Most Recent Platinum

[ChiefMichigan]

Platinum #84: Castaway Paradise

A fun indie game with a plat that is probably about a 2/10 in difficulty. However, it is not a super quick platinum. Unless you're speedrunning or get lucky with some of the spawning of collectables, it's going to take at least 15 hours. It took me about 27 hours. 

If you like Stardew Valley, Story of Seasons, or Animal Crossing you'll probably like Castaway Paradise. 

[rjkclarke]

Platinum #333

Thimbleweed Park (PS4)

 

 

Player of the Year
Collect all trophies.

 

 

 

To call Thimbleweed Park a love letter to the point-and-click genre, would essentially be doing it a disservice. That isn’t a knock on the game in the slightest – to be perfectly honest; it is far more than that. Thimbleweed Park is less of a love letter but more of a lovingly crafted and beautiful poetry anthology of all of the elements that made people fall in love with this genre to begin with.

If I were to create a Mount Rushmore of some of the greatest minds to ever apply their craft to this genre – then mine would consist of: Ron Gilbert (Monkey Island,) Tim Schafer (Day of the Tentacle/Broken Age,) Roberta Williams (Kings Quest) and Charles Cecil (Broken Sword). Ron Gilbert proves with this game, that he hasn’t lost a step, and can still create an interesting take on one of gaming’s oldest genres, loosely inspired by both Twin Peaks and The X-Files. Not only that, he managed to weave an incredibly interesting metatextual commentary about the genre itself into the games plot, which I thought was a fascinating direction to go in.

 

Thimbleweed Park started its life as a successful Kickstarter campaign – envisioned as “a newly unearthed” LucasArts (hilariously referred to as MucusPhlegm within the game,) adventure game. The idea behind this was to imbibe the feeling of playing a game straight from 1987, something which I believe this game absolutely achieves. Therein unfortunately lies part of the problem, you’re immediately limiting your audience, to those likely to already have a vested interested in a game of that ilk.

Here’s my problem, I’m one of those people I made reference to just now, and as such I absolutely loved this game, almost everything about it in fact - but I’d struggle to recommend it to anyone not at least interested in the genre, because for a game released in 2017 it does, as was the intention, play like something that’s thirty years old. With that also comes a lot of the cumbersome and unwieldy gameplay that can be associated with that, but we’ll get to that.

 

I don’t think I’ve ever played a crowd funded game that did as good a job as Thimbleweed Park does with making the Kickstarter backers feel like an integrated part of the experience. So much so in fact, that I’m genuinely a little bit annoyed at myself that I never backed this. There’s an expansive library in one of the areas in the game, and its filled little short written pieces written by some of the games backers, that range from hilarious, incredibly interesting and absolutely filled with Easter Eggs. The best one I think I encountered was one from Ron Gilbert himself – where he literally Rick-Rolled me, I saw the title of the book, and as any self respecting Monkey Island fan that sees a book titled The True Secret of Monkey Island would, I opened it. Only to find that inside were the lyrics to Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley, which absolutely cracked me up. Some of the Kickstarter backers also recorded voice messages that you can access via the games telephone book, which also range from hilarious, to plain bizarre. I thought it was a lovely way of acknowledging their contribution, without even feeling like a forced inclusion.

 

Just like everything else in Thimbleweed Park, the intention is to reflect a game from 1987, something that is managed to an incredibly sharp degree in the visual department. If the intention really was for the game to feel like a lost LucasArts game, then they managed this to a startlingly accurate degree. Containing absolutely gorgeous pixel-art and character models with ever so slightly wrong proportions.  The locations are so evocative of a game from that era, as is the use of colour, to really bring certain objects to your attention; it’s an area of the game that feels so authentic.

 

The sound design less so – and I can see why, I think -  had they gone fully in the direction of recreating a game from that era, then the audio quality probably should have reflected that, but if it did, I think people would react negatively and question why it was so muffled and difficult to understand. It’s not really a criticism, more of a necessity so I understand the decision. Thimbleweed Park gives us incredibly crisp and satisfying sound effects, with a lot of attention to detail paid to them. The soundtrack itself is of a very high quality too – I always think it says a lot about a games soundtrack if it can contain looped audio, yet still not be annoying or intrusive.

 A touch I particularly enjoyed was that when you pause the game, elevator music plays, which gave me a smile when I first heard it. The voice acting is of a decent quality too – admittedly a little bit variable, but nothing is stand out bad. I thought Ransome The Jerk Clown was a particular highlight. Imagine Daxter from Jak and Daxter, but with his obnoxious levels turned up to eleven, and that’s Ransome – he’s a great inclusion, and some of his cynical quips and sarcasm really gave me a chuckle on occasion.

 

Thimbleweed Park’s gameplay is exactly what you’d expect – you point at items and you click on them, and interact with them. Alright, alright – so admittedly it’s much more complex than that, and those who are more used to modern point-and-click titles, might be surprised to find that in this title you have to manually select the verbs to use each individual one. It’s something that does admittedly take a while to get used to, but once you do, it won’t feel cumbersome anymore. I was pleasantly surprised by the absolutely slick loading times, I wouldn’t be spouting hyperbole either by saying that it loads in a flash.  

