playing an indie that tries to be fairly authentic to the way old games played. I found the game pretty straightforward and easy, so it's perplexing to me that so many people find the game so frustrating and confusing. The only real beefs I have with the game are the crappy way the map fills in (some rooms just never fill in completely, making it seem like you've got something left to explore when you actually don't) and that the involvement of the "legendary" Japanese industry veterans didn't amount to much. Despite having the same composer as Ninja Gaiden, the music in Exile's End doesn't stand out, in my opinion, and other than a nice piece of art when the game loads up, there's nothing about the visuals that's especially impressive either. They could've told me the game was entirely made by Western indie developers, and I would've believed it no problem.

I played through Exile's end a few years ago on PS4. I enjoyed it okay, but something about it felt kind of unfinished to me. There were a lot of areas that were pretty sparse with little to do aside from some easy platforming, and the combat felt pretty under-baked as well. I may have had my perspective tainted by playing other metroidvanias around the same time like Axiom Verge that felt a lot more robust, amd followed it a little while later with Hollow Knight.

Finally throughy kids' chess meet season. If your kids ever get into a school chess team, the meets are not parent-firendly. You can't watch them play even. You just sit in a crowded area all day trying to help your kid stay happy and focused enough (or helping the navigate Chrono Trigger on DS...).

I did in the last month play through Final Fantasy III (VI I guess) on SNES with my oldest son, and then for the first time finally played all the way through Final Fantasy V on the PS1. It was fun, and the job system was interesting, but needed a little too much grinding for what it is. Still, I liked it a lot, though it doesn't hold a candle to VI for me.

[kupomogli]

I rarely upload games to Youtube but since the 2024 Game of the Year is about to release soon, February 29th, I decided to start playing Final Fantasy 7 Remake and uploading everything to Youtube. I've been playing each chapter to familiarize myself with it then playing through a second time so I can get a really good run of the chapter. I don't like to upload just anything up there, if I don't feel that it looks good or it's not something I'm not already great at, then I don't upload it. Even though I get almost no views, it's not about the views as the videos are more for me than anything. The reason Youtube existed in the first place, to capture and display things that mean something to me not the millions of people who will throw as much trash up there and hope something sticks.

[Aussie2B]

I played through Exile's end a few years ago on PS4. I enjoyed it okay, but something about it felt kind of unfinished to me. There were a lot of areas that were pretty sparse with little to do aside from some easy platforming, and the combat felt pretty under-baked as well. I may have had my perspective tainted by playing other metroidvanias around the same time like Axiom Verge that felt a lot more robust, amd followed it a little while later with Hollow Knight.

I didn't mind that it wasn't more robust, since I was seeking out short games to begin with, but I do have Axiom Verge for Vita too and should see how that compares someday when I'm up for a lengthier Metroid-style game. I've never bought Hollow Knight myself, but my husband got that for his Mac a while back and, coincidentally, just started playing recently. Maybe Exile's End inspired him to play another Metroid-style game.

As for my Super Hydorah playing on Vita, I cleared the remaining optional stages and only have the last two stages now. I was surprised at how little practice Path of Scylla took me, considering the in-game "description" (or whatever you wanna call it) is a warning saying "Better not to enter", and a walkthrough I came across talks about the stage being a total nightmare that would take hours of practice. Go figure. Once I had good weapons, it was nothing compared to the struggle I had with Galactic Inferno or even some of the other stages. With all but the last two stages cleared, I now have every weapon at my disposal. The second-to-last stage is a boss rush, which is a design concept I've never been fond of in general, and this one is extra annoying because all six of these bosses you have to beat in a row to clear the stage are brand-new. So you have to learn a boss, probably lose when you get to the next, repeat the ones you've cleared until you learn the next, rinse and repeat. That said, I've already made it to the sixth and final boss of the stage, so hopefully I just need a little more practice before I can move on to the final stage of the game.

[celerystalker]

I didn't mind that it wasn't more robust, since I was seeking out short games to begin with, but I do have Axiom Verge for Vita too and should see how that compares someday when I'm up for a lengthier Metroid-style game. I've never bought Hollow Knight myself, but my husband got that for his Mac a while back and, coincidentally, just started playing recently. Maybe Exile's End inspired him to play another Metroid-style game.

As for my Super Hydorah playing on Vita, I cleared the remaining optional stages and only have the last two stages now. I was surprised at how little practice Path of Scylla took me, considering the in-game "description" (or whatever you wanna call it) is a warning saying "Better not to enter", and a walkthrough I came across talks about the stage being a total nightmare that would take hours of practice. Go figure. Once I had good weapons, it was nothing compared to the struggle I had with Galactic Inferno or even some of the other stages. With all but the last two stages cleared, I now have every weapon at my disposal. The second-to-last stage is a boss rush, which is a design concept I've never been fond of in general, and this one is extra annoying because all six of these bosses you have to beat in a row to clear the stage are brand-new. So you have to learn a boss, probably lose when you get to the next, repeat the ones you've cleared until you learn the next, rinse and repeat. That said, I've already made it to the sixth and final boss of the stage, so hopefully I just need a little more practice before I can move on to the final stage of the game.

I had a lot of fun with both Axiom Verge games. The second one is more streamlined in its mechanics and is more exploration-focused, while the first had an atmosphere I liked better, more and better bosses, but a whole lot of useless weapons. Hollow Knight I love to pieces. I just started a third playthrough of it. My oldest boy got strep throat, and asked me to play for him to watch while he rests on the couch. The only real flaw, if you'd call it that, is in the Godhome section, where the difficulty to complete the pantheons is ratcheted up to the point of being inaccessible for a lot of folks, with the best ending stuck behind one of the most absurd boss gauntlets ever created.

[Aussie2B]

I beat Super Hydorah for Vita last night, and hoo boy, was that a hard-fought victory. I cleared the boss rush not long after my last post, and the final stage wasn't horrible, but it's comparable in length to Galactic Inferno and thus took a fair bit of practice before I could get through it all. And go figure that the same walkthrough writer who made out Path of Scylla as a total nightmare described the final boss, Hydorah, as trivial, even though I lost to him a good number of times. I definitely wouldn't say he's the hardest boss in the game, though. Anyway, I earned the good ending, as I cleared every single stage, and it took me nearly 100 continues to accomplish that. x_x The idea of earning the hero ending, which requires a 1CC, gets a big old LOL from me. I feel relieved just beating the game at all. I spent much of the game, certainly from the Galactic Inferno onward, feeling like I bit off more than I could chew with this game. My middling shmup skill level was pushed to its absolute limits here. I can't even remember the last game to challenge me to this degree, though I'm sure I could've had a somewhat easier time with it if I had been able to play at times of day when I'm not beat. I'm gonna need something mindlessly easy I can plow through to give myself a break in the near future, haha. Until then, I might replay some of the earlier stages in Super Hydorah and see if I can pick off some trophies for the secrets. I only ever found a few, and I didn't even realize until well into the game that most secrets are invisible and require you to just fly over a specific spot. And that you're clued in on the secrets with a chime when you're close. But I'm obviously not going for the platinum here, since there's a trophy for the hero ending, among other tasks that are likely faaaaaar beyond my abilities.

[Aussie2B]

It's funny how slow-paced and easy the early stages in Super Hydorah on Vita now feel to me, having dealt with the later stages, haha. I blew through the eight stages prior to Galactic Inferno, using a guide to get the secrets in all of them. That only netted me one additional trophy, as only a few individual secrets pop a trophy (though there's also one for finding all the secrets). I did still use a couple continues even on these easier stages. I guess I'll give Galactic Inferno a try and see if all my practice can produce a relatively easy clear. If not, I'll probably stop hunting down secrets here and move on to another game.

One thing that's annoying is that I read, once you earning the good ending, on subsequent playthroughs, you get a free shield upon starting each life, but I guess that's not in this version. I see nothing different in this replay versus my first time through. I know there are some differences between this version and later releases. I know later releases got a difficulty option where you get a 3-hit shield with every life, which sounds like it would make a HUGE difference. Though, you can't earn the hero ending on that mode, and your score is reduced. But no such thing in the Vita version, nor the two-player mode.

[Aussie2B]

I'm still playing a tiny bit of Super Hydorah on Vita here and there. I didn't clear Galactic Inferno on my first try this replay, but I did pass it shortly after that. I guess all that practice has stuck with me. So I cleared some more stages after that, getting all their secrets and nabbing two more trophies. Now I have access to Path of Scylla, Charybdis, and Red Eden. I know those first two are worth attempting without better weaponry, and go figure that Red Eden is a sticking point for me now. I didn't have too much trouble with it my first time through the game, but this time, I've already blown through several continues. It doesn't help that my weapons aren't powered up at all, and Red Eden doesn't give you much of a chance to power up.

I did start up a new game too. I decided to return to the PS1 game Rapid Angel. I still think it's a shame that it wasn't localized in any way at all for its US PSN release, even if it's perfectly beatable without knowing any Japanese. The game bills itself as a "high tension comical action game" (it says this in English on the front cover), but other than coming off as random and wacky, the comedy is basically lost if you can't understand the cutscenes. This is another game where you gotta beat the whole game in one go, which I did with Natsumi. She's got almost nonexistent range, but it doesn't really matter because, with infinite continues, there isn't much challenge on the default difficulty. I agree with others who say it has a "doujin" feel. The game is a weird mix of some things looking very amateurish (namely the character art) and other things being highly detailed (all sorts of unique sprites in the backgrounds that you'll probably zip by in seconds). Nothing amazing in terms of gameplay, but it's definitely got personality and charm. Gives me a lot of Kendo Rage vibes.

[Aussie2B]

I haven't done much gaming these last couple weeks. The visit with my family came to an end, and so, between prep, traveling, and settling back in at home, I haven't had much free time. Plus, I always seem to lose interest in continuing with my "vacation" games whenever I return home. I guess the transition makes me want to shift gears all around, and with access to my full collection, I have a lot more to choose from. But I do want to tie up some loose ends. I have a book to finish, so I don't want to start up any game that's going to consume all of my free time. I'm also not quite done with Rapid Angel on my Vita. After clearing the game with Natsumi, I then did so with Ayane and Haruna, the other two girls available from the get-go. Once I got back home and settled in enough, I then played through the game with the two bonus characters unlocked after earning the good ending with one of the initial three girls. One of the bonus characters is cool in that she gets her own story and a "remixed" version of the game that even has some new content. The other bonus character has the standard stage order but without any cutscenes. It kinda feels pointless playing with him, but I guess it's good if someone wants nothing interrupting the gameplay. That said, both bonus characters have kind of annoying move sets. They can cheese some bosses pretty well, but their animations are too long to feel good for clearing out standard enemies. Anyway, I think I'll run through the game at least one more time, since I never got the bad ending. After that, I'll probably move on. I could replay to check out different dialogue options, but eh. The value of that is lost on me, considering my understanding of Japanese is far from fluency.

[Aussie2B]

I did play through Rapid Angel on my Vita with Natsumi once again, intentionally earning the bad ending, and now I think I'll give my Vita a break for at least a little while.

I decided to start up Donkey Kong on my Super Game Boy 2. I rarely use either my US Super Game Boy or the second model, since the portability of Game Boy games is a big plus to me, but the Super Game Boy enhancements to Donkey Kong are so nice that I can't bring myself to play it on anything else. I'm glad my husband picked up the Super Game Boy 2 on a whim a while back. It's nice to get the enhancements while also having it run at the correct speed. Not that it's a huge problem with the original Super Game Boy, but I still prefer to have things running properly. Anyway, I'm loving the old school Nintendo charm and polish of this game, down to the adorable demo of Mario doing an acrobatics performance. And I love that the game trolls the player, pretending to be a straight port of the arcade game at first. I cleared Big-City, the first world, and left off in the middle of the second.

[Aussie2B]

Up to Jungle, the fourth world, in Donkey Kong on my Super Game Boy 2 now. The difficulty has definitely increased, so I understand why they load you up on so many extra lives early on, though I've been able to keep my reserves at around 30. I like that the game mixes in stuff from both the original Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior. I also like how you get a face-off with Donkey Kong after every three puzzle stages. It's a nice action-focused break that adds variety to the game.

[Aussie2B]

I didn't get a chance to post more as I went through it, but I beat Donkey Kong on my Super Game Boy 2. Great game that really shows off what the Super Game Boy was capable of (yet barely utilized by any other game). I'm guessing the game was overshadowed by Donkey Kong Country released later the same year, but I'm glad I finally bought and played it. I managed to keep my lives around 30-40 through the whole game, though I had fewer than 10 by the time I beat it because the last couple stages stumped me a bit in terms of what exactly I needed to do. But overall I never found it overly challenging, but not a total cakewalk either. I just managed to keep earning extra lives at about the same rate as I was losing them. The airplane area was probably my least favorite, as I wasn't crazy about any stage with wind pushing Mario, but it's a shorter area with only eight stages anyway.

[Gametrek]

I am just DLCing stuff and checking them out. From big hits like "The inquisitor" or Bioshock rip offs like
"Hazel Skies". Otherwise looking at many RPGmaker stuff, which is like Amazing if not mentioned please go and play "Fear and Hunger 2" and just enjoy it. Just checked out if Sonic Dash again ( android ) could work, and of course my network settings messes that up ( because it keeps trying to connect ).
There are also some nice OpenBOR makes out theree with 3d running simular to "Guardian Heroes" ( you literally could make a GH game in OpenBOR now.

[Aussie2B]

I haven't started up anything seriously since Donkey Kong, but I did finally clean and test out a number of 3DS and DS games I bought before my visit with family. On 3DS, I played a tiny bit of Steel Diver, Bust-A-Move Universe, and Adventure Time: Hey Ice King! Why'd you steal our garbage?!! (That's exactly how the box of Adventure Time has the title written out, missing punctuation and capitalization and all.) Gotta say, I find the humor of Adventure Time absolutely insufferable. Just the art style and vibe of it always made me think the cartoon would definitely not appeal to me, and if the game is representative of the humor in the show, then that seals the deal. I'm just way too old for this kind of millennial/zoomer humor, haha. (Though, I'm a xennial, so depending on what cut off point you wanna use, some would claim I'm a millennial myself.) But a Zelda II homage from WayForward? I'm potentially down with that. Steel Diver is interesting, but I can see why many people don't dig it. Bust-A-Move Universe seems like a pretty barebones rendition of Puzzle Bobble. Not even a Vs. CPU mode?

On DS, I briefly played Style Savvy, Theme Park, Mario Party DS, Super Mario 64 DS, and Cooking Mama. There's something very appealing about DS games that have you flip them and hold them like an open book to play, as is the case with Style Savvy. I have a couple other DS games like that, and it still feels really cool. Cooking Mama doesn't seem quite as fun as Ore no Ryouri, but that game set a high bar. Super Mario 64 is great in any form, but I still have a hard time playing it with anything but a standard N64 controller.

[fpbrush]

Played with my Nintendo DS Lite version today :)

[Aussie2B]

Still haven't gotten particularly invested in anything, but I have been cleaning and testing a bunch of stuff these last few weeks. A few years ago, during a walk, my husband and I came across some clear bags put out on the curb for recycling and saw they were loaded full of Atari, Intellivision, and Coleco stuff. We brought everything home, and the first thing I tried was the boxed Atari 7800, which we found with ten 2600 carts and seven 7800 carts (plus some manuals). At the time, we discovered the 7800 could play the 2600 games just fine, but no matter what we did, the 7800 games wouldn't work. Disappointed with that, I cleaned up all the Colecovision carts we found. I think there was somewhere in the ballpark of 15 carts, plus some overlays for the Super Action games. I already had a Colecovision and small collection of carts, so I figured I'd test the carts on the system I already had and worry about cleaning up the found Colecovision and all the controllers (two regular and two Super Action) later. That's when I learned my Colecovision had stopped working at some point since the last time I had used it. We tried a bunch of stuff but couldn't resolve that problem either. So then the wind was really taken out of my sails, and I packed everything else away.

