Popular Post DrBloodmoney Posted December 7, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted December 7, 2021 - 484 - 618 Lost in Random Looking at the catalogue of Zoink Games, the Swedish developer of Lost in Random, there emerges a particular penchant for the unusual and the peculiar. From the oddly grotesque visuals of comedy adventure game Stick it to the Man, to pointed, geometry of animal-based platformer Fe, to the whimsical art styles of Flipping Death or VR exclusive Ghost Giant, Zoink clearly have range, and can work in a multitude of visual tones, but in every instance one thing is constant: their love of, and commitment to - aesthetically curious crafted realities. Lost in Random is no outlier in this regard. In the magical land of Random, the citizens of its six townships - Onecroft, Two-Town, Threedom, Fourberg, Fivetropolis and Sixtopia - all have their fates decided (where they live, what they do, and what they will be,) at the age of 12, by the roll of the Queen's magical die. When the Queen's emissary, the grotesque Nanny Fortuna, arrives in Onecroft and a little girl named Odd rolls a six, she is whisked off by the royal mechanical spiders, to Sixtopia. Her sister, Even, haunted by dreams that convince her the fabled Sixtopia is not the paradise she and the other citizens have been led to believe, decides to set out to rescue her. After stumbling across a magical die - Dicey - who is much the worse for wear, having had most of his 'pips' (dots) removed after all dice were outlawed by order of the Queen, she discovers Dicey still retains some of his power from the old days - enough to battle the guards and soldiers of the land. The pair set out to travel across Random, traversing each of the six townships, fighting the Queen's clockwork soldiers all the way, learning of the past and present of the land, to rescue Odd from the Queen's clutches. The actual narrative of the game is pretty good all told. The through-line narrative is a simple rescue mission, and is kept ever-present across the game by the dream-sequences peppered throughout, and in the interactions between Even and Dicey, (who speaks in unintelligible bweeps and bwoops, but are discernible by the available responses on Even's part,) the real meat of the game is in the six different townships Even and Dicey's quest takes them to. Each area is not only visually distinct and interesting to look at, but is also given a remarkable amount of Grimm Fairytale style backstory and real personality. Onecroft, where every citizen is downtrodden, and the whole place is crafted out of brick-a-brack and (oddly,) giant teapots. Two-Town, on the other hand, where every citizen has two personalities, decided each day by the roll of the Queen's die, is where Even learns everything is duplicitous... right down to the second Mayor - Royam (get it?) - who grows upside down out of the Mayor's head, and is wasting the entire towns budget on building a second Two-Town upside-down above the main one. Threedom is a town riven by war between the three siblings - The Duke, The Count and The Duchess, each of whom claims full rights of reign, and Even is tasked with bringing an end to the pointlessness of the civil war. It is impressive how much each individual area is able to conjure its own flavour within the overall aesthetically cohesive world of Random, and draw its own host of new missions and side-quests, without the main thrust of the plot being lost. A lot of this comes down to simple good pacing, however, one of the best elements of the game also very much plays into this element - the Narrator. Like in Bastion, the Narrator of Lost in Random supplies a fair mount of both information and the personality of the game itself, as well as a lot of the humour. The Narrator in this game is the source of much fourth-wall breaking and when used effectively, can be very funny - taking a cue from things like The Stanley Parable, Lost in Random milks a good portion of humour from the player's ability to tease the Narrator by doing the opposite of what he says, and quite a bit of additional dialogue has been recorded to fit to this. Lost in Random actually goes a little further too, in the sense that the Narrator mechanic is used in a variety of out-of-the-box ways. At one point, for example, while in the middle of a line of narration, a door can be heard bing broken down, and the Narrator is audible carried off by guards, leaving Even suddenly feeling rather alone. When, with the task of narrating switching to the Queen herself, her rather more vindictive take on narration... "Even suddenly realised what a terrible person she was..." causes Even to feel rather overwhelmed and sad, for reasons she can't quite explain. At one point, Even even comes across a prison door, from which a different narrator of another character's story can be heard. This kind of 4th wall breaking does help to keep the tone of the game light, as do the plethora of differently accented and oddly drawn NPCs Even and Dicey encounter, though there is no shortage of good world-building to flesh out the world in spite of this lightness. In terms of aesthetic, the game does look good, though this is, it should be said, much more down to the excellent art