I’d say this game probably has the most in common with a title like Day of the Tentacle. Both titles have multiple characters (five in this games case,) and each one has their own branch of story, that can be followed to its conclusion. A slight criticism is that all the characters except one all have the ability to do the same things, I would have liked there to have been a few context sensitive things that only certain characters can do, as it would have forced you to think outside the box even more.

 

Speaking of difficulty, it also contains two distinctly different difficulty settings. Now, full disclosure here – I was going to write this review after doing the hard mode playthrough, as I thought there wouldn’t be any significant difference between the two. Now that I’ve done both, I’m glad I didn’t.  The difference between the two is almost astronomical. To put into perspective I spent probably six or seven hours on my hard mode playthrough (admittedly a good chunk of that was getting the voicemail trophy,) yet, the casual playthrough took just under two hours. There were so many puzzles cut out completely from that playthrough – it’s comparable to the two difficulties in The Curse of Monkey Island, where you can miss so much by playing on a lower difficulty.

On future playthroughs I will be playing it on hard mode, and I think this is definitively the best way to experience the game, I loved the fact that I was having to get a pen and paper out, and physically write things down to figure out some of the puzzle solutions (some of which are randomised each playthrough,) it’s a feeling I haven’t had whilst playing a game like this for a while – and it really is effective in giving you that feeling of independent puzzle solving.

 

The journey towards the platinum in Thimbleweed Park is a pretty simple one, you have to play through the game twice, as the difficulties don’t stack, do various miscellaneous trophies which can be really funny, so none of them really feel like a chore, and collectibles, seventy-five of them to be specific. They are at least interesting; you have to collect seventy-five specks of dust, which are tiny grey pixels that can be found in any part of a given screen. If you wanted to, you can just save before picking one up, pick it up and reload it the amount of times needed for the trophy late into the game if you feel you’re running short. You also have to do an entirely separate playthrough without ever picking up a single speck of dust, but you can essentially do a speedrun on casual very quickly, as it is staggering seeing how much of the puzzles actually got removed from that mode.

 

I’m genuinely having a hard time recommending this one, despite the fact I think the game is a tremendously good video game – the thing is, I looked at plenty of review scores, and there’s an overwhelming amount of praise for it, praise that I agree with – I think this game is incredible for what it is, but it has almost no universal appeal for anyone that might be interested in trying out a game like this, because it feels so anachronistic to actually play. Which was the intention, to feel like a game from 1987, but as I alluded to earlier, that’s only going to attract a certain calibre of individual who would be predisposed to liking something like this anyway

 So – in short, I’d say if you’re a fan of the genre, and you’re looking to try something that you haven’t played before, then try it out, you’ll almost certainly have a good time, and love picking out all the tiny obscure references that the game throws out so often, like the scratched initials by a love heart in the elevator panel of “G Heart E” which I suspect was definitely meant to be Guybrush loves Elaine. It’s the small things like that, that make you smile, and reminds you exactly why you decided to play a game like this in the first place.

Edited October 26, 2021 by rjkclarke

[Redgrave]

 

#227: Platinum Trophy - Devil May Cry 2 HD (PS4)

 

My history with this game goes back to the PS2 days since it was the first Devil May Cry I played. I don't know why I started with 2 but thankfully it didn't put me off from the series. I played the HD version on PS3 years ago but I only got all but the Bloody Palace trophies because I just did not have the patience to mash jumping and shooting for hours only to die and have to start all over since Capcom for some reason only had the Infinite Devil Trigger cheat on the PAL region, perhaps as a way to torture people that only have the NTSC copy. They thankfully fixed this with the PS4 version where you can get Infinite Devil Trigger if you change your system language to Chinese (or French but I read that didn't work for some people so I didn't try). It's still a weird workaround but at least they actually have it where all regions can use it now.

 

As for the game itself I don't really know what else to say that hasn't already been said. It's bad for a lot of reasons but it does have some redeeming qualities even if they aren't major. For one, despite Dante's personality being pretty bland compared to the first game, his design in DMC2 is one of the cooler outfits. If anything I like it more than his DMC4 outfit at least. The secondary character Lucia is also an alright character but I feel like she wasn't given enough development so I feel like she got shafted because she was associated with this game.

 

Some of the demons and bosses had interesting designs. I feel like they had something of an Aztec/South American naming convention and design from folklore and such (the Goatlings being an example) which I think is cool because I like the idea of Dante going around and fighting demons from other real world inspired cultures and folklore. It would be cool if they did this again and in a Polish inspired location so we can basically get Witcher May Cry. Lastly, the graphics and soundtrack are alright still. There are some good songs for the bosses admittedly even if the bosses themselves aren't great.

