Time for another KYC - 20th edition

[PerryToxteth]

KYC 20

Game No. 4
 

 

Trophies Earned: 0/41

Playing Time: 1+ hours

YouTube Time: 1+ hours

 

Final Thoughts: I’ve been gaming since the Bronze Age, when I saved up my summer chore money and bought an NES in junior high. Side note: my family did have an Intellivision, but that’s probably more novelty than actually gaming. 
  One of my favorite game series from all consoles over the decades was the Allied General/ Panzer General games that were released for the PS1. They were fantastic military strategy games that sorta played like the board game Axis & Allies, but on a much smaller scale. 
  Fast forward 20 + years and this game came out along with its companion, Strategic Mind: Pacific. I didn’t know too much about the series or the developer, but the gameplay looked awfully similar to the PS1 games I had fondly had memories of and decided to give one of them a chance. I decided on Blitzkrieg because I remember naval warfare being a bit complicated in the pacific scenarios from yesteryear. And, I don’t care what the Woke crowd says, Panzers look fricking cool! 

  So I fired up SM: Blitzkrieg eager for a journey into nostalgia. Instead, I retreated quickly to figure out how anyone learned how to play this game.   
  From the title screen, you are offered little choice but to start a new campaign. Fine, let’s go. It then kicks into a cut scene with OKH Commander Franz Halder having a discussion with the worst looking animated mock-up of Herman Göring that’s ever existed. You could argue that aside from Adolph, Göring would be the second-most recognizable face of the Third Reich. How the developers missed that badly on a face that’s so recognizable is beyond me. Then, he starts talking the most Americanized Cowboy dialogue ever put in a German feature. Either find someone with an accent, or put it in German with subtitles. The voice sounds exactly like Dale Dye. 
  Then the gameplay began with a Battle of Spain scenario. Let the frustration begin! It looks like Panzer General with the hexagonal map, but the similarities end there. First, everything is controlled by a cursor that’s operated by . Except (!), if you move too close to the edges of the screen, you will move over on the map and completely lose the area you were just looking at. So 20 seconds in, and I’m already realizing this is a terrible Steam port.
  Then, I’m not sure what to do. Do I move my unit first? Attack first? What’s the Order of Battle? Aha! The developers forgot to put in a F’ing Tutorial!!  After flailing around for a few minutes, I realize I can not fudge my way into starting this thing. It’s too complicated with promotional points, secondary objectives, and a ton of icons that I have no idea what they represent. In looking around on the menu screen, I find a glossary that can sort of be used as instructions. So really, back to the PS1 days, right? But it is a mountain of screen information to get through. 
 Like any good 21st century gamer, I turned to YouTube for help. And yep, it’s true, this game is as complicated as I thought it would be. That’s perfectly fine if it’s explained to you, but I shouldn’t have to go to other online resources to figure out how to start playing! I watch a 45+ minute tutorial and some more videos on a couple scenario play throughs.  The game looks fun. It seems similar to the PS1 games in a variety of ways, including where you can carry over veteran units from battle to battle and make them into juggernauts. But why wasn’t any of this explained?!? 
I ran out of time to use my YouTube knowledge and start up a new campaign. I will try to start this one again after KYC, but I’m sure it will involve more YouTube views. Unbelievable. 
Grade: 

 

Next Up: Five Dates

[MarkusT1992]

Just wanted to let you know that I will write a combined review for my last game and my current game in a few days.

 

@Hemiak After reading your review of Alien: Isolation a remembered reading something about the alien AI and how it is special and found this article. It explains how the ai works and is an interesting read.

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/the-perfect-organism-the-ai-of-alien-isolation

[Kevvik]

Game #5: Sakura Wars

 

Initial Impressions

 

Time played: -8 hrs

Trophies earned: 9/45, 14% for E rank

 

Sakura Wars is a primarily a 3D adventure game with intermittent real-time combat sections.  You play Kamiyama, a male military captain assigned to the Flower Division, a group of young women who fight demons while operating mechs and then entertain the populace with theatre productions in quieter times.
 

As per normal in this style of anime-based storytelling, the girls are not very good entertainers and their mechs are mediocre, so bad that Shanghai has sent a force to operate out of Tokyo because they can’t look after themselves. The Flower Division used to be a great Force until it disbanded 10 years earlier after a huge demon invasion. An old member of that force, Sumire, resurrected the Flower Division but it’s current quality leaves a lot to be desired.  You also, naturally, have a past connection with one of the girls (named Sakura) who secretly is in love with you. The girls are all eager to do this but it’s on you to build the necessary teamwork. Being based on anime, all the typical character types are here, the shy bookish type, the underage ninja, the redhead with a temper, the hot older woman and, of course, the old love interest.  This being a harem style game as well, you build/lose trust with the girls through dialogue choices and you’ll likely end up romancing them all by the end. And of course they are all attractive in their own way.

 

This part of the game is standard fare along with some collectibles and inappropriate situations.  You also have some cutscenes from the anime mixed in. Important plot stuff is generally voice-acted while the rest just presents text even though the characters go through the motions of talking.  I’m into Chapter 3 where the Division has to enter an Olympic style competition in order to be taken seriously and not disbanded so they have introduced a couple of new Divisions from London and Berlin to add to our Shanghai rivals. This should drag things out pretty well while we build our teamwork. The character animations are pretty good though I’m getting tired of my protagonist always crossing his arms dramatically at some point in just about any conversation.  The girls’ designs are fairly typical of anime-based games.
 