design than the technical graphics. Don't get me wrong, the graphics are perfectly adequate, however, the game does have a bit of a PS3 era feel, and some of the movement can feel a little stiff. The slightly older feel of the game is particularly exhascerbated by the lack of any jump mechanic (this is not, despite how it seems in screenshots, a platformer,) and Even can sometimes feel like she is getting stuck on geometry when a minimal 2-inch difference in height of some floor panels are, to all intents and purposes, a brick wall to her. The actual design work is really top notch though. There is a significant debt to be paid to American McGee's Alice, and to the filmic output of Tim Burton. The world design is Grimm Fairytale crossed with Alice in Wonderland, in much the same vein as Burton's Corpse Bride or Nightmare Before Christmas, though the actual characters have a marionette, sculpted, hand-made quality, more reminiscent of Burton's James and the Giant Peach. These character designs - both humanoid and less so, are deliciously macabre and grotesque, but the light tone prevents them ever feeling scary, and instead, live just on the edge of reality - peculiar and odd, but never horrific. Audio is good - the music is fun and perfectly fits the tone, and voice work is well done. NPCs talk in a broad variety of accents, from Australian to Irish to loads of different English and Scottish dialects, and the mishmash works to the game's 'everywhere-and-nowhere' tone well. Even herself is voiced well, and the Narrator - easily the most prominent voice - is well cast and pitched just right - working for both the fairytale aspects and the comedy. The main mechanic of the game is essentially adventure game/ RPG-lite, and most missions involve one of two things - talking, or fighting. The talking is good, and the missions simple but funny for the most part, though one major issue with the game - the worst one by far - is highlighted in these in-town sections. The game provides a map, which shows the locations of mission critical NPC... but does not show where the player is in relation! It gives a rough indication of which 'zone' of the town they are in, but no indication of compass direction, meaning that in a new town, it can take far longer to orient oneself than it really should. This decision feels baffling - I suppose feeling lost could be argued to be the point in a game called "Lost in Random"... but being forced to constantly peer at the map every ten steps to work out if I'm going the right direction is not really conducive to immersing oneself in the delightful worlds Zoink has built! Combat in the game is a really odd affair - and genuinely interesting - a mash-up of card-battling with 3D action RPG mechanics. Even has a deck of cards she can build from her card-collection, each of which has different abilities. Some are weapons (Even has only her trusty slingshot to begin each encounter,) or different traps/ hazards/ buffs etc. In each encounter, crystals will form on enemies, which can be sling-shotted to break. Dicey is then commanded to collect these, which translate to dice power. This dice power makes available different cards, and once at least one card is available, dicey is 'rolled' and the number he lands on corresponds to a value which can be 'spent' on using these cards. This means that building an effective deck becomes a main mechanic of the game, and finding new, better cards can make all the difference in a battle. The system sounds complex - an on paper it is - but actually works pretty well, and while it does mean each encounter tends to start a bit slow, as Even tries to weave around the playfield, shooting crystals and avoiding incoming threats, once it gets going there is a fun, odd dynamic to the whole thing. Occasional 'special' battles are also introduced, wherein a meta-element of a massive board-game is added - the movement of which is also tied to Dicey's rolls, and these, while a little cumbersome in concept, actually work pretty well too. There is a bit of an issue, in terms of combat towards the latter portions of the game, in the sense that there begins to be a little too much of it - once a really good deck is built, the player tends to stop innovating with it, and so combat can feel a little flat by that point, and certain encounters can last far too long. Overall, Lost in Random is very much a game that works better in reality than it, by rights, should on paper. It's mechanics are obtuse and strange, and it's world is both over-complex in some areas and over-simple in others, however, those complaints aren't really valid, as actually playing the game, it all comes together to create something charming, fun, unusual and certainly unique. The art-style may be heavily influenced by Tim Burton, and Lewis Carroll, but I think there is enough originality injected into it that Lost in Random becomes its own beast - and it's a pretty engaging one. (Review originally published HERE) (For game comparison and Scientific placement, see THE CURRENT RANKING) 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post MadDoggMajima Posted December 7, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted December 7, 2021 (edited) PLATINUM #12 - Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy (PS4) Like many others have said, this is a game that completely shattered my flarkin' expectations with flying colours, and I mean that in a good way. Let me just start this review out with the fact that I've never been too into Marvel or superheroes in general. I've watched a few of the recent movies, but I never found myself too interested in them. However, there were two outsiders: the current Spider-Man series and the Guardians of the Galaxy series. I have no idea why, but something about those clicked a lot more with me, and I'd consider them favorites of mine. So of course I was ecstatic when this game was announced (although predictably we knew about it a while before then because of the rumour mill), but after playing through the pretty disappointing Avengers game, this hype sorta flatlined a bit knowing it could end up like that. Boy, was I wrong. THE STORY: Anyways, this game follows the Guardians' misadventures as they go searching for a mysterious beast, only to set off a chain reaction by freeing a creature known as Magus, leading to the whole galaxy getting brainwashed into joining a crazy space cult who also turned Star-Lord's girlfriends' daughter into a false god. Much of the enjoyment from this came with the dialogue, which like the GotG movies is more focused on humour, the interactions between the Guardians and how they bounce off each other, although the few quiet moments the game had were well written too. Getting to explore the different biomes the game leads you though was a treat, with my favorite being the dense spaceport of Knowhere, where you can spend some of the credits you've earned on several attractions. SCORE: 9/10 THE GAMEPLAY: The moment-to-moment gameplay during fights is simple but fun - each Guardian specializes in different methods of attack. Star-Lord, your playable character for this evening, uses his blasters which gain elemental capabilities over the course of the story, and is fun to control as you glide and hover around. He also has a melee attack, though I never found it of much use, and you can command the other Guardians via a button prompt. However, this brings up my biggest gripe with this game, it's repetitiveness. Especially during the 2nd half of the adventure, the constant fights became draining, as enemies began to show up that were a pain to defeat, but it did feel satisfying to keep a chain attack going on one of the more bullet-spongy enemies to see how fast I could stagger and knock them out. SCORE: 8/10 THE GRAPHICS/PERFORMANCE: I played this game on my base PS4 (yep, don't have a PS5, because they're next to impossible to get at MSRP), and this game looks absolutely stunning for the hardware. The character models are detailed, and the environments are well-crafted too, but with one caveat: performance. This game rarely felt smooth to play. The framerate during basic exploration was fine, I'm not expecting 60fps on a late-era game releasing 2013 hardware after all, but during battles it tanked and it tanked HARD, especially when a lot of explosions and other SFX were going on, and enemies are surrounding you. If you're going to play this, wait to get the current gen consoles or a capable gaming PC. SCORE: 8/10 (assuming you're not playing on last-gen, of course) THE TROPHIES: The game can be completed in a single playthrough, but for the sake of not spoiling the experience I decided to split my trophy progress into two playthroughs. The first playthrough was great, but the second not so much because I already knew how the story played out. The trophies for this game are all simple to get, and you'll likely get at most 75% of them playing through once casually - the customizable difficulty options also made the second playthrough more bearable. SCORE: 9/10 MY (OVERALL) SCORE: 85%! Even if you're not into Marvel, this game is a great experience which stands on its own. Just be prepared to play through the game twice for the platinum if you don't wanna be spoiled. Edited December 7, 2021 by MadDoggMajima 12 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Nelson_ Posted December 7, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted December 7, 2021 #320 - Onee Chanbara Origin 18 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
percy547389126yv Posted December 8, 2021 Share Posted December 8, 2021 #1,020 PS4 version of Ball Lab 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hanzoadam Posted December 8, 2021 Share Posted December 8, 2021 Getting some more Indie Sale games out the way 699 GLO (PS4) GLOObtain all other trophies 698 Bishoujo Battle Mahjonh Solitaire (PS4) Stage MasterUnlock all other trophies 697 Infestor (PS4) Platinum InfestorGet all other trophies. 696 Racing (Challenge mode edition): Breakthrough Gaming Arcade You got all the trophies! Congratulations!You got all the trophies! Congratulations! 695 Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitare [BLUE] (PS5) Blue MasterUnlock all other trophies 694 Infestor (PS5) Platinum InfestorGet all other trophies. 