Dragon-Archon's Lair of Platinums Mk.II

[Dragon-Archon]

#186: Ratchet & Clank

I finally got around to playing this game, got it with the PS4 over a year ago. This game retells the events from the first game, but changes some things. There are some new characters and Nefarious and the Galactic Rangers are introduced too (those originally made a debut in the third game). The game looked amazing. I also liked how the sound of combat and music was almost muted while being underwater, which added to the feeling. Then there was the whole narrated approach of the game, where Qwark recounts the events with some hilarious parts. This was also a good way to incorporate hints into the game. The maps of some worlds felt identical to the ones from the first game, which was great. I just wish some of the new characters were fleshed out a bit. I wouldn't mind seeing more reboots like these, though a new game would be better.

[James_Tonto]

Nice work on Ratchet and Clank on PS4. 

[Dragon-Archon]

13 minutes ago, James_Tonto said:

Nice work on Ratchet and Clank on PS4. 

Thanks, now I've played all R&C games again, except for the PSP ones.

[James_Tonto]

19 minutes ago, Dragon-Archon said:

Thanks, now I've played all R&C games again, except for the PSP ones.

 

Do you need to play those? Or do plan to play them for the sake of total completion? 

[Dragon-Archon]

5 minutes ago, James_Tonto said:

 

Do you need to play those? Or do plan to play them for the sake of total completion? 

I want to play them some day. Heard those were pretty meh, but still like to try it.

[Dragon-Archon]

#187: Cyberdimension Neptunia 4 Goddesses Online

Due to this game being a parody of Sword Art Online, it piqued my interest. In this game the main characters are selected for the beta of the MMO 4 Goddesses Online. The game was entertaining, but the digital version has an issue where it would randomly close the game and also made it impossible to move around during boss fights. This latter bug meant not being able to dodge and having to rely on blocking. The game is on the short side, so bosses are recycled a lot for quests.

[Leon Castle]

31 minutes ago, Dragon-Archon said:

#187: Cyberdimension Neptunia 4 Goddesses Online

Due to this game being a parody of Sword Art Online, it piqued my interest. In this game the main characters are selected for the beta of the MMO 4 Goddesses Online. The game was entertaining, but the digital version has an issue where it would randomly close the game and also made it impossible to move around during boss fights. This latter bug meant not being able to dodge and having to rely on blocking. The game is on the short side, so bosses are recycled a lot for quests.

I still remember Neptune going all ``We`are going to die!`` doing that Cheetah boss quest. Too bad that the digital version has that ``Kick me out`` bug.

[Dragon-Archon]

6 minutes ago, Leon Castle said:

I still remember Neptune going all ``We`are going to die!`` doing that Cheetah boss quest. Too bad that the digital version has that ``Kick me out`` bug.

Yeah, that part didn't make sense considering the final boss was already defeated and it was a rematch against Cheetah. The bugs were annoying, but luckily not gamebreaking.

[Leon Castle]

2 hours ago, Dragon-Archon said:

Yeah, that part didn't make sense considering the final boss was already defeated and it was a rematch against Cheetah

Cheetah was a unbeatable Extra Boss or something like that from Vert`s Favorite MMO: 4 Goddesses Online, the reason Neptune said that line may be due to how a Boss looks hard to the Characters but is easy to the Player (Like the SAO Games where Kirito says the Boss was Very Hard while You think the Boss was easy)

[DragonQuest238]

On 8/21/2018 at 8:49 AM, Dragon-Archon said:

I wouldn't mind seeing more reboots like these, though a new game would be better.

Hey, wanna help me start a petition to Insomniac's Ratchet and Clank branch to have them do a reboot of Going Commando?

[Dragon-Archon]

#188: Batman

I've never been a fan of Batman, so when this game came to PS+ I went in with no expectations. It turned out to be quite nice, especially the stuff about Bruce Wayne's parents. Don't know if any of that is canon, but it sure was interesting. Some characters were familiar from movies and others were new for me. Quite a few villains appear and the identity of the main villain was a real surprise. I did not see that coming. The ending sets things up for a sequel, which I'll definitely give a try some day. I've read some horror stories about the game crashing and being unplayable. Luckily, I didn't have any of those issues. Only in episode 2 there were a couple of completely black backgrounds and characters were looking in awkward directions during a few conversations.

