Kill Your Completion 17

[voodoo_eyes]

5 hours ago, PerryToxteth said:

 

 

  After playing for a couple hours, I realized I was within reach of the platinum, so I pushed through and polished Truberbrook off. It’s not a bad game, it’s just underwhelming. But I am not a point-and-click guy. So if it’s your thing, I’d recommend because it plays much better than Irony Curtain or Day of the Tentacle. 
Final Grade: 

Next Up: The Crew 2 

- @voodoo_eyes Let’s “crew it up!” 

 

 

I am a point-and-click guy, and it's still only a decent game ?.

 

Have you played the first "crew" btw?

[PerryToxteth]

7 hours ago, voodoo_eyes said:

Have you played the first "crew" btw?

I played “The Crew” a few years ago and it was some of the best gaming times I have had, and also one of the worst. I easily logged in over 100 hours in the first game, and probably could have kept going dozens of more hours if the game required it.  I still have some booster friends in my PSN list for some of the hard as hell MP trophies, but that’s what the game was called, right? 
Unfortunately, I hit the worst glitch of my gaming career in The Crew as well. I had met all the requirements for an ultra rare trophy and yet it didn’t pop. So one glitched trophy caused me to not earn what would be my rarest . Over time though, I reflect back on that game with more fondness than frustration. I would easily replay it again, but the damn save is on Ubisoft’s server and there’s no way to delete your game. 
That being said, I am a few hours into The Crew 2 and without spoiling my review, the second game, so far, is nothing like the original. 

[voodoo_eyes]

49 minutes ago, PerryToxteth said:

I played “The Crew” a few years ago and it was some of the best gaming times I have had, and also one of the worst. I easily logged in over 100 hours in the first game, and probably could have kept going dozens of more hours if the game required it.  I still have some booster friends in my PSN list for some of the hard as hell MP trophies, but that’s what the game was called, right? 
Unfortunately, I hit the worst glitch of my gaming career in The Crew as well. I had met all the requirements for an ultra rare trophy and yet it didn’t pop. So one glitched trophy caused me to not earn what would be my rarest . Over time though, I reflect back on that game with more fondness than frustration. I would easily replay it again, but the damn save is on Ubisoft’s server and there’s no way to delete your game. 
That being said, I am a few hours into The Crew 2 and without spoiling my review, the second game, so far, is nothing like the original. 

 

 

I remeber there being a glitch in the first game that broke trophies, so I didn't bother with it.

 

I do already have fairly strong opinions on the second game though.

[MAUSZX]

STATE OF MIND

 

Genre:  Puzzle, Adventure, Indie.

Time Played: Probably like 10 - 12 hours

Game Difficulty: 1/10

Trophy Difficulty: 3/10

 

Time played: about

Trophies earned: 35/35

 

Hi, I couldn't make a Post before, sorry about that, I finished State of Mind in my second day, there was no work that day so basically I blast the game the entire day off until I had the Platinum.

 

Is it good tho?

Yeah, is weird to describe this game and really review it. The game is basically a story game similar to TWD games, not as linear as those, but yeah is basically that, some puzzles you have to solve and some investigation you have to do to make progress in the game. The story is super weird, very unique tho, I would say there is really no story like this in any other game out there, that said either by the end or something I would say this game has a good to ok story. Trophies are not like TWD tho, there are a ton of missables, but since the game autosaves every chapter apart, you can reload a certain save file to do everything, there is only 2 trophies that you need to at least play 1/3 and make a certain decisions to unlock it.

 

If you like those kind of games like TWD and those style I would highly recommend this, while I think most of TWD games have a better story overall, it still has a very unique one and also the art style is pretty dope, so I guess is a must play if you are into that kind of games.

 

 

----------------

I started Yesterday my second game Leisure Suit Larry. So far I think I have played like 2 hours, but I will say is a very classic Point and Click game, for those that don't know Leisure Suit Larry was one of those "adult" games that existed in the 80's, to this day people feel offended by this franchise existance, the game came back as a terrible game in the ps3 and 360 era, so of course people always talked about "how terrible the world is because the first game existed" So this game basically puts you in a return, kind of a sequel of the original game, where it mocks everything in this generation, since Larry, time traveled from the first game of the generation to this game that is placed probably in 2018. Is a funny game to be honest, so far it seems like it can be an easy platinum too. I see some people speedrun this game and it lasted 3 hours, why would you speedrun a Point and click game ignoring the entire plot and conversations? who knows, but hey, might be able to finish it in time, tho this week I am kinda overload with work, so it might not be that easy.

 

 

[Arctic Cress]

Game #1 - NEO: The World Ends With You

Time played: 8 hours

Trophies: 8/51 (12% - E)

 

Back when I was in high school, a game called The World Ends With You was released for the DS and it quickly become a favorite of mine, with its battle system using the two DS screens in a very unique way, not seen in any other game at the time. It took thirteen years, multiple ports and an appearance in Kingdom Hearts before the game finally got a sequel this year in the form of this game.

 

Taking a page from its predecessor, NEO: The World Ends With You starts with the Reaper game being held in Shibuya, Tokyo again, with our main protagonists being the two high school students Rindo and Fret, making up the team the Wicked Twisters. Unlike the original game, which had people paired up into groups of two, this Reaper game has no limit on the amount of people who can be on any one team. The two gain two more members during the week in Nagi, a college shut-in and Sho Minamimoto, a character returning from the previous game. Together they try to survive the Reapers' game by accumulating enough points to stay alive after the week ends. So far, I've gotten to the end of week 1, day 6, so I'm fast approaching the end of the first week.