693 Jigsaw Finale MaestosoWhich brought you the title of Maestro of Puzzles… 692 GLO (PS5) GLOObtain all other trophies 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post erwint0920 Posted December 8, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted December 8, 2021 #48 Birthday of Midnight Platinum Midnight Get all other trophies. Yes, this is a very easy game to platinum and it will probably mainly be played for that reason. But, it is actually a really fun game (IMO), I felt the same about 36 Fragments of Midnight and Midnight Deluxe. 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post AsheRebel Posted December 8, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted December 8, 2021 Platinum #147 Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (PS4 Version) I haven't really enjoyed cod since the old and gold ps3 days but this is the first cod in ps4/ps5 era that I genuinely enjoyed and play a lot of multiplayer and zombies in. The Dead ops Arcade and Fireteam trophies were a bit of a pain but otherwise it was easy for me. Thanks and huge shoutout to my bestie @AsheBurns for playing this game a lot on PS4/PS5 with me & soon I will platinum the PS5 version too. She is my zombies mode expert ? For sentinemental value I had to platinum this special game for us two on the day we met ? 13 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post starcrunch061 Posted December 8, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted December 8, 2021 PLAT #461: Kingdom Hearts 3 KINGDOM HEARTS III Complete Master Unlock all other trophies. Hmmm. Here's an odd one. Well, I can say that Kingdom Hearts III is...not a bad game. It has great graphics. It has good combat that rises to greatness sometimes. It has lots of colorful worlds, and the worlds feel more alive than in previous entries. And yet, ehhh. Were I to grade this game, I would say that it's in the fat part of the curve, with a solid B-. There are flashes of brilliance, but ultimately, it never really rises above the challenge here. On the plus side, Kingdom Hearts III looks fantastic. Anyone who complains that the graphics aren't on par with, say, Red Dead Redemption 2, are missing the point. The stylized look is great. Disney worlds (and they're pretty much ALL Disney worlds) conjure the fairy tales from memory. I have often been disappointed with Square and their aesthetics. Not here. This is what I want to see from a game based on a (series of) cartoon world(s). Combat has a lot of great ideas, some of which are implemented well. The best, by far, is the use of keyblades to do "formchanges". This allows you to develop a fighting style based on your interests (melee, speed, magic, etc.). This is the best part of combat. It is (theoretically) great to run around, trying to build up your formchange meter in order to obtain new weapon styles. One keyblade might turn into a hammer, another into a staff, still another into...a frying pan? Whatever. It works well. Added to this is pretty much every idea that KH has ever had in any game ever. You'll see shotlocks from BBS. You'll see team attacks from earlier KH titles. You'll see something called Flowmotion from...somewhere. Character links appear, and a new combat type, the "attraction" (which are rides at Disney World) all get rolled into the fray. What a shame. While some of these ideas are pretty good (I've always thought the Shotlocks were underrated), putting them all together in a single game just becomes cloying. All of these will trigger particular commands that you will need to shift through in order to use them. When you have 3+ of these commands appearing at once (not to mention potential finishers for your Formchanges), this is really annoying. In addition to occasionally triggering the wrong command, I found that triggering a command sometimes triggered two of them, which is really annoying (theoretically) when you fight a tough boss. The attractions are a real problem. They appear often, they're ridiculously overpowered, and they take forever to finish. It was fun the first 10 times playing the mini-game associated with the magic carousel. It became significantly less fun for the remaining 100 times it appeared, and that's just one of multiple attraction commands. Perhaps you can turn them off somewhere, but I never bothered to look, because ultimately, this game is WAY TOO EASY. I played on the top difficulty available to me when I purchased the game (Proud Mode), and there is nothing worthy of that name in there. I don't know why Critical Mode wasn't available from the start (it did appear later, but there was no way I was starting my game over to incorporate it). In short, all of these nifty gadgets play little to no role, because you'll be wiping out bosses with no strategy whatsoever. Speaking of bosses, they're kind of a dud. They sort of look cool, but there's no real oomph to them. Back in the day, you might have fought Prince Hans himself. Now, though, he turns into a random Norse wolf. It looks cool, and the battle has some cool moments, but there's nothing really tying that boss to Prince Hans. At the beginning, you'll fight through Olympus, but instead of fighting Hades, you get random fights against elemental titans. Lame. Let's only discuss the story for a moment. It's completely laughable, even by Kingdom Hearts standards. Here is one bit of the tale: at some point, you'll meet a young version of Riku, who