All these years later, I finally got the urge to mess with the stuff again. I cleaned the Intellivision II we found, plus the one whole controller (found another that was strangely pried open and missing pieces) and 30-some carts. Also found a big stack of overlays and some manuals. Fortunately, the Intellivision works just fine, as do all the carts, though the controller is only partially working. Luckily, I have an Intellivision Flashback I received as a gift a long time ago and barely touched, and I learned people make adapters for using Flashback controllers on real Intellivision systems. So I got a pair of those and can now use perfect, mint condition controllers on my Intellivision II. I also had a collection of nearly 20 Intellivision carts kicking around, despite never owning an Intellivision before this literal find, so I tested those out too. Here's the list of all I played:

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
Astrosmash
Atlantis
B-17 Bomber
Bomb Squad
Bowling
Boxing
Demon Attack
Frog Bog
Horse Racing
Ice Trek
Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack
Lock 'N' Chase
Loco-Motion
Masters of the Universe: The Power of He-Man
Math Fun
Mind Strike
Mission X
Motocross
NBA Basketball
NFL Football
NHL Hockey
Night Stalker
Safecracker
Sea Battle
Space Armada
Space Battle
Space Spartans
Stampede
Star Strike
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
Sub Hunt
Swords & Serpents
Triple Action
Tron: Solar Sailer
Utopia
Vectron

I've got over ten duplicates, so that's why the numbers don't quite add up. Anyway, it's been fun exploring this library that I had practically no knowledge of or experience with. So far, I think I like Loco-Motion best, as I was already a fan of the Game Boy version under the title Guttang Gottong on the European Konami GB Collection Vol. 3. But some other notable ones to me were Astrosmash, Frog Bog, Space Armada, and Stampede. I guess I'm grativating toward the ones that are easy to quickly grasp. Some of the others will take some time to figure out.

We also have an Intellivoice we found, but it ended up buried away elsewhere, so I'll dig that out, clean it up, and test it another time.

If all this wasn't rad enough already, my husband managed to fix the 7800 too. His skill at tinkering with electronics has gotten even better than when we last messed with it, so this time he noticed oxidation on one of the sockets, put in a jump wire, and voila, a 100% working 7800. All the 7800 games we found worked fine, and I played a bit of Centipede, Choplifter, Food Fight, and Joust. Then I popped in Asteroids and Pitfall for 2600 just to make sure the system still plays 2600 games too.

I think I'll leave it at that for now. The Colecovision we found was in the roughest shape of everything, so I have no faith that it'll work any better than the Colecovision I've had longer. I do want to have a working Colecovision again someday, but I need a break from cleaning and troubleshooting.

[Aussie2B]

I received a few imports in the mail yesterday, and the first I cleaned and tried out was Sailor Moon R for Game Boy. I cleared the first stage via the main game mode, where you get all the different types of gameplay. Pretty middle-of-the-road, not particularly good nor bad. But I'm a Sailor Moon fan, and I thought it would be fun to get some more Sailor Moon games, even if they, overall, aren't that highly regarded. Already have a copy of Another Story, which seems the highest praised of the bunch.

[Aussie2B]

Since my last post, I tried more of the batch of imports I mentioned and then bought and received a few more yet. On Nintendo 64, I played a bit of the sample games in Dezaemon 3D. On Super Famicom, I played Chrono Trigger and Front Mission: Gun Hazard. I've had the SNES version of Chrono Trigger since shortly after it released, but it's fun to have a Japanese copy too. Also, there were a couple files already on the cart, and one had some funny names. Here's what the person changed the names to:

Crono -> Nuts
Marle -> Panna (presumably either a reference to panna cotta or "pan", the Japanese word for bread)
Lucca -> Milk
Frog -> Kerokon ("kero" is a Japanese SFX representing the sound frogs make, akin to "ribbit" or "croak". I'm not sure what is intended by the "kon". Maybe "complex", as in "lolicon", "siscon", "brocon", etc.?)
Robo -> Robokon (same deal as with Frog)
Ayla -> Chibi (basically means "small", but it's like calling Ayla a runt or a pipsqueak, so I guess it's supposed to be ironic, like how you might call a huge, tough guy "Tiny")
Magus -> Signal (your guess is as good as mine as to why "Signal" was chosen, haha)

Anyway, I also bought a couple other Japan-exclusive N64 games, but my husband was the one to test those. And I bought a couple PC-FX games, but I don't feel like pulling out the system just yet.

I did finally start up something to actually get invested in. Two games, actually, which wasn't my plan, but I got a jury summons and figured I should pick out a handheld game to start. I don't know what jury duty is like elsewhere in the country, but here, there's usually a ton of sitting around doing nothing while you wait to see if you're even going to be selected. A previous time I had jury duty I played through all of Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge on a Game Boy Pocket. I decided I'd take my Vita, and I started Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack and got up to the third area. It should be enough for my jury duty (and I have digital games on my Vita too if I'm desperate for something else) but hopefully won't be too long and take me away from the longer game I started, which is Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness, aka Star Ocean 5, for PS4.

I bought the collector's edition of Star Ocean, which was exclusive to the Square-Enix web store, way back when the game was new eight years ago, and despite it being another entry in my favorite series, I hadn't even opened it until recently. I didn't have a PS4 when I bought it, but if I recall correctly, I had one within a year or two. But I continued to put it off, then got pregnant and for a long time figured an involved RPG just wasn't doable for me. But now I'm at a point where I sleep relatively okay (never enough, but it's not like nursing repeatedly through the night like before), and I pretty reliably have a little time to myself each night. The game doesn't do auto saves or temp saves or anything, just old school save points, but if I'm smart about when I start and quit, I should be able to fully shut down the PS4 each night.

Even though I now have dozens of PS4 games (even after purging a ton of Limited Run Games stuff), this is the first one I'm playing on the system. I've just been using my PS4 for DVDs and Blu-rays all these years, though my husband has played some games on it (but prefers to get stuff for PC over PS4 when possible). I guess I've just been holding out for Star Ocean when it felt like the time was right.

I am aware that the game has a terrible reputation, but I've remained optimistic, as I've loved every Star Ocean I've played thus far, which includes Star Ocean 4, another one that gets a ton of hate. But I do have to say that Star Ocean 5 made an awful first impression on me, which I've never experienced with a Star Ocean game previously. The NPC interaction is frankly just horrible, all the text is hard to read, and all the attempts to make the game "seamless" just work against it. Things feel awkwardly abrupt, like I'm missing something or the game itself is missing something, as if the game wasn't fully finished. It's been giving me Infinite Undiscovery vibes, which is my least liked tri-Ace game, and even kind of reminds me of my experience playing Quest 64 in some ways. But once I got out of the opening town, I started enjoying it more, and I'm currently at the second town. I'm hoping the game will grow on me more and more, and I'm hoping Star Ocean 6, which I haven't played, doesn't repeat some of these mistakes. Sometimes it feels like game developers need to keep "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" in mind, but I also realize I'm a dinosaur stuck in the past and some things change just because that's the direction modern gaming demands. But I'd sure as heck rather simply press a button to initiate and advance dialogue than have a ton of junk pop up all over the screen and disappear before I can even finish reading. This game kinda makes me all the more want to stick with retro games and new releases of retro games or games that stick to older styles of design.

[Tron 2.0]

PS5
Star Wars Dark Forces Remaster Night Diver Studios does it again :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b9TTurkH4c

[Aussie2B]

I'm getting into somewhat of a groove with Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on my PS4 now. I got Victor and Fiore, and I think I had an encounter with a couple other characters who will join later. Then I got to the castle, so Vic and Fiore took off. Now I'm back to just Fidel and Miki and have to head back to the initial town. I know this game was advertised as seamless and streamlined, and true enough, everything feels rather stripped down. Battles feel like they have less depth than in prior Star Ocean games, so I haven't even bothered to use anyone but Fidel yet. I basically just mash on X and O alternatively with an occasional skill if the enemies seem a bit tougher. I guess it's fitting in a way. The whole opening feels very derivative of the first Star Ocean, with the starting characters being a group of fighters who are tasked with defending a rural town. Fidel and Miki are basically Ratix and Milly. ("Miki" could even be a portmanteau of "Milly Kiliet", which is the official romanization of the name in Japan. Never mind the nonsense changes made in First Departure's localization.) Miki also has a nickname for Fidel, just like Milly does for Ratix. And I guess Ted would be Dorn, since he doesn't join the party (though Dorn does very briefly). Anyway, where I'm going with this is that, in the first Star Ocean, Ratix sits and does nothing if you switch to controlling another character, so it makes sense to control Ratix the vast majority of the time. In SO5, Fidel is the only character you can control outside of battle, and given the similarities to the first Star Ocean, it's fitting that I'm controlling him in battle too. But I'm sure I'll use others eventually.

I've learned some roles, specialties, and Item Creation abilities, but there's not a ton to do with those either. But now I can harvest and such like in SO4. I've completed a number of quests, but there's only been one so far where I didn't already have the required items when accepting the quest. By simply buying stuff in shops when it says I have zero of an item and fighting most enemies I see, it's been easy to amass whatever I need. I guess I'll see if quests turn into grindy busywork later. I've also heard there's a lot of backtracking, so I guess heading back to Sthal is my first taste of that. But there's a shortcut to take, so it sounds like I don't have to retread the same ground.

Overall, I'm enjoying the game now and have mostly adjusted to its annoyances, though it's definitely on track for being my least favorite Star Ocean so far. But like I said, I've loved every other one I've played, so being in last place isn't necessarily much of a slight. And even if past Star Ocean games didn't leave a bad first impression on me like this one did, I do have to admit that the series isn't the greatest about its opening sequences. I mean, the sheer amount of dialogue in SO2's opening, especially if you pick Claude, can be a real slog to get through. With SO5, they did themselves a disservice by abruptly throwing you into a battle tutorial, then making you deal with the terrible NPC interaction, and then having your first real battle take place at night while townspeople are "fighting" all over the place too. You can barely see or follow what's going on in that attack on the town. Once you get to regular battles, it's so much better.

[Aussie2B]

I did my jury duty and wasn't selected for a trial, so it was just the one day, and since my name was called early, I didn't have to wait around long and thus didn't get to play much. I got in like 30-45 minutes of time with Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack on my Vita while I was there. But I played more last night too, so now I'm in the fourth area, the Badlands, on, I think, the final stage of the area. And as far as I can tell, there are only two more areas after that.

In Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on my PlayStation 4, I went back to Sthal, did what I needed to do there, and now I gotta go back to Central Resulia, haha. So I'm definitely understanding why people complain about backtracking. And I've yet to explore anything that I would consider a legitimate dungeon. Anyway, I decided to take the long way back, since there's new stuff I can do along the way. I did my first run through the optional Cathedral of Oblivion, which is kind of like an arena. It appears to be a reference to the Cave of Oblivion from Valkyrie Profile, which also had a degree of randomness to it. I had to do three battles before I could leave. The second was a bit challenging, and the third definitely was. I blew through most of my healing items on that one. Next I'm gonna restock in Myiddok (some of these town names are really over-the-top) and see what new stuff is available there. There should be another portal to the Cathedral of Oblivion on the plains too. (I know because I just recently bought the Prima strategy guide for the game, which I'm referencing to see what I may be missing.)

[Slate]

Super Bonk for the Super NES.

... So long as my power doesn't go out, I've gotten up to Level 6. I'm close to the end as it is, and this Super NES has been on for almost a week.

- Austin

[YoshiM]

My play time has bounced around quite a bit. For a while I wanted to play my Steam Deck during a lunch break but of course I never could take a break when my deck was there. Ugh.

I have gotten a little Atari 2600 play in with some Pitfall II. As my hardware ages, I am looking at retro-alternatives for play on modern TVs. I currently have my eye on the Atari 2600+, even though it IS a software emulation box. It is just becoming a GREAT emulation box, but it's best played with actual carts (though a Harmony cart can be used, but only loaded with one game at a time, but I don't know if I want to keep flashing it to change games). I bought a loose Pitfall II cart for a decent price from a local toy store, so after giving it a good clean I played that for quite a while. I will admit my memory really sucked on this title as I couldn't remember it had ladders as my CRT only showed "holes" to fall down (which I thought was the gameplay for a bit until I thought how this didn't seem right). My TV's brightness was too low (which I never noticed on ANY other game but this one so far) and after turning it up, the ladders appeared. I played a MUCH better game after that.

Earlier I got down with some original Sonic action on the first Genesis Mini. I have never beaten this game in what, 34 years or so give or take? I usually got as far as the second or third act of the Labyrinth Zone (or the "Water Level" as I told my kids) and that was that. The frustration level tipped over my threshold and I never got back around to playing it again. Thanks to the magic of save states, I finally got past that damned zone! I'm now in the "Scrap Brain" Zone and saved it there. I also have 4 chaos emeralds.

On Father's Day I went to a different arcade, "Hero's Venture" in Two Rivers, WI. as opposed to the Garcade in Menomonee Falls. I found it interesting that it had a "pay as you go" side and then the all day play-for-one-fee side. My overall experience was underwhelming. The "Pay as you go" side required the use of rechargable point cards instead of just taking cash or quarters, which I think is worse than having to buy tokens. The games there were mostly the really "big" machines, like a couple VR style systems, a lot of redemption machines and....pinball. The ONLY pinball they had in the place you could only play using a card. There were none in the "all day fee" side.

The "All day" side did have a nice selection of mid 80's games on up. I haven't seen Black Tiger, Lifeforce, Ghosts n' Goblins, Operation Wolf and such for a very long time. The games were in their section of sorts (fighting games of many ages in one area, sit down driving games in another, etc.) and they had about 4 air hockey tables along with a pool table. Sounds like paradise, right? The problem, for me anyways and my daughter (my son...he didn't seem to care but got bored near the end of our stay), was that there were a decent number of games in states of disrepair. Both Pac-Man and Mr.s Pac-Man were near unplayable because the joysticks were wonky. Pac-Man's stick had problems going down, meaning I'd have to slam it a bit to register. My son didn't say what his problem was on Ms. Pac but it was also joystick related. Pole Position's screen was off color, Ninja Baseball Bat Man's panel was lifting up while I played, Dungeons and Dragons: Tower of Doom had joystick problems....the list went on. The "back room" past the first room with the air hockey tables with the black light ribbons, floor tape in the shape of a Tron Recognizer and such looked like a dingy garage someone set up arcade machines in.

Overall, Garcade spolied me. Even though the outside of the place is part of an aged old strip mall, the inside is very inviting and has a lot of games of different genres from different ages. And I can count with maybe a couple fingers on one hand the problems I had with an arcade game there. On top of that, you can play ALL the games there on free play with an all day pass....including pinball.

Also on Father's Day I got some time in on Full Quiet for the NES. It is a pain in the rump trying to get the second cabin open! I watched a walkthrough and I was on my way to getting the place unlocked BUT I took too long and got killed by the monster that comes out at midnight. I guess you really have to manage your time in this leg of the adventure and if you don't know your way, you are scah-roood. I did notice my TV gets a bright glow on the lower right with the NES, so I'm not sure if I have to keep adjusting the brightness when I play Atari and then NES? Or if my TV is starting to show signs of impending failure (it was a refugee from a renter who just up and left the apartment they were renting from us, leaving most of his stuff behind).

[kupomogli]

Platinumed Ys8 again. Ys8 was a favorite of mine when it released on the PS4 when I first platinumed it, picked it up for PS5 and played through it then, I recently replayed the entire game on Nightmare difficulty using the new game plus option. I didn't carry over any levels and I didn't use any of the equipment, I just wanted it in my inventory so when I did get to the point that I could use it, I didn't have to worry about the materials and I'd already have them or the equipment. So it was a little easier than a brand new Nightmare save file but just cutting a little bit of time.

Also, I recently played through Cult of the Lamb. My first experience with the game I played a couple hours then I quit, but my recent experience I started a new game and after a week or more I finished the game in 16 hours. I think it's one of the better procedural games because it's about 80% survival/simulation game and only about 20% procedural dungeon gameplay.