 

NEO brings another unique battle system to the fray. Each shoulder button, the button, and the  button have a number of pins assigned to them. Each character can equip one pin at a time, which is used as their attack in battle. The face buttons tend to favor attacks that are multiple taps while the shoulder buttons have attacks that have the button held down or charged up to do more damage. The game gives tons of pins to use, and a proper loadout is needed to keep pace with the many battles the game has. I've gone with pins that use both of the face buttons and two of the shoulder buttons for my four characters so far, which seems to be the default. The battles are very fast-paced and each battle is graded anywhere from C to a gold star, which is the highest rank and gives the most benefits.

 

Returning from the previous games are equipment from the various brands in Shibuya, each with their own stats and abilities. Style isn't needed to equip these items this time around, though; it's needed to use the ability of each piece of equipment, which can be important based on the item. The other way to gain stats is by eating at the various restaurants in Shibuya, and each food item raises a number of stats while sometimes giving a bonus upgrade at times to a random stat. Money isn't gained the traditional way by winning battles, instead you get pins that can be sold for a set amount of yen, such as a 1,000-yen pin. I'm finding that I run out of money very quickly by eating and buying equipment at the point I'm at - hopefully there's a better way to make money some time ahead.

 

Special notes have to go towards the music and voice acting; the music uses both tracks from the first game and all-new ones. I literally heard Three Minutes Clapping come up as the exploration theme and I just stopped and listened to it - it was my favorite track from the first game. The English dub for this game is really good and is one of the standouts here - it also helps that all the characters from the original maintained their voice actors despite the thirteen year gap. There's a decent amount of new and old voice actors in this dub so it's nice to see some new voices in the mix. Nagi in particular has a great voice actor and it's literally her first role ever.

 

I have been waiting thirteen years for this game and I'm glad to see it being as good as I hoped it would be after the long wait. Sadly now that I'm in my 30s the dialogue in the game can be a bit strange to me, but I figure it works since the main characters are teenagers. I'm excited to explore the rest of this game later on!

 

Starting completion: 75.03%

Current completion: 75.00%

Difference: -0.03%

 

Not much of a drop as I also work towards completing KYC 15's London Detective Mysteria - that should be done with this week. Next game will probably be Blue Reflection: Second Light which actually just arrived today in the mail. Excited to start it!

[voodoo_eyes]

Game #2 - The Crew 2 - Final Impressions

 

 

Time played: about 7h

Trophies earned: 8/35

 

 

I hate this game in almost every regard.

 

You need to be online or you can't play at all. The game kicks you back to menu, if you're idle for about 10 minutes. It's visually subpar and in parts looks worse than NFS Carbon did back in 2006. The music is dreadful, but that's just personal preference.

What is truly awful is that you can't retry races. If you start one, you better finish it, or it will put you into a loop until you do (unless it's a timed race). So if you had a bad start, better be prepared to waste 5 minutes to finish the race and not make top 3 (which means no rewards), or quit to system and reboot the game, which also takes about 5 minutes.

 

That's another thing about this pile of shit. There's load time after load time, it never ends. 3 load screens until you're actually in the game, you want to start a race, that's a load screen, then wait 30 seconds for an introduction to the race,  drive yo to the actual race and then load again to race. Finish the race, have another load screen, before you can pick up the "loot", if you reached the objective. If not, rinse and repeat or try to find another race from the limit number of races you can actually pick.

 

The game is the grind to progress kind of game, which I m certain I already stated at some point how much I hate that sort of system. Yuo'll only unlock more races, if you get to the next rank, and you nly get to the next rank by completing races. Problem is each race type (and there are several of them) requires a different vehicle, which cost absurds amount of cash for the most part. So off you go do races, hoping to try and get the objective to actually get decent rep and payout and upgrades for your car. If your car is not upgraded, then your chances of winning a race is fairly slim.

 

Ikept trying to get back to it several times to see, if I could progress to the 2nd rep level, but ran out of races to do. Didn't feel like grinding cahs for new vehicles or to just do more races to farm rep. Already delited this crap from my sytem by now.

 

 

It gets a 3/10 because it didn't crash, and there's variety, if you can be bothered to grind for it.

[voodoo_eyes]

Game #3 - Styx Master of Shadows - Preview

 

Developer : Cyanide Studios

Publisher: Focus Home Interactive

Genre: Stealth

Price: 29,99 €

 

 

Focus Home Interactive may be my favourite AA publisher. Most games I've tried have been solid and I happen to have played the sequel to this game, which was pretty good.

Hopefully this one will be just as good or better. Funnily enough it looks like I'm working my way backwards with this series, as I also still have Of Orcs and Men to play, which technically started this series.

 

From the trophy list, this game seems to be either really hard, people just didn't like it or completely broken, as hardly anyone finished the story.

 We'll see I guess

[PerryToxteth]

On 11/10/2021 at 4:52 AM, voodoo_eyes said:

 

 

What is truly awful is that you can't retry races. If you start one, you better finish it, or it will put you into a loop until you do (unless it's a timed race). So if you had a bad start, better be prepared to waste 5 minutes to finish the race and not make top 3 (which means no rewards), or quit to system and reboot the game, which also takes about 5 minutes.

 

My review will come tomorrow, but to solve this problem, hit  during a race. A prompt will come up asking you if you want to retry or abort. Hold  for your selection. 
Also during races, if you are off track, hold  and  and it will recenter you on the track. 
 

