Baker’s Final March

[Joe Dubz]

24 minutes ago, Baker121 said:

Well there are a lot of better JRPGs out there than this one. I highly recommend Tales of, especially Berseria and Vesperia, or the Ys series. Or you can join me with Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne .

I appreciate the hot tips there my friend, I may take you up on that offer! Looks like I have some research to do here on my end ?

[HusKy]

You are not supposed to be playing TLoU2 Baker

[Baker]

23 minutes ago, HusKy said:

You are not supposed to be playing TLoU2 Baker

I’m just giving you a head start Husky ?.

Edited July 12, 2021 by Baker121

[Baker]

 #297+100%

 

 

The Last of Us Part II

 

Enjoyment: 4/10

Difficulty: -

Playtime: 50 hours

 

*SPOILERS*
 

As always I’m late to the party when it comes to big AAA titles as I ‘never’ buy games on release. So the story was spoiled for me for the most part, but I was still looking forward to playing this.

 

Now when the game came out there was a lot of discussion about it. Many felt the game was shit and they ruined the characters, others thought it was better than the original. Unfortunately I fall into the former camp. I hated the story.

 

The Last of Us was an incredible game mostly for the fact it told an amazing story with great character building. The gameplay was alright.

 

Now onto Part II, where in the prologue of the game Joel gets brutally beaten to death by a big muscular boy with a ponytail and a female voice named Abbot. Maybe fair, because Joel killed Abbot’s father, not to mention many others. Ofcourse this doesn’t sit well with Ellie, who witnessed the murder, and in the 4 years since the last game has grown up into a fine lesbian psycho killer. So she sets out for revenge. After playing 1/3 of the game as Ellie and 1/3 of the game as Abbot, Abbot actually wins but decides to let Ellie go because her girlfriend is pregnant. Still having nightmares about Joel’s death Ellie decides to go on the hunt for Abbot again, this time she wins, but decides to let him go for reasons unknown to me. Really, wtf. The whole story was so incredibly boring and nonsensical to me.

 

Now was this game all that bad? No. The gameplay has improved a bit, and there were some great chapters to play through. Also many mind numbingly boring ones, especially the flashback chapters, but I had my fun with it.

 

Let’s just forget this story exists and hopefully Naughty Dog can redeem themselves if there ever comes a Part III.

 

Onto the next game. It’s time to give Ys Origin another good attempt.

Edited July 21, 2021 by Baker121

[Deluziion90]

11 hours ago, Baker121 said:

 #297+100%

 

 

The Last of Us Part II

 

Enjoyment: 4/10

Difficulty: -

Playtime: 50 hours

 

*SPOILERS*
 

As always I’m late to the party when it comes to big AAA titles as I ‘never’ buy games on release. So the story was spoiled for me for the most part, but I was still looking forward to playing this.

 

Now when the game came out there was a lot of discussion about it. Many felt the game was shit and they ruined the characters, others thought it was better than the original. Unfortunately I fall into the former camp. I hated the story.

 

The Last of Us was an incredible game mostly for the fact it told an amazing story with great character building. The gameplay was alright.

 

Now onto Part II, where in the prologue of the game Joel gets brutally beaten to death by a big muscular boy with a ponytail and a female voice named Abbot. Maybe fair, because Joel killed Abbot’s father, not to mention many others. Ofcourse this doesn’t sit well with Ellie, who witnessed the murder, and in the 4 years since the last game has grown up into a fine lesbian psycho killer. So she sets out for revenge. After playing 1/3 of the game as Ellie and 1/3 of the game as Abbot, Abbot actually wins but decides to let Ellie go because her girlfriend is pregnant. Still having nightmares about Joel’s death Ellie decides to go on the hunt for Abbot again, this time she wins, but decides to let him go for reasons unknown to me. Really, wtf. The whole story was so incredibly boring to me.

 

Now was this game all that bad? No. The gameplay has improved a bit, and there were some great chapters to play through. Also many mind numbingly boring ones, especially the flashback chapters, but I had my fun with it.

 

Let’s just forget this story exists and hopefully Naughty Dog can redeem themselves if there ever comes a Part III.

 

Onto the next game. It’s time to give Ys Origin another good attempt.

 

 

4/10 that's kinda high

 

congrats though!

[Eqill5]

11 hours ago, Baker121 said:

Now onto Part II...

This section of your review had me in kinks..