The combat isn’t horribly complicated with light/heavy attacks, a special attack, dodging, dashing and the like. Each combat section gets a rating based on how you did in speed, damage enemies killed, partner morale and the goal is to get S ranks to increase the trust between you and your partner. So far I keep getting A ranks primarily because I clear the areas too slowly.

 

I’m enjoying this so far though it’s not anything particularly special.  The fan service hasn’t gotten too out of hand yet, sticking more to the romance side with a few perv opportunities.  
 

Score so far: 6/10

 

I also finished off the plat for Wytchwood today. It was a nice backdrop away from the dialogue of Disco Elysium and when taking a break from Sakura Wars just to get away from the harem.

[PerryToxteth]

8 hours ago, slicknick3822 said:

Interesting, I never felt that way about Chloe. We learn during the first one, she basically lost everyone she loved and that she became a rebellious teenager but I never thought she was so awful. LiS Spoilers:

  Reveal hidden contents

I still killed her at the end of LiS, because I think that would be canon, not sacrificing a city for a high school relationship.

 

Thank you! I hope so too!

I had little empathy for Chloe in the first game bc she was a train wreck to everyone in her life and didn’t take any accountability for her actions. I chose the same ending.

  This game, Before the Storm, details on how and why she built up such a hard exterior. I have much more empathy for her after playing this game, because you see her true self when she is with her best friend. When the guard is down, she is a good person. I actually think this game is better than the first one. I’m curious to see if you agree.

I know there is another LIS game out there, but I don’t believe it continues this story - is that true? 

[Hemiak]

@PerryToxtethLiS 2 is completely new characters. Pretty sure True Colors is as well. 
 

I also found Chloe to be annoying in the first game.
 

Saying she lost everyone is a stretch since she still lives with her mom, but I get that she lost her dad who was important. And then she formed this really strong bond with this other girl, and that started to pull her back out of her shell, and then that person went missing too. The second does a good job explaining her issues, but game one was just kind of obnoxious imo. 

 

[Chirithy84]

Game 5

Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2

Cyber Connect

39.99 €

Fuga: Melodies of Steel -  Add on/ Deluxe Edition Upgrade € 19.99

--

Spoiler

Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 - Official Trailer #Fuga2 #FugaMelodiesofSteel2 - YouTube

 

----

Years later, while the children were enjoying their peaceful lives, they were all called to the capital. Lieutenant Muscat led them all into a large hangar; where they beheld the Tanaris; bigger than before.

Spoiler

Spoiler

Hard spoiler. Only at your own risk and only; if you can really get excited about the second part. And only if you're interested in the story of the second!

Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 FULL GAMEPLAY CHAPTER 1 - The Devil in the Belfry [NO COMMENTARY] 

 

 

Edited May 24, 2023 by Chirithy84

[purgta]

Game #4: Jisei

 

 

Jisei is a murder mystery visual novel developed by Sakevisual.

 

The game was a lot shorter than I was expecting. It takes about an hour to get through a blind run. On the positive side it did not outstay its welcome but an hour is very short for a visual novel. The game has three bad endings and one true ending. The characters were fine. Each seemed different from one another which is always good. The story is mainly you asking characters questions to try to piece things together. 

 

The game kept bringing up things that were unanswered at the end or were going to be in a sequel. That would be fine if you jumped into the sequel straight away but it kind of hurts the murder mystery as a standalone story. I was enjoying piecing things together but the game does not trust its audience to find the answer and basically just tells you who the culprit is. This wouldn't have bothered me so much if it was not right before asking you to reveal the murderer. Even solving it myself beforehand still left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.

 

I can't really say much more about the game without spoiling things. It sounds like I am complaining a lot but I do think the game is fine. It goes on sale a lot for around a euro these days. Only one more game to go for me. Game number five is Legend of Dragoon.

[voodoo_eyes]

Game #8 - Beyond a Steel Sky - Review

 

Time played: 8h

Trophies earned: 33/33

 

 

It's been a while since I actually finished a game in one of these events.

 

Turns out this was more of an adventure type game with some puzzles along the way and a lot of back and forth between areas. Visually it is held in a comic book style. The voice acting and lip sync are pretty good.

 

The gameplay didn't really grab me much, nor did I find the story particularly interesting. They try to throw in some funny lines here and there, but not enough to make the dialogue worth listening to.

 

There really isn't much more to say. It's just an ok game. 6/10, won't bother platting the ps4 version.

[Taruta13]

20 hours ago, slicknick3822 said:

LiS Spoilers:

I played LiS and got the plat on an older account and I did the same thing because I think that is what Max would do, she would respect Chloe's request even if it hurt her.

 

Anyways, let's get this out of the way. I had to quit the game I was played two and a half minute(35 seconds actually) short because I reached a part which would have run me over three hours, so here it is... the penultimate review.

 

Game #9: Ni No Kuni II - Revenant Kingdom
Final Review

 

Amount of time played: 2 hours, 57 minutes over 3 days

Trophy completion: 3% (3 / 63)

As I touched on before, this is the sequel to the original Ni No Kuni, which I may have to move to milestone #195, because I forgot the Solosseum exists.