is evil. Later, present Riku will face this young Riku, only to find out that young Riku is actually some robot thing possessed by the spirit of young Riku, but here's the thing: the spirit possessing the robot is actually a fake young Riku. The real young Riku spirit is inside of present Riku, and will inhabit the robot thing after you finally defeat the spirit of fake young Riku and drive it away. You can't make this stuff up. And I don't care about the 4th mobile release that I missed (I believe it was called Kingdom Hearts Re:Guarding Stupid Name Choice). That's just dumb. It's as if the storyteller, having created all of this nonsense, insisted that he could make it all work in the end. He didn't. The post-game is somewhat lacking. There are some battles against harder enemies, but most of these enemies will have already been encountered in the game itself. The one exception (the "super boss" Dark Inferno)...is a complete joke. I nearly beat him at level 40, with no preparation. I came back to him at level 99 with full preparation, and I'm not sure he even hit me. This ain't no Mysterious Stranger, I can tell you that. In addition, Square has included requisite minigames. I think you have to work to make minigames this bad. The sad thing is, some of the minigames seem to have a core of fun in them, but all of them fail. The best of the lot is a crappy rhythm dancing game. The worst is...take your pick, but I'm voting for the Sour Cherry Flan race. The Frozen Shield Slide should have been a fun race...but it's marred with an unnecessary and artificial "Find all the treasure chests that we randomly hid on this course in places that actually slow you down. All in all, it's probably worth your time. I imagine if you're a fan, you've already played. If you don't like KH games, this won't change your mind. If you've never played any, KH2 is significantly better, and KH1, despite its issues, is superior as well. Enjoy! 12 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post MilanYildirim Posted December 8, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted December 8, 2021 #245. Assassin's Creed Black Flag. The best old version of AC game. 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post travisaurasrex12 Posted December 8, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted December 8, 2021 The Azure You Obtained Difficulty 2-10 Enjoyment 4-10 What a grind of a plat marrying all the ships took forever plus the random times the urgent battles showed up made getting this plat take longer then it should have 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post kkulifay Posted December 9, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted December 9, 2021 2021 has been the year of Far Cry platinums. This year I earned the plats (100% completions) in *Far Cry 3 (PS3 *Far Cry 4 PS4) *Far Cry Primal (PS4) *Far Cry 5 (PS4 *Far Cry New Dawn (PS4) I thought FC3 had the best story, FC New Dawn has the best trophy list and graphics, and FC 4 had the best DLC. Next Plat? Dying Light when the PS5 patch goes live and Marvels Spider-Man game of the year edition with all the DLC. 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
percy547389126yv Posted December 9, 2021 Share Posted December 9, 2021 #1,021 PS5 version of Ball Lab Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
percy547389126yv Posted December 9, 2021 Share Posted December 9, 2021 #1,022 PS4 version of Space KaBAAM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post whodeygamer Posted December 9, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted December 9, 2021 #25: 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim I only recently found out about this game because of a trailer for an upcoming Nintendo Switch port. The art style along with ATLUS being involved was enough to catch my interest. After finding out that the game was already on PS4, and that it was on sale for the Black Friday sale, I decided to buy it pretty much without knowing anything about it only because ATLUS is the publisher. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim has you follow the stories of 13 characters from different time periods in Japan, who end up joining forces to fight against mechanical monsters known as Kaiju using mechs known as Sentinels. The game is split into two game modes: Remembrance and Destruction. Remembrance is the game’s story mode, which is where you’ll spend a majority of your play time in. The game’s biggest strengths, it’s complex storyline along with the beautiful art style are on full display. Here you get to see how and why the characters eventually end up in a mecha war against the Kaiju. Destruction on the other hand is where you battle the kaiju in a real time strategy battle system. This is unfortunately where the game falters, both art wise and in gameplay. Overall, I enjoyed 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, even though I didn’t care much for Destruction mode. 13 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Vrisnem Posted December 9, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted December 9, 2021 Dynasty Warriors 9 True Warrior of the 3 Kingdoms I picked this game up on sale for £11 last month and went into it with