 

That's about all I can think of for the good parts unfortunately. My understanding is the development cycle for this was pretty rough and apparently the game was even worse until Itsuno who later directed the future games stepped in the last few months of development so I would hate to think about how the original final product was going to be like. I think ultimately there are a lot of interesting ideas that could have made a good game but they just couldn't for whatever reason and so what we were left with was a bad game with a lot of elements of something good buried underneath.

 

I could say a lot more about the combat and enemies and why they are bad, but I know everyone else has already done that and surely in a much better way than I could. But I will say that there is nothing really redeeming about the bosses except maybe the final one on Dante's campaign but that's only because it actually feels like a boss that had some work put into it. Every other boss can best be described as having a different level of obnoxious than another. They are all the same mashfest no matter what and it's only made worse on Must Die difficulty. People will joke and meme about the helicopter boss as being bad but the true pain is the invisible fish boss that shows up on Lucia's campaign. That fight really encapsulates why the game is bad and I really hope that they just couldn't make it better in time since I refuse to think someone could look at it and approve it.

 

Basically you fight this giant fish (underwater I may add, with bad controls to go along with it) that goes invisible which means you can't lock onto it until it decides to become visible for two seconds and even then you probably won't hit it as many times as you would like because chances are it will hit you and the knockback animation along with recovering takes ages. Keep in mind that this is on Normal difficulty. On Must Die difficulty it just stays invisible forever, which means that you have to sit through horrible underwater controls while also just praying that you will hit this boss eventually. This boss is the sole reason that I did not do Must Die difficulty on Lucia's campaign even though she has less Missions. It really is a fight that just leaves you wondering what they were thinking.

 

I guess the only other thing left to say is that the silver lining to DMC2 is that it did pave the way for DMC3 at least which gave us the whacky woo-hoo pizza loving Dante we all know and love.

 

But on the other hand, there is a part where you fight a giant monkey demon boss, so maybe the game's not so bad after all. Because of that I'll give it a final verdict:

 

 

[NurseTatiana]

 #254 Wolfenstein: The new order GER

             Wolfenstein Master

              Collect all trophies 

             21.54% Uncommon

Enjoyment 10/10

Difficulty 3/10

Soundtracks 8/10

Time Estimated 15-20h

Platinum time 3days and 1hr

Recommendation 10/10

 

My review the first time I played this game in 2018 I really enjoyed it. The story is really good. The game gives you variety of weapons and you can play in what style you want. Either stealth witch is probably the most preferable way or gun blazing right in the fight. Blazko is a definitely a favourite character as others aswell. Trophy wise nothing is too bad the perks are simple to farm. You have to complete the game in über difficulty and if you have played any Call of Duty game on veteran you will probably find this mode easier. However I highly recommend doing stealth in a lot of sections so you can avoid reinforcements from the commander. To sum this up I really enjoyed doing this game for the second time! ?

 

Next platinum? I already got one easy plat after this so I forgot to write a review before getting it. Anyways it's Haloween soon so I will probably have a look at the store ?

Edited October 26, 2021 by NurseTatiana

[TomataEighty9]

FIFA 22 (PS4) 

 

Trophy Hunter
Unlock all other trophies (excluding additional content trophies)

[Valzentia]

 #37 - Paw Patrol: The Movie - Adventure City Calls

Difficulty: 5/10

Fun: God, please show me the mercy I have never been given/10

 

This would be a pretty easy game to complete...if it wasn't glitched to all hell. Seriously; this game is even buggier than WWE 2K20. Pup treats not registering, dogs falling through objects, AI literally getting stuck inside of obstacles (as in inside of the obstacles), unresponsive controls...this game has it all. Don't even bother with this cursed pile of shit unless you are truly batshit insane like I am.

[GarciaFever]

#209 MegaTagmension Blanc + Neptune VS Zombies

 

 

 

I didn't like the game as much as I thought I would. I didin't even know what the plot was about because I didn't want to sit through so many hours reading dialogue between characters making a film to save their school. In terms of fighting, it was ok. Nothing gave me too much trouble, with the exception of certain parts not spawning after defeating the same boss multiple times, but that wasn't too bad due to me using Nepgear while maxed out on levels. Heck, I didn't even use any of the other CPU Goddesses because Nepgear's fighting style was super easy to use (even though I really wanted to use Noire due to being the best waifu of the series ). Thankfully I didn't have to grind out all lily ranks like in Hyperdevotion Noire Black Heart. That shit took forever.

 

 

#210 A Rose in the Twilight

 

 

It was a very good platformer. At first I thought that the trophies for completing the game within the time limit was going to be difficult, but after looking through some vieos on what to do, it became much easier. I struggled a bit with the second boss, but that was mostly due to me not being patient enough and was rushing through it as fast as possible, even though I didn't need to. The only downside is that sometimes when I switch from the girl to the giant, I accidentally keep on grabbing the girl instead of the debris that is around her. It's a bit finnicky, but not too bad overall.