 

I personally really enjoyed TLOU II but still appreciate it when someone else doesn’t, and can write a review without taking things too seriously, especially making it funny. I can’t remember who it was but someone did the same with Shadow of the Colossus in their checklist and it really makes for some good night time reading 

[Baker]

On 12-7-2021 at 5:46 PM, Deluziion90 said:

Congrats on the platinum! Last of us 2.. Great gameplay, great graphics pretty much great all the way.. But some things they did in the story it's really not my greatest game. Having it borrowed is a big win though. Shouldn't take more then a week to platinum.

 
You were spot on with this comment. I felt the same. It also took me exactly a week ?.

 

8 minutes ago, Eqill5 said:

This section of your review had me in kinks..

 

I personally really enjoyed TLOU II but still appreciate it when someone else doesn’t, and can write a review without taking things too seriously, especially making it funny. I can’t remember who it was but someone did the same with Shadow of the Colossus in their checklist and it really makes for some good night time reading 

Luckily you see it as it is. A joke on one of the protagonists that looked like the 90’s female pro wrestler Chyna, may she rest in peace. You have to be careful on PSNP nowadays because posts get reported and deleted quickly.

Edited July 21, 2021 by Baker121

[AJ_Radio]

1 hour ago, Baker121 said:

 Luckily you see it as it is. A joke on one of the protagonists that looked like the 90’s female pro wrestler Chyna, may she rest in peace. You have to be careful on PSNP nowadays because posts get reported and deleted quickly.

 

Which I find sad because we're all grown people on this website. I'm not going to go over the rules, but this past year I've seen several posts from people that were effectively harmless, but were deleted anyway because "reasons".

[Baker]

Introducing something new here in my checklist. Once a month I’m going to look back at a game that stood out for me. This can be because of difficulty, enjoyment, length or something else. Let’s start with my proudest platinum to date:

 

 #31

 

 

Star Ocean: The Last Hope International 

 

Enjoyment: 8/10

Difficulty: 6/10

Playtime: 550 hours

 

As I’ve mentioned many times, before trophies I basically only played JRPGs. Strangely enough I had never heard of Star Ocean, even though the franchise has been around since the mid 90’s. In 2012 I was looking for a new JRPG to play and then I saw the trailer for this game. I loved it and immediately went looking for a guide to see what to expect. There already was a guide up on .org that had a 10/10 difficulty rating with a 500 to 1000 hours estimate completion time. Not something I expected or wanted to see, but after a bit of hesitation I thought, screw it, let’s do this!

 

The story and the characters in this game are mediocre at best. The game really shines in the battle system. It’s one of the best in any JRPG I’ve ever played. Luckily so, because you’ll be spending an insane amount of time with it.

 

To get the platinum there are a ‘few’ things you need to do.

First:

 

There are a ton of missables, and if you miss even one little thing, your playthrough for that collectible trophy is ruined. Think of making every available item in the game, do all sidequests, get all treasure chests, get all monster entries, etc.. Everything is highly missable, so you need to play with a checklist. Luckily the guide I used was accurate so I got everything on my first playthrough. If you don’t get it it’s not the end of world because..

 

Second: 

 

A minimum of three playthroughs are required as higher difficulties are locked from the start. You start with Galaxy—> Universe —> Chaos. There is also Earth difficulty, easy mode, which also comes in handy as once you’ve beaten the game for the first time you unlock an extra character on consecutive runs which you need 900 battle trophies for. I’ve done those on Earth difficulty. But more on that later. I remember speedrunning through Universe and Chaos in around 25 hours combined. So that leaves 525 hours. Take around 25 hours for your first time beating the game and that leaves you with 500 hours, which I basically spend grinding.

 

Third:

 

The infamous battle trophies. For each of the 9 playable characters there are 900. And you have to get them all! Many are easy and come naturally but there are a few that I remember well.

 

1. -ology drops.

 

Rare enemy drops. And every character, except Faize, needs to get 255 of these. This takes a very long time, as the drop rate for these items is around 7%.

 

2. 55 Grigori kills and 3000 battles.

 

You need to do these as Faize, the character you unlock after your first playthrough. Doesn’t sound too bad, but 3000 battles takes a long time and a Grigori is a boss enemy. There were only 5 of them in the main game if I remember correctly. Luckily there is a post game dungeon that also has 3 Grigori, so you need to run through this dungeon a minimum of 17 times, and each time you need to kill one of the two super bosses, Gabriel Celeste, to reset the dungeon. I did these on Earth difficulty, so a fourth playthrough, and it took me around 90 hours to get all 900 battle trophies for Faize.