very low expectations based on what I had heard from other people. Phrases such as "worst Dynasty Warriors game of all time" were thrown around. Maybe it's because I came to it once it was fully patched and playing on a PS5, so wouldn't have experienced the same performance issues others might have, but I really enjoyed it. I can't remember the last time I put 65hrs+ into a video game in under a month. The open world was a refreshing change of pace after spending the past 2.5 years platinuming DW8/DW8:XL/DW8:E and the way the story played out really helped me to get a better grasp of how all of the separate scenarios in previous games fit together in the grand scheme of the Three Kingdoms period (and I say that even having read the classic novel). I'm excited for DW9: Empires to release in February! 11 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Darghel Posted December 9, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted December 9, 2021 (edited) #126 New Owner of the Scarlet Devil Mansion (Touhou Kobuto V: Burst Battle) Difficulty: It's pretty frustrating, but it's doable Time to Complete: About 16 hours Recommended: Maybe if you're a super mega fan of touhou... Total score: 5/10 Funny story: a while ago I gifted my sister a game for her birthday, and I saw a touhou game on the local gamestop which had them. So last night while browsing my backlog I was seeing this game and I thought "Hey it's the game I gave to my sister...let's see if it's any good". And oh boy it's no good! First and foremost, I am not a Touhou fan, so I'm obviously not the best person to play this game. But my sister is, and we played together to see the references and detail of the game, so Kudos to my sister for giving more information about all the stuff. Anyway, this game is loosely inspired by the 6th game, "Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil", as all the roster is based of that game for the exception of Youmu (7th) and Koishi (11th), both fo which are DLC. However besides the roster, the references and the BGM used in the game, which are all remixes, the plot has nothing to do with the original game and infact the main villain of the game....spoilers I guess but really, you expect big plot from Touhou? Spoiler Anyway it's a Yukkuri. I'll be back on that later, but are you really surprised? The game is pretty much your general Touhou goodness for when it comes to references: the dialogues are silly but really funny, from literally saying "hi" to "let's fight!" in matter of seconds, a lot of references are there if you're a fan too (like how Cirno is called 9 because of the manual description, or Meiling is called China because nobody could decide how to pronounce her name correctly) as well as the neat detail of having the palette swaps of each character being another character, like how Reimu's second palette is Sanae - which is fitting because she's technically also a Shrine Maiden, and according my sister she is often called "Reimu Player 2", or how Meiling's second color is Yoshika Miyako, a Jiangshi, or how Marisa's second palette is Usami Sumireko, which isn't a witch but is a psychic instead but hey it works!. In general, they put a lot of details in the Touhou part, making sure to pick the right stuff so a fan could enjoy, and if my sister didn't point them out I would probably be clueless... ...but now I come in and we can talk of the game because oh boy, it's not really fun! At all! The game is meant to be a sort of fighting game with bullet hell elements, which is nice, but at the same time the game forgets the most basic thing...a tutorial! Yeah, good luck figuring out the moves! Oh sure you got 3 buttons there and a parry and dash, but did you know you can combine dash and parry to make different moves? I didn't! I had to look online for it! And that's only the smallest problem: the game is broken on many levels, to the point that you really need to play cheap in order to win. Even after learning some moves, trying to play as good as I can, the enemy CPU has the tendency to cheap out and just do whatever they want: Special move that goes through the hurdle? Check! Spell that somehow hits me even though I'm super far? Check! CPU dodging spell damage even though there's no freaking away unless they're a CPU? Check! Yeah, not fun, and it doesn't help that some of the roster is either weak or flat out overpowered, so characters like Marisa, Lumia (or "Rumia" like my sister constantly reminded me), Remilia or even Youmi and Koishi (which i can't play) were so brokenly overpowered that they could just kill you right way if you're positioned wrong...no really, there were times where I would literally last 2-3 seconds before either Youmu just does a move and I'm dead, without mentioning Marisa's spell that can practically kill you from full bar to basically 1 hp. I checked while doing my vs human fights: it's insane! And her regular charge attack, a laser, can literally take 1/3 of your health bar with zero effort and you can practically spam it! Yeah, so fun having Marisa in Arcade... So yeah, this is why the game is not fun: the trophies are actually fairly simple but get frustrating because of the whole balancing: arcade mode requires you to defeat 7 enemies in a