Topic: Games you've recently beat

@colonelkilgore @Jimmer-jammer @Th3solution I just beat Fable II, took me a few weeks, I was only playing in the mornings really until a long session to finish things off today. Great game, and another one under my belt after a load I didn't gel with recently.

@TheBrandedSwordsman good to hear you connected with it buddy, are you gonna try the other Fable games now or move onto something else?

@TheBrandedSwordsman glad to hear you found one! I had a game this year that I just could not gel with, even though I thought I’d love it (13 Sentinels)… I have the same question as the colonel haha

@Jimmer-jammer quite surprised about you not feeling 13 Sentinels buddy, as until your comment pretty much everything I’d heard about the game was universally positive. It’s probably a good thing actually, as I’ll lower the expectations a wee bit for when I play it in a couple of months.

@colonelkilgore honestly, I’m pretty surprised too. It’s probably more me than the game, as it seems to be well crafted. I may return to it one day but for now I have no interest in going back. The combat did nothing for me (and I generally enjoy both turn-based and mech type content) and the story just wasn’t grabbing me. I actually fell asleep while playing on three separate occasions (again, probably me more than the game itself).

Definitely not a good sign. Well, I’m still very curious about the game… but now with a bit of a different perspective. I’ll look forward to chatting it over a bit with you once I’ve put some time into it.

@TheBrandedSwordsman Nice! Glad that Fable ended up being a good game to get your mojo back. So do you think you’ll try to start anything else before Elden Ring? It’s still a full 2.5 months until that releases, so you have a while.
Speaking of, I bought Demon’s Souls in the sale and I think I will start it up as soon as I finish Ratchet & Clank. I’m at around 85% of R&C so probably will get that done if I get time this week.

@colonelkilgore @Jimmer-jammer @Th3solution I will just be giving some time and thought to my next game, thanks for all the comments, good luck with Demon's Souls ,sol, that and Dark Souls II are the only Souls games I haven't beaten yet.

Persona 3 Portable. It was great. I like the story, and the main cast was wonderful. And the gameplay still holds up well today.

That’s Persona PSP down. Thanks to the weird PSP on PS Vita idiosyncrasies, it took me 631 hours. I’d estimate that to be more 30 to 40 hours but half of that was spent in the final dungeon grinding for the ultimate Personas. Worth it!

Yesterday I finished Assassin's Creed Valhalla. I didn't collect all the treasures yet but I probably will go back for the platinum.

I feel really positive about it. They fixed the thing I disliked most about Odyssey - the enemies taking 4 years to kill no matter how much you level up - and I also very much liked the gathering allies to take down a baddie thing. I also like vikings which helps. I actually think this was probably my favourite ever Assassin's Creed. That's not massive praise but it is still some praise.

If I had to moan about stuff and of course I do, my major gripe with the game is that - like all the best Assassin's Creed games - it would be better if it wasn't an Assassin's Creed game. Eivor's story is barely related to the assassins at all, and all of the future animus hijinks are just annoying. The ending is the weakest part of the game, primarily because instead of this just being a radical viking RPG, they had to shoehorn all of the terrible Assassin's Creed silliness into it to tie it in to the other games.

The series is a mess. I wish they'd just do a separate series from AC that plays like Valhalla but it's just a historical RPG. Just do that and I'll play them. All of them. But no, it's 90% historical RPG, 10% lol okay so once up on a time there were some magic people but they all died and

Mini Ninjas PS3 just now.

@johncalmc I had heard they toned down the modern day animus stuff for this one, but it sounds like it still detracts. That’s too bad. I haven’t played Odyssey yet but I enjoyed Origins. I have no plans to jump into Valhalla until I’ve played Odyssey, unless you recommend I should skip it? Honestly I only have so many 100 hour open world games in me and can’t imagine playing both games within a year or two of each other.

@Th3solution Same. I think we finished Orgins at around the same time and I have no urge to play either of the next two games yet. I think my dad has Odyssey so i could borrow of it him at anytime

I finished Mini Ninjas PS3 several hours ago.

Such a good hidden gems.

@JohnnyShoulder I probably would have had an itch to play Odyssey by now except that I played Ghost of Tsushima a few months after Origins, and that’s basically cut from the same cloth.
I saw AC Valhalla for $14 today, which seemed like a steal for a PS5 native game that has like 1000 hours of content. I also saw a pre-owned PS4 disc for Cyberpunk 2077 for $9 and I actually thought twice about picking it up. Wow, that game has fallen from grace.

@Th3solution They've toned it down to an extent. I think you only briefly play as the future person like three times during a game I played for 160 hours (I also beat the Paris and Ireland DLCs) so in terms of time spent it's certainly not a big deal. The problem is that if you're invested in the narrative - as I was - then being a pretty radical viking RPG for 95% of the game and then turning into sci-fi silliness for ten minutes at the ending feels anticlimactic and weird.

It annoys me, honestly. If I could have full creative control over any video game series I'd probably pick Assassin's Creed. I've never been a huge fan of the series but it annoys me how much potential the series has that Ubisoft repeatedly squanders. They annihilated the overarching future lore with Assassin's Creed 3, and since then it's like they've been trying to just imagine up ways to tie games to the series, however tenuous those links are, just so they can call it Assassin's Creed, often to the detriment of the game.

If they cared about making a quality product and not just bashing out annualised releases for maximum coin they should have had a plan for three, five, even seven games, each set in a different time that led up to some sort of coherent conclusion. Instead they just take games that really have little business connecting to one another and then pile silly science fantasy lore on them to create a vague link.

And so should you skip Odyssey and move straight on to Valhalla? If you're only going to play one of them then I would say Valhalla is better for me. I think some people found it too long (it is) and others didn't care for the settlement stuff (I liked it) but I do think the game is better in most ways. There are a couple of the future bits you won't understand if you skip Odyssey but if you don't care about those then it doesn't matter. And obviously I'm more interested in vikings than ancient Greece which contributes too.

I personally wouldn't skip Odyssey though. I think it's the weakest of the new three, but I still liked it. My major gripes were that I didn't think the story was particularly memorable, it's too long (again), and the combat is annoying because the enemies take too long to die. I play these games on easy because I don't care one whit about challenge or learning how to fight, I just want to run around historical settings seeing sights, collecting things, and shivving people in the back. The combat - even on easy - is tedious and irritating.

One thing's for sure - this series needs to go away and then come back rebooted with a clear vision.

@johncalmc Thanks for the breakdown. Having only played two of the post-AC3 games, I can completely see what you mean. The modern/future day arc felt tacked on even with Black Flag.

I’ve got several games lined up on deck, so an AC game isn’t in my immediate plans anyways. But when I do pick the series back up I’ll probably try Odyssey first, but I’m not sure since the more time goes on, the more I want to be playing PS5 native games where possible. I honestly think I might try Immortals: Fenyx Rising before I play another AC game, just to see how the Ubisoft approach translates to a non-AC conceptualized game.

@Th3solution @johncalmc There must be something wrong with me as I seem to be the only person in the world who always enjoyed the sci-fi part of AC and is actually sad about it being marginalized

@Th3solution I have that as well but I haven't started that yet. I quite like the idea of a game that's like assassin's creed but without all the baggage. We shall see if it's any good.

Odyssey is pretty good though. Fine for what it is. Depends what you're expecting. I play these games while I listen to podcasts and stuff mostly, just milling about collecting the treasures etc.