 

3. Kill the Ethereal Queen as Lymle under 10 minutes.
 

Lymle is the weakest character in the game and you need to get the final blow on the Ethereal Queen while controlling her. EQ is the second and hardest super boss that sits at the end of the second post game dungeon: The Wandering Dungeon. This is a randomly generated dungeon that is prone to crashing. A run through this dungeon can take anywhere between 2-4 hours and even with maxed out stats, the EQ can one shot your entire party. There are no save points in this dungeon, so if the game crashes or you lose against EQ, you lost a couple of hours.

The game crashed a few times for me during my runs through this dungeon, as you need to make multiple trips. The EQ has an item drop which you need for Item Creation. You need 5 of these EQ feathers. Once you reach floor 20 you get to the EQ. The first time she is in her two wings form, and this is where you should really get the Lymle battle trophy because every time you beat her she becomes stronger. She goes from two wings to four wings to six wings. And at four wings it’s already hard to beat her in 10 minutes. You can fight her again on floor 22-24-26, etc.. But I never took the risk, because of the crashes, and always backed out after floor 20. I’ve ran through this dungeon 10+ times.

 

4. 30.000 kills as both Edge and Arumat.

 

60.000 kills total!
 

Now this is where the game almost broke me.
 

This is just an insane amount of kills. At the time I played this there were already automated strategies if you had a turbo controller. Ofcourse I didn’t own one so I had to do it all manually. I remember doing this in one very hot week during the summer, where I did 10 hour sessions every day. I got around 700-800 kills per hour, so you can do the math. These two battle trophies alone took me around 80 hours. At this point I thought: Why the fuck am I doing this?

There were many more time consuming and annoying battle trophies but these really stood out to me. 
 

When I finally got my last battle trophy, which was the 3000 battles as Faize, I felt such a relieve. I haven’t felt anything like that ever since. And it has been 9 years since I played this game.

Edited July 22, 2021 by Baker121
Improvements

[AJ_Radio]

Aside from Super Meat Boy, I would also pick Star Ocean: The Last Hope International as one of your most impressive. 
 

I wouldn’t have the guts in me to do it. Couldn’t imagine being 300 hours in only to find I missed out on something. I would quit trophy hunting for several months.

[Baker]

27 minutes ago, AJ_Radio said:

Aside from Super Meat Boy, I would also pick Star Ocean: The Last Hope International as one of your most impressive. 
 

I wouldn’t have the guts in me to do it. Couldn’t imagine being 300 hours in only to find I missed out on something. I would quit trophy hunting for several months.

Well there is no way you can be 300 hours in and missed something. Once you reach post game content, nothing is missable anymore. If you know what to do and mastered the boss battles and battle system you can speedrun through it in 10-12 hours. My Chaos run took me 11 hours. So it isn’t as bad as it sounds.

 

I really don’t think of SMB as one of my proudest. It’s not an easy game, but I’ve done harder stuff in games you wouldn’t expect. Which will be my next story, so check back in a month from now ?.

[AJ_Radio]

47 minutes ago, Baker121 said:

I really don’t think of SMB as one of my proudest. It’s not an easy game, but I’ve done harder stuff in games you wouldn’t expect. Which will be my next story, so check back in a month from now .

The trophy rarities are completely off for Super Meat Boy, but that’s besides the point. 
 

Your account is still better than most. It’s pretty impressive that you have no stacks on your profile. I have enough stacks to account for over 2000 trophies. Realistically, my unique trophy count lies somewhere around 11,200 - 11,500 trophies. 

[Arcesius]

Hey @Baker121 I dig the Throwback Thursday! Also, great pick for the first "nostalgic review"  I understand why you told me that this game isn't for me (or, rather, my current RL situation ?). Still, it sounds like something I would have enjoyed a couple of years ago. I loved to just sit and relax while grinding anything... Or have my gf grind levels for me in some Final Fantasy ?

 

Looking forward to the next post! 

 

P.S. @AJ_Radio I don't think he was talking about the trophy rarities. The game just isn't as brutally hard for everyone. If I remember correctly he also rated it a 8/10, and there are multiple games on his profile that I know he rated higher. 

Edited July 23, 2021 by Arcesius

[Deluziion90]

Well that's one game I'm never even going to consider. Grinding DB:FighterZ took me a full week of doing the same over and over for 8-10hrs each day and that's probably the last insane grind I'll ever do. I don't mind grinding but everything over 20hrs is a no go for me these days ?