row but because of how broken the game can be it's no easy task. There were times I could do it easy, and other times I'd die in 10 seconds flat. The Score Attack was easier because you can do it in 4-5 fights, other than that it's the same. And the story mode as I mentioned doesn't specifically take inspiration of the 6th game of the franchise so it's really more like silly scene after silly scene...like how Cirno becomes the owner of the Scarlet Devil Mansion (like shown in the platinum picture), or how Reimu finds out that the Yukkuri is the main villain. Infact speaking of Yukkuri and other things, this is yet another thing my sister has mentioned: the game's humor is old...infact this game was originally released in 2010, which makes sense because a lot of the jokes and humor, especially the yukkuri, was rampant around that time so it makes sense. I'm not a fan so I can't say but my sister has mentioned that stuff like Yukkuri and the humor is not as hot as before, which made her confuse a lot of the time. In a sense, this game is a little capsule of 2010s touhou humor and jokes, alongside a pretty clunky game and kinda bad graphics (which makes sense, but they could've improved a little for the re-release?) Bottom line...I didn't like it, not because I'm not a fan of Touhou, but because it plays like garbage. I tried to enjoy it, and I really liked playing with my sister as she explained everything and told me why this, why that. But otherwise, this game is really not good and unless you can stomach its controls, I would suggest to skip it. It's not an impossible platinum, but it's not one that you'll have fun doing it, even if you're a fan. And the worst part of all this? I did mention that i bought a touhou game at the local gamestop for my sister's birthday. It wasn't this. It was Genso Rondo Bullet Ballet...which means I might need to check that one too. Can't be worse right? "gulp" Edit: I apologize if I'm mistaken on anything I wrote, I asked my sister before writing this, but if we're wrong on something I apologize in advance: like I said I'm not a fan of Touhou and while my sister is a big fan of it, she might get things wrong too. We're not machines! Edit 2: Genso Rondo is better, but it's probably a lot tougher platinum to achieve. I might not do that right away, but at least I can already say it's a lot better! Edited December 14, 2021 by Darghel Decided to give it a 5...I think it does deserve some love even it plays awful. 12 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Han_PL Posted December 9, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted December 9, 2021 BLOODBORNE 16 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
percy547389126yv Posted December 9, 2021 Share Posted December 9, 2021 #1,023 PS5 version of Space KaBAAM 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Odd-Shokupan Posted December 9, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted December 9, 2021 (edited) Persona 5 Royal One of my all-time favorites. Played again through the game with the awesome perfect schedule guide on this website. I am listening to Our Light and couldn't hold a tear back. Goodbye phantom thieves, goodbye friends. Edited December 15, 2021 by Odd-Shokupan 24 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Masamune Posted December 9, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted December 9, 2021 All Complete! Obtained all trophies. Difficulty: 4/10 (2 playthroughs with proper prep, 1 playthrough would probably be a 9/10) Enjoyment: 6.5/10 (most of that is for the story) Playtime: 97:33:18 (I probably wasted at least 10 hours trying to do the post-game stuff) Screenshot: Spoiler Sadly this was one of the lesser CH games, the list of cons it has far outweighs the pros... The best thing it has to offer is easily the story, I enjoyed that & would rate it above average. Thankfully the trophies are all relatively easy & a lot you will get naturally, only one really worth mentioning is for getting 10K kills. After 2 playthroughs, I was only around 5K? So that'll require some grinding (you can get around 1K an hour depending on where you farm). Gameplay though... yeah, that leaves a lot to be desired. ? The combat system can be very tedious, especially late-game (where you get constantly bombarded with status ailments), to the point where having a defense against the more troublesome ailments like instant death & paralysis are mandatory (either that or never let the enemy get a turn, which is near impossible since a lot of later enemies have twice the speed as you unless you've been focusing on that stat the whole game). The game doesn't really have any post game content besides some story-less extra dungeons either, which aren't even worth doing thanks to the extremely steep difficulty spikes (I had my special stat capped out on Coo & still had no chance of beating the Lv600 rabbit boss). ? Since all your stats you gain while leveling up are decided by you, you can end up building a character completely wrong & ruining them too. This of course isn't the first CH game to use the PP system, but I think it is the first to let you decide where ALL your stats go? A lot of the attacks in the game rely on dual stats too, so you can't just