 

Made by the people who made the last game I played, Rogue Galaxy, LEVEL-5 is a master worker of great RPG stories. If my account got erased and I lost all my trophy progress and had to start over, the games I would go for first are Dark Cloud, Dark Cloud 2, Rogue Galaxy and Ni No Kuni. Why not this game? Because it got DLC which is a bit too challenging for me. Still, the Tales of the Timeless Tome are a nod to Oliver's Wizard's Companion.

 

But let's see how this stands up. It stands up pretty good. The overworld theme is a softer remix of the original game's overworld theme, and the combat is more like Tales of Berseria. The original did have sort of actiony combat but it was in the line of Tales of Symphonia where you had to pause to input actions. Also gone are the familiars you raise and metamorph. Instead, your passive companions are Higgledys, little Pikmin creatures that add DPS and support to any battle. I know we'll have to use them to deal with the next boss coming up!

 

Kingdom Hearts 3 took Sora's three keyblade line up and used it with every character, allowing everyone to carry three melee weapons and swap between them, because of the zing mechanic. You build up zing by landing hits with your melee weapons. If you have no zing, you cannot use your attack skills and Evan's skills are pretty powerful. His best skill has him swing his sword in an energy glow and do mad multiple hits to every enemy around him.

 

The goal of the story is to help Evan build a new kingdom since he was ousted from his rightful place as the king of Ding Dong Delll. So far I completed two of the many chapters and have enjoyed it, and now that my "DLC is a suggestion" policy has been fermented, I can enjoy getting the platinum without suffering the insufferable DLC. (I'm not good at playing games at high difficulty, so please bear with me.)

 

VERDICT: If you enjoyed the original Ni No Kuni, play this. If you never played the original and still want to experience hand-drawn art in an RPG with a deep political story that doesn't get overbearing with politics, play this. If you love good action RPG goodness, PLAY THIS.

 

RATING: 9.5 Higgledies out of 10 (-0.5 because of the DLC, sorry)

Edited May 24, 2023 by Taruta13

[Taruta13]

And now, the final....

 

 

You may have never seen it coming, but I certainly did.

 

Final Preview: Persona 3 Portable

 

I wasn't expecting to do another Persona game, but Atlus gave everyone their wishes and ported Persona 4 Golden to the PS4. They also had plans to do Persona 3 in some way, so here we go. Before everyone gets on my backside, the guy who I am going to see in a few hours for gym coaching kept mentioning that Atlus was making an actual remaster of the original Persona 3. I am not going to believe it until Atlus announces it, so for now, this is what you get.

 

Not saying it's a bad game. Persona 3 was the first Persona I played back when Playstation 3 did not exist. I actually GOT 100% SOCIAL LINKS in the original game with a guide. And since I can push through cutscenes, I am not concerned about running out of time.

 

.

 

Why people hate this game is that, due to the PSP not being able to handle the processing power of the original Persona 3's cutscenes, Atlus decided to turn those cut scenes into a visual novel and the exploratory areas into a point-and-click adventure. I get you people. Having played the original Persona 3 to completion, I know how it hurts not getting to walk around the school, mall and dormitory like in Persona 4 Golden, and Persona 5 did not help.

 

However... uhm... this is the only Persona game where you can choose to play as a brunette femme! This means that a lot of the social links had to be reworked, due to Atlus avoiding LTGQB issues. I think it was because dataminers found some voiced dialogue in Persona 4 Golden where Yosuke confesses gay love for the main character and you can romance him and a lot of people got gross sh** angry at this.

 

If you choose to play as femme-Minato(Minato is the canon name for the male character), you can romance the male companions. Yes, even the ten-year old boy Ken. I bet people had a feel day with what was essentially pedophilia.

 

Unfortunately, I am going to be philandering a lot. Thanks to Asdivine Cross and The Last Campfire getting ALL the trophies and the platinums before their three day play was up, someone had to take up the slack, so now I have A FULL WEEK of one hour play sessions to deal with.

 

Therefore, I will be spending those sessions working on the 100% Femme-Minato playthrough as the guides suggest. This will grant me the resources to bum-rush the Minato playthrough and get it over with because, yes, there is a trophy requiring playing the story as both genders. (If anyone wants to confirm that I can just decide to get the bad ending and that counts, please let me know.)

 

Well, we'll be heading into Tartarus tomorrow. Wish me luck.

 

EDIT: Actually, since this is going to be over as many play sessions as everything else, I've decided to whittle play time to 30 minute sessions, which will still put me over 3 hours(3 hr, 30 min) but at least I won't feel obligated to finish anything and earn too many trophies. After all, I'm murdering my completion.

Edited May 25, 2023 by Taruta13

[Arctic Cress]

Game #2 - Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate

Time played - 5 hours

Trophies - 5/55 (7% - C)

 

Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate is apparently the 5th game in the Shiren the Wanderer series, most of which have never seen a release overseas. This is actually the first title in the series I have played, but I know the basics - the game is a roguelike where you start each dungeon at Level 1 and try to make it as far as you can in the randomized dungeons.

