Grotz99

Hopefully this is the last time I need to post in this thread. Couldn't resist getting a few more games around black Friday. Looks like I spent $82 less than last year. November PS4 Games Deathloop (physical+steelcase) - $29.99 Tales of Arise (physical) - $32.31 Switch Mario Party Superstars (physical) - $61.40 November Total: $123.70 December PS4 Lego Super-Villains Season Pass - $2.99 December Total: $2.99 2021 Total: $723.17 2021 Total Played: $300.62

Clicking through the next page button in this area of the forums and I finally found this....at the bottom of page 4. I guess it isn't too bad considering my last post was in August. I've done a good amount of gaming since then, but that's about when I got really busy with work so this fell to the wayside. There are also so many more amazing threads to read that I can't even get close to getting this section to be completely read and caught up on anymore, which is great. Due to my massive backlog of games I would like to play and the limited amount of time I have now a days, I changed my mantra when it comes to trophies. I will still be aiming to collect them and if I like the game enough or if they aren't super grindy, I will attempt to 100% games, but I have no problem now deciding to move on if they take too much time or I am just not enjoying it. My minimum is going to be at least getting an A rank in the game and I'm starting up old games on profile as well to do just that. Now where to start.... Although I did not platinum either of these, I wanted to discuss this trilogy, you can see my thoughts on the first game, that I did platinum, here. My original goal this year was to at least play up through the 2nd one, but I found that after a small break from playing the 2nd game, I wanted to play the third to see how it wrapped up. Since the gameplay doesn't really change much from the first game, this will be mostly about the story and will contain spoilers. Nothing major, but I strongly feel that you should play these games going in blind for the first playthrough. The Banner Saga (TBS) 2 and especially 3 made TBS 1 look more like the preface to the whole story. All you knew from the first one is that you were running from a horde of perceived enemies, Dredge, and that there was a giant snake breaking down mountains. TBS 2 has you start off immediately after the first one sailing down a river with whoever was still alive trying to escape the horde of Dredge to get to the main human city Arberrang in hopes that it will keep your people safe. Sound familiar? It's the same premise from the first game, but this time there is more action and the story starts to unravel more. The neat thing is that the choices you make in the first game can carry over to consequences in this one, as well as the 3rd game. The best part about this one was though was the introduction to the Ravens, a group of mercenaries who will do anything for money, even when the world seems to be coming to an end. It introduced one of my favorite characters, Bolverk, a berserking Varl who can either be kind or a mean SOB depending on the choices you make for him. Being a little mean and making choices that benefit the Ravens was essential for a trophy and probably played best to his expected personality. When it came to combat, he was one of the strongest (maybe too strong for your parties own good). Due to dual wielding 2 axes, he was able to swing twice, but his 2nd attack would hit someone by him at random, even your own party, which I forgot numerous times...poor Folka was just trying to help provide him some defense! His ragtag group also encountered the most interesting characters I thought, such as the drunk axe thrower Oli. On the other side of the story, either Alette or Rook were leading their caravan over hills, through swamps and forrests and during this was introduced to what I believe to be on of the most annoying "enemies", the horseborn. These creatures are able to attack and then run away after or use pretty long range attacks. Although the overarching story for this didn't deviate much from the first one, it was each of the little moments that made this game memorable. The choices and interactions you had to make along the way would sometimes have dire consequences and that is why playing this game blind the first time through is such a treat. TBS 3 takes a different approach than the first 2 and irregardless to what people thought, I thought it was a good direction to go. It again focused on 2 parties, one with the majority of the characters stuck in the city trying to help defend it or keep people from turning on each other and the other group trying to get to where the darkness began. I thought what happened in and around the city to be more exciting and each of your choices there would affect how long the other party had to move since the darkness is creeping in (you finally learn what the hell is happening near the end of this game). These choices also turn this in a Game of Thrones scenario, where I hope you weren't attached to too many of the characters, that is if you go in blind. I thought it was kind of a shot to the face when I found out that a choice you made in the first game decides the fate of one of the main characters, the bad version of that choice is by default if you don't continue from a save too. I also learned that while playing Alette, you apparently can't be too nice... While you are working on the city with one group, the other is progressing through the darkness for an amount of time determined by the first group's choices. This management was tricky to get things done in a certain amount of time or make it to specific days and made you not only replay from the start of 2nd to last chapter, but even from choices in the first chapter and made me do what I hate to do and follow a guide to the letter. This is partly why I didn't platinum the 3rd game and didn't want it to sour my overall experience. Unless I missed something early on in the story, I kind of wish they would have sprinkled in a bit more about wtf was going throughout it, rather than a big reveal at the end, but like I said, these games were more about the little moments rather than the overarching story. It was about getting to know and care about the characters you came across, even if you wanted some of them to die off. Although I didn't platinum TBS 2 and 3, I feel like one day I'll go back them, not sure about TBS 2 DLC though. I brought this up before, but I wasn't sure what the best way to play these would be, one at a time with multiple playthroughs for each one until the next or playing through the whole trilogy in one playthrough first. I went with the former, but now that I've done that I think actually playing through all 3 in one playthrough would have been better. Yes, it sucks to have 3 unfinished games on the profile for a while, but getting the whole story and having no idea what the consequences are as you are going would make this more enjoyable. After that using a guide from the start for the rest might not be so bad as you can plan out the whole journey. They at least made it better in TBS 2 and 3 so you can load saves from each chapter if needed. This is probably a jumbled mess as I'm rusty at writing these things, but I wanted to get some thoughts about these games on here before I forget about them. Going forward, I'll probably stick to writing about games I complete as this is a trophy checklist. Hope this helps me go back and write some things for the games I did platinum in the past few months. I just got a decent amount of games I'm excited to play from the sales including Deathloop and Tales of Arise, but of course after drinking a bit last night I decided to play something slightly mindless and popped in Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory so I guess I'll be playing that now...Also started Yakuza 4 and every time I started one of these I'm just so excited to play them, but they are dense and will take time, it probably helped to have breaks between them. Also heard that Yakuza 4 is the least favorite, but so far I'm not seeing why, guess I'll find out when I complete it.