 

[percy547389126yv]

#967 PS4 version of Flowers by POWGI

[sk_lp_him]

#105 - The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope

 

 

There Is Hope
Collect all Trophies

 

It's great, I liked the story very much. It's better game than Man of Medan, especially the "keep calm" segments are improved and I didn't randomly fail a single one.

[Yoey_666]

#501 & 502 - Nickleodeon Allstar-Brawl

 

#503 - Carrion

 

 

Edited October 27, 2021 by Yoey_666

[sealightbreeze]

 

 

 

[Nelson_]

 #317 - Trails of Cold Steel IV (JP)

 

 

 

(Was nice to do JP version with it's exclusive Alisa VOFAN costume)

 

[Phoenix_argentea]

On 23/10/2021 at 7:48 PM, DesmaBR said:

 

how did you get the screenshot there?

Though you had to finish all sidequests to unlock the final one

I simply cleared all the available sidequests (69/70) and I left this particular one for the platinum. Then I cleared all the remaining trophies (level up, post-game dungeon, bonding trophies, etc...),

I went back to the flame castle of the first desert area, where there is a locked door. Then I entered into the treasure room, unlocking the 70 sidequests cleared, and the platinum trophy!

[DesmaBR]

45 minutes ago, Phoenix_argentea said:

I simply cleared all the available sidequests (69/70) and I left this particular one for the platinum. Then I cleared all the remaining trophies (level up, post-game dungeon, bonding trophies, etc...),

  Reveal hidden contents

I went back to the flame castle of the first desert area, where there is a locked door. Then I entered into the treasure room, unlocking the 70 sidequests cleared, and the platinum trophy!

 

Weird, the one where you had to record the voices only unlocked after I finished all other sidequests.

[percy547389126yv]

#968 PS5 version of Flowers by POWGI

[Quink666]

#394 Night Book

 

 

Platinum Trophy 67,32%

 

 

 

Difficulty:  / 

Fun:  / 

Trophies:  / 

Time to Plat: 3 Hours

 

This is one of four games that was discounted and in my wish list. Not much to say other than it is your usual Wales Interactive FMV with an easy platinum.

Not nearly as good as Late Shift imo.

 

 

#395 I Saw Black Clouds

 

 

Platinum Trophy 52,49%

 

 

 

Difficulty:  / 

Fun:  / 

Trophies:  / 

Time to Plat: 4 Hours

 

My second discounted game that was in my wishlist. This FMV is undoubtedly the worst game to come from Wales Interactive. I would steer clear from this one. Can't think of a single thing i enjoyed about it

 

 

#396 Through the Woods

 

 

Supermom! 49,48%

 

 

 

Difficulty:  / 

Fun:  / 

Trophies:  / 

Time to Plat: 2 Hours

 

 

Heard lots of good things about this game and i have to agree with most that it was better than i expected though my espectations was low to begin with. Had some performance issues but nothing major. Had 2 crashes and the game felt like it played in was under 30FPS most of the time. Still it had an enjoyable story that was very short. I would recommend this if you can snag it during a sale.

 

#397 Clid The Snail

 

 

Dark fable 23,56%

 

 

 

Difficulty:  / 

Fun:  / 

Trophies:  / 

Time to Plat: 5 Hours

 

This game was so damn good i wish it was longer. Never heard about this game until a few days ago when i stumbled upon a video of it. I had been wanting to play a twin stick shooter or top down action game for a while when i found this. From my understanding this is a Playstation exclusive but it seem like Playstation did almost no PR for it. Graphics are very indieish (blurry) but still decent enough that i can't complain. Only a few misc trophies to keep an eye on when playing it which was nice. I could enjoy the game at my own pace. Highly recommend this game!

 

Edited October 28, 2021 by Quink666

[Suminya]

#321 - Street Racer Underground

 

Street Racer Underground
Earn all other trophies.

 

Rarity: 46.08% (PSNP) / 7.4% (PSN)

Time: 1 day, 4 hours (10th fastest achiever)

Difficulty: 1/10

 

 

#322 - WRC 8

 

WRC 2019
Earn every trophy in the game.

 

Rarity: 7.28% (PSNP) / 0.1% (PSN)

Time: 6 days, 10 hours (21st fastest achiever)

Difficulty: 3.5/10

[Lordguwa]

platinum #562 Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power Of Two (ps3)

completed in 6 days 5 hours

platinum rarity: 1.59% ultra rare

platinum name: Can I Get A Pin Of That?

best costume for 2nd round: sorcerer's costume for mickey

game difficulty 3/10 if use youtube for missed items and collectibles

 

managed to get this done without no issue on day 6. just had to do the 2nd off-track run after losing some game time due to sleep. next game will be Retrace: Memories Of Death (ps4) seems to fit the halloween plat for me but i'll start it later today.

