RealM722's Trophy Cabinet

realm722 · October 8, 2021

Game: Spiritfarer (150th platinum)

Analysis: I bought Spiritfarer for $19.49 back in late May 2021, and boy has this review been a LONG time coming. I am excited to share my experience with this game. Spoilers are heavily present in this entire review. If you want to skip them all and just see my general thoughts, jump to the "Would I recommend?" section.

Why Spiritfarer? Before I even get into talking about this game, what the hell you actually "do" in it, and how good it is at accomplishing it - I need to take y'all on a lil journey. Spiritfarer wasn't just any ol' game I picked up on a sale hoping that it'd be good. I've been hyped for this game for well over a year, and I have documentation to prove it.

Times I've Mentioned Spiritfarer in Past Posts:
Sundered Review (April 23rd, 2020)

Talkin' Game Developers (Jun 26th, 2020)

Do I Enjoy Harder Games? (Oct 20th, 2020)

Replying to Arcesius (Nov 29th, 2020)

100% Club Article (Mar 11th, 2021)

Dangers of Expectations (Apr 29th, 2021)

Replying to Grotz99 (May 5th, 2021)

Jotun Review (Jun 13th, 2021)

All of this is to say - I've been anticipating this game for quite some time. Ever since I saw that E3 trailer back in 2019, this game has occupied some real estate in my brain. From the colors absolutely popping off the screen and captivating me, to the curious base-building mechanics, I genuinely wanted to know if these developers (who at the time, were completely unknown to me), could capitalize on making an entertaining non-violent video game that could keep me intrigued and playing in the same vein of the classic Harvest Moon games or Stardew Valley if you prefer a more modern example. It is with great joy I can report that if you enjoy Animal Crossing, you will probably LOVE Spiritfarer. Allow me to defend that statement.

What is the gameplay loop of Spiritfarer? You play as Stella. A black girl in charge of directing lost spirits to the Everdoor, and in this capacity you serve as the Spiritfarer. You can drive a boat to different islands and gather the resources you'll need. Why do you need these resources? Because the essential core of the game is completing tasks given to you by the spirits on your ship. One of them will want a house built with specific materials. Others will want a meal composed of ingredients from a distant island. Your entire life revolves around caring for these spirits, making them feel loved and cared for, and completing the assignments they give you. What does this all mean? Spiritfarer does not have a single amazing core gameplay element in my mind. What you'll find is there are very small different tasks that you can accomplish, without any of them serving as the main crux. There's no combat system. No in-depth platforming. It's a resource management game with some base-building elements and a sensation I can only describe as "you constantly feel like you're chasing and trying to keep up with what the game demands of you." What do I mean by that? I mean, Spiritfarer is a very easy game to lose MANY hours to without realizing how much you've played. The reason for this is there's always SOMETHING to do. You've gotta water your crops. OR that spirit has a new assignment for you. Don't forget to fish! Weren't you just cooking something? Oh snap don't forget to go to that one island and get that resource. Hey, you may as well complete some errands for Francis while he's close. Don't you need to go cut some more logs? It's time for a spirit mini-game event!

Spiritfarer gave me BIGTIME Graveyard Keeper vibes with the amount of "chasing" you'll be doing

This is a very good feeling to have while playing. It may not be good for your sleep schedule or if you have a very window of free time to enjoy gaming, but it is absolutely necessary for a game like this where there is no core unique gameplay element. Thunder Lotus Games meticulously crafted this system with enough mini-games and little tasks you need to accomplish so you're always chasing something. Maybe you need that one extra resource to unlock that other thing that you need to unlock a brand new portion of the map! Why do I bring so much attention to this? Because on their own, none of these mini-games are very good. I'm going to prove this - by breaking down each of them individually. One at a time. Sorry, not sorry.

Gathering / Managing Resources Minigames:

Fishing - I do not enjoy fishing in this game. At least not until I got the 7th shrine upgrade which you won't get until the very end of the game. As opposed to Stardew Valley which is more skill-based and admittedly trickier, the Spiritfarer fishing game is tedious at best. Basically, when a fish bites - you have to reel it in. You hold down the square button to do that. But if you hold on too long, your fishing rod starts to turn red. If you continue holding square, the line snaps and you don't catch the fish. For more difficult species, you're looking at doing this, repeatedly, 3-4 times PER fish. It's not fun. I would have preferred a more difficult, quicker system than the one they opted for.

Cutting Trees - Simple, but again, too long of a wind-up animation waiting for Daffodil(your cat) to get into position. Move the right stick to the left and right and back again.

Mining Ores - This one is strange. You have to wind up your pickaxe, but don't hold it for too long, or you'll get stun-locked and have to wait 8 seconds before trying again. Getting the timing perfect on this so you DIDN'T get stun-locked was oddly... engaging?

Cutting Logs - This mini-game was a guilty pleasure of mine. I loved it. It's more skill-based, quick, and the better you perfectly cut the logs, the more materials you get.

Threading Fabric - I really enjoyed this one. It is super quick on more difficult materials and the satisfaction of hitting perfectly in the middle to get extra resources is delightful.

Smelting Ore - I DESPISED this mini-game. It takes forever. The stupid heat meter takes forever to load and it's not skill-based so you can't get bonus resources out of it.

Gardening Field - I didn't care at all for the way they designed this. You have to plant the crop, water it SO MUCH(I hated watering my crops by the end of the game), and yank it out of the ground, sometimes with a lengthy animation depending on the crop. I just wished they gave us a way to automate this by the end.

Crusher - They phoned this one in. You just spam the square button a lot. No timing or skill is needed. It's super quick though which I love.

Smithing - Didn't enjoy this one a lot since I never quite figured out how to properly hammer the material into glass. Not bad, not good. 6/10.

Spirit Dependent Minigames:

Gwen's Bright Jelly - This one is okay. It's the first one, and you essentially have to run around your ship and jump into the jelly approaching. Gets better with more movement options available later in the game.

Atul's Bottled Lightning - I oddly loved this one. Perhaps it's my love of Atul that's blinding me, but lining yourself up right before the lightning hits is a ton of fun.

Summer's Quartz Dragon - There are dragons in this game. You have to mini ores off their backs to heal them. Some platforming, but it's not anything too challenging.

Astrid's Turtle Sisters - This isn't even a minigame. You just plant any resource on the turtles back and it's infinitely renewable. Convenient and well appreciated!
Giovanni's Comet Rocks - Somewhat similar to Atul's lightning. Meteors hit your ship and you have to collect them before they fizzle out. Didn't mind playing this one.

Gustav's Fireglow Seeds - This is an exact copy of Gwen's mini-game. The difference is instead of jellyfish it's fireflies. Innovation.

Alice's Nebula Fibre - Very simple minigame. Just collect pillbugs on the ship and bring them back to the mother. Quick and easy.

Bruce & Mickey's Pulsar Ore - This one is genuinely challenging. The pulsar rays will be approaching you from all 4 angles. They're tricky and change direction. Arguably the best one of them all given even towards the end of the game it still gave me a hassle.

Stanley's Bottled Ectoplasm - Another event that's genuinely challenging. The dust shades are SUPER quick and you'll be sprinting after them for the full runtime.

Buck's XP Options - This will come at the very end of the game. It's just aight. Have to use your light ability to pop the resource, it's a 6/10 at best.

What are the final results? If any one of these was asked to carry the game on its back, Spiritfarer would crumble and be a subpar experience. But with enough variety and the fact you never do any of these events or tasks too frequently all at once, it makes the game a great deal more enjoyable. What I said earlier is absolutely true. The best way I can describe the sensation is how I felt while playing Graveyard Keeper. For 80% of the game's runtime, you will be chasing, trying to keep up with the demand of resources constantly being hurled at you. Thankfully, compared to GK, there is not nearly as much grinding. But enough about gameplay, let's get to the heart of Spiritfarer.

The Soul of Spiritfarer - This game will be made or broken for you depending on whether or not you love this cast of misfits. I cannot say this any more emphatically - I am FLOORED that Thunder Lotus Games made a cast and crew so incredibly lovable after their previous game in Sundered. Sundered was a soulless game that had these absurdly long names for all the different locations and higher beings you encountered that NONE of them were memorable. Jotun largely ignored a story but created some fascinating character designs. Spiritfarer ties a bunch of okay/mixed gameplay mechanics but hits it out of the park and gives you a REASON to continue playing with these goofballs visualized above this paragraph. I love the ones that were a hit for you right out of the gate to the ones that were difficult and a bit tsundere before finally breaking the ice. I'll be honest. I don't know if this makes me a furry. I adore these designs. Let's rank my favorites from the best to the worst, of course, all in my humble opinion.

Ranking the Characters in Spiritfarer:

#1. Atul - Atul is best boy. There is no one else close. He is a lovable easy-going giant frog and a woodworking enthusiast. Why do I love him? Well, for one he plays the flute that raises the happiness of all the other crew members by x3. Listen to this absolute banger. He's super simple and loves anything you feed him, which is a great contrast to many other members as you'll discover the longer you play. He's Stella's biological uncle and misses his family. His ending is especially brutal as you never get a proper goodbye as you do with all the other characters, and it left me stunned given the routine I had fallen into when letting go of other members of the cast. He'll be the iconic character I always remember from this game.

#2. Alice - This may be surprising for many. Alice is a sweet older woman who is incredibly gentle and loving. She'll give you meals to hand out to other crew members and is very simple in terms of what she requires to maintain her morale in good standing. What got me worst of all was since she's older, you start noticing a deterioration in her physical and mental faculties as you near the end of her time with you on the ship. You'll be told to move her house to the ground floor so she doesn't have to climb ladders. She'll also confuse you for her own daughter. This hit me really hard given I've very recently gone through the passing of a beloved family member who... went thru a lot of the stuff Alice goes through here. Yea......

#3. Gustav - I love Gustav. He gives me bigtime "Yusuke from Persona 5" energy. He's absolutely ridiculous and that just makes you love him all the more. He is a long-winded gasbag who quite literally have entire days lost to him if you speak to him too long in conversations. This made me cackle the first time it happened and the fact the game lets you do it again is utterly delightful. Another great point his favor is like Atul, Gustav can play his fiddle and raise the happiness of all members by x3. Love him and he was one of the last ones I let leave my boat(in part due to needing his fiddle to Elena to ecstatic)

#4. Astrid - Oh Astrid. A hopeless romantic who can't let go of a good-for-nothing man. The thing that stands out the most for me with her is the fact she's pro-workers rights and ran a protest against her corporate overloads when you first bring her onboard to your ship. She'll be with you for a very long time and appreciates the bare necessities of life. The reason she's this high up is because in my playthrough, at the very end, she moonwalked off the ship which had me howling with laughter when it was happening. It's an innocent bug and while it contrasted poorly with the gravity of death/losing her, I'll always remember it.

#5. Stanley - Stanley is frigging adorable. He's a mushroom you'll pluck out of your field one day that out of thin air will become a member of your crew. He has the personality of a child and will engage in all the innocent and playful aspects of life many forget as they get older. He'll have you goof off and put random things into systems you've been using for tens of hours, and offers a sense of whimsicalness that refreshes the player with some of the more difficult personalities that can be found onboard. Just remember to build another guest house since he turns yours into his own crib.

#6. Bruce & Mickey - I love these two. Let me say, they're jerks. They will very often cause -1 happiness just because they bully and push around other members. They're difficult personalities who will make outlandish demands and speak abrasively both to you and others. They will REFUSE to eat one ingredient meals which is what I'll probably most remember them for. But man if they weren't unique and sometimes hilarious with their requests "ayyy buddy needs 100 carrots get on it stat".

#7. Gwen - Gwen will likely be a lot higher for others due to the fact she's the very first spirit whose needs you'll be caring for in the game. She serves as a bigger sister role to Stella and helps her learn the fundamentals of everything you'll be managing for the remainder of the game. She also has a bit of a... snobbish energy? But she knows it so it's not that bad. She also smokes, and while smoking is awful, it looks cool as hell when a reindeer does it.