Ubisoft is normally accused of doing to much hand-holding at the start of their games. I feel this one did the opposite and opened the whole toy box right from the get-go, without an explanation of the contents. I watched an Ultimate Beginners Guide on YouTube and it helped me immensely. 

[willythom88]

For whom the bell tolls, time marches on...and on...and on...

 

Time played: 10 hours

Trophies earned: 3

 

I was beginning to think I had hit open world fatigue.  I just wanted someone to point me to the next objective, and once I hit the final act, I could go back and survey the land for optional content.  Also, given my history with the Assassin's Creed franchise, I didn't have high  hopes here.  Fortunately, all my hopes were exceeded.

 

Graphics - 7/10

This game is really pretty, but not particularly mind blowing.  While the landscapes are beautiful, the characters faces look dead.  In fact, it gives me distinct Dragon Age Origins vibes a lot of the time.  The main character does have some liveliness to her (in my case, you may get a him) mug, as did her childhood friend.  However, most of the characters emote about as much as a half eaten bowl of jello.

 

Fortunately, the landscapes and buildings make up for it most of the time.  The buildings are especially pretty, and while they lose their variety a tad when you first move past the opening credits (which took me about 6 hours to get to), they pick up considerably not too long after.  I really enjoyed scavenging the environment, finding little details in fantastically built environments.

 

Gameplay - 7/10

I thoroughly enjoyed this games stealth and combat, but I did have issues with some of it's finer details.  The stealth is fantastic, and while you aren't locked into using it, it's a lot more fun than running in guns (or in this case, axe) a-blazing.  The skill tree in the game is entirely too big and frankly not necessary, but it's not so imposing it makes it hard to play.  Just feels needlessly tacked on.

 

The primary issue I have with the gameplay is the navigation system, which shows a plethora of icons but only defines the distance of the one you have pointed directly in front of you.  This causes confusion when multiple goals are stacked on top of one another, or even near each other on the navigation wheel  IT's also a pain differenitating which icon is which at first, though you get used to that after awhile.

 

This is obnoxious when you consider how often new optional objectives pop up on your map, or how long it takes to navigate from one place to another.  I enjoyed travelling by boat or horse, but on foot, it's a real pain in the ass.

 

Glitches/Bugs: 4/10

Open world games (especially by Bethesda and Ubisoft) are famous for their bugs, but I've never had them actively prevent me from enjoying myself.  Sometimes the navigation is wrong.  Sometimes enemies flop around after death like cart wheeling dolphins.  I previously posted a video where I suddenly got transported to a nimbus cloud and fell to earth.  No damage, unlike the time I got stuck between a fence and tent and shook until I randomly died.  Given the games obnoxious load times, this death was annoying.  Fortunately the load times are much worse when you start it (seriously, it spends 3 minutes checking for updates or addons....I'll f'in tell you when I buy them, damn!), but they are still enough to make you sprint like a mad man from any fight you are kind of close to losing.

 

Trophies - 5/10

Most of these are story related, actually.  I don't mind them, but they aren't going to excite you if you find the average rigmarole very interesting.

 

Final Score - 7/10

 

Up next - Romancing Saga 3!

[voodoo_eyes]

4 hours ago, PerryToxteth said:

My review will come tomorrow, but to solve this problem, hit  during a race. A prompt will come up asking you if you want to retry or abort. Hold  for your selection. 
Also during races, if you are off track, hold  and  and it will recenter you on the track. 
 

Ubisoft is normally accused of doing to much hand-holding at the start of their games. I feel this one did the opposite and opened the whole toy box right from the get-go, without an explanation of the contents. I watched an Ultimate Beginners Guide on YouTube and it helped me immensely. 

 

Thanks for the tips. Unfortunately I've no desire to go back to it and I'll be selling it off come next week ?.

[Lodbizarro]

Game 1 Review

Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart

 

Long overdue but here it is I really enjoyed this game Insomniac really outdid themselves and showed why after 20 years they're still one of the best gaming studios. I've been a fan of a lot of their games from Spyro back in the day to the recent Spider-Man game for PS4 I've loved them immensely but the Ratchet & Clank Series has had a special place in my heart since I was in Middle School and it's been fun watching the series grow along side me. Seriously yo can see the love and heart they put in Rift Apart it does a great job to reference past games without shoving it in your face are stopping the game to point out the reference which I'm sure is nice for those of us who catch them but doesn't leave those who haven't feeling left out. While I didn't get to finish the game I would say after about 15 hours I'm around the third act so it's a nice length game. The Story was enjoyable. I loved the new characters all of them.  

Spoiler

Especially Rivet, Kit, and Emperor Nefarious

The humor is on point I laughed out loud several times in my play-through, the gameplay is tight I don't recall at any point having issues with the controls or the camera at any point which I've struggled with in past R&C games at times. Honestly this was a great experience that I would recommend to anyone who is fortunate to have a PS5 and definitely feel like it should be considered for GOTY.

Rating 9/10

Playtime 15 hours

Trophies 24/47

Completion 19.91%

[willythom88]

Romancing Saga 3 - Preview

 

So I'm two hours in and I'm equal parts fascinated and thoroughly annoyed.  If you aren't familiar with the Saga series, they sort of function like the opposite of the Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest games.  They don't hold your hand, to a fault.  I am currently past the character I picked's prologue, and I genuinely have no idea what to do next.  You're supposed to walk around and talk to people and while that's nice and whatever, it does take some getting used to.  You also have a big focus on recruiting party members, but that is also a gamble.  I actually got someone, and then lost them less than 10 minutes later when I decided to travel.  Oh well, I'll be back in a few days with a review.