Edited October 28, 2021 by Lordguwa

[Sakumiashi]

Platinum #24 

Bloodborne

 

 

 Bloodborne

 

Fun: 9/10

Dificulty: 7/10

 

[Rick_Sanchez]

Platinum 269, 270, 271

Fun: 9/10

Difficulty 4/10

Mass Effect returns with a great graphical upgrade and a gameplay update for the first Mass Effect game to bring it more in line to the other two games and it makes it a whole lot less painful to play. You no longer have to stick with the same two squad mates throughout the entire game, making a one playthrough platinum possible. Each game has you go through and use different abilities yourself or a squad mate's ability a number of times, clear through the game once, and complete side quests. Going through insanity is optional for each platinum but the legendary edition has its own separate trophy list from the main games that, while doesn't have a platinum, does require an insanity run completion in each game, romance a character in each game, and get a certain number of kills. This is an excellent way to experience Mass Effect if you haven't played it before.

[DrBloodmoney]

 #475

? #607

 

Tales of Arise

 

Set in the technologically and magically deficient planet of Dahna, the population has been ruled over for 300 years by an occupying force - the technologically superior and magically gifted Renans, from neighbouring planet Rena and its occupied moon Lenegis. The enslaved Dahnan population has been forcibly divided into five separate areas, each ruled by a different Renan lord, who extract magical power ("Astral Energy") from the Dahnan population, is a sort of regicidal tournament - the Crown Contest.
Periodically, the new Renan overlord is chosen from among these five lords, based on their Astral Energy harvesting prowess, as the Dahnan population live out joyless existences, unable to resist their occupation. There are pockets of meagre resistance in most realms, but none are powerful enough to really achieve anything - until, of course, (in true JRPG tradition,) an amnesiac hero emerges: Alphen. 
Without memories, but armed with an iron mask and the inability to feel pain, Alphen quickly teams up with a mysterious, prison-breaking Renan woman - Shionne - with a magical condition meaning she causes pain to anyone who touches her, and over the course of 40-ish hours, they amass a small band of heroes from around Dahna, journey to each of the five realms and battle each of the five lords, unravel the mystery of the Crown Contest, the Renan-Dahnan history, and the mysteries of their differences and similarities. 
Oh, and fall in love.

Rather inexplicably.

The plot of Tales of Arise is, it must be said, a mixed bag. 
In terms of world-building and lore, I really think the game is at its greatest strength. The history and mysteries of the Dahna-Rena relationship is actually very interesting, and the game does a very good job of doling out new, sometimes seemingly conflicting, compounding, and additive information throughout the entire journey. The basic concept is not outrageously original - in fact, very little of the core narrative elements of Tales of Arise are - however, they are handled well, and within the plethora of Manga-style stories that permeate the genre, I think Tales of Arise is a good one.

 

The actual narrative plot, and the journey of the characters within it, however, while investing enough, starts very strong, but suffers a little in the back half of the game. The first 20-odd hours, in which the journey is from one Dahnan realm to the next is really quite great. This is the portion of the game where the mystery is, well, just that - mystery. 
Alphen knows less than Shionne, but Shionne doesn't know everything, and each new realm they visit is unfamiliar to both. The first half of the narrative is where a lot of the best narrative elements reside - recruitment of new party members, discovery of new places and ideas, and a lot of the best conceptual stuff takes place. Each of the realms is presided over by a different ruler, each with their own story and personality, but more than simply being varying versions of each-other, each has a markedly different method of rule. 

Each populated area feels politically different than the others. Where the initial, scorching desert of Calaglia is ruled with brute force and an iron fist, the wintry region of Cyslodia is dominated with a more insipid, secretive "rat on your neighbours" mentality. The utopia of Elde Menancia, on the other hand, has a ruler who has abandoned the Crown Contest, and has chosen to try to bring harmony and good fortune to Renan's and Dahnan's alike, while the autumnal, fairytale beauty of Mahag Saar is home to a ruler adept at manipulation, allowing the populous to destroy themselves. 
It is these aspects that keep the game feeling fresh, as each change in ruling philosophy allows the characters of the game, and the writers, to explore different philosophical ideas about rule and power and control. These issues are - it must be said - not delved into with a huge amount of nuance - however, there is more than one might expect, and they allow a lot of the better conversational aspects of inter-party dynamics.

 

Where the overall plot falls over a little though, is in the back half of the game. Once the five realms are dealt with, the plot begins to reveal its cards about the overall nature of Dahna and Rena, and here, the game goes Full-Manga. While I don't take too much issue with the concepts, there is a huge amount of terminology and bafflingly over-complexity for what is, fundamentally, a fairly simple premise. Alphen and Shionne's relationship to the Dahna-Rena dynamic is borderline ridiculous, and never feels properly explained, handled, integrated or excused, and so the whole concept does feel like it get crushed under the weight of that one silly conceit. This is coupled with an awful lot of narrative short-cutting, the likes of which is never used in the front half of the game. There is a lot of expositional dialogue that tends to amount to:
"What if we did this..." 
"Why would that work?
"Because it has to!"
...