#8. Buck - Buck is such a goofball. He is a complete geek who loves role-playing games and his house will be entirely composed of action figures. He never actually leaves your crew and will be with you until the very end of the game. One of the things I love about him is just how extra he is with describing everything in a lore-related fashion.

#9. Giovanni - Giovanni is a playboy and Astrid's cheating lion husband. You actually catch him committing adultery and have the option to tell Astrid or not. Somehow, despite all his deplorable actions the way he'll call you Bambina and his general charm that made Astrid fall in love with him in the first place is still present. He's one of those guys that you wish "got it" and realized what he was doing to others and change his ways but man... some things never change.

#10. Elena - A serious, no-nonsense dog that will demand excellence out of Stella and does not care for the hugs and kisses you've offered every other member of your crew until the very end of the game. She's an ice queen. If you hug her, she gets PISSED and will not let you. She wants simplicity in life, and improving her home makes her mood go down. Thus, make sure you get her to ecstatic before going for that trophy.

#11. Beverly - I discovered that Beverly was added as DLC. Her most distinct moment for me was initially bringing her on the ship, thinking I finally got her, before she looked at the house I built and said "this is trash" and immediately demanded to be dropped off in Oxbury again. Aside from that, she utilizes a projector to review old memories and also has a hilariously loud and obnoxious eating sound when given a meal that made me giggle each time I heard it.

#12. Summer - I did not love Summer. She's one of the characters you get early on and for whatever reason, nothing of her ever really hit home with me. I do remember she was a vegetarian - and she'd chastise you if you ever tried to feed her something with meat or fish in it.

I LOVE this crew. It has a great variety of personalities, and this is me not even mentioning some of the other characters who you'll frequently be interacting with. There's Albert, a shark who upgrades and expands your ship as you progress in the game and will quip dad jokes at you whenever you return to him. Raccon Inc. is run by a knockoff of Tom Nook that cripples small businesses and makes every store owner change their name to Theodore. Through Alex's bus system, you have a fast travel system that lets you jump to different bus stops so it doesn't make your boat trips as long as they would be otherwise. He plays some incredibly obnoxious music whenever you get near him, and if you tell him to turn it off, and then turn it back on, you will laugh at loud and how he replies to you. Finally there's Susan, the Collector (who's also the platinum image!) who gives you rewards for collecting things. But hilariously enough, rather than praise you for your hoarding, she's very apathetic to your collection and mockingly congratulates you for being a completionist. I thought it was spectacular.

Your enjoyment of this game will live or die depending on how much you enjoy these characters.

But I've been so positive up to this point... what about some of the negatives with Spiritfarer?

1) The movement system for Stella needed to be more expanded upon earlier in the game. I understand the limitations of what you can do without breaking previous islands if you made Stella too powerful. But, the abilities you gain just aren't transcendent enough. The double jump is fantastic, as well as the glide. But then you get a zipline and bounce ability that while fun, I feel like the dash mechanic should have been introduced MUCH sooner. It makes navigating the ship much quicker. 2) Some animations you just get tired of looking at for the 100th time. There is a loading screen for getting on and off every island you visit. On PS4, this wasn't too bad but it was there. On PS5, the load times are so quick it wasn't much of a bother. But with other animations, this still applies. Yanking out crops in the garden. The slow tree cutting process. It's wonderfully animated, believe me, but I can absolutely see this getting grating towards the end of the game. 3) I wish some of the minigames were better. I already talked at length about this but yea. 4) I wish things could be more automated. I understand why this isn't the case. The game NEEDS to make you feel like you're "chasing" to always keep you busy. What would you do if everything was automated? But I wish you could at least temporarily make things easier on yourself by telling Atul to chop up 15 oak logs or get Summer to handle your garden as opposed to always needing to do it yourself. 5) The endgame kinda... sucks? This is natural and may be an intended consequence of what this game is going for. In the early and mid-game, you will have a lively, bustling ship with things you are constantly attending to before nighttime falls. You very often won't be able to fill it all in one day. But by the end, your crew members are so few, the ship is so much more lifeless, that you'll find yourself only needing to focus on 1-2 things that the game just doesn't feel the same. You're no longer chasing. It's not awful. The proper endgame for me only lasted 2-3 hours given I needed to grow a pear tree and fish an octopus for the last few recipes I needed to make, but I could absolutely see someone disliking the end portion of this game after loving the early and middle portion. Isn't that kind of fitting for a game all about death? The end is never pretty, no matter how much closure and contentment you can find in the end. That loss is there. You just need to find a way to grapple with it or else you'll never get on with life.

Trophies - This game has a fairly high platinum rate all things considered so you should know going in this won't be too bad. There ARE missable trophies. But they're fairly easy to point out. The first thing is, you NEED to make sure you get every spirit to ecstatic mood. It doesn't have to be for a long time, or even when they leave, just one time when they're on your ship, make sure you get them there. Upgrading their house and feeding them their favorite meals will often simply accomplish this. I personally recommend that unless you NEED to get another spirit flower, DON'T let go of Atul or Gustav until the very end of the game. Why? Because those +3 happiness bonuses single-handedly carried me for getting all spirits to ecstatic in my playthrough. Aside from that, there are two missables towards the end of Astrid's story whether you tell her or not about Giovanni's infidelity. Make a backup save to the Cloud or USB and just pick the opposite one when you reload or immediately quit out after making it in-game and selecting the other option. Aside from that, build every building and create every recipe. I personally just planted a bunch of vegetables and fruits since the start of the entire game so I had an abundance of materials for clean-up in the endgame. Cultivate chickens, cows, and turn wheat/rice/corn into flour with the windmill as well. The only two ingredients I missed out on were a pear and an octupus, clean-up there took prolly 45 minutes waiting for the tree to grow, and FINALLY catching an octopus. Everything else is very straightforward and you should get it naturally while playing. It took me 1 week and 6 days to earn the 27.13% rarity platinum.

Would I recommend Spiritfarer? YES, with some qualifiers. I freaking love this game. But I am biased as all hell towards it. I personally made this my 150th platinum milestone since I was in the 130s. I have been anticipating this game since E3 2019. I LOVE these sorts of Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing-type games. Do you? OR are you someone who NEEDS a core gameplay mechanic that's enthralling like a combat system found in a FromSoftware game? If the answer is the latter, you'll probably not enjoy Spiritfarer since the gameplay isn't why you're here. You're here for the characters. Everything you do in the game, you do for them. If you haven't bought in on them, you may find large stretches of this game quite dull. I also think if you dig exploration, there's value here for you. When you realize just how vast the map is, you'll get a twinge of the feeling BotW gave you when you realized the starting plateau was just that, the starting area. I am utterly thrilled that this game lived up to expectations for me. Given the fact I've been burned on games I thought could be brilliant but just turned out solid (Forgotton Anne, Owlboy, Haven) - the fact Spiritfarer is so lovingly crafted makes me proud to say I've played every single game Thunder Lotus Games has ever produced and will be right there whenever their next release launches. Thank you for your time and I hope you all have a marvelous day!

Panda Score: 9.3 / 10

Panda Difficulty: 3.7 / 10

Spoiler

Game Start Date: September 23rd, 2021

I’m excited. Finally booting up the game this Thursday. I’m optimistic it can be a hit. The graphics for Thunder Lotus Games have always been stellar. Let’s hope the gameplay loop is satisfying and the story/dialogue holds my attention.
Charon? Spiritfarer? My mind went to “The Forgotten City” Karen lol
Oh Charon is retiring
Stella is us!
Okay I’m digging the colors. Our first friend is “Gwen” is a deer and we’re upgrading out boat from a shark named Albert. I’m enjoying the music. Good start.
Gwen loves comfort food, that bright jelly sequence catching was cool
NEVER the same thing twice
“Theodore and his brothers are the founders of Raccoon Inc., a shady retail franchise with very loose moral values” hehehe Animal Crossing reference
Gwen just undressed this raccoon lmao
I love Atul’s design
This game feels like it’s going to be mammoth. All of the recipes. All of the islands. Sweet!
Hey we made Gwen ecstatic! WOO! 1st trophy earned 1 hour into the game
Double jump! Cool!
Heh got a trophy for giving a tip to the Furgoawa island lady, there’s also a random sprite I can’t reach yet, presume we get a “glide” ability from the next obal and he’ll be a future Boat resident
Hahahah alright this game is starting to get good. I feel like I’m playing Graveyard Keeper chasing all of these upgrades but also a hilarious “protest revolt” against the capitalist CEO and I got that sprite to join my boat, cool!
Hehehe sawdust “It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere” Stars Wars prequels reference
Atul has reached ecstatic after feeding him pork chops!
Summer is ecstatic! Gave him an opal and a hug.
We saw Gwen off through the Everdoor… it was real Deer Girl
Evil gigantic Owl’s name is… Hades? Hmm……
On this new PS5 (Sept. 30th) and WOOOOOW the loading times between moving to Islands definitely feels way faster
I LOVE the idea of Susan the Collector. An apathetic walrus baffled by why you collect so much junk and rewards you anyway
Alice has reached ecstatic after doing a nebula event!
Lol I accidentally added another spirit, his name is Gustav!
Alright Gustavo explaining his room design literally making me lose the whole day due to his long-winded explanations made me LOL, and the fact the game lets you repeat hearing him is even better
WOOHOO! We got Astrid ecstatic thanks to Gustav’s fiddle, and the trophy popped for making 5 of them reach there so that’s great!
I just got the Zipline upgrade from Norwelder. The game is fun man, I’ve gotten into the routine of it. It gives me BIGTIME Graveyard Keeper vibes of constantly chasing the next upgrade / resource along with being overwhelmed by tasks from different crew members. But I’m liking it. It’ll be a long game, but I think I can enjoy that for this sorta game.
We saw Summer off…
We found Giovanni! Hope Astris doesn’t get super sad over this playa being on board
We got Giovanni got too ecstatic Very early on too, thanks Atul/Gustavo!
Alice’s ending made me incredibly sad. As someone who has seen elderly people deteriorate :/
By seeing Summer and Alice off, we get 2 spirit flowers, and now have access to the rock breaker! New area lessgo!
Alright got a new character! A gigantic thug intimidating in Bruce & Mickey!
Bruce and Mickey are ecstatic! All thanks to Gustavo’s fiddle, Atul’s flute, and having a nice house. Sweet!
With bounce, we went and got Buck from the Lighthouse, he seems unique
We’ve added Beverly and Stanley to the crew! Wow this ship is crowded now
Dawg… Beverly really hoped outta here… she’s unbelievable
Oh my god I just cackled laughing as Astrid moonwalked her way out of the ship to the Evedoor, that was HILARIOUS
We got Gustav to ecstatic! Al thanks to Atul’s flute!
Stanley is ecstatic after listening to Atul’s flute and giving him French fries!
Beverly is ecstatic! Carried completely by Atul’s flute + Gustav’s violin!
Remember to do a mini-games take on everything in full review
I feel like I am flying through Stanley’s quest line, just need some more bottled exoplasm man
I decided to have Atul and Gustavo to take part in Stanley’s play
Buck reaches ectstatic! Atul and Gustavo are MVPs of this game
Wow Atul just… left…. Not even an Everdoor scene with him? We got his spirit flower
Elena is gonna be such a pain to get her mood up isn’t she?
Bruce and Mickey are gone, see ya fellas
WOOOO!!! ECSTATIC TROPHY POPPED!!! ALL THANKS TO GUSTAV’S FIDDLE THAT MAN IS A LEGEND!
This boat is getting mighty empty… sent Gustav and Elena through the Everdoor
I gotta be honest - not loving the endgame right now. I’m at 88% on quests and the boat feels so empty just having Buck (doing all the lighthouses) and Beverly remaining on board. I miss having 4-5+ on all at once.
Damn it's over... that took me a bit less than 30 hours. I loved it.