 

16 hours ago, Leon Castle said:

Cheetah was a unbeatable Extra Boss or something like that from Vert`s Favorite MMO: 4 Goddesses Online, the reason Neptune said that line may be due to how a Boss looks hard to the Characters but is easy to the Player (Like the SAO Games where Kirito says the Boss was Very Hard while You think the Boss was easy)

I thought they said World Break Online, the MMO that shut down at the start of the game .

 

12 hours ago, DragonQuest238 said:

Hey, wanna help me start a petition to Insomniac's Ratchet and Clank branch to have them do a reboot of Going Commando?

I'll pass.

[James_Tonto]

17 hours ago, Dragon-Archon said:

#188: Batman

I've never been a fan of Batman, so when this game came to PS+ I went in with no expectations. It turned out to be quite nice, especially the stuff about Bruce Wayne's parents. Don't know if any of that is canon, but it sure was interesting. Some characters were familiar from movies and others were new for me. Quite a few villains appear and the identity of the main villain was a real surprise. I did not see that coming. The ending sets things up for a sequel, which I'll definitely give a try some day. I've read some horror stories about the game crashing and being unplayable. Luckily, I didn't have any of those issues. Only in episode 2 there were a couple of completely black backgrounds and characters were looking in awkward directions during a few conversations.

 

Nice work on Telltale's Batman. I beat that game awhile back myself and thought it was pretty good. It's not my favourite Telltale game, but it was pretty good. I had that weird black background bug happen during chapter 3 I think, the one set during the Wayne family murder. I'll probably pick up the sequel like you, though the sequel I'm most excited about, right now is Guacamelee 2! 

[Dragon-Archon]

#189: Dust: An Elysian Tail

Another PS+ freebie and a very good example of indie games that work perfectly. You play as Dust: a person that doesn't remember anything and is found by a mysterious, talking sword. The sword guides Dust to recover his memories, all the while hinting it knows more than it tells. The sword's guardian, Fidget, is a great source of comic relief. It reminded me of Daxter from Naughty Dog's Jak series, both in terms of appearance and the bragging. Enemies in chapter 4 and 5 are very strong on Tough difficulty, so defeating them took a while. When doing a clean up before finishing the story, I got enough money and items to create the best equipment, which came with lots of multipliers for Fidget's attacks. They all stack, so that made it possible to breeze through them. Something I liked a lot about this game was being able to sell items that enemies drop. The stores would then add more of these items over time, which removed the need to waste time farming items. IMO more games should add this feature. The one flaw it has are the challenges: there are 6 obstacle courses that need to be cleared with a specific high score. The fourth challenge is by far the most annoying one due to the sliding mechanism not responding when trying to slide quickly, which results in Dust jumping instead. I really hope there will be a sequel (minus the challenges), as this game is fantastic.

 

7 hours ago, James_Tonto said:

Nice work on Telltale's Batman. I beat that game awhile back myself and thought it was pretty good. It's not my favourite Telltale game, but it was pretty good. I had that weird black background bug happen during chapter 3 I think, the one set during the Wayne family murder. I'll probably pick up the sequel like you, though the sequel I'm most excited about, right now is Guacamelee 2! 

Thanks, same here. My favourite TellTale game is Tales from the Borderlands, followed by The Wolf Among Us. Batman ties with The Walking Dead season 1 at the third place. I had those black backgrounds during Bruce's flashbacks of the murder in episode 2. I still need to play the first Guacamelee! games, got it from PS+ too once, so will give it a try one day.