There is also a bit of an issue in the latter half of the game, in the sense that, for all that it is complicated, the actual twist - the 'big mystery reveal' about Dahna and Rena - is, frankly, utterly predictable. The problem, really, is that the game does such a good job in the first half of showing the Dahnan-Renan relationship through its treatment of the more interesting conversations around governmental authority, slavery, power and control, that when it finally wants to reveal that relationship, the player is almost guaranteed to be 15 steps ahead of it.

I won't spoil the reveal, but I will say - when you guess it 5 hours in, yes, you are right. It'll just take the game another 30 to admit it. When it happened, I think the characters were the only ones surprised.

What carries the plot much more in that back half, is that the characters in Tales of Arise are pretty strong. The group comprises six members in total, and aside from one character - young Dahnan mage Rinwell - each is given a lot to do, a lot of interesting backstory, and some real relationships to both the world around them, and the other characters. 
(On Rinwell specifically, her lack of meaningful narrative elements is so oddly out of step with the rest of the cast, that I have to assume some content was either cut out, or that DLC is planned, involving her.)
As the group cross the five realms, these characters are recruited in ways that are weaved into the narrative smoothly, and really quite effectively. More so than even many Final Fantasy games, I appreciated how Tales of Arise really takes its time to build up to a natural point where a character would reasonably join the group, rather than just bolting them on without a solid narrative reason. Except Rinwell. Poor Rinwell.

 

The relationships between characters are very well done for the most part. The game features a huge, huge amount of incidental dialogue - presented as optional 'skits' - and these range from story-critical, to tertiary, to downright incidental and comedic, and go a long way to making the group feel dynamic and interesting. Each combination can yield good back and forth, and I enjoy each character's addition to the party.
The one issue I took with the inter-character dynamics, actually, was with Alphen and Shionne themselves. Rather predictably, they start antagonistic, but end up deeply in love, however, despite over 300 skits and a mountain of pages of dialogue, the game fails to ever really give them any reason. They simply don't like one another, until they suddenly do - and their end game, emotional scenes feel oddly unearned.

 

Villains in the game are very good for the most part - in particular, each Renan Lord is distinct, and deliciously detestable in different ways, though unfortunately, this is another area in which the game begins to slip in the back half. The actual 'big-bad' - Vholran - is remarkably underwritten, and fairly weak in terms of the narrative. He was particularly disappointing, as - unlike the individual Renan lords, who feel unique and distinct - Vholran feels like a mashup of other villains from other (better) games. Artistically, he looks basically like Sephiroth, but with a lot of black feathers on his black leather outfit. Imagine if Sephiroth had 'Taken the Black' and joined the Night's Watch.

 

Visually, I think Tales of Arise is very strong. The technical side is well put together - occasional texture pop-in, but nothing outrageous - but in terms of art design, the game really does a lot. There is a pastel shaded, fairytale aesthetic to the whole game, but individual areas are all very distinct, and things like npc's clothing, architecture and enemy design is rounded to make each area feel aesthetically coherent. 
Unfortunately, this is yet another area (can you detect the pattern here?) where the back half of the game suffers. As the game moves away from the five realms, it becomes much more dungeon focussed, and the late-game areas are markedly less interesting visually. 

 

Combat in the game is - I must say - total chaos, and often tremendous fun, though I'd be lying if I said I always felt in real control of the action. There are systems in place to allow pre-fight sets of paradigms to be set - a-la Dragon Age or Final Fantasy XII - however, these are not particularly fun to set up, and do little to really direct the firehose of chaos. Every fight, from the easiest little creature to the final boss, looks like truck full of gasoline and fireworks crashed into a piñata factory.  
(Interesting factoid- I have a setting on my TV which dynamically adjusts contrast in different areas of the screen, raising and lowering brightness in specific areas of the screen based on the action and most important areas. It has never failed to work, once, until my TV met Tales of Arise fights! I had to turn this off, for the first time ever, as the fights in Tales of Arise would confuse it so much that I wold finish a boss battle, and the whole screen was either so bright it was giving me a suntan, or dark as pitch!)
The player controls one character at a time, with the ability to command specials from others. You can change on the fly, but often, it felt so chaotic that doing so became untenable, and I simply Alphen-ed my way through most of the game, with the others buzzing past like fighter-jets on bombing runs.

 

Audio in the game good. The original score is a rousing, thumping orchestral affair and helps a lot - especially early on - to give weight to the narrative before the player has learned all the nuances of it.

Voice work is also good for the most part - particularly in the 'skits', however, there is a real issue with overuse of 'Manga-gasps'. Almost every line in some scenes, seems to have exchanges of grunts and gasps to convey emotion, in a game that looks good enough that it never needs them. I can't help but feel this is a hangover from a less graphically capable age - it feels like the voice-artists have so little faith in the animator's ability to convey emotion with facial expressions (which they do fine, by the way,) that they need to add over-the-top sighs, grunts, gasps, and 'ughs' to hammer every emotive point home.