Edited October 8, 2021 by realm722

YaManSmevz · October 8, 2021

41 minutes ago, realm722 said:

It is with great joy I can report that if you enjoy Animal Cro-

Sold.

realm722 · October 13, 2021

Game: Flatland Vol. #1

Analysis: I bought Flatland Vol. #1 for $0.74 back in late August 2021 and I can say comfortably for less than $1, it's well worth your money.

You're always taking a risk when you take a flyer on one of these super cheap games that go on sale. Sometimes you don't know if they're going to be a downright broken mess (cough Dark Mystery) or if you'll get some shockingly good bang for your buck on a game that just so happens to be super cheap. I'm happy to report that Flatland Vol. 1 falls into the latter category. This is a super high-paced platformer that will have you moving very quickly as a cube through 60+ stages of challenges. Some are mind-numbingly simple and others will have enemy triangles trying to blow you up. Along the way, you'll be asked to collect all 50 cubes in which many can be found hidden away in bonus or secret levels that have a green tunnel entrance. These aren't too hard to find, and while you could use this 100% completion guide on YouTube by @greenzsaber, I found the majority of them to be intuitive enough that I didn't need a guide. Once you've done all that, you'll have two major trophies remaining that are the hardest in terms of impeding most players to the platinum. That is "BIG BOSS" and "You're FASTER THAN LIGHT!". "BIG BOSS" asks you to complete the whole game while dealing with the final boss that only appears in the final 10 or so stages. Man is this guy annoying. You constantly need to stay moving as this little cube or else you'll be killed by the projectiles fired at you from the boss. I did this after getting all the collectibles and I died A LOT. Some stages were ruthlessly difficult given how jampacked they are that trying to avoid the normal enemies on top of the boss felt impossible. But rest assured, with enough patience and practice you will get the job done. The same logic applies with "You're FASTER THAN LIGHT!". This one requires you to beat all stages again, but this time with a hidden timer to beat the developer's time. I found this to be slightly easier than the previous challenge despite being rarer on PSNProfiles. I imagine that ultimately boils down to the fact this was my 3rd time playing through the game. I had learned the general layout for the vast majority of the levels outside of a handful of tricky ones. One final detail I'll add as a nice compliment to the game is that whenever you die, the game resets you very quickly which makes dying not very frustrating, similar to a game like Celeste. All in all, I was able to earn the 31.62% rarity platinum in 22 hours and 51 minutes.

RealM722 Playthrough Death Counter:

(1st) Flatland (421 deaths, 162 on Level 66-3)

(2nd) Not Him Again (867 deaths, 352 on Level 59-3, 197 on Level 62-3)

(3rd) Faster than Light (315 deaths, 21 on Level 25-1)

Would I recommend it? YES, with a few disclaimers. Do you want a nice relatively simple platinum if you have a modicum amount of experience with platformers? Knock yourself out. There's not much you're going to beat with the sub-$1 I managed to get the game for on sale. But there are some complaints I have. 1) The button for sprinting is god-awfully placed. You have to hold down the square button to "sprint" as the square. You'll be doing this A LOT especially during the high-speed runs in order to clean up the platinum. This is very awkward and numerous times, even during my last runs, I would be clicking the square button to jump, when in reality I needed to be clicking the x button. It's weird. It's not great. I adjusted, but my hands kinda cramped and I recommend taking a break after doing a full playthrough. 2) Be warned, you must complete both the boss run and speedrun in one setting. If you leave, there is no level select. This could be especially annoying due to the last disclaimer which is 3) Apparently this game is very buggy. If you pause while in one of these modes, some of the doors/gates that move you to the next level can glitch which means you have to start from Level #1 and try a brand new run. Thankfully, I never ran into this issue and I paused A LOT in the boss rush mode and never had it happen. I never did during the speedrun out of precaution. Even if this does happen to you, while annoying, the game is so short and can be finished in less than 20 minutes that even if you were to get screwed over, any trophy hunter with even a mildly strong mental fortitude will overcome this inconvenience. So yea, check out this game when it's on sale unless you got @Copanele platforming skills! ?I have another quirky/niche plat coming up after this and then we'll be getting into some article ideas I've been sitting on for a while. 'til then!

Panda Score: 6.6 / 10

Panda Difficulty: 3.5 / 10

Edited October 11, 2022 by realm722

Copanele · October 13, 2021

Wow I noped out at the very first "fast paced platformer" part ? smh I really am infamous for my "proficiency"

Congrats there who the hell puts a sprint button on the Square button?

realm722 · October 15, 2021

Game: No Thing

Analysis: I bought No Thing for $0.49 back in late August 2021. It is a game where you turn left and right. That's the gameplay loop.

Why did I buy No Thing? Well, when you see an 18% rarity platinum for less than 50 cents on the PS Store, my question to you is how do you not buy it? The sample size was large enough (650+ users). There was a trophy guide created on here and the rough estimations given were 4/10 difficulty with 10 hours of practice in order to complete it. That sounded very doable in my mind. So we took a flyer on it. The game is extremely simple, the control scheme is only two buttons. Click L1 to turn left, click R1 to turn right. You are constantly running forward and must turn at the appropriate intervals in order to avoid careening off into the void and dying. The closest game I can offer as a comparison is Infinity Runner which I platinumed back in January. That game is a good deal bit more complex as there's jumping and sliding but is more easily cheesed with the pause mechanic. Lemme tell y'all this, No Thing is NOT an easy game. For me at least, it was a very difficult game. Why? I dunno man... I guess I have crappy reflexes? The speed with which your guy would start sprinting on some of the later levels is just brutally difficult to keep up with at times. Level 4 in particular will train you how to handle vertically inclined levels as you still have to time the turns properly even if you can't see the floor below you when attempting to land. Meanwhile, Level 5 took me less than 5 minutes to achieve. Where the game starts ramping up in difficulty is Level 6. The path you need to take in order to survive switches and appears only at the last moment. You have to memorize the path in order to have a chance. I still have it ingrained in my memory. Right, Right, Right, Left, Right, Right. Repeat until the 65% mark where a new path will open up on the left side. All of this sounds like gibberish to you, the reader, but believe me, it makes sense. But here's the point in the review where I have to come clean..

Glitches Save the Day - Yea, I had to use glitches to earn 25% of the trophies on this game. That sounds like an absurd amount until you realize there are only 12 earnable trophies so I used glitches for 3 of them. Which ones? "The Small One", "Palace", and "Television". Let's start out by covering the first two. So..... this game would be a 10/10 difficulty if there wasn't a glitch available for these trophies. They require you to score 500, and even more ridiculously, 1000 points in a single run without dying. You earn 1 point every time you turn left or right. Each level in the game will only earn you roughly 120-140 points. That means you're looking at perhaps needing to complete 8-9 levels in a row, without dying, to earn this trophy. Given that each level may take you up to an hour, sometimes multiple hours, just to beat one time. I shouldn't have to tell you how absurd this sounds. So what do, we do instead? We cheat! and thanks to a wonderful user on here by the name of @esstee11, he discovered a convenient area early in Level 2 where you can practice glitching yourself in a wall and being able to turn infinitely without dying. Please note - even WITH this glitch, the trophy is still not easy. It took me 2 hours of practice in order to get it. In large part because the game would still kill me randomly for seemingly zero reason. I imagine it's because you gradually get faster and faster the more you turn so once your number gets too high you just glitch through and die but it was nerve-wracking clicking L1 and R1 back and forth hoping the game wouldn't randomly kill me. The other trophy I glitched was in order to beat a level, particularly Level 7 - "Television". Listen, I'll fess up - I'm disappointed in myself I wasn't able to earn this one "the right way". I practiced it for 3 hours. The highest I ever got percent-wise was 76%. But those platformers are just way too damn narrow. You move way too damn quickly. I couldn't. So I decided to look up some runs on YouTube. What did I discover? This glorious video with only 7 views covering a way to glitch yourself into a wall, and thanks to a convenient checkpoint, automatically get to the next level. I had already been used the "turn-around-at-the-start" tactic so the rest was super simple.

Would I recommend No Thing? Absolutely not. Are you on crack? I would feel genuinely awful if someone who generally takes my recommendations got stuck playing this game. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed my time with it. I got 11 hours of playtime out of 50 cents and am a freak who enjoys repeating a task over and over again, getting incrementally better until I finally achieve victory but I cannot in good conscience recommend this game to anyone. How about this - do you have super fast reflexes that you enjoy being tested? If yes, then maybe get No Thing. I'd personally say, go play Infinity Runner, and if you enjoyed that, could you enjoy a more dumbed-down, harder version of that game. The game at its peak for me was Levels 8, 9, and 10. Likely because I was just finally past Level 7, but also in a huge part due to the fact the levels just felt much better balanced and the final Level 10 which took me around 1 hour and 15 minutes to practice before finally beating it was a fantastic way to sendoff the game with climbing an entire tower. I listened to Tame Impala's - "The Less I Know the Better" on loop during those runs. One last thing I'll mention is if you hate jarring colors that change every 10 seconds, don't get this game. This is a full run of the game, watch it until you get the gist of what I'm talking about. I managed to stomach it but man I wish you could that off just to focus on the gameplay. Anyways, that's enough from this weird game. I earned the 18.21% rarity platinum in 2 days and 8 hours, and it has the added bonus of being my Level 460 milestone! Cool!

Panda Score: 6.6 / 10

Panda Difficulty: 5.4 / 10

Spoiler

NO THING GLITCH TRACkER FOR PALACE TROPHY

Died at 154
Died at 73 (went left twice)
Died at 402 (went right twice)
Died at 109
Died at 143
Died at 144 (went right twice)
Died at 66 (went right twice)
Died at 274
Died at 777
Died at 71
Died at 84
Died at 187
Died at 85 (went right twice)
Died at 232
WE DID IT!!!! 1,015!!!! PAUSED EVERY 100 LESSGO!

(Timed 40 seconds per 100 turns)

Edited August 25, 2022 by realm722

esstee11 · October 15, 2021

Ah thanks for the shout mate ?

Great write up, and congrats for persevering and completing this deceivingly difficult plat! ?

rjkclarke · October 17, 2021

I've finally caught up with your thread! Woooo

All fantastic reads as always - oh and congrats on Platinum number 150! They always feel a little more satisfying when they are a game you love right?

I don't usually extensively plan milestones - but that one I actually did - I was like, yes Witcher 3 please! - and I got the most amazing screenshot for it too, if you ever stumble across my actual profile on PSN, not the one on here, it's the background image you can have on your profile, and it happened pretty much by accident - but man what a happy accident.

Sorry about getting a little behind - yours isn't the only one unfortunately.... So I'll have to make an effort to sit down and do a bit more reading!

Full disclosure though - I did skip a few sections of some of those reviews that you flagged as pretty spoiler heavy (you probably noticed I avoid spoilers wherever I can). I absolutely intend to go back and read them fully when I've actually played the games in question. However, you should take that as a compliment, because I pretty much trust your opinion on the games you're playing, and you always give such thorough and detailed descriptions I usually almost always know whether or not I'll like something, just by how much detail you've put into unpacking everything. Ironically I think you once said the same about some of the stuff I've written.

So after you recommended me The Banner Saga, which I am absolutely going to play at some point, Ash of Gods will probably also get a little turn itself, I actually saw it not too long ago for a similar price, physically to what you paid for it, so perhaps I'll have to pick it up.

Spiritfarer looks like something I'd have a great time with too, so even skimming around the review a bit I think I'm pretty much sold on that one - it's been far too long since I've played a game like that.