 

The game's story revolves around the two elements from the title; the Tower of Fortune where a god can change someone's fate, and the Dice of Fate that allows someone to climb the tower. In the starting village, a girl named Oyu has a terminal illness and her childhood friend Jirokichi decides to climb the tower to change her fate. Shiren decides to help Jirokuchi along with a number of other characters within the story. So far, I've climbed the Tower of the Past and received the first (of three) Dice of Fate, so I'm well on my way through the story. Strangely enough, I haven't fought anything resembling a boss fight yet, which is kind of surprising! I definitely expected a good challenge from this game - though I might see that later in the game.

 

While the main game is interesting enough, there's also a LOT of side content in the game which makes up a lot of the trophy list itself. There's Exploding Rocks, which is basically Minesweeper in a Shiren dungeon - which is better than it sounds. I've beaten the first two courses of it, but not the last one. There's the Statue Cave, where you have to push statues into a designated portion of a dungeon - and Iooked through the menu and saw well over a hundred of these courses. That explains the 1.68% rarity on that trophy. There's another person with those two which has even more side dungeons to go through, so I've only scratched the surface of what this game has to offer.

 

Based on all this, I assume I'll be spending a lot of time going through the various dungeons in this. A perfect Vita title, I think!

 

 

Not going to do the usual update since I've gained so much completion from playing other games for the past two weeks instead of doing this event, but I'll get back on track soon enough. Since I am currently on vacation, the next title played will probably be the other Vita game, Akiba's Beat.

[voodoo_eyes]

Game #9 - Afterparty - Preview

 

Developer: Night School Studio

Publisher: Night School Studio

Genre: Adventure

Price: 19,99

 

 

Not sure what to expect from this. It's from the same studio that made Oxenfree, which I thought was an ok game. As far as I know, this game focuses on interacting with characters in the game and future interactions depend on your previous dialogues choices.

 

[Hemiak]

Solo Game 4

Time: ???? Uh, maybe ten hours, the game save file says 120 so I’m pretty sure it keeps counting even if you’re on rest mode and you don’t fully close it out. ?

Trophies: 14/23 64%)

 

I had fun with this one. Some frustration, but good overall. So what is it? It’s an isometric action/adventure game. You play as a Drifter looking for (I’m assuming) the Hyper Light. All of this is nebulous as there’s no actual text in the entire game, and the story is told through small vignettes at specific times. 
 

Honestly even after beating the game I’m not 100% on everything. He’s sick, but I don’t know if that was a preexisting condition or something he acquired while chasing the Hyper Light a la Shadow of the Colossus. I did journey on Reddit to get the communal take on everything. There is a language of runes written in various places and people have taken the time to decipher it and piece together the story. Though even that still leaves room for interpretation. 
 

The basis is this, the drifter, and others like him, are trying to reach some kind of power in the center of the world. Whether this is pure divine power, nuclear, or a really strong A.I. or processor of some kind….  

 

To get there you need to power the lift down, to do that you need to do two things…. Four times each. The town with the lift is in the vary middle of the map, so you need to journey to the 4 cardinal directions with two objectives in mind. In each area there are 8 power modules, and you need to find and activate at least 4 in each area. Each direction also has a boss you can face after activating at least 3, although the South has 3 extra bosses for story reasons. After fighting the boss you can go to the roof of his building and activate a huge monolith that begins resonating. Around the lift in town there are four smaller monoliths that activate when the big ones, and indicators around the lift that light up as you activate modules. It doesn’t matter (for story) whether you only do 4 or all 8 in an area, and extras in one area don’t carry over to others. 
 

You have five hp, and do one damage with a sword slash or basic gun shot. There is a charge sword spin and different guns that do more damage, but no way to increase base health or damage. You also have a dash move that doesn’t give I frames, but can get you out of harms way. You can use it three times with a slight delay, before a longer cooldown. However, there is a dash upgrade that allows you to dash faster and with no end until you run out of stamina, which is like 20-25 dashes. There’s a room with panels on the ground that refill your stamina instantly and a trophy for chaining 800 dashes in a row, which was pretty annoying. 
 

Along with modules each area has 4 keys, 4 smaller tablets, and 42-47 gear bits. These are little yellow coin things, and collecting 4 gives you a token, which you spend in batches of 2 or 3 for upgrades. There are 186 of the buggers in the game and I’m stuck at 185 with no idea which I missed.  

 

There are different outfits that consist of a cape, sword, and little floating buddy that helps you interact with thing. Each outfit is a color theme, and each grants a specific bonus that usually speeds up something you do. You only need one piece to activate the bonus, so you can mix and match and have three active at once. Problem is none of this is outlined in game, so you either need to play around and find the minimal changes, or find out online. 
 

I beat the game blind, then went back to find all the collectibles, and got everything but the one gear bit. I’ve been through almost every area a third time and still haven’t found it which is annoying. So last night I started NG+ which starts you at the beginning with all the sword and dash upgrades, but none of the gun ammo, bomb, or health kit upgrades. Then you beat the whole game again, only this time you have 2 max hp. So that means two hits to kill you, except a good number of enemies have 2 hp attacks so that’s fun. I finished the first three areas, the North boss was a nightmare, but everything else has been tough but fair so far. 
 

