Topic: Games you've recently beat

@colonelkilgore The New Order is awesome. I bet you can get it for less than a fiver these days, too.

Good to know 👍. I already have it tbh (I managed to get the full Alt. History Collection for around £15 a while back. I just like to space games within a series (as well as games of the same genre) out a bit. I probably won’t play a first-person shooter for a few months now.

@colonelkilgore Surprisingly, it had the best love story in any game I've played I think. Couple of weird difficulty spikes though, that's the only bad thing I can say about it.

@kyleforrester87 🤣 that is surprising… but certainly whets my appetite for it.

@RogerRoger Welllllllll, about that....

Apparently it can take about a year and half for her to calm down from her overly energetic nature as a pup... So yeah. That's fun!

Already got it planned out for when it drops huh? Nice one! I hope you enjoy replaying them all! 😄

I think the only thing I bought on PS3 out the PS1 games confirmed so far is Abe's Oddysee... And I bought the "oddbox" double pack version with Exoddus. So I hope that counts for me getting Oddysee free. 😅

... Don't look up prices of physical copies for The Legend Of Dragoon then rog.

Nevermind something like rare horror PS2 games Kuon or Rule Of Rose. Those prices'll truly make your head spin.

Cyberpunk 2077

Just wrapped up the story a couple of hours ago. I loved the game, and it would only be second to Horizon Forbidden West as my 2nd favorite game played this year. I realize that we are only 5 months into the year, but still, it was well worth the 15 month wait to finally play the game the way it was meant to be played. I had left my copy sealed from release until the PS5 version was finally put out.

I am not going to go into a very detailed review, but it is a shame that they had to release this in such a horrible state because there is actually a great game there. They nailed the feeling of the world, the story, and created some really good characters.

Hopefully when the DLC drops it ends up being pretty good as I look forward to jumping back into the game again someday. I plan on playing it a second time someday to experience the game as the Female V and see what the Judy romance is like anyways, but still, more good content that's new is always welcome.

I completed AI: The Somnium Files on Nintendo Switch over the course of my vacation. I have a long history of playing visual novels on such trips, so it seemed appropriate. Especially with the sequel releasing soon.

How was AI: The Somnium Files @Ralizah?

I've heard good things about it and I did play the demo but never quite felt the urge to pull the trigger on it.

Eager to get your hands for the sequel kinda good?

@HallowMoonshadow Hmm.

The characters are mostly likeable and well-developed, but the writing is marred a bit by the omnipresent and really childish sexual humor (I expected some of this, since all of Uchikoshi's games have this element present to some extent, but the 30 year old MC's teenager-like obsession with breasts and porno mags actually starts ruining important setpieces in this game). The story itself is pretty gripping in its last several hours, though, even if it's tonally all over the place at times. The composer had pretty much only written music for Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games previously, but he does a great job with the soundtrack in this, and the music is strong throughout.

I'd heard a lot of complaints about the trial-and-error aspect of the gameplay sections in this, which allow you to poke around in people's dreams, but that mostly wasn't my experience. I found the dream sequence puzzles had their own sort of emergent logic, which kept them from being frustrating. With that said, the time management element discourages the player from seeing all of the funny interactions written into these sections, and the puzzle element is still far less satisfying than, say, the escape room puzzle gameplay in something like Virtue's Last Reward.

Performance in this version is a bit questionable at times. The game looks great on the Switch (character animations are massively improved over the jank-ass Zero Time Dilemma), but it suffers from some lag and multi-second hang-ups when the game is loading animations and the like. It wasn't a huge deal for me, given the nature of the game, but it's something to be aware of with this version of the game. I don't know if the PS4 version has these issues, but, last I heard, the PC release was pretty buggy as well.

I'll def. be grabbing the sequel, but will probably be waiting on a price drop or something. There are WAY more games coming out in the next few months than I'll have time to play.

... I think I recall this even in the demo in regards to the mc with him saying things like that to the AI he has...