I do know what you mean about seeing games for like £0.37- £0.76 or something like that and thinking...... Why not? How bad can it be for that price, I've got a little puzzler I picked up a while back I'm planning to play that was a similar price to those, so at the very least, we'll be giving a bit of exposure to a title people might never have heard of, or looked into otherwise - and realistically how much can you really complain about a game that's that price - you can't expect it to be the most stellar experience, but there's usually something to like, or some positive to take away from it

I think I'll be giving No thing a miss - that looks like it'll make me want to go and lie down in a dark room and scream into a pillow.... I'd seen that on sale occasionally,clicked on it, got a little confused about what it was and clicked away - so I'm glad you gave its review your full attention - so that now more people can actually find out what it is.

I love your dedication to getting at least one 100% a month as well - that's really cool, your profile looks so diverse to scroll through as a result as well. it isn't just BLUE BLUE BLUE BLUE BLUE BLUE........ ad infinitum!

Keep the awesome content coming! I'll try not to get behind this time!

Edited October 17, 2021 by rjkclarke

realm722 · October 19, 2021

Game: PGA Tour 2k21

Analysis: I did not buy PGA Tour 2k21, but rather got it during the month of October 2021 for Free thanks to it being available for PS+ Users!

History of Golf Games - This is the first PS+ game I've played and completed since Goat Simulator back in July 2021. The games they've been putting out have largely been not relevant to my gaming interests or ones I won't touch for quite some time. PGA Tour 2k21 on the other hand was incredibly unique. I have not played a golf game since.... Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 on the Nintendo Wii. WOW! That game was released back in July 2009. LeBron hadn't even left Cleveland yet! The point is - I had not played a golf game in forever and give how reasonable the trophy guide said the platinum was, I decided to test out the waters. Lemme say, I am pleasantly surprised by just how much I enjoyed my time with this game! I decided to do some research on the "golfing video games" genre and discovered it's essentially been in turmoil since the Tiger Woods games faded after 2014. If you're a die-hard golfing sim fan, you'd have to resort to a more arcade game such as Everybody's Golf or settle for a hardcore experience in The Golf Club franchise. This game is made by the same studio (HB Studios) as The Golf Club series, with the difference being they've integrated with 2k Sports for a more casual experience while also retaining the PGA Tour license. Who knew golf video games had such a storied history?

But you don't care about any of that. Why was it good? I dunno man... it's fun to hit the ball around. The very first thing when I jumped in was create my golfer (I made my guy "El Bombillo", a Colombian whose name translates to "The Light Bulb". This nickname applies since I made my guy bald, and his head's shape reminded me of a light bulb). After that, I started the MyCareer Mode of this game which is... pretty bare bones. It's a decent start I suppose. You go through a bunch of tournaments, can switch up your gear and clubs, but there's not really a whole lot of progression. You can have "rivals" which is a stupid gimmick and poorly implemented. Literally, all that matters is beating your current "rival" in the SAME 7 CATEGORIZES EVERY SINGLE TIME, rinse and repeated twelve times. But none of these superficial elements mattered to me. I dove into the game and started playing on beginner, and man was I having fun! I was struggling at first racking up a number of bogey's and just generally putting awfully (I did not discover the putt preview until 8+ hours into the game). But eventually, I turned off wind, and all of a sudden my shots were perfect damn near every time. Even with this, I enjoyed setting my own challenges such as trying to hit a hole-in-one or make it in the cup from the bunker. I was able to absolutely blaze through this section even though it is where the bulk of your time grinding for the platinum will be due to the fact I 1) turned off all replays and presentations elements and 2) fast-forwarded every single time after I hit my shot. I believe without this feature, the game would have been a complete slog. With it, you can fly thru 18 holes in about 10 minutes.

My Uproarious Online Experience - I don't typically play online unless a game forces me to. This game had two particular trophies that needed popping in this regard. The first is "Invite Only" which requires you to finish a round in a private match. I made a gaming session on here and within 30 minutes, @BURNT-FACE-MAN42 messaged me and we were able to bang out this trophy in less than 15 minutes. The second trophy, "Playing With Others" requires you to finish a round in matchmaking with strangers. This trophy brought me the best experience I've had with multiplayer since Journey. Here I was, loading into a lobby with 3 complete strangers, simply hoping none of them disconnect and the connection remains stable enough that I only have to do this one time. What I got instead was pure hilarity. Basically - I dunno if they were new at the game and just were trying it out since it was on PS+ OR maybe they were like me and had just played Career Mode on beginner difficulty for 10+ hours, but oh my god they were AWFUL. The minimum difficulty online is Pro. All of a sudden, things such as wind, backspin, and precision become a hell of a lot harder than playing on baby mode. What this led to was me utterly cackling at their horrible shots. I wasn't even doing it out of meanness. These strangers had these hilarious, goofy-looking freaks for their characters while my normal dude was out here trying to play a proper match. A bonus to this is, since the PS5 has a built-in mic, I could tell all 3 of them had their mics on since I would hear feedback from the game. (When I first got my PS5, that was the very first thing I turned off). Still, I could hear one of the players, Aceshark4, a Spaniard cracking jokes in Spanish that had me HOWLING. The absolute best was on the final course when there was a gigantic lake, he hit it into the water 3 times in a row and every time said "¡AL AGUA!" which can roughly translate to "TO THE WATER!". I turned on my mic so he could hear me cry laughing from his jokes and he too would start cracking up. It was such an organic, genuine interaction that we were all just laughing at how bad all of us were. Another player, Jeje_053 got in on the jokes as well. He had a literal 2-inch putt to close out the round, and all of a sudden whips out his driver looking like he's gonna send the ball to the moon which absolutely sent both me and Aceshark. Finally, Pepedebeste_053 (American player) was the worst player of us all and was an unintentional comedic genius with the way they'd hit their shot so poorly, only to roll right back to where they just tee'd off it couldn't have been planned any better. I know this is such a strange thing to make such a long anecdote about but this encounter will by far be the thing I most remember about this game and just being able to chat in Spanish and have a good time with a complete stranger while enjoying a golf game.

Would I recommend it? YES. Unless you hate sports games or golf itself, why wouldn't you? According to the PS5 tracker, it took me just 12 hours to earn the platinum. The PGA Tour Career trophies are by far the biggest grind and took up 10 hours of that play-time, but with fast-forwarding + turning off all presentations, you can turn that into five movies you got to enjoy while mindlessly swinging away and mowing down all your rivals. In fact, if I had to give a criticism of this game - it'd be that. I wish I had me play this same amount of time, maybe even a little more, if the game had just challenged me a bit with some harder, slightly more skill-based trophies. I think the gameplay loop is genuinely a blast and hitting those fairways or getting that perfect curve on a 30ft putt is utterly exhilarating. Of course, I don't want them to overdo it either. That "True Legend" trophy is downright stupid. If not for a loophole found out by the community on Scramble Mode, I could NEVER complete it. Playing on Legendary difficulty after playing on Beginner for 8+ hours is like going from 2-pound weights to 200-pound ones. Every shot is a mile off from where you intended. Only thanks to this helpful guide did I achieve it. Every other trophy in the game is fairly easily followed and many can be attained if you aim for them while grinding away at the career mode victories. All in all, it took me 2 days and 4 hours to earn my 8.16% rarity platinum and that time remarkably makes me the 26th fastest achiever to 100% according to PSNProfiles. Pretty cool given this is a PS+ game and people are likely trying to finish it as fast as possible. I definitely consider myself a fan of the series, and will likely pick up the next game in the series when it goes cheap and if the trophies are even reasonably manageable (hey... I think 2k got exactly what they wanted out of me by putting this game on PS+, damn them!)

Panda Score: 7.4 / 10

Panda Difficulty: 2.8 / 10

On 10/17/2021 at 1:40 PM, rjkclarke said:

-snip-

Hah, you are far too kind rjk, thank you for all the kind words! I always say that I first and foremost write these reviews for myself (which I honestly do narcissistically read back more than I'd like to admit just to remind myself how I really felt about a game), but to hear someone read and gain value for them really makes my day. I know I go quite heavy on the spoilers, I'm probably the worst offender of everybody here who has checklists that does that. There's a number of reasons for that. On one hand, I feel completely hamstrung at times to properly convey my thoughts without them. While on another, I've found that game stories for me are largely just flavoring, and even if I am spoiled - seeing how good a game executes it still brings value to me far more than the surprise of the twist.

I am legitimately thrilled that you are going to play TBS. I am going to devour those reviews. I think you're the only one in the history of the internet who'll give me a running for the amount of words I've typed regarding them ?. I really think you'll enjoy it and if you do, AoG will be another one I'll be ecstatic to dicuss with you about - just because as of right now Briste is literally the only other person I know who's played it.

Finally thank you for the compliment on the 100%'s! They're often a cheap way for me to say I try and complete at minimum 4 games every month when in reality one of them only takes a mere few hours, but they add a lot of diversity. I like to think of it like how a big-time college football program will always schedule themselves a cupcake FCS team when they need an easy win before some of their tougher opponents. I will say, one debilitating thing that my stupid brain does to me is since I love how it looks - I'm kinda not looking forward to the change in the size offered by PS5 games. I know it sounds utterly asinine but the images being full squares instead of rectangles now ruins the uniformity. I will get over it and just accept it but I won't be happy about it!

Copanele · October 19, 2021

Never thought a golf review could be so entertaining ? congrats and thank you!

Of all the sports that could bring people together, golf really is a weird contender!

AihaLoveleaf · October 19, 2021

Love the PGA review. Knowing you can turn off wind to freely shoot for aces and birdies sounds amazing, and that online session was hilarious. You may have just put this game on my list of things to play.

rjkclarke · October 21, 2021

On 19/10/2021 at 7:11 AM, realm722 said:

Hah, you are far too kind rjk, thank you for all the kind words! I always say that I first and foremost write these reviews for myself (which I honestly do narcissistically read back more than I'd like to admit just to remind myself how I really felt about a game), but to hear someone read and gain value for them really makes my day. I know I go quite heavy on the spoilers, I'm probably the worst offender of everybody here who has checklists that does that. There's a number of reasons for that. On one hand, I feel completely hamstrung at times to properly convey my thoughts without them. While on another, I've found that game stories for me are largely just flavoring, and even if I am spoiled - seeing how good a game executes it still brings value to me far more than the surprise of the twist.

You deserve those kind words - you're doing us all a public service with all these awesome reviews and articles!

You most certainly aren't the only one that reads them back - I read mine back fairly regularly too, and edit them on occasion too, I don't think its a bad thing - in fact if I told you otherwise I'd be lying, as I spent a lot of this morning just going through my own reviews and adding a load of banner images to every review and making them nicer to look at. Thanks for the inspiration again @madbuk!

Which is more for me than it is for anything else, because I wasn't truly all that happy with what they looked like -my philosophy has always been, if people enjoy reading them, that's the nicest bonus anyone can ask for. It's great having a place to really air your own thoughts though.

Nothing wrong with going heavy on spoilers if you need to, I wouldn't want you to feel like your creativity was being stifled if you had to avoid them - there'll be a few reviews I can see where I'll have pretty much no choice but to delve into them a bit myself - you do make a really great point about that, that even if you're a bit spoiled on a certain event - just the journey towards how those events actually take place can be pretty worthwhile in themselves.

On 19/10/2021 at 7:11 AM, realm722 said:

I am legitimately thrilled that you are going to play TBS. I am going to devour those reviews. I think you're the only one in the history of the internet who'll give me a running for the amount of words I've typed regarding them . I really think you'll enjoy it and if you do, AoG will be another one I'll be ecstatic to dicuss with you about - just because as of right now Briste is literally the only other person I know who's played it.

I'm looking forward to starting it at some point - I just need to clear my backlog a little bit more,so I can feel a bit more positive about starting a game series I'm pretty certain I'll get hooked on.

You've got like 8000 plus on The Banner Saga right?

I won't actively try to beat that, but if it happens, it happens. As you and I have discussed a bit before I think, word count doesn't always = quality, so I'm always very mindful of that - I just get a bit carried away sometimes and get over passionate about certain games,which is I'm sure what you do too. Hence the long word counts. I suspect our awesome resident Dr is the same too.