I won’t get into the whole story as it’s pretty nebulous and speculative, so anyone can look that up if they really want. I enjoyed it a lot, but sometimes the rooms felt unfair, and the healing takes time a la dark souls. It takes a second to activate, then fills up your health slots pretty quick, but if you get hit before it finishes it stops where it was and you lose the next point. Can’t count how many times I started a heal, got hit a second later, and still died because of this. Oh there’s a trophy for dying 1k times which is dumb af. I’m hoping it counts Across save slots, but not holding my breath. Gonna be a grind later probably. 
 

Rating: 8/10

Difficultly: 7/10

—————————————

 

Im just going to do this now because holy crap was I disappointed. 
 

Wife Game 4

Dreams

Time: 2.5 hrs

Trophies: 0, this is the first time I’ve ever failed to get a trophy on one of these games, but screw this. 
 

This game is made by the people that made the LBP games, which I had fun with. I was hoping for more 2(or even 3)D platforming goodness, with some creative stuff sprinkled in. That’s always been my least favorite part of the LBP stuff. I can appreciate that other people really enjoy building and designing worlds and levels for people to play, but that’s not for me. 
 

Instead it seems like they took all the creative stuff from

LBP, tweaked the formula a bit, and made a game out of it. You play as an imp, a little blob with a glowing antenna you move around the screen to interact with things. You can possess certain creatures to run around in 3d platformer mode, and there are a few levels they included with this in mind, but they aren’t very fun at all. It all just seemed like a collection of builder tools thrown together they wanted the community to go nuts with.
 

As I said this game seems interesting for people into that, but it wasn’t for me. I tried out several of the included level worlds and ran around and did some stuff, but honestly I can’t be assed to play something this far out of my interest zone. I’m just glad I got in on a deep sale so I can delete it and forget I ever tried this out. 
 

 

Next up: Solo game Ghost of Tsushima, Wife Game probably Plague Tale: Innocence. 

[Vulpine9Tails]

Game #4: Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning

 

Time played: 18 hours

Trophies: 39/69 = 55%

 

I may have gotten a little carried away with this game. I am enjoying it quite a bit. I originally played this when it came out on PS3. Or at least I tried; I never made it past the first town after the tutorial cave. This time I have already beaten the story and am now on trophy cleanup.

To be honest, I started off caring about the story but my interest quickly dwindled. Something about how there was a dwarf who was doing experiments trying to make things come back to life and you are the only successful case of being resurrected and some demon guy who supposedly killed you before the game started is salty that he has to kill you again and for some reason a whole bunch of other guys are mad about it too. You can also mess with fate somehow. I honestly have no idea. All I want to do is go around murderizing everything because the combat is extremely fun. you can wield daggers, chakrams, heavy hammers, swords, greatswords, longbows, spears, the works. And the combos you can do depend on what kind of weapon you are using. 

 

It's a big open world and enemies just kind of exist in it for you to kill. They're pretty dumb, even on Hard difficulty, and with the right build you can absolutely demolish baddies. I have a build where most of the pieces give an extra 20% damage buff during combat during the day (there is a nice day/night cycle which otherwise doesn't have an effect on the game except maybe some NPCs are sleeping during the night but can be woken up). I was pretty much one and two shotting everything in my path. You even get an ability (the name of which escapes me but I think it's called Fatebreaker or something) where time slows down and you can blast away on enemies and then do a QTE that gives you a bonus to experience depending on how fast you can mash a button prompt. You can also craft weapons and armour (how I got my awesome build) and the buffs that your pieces can get seem to all stack and can get quite insane from what I can tell. Where most games might give you a couple percentage points, this game is giving you twenty. And they stack. It's fun is what it is. 

 

Other than combat, the rest of the game is actually quite dull; most quests are "go here, talk to this guy, go somewhere else, kill some enemies or a big bad, warp back, talk to buddy again, quest complete." But I like simplistic games like that so it doesn't really bother me much. If you have open world burnout I would stay away from this game though as there is a lot of travelling and though there a lot of neat areas, really there's not much to do. There's some collectibles scattered around in the form of lorestones, and this is my biggest annoyance with this game; once you pick one up, the narration will not. shut. up. It just drones on and on. No one cares I swear to god shut up. Like I don't mind collectibles that give some background (obviously these are called "lore"stones for a reason) but my god there are over a hundred of them and every single one I've found so far it's like the narrator is reading entire essays and they won't stop until they are either done or you pick another one up in which case a different set of lore will take over and now you have to listen to that one. At least they don't play at the same time and try to supersede each other because that would be the only thing that makes it more annoying. 

 

Overall, I enjoy this game and I am definitely going at least for the platinum now. I'm not sure if I care to do the DLC but that sounds like future me's decision to make way down the line.  

[slicknick3822]

Game #5 - Ghost of Tsushima - Final Review

Time played: ~7h

Trophies Earned: 6/77 (5%)

 

I'm going to be honest, I'm not really sure how I feel about this game. I feel like I haven't even made a big enough dent to make a true judgment of the game. The game is stunningly beautiful and I love the vibrant colors. It's right up there if not better than the other top tier graphical games I've played this month like Spider-Man and Horizon. The story is intriguing but these early stages are repetitive (person is missing/captured, find/rescue them). I'm more curious as to how the story continues after this first part of the island and the island opens up. The best part of the story is the battle within Jin about following his code of honor vs going against it for the good of the country. As for the gameplay, I really enjoy the swordplay. The one gripe I have with the gameplay is that traveling seems slow, especially coming off the back of a game like Spider-Man where swinging through the city is quick. 