 

 

[Arctic Cress]

Game #2 - Blue Reflection: Second Light

Time played: 12 hours

Trophies: 16/49 (24% - D)

 

Way back in Kill Your Completion V, I played the first Blue Reflection and enjoyed it enough, but was disappointed with a bit of it, namely the extremely low difficulty (even on Hard) and the instant bonds that the game had. So far, the sequel seems to fix both of those problems, which is always welcome.

 

The main character in this game is Ao Hoshizaki, a high school student who failed her final exams and was on her way to supplementary lessons when she suddenly finds herself in an isolated school surrounded by water on all sides, with three other girls with amnesia currently living in the school as well. One day after she arrives, a new path opens up in the area to a place called the Faraway - which shows up as a forest-like area with various structures and demons lurking throughout the open areas. Ao and two of the other girls in the school are able to transform into Reflectors, the magical girls from the previous games, to be able to fight the demons in this area. The Faraway seems to be connected to the amnesia that the other girls there have, so they continue to explore the area in search of the missing memories.

 

So far after playing through the prologue and four chapters of the game, I've been impressed with the new battle system so far - it's still turn-based, but there's been a lot of additions to keep it interesting. Actions taken in battle now raises a character's ether gauge, which allows you to take multiple actions in a turn (but wait longer) or be able to use more powerful attacks in the character's arsenal. Successful hits on an enemy also powers up a combo gauge on the right side which multiplies successive attacks on an enemy - in the last boss it was somewhere in the 30s and had a damage multiplier of x6.75 applied to the last attack on it. These additions combined greatly speed up regular encounters and make boss fights a little more strategic in nature, as the bosses also have the same ether gauge that they are also charging up to use similar, more powerful attacks. Besides the three characters who are fighting, you also have one support character who uses a number of skills to support the party and can use items if needed. They, however, are technically not participating in the battle so they have a separate timer they run on - which may be problematic if you need an item used immediately! While the game is set to easy or normal (you can't choose hard difficulty from the beginning), I have had some battles where a character did take enough damage to actually call the game more challenging. It's still an easy game on normal difficulty, but not as easy as the original game on hard difficulty, so the balance is fixed to be a bit better overall.

 

The crafting system, which was very bare-bones in the original game, is now reworked and has both food items (which can be used as above) and materials to make. These materials can be further processed into various buildings and other facilities on the school grounds, such as vending machines, a small garden, and even a takoyaki stand, to name a few. These facilities not only provide items if interacted with, but also boost the stats of your characters while exploring. The bond system from the previous game has been reworked into a date system, where Ao and one of the other characters head to a certain facility or room in the school and talk about something while they are in the area. These reward fragments, which can be equipped to your characters for stat boosts or other boosts, such as raising EXP. Most of these are locked and open up as the game progresses or facilities are created, so they can follow the storyline instead of being completely independent from it - a welcome change.

 

While playing the original Blue Reflection is not really required to play this one, you should know that a few of the characters from that game also show up in this one, so if you are interested in playing this one it might be best to check out that game for the first part of the story, as easy as it is. The game does try to explain most of the events that happened in it but in my opinion doesn't really do a very good job of this.

 

My only main complaint are the stealth missions - I don't play many stealth video games besides like Ghost of Tsushima where losing stealth basically means kill everything, which isn't an option here. There aren't many of them, thankfully, but some are just annoyingly stupid to trek through. One sidequest had me going across a river into full view of an enemy patrol with no cover to stop it. Because of this, I ran into the patrol multiple times before timing it at the exact point the game wants you to land, which was very small. I'm hoping there are not too many stealth missions ahead, but there probably is. Also, I can't believe the game teased at playing OVERDOSE, the battle theme from the first game, multiple times, limiting it only to a handful of event scenes! The new battle theme isn't anywhere as good as that one, unfortunately.

 

Starting completion: 75.03%

Current completion: 74.98%

Difference: -0.05%

NEO: The World Ends With You - 8/51 (12% - E)

 

Again, not much of a drop, with London Detective Mysteria's platinum in the books and 24% of this game finished. The current TrueTrophies bonus in GTTSC will probably make me play Lost Judgment next (while Blue Reflection did the work on the other bonus), then Akiba's Trip for the last game before my vacation starts next Sunday.

[voodoo_eyes]

Game #3 - Styx Master of Shadows - Final Impressions

 

 

Time played: a bit over 7h

Trophies earened:14/34

 

 

I won't be playing more of this game today, so I'll wrap it up now. I'll return to it to at least finish the story though.

 

First thing that you notice when you boot this up is that this game didn't age very well. Initially the lip sync seemed to be pretty good and the character models seemed to have the usual Focus Home goofy models, but with time these also got worse. The lip sync goes completely out the window by the time you reach mission 3.

 

Mission 3 is where I'm currently at and progress has been tied to a lot of trial and error. The game is not difficult so far, it's just annoying, because you often get caught by pure bad luck, because you didn't know there was that one extra enemy chilling in the corner.

The combat is terrible, as it's meant to be. In direct confrontation all you can do is parry an attack. So the only viable option is stealth. I've been doing a run witout getting detected so far, which makes drags the game out a bit more, because a lot more loading is involved with this apporach.