On 19/10/2021 at 7:11 AM, realm722 said:

Finally thank you for the compliment on the 100%'s! They're often a cheap way for me to say I try and complete at minimum 4 games every month when in reality one of them only takes a mere few hours, but they add a lot of diversity. I like to think of it like how a big-time college football program will always schedule themselves a cupcake FCS team when they need an easy win before some of their tougher opponents. I will say, one debilitating thing that my stupid brain does to me is since I love how it looks - I'm kinda not looking forward to the change in the size offered by PS5 games. I know it sounds utterly asinine but the images being full squares instead of rectangles now ruins the uniformity. I will get over it and just accept it but I won't be happy about it!

They look awesome - that diversity really does make for interesting viewing.

I think I need to expand on my 100%'s personally... I was looking at my section of them in my front page earlier, and was like "I'm sure I have more than that, it appears not" so I might have to fix that one a bit going forward - do a bit of diversifying myself.

I don't think you're the only one that isn't a big proponent of those squares. They do look a bit funky in a sea of rectangles to just see a big square box with an Astros bot in it or a big Square Spidey symbol.... I guess it's just something we'll all have to get used to.

Grotz99 · October 21, 2021

Glad to see another person enjoyed PGA Tour 2K21. I ended up buying that game earlier in the year (sadly, but worth it) to play online with a friend and we had a great time messing around on the course with random people. Did you play any of the custom courses that have multiple pins on the green and only 1 is the true hole? I would find it hard to believe anyone got True Legend legitimately, you need more control for that than Yakuza 3 pool.

PlutoRico · October 22, 2021

I wish I knew about your checklist earlier my friend, I'm gonna have to keep an eye on your thread from now on cause it looks like a fun little place on this website ? Love your Miami banner and your articles, I'll have to catch up because some of them looks very interesting haha, keep it up ?

YaManSmevz · October 22, 2021

On 10/18/2021 at 11:11 PM, realm722 said:

Game: PGA Tour 2k21

Awesome review! I mean they're always awesome, but your description of the experience here had me particularly crackin up. I've been on the fence with this one all month - I got a lot of unexpected joy out of the golf game in GTAV, and I thought that was enough for me. But maybe not! And if it's not only accompanied by a trusted endorsement but also free, who am I to not give it a shot?

My hands are tied. Downloaded!

realm722 · October 25, 2021

Game: The Last Guardian (a.k.a The Worst Game I Played During The Playstation 4 Era)

It's.... finally...... over. I'm free. My eternal nightmare has come to an end. The Last Guardian has mocked me for the last 4 1/2 years. But now I reign supreme.

Posts Where I've B!tched About The Last Guardian:

LittleBigPlanet 3 (Feb. 24, 2020)

Every Video Game I've Owned (July 20, 2020)

LEGO Ninjago Movie (July 24, 2020)

Graveyard Keeper (Nov. 6, 2020)

The Games That Got Away (Apr. 11, 2021)

Why do I hate The Last Guardian? I am having a very difficult time deciding between whether I should actually try to play nice with this review, or be as ruthless as I actually want to be. No game, in all my gaming life, has filled with me such existential dread with the thought of having to replay through the main story again as much as The Last Guardian has. No game, in all my life, has lorded over me as much as this one has. To give y'all an idea - allow me to mention a few anecdotes. I have the physical disc edition and laid it next to my PS4 for the last few years since it served as a testament to my inability to conquer it. It had won. I had failed. At least for now. It outlasted me the duration of the PS4-only life cycle. So when I had to swallow my pride and have it continue to rest next to my brand-spanking-new PS5, it was a point of humiliation. For whatever reason, I had reached my breaking point with the ridicule. I needed to finish this game, and put it on the shelf of retirement alongside all the other great, difficult games I had managed to besiege. Here is that story.

Innocent Beginnings - The 1st trophy I got in this game was "The Call of Nature" which is see Trico take a piss and that was earned back on April 4th, 2017. Forgive me, but, my memory isn't going to recall all that well how life was back then. I know for a fact that my 1st playthrough of the game ended on May 17th, 2017. This was pre-trophy hunting RealM722. I had a whooping 9 platinums to my name. So while I kinda cared about the trophies, I wasn't following a guide or going out of my way to retain them. My fading memory gives me the feeling that the general consensus I felt was "Trico was a bit annoying sometimes, got lost a good amount, but it had some cool set pieces and moments". Let's say a high 6 or light 7 if I'm feeling generous. Not bad!

Where My Hatred Grew - Having gotten into Trophy Hunting in early 2018, I inevitably went through games I had completed and tried to earn their platinum. I managed to accomplish this goal with genuinely difficult games, such as FIFA 18 and The Witness. How hard could The Last Guardian be? Well, I essentially approached this 2nd playthrough as a collectible run. I wouldn't worry about the speedrun or no-death or all hints. That was a mistake. Because as I made my way thru the game again, I began to become irritated with Trico's lack of cooperation. Clunky controls where the ragdoll boy would fling himself off a cliff at the slightest whim. I got a great number of achievements on this run, from "Collar" to "Lock, Stock, and Barrell" as well as the huge variety of "combat" trophies but... I was so over this game. I hated it. The 2nd playthrough was a miserable, slow, unresponsive slog that feels like you're playing the video game equivalent of quicksand. I resented the idea of ever having to play this game again, let alone a whole two more times that would be needed to earn the speedrun/no death + all hints trophy that I foolishly ignored on this 2nd playthru since I was either impatient or too much of a noob to realize it would cost me another run through the game. The likability for this game had faded from "that was cool Trico jumped in the big pool of water when I baited him with barrels" to "JESUS CHRIST YOU STUPID DUMB BIRD CAT DOG JUST JUMP TO THE OBVIOUS FREAKING PLATFORM"

A 2-Year Hiatus - From 24th April 2018 through July 27th 2020, I did not touch TLG. I had honed my skills in other games. Earning 80 platinums in that timeframe. During those 2 years, the game sat posted up next to my PS4, every day, reminding me of my shortcomings. Eventually, in the summer of 2020, I returned.

Gotta Go Fast - For my 3rd full playthrough of the game in 2020, I had a very simple goal. Get through the game as quickly as possible and do not die a single time. Two utterly delightful trophies in a game where you are at the mercy of a gigantic fur prancing moron hopping between collapsing infrastructures. You are also left to the whims of a buttery boy who at any time, just may decide to not detect a ledge you're leaping towards. OR, perhaps worst of all, the camera moves at the absolute worst possible moment to send him plummeting to his death. The lesson? Have that Cloud or USB backup save ready in a jiffy in case you fail to hit the start button in time to reset your checkpoint! I remember dying multiple times at this section in the game. Simply because the boy refused to grab the wooden beams. It was awful. I hated every moment of it. I was also trying to get the "Intensive Care" trophy during this run and remember being utterly pissed off when it didn't pop at the end. I had managed to take care of two of the most asinine trophy requirements for the game and was still unhappy with my progress. Even when running through it as quickly as possible, the game will slow to a snail's pace at certain points. I couldn't imagine the thought of doing another playthrough. Hence... another hiatus.

1 1/2 Year Break - Another lengthy break. Another 56 platinums earned. My determination had been renewed, and for whatever reason, I was filled with a burning passion to finally put this game out of my life once and for all. Maybe buying Dragon Quest 11 physical edition and wanting it to be the new game that sat by my console was a motivator. Maybe it was seeing the Dolphins fail one Sunday after another, and their ineptitude reminded me of my own with TLG. Whatever it was, I needed to finish this.

The Final Run - Knowing that this may be my last run if I played my cards right, I was filled with what I can only describe as a feeling of serenity. "It's okay if the game takes forever, we're trying to get every hint." is what I would tell myself. I had the aid of this beautiful, magnificent guide. I love the man who made this. During my journey, I felt like I had a companion in my suffering. Waiting 10+ minutes to get a certain hint to pop while standing next to a canteen OR, someone else also voicing their displeasure with how much this game tests your patience. During the run, I also learned you can wipe off the blood from Trico left my spears and cuts after battle. WHOOPS! That's the first time I learned you could do that. Maybe you need to do that along with taking out the spears in order to earn the trophy? I started doing it like 30% of the way in and got the trophy to pop at the end so maybe. The hilarious thing for me is in my head, since it had been a year and a half, I kept asking myself "when are we going to get to that annoying blue fog bit? OR that section where you fall into water and need to climb up Trico's tail? OR that dumb bit when you get stuck in a cage and an angry Trico beats you around? OR that idiotic section where you're stuck on a tree branch?". Eventually, I passed all of these milestones. I did not have the "All Talked Out" trophy pop until the very end, where it tells you to grab Trico's tail and point it at the green/black slime cage thingy. When it popped, I can describe a sense of relief that can only be rivaled with the feeling when you are told that you are in fact, not the father. After 30+ minutes of ending cinematics, credits, and cutscenes... the platinum popped. My nightmare was over. I had earned the 3.24% rarity platinum in a speedrunning worthy 4 years and 6 months.

I'll repeat the question. Why do I hate The Last Guardian? There's so much here to dislike. It's like Fumito Ueda weaved a tapestry of qualities in a video game that infuriate me. I hate how unresponsive Trico is. I don't care if "that's what they intended". They wanted you to "cultivate a real relationship with your companion, and having him sometimes not respond to your requests, get distracted, and have a mind of his own is all part of that vision". I acknowledge their creative vision. I hate it all the same. While the trophies may have whittled me away from mild appreciation to utter resentment, I did not love Trico's "mind" on his 1st playthrough. For every unique, cool moment you'll have where he picks you up and launches you onto his back, he'll have four more infuriating clear platforming sections where a toddler could tell you where to go, and he just insists on bobbing his moronic head around without ever actually doing anything. I am waiting for the dumb bird dog in the television to jump so I can have control again. I am tired of waiting - and this game makes you wait A LOT.

Would I recommend The Last Guardian? MAYBE. "LMAO WHAT?" is what you're probably saying to yourself. You just spent 8+ paragraphs talking about how much you detest this game. Yes, I know. But in a strange way, I still wanna recommend this to people. In some perverted fashion, so you all can suffer what I had to suffer! But in a more honest sense, I acknowledge that some of my own imperfections led to increasing my frustration. I was a new trophy hunter, trying to platinum a very difficult game. I've seen people like @N1NJ4_V4MP1R3 earn the plat in less than 4 days which just boggles my freaking mind. I am going to go out of my way to hear the perspectives of people on YouTube who enjoy this game, and see if I can understand where they're coming from. I accept that this game and I are inseparable given it served as my gaming nemesis for a sizable amount of time. In a weird way, I'm kinda sad it's over. Is this what Batman felt when the Joker died? I've gone on long enough. Trico and the boy are out of my life for good now. They're probably glad I'm finally out of theirs. See y'all next time.

Panda Score: Worst Game Of All-Time On The PS4 (as punishment for The Last Guardian's sin, I will never play The Shadow of the Colossus)

Panda Difficulty: 7.7 / 10 (not cuz it's difficult but because this game has the worst trophy list of any I have ever played)

Copanele · October 25, 2021

3 hours ago, realm722 said:

Panda Score: Worst Game Of All-Time On The PS4 (as punishment for The Last Guardian's sin, I will never play The Shadow of the Colossus)

I was about to say " HEY this review sounds like my experience with the Shadow of the Col--oh there it is "

Seriously though, if I ever play The Last Guardian (I have no idea why I would do that but anyway), I think I will just copy/paste my SotC experience, since Trico seems to control just as smoothly as Horse. Forgot the horse's name, so he shall be named Horse. I don't know why devs thought there would be exciting to play the fantasy version of QWOP in these games...but eh.

The only great part about these games is that you can't write a bland review about them ?at least SOME magical experience is guaranteed.