 

I think this one may be on the backburner a bit longer than the others but I do wanna get back to it but I think it will have to be at a time when I can really focus on the game.

 

Rating: 7/10

Current %: 68.50% (-20.20%) 

 

Game Preview

May 26th-31st

Persona 4 Golden

 

Developer: Atlus

Publisher: Atlus

Genre: Action RPG

 

Saving the best for last, I hope. I've always enjoyed the Persona games and played P4G on Vita but never beat the game. Similarly, I've played Persona 5 vanilla and Royal and never beat either of them. But I already know I enjoy the stories and gameplay loop so now all I need to do is sit down and actually play the game through. These dates are mostly my Memorial Day weekend off so I should have a lot of time and I plan on continuing to play through into June as well.

[Vulpine9Tails]

2 hours ago, slicknick3822 said:

Game #5 - Ghost of Tsushima - Final Review

Time played: ~7h

Trophies Earned: 6/77 (5%)

 

I'm going to be honest, I'm not really sure how I feel about this game. I feel like I haven't even made a big enough dent to make a true judgment of the game. The game is stunningly beautiful and I love the vibrant colors. It's right up there if not better than the other top tier graphical games I've played this month like Spider-Man and Horizon. The story is intriguing but these early stages are repetitive (person is missing/captured, find/rescue them). I'm more curious as to how the story continues after this first part of the island and the island opens up. The best part of the story is the battle within Jin about following his code of honor vs going against it for the good of the country. As for the gameplay, I really enjoy the swordplay. The one gripe I have with the gameplay is that traveling seems slow, especially coming off the back of a game like Spider-Man where swinging through the city is quick. 

 

I think this one may be on the backburner a bit longer than the others but I do wanna get back to it but I think it will have to be at a time when I can really focus on the game.

 

Rating: 7/10

Current %: 68.50% (-20.20%) 

 

I hope you do come back to GoT. The story is stellar, and the ending made me cry (no spoilers) to the point where it actually messed me up for a few days lol. I didn't really care for the game when I started it, but as I kept playing I really got into it and by the end I understood why people like it so much. 

[Kevvik]

Game #5: Sakura Wars

 

Day 5 Impressions

 

So I’ve continued through to episode 4. You are now in the World Games and I’ve defeated the first opponent.  The stakes are also higher as higher demons are now showing up, the first as a boss fight in the combat for ep 2 and another which says they will destroy Tokyo if not given the key to unlock the shadow prison that the Archdemon has been kept in. This prompted the President of the Combat Revues to change the competition so that any Force which loses will be disbanded so that the winner will now be in charge of a worldwide United Force.  Personally, I think he has ulterior motives and this being anime based, I’m probably right.

 

The combat is still pretty good, it’s responsive and fun. There is also a new mechanic in a trust/team attack where you join with another member to set it off and you become temporarily invulnerable and powered up. It’s adds a little to the toolbox but we’ll see how well it works moving forward.

 

There is also a Battlebot simulator where you can replay old missions with different characters to try to get S ranks to increase trust with the team members.  There are also collectibles here so for the plat I’m going to have to S rank all of them. Plus, you have Koi-Koi, the card game you side play.

 

Overall an Ok game that will likely (being JRPG) have a bunch of grinding for the plat.

 

Time played: 14 hrs

Trophies earned: 16/45, 25% for D rank

Final score: 6/10

Completion Rate: 86.84% (-0.70% for the event)

 

Next up: Game #6: Psychonauts 2

 

I’m a big fan of Psychonauts, I’ve played through it multiple times on multiple platforms PC, PS2, PS4 so I’m really looking forward to this. Even played the VR title.  Not sure I’ll get to it today with guests coming over but I still have 5 days starting Friday to play in May.

[Psy-Tychist]

Game 4: Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight

You better Leaf her alone.

 

Current Percentage: 70.53% +0.03%

Trophies Earned: 0/10 - 0%

Time Played: Roughly 90 minutes

Amount of cats found: 2

 

Momodora is a game I found when watching the Australian Youtuber Indeimaus who described it as Boobborne. Besides the blatant titty reference, the gameplay was not influenced by Bloodborne but more closely resembles a stripped down version of Megaman mixed with Salt and Sanctuary. The story that I found out in the little time I played went something like this: You play a priestess who has come to cleanse the nearby city of Karst where a curse has been infecting the land and it reached her village. To enter the city of Karst and see if she can end the curse, the priestess has to find several crests to open the seal to the source of the curse. 