 

So it's sneaking through corridors and atop of railings, as well as lockpicking, while avoiding to get spotted and stealth killing those in you way. There are also collectibles along the way, which I'm not sure have an actual use. The plat will require to get all of them, as well as not getting spotted throughout the whole game, speedrunning each mission and not killing anyone.

 

There are some upgrades that you can unlock by gathering points from completing objectives. Unfortunately most upgrades kind of suck.

 

Overll I've been enjoying my time with this game, despite it's flaws. It would've been a good one, if they hadn't completely given up on the lip.sync. As it stands it's a 6.5/10 for me

[voodoo_eyes]

Game #4 - The Division 2 - Preview

 

 

Developer : Massive Entertainment

Publisher: Ubisoft

Genre: TPS

Price: 29,99 €

 

 

I played the first game, and thought it was pretty average. It seemed poorly balanced when playing solo and the drop rate of better gear was terrible.

Now it's time to give the second one a go, and hopefully both those issues are non-existent. I also hope they fixed the menu, cause that was unpleasant to navigate through in the first game.

[willythom88]

Many times I've tried to tell you, Many times I've cried alone

 

Genre: RPG (Turn Based)

Trophies: 2

Time Played: A Little Over 3 Hours

 

 

Romancing Saga, a sub-chapter/spin off/new arch? of the SaGa series, is a weird duck indeed.  I feel like, given my work week this week, I won't be able to give it the time it needs to really grow on me, but it also feels like a super slow burn.  I spent about 2 and a half hours on Thomas' story, and an hour on Katrina's, and while I think I have something of an idea of what the overarching plot is, I don't think it's particularly important.  SaGa games, or the couple I've played now, seem to be more about the smaller tales taking place in each world.  Given how you can pick one 8 characters (and you can further pick their classes), there's a lot of story to dig through.

 

The meat and potato's of SaGa games, and this one doesn't appear to be any exception, is the combat.  Given how little direction you are given as time goes on, you'd hope the combat is good.  Thankfully, it is, but I doubt it will be everyone's cup of tea.

 

Basically it's more Dragon Quest VIII than it is Final Fantasy X.  Everyone's moves are selected, then attacking commences.  Missing or dealing 0 damage is common place in the battles, and I gotta admit, it's frustrating, though not in a way that makes you dislike the game.  More so a way that makes you want to plug the holes in your offense.  At least for me.  After battle, instead of getting experience points, random stats for each character level up a bit.  This is kind of cool, but having so degree of control over which stats increase might be nice.  Anyway, you fight, if you die, you lose a life point, of which you have a finite amount available.  You can recharge them at inns, and I believe you can revive characters who still have life points, but I didn't find the item to do so.

 

Each character has multiple types of attacks they can use, and if you equip them with multiple weapons, they'll be able to learn skills during battle for each weapon type.  If you've played The Alliance Alive (which I can mostly recommend), it got it's combat system from the SaGa games, so this felt really nice.  And like I said, you learn new moves mid battle, randomly, based on the weapon you're using when you learn it.  And when I say mid-battle, and randomly, I mean it.  You'll learn them as soon as you execute a pre-selected move, and it doesn't appear there's a way to boost this (though I'm sure the savants will tell me otherwise, at least of some setup I could've used or an item I hadn't found yet).

 

You'll go around recruiting random folks to join your party, and that's where most of the games trophies come in.  I recruited two, and from what I can tell, they were the easiest.  There's also other people you can recruit who would otherwise be in your party if you had another main character, but they don't have trophies for them.  My Katarina party consisted of Sarah, a goofy girl and a bard.  Unfortunately, my party with Thomas was virtually the same, but this leads to my one major gripe with the game.

 

Aside from the opening mission on both characters (one being much better than the other), your quest is kind of vague.  You are expected to go around and speak0 to people to get clues to where to go next, but not all of those clues will actually benefit you on your journey.  I ended up at a beach resort with Thomas, dying in a treasure cave that I thoroughly suspect had nothing to do with anything.  Well, at least not at where I was in the adventure.  Katarina made it to Pidona (very early in the adventure), until I realized I was running in circles.  It's crazy how little guidance is offered, and before you say "Games back then used to be about exploring you know!", I'm not saying it's a BAD choice for narrative, but I am saying I personally wish there was a guy at the front of the town waiting for me and syaing "Hey!  Let's go to Blarth Garlum's house in Davenport!"  Ya know.

 

The trophy list is kind of chaotic, and I like it.  Basically, finish every characters story, recruit a whole bunch of people over multiple playthroughs, and defeat some (from what I can tell) big bad bosses.  The SaGa games all follow a pretty typical trophy list scheme, and I think it works at getting you to explore (if the access to everything right off the bat and no guidance wasn't enough).

 

Gameplay - 7/10

Story - 6/10

Trophies - 8/10

 

Final Score - 7/10

 

I'm actually gonna go back to this and probably try to finish one of the paths (if not a few to get a better feel for the story).  I wish I had given it more time, as I feel like this requires at least 10-15 hours to really get the feel of.  Unfortunately, with work this week being as it is, it's a bit too much.  Had I known that up front I would have pushed this off to next week.  Oh well, if my mind changes I'll update this review.

 

Next Up - RIVE!

 

 

 

[Arctic Cress]

Game #3 - Lost Judgment

Time played: 5 hours

Trophies: 5/51 (6% - E)

 

It seems that every Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio game I play ends up on a KYC list at some point in time, starting with Yakuza Kiwami back in KYC 5. While I haven't been impressed with some of the entries (like Yakuza 3) most of them have been pretty enjoyable games. So far, Lost Judgment falls into the latter category.