MD_91 · October 26, 2021

After my experience of going back and completing Ico I can't imagine I'll ever add The Last Guardian to my list as Trico sounds even more frustrating than the stupid girl you have to lead around in that game, along with SotC they really nailed the "how to hate your companion" vibe with these games

realm722 · October 28, 2021

I Finally Decided To Pay $13 For A Premium Account

Lads, I've finally done it.

After having extensively used this website for 5 years (this thread being created back on July 26th, 2016) - and more frequently having been updated within the last 2 years, I finally felt like this website was most definitely within my Top 5 Most Frequently Visited Websites On The Internet. I won't lie - I held out for a while since I wanted to make sure support was still offered as we transitioned to the PS5 generation. It was. So here I am. If this website for whatever reason comes burning down to the ground within the next year or so, I give you all the freedom to personally blame me for causing this calamity. I'm sorry. Imagine how I must feel! I would have been better off paying the $5 yearly subscription and hoping the same outcome occurred just to save $3.

But in all seriousness, this website is pretty awesome. I see a lot of the Trophy Cabinet Gang with their fancy golden "Premium Member" status and felt left out of the party. Do you know what it means to deal with advertisements all the time? Trust me, I tried to get rid of them - but these buggers were particularly persistent on here. So in combination with that, plus a slight feeling of guilt for having used this website as much as I have for the last few years, I thought it was time to fess some cash up. The bonuses aren't even all that fancy aside from the ads. I can refresh my profile every minute now which is cool. But that will only encourage more freakish behavior to refresh my account every minute after I earn a 80% common bronze trophy in any game. That can't be healthy. But I sure as hell am going to do it to ensure I'm getting my money's worth!!! I also get an extended trophy cabinet. That's nice I guess.

Would I recommend that YOU pay the $13 for the lifetime membership? MAYBE? Do you use this website a lot? Like... meticulously comb through every cabinet, frequently get trophy help and guides from here, and in general like the community? Then if your circumstances allow, yea - you should probably do it. Based on the fact you're reading this post. You probably should pay for it. What weirdo doesn't frequent this website and yet ended up reading my gremlin den trophy cabinet thread? Pay up ya coward. OR don't. I don't get any of the money. That's all going to Sly. Which lemme say - is a really cool name for the Owner of this website.

aaaaaand with that brief anecdote over. Let's thank some of y'all for commenting while I've been too self-absorbed in my own posts.

On 10/21/2021 at 5:57 PM, rjkclarke said:

I'm looking forward to starting it at some point - I just need to clear my backlog a little bit more,so I can feel a bit more positive about starting a game series I'm pretty certain I'll get hooked on.

Completely fair! If I may offer a slight recommendation. I think the original game "The Banner Saga" is an excellent choice for a potential 350th plat milestone you have coming up soon. It is a beautiful image of Iver in all his glory. If you have another game in mind given your milestones are so far and few between at this point, I clearly understand.

On 10/21/2021 at 6:32 PM, Grotz99 said:

Glad to see another person enjoyed PGA Tour 2K21. I ended up buying that game earlier in the year (sadly, but worth it) to play online with a friend and we had a great time messing around on the course with random people. Did you play any of the custom courses that have multiple pins on the green and only 1 is the true hole? I would find it hard to believe anyone got True Legend legitimately, you need more control for that than Yakuza 3 pool.

I did not play any of the custom courses! But I did enjoy watching some YouTube reviews of the game in the background while handling some other tasks and noticed how fun some of them were. This is why making quirky trophies that specifically cater to stuff like this could be an awesome way for the developers to show players the full scope of their game. Maybe for PGA Tour 2k22. and yea - True Legend is 100% achievable legitimately... for the die-hard golf gamer. He probably plays his Playstation in a polo T-shirt. I don't think that guy is a trophy hunter.

On 10/22/2021 at 11:48 AM, PlutoRico said:

I wish I knew about your checklist earlier my friend, I'm gonna have to keep an eye on your thread from now on cause it looks like a fun little place on this website Love your Miami banner and your articles, I'll have to catch up because some of them looks very interesting haha, keep it up

Welcome! Always happy to see new faces around here. All your games are <1% completion so I think you're better off in Existential_Solid or Arcesius' threads than here if you wanna find games you may wanna end up completing. ?

On 10/22/2021 at 2:57 PM, YaManSmevz said:

Awesome review! I mean they're always awesome, but your description of the experience here had me particularly crackin up. I've been on the fence with this one all month - I got a lot of unexpected joy out of the golf game in GTAV, and I thought that was enough for me. But maybe not! And if it's not only accompanied by a trusted endorsement but also free, who am I to not give it a shot? My hands are tied. Downloaded!

I'm glad I could be the one to push you over the edge hahaha. PS+ games are always tricky in that sense. I'll sometimes look at one that I didn't have on my radar and say "ehh... do I really wanna commit so much time to this game that I don't even know is good." and with so many varying opinions out there, it can be hard to get any clarity. The best thing is - even if you think the game is just aight, you're not beholden whatsoever to the suggested 30-hours mentioned in the trophy guide. We're talking 15 max if you take things very gingerly. Hope to read your review eventually!

On 10/25/2021 at 3:33 AM, Copanele said:

I don't know why devs thought there would be exciting to play the fantasy version of QWOP in these games...but eh.

Yea Copa... these games aren't for us. But I don't really think they're for new gamers either? Cuz controlling a 3D camera is hard enough as is for us regular folk, now imagine someone who's never held a controller fighting with that, on top of the wonky controls, and... Team Ico's unique gameplay. I don't see it. But as you said, at least we have memorable stories about them. There's a small part of me that still wants to play SotC but perhaps I'll do it on a 2nd account and make a new series called "One and Done" where I rush thru the main story campaign and post a quickie on how I felt having to be weighed down by the trophies. But that'll be well in the future. I've had enough of Trico or Agro to last me until mid-2022 at the earliest.

On 10/26/2021 at 3:23 PM, MD_91 said:

After my experience of going back and completing Ico I can't imagine I'll ever add The Last Guardian to my list as Trico sounds even more frustrating than the stupid girl you have to lead around in that game, along with SotC they really nailed the "how to hate your companion" vibe with these games

The crazy thing is, I decided to watch this review on YouTube regarding the background of TLG. He mentions how the developer was surprised that in Shadow of the Colossus, the intention was for the player to form a deep bond with the main character and these titans he was killing. Instead, many players gravitated to the horse - the player's literal companion. So they said, "yo, let's make a game ALL ABOUT the relationship between the main character and the animal companion". Yet - I feel like I've read everywhere that Team Ico are the kings of making you mad at your incompetent ally so... what gives? I'll tell ya what! People will put up with anything if you put an animal in it. It doesn't even have to be a good, helpful, or smart animal. Damn them!

Edited October 28, 2021 by realm722

Grotz99 · October 28, 2021

10 hours ago, realm722 said:

I Finally Decided To Pay $13 For A Premium Account

Goes to look at trophy cabinet...

I'm guessing you have it setup by top 10 favorite games in platinum rarity order?

realm722 · November 2, 2021

Game: One Eyed Kutkh

Analysis: I bought One Eyed Kutkh for $1.49 in mid-October 2021. It's probably not worth what I paid for it.

It's the 1st of yet another month, and you know what that means - another 100% game needs to be completed! I had achieved some fundamentally solid games the last two months in Deployment and In Between, but I'm afraid we've come back down to earth here. This game was originally released on Steam back in 2017 by developer "Baba Yaga Games", and it's with great sadness I must say that they've produced nothing notable since. This is a point-and-click adventure game. That lasts 30 minutes. I personally earned the 86.11% rarity 100% completion in just 28 minutes and 2 seconds. That time currently places me as the 12th fastest achiever on PSNProfiles. That surprises me. Regardless, you're a weird pink alien with one eye, your ship crashes, and you have to pit gears back in your ship to get it up and running again. You find 3 of the 4, pit the sun and moon against each other after making an idol, and then bounce outta there having stolen their two pedestals. The game switches perspectives to a young boy who makes his way up a huge tree, gets to the top, and gets swiftly pushed straight back down to where your pink alien dude is. The point? The boy begs the pink alien to get the moon and sun to stop fighting by offering him that rarified 4th gear. The alien accepts. The sun and moon are in harmony again. Game Over! That was quick, wasn't it? I'm sure you could probably deep-dive on YouTube and find a guy who thinks this is his favorite game of All-Time and the story was deceptively simplistic when if you look deeper, it was talking about the trials of being a child with two parents bickering or something like that and it really spoke to him. You won't find that here though. I don't find much value outta games like these, and this one largely served to fill my quota of giving one to the little guy at the start of each month.

Would I recommend One Eyed Kutkh? No. Skip this one. There are better 100%'s out there you can get for a dollar and fifty cents. Just go through my own history.

Panda Score: 5.7 / 10

Panda Difficulty: 1.2 / 10

On 10/28/2021 at 11:04 AM, Grotz99 said:

I'm guessing you have it setup by top 10 favorite games in platinum rarity order?

Not quite! I obviously wouldn't put any games I disliked, but I mostly just put some cool-looking platinum icons that weren't already featured on my milestone list(tho I now recognize Pyre and Dead Cells are fallacies in that explanation). I really love icons that are unique who feature a prominent character from the game (Okami HD, The Banner Saga) rather than ones that settle for a basic trophy but in blue for the plat. I enjoy reading other people's cabinets that aren't all platinums and rather funny trophy names over the years but I ultimately decided to end up going the basic route.

Edited January 18, 2023 by realm722

realm722 · November 2, 2021

Game: inFamous Second Son

Analysis: I did not buy inFamous Second Son. Rather, I got it for Free as it forms a part of the PS+ Collection for PS5 Owners. Awesome!

When we last left off with the inFamous series, I did not write a very glowing review. For the most part, I disliked inFamous First Light. I did not care at all for the main character or her plight, found the bulk of the game uninspired and mediocre, and its only saving grace was the combat challenge arena mode that just made combat the focus point and dumped everything else. Good, mindless fun. I told myself I wouldn't purchase another inFamous game due to how much I didn't care for my experience with the spinoff title. Then I discovered that the 3rd main game in the franchise was free so.... why the hell not? Even if I utterly hated it, the plat shouldn't take too long and hey it'd probably make for a funny, engaging review. (Spoilers below)

inFamous Second Son is good Junk Food

Having spent 19 hours with the game and attaining the platinum, I can happily report that I enjoyed my time with it! It's not going to be entering any vaunted pantheons of my beloved gaming inner circle, but it wasn't a miserable experience. The story revolves around the protagonist, Delsin - who one day incredibly gets these new wicked powers. Sweet! Too bad those who have those powers are hated by virtually all citizens and hunted down by the DUPs and Augustine (I like this lady. There's probabl- actually no - now that I think about it most DEFINITELY NSFW artwork of her), who serve as the main big baddies of the whole game. Troy Baker is fantastic as Delsin. Even if I didn't love how jarring the tone could be at times (Delsin is still witty and charming even if he's mowed down hundreds of civilians and painted the streets red with blood), on the "Hero" playthrough, the tone fits very well. I didn't care for his brother. I forget his brother's name. He dies. In both routes.... when I was kinda hoping if you were evil, he'd turn on you. Yea - that is one thing I want to add. For a series that prides itself on letting you be "good" or "evil", the story barely changes at all. I understand how limiting this can be for a developer as if you were to write two completely branching paths, that'd be double the development time while splitting your audience but - the game is super short. Instead of hunting down drug dealers w/ Fetch, we hunt down... protestors and activists? and then we record on live television killing their leader? AND THAT MAKES ABIGAIL HORNY TO THE POINT THAT SHE WANTS TO BANG DELSIN? IS SUCKER PUNCH IMPLYING SEX CAN ONLY BE ACHIEVED BY BEING EVIL?