So Cult of the Lamb is basically part Harvest Moon game with a lot of depth with its time/resource management. That can be stated of any game of this type and for Cult of the Lamb this is what you're going to be doing atleast 80% of the time. You start off with some followers and you'll speak to your followers and bless them daily which will level them up and provide you devotion, but they can also pray at the shrine to provide you devotion as well, and this is what you gain to acquire new things to built. At first, you can't make beds, so you'll want to build beds for them to sleep on and those beds will break so you have to repair them. From there they need to to be able to eat, so you want to make plots of land to grow crops. You'll eventually run out of trees and stone or need other material that is made from trees and stone, so you'll need to create mines, lumber mills, etc, and have them work on getting you more because otherwise you need to take multiple trips just to get enough of either resource. Your followers need to go to the bathroom regularly so at first you'll be sweeping up all the poop otherwise they'll get sick and throw up everywhere and followers will get sick from that. Eventually you can create an outhouse, eventually you can create a janitor area for them to clean up after themselves. You can create a building that can hold the seed you get from your crops and another building around your crops so your followers will water them and then later on you can upgrade this to where they will pick your crops for you. Every single time you get enough devotion, you need more and you get one item each level.

But you also have a chapel in which you can preach once a day. Each time you level up there, you can increase aspects of your character in dungeons from finding different weapon types and increasing the level of weapons that you find in the dungeon, so unlike most procedural games, going in the dungeon isn't a big requirement as long as you have the followers. Each time your followers level up you'll get these tablet pieces and each time you get a full tablet you can add a new doctrine. There are 25 doctrines in all minus the doctrines you gain after everything is completed which allow you to gain sin, which allows for cosmetic upgrades to your chapel. Each time you choose a new doctrine, you have the choice between one of two. You can have crops grow instantly, you can throw a banquet to fill up the hunger gauge(or the other option is to fast for three days without going hungry.) One that I've found very useful is sacrifice your followers to gain extra experience, allowing you to level your weapons and curses up faster and it's not really an issue because once your followers become elderly they can't do anything to help anyways. They just walk around town until they die of old age and then you have to spend the resources to bury them, some followers might get scared that someone died, etc, or you may have picked up a dissenter follower and you want to get rid of them so you choose one of a few options.

But the other part of this game is going into the dungeons. You were brought back to life to start a cult worshiping the one who waits and your object from there is to defeat all of the old faith. So you go into one of four areas(only one to start,) and you go through a few rooms until you get to a mini boss. Once killing the mini boss you'll get a follower along with everything else you've picked up and you come across a locked door. You'll go through each area three times with three mini bosses and you'll have two negative effects per old god that is set upon your followers, starvation, being sickness, even have to kill them when they're mind controlled and attempt to kill you. These dungeons are rather short and I'd say if you want to make them even easier, create a demon summoning location in your own and also choose the upgrade that allows you to sacrifice a follower if you die and only sacrifice them if you need that little bit of push to defeat the boss, another way that you can get rid of the elderly in your cult and have them prove useful.

Now, you may have heard the SRG version includes a little bit of DLC. It doesn't include all DLC and it doesn't really matter because even the DLC it includes is cosmetic. I never even used a single decoration in my entire game except for three cheap ones when I was requested by a member to do so. If you don't want to track down an SRG version then the standard version with no DLC isn't a big deal to own, it's the same exact game.

Though it would have been nice if they did wait because this August the game is getting a local co op mode to do everything with two players, a lamb and a goat. There are issues I had with the game though, technical issues. The game auto saves so the soft crashing wasn't a big deal as I pressed the options button went to the main menu and reloaded, but it happened in a dungeon during an event that never loaded and since it auto saves before entering the dungeon I had to do the entire dungeon again which as I said, the dungeons aren't very long. The second issue is that whenever the game goes to a different day, the transition appears that it should be smooth but knocks it down to single digit FPS for around two seconds or so. This is literally each and every time a new day comes around. I haven't noticed frame drops like that anywhere else in the game and on the PS5 version it does run at 60fps with no drops during normal gameplay.

[Aussie2B]

I posted as much a while ago, but I beat Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack on my Vita, and I did play some more after that. Snagged one additional trophy and then located a bunch more Blob Friends and earned more gold medals. I still might go back for more, but I'm pretty involved in Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on my PlayStation 4.

I'm over 25 hours into Star Ocean 5, and judging by the strategy guide, it seems like I'm about halfway through. I've heard of people beating the entire main story in that much time, and if one were to only focus on the main story, I can see how that's doable. I'm probably spending just as much time, if not more so, on optional stuff than the main story. And really, there's not much to the game outside of the optional content. You mostly just bounce back and forth through the same handful of towns and fields. I only just recently cleared what I'd consider a proper dungeon, and it wasn't much of one, with one floor, no puzzles, and a mostly straightforward point A to point B path. The game definitely has that same kind of unfinished vibe that Infinite Undiscovery has, like I'll be thinking "well, this is where a dungeon should've been". Though maybe some of it is intentional design, with their whole "seamless" approach. I guess a traditional dungeon would feel more "game-like" and less like a natural part of the world. And with all the reused assets, the game kind of feels more like a fan hack than an official entry in the series. It's also finding more and more new ways to annoy me as I progress, like the "secret" conversations between Emmerson and Anne that would occur in the middle of a cutscene where I'm already reading the subtitles and then have to whip the camera around to try to find the text boxes translating their conversation too and would inevitably miss stuff. But this isn't the first time I've played a tri-Ace game that seems to punish you if you choose to play with Japanese voice acting (or if you're deaf or hard of hearing and rely on the text). It seems like there's always stuff that's just untranslated (like the lines characters speak after leveling up here or full frickin' mid-battle conversations in Resonance of Fate), or the manner in which text is displayed makes it impossible to catch everything. Also gotta love that Star Ocean 5 gave me a means of fast travel, greatly reducing the irritation of backtracking to old towns for Private Actions and quests, only to quickly eliminate that option, so now I'm back to trudging along the same paths for the billionth time.

My comments sound harsh, I know, but I am still enjoying the game in spite of the bounty of annoyances and look forward to playing each evening. However, I don't think I could say I love it, when I can easily say I loved every previous Star Ocean I've played, even with how maligned some of them are, like Star Ocean 4. The Star Ocean 4 haters should play Star Ocean 5 and then see how much good is actually in Star Ocean 4. I'm probably spending most of my time on quests and Private Actions, and neither are exceptional. The quests are mostly busywork. Kill so-and-so number of a specific enemy, collect so-and-so number of a specific item. But occasionally they unlock new Specialties, which is nice. The Private Actions are honestly rather pathetic compared to those in older Star Ocean games. They tend to be extremely short, random, and end abruptly. I'm talking like sometimes literally two sentences and it's over. But this is the kind of game where you have to take what you can get.

[kupomogli]

Speaking of Star Ocean, I haven't played any of the games since Star Ocean The Last Hope until I've played and finished Second Story R. This game receives some massive praise, however I think they ruined Star Ocean the Second Story. Even Second Evolution is a far better game.

Now the one thing Second Story R does amazingly well is it assists people like myself who refused to use strategy guides in actually understanding what a lot of the mechanics do. Writing allows you to level a lot of skills up without using your points, but then publishing allows you to increase all characters intimacy level with the others. I also didn't do many of the personal actions in the original or the PSP game because how difficult they were to find without constantly leaving towns, looking everywhere, leaving town, looking everywhere. The game tells you exactly what town has a a personal action and then you just bring up the map, do the personal action, leave town, if there's another one it'll tell you, so I was actually able to experience them this time around.

However, aside from the quality of life improvements and the graphical upgrade, they just ruined the combat. Star Ocean the Second Story R is not enjoyable to play AT ALL. So you may have experienced this in the demo, but they added the blind side mechanic from Star Ocean The Last Hope and when it's only Claude or Rena alone, or Claude and Rena(set to only healing) the mechanic is actually useful, evade before they attack and then attack the enemies afterwards. However as soon as you get more characters you can't spend the time to wait for the enemies to attack, if you try to do so then you're leaiving all this time open that all your other characters are going to run in and attack and if you just wait and then counter you're literally going to be left to a bunch of dead allies. So you'll never use that mechanic the second you have another character to aggro the enemies.

The other problem with the game is that the game is either stupidly easy to where you'll walk through these paper thin enemies, or stupidly hard to where these enemies will walk through you like you're paper. If you turn up the difficulty higher than the normal difficulty you'll just start getting curb stomped by everything you'll just button mash through to the end of the game and the game just feels like an extreme chore to even play through at that pointt. Until you get to the wise men. The first of the wise men is easy, you'll just walk through him like nothing, but then you go to the last dungeon and fight three at a time. One of the wise men has a pulse ability that goes off every few seconds and is unavoidable, staggering and dealing damage to all characters as the pulse is basically an aoe physical attack that goes off whether you're attacking the enemy or night. The second of the three wise men in that battle will constantly cast aoe spells that will kill you in one or two hits and then the third of the wise men while use an inescapable attack that doesn't attack straight forward so you can't just move up and down to avoid it, it literally tracks you. So at this point you'll actually need to level grind in order to defeat them. I was at the point that I hated playing combat in this game so I turned it to easy and I still needed to level grind. I then got to the second to last boss and holy sh-- was this boss like all three of them in one, had to level grind again. I then fought the last boss who was much easier than the second to last boss. But basically, the difficulty in this game was either "no chance" or "instant win button." I for one hated the game and had such a bad experience. Even if the game remained stupidly easy, I wouldn't have enjoyed it because I didn't enjoy it, but it was even more frustrating when it was clear that there is literally no skill in the game, it's just how powerful you are. I understand the original Star Ocean the Second Story is like this, but the original is atleast a bit more balanced and atleast feels like it's neither too hard or too easy unless you run into enemies that you shouldn't be fighting(certain areas on the world map.)

[Aussie2B]

I haven't played any of the SO2 remake, but I did buy the stupidly expensive collector's edition that was exclusive to the Square Enix store. I'm not surprised if the balance feels off because it's based on Second Evolution, which already threw off the balance by adding in the 3-hit standard attack combo. I can imagine what adding extra mechanics would do. It seems like a large percentage of the people who play it just look up how to break it and then cruise through everything. Bloody Armor was very tedious and annoying to use in a beneficial way in the original (having to endlessly spam healing abilities), but in the remake, it seems easier to abuse. I've also noticed that a lot of people talk as if the remake is objectively the definitive version of the game and that every single change is objectively for the better, which is off-putting. One change I heard about that I don't like is that characters earn the same EXP whether they're in the active battle party or not. I much prefer having control over my characters' levels.

Anyway, as for Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on PlayStation 4, I have over 30 hours on the clock and have been catching up on a huge backlog of Private Actions. They may be pretty short, but there sure are a bajillion of them. Apparently, I hadn't quite understood how they worked. Some PAs trigger at certain spots on the maps while you're adventuring like normal, and others you have to intentionally initiate in towns by entering a golden circle with a whistle icon to split up. Then you're shown a number of diamonds that indicate how many you can see. Once you complete whatever you want, you regroup, and the whistle point disappears. I assumed the whistle point disappearing means you've seen all you can at that point in time in that town, and if I left the town or whatever and saw the whistle point return, I figured you could split up but wouldn't be able to do any more PAs until you advanced the story. Turns out, the whistle icon always disappears after doing a round of PAs, but if you enter a building or leave town and come back, it will comes back if there are more available. If you leave and return and it's still gone, then you know you're caught up. Likewise, you can farm the "random" PAs in a similar way if you know the spots they happen at. Do one, enter a building or leave the map, then return to that spot to see if another will occur. Just in Sthal alone, I spent over an hour last night catching up on dozens I hadn't yet seen. Most PAs just get backlogged so you can see them whenever, but I know some are missable. I'm not sure if I've missed any thus far, but I'm going to try to be more thorough going forward. Even though I'm referring to a guide, I basically just skim pages on parts I've already done, so I wouldn't be surprised if I missed something somewhere. I know there are also missable enemies for the encyclopedia, since areas get new enemies (more like tougher palette swaps) periodically, and I haven't been killing every enemy on every field all throughout the game. I don't want to read up on the game too much and get spoilers, so if I miss something, oh well. If I actually want the platinum someday, I'd have to replay the game two more times on higher difficulties anyway.

[Slate]

Landstalker on Genesis, since I fixed the game. It's a pretty solid game, though it took a while to get used to needing to press the D-pad in diagonal directions.

I'd like to play Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure again too, but I don't have a copy.

- Austin

[Tron 2.0]

Landstalker on Genesis, since I fixed the game. It's a pretty solid game, though it took a while to get used to needing to press the D-pad in diagonal directions.

I'd like to play Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure again too, but I don't have a copy.

- Austin
Landstalker using a standard genesis controller is kind of cumbersome to use unless you have a joystick instead.Back in the mid 2000's id play the game through the virtual console for wii.I will say using the procontroller analogue still was very comfortable to use for playing.

[Aussie2B]

I spent days (roughly an hour each night) just doing optional stuff in Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on PlayStation 4. I think I'm finally caught up on Private Actions (the ones I can do without Relia at least), and I also did some quests and a couple runs through the updated Cathedral of Oblivion. Now I'm finally ready to start making story progress again.

[Slate]

Landstalker using a standard genesis controller is kind of cumbersome to use unless you have a joystick instead.Back in the mid 2000's id play the game through the virtual console for wii.I will say using the procontroller analogue still was very comfortable to use for playing.

It was a bit bothersome, but I got used to it enough. Thankfully, the save battery's still working, and it read at 3.02 volts. I decided to start having a spare save file, just in case one save should corrupt while I am saving.

I also started playing Jurassic Park and The Lion King, also both on Genesis. I finally figured out how to get through Levels 2 and 3 of The Lion King, and it's not as difficult as my plays of Ghosts 'n' Goblins on NES in 2022.

- Austin

[Aussie2B]

I made a silly mistake in Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on PlayStation 4, and I have no idea how long it was affecting me.

First, let me go on a tangent. The English localization of this game reads like an English major trying to show off their vocabulary, or at least someone who really loves their thesaurus. I think I have a pretty decent vocabulary myself. I work in publishing, after all. But even I find myself often looking up definitions of some of the extremely obscure words this game spits out, and I highly doubt the Japanese script uses equally obscure langauge. Star Ocean games aren't exactly known for having deep, highbrow stories. They're effectively Star Trek episodes in which crew members get tangled up in a conflict on an underdeveloped planet, with a heaping helping of anime tropes on top. So what's funny is that, tonally, the vocab choices arguably work to the detriment of the game. When some random NPC who isn't presented as well-educated is expressing that he has the hots for Fiore, it doesn't seem particularly appropriate to me for him to use the word "pulchritude" instead of, you know, "beauty" or something. Funnier yet, I haven't noticed any typos or other mistakes in run-of-the-mill text, but when the game tries to get flowery, that's when the screw-ups slip in. I've noticed "atramentous" on a couple occasions, which, again, probably would've been better replaced with something more basic, and one time it was misspelled. Even an inn, which is labeled on the map and has its name show up in large text every time you enter has "sultanic" misspelled as "sultantic". Anyway, with an RPG and the quantity of text that goes along with said genre, I certainly wouldn't argue for the entire script to be pedestrian language, but this is the opposite extreme and feels way overboard, or as the kids say these days, "extra". Considering it's a Teen-rated game, I feel bad for any 13-year-old playing the game and probably just guessing at what words mean from the context. Although, I guess if somebody learns some new words from the game, it's not all bad.