 

Lost Judgment again stars lawyer turned detective Takayuki Yagami. In this title, Yagami takes his talents out to Isezaki Ijincho, the main city in Yakuza: Like a Dragon, to investigate a bullying case in Seiryo High School. His friends Fumiya Sugiura and Makoto Tsukumo have set up a new detective agency out in Isezaki Ijincho, and ask Yagami to help them with this large case. Of course, this bullying is only the tip of the iceberg to what has really happened around this school and Yagami is once again deep into another case that spans both his activities in this new city as well as Kamurocho.

 

The true highlight of Lost Judgment over its other titles in the series is the combat, and even with the limited skills I have the combat is fantastic. Yagami's combat styles, now with a 3rd addition in Snake, all flow extremely well and make combat not a chore, but something that you really want to do more of. While some of the bosses are quite on the easy side even on Normal difficulty, the one I fought just before writing this up was probably the toughest one I had fought up to this point! I had to chug a Tauriner and span some EX Actions at the end to finish off his last health bar before he defeated Yagami. Once I do get enough skills I am very interested in how the combat will feel as continue through the storyline.

 

The usual long list of completion makes its return here in Lost Judgment, and now with two cities to explore the list is now twice as long to finish. There seem to be less side cases than the previous game, but the new School Missions is new to this title - where Yagami helps the various clubs at Seiryo High School in different activities, such as the Dance club, which includes a new rhythm based minigame that takes the place of the Karaoke one that the Yakuza games have. With all the content added from these the total missions may be even longer in general. Also a nice addition is the removal of the missable trophies that were sprinkled throughout the original game's trophy list. Many of them were annoying, such as the one that required you to double your chips in gambling minigames. Especially since you couldn't do koi-koi (which is fun) or roulette (which could be done by saving/reloading).

 

The story and characters of Lost Judgment are familiar if you've played the previous title. Yagami is always pressed towards the truth but is also sarcastic a lot, and the English VA does a great job of portraying his character. There are several moments that you just have to laugh at throughout the game. Kaito and Sugiura are also well done and I enjoy the dialogue between the three characters and Makoto, who is more of the straight man in this group.

 

Like the previous games I've reviewed in this event, I don't recommend starting at this game if you want to jump into the series, but the game does seem to gloss over everything that happened in Judgment and don't mention it much. Anyway, that's more of a problem for Xbox One users who only have Lost Judgment while Judgment is only available on the Xbox Series for whatever reason. As for me, I think I will go back and finish Judgment instead of getting too far into this one - there's not much left in the original game that I still have to do. i do look forward to playing more of this, though!

 

Starting completion: 75.03%

Current completion: 74.87%

Difference: -0.16%

NEO: The World Ends With You - 8/51 (12% - E)

Blue Reflection: Second Light - 16/49 (24% - D)

 

Even a torrent of One Piece: Unlimited World Red trophies for a silly TrueTrophies challenge wasn't enough to stop a pretty decent drop in completion this time. Probably will not go much farther down though. Next up is Akiba's Trip, and then the Re:Zero game after my vacation.

[MAUSZX]

Leisure Suit Larry Wet Dreams don't dry

 

Genre:  Point and click, Adventure.

Time Played: Probably like 13 - 17 hours

Game Difficulty: 1/10

Trophy Difficulty: 3/10

 

Time played: about

Trophies earned: 32/32

 

Forgot to make an update, so here it is.

Easy game like any P&click game is just about figuring out what to do with your objects and at that point in the story, humor wise I think is a super funny game. A virgin guy from the 80's desperate to have sex time travels to the 2018 where everything is about technology, phones, and social media, is kinda a social criticism and parody, very good one imo.

 

 

Call Of Duty. Modern Warfare Remaster

 

Genre:  Shooter.

Time Played: Probably like 10 - 15 hours

Game Difficulty: 6/10

Trophy Difficulty: 6/10

 

Time played: about

Trophies earned: 40/51

 

 

We all know about this game, but playing it today, it changes perspective, story wise is pretty good, gameplay wise too, but at the same time, this game hasn't age that well... let me explain, Veteran Difficulty, this is a COD game that was made before multiplayer was as big as it is today, I think this game might have been the first game that probably made it big in the multiplayer scenario, so campaigns were very important at the time that this game was made, and because devs wanted you to keep playing their game and not sell it in the first month that you bought it, they raised the difficulty to a ridiculous level, and yeah this game is not as unfair and annoying as World at War was, but still, just because you don't get 100 grenades at you every minute or so doesn't mean the difficulty tends to be a little bs, specially in like 4 levels, they are still throwing at you 10 grenades every minute and you still get headshoted by an enemy that is not even looking at you, also your companions sometimes get in the way more times than they actually help. That been said, I got the hardest trophies out of the way and now I only need to have the misc trophies, so is a win for me, I would probably have a platinum already but the first 2 days I didn't play this game at all, because I forgot the day that it began. Still after all this I think is a great game, even tho I screamed at the game more than a few times.

 

[voodoo_eyes]

Game #4 - The Division 2 - Final Impressions

 

 

Time played: about 3-4h

Trophies earned: 2/61

 

 

The game is set up very similarly to the first game. It's a sandbox map of a city that you explore with main and side missions scattered around. THe game looks and sounds good. However there are a lot of pop-in issues, which I don't recall the first game having.