 

The other issue with voice work, is, well, the lack of it - in odd places. As stated, there is a HUGE amount of dialogue in narrative-critical scenes, and in skits, however, when it comes to npcs, the old JRPG trope of 'full-text-in-subtitle, but just a "YES!" or "Hmmm?" or "Cool!" in the voice over. 
This is something that - I imagine - was born out of disc space in years gone by, and I understand still doing this for completely incidental NPCs, however, the effect it has on side-missions is pretty negative here, as it makes them feel unimportant. There are only 70 side quests. It feels odd that the game has 320 fully voiced skits - at least 150 of which, while nice to have, are not even close to plot critical - yet doesn't give voice work to these 70 NPCs for their missions. I can't help but feel like losing the 70 least consequential skits in favour of fully voiced side-quest givers would have been an easy boon to the game.

 

Overall, I was quite enamoured of Tales of Arise. It has some issues - some, I'm sure, are due more to series staples I am unfamiliar with, and actually seen as a positive by franchise veterans - but the bones of the game are solid. Combat is a glorious, silly mess, and very fun, and the plot, while getting eventually bogged down by its own conceptual headiness and Manga-fication, is a solid and interesting one at its core.

The world doesn't feel as real, or 'alive' than some in other JRPGs - a fact not helped by the lack of meaningful interactions with characters outside the small group of protagonists. It can feel like six well-realised characters travelling and discussing the politics of a paper world at times, however, that group is still tremendous fun to spend time with, and their journey is one I enjoyed seeing play out. While I think the game is far, far stronger in the first half than the second, I still think the overall experience is worth that dip in quality, post-Dahna.

 

(Review originally posted HERE)

Edited October 29, 2021 by DrBloodmoney

[Lordguwa]

platinum #563 Retrace: Memories Of Death (ps4)

completed in 2 hours and 13 minutes

platinum rarity: 86.67% common

platinum name: Retrace

 

platinum #564 Tamiku (ps4)

completed in 14 minutes and 55 seconds

platinum rarity 95.68% common

 

had to play through this several times as the game had to be saved at the notebook (missing one little thing can mess up getting a particular ending). also finished tamiku. going to take a chance with 88 heroes (ps4). there's option to cloud save it'll just mean playing good enough so i have 16 or more at the end. then i can go after the various achievements.

Edited October 28, 2021 by Lordguwa

[snakebit10]

 

#368:

 

First of, I didn't have high expectations for Far Cry 6. I have mostly liked the series but FC5 was a let down for me. I even liked New Dawn better. I had even said I was more excited to get to play Blood Dragon again than to play FC6. When I found out Blood Dragon was not releasing right away I decided I would go ahead and play FC6 now. I am glad that I did. I didn't think any game in the series would ever surpass FC3 for me, but FC6 has done just that. To me Dani is the protagonist they have had. From meeting Juan at the beginning and all of the others, I think they were all well done. El Tigre was one of my favorite NCP's. Loved his stories about the 67 revolucion. 

 

Gameplay wise I feel they did everything better. It is a lot of the same but polished. With the addition of the Supremo back packs were a game changer taking out helicopters and tanks. Even though I stuck with the rocked launcher one the most. I feel driving is improved. I use vehicles more in FC6 than all previous editions combined. Lastly, Yara is huge and beautiful. Lot's to explore and do through the whole map. 

 

Fun 8/10

Difficulty 3/10

 

[slender_adrian]

- Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep -

 

 

 #78

Difficulty: 5/10

Enjoyment: 7/10

Rarity: 6.43% Very Rare 

Time: 123 Hours

 

"There's always a way"

 

What a beast of game this is, the story it's just amazing, it is incredibly sad like all KH games haha, I fell in love with the characters of this game, Ven, Aqua, Terra, they are incredible, Aqua being my favorite of the trio, the bosses design for this game is brutal, every boss felt unique, the normal enemies felt a bit off but they are ok I don't like being chase by green aliens haha. The level design is pretty good too, the levels are short but that's fair, by far my favorite level was Deep Space, and of course there's the combat system. The combat system for this game is PERFECT, the commands mechanic is so well made, it's simple and by far less confusing than the card stuff for reCOM, honestly after playing this game for 120 hours I probably used all of them at least once, since there are so many you'll have a lot of ways to deal with the enemies, this is one of my favorite aspects of this game. Melding commands is fun as hell, and the D-Links are one of the best mechanics I've seen in a viedogame. I did like the soundtrack for this game, it didn't drive me mad this time haha. This is an excellent game, incredible story, nice gameplay, a lot of extra stuff you can do, totally worth playing.