[Dragon-Archon]

#190: Apotheon

Another indie metroidvania game. Unlike Dust, this one had some bugs. There was a patch released, but there's still a bug that can cause the game to crash every time when opening a loot box (all 75 of them must be opened for a trophy). The game even crashed twice when trying to save before opening a loot box . In this game the Greek gods have abandoned humanity and they're slowly dying from diseases, famine, and slaughter. Hera has pity on humanity and tasks Nikandreos to travel to Olympus to gather divine objects that would help humanity survive. At first I was worried that this would feel like a 2D clone of God of War, but that wasn't the case. There's no level up system and Nikandreos only becomes stronger after obtaining these objects. Then there's an armour gauge that increases after finding/buying any armour. Those all contribute to the same gauge. Besides that, weapon damage and speed can be increased by paying for lessons at weapon masters. That's all the "leveling" in the game, which doesn't give much incentive to fight enemies. I tried to fight new ones, but but it becomes a bit boring after a while, especially when dealing with annoying ones, such as wolfs in Artemis' hunting grounds. That is a shame, because there are lots of weapons in the game. These weapons will break eventually and there's no way to restore their durability. The repair kits in this game don't help, because those restore Nikandreos' armour gauge. Athena's labyrinth trials were a nightmare to complete, especially when the targets were off screen. Whoever designed that is a sadist. The ending was an unexpected surprise. I'd like to see other games like this based on Egyptian, Mayan, Chinese, and Japanese mythologies.

[Dragon-Archon]

#191: Tales from the Borderlands

I already played this game before and it became my favourite TellTale game to date. So when it came to PS+, I gladly played it again. It was fun to choose different options and see how things unfolded. Too bad I still wasn't able to unlock the mysterious Vault Hunters at the end.

[Dragon-Archon]

#192: Valkyria Chronicles

This plat is also trophy #9,000. It's the first time I've played a Valkyria game and I liked it. It's a strategic war game where you have to defeat enemy soldiers/tanks, capture bases, or defeat bosses. Soldiers are divided into 5 classes, each with their advantages and disadvantages. Completing missions yields money and experience, those can be used to research better weapons and level up units for more health and effects. Besides that, there are Aces, which are stronger regular enemies. Defeating them yields bonus exp, money, and their weapon. There's also an actual story and most of the characters are interesting.

 

However, this game also has its flaws. Bosses are very overpowered, even cheap (looking at you mission 7, 10B, and 15B). During the enemy's turn it's not possible to skip or fast forward their walking animation. This is worse when the enemy can move a lot of soldiers or is crawling through high grass and seems to take forever. In some missions it took more than 2 minutes before the enemy's turn was over. The final flaw is the ranking system for missions that's completely unbalanced. The rank determines how much money and exp is received, these range from A to D. The criteria for the ranking solely depends on how fast a mission is completed. That's it. Enemies defeated, bases captured, allies that weren't injured don't count for anything. This results in obtaining mostly C and D ranks during the first playthrough. Story missions can't be replayed during the first playthrough, so the game forces players to do skirmishes (these battles similar to story missions without bosses that yield a lot less exp and money). All the while tons of exp and money is needed for leveling and research. Players are punished for taking their time with strategic game by playing tactically. During NG+ levels and research carries over, so it's easy to run past groups of enemies (and even tanks) with a single soldier while brushing off a hail of bullets in order to rush to the enemy's main camp for an A rank. This yields a ton of exp and money, but there's no need for it anymore. There's a trophy for completing every battle with an A rank, so this must be done. I don't know what the developers were thinking when deciding upon this ranking system for a strategic game.

 

I'm glad to know these flaws have been fixed in other Valkyria games and I'll definitely try out more of them in the future.

[Dragon-Archon]

#193: Toukiden The Age of Demons

October 7 2018

First of all, I'd like to thank @viech54 and @ab4h4r4k1 for exchanging avatars with me, which allowed me to use their avatars as A.I. party members.

 

As usual, I'll start with some of the good things about this game. I liked the story, it's nothing original for a monster hunting game though: humanity is losing -> player character arrives to turn the tide. In this game an event occurred 8 years prior to the start of the game where oni (demons) invaded the human world. Only Slayers can defeat these demons and purify them. I also liked how a special ability (Eye of Truth) makes it possible to see the health bar and breakable parts. These parts are also colour-coded to indicate how close they are to breaking.

 

Now for the bad things *cracks knuckles*.