For some reason when I read this, this came to mind: I also like spectating Evo, so I'll keep an eye on this to see what it takes to actually get all the trophies for those games. 😁

Glad to see I'm not the only one that thinks this way. I have become busy and been wanting to spend any free time I have actually playing my games, but I will update my checklist soon, especially since I want to talk about how I'm going about gaming now. Even though I haven't 100% finished some of the games, I would still love to talk about them. I use to be able to keep this section as read up to date, but now it's impossible...in a good way. I love reading other's views on the games they play and engaging discussions and it almost seems endless, especially when it's like reading a novel, some of you know who you are 😉 Was curious Arc if you had any intention of playing Dead Nation. I started to play it as part of my plan to slowly get old games on my profile to at least A rank and I can see this game being quite a challenge.

Ended up getting Deathloop from Best Buy since it comes with a free Steelcase and I'm a sucker for those.

Wow did those videos make that look annoying. Did you try sitting in 2nd place until near the end and hitting them with an item? I use to do that a bunch in Mario Kart, mostly because blue shells would screw up your day anyways.

As I've gotten busier lately and keep looking at my backlog, I keep thinking that I would like to at least play these games before I no longer can, so I've started a new gaming mantra recently. I would still like to get at least A ranks in games and try to go for platinums, but only when it's fun and worth my time. I don't want to spend hours doing mindless grinding for 1 trophy anymore or playing through a game for the 5th time that I didn't find fun, it even starts to sour some games. My account is of course no where near as impressive as yours, but I worked my way from 37% to 62% completion and played too many tedious hours to get a few extra trophies when I have so many unearned and so many great games staring at me from the shelves. It's kind of nice to set that expectation that I won't have to get 100% for this game because these 3 trophies require a ton of time and I'm better off moving on or maybe cleaning up some from my unearned. Having a non-100% completion goal but enough to be satisfied made me enjoy gaming more with the limited time. I will still push myself for harder trophies, as long as they are fun. (looking at you Slay the Spire, still doing 2-3 runs a week)

Usually if I'm buying a game day 1 at full price, it's for the steel case to show off in on shelves, but I've made some mistakes back in day that don't include goodies. Bought A Way Out for full price to play a coop game with my wife. It was ok but not worth $40. Another is jumping the gun on Everspace because I wanted that Freelancer and Tie Fighter nostalgia again. That game did not fill that... I think I also paid full price for a physical version of Star Ocean Integrity and Faithlessness, which I played for a couple hours and couldn't get into. I'd like to try it again some day as I did enjoy other Star Ocean games, but trophies aside, is it worth it for a playthrough?

Another month, another Switch game, but decided to finally pick up Smash Bros Ultimate with it going on sale. Othercide was at it's lowest price and I've been waiting to get that for a while. Still under last years total spent, but have 2 months ago... I'm at least doing a better job this time around playing the games I get while still playing a few from last year. October PS4 Games Othercide - $10.49 (started) Switch Games Super Smash Brothers Ultimate - $43.09 (started) October total: $53.58 2021 total: $596.48 2021 total played: $290.64

Great review and the guide looks awesome. It's been 2 years since I've played The Witness and I stopped without getting the Challenge trophy like a damn fool. At this point I feel like I would need to play the game again to get use to the puzzles before attempting that trophy or maybe look at your guide and others to shock my memory into how to solve some of those puzzles. It's definitely up there for puzzle based games.

Had to pause it to see what that bird actually throws and it's actually other little birds, thought for a sec that they were already cooked too...

Goes to look at trophy cabinet... I'm guessing you have it setup by top 10 favorite games in platinum rarity order?

About to finish my 2nd playthrough of this, which I decided to do as the silent one and it's been more of a speedrun mode than anything, and I agree that it would be hard to talk about this game when it would be best to do as much of a blind run as possible. I had no idea going into this game other than I heard that it had a creepy vibe playing through it and it was short. You can do this is 2 playthroughs, but it's probably recommended in 3. I feel like I'm not going to like being a total jerk to them in my 3rd playthrough...

Glad to see another person enjoyed PGA Tour 2K21. I ended up buying that game earlier in the year (sadly, but worth it) to play online with a friend and we had a great time messing around on the course with random people. Did you play any of the custom courses that have multiple pins on the green and only 1 is the true hole? I would find it hard to believe anyone got True Legend legitimately, you need more control for that than Yakuza 3 pool.