madbuk

I appreciate the shoutout, I honestly hadn’t even realized myself just how long I’ve been doing this now… now I feel old 😅 All the credit for the banners has to go to whoever it is in the Game Information Team that sets those up for each game, I just, uh… “borrow” their chosen ones for my own list

Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight Originally I had planned on doing Persona 5 Royal before this, but I needed something relatively stress free over the past few days and this seemed perfect for that. It was also perfect for a trophy event I'm currently a part of (and have no chance of winning, but still...) so I decided not to wait and just jumped right in. Overall, I like the social event structure of this compared to the VN-style structure of Persona 4 Dancing, but it was still very weak in that aspect and a lot of the interactions were incredibly uninteresting and simply padded out the playtime. Exploring each character's room afterwards was fun though, I spent ages trying to track down some of those hidden cards lol. The dancing gameplay overall seemed harder than 4 was, but the trophy list was still extremely easy regardless because it doesn't ask for mastery at all. The UI is still complete trash and a real hindrance for me personally as someone with bad peripheral vision, but ignoring that I still had fun with it. Still don't expect to ever play 3 because of spoilers, but maybe Atlus will decide to port actual Persona 3 over some day and then I can play 3 Dancing afterwards.

Progress Update: #427 - Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight Originally I had planned on doing Persona 5 Royal before this, but I needed something relatively stress free over the past few days and this seemed perfect for that. It was also perfect for a trophy event I'm currently a part of (and have no chance of winning, but still...) so I decided not to wait and just jumped right in. Overall, I like the social event structure of this compared to the VN-style structure of Persona 4 Dancing, but it was still very weak in that aspect and a lot of the interactions were incredibly uninteresting and simply padded out the playtime. Exploring each character's room afterwards was fun though, I spent ages trying to track down some of those hidden cards lol. The dancing gameplay overall seemed harder than 4 was, but the trophy list was still extremely easy regardless because it doesn't ask for mastery at all. The UI is still complete trash and a real hindrance for me personally as someone with bad peripheral vision, but ignoring that I still had fun with it. Still don't expect to ever play 3 because of spoilers, but maybe Atlus will decide to port actual Persona 3 over some day and then I can play 3 Dancing afterwards.

HP is much much better than Rivals. It’s not open world, so races actually have thought put into the route, you can pause it, and there’s no speedlists. Simply need to get gold in events and that’s it. Handles a lot better, too.

Can second this, just got the plat today and this was absolutely invaluable.

#426 - Katamari Damacy Reroll Pretty bizarre decision to remaster this game - Katamari Damacy is the first ever Katamari game, and you can definitely tell. Various QoL improvements introduced in Forever and Touch My Katamari are entirely absent here, and the game's controls feel a little worse as well. There's also less content than there was in Forever, both in terms of number of levels and extra content like new game modes. Honestly Forever seems like it was just the ultimate package of every prior Katamari game, so I have no idea why they opted to remaster this one instead of that one. The very least they could've done is added in some of the minor upgrades Forever had, like having rainbow text for newly acquired items. It's a small detail that was surprisingly helpful and it sucks it's non-existent here. I will say that I appreciated the lack of gimmick levels this one had - it had two, which were both very annoying to get completion in, but Katamari Forever had some even more annoying gimmick levels (hot & cold... oof) that I don't miss in the slightest. Overall I enjoyed this because Katamari gameplay is fundamentally fun, and it's something so unique that I'm grateful we got any "new" game on PS4 at all, but it could've been better. Let's hope we get a PS5 game - PS3 had 1 (Forever), Vita had 1 (Touch), PS4 had 1 (Damacy)... lets keep the trend alive.

Progress Update: #426 - Katamari Damacy Reroll Pretty bizarre decision to remaster this game - Katamari Damacy is the first ever Katamari game, and you can definitely tell. Various QoL improvements introduced in Forever and Touch My Katamari are entirely absent here, and the game's controls feel a little worse as well. There's also less content than there was in Forever, both in terms of number of levels and extra content like new game modes. Honestly Forever seems like it was just the ultimate package of every prior Katamari game, so I have no idea why they opted to remaster this one instead of that one. The very least they could've done is added in some of the minor upgrades Forever had, like having rainbow text for newly acquired items. It's a small detail that was surprisingly helpful and it sucks it's non-existent here. I will say that I appreciated the lack of gimmick levels this one had - it had two, which were both very annoying to get completion in, but Katamari Forever had some even more annoying gimmick levels (hot & cold... oof) that I don't miss in the slightest. Overall I enjoyed this because Katamari gameplay is fundamentally fun, and it's something so unique that I'm grateful we got any "new" game on PS4 at all, but it could've been better. Let's hope we get a PS5 game - PS3 had 1 (Forever), Vita had 1 (Touch), PS4 had 1 (Damacy)... lets keep the trend alive.