First of all, the game has no f#$%ing jump feature, while there are large oni that sometimes don't even fit on the screen. What kind of idiot thought that shouldn't warrant jumping. Two out of 6 weapons have a leap attack, which is the closest thing to jumping. There's also a bow, but it's not that good due to not being able to track oni fast enough. Some large oni receive a huge speedboost when they're in perma-rage mode.

 

The biggest grinds in this game are to obtain at least 1 of every material for the slayer record + area record and collecting all mitama (souls of fallen heroes that grant abilities and buffs).

 

Collecting 1 of every material applies to both enemy drops and materials that are found in mission areas. To make things worse: the post-game maps have a completely new list of materials (both for areas and enemies). In addition to that: there's a specific material (Eye of Truth Mask) that can only be obtained by breaking every part of large oni. However, breaking every part doesn't guarantee an Eye of Truth Mask will be obtained. Oh no, you just have a chance to obtain it. And this material must be obtained for every single large oni to completely fill out the slayer record. Areas can also have an Eye of Truth Mask as a pickup reward, but again, this is random and has to be obtained for every area to fill out the area record. As if all that wasn't bad enough, materials obtained for completing a mission doesn't even count towards the slayer record and area record. Which means it's necessary to obtain the Eye of Truth Mask 30 times (once for every area and once for every large oni).

 

There are also small, grunt oni that have enemy drops, but luckily no Eye of Truth Mask. But fear not, the developer found a way to add annoying things for small oni too. There are special version of a few small oni that only spawn after killing the regular version and coming back to the area. Besides that, there are shadow oni, which are usually invisible and can only be seen with the Eye of Truth ability. However, these shadow oni have a chance to spawn.

 

The A.I. party members get in the way most of the time, as there's no way to issue commands. For example: after a part has been broken, it must be purified. Otherwise the oni can regenerate it and that wouldn't count as breaking all parts. When breaking a part it's random whether or not the A.I. helps out with purification or keeps attacking. Another thing is the A.I. continuously attacking parts that have been broken, which deals more damage. That in turn makes it needlessly harder to break all parts before the oni is defeated. Or when an oni uses an AoE attack that lingers, the A.I. just charges through it, instead of going around it. How hard would it be for the developer to add a command system so that the retarded A.I would prioritize purification, hang back, go all out, or even focus on reviving? Apparently not that hard, as it's been added in Toukiden Kiwami. It's possible to take fewer party members, but this results in fights taking longer to finish, which is highly unwanted when farming for mitama.

 

There are 200 mitama in the game and about 5 are story-related. The rest has to be farmed from oni. Mitama have a chance to be dropped from oni and you can't just fight the easiest mission ~195 times. Nope, mitama are dropped only by fighting the correct oni in the correct map. Of course there are different drops in the post-game maps. Then there are story missions and online missions. You've probably guessed it by now: some mitama are exclusive to story missions due to the area-oni combination. It's actually better to use the online missions, as it's possible to use other players' avatars as NPCs during these. Not only are those a huge improvement over regular A.I. members in terms of damage output and skills, but it's possible to stack a buff that increases the chance to obtain a mitama. Each player character can have 2 of these Heroes Guidance buffs, so a party has a maximum of 8. The avatars I received both had 2 of these buffs, which didn't disappear after a mission. That's right, having these buffs on your own character means it'll disappear after completing a mission. Obtaining them is up to RNG too, as one is obtained by visiting the Pool of Purity with a specific character. This character is fixed and only changes when completing a mission. The other one is obtained by making a donation to the offering box. This last one can be save scummed though. Remember those shadow oni I mentioned earlier? Well, those have a grand total of 24 mitama too. There are 2 shadow oni and there's one for each map and post-game map. Getting them to spawn (and more importantly, obtaining the mitama) is up to RNG too. There are 2 DLC packs that have guaranteed shadow oni spawns, which makes it possible to obtain 8 out of those 24 mitama. I eventually caved in and bought them. There was also an error in this mitama checklist: Kajiwara Kagetoki isn't obtained from Honour Bloodhunter, but Honour Manhunter. I wasted a lot of time trying to obtain it from Bloodhunter. After 50 attempts, I moved on to shadow oni farming and got it the first time from Manhunter. I can't believe no one updated the checklist in the ~4 years since the game has been released.