 

This time the map is divided by level zones, so you have an easier idea of how difficult things will be in each zone. So htat's a small improvement. The co-op option remains, but I'll still want to stick to this game solo. I've yet to encounter one of these Multuplayer-focused MP games that promise that the game can be played well solo, to actually deliver on that promise, without you having to grind absurd amount of hours for top notch gear.

 

To progress you'll get to choose a couple of skills and a bunch of passive perks when you find the materials for them or level up. The loot drops are still not great. I expect in any game that is loot focused to get a drop from an elite enemy, and it better be at least a rare one, this game most og the time gives you fuck all.

I've so far only gotten 2 uncommen items as drops, and a bunch of common crap. I'm hoping this improves further down the line.

 

Missions usually take place in enclosed areas, like inside buildings and take about 30 minutes to get through. There are also smalled side events, of which I've only done one so far. That one was an enemy zone, in an open area, that needed to be cleared. Doing so reduced enemy activity in the zone and if you search the area, it has like 5 loot chests as a reward. THe problem with these loot chests, is that they also can just contain cosmetics.

 

 

Anyway, I suppose for now this is a 6.5/10, better than the first game for now. Only marginally though.

[willythom88]

 

First Look

 

I've always been interested in trying as many genres as possible, and thanks to a childhood love of Galaga, schumps have always been on that list of beloved ones.  I especially like twin stick shooters like Resogun, Mamoruken Curse, and now, Rive.  This game is f'ing great.  It's funny, chaotic and really hard (even on normal).  Great trophy list to boot.  My only complaint so far is that the game uses a sort of wave structure to it's battles, and it's a bit repetitive.  Fortunately, it's also fairly short.  I'm almost two hours in and I'm on mission 7 of 12.  Still, digging the difficulty, and while I've got no intention of hitting "Single Credit" mode, which I just unlocked, I do think I'll be exploring this one thoroughly before moving onto Lego City Undercover next Weds.

[Arctic Cress]

Game #4 - Akiba's Trip: Hellbound & Debriefed

Time played: 3 hours

Trophies: 6/55 (8% - E)

 

Back in 2014, I played Akiba's Trip: Undead & Undressed after seeing it on XSEED's website at the time, and thought it might be a fun title to mess around with. I actually enjoyed it a lot, and have the platinum in the Vita version and played through the game a few times on the PS3 one. It was definitely an unknown game at the time, even without the first game coming over. Now the first game finally gets this remaster, though it really should have been remade instead. More on that in a minute.

 

This game's story is pretty similar to the 2nd game. The protagonist gets attacked when in Akihabara, and becomes a "Shadow Soul" by pure chance, after an encounter with them. A mysterious government agency called NIRO recruits the protagonist to their cause against the Shadow Souls that are currently all over Akihabara. The protagonist and his friends, the Akiba Freedom Fighters (a different group than the ones in the sequel, but the same name) join up with NIRO to help save Akihabara from the Shadow Souls.

 

While the story is similar, that's where the similarities end. The original game feels like a prototype of how Undead & Undressed felt, and the remaster does nothing to improve on basically anything besides upscaling the graphics... a bit, leaving it feeling like the PSP game that was released back in 2011. Combat is a chore - the same buttons attack the same parts of the body, for the head, for the chest, and for the legs - but the attack chains are so small and enemies are very good at dodging or guarding your attacks. This is also casual (normal) difficulty, so I can't even imagine what the other three difficulties are like. Undead & Undressed also developed many different moves for different weapons, however, I haven't seen many different movesets when changing weapons. Maybe this changes later instead of having all two-handed weapons being the same, and one-handed weapons having only two movesets total.

 

I mentioned how the game may have upscaled the graphics a bit. I guess they did a bit of work, but the game looks worse than Undead & Undressed when it came out back in 2014, and there's really no excuse for this. There are several PSP games that have gotten more work than what we received. The game should have been remade to even look as well as Undead & Undressed, and that game even has a PS4 version they could have based it off of!

 

In short, I'm glad we got the game released, but it's not a good game by any standards. I'm certainly not going to go back to it right after KYC is over, but maybe a few months down the road. The story and characters are somewhat more interesting if you can look past the outdated graphics and combat.

 

Starting completion: 75.03%

Current completion: 74.63%

Difference: -0.40%

NEO: The World Ends With You - 8/51 (12% - E)

Blue Reflection: Second Light - 16/49 (24% - D)

Lost Judgment - 5/51 (6% - E)

 

A slightly higher drop as I also started Death Mark on the Vita which is much better than the game I wrote up in this post, and I'll be finishing it up sooner rather than later. I'm going on my vacation without my PS4/PS5 so I'll be back after Thanksgiving and will play and write-up my last game then.

 

[voodoo_eyes]

Game #5 - Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Preview

 

 

Developer : Owlcat Games

Publisher: Deep Silver

Genre: CRPG

Price: 39,99 €

 

 

It's time to dig into one of my favourite genres. I was quite happy when it was announced that this game was going to come to consoles, unfotunately  I heard that it has a ton of problems at release similar to it's PC version, go figure.

 

CRPGs on console are a tricky thing and need to keep a lot of things in mind. First off it's a genre that requires you to read a lot, wich means prefereably it should have voice-acting, which costs a fortune. At lack of voice-acting it will need to have way bigger font size, because unlike to a PC monitor, your TV is probably a few meters away from you, and I for one would rather not be face planting my TV to play a game.