Eugene sucks. I did not care for him. The flying angels were also very bizarre and came out of nowhere for a game so generally based in reality. Eugene's section where he's introduced is also prolly one of the worst examples of how bad the tone is in the game when you play as evil Delsin. His brother(who's a cop in case I had forgotten), dresses up like he's a conduit and runs around joking about how bad and evil conduits are. Hilarious on a good playthrough. But when I'm LITERALLY MURDERING CIVILIANS LEFT AND RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM and he's still doing this jolly over-the-top charade - the entire act disintegrates on itself. They do some cool things in the game. Your jacket changes depending upon which route you go. Your attacks and powers can be blue or red. But given the fact, the big "thing" that inFamous does is "you can choose to be good or bad!", so many of these elements feeling lackluster is not something I can simply overlook.

But moving on from that, let's talk about what really matters - and what makes this game that "good" junk food I mentioned in big font up above. Whereas inFamous First Light limited you to the "Neon" moveset - with Delsin you'll eventually have the option to switch between Smoke, Neon, and Video (& concrete - which no one ever uses since you only get it after the game ends). My personal favorite was Neon. I love how you endlessly dash with a certain upgrade which makes scaling buildings a breeze. This is much more problematic with the Smoke ability, which led to me greatly struggling when I didn't find an air vent right away to quickly shoot up to the top of the building. Neon also has the advantage of a slowdown "focus" mode upgrade which lets you exploit a weakness of the enemy by hitting them in the head or ankles. Video is also very fun as you can fire endless pixels that do gigantic damage and your "dash" ability also lets you scale up buildings super quickly. Balancing these different styles was fun, and the best part of this entire game will be when you're just mindlessly cleaning off the checklist of activities to complete in each district. I personally did a huge amount of the first area of the map with just Smoke, as I didn't realize you'd get more powers as it was my 1st playthrough. What I'd do is try and build-up your super attack, have it charged, and then go to one of the DUP Commander areas where the power core is. Unleash it, clean up the remaining enemies, and then pluck through the side activities. The side activities in this game aren't good. There's a graffiti one that sucks and requires you to use the touchpad. OH YEA THAT'S ANOTHER THING! THERE'S SO MANY TOUCHPAD MECHANICS! I have played 200+ games on PS4, and not a single one of them has used the touchpad as much as this one has. Boy is it a relief the PS5 didn't dump that feature. I get that Sucker Punch was just tryna appease Sony with "hey look at us include these features you put on the big bad new PS4" but that is one of the things that has aged the worst in this game.

Aside from graffiti artwork, you have hidden cameras which are usually very simple, but I'm sometimes a brain dead moron and it would take me 2-3 minutes to find one as I'd be there like "I see Delsin... I know what angle it MUST be coming from, how am I still not seeing it?". There are "chase the hidden DUP agent" missions that SUCK. On one of them, it legit took me 20 minutes to find the guy. It's the one in the park in the first section of the map. I could not find him for the life of me. They aren't good missions. There are "hidden audios" which are meh, "towers" which block a portion of the map until you take them down. The random events are all pedestrian. The point I'm getting at is this - don't expect Yakuza 0-tier side quests with this game. You're here for the combat. For the full 20-hour runtime of the platinum. Thankfully, combat, even on normal difficulty, never got stale for me. The enemies were never "too easy" in large numbers. If you stood out in the open, you would quickly get your health whittled down into black and grey and have to back off. That's another thing - I don't know how I feel about the healing system. A part of me wishes it was different. Another part of me doesn't have an answer for a "better" system they could have implemented.

This review has been a complete mess jumping to one point from another, but that honestly kinda fits my time with this game. You run around the map, doing the same activities over and over again, and for the most part, it's solid, carefree fun. "Oh snap there's a shard drone over there lemme get that", "oh hey lemme bust that drug deal I need to do 10 for the trophy", "might as well get that graffiti while I'm here." Hence, the good junk food metaphor was used earlier. I appreciate the game for giving me a solid protagonist in Delsin, for making me appreciate Fetch far more in this game than in her standalone one, and for an awesome boss fight at the very end. The concrete boss where Augustine becomes a concrete giant is legitimately a blast. It's not difficult at all once you learn her moveset and more-so about just properly timing your dodges and waiting for your powers to load but I did feel it was worthy of praise.

Would I recommend inFamous Second Son? Yes. Think of it like going to McDonald's if you don't normally eat there. If you have food like that every day, you're going to feel awful. If you're constantly playing Ubisoft Open World games, I could easily see someone not enjoying the mindless action in this one as much as I did. But if your gaming tastes align with my own, I think you can enjoy this game as I did. None of the trophies are very difficult. Just review them before you play the game so you can start whittling them down naturally starting on your 1st playthrough. This made cleaning up the "complete 10 X side activities" trophies super easy to wrap up and the miscellaneous combat ones are easy as even if you clear out every distract once the game is over, random DUP events will still happen and you'll be able to snag them that way. All in all, it took me 1 week and 5 days to earn the 27.83% rarity platinum. I genuinely did not mean to write this much about this game as I did but here we are. Ooooooh - before I forget, UNSKIPPABLE CUTSCENES? SERIOUSLY? The main campaign is super short but even then that's going to dock the game a few points.

Panda Score: 6.5 / 10

Panda Difficulty: 3.1 / 10

realm722 · November 9, 2021

Game: Ara Fell: Enhanced Edition

Analysis: I bought Ara Fell for $4.49 back in mid-August 2021 and I am happy to report that this is a fundamentally sound, pixelated, turn-based RPG. It's good, man!

I'm not the biggest turn-based RPG guy. I have a modicum of experience in the genre at best. Ranging from the wildly popular Persona 5 to the mobile game style Dragon Sinker. The best game that I think could serve as a similarity to Ara Fell in my gaming catalog though has to be Cosmic Star Heroine. This game brought back a lot of memories with that one in the sense that while I wouldn't consider the game to be elite, it's just so nicely made and comfy to enjoy. It's the local star of a team that while not conquering the whole league is beloved by his fanbase. Think... Donovan Mitchell of the Utah Jazz. OR Matt Ryan for the Falcons if you prefer football. They're good, not great - but the people who love them, LOVE them. (Spoilers below)

What exactly makes the game so comfy? Well, for one the pixel art is delightful. I'll admit - when I saw the cover of the game on my PS5(it's the banner image for this post) - I had zero idea what to expect going in. Then I saw the pixel art and thought "awww....", but once I got over the disappointment, the game is very nicely detailed. The creators did a wonderful job of conveying the emotions of the characters in an adorable fashion when needed. I'll describe a few examples. On your journey, you will have a crew of four that has the task of saving the world. There are vampires, elves, dwarves, common folk, and plenty more. Basically - vampires are evil and wanna take over the world and you're the chosen one that needs to stop them. You play as Lita, the red-haired girl featured who is an incredible archer and a mere 16 years old. She's a girl, but she's spunky. She goes spelunking with a boy named Adrian. You already guessed it. Adrian has a big-time crush on Lita which is made manifest later in the story when they adorably kiss after some pretty dramatic events. But Lita kinda has this whole "gotta save the world from impending doom" business going on so she doesn't really reciprocate those same feelings back to him. At least not right now. You also have Seri Kesu. She's powerful and sassy. She's also a bit tsundere often being mean to Lita and often needing her to get back on track to the main goal. She's an ice queen. But man is her lighting magic OP as hell! Finally, there's Doren. Doren's the quiet and mysterious type. He's also apparently piped around 40% of the women in Ara Fell. Nice. He isn't flashy about his prosperity with women but eventually, even the group calls him out on it cuz goddamn man every time we pull up to a new city some lady remembers having a deep, romantic connection with him.

I'm not going to get too lost in the weeds on the specific story details. You need to collect insert generic powerful stone/gem in these insert fantasy location names in order to stop insert big baddie villain from conquering the world. But I liked the way it was handled! This is a very lean RPG. I personally played on Expert mode because there's a trophy tied to beating the game on that difficulty, and despite the fact I had to grind the odd 2-3 levels in certain locations, I never felt the game was dragging on or being grotesque with how much it asked me to grind. You'll clear out most areas quite swiftly and at a brisk enough pace that as long as you're properly leveling up your gear and properly distributing all of your stats, you should have no boss pose too tall of a challenge. I personally loved focusing on strength and speed for Lita. Slowly raising her MP here and there and virtually never her defense, and by the end of the game, I had her at 103% crit rate and doing 2-3k damage on every Holy Charged Shot. With Adrian, I focused a huge amount on defense and a mild amount into both attack and speed. By the end of the game, he had 540+ health and was a godsend against bosses taunting them, reflecting damage, with the occasional "Mark" that makes the boss even more vulnerable to attacks. Seri Kesu is another strength / speed-focused attacker with her magic being able to hit all enemies. Her lightning move was hands down my favorite and I used it about 80% of the time when attacking. Finally, Doreon is the support and his main focus is to keep everyone topped off health-wise while occasionally contributing with damage of his own with a Holy Blast. His "ultimate" move of healing everybody and regenning will probably be the one you must frequently use as it ended up always being the first one available to use against bosses. There isn't much to be said about turn-based RPGs that hasn't been written in the decades people have played these types of games. You'll know whether you can stomach it or not based on your gaming history. I can personally say that as someone who doesn't play these types of games very frequently, I greatly enjoyed my time with it, felt that on Expert Mode it never became so easy that I could turn my brain off. In general Ara Fell just made a very well-crafted system with plenty of mechanics we've seen before, placed into a very nice package that was this game.

Would I recommend Ara Fell: Enhanced Edition? Yes. If you enjoy turn-based RPGs, absolutely. If you're someone who doesn't even really play these sorts of games that often, but appreciates a game that was crafted with love and can find some enjoyment in seeing small numbers slowly become big numbers, you should probably play it. In terms of a trophy hunting experience, only one trophy is missable and that is tied to a very specific quest you can stay on the lookout for. I personally played alongside this masterful guide from GameFAQs. Some people may frown at me for deciding to play the game that way but it did nothing to distract from the experience in my mind. I got to scoop up all of the various enchantments / items / materials in an efficient manner and still enjoy the best the game had to offer, all while doing so in a sub-20 hour experience. All in all, I earned the 35.77% rarity platinum in 4 days and 4 hours. I hope this glowing review inspires some of y'all to check the game out. At only 750ish owners on PSNProfiles, it's one of the more under-appreciated games I can say I've had the privilege of playing.

Panda Score: 7.6 / 10

Panda Difficulty: 2.9 / 10

Spoiler

Ara Fell Game Thoughts;

The opening them girl is very pretty
I’ve heard good things about this game, let’s hope it comes through - playing on Expert difficulty to make it a single play through since I aint no pansy
Daddy Edmond is telling Adrian to piss off
I finished Chapter #1, enjoying the game thus far
YOOOO A VAMPIRE JUST KILLED MY DAD? SERIOUSLY?

lol I started taking notes with this game and then never continued not because I disliked it but I just got so comfortable with it I forgot to keep tracking my thoughts. What a cliff-hanger though amirite?

Edited January 18, 2023 by realm722

realm722 · November 15, 2021

Game: REZ Infinite

Analysis: I did not buy REZ Infinite. Rather, I got it for free thanks to the "Play At Home 2021" Initiative by Sony during the latter portion of the month in March 2021.

Why REZ Infinite? Quite simply, I'm very proud of myself that I've managed to achieve one ultra-rare platinum per month this year. As my options dwindle for games that I can continue that streak with, REZ Infinite kept rising up the list of games I'd finally play. Based on what I had read from other people who've played it, it definitely seemed like the game was not so much difficult as much as it was tedious. I can handle tedium. (or so I thought) I have a Dragon Quest Heroes platinum for cryin' out loud!