 

One final thing I'd like to point out is how easy it is to be knocked back or even ragdolled by large oni to the point it's incredibly cheap. For example: when an oni starts to fly, lands, or even roars, you're knocked back. Getting hit with attacks results in ragdolling for 10 kilometers. And the oni love to spam the same attacks a few times in a row.

 

So, recapping: I do NOT recommend this game at all. It has huge, pointless grinds, retarded A.I, and terrible RNG. You'd be better off with Toukiden Kiwami, as the trophy for completing the slayer record is removed and a few things are improved.

Edited October 10, 2018 by Dragon-Archon

[Dragon-Archon]

#195: Mind=0

In this game teenagers are transported to another world where they form contracts with other beings to fight together. These beings are called MINDs and people that have a contract are Minders. This game may be the biggest bomb of 2018 so far. It's best described as a terrible Persona clone. But, I'm getting ahead of myself: before going into details about that, let's take a look at the good things first. *Thinks long and hard for a while* right, good things about this game... oh, I got one: it's possible to equip/unequip skills in this game, provided you have the necessary skill card. That way you can adapt to new dungeons and boss fights.

 

In case you're thinking "Is that it? Nothing else was good about the game??", then congrats; we're on the same page. And nope, that's it for the good things. The story ... well, calling it a story is actually way too much credit. Anyway, the story is very lacking and doesn't explain anything, except for the basics about MINDs. That's it, there's a very brief explanation about the bad guy's plan at the end, but the majority isn't explained. This game just feels like a prologue that overstays its welcome and it was obviously intended to have a sequel. The story also takes place over the course of 9-10 days. After the initial meeting (and getting their butts kicked), the party is somehow strong enough to defeat the bad guys 2-4 days later.

 

The antagonists are introduced exactly halfway through the game. Before that the main characters wind up in dungeons filled with hostile MINDs that want to kill them, so the logical conclusion is to reach the end of the dungeon rather than finding the exit. Once the antagonists are introduced, not much changes. Nothing is revealed. Only after defeating each of them, you see a short scene (for a lack of better word, as it's just a black and white screen with some dialogue) that vaguely implies why they joined. Even their fate is not clear. One is confirmed to have died (for reasons unknown), one got away, and the other two... I don't know: they could be dead or escaped . If it wasn't for the confirmation about one of them dying, I never would've guessed it.

 

Most dungeons are very uninspired and the interior is recycled often. Interiors include an abandoned factory, subway trains, pure white mental facility-ish setting, back alley shopping street where every store's shutters are closed, and some hideous thing that resembles a 3-year old's colouring book. I liked the Japanese festival-ish theme and the movie theater though. The post-game dungeon had nothing new, instead it recycled every other dungeons. Enemies are also recycled over and over again with just a palette swap. After the second dungeon there's only 1 new enemy per dungeon.

 

There's no character growth or real events that make you care about the characters. There are 4 events per main character, but those don't add anything useful.

 

Enhancing skills at first doesn't seem to do anything, as the skill's description doesn't reflect the changes. You need to manually equip a skill, then take a look at the stat boosts or damage inflicted to notice the difference. Also, enhancing skills in one go from start to max costs much less skill points. If you raise a skill a few levels per time, the cost goes up about 100 times.

 

Finally, there's no item to escape from dungeons, you need to reach a warp portal.This is especially annoying in the post-game dungeon, where you need to backtrack from floor 50 to floor 42 to escape, which is BS.