#425 - Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered I remember this game as being pretty easy back on PS3, and I remember really enjoying my time with it. I was expecting this to be equally as enjoyable and just as much of a breeze, and... honestly, either I've become worse as a game or they've done something to the AI, because the racer campaign in this seemed much harder than it used to be. I like that though, the added challenge was actually appreciated and made it even more enjoyable. Playing as a cop, surprisingly, was more fun than being a racer for me, but both campaigns are good and decent in length (78 events for racer, 63 for cop IIRC) so there's plenty of things to do here. The online trophies were pretty easy but they do basically require single player completion to begin with which is a little annoying, but manageable. I can definitely recommend this game to racing fans, it's the best NFS I've played so far, and if it's ever cheap enough I may even do the NA stack of this in the far distant future as well.

Progress Update: #425 - Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered I remember this game as being pretty easy back on PS3, and I remember really enjoying my time with it. I was expecting this to be equally as enjoyable and just as much of a breeze, and... honestly, either I've become worse as a game or they've done something to the AI, because the racer campaign in this seemed much harder than it used to be. I like that though, the added challenge was actually appreciated and made it even more enjoyable. Playing as a cop, surprisingly, was more fun than being a racer for me, but both campaigns are good and decent in length (78 events for racer, 63 for cop IIRC) so there's plenty of things to do here. The online trophies were pretty easy but they do basically require single player completion to begin with which is a little annoying, but manageable. I can definitely recommend this game to racing fans, it's the best NFS I've played so far, and if it's ever cheap enough I may even do the NA stack of this in the far distant future as well.

Bonus Post #1: Genshin Impact No plat for this one, but I felt it deserved a post anyway, a lot moreso than some of the other games I've posted on here. This game is very, very good. Exploring the world, solving puzzles, finding rare resources, and just general questing is so much fun in this game, and it just gets better with time as you start unlocking more characters and combat gets more depth as a result. Combining different elements to cause reactions is very satisfying, especially the Anemo ones since Anemo can combine with practically anything. I also feel the need to address the elephant in the room - the monetization of a f2p gacha game like this one... I can safely say, this game is very generous with its resources and I only ever bought one thing in it, meaning the grand total expenditure for this game was £8.99. Considering I got almost 300 hours of this game, that's insane value. Look at Ratchet & Clank which is 10 hours for £70 lol. The story isn't particularly engaging, which is a shame because there are a large amount of interesting characters throughout, but the gameplay more than made up for that. I also happened to start this game during the patch (1.5) that introduced the Windtrace event, which was definitely my favourite. Such a unique concept (for Genshin, I know prop hunt is popular elsewhere), and a breath of fresh air compared to the sheer amount of combat the game already has. Future events had a lot of combat focus and that just wasn't as interesting to me, but it was still fun because the combat is fundamentally good. Trophy list wise, this is way simpler than they could've made it, making it very possible for f2p players to get 100%. You don't need every star in the final Abyss floors (thank god), you don't need every character (thank god), you never have to raise anyone to level 90, you never have to use specific characters so you're free to experiment and find the team(s) you like playing the most, and a lot of it is tied to exploration which is Genshin's strongest aspect imo. While I would love to keep this game installed and continue doing my daily/weekly duties, and participate in upcoming events, it is quite a beefy game in terms of download size, and I'm beginning to struggle on my 500GB PS5 in regards to space (500GB really wasn't enough...). I'm going to keep it installed for now (especially with the upcoming Kazuha banner I want to pull on) but it may have to be deleted at some point unfortunately. I'd honestly love to see future updates bring more trophies, but I doubt it tbh. It's a shame that I don't have a plat to show for this, and I'm not a fan of autopopping - and autopopping is unavoidable in Genshin - so I'll never get to play the PS5 version and plat that, but the PS4 version runs very well and has fast loading, so I don't mind being stuck on it. I can absolutely recommend this game, especially since it's free, but expect a considerable time investment if you want 100%. It's worth it though. In terms of my checklist and how many 100% posts I'll do similar to this one, I'm not sure yet, I might not do many (if I even do any after this one), but if a game resonates with me as much as this one did I suppose I may as well.

While there are certainly criticisms of TR Legend that I regularly like to mention (it being the start of the white ledge platforming saga, which isn't remedied until Shadow of the TR over a decade later, and is even copied by many other games afterwards like Uncharted/Horizon, it being too actiony, the puzzles being too simple, etc.), it really is such a high quality package and something the series needed after AoD. A prime example of quality over quantity, and it has my favourite version of Lara by far. I wish the new games were even remotely as engaging as Legend was, storywise. Would love to see a PS4 or PS5 (or both!) stack someday for the LAU trilogy. Legend also has my favourite OST of the series, so many good tracks. Btw, it's a big anniversary for Tomb Raider this year, just thought I'd mention that since Square Enix don't seem to give a fuck themselves </3

RE4 has no plat, I don’t tend to do posts of those Not entirely sure why tbh, some of them are harder (and/or better) than your average plat, but back when I started this years ago I didn’t bother so I just kinda stuck with that routine. Maybe it’s something worth changing. Also still not sold on Revelations, will probably just stick to numbered entries