focus on 1 stat if you want to increase your attack. The AoE attacks are way too small as well (including AoE items, those can by useless depending on your formation), you'll be lucky if you can hit more than 2 enemies with them half the time, the difference between the low & high grade rages aren't that big either. Also if a party member happened to die right as your turn comes up (they're still standing but with 0 HP), you can't revive them, you actually have to wait till your next member's turn comes up to do so (this happened 6 or 7 times to me). ? I can think of 4 or 5 more things to mention, but I'll stop here. In the end, I can really only recommend this to people who really enjoy the other CH games... I guess you could say this is a cross between Agarest & Fairy Fencer? Just... not as good as either of them. ? 16 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darghel Posted December 9, 2021 Share Posted December 9, 2021 @Masamune Wow congrats! I've been wanting to attempt the game again after it beat me years ago (I tried starting on very hard, it didn't go well! and ). I was hoping if you'd have tips for that, like if you'd recommend doing two playthroughs or the interviews, because I'm always scared to fail those. Any suggestions or tips could be appreciated if you could share any. Again, congrats! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post BlinkWinkel Posted December 9, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted December 9, 2021 (edited) (post deleted) Edited June 22, 2022 by BlinkWinkel 10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Masamune Posted December 9, 2021 Share Posted December 9, 2021 11 minutes ago, Darghel said: @Masamune Wow congrats! I've been wanting to attempt the game again after it beat me years ago (I tried starting on very hard, it didn't go well! and ). I was hoping if you'd have tips for that, like if you'd recommend doing two playthroughs or the interviews, because I'm always scared to fail those. Any suggestions or tips could be appreciated if you could share any. Again, congrats! I tried starting on VH as well, think I made it to around chapter 2 or 3 till I quickly learned that's near-impossible. ? Definitely do 2 playthroughs, & at the end of your first run just farm as much PP/BP as possible (don't use it!), & get your weapons to at least Lv40, that makes VH a cakewalk. As for the interviews... yeah, those suck. ? Thankfully I don't think you need to ace them all for the true end, the main requirement for that is just getting a character to a 4 star affection rating before the cut-off point, acing an interview just makes that easier. I save-scummed till I knew I had the correct choices on them all & that gave me a 5 star rating with all 5 girls by the end, so there's some room for error. Also you can save-scum the game's missions till the girl you want gets a high ranking mission, that'll increase her affection more than the others. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Mr_Wright95 Posted December 10, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted December 10, 2021 Platinum 94 & 95 Cat Quest I & II Fun 9/10 Difficulty 1/10 After realising that Cat Quest I was not a Co-Op game, my partner and I decided to start with Cat Quest II. This game has a unique charm and is a fairly relaxed take on an adventure RPG. Cat Quest II was very fun and just difficult enough to not make the game mindless. It was a fairly short experience with it taking about 8-10 hours of gameplay for my partner and I to complete. Overall though it was a pretty well designed couch co-op game and we enjoyed it. After tackling Cat Quest II I then moved onto Cat Quest I, this game overall played very similar to Cat Quest II with a few minor differences. I was on pace to smash this out fast, but then disaster struck. Due to a few quests that have been added after the trophy list was made, It is possible to ping the "Complete all side quest" trophy, before actually completing all of them, since you just need to hit X number of side quests (the amount when the trophy list was made) This meant when I got to the end of the game missing 1 piece of Armour and all dungeons and quests (or so i thought) completed I moved onto a NG+ to try and wrap it up. Fast forward 6 hours I realised what I had done after pulling my hair out for hours and checking Discord, Reddit and Forums. I had missed a LVL99 side quest that gave the 1 armour I was missing. Overall though the game was fun and its my fault for not checking If i had actually completed all of the side quests. MrWright95 Platinum Challenge (11 Platinum's Nov 10 - Dec 24) This takes me up to 95 Platinum's with 5 to go before December 24 for my Trophy Challenge. This seems like a lot, but I have 4 games currently in progress that are all not too far off Platinum. Then I have to figure out which PS3 game I own that I can platinum fast to be able to achieve my goal of 100 Platinum's before Dec 25. 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IzunaGaiden Posted December 10, 2021 Share Posted December 10, 2021 20# Tekken 7 Difficulty : 1/10 Time : 10 hours Fun : 8/10 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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