Now for the platinum, to be honest this wasn't that hard, it did take time and a lot of grinding. Basically you need to complete this game 100% 3 times, the first time took a while since I didn't know how and when to do stuff, and of course it require a lot of research. But once you know what are the best ways of doing stuff getting this game 100% isn't that bad, the second time I completed a report I managed to complete it 10 hours faster than on my first try, and the third time I did it 5 hours faster ( The Adventurer: Aqua,  The Adventurer: Ventus,  The Adventurer: Terra). Talking about trophies, there's one particular trophy that for me was a nightmare getting,  Maestro trophy was a pain to get, personally this was the hardest trophy to get, most of the trophies where pretty much simple to get. There was a lot to be done, the most tedious and boring part of getting this platinum was the Command Board minigame, this minigame itself its pretty easy and simple, winning here is no problem, but is not fun at all it's was so boring but I have to say that the Command Board is really useful especially on Critical Mode. Critical Mode is the highest difficulty setting for this game, and to be honest it was a breeze, didn't have any struggles with this mode, finishing it with Terra was extremely easy, same with Ven, Aqua's bit was a little more complicated, especially on the beginning, besides that everything went nice. Was it worth it? Every second!

 

 

I love this game, it was a nice journey getting this amazing platinum! 

[rjkclarke]

Platinum # 334

Cat Quest II (PS4)

 

 

Pawlatinum
You are pawsome!

 

 

Cat Quest II is almost one of the purrfect (sorry, I had to,) video game examples of the saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Every once in a while, that’s fine – sometimes a video game doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel to still be a thoroughly enjoyable experience, for me that was pretty much my time with Cat Quest II.

 

Following on from the previous title – Cat Quest II is set many years after the events of the first game. For the record – this isn’t a game where you have to know any of the previous games events or the lore to really have a worthwhile experience with it though. There is a story of course – but if you wanted to, you can pretty much ignore it, it’s charming and very funny in places, so it is worthwhile, but due to the games fairly short runtime, it isn’t something I really found I paid all that much attention too.

 

Cat Quest II boasts the same charming visual elements that the original title has, vibrant and colourful, it looks surprisingly very appealing given how the game almost looks like a mobile title at a glance. It seems like there was a conscious decision this time around to try and diversify the enemy types and their respective appearances, which I felt often kept things fresh.

I’ve got fairly mixed feelings on the soundtrack – it’s perfectly fine, and I didn’t once find it tiresome, I just wish there was more of it, some of the tracks are recycled from the original game too, so I struggle to think of anything noticeably new that really reached out and grabbed me by the paw.... I mean hand...

 

The real thing of note is the addictive gameplay loop – which is a substantial improvement from the already, stellar fare seen in the original Cat Quest. Is it complex, intricate and deeply layered? No, not at all, but it’s so satisfying, and laid back to play that I don’t think any of the wordage I used above actually hamper the experience one bit.

As a small scale open world experience it’s very enjoyable – the dungeons in Cat Quest II have far more variety than they did in the first title. Some come in the forms of fight arenas, others are small scale puzzles, and one or two are pretty hilarious. One thing I felt Cat Quest II was really lacking was side-quests – I’m sure there was more in the original title, what there are, are actually very good – there’s a nice little Harry Potter inspired one, and plenty of other nice little pop culture references that’ll put a smile on your face. I actually think the fact I wanted more side-quests is a positive more than a negative, as that’s a pretty big endorsement of the overall quality on display within them.

 

That being said, this time around there is a few new wrinkles that do add something substantially different to the experience, which really sets it apart from the original title. This is the inclusion of two playable characters instead of one. Or alternatively, couch co-op – now, I might have played this game completely solo, but I can’t ignore how good this feature could potentially be, just because I didn’t make use of it.

 Solo or co-op your dog partner (yes you have a dog buddy in this game,) and yourself, have interchangeable equipment – neither the cat nor the dog, have any specific skills or abilities that only they can use. Which if I’m honest feels like a wasted opportunity, considering you can switch between them with one button press when playing solo, it might give you more reason to switch between them more regularly.

Here’s the thing – just the inclusion of another customisable character adds quite a lot to the whole experience, you can essentially have several set ups, you could have two melee users, or one mage and one melee user (my preferred set up,) or a few other combinations. This inclusion actually gives the games combat a little bit more depth than in the previous game, which really amounted to press attack – dodge – use magic – repeat. Whilst here,  if you want to play cautiously and do late game things early, so long as you’re efficient at dodging, or have high armour stats, you can essentially kite the enemies, as your partner deals steady damage.

 

I don’t expect anyone would spend more than about fifteen hours on their quest for the platinum in Cat Quest II. Nothing in the game is missable – so you can essentially play through it how you like – do side-quests as they appear, or wait until after the final boss, that decision is entirely up to you.  

 

Much like its predecessor Cat Quest II is almost the purrfect (sorry, I really must stop,) game to play after a long hard day – or a time when lethargy starts to take over – the game is simple and satisfying, yet still very enjoyable, and unlike with some other RPG’s  your progress doesn’t seem to slow to a crawl. In this game you always feel like you’re gaining momentum towards your goals.

 If you can find this for a decent price, and you wanted to scratch an RPG itch, one that you didn’t fancy scratching with something bigger, this might be just the thing for you.

Edited October 29, 2021 by rjkclarke