Partially, I just wanted to talk about how ridiculous the localization is, haha, but I also bring this up because my mistake is related to the game's text. Most of the game has been brain-dead easy, so when I got a role that exchanges some amount of EXP gain for SP gain, I figured, "Sure, why not" and used that. Then I got an accessory that seemingly did the same thing and equipped that. You see, despite the over-the-top prose, the game does a piss-poor job of explaining the factors of roles, equipment, etc. It's a lot of abbreviations and stuff written out like formulas and just isn't very clear. Maybe it's just modern gaming terminology that I'm not familiar with, who knows. I am a dinosaur, after all, haha. It turns out the accessory causes me to gain ZERO experience, in exchange for a miniscule boost to SP gain. Really, it seems more like a trolling accessory than something that could be genuinely useful. But getting back to the whole "seamless" thing, the game pops battle results on the side of the screen, and then they quickly disappear, while I'm probably already running off somewhere. I usually glance to see if I got any good drops, but I don't care about the exact amounts of EXP, SP, and Fol I'm getting. But while doing the second proper dungeon of the game (yet another laboratory), I noticed I was getting 0 EXP every battle. At first, I assumed there must be some story reason for that and continued on, but I lost a couple times on the boss battle following the third "protect Anne" battle and started thinking about what I could do to improve my odds. I think I was probably using that accessory for quite a while, haha. I did struggle a good bit on the second "protect Anne" battle right before entering this dungeon too, so I guess the lack of EXP gain finally caught up with me. I suppose I inadvertently found a way to increase the challenge, haha. But even so, outside of the optional Cathedral of Oblivion battles, the only battles I've lost are the first two "protect Anne" missions and this boss battle I'm currently up to, which is why I never even noticed the handicap I gave myself.

[YoshiM]

I've been all over the place lately. Not too much retro save for "Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D" for the 3DS. I met the Princess and got out of the castle to get to Kakariko Village. That's about as much time I had for that.

Next up was some Switch play. I played some "Cadence of Hyrule" along with dipping my toes back into "The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim" after reading a post on Atari Age. Was in a completely different location than I remembered and had a blast running some wolves through with my bow.

I had planned to play some "Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition" BUT that whole Crowdstrike thing struck my plans. Got "the call" from work at 4:30 this morning and pretty much spent all day clearing that mess out with the rest of my team.

[kupomogli]

Brigandine The Legend of Forsena and Brigandine Grand Edition are my two favorite games, but the last few days I'm recording a little bit of footage from Tactics Ogre Reborn to try my hand at a video review. I'll admit, I'm not going to put as much effort as you see in other videos where they cut five to 10 seconds of video to repeatedly change what's being seen and while I will do some of that, there's going to be a lot less of that. I doubt it's going to get many views but that's not why I'm really doing it. This game is the best TRPG we've seen in decades and no one has played it, not even fans of the genre, not even fans of Tactics Ogre or Tactics Ogre on PSP thinking it's just yet again the same game.

It's pretty crazy, but Tactics Ogre Let Us Cling Together on Super Famicom defined the 3D/Isometric TRPG way back in 1995 and the mechanics are borrowed by most other games in the genre to this date. Weight playing a factor in your character's speed, whether you take move or take an action reduces your recovery time, height factors into range of attack from bows allowing increased range, etc, etc, etc. It innovated on many mechanics and not that innovation makes the game great, but as flaws as the original is in terms of damage where bows are the definitive weapon of choice, how most classes are identical to one another with different stats, the ninja just being broken because the agility stat being the most broken stat in the game, the game itself is still a great game.

I don't care what you innovated if you're a bad game. Dragon Warrior didn't really definie anything when Wizardry and Ultima did it first, and while I don't like Wizardry and Ultima either, Dragon Warrior was only a good game because it was one of the few games that existed in the RPG genre, it only took literally one game, the original Final Fantasy to just show how bad Dragon Warrior actually was as a game and the genre has got better since. So my praise for Tactics Ogre and its innovation is because the game STILL holds up to this day as one of the better games in the genre.

However, there's no reason to ever play the original Tactics Ogre, because while it has its own underlying flaws, the game perfects everything that the original game did wrong. The game takes what the PSP changed, and completely guts that trash game. The PSP game is garbage. It added some really cool things, but if you wanted to use any of it the game was an absurd grind. Reborn through all of that shit away. Tactics Ogre Reborn kept the script change and added voice acting, tied passives like counterattack, parry, etc to weapons instead of learning them through a skill tree, any skills that characters would gain were now based on level and added a level cap at each point. There was no grinding, there was no busy work, everything you get is given to you and you just equip your characters. The functionality of the PSP skills were changed to either active skills, passive skills, and auto skills which only allowed you to equip up to four and one of them were going to be your weapon skill, so your characters could vary depending on how you wanted to use them.

With the addition of these auto skills that were very potent, but they only trigger about 40% of the time, your team composition is less about each individual class and more about builds. If you were to play a card game, you're not going to build a deck of 50 different cards, your deck would ultimately be trash. Maybe the perfect cards would fall into place, but the best decks would be builds centering around maybe 15-20 different cards at most in that 50 card deck. And that's how Tactics Ogre Reborn's party system works. One terror knight is going to very slowly spread fear and debuffs to all enemies, having two terror knights will do so twice as fast. One soldier or archer will allow your party to spread debuffs but when the auto ability only works 40-50% of the time, it's best to have two to give yourself a much better chance that these effects will occur, same with dragoons when dealing with beasts and dragons, same with beast tamers when your party is filled with beasts or dragons. One knight will help tank, but having two knights in the party both with guardian force going off 40-50% of the time, you'll be able to not only going to half damage to that character but then sustain half of the damage reduced. So 1000 damage will only hit the targeted character 500 and the knight 250, but when that effect is absent completely there goes your character in an OHKO from a boss. So these new mechanics that were built into the game retain what makes Tactics Ogre so great and perfects the class build party system.

However, Tactics Ogre Reborn doesn't stop there, because how varied Tactics Ogre weapon system has been since the original it's now been reworked completely. The shield guarantees knockback 100%. It deals a little bit of damage, but it's less about the damage it deals than it is about the party and enemy positioning. I didn't bring up the cards that will appear on the map before but there are cards that will randomly appear on the map, if you have a character that's next to or can't quite reach a card, a character with a shield can push them into it. You can push a boss into a debuff card to remove all their cards, or push them into another card to push the first card on their list completely off. Your characters won't often jump off of ledges so having the shield encourage them is a great way to move a distance that may take one or more turns and enemies on the side of bottomless pits can be pushed to their deaths, a great way to get rid of undead without having to kill AND exorcise them. But while the shield is a great "weapon" for positioning, the spear is a great weapon for a melee character to attack at a range or even attack two enemies at once. Additionally let's say you have a character set up for a pincer attack and the enemy doesn't counterattack as they have one handed equipment, attacking with the spear or whip from a range of two triggers the character to pincer. If the spear or whip attacks an enemy that can only counter from a space of one and there is an ally behind with pincer and also in front with pincer, the pincer will trigger and the counterattack will then trigger the second pincer attack. You have two hands to equip any two single handed or one two handed weapon.

Debuffs and buffs are now extremely important in this game. Not only are the soldier and archer great for building melee and ranged debuff parties, the beast tamer is one of the earliest characters in the game and the only character in the game without getting a special class that can throw items at a range. Nearly every single buff or debuff has some form of item that you can buy in the shop. Giving all your clerics the item to double HP recovery for five turns, giving any character that can debuff enemies black lizard powder to double the effectiveness of the debuff for five turns, maybe giving your characters physical or defensive buffs or giving your characters debuffs for attack, magic, or defense that they can drop on a target right next to them. The sword master excels at buffs and significantly worse at debuffs without black lizard powder and can do both in an AoE, making this a great character for a party wide defense or attack increase. Terror knights can hit enemies with fear and whatever is attached to their weapon as all active effects guarantee the weapon debuff will hit while ninja have spells that activate 40-50% of the time only on themselves as auto abilities that then last for five turns, allowing them to add poison, stun, or silence. That's not even talking about the wizard's debuffs and the ability to paradigm shift to give your characters extra turns or using MP transfer to an ally.

Then let's not forget just how many monsters that Tactics Ogre has and the insane rework they've all received and we haven't even scratched the surface of what's possible within the gameplay.

Tactics Ogre Reborn is a 10/10, one of the absolute best games anyone will ever play in the RPG genre and all I did above was talk about the gameplay, not even touched on the games three different story paths as well as all the possible events in which not until games like Bioware or Larian's recent games have we seen such drastic changes in story events. Games like The Walking Dead and others are superficial in comparison to what Tactics Ogre offered back in 1995. Despite coming such a long way, it's been 30 years and Tactics Ogre has done it better than just about everything that's followed it.

[calthaer]

My play time has bounced around quite a bit.

Me too. Over the past month I've played bits and pieces of:
Grim Dawn (with friends)
Civ VI (with friends)
Dungeon Keeper
Graveyard Keeper
Lords of Waterdeep
Solasta: Crown of the Magister
Potion Craft
Alan Wake
Deep Rock Galactic
Baldur's Gate 3
Slay the Spire
Starcraft: Brood War
Diablo 2 Resurrected

I've never been the ADD type but for whatever reason I can't stick with one of these and finish it. Maybe it's because some of these games are boring (Solasta in particular is pretty ho-hum). Might also just be because work has been stressful...and if I ever hit a place in one of these games that seems super-hard I just don't have the energy to push through that wall.

[YoshiM]

I finally was able to play "Nintendo World Championship: NES Editon Deluxe Set" this weekend. Even though I have NES Remix on the Wii U, it didn't click with me (though sometimes it's hard to get into a game when I have my little "sharks" hovering around me wanting to play something else and I just wanna get some gaming time for myself). This actually does. I'm still in the early stages (I only had about 15 minutes to play) and I really worked at trying to get better times doing these seemingly easy "Super Mario Bros." tasks. The first one is getting the very first mushroom in the fastest amount of time. I think mine was like 5.025 seconds....which is a "A" I think. Apparently you can do this faster.....how I have no idea but I really kept trying. I did notice some odd button delays/non responding when I was holding the B button and that moving my thumb over the A while going down stairs. I have to try this on real hardware or on the NES Online games to see if I have the same issue. I typically play with my Switch Lite so it's experiment time.

I also dove back into "Skyrim" on my Switch earlier this week There's just something about the supported gyro aiming that just feels soooooo good in that game-getting headshots on my targets with little effort. I forgot where I was (I thought I was in a town where I had to find this crazy guy's lost sister, whose body I found in the river) but apparently I was on a snowy hill with my Khajit named Chazelle (who is based on one of the children one of my kids's character had with the NPC she married. She geeked out at seeing her "kid" in the polygonal flesh). I played for a bit then noticed like 45 minutes passed in a blink of an eye.

[fpbrush]

So far, I am playing through Trails of Cold Steel III and lovingly cherishing my lost sega genesis collection from my childhood.

[YoshiM]

More Skyrim for me. After getting sidetracked at a few places on my way to get the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller, (a crypt, some cave and a fort overrun by bandits), I finally get to Ustengrav and clear the crypt but found the horn missing with a note in its place. I follow the instructions and meet up with a Delphine in Riverwood. So I meet her and we go dragon hunting as apparently some wyrm is raising its deceased kin from their forever slumber. I beat the dragon that was resurrected and head back to the Greybeards to get my "Dragonborn FUS ROH DAH" badge. I go back to Riverwind and get the skinny on a party I have to check out.

I wonder if it's a formal party? My Khajit in a dress? Could be interesting.

I have found I find archery way more satisfying than melee combat. I guess it's because I feel like the impacts HIT with an arrow while melee just seems like I'm swinging wildly. The targets don't seem to react too much until they get beat down, or at least that what it looks like to me during the trading of blows. I've been using two handed weapons just for the sheer damage output but I think I may have to switch to a one handed weapon and a shield. I dunno, I enjoy the sneaking and sniping.

I did put in more time in Nintendo World Championships. I got more S ranks in The Legend of Zelda. I read up on an invisible ladder trick in Donkey Kong and found out that Nintendo had blocked/prevented many glitches that were in these games. I guess the game will actively tell you what you did was not allowed. Apparently this glitch fell through the cracks and the person who used it got on the worldwide leaderboards for all the world to see. Folks got real uptight about it, which is fair since other glitches were yanked. We'll see how that pans out.

[Ostin Powers]

Last night, I found myself lost in a simple yet addictive browser game called “Snake Color Brake,” which you can play at https://snakecolorbrake.com. Now, I’m usually diving into complex strategy games or narrative-heavy adventures, but this one had me hooked with its straightforward yet challenging gameplay. The concept is a fresh take on the classic snake game – you control a snake made of colored balls, and your goal is to break through blocks by matching your snake’s color with them. As you progress, the game’s difficulty increases, demanding quick reflexes and smart decisions to keep going. The endless mode is where the real fun lies, offering a continuous challenge that keeps you coming back for more. The global leaderboard adds a competitive edge, pushing you to beat not just your own score but those of players worldwide. The game’s colorful visuals are engaging without being overwhelming, and the mechanics are smooth and intuitive. It’s one of those games that’s perfect for a quick break, but don’t be surprised if you end up playing longer than you intended. It’s a great reminder that sometimes the simplest games can provide the most enjoyable gaming experiences.

[YoshiM]

Skyrim continues to rule my available lunch breaks. I got through the party and made it back to Riverwind to get my stuff back and now I'm just chilling there for a bit, planning my next stop along with what to do with the amount of stuff I have.

Tonight I was consolidating my DS, GBA, 3DS and Vita stuff into one container (thanks goes to Costco for having a nice storage container sale not too long ago). Besides, one of the smaller Rubbermaid containers I had some DS stuff in was cracking and had holes, so why not on a rainy night (which I love a rainy night....). Pulled up my blue original DS I got back at Fry's Electronics in Las Vegas back in 2006. I turned it on to see if it had power and sure enough, the little beast turned on and "Animal Crossing: Wild World" was on tap (which came with the system as a bundle). Wow....so many memories. It was a fireworks celebration so I meandered around to speak with villagers but then shut it down so I could continue my cleaning.

I pulled the Wii U out of the storage stack so it can get its dose of electricity. After playing "Nintendo World Championships" on the Switch, I have a new appreciation for "NES Remix". I played that for maybe an hour and didn't realize the time flew until I tried standing after sitting cross-legged. Ugh! Dang aging knees!

[Aussie2B]

Over a month since my last update, and I'm still playing Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on PlayStation 4, with nearly 70 hours on the clock. Maybe there isn't much to the main story alone, but you can definitely sink a lot of time into the game if you take your time and complete all the optional stuff. Thankfully, I got fast travel back some time ago, so now I'm bouncing back and forth between progressing the story and warping around every time more quests and Private Actions open up. I think I'm at the last batch of that stuff, though. I'm right before the final mission of the game, which I know is a point-of-no-return until the game is beaten. If I remember correctly, I'm at 95% completion of the quests, with six I've yet to clear (not sure how many there are total, but it's not one quest = 1%). Of course, for all I know, clearing some of those may open up additional ones. Right now, I'm working on clearing the final iteration (out of three) of the Cathedral of Oblivion areas. I've done four of the points already, so just one left until I start the final mission, as that area has its own vortex leading to the Cathedral of Oblivion. I also know this game gives you a scene with the character who has the highest affection for the protagonist near the end of the game, just like in Star Ocean 2, so maybe I'll reload after that and toy around with the items that increase and decrease affection to see if I can get all those scenes. I don't think I ever actually did that in SO2. I think I just got Rena when playing as Claude and Claude when playing as Rena.

[Aussie2B]

Clearing the final boss of Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on PS4 wasn't any big deal, especially considering I had all the weapons earned from the Cathedral of Oblivion save for Fidel's, which are the second strongest weapons for each character in the game. After that I did the tedious task of defeating the final boss four more times after fiddling with affinity boosting/decreasing items to see the other four endings. Miki was the one I got without changing anything, and I also got Relia's, which is independent from the rest. It's hardly worth it, as the character endings are pathetically short. Not that they aren't in something like Star Ocean 2 as well, but at least there you could get as many as 8 solo endings or 4 paired endings in one go. Here it's just one single ending + Relia's if you qualify for it. I also discovered another annoying thing about the game. I assumed all cutscenes in the game were unskippable, but they actually *did* program in the ability to skip some scenes. I was able to skip most of the ending sequences to relatively quickly get to whatever character ending I earned. I don't know why that isn't available the vast majority of the game. The biggest time waste was the stuff before beating the boss. It's got like 5 different forms, 2 of which are invincible so you just have to stay alive until a certain length of time passes, and there's cutscenes before and after all of those, which can't be skipped.