 

 

I've already played a couple of CRPGs on console at this point. The first being Pillars of Eternity which I loved, even though the performance issues were rough at times. And Torment Tides of Numenara, which was almost good. Wasn't a fan of some of the game mechanics, but toher than that it was pretty solid.

 

 

Curous to see how I'm going to enjoy this one.

[MAUSZX]

Grim Fandango

 

Genre:  Point and click, Adventure.

Time Played: Probably like 15 - 20 hours

Game Difficulty: 5/10

Trophy Difficulty: 5/10

 

Time played: about 15 to 20 hours

Trophies earned: 48/48

 

Honestly if it wasn't because of the many guides out there I would probably still be stuck in the first section of the game, there is a lot of difficulty factors for this game, and the biggest one for me is that is not obvious what you can interact with and what you can't, also there are some random puzzles that.... I mean I guess the first person that solved them was by mere luck. Still I'll say this is a very funny and enjoyable game.

 

[willythom88]

I've seen sun that's were freezing and lives that were through...

 

Genre: Platformer/Schump

Trophies: 6/42

Time Played: 2:42 minutes per the in game counter, but idk if that counts deaths, cause it feels like a lot more

Recommended: Not really

 

As I said before, Rive is a game I should love.  Unfortunately, I'm on chapter 2 of 12, and the last two chapters since my first update have been monumental b*llsh*t.

 

Visually, the game looks good, but isn't particularly astounding.  The sounds are much better, and between the hilarious dialogue and the badass soundtrack, I really liked the audio design.

 

Enemy design is a mixed bag, most because they introduce interesting enemies, and use them in ridiculous ways.  Most of the combat is about throwing wave after wave of enemy at you, keeping you panicked.  While it is easier once you gain your composure and remain calm, it's followed mere SECONDS later but another wave you have to learn the patterns for.  This has to do with some pretty lackluster level design that is only held up by slowly moving from one room (and one challenge) to the next, dealing with ludicrous amounts of enemies that tend to swarm you before you realize they are there.  Sometimes it's fun to figure out how to approach these situations, and sometimes it's terrible.

 

On second has you outrunning rising lava, while gunning down enemies, and my heavens, it's the least fun I had the whole game.  Eventually I got to a checkpoint, then died a bunch, before skating by and getting through the end of the section by the skin of my teeth.  I didn't feel accomplished either.  I felt drained.

 

The later chapters seem to just harp on the earlier chapters innovations, instead of just ending the game two chapters early.  I died well over a hundred times during my run, and while it started off feeling like a learning experience, it eventually felt like a tremendous slog to get through.  I'm mad too because I'm almost at the end, but I have no inclination to see it through.

 

Graphics - 5/10

Soundtrack - 9/10

Level Design - 4/10

Gameplay - 4/10

 

Final Score - 5/10 

 

Final Game - Lego City Undercover!

[voodoo_eyes]

Game #5 - Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Final Impressions

 

 

Time played: about 5h?

Trophies earned: 1/43

 

 

I have not been able to play this nearly as much as I would've like. Also know, that I'm quite biased towards this genre, and have not played a single CRPG that was bad. I still stand with you'll either like it or you don't, there's no middle ground.

 

That being said. There are some that are better than others, and I believe I've played better ones. This one might be the most complex though.

 

As with most games in this genre you get a handful of difficulty ptions, so you can just go through the game and enjoy it or have you characters die, if an enemy sneezes.

There's a good amount of classes, races and skills that you can select from in the character creation. You also have a number of options wheter you want to pick how your companions level up or if it's to be automatic.

 

The game looks and sound great, there's partial voice acting mostly tied to the main quest, and teh musical score is solid as to be expected from these games. Performace is not good though. To be fair I have a base PS4 and it's quite choppy, to the point where I'm conidering only getting back to it once I can get a PS5 for a reasonable price.

 

There are a few more things I take issue with though, the menus are not very user friendly. You can't switch between characters seemlessly, the invenotry does not show up next to you equipped gear, but rather in a separate tab, which makes comparing gear an absolute chore. Setting up spells is also somewhat clunky, because once again you need to awkwardly switch to each character to set the spells up, it's a weird design choice that I'm just not fond of.

 

Then there's the timer...

SO there are a few things I really hate in games, grinding to be able to progress story, a game being online only and time limits.

 

While the timer makes sense for story reasons, should've just gone with a story that doesn't make it so.

 

These games tend to be 100 hours long, if you want to explore everything. A big part of what makes these games fun, is exploring everything finding side quests and companions and so on. Slapping a timer in my face that tells me it's game over when it runs out is infuriating. Even though the timer is only supposed to be there up until a specific story segment, not knowing how far that point is away, makes me not explore other areas that I findduring the travels.

 

Other than that it's your typical CRPG. You can have up to 5 additonal party members who either love or hate eachother at some point, go through various areas, defeat monsters and bandits while eventually finishng the main quest. Plenty of stuff to loot and fight everywhere. You need to rest in-between your travels to regain heath and spells and in this game potentially get bonuses, make food, etc.

 

The map is set up a bit differently as well. You get very few fixed lcoations, and only unlock more while exploring. Random encounters are also a thing in this game, and travelling costs a lot of time, which make me think of the timer again.

 

 

At this stage it's a 7/10 with potential to go up to an 8 at most, if it runs better on a more powerful system. So better than Torment Tides of Numenara, but substantially worse than Pillars of Eternity, which also ran poorly, but everything else was so much fun.

Edited November 25, 2021 by voodoo_eyes