Topic: Games you've recently beat

@RogerRoger
Yep, definitely have to agree, the mission with Lando was hilarious. Really was solid gold. Perhaps we will see a return in Battlefront 3 on PS5, you never know.

@RogerRoger I own the whole series on Steam so I do think I’ll play the others at some point since they’re less likely to be as frustrating. I did enjoy my time but those bosses truly were hard. Jerec in particular, I managed to trap him so that he wouldn’t run into the core to heal himself so that definitely helped. No clue how I would have beaten him otherwise!

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Welcome back.

Definitely check out Falcom's Ys series. Ys VIII, in particular, was really good.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Glad to see you back and that you enjoyed Cold Steel. I finished off Sky the 3rd so I’m only a couple of games behind you and could catch up if I had even less of a life and idk, you had your hands in casts for a couple of months 😂😂

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Separate, aside from Ys I and II, which are connected. They all, to my knowledge, take place in the same universe/timeline, and there are small references to previous games and returning character cameos dotted throughout the series, but they can be played in any order, for the most part, without losing much of anything when it comes to appreciating the experience.

@Ralizah Don’t forget Ys Origin! Great game and very much related to 1 and 2.

@nessisonett I mean, it's a prequel to the series as a whole and is set hundreds of years before even the first game, right? My understanding from discussions with fans is that, aside from small references (which exist throughout the series), it can also be appreciated as its own thing.

Using the Geofront translation patch for Zero? I hear it's fairly high quality. I'll probably wait for them to finish with Ao no Kiseki as well.

@Ralizah Yep, the translation’s been great so far. I’m really missing the turbo button for battles though, Sky Evo made battles a breeze being able to speed up.

Ys Origin does tie directly into and somewhat spoils the first Ys game though, in terms of characters not being who they say they are. It’s definitely more related than for example, Ys 2 and Memories of Celceta. I’d recommend to play Ys 1&2 and then Origin afterwards for maximum impact.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Welcome back! So, as someone who never finished ToCS, how long do you figure you spent on it? And at what point in the game did you feel like it clicked from “pretty good” to “can’t wait to play again and can’t stop thinking about it between gameplay sessions.”?

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Okay - thanks. That’s consistent with what I’ve heard. And the word out there is that the series even gets better and better with each installment. So my being stuck on Chapter 2 sounds like I’m not far from a threshold of when it starts to really hook you, if I can push forward just a little more.

Just beat the main campaign of DOOM 3: BFG Edition, although I still need to go through the two short expansion campaigns included with the game.

I can't wait to talk about this.

Beat Cuphead on PS4, don't think I will be torturing myself with the Plat, but want to get the trophy list over 50%.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Kinda half and half? I do kind of want to laugh at various aspects of it (and plan to), but there's also some cool new monsters/redesigned monsters/interesting new weapons/interesting level design choices, etc. I'm keen on talking about.

There are also changes to the BFG Edition I want to explore, because I feel like they lead to the game having a bit of an identity crisis.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy LOL I've heard about the DOOM RPGs, although I think they're iphone exclusive, and I'm an android user. Not that I'm keen on playing phone games anyway. I've tried, but... I need buttons!

My current plan for the rest of the year is:

• DOOM 3 expansion content
• Paper Mario: The Origami King (I'm probably 2/3rds of the way through it, although I'm playing it with my nephew, so it's a bit slow-going)
• Astral Chain
• Digital Devil Saga 2
• DOOM 2016
• Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition
• DOOM Eternal

I'll also probably nab Cyberpunk, but, like with The Witcher, I expect that playthrough to be months long.

Those are my prioritized games for the rest of the year, so other than Final DOOM, I should be fully caught up on the series by the end of the year. I'm generally not a huge fan of playing multiple games in one series over a short period of time, but DOOM games aren't terribly long, and I do like seeing how they evolve over time.

I think you'll probably dig DOOM 64. One of the only games I've ever immediately replayed after finishing.

Is Cold Steel 2 your next stop after DOOM 64?

I finished off Strider 2014 there, it was really quite good. A proper retro experience from beginning to end, difficult without feeling unfair and with plenty of collectibles. The final boss even inexplicably turns into a monster at the end. You then ride his burning corpse from space back down to Earth. Now that’s rad.

Woah, I got the under 4 hours trophy by the absolute skin of my teeth!

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Pretty sure. They're not on the Play Store, as far as I can tell. The one area where Apple dominates is in terms of the mobile games you can play on its platform. They also have access to Tanto Cuore, and a mobile port of Shin Megami Tensei. All of which never come to Android because of exclusivity agreements. -_-

Oh? What's happening in September?

Yeah, I'm looking forward to playing through the other half of DDS. I originally also wanted to fully beat Nocturne on my PS2 before SMT V arrived, but with the HD port coming, I can just play it through on my Switch.