After I finished with the endings, I cleared the hardest rendition of the final iteration of the Cathedral of Oblivion and then started up the Maze of Tribulations (which I still prefer calling the Cave of Trials). Thank goodness I have the strategy guide because, like the Cathedral of Oblivion (which is completely straightforward), you get no map, and with the dungeon areas all looking the same, it's really easy to get disoriented after doing a battle and having the camera swing all over. You can use the blank map like a compass at least and take note of which direction you're pointed, but it's still nice to have the guide's maps to refer to. There are 3 tiers to the dungeon, each with 5 areas (and a boss for each of those) In the first tier (Chasm of Repose, I think it's called), I cleared three sections, defeating Ted, Victor's subordinates, and a weird group of 5 Pavines, haha. Now I'll have to take a break from the game as my mom is staying with us a few weeks, and I want to leave the TV free for her. So I guess I'll have to pick out a handheld game to play in the meantime.

[YoshiM]

Here's a twist: played Skyrim but on the Steam Deck. I pulled my PC character out of digital moth balls to see where he was at. I decided to put him back on the main quest like my Switch character. He's like 6 or so levels higher than Chazelle, so he's got more things going for him. I set up the gyro controls and now this version has taken my Skyrim time. I'm now on my way to Riften.

I did some rearranging of my gaming area in the basement and I now have some of my retro stuff hooked up and powered up! I downloaded the demo of "Galagon" from Champ Games for the Atari 2600 and have been playing that here and there. This game just blows my mind and I am soooo not used to using a joystick anymore. I was having a problem with my TV being too low (I moved my file cabinet over to my metal shelving so I could have the TV at the same level as my Color Computer roll-ee table) so I took some leftover wood from the porch project (phase 1), stacked it to be about 6" high and now it's literally at eye level as I sit. it didn't help my score any.

[Aussie2B]

I decided to start htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary on my Vita. (The way the title is stylized is so annoying and completely counterproductive to getting sales, when people can't even read or remember it.)

I can see why most people aren't crazy about the controls. Even the control scheme that doesn't require touch controls doesn't feel great. There's one maze clearly inspired by Irritating Stick (or the game show it's based on, rather), so I tried switching to the touch controls for that, but then my finger was blocking my view. The game does have a lot of atmosphere, and I'm interested in learning more about what exactly is going on with Mion, the protagonist, and the world, though my rate of finding the sprouts that trigger Mion's memory scenes has dropped off. The actual puzzle platforming seems middle-of-the-road. Plenty of trial and error as you die over and over before you figure out how to progress, so it's a bit more challenging and frustrating than I was expecting. There's a trophy for hitting 100 deaths, and I've already done so in the third area. Between the controls and how time sensitive a lot of parts are, the game kind of feels less like the average puzzle platformer and more like Lemmings, where you're just trying to lead Mion to an exit before she wanders off to her doom. I'd prefer more direct control in a game like this, rather than what feels like a sloppy implementation of the controls you'd expect in a point-and-click adventure. Then again, the design of the controls does add to the feeling of vulnerability and highlights that Mion is just a little girl who has no idea what's going on and isn't particularly skilled at anything these circumstances are requiring of her.

[Aussie2B]

I kinda, sorta beat htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary on my Vita, in that I got the "bad" ending (which I believe one would have to get before being able to get the "true" ending). The trophy for "completing" the game doesn't pop until you get the proper ending, though. Right now, I'm on Chapter X, on what I assume is the "final boss". It's basically a tower defense mini game. So I should have the proper ending soon, unless this battle ends up giving me a lot of grief. The requirements to access Chapter X are pretty ridiculous, though. Needing all the Memory Fragments is fine, and I picked off the few I missed without much trouble, but having to go back to a random event to do something different and then a random stage with barely anything in-game to clue you in on that is a bit much. I would've probably had no idea what to do to fully complete the game if I hadn't already read a post about the requirements. I feel bad for all the people who saw all the memories and then refought the super annoying boss battle of Chapter 4, thinking that was the way to earn the other ending. That battle is basically the shell game + picking out an image you only get a quick flash of over and over and over. The shell game parts aren't too bad if you're decent at following the movements, but the other part basically requires mashing the start button to pause the game repeatedly to get a glimpse of what you need to see. In the end, you're probably going to rely on luck a little, and you can only screw up so many times before you have to start the long sequence all over. (I believe I read there's 25 instances of having to pick an answer.) Some people even film the game while they're playing and review the footage before they pick. There's a trophy for getting through the battle without making a single mistake, which is a huge thorn in the side for trophy completionists. Between that and another particularly irritating trophy, I doubt I'll bother with the platinum.

Honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about the game in general, which seems to be a common sentiment among people who play through it. I don't think it's a bad game, but I'd hesitate to call it good either. Most of the time, I'd just have a feeling of relief when completing a stage, glad that I was done with it and hoping I wouldn't have to return to it. It doesn't help that the pace is so plodding. Even when you know exactly what to do and can do it without issue, it feels like Mion takes all eternity to go through the motions. It kind of feels like playing a game in slo-mo, which often makes it feel like a chore. I just hope the true ending is satisfying because, even after seeing all the memories, I feel like the story is still extremely vague. I can take some guesses at what's going on, but I'd love to see something a little more concrete.

[Aussie2B]

Though the tower defense final battle in htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary on Vita was a pain, I did end up clearing it a day later. Unsurprisingly, the true ending of the game is just as ambiguous as every other cutscene in the game. I read some fan theories after I finished, and I also learned there are additional story details that, annoyingly enough, aren't given in-game or even in the limited edition's art book but are in Japanese trailers, which have been fan-translated. I seemed to have completely misinterpreted one of the main plot points, which made everything after more confusing. That said, it's all speculation, so there's no real "right" or "wrong" interpretation. Just some theories seem to make things fall into place better than others. But some speculation I'm not buying at all, like people who think the boss of Chapter 2 is the corgi. Some people love these kinds of cryptic stories, but I find them underwhelming, as if there's no real story to begin with. When I get into a story, I much prefer for there to be a lot I can sink my teeth into and then speculate on the deeper meanings of things and psychoanalyze the characters. I'm way more inclined to speculate profusely on a good visual novel than the story of an intentionally unclear game where you not sure about what happened at all.

Anyway, I picked off a handful of trophies after earning the true ending but stopped at three left (not counting the platinum, or "platinium" as the trophy list spells it). The remaining ones are just too time-consuming and tedious for my tastes. The game did end up being the perfect length for me. I wanted something to play while my mom was staying with us, and I got the true ending the night before her flight back home.

My plan was to resume Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on PS4, but then I came down with a cold. I always use headphones when I play games on our HDTV, as I play after my daughter is down for the night and the TV is right outside the bedroom. But I don't like the pressure of headphones on my head while sick, so I picked out a short game I could play through on my SP. I decided on Sailor Moon R, and I'm already up to the fifth and final stage. I'm playing the main mode, which includes a lot of walking around, interacting with other characters and playing optional mini games, but there's another mode that cuts out the story and is only the action segments. The game has you select your gender, and I picked that I'm a boy, haha, as that's actually the difficulty selection. Go figure that a series that many people hold up as female empowerment has a sexist difficulty selection where picking you're a girl gets you the easier difficulty. I get the mentality behind it, though. There were probably a lot of girls who got the game just because they were fans of the manga and/or anime but weren't very experienced with video games, whereas the boys who got the game were likelier to have more gaming experience. Both modes are quite easy anyway. The game roughly tells the story of the Black Moon arc, and it's got anime-exclusive characters, like Yuichiro. The game isn't at all anything special, but it's not bad either. It was a good choice for something relatively mindless to play while sick.

[YoshiM]

Not much going on in the retro realm. I'm still totally absorbed in Skyrim and mainly on the Steam Deck. I've gotten as far as capturing a dragon and getting the location of the big bad "world eater" Alduin from him. I gather this is nearing the end of the main quest BUT I do feel like I'll actually go through my back quest log. I've got a civil war to fight, probably buy some property, who knows?

I pulled out the OG Xbox again to give Morrowind a go. Man...some 3D games just don't age well. It looks well enough for its time but the game play feels so clunky compared to Skyrim or even Oblivion. I didn't get very far before I shut it down.

[kupomogli]

Finished Julius mode in 25 minutes on AoS, if this was the only mode AoS would be trash. Playing Julius mode on AoS sucks all the fun out of the game.

Almost 200% on Maxim mode on Castlevania HoD with Maxim mode. Maxim mode is actually more enjoyable than playing the base game on HoD. You're still just filling out the map on Maxim mode, even more so this time, but it's just a lot more enjoyable this time around with how Maxim controls and he takes consistent damage to and from enemies throughout the game.

[Aussie2B]

After beating the standard mode in Sailor Moon R on my Game Boy Advance SP, I did run through the action mode just for the heck of it. People who have zero knowledge of Japanese (even more so if you're unfamiliar with the IP) would probably like it more than stumbling through the exploration and story parts in the main game, but it's also extremely short and kind of unsatisfying when it's only the action segments.

I finally started up Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on PS4 again, after not touching it for over a month, and it was actually quite easy to jump back in. With how button mash-y most battle are, there's not much to readjust to. I beat Der-Suul in the Maze of Tribulations, and with the treasure chest behind him, I was able to learn the last spell I needed to have every skill/spell in the game.

[kupomogli]

200% on Maxim mode and finished Circle of the Moon on magician mode which is cool that you start with all the cards just not exactly that enjoyable to progress through when you're using the invincibility to run through everything and then killing the bosses. After seeing just how long one level was to grind out I just kept rewinding on the last boss didn't even want to beat that mode legit.

Then today I started and quit playing Star Wars Jedi Outcast within the hour. I heard a lot of praise for these games and no, these games are not good at all. I get games can "age poorly" but I think so many people use "aging" as an excuse for bad games because even if I played it at launch there's no way in hell I'd have praised this game. There's nothing about poor aging about it, this game is trash.

I looked up the release date of Star Wars Jedi Academy and it was in 2003. So let's see, Nightmare Creatures(1997,) Soul Reaver(1999,) Sword of the Berserk: Gut's Rage(1999,) Soul Reaver 2(2001,) Devil May Cry(2001,) Castlevania Lament of Innocence(2003.)

People really need to get that shit out of here. Aging poorly, psh, it's a terrible fucking game. There's nothing poor about the games age when games years and years before were mechanically and functionally better in all aspects of design.

I wouldn't score the game higher than a 2/10, DMC2 is a better game, that's how bad it was.

[YoshiM]

Then today I started and quit playing Star Wars Jedi Outcast within the hour. I heard a lot of praise for these games and no, these games are not good at all. I get games can "age poorly" but I think so many people use "aging" as an excuse for bad games because even if I played it at launch there's no way in hell I'd have praised this game. There's nothing about poor aging about it, this game is trash.

I looked up the release date of Star Wars Jedi Academy and it was in 2003. So let's see, Nightmare Creatures(1997,) Soul Reaver(1999,) Sword of the Berserk: Gut's Rage(1999,) Soul Reaver 2(2001,) Devil May Cry(2001,) Castlevania Lament of Innocence(2003.)

People really need to get that shit out of here. Aging poorly, psh, it's a terrible fucking game. There's nothing poor about the games age when games years and years before were mechanically and functionally better in all aspects of design.

I wouldn't score the game higher than a 2/10, DMC2 is a better game, that's how bad it was.

Back in the day, I thought Jedi Outcast earned its ratings. I praised it pretty highly on these very forums back in 2003. I loathed the phrase then and it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth to say it and an uncomfortable itch in the fingers to type it, but you have to "play it for a while before it 'gets good' ". That always got me as games progressed at the start of the 3D age forward-developers seemed to not kick the "cool" into gear until you ground through the first hour or three. In hindsight it was probably because they had to hold your hand in order to show you how the game works, which made sense as a lot of the concepts were still new and growing. However if you had a few of that particular game type under your belt (like I did with FPS style games) it was just damn annoying. Same thing with Metroid Prime and its "First Person Adventure" concept-you had to stick with it to give it a chance to potentially click with you.

Now is Outcast a good game? To *ME* 21 years ago, I was enthusiastic about it. At that time, the game made me feel like a Jedi. But again, that's 21 years ago. There's been a lot of changes to game play since then and I played a lot of that genre through those years. Would I be just as enthusiastic about Outcast now as I did then? I have no idea. I'd almost have to spin it up on the Xbox and give it a go. After advances in 3D gaming, I might be in the same boat as you.

Jedi Academy though....that was dirt even then. Sure it had the guts of Outcast but the game just felt so uninspired. After Outcast I wanted to like it but it just felt so flat to me.

In my case with Morrowind-for its time it was definitely a leg up over Daggerfall and Arena. For starters-you could use a controller! Second-wandering around the world wasn't bland! It was a visual feast back then and more so on the PC (though my rig at the time coughed and wheezed trying to play it). Yet back then it would not click for me. I remember it being brutal and I did explore for quite a while but I think I just got tired of it. I couldn't even tell you where I left off and I never went back to it. I dug Fable more so than Morrowind (and still do as I have been playing it, though pissed that my game didn't save so I'm back to my young self just getting out of the fire in the village).

[Aussie2B]

The universe really doesn't want me to complete the post-game dungeon in Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on PlayStation 4, haha. I attempted the fight against Daril, got my butt whooped, did a tiny bit of skill point grinding and allocation in preparation of another attempt, and then my whole household caught another bug. So I've barely played anything since we all started getting sick again, and even when I've had the time and drive to do so, I again wanted to just play something simple on my Game Boy Advance SP. I started up The Jetsons: Robot Panic, which my husband bought me at random back, I believe, when my daughter was still an infant, or maybe 1. I imagine he probably tried it out on our flash cart and thought it was something I'd like (despite neither of us having much interest in the IP itself). But I was hesitant to play it much prior to this because it's got no saves or passwords, and getting enough time to play through an entire game in one sitting, even if it's short, can be tough for me. What's nice, though, is that you can pick the first three stages in any order you want, so I started with short sessions just to learn each of those. Once I could get through those relatively quickly, I tackled George's stages. I ran out of continues on my first go at those, but I beat the game the next attempt. It's not a tough platformer, but it's not braindead either, and I like what the different tools bring to the table. Also how the game introduces them with the initial three stages with Elroy, Judy, and Jane before combining them together. It's also a fun twist that the two George stages each have a trap that make things tougher until the stage is completed, but if you're careful, you can avoid triggering the traps. Anyway, it's a solid little Game Boy game. Hanna-Barbera made a good choice licensing out their IPs to Taito.

[kupomogli]

@YoshiM I played the first one, the ship gets shot down, you start off by escorting this other person, you having a light saber, the other person didn't, it just didn't feel fun to move around, explore, or fight, but I absolutely love Nightmare Creatures to this day and that's more than half a decade older. If it's the first one that you say is the better game, I'll look at it again sometime later, I'll go back to it and try and progress further.

I mean, I will state what I don't like about it PLUS my vision could be an issue. They still don't know what the issue is but I have flashing spots everywhere, darker spots are darker, brighter spots are brighter. At some part of the tutorial that I couldn't make out what was the ground what wasn't that I kept dying over and over restarting at the checkpoint having to kill the same screaming monsters. So of course some of this is going to be based on my effectiveness of actually playing the game, but for the most part I can see everything, just didn't care for the control, how it played, light saber combat just felt incredibly meh, though I did realize that if you stand still facing the enemy you'll deflect shots automatically with the lightsaber. Left and right with the lightsaber did a very slow wide attack, repeatedly using the lightsaber was quicker, it just didn't feel good.