[Dragon-Archon]

#196: Rogue Legacy

This game is great, it starts out hard, but after leveling up things went much better. Upon dying, you choose an heir to continue the adventure, which are randomly generated. There are 9 classes to choose from, each with their pros and cons. The most expensive class to unlocks the Dragon class, which is the most useless of all due to the limited range and weak attacks. Clearly the devs don't know that a dragon is supposed to be OP. Heirs can also have up to 2 traits, which add fun effects, such as sepia screen or floor spike traps not activating. The objective of this game is to explore the castle to defeat the 4 bosses, which opens the door to the final boss. The castle is randomly generated too when dying, unless the Architect is used to lock it down, which is useful to practice boss fights. After defeating the regular bosses it's possible to fight remix versions of them, which are basically much harder versions that are fought with a preset character.Alexander IV and Neo Khidr. Defeating all 5 bosses unlocks the Traitor class, which is the best one in the game. Using it against the final boss adds a fun part to the dialogue. After defeating the remix bosses, completing the game with 15 deaths or less was a lot easier than expected.

[Golden_Jace]

getting close to number 200, any plans for that?

[Dragon-Archon]

On 11/15/2018 at 1:21 AM, Golden_Jace said:

getting close to number 200, any plans for that?

Yeah, it's going to be Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus.

[Dragon-Archon]

#197: Dungeon Travelers 2

Another dungeon crawler. In this game the Demon God was sealed away a few hundreds years ago, but the seal is weakening. It's up to the Royal Library to prevent the Demon God from resurrecting. You play as Fried, a Libra completely focused on studying monsters and incredibly dense to the point of not noticing anything about every party member having feelings for him. He hardly has a personality at all. The party members are somewhat interesting and my favourites are Grishna, Mefmera, and Yae. The story is pretty meh and very predictable. It needed to be fleshed out a lot more. The game does have a lot of different classes and there are some funny ones among them, such as Maid or Joker. I also like that each party member has a unique outfit when changing classes. Even if you have 2 party members of the same class, their outfits are completely different. There's also a huge grind to defeat 20,000 enemies, which the game doesn't keep track of. I reached 5,000 just before the final boss so tried the post-game content. The post-game content has 8 dungeons (2 less than the story mode) and takes a long while to complete. I gave up on completing those in the final dungeon and farmed kills in early dungeons. The trophy popped after farming 6,000-7,000 kills. This grind put a huge damper on the fun factor.

[Leon Castle]

5 hours ago, Dragon-Archon said:

#197: Dungeon Travelers 2

Another dungeon crawler. In this game the Demon God was sealed away a few hundreds years ago, but the seal is weakening. It's up to the Royal Library to prevent the Demon God from resurrecting. You play as Fried, a Libra completely focused on studying monsters and incredibly dense to the point of not noticing anything about every party member having feelings for him. He hardly has a personality at all. The party members are somewhat interesting and my favourites are Grishna, Mefmera, and Yae. The story is pretty meh and very predictable. It needed to be fleshed out a lot more. The game does have a lot of different classes and there are some funny ones among them, such as Maid or Joker. I also like that each party member has a unique outfit when changing classes. Even if you have 2 party members of the same class, their outfits are completely different. There's also a huge grind to defeat 20,000 enemies, which the game doesn't keep track of. I reached 5,000 just before the final boss so tried the post-game content. The post-game content has 8 dungeons (2 less than the story mode) and takes a long while to complete. I gave up on completing those in the final dungeon and farmed kills in early dungeons. The trophy popped after farming 6,000-7,000 kills. This grind put a huge damper on the fun factor.

Good Job on killing off a Demon God and nice knowing it's like Mary about the Classes.

 

btw do you know why it's that you can't edit anything past OP then some years or less have past?

[Dragon-Archon]

1 hour ago, Leon Castle said:

Good Job on killing off a Demon God and nice knowing it's like Mary about the Classes.

 

btw do you know why it's that you can't edit anything past OP then some years or less have past?

Thanks . I liked that about Mary Skelter too.

 

No idea, it just suddenly started. First time I got it was when trying to edit the OP of LP SO4. Now I can't even edit my checklist anymore.

[Leon Castle]

10 minutes ago, Dragon-Archon said:

No idea, it just suddenly started. First time I got it was when trying to edit the OP of LP SO4. Now I can't even edit my checklist anymore.

It happens on Old OPs too?! Now I'm glad I made a new checklist. What happens with LPs and heck PPs if 4 year old Post's OP can't be edited? wait for the owner to fix it or make new ones every time the Limit's hit?