What did I think of the game? I enjoyed it! It's very different and unlike pretty much I have anything in my gaming catalog. It's a musical on-rail action-shooter that is considered the sequel to the original REZ released in 2001 on the Dreamcast. That's 20 frigging years ago! The uniqueness and creativity of that era shine through here. Instead of crisp, polished characters with stereotypical dialogue you've got this weird grey frog-feet looking man riding through environments and shooting things that most closely resemble spaceships and occasionally venture into creature territory with some dragon-like elements. There are only 5 areas in the original base game, but they are surprisingly lengthy(lasting 9-12 minutes, with Level #5 lasting closer to 25 minutes). I managed to do quite well on my 1st playthrough largely achieving 95% shootdown and only dying at some puzzling boss sections where I didn't know where exactly to hit (such as level #4 where the boss can be running BEHIND you and I didn't realize you had to turn around until I was dead). Despite being so old, these levels are good fun. I enjoyed playing them and while Level #5 took me awhile to achieve 95% shotdown, with the help of a YouTube video I passed it easily. From here, I decided to dabble in the "AreaX" section which is a new addition to the game. This section is a crazy switch-up given the fact you're now actually allowed to control your character by both accelerating and decelerating. It's a bit trippy and intimidating given the vast settings you'll find yourself in but I'd argue this was the section of the game while playing that I most loved. Avoid taking any damage, achieving the 95% shotdown rate for each boss, and just basking in the gorgeous colors was a blast. The 20-25 minute play-time makes it very comfy to get familiar within the hour or so it'll likely take you to achieve all the trophies. Sadly, the game takes a dip in quality from here due to the trophies asked of the player.

When A Game Overstays Its Welcome - I'm someone who doesn't like it when I read "this game dragged on towards the end" OR "would have been better if it was 5-6 hours shorter" OR "this section was quite tedious and repetitive". I feel like gamers launch those accusations a lot, and far too often than when they genuinely apply. Usually, if a gamer complains about "padding" in a game, they'd bitch just as much if the padding was cut. "$60 for a 10-hour game???? Get the hell outta here!". So imagine how much it pains me to say... if you wanna enjoy REZ Infinite and get the platinum, you're going to have to suffer through 6+ hours of pointless, repetitive material. Two trophies are the most egregious offenders on this front. The first is "Power Breaker" which asks you to clear score attack mode 30 times. Completing a single level (9-12 minutes) and beating the high score (150,000) counts as one time you've contributed to that tally. The shortest level is Level #1. So you're looking at in all likelihood, having to play this same level 25 times. Over, and over, and over again. Does that sound fun to you? I watched multiple movies while grinding this task. (Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas is underrated man, Eris & Michelle Pfeiffer's voice awoke A LOT of things in people back then). While that task wasn't very enjoyable, I knew it was helping me grind to the 10-hour gameplay time needed for "The Rezident" trophy. But what was the backbreaker for me? "Trance Hacker" asks you to beat the game all the way through, all 5 levels plus bosses, an asinine six times. No new enemies. No new levels. Instead, the colors look a little bit different. I watched Ridley Scott's American Gangster(that Denzel is good, man) during this since it literally involved me clicking the "O" button a bunch since I enabled "Unlimited Overdrive". I really cannot state how unbearably long these trophies make an otherwise incredibly short game. If you're going to go for this platinum, I strongly recommend having movies/podcasts/YouTube videos ready to go to null the grind. All in all, I earned the 3.31% rarity platinum in a mere 4 days and 8 hours.

Would I recommend REZ Infinite? Probably not. I enjoyed my time with the game in terms of the actual gameplay and music. The first 5-6 hours of trophy hunting, experiencing the game for the first time, learning where all the enemies would attack from and their patterns plus the additional AreaX mode was a blast. Aiming for those high scores the first time around was genuinely fun! But the latter half 5-6 hours easily bumped this game from a low 7-0 tier to a high 6-0 tier. If you can stomach some grind and tedium, I recommend checking this bad boy out since it is incredibly unique from everything else typically found on the market. I hope this offers some clarity to those who downloaded this game for PS+ ages ago but hadn't touched it since there simply isn't a whole lot of reviews from trophy hunters that I've seen on the typical experience. Hope y'all are doing well and until next time!

Panda Score: 6.8 / 10

Panda Difficulty: 4.0 / 10

Edited November 15, 2021 by realm722

realm722 · November 24, 2021

Game: Kamiko

Analysis: I bought Kamiko for $2.99 back in late August 2021, and I can say that for that price point I got exactly what I wanted out of the game!

You probably haven't heard of Kamiko. It's a small top-down adventure indie game made by the Japanese developer, Skipmore. Here's their steam page. With the North American version of the trophy list having less than 300 owners, I was taking a teensy bit of a risk in deciding to follow through with the purchase given with games this small, the trophy support tends to be minuscule if not completely nonexistent. Thankfully, there's a marvelous YouTube run that manages to demonstrate both a necessary sub-30 minute speedrun of the game as well as a full run without taking damage a single time. That may sound utterly absurd. I know it did for me. But in practice, it really isn't that difficult. There are three different characters to choose from and while that run demonstrates the melee Yamato, I personally used the range attacker Uzume with her bow and arrow to take down enemies from a distance. The great thing? You don't need 30 minutes of perfection. Rather, the game has an unbelievably generous savepoint system that allows you to quit to the menu as soon as you take damage and reload from before that hitpoint. This made getting hit in a BS fashion such as an enemy spawning on top of you a non-factor due to how quickly you can retry, and at maximum, you're talking about losing 2-3 minutes at most. By far the hardest sections of the game on World #3 and World #4, specifically the first boss fight on the last level due to the fact those hedgehog-looking things can spawn right on top of you when you're in a corner. Nonetheless, after some persistent attempts, I managed to get the "Untouchable" trophy and the game was an absolute breeze from this.

Having focused entirely on the trophies in that first paragraph, how do I actually feel about the game? I really dig it. The developers generously instituted a fair and lenient in-game timer that you can have always running to track your progress. It pauses during cutscenes. The combat feels snappy and responsive. At least for melee characters. For Uzume, I noticed you were always stuck in place for a second or two after firing a shot, and sometimes that could use you to get hit by a projectile as you were unable to sprint away. The maps may seem large on your first playthrough, but on subsequent runs(three is the minimum, I needed to 4 1/2) you'll absolutely blaze through the game with how quickly you can sprint as well as knowing the proper order to unlock the shrines in order to progress. Finding the secrets after your first time is also a cakewalk. The boss fights are simple and straightforward while never dragging on too long. The key here is to have balanced expectations. For a $3 game, I wasn't expecting the universe. I got a snappy, quick experience that was fun for what it was.

Would I recommend Kamiko? Sure. I'm not going to pretend I've come back from the mines having unearthed a diamond in the rough. But given how some other indies I've been excited for have disappointed (cough Chasm cough), Kamiko knows what it is and hits all the marks it aimed for. If you enjoy speedrunning, I think you can really dig the game on an extra level. If you hate speedrunning, I still think you can play it. The 30-minute timer really isn't that strict. By sprinting somewhat regularly, I always beat the game in 25-27 minutes. Having said all that, I earned the 23.39% rarity platinum in 4 days and 22 hours. As the year winds down to a close, we'll be rounding out December with a couple more indies before enjoying our mammoth JRPG to close things off. I'm excited to make some end-of-year awards + have a few article ideas I've been sitting on. Aside from that... oh hey the Dolphins are streaking! 3 in a row baby!

Panda Score: 6.7 / 10

Panda Difficulty: 3.0 / 10

Edited January 18, 2023 by realm722

realm722 · November 26, 2021

I've Decided to Publicize My 350+ Movie Ratings

(DISCLAIMER: This post has nothing whatsoever to do with video games)

Official: RealM722's Movie Reviews Spreadsheet

Hello gang. In order to make my latest article the front page post of a new page, one more is needed to round out the total number of posts to 375. So this is the best thing I came up with. I watch movies! You can even say I like watching them. As a result, since 2019 or so I have made a concerted effort to write down every movie I've watched and how it grades in the hierarchy that is every other movie I've seen. Slowly, I've built up a sizable catalog. With an average pace of watching 9 movies or so a month (some months I'll watch 15, others just 4-5), I've built up my library of knowledge and thought the time was finally ripe that I can post this and maybe some innocent soul could get some value out of my rankings. OR maybe at least see a movie that I highly rated that they've never heard of before. I will add another disclaimer - I'm a weirdo. I like weird things. It's why "Before I Fall" which is a weird mishmash of Mean Girls + Groundhog Day ranks higher than classics such as "Blade Runner" and "Citizen Kane". While I somewhat value how the general public and critics have valued a movie, if I watch something and don't enjoy it - I'm not gonna lie to myself and pretend as if I did. But let's break down some of the categories presented so I can offer some defense.

Movie Title / Year / Length - This one is straightforward. Basic facts. Some of the titles are so long they get cut off but by entering in the first few words you should find what you're looking for. I will add that you WILL find some TV shows and limited-run series on the list. Why? Because I barely watch TV shows. So why would have an entirely separate rankings list for like... 8-10 shows? It makes no sense. Hence, they've been thrust into the movie batch and hilariously offer the longest watch times under the "length" compared to even the longest 3 and a half hour epics. In case anybody asks why I don't watch TV shows - they're too long. If I'm watching one, I'm binging it HARDCORE. I watched 5 seasons of Jane the Virgin in like... 2 1/2 weeks. By comparison, I could have watched, what? 30 movies in that same time span? TV shows have their value and they make wonderful background theater but even I have my limits.

Genre - This is such a difficult category to define at times. What exactly separates a movie from being a "comedy" and a "black comedy"? What I did for this process was google the Wikipedia entry for every movie I've seen and typically put whatever the default was there, even if I disagreed with what it said. How is Blade Runner simply labeled "Science Fiction" while Johnny Mnemonic is "Cybperunk Action Thriller"? I'll 100% concede that if you were to comb through this extensive list, you'd find some serious discrepancies between what a movie actually is and what I put for its genre. But there is no perfect measuring system and I defy you to tell me otherwise!

Director / Favorite Actor - The director is very straightforward. I think I bungled creating it and just put the creator of the show for TV shows since each episode can have its own director. For movies, sometimes there were 2-3 that qualified but I settled on one for the orderliness of the spreadsheet. The seriously notable category here is the "Favorite Actor (or actress)" category. Let me make myself very clear - THIS IS NOT THE STAR OF THE MOVIE/SHOW. It's not always the protagonist. Very often it is. But not always. Sometimes a supporting character can blow me out of the water and steal the mantle away. I did this in order to make it very clear the actors and actresses I like and don't like. For example - Russell Crowe, John David Washington, Rachel McAdams, Zoey Deutch, Christian Bale, and Jessica Chastain? That's probably gonna be a good time for me. But, Johnny Depp or Will Smith? I'm probably not gonna enjoy it. I know, I'm the weirdo in this scenario. On the odd occasion, even one of my favorite actors will produce a dud while one I have a distaste for will begrudgingly receive a "aight they were pretty decent in that".

Will I Rewatch? / Word Count - Arguably the most underrated category. Do I want to rewatch a movie? This is such a unique category because I can watch a phenomenal movie such as Roma, for example, and while I was enthralled by it and adored the way it was shot - it can run at a glacial pace at a point. That pace served the narrative given the sudden high-intensity situations. But not knowing when those scenes are? I don't have a strong urge to rewatch it. Perhaps that can change in 2-3 years. Time typically favors older movies in this sense so I've left this category be fluid and if I ever feel the itch to rewatch something that was previously marked otherwise, I'll make that adjustment. I will never rewatch TV shows. I don't understand people who do. I guess it's kinda like people who replay mammoth 80+ hour JRPGs? The heathens. Finally, word count is my own private individual reviews that I do for myself to remember how I felt about a piece of work. They're not good. Hence why I haven't made them public. I'm not using Letterboxd. Don't even recommend it.

So yea! If I can get even 1-2 people here to watch About Time or Gone Girl, I think this post will have been worth it. Back to video games!

RealM722's Trophy Cabinet

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