I'm not sure if you've ever played Nightmare Creatures for reference, but here's a video, it's quick to get into the game.

https://youtu.be/OBANWSu7Ma0?t=5

[Aussie2B]

I feel really drained after being sick practically twice in a row, but I'm basically back to normal now and resumed Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on my PlayStation 4. After my prep, I cleared Daril no problem and then pounded out the first four bosses of the second section of the post-game dungeon. Now I'm sitting ready to take on Gabriel Celeste. I'm curious if this battle will actually be challenging, since I'm just mashing my way through most of this dungeon so far.

[Aussie2B]

I guess Gabriel Celeste in Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on PlayStation 4 is kinda, sorta challenging? I beat him on my very first try, which I can't say for a handful of other battles in the game, but it's the only battle so far that had me blow through all 20 Fresh Sage resurrecting items I was carrying. I used most of them bringing Miki back, so once I was out, I switched to her in order to keep her out of danger and manually heal and revive everybody else as needed. Now I'm in the third and final hub of the post-game dungeon, and even the regular enemies are quite a bit more difficult, placing me in some dicey moments. I haven't even attempted any of the bosses of this section yet. I think it's time I make a conscious effort to level grind some on the Metal Scumbags in the second area. I made note of a spot where a battle with three of them is easily accessible, and I can use the Ocarina speciality to bring them back repeatedly. Unfortunately, it appears the best you can get is a battle with three + one other type of enemy. I was hoping I'd come across a battle that was exclusively Metal Scumbags and/or contained more than three of them. In preparation, I made a big batch of Shortcake and maxed myself out on the ingredients to make more, so with those and roles boosting my EXP gain, I should be able to rapidly gain more levels.

[Aussie2B]

I suppose unsurprisingly the boss battles of the third hub of the post-game dungeon in Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness for PlayStation 4 are an even bigger difficulty spike than the regular enemies, or at least I'd say so for the one I've been attempting. I've been trying to beat the Anima forms of my playable characters (that is, I have to battle shadow versions my own party, minus Relia) in the first of the Terpsichorean Interlude areas (that's seriously what they're called; the game's pretentious vocabulary strikes again), but I keep losing practically as soon as the battle begins. I've repeatedly gone to the Metal Scumbags to grind, so now all my party members are roughly around 180-190 (out of 255, the traditional max level in Star Ocean games). It's annoying because, unlike the fifth and final boss of each hub, I can't save right before the boss fight. I have to navigate four floors populated with regular enemies to reach the Anima fight, and after using my gaming time for a few nights on the same sequence of events (traverse the floors, lose on the boss fight, gain some more levels), it started to all feel rather tedious. So I decided to take a break from that and finish off the last three outstanding quests I had.

I finally started using Synthesis, which itself is...not so great. To get anything good enough to make it worth your while, you really need to max out the specialty and fill all six slots with stuff. Endlessly scrolling through the menus to pick things out is also tiresome. It's best to just use stuff you can buy (after you've racked up so much fol that money is no object). Filling the slots with items you can buy 99 of at least gives you a fair number of attempts before you have to mess with more menus. The results are random selections out of whatever range of items the quality and impurity values of the items you picked qualify you for. So basically, it's like the random item creation of Star Ocean 2, but instead of only using up one or two items at a time, you're blowing through six items, and you don't have songs to improve your odds of getting something good. Gotta love when, for your six items, you get one of those six items back or some cheap item you can buy in any town, like a Fresh Sage. But Synthesis is the only way to get a number of things. I needed Marbled Meat and Empyreanase for quests and item creation, and now I'm trying to get enough Lezard's Flasks for all the recipes needing those.

[Aussie2B]

I continued filling out my Item Creation menu in Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on PlayStation 4 these last several days. Some of it involved more Synthesis, while, for others, I was grinding for particular item drops. There aren't a ton of recipes I've yet to do now. Most of the remaining ones require items you only get from bosses in the post-game dungeon. So I decided to get back to that and lost again against the Anima enemies. I did last a good bit longer, probably because I used Sukiyaki before the battle, rather than Grilled Steak. (The latter gives a boost to attack, while the former gives a boost to both attack and defense). I know I need to take down the Miki Anima first, but I was struggling to do so. She heals so damn fast. I tried using a couple Reserve Rush attacks on her, but I think the target may have switched on me. I need to review the controls and see if I can lock on. Generally, it's been fine to just approach whichever enemy I want to target and attack, but this battle is way too chaotic. I would definitely say it's the most challenging one I've encountered thus far. If I remember correctly, I was around level 120-130 when I started this third section of the dungeon, and now I have everybody over 200 and I'm *still* losing this boss battle.

[fpbrush]

Playing a little bit of Kirby Super Star Ultra lately on the NDS. Funny little game, not too far along in the gameplay, yet. Enjoyable and not a huge time commitment.

[Aussie2B]

I managed to clear the Anima battle in Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on PlayStation 4. It wasn't the most illustrious victory, but frankly, I was getting sick of being stuck on that battle and just wanted to move on. I'm starting to conclude that the strategies for boss battles in the official guide are kinda useless. At least for my style of playing. Their suggestions are way too micromanage-y, and trying to pull off their convoluted approach distracts me from properly keeping an eye on the status of my full party. The huge amount of levels I gained didn't seem like they were making a significant difference, and trying to execute a combo of Reserve Rush attacks wasn't working for me. So I just used items to max out my Reserve Rush gauge prior to the battle and then unleashed all of it with Fidel on the Miki Anima. I finally took out her out, though, like usual, nearly my entire party was wiped out by the time it was done. I gave up on even trying to keep my Miki alive (which would then give me a chance to keep everybody else alive), and just switched to Anne, using the Dead Man Walking role.

Now, some people consider this role "cheating". When the role isn't fully leveled up, it's basically instant death for the character using it, as it makes HP tick away, but with it maxed out, the rate of loss is slow enough that you can manage to stay alive with regular healing. The character is otherwise invincible, so it's basically this game's version of Star Ocean 2's Bloody Armor. But only one character can use the role at any time, so unless you control the character yourself and constantly stop to heal, then you're reliant on a character who isn't invincible to do the healing. In other words, it's not necessarily some insta-win thing. I've been using Dead Man Walking on Anne since the Daril fight, and it certainly hasn't kept me from seeing the Game Over screen. In fact, Anne has been dropping a lot, just because Miki is knocked out or otherwise can't pull off a heal when needed.

But this time, I did control Anne myself, while everyone else was out, spamming skills briefly and then using an item to recover HP, over and over. A bit tedious and cheap, yes, but not as tedious as losing the battle repeatedly and traveling through the floors before it time and time again. If there was a save point right before the boss, that'd be different. Honestly, from what I've read, it sounds like very few players beat this battle without Dead Man Walking. And anyway, I'm not above taking advantage of overpowered stuff or cheap tactics in Star Ocean games, haha. I'm pretty sure the only way I ever beat Freya in Star Ocean 3 was by taking advantage of the MP rollover bug (which only exists in the original Japanese release). I only got one Moonstone drop out of the Anima battle, but oh well. Wasn't in the mood to reload and try for better drops.

I think one thing that's probably working against me is that I've barely dabbled in Synthesis and have yet to touch Augmentation at all. This deep in the post-game dungeon, they probably expect you to have pimped out your equipment with good augments, but I've just been coasting along with whatever I've been able to buy, find, or make in Item Creation. And for the vast majority of the game, that's more than enough.

[Aussie2B]

All the remaining battles of the post-game dungeon in Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on PlayStation 4 were a breeze, including Ethereal Queen. The official strategy guide makes a comment that the Anima battle could very well be the toughest battle in the entire game, and for me, it definitely was. It's kinda weird that a random boss battle with no story or series significance that occurs two thirds of the way through the post-game dungeon is harder than the final battle of said dungeon. Granted, I can't say how Gabriel Celeste and Ethereal Queen are in their six-wing forms, let alone on the hardest difficulty (which would also make the Anima battle harder anyway). The post-game dungeon has three iterations, so I've only cleared the first, but all that happens is that the bosses respawn, the angels get more wings and stronger, and Santa sells more stuff. I'd like to do more Item Creation before I retire the game, and I need more drops from the bosses, so I've started working my way through the second iteration. Since treasures don't respawn, I don't have to waste time going after the chests, and if I make a beeline toward the exit of each floor, I can blow through things pretty quick.

[kupomogli]

So I've played everything on Dominus Collection since I downloaded it from a friend's account. I still purchased the physical version, it just won't be here until February. I'm currently one fifth of the way through the last area in the game so I'm at the very end.

After finishing Dark Souls which I've realized that I still don't like as a game, the only Souls game that I don't like actually, I've been replaying Bloodborne again. I'm replaying the game again building a Strength and Skill build which I probably already had before but I don't have a save data for it. On The Old Hunter's version of the game which doesn't read the US save data, I've got a Strength/Arcane build, a pure strength build, a pure skill build, a skill/bloodtinge build, and now a Strength/skill build. I'm going to make a strength/bloodtinge build next, but also a pure bloodtinge and pure arcane build also. Maybe one day I'll work on a arcane/strength, bloodtinge/strength, and bloodtinge/skill. There's really no need for a skill/arcane build because there's no weapons that scale from both outside of the paper enhancements.

Granted there's really no need for all of these builds, just min maxing each build for level 120 the way I want to play them. Every build that's doesn't include bloodtinge has terrible bloodtinge making guns rather ineffective. The pure strength and pure skill build atleast include smome since going over 50 doesn't do much at all so extra points in Vitality, Endurance, and Bloodtinge or Arcane.

[Aussie2B]

I'm currently ready to tackle the four-wing version of Ethereal Queen in the second iteration of the post-game dungeon of Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on PlayStation 4. I was a little nervous doing the Anima fight again, but I did clear it on my first attempt. Also managed to have all my party members alive by the end of the battle, unlike my first victory against them. Again, I only got one Moonstone, which sucks, but I'm still not sweating it. Gathering all the needed Orichalcum to make every Item Creation recipe is the bigger pain, and if I actually accomplished that prior to having all the Moonstones I need, I could just use Synthesis to turn any extra Orichalcum into Moonstones. The Orichalcum is also more annoying because, by the time you have enough to make all these different recipes, you'll probably already have the weapons they make, so there's not much reward in it. With the Moonstones, you can at least use Synthesis to make each character's strongest weapon, and since only one Item Creation recipe requires one Moonstone, I've used the additional ones I've received so far to make a couple of those.

All that said, I've put another pause on Star Ocean because I'm sick for the third time since late September, ugh. Such is life as a parent. So, out of my desire to play something more basic, I started up Game & Watch Gallery 2 on my Game Boy Advance SP. I've ended with the second, third, and fourth games in the series (not counting the Game Boy Gallery game released only in PAL regions), despite never intentially aiming to collect them, and, until now, never gave any of them much time, partially because I figured there was nothing to do in them but try to improve your scores. Now that I know there's stuff to unlock and that you can earn a credits roll and "beat" the game, it's more interesting to me. Though, it's still just a matter of scoring high enough in each variation of each game. I like that the game also goes into the history of the Game & Watch series, which I know little about. I mean, I know some bits of historicial info, like the D-pad originating with the series, but I've never owned any of them and, to the best of my recollection, have never once played one, though I did own some Tiger handhelds and what have you. I've played a little of every game on Game & Watch Gallery 2 now, and I can see why there are people nostalgic about these games. As simple as they are, some of them are pretty addicting, both the Modern versions and Classic versions. I think I like Helmet and Vermin best so far. Parachute is decent too. I'm still trying to get the hang of Modern Chef. Managing both Peach and Yoshi simultaneously throws me off. I haven't figured out Donkey Kong at all yet. I'm not sure what exactly I have to do to progress after flipping the switch. It also throws me off that Mario snaps from spot to spot, instead of the smooth movement in arcade Donkey Kong. Which you'd think I'd be fine with, considering I played a ton of the Coleco Donkey Kong tabletop back in the day, but I guess I gotta reacclimate.

[Aussie2B]

I'm pretty much over my latest cold, but I'm still playing Game & Watch Gallery 2 on my Game Boy Advance SP and have yet to return to Star Ocean. I've racked up 40-some stars, which is nothing compared to the 120 there are in total. But I believe there's a credits roll at 50 stars, so I'm not too far off from counting it as beaten. I think there's another credits roll at 120, but I don't know how that differs. I'm finding the "Easy" and "Hard" designations are kinda wacky. The Easy versions definitely start off slower (painfully so, in some cases), but they eventually speed up and don't seem much harder at that point. In fact, the first game I got over 1000 points on (and thus earning all five of its stars) was Classic Ball on Hard. The very first time I played it, I scored well over 2000, yet I'm still struggling to get more than a few hundred in Classic Ball on Easy. The other game I've got all five stars in is Modern Helmet on Hard. The only game where Easy is significantly easier for me is with Modern Chef. I'm getting better at it and enjoying it more, but I have a tough time when there's more than two adjacent columns of food. The food definitely flies around more on Hard. I still stink at Donkey Kong and have barely been touching it, though I have been improving a little and can at least clear the stage.

[Atomicfear]

my everquest proj1999 is crapping out on me. has an error ;(

[kupomogli]

Ys10 is worse than both Ys8 and 9 in nearly every way, and while I was disappointed in Ys9, there were still some things I liked better than Ys8(there were less bosses, but they were generally better on average.) The one thing I will say that I like better on Ys10 is that weapon skills appear far more balanced in usefulness. The stab into the ground on Ys8 for example is completely useless the entire game, you're never going ot use it, but the one on Ys10 is actually good whether you're doing it from the air or on the ground and interacts differently than other attacks This is based on the first three skills I've used and their usefulness.

However I've played five hours, and according to PSN, I've completed 25% of the main game. Now, that wouldn't be a problem in most cases, but most of that five hours has been text dumps. tThe dialogue is great and the characters are likeable, however this is modern day Falcom padding. This is some of the worst padding I've played in any Falcom game to date, and I've stopped playing their Trails games midway through Cold Steel 3, so I'm not sure how utterly absurd the padding gets in the later games. I'm going to throw a few comparisons out there, but one comparison I'm going to throw out there is a game that does it well, a game that doesn't feel like it's too padded despite the very reason the game existed is to flesh out the storyline of the original game, and that's Final Fantasy 7 Remake. On Final Fantasy 7 Remake, the first two chapters of the game include the Sector 1 Mako Reactor and Sector 1. These two chapters take a combined total of less than two hours. When it comes to the amount of exploration I've done in Ys10 in the first five hours, those two hours on Final Fantasy 7 Remake have more exploration, a much larger amount of video game real estate to actually explore. So despite all of the depth to the characters that were added and additional dialogue to make the charaters more likeable than they were on the original, the game is still better paced than the text dump extravaganza that's Ys10 and you actually see and do more. So the second game, and I use this one alot when comparing classic RPGs to modern RPGs, is Suikoden. Now, I won't go into too much detail and instead just name the areas that you go to, but there are a lot of things that happen in each of these areas, you explore all of thehse areas, and this is only the very first hour of the game. So you start in Gregminster Castle, Gregminster, dungeon island to meet Leknaat, Gregminster, Rockland, Bandit Hideout, Rockland, Gregminster, Lenankamp, Rockland, Lenankamp. There are at least 12 main events that happen within that first hour(there are more because more than some main events happen in each of those areas like Ted's meeting with Windy, Ted giving the Soul Eater rune to the hero and the death of Ted, and then Viktor helping the party escape from Gregminster in the last time you are in Gregminster. But the game gets straight to the point in each of these events and still finds time to make these characters important. Suikoden 2 in total is a 9-12 hour game. I know the game like the back of my hand so I can get all 108 stars in under nine hours, but for someone who doesn't getting 100% in 12 hours aside from some stars being RNG if they're there or not wasting more time. Consider that I've done nothing on Ys10 at all in comparison and you can complete the entire game of Suikoden 1 in less than twice the time.