[Baker]

18 hours ago, Arcesius said:

Hey @Baker121 I dig the Throwback Thursday! Also, great pick for the first "nostalgic review"  I understand why you told me that this game isn't for me (or, rather, my current RL situation ). Still, it sounds like something I would have enjoyed a couple of years ago. I loved to just sit and relax while grinding anything... Or have my gf grind levels for me in some Final Fantasy 

 

Looking forward to the next post! 

Thanks.

 

You know, this game has been around for so long, there is now much more information about it and you can cut down playing time immensely. I know madman @dertswa687o completed this game 4 times, and I think he completed this game in 250 hours.
 

Also, and I know your not a fan of it, but because of remote play on PS4 you can just let the grinding be done for you. This would be a great addition to your trophy list. And if you’re looking for a JRPG, why not go for the king of them all ?.

Edited July 24, 2021 by Baker121

[DrBloodmoney]

1 minute ago, Baker121 said:

if you’re looking for a JRPG, why not go for the king of them all 

 

But Chronotrigger doesn't have trophies... ?

[Baker]

Just now, DrBloodmoney said:

 

But Chronotrigger doesn't have trophies... 

Final Fantasy VII does ?.

[DrBloodmoney]

Just now, Baker121 said:

Final Fantasy VI doesn't either ?

 

Corrected ?

[Baker]

Just now, DrBloodmoney said:

 

Corrected 

How I would love to see that game hit the PSN store one day. We can only hope..

[DrBloodmoney]

2 minutes ago, Baker121 said:

How I would love to see that game hit the PSN store one day. We can only hope..

 

I think it will - not doing so is simply leaving money on the table - I might be being naively optimistic, but I genuinely do think that one day were will have a platinum trophy in our lists for both Chronotrigger, and FFVI.

 

(I'd personally like Illusion of Gaia too - but that one I have no hope for!)

[Arcesius]

I'm not sure about Chronotrigger, but remasters of FF I - III are releasing in five days, with IV - VI releasing later this year (Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster). So far they are only coming to Steam (and mobile..?), but Square has stated that whether they will also hit consoles depends on demand... 

 

It's up to us guys! ?

[DrBloodmoney]

28 minutes ago, Arcesius said:

It's up to us guys! 

 

Done 

Edited July 23, 2021 by DrBloodmoney

[dertswa687o]

5 hours ago, Baker121 said:

You know, this game has been around for so long, there is now much more information about it and you can cut down playing time immensely. I know the madman @dertswa687o completed this game 4 times, and I think he completed this game in 250 hours.

 

Honestly there hasn't really been any new information for the game for a long time. I think most people just make mistakes that add a bunch of time, with by far the biggest one being not combining Edge's 30k kills and Faize's 3k battles. Some people also try to work on quests and item creation before getting duplication which adds a lot of unnecessary farming. My first completion of the game took me 350 hours and I was only able to cut it down to 230 hours by knowing the best order to do things.

[VigilantCrow]

3 minutes ago, dertswa687o said:

 

Honestly there hasn't really been any new information for the game for a long time. I think most people just make mistakes that add a bunch of time, with by far the biggest one being not combining Edge's 30k kills and Faize's 3k battles. Some people also try to work on quests and item creation before getting duplication which adds a lot of unnecessary farming. My first completion of the game took me 350 hours and I was only able to cut it down to 230 hours by knowing the best order to do things.

I may or may not be that sucker who went all in on crafting and questing before post game

 

[AJ_Radio]

On 7/23/2021 at 3:39 AM, Baker said:

How I would love to see that game hit the PSN store one day. We can only hope..

 

On 7/23/2021 at 3:43 AM, DrBloodmoney said:

 

I think it will - not doing so is simply leaving money on the table - I might be being naively optimistic, but I genuinely do think that one day were will have a platinum trophy in our lists for both Chronotrigger, and FFVI.

 

(I'd personally like Illusion of Gaia too - but that one I have no hope for!)

 

Square Enix seems rather hesitant to release their old games for some reason. Everything before Final Fantasy VII either doesn't exist or is a mere afterthought in their eyes.

 

Chrono Trigger is still my favorite JRPG of all time. One of the few RPGs I actually got into on the Super Nintendo just when Nintendo was starting to discontinue it. I will literally piss my pants when these games get trophy support.