 

The game itself plays like a metroidvania but has the feeling more like a platformer in the style of Megaman. Graphically, it is a very pretty pixel-art game and the sprites are all very cute and individual, it has a lot of charm in the game with very distinctive backgrounds. The first area is a forested area with imps before getting to the city of Karst which does borrow heavily from Bloodborne in design, even though they were released close together. Further areas move underground and into other dimensions such as ice and fire as well as an underground location that seems damp. All these areas feel different and have specific enemies that fit these places. You have a physical attack which can be a 3 hit combo using a maple leaf and you gain a bow early on which you can use indefinitely and it fires a lower impact shot which you can spam as well as charge up for a more powerful volley. You can roll through most attacks and you come equipped with a double jump from the start of the game. From what I have seen in the game, you gain no improvements to your attack or defence but you can find several heart containers hidden around which will increase your maximum health and you can find and buy charms and items which would have passive effects as well as activatable effects. I've only found 2 of these so far, but I expect that there will be many more. 

 

The game has 3 difficulties to start with, Easy, Normal and Hard and beating Hard will give you the final difficulty, Insane. Each difficulty will give you a different pool of health to start with and Hard has a paltry amount which would mean dying in less than 3 hits in the beginning. Even starting on Normal, the enemies are no slouches and you are not hand-held through the tutorial area and boss. I died more times to the imps that I did to the first boss. I found out a little secret about the bosses in the game after beating the first one, if you beat them without taking damage, you get an item from them. I've only defeated the one boss but I assume that the others will drop some fun things when I get to them. 

 

Trophy wise, you have to do nearly everything in the game to actually get trophies with only two miscellaneous trophies able to be completed before the endgame. At least 3 playthroughs will be required to get the 10 trophies with the hardest being probably completing it on Insane difficulty and completing the game without dying. Truly something I will struggle with, but the game is cute and interesting, so hopefully that will drive the completion onwards. 

 

Overall the game is fun and easy to play with some difficulty to everything that you come across, whether than is the basic enemies, the platforming or the bosses. It is not a game for the faint of heart and takes the difficulty and playstyle of Hollow Knight and mixes it with Blasphemous. If that sounds like fun, give this a whirl.

 

Next Game: Superhot

[voodoo_eyes]

Game #9 - Afterparty - Review

 

 

Time played: about 10h

Trophies earned: 24/24

 

 

This is a very story-heavy game so I'll have to keep description for this game to a minimum. I have at this stage gotten the game's platinum, which takes about 1 and a half playthroughs, if you don't miss anything and almost everything is missable.

 

Essentially you'll play as two characters that are friends and go through the game, having conversations with NPCs, doing some quests for them so you can reach the end of the game

 

The voice-acting is fantastic throughout (it has a lot of profanity though, just as a warning for those who have an issue with that). Unfortunately, there are times where the dialogue is cut off before it is entirely spoken aloud.

 

Visually it's mostly on a 2D plane, and fairly solid graphics. It gets slightly monotone though, as a lot of the areas are either fairly dark or kind of neon. There is also some backtracking to previously visited locations.

 

There were a few minor technical issues as well though, with sometimes the voice becoming barely audible and I had one occasion where the screen was just black for about 5 minutes, even though there was a conversation going on )it was on a third partial playthrough fora missable trophy, and it was not intended). These minor issues and a kind of pointless additional playthrough brought this down to a 7/10 for me, otherwise it would've been an 8.

Edited May 27, 2023 by voodoo_eyes

[voodoo_eyes]

Game #10 - Forspoken - Preview

 

 

Developer: Luminous Productions

Publisher: Square Enix

Genre: Action-RPG

Price: 79,99€

 

I'll anticipate my preview slightly for this game. This game may largely be known for it's massive price tag and underwhelming review scores. It's made by the same studio that made Final Fantasy XV, which I enjoyed a lot. This one looks like it could be fun, so I'm actually looking forward to it, hoping it's actually not that bad. I mean the price tag is hefty, which is why I bought a physical copy for half the price instead, it's got to be worth that right?

[Hemiak]

So I just realized I don’t have Ghost of Tsushima, I only have access to the free MP Legends mode, which I was pretty much never going to play even if I finished the sp stuff. So that got deleted and I need to choose something else to play. Maybe Eldest Souls, which I picked up on sale not too long ago. 

[Taruta13]

3 hours ago, voodoo_eyes said:

I bought a physical copy for half the price instead, it's got to be worth that right?

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell...

 

Anyways, since my final game now has to last a week due to some of the titles I played getting completed early, I might as put a mini-review for Persona 3 Portable so far. I have just started to explore Tartarus on my own(am at April 22), and I am following the great walkthrough here given by LuckySIime, Aridoburrito, BeforeJam, ObsiEez and yanderegogeta. Great walkthrough and lots of illustrations and screenshots to get the point across. Just defeated the first two Tart bosses and the first one did knock down Junpei because I forgot he was weak to wind. The second one kept Yukari and Junpei knocked down as I was trying to whack them with my naginata(I am going through the female route first as I have played the male route on the original game on PS2) but since I was on Beginner mode, I didn't die. Still it was annoying. I like how the clock works like an inn and heals your team for money, wish I had had that feature in the original game.

 

I'll probably just farm the floors for the next two days because I need to get a couple of rare items, though I was getting a lot of Coin Shuffle times so I am already at 30,000/50,000 yen. I am also training my Persona to learn all their moves up to Level 10 before fusing anything. Got to Level 10 and got the Persona stock upgrade. Great game so far.