So the last game I'm going to point out, is Ys8. Now granted, I could easily point out, Ys 1 and 2, Origin, Oath in Felghana, different classic Ys games that have a smaller storyline and are shorter games, but all of these get to the point, you get a good understanding of all the characters motives and personalities, and you really like these characters. Before Ys8, my favorite Ys was Ys Origin. It has a great storyline but yes, you do have to play through the game three times to see it all, but atleast it does have such a great replay value. However with Ys8, there's a more expanded storyline, but like Final Fantasy 7 Remake, the text dumps weren't out of control. Now, when I first played the game on the boat it was a bit rough, but once you're given control at the end of that chapter, even when the game does want to provide you a lot of story, it's it's still not too much. The Dana stuff is usually a few lines of dialogue here and there and then Dana needing to go from one area to plant a sapling to allow Adol passage through, but you're atleast given the freedom to explore during this time. The few points during Ys8 that have the most storyline and the most dialogue still haven't came close to what Ys10 has already had and that's during a few sections of the game where you repeatedly keep going back and forth between the area of the town and certain locations both in the middle of the first half of the game and at the very end of the late game. In between all of the fairly concise dialogue from modern gaming though, Ys8 just has these incredibly well designed monstrous areas to explore. The game has a total of 36 different bosses and that's not including all of Dana's bosses.

Long story short, Ys10 has an obnoxious amount of padding like modern Falcom games are known for, but that's not its only issue.

Ys10 issue is also with its gameplay which is not very good. Now again, it does have the more balanced weapon skills as I stated earlier, true, but the core gameplay is ruined just by how you play it. So they reduced the amount of playable characters from six on Ys7, Celceta, 8, and 9 to two. That's fine, it's not a big deal there. However, it's not like Adol and Karja even feel that different to play aside from Karja's main combo string being slower than Adols. So there's that going against it. In all the other games, playing nearly all the characters feels very different. But that's not even the issue here, how the characters play for the most part is fine, even if there feels like much less of a reason to change characters, but more on that later because that's included in part of its own section.

The first biggest issue to the games combat system is the new duo and defensive mechanic. Now, the one plus side to this system is that after doing a perfect guard you have a slight amount of invincibility and the enemy themselves gets staggered back to stop them from damaging you during the counterattack. That's great because, at times you can do perfect guards on Ys8 and Ys9 and just be invincible from follow up attacks. I do think Ys Celceta and 7 did it the best where your perfect guard had no invincibility. It has the exact same perfect guard that works the best, but you're not using it on easier to guard attacks then avoiding the rest of the damage or perfect guarding other hits in the middle of invincibility. So atleast with that, I give it to Ys10 combat system, because I haven't yet got to the issue with the new duo and defensive system.

So the issue with this new duo and defensive system, is that the defensive system and duo system is on R2. So think of it as its own moveset, because that's exactly what it is. You hold R2 to attack and use duo meter for your attacks and skills for your duo gauge, you don't hold anything to normally attack, and then you hold R1 for your regular moveset. Adol's regular moveset, Karja's regular moveset, and duo actions all have their own meter. There is no shared meter like there was in the other Ys games, oh no, that'd be way too simple and fun. I might actually enjoy the combat a bit more than(wlell, probably not because I haven't even got to its biggest issue.)

But seriously think about it, if you want to guard attacks you're pressing R2, which has a bit of delay going from attack to guard back to attack again unlike there being no animations in the past games, you having to hold either R2 or R1 depending on duo or single character special attacks or hold R2 or hold nothing when doing duo or single character regular attacks. The amount of mental and controller voodoo you have to perform to play this game is uncomfortable. I didn't even mention jumping, evading, and switching between the two characters. I will mention one thing with evasion though, blue attacks are unlbockable and are called "quick attacks" you have to evade them. So the game has a lot of rock, paper, scissors defensive mechanics as well always a joy to find in action games /s.

So I mentioned none of that's even the worst part of the games combat. It's all pretty bad, but bosses now have defense bars on top of their HP bars. I started the game on hard, and on the third boss, this became such a chore, among also being killed in two to three hits, that I just turned it back to normal. So Karja's normal and special attacks deal more armor damage than Adol, while Adol deals more HP damage, again, more of that rock, paper, scissors bullshit round 2. Their duo attacks also deal either more guard break damage or more HP damage. The guard break bar however is as slow to remove as damage towards the HP bar. So when you remove the guard break bar four times in the course of the boss battle, it's like the boss have five bars of HP and on hard mode it's like the guard break bar and HP amount both reduce as if the enemy difficulty was on nightmare on any other game. It's absolutely ridiculous just how much of a damage sponge these bosses are. Below is a video of me defeating three bosses in nightmare on Ys8, but that's the thing, if I wanted to play nightmare difficulty on Ys10 and have damage sponge bosses, I'd play nightmare difficulty, not having super damage sponge bosses because of this garbage guard break mechanic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtH6OOY5nJw

You want to see a guard break mechanic that works well, that isn't a chore to play through and just allows you to deal more damage while staggering enemies? A guard break mechanic that actually gives you the benefit of dealing more damage after breaking their guard. You have the opportunity to break their guard faster by using break skills during certain points and then going all out during the window of opportunity that their guard is broken. Even if you're not very good, the guard break still builds up, so you can still go all out when their guard is broken getting the benefit of the extra damage, but on Ys8 it's like, hey, here's four extra HP bars.

https://youtu.be/G0y3YWnQTCs?t=1608

[Aussie2B]

I'm sitting at exactly 50 stars in Game & Watch Gallery 2, which I'm still playing on my Game Boy Advance SP despite the battery really seeming to be on its last legs now, and I'm wondering how much more I want to keep playing it. I don't know if I have it in me to aim for all 120 stars. I'm lucky to get a few stars each play session, and I've probably already picked most of the low-hanging fruit. It felt like it took a decent effort just to hit 50, and the rewards taper off after this point too. They came every five stars before, but now it's every ten, and then later every 20. The only particularly interesting award left is the King Koopa version of Modern Ball, at 100 stars, but each version of Modern Ball is harder than the last, and I've yet to get particularly good at even the initial Yoshi version, as I haven't found it as fun as many of the other games and thus haven't touched any version of Modern Ball much. The other rewards add some more games to the Museum, but that's a lost cause anyway, with a whopping 16 entries requiring linking up with the first Game & Watch Gallery, which I don't even own.

I have gotten all five stars from a couple more games, and I'm really liking Modern Chef now. There are a bunch of games where I can get roughly in the 700-900 range, but it's kinda frustrating putting in the time to get the score that high but still fall short of hitting 1000 and earning all five stars. It just takes practice of course, but with limited gaming time, I don't know how much practice I want to put in.

[kupomogli]

Dropped Ys10 at 50% of the way in. After hitting around 8-10 hours, I started to skim dialogue and even then it was constant cutscenes throughout the game. It doesn't end at opening, it is constant, even 50% of the way through the game. After 10 hours, I started reading the first five lines and if they didn't quickly get to some sort of point that they're trying to make, I'd skip the dialogue completely, and as you can probably, I've skipped everything since. I'm not going to skim through 10 minutes of dialogue to find out there's nothing relevant or interesting, I'm certainly not going to sit through the regular and constant 20-30 minute cutscenes.

I then thought, why the hell am I just playing through this game just to show I've played it to completion. Because the gameplay is trash, the level design is trash, and then the game is padded out AF and it's well written, but there's nothing there, it's just fluff. Constant amounts of fluff.

So I quit playing Ys10 and I actually started another game that's quite similar, but this one is actually good.

Granblue Fantasy Relink. So dialogue is what you'd expect in classic RPGs. They get to the points while still making characters who are likeable. The game is short though, it's maybe 15+ hours, so it's not unnecessarily long and padded out, but apparently that's where the end game content starts, because there's a decent single player storyline with some great gameplay.

Whenever you play through quests however, you're either playing through waves or boss battles. This is similar to Monster Hunter, but more closer to a game like Soul Sacrifice as bosses are in one large area as the game itself is a linear game. There's no running back and forth whenever the boss escapes, it's just straight up defeat the boss.

Now, I haven't played Granblue Fantasy, but I have played Dissidia Opera Omnia and the weapon and skill progression is pretty much like that game. You'll get materials to upgrade your weapons, and then you max your weapons levels out. You keep all the weapons(although you can sell them) because you can level them all up. Each of them has a unique quality to them, additionally, as you level them up you can gain permanent stat buffs to your characters, so end game it'll be vital to your end game MMO like progression.

The game does start you out with having six characters to use, but as you progress through the game you'll get member cards. There are 14 different non DLC characters that have their own combat, so it's like using 20 different weapon styles in a Monster Hunter. I've only unlocked one of the 14 characters because I've noticed that the other characters masteries will automatically build alongside your own character progression, so mastering everything first allows you to get characters that you will have sort of prebuilt without having to spend all that time leveling them up. So save your character cards and play through the ones that you start with and then use the others end game, atleast if you want to use all of them and don't want to spend more time grinding them up because you got them early.

The progression and combat are the best part of the game so I'm interested in continuing once I get to end game. I have a friend that has already finished the game so thankfully I'll have someone to play with at that point.

So combat is like a DMC lite. For those who have played Castlevania Curse of the Moon, the combat is similar to that, that's pretty much the games very core part of the combat. Most characters have a single combo and triangle will determine a finisher attack at the end of whatever attack you're at, including double and triple finishers. Pressing X then Square will lead into a launcher, you have aerial combos, you can defend or evade, but perfect defending and perfect evasion will add limited time bonuses. Your triangle button is a unique skill for each character. The main character can use an attack with it, or charge it into three powered up versions and you can charge and move(as well as run) around as it's charging. Then much like Draogn Quest Heroes and modern Ys, holding R1 will allow you to press any of the face buttons to use a special attack. The special attacks don't use MP or energy though, each skill is set on a cool down so there's no spamming your best attacks repeatedly, it is more strategic in your use. Sometimes your characters will trigger a link attack requiring all linked characters to press o during a call out for additional damage.

This is a pretty good game. It's really enjoyable and thep rogression is actually really enjoyable tbh. I loved Dissidia Opera Omnia and if they can do it here, I'd really like to see a offline version much like Mega Man X Dive.

[Aussie2B]

I'm now up to 70 stars in Game & Watch Gallery 2 on my Game Boy Advance SP, so I'm still maintaining a decent rate of progress, adding a few stars every night. For that, I earned two more Museum entries. If I can hit 80, I'll get the last of the Museum entries I can unlock without linking up with the first G&W Gallery. After that, only the King Koopa version of Modern Ball and the cast credits remain as rewards, but having to earn 20 additional stars for each sounds tiresome. I've gotten the max stars in both versions of Modern Chef. That one became quite fun once I got the hang of it. And believe it or not, I got max stars in both versions of Modern Donkey Kong, but not because I mastered the normal method of playing them, haha. I had read that stomping koopa troopas is the best way to rack up points in Modern Donkey Kong, and the in-game hint recommends stomping them too. (It would help if these in-game hints weren't so Engrishy, though.) So I tried hanging out at the bottom of the screen, and sure enough, you can easily rack up hundreds with barely having to do anything but jump. As long as your timing is decent and you keep an eye on how close the barrels are and adjust accordingly, there isn't too much threat, and you can rack up over 1000 points without so much as seeing Donkey Kong, let alone clearing the stage even once. Classic Donkey Kong doesn't have koopa troopas, though, so I guess I'll have to get good at repeatedly clearing the stage for those.

[celerystalker]

I spent most of what little time I've had the last 6 weeks playing Romancing Saga 3 remaster on the PS4. I included it in a Play-Asia order of Christmas presents to get over the free shipping threshold, and it really got its hooks into me. I've had the Super Fmicom original for a couple of decades, but being able to play it in english has been tremendous.

It has some very cryptic systems for not including any kind pf manual in this version, but once I got into it, it has become a top 5 JRPG for me. The sheer variety in ways it can be played it wild, especially for a game around 30 years old. It's Square at its very peak era to me, and is such a wonderful blend of simple and convoluted that it made me want to get under the surface of things. The way it can be played in nearly any order and can as a result have different available scenarios is neat amd ahead of its time. The 8 different main characters with differing prologues amd access to certain areas, quests, and systems is refreshing, and the fact that the games has two completely fleshed out battle systems and massive mini games (the business buyout to financially cripple the bad guys and war game when you play as Duke of Loanne) can make separate playthroughs feel almost like a new game. The fact that it can take a concept like party formations and integrate it into both a standard JRPG battle system of the time and in the unique commander mode in ways that have commonalities and completely unique functions in both shows some truly thoughtful design.

I did two full playthroughs (Thomas and Katarina), and enjoyed both immensely. The final bosses are genuinely pretty tough, though they can feel a bit infair sometimes. The New Game+ is executed better than in amy other JRPG I've ever played. You can start one even from an incomplete save file, carrying over all stats (save for HP), spells, and non-quest related equipment. You also carry over any skills you mastered, and can assign them to your new party immediately. There are nearly 30 playable party members and 8 possible main characters, so you can experiment each time, and can assigned mastered skills to anyone, instantly catching up new characters you haven't used extensively as viable in new runs.

I loved it, if you can't tell, and think it's head and shoulders above the rest of the SaGa series given its aesthetic and becoming slightly more user friendly. I'm taking a break from it for awhile, but I'll be back for the remaining characters. It also gave me an excuse to use my Vita for a bit for remote play while my wife was watching horrible teen dramas as she likes to do this time of year (I like to watch shows with her, but I can't take Riverdale
Yuck.)

[kupomogli]

Romancing SaGa 3

I thought I loved the SaGa games, but it appears to me the only SaGa games I can really get into are the ones that are more linear in their approach, and I do include SaGa Frontier when stating this as there are a few major side quests but the game itself is very linear otherwise.

For many different reasons I didn't like Romancing SaGa Minstrel Song, Romancing SaGa 3, Scarlet Grace, and Emerald Beyond. Emerald Beyond it was too linear, but at the same time it was heavily trial and error because let's say you fight a specific enemy and bam, that enemy was far more powerful than you and you just couldn't even hope to win.

And that's the problem I had with Romancing SaGa 3. The prologue of the game when I played it was great, but then you get past the prologue and you start doing these side quests. So I'd get to the side quest with this horde of rats, you can go back to the one person to get an item that will damage them every turn, but even then, I couldn't kill them, I even came back later and still couldn't kill them. I do this other side quest where I get brought into this dream world, can't defeat the boss. Another side quest where I go to this glacier area and fight this giant fish boss with the Minstrel, can't beat him, I actually defeated the other element but when I went back to Undine I was required to fight her too for some reason and couldn't beat her, I couldn't beat this dragon.

Like, the game did not tell me where to go and I had no clue what to do so I kept going to every location and spoke to everyone and started doing all these side quests and bam, brick wall.

I honestly think that Romancing SaGa 3 is a terrible game because you either know exactly what to do or you don't and the game is massively, MASSIVELY trial and error. And I absolutely can't stand when games make a game trial and error because that means that every time I can't progress I have to leave that area, get all the way out of the dungoen, a dungeon where the enemies were all stupidly easy but I could not progress because an overpowered boss. When I get more powerful I go attempt it again, fail, and again have to make my way all the way back out again. So each time I'm wasting huge chunks of time going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth because. It just isn't fun going through this massive amount of time wasting trial and error.

If it was possible to actually win, then sure, I wouldn't mind the game. Think of a Bloodborne or a Souls or whatever, where it's a hard battle but you actually overcome it, but in Romancing SaGa 3, often times it's not even remotely possible to defeat the boss because of sheer numbers. You can't exact win if enemies deal AoE damage that defeats your party in one or two hits. The only reason I did so for the fire element is because I did a formation in the front row and the AoE didn't hit everyone, just that front row, and I focused on healing that character and eventually won, but every other boss just had an insurmountable amount of HP and damage that it just wasn't happening.