Good to hear the story is pretty good in your eyes despite the tone being a bit over the place throughout the game.

... I really need to get the 999/nonary game series.

I did like the puzzles/interactions in the carsousel memory place though and I seem to recall there being multiple paths mentioned too so it presumably has some replayability too? 😄

... I admitedly have no idea what's coming out over the next few months 😅

Still I hope you enjoy whatever you're after and Ai's sequel!

@HallowMoonshadow Like nearly all of Uchikoshi's games to date, there are branching paths, and the player will need to explore pretty much all of them before the game's "true" route is made accessible. You'll see the credits 3 - 5 times before you actually get the proper ending that fully wraps up the game. And this game's method of accomplishing this is having several of the Somniums feature alternative paths to completion.

Somniums also typically feature hidden collectibles you can do back and look for as well, so, yes, expect to replay several of the Somniums at least once down the road.

Yeah, the game has a really solid mystery underneath it all, and no amount of weird flaws in the rest of it can detract from how well executed the plot is once it gets going. Which is, ultimately, why Uchikoshi's games have such a cult following.

And yes, play The Nonary Games collection. 999 and VLR are both absolute classics.

So, just taking the next two months, the games I'm actively interested in include:

• AI: The Somnium Files - nirvanA Initiative
• Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course
• Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes
• Live-A-Live
• Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3
• Yurukill: The Calumniation Games

@Ralizah Yeah, Zero Escape went a little overboard with the pervy main character at times as well. I haven’t played AI yet because I’m still annoyed about Zero Time Dilemma 😂

@nessisonett 999 is the most tasteful in that regard. I still think the optional innuendo-laden discussion about drowning is one of the funniest exchanges I've ever seen in a video game. And it made sense contextually, given the character was a hormonal teenage boy

@Ralizah I’m just annoyed that Zero Time Dilemma utterly ruins about 99% of the dialogue between Sigma and Phi in Virtue’s Last Reward. Some of it was creepy, some of it was quite touching. There were some fairly tasteless jokes in that game, but I guess they did actually make sense given Tenmyouji’s identity now that I think about it.

Finally got to see the credits roll on Final Fantasy VII Remake (PS5) this afternoon then went back to pick up easily obtainable trophies. Think I spent around 40+ hours doing this. As regular readers may recall, not really my favourite game but glad that I got it with plus rather than paying for it.
On that note have just checked my trophy guide and it seems I have played around 20+ games gotten from plus in the last year, in that sense it probably works out at decent value for me.

@sorteddan Yeah, I’d say 20 games is definitely worth the subscription! If you consider maybe an average cost of each game is $20, then all you really need to play is 3 games to get the value back. 😄
I’ve played 3 from my PS+ library so far this year (Dirt 5, Rime, and currently playing BioShock 2), so anything else over the next 6 months is gravy. Also got a PS+ discount on at least one of my purchases this year which saved me about $20 off the price of Kena. And then the cloud saves, which it’s hard to put a dollar value on that. If only I ever used online functionality then I’d really get my money’s worth. But sounds like you definitely are!

Just finished my first playthrough of Sniper Elite 4 and enjoyed the hell out of it tbh. Exactly what I was looking for. Gonna have to go back through each mission to pick up all the collectibles and then the ‘Authentic’ playthrough after that will be interesting.

Oh and the co-op and pvp that @render and I are planning to get done at some point this month. Fair bet of content fair play 😅.

@JudgeDredd yeah I know what you mean about retro level design (if on steroids to be fair)… probably it’s strongest aspect. Glad you enjoyed 5 so much… it’ll be a long old while until I get to that one… but I’ll be looking forward to it for sure.

Cheers for the heads-up on manual saves on authentic too 👊

@JudgeDredd yeah that’s the one alright. I’m gonna focus on getting all the collectibles and kills etc. first and then I’ll leave the Authentic run til last. Gonna be really interested to see how the gameplay changes.