[Arctic Cress]

Game #3: Akiba's Beat

Time played: 4 hours

Trophies: 3/45 (4% - D)

 

Akiba's Beat is the latest entry in a series of games set in Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan. Despite the fact that the series has another two games, it only really shares the setting with the other two games - Akiba's Beat really has its own plot that has nothing to do with stripping clothes off of vampires in Akiba. Though honestly, given what I have played, I think I would have preferred that to what I actually played.

 

The main character of Akiba's Beat is Asahi Tachibana, a self-proclaimed NEET who lives in Akihabara. One day, on the way to meeting with one of his friends on Sunday, he notices a weird design on Akihabara Station that no one else sees - except a girl nearby, Saki Hoshino. She explains that it is a delusion that could make it seen by more people if not stopped, so the two venture into the Delusionscape and beat the Audio Grand Phantasm, which dispels the delusion. Afterwards, they find out that the Sunday they are in is endlessly looping, and to find out why, they end up teaming up to fight any other delusions around the Akihabara area. I'm not really invested in the story - and the pacing is the general problem - it took about 5 Sunday loops for the characters to figure out what was wrong in Chapter 2 - and yes, there were no battles during the entire sequence. I think I got bored at some point and just turned the game off for a bit before coming back to it later. And then right after comes Chapter 3 where the dungeon is available immediately ?

 

The gameplay is basically traversing through some dungeons, and the battle system is similar to what you would find in the Tales series. Upon encountering an enemy you get thrown into a battle - with normal attacks and skills. Attacking enemies builds up an Imagine Field gauge, which allows you to attack repeatedly and build up a % that powers up your attacks for a short period of time. Naturally, you'll want to trigger this during a boss battle for maximum effect. I've had to control the AI strategy a bit more than I would have liked - the AI loves using skills that enemies are resistant to or spamming magic so they have no SP to use any skills. They are, however, decent at healing when they actually have enough resources to cast the spell. I've mostly played on Normal, but if I do continue I might bump up the difficulty a bit since Normal seems a bit too easy for me. The annoyance in battle is Pinkun, Saki's companion thing that has one of the most annoying voices in the game, and he talks way too much in battle - about as much as a Persona navigator would. It is grating to hear his voice both in battle...and even most places outside of battle! He still talks when you're saving, when you go to shops, etc.

 

Other than the dungeons, there's not much else to say about the game. The shops you might have seen in the Akiba's Trip games have all been streamlined so now they all carry the same items, and there's no using different items as weapons either - you have one weapon that you upgrade using computer chips. Same thing with armor - clothing shops each have their own preset armor line for each character with a separate slot for accessories. Akiba also seems very empty - there aren't any characters to attack because you aren't stripping vampires, so they're all just represented as silhouettes instead, which makes the city feel emptier. There are subquests - but all the subquests I've done so far is 'talk to a number of NPC silhouettes until you finish' so it's not exactly anything interesting besides the small story bits.

 

I feel like I won't play this game much and would just prefer playing another Tales game instead - I probably said the same when I reviewed Shining Resonance Refrain in a past KYC - and this game will probably have the same fate as that one - only being brought out for certain trophy events on PSNP or TT.

 

 

I'll be back from my vacation tomorrow, so I'll squeeze the last three games in what time I have left.

[voodoo_eyes]

6 hours ago, Arctic Cress said:

Game #3: Akiba's Beat

 

 

The annoyance in battle is Pinkun, Saki's companion thing that has one of the most annoying voices in the game, and he talks way too much in battle - about as much as a Persona navigator would. It is grating to hear his voice both in battle...and even most places outside of battle! He still talks when you're saving, when you go to shops, etc.

 

 

 

I see you've met one of my most hated characters in video games.

[voodoo_eyes]

Game #10 - Forspoken - Review

 

 

Time played: 15h

Trophies earned: 22/62

 

 

Controversial opinion, but I'm enjoying the game. It's not perfect, and it has issues, but it's solid overall.

 

To be fair, at least the initial plot is as random as it gets, it gets cleared up a little bit more over the course of the game though. Still not great, but not as bad as I initially thought.

 

Visually the game looks good, but not great, and has a few graphical bugs here and there and some of the textures are not what I expected to see from a game with an 80€ base price tag. Sound and music are pretty good though. The voice-acting is also pretty good, but there's a weird contrast of a character that swears every second line they utter while the rest speaks in an excessively polite and elaborate manner. Those just don't really mix well.

 

Gameplay-wise it's an open world game with a shitload of things to do, there's collectibles and fast travel, mini dungeons, skill shrines, events, challenges, etc. The traversal in this game is a lot of fun and the combat entertaining as well. Unfortunately the game only starts opening up combat variety about 8 hours into the game. However while there is variety at some point, it still feels like there could've been done so much with the combat. It doesn't help that you level up your spells and abilities by grinding specific objectives with each of them.

 

I'm currently in Chapter 11 out of 14, so I'm closing in on the end of the story. If I hadn't done a bunch of side stuff, I'd probably have wrapped it up by now. Doing everything though I can see easily taking 50+ hours, and that's the bit that's just not for me anymore these days.

 

Nevertheless it's a 7/10 for me. Under no circumstances at the full retail price though.

 

EDIT: Ended up finishing the game, nothing changed regarding the rating. There's free roam after the story though. Also turns out there are only 13 chapters not 14.

Edited May 30, 2023 by voodoo_eyes