I will even state that let's say that I did suffer through all the trial and error. Let's say that I eventually memorized everything, memorized exactly how to play through the game without any trouble whatsoever. My opinion would be the same and if I was to give sort of an explanation on my feelings of the game, even if I can finish the game without any issues afterwards, I actually rarely ever forget anything, and my thoughts on how good a game is remain based on all of my experiences. I would definitely refernce how the game is better during replays and at that point it "may" be a great game, but I'd say that overall it is a bad game and that's my opinion on Romancing SaGa 3. The opinion won't change but maybe one day I'll replay it, skip all of these side quests until I move beyond and find where I should actually go(which btw I couldn't find out where to go either despite feeling like I've been on every map I possibly could. Again, more trial and error. But that would be my opinion of the game an absurd amount of trial and error of a game that may or may not become good.

I have the exact same opinion I did of Dark Souls way back when. It's the only Dark Souls that I don't like, replayed it, thoughts are the exact same. This is despite liking Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 2, Dark Souls 3, Bloodborne, and aside from the open world, Elden Ring.

Anyways, thought I'd just give a reply to that.

[kupomogli]

So on Granblue Fantasy Relink I finished the main game, chapter 0, and I finished off all of the games quests after chapter 0 including this extremely difficult one called The Final Report. This is definitely a great game that I'd rate a 7/10. It's a bit lacking in terms of content for a Monster Hunter type game as you have around 15 bossses, not counting a few elemental variations of two different bosses and each new difficulty the bosses will do some new attacks but it almost feels like only until the hardest difficulty do they actually feel differnt(outside of raw stats and damage output.)

The combat is great, the party system is great, and building up your characters both the character you'll be using and your allies is a lot of fun. There are 18 different usable characters and each character has a unique mechanic attached to them, whether it's one character that can build up an attack charge meter based on how many perfect attacks you get in a row, another character that can do a full combo finisher provided all of the attacks are perfect, a character who's last hit of the combo will send her into the air and then you can do aerial dives towards the enemy and as long as you press the square button just as you hit the enemy during the dive you'll do a backflip to repeat the process over and over while three hits will reach full power allowing for her triangle attack to deal a large amount of damage or continue to just keep the aerial dives going.

Unfortunately the AI is a bit stupid and you'll really want to cherry pick characters that will work best for the AI. The AI will barely attack, they'll never use their unique properties, they will spam their special attacks the moment they become of use, so the best AI characters to use are those with ranged and support as those characters will deal the most damage.
.
Now what's really cool about the game's party system is actually the gacha mechanic. So the games gacha and customization are actually great because it's not using it as a paywall to force an absurd grind. So each of your weapons you can craft to increase their levels and if don't want to battle the bosses that give you the items for these upgrades, you've likely earned enough items to purchase these through the knick knack trading shop. You just trade the items, purchase the weapons, and then trade the items to uncap the weapons. That's when you get soul stones to place on weapons or sigils to add on your characters and these allow you to fine tune the customization of your characters.

For instance, one character I used during The Final Report in a way I never used him normally(infact I dropped him off my team at the end game and used other characters,) was Gran. So Gran has a ton of attacks that allow him to be used offensively or as a support. Now offensively I think he kind of sucks, but as a support I think he's the best character in the game, because I built him as a tank, gave him defensive and recovery skills, and then gave him a skill that he increases his defense by 50% and takes damage in place of my other allies. I then gave him sigils to decrease the amount of damage received, decreased the cooldown time of his skills, increased his HP, and also HP regen so that he just naturally regained any of his lost health.

Now of course many sigils are more valuable than others, so ones that rely on situational type things are ones that immediately don't use, but there's depth in the character customization through these sigils. To me though it's more so, how much defense do you want over attack, but there are characters that benefit from charge attacks, characters that benefit from finisher attacks, damage cap increases because as a gacha game once you hit the damage cap it doesn't matter how much you deal you're going to be stuck at that damage, etc.

I defeated the games hardest boss on The Final Report quest in a bit over 50 hours and every other quest after seems easier. I haven't did everything, I've only done a few, including one where you fought three bosses with level 125, but it seems like that one boss was where it's safe to drop the game as you've pretty much did it all. Just to let you know, you had to fight the games final boss again, but two points during the battle you had to break the boss or you had to deal the last 10% of HP against the boss. If in these two points you didn't deal the damage threshold, then it was game over because the boss would do an ultimate attack that didn't deal any damage, just gave you an instant faiil, and that 10% HP you had to deal at the end that did take a good deal of grinding and sigils to get extra damage out of my character's ultimates. Now, you have to change to hold SBA for your characters not to use their ultimates, but I do think maybe if you were to remove hold SBA when the boss is going into his final attack that it might actually be easier to hit that 10% because there's a circle that gives the player a chance to use theirs as each of your party members can combo the SBA to then do a super ultimate, and if you wait for that circle to go down you have a lot more time to deal attacks in between, because your AI allies will not use theirs until the circle goes all the way down, giving you a chance to do yours, and essentially allowing you to get a little bit of extra time without these being done just back to back. I did not try that, but I think that would have been enough to not require the sigil grinding to get that extra 2% I couldn't deal.

[celerystalker]

I thought I loved the SaGa games, but it appears to me the only SaGa games I can really get into are the ones that are more linear in their approach, and I do include SaGa Frontier when stating this as there are a few major side quests but the game itself is very linear otherwise.

For many different reasons I didn't like Romancing SaGa Minstrel Song, Romancing SaGa 3, Scarlet Grace, and Emerald Beyond. Emerald Beyond it was too linear, but at the same time it was heavily trial and error because let's say you fight a specific enemy and bam, that enemy was far more powerful than you and you just couldn't even hope to win.

And that's the problem I had with Romancing SaGa 3. The prologue of the game when I played it was great, but then you get past the prologue and you start doing these side quests. So I'd get to the side quest with this horde of rats, you can go back to the one person to get an item that will damage them every turn, but even then, I couldn't kill them, I even came back later and still couldn't kill them. I do this other side quest where I get brought into this dream world, can't defeat the boss. Another side quest where I go to this glacier area and fight this giant fish boss with the Minstrel, can't beat him, I actually defeated the other element but when I went back to Undine I was required to fight her too for some reason and couldn't beat her, I couldn't beat this dragon.

Like, the game did not tell me where to go and I had no clue what to do so I kept going to every location and spoke to everyone and started doing all these side quests and bam, brick wall.

I honestly think that Romancing SaGa 3 is a terrible game because you either know exactly what to do or you don't and the game is massively, MASSIVELY trial and error. And I absolutely can't stand when games make a game trial and error because that means that every time I can't progress I have to leave that area, get all the way out of the dungoen, a dungeon where the enemies were all stupidly easy but I could not progress because an overpowered boss. When I get more powerful I go attempt it again, fail, and again have to make my way all the way back out again. So each time I'm wasting huge chunks of time going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth because. It just isn't fun going through this massive amount of time wasting trial and error.

If it was possible to actually win, then sure, I wouldn't mind the game. Think of a Bloodborne or a Souls or whatever, where it's a hard battle but you actually overcome it, but in Romancing SaGa 3, often times it's not even remotely possible to defeat the boss because of sheer numbers. You can't exact win if enemies deal AoE damage that defeats your party in one or two hits. The only reason I did so for the fire element is because I did a formation in the front row and the AoE didn't hit everyone, just that front row, and I focused on healing that character and eventually won, but every other boss just had an insurmountable amount of HP and damage that it just wasn't happening.

I will even state that let's say that I did suffer through all the trial and error. Let's say that I eventually memorized everything, memorized exactly how to play through the game without any trouble whatsoever. My opinion would be the same and if I was to give sort of an explanation on my feelings of the game, even if I can finish the game without any issues afterwards, I actually rarely ever forget anything, and my thoughts on how good a game is remain based on all of my experiences. I would definitely refernce how the game is better during replays and at that point it "may" be a great game, but I'd say that overall it is a bad game and that's my opinion on Romancing SaGa 3. The opinion won't change but maybe one day I'll replay it, skip all of these side quests until I move beyond and find where I should actually go(which btw I couldn't find out where to go either despite feeling like I've been on every map I possibly could. Again, more trial and error. But that would be my opinion of the game an absurd amount of trial and error of a game that may or may not become good.

I have the exact same opinion I did of Dark Souls way back when. It's the only Dark Souls that I don't like, replayed it, thoughts are the exact same. This is despite liking Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 2, Dark Souls 3, Bloodborne, and aside from the open world, Elden Ring.

Anyways, thought I'd just give a reply to that.

I can understand that. I didn't really run into those problems myself, though a manual, even digital, would be hepful. For the rats, I used attacks like Twist and Turn and Giant Swing that hurt all enemies, and killed it without knowing there was an item to get to make it easier. Using the right formation for the situation makes a huge difference, though the game doesn't really explain it. Also, sparking and mastering the right wards makes a huge difference, completely netralizing a lot of attacks, as well astons of equipment that netralize elemental attacks.

Basically, learning the right loadout and formation is integral to success, but the game definitely doesn't give players a lot of tips. I went into it completely blind, and it took awhile to wrap my hands around it. I can totally see where some might find it off-putting. For me, it kinda worked.

[Aussie2B]

It drives me nuts when games don't even include digital manuals, even more so for games that weren't designed from the beginning to explain everything in-game (considering Super Famicom games came with paper manuals). I guess I may want to check some FAQs whenever I get around to Romancing SaGa 2 and 3, both of which I bought when their recent-ish localizations launched (not the new remake of RS2, though). And I've been sitting on the Super Famicom originals a long time too, having not played those either. It's kinda funny at this point how many Super Famicom games I bought because they were Japan-exclusive that have gotten localized since. Not a complaint at all, though. I love seeing Japan-only games finally officially released in English. But before I explore the SaGa series further, I still have to play through Final Fantasy Legend 3.

Anyway, as for what I have been playing, my rate of progress in Game & Watch Gallery 2 on my Game Boy Advance SP definitely slowed down after I hit around 75 stars, to the point where was lucky to add even one additional star each night, so my rate of playing the game at all also dropped, as I'm not keen on using up my limited gaming time each night on a session that could well result in zero progress. So I got back to Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on my PlayStation 4 briefly, and I'm now sitting before the final, six-winged form of Gabriel Celeste. However, I got sick for the fourth time in the last three months, blegh, so I went back to Game & Watch Gallery 2 and have worked my way up to 80 stars. Now there's nothing more I can get for the Museum, even though it's only one third full. I'm skeptical that I won't drop the game before hitting 100 stars, but we'll see. There are still quite a few games/modes where I'm not good enough to get more than one or two stars out of them, but they're just not clicking with me.

[Aussie2B]

I got one more star in Game & Watch Gallery 2 on my Game Boy Advance SP some days ago, but I've mostly dropped the game at this point.

I've been trying to finish off the last few things I want to do in Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness so I can finally retire that for the time being too. I'm still having fun with it overall, but I've been sticking with this game for so long now, albeit with many breaks. I wanted to start fresh in 2025, but it doesn't really make a difference if I continue to tie up loose ends for a bit. The sticking point for me right now is the boss Bloodbane. I can beat it no problem, but its drops are the only way in the entire game to obtain the Dragon God Scale item. I need one to make the last Item Creation recipe I've yet to do, and the RNG hasn't been kind to me. I didn't get one my first two runs through the post-game dungeon, and on this third run, I've been reloading and have tried four times already. What's weird is that the strategy guide claims there's a 1% chance of getting the Levantine sword as a drop (otherwise you can obtain it via Synthesis, which I've already done), and out of those six battles against Bloodbane, I've had Levantine drop three times. I know sometimes people get lucky, but it seems to me that there's no way it could be 1%. Maybe the guide left off a second digit. There are a lot of drops in the post-game dungeon that have a roughly 10-20% chance. The Dragon God Scale is 18%, if I recall correctly, and yet still nada. Beyond that, I'm sitting at 99% completion of the enemy and item encyclopedias, and I've hit the max level of 255 with Relia, with the others not far behind. At this point, I mostly just need to defeat six-winged Ethereal Queen and farm a few more pieces of Orichalcum and Moonstone and I'm done. I should be able to accomplish that without having to even beat Gabriel Celeste again, I hope.

[calthaer]

Reading through these and feel bad that Aussie2B is the only person posting.

Daunting for me to post thought because I have to actually face my compulsive switching. It's rare that a game just grabs me and I play it all the way through to completion - I often get bored ~50% of the way there on an hours-long game and I'm ready to switch. I really wish they made more games that lasted 10 hours and no more. The maps are too big, too many unlockables, etc.

Over the past few months I've played:

The Last Spell - really like this...but it's a rogue-like, so you have to beat something and then go beat it again
Heroes of Might & Magic III - going through a campaign...slowly
Ion Fury - like an old Duke Nukem but man is it long
Red Alert 2 - There was an error with one of the cut scenes and the game stopped working
Baldur's Gate - playing off-and-on for the past two years with a friend
DarkQuest
Gloomhaven - Can get pretty frustrating
Path of Exile 2
Hand of Fate 2
Diablo IV Expansion

and there are other games waiting in the wings...some of these I haven't picked up in months or sometimes years:
Salt & Sanctuary
Advance Wars 2
Odin Sphere
Final Fantasy 9
Thief 3: Deadly Shadows
Artifact Adventure
Fallout
Gauntlet: Slayer Edition
Cobalt Core - have "beaten" the main game but not unlocked everything
Metroid Prime (the Wii disc with all three of them on it)

One of these days I'll get all these done, but I get 10-15 hours in and then I'm ready for the game to end and it doesn't.

[Aussie2B]

Haha, it's no problem. It's great when others participate, but I don't mind when the topic temporarily turns into my own personal gaming blog, haha. In fact, I periodically copy and paste the posts I make in this topic into Word files I have, creating a gaming journal going all the way back to 2004. It's fun to look back on my experiences with games over the years, and I can search the files to quickly look up what I thought of a particular game. It's also tremendously helpful if I want to return to a game eventually to do more and need a refresher on what I did and didn't already do.

I wouldn't worry about how much you play a game either. I mean, I've often listed off games I newly bought and briefly tested out for probably 30 minutes tops. It's definitely not a topic just for talking about games we're playing to completion. And I know what you mean about games being too long. A short length is a selling point to me. Unfortunately, sometimes I start a game and think it can be banged out quick, only to end up with a bigger commitment than I expected. Like with Game & Watch Gallery 2, it's listed as just a couple hours long on How Long to Beat, and, sure, if you're already familiar with the games and good at them, it wouldn't take long to rack up enough stars to earn the credits, but for someone new to the games, it'd probably take way more time than that to practice and improve enough.

Anyway, as far as gameplay goes, I'm effectively done with Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on PlayStation 4. I got enough Orichalcum to have every Item Creation recipe made and to complete my Item Encyclopedia. I thought six-winged Ethereal Queen would complete my Enemy Encyclopedia, but then I discovered that I missed a dumb little imp in Chapters 4-5. The final version of Ethereal Queen was definitely harder than the previous ones, but I still beat her on my first attempt. Even with my whole party at the max level, the Anima fight is still harder. No matter how strong a single enemy is, a six (or seven, if you want to count Relia)-versus-one battle is gonna be in your favor to some degree. Six (or seven) versus six is a lot harder to manage. I also maxed out everything that takes skill points, though I didn't learn every role because some are tied to the in-game Battle Trophies. Since a number of Battle Trophies are cumulative and they carry over from one file to the next (same as the encyclopedias), I don't see a point in concerning myself much with them now. If I ever play through the harder difficulties (which is a must if I ever wanted to pursue the platinum PSN trophy), then I'd get closer to earning the remaining Battle Trophies while doing that. I did earn 66% of them, though. The only other thing I could do is try to level up my moves and spells more, but that would be incredibly tedious and there's no real reward in doing so. I think Air Slash is the only one I maxed, as I just spam that with Fidel from a safe distance during most boss battles. What I do want to still load up the game for is to read the messages from Augury (now that I finally maxed that) and check out the lore stuff in the Glossary.