@RogerRoger Yeah, I'm especially keen to see how our experiences compared.

Did you play through both expansions, or just RoE?

Polished off L.A. Noire with my mum tonight. The ending was a little strange and rushed but we both really enjoyed playing it, it’s just a proper detective game despite us being crap at reading people. It’s a shame there’ll probably never be a follow-up, it had a lot of good ideas that just needed some more polish. The facial animations are better than any game I’ve ever seen as well, and this is a 9 year old game. The tech they used definitely holds up and the cast did a stellar job. Absolutely a game I would recommend as an experience.

@stuzster Oh no, that’s both a massive shame and incredibly ironic! I think L.A. Noire shines in its immersion, the city is such a faithful recreation along with them having actual radio show clips from the 40s, the cars control like crap and most of the police are dodgy, racist or entirely incompetent. It’s a game I’d definitely play again and aim for the platinum.

In one of my more erratic gaming moments, I drifted away from the ‘flavor of the month’ and a game I seriously am loving, Ghost of Tsushima, to finish off my orphaned and forgotten playthrough of The Council.

I’m not entirely clear why I reopened this Pandora’s box of a game because I honestly forgot about it after casually placing it in the back of the cabinet like my little jar of marmite. “Maybe I’ll try this mixed experience again when I’m feeling adventurous...”

Well, for whatever reason, (and spoiler for those who’ve played it) and the only logical explanation is that a daemon possessed me and took over my thoughts to lead me to do this irrational act 😜 I was led to randomly click on the game in the waning moments of a difficult week. I think I felt the surge of satisfaction after finally completing Bloodstained recently and subconsciously gravitated to a game that I knew I was close to finishing.

I don’t think I played the game for at least 6 months, I’d guess. I enjoyed episode 1 (and I believe I left some early impressions somewhere) and episode 2 a little less so. By episode 3 I was feeling a little put off and struggled to even feel motivated to start episode 4, but I had the “well, I’ve invested this much time into it and I bought the full season so I might as well...” thoughts and I started the penultimate episode all those months ago, where I finally just stagnated and abandoned it in the first chapter of episode 4. And there it sat for ages until a few days ago when it was resurrected, and now, completed finally to strike off my backlog list. 🥳

I won’t make this into much of a proper review, but I’ll say that the game has its strengths. Obviously it has plenty of shortcomings too, and I would be hard pressed to endorse a recommendation to the average gamer. But the last few chapters actually got quite interesting and once I reached a certain point in the story (again, huge spoilers here —) when you discover the truth about Mortimer being a daemon and being Louis father that’s when it really made it worthwhile and I was excited to see how everything was going to play out. So the final episode, number 5, was not nearly as much a slog because I was honestly fascinated at what could transpire and how my choices could affect things.

And I’ll give the game credit here too — your choices do matter. They seem to matter quite a bit. In fact, I’m rather upset with myself because I got a rather disappointing ending. And it seems that I was headed towards it fairly early on by some of my decisions even in the first few episodes. As ‘multiple ending’ type of games do, there is diverging decisions that occur pretty late in the game too, but in this one, I was not able to try to get a good ending by simply going back an hour to the point of a binary decision and just replay the last hour to get a different outcome (I know because I tried). No unfortunately if I wanted a good ending, I was going to have to replay the darn thing from at least episode 2 onward. And the thought of that made me feel like I’d rather have marmite toast than that.

So in the end, I think that speaks for itself. In a game where you can choose from one of 3 original classes at first, has a pretty open decision making narrative as well as RPG mechanics to build an individualized build out of your talents and abilites .... yet it plays in such a clunky manner that it’s just not very re-playable. At least not for me.

The story feels glacial at points - seemingly going nowhere with nonsensical narrative arcs, and the puzzles are sometimes quite difficult. The game allows you to paint yourself into a corner if you don’t have the right abilities leveled up to more easily solve a situation or puzzle. Fortunately I never got stuck beyond progression, but it can be a little frustrating.

Anyways, it’s too bad, because the game innovates wonderfully. And everyone here knows how much I champion innovation in gaming. I can’t say I regret playing it or that I didn’t have some enjoyment from it, and like I say, the ending sort of makes all the lull in the middle worthwhile. All five seasons is probably about 15-18 hours of gameplay, so it’s not too long. So, if you like the ‘choose your own adventure’ style of story driven experience like Telltale and Life is Strange, yet have grown tired of their repetitive recipe and approach, then it’s worth a try for you. But Big Bad Wolf studio has some ironing out to do to make the gameplay more pleasing and the mechanics more passable before the next project (Season 2?)

Tagging @RogerRoger here on a separate post so you don’t accidentally see the spoilers in an email. I think a long time ago you had some level of interest in The Council and wanted